The Library of Pergamon
About
Eumenes II built this library beside his Temple of Athena, stacking it with an estimated 200,000 parchment scrolls that made it the greatest rival to the library at Alexandria. Egypt's Ptolemies reportedly banned papyrus exports to starve out the competition, forcing Pergamon's scribes to perfect treated animal skin as a substitute — parchment, pergamena, takes its name from this city. By 117 CE it had operated as one of the ancient world's great centers of learning for roughly three hundred years.
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 Readers are respectable men and their secretaries; access is a favour that can be withdrawn.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
Nearby
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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 →