Dioscorides, however, specifies the proportions of this "soot" ink. Another formula alluded to by the same author calls for a half ounce each of copperas (blue) and ox-glue, with half pound of smoke black made from burned resin. He adds, "is a good application in cases of gangrene and is useful in scalds, if a little thickened and employed as a salve." De Vinne speaks of this as a "crude" receipt which will enable one to form a correct opinion of the quality of scientific knowledge then applied to medicine and the mechanical arts; also that these mixtures which are more like shoe blacking than writing fluid were used with immaterial modifications by the scribes of the dark ages.
The old Greeks and Romans had no substitute for the papyrus, which was so brittle that it could not be folded or creased. It could not be bound up in books, nor could it be rolled up unsupported. It was secure only when it had been wound around a wooden or metal roller.
After the wholesale destruction of the libraries of ink-written MSS., the black inks began to fall into disuse; their value in respect to quality gradually deteriorated, caused by the displacement of gummy vehicles, and a consequent absence of any chance of union between the parchment or papyrus and the dry black particles, which could be "blown" or washed off. To employ any other kind of ink except one of natural origin like the juice of berries which soon disappeared, was forbidden by prevailing religious customs. Such conditions naturally merged into others, in the shape of "ink" substitutes for writing; the stylus, with its accompanying sheets or tablets of ivory, wood, metal and wax came into popular vogue and so continued for many centuries, even after the employment of ink for writing purposes had been resumed.
Ovid, in his story of Caunus and Byblis, illustrates the use of the tables (tablets), and he lived at the time of the birth of Christ, thus translated:
"Then fits her trembling hands to Write:
One holds the Wax, the Style the other guides,
Begins, doubts, writes, and at the Table chides;
Notes, razes, changes oft, dislikes, approves,
Throws all aside, resumes what she removes.
* * * * * * * *
"The Wax thus filled with her successless wit,
She Verses in the utmost margin writ."
He also makes reference to inks, in the passage taken from his first elegy, "Ad Librum:"
"Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo;
Non est conveniens luctibus ille color.
Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur.
Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras."
which Davids translates as follows:
"TO HIS BOOK.
"Nor shall huckleberries stain (literally veil) thee with purple
juice:
That color is not becoming to lamentations.
Nor shall title (or head-letter) be marked with vermillion, or
paper with cedar,
Thou shalt carry neither white nor black horns on thy forehead
(or front, or frontispiece)."