What were books like in ancient Greece and Rome?

By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

If you were to visit a bookshop in the ancient world, what would it be like?

You don’t just have to imagine it. The ancient Roman writer Aulus Gellius, who lived in the 2nd century CE, gives us a number of descriptions of his adventures at bookstores. In one passage, he describes an encounter at one in Rome, which he was visiting with a poet friend:

I…

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© The Conversation - Thursday, January 1^st 2026

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