Nearly two thousand actual rolls were discovered at Herculaneum, of course in a highly-carbonized condition, and of them some hundreds have been unrolled. None appear to have been embellished with illumination;[[3]] so that for proof of the practice of the art in classical times, we are thrown back upon the classical authors themselves. The allusions in their writings to the employment of red and black ink are frequent. Martial, in his first epistle, points out the bookseller's shop opposite the Julian Forum, in which his works may be obtained "smoothed with pumice-stone and decorated with purple." Seneca mentions books ornamented "cum imaginibus." Varro is related by Pliny to have illustrated his works by likenesses of more than seven hundred illustrious persons. Pliny again informs us that writers on medicine gave representations in their treatises of the plants which they described. Martial dwells on the editions of Virgil, with his portrait as a frontispiece. The earliest recorded instance of the richer adornments of golden lettering on purple or rose-stained vellum, is given by Julius Capitolinus in his life of the Emperor Maximinus the younger. He therein mentions that the mother of the emperor presented to him, on his return to his tutor (early in the 3rd century), a copy of the works of Homer, written in gold upon purple vellum. Whether derived from Egypt or the East, this luxurious mode of embellishment appears to have been popular among the later Greeks, a class of whose scribes were denominated "writers in gold." From Greece it was, no doubt, transplanted to Rome, where, from about the 2nd century, it, at first slowly, and ultimately rapidly, acquired popularity. St. Jerome, indeed, writing in the 4th century, in a well-known passage in his preface to the Book of Job, exclaims:—"Habeant qui volunt veteres libros vel in membranis purpureis auro argentoque descriptos vel uncialibus, ut vulgo aiunt, literis, onera magis exarata quam codices; dummodo mihi meisque permittant pauperes habere scedulas, et non tam pulchros codices quam emendatos."[[4]]
This almost pathetic appeal of the great commentator was scarcely necessary to assure us that such sumptuous volumes were executed for the rich alone, since the value of the gold and vellum, irrespective of the labour employed, must necessarily have taken them, as he indicates, altogether out of the reach of the poor. Evidence indeed is not wanting, that many of the Fathers of the Church laboured with their own hands to supply themselves with writings, which no golden letters or purpled vellums could make more valuable to them or their primitive followers: thus, Pamphilus, the martyr, who suffered in the year 309, possessed, in his own handwriting, twenty-five stitched books, containing the works of Origen. St. Ambrose, St. Fulgentius, and others, themselves transcribed many volumes, precious to themselves and most edifying to the faithful. Whatever ornaments or pictures these volumes contained, no doubt reproduced the style of art fostered, if not engendered, in the Catacombs.
Roman illuminated manuscripts would appear, therefore, to have been mainly divisible into two classes; firstly, those in which the text, simply but elegantly written in perfectly-formed, or rustic (that is, inclined) capitals, mainly in black and sparingly in red ink, was illustrated by pictures, usually square, inserted in simple frames, generally of a red border only; and secondly, the richer kind, in which at first gold letters, on white and stained vellum grounds, and subsequently black and coloured letters and ornaments on gold grounds, were introduced. The first of these appears to have been the most ancient style, and to have long remained popular in the Western Empire, while the second, which, as Sir Frederick Madden has observed, no doubt came originally to the Romans from the Greeks, acquired its greatest perfection under the early emperors of the East.
Of both styles there are still extant some invaluable specimens, which, although not of the finest periods of art, may still be regarded as typical of masterpieces which may have existed, and which fire or flood, Goth or Vandal, may have destroyed. Before proceeding, however, to an enumeration of any of these, it may be well to define certain terms which must be employed to designate the peculiarities of character in which the different texts were written, some slight knowledge of which is of great assistance in arriving at a proximate knowledge of the dates at which they may have been executed. Such a definition cannot be more succinctly given than in the following passage, extracted from Mr. Noel Humphrey's interesting work "On the Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing:"—[[5]]
"Nearly all the principal methods of ancient writing may be divided into square capitals, rounded capitals, and cursive letters; the square capitals being termed simply capitals, the rounded capitals uncials, and the small letters, or such as had changed their form during the creation of a running hand, minuscule. Capitals are, strictly speaking, such letters as retain the earliest settled form of an alphabet; being generally of such angular shapes as could conveniently be carved on wood or stone, or engraved in metal, to be stamped on coins. The earliest Latin MSS. known are written entirely in capitals, like inscriptions in metal or marble.
"The uncial letters, as they are termed, appear to have arisen as writing on papyrus or vellum became common, when many of the straight lines of the capitals, in that kind of writing, gradually acquired a curved form, to facilitate their more rapid execution. However this may be, from the 6th to the 8th, or even 10th century, these uncials or partly-rounded capitals prevail.
"The modern minuscule, differing from the ancient cursive character, appears to have arisen in the following manner. During the 6th and 7th centuries, a kind of transition style prevailed in Italy and some other parts of Europe, the letters composing which have been termed semi-uncials, which, in a further transition, became more like those of the old Roman cursive. This manner, when definitively formed, became what is now termed the minuscule manner; it began to prevail over uncials in a certain class of MSS. about the 8th century, and towards the 10th its general use was, with few exceptions, established. It is said to have been occasionally used as early as the 5th century; but I am unable to cite an authentic existing monument. The Psalter of Alfred the Great, written in the 9th century, is in a small Roman cursive hand, which has induced Casley to consider it the work of some Italian ecclesiastic."
To return from this digression on the character of ancient handwriting, to the examples still extant of the two great sections into which the manuscripts of classical ages may be divided, I would observe, that, first in importance and interest of the first class may certainly be reckoned the Vatican square Virgil with miniatures, which has been referred by many of the best palæographers to the 3rd century. It is written throughout in majuscule Roman capitals, which, although MM. Champollion and Sylvestre[[6]] describe them as of an "elegant but careless form," appeared to me, when I examined the volume minutely in 1846,[[7]] to exhibit great care and regularity. The miniatures, many engravings from drawings traced from which are given in D'Agincourt's "Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments,"[[8]] are altogether classical, both in design and in the technical handling of the colours, which are applied with a free brush, and apparently in the true antique manner, i.e., with scarcely any previous or finishing outline. These miniatures have also been engraved by Pietro Santo Bartoli, but not with his usual accuracy of style. A complete set of coloured tracings made by him are in the British Museum (Lansdowne Coll.), but they even are not quite satisfactory. The Terence of the Vatican, which is without miniatures, is in a somewhat similar writing, and belongs to about the same period. The third in importance of the ancient Vatican manuscripts of this class, is in the rustic instead of elegant capital lettering, and is supposed to be of the 5th century; certainly not later. It is a Virgil, decorated throughout with pictures executed in apparent imitation of the square Virgil, but in a much more barbarous and lifeless style.[[9]] From an entry of the 13th century contained in the volume,[[10]] and from our knowledge of its having been long and at a remote period, preserved in France, it would appear to have belonged to the Parisian monastery of St. Denis, if not to the Saint himself.
So far as antiquity, irrespective of merit in point of illumination is concerned, the most remarkable ancient Roman manuscript[[11]] existing belongs to the curious class known as "Palimpsests," or books from which the colouring matter of an original writing has been discharged, in order to prepare the vellum for receiving an altogether different text, the latter being generally written at right angles to the former.[[12]] This precious document is the celebrated treatise "de Republicâ," by Cicero, written in uncial characters, evidently in an Augustan period, and was discovered by Cardinal Angelo Mai, under a copy of St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, made previous to the 10th century.
The Ambrosian Library at Milan contains a codex of Homer, of equal antiquity with the Cicero, with fifty-eight pictures, much in the style of the Vatican square Virgil. This important MS. has been commented upon by the same distinguished antiquary.[[13]]