upplied copies as they were
demanded. Aristotle, we are told, possessed a somewhat extensive
library; and Plato is recorded to have paid the large sum of one hundred
minae for three small treatises of Philolaus the Pythagorean. When the
Alexandrian library was founded about 300 B.C., various expedients were
resorted to for the purpose of procuring books, and this appears to have
stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers, who were termed
[Greek: biblion kapaeloi]. In Rome, towards the end of the republic, it
became the fashion to have a library as part of the household furniture;
and the booksellers, _librarii_ (Cic. _D. Leg._ iii. 20) or
_bibliopolae_ (Martial iv. 71, xiii. 3), carried on a flourishing trade.
Their shops (_taberna librarii_, Cicero, _Phil._ ii. 9) were chiefly in
the Argiletum, and in the Vicus Sandalarius. On the door, or on the side
posts, was a list of the books on sale; and Martial (i. 118), who
mentions this also, says that a copy of his First Book of Epigrams might
be purchased for five denarii. In the time of Augustus the great
booksellers were the Sosii. According to Justinian (ii. I. 33), a law
was passed securing to the scribes the property in the materials used;
and in this may, perhaps, be traced the first germ of the modern law of
copyright.

The spread of Christianity naturally created a great demand for copies
of the Gospels and other sacred books, and later on for missals and
other devotional volumes for church and private use. Benedict Biscop,
the founder of the abbey at Wearmouth in England, brought home with him
from France (671) a whole cargo of books, part of which he had "bought,"
but from whom is not mentioned. Passing by the intermediate ages we find
that previous to the Reformation, the text writers or stationers
(_stacyoneres_), who sold copies of the books then in use--the ABC, the
Paternoster, Creed, Ave Maria and other MS. copies of prayers, in the
neighbourhood of St Paul's, London,--were, in 1403, formed into a gild.
Some of these "stacyoneres" had stalls or stations built against the
very walls of the cathedral itself, in the same manner as they are still
to be found in some of the older continental cities. In Henry Anstey's
_Munimenta Academica_, published under the direction of the master of
the rolls, we catch a glimpse of the "sworn" university bookseller or
stationer, John More of Oxford, who apparently first supplied pupils
with their books, and then acted