1. Introduction

The Hellenistic kingdoms are particularly interested in fostering education and sciences. The Ptolemies and the Attalids are known to have been competing for the foundation of libraries. Although markedly smaller, the royal library of Pergamon, founded by Eumenes II Soter (197-158 BC), rivalled in fame that of Alexandria. Several other cities in Asia Minor seem to have had public and private libraries, mainly in the Roman period. Among these cities were Edessa, Halicarnassus, Heraclea Pontica (in Bithynia), Cnidus, Mylasa, Priene, Prusa, Sinope, Smyrna, Teos, Tarsus and, of course, Pergamon, Ephesus, Sagalassos and Nysa, three cities where archaeological research revealed buildings considered to have served as libraries. The number of public libraries in Pergamon in Roman years is estimated to have been amounting up to eight.¹

The majority of the libraries were part of a wider complex: a sanctuary or some gymnasium.² The great library of Pergamon was annexed to the sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, while later (in the years of Emperor Hadrian, 117-138) the native Flavia Melitene offered a library with a limited number of books to the Asclepieion, the sacred health centre outside the city of Pergamon. The library of Nysa (2nd/3rd century AD) and possibly the libraries in Mylasa and Halicarnassus belonged to the complex of a great gymnasium.³

2. Architectural Style and Interior Facilities

2.1. Hellenistic Libraries

The architectural design and interior facilities of Hellenistic libraries must have followed the standards of the great Library of Alexandria. The remains of the Library of Pergamon provide a clear picture of the libraries of Hellenistic years in Asia Minor. However, local libraries must have been smaller and plainer. The architectural design of the library is characterised by the existence of a large room leading to a portico. The size and decoration indicate that the room served as a place for meetings, lectures and receptions. The statue of some god must have stood along the central axis of the room. The walls possibly had niches in the form of aediculae for wooden bookcases. Next to the great, or royal, libraries there were smaller subsidiary rooms (book stores) for storing the rolls in movable bookcases or boxes (kivotoi), as well as a banquet room and a living quarter (according to the oikos at the Museum of Alexandria).

Particular care must have been taken to protect the books from dampness and light the room. Papyrus rolls or parchments were kept in closed bookcases, located within safe distance from the walls, while the windows must have had a mechanism that closed them in case of rain or wind. The readers were allowed to take the rolls to the portico and read them in full light. The interior must have been completed with seats and tables.⁴

2.2. Roman Libraries

The Roman libraries of the eastern provinces retain several features of their predecessors. They are not in the style of the double library of Rome with two rooms, where the Greek and the Latin writers can be found in separate rooms. They had a principal room and, often, a big niche at the end, where stood the statue of the god or some deified emperor.⁵ On either side of the statue there were symmetrically arranged, quite often on 2 or 3 levels, bookcases within niches. Access to the highest bookcases was through wooden balconies, supported on the columns of the ground floor. The room had tables for the readers –a novelty of the Imperial years. As a result, Roman libraries remind of modern reading rooms rather than Greek libraries. The most famous roman libraries discovered in Asia Minor are the Library of Celsus in Ephesus, the Library of Sagalassos and the Library of Nyssa.

According to Vitruvius, the ideal library has eastern aspects. The room was lighted by windows, filled with glass, and possibly by auxiliary lamps. The artistically decorated facade of the Library of Celsus in Ephesus had 3 protected eastern entrances that allowed better lighting of the room. The need for increased protection of the rolls against dampness may have led to the construction of an external and an internal wall, between which there was a wide passage (peristasis).⁶

3. Content and Organisation of the Collections

The size of the collection varies according to the character of the library. The library of the Attalids is estimated to have had approximately 200,000 books, that of Nysa 10,000 and that of Celsus 3,000. Of course, there were much smaller and local libraries, supported by private sponsorship. The most important books of the collections were the works of Greek classical writers (such as Homer, Euripides, Herodotus and Aristotle) and, probably, local writers. Nothing is known about works of Latin writers. Given that no twin rooms have been preserved, like those of Rome, the collections must have been in only one language.⁷

In order to find books the citizens and the clerks of the libraries turned to either the bookstores of big cities or had copies made by professional scribes. The influential citizens followed even violent methods. The heirs to the library of Aristotle are said to have hidden the books under the ground in order to save them from the greedy kings of Pergamon.

The book collections were possibly organised according to the ideas of Alexandrian scholars about the arrangement of books. Catalogues of contents were sometime compiled at the library of Pergamon, although they cannot be compared with those compiled by Callimachus for the library of Alexandria.⁸