The Romans made books of bronze, in which they engraved the concessions granted to their colonies; and they preserved on tablets and pillars of the same durable material the decrees and treaties of the senate, and sometimes, even, the speeches of their emperors.
"The Bœotians," says the learned Greek geographer Pausanias, "showed me a roll of lead on which was inscribed the whole work of Hesiod, but in characters that time had nearly effaced."
"Who will grant me," cries Job, "that my words may be written? who will grant me that they may be marked down in a book? With an iron pen and in a plate of lead, or else be graven with an instrument in flintstone?" (xix. 23 24.)
Tanned skins were likewise employed for writing purposes by the Asiatics, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Celts. In the Brussels library there is to be seen a manuscript of the Pentateuch, believed to be anterior to the ninth century, written on fifty-seven skins sewed together, and forming a roll more than thirty-six yards long.
The custom of writing on leathern garments appears to have been prevalent during the middle ages. The great Italian poet, Petrarch, used to wear a leathern vest, on which, while sitting or sauntering near the shaded margin of the fountain of Vaucluse, he would note each passing thought, each poetic fancy. This precious relic, covered with erasures, still existed in 1527.
We read, too, of a certain abbot who strictly enjoined his monks, if they happened to meet with any of the works of St. Athanasius, to transcribe the precious volumes on their clothes, should paper be unattainable.
The use of prepared sheep-skin, that is, parchment, dates from about a hundred and fifty years before the Christian era; its Latin name, pergamena, is very evidently derived from Pergamos, but whether because invented there, or because it was more perfectly prepared in that city than elsewhere, is a question not yet decided. Besides white and yellow parchment, the ancients employed purple, blue, and violet. These dark shades were intended to be written on with gold and silver ink. Several very beautiful manuscripts of this description are to be seen in the Imperial Library of Paris. Parchment manuscripts were sometimes of great size; thus, the roll containing the inquiry concerning the Knights Templars, which is still preserved in the archives of France, is full twenty-three yards long.
Parchment became very scarce during the invasions of the barbarians, and this scarcity gave rise to the custom of effacing the characters of ancient manuscripts in order to write a second time on the skin. This unfortunate practice, most prevalent among the Romans, and which was continued until the invention of rag paper, has occasioned the loss of many literary and scientific treasures. The primitive characters of some few of these doubly-written manuscripts, or palimpsests, as they are called, have been restored by chemical science, and several valuable works recovered; among others, for instance, Cicero's admirable treatise on the Republic.
Even the intestines of animals have been used as writing material. The magnificent library of Constantinople, burnt under the Emperor of the East, Basiliscus, is said to have contained, among its other curiosities, the Iliad and the Odyssey, traced in letters of gold on the intestine of a serpent. This rare specimen of caligraphy measured one hundred and twenty feet.
The most ancient inscribed characters we possess are upon wood. A sycamore tablet containing an engraved inscription was discovered, about thirty years since, in one of the Memphis pyramids; the learned Egyptologist who deciphered it pronounced it to have been in existence some five thousand nine hundred years! The Chinese, also, before they invented paper two thousand years ago, wrote upon wood and bamboo. Many oriental nations still make books of palm-leaves, on which the characters are scratched with a sharp-pointed instrument. The Syracusans of bygone times used to write their votes on an olive-leaf. The modern Maldivians trace their hopes, fears, and wishes on the gigantic foliage of their favorite tree, the makareko, of which each leaf is a yard long and half a yard wide. The Imperial Library of Paris, rich in all that is rare and interesting, possesses several ancient leaf manuscripts, some beautifully varnished and gilt.