Fig. 9. A reader with a roll: from a fresco at Pompeii.

These sticks were sometimes painted or gilt, and furnished with projecting knobs (cornua) similarly decorated, intended to serve both as an ornament, and as a contrivance to keep the ends of the roll even, while it was being rolled up. The sides of the long dimension of the roll (frontes) were carefully cut, so as to be perfectly symmetrical, and afterwards smoothed with pumice-stone and coloured. A ticket (index or titulus, in Greek σιλλυβος or [σιττυβος]), made of a piece of papyrus or parchment, was fastened to the edge of the roll in such a way that it hung out over one or other of the ends. As Ovid says:

Cetera turba palam titulos ostendet apertos
Et sua detecta nomina fronte geret[64].

The others will flaunt their titles openly, and carry their names on an uncovered edge.

The roll was kept closed by strings or straps (lora), usually of some bright colour[65]; and if it was specially precious, an envelope which the Greeks called a jacket (διφθερα[66]), made of parchment or some other substance, was provided. Says Martial:

Perfer Atestinæ nondum vulgata Sabinæ
Carmina, purpurea sed modo culta toga[67].

Convey to Sabina at Ateste these verses. They have not yet been published, and have been but lately dressed in a purple garment.

Martial has combined in a single epigram most of the ornaments with which rolls could be decorated. This I will quote next, premising that the oil of cedar, or arbor-vitæ, mentioned in the second line not only imparted an agreeable yellow colour, but was held to be an antiseptic[68].