Note 25 — Chapter VI · PLATONIC CANON, AS RECOGNISED BY THRASYLLUS.

We see from hence what there was peculiar in the Platonic and Aristotelian literary establishments. They included something consecrated, permanent, and intended more or less for public use. The collection of books was not like a private library, destined only for the proprietor and such friends as he might allow — nor was it like that of a bookseller, intended for sale and profit. I make this remark in regard to the Excursus of Bekker, in his Charikles, i. 206, 216, a very interesting note on the book-trade and libraries of ancient Athens. Bekker disputes the accuracy of Strabo’s statement that Aristotle was the first person at Athens who collected a library, and who taught the kings of Egypt to do the like. In the literal sense of the words Bekker is right. Other persons before Aristotle had collected books (though I think Bekker makes more of the passages which he cites than they strictly deserve); one example is the youthful Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2; and Bekker alludes justly to the remarkable passage in the Anabasis of Xenophon, about books exported to the Hellenic cities in the Euxine (Anabas. vii. 5, 14). There clearly existed in Athens regular professional booksellers; we see that the bookseller read aloud to his visitors a part of the books which he had to sell, in order to tempt them to buy, a feeble foreshadowing of the advertisements and reviews of the present day (Diogen. L. vii. 2). But there existed as yet nothing of the nature of the Platonic and Aristotelian μουσεῖον, whereof the collection of books, varied, permanent, and intended for the use of inmates and special visitors, was one important fraction. In this sense it served as a model for Demetrius Phalereus and Ptolemy Soter in regard to Alexandria.

Vitruvius (v. 11) describes the exhedræ as seats placed under a covered portico — “in quibus philosophi, rhetores, reliquique qui studiis delectantur, sedentes disputare possint”.