Talk:Pinakes

120,000 books or 120,000 scrolls ?

The total number of scrolls in the ancient library seems to have been confused to the total number of scrolls in the Pinakes (120). The number of scrolls in the Museum library is been widely disputed since the ancient sources. for more, see: BAGNALL, Roger S. Alexandria: Library of Dreams. In: Proceedings of the Ameri-can Philosophical Society. New York: New York University. n. 146, 2002. p. 348-362. full text: < http://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/28263/2/D172-Alexandria%20Library%20of%20Dreams.pdf >. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.15.184.232 (talk) 04:40, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

According to this reference ...the Library of Alexandria, created about 245 BC for the first time a catalog of Greek literature covering 120,000 books, called the Pinakes... Is there a difference between scrolls and books, especially when referring to an ancient library that ONLY had scrolls? --Doug Coldwell ^talk 11:46, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

According to this reference ' ...Callimachus of Cyrene was perhaps Alexandria's most famous librarian, creating for the first time a subject catalog in 120,000 scrolls of the Library's holdings, called the Pinakes or Tables.

Based upon Tzetzes' (late) testimony, The Oxford Classical Dictionary gives an estimate of nearly 500,000 rolls or "the equivalent, perhaps, of 100,000 modern books". I think the IP is probably correct to suspect that the 120 rolls of the Pinakes were the source of these references' figures. The OCD should prbably be preferred, but I'll try to look at a work on ancient book culture soon. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 17:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Great! Is this OCD source online? Where exactly did you find this OCD information? So, what your saying is that 500,000 scrolls of the time is about 100,000 modern books? Note also above on the references I gave. It is 2 differenct references; one saying 120,000 books while the other is saying 120,000 scrolls. So what you are saying is that a "scroll" is different than a "book"? What's the difference? Where did you get that concept?--Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:07, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The OCD is online, but I'm pretty sure that its subscription (I'm on a computer at my school right now). The OCD doesn't go into details, but the way the author probably arrived at the estimate would be to take the average amount of text that could be fit on a (sc)roll of papyrus in the format used during the time period and do a calculation according to the modern sense of a "book" being roughly 100,000 words. (Lots of times classicists doing this sort of calculation use the format of the Oxford Classical Texts to mean "book".) Or it was simply a recognition that a roll generally couldn't accommodate much more than 1/5 of a modern book. (Now I'm just reading minds.)

As for the difference between rolls and books: Homer's a pretty good case. We have a few 2nd century CE rolls that contained about 1/6 of the Iliad, a poem which we could easily fit in a single modern book. These rolls are infact on the large side, and a roll of epic poetry would often contain no more than about 1,000 lines, or roughly 30 pages in a modern book. Is that all ridiculously convoluted? Does it help?

I have a question, though, should I not use the OCD since its not accessible to everyone? Thanks a bunch, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would say you can use the OCD even if not accessible to everyone. Now ...it was simply a recognition that a roll generally couldn't accommodate much more than 1/5 of a modern book... sounds a little like Original Research to me. And ...the way the author probably arrived at the estimate... sounds a little like Original Research to me. Surely there are sources that are NOT subscription services that show a scroll could only hold 1/5 of a modern book - yes? Where? Since you used the subscription service of OCD, can you be a little more specific where exactly you found this information in the OCD? Perhaps copy down a couple of pertainent lines and give to me here.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:45, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, my comments above were full of original research. Sorry bout that. I'll paste the relevant text here, but I'm new and don't know the copyright situation of stuff like this, so if I'm messing up, please delete it. It's from the third edition, the entry is "Libraries" by P.J. Parsons, a pretty could scholar to go by (among other things, he edited the 2nd edition of Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. The text is:

The first Ptolemies (see Ptolemy (1) ) collected ambitiously and systematically; the Alexandrian Library (see ALEXANDRIA (1) ) became legend, and *Callimachus (3)'s Pinakes made its content accessible. There were rivals at *Pella, *Antioch (1) (where *Euphorion (2) was librarian), and especially *Pergamum. Holdings were substantial: if the figures can be trusted, Pergamum held at least 200,000 rolls (Plut. Ant. 58. 9), the main library at Alexandria nearly 500,000 (*Tzetzes, Prolegomena de comoedia 11a. 2. 10–11 Koster)--the equivalent, perhaps, of 100,000 modern books.

I don't really know where one finds reliable info on stuff like this online for free. Do you have any ideas? Thanks a bunch, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 18:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly the PDF at the beginning of this thread says the Pinakes was 120 books that listed the genres, authors and works; where it says: Callimachus’s famous Pinakes, a systematic listing of genres, authors, and works in 120 books... It points out that would have been impossible to ... catalog hundreds of thousands of rolls... this way (just 120 books).--Doug Coldwell ^talk 18:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

We had an edit conflict there. Unfortunately, since we don't know too, too much about the format of the Pinakes it's hard to say what was possible. But we might remember that there would most likely only be one entry for the Iliad, which could have been as many as 24 rolls per copy in the library and there were very likely many copies. We definitely need to incorporate that pdf, though. (I couldn't open it before). The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 18:58, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I fixed the PDF file earlier today so that it was readable. The above info from OCD I would suggest to copy into an inline reference at the first line of Description and change "more than 120,000" to "nearly 500000" and remove the "dubious-discuss" tag since now you have a reliable reference. Just copy those words into an inline reference and put at the end of this first line - deleting the existing reference there now [4].--Doug Coldwell ^talk 19:13, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Doug, for the help! And for fixing the pdf link. It's a great article and footnote 36 on page 356 is going to be really helpful, too. I'll make the edit you suggest and then think on what Bagnall has to say about all the conflicting evidence. Thanks again, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 19:19, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I've figured out the confusion here (I think): the Pinakes was not, apparently, a catalogue of the library's entire holdings, but was concerning with information on the "Greatest Hits". The full title was "Pinakes of Illustrious Men in Each Branch of Learning and of What They Wrote" (Πίνακες τῶν ἐν πάσῃ παιδείᾳ διαλαμψάντων, καὶ ὧν συνέγραψαν). It was actually based upon an existing, basic catalogue of the library. The Krevans piece (which can be seen in part at Google Books) and the bibliography therein explains this. It is still popularly considered the first library catalogue, so I'm going to try to finagle the definition so as to keep this right at the top, since that's what has made the work famous outside of classical studies. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 20:52, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Callimachus the Librarian?

Callimachus was never the head librarian. I'll try to clean this page up soon. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 22:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

References

I'll also note that the references used in this article are remarkably poor. I'll attempt to find the Classical Quarterly articles listed at the base of the page and to take a look at Pfeiffer's History of Classical Scholarship. I would delete the erroneous content right now if it were not "referenced" and I had access to reliable sources. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 23:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Here are two off-line references that might be of use to the page:

Hopkinson, N. A Hellenistic Anthology (CUP, 1988) 83: (the he is Callimachus)

Later he gained employment in the Library and produced the Πίνακες, a 120-volume list of the holdings in prose and verse (Pfeiffer, HCS 127%ndash;34). It seems likely that this huge work was more than a mere catalogue: Callimachus probably concerned himself with writers' biographies and with problems of authenticity, and this in turn must have entailed the use of stylistic and other criteria to form an authoritative judgement of a work's date and authorship.

Parsons, P.J. "Callimachus", in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (OUP, 1996):

The Pinakes ('Tables of Those who have Distinguished themselves in Every Form of Culture and of What they Wrote') presented, in 120 books, a bibliography of Greek literature and a catalogue of the Alexandrian *Library, organized by subject ('rhetoric', 'laws', 'miscellaneous prose'); they included some biographical notes, and cited the first line of each work, and the number of lines.

The two articles from Library Quarterly (not Classical Quarterly, as I mistakenly typed above), are really helpful since they provide the only translations of any of the fragments that I've been able to find. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Though it's old, the second volume of Sandys' History of Classical Scholarship has some discussion on pages 122–23. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Eurocentric notability

The citation naming this as the first library catalogue ever is poor, and my own knowledge is not so broad as to feel any confidence in it. The Pinakes surely amount to the earliest known catalogue in the Western tradition, but does anyone know for sure that it was the earliest overall? I'll look into this as best I can myself, but doubt that I have the Library Science tools. Any help will be very appreciated. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 03:38, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

All the unrelated Library history articles on Wikipedia that I've been able to find state the same thing, so I'm assuming that no reference to an earlier work of this kind will be forthcoming. I'll keep an eye out, though. The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The name

I thing the name should simply be Pinakes, if for no other reason than simplicity. When you type in the search box "Pinakes" you get the other option of Pinax, which is just one word. I think Pinakes should also be just one word. I don't see any confusion to that of Pinax (one word). If you are looking up Pinax one would type just that word and IF you are looking up "Pinakes" you should get it directly with the one word.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 20:16, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I whole-heartedly agree, Doug. Sorry again for acting unilaterally. I'd just read WP:BOLD and was feeling, well, bold. I don't really know how to fix this or if we should wait for more input from others. Does the disambiguation page remain? Do we need to worry about the redirects. I'm going to try to be decidedly less bold with stuff like this. Yours, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 20:24, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Asked for help at the Help Desk. I believe they can straighten it out for us.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 21:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Why not just create a redirect from Pinakes? Eeekster (talk) 01:28, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did. That seems to have solved the problem. Good idea!--Doug Coldwell ^talk 10:52, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Now we have the best of all three worlds. Pinakes goes to the article, as does Pinakes (Callimachus), as does Pinakes (tables).--Doug Coldwell ^talk 14:26, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. Once I have a bit more experience with things like this I'll try to change the headword of the article to reflect Doug's proposal above (i.e. that the article be simply Pinakes) and make Pinakes (tables) and Pinakes (Callimachus) redirects. Those see-also type italic phrases might then also belong at the head of both Pinax and Pinakes. Best, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 20:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Since it works with just Pinakes now, and with Pinakes (Callimachus) and Pinakes (tables) I would say to leave well enough alone for awhile and let the double re-directs be fixed by others. I think we are good just the way it stands for now. Since you are becoming more knowledgeable on the subject than myself, then finding some better references would be good. If you happen to expand the article some, that would be good also. Let's look at name changes in a few months and let the names stand the way they are for now - and just concentrate on improving the article itself.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:02, 17 July 2011 (UTC)