Effects of a Roman printing press?

Let's imagine that someone in Alexandria invents a practical printing Press around 300 AD. How would it affect the Roman culture? could it help Romanize the germanic tribes after the fall of the Western Roman Empire? Would this invention be relevant or would it be a footnote in the annals of History?
 
Well, the problem that immediately jumps to mind for me is the lack of paper. While China had developed paper by this point, it hadn't spread beyond their borders to the best of my knowledge. It was also the Islamic World several centuries later that adopted papermaking and really refined it into an industry.

Without pulp mills and a proper papermaking industry, the romans would be lacking a plentiful and cheap enough writing medium for widespread success.
 
Well, the problem that immediately jumps to mind for me is the lack of paper. While China had developed paper by this point, it hadn't spread beyond their borders to the best of my knowledge. It was also the Islamic World several centuries later that adopted papermaking and really refined it into an industry.

Without pulp mills and a proper papermaking industry, the romans would be lacking a plentiful and cheap enough writing medium for widespread success.

You can run vellum through a printer.
 
You can run vellum through a printer.

Papyrus was fairly cheap and common in the Roman empire and certainly cheaper than vellum. Roman sources describe multiple qualities available for sale. Papyrus doesn't last too long in colder or wetter climates but since Rome is mostly a drier Mediterranean climate it's not a huge issue.
 
See also
Hellenistic printing press.
Roman Printing Press
WI: The printing press invented in Ancient Greece?

(and see the list of links in Carlton's post, below)

My comment from another thread
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Effectively, yes. Parchment is expensive enough that you can't afford to print the numbers of copies that make a printing press worthwhile. Papyrus is theoretically possible, at least in Egypt, but it has problems, too. I don't remember them all, but I THINK it might be too brittle to deal with with a press. I suspect its cost is a lot higher than paper, too.

Others' comments
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp. Novel published in 1949.

I would have thought that book would be in the Read first before posting canon...

True it's a time travel series, but de Camp goes through the viability and complications of introducing plausible transformational technologies such the printing press, telescope, Hindu-Arabic numerals (which appeared circa 500 AD in reality), etc, to the 6th century Europe.

An amazing amount of really culture-altering technologies could have been developed centuries before their official arrivals, even accepting deep conservationism and disinterest - arguably the biggest what if's of history.
Gutenberg actually wasn't taregeting the book market. His business was formulaic documents that every scribe hated making out, but that needed to be produced in their hundreds or thousands. Printing the Bible was more a proof-of-concept idea (we can make books), and financiallky ruinous despite the fact that he was able to undercut prices for handwritten books.

The market for books in Classical Athens was probably much, much smaller than it was in 15th century Germany, but by the end of the classical and the Hellenistic era, it would have grown enormously. There were, by then, businesses that had scribes copy the most popular works in the expectation of ready sales. Hellenistic Athens could have used printing very well to export its culture yet more effectively.

Unfortunately, the limits of technology make it very improbable. Not because literate slaves would be cheaper than printing - both buying and training a scribe would cost serious money, and you could not starve a slave of such quality. The cost of employing skilled slaves or freemen was equal for third parties, and the income generated by slaves for their owners was still not high enough to make the model attractive. The problem is that there are going to be hundreds of details that need to be gotten right, and without a lot of previous work to build on, it is hard to see how they would get there.
 
Papyrus was fairly cheap and common in the Roman empire and certainly cheaper than vellum. Roman sources describe multiple qualities available for sale. Papyrus doesn't last too long in colder or wetter climates but since Rome is mostly a drier Mediterranean climate it's not a huge issue.

Paryrus break for a good word, if you're not careful. The Romans need to discover paper before a printing press is viable. Of course paper would be revolutionary in its own right.
 
Well, the problem that immediately jumps to mind for me is the lack of paper. While China had developed paper by this point, it hadn't spread beyond their borders to the best of my knowledge. It was also the Islamic World several centuries later that adopted papermaking and really refined it into an industry.

Without pulp mills and a proper papermaking industry, the romans would be lacking a plentiful and cheap enough writing medium for widespread success.
That's an awfully deterministic view. If someone back then invented the printing press, it would drastically increase their motivation to come up with something better than Papyrus, so paper might very well be invented a century or so after for all we know. Or someone might figure out a way to make more resilient papyrus.
 
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