“Immortal Spirits Speak In Those Same Places”: Invoking the Dead in Roman Libraries

T. Keith Dix

University of Georgia

This paper considers Roman libraries as places of commemoration, paying honor not only to famous authors and men of letters but also to library founders and their families.   Authors' portraits are not only part of the decorative program but also the ideological program of libraries; while founders and their family members receive not only statues but occasionally even burial within their libraries.  Pliny the Elder (HN 35.2.9-11) traces such practices back to Asinius Pollio, founder of Rome's first public library which he established in the Atrium Libertatis; and Pliny's description of Pollio's decorative program for the Atrium Libertatis recalls his description of Roman houses in previous generations: in the atria were family portraits, in the offices (tabulina) were documents and records of the accomplishments of magistrates, and outside and around the thresholds were portraits of mighty souls (animorum ingentium imagines) and displays of enemy spoils.