In A Splendor of Letters , Nicholas A. Basbanes continues the lively, richly anecdotal exploration of book people, places, and culture he began in 1995 with A Gentle Madness (a finalist that year for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and expanded in 2001 with Patience & Fortitude , a companion work that prompted the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer David McCullough to proclaim him "the leading authority of books about books." In this beautifully packaged edition, Basbanes brings to a close his wonderful trilogy on the remarkable world of books and bibliophiles.

Nicholas A. Basbanes was literary editor of the Worcester Sunday Telegram from 1978 to 1991, and is a former president of the Friends of the Robert H. Goddard Library of Clark University.

Preface
Marbles and Names	p. 1
Editio Princeps	p. 27
The Ozymandias Factor	p. 59
Ex Libris Punicis	p. 93
From the Ashes	p. 133
Shelf Life	p. 179
Ingenious Cipher	p. 229
Into Thin Air	p. 255
Make Haste Slowly	p. 283
Music of the Spheres	p. 311
Proper Passage: A Coda	p. 363
Notes	p. 369
Bibliography	p. 407
Author's Interviews	p. 423
Index	p. 425
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A Splendor of Letters
The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World

Chapter One

Marbles and Names

Ye who in future pass,
will see this inscription,
which I have had carved in the rock,
of the human figures there --
Efface and destroy nothing!
As long as posterity endures
preserve them intact!

Inscription Honoring
Darius I At Behistun, C. 500 B.C.

O Egypt, Egypt, of your religion only fables will survive, unbelievable toposterity, and only words will survive inscribed on stones that narrate your piousaccomplishments.

From the Asclepius Tractate, C. A.D. 350,
Found Buried At Nag Hammadi in 1945

At the core of a high-stakes political speech that has survivedthe passage of twenty-four centuries is a caustic aside on themerits of safeguarding written testimony and the need toarchive documentary material. Cleverly framed as part of a devastatingattack on a detested opponent, the biting comment was delivered in 330 B.C. by Aeschines, a renowned orator active in the daily affairs of Athens, and the sworn enemy of Demosthenes, the greatest public speaker ofantiquity. The two men had become bitter rivals during a protracted effortto prevent Philip II of Macedon from consolidating control over all ofGreece, with each championing different strategies for containment; bothapproaches had failed resoundingly, and now a legal proceeding had beenconvened to assess the blame. At issue was whether a proclamationawarding a gold crown of glory to Demosthenes six years earlier shouldbe rescinded on the grounds of incompetence, or allowed to stand.Aeschines knew that if he had any hopes of humbling his charismaticrival, he had to reinforce his views with facts, not heated speculation.Addressing a legal assembly of citizens known as a graphe paranomon, hebuilt his attack around this tart observation: "A fine thing, my fellowAthenians, a fine thing is the preservation of public records. Records donot change, and they do not shift sides with traitors, but they grant to you,the people, the opportunity to know, whenever you want, which men,once bad, through some transformation now claim to be good."

To support his allegations, Aeschines asked that several documentshoused in an official repository known as the Metroon -- the sanctuary ofthe Mother of the Gods -- be brought forth and read before the court offive hundred citizens that had gathered in a common meeting place at thebase of the acropolis called the agora. In On the Crown, a brilliant rejoinderconsidered by classical historians to be his masterpiece, Demosthenesdefended his comportment by artfully avoiding any substantive discussionof recent events, and the decree honoring his character was overwhelminglysustained. Humiliated by this embarrassing rejection, Aeschines leftAthens in disgrace and spent the remainder of his days teaching rhetoric inRhodes, but his pithy rationale in defense of systematic record-keepingendures, and it suggests how highly documents were regarded in ancientGreece, particularly in a graphe paranomon,where a preponderance of evidence,not prevailing public sentiment, was supposed to carry the day. It isworth noting that the graphe paranomon proceeding, or a public action against an unconstitutional proposal, was introduced by Solon, the sixth-centurylawmaker whose moderate precepts replaced the unforgiving codeof Draco, the creator of laws so harsh they were said by Plutarch to havebeen written in the seventh century "not with ink, but blood." Regardlessof the medium Draco used to document his pronouncements, the laws thatbear his name marked the first time that Greek legislation was formalizedin writing.

From a preservationist's point of view, the enduring lesson of theAeschines-Demosthenes confrontation is that while the plaintiff 's argumentin praise of archiving has been passed on to our time through themiracle of textual transmission, the actual documents extolled in hisspeech -- words written in their time on papyrus scrolls -- have long sincedisintegrated. Paradoxically, all that has been unearthed from a first-centuryA.D. reading room located near the agora where Aeschines arguedhis point so heatedly is a rule inscribed on a marble tablet that governedaccess to its holdings: "No book is to be taken out because we have swornan oath. The library is to be open from the first hour to the sixth." Likemost other classical writings that survive in their original physical form,this edict endures because it was carved onto stone for display in a publicplace. But even then there were never any guarantees of permanence, asthe Roman statesman, teacher, and occasional poet Decimus MagnusAusonius (c. 309–392) suggested seven hundred years after the twoGreeks had settled their scores in the shadow of the Parthenon. Rememberedtoday largely for his lively correspondence and witty dedications inverse, Ausonius enjoyed poking through the shards of past cultures. In Onthe Name of a Certain Lucius Engraved in Marble, he considered a worninscription marking the grave of some long-forgotten dignitary. He notedin this rumination that the deceased's forename began with the "singlesign" of an L, and that it had been chiseled in front of what he believed tobe an M, but which was incomplete, "for the broken top is flaked awaywhere the stone is cracked, and the whole letter cannot be seen." So what, he wondered, was the name of this once prominent man whose identityhad been buried in the dunes of time?

No one can know for certain whether a Marius, or Marcius, orMetellus lies here. With their forms mutilated, all the letters areconfused, and when the characters are jumbled all their meaning islost. Are we to wonder that man perishes? His monuments decay,and death comes even to his marbles and his names.

Further evidence of that gloomy certainty comes in The Antiquities ofthe Jews, a sweeping history of the world ...

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The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World. Copyright © by Nicholas Basbanes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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