ROMAN BOOK FAIR

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 123, 21 November 1932, Page 16

ROMAN BOOK FAIR

Romans have .been "invited to patroniso a book fair in the restored booths of the Forum of Trajan, where any hook published within the last few years in Italy can be bought with an autograph of the author. There was a library at: the Forum in the days of Augustus, where, for all one knows, the Roman could buy. the latest poems of Horace or an oration of Cicero. Part of the market of Trajan consisted of booths built in semi-circles in four or five tiers. Each booth measured about eight or nine feet in 'width, and was 15ft.to 18ft deep. There dealers sold I olive oil from the Sabines, fruit from the south, wine from the Alban Hills, manufactured articles, kitchen utensils of copper and iron, and clothes and household goods of Greek design. By the demolition of blocks of old houses the market, as it was originally, was restored. Most of the 150 booths, with- their brick walls and vaults, nearly 1800 years old, ■ have been cleared, shelves and stands have been placed in them, and now, for a day each year, they will be devoted to the sale of the latest novels, * histories, poems, and plays, and all the other literature of modern Rome.