‘Concerning the number of books, the arrangement of the libraries and the collection in the Museum, why need I even speak, since they are in all men's memories?’ Since memory has in this case proved fallible, today Athenaeus' throwaway remark underscores the limits of our knowledge about ancient libraries. Indeed, even what we think we do know is open to question, as we discover in this stimulating and carefully edited collection, which aims to challenge existing histories and understand ancient libraries as the product of cultural practices alien to our own.

Several traditional narratives and familiar sources are re-interrogated. Christian Jacob re-analyses seven well-known literary fragments, including Athenaeus' and Strabo's comments on Alexandria, and the seemingly contradictory traditions they preserve about the fate of Aristotle's library. Aiming to deconstruct synthetic accounts of ancient libraries, Jacob interprets each text as a discrete testimonium to a particular set of historical circumstances and conceptual associations. Michael Handis revisits Galen to discuss ancient mythologizing of the Library of Alexandria, while Myrto Hatzimichali returns to the question of the Library's fate after the fire of 48 b.c., delineating other factors important for its subsequent trajectory: loss of royal patronage, the brain drain to Rome and a shift towards meta-scholarship.

Some papers focus on libraries as physical spaces, again with thought-provoking reassessments. Gaëlle Coqueugniot effectively overturns the identification of the Library of Pergamum with four rooms in the sanctuary of Athena Polias. With the north-eastern hall better understood as a banqueting room and/or offering repository, and the interpretation of other architectural elements equivocal, the Library of Pergamum dematerializes, as do all other libraries reconstructed on the basis of this identification. Moving to Rome, Pier Luigi Tucci proposes a revised reconstruction of the Domitianic library in the Templum Pacis — not shared by Richard Neudecker, whose chapter explores links between Roman libraries and archival and sacred spaces. Matthew Nicholls elucidates the public aspect of Roman Imperial libraries through the architecture of surviving buildings: in Rome, Ephesus and Timgad, the prioritizing of display and monumentality (even over the needs of books and readers) suggests that these euergetistic libraries were not designed only for literary visitors, but for all inhabitants of the cityscapes to which they were such eye-catching additions. With regard to internal arrangement, David Petrain argues that Imperial libraries created metonymic associations between books and decorative elements (for example, clipeus portraits), which could be utilized to convey ideological messages. Although the programmatic aspect of library decoration is clear, the question arises of how unambiguously these messages could be communicated to users.

Users — owners, readers and writers — form another central theme. Surveys of book culture are undertaken by Pasquale Massimo Pinto for fourth-century b.c. Athens, and Michael Affleck for Rome before 168 b.c., establishing the socio-cultural background for the more detailed studies made possible by later sources. Among the latter, T. Keith Dix uses Cicero's letters to build up a fascinating picture of the history of a private library in Republican Rome: Cicero's acquisitions through purchase and inheritance; losses during his exile; efforts to track down the slave who absconded with many volumes. Cicero's writings also shed light on library culture more broadly: investigating the transmission of Aristotle's esoteric writings in the late Republic, Fabio Tutrone emphasizes the crucial rôle of élite social networks in determining the use of private book collections — which in some cases, like those of Lucullus and Sulla, acquired a semi-public character — and hence the spread of texts and ideas. In the Imperial period, too, élite sociabilities are crucial for understanding library culture. William Johnson sees the ‘eerie silence’ (347, 362) about users of public libraries in the literary record as a product of the fact that élite writing and reading centred around private book collections and the exclusive social circles of their owners. Focusing on Plutarch and Galen, Alexei Zadorojnyi further suggests that the paradoxical literary treatment of libraries reflects unease among the literate élite of the Second Sophistic about the ‘physical and hermeneutic vulnerability of books en masse’ (400). Libraries' impact on writers' working practices also receives attention. Annette Harder traces reflections of the Alexandrian Library in the poetry of Callimachus and Apollonius, while Daniel Hogg argues that Book 1 of Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Antiquitates was published separately to reach a wider audience than the complete twenty-volume work — an attractive idea, although the surviving papyri and manuscripts do not obviously reflect a broader circulation for Book 1.

What of content? The only excavated Greco-Roman library whose composition can be analysed is that of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. George Houston's examination of the non-Philodemus manuscripts from the Villa confirms the specialized nature of this philosophical collection. The patchy representation of Greek Epicurean writers in particular suggests selective acquisition (although some works may have been unobtainable, removed or kept elsewhere). In Egypt and Mesopotamia, surviving assemblages of papyri and cuneiform tablets permit fuller studies of content. Kim Ryholt explores intellectual life at an Egyptian temple under Roman rule using the Tebtunis temple library papyri. Significant numbers of divinatory papyri suggest that divination was more important within the temples than previously thought; conversely, the comparatively small number of magical texts may reflect Roman legislative restrictions. Further east, Eleanor Robson illustrates the heterogeneity of cuneiform libraries in first-millennium b.c. Mesopotamia through a comparison of four collections. The libraries' differing compositions reflect the various priorities of their users — from Neo-Assyrian court scholars to Hellenistic ritual specialists — and reveal changes in intellectual praxis over time. All the libraries examined in these three chapters could fit the model of a ‘special library’ outlined by Martínez and Senseney in their contribution.

In his magisterial survey of Roman Imperial libraries, Ewen Bowie imagines the sophist Hadrianus of Tyre contemplating his future working life in Rome. What will the library collections be like? The workspaces? The borrowing rules? As Bowie notes, today we can answer few of these questions. Yet this volume illustrates how the careful examination of even well-worn testimonia can still transform our understanding of these ‘alien libraries’, and the reading cultures of which they formed part.