Here are some more recent acquisitions from the rueful “Island of Misfit Books” project.

You probably know all about William Wordsworth, the English Romantic poet who was friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he visited Rheinland-Pfalz where they first got the idea to translate Goethe’s Faustus.

This volume is called Poems of Wordsworth Chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. Arnold was an English professor (at Rugby and then Oxford) who was also a poet; “Dover Beach” is often referenced by Ian McEwan and appears in Fahrenheit 451. This book is a printing from 1893. The spine is very bent and there are fingerprints and some faint traces of pencil on almost every page…someone really liked this book.

Crime novelist and short story writer Edgar Wallace was also quite a character and became, in 1927, one of the first authors to secure a deal with a movie studio for stories and scripts. This turned out to be a good thing because Wallace was also, earlier, the creator of King Kong. (In the scene in the basement tavern in Inglourious Basterds during the “Who Am I?” game there are references to both King Kong and Wallace.) As you can see by the cover of White Face, Wallace was also academically ahead of his time, having devoted several hundred pages lo in 1930 to the exploration of the astonishing theory that, indeed, some segment of the population — perhaps even you — is in fact white. A film was made of White Face as well; it premiered in March 1932, just a few weeks after Wallace’s death in February of the same year.

Speaking of trends in scholarship, of course it is no longer necessary to speak French or go to France in order to become a person of letters on French subjects. Nonthetless, my favorite book in this trio is the Brief French Grammar. It was the property of a the New York Public Library in the second decade of the 1900s, and then of the Board of Education of the City of New York where it circulated until 1936. A very enthusiastic student marked a routing slip left inside the book with an emphatic red date: Le Juin 22, 1920. Completely adorable.

This book, The Hour of Our Death by Philippe Aries (New York: Knopf, 1961) and the pages inside it was rebound recently, with the ad hoc call slip of a patron (who apparently had found the book) joined to new (sewn) binding.

CCCP Calendar Card, 1971

Soviet Calendar Card, 1971

Documenting odd things found in library books begins; this project is called The Lure of Salvage. Our inaugural item, this small (7 cm by 10.2 cm) calendar card from Moscow cicrca 1971 was found in a book of Russian poety printed in 1942. The photo does not do the image of the curly horses and leaping wolves justice but it is very dreamy and lovely.
‘There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.’ – Walter Benjamin

The Remorse of the Emperor Nero After the Murder of His Mother, John William Waterhouse, 1878

INTRODUCTION

An important distinction between Roman Emperor Nero and Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan (and his modern descendent, the William Randolph Hearst character entombed in Xanadu in Citizen Kane (1939) ), is that many of Nero’s ostentatious and ambitious construction projects – beyond and including the Golden Palace – contained spaces for the creation and display of art as well as libraries. In fact Nero’s baths offered one of the largest “public” libraries of the ancient world (Boese 2005, 102) (Staikos, K. 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to present a biography of Nero in relation to the development and subsequent destruction of First Century libraries in Rome, and to present an argument about how access to libraries and knowledge ebbs and flows, and how this access does not always correlate in predictable ways around what we normally think of as civilized and progressive behavior. Nero’s strategy – to earn the love and support of the Roman people by providing culture, food, entertainment, and the constant diversion of a capricious sociopath running the Empire – was successful; it was the senatorial class who actually despised Nero. As Christendom ascended, it adopted some of Nero’s tactics – the spectacular persecution of a minority, for one thing – while other beneficial societal institutions – the aqueducts and the libraries, for example – fell away (Kiefer, Highet, and MacInnes 2000).

One of the main sources for organizing this paper is the Robert Graves translation of Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars. This is not a perfectly reliable source, of course, but as a primary source document written less than 75 years after Nero’s death by someone with direct access to Hadrian, it is a priceless catalogue of observations. More recent research reveals more facts about Nero’s libraries, who used them, and what of their contents survive.

NERO’S BIOGRAPHY

         Nero was born at Antium in December 37, and at first was named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. His father was Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, belonging to an extremely noble and ancient family, and his mother was the younger Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina the elder. When he had reached the age of two his mother was banished by Gaius (Caligula) who seized his inheritance the following year after the death of the child’s father (Staikos 2000).

            Under the emperor Claudius, however, the younger Agrippina, his niece, was recalled from exile, and arranged for her son to receive a good education. After she married Claudius in 49, Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the younger) became Nero’s tutor. Nero was betrothed to Claudius’s daughter Octavia, whom he married in 53. In 50, Agrippina persuaded her husband to adopt Nero as his son, so that going forward Nero was advanced in hierarchy over Britannicus, Claudius’s own younger son (Nero assumed the name Nero Claudius Drusis Germanicus). When Claudius died in October 54, Britaniccus’s claim to the emperorship were set aside, and with the support of the praetorian prefect Sextus Afraniaus Burrus, Agrippina secured the throne for Nero (Staikos 2000).

