Konstantine Panegyres, The University of Western Australia

If you were to visit a bookshop in the ancient world, what would it be like?

You don’t just have to imagine it. The ancient Roman writer Aulus Gellius, who lived in the 2nd century CE, gives us a number of descriptions of his adventures at bookstores. In one passage, he describes an encounter at one in Rome, which he was visiting with a poet friend:

I chanced to be sitting in a bookshop in the Sigillaria with the poet Julius Paulus […] There was on sale there the Annals of Quintus Fabius Pictor in a copy of good and undoubted age, which the dealer maintained was without errors.

Gellius then tells us that, while they are sitting there, another customer enters the shop. The new customer has a disagreement with the dealer. He complains that he “found in the book one error”. The dealer says that’s impossible. Then the customer brings out evidence to prove the dealer wrong.

In different passage, Aulus tells us about some bookstalls he came across when he arrived by ship at the port of Brundisium on the Adriatic coast. The books, he records, were “in Greek, filled with marvellous tales, things unheard of, incredible […] The writers were ancient and of no mean authority”.

The volumes themselves, however, were filthy from neglect, in bad condition and unsightly. Nevertheless, I drew near and asked their price; then, attracted by their extraordinary and unexpected cheapness, I bought a large number of them for a small sum.

Aulus goes on to describe in excited language all the weird facts he derived from these books – like how people in Africa can “work spells by voice and tongue” and through this witchcraft cause people, animals, trees and crops to die.

The origins of writing

These sorts of stories bring us close to how ordinary people in ancient Greek and Roman times obtained books and engaged with books. But if we read stories like this it might lead us to want to know more. How did books and writing come into existence? And how were books written and produced?

Many people in the ancient world thought that writing had been invented by gods or heroes. For example, the ancient Egyptians believed the god Thoth was the first to create signs to represent spoken sounds.

The origins of writing are certainly mysterious. It’s unclear when writing began and who invented it.

The earliest written text is a wooden tablet radiocarbon dated to before 5000 BCE. This is known as the Dispilio tablet, because it was discovered at a neolithic lakeside settlement at Dispilio in Greece. It is carved with strange linear markings. These have not been deciphered, but most scholars think they are a form of writing.

Evidence for writing appears early in different parts of the world. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, the oldest texts, such as the Kish limestone tablet at Uruk or the Narmer Palette at Hierakonpolis, date to before 3000 BCE. In the Indus Valley, the Harappan script, which remains undeciphered, appeared around the same time. In China, the earliest characters, the Dawenkou graphs, also date to around 3000 BCE.

One of the most interesting aspects of early writing is that there is such a variety of different scripts. For example, the earliest known texts in the Greek language are written in the Linear B script, which was used from around 1500-1200 BCE, and wasn’t deciphered until 1952. Linear B is not an alphabet, but a syllabary of more than 80 different signs. A syllabary is a kind of writing system where each sign represents a syllable.

By around the 8th century BCE, most Greeks had starting using an alphabet instead of a syllabary. Unlike a syllabary, in an alphabet each letter represents a vowel or consonant. The Greeks adapted their alphabet from the Phoenician alphabet, probably via interactions with Phoenician traders. The Phoenician alphabet had only 22 letters, making it much easier to learn than the 80-plus syllabary signs of Linear B.

Our English alphabet comes from the Romans, who in the 8th and 7th century BCE also got their alphabet from the Phoenicians, via the Greeks.

The origins of books

People in ancient times used many different things as writing materials.

The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) tells us that the earliest people in the world

used to write on palm-leaves and then on the bark of certain trees, and afterwards folding sheets of lead began to be employed for official muniments, and then also sheets of linen or tablets of wax for private documents.

However, the most popular writing material in the ancient Mediterranean was papyrus, from which we get our word “paper”.

To make papyrus, you get the pith of the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus), cut it into slender strips, then press it together. Once dried, it forms a thin sheet that you can write on.

Papyrus sheets were usually glued together into rolls. These rolls could be very long. Some of the most lavish Egyptian papyrus rolls were more than 10 metres long, such as the recently discovered Waziri Papyrus containing parts of the Book of the Dead.

When papyri were rolled up they were stored in shelves or boxes. Labels were attached to the handles of the papyri so you could identify their contents. In his play Linus, Greek playwright Alexis (c. 375-275 BC) has one character tell another how to look through a bunch of rolls to find what he wants:

go over and pick any papyrus roll you like out of there and then read it… examining them quietly, and at your leisure, on the basis of the labels. Orpheus is in there, Hesiod, tragedies, Choerilus, Homer, Epicharmus, prose treatises of every type…

Papyrus seems flimsy to the eye, but it is a durable writing material, stronger than modern paper. Many papyri have survived for thousands of years stored in jars or sarcophagi or buried under the sand.

The oldest surviving papyrus text is the so-called Diary of Merer (which you can listen to here), the logbook of a man named Merer, who was an inspector during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza under Pharaoh Khufu. This papyrus, which dates to around 2600 BCE, gives a day-by-day account of how Merer and his team of about 200 men spent time hauling and transporting stone and doing other work.

Papyrus was susceptible to being eaten by insects or mice. But there were ways to prevent this. Pliny the Elder, for example, advises that sheets of papyrus soaked in citrus-oil won’t be eaten by moths.

How to write a book in antiquity

If you were living in ancient Greece or Rome and wanted to write a book, how would you do it?

First, you would buy sheets or rolls of papyrus to write on. If you couldn’t afford it, you’d have to write on the back or in the margins of papyri you already owned.

If you didn’t own any papyri already, then you would have to write on other materials. According to the Greek historian Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), the philosopher Cleanthes (c. 331-231 BCE) “wrote down lectures on oyster-shells and the blade-bones of oxen through lack of money to buy papyrus”.

Second, you would get your ink. In the ancient world, there were many varieties of ink. Normal black ink was made from the soot of burnt resin or pitch mixed with vegetable gum. When buying ink, it would come in powder form, and you would need to mix it with water before using it.

Third, you would get your pen. It would be made from reed, hence it was called the “calamus” by Greeks and Romans (“calamus” is the Greek word for reed). To sharpen your pen you would need a knife. If you made a mistake, you would erase it with a wet sponge.

Now you have all the materials you need. However, you don’t need to use the pen and papyrus yourself. If you want, you can get a scribe to write down your words for you.

The Greek orator Dio Chrysostom (c.40-110 CE) even advised writers not to use the pen themselves:

Writing I do not advise you to engage in with your own hand, or only very rarely, but rather to dictate to a secretary.

If you needed to consult other books while writing, you could get friends to send them to you or ask book dealers to make you a copy. In a papyrus from the 2nd century CE found at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and written in Greek, the writer asks his friend to find the books that he needs and make copies of them. Otherwise, you would go to a library, though the best libraries at Alexandria, Rome and Athens might be far away.

When you finished drafting your book you would need to revise and correct it. You could then publish it by having many copies made by scribes and delivering these copies to friends and booksellers.

When all this was done, your book would be out in public. Perhaps someone like Aulus Gellius would stumble across it in a busy Roman bookshop. Maybe he’d even buy it.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Michael La Corte, University of Tübingen and Stephan Blum, University of Tübingen

Imagine waking up to find strangers in your home – eating your food, killing your animals, then laughing as they blind you. Later, they tell the world you were the monster.

We are describing one of the better known episodes of Homer’s Odyssey, written around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. The intruders are protagonist Odysseus’s men, and the “monster” they attack is Polyphemus, a solitary giant shepherd later remembered only as a cyclops.

For centuries, we’ve followed the hero’s journey without asking what it costs. But what if the cyclops wasn’t the monster, but just one of many lives shattered along the way?

Director Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of The Odyssey hits cinemas in July 2026. But will it celebrate Odysseus as the clever hero – or finally confront the wreckage he leaves in his wake?

Homer’s Odyssey, composed at the turn of the 8th to the 7th century BC, follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he struggles to return home from the Trojan war, outwitting monsters, gods and fate. It’s a tale of resilience and cunning – and the template for countless stories since: the clever man triumphs over the monstrous other and sails home in glory.

We know the pattern by heart. But we rarely ask: who gets trampled along the way, and whose story is never told?

This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.

In the scene of Odysseus v Polyphemus, the cyclops is cast as a brute, a savage who traps the hero and his men in a cave. Odysseus responds with legendary cunning: wine, lies, a sharpened stake – and escape.

From the outside, it’s textbook heroism, yet Homer himself hints at the cost of that victory. He has Odysseus reveal his name only after the escape: “Tell them it was Odysseus, sacker of cities, who blinded you.” It’s a moment of pride, not necessity – the spark that seals his fate. In that instant, the clever survivor becomes the arrogant aggressor, and the story’s moral axis begins to tilt.

Yet if we shift perspective, the story changes. Polyphemus is a solitary shepherd, living in peace. Strangers break into his home, steal his food, kill his livestock, and leave him blinded and broken. His cave isn’t a prison but a home under siege. His violence, while brutal, emerges from desperation. You could easily argue that Polyphemus isn’t the villain. He’s the victim.

This reversal reveals a troubling pattern: our cultural instinct to root for the protagonist, no matter what they do – as long as the cause feels noble. From ancient epics to Hollywood blockbusters, we excuse deception, destruction, even murder, if it serves the “greater good”.

We cheer when the hero escapes – but rarely look back at what’s left behind. A burned city. A grieving family. A blinded shepherd. If it fits the story, we accept the collateral damage as necessary. That’s the seductive logic of heroism: clean endings, messy consequences.

In Homer’s writing, Polyphemus gets a single moment of anguish – a prayer to Poseidon, his father – and then vanishes from the story. His voice, his pain, his version of events do not fit the heroic arc.

And this pattern continues. Empires and conquerors have long branded enemies as “barbarians”, “savages” or “monsters” to justify violence. From Roman propaganda to colonial domination in the Americas and Africa – and, more recently, to claims of “denazification” in Ukraine – this tactic dehumanises the “other side” and erases their stories. Strip the enemy of humanity, and their suffering becomes legitimised.

If history is so often written by the victors, we must ask: what remains of heroism when we finally listen to the so-called monsters? As global conflicts polarise public discourse around heroes and villains, the stories we choose, and those we silence, matter more than ever.

What if we shift the spotlight? Polyphemus becomes more than a monster – he’s a mirror, showing how unchecked heroism can slip into cruelty. Cleverness isn’t virtue. And survival at others’ expense isn’t always justified.

Odysseus, the “man of many turns” is brilliant but ambiguous. His actions bring destruction alongside triumph. For every hero who returns, many suffer or are lost. True heroism lies not just in daring escapes, but in owning the cost left behind.

The cyclops’ tale warns us how easily we dehumanise those in the hero’s way. How we flatten complexity to fit a script. How we justify harm if the story feels right. Rethinking Polyphemus complicates Odysseus and challenges us as storytellers and audiences.

The real challenge for Nolan’s The Odyssey won’t be spectacle or scale, but perspective. Will it dare to look beyond the hero? Will it give voice to those left in his shadow? Clint Eastwood did just that with Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), telling the story of the battle of Iwo Jima from opposing sides. By letting the “enemy” speak, he shattered the illusion of a single, righteous story.

If Nolan embraces that sort of complexity, The Odyssey won’t just retell a myth but will challenge us to rethink who we name as heroes and to listen more closely to those we once dismissed as monsters.

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Michael La Corte, Research Associate, Curation and Communication, University of Tübingen and Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.