Padrão de Resposta

There was no reason for the Greeks to love and therefore keep their own books. Socrates, like so many others, wrote nothing. Deeply despising “barbarians”, there was neither reason for them to love and therefore preserve foreign books. Thus, the most remarkably literate people of the Ancient World had no libraries.
In order to render the paradox complete, the best libraries and particularly the first public libraries, in the Western World, will belong to a military and bellicose, trading and practical, immediatistic and political people, who only allowed for words – written or spoken – as instruments for action. Indeed, this last trait summarizes the character of a people driven for world conquest and capable of instantly perceiving the utility of all weapons: with the Romans, book leave the sacred sphere to enter the profane one, shed their aura of aloofness to become means, and, available to everyone, turn into the privileged vehicle of ideas, projects and entreprises.