            Since he was not yet seventeen – younger than any of his predecessors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty when they came to the throne – the empire was at first governed by Agrippina, the sister and wife of earlier emperors and now the mother of a third. This unprecedented phase of female rule was underscored by the issue of the unique coinage during this reign, which displayed the heads of Nero and Agrippina facing one another. When the male-only imperial council (consilium princips) was in session Agrippina would listen from behind a curtain. As had become a Julio-Claudian custom, Agrippina used her power, position, and knowledge to eliminate possible rivals, notably, Marcus Junius Silas, who, like Nero himself, was a great-great grandson of Augustus (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            But Agrippina’s influence lasted only a few years; in 55 Nero asserted his ascendancy by appearing alone on the face of Roman coins, as Agrippina’s portrait and name disappeared. When early in the same year Britannicus died at a dinner-party in the palace – allegedly murdered by Nero – Agrippina was dismayed, since she wanted to keep Britannicus in reserve in case her son became difficult to control. Agrippina’s power waned further when the Nero transferred her to a separate residence, thus bringing her lavish Palatine parties to an end (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            The empire seemed poised for a period of stability with Nero ruling under the guidance under Seneca and Burrus. The late Claudius was deified (he was the first emperor since Augustus to receive this honor) as Nero promised to Augustus as his model for leadership. Nero also expressed the idealistic if somewhat unrealistic desire that the Roman Senate should exercise its governmental functions based upon representation, as in ancient times. Steps were taken to improve public order and reform treasury procedures. Territorial and provincial governors and their staffs were forbidden to extract large sums of money from the local populations for gladiatorial shows and other excesses; and Nero himself maintained a regular work schedule, paying particular attention to his judicial duties (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Nero also entertained progressive leanings, leading him for example to abolish indirect taxes through out the empire, to abolish the stationing of soldiers in bars and theaters, to forbid the killing of criminals in public spectacles. All these ideas proved impossible to implement. Yet such proposals, even if they came to nothing, suggest that Nero, in the context of the quotidian brutality of Roman life, began his rule in a basically humane manner. For example, like his mentor Seneca, he expressed objections to taking life, and this aversion extended to capital punishment. There seems to have been a turning point in 61 when the city prefect, Lucius Pedanius Secundus, was murdered by one of his slaves, with the result that Nero, according to the law, had to have all four hundreds slaves of the Padeanius household put to death, despite strong pressure in their favor from the public (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Setbacks of this kind seemed to diminish Nero’s interest in his administrative duties. Eventually Nero devoted himself more and more to the real interests of his life: horse racing, singing, reading, dancing, acting, writing poetry, and sexual activities. Seneca and Burrus attempted to guide Nero toward circumspection in order to prevent his behavior from becoming a scandal, yet Nero persisted in increasingly boisterous and lawless behavior, breaking into Roman shops and getting into brawls. Despite the fact that marriage with her was socially out of the question, Nero had a long relationship with an ex-slave Acte, who also provided advice on governance matters to Nero. Agrippina was unhappy that another woman was now in the palace. She deplored Nero’s non-Romanesque taste for the books, poetry, and the arts, and of the “effeminate” Greek dress Nero in which he dressed. Aware of her disapproval and more concerned with his personal safety than filial obligation, in 59, Nero had Agrippina murdered while she vacationed by the Bay of Naples. Nero reported to the senate that Agrippina had plotted against his life obliging him to have her killed. This matricide remains one of Nero’s greatest canonical sins, inspiring numerous plays and paintings. Yet at the time, the senators, who had hated her unconstitutional role and arrogant behavior, did not entirely regret her removal and Nero was relieved to find that general population and Praetorian Guard did not seem to mind too much either (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

            In 62, however, a new phase of Nero’s reign began, when both Seneca and Burrus disappeared from the scene. First Burrus died, of seemingly natural causes. He was succeeded as praetorian prefect by a pair of colleagues, Faineius Rufus and the sinister Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus, a Sicilian who encouraged Nero’s excesses and became a Rasputin-like figure of intrigue in the palace. Seneca found Tigellinus  and the newly willful Nero too difficult to work with, so Seneca resigned to enjoy the enormous wealth which he had succeeded in amassing. Soon afterwards, Nero showed his newfound independence by changing wives in typical overkill fashion. He divorced Octavia, who, although harmless, was exiled and put to death in 62. Her place was taken by Poppaeia Sabina. Nero perhaps underestimated the senators’ unfavorable reaction to his activities in a different field, that of the arts. At first the emperor had limited his stage appearances to private stages, but in 64 he broke out from this restriction and launched his public debut at Neapolis. There, to the pleasure of the passionately Hellenic-culture-loving Nero, his audience were Greeks. In 65, in Rome, at the encore performance of the Neronian Games which Nero had instituted on the Greek model the emperor began singing and reciting verse for Roman spectators. The emperor subsequently invented “youth” games, at which Nero performed escorted by a gang of soldiers known as the Augustiani. Nero performed a sort of ad-hoc rapping poetry based upon phrases tossed out by his drinking companions. Nero did in fact write original verses and also executed more than a few paintings and sculptures (Chapman and Juvenal Satura 5. English 1629).

