Matthew Nicholls

Galen and Libraries in the Peri Alupias.

This article examines the implications of Galens newly-rediscovered Peri Alupias (On Consolation from Grief) for our understanding of the function and contents of public libraries in late second-century a.d . Rome. As a leading intellectual figure at Rome, Galens detailed testimony substantially increases what we know of imperial public libraries in the city. In particular, the article considers Galens description of his use of the Palatine libraries and a nearby storage warehouse, his testimony on the contents, organization, and cataloguing of the books he found there, and his use of provincial public libraries for the dissemination of his own works.

Parchment Codices in a New text of Galen

The Πeρὶ Ἀλυπίας (‘On Consolation From Grief’, henceforward PA ) of Galen, recently rediscovered in a fifteenth-century manuscript in a monastery in Thessalonica, contains a wealth of information for the scholar of Roman libraries and books. The work, a treatise on the avoidance of the grief contingent upon loss and suffering, begins by listing the losses suffered by Galen himself in the fire of AD 192. The fire destroyed the Templum Pacis, a series of warehouses and storerooms, and the libraries on the Palatine hill. As Galen had spent much effort copying books from these libraries, and had then deposited his copies in the warehouses that also burned, his work was lost beyond the possibility of recovery.

Digital Visualisation in Classics Teaching and Beyond

For the last few years, I have been working on an extensive digital model of ancient Rome as it appeared in the early 4 th Century AD. This sort of visualisation lends itself to many applications in diverse fields: I am currently using it for research work into illumination and sightlines in the ancient city, have licensed it for broadcast in TV documentaries and publication in magazines, and am working with a computer games studio to turn it into an online game where players will be able to walk round the streets and buildings of the entire city (when not engaged in trading with or assassinating one another). Later this year I will be making a free online course, or MOOC, about the architecture of ancient Rome, which will largely be illustrated by this model.