Roman public libraries from the reign of Octavianus Augustus

The appearance in Rome the first public libraries in the reign of Octavian Augustus was a significant event in the cultural life of the imperial capital. By the beginning of our era, four libraries functioned in the city, the book riches of which were available to the entire free population of Rome and numerous guests of the city. Like the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum, they retained a connection with cult buildings such as the sanctuaries of Apollo or the Atrium of Liberty. Libraries became public property either by transferring private collections of books (Lucullus libraries) to the state or were originally built at the expense of the treasury, but with wide involvement of donations from wealthy Romans, including family members of the ruling dynasty. The libraries of Rome were, at the same time, repositories of artefacts, that is, they served as New European museums, schools of poetics and rhetoric, and centers of communication of the intellectual elite. In them, under Octavian Augustus, honed literary skills and recited their works Horace, Ovid, Virgil. The material for this article served the reports of ancient authors and the results of archaeological excavations on the Palatine of recent decades. Epigraphic monuments (tombstones epitaphs of servants of Roman libraries of the first century CE, were attracted on the Appian Road) and authors who were not translated into Russian (Seneca the Elder, Fronton, Servius Grammaticus, Galen), or available only in old pre-revolutionary translations (Quintilian) were engaged as well. The influence on the formation of Roman libraries of the famous library in Alexandria of Egypt has been traced.