Faustini fugis in sinum? sapisti.
Cedro nunc licet ambules perunctus
Et frontis gemino decens honore
Pictis luxurieris umbilicis,
Et te purpura delicata velet,
Et cocco rubeat superbus index[69].
His book had selected the bibliomaniac Faustinus as a patron. Now, says the poet, you shall be anointed with oil of cedar; you shall revel in the decoration of both your sets of edges; your sticks shall be painted; your covering shall be purple, and your ticket scarlet.
When a number of rolls had to be carried from one place to another, they were put into a box (scrinium or capsa). This receptacle was cylindrical in shape, not unlike a modern hat-box[70]. It was carried by a flexible handle, attached to a ring on each side; and the lid was held down by what looks very like a modern lock. The eighteen rolls, found in a bundle at Herculaneum, had doubtless been kept in a similar receptacle.
My illustration ([fig. 10]) is from a fresco at Herculaneum. It will be noticed that each roll is furnished with a ticket (titulus). At the feet of the statue of Demosthenes already referred to, and of that of Sophocles, are capsæ, both of which show the flexible handles.
Fig. 10. Book-box or capsa.
I will next collect the information available respecting the fittings used in Roman libraries. I admit that it is scattered and imperfect; but legitimate deductions may, I think, be arrived at from it, which will give us tolerably certain ideas of the appearance of one of those collections.
The words used to designate such fittings are: nidus; forulus, or more usually foruli; loculamenta; pluteus; pegmata.
Nidus needs no explanation. It can only mean a pigeon-hole. Martial uses it of a bookseller, at whose shop his own poems may be bought.