Forty Centuries of Ink / Or, A chronological narrative concerning ink and its backgrounds, introducing incidental observations and deductions, parallels of time and color phenomena, bibliography, chemistry, poetical effusions, citations, anecdotes and curiosa together with some evidence respecting the evanescent character of most inks of to-day and an epitome of chemico-legal ink.

by David Nunes Carvalho

"The price of books made by slave labor was necessarily low. Martial says that his first book of epigrams was sold in plain binding for six sesterces, about twenty-four cents of American money; the same book in sumptuous binding was valued at five denarii, about eighty cents. He subsequently complained that his thirteenth book was sold for only four sesterces, about sixteen cents. He frankly admits that half of this sum was profit, but intimates, somewhat ungraciously, that the publisher Tryphon gave him too small a share. Of the merits of this old disagreement between the author and publisher we have not enough of facts to justify an opinion. We learn that some publishers, like Tryphon and the brothers Sosii, acquired wealth, but there are many indications that publishing was then, as it is now, one of the most speculative kinds of business. One writer chuckles over the unkind fate that sent so many of the unsold books of rival authors from the warehouses of the publisher, to the shops of grocers and bakers, where they were used to wrap up pastry and spices; another writer says that the unsold stock of a bookseller was sometimes bought by butchers and trunk makers.

"The Romans not only had plenty of books but they had a manuscript daily newspaper, the Acta Diurna, which seems to have been a record of the proceedings of the senate. We do not know how it was written, nor how it was published, but it was frequently mentioned by contemporary writers as the regular official medium for transmitting intelligence. It was sent to subscribers in distant cities, and was, sometimes, read to an assembled army. Cicero mentions the Acta as a sheet in which he expected to find the city news and gossip about marriages and divorces.

"With the decline of power in the Roman empire came the decline of literature throughout the world. In the sixth century the business of bookmaking had fallen into hopeless decay. The books that had been written were seldom read, and the number of readers diminished with every succeeding generation. Ignorance pervaded in all ranks of society. The Emperor Justin I, who reigned between the years 518 and 527, could not write, and was obliged to sign state papers with the form of stencil plate that had been recommended by Quintilian. Respect for literature was dead. In the year, 476, Zeno, the Isaurian, burned 120,000 volumes in the city of Constantinople. During the year 640, Amrou, the Saracen, fed the baths of Alexandria for six months with the 500,000 books that had been accumulating for centuries in its famous library of the Serapion. Yet books were so scarce in Rome at the close of the seventh century that Pope Martin requested one of his bishops to supply them, if possible, from Germany. The ignorance of ecclesiastics in high station was alarming. During this century, and for centuries afterward, there were many bishops and archbishops of the church who could not sign their names. It was asserted at a council of the church held in the year 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first elements of letters. Hallam says, 'To sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman of any rank to know bow to sign his name.' He repeats the statements that Charlemagne could not write, and Frederic Barbarossa could not read. John, king of Bohemia, and Philip, the Hardy, king of France, were ignorant of both accomplishments. The graces of literature were tolerated only in the ranks of the clergy; the layman who preferred letters to arms was regarded as a man of mean spirit. When the Crusaders took Constantinople, in 1204, they exposed to public ridicule the pens and inkstands that they found in the conquered city as the ignoble arms of a contemptible race of students.

"During this period of intellectual darkness, which lasted from the fifth until the fifteenth century, a period sometimes described, and not improperly, as the dark ages, there was no need for any improvement in the old method of making books. The world was not then ready for typography. The invention waited for readers more than it did for types; the multitude of book buyers upon which its success depended had to be created. Books were needed as well as readers. The treatises of the old Roman sophists and rhetoricians, the dialectics of Aristotle and the schoolmen, and the commentaries on ecclesiastical law of the fathers of the church, were the works which engrossed the attention of men of letters for many centuries before the invention of typography. Useful as these books may have been to the small class of readers for whose benefit they were written, they were of no use to a people who needed the elements of knowledge."

In the more ancient times, however, when MSS. books (rolls) were not quite so plentiful there was seemingly no difficulty in obtaining large sums for them.

Aristotle, died B. C. 322, paid for a few books of Leusippus, the philosopher, three Attick talents, which is about $3,000. Ptolemy Philadelphus is said to have given the Athenians fifteen talents, an exemption from tribute and a large supply of provisions for the MSS. of aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides written by themselves.

Arbuthnot, discussing this subject, remarks that Cicero's head, "which should justly come into the account of Eloquence brought twenty-five Myriads of Drachms, which is the equivalent of $40,000. Also, "the prices of the magical books mentioned to be burnt in the Acts of the Apostles is five. Myriads of Pieces of Silver or Drachms."

Picolimini relates that the equivalent of eighty golden crowns was demanded for a small part of the works of Plutarch.

If we are to believe any of the accounts, the environment of the art of handwriting and handwriting materials at the beginning of the fifth century had contracted within a small compass, due principally to the general ignorance of the times.

As practiced it was pretty much under the control of the different religious denominations and the information obtainable about inks from these sources is but fragmentary. What has come down to us of this particular era is mostly found on the old written Hebrew relics, showing that they at least had made no innovations in respect to the use of their ritualistic deyo.