Le biblioteche nella tarda antichità: l’apporto dell’archeologia

In the earlier studies devoted to the architecture and fitting out of ancient libraries, little attention was paid to their late antique phases. As often with Greek and Roman monuments, they were studied mainly from the architectural point of view, therefore only the original structure of the buildings and possibly their major transformations (as in the case of the library of Hadrian in Athens) were investigated, without taking into account their becoming in the course of time. Based on a misinterpretation of a passage in Ammianus Marcellinus, and the premise of a widespread cultural decay, it is generally taken for granted that libraries were abandoned by the middle of the fourth century. The aim of this paper is to verify the correctness of this picture, reconsidering both the archaeological and the textual evidence. The basic data on the main public and private Roman libraries are presented, with reference to the excavations reports; they show that public libraries follow either a standardized, elaborate architectural scheme (the rectangular room, with rows of niches in the walls) or simpler solutions, where free wooden shelves are used to store the books. This seems to be the case also with most of the private libraries; on the other hand the wide use of niches made by the residential architecture starting from the 1th c. A.D. makes it difficult to identify with certainty any specific function.

As far as late antiquity is concerned, recent archaeological investigations show that the picture is far from homogeneous; there is no evidence of an early neglect, and in the case that the library buildings are damaged by external causes at the end of the 4^th c. (Ephesus, Sagalassos), they were taken care of as civic monuments. The written sources confirm that the cultural life remained active up to the 5^th-6^th centuries, manifestly in Athens, but also in Rome, where one of its settings was the area of the Trajan’s Forum and of its libraries. They also attest the major role of libraries in the aristocratic style of life; however, as in previous centuries, the architectural setting of private libraries, as well as their possible distinctive features, remain hardly perceptible. Equally, very little is known from the archaeological point of view of the ecclesiastic libraries, the only possible cases being the scanty rests of the scrinium Lateranense; the identification as libraries of the two side chambers of Saint John the Evangelist in Ravenna, although suggestive, should be cautiously received, while the attribution to the bibliotheca Agapeti of a late antique hall on the Celio in Rome has been finally discarded, since it has been proved that the large apsis still standing is the reception hall of a domus.