The text was written in columns, σελίδες, paginae, the width of which seems not to have been prescribed, but which for calligraphic effect were by preference made narrow, sufficient margins being left at head and foot. The average width of the columns in the best extant papyri ranges from two to three-and-a-half inches. The written lines were parallel with the length of the roll, so that the columns stood, so to say, with the height of the rolled-up roll, and were disclosed consecutively as the roll was unwound. Ruling with lead to guide the writing is mentioned by writers, but it does not appear that the practice was generally followed. The number of lines in the several columns of extant papyri is not constant, nor is the marginal boundary of the beginnings of the lines, for the accuracy of which a ruled vertical line would have proved useful, ordinarily kept even. No doubt in practice the horizontal fibres of the material were found to afford a sufficient guide for the lines of writing.
If the title of the work was to be given, the scribe appears to have written it ordinarily at the end of the text. But something more was needed. To be obliged to unroll a text to the end, in order to ascertain the name of the author, would be the height of inconvenience. Its title was therefore sometimes written at the head of the text. It appears also that at an early period it was inscribed on the outside of the roll, so as to be visible as the roll lay in a chest or on the shelf. But a more general practice was to attach to the top edge of the roll a label or ticket, σίλλυβος, or σίττυβος, titulus, index, which hung down if the roll lay on the shelf, or was conveniently read if the roll stood along with others in the ordinary cylindrical roll-box, κίστη, κιβωτός, cista, capsa. One such label made of papyrus has survived and is in the British Museum.
The scribe would not commence his text at the very beginning, nor would he carry it quite down to the end, of the roll. He would leave blank a sufficient length of material at either extremity, where the roll would naturally be most exposed to wear and tear by handling in unrolling and re-rolling; and, further, the extreme vertical edges might each be strengthened by the addition of a strip of papyrus so as to form a double thickness of material.
According to the particulars given by classical authors, the roll would be finished off somewhat elaborately; but the details described by them must be taken to apply to the more expensive productions of the book trade, corresponding with the full-bound volumes of our days. In practice, a large proportion of working copies and ordinary editions must have been dealt with more simply. Firstly, the roll should be rolled up round a central stick, of wood or bone, called the όμφαλός, umbilicus, to which the last sheet of the papyrus may or may not have been attached. But as a matter of fact no rolling-sticks have been found in company with extant papyri, and it has therefore been suggested that they were not attached to the material but were rolled in loose, and were therefore liable to drop out. In some instances, as in the rolls found at Herculaneum, a central core of papyrus instead of a stick was thought sufficient. The edges, frontes, of the roll, after it had been rolled up, were shorn and were rubbed smooth with pumice, and they were sometimes coloured. A valuable roll might be protected with a vellum wrapper, φαινόλης, paenula, stained with colour; and, further, it might be secured with ornamental thongs. The central stick might also be adorned with knobs or “horns,” plain or coloured. This seems to be the natural explanation of the κέρατα, or cornua, mentioned by the ancient writers. Finally, the title-label described above was attached to the completed roll, now ready for the book-market.
In the perusal of a work the reader held the roll upright and unrolled it gradually with the right hand; with the left hand he rolled up in the reverse direction what he had read. Thus, when he had finished, the roll had become reversed, the beginning of the text being now in the centre of the roll and the end of it being outside. The roll was “explicitus ad umbilicum,” or “ad sua cornua.” It had therefore now to be unrolled afresh and to be re-rolled into its normal shape—a troublesome process which the lazy man shirked, and which the careful man accomplished by making the revolutions with his two hands while he held the revolving material steady under his chin.
Although the codex or manuscript in book-form began to make its way in Greek and Roman literature as early as the 1st century of our era, the roll maintained its position as the recognized type of literary document down to the 3rd, and even into the 4th, century, when it was altogether superseded. We shall proceed to describe the codex after giving some account of the waxen, or, to speak more correctly, the waxed, tablet, its precursor in the book-form.
The ordinary waxen tablet in use among the Greeks and Romans was a small oblong slab of wood, beech, fir, and especially box, the surface of which on one or both sides, with the exception of the surrounding margins which were The Waxen Tablet. left intact in order to form a frame, was sunk to a slight depth and was therein coated with a thin layer of wax, usually black. The tablet thus presented the appearance of a child’s school-slate of the present day. Such tablets were single, double, triple, or of several pieces or leaves. In Greek they were called πίναξ, πινακίς, δέλτος, δελτίον.: in Latin cera, tabula, tabella, &c. Two or more put together and held together by rings or thongs acting as hinges formed a caudex or codex, literally a stock of wood, which a set of tablets might resemble, and from which they might actually be made by cleaving the wood. A codex of two leaves was called δίθυροι, δίπτυχα, diptycha; of three, τρίπτυχα, triptycha: and so on. The triptych appears to have been most generally used. A general term was also libellus.
Tablets served for the ordinary minor affairs of life: for memoranda, literary and other notes and drafts, school exercises, accounts, &c. The writing incised with the stilus could be easily obliterated by smoothing the wax, and the tabula rasa was thus rendered available for a fresh inscription. But tablets were also employed for official purposes, when documents had to be protected from unauthorized scrutiny or from injury. Thus they were the receptacles for wills, conveyances, and other legal transactions; and in such cases they were closed against inspection by being bound round with threads which were covered by the witnesses’ seals.
Small tablets, codicilli, pugillares, often of more valuable material, such as ivory, served for correspondence among other purposes; very small specimens are mentioned as vitelliani, for the exchange of love-letters.
A certain number of Greek waxen tablets have been recovered, chiefly from Egypt, but none of them is very early. They are generally of the 3rd century, and are mostly inscribed with school exercises. The largest and most perfect extant codex is one in the British Museum (Add. MS. 33,270), perhaps of the 3rd century, being made up of nine leaves, measuring nearly 9 by 7 in., and inscribed with documents in shorthand.