Bibliotheca Celsi
About
A grand funerary library on Ephesus's Curetes Street, built by Tiberius Julius Aquila to honor his father, the former proconsul of Asia Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, whose sarcophagus lies beneath the building. Construction began around 110 CE, but Aquila died before it was finished and his heirs completed it, with the facade's full sculptural program not finished until around 135 CE under Hadrian. In 117 it was still an active building site.
What happened here
Books are scrolls, kept in labelled pigeonholes around the walls, and you read them standing at a desk or sitting in the courtyard with a slave to hold the roll. Greek and Latin collections are kept separately, often in facing rooms. Nothing is borrowed. A staff of copyists keeps the collection alive, because a scroll handled regularly lasts a couple of generations at best, and a library that stops copying is a library that is dying. Readers are respectable men and their secretaries; access is a favour that can be withdrawn. Libraries attach themselves to baths, temples and fora rather than standing alone, so a visit is folded into a day of other business. Lamps are forbidden inside for obvious reasons.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →