Ancient Latin Poetry Books. Materiality and Contexts of Reception

Before the invention of printing in the XV century, all forms of writing were done by hand. For a literary text to circulate among readers, and to be transmitted from one time to another, it had to be copied from one book to the other by scribes. As a result, ancient books were different from one another, and each individual piece has its own history. The most ancient of these books, which are the closest to the time in which the texts were composed, are few, usually damaged, and have been often neglected in the scholarship. This books presents a detailed study of oldest manuscripts containing texts by Latin poets, such as Virgil, Terence, and Ovid, that are still extant. Analyzing their physical characteristics, their script, and the historical contexts in which they were produced and used, the work shows how manuscripts can help us gain a better understanding of the history of texts, as well as of the reading habits of the ancients. As the manuscripts originated in various places of the Latin-speaking world, the book investigates the readership and reception of Latin poetry in many different contexts, such schools in the Egyptian desert, aristocratic circles in Southern Italy, and the Christian élite in late antique Rome. The research also contributes to our knowledge about the use of writing and the importance of the written text in Antiquity. This is an innovative approach to the study of ancient literature, which takes the materiality of texts into consideration