            These aberrations, as the senatorial class regarded them, did not usurp the empire as a whole, but the Romans began to experience incursions from its periphery. In Britain there were uprisings and revolts over taxations, including the legendary insurrection led by Queen Boudicca. Meanwhile, at the other end of the territories, Roman troops were routed and defeated in what is now Turkey and Armenia. (In 63, however, the Romans were able to place Tiridates, one of Nero’s protégés, on the Armenian throne.) Nevertheless the situation at Rome deteriorated. A crucial event was the Great Fire of Rome in 64. Nero tried to pin the blame for the conflagration on the city’s small Christian community (regarded contemporaneously as a dissident group of Jews); the martyrdoms of Saint Peter and Saint Paul were ascribed to these persecutions. Still the rumor persisted that not only had Nero sung his own poem “The Sack of Troy” while enjoying the spectacle of the flames but also that he had actually started the fire himself, in order to be able to annex some land he wanted for the erection of the Golden House (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

            Nero had already constructed a mansion, the Domis Tranisotira, which would become the mere entrance hall to the new and vastly greater Golden House. Designed by Nero’s architect-engineers Severus and Celer, the Golden House was a series of separate pavilions and kiosks set amid a designed landscape including a large artificial lake stocked with many varieties of fish. When the Golden House was complete, Nero exclaimed: “Now I can at last begin to live like a human being!” (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

            Meanwhile, however, Nero’s relationship with the senatorial class was deteriorating sharply. One of Tigellinus’s first actions had been to revive the treason law and to liquidate a number of possible suspects. In 65 what was regarded as a serious plot against Nero emerged. Known as the Pisonian conspiracy, its leader were Faenius Rufus – the other praetorian prefect – and the retired Seneca. Nineteen executions or suicides followed, and thirteen banishments. Faenius and Seneca were among those who died, as did Seneca’s nephew, the poet Lucan, who had been one of Nero’s closest friends. During the years that followed the government continued to punish suspects. Nero himself had gone to Greece to display his artistic and physical prowess, collecting works of art and manuscripts, and ostensibly liberating the Greeks whom he loved. In Rome, amid continuing executions, a shortage of food became so acute that the ex-slave Heleius whom Nero had left in charge of the capital went to Greece and summon Nero urgently back (Seneca and ProQuest Information and Learning Company 1653).

            In January 68 Nero made a return to the capital. By March, most of the territorial generals were in revolt against Nero. When Nero heard that the Senate, too, had turned against him and condemned him to be flogged to death, he decided, with the assistance of a secretary, to commit suicide on 9 June by stabbing himself with a dagger. His last words were: “Qualis artifex peseo;” – “What an artist the world is losing in me.”(Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

DID LIBRARIES DECLINE AFTER NERO?

            For the first five hundred years of its history, Rome had no public library. Within the oral culture of the first Roman civilization, public readings and recitations were the normal fare of the intellectual classes. But the “long prosperity of Caesar’s regime…tended to direct men’s minds toward cultural diverions,” and by 37 Asinius Pollio had founded the first public library, followed by construction of two large public libraries, the Palatina and the Octaviana, effectively gaining the approval of the intellectuals during his reign (Suter 2008, 193).

            The new empire brought about the “creation of new civic ideals,” including “a growing appreciation of literary and aesthetic interests.” Literary groups sprang up, and with the emperor being “regarded as the chief patron … in the more celebrated circles” influence spread widely. The book commerce followed Roman trade routes, taking Latin literature to all comers of the empire. The works of Martial, Pliny, Seneca, and Ovid were for sale as far away as Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and during Nero’s many travels to Greece even he managed to collect or order the purchase of volumes by favorite authors in translated form (Suter 2008, 195). 

            The Roman baths served as social clubs, providing among other things, recreational reading for their patrons and public meeting rooms for the presentation and discussion of new literary works. The libraries in the bath houses, particularly during Nero’s brief era, rivaled the public libraries in collections and level of activity. While the Roman libraries shared several features with those of Nineveh, Alexandria, and Pergamum – for example, a connection to a temple or palace, artistic ornaments, and management methods – these features were taken to an extreme in Rome. Public libraries were attached to the greatest temples dedicated to Apollo, Juno, and Jove. Following the example of Asinius Pollio when he founded the first public library, Nero’s libraries became virtual art museums, containing statues, busts, medallions, and inscriptions as well as walls covered in painted frescoes. Nero’s public libraries seemed to follow the same basic physical form. There was a spacious reading room surrounded by stack rooms. The stacks were always divided into Greek and Latin sections, often arranged and catalogued separately (Kiefer, Highet, and MacInnes 2000; Houston 1988, 258-264).

            Ammianus Marcellinus, a Fourth Century Roman historian who chronicled library history from the First Century through his own time, describes a decadent manner of life among his contemporaries, who flaunt huge chariots and foppish clothing, who ignore intellectual pursuits and devote themselves to gluttony and drink. Ammianus says serious studies in noble houses have been “replaced by partying, philosophers by singers, rhetoricians by actors, libraries by water organs.” Ammianus’s reports suggest that reading even in the class of Romans who had access to libraries was on the wane, though proof that public libraries ceased to exist after the time of Constantine is insubstantial (Hoare 1952) (Thompson, J. W. 1940). 

            Honorary and funerary inscriptions of the first two centuries mention several dozen men involved in the administration or staffing of Roman public libraries. Inscriptions of the third century, however, mention only a few, and later inscriptions none at all. Does this mean that there were no such administrators, and thus no such libraries? Similarly, a late catalog of the administrative posts held by  officials throughout the Roman empire, the Notitia dignitatum contains no clear reference to any library officials. Since the Notitia was compiled circa 400, it is possible to infer that there were no such functionaries at that time (Halpern 2007) (Thompson, J. W. 1940).

            The reason the libraries shut down may have had more to do with the threat of barbarian attacks upon Rome which began with territorial skirmishes in the 300s and culminated in Rome’s sack (a continuing catastrophe rather than a sudden cataclysmic event ongoing from around 410 to 450). There is no convincing evidence that the Christian emperors thought it advisable to close the old public libraries. The apparent continued use of the library in the Forum of Trajan, the most likely  candidate for such closure, indicates rather the opposite (Hoare 1952) (Houston, G. W. 1988).

Though Ammianus refers only to libraries in private houses, there is evidence that the functions of the public libraries of Rome were breaking down by about 380. However, a significant number of libraries were still in existence in the early part of the fourth century, and at least one, in the Forum of Trajan, seems to have been open as late as 455. We do not yet know exactly which libraries were still open in the fourth century, or how they were eventually destroyed (Houston, G. W. 1988).

CONCLUSION

            Nero’s delusions about being an artiste along with his desire to please and secure the support of the Roman public resulted in the somewhat unintentional creation of some very popular and accessible public libraries in First Century Rome. Immediately following his death, Nero was, naturally and deservedly, the subject of much sorrow and resentment for the early Christian emperors. Over the past millennia, Nero, despite the intentions of moralizing writers and artists to depict him otherwise, has become a sort of model for the brooding, crazy antihero, a motif not more perfectly refined (and notably lacking the homicidal violence) until Oscar Wilde created a blueprint for a differently performed troubled soul.

            Unlike the heroic and devoted Cassiodorus or the forward-thinking Augustus, Nero’s benefit to library culture was almost completely accidental. However, there is no doubt that, during his brief time as emperor, there was at least the possibility that, as library historian and scholar Immanuel Wallerstein observed, “contrary to what most modern scholars have thought, that around one could still go to one of a number of public libraries in Rome and read a good book, or a bad one.”

VITA

NERO

Nero was born in Antium in 37.

His father was from a patrician Roman family, and his mother was Agrippina, daughter of a famous general, Germanicus. Agrippina later married the emperor Claudius, who adopted Nero. Stoic philospher Seneca was Nero’s tutor. Nero later had Seneca executed (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Agrippina poisoned Claudius, and in 54, at age 17, Nero became Rome’s teenaged emperor (Halpern 2007).

Historical rumors persist about Nero’s relationship with Agrippina, but what is certain is that Nero married Octavia at age 18, divorcing her (and having her executed) in 62. He remarried Poppaeia Sabina in 63, and also had (amid many other dalliances with people of both genders) a long relationship with a former slave, Acte (Halpern 2007).

In 55, Nero has a new Roman coinage struck featuring his and Agrippina’s faces, and also images referencing his interests in music and chariot racing.

During the early years of his reign, Nero opposed capital punishment, reduced taxes, and built numerous public bath houses equipped with public libraries that were truly open to the public, not just the senatorial class( Dix 1994, 282).

At first he was guided by his mother but as he grew older, Nero wanted to break free of her influence. In 59, he had his mother stabbed to death (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

By 60, Nero had fallen into violence and disrepute, gambling, drinking, engaging in excessive sexual and violent behavior, and developing the “Roman candle” form of burning at the stake for which he remains famous (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Wild animal shows demonstrated the emperor’s ability to collect exotic animals from all over the world and bring them to Rome. Killing them displayed the emperor’s power over nature itself. This had a devastating effect on wildlife around the Empire. Lions were wiped out in Mesopotamia and the North African Elephant became extinct (Halpern 2007).

In 61, Nero set off on a musical tour of Greece, where he sang in competitions, always winning first prize. He even won the chariot race at the Olympic Games although he fell out of the chariot before the end of the race (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Nero believed he was a magnificent poet, writer, musician and singer. When he went to Greece he observed: “The Greeks alone are worthy of my genius. They really listen to music!” (Chadwick and De Courtivron 1996).

His Greek audiences loved their singing emperor, but Rome’s upper classes were shocked by Nero’s behavior (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

In 64 fire destroyed the center of Rome. Nero blames the fire on groups of early Christians, but the impression persists that Nero set the fire himself in order to secure valuable real estate in the center of the city upon which to build his Golden Palace (Dix 1994, 282).

In 65 Nero learned of a plot to overthrow him. Suspecting everyone, he had dozens of leading Romans arrested and executed. This lead to a widespread rebellion in 68, when senators and military commanders rose against him. Nero threatens to kill himself several times, and then does so (Suetonius ca et al. 2000).

Nero’s death was followed by a period of civil war. After ten years of unrest, Vespasian founded the Flavian dynasty (Mason Hammond 1956, 61-133).

REFERENCES

Boese, Kent C. 2005. “Between The Lines.” The Bottom Line 18, (2).

Boyd, C.E. (1963). Public libraries and literary culture in ancient rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Carcopino, J. (1940) Daily life in ancient rome: the people and the city at the height of the empire. New Haven: Yale University Press

Chadwick, Whitney, and Isabelle De Courtivron. 1996. Significant Others : Creativity & Intimate Partnership. 1 pbk. ed. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson.

Chapman, G. & Juvenal Satura (1629). A iustification of a strange action of nero; in burying with a solemne funerall, one of the cast hayres of his mistresse poppæa. also a iust reproofe of a romane smell-feast, being the fifth satyre of iuuenall. Imprinted at London: By Tho Harper, M.DC.XXIX.

Clift, E.H. (1996) “Book publication in ancient rome (a centennial retrospective),” National Forum Vol. 76, Fall, 1996, 1. Available from Academic Search Premier EBSCOhost. Accessed 10 March 2009. <http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=97010511 29&db=aph>

de Vleeschauwer, H.J. (1963) “Survey of library history, part 1,” Mousaion: Books and Libraries No. 66; Pretoria: University of South Africa.

Dix, T. Keith. 1994.  “ “Public Libraries” In Ancient Rome: Ideology And Reality.” Libraries Culture 29.

Fantham, E. (1996). Roman literary culture : From cicero to apuleius. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Halpern, Micah D. 2007. Thugs : How History’s Most Notorious Despots Transformed The World Through Terror, Tyranny, And Mass Murder. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson.

Harris, Michael H., and Johnson,Elmer D. History Of Libraries In The Western World. 1984. Compact textbook ed. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.

Hoare, Frederick Russell. 1952. Eight Decisive Books Of Antiquity. Essay Index Reprint Series. Freeport, N.Y: Books for Libraries Press.

Houston, George W. 1988. “A Revisionary Note On Ammianus Marcellinus: When Did The Public Libraries Of Ancient Rome Close?” The Library Quarterly 58, (3) (Jul.): 258-64.

Houston, G. W. 2008. Tiberius and the libraries: Public book collections and library buildings in the early roman empire. Libraries the Cultural Record, 43(3), 247.

Kiefer, Otto, Gilbert Highet, and Helen MacInnes. 2000. Sexual Life In Ancient Rome. Kegan Paul Library Of Sexual Life. London: Kegan Paul.

Kraus, T. J. 2000. (Il)literacy in non-literary papyri from graeco-roman egypt: Further aspects of the educational ideal in ancient literary sources and modern times. Mnemosyne, 53, 322-342.

Mason, Hammond. 1956. “The transmission of the powers of the roman emperor from the death of nero in A.D. 68 to that of alexander severus in A.D. 235.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 24, : 61-133.

Scarre, C. 1995. Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome, The New York, NY: Thames & Hudson.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus ca, and ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 1653. Lucius Annæus Seneca, His First Book Of Clemency [Electronic Resource] : Written To Nero Cæsar. Early english books, 1641-1700 ; 1158:5. London: Printed by Thomas Harper, MDCLIII.

Staikos, K. 2000. The Great Libraries : From Antiquity To The Renaissance (3000 B.C. To A.D. 1600). 1 English ed. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press.

Suetonius ca, Michael Grant, Robert Graves, and Sabine MacCormack. 2000. The Twelve Caesars. Classic biography. London: Penguin ; Penguin Putnam.

Suter, Keith. 2008. “Protecting the world’s cultural heritage.” The Contemporary Review 290, (1689).

Thompson, J.W. 1940. Ancient libraries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940.

Wallerstein, I. 1978. Libraries and our civilizations: a report prepared for the governor of the state of new york. New York: Governor’s Conference on Libraries.

Peak Libraries: Developing Sensitivity to Future Consequences

Insensitivity to future consequences is an identified behavioral aberration experienced by people who have experienced traumatic brain injuries to the cerebral cortex (Franck, 1995). Though perplexing and disruptive, at least there is some explanation for the actions of those who suffer this affliction. There is no such biological explanation for the shortsighted and damaging behaviors affected by those responsible for the stewardship of public library and museum programs, particularly in Florida. Florida’s plight, which is duplicated in states and municipalities nationwide, presents a particularly tragic case as the consequences of defunding important cultural and social programs may easily be foreseen.
Parallels may be drawn between the “gas crisis” and the “library crisis.” For more than twenty years, since the administration of President Ronald Reagan, patrons and employees of museums and libraries have dealt with increased funding shortfalls and budget and staff cuts in pretty much the same way as the general population has dealt with the current petroleum crisis: by complaining, and doing nothing else. Until recently, drivers griped about gouging at the gas pump and kept buying Hummers. Librarians and museum curators long bemoaned the crumbling cultural infrastructure (Klein, 2007). Through 2006 and 2007 commuters continued to drive exactly as much as always, and since 1984, library administrators have also continued, with respect to the lack of public funding for collections and facilities, to commiserate with colleagues and at library conferences, and perhaps most damagingly, to continue to rely on the personal integrity and client focus of library staffers to maintain the high level of productivity and professionalism associated with librarianship.

With gasoline, the question the past few years has been: How expensive would gas have to get before it actually began to affect driving habits? Would two dollars per gallon be the point at which motorists said, “Enough is enough, I am going to drive less!”? No. Two dollars came and went and the only thing that changed was the amount of complaining, which went up. Three dollars a gallon, then? No. Demand for gasoline did not go down. Four dollars?!
Finally, four dollars was the tipping point at which gas prices created a degree of public outrage concerted enough to actually cause action: Driving is down, mass transit use up, peak oil is acknowledged, politicians agree that maybe it would be a good idea after all to drill in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s coast.
Yet what will be the moment of combustion when it comes to the dismantling of our public, school, academic, and museum libraries? In January 2003, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush proposed the closing of the Florida State Library and laying off its fifty-plus employees, a petty retributive gesture against retiring library administrator Barratt Wilkins’s disagreement with many Bush policies. Librarians at the Tampa Bay Library Consortium (and support staff also) have been laid off in 2008 even as more systems rely on connected services and collections. Public librarians have been laid off throughout the state of Florida. As the University of South Florida prepares for the reaccredidation process for the School of Library and Information Sciences, course offerings are diminished and the prestigious graduate assistant program is able to accept fewer qualified candidates. However no one would know this from the silence of librarians and library students on email list serves, blogs, and in the conventional news media. What will it take for these capable communicators to make their voices heard and rise to action?
Having introduced a comparative scenario and a few examples of a critical issue facing libraries and indeed cultural history, I will review just a few possible actions – some cannot really be called agreeable solutions – to the problem faced by libraries, which amounts to major economic problems exacerbated by fear, denial, and resistance to cooperative collaborations.

Avoiding Corporate Sponsorships

At first recollection, one of the most successful alliances in American library history was 2001’s “@ The Library” campaign, a sponsorship arranged by the American Library Association and underwritten by Major League Baseball (ALA News, 2001). Though MLB still claims on its promotional literature to be a “major sponsor of the Campaign for Literacy,” in fact no significant joint activities between ALA and MLB have taken place since 2004. MLB gets the good public relations while ALA’s public division gets nothing and its administrators say nothing publicly about an industry in which a single player’s annual salary could fund a small system for several years.
There is actually a case history of how, and why, corporate sponsorships of public agencies are not necessarily symbiotic relationships as they present practical as well as ethical problems. Beginning in 1995, Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness megacorporation, began funding programs on both National Public Radio and through the Public Broadcasting Systems, most notably NPR’s All Things Considered and PBS’s acclaimed News Hour With Jim Lehrer (Solomon, 1998). ADM provided as much as $24 million a year for News Hours’s production. In spring of 2008, ADM announced that, as a result of (among other things) Lehrer’s unfavorable reportage on ADM’s factory farm, genetic patenting, and general business practices, it would terminate its fourteen-year tradition of underwriting the show. Owing to its reliance on this corporate stipend, News Hour is now in great peril of cancellation (Anonymous, 2008).
Public libraries and museums are supposed to be open repositories of openly available information, some of which invariably offends some people, and the ethical ramifications of accepting funding from corporations is obvious, and will not be discussed at length here, but seriously, who could trust a library whose collection was underwritten by Monsanto, Halliburton, or Philip Morris?
One suggestion is that libraries and museums actively court not corporations but individuals who have done very well indeed owing to the exposure they have received, and credibility they have attained, by having their work displayed in and promoted by cultural institutions (Brewster, 2008). Instead of selling honorary T-shirts fêting the Whitney Biennial through the Gap, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Marilyn Mintner, Chuck Close, and Kenny Scharf could kick a few million apiece to museums less wealthy than the Whitney. Same for the fantastically rich authors whose work is on constant reserve in every public library in the country – John Grisham, Danielle Steele, Jodi Picoult, and others who don’t receive the acclaim of Umberto Eco or Annie Proulx but who achieve popular fortune largely through libraries (Rogers, 2004) (Malanga, 2004).
Most libraries are slaves to Microsoft and costly database subscriptions, paying a large portion of annual budgets for licensing and having to spend more, year after year, for patches, upgrades, and more Windows software (and now, in Florida, with the emerging uniformity of Polaris) for servers.
What about open source software? Linux has been free (free of charge and free of all known viruses) for years, is easily comprehensible, and enjoys a large and supportive community of freeware enthusiasts (Stratigos, 2003). A library could pay one person a good salary to run an open source IT systems for hundreds of thousands of dollars less, per year, than by continuing to participate in corporate software perpetuation.

The Eschatology Position

There is something else library and museum administrators and staffers can do in the face of the extraordinary rendition of cultural resources in the service of bank bailouts and funding Blackwater: nothing (Foucault, 1997). Not in the same way the members of this profession now do nothing in the way of solidarity actions (or calls to action), but simply by refusing to continue in this manner. If elected and appointed officials as well as voters place zero value on public funding for libraries and museums, then that is the service that will be rendered: zero.
This scenario has played out in other cultural and artistic arenas. Faced with lack of public support and unwilling to kowtow to corporate sponsor demands for endless programs of “popular” fare, in the past ten years, symphonies and orchestras in Fort Lauderdale, Tulsa, Savannah, Colorado Springs, San Jose, and Toledo have simply shut down (Anonymous, 2008). In the past five years, the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Dolls’ House and Toy Museum and the Mary Merritt Doll Museum in Washington, D.C.; and the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago have all become extinct. Tellingly, Thomas McCormick an art dealer quoted in The New York Times regarding the Terra said, “We’re all more or less guilty for not supporting it … but by next week, will anybody really notice that it’s gone?”

Conclusion

Of course people notice when a library or museum closes, or for that matter when looting and war destroy such an institution. Now there is a public outcry over the destruction and looting of the Iraq national library and museums, just as the world grieves over the destruction of the Bamiyan Valley Buddha statues. Yet each library or museum threatened or imperiled by disaster capitalism is its own unique tragedy. Every lost collection, vestige of visual culture, and shuttered repository is a tragedy not just of the present incalculably to the future.
Certainly organizations such as UNESCO and the Institute of Museum and Library Services – which I realize were to have been the lynchpins of this paper – have performed critical interventions and created dialogues that benefit that patrons and staffers of libraries and museums. Their presence (particularly that of UNESCO in Afghanistan) and voice is creating advocacy for and diminishing the threat to cultural treasures all over the world, no doubt.
However I am as troubled by the death by a thousand budget cuts being suffered, especially locally, by library and museum programs as by some of the more notable international outrages of war and colonialism. As students and librarians-to-be we have learned that being agreeably quiet does not save programs or jobs, so this should remove the “but I’ll get in trouble” obstacle to becoming activated and mobilized. I am not certain that any level of action can, at this time, turn our culture around, but I hope librarians will be noted in histories as people who spoke up, acted out, and behaved to the last second as if the future depended upon them.

References

ALA NEWS. (2001). American Libraries, 32(7), 6.
Bernstein, D. (2004). A museum in chicago is closing its doors. New York Times (Late Edition (east Coast)), p. B.7. Retrieved July 10, 2008, from New York Times database. (Document ID: 726578841).
Brewster, D. (2008). Contemporary art defies doomsayers.(WORLD NEWS). Financial Times, , 6.
Eakle, A. J. (2008). Museum literacies of a second-grade classroom: A classroom museum was conceptualized, designed, and built by this class, leading to unique understandings of literacy skills. The Reading Teacher, 61(8), 604.
Foucault, M., Faubion, J. D., Hurley, R., & Rabinow, P. (1997-). The essential works of michel foucault, 1954-1984. New York: New Press.
Gleadell, C. (2008). Holding steady. Art Monthly, (313), 43.
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine : The rise of disaster capitalism (1st ed.). New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
Malanga, M. L. (2004). Carnegie redux. Library Journal, 129(14), 52.
‘Marketplace’ report: Newshour to die?(12:00-1:00 PM)(broadcast transcript)(audio file).(2008). Day to Day,, NA.
Oder, N. (2006). New IMLS collaborative grants. Library Journal, 131(17), 20.
Rogers, M. (2004). Hostile takeover? Library Journal, 129(14), 52.
Solomon, N. (1998). Made possible by…: The death of public broadcasting in the united states. The Progressive, , 40.
Stratigos, A. (2003). Library of the future. Online, 27(1), 74.

The Parthenon Friezes at the British Museum

At the end of the summer of 2007, the week before fall university classes began, Greece was on fire. The Peloponnese was uniformly scorched, nearly a hundred people were killed, rural economies were displaced, and flora and fauna indigenous only to Greek pine forests and mountainsides were burned, perhaps beyond any eventual recovery. Though the fires were barely held back from the famous antiquities of Olympia and Athens, other archaeologically priceless sites were not so fortunate .
Though some of the fires were attributed at their source to arsonists, Greek Prime Minister, Kostas Karamanlis, whose New Democracy party was returned to office this past September, is partially culpable in this tragedy. Karamanlis and other Greek officials were slow to acknowledge the severity of the fire emergency and have yet to admit the true extent of the damage.
“There are several well known ‘arsonists’ in Greece — garbage dumps (burning spontaneously), farmers burning brush, animal farmers burning land to sprout fresh grass for grazing,” Nikos Charalambides, director of Greenpeace in Greece, told a reporter from Reuters on October 1.
“But the biggest arsonist is the state, which has not clarified the use of land, leaving suburban forests vulnerable to rogue developers,” he added in the same piece.
“The lack of a national land registry and national zoning laws leave room for doubt about the characterization of land, whether it is forest or not,” told Reuters.
It is not a good time for antiquities, and the dire circumstances are of course more attributable to the traditional colonial superpowers than to Grecian malfeasance.
The blame for the theft of treasures from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, the burning of Baghdad’s National Library, and the looting of more than 10,000 Ur, Sumerian, and Babylonian archaeological sites may be laid, in the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom, on the doorstep of the United States and bullied ally Great Britain.

It is in this poisonous atmosphere (additionally contaminated by pollution, global warming, and the threats of vandalism and terrorism) that the debate over who rightfully owns the Parthenon sculptures – or, more accurately, who owns the right to display the friezes – continues.

Beyond the intangible sense that Greek masterpieces belong in Greece, there are numerous logical and legal arguments both against and in favor of returning the Parthenon sculptures to their original site at the Athenian Acropolis.
Though the sculptures originated in the powerful city-state of Athens during the Fifth Century B.C., in 1816 the country known historically as Greece was under the rule of the Ottoman. This is the year Lord Thomas Elgin purchased the sculptures and moved them from to England . In 1830 the Greeks, supported by European countries including Britain, won their war for independence and established a sovereign nation. Thus, one argument goes, the Ottomans were not in position to grant acquisition of the sculptures. Additionally, Elgin’s reported bribery of Greek and Turkish officials calls the legality of the agreement to obtain the sculptures into question .
The British Museum, where the so-called Elgin Marbles have resided for nearly 200 years, has established itself, not, as its name implies, as a cultural collection representing Britain, but as a sort of all-surveys meta gallery. The museum also offers law-based platforms upon which to base its retention of the sculptures.
The museum maintains that, when executed, the purchase of the sculptures by Lord Elgin followed international law appropriate to the date .
The British have as well an abundance of rhetorical and aesthetic arguments that shore the museum’s claim to the sculptures from the irrationally nationalistic – the sculptures are part of England’s collective consciousness – to the petty – the museum in Athens, created with viewing the Acropolis in mind, charges admission while the British Museum does not
One position concerns the physical wellbeing of the marbles, with the museum maintaining that the environment in the Duveen Gallery has protected the sculptures from the corrosive pollution in Athens that has damaged those remaining on the Acropolis . Yet the museum has been criticized for its conservation of the sculptures, too, taking salvos in particular for the “overcleaning” incident of the late 1930s. Scholar John Boardman, who supports the return of the sculptures to Athens but presents an even-handed account of the arguments in his 2000 paper The Elgin Marbles: Matters of Fact and Opinion says that the marbles have always been handled brutishly, even by the Athenians who created them. The Athenians were hard on the temple, burning sacrifices and torches that marred the exposed stone. Ten years after its dedication, an earthquake caused some damage to the temple. The metopes were vandalized during the Fifth Century, when the temple was a Christian church. The north and south sides of the building were destroyed in 1687 by an explosion. Elgin broke some of the triglyphs while removing them. Yet had Elgin not taken the sculptures when he did, Boardman says such destruction would likely have continued through the modern times leaving modern searchers only drawings by which to imagine the friezes.
The British Museum has more at stake than the sculptures in this battle. Returning the pieces would create a precedent for the repatriation of pieces acquired under questionable circumstances (or even not) in many of the world’s major public collections. The British Museum, however, owns treasures including the head of Ramses and the Rosetta Stone from Egypt, the Iraqi winged bull arch, an Easter Island cult statue and the Benin bronzes from Nigeria. The Egyptians have asked for their pieces back, too.
Yet the mention of the British Museum’s antiquities collection circles back to thoughts of the depth of these galleries. The museum affords visitors the opportunity to look at pieces from Athens in a contemporaneous sense to those from Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, and Assyria.
A contingent of British society has long been vocal in agitating for the repatriation of the marbles (including Lord Byron). A 1926 editorial in The Science News Letter called “Returning Elgin Marbles to Athens Argued” states flatly “the Elgin marbles should find their ultimate home in Athens.”
Almost everyone agrees that the new Acropolis Museum, built in an austere and reverential style, would make an aesthetically pleasing gateway to view the restored sculptures. The design would allow the sculptures to be displayed in their original arrangement of the sides and corners following the original orientation of the Parthenon temple .
Further, the Greek Government has now proposed a sort of rotating display of the sculptures and has even mitigated its claims to the point of assuring the British Museum that some sort of Greek antiquity would always be available for display in the Duveen Gallery .
It would, of course, have been better if Lord Elgin had never taken the marbles. But there is no point in speculating on this possible past. Currently neither the Greek government, who has repeatedly shown poor stewardship of the environment in general and antiquities in particular, nor the British, who associate the marbles with their own idealized identities as pure democrats, deserves the marbles.
If a Solomon-like decision were to be made, some party would step forward and do what is best for the Parthenon sculptures, not the quarreling countries. The lost treasures of Iraq show that antiquities are not necessarily safe even in their rightful homes. Given the constant unrest in the Balkan states, the danger of damaging the sculptures by moving them, the ease of mobility in Europe afforded by the European Union and great and simple access to London, the Elgin Marbles should remain in the British Museum, where, at least, they are in good health.
Art history has been torn apart and ruined by the steamroller of identity dominance, cultural relativism, and colonial detractors and apologists, but critical theory mostly concerns – and damages – only the contemporary. The treasures of the ancient world should be exempt from this nationalistic, new age folderol. Citizens of both Greece and Britain – and of all nations should find a commonality in global art history, and voice despair and outrage over the continued destruction of the equally valid visual culture of the rest of the Middle East.
References
Two Greek Antiquities Returned From United States. 2007. The Associated Press, September 19, 2007.
Cradle Of Mankind Is Destroyed By Looters And Invading Troops; DEATH OF HISTORY. 2007. The Independent (London), September 17, 2007, sec NEWS.
Firefighters Protect Olympia While Villages Burn. 2007. The Australian (Australia), August 28, 2007, sec WORLD.
Greek Authorities Begin Moving Acropolis Statues To New Home. 2007. Agence France Presse — English, October 14, 2007.
Returning Elgin Marbles To Athens Argued. 1926. The Science News-Letter 9, (276) (Jul. 24): 7.
Boardman, John. 2000. The Elgin Marbles: Matters of Fact and Opinion. International Journal of Cultural Property, Vol. 9, No. 2. 233-262.
Challis, Debbie. 2006. The Parthenon Sculptures: Emblems of British National Identity. The British Art Journal (Volume VII, Issue I) 33-39.
Gatopoulos, Derek, and Associated Press Writer. 2007. Greece Recovers Stolen Ancient Statue From Switzerland. Associated Press Worldstream, June 14, 2007.
Heyd, Thomas. 2003. Rock Art Aesthetics And Cultural Appropriation. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61, (1) (Winter): 37-46.
Petsalis-Diomidis, Alexia. 2003. Twenty-First Century Perspectives On The Parthenon. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 123, : 191-6.
Stinson, Jeffrey, and Joanna Kakissis. 2007. Deadly Fires Take Toll On Greece’s Spirit; Failure Of Officials, Government Leave Citizens Frustrated, Ashamed. USA Today, August 31, 2007, sec MONEY.
Triandafyllou, Vassilis. 2007. Ancient Olympia Saved But Deadly Fires Spread. The Daily Telegraph (Australia), August 28, 2007, sec WORLD.
Online Resource: The Case for the Return, London, England, 2007. http://www.parthenonuk.com/the_case_for_the_return.php
Online Resource: Will Britain lose its Marbles? If The British Museum Returned Lord Elgin’s Treasures To Greece, How Safe Would Any Loot Be?, Salon, February 2005. http://www.salon.com/travel/feature/2000/02/05/marbles/index.html
Online Resource: Case Study: The Elgin Marbles, The American University, Washington, D.C., 1997 http://www.american.edu/TED/monument.htm