[1215] Lib. i. cap. 114. Rauwolf says in his Travels, vol. i. p. 93, “In the shops were to be sold small reeds, hollow within and smooth without, and of a brownish-red colour, which are used by the Turks, Moors, and other Eastern people, for writing.” It appears that Rauwolf did not see these reeds growing, but prepared and freed from the pith. We are told by Winkelmann, in his second Letter on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, p. 46, that for want of quills he often cut into writing-pens those reeds which grow in the neighbourhood of Naples.
[1216] Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabica. Havniæ, 1775, 4to, p. 47, 61.
[1217] Those who wish to see instances of learned men who wrote a great deal and a long time with one pen, may consult J. H. Ackeri Historia Pennarum, Altenburgi, 1726. The author has collected every thing he ever read respecting the pens of celebrated men.
[1218] Clementis Alex. Opera. Coloniæ, 1688, fol. p. 633. The best account of these sacred writers may be found in the Prolegomena, p. 91, of Jablonski’s Pantheon Ægypt.
[1219] Sat. iv. 149.
[1220] Od. iii. 29, 53.
[1221] Gronovii Thesaurus Antiq. Græc. ii. n. 28.
[1222] Lambec. lib. vii. p. 76.—Montfaucon, Palæograph. Græca, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 21.
[1223] Amm. Marcellini Hist. ed. Valesii, Par. 1681, fol. p. 699. The letters might have been raised on the plate, or deeply engraven in it, so that Theodoric only followed with his pen an impression of them made upon the paper.
[1224] It is uncertain whether the characters were followed with a style, a reed, or a quill; for γραφὶς (the word used) is the general appellation. “There have been princes, also, acquainted with writing, but so lazy that they kept a servant who could imitate their hand to subscribe for them.” Of this we have an instance in the emperor Carinus, respecting whom Vopiscus says, “Fastidium subscribendi tantum habuit, ut quendam ad subscribendum poneret qui bene suam imitaretur manum.”