CLASSICAL INK AND ITS EXODUS.
THE MATERIALS AND METHODS EMPLOYED IN PREPARING
THE INK MSS. OF ANTIQUITY--THE INTRODUCTION
OF PARCHMENT AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR
PAPYRUS--MODE OF WRITING ON PARCHMENT--HOW
SEPARATE PIECES WERE FIRST JOINED INTO BOOK
FORM--EVIDENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF WRITING
UTENSILS TO BE FOUND IN ANCIENT PICTURES--SOME
FORMULAS BY THE YOUNGER PLINY AND HIS CONTEMPORARY
DIOSCORIDES--HOW THE GREEKS AND
ROMANS KEPT THEIR PAPYRI FROM BREAKING--WHEN
BLACK INK BEGAN TO FALL INTO DISUSE AND ITS
CAUSE--THE ADOPTION OF THE STYLUS AND ITS ACCOMPANYING
SHEETS OF LEAD, IVORY, METAL AND
WOOD COATED WITH WAX--THE EFFORTS MADE TO
RESUME THE USE OF SOME INK WHICH WOULD BIND
TO PARCHMENT--WHY THERE ARE NO ORIGINAL MSS.
EXTANT BELONGING TO THE TIME OF CHRIST--THE
INVENTION OF THE VITRIOLIC INKS--HUMPHREY'S
BLUNDER IN LOCATING DATES OF EARLY GREEK
MSS.--THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF HERCULANEUM
AND POMPEII--AWAKENING OF INTEREST
AGAIN ABOUT THE EMPLOYMENT OF INKS--REDISCOVERIES
OF SOME OF THE MORE REMOTE ANCIENT
RECIPES--THE WRITERS IN GOLD AND SILVER--RECORDED
INSTANCES OF ILLUMINATED MSS.--PASSAGE
FROM THE BOOK OF JOB WRITTEN BY ST.
JEROME--DENIAL OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF TANNO-
GALLATE OF IRON INK IN THE FOURTH CENTURY--
DESTRUCTION OF THE INSPIRED WRITINGS BY ORDER
OF THE ROMAN SENATE--THE ECLIPSE OF CLASSICAL
LITERATURE AND DISMEMBERMENT OF THE
ROMAN EMPIRE--POEM ON THE THOUSAND YEARS
KNOWN AS THE DARK AGES WHICH FOLLOWED.
THEOPHRASTUS says that the papyrus books of the ancients
were no other than rolls prepared in the following
manner: Two leaves of the rush were plastered together,
usually with the mud of the Nile, in such a
fashion that the fibres of one leaf should cross the fibres
of the other at right angles; the ends of each being
then cut off, a square leaf was obtained, equally capable
of resisting fracture when pulled or taken hold of
in any direction. In this form the papyri were exported
in great quantities. In order to form these
single leaves into the "scapi," or rolls of the ancients,
about twenty were glued together end to end. The
writing was then executed in parallel columns a few
inches wide, running transversely to the length of the
scroll. To each end of the scrolls were attached round
staves similar to those we use for maps. To these
staves, strings, known as "umbilici," were attached,
to the ends of which bullae or weights were fixed.
The books when rolled up, were bound up with these
umbilici, and were generally kept in cylindrical boxes
or capsae, a term from which the Mediaeval "capsula,"
or book-cover was derived. "The mode in which the
students held the rolls in order to read from them is
well shown in a painting in the house of a surgeon at
Pompeii. One of the staves, with the papyrus rolled
round it, was held in each hand, at a distance apart
equal to the width of one or more of the transverse
columns of writing. As soon as the eye was carried
down to the bottom of a column, one hand rolled up
and the other unrolled sufficient of the papyrus to
bring a fresh column opposite to the reader's eye, and
so on until the whole was wound round one of the
staves, when, of course, the student had arrived at the
end of his book."
Eumenes, king of Pergamus, being unable to procure
the Egyptian papyrus, through the jealousy of
one of the Ptolemies, who occupied himself in forming
a rival library to the one which subsequently
became so celebrated at Pergamus, introduced the
use of Parchment properly "dressed" for taking
ink and pigments and hence the derivation of the
word "pergamena" as applied to parchment or vellum,
the former substance being the prepared skin
of sheep, and the latter of calves.
The sheets of parchment were joined end to end, as
the sheets of papyrus had been, and when written
upon, on one side only, and in narrow columns across
the breadth of the scroll, were rolled up around staves
and bound with strings, to which seals of wax were
occasionally attached, in place of the more common
leaden bullae.
The custom of dividing wax, ivory, wood and metal
MSS. into pages and in this way into book form is said
by Suetonius to have been introduced by Julius Caesar,
whose letters to the Senate were so made up, and
after whose time the practice became usual for all
documents either addressed to, or issuing from that
body, or to or from the Emperors. As that form subsequently
crept into general use, the books were known
as "codices;" and hence the ordinary term as applied
to manuscript volumes.
All classes of "books," the reeds for writing in
them, the inkstands, and the "capsae" or "scrinia,"
the boxes in which the "scapi" or rolls were kept,
are minutely portrayed in ancient wall-paintings and
ivory diptychs (double tablets), and which may belong
to a period near the beginning of the Christian era.
Pliny and Dioscorides have given the formulas for
the writing inks used by the Greek and Roman scribes
immediately before and during their time. Pliny declares
that the ink of the bookmakers was made of
soot, charcoal and gum, although he does not state
what fluid was employed to commingle them. He does,
however, mention to an occasional use of some acid
(vinegar) to give the ink a binding property on the
papyrus.
Dioscorides, however, specifies the proportions of
this "soot" ink. Another formula alluded to by the
same author calls for a half ounce each of copperas
(blue) and ox-glue, with half pound of smoke black
made from burned resin. He adds, "is a good application
in cases of gangrene and is useful in scalds, if a
little thickened and employed as a salve." De Vinne
speaks of this as a "crude" receipt which will enable
one to form a correct opinion of the quality of
scientific knowledge then applied to medicine and the
mechanical arts; also that these mixtures which are
more like shoe blacking than writing fluid were used
with immaterial modifications by the scribes of the
dark ages.
The old Greeks and Romans had no substitute for
the papyrus, which was so brittle that it could not be
folded or creased. It could not be bound up in books,
nor could it be rolled up unsupported. It was secure
only when it had been wound around a wooden or
metal roller.
After the wholesale destruction of the libraries of
ink-written MSS., the black inks began to fall into disuse;
their value in respect to quality gradually deteriorated,
caused by the displacement of gummy
vehicles, and a consequent absence of any chance of
union between the parchment or papyrus and the dry
black particles, which could be "blown" or washed
off. To employ any other kind of ink except one of
natural origin like the juice of berries which soon
disappeared, was forbidden by prevailing religious
customs. Such conditions naturally merged into
others, in the shape of "ink" substitutes for writing;
the stylus, with its accompanying sheets or tablets
of ivory, wood, metal and wax came into popular
vogue and so continued for many centuries, even after
the employment of ink for writing purposes had been
resumed.
Ovid, in his story of Caunus and Byblis, illustrates
the use of the tables (tablets), and he lived at the time
of the birth of Christ, thus translated:
"Then fits her trembling hands to Write:
One holds the Wax, the Style the other guides,
Begins, doubts, writes, and at the Table chides;
Notes, razes, changes oft, dislikes, approves,
Throws all aside, resumes what she removes.
* * * * * * * *
"The Wax thus filled with her successless wit,
She Verses in the utmost margin writ."
He also makes reference to inks, in the passage
taken from his first elegy, "Ad Librum:"
"Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo;
Non est conveniens luctibus ille color.
Nec titulus minio, nec cedro charta notetur.
Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras."
which Davids translates as follows:
"TO HIS BOOK.
"Nor shall huckleberries stain (literally veil) thee with purple
juice:
That color is not becoming to lamentations.
Nor shall title (or head-letter) be marked with vermillion, or
paper with cedar,
Thou shalt carry neither white nor black horns on thy forehead
(or front, or frontispiece)."
The traditions handed down as of this era relating
to the efforts to find some substitute for "Indian"
ink which would not only "bind" to parchment and
vellum but also would be satisfactory to the priests,
are more or less confirmed by the younger Pliny, and
makes it safe to assume that several were invented
and employed in writing, though possessing but little
lasting qualities. Their use and natural disappearance
is perhaps the real cause of the fact that there are no
original MSS. extant dating as of or belonging to the
time immediately preceding or following the birth of
Christ, or indeed until long after his death.
There is some authority though for the statement
that at this time two vitriolic substances were used in
the preparation of black ink,--a slime or sediment
(Salsugo) and a yellow vitriolic earth (Misy). This
last-named mineral, is unquestionably the same natural
chemical mentioned by writers, which about the end
of the first century was designated "kalkanthum" or
"chalkanthum" and possessed not only the appearance
of, but the virtues of what we know as blue
copperas or sulphate of copper. It continued in use
as long as men were unacquainted with the art of
lixiviating salt, or, in other words, as long as they had
no vitriol manufactories. Commingled with lampblack,
bitumen or like black substances in gