THE ANTIQUITY

WHAT DOES ANTIQUITY MEANS?

According to the google or https://www.net/definition/antiquity,
antiquity means an academic journal to the subject. It publishes
four editions a year, covering topics worldwide from all periods.
Antiquity is own by the trust, a registered charity founded in
1927 by the English archaeologist O.G.S Crawford. Its trustees
presently include Warwick Bray, Barry Cunliffe and Colin
Renfrew.
Another meaning of antiquity is this is all about the ancient times;
former ages: times long since past.
Libraries were feature of larger cities across the ancient world famous.
Rarely ever lending libraries they were typically designed for visiting
scholars to study and copy whatever they were interested in. text in
ancient libraries were typically kept on papyrus or leather scrolls
inscribe on wax and clay tablets or bound in parchment codexes.
Books were acquired through purchase, copying, and donations but
were also one of the items taken away from the cities by their
conquerors; such was the value put on knowledge in antiquity.
THE CONCEPT OF A LIBRARY IN ANTIQUITY
Libraries in antiquity were not always designed for the public to
freely consult text or take them off-site libraries function today,
although some did offer this service. Many libraries in the near East
and Egypt were attached to sacred temples sites or were part of an
administrative or royal archive, while in the Greek and Roman
worlds these types continued but private collections became much
more common too.
 What is meant by late antiquity?
Late antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe
the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle
Ages in mainland Europe, the Mediterranean world, and the
Near East.
 During the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages periods,
there was no Rome of the kind that ruled the
Mediterranean for centuries and spawned the culture that
produce twenty-eight public libraries in the urbs Roma.
 Under Constantine the great the empire had been divided
then later re-united again who moved the capital of the
Roman Empire in 330 AD to the city of Byzantium which
was rename Constantinople.
 The Roman Intellectual culture that flourished in ancient times was undergoing
a transformation as the academic world move from Laymen to Christian clergy.
 As the west crumbled, books and libraries flourished and flowed east toward
Byzantine Empire. There, four types of libraries were established: imperial,
patriarchal, monastic, and private. Each had its own purpose and, as a result,
their survival varied.
 Christianity was a new force in Europe and many of the faithful saw
Hellenistic culture as pagan. As such, many classical Greek works, written on
scrolls, were left to decay as only Christian texts were thought fit for
preservation in a codex, the progenitor of the modern book. In the East,
however, this was not the case as many of these classical Greek and Roman
texts were copied. "Formerly paper was rare and expensive, so every spare
page of available books was pressed into use.
 Thus a seventeenth-century edition of the Ignatian epistles, in Mar Saba, had
copied onto its last pages, probably in the early eighteenth century, a passage
allegedly from the letters of Clement of Alexandria". Old manuscripts were also
used to bind new books because of the costs associated with paper and also
because of the scarcity of new paper.
 In Byzantium, much of this work was devoted to preserving Hellenistic thought
in codex form was performed in scriptoriums by monks.
 Monastic library scriptoriums flourished throughout East and West, the rules
governing them were generally the same. With such production, medieval
monasteries began to accumulate large libraries. These libraries were devoted
solely to the education of the monks and were seen as essential to their spiritual
development. Although most of these texts that were produced were Christian in
nature, many monastic leaders saw common virtues in the Greek classics. As a
result, many of these Greek works were copied, and thus saved, in monastic
 When Europe passed into the Dark Ages, Byzantine scriptoriums laboriously
preserved Greco-Roman classics. As a result, Byzantium revived Classical
models of education and libraries.
 The Imperial Library of Constantinople was an important depository of
ancient knowledge.  Constantine himself wanted such a library but his short
rule denied him the ability to see his vision to fruition. His son Constantius II
 made this dream a reality and created an imperial library in a portico of the
royal palace. He ruled for 24 years and accelerated the development of the
library and the intellectual culture that came with such a vast accumulation of
books.
 Constantius II appointed Themistius, a pagan philosopher and teacher, as chief
architect of this library building program. Themistius set about a bold program
to create an imperial public library that would be the centerpiece of the new
intellectual capital of Constantinople.
Classical authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Thucydides, 
Homer, and Zeno were sought. Themeistius hired calligraphers and craftsman to
produce the actual codices. He also appointed educators and created a
university-like school centered around the library.

 After the death of Constantius II, Julian the Apostate, a bibliophile

intellectual, ruled briefly for less than three years. Despite this, he had a
profound impact on the imperial library and sought both Christian and pagan
books for its collections. Later, the Emperor Valens hired Greek and Latin
scribes full-time with from the royal treasury to copy and repair manuscripts.
 At its height in the 5th century, the Imperial Library of Constantinople had
120,000 volumes and was the largest library in Europe.A fire in 477
consumed the entire library but it was rebuilt only to be burned again in 726,
1204, and in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks.
 Patriarchal libraries fared no better, and sometimes worse, than the Imperial
Library. The Library of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was founded most
likely during the reign of Constantine the Great in the 4th century. As a
theological library, it was known to have employed a library classification
 system. It also served as a repository of several ecumenical councils such as the 
Council of Nicea, Council of Ephesus, and the Council of Chalcedon. The library,
which employed a librarian and assistants, may have been originally located in
the Patriarch's official residence before it was moved to the Thomaites Triclinus
in the 7th century. While much is not known about the actual library itself, it is
known that many of its contents were subject to destruction as religious in-
fighting ultimately resulted in book burnings. During this period, small private
libraries existed. Many of these were owned by church members and the
aristocracy. Teachers also were known to have small personal libraries as well as
wealthy bibliophiles who could afford the highly ornate books of the period.
Thus, in the 6th century, at the close of the Classical period, the great libraries
of the Mediterranean world remained those of Constantinople and Alexandria. 
Cassiodorus, minister to Theodoric, established a monastery at Vivarium in the
toe of Italy (modern Calabria) with a library where he attempted to bring
Greek learning to Latin readers and preserve texts both sacred and secular for
future generations. As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus not only collected as
many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing his
monks in the proper uses of reading and methods for copying texts accurately.
In the end, however, the library at Vivarium was dispersed and lost within a
century.
 Through Origen and especially the scholarly presbyter Pamphilus of Caesarea,
an avid collector of books of Scripture, the theological school of Caesarea won
a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time,
containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory Nazianzus, Basil the Great
, Jerome and others came and studied there.
 Dark Ages Constantius II Themistius Constantinople
Plato Aristotle Demosthenes Isocrates

Thucydides Zeno