Pliny the Younger: Bestselling Author in Gaul

Greco-Roman authors largely preferred private copying through friends and acquaintances to publish their work over commercial book sellers (see previous post). Despite this, bookseller were utilized, even if in some type of limited capacity (see previous post). Once an author's text began to circulate outside of the author's circle of acquaintances, the author could lose all knowledge of where his works were being copied, sold, and read.
Horace (65-8 BCE) illustrated this well when he wrote that “[w]hat you have not published you can destroy; the word once sent forth can never come back” (Ars. 389-390). Once published, anyone who was unknown to the author could obtain a copy of the author's composition and distribute it across the Roman world. Yet, even in these circumstances, an author could learn the fate of their work. This occurred in the case of Pliny the Younger (ca. 100 CE), when he received a letter from a friend, Rosianus Geminus, who lived in Lugdunum, Gaul (modern day Lyon, France). Pliny wrote a letter in response,

"I have your letter, an especially welcome one as you want me to write you something which can be included in your published work. I will find a subject, either the one you suggested or something preferable, for yours may give offence in certain quarters - use your eyes and you will see. I didn't think there were any booksellers in Lugdunum, so I was all the more pleased to learn from your letter that my efforts are being sold. I'm glad they retain abroad the popularity they won in Rome, and I'm beginning to think my work must really be quite good when public opinion in such widely different places is agreed about it." (Ep. 9.11).

 We can see from Pliny's return letter that his books were quite popular in Gaul. Even in the case of anonymous booksellers acquiring and selling copies of Pliny's works abroad, he was still able to obtain information regarding them through his circle of acquaintances and friends. Thus, any major alterations, corruptions, or plagiarizing of his work (at least in Gual) could have been made known to him.
  

Statue of Pliny the Younger on the Cathedral of S. Maria Maggiore in Como

________________

Horace. Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica (H. Rushton Faiclough, trans. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 483.

Pliny. The Letters of the Younger Pliny (translated by Betty Radice. London: Penguin Books, 1969), 238-239.