Jeremy Norman’sHistoryofInformation.com Exploring the History of Information and Media through Timelines
Jeremy Norman’s
A: Roma, Lazio, Italy, B: İzmir, Turkey, C: Como, Lombardia, Italy
Ruins of the library built in Ephesus as a memorial to Titus Julius Celsus. In 92 CE Celsus was a consul in Rome, in charge of all public buildings. Between either 105-106 or 106-107 CE he was the proconsul of the Asian province, the capital of which was Ephesus. When Celsus died in 114 CE. at the age of seventy, his son Tiberius Julius Aquila, built the library as a mausoleum for his father. It is assumed that the construction of the library was completed in 117.
"By the end of the Roman Republic the institutions and processes that govern and guard the transmission of the written word were already in existence, and under Augustus and his successors they were refined and consolidated. The book trade became more important, and we soon hear of the names of established booksellers: Horace speaks of the Sosii, later Quintilian and Martial tell of the Tryphon, Atrectus, and others. By the time of the Younger Seneca book collecting was derided as a form of extravagant ostentation. Augustus founded two public libraries, one in 28 B.C. in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, the other, not long afterwards, in the Porticus Octaviae. Thereafter libraries were a common form of both private and imperial munificence, in Rome and the provinces. Pliny founded a library in his native Comum and provided money for its upkeep; the best-preserved (and restored) ancient library is that built at Ephesus in memory of Titus Julius Celsus, proconsul of Asia A.D. 106-7; one of the most famous was the Bibliotheca Ulpia founded by Trajan, which long survived the disasters of fire and strife and was still standing in the fifth century" (Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 3rd. ed. [1991] 24-25).