Have you ever taken a stroll along the Seine in the center of Paris? If so, you will unquestionably have encountered the Bouquinistes, which form – in my personal opinion – one of the most enjoyable cultural landmarks of this remarkable city.

At least, when I am in Paris, I am tempted to spend hours at these green boxes, glancing at the innumerable vintage prints, postcards, and old newspapers, browsing through valuable and less valuable vintage books, and every once in a while picking up one or another of these treasures I had never heard of before, taking a quick glimpse at their yellowed pages, just to wonder who might have been the last person to look at those lines.

I know. Paris has, of course, much more to offer than old books, right? But I mean, this is certainly not the place where I need to talk about the greatness of the Louvre, the beauty of the Eiffel Tower, or the impressive splendour of the Palace of Versailles – to name just a few of the world-famous tourist magnets of the French capital. Let’s just take them for granted for a moment.

But still, I think there is a way in which the Bouquinistes can not only easily compete with these cultural giants, but also kind of outcompete them. And I will tell you why.

But for this, we need to leave Paris for a moment and go back in time.

Far, far back in time.

If I had to name one particular Latin book I have always enjoyed reading for pleasure, it would not be – as one might assume – one of Cicero’s speeches, nor Caesar’s Gallic War, and it would not even be the collected poems of Ovid – even though the latter are definitely among my absolute favourites of all time. It would be the comparatively less well-known Attic Nights by Aulus Gellius.

The reason is quite simple. When you read Cicero, Caesar, or Ovid, you are kind of stuck with these authors themselves. But when you read Gellius, you dive into a real treasure trove of Latin and Greek literature, philosophy, history, art, and many other topics.

This is because the Attic Nights are no ordinary book. They are what is called a commonplace book. They are basically a compilation of all the different topics the author found interesting and worth thinking and writing about.

This has two consequences. The first is that the topics in this book change quite rapidly. On one page Gellius is talking about his opinions on people who make a show of themselves by claiming to be followers of some particular philosophy, on the next he is discussing some grammatical phenomenon, and on the third he might give you his view on some historical event.

(And if you now think, “Wait, that sounds kind of like what is happening when I scroll through my social media feed,” you might be as historically inaccurate as you are nevertheless fascinatingly correct.)

Varietas delectat! – as the ancients already knew very well.

The second consequence is that Gellius’ work preserves, either as direct citations or as paraphrases, countless snippets of the works he was reading and writing about. So, you find yourself constantly in the presence of hundreds of different voices, many of which would have been entirely forgotten were it not for Gellius.

But among all the passages in Gellius’ work, there is one which I have always found particularly fascinating. In it, the author describes how he arrived back in Italy by ship at the port of Brundisium, which at the time was one of the most important harbours of the Mediterranean, basically connecting the major travel routes between the eastern and western parts of the empire.

And as he tells us, directly after Gellius had set foot back on Italian soil, the first thing he does is take a stroll through the harbour, having a look at all the goods many of the traders had brought with them from the east.

We can imagine Gellius glancing at all kinds of beautiful items here. He will have seen jewellery, statues made of bronze and marble, precious fabrics, and maybe even more precious tapestries. This being the time of the Romans, his eyes will inevitably have met those of all different sorts of slaves and maybe the one or the other exotic animal as well.

But, you know, this is Gellius, so these are not the things he is talking to us about. What he tells us is that he stumbled upon some bundles of dirty old books, which actually were entirely unpleasant to look at.

But even though these are, of course, scrolls we are talking about here, and Gellius would have had no idea of its meaning, the – for us – old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” was already true at a time when books were not equipped with this particular part.

So, despite their ugly appearance, Gellius is utterly fascinated by his find. And, as he tells us with recognizable pride, he bought a whole bunch of those books and started reading through them avidly during the following nights while taking all kinds of notes.

In short, what he does is give us a glimpse into how the very work we are reading was compiled.

But, of course, you might ask yourself now what kinds of books we are talking about here.

Well, we are not talking about some ordinary history books or speeches by some Roman orator. We are talking about books full of wonderful and mysterious tales about places and beings long gone and far away.

And yes, of course, Gellius goes on for some time about all the wonders these books are telling him about.

For example, he talks about the cannibal dietary habits of the Scythians, about one-eyed creatures living in the far north who were the role models for the famous Cyclopes, and about strange peoples who already have white hair as children. He also recounts tales about the grim wizardly abilities of people who could make things die just by looking at or talking about them. And he also talks about men with the heads of dogs, others with only one leg, or even some whose bodies are entirely covered in feathers.

In short, what Gellius is sharing with us is, so I think, nothing less than an insight into what we all hope to discover when we, like him, open up some old book in some dusty antiquarian bookshop – like the ones on the beautiful banks of the River Seine, don’t we?

What he is sharing with us is an insight into tales that are so old and almost forgotten that he must have felt like he was the first one to read them in centuries.

And indeed, maybe he even was!

But then, as I said, this scene took place almost two thousand years ago, in an age which to us today is utterly foreign – except for exactly these very human experiences.

Because this is where the Bouquinistes of the Seine in Paris outcompete the likes of the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, or even the Palace of Versailles.

Because when you are there, maybe on a wonderful spring or summer morning, a freshly brewed coffee in your hand, flicking through the rough and yellowed pages of their books – these bookstalls have the ability to connect you in a very intimate way to a world of wonders and imagination that we share with people like Gellius – this quirky old scholar who died so long ago.

If we just pick up some old and almost forgotten book in the center of Paris, we can feel connected to a cultural continuity spanning millennia.

And who knows what you might discover once you do this the next time…