CHAPTER IV.
Book-Terminology in Classic Times.
BEFORE proceeding to the consideration of the conditions under which works of literature in Rome were prepared by the writers and were brought within reach of the hearers or readers, it will be convenient to give consideration to the different forms of books which existed among the ancients, the various names by which these forms were known, and the nature of the material from which they were prepared.
The history of the different materials used in the writing of books and of the various terms employed to designate the books themselves, throws light on the conditions and the development of the production and distribution of literature. The baked clay tablets of the Chaldeans and Assyrians have already been referred to. Layard speaks of those found by him as of different sizes, the largest being flat and measuring nine inches by six and a half, while the smallest were slightly convex, and in some cases not more than an inch long, with but one or two lines of writing. The cuneiform characters on most of them were singularly sharp and well defined, but so minute in some instances as to be illegible without the aid of a magnifying glass. Curiously enough, in the same ruins with the tablets have been found specimens of the glass lenses which were probably used by their readers. Specimens have also been found of the instrument which was employed to trace the cuneiform characters, and its form sufficiently accounts for the peculiar shape of these characters, a shape which was imitated by the engravers on stone. The tracer is a little iron rod (a stylus), not pointed but triangular at the end. By slightly pressing this end on the cake of soft moist clay held in the left hand, no other sign could be obtained but that of a wedge, the direction being determined by a turn of the wrist, presenting the instrument in various positions. The tablets, having been thus inscribed on both sides and accurately numbered or folioed, were baked in the oven.
An astronomical work discovered by George Smith comprised seventy such tablets, say one hundred and forty pages. The first of these begins with the words “When the gods Anu,” and this seems to have been taken as the title of the work, for each successive tablet bears the notice “First (second or third) tablet of ‘When the gods Anu.’ Further, to guard against all chance of confusion, the last line of one tablet is repeated as the first line of the following one—a fashion which we still see in old books, in which the last word or two at the bottom of a page is repeated at the top of the next.... If the tablets were to be impressed with figures or hieroglyphics in place of or in addition to the cuneiform characters, engraved cylinders were used of some hard stone, such as jasper, cornelian, or agate.... Tablets have also been found (usually in foundation stones) of gold, silver, copper, lead, and tin.”[128]
Referring to the care with which each monarch gathered into his palace the chronicles of his reign, building long series of inscribed tablets into the walls and burying others beneath the foundation stones, Ménant says:
“It was not mere whim which impelled the kings of Assyria to build so assiduously. Palaces had in those times a destination which they have no longer in ours. Not only was the palace indeed the dwelling of royalty, but, as the inscriptions indicate, it was also the Book, which each sovereign began at his accession to the throne, and in which he was to record the history of his reign.”
Painstaking and slow as the method appears to have been in which the Babylonians and Assyrians recorded the earliest known literature of the world, in one respect at least they achieved a success greater than that of any of the literature-producing nations who were to follow them. Their books were made to last, and through forty centuries of vicissitudes such as would have crumbled into unrecognizable dust the collections of the Vatican or of the British Museum, the mounds of Mesopotamia have safely protected the libraries of the Chaldean kings, and it is probable that, notwithstanding the completeness of the devastation that overwhelmed the Assyrian lands, a larger proportion of the entire body of Assyrian literature has been preserved for the students of to-day than of any national literature which came into existence prior to the invention of printing.
The book of Egyptian literature was nearly always written on papyrus, that is, on the tissue prepared from the stems of the papyrus plant, a species of reed which in ancient times abounded on the banks of the Nile. In the earlier days, there are instances of palm-leaves being used for certain classes of documents. According to Wilkinson, the papyrus plant has now entirely disappeared from Egypt. So important was the rôle played by papyrus in the history of classic literature that ancient writers speak as if their literature could hardly have existed, or at least could hardly have been preserved, without it.
Pliny, for instance, writes: Papyri natura dicetur, cum chartæ usu maxime humanitas vitæ constet, certe memoria.[129] Birt renders this: It is on literature that all human development depends, and assuredly to literature is due the transmission of history.[130] Pliny here uses the word charta (i. e., paper made of papyrus) as a general term for literature, and speaks as if papyrus were the only material in use for books. He was writing about the middle of the first century.
From their own land the Greeks could secure no materials for book-making, and their literature, which was to inspire and to enlighten future generations, could be preserved for these generations only by the use of substances imported from other countries. By far, the most important of their book-making materials was the same papyrus plant which had long been utilized by the Egyptians. To the stem of this plant, from which the book “paper” was prepared (the English term being, of course, derived from the Egyptian plant), the Greeks gave the name of βύβλος, or βίβλος. These terms, with the diminutives βύβλίον, βιβλίον, and βιβλάριον speedily came to stand for the book itself instead of for the book-paper, the “book” comprising a series of prepared papyrus sheets, gummed together into a roll. βύβλος usually denoted a single work only, although such work might comprise several volumes or rolls. Suidas, however, whose Lexicon was written about 1000 A.D., asserts that it was also used for a collection of books. The word βύβλος was in like manner used for cordage, i. e., the ropes of ships, for the making of which the papyrus stem was also employed.
We have named first in order papyrus, as the material most universally used by the Greek writers, and βύβλος as the term for book most frequently occurring in Greek literature.
Centuries, however, before the introduction of the papyrus, or of the dressed skins, other materials were employed for writing, such as thinly rolled sheets of lead, used for public documents, and slips of linen sheets, and wax tablets, used for private records and correspondence. Wax tablets were known to Homer, and twelve hundred years after Homer were still in use among the Romans. The Homeric Greeks also utilized slabs of wood and the bark of trees, another material which remained useful for many generations, and which gave to the Romans the term for book, liber. Another term in which the roll nature of the book is clearly indicated is κύλινδρος, a cylinder.[131] This brings us back to one of the Assyrian forms, arrived at, however, in a very different way.
The papyrus book, whether Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, was gotten up very much like a modern mounted map. A length of the material, written on one side only, was fastened to a wooden roller, around which it was wound. The Egyptian name for such a roll was tamā. Such rolls were often twenty, thirty, or even forty yards long.[132] Herodotus tells us the whole of the Odyssey was written on one such roll. He also refers to an Egyptian priest rolling a book about the horns of a sacrificial bull.[133] As the inconvenience of these long rolls became apparent, the practice obtained of breaking up the longer works into sections. Certain suitable sizes became normal, and the conventional length of the roll possibly exercised some influence on the length of what are still called the “books,” i. e., divisions of the classical authors. The Egyptian rolls were kept in jars, holding each from six to twelve.[134]
The term ἁπλὰ was applied to a “book” or writing completed on a single strip of papyrus and comprising therefore only one leaf.[135]
The word τόμος (from which comes our English tome) occurs only after the Alexandrian era. It means literally a slice or a cutting, and when used with precision stood, as to-day, for a portion or division of the entire work. A diminutive of this is τομάριον.
Ὁ χάρτης indicated originally a papyrus sheet or roll which had not yet been written upon, but came later to be used also for a papyrus manuscript.[136]
Τεῦχος, which had for its earlier signification tool or implement, was later used for a chest, repository, or book-case, and, after the Alexandrian age, came finally into use as a term for a set or series of (literary) works.
Γράμμα, meaning in the first place “that which is graven or written,” and then “the letter” or the scripture, is used, although but rarely, for book, occurring more often in the plural Γράμματα,[137] and still more frequently in the form Συγγράμματα, “words written together.” The Σύγγραμμα was a collection of manuscript rolls tied together in a bundle or faggot, called by the Latins fasces.
The famous term Λόγος, meaning in the first place that which is said, the word, the utterance, and then the story or narrative, came occasionally to be referred to as the book, or in the plural form, Λόγοι, as the books, writings, or works of a particular writer. It was, however, the substance of the writings and not their physical form which was then referred to, and the expression seems to have been applied only to writings in prose.
The previous terms (with the exception of Λόγος, which, having to do with the thought of the writer and not with the form of the writing, could stand for any intellectual production) were all employed only for books written on papyrus. A material which preceded the use of papyrus, and which, with improved methods of preparation, long outlasted this, although occupying a far less important place in ancient literature, was obtained from skins or hides. The use of this material for writing was borrowed from the Phœnicians, from whom were also purchased the skins themselves. The dressed skins were called διφθέραι, and writings upon skins came to be known by the same name. Ctesias speaks of the διφθέραι βασιλικαὶ, royal books (or writings or documents) of the Persians, and Herodotus says that such skins were used in the earlier times for book-material not only in Greece, but even in Egypt, the home of the papyrus. In Greece, the papyrus, introduced from Egypt through the Phœnician traders, appears at one time to have almost entirely replaced the dressed skins, while later, owing to the improved methods for the preparation of the skins, these again found favor. It was, however, not until the production of parchment (membrana or pergamena), that the value of skins for literary purposes began to be properly understood, and even parchment made its way but slowly among writers in competition with the long-established papyrus, which it was, however, destined to outlast for many centuries. The name parchment, pergamena, is derived from the city of Pergamum, where, according to the tradition, it was first prepared under the direction of King Eumenes II., about 190 B.C. It seems certain, however, that parchment had been produced considerably before this date, but a great impetus was doubtless given at this time to its use, and its manufacture was improved, owing to the embargo placed by Ptolemy Philadelphus on the exportation from Egypt of papyrus. Ptolemy was, it appears, jealous of the growing fame of the great library of Pergamum, which was beginning to rival that of Alexandria, and he hoped that by cutting off the supply of book-material from other countries he could compel the scholars of the world to resort to Alexandria.
Pliny, writing about 250 years later, appears not to have believed that the new parchment could serve as in any way an adequate substitute for the papyrus. He considered it very fortunate that the Ptolemies had finally consented to withdraw the interdict on the exportation of papyrus, as otherwise the history of mankind in the past (immortalitas hominum) might have been utterly lost.
Excepting for the temporary impetus given to the use of the parchment among the writers of Pergamum during the embargo on the Egyptian papyrus, its introduction among literary circles proceeded but slowly. It came into competition more directly with wax tablets for private notes and memoranda than with papyrus for use in books.
For correspondence, at least for the longer letters, papyrus seems for some centuries to have been found the most convenient material. The author of the Second Epistle of John evidently wrote on papyrus,[138] and in the long series of letters between Cicero and his several correspondents, all the references are to the same material.
The Latin terms for book, like those used by the Greeks, indicate the nature of the material used, or the method of its arrangement. The word liber, which occurs perhaps the most frequently in Latin literature, has been already referred to. It means originally bark, and by some antiquarians is supposed to give evidence of some prehistoric use by the Italian writers of tablets of wood or bark. It was applied finally to books of all kinds, but when used with precision, it indicated books of papyrus arranged in leaves as opposed to a roll or a series of rolls. The roll, whether composed of papyrus sheets or of parchment, was called volumen. Its use as a general term for a book of any kind appears to date from the time of Cicero. Liber was also used for a division of a literary composition, in the sense in which the term “book” is employed to-day, the entire work being called volumen, or opus. The latter term, however, had, like λόγος, no reference to the material or form, but only to the literary production.
The next term in order of importance was codex. The word, which means originally the trunk of a tree, was in the first place used for wooden tablets smeared, for writing purposes, with wax. It was later applied to large documents and manuscripts, whether of papyrus or parchment. A still later meaning was that of a collection or series of writings, in the sense in which we should to-day speak of “a body of literature.” A codex rescriptus, or palimpsest, was a parchment on which the original writing had been erased or defaced to make room for a later inscribing. The erasing was sometimes imperfectly done, so that it became possible to decipher the text of the original writing through that which had been superimposed. A number of important works of antiquity have in this manner been recovered through the labors of modern scholars, the list including Cicero’s De Republica, some of the books of Livy, certain books of Pliny the Younger, and portions of the Septuagint.
The term libellus, literally a small writing, was used for a memorandum book, a petition, a memorial, a summons, a complaint in writing, and finally for a small volume. Birt explains that in the latter sense it always stood for a book of verse, on the ground that, according to the usual arrangement, a volume of verse contained half as much material as one of prose.
The wooden case containing the papyrus roll was called a capsa, or a scrinium. The latter term was, possibly, more generally applied to a case large enough to hold several rolls. The term umbilicus was applied to a reed or stick fastened to the last leaf or strip of the manuscript, around which it was rolled.
It is to be borne in mind that as the inspiration for Roman literature came from Athens and Alexandria, and the earlier Roman authors were accustomed to use Alexandria as a convenient centre for book-production, the Greek terms for books and for things connected with books came into general use with Latin writers, and probably for some time continued to be employed in place of or indifferently with the Latin terms.
