TABULÆ AND INK STAND.[ToList]
The cut above, besides an inkstand, represents an open book. The thinness and yellowish color of the leaves, which are tied together with ribbon, denotes that it was made of parchment or vellum.
LIBRARIES AND MONEY.[ToList]
Below is a cylindrical box, called scrinium and capsa, or capsula, in which the manuscripts were placed vertically, the titles at the top. Catullus excuses himself to Manlius for not having sent him the required verses, because he had with him only one box of his books. It is evident that a great number of volumes might be comprised in this way within a small space; and this may tend to explain the smallness of the ancient libraries—at least of the rooms which are considered to have been such. Beside the box are two tablets, which, from the money-bag and coins scattered about, had probably been used in reckoning accounts.
No perfect papyri, but only fragments, have been found at Pompeii. At Herculaneum, up to the year 1825, 1,756 had been obtained, besides many others destroyed by the workmen, who imagined them to be mere sticks of charcoal. Most of them were found in a suburban villa, in a room of small dimensions, ranged in presses round the sides of the room, in the centre of which stood a sort of rectangular book-case.
Sir Humphry Davy, after investigating their chemical nature, arrived at the conclusion that they had not been carbonized by heat, but changed by the long action of air and moisture; and he visited Naples in hopes of rendering the resources of chemistry available towards deciphering these long-lost literary treasures. His expectations, however, were not fully crowned with success, although the partial efficacy of his methods was established; and he relinquished the pursuit at the end of six months, partly from disappointment, partly from a belief that vexatious obstacles were thrown in his way by the jealousy of the persons to whom the task of unrolling had been intrusted. About five hundred volumes have been well and neatly unrolled. It is rather remarkable that, as far as we are acquainted, no manuscript of any known standard work has been found, nor, indeed, any production of any of the great luminaries of the ancient world.
The most celebrated person, of whom any work has been found, is Epicurus, whose treatise, De Natura, has been successfully unrolled. This and a few other treatises have been published. The library in which this was found appears to have been rich in treatises on the Epicurean philosophy. The only Latin work which it contained was a poem, attributed to Rabirius, on the war of Cæsar and Antony.