Antique Way

Ancient Book-Making of The Early Roman World

INTRODUCTION

Today, the world "book" brings to mind a rectangular object. Upon opening the book's cover we can flip through many thin sheets of paper perfectly aligned and secured into a sturdy spine. We use books for entertainment, information, and other reasons. We rarely stop the think about the origin of this common object. To judge from the surviving written materials, it appears that man has attempted to record his thoughts and experiences since, at least, the sixteenth century before Christ. The earliest written materials found in the world date back to this time. Many materials were used to construct these written materials in ancient times. Leaves, bark, wood, pot-sherds and clay were all materials used for shorter texts. Books and long literary or poetic collections were not recorded on these materials. The most popular materials used in ancient Greece and Rome for making books, not merely documents, were papyrus, leather, and vellum. Papyrus rolls existed for many centuries and they were followed by vellum codices.

Most likely, the Greeks did not use leather as often as they used papyrus or vellum as writing materials. Herodotus stated that leather was probably used when papyrus was not readily available (Kenyon 1951, p. 44). Greek literature may have been recorded on leather, but if so, no trace of such leather books survives. If leather was ever used regularly, it was probably earlier than the times of the Greeks and Romans.

PAPYRUS

Papyrus was apparently the most popular and readily available material in the Greek world. The papyrus roll was basically the only material used in making books until the Christian era. The Greek and Roman classics were written on papyrus, as were the books of the New Testament. The use of papyrus is thought to have begun early in the history of the Greeks and Romans. It is known that papyrus was used in Egypt in the third millenium. We have extensive evidence of papyrus works: books made of papyrus have survived, literary works refer to papyrus, and various types of art depict scenes involving papyrus.

Papyrus rolls were light colored and nine to ten inches high. The length of the pages of papyrus depended on the length of the strips that were cut. Greek papyrus rolls were small compared to papyrus rolls of other regions. The best surviving papyrus roll is probably the third book of the Odyssey. The tallest known Greek papyrus was fifteen inches high and was a tax-register. Normal Greek papyrus rolls never exceeded thiry-five feet in length, so far as we know.

VELLUM

Vellum existed at the same time as papyrus. However, papyrus was more widely used. "It (vellum) was employed for note-books and, somewhat later, for books of the second grade, but the papyrus roll continued to be the aristocrat among books, and was also probably by far the more common material for books of all grades" (Kenyon 1927, p. 58). At the same time vellum became popular, the papyrus codex began to be used because it was modeled after the vellum codex. The codices were similar to our modern books. They were made of sheets of papyrus and vellum and held together by string or leather thongs. Vellum, like leather, is produced from animal skins. The skins were washed and scraped and the hairs were removed with pumice stones. After the hides were smoothed, they were chalked. The hair-side of the skin was better suited for writing and retaining ink. Vellum codices of eight leaves were most common. Quires were large skins of foldable vellum. They could be folded horizontally or vertically. Quires were made in order for hair-side pages to face hair-side pages, and flesh-side pages to face flesh-side pages. This made the appearance uniform with each opening of the book. Vellum was often covered with wax and written on with a stylus. With wax, it was easy to reuse vellum because the wax could be smoothed with a knife.

VELLUM REPLACES PAPYRUS

The victory of vellum over papyrus was actually the victory of the codex over the roll. When vellum finally suceeded the use of papyrus around the fourth century, one cause of the swtich is said to have been "a demand for volumes of a greater bulk than the papyrus roll" and the second reason being "an improvement in the manufacture of vellum" (Kenyon 1971, p. 112).

EVIDENCE OF PAPYRUS ROLLS AND CODICES

We have a great deal of evidence of papyrus rolls and codices. Most important, of course, are the surviving texts, which number in the thousands. Many of the surviving papyrus rolls are specimens of literature. Evidence of ancient book-making is interesting because some of the surviving texts are themselves texts that describe papyrus or vellum works. For instance, a poem by Catullus describes book-making and refers to the poet Suffenus.

EVIDENCE OF VELLUM CODICES

Though not as widely used in the early Roman Empire, vellum codices have also survived. The vellum codices of the highest quality are copies made of the Greek Bible. They were written in the fourth century and are the earliest discoveries of the vellum codices. Copies of Virgil have been discovered on vellum codices and date back to the fourth or fifth century. Writing in the first century AD, Martial speaks of receiving Christmas presents consisting of the works of Homer, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, and Ovid copied into vellum note-books. Two vellum codices were found in Avroman of Kurdistan dating back to 88 and 22 B.C. More documents of vellum were found at the Roman fortress of Dura and the dates mentioned in these documents are 190-189 and 196-195 B.C. (Kenyon 1971, p. 90). Some of the earliest examples of vellum documents found were the De Falsa Legatione by Demosthenes which is now in the British Museum and Cretans by Euripides, both of which date back to the late first or second century (Kenyon 1971, p. 93).