Shelf-Conscious

'As it turns out, for a great deal of their history, shelves were much more haphazard than they are today. Before they even displayed books, they supported piles of scrolls. In the first century BC, Atticus loaned Cicero two assistants to build shelves and to tack titles onto his collection. “Your men have made my library gay with their carpentry work,” Cicero reported. “Nothing could look neater than those shelves.”'

The Paris Review
Image: Ezra the scribe,'Codex Amiatinus'