could be wished; but the frequent notices of books,
copyists and publishers, made by many authors
during the first century, teach us that books
were plentiful. Horace, the elegant and fastidious
man of letters, complained that his books were too
common, and that they were sometimes found in
the hands of vulgar snobs for whose entertainment
they were not written. Martial, the jovial man of
the world, boasted that his books of stinging epigrams
were to be found in everybody's hands or
pockets. Books were read not only in the libraries,
but at the baths, in the porticoes of houses, at
private dinners and in mixed assemblies. The
business of bookmaking was practised by too many
people, and some were incompetent. Lucian, who
had a keen perception of pretense in every form,
ridicules the publishers as ignoramuses. Strabo,
who probably wrote illegibly, says that the books
of booksellers were incorrect.

"The price of books made by slave labor was
necessarily low. Martial says that his first book of
epigrams was sold in plain binding for six sesterces,
about twenty-four cents of American money; the
same book in sumptuous binding was valued at five
denarii, about eighty cents. He subsequently complained
that his thirteenth book was sold for only
four sesterces, about sixteen cents. He frankly
admits that half of this sum was profit, but intimates,
somewhat ungraciously, that the publisher Tryphon