...This chapter examines various practical and logistical aspects of reading in antiquity. The chapter presents in detail the ways in which “bookroll culture” in the first and second centuries AD differed from reading a modern book, and the ways in which the reading system worked symbiotically...

...Table 11.1. Typical Bookroll Dimensions (Johnson 2004 ) Dimension Normative Range roll height Ptolemaic: 19–25 cm Roman era: 25–33 cm column height class I: 12–16 cm class II: 16–21 cm class III: 21–27 cm column width, prose class I: 4.5–6 cm...

...This chapter explores the nature of the symbolic status and function of the bookroll. It focuses on the tension between the fragile physical book and the ways in which the text can escape fragility. For Florence Dupont, the literary book during Alexandrian times is in concept no more than...

...This chapter talks about the fragility of the physical bookroll from a Roman poet's point of view. It focuses on the ways in which the poets, even while recognizing material texts as the vehicle for gaining a wide and lasting audience, repeatedly expressed anxieties over the corruptibility...

... of traditionalization, and the negotiation of an intertextual gap—and considers how the production of a bookroll becomes a performance. Next, it argues that understanding the scribe as a performer can help scholars of scribal activity out of four difficult spots into which they tend to work themselves. The chapter...