Part 2 (2/2)

The information which these observers have given us amounts to this: the room was about 12 feet long, with a floor of mosaic. Against the walls stood presses, of a man's height, inlaid with different sorts of wood, disposed in rows, with cornices at the top; and there was also a table, or press, in the centre of the room. Most of the rolls were separate, but a bundle of eighteen was found ”wrapped about with the bark of a tree, and covered at each end with a piece of wood.” A room so small as this could hardly have been intended for study. It must rather have been the place where the books were put away after they had been read elsewhere.

Before I quit this part of my subject, I should like to mention one other building, as its arrangements throw light on the question of fitting up libraries and record-offices. I allude to the structure built by Vespasian, A.D. 78, to contain the doc.u.ments relating to his restoration of the city of Rome. It stood at the south-west corner of the Forum of Peace, and what now exists of it is known as the Church of SS. Cosma e Damiano.

The general arrangement and relation to adjoining structures will be understood from the plan (fig. 7). The room was about 125 feet long by 65 feet broad, with two entrances, one on the north-west, from the _Forum Pacis_, through a hexastyle portico (fig. 7. 2), the other on the north-east, through a square-headed doorway of travertine which still exists (_ibid._ 1) together with a considerable portion of a ma.s.sive wall of Vespasian's time. After a restoration by Caracalla the building came to be called _Templum Sacrae Urbis_. It was first consecrated as a church by pope Felix IV. (526-530), but he did little more than connect it with the _Heroon Romuli_ (_ibid._ 5), and build the apse (_ibid._ 4).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7. Plan of the Record-House of Vespasian, with the adjoining structures.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8. Part of the internal wall of the Record-House of Vespasian.

Reduced from a sketch taken in the 16th century by Pirro Ligorio.]

The whole building was mercilessly mutilated by pope Urban VIII. in 1632; but fortunately a drawing of the interior had been made by Pirro Ligorio in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the original treatment of the walls was practically intact. I give a reduced copy of a small portion of this drawing (fig. 8). As Lanciani says:

The walls were divided into three horizontal bands by finely cut cornices. The upper band was occupied by the windows; the lower was simply lined with marble slabs covered by the bookcases ... which contained the ...

records ...; the middle one was incrusted with tarsia-work of the rarest kinds of marble with panels representing panoplies, the wolf with the infant founders of Rome, and other allegorical scenes[58].

I explained at the beginning of this chapter that my subject is the care of books, not books themselves; but, at the point which we have now reached in regard to Roman libraries, it is necessary to make a few remarks about their contents. It must be remembered, in the first place, that those who fitted them up had to deal with rolls (_volumina_), probably of papyrus, but possibly of parchment; and that a book, as we understand the word, the Latin equivalent for which was _codex_, did not come into general use until long after the Christian era. Some points about these rolls require notice.

The length and the width of the roll depended on the taste or convenience of the writer[59]. The contents were written in columns, the lines of which ran parallel to the long dimension[60], and the reader, holding the roll in both hands, rolled up the part he had finished with his left hand, and unrolled the unread portion with his right. This way of dealing with the roll is well shewn in the accompanying ill.u.s.tration (fig. 9) reduced from a fresco at Pompeii[61]. In most examples the two halves of the roll are turned inwards, as for instance in the well-known statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican[62]. The end of the roll was fastened to a stick (usually referred to as _umbilicus_ or _umbilici_). It is obvious that this word ought properly to denote the ends of the stick only, but it was constantly applied to the whole stick, and not to a part of it, as for instance in the following lines:

... deus nam me vetat Inceptos olim promissum carmen iambos Ad umbilic.u.m adducere[63].

... for heaven forbids me to cover the scroll down to the stick with the iambic lines I had begun a song promised long ago to the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9. A reader with a roll: from a fresco at Pompeii.]

These sticks were sometimes painted or gilt, and furnished with projecting k.n.o.bs (_cornua_) similarly decorated, intended to serve both as an ornament, and as a contrivance to keep the ends of the roll even, while it was being rolled up. The sides of the long dimension of the roll (_frontes_) were carefully cut, so as to be perfectly symmetrical, and afterwards smoothed with pumice-stone and coloured. A ticket (_index_ or _t.i.tulus_, in Greek [Greek: sillubos] or [Greek: sittubos]), made of a piece of papyrus or parchment, was fastened to the edge of the roll in such a way that it hung out over one or other of the ends. As Ovid says:

Cetera turba palam t.i.tulos ostendet apertos Et sua detecta nomina fronte geret[64].

The others will flaunt their t.i.tles openly, and carry their names on an uncovered edge.

The roll was kept closed by strings or straps (_lora_), usually of some bright colour[65]; and if it was specially precious, an envelope which the Greeks called a jacket ([Greek: diphthera][66]), made of parchment or some other substance, was provided. Says Martial:

Perfer Atestinae nondum vulgata Sabinae Carmina, purpurea sed modo culta toga[67].

Convey to Sabina at Ateste these verses. They have not yet been published, and have been but lately dressed in a purple garment.

Martial has combined in a single epigram most of the ornaments with which rolls could be decorated. This I will quote next, premising that the oil of cedar, or _arbor-vitae_, mentioned in the second line not only imparted an agreeable yellow colour, but was held to be an antiseptic[68].

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.

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