Sosii, acquired wealth, but there are many indications that publishing was then, as it is now, one of the most speculative kinds of business. One writer chuckles over the unkind fate that sent so many, of the unsold books of rival authors from the warehouses of the publisher, to the shops of grocers and bakers, where they were used to wrap up pastry and spices; another writer says that the unsold stock of a bookseller was sometimes bought by butchers and trunk-makers.
The Romans not only had plenty of books but they had a manuscript daily newspaper, the Acta Diurna, which seems to have been a record of the proceedings of the senate. We do not know how it was written, nor how it was published, but it was frequently mentioned by contemporary writers as the regular official medium for transmitting intelligence. It was sent to subscribers in distant cities, and was, sometimes, read to an assembled army. Cicero mentions the Acta as a sheet in which he expected to find the city news and gossip about marriages and divorces.
In the sixth century the business of book-making had fallen into hopeless decay. Ignorance pervaded all ranks of society.[1] The books that had been written were neglected, and the number of readers and scholars diminished with every succeeding generation.[2] The treasures of literature at Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria which were destroyed by fire or by barbaric invasion were not replaced. Books were so scarce at the close of the seventh century, that Pope Martin requested one of his bishops to supply them, if possible, from Germany. The ignorance of ecclesiastics in high station was
- ↑ The emperor Justin (518–527) could not write, and was obliged to sign state papers with a stencil.
- ↑ When Latin ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the laity. Hallam, Middle Ages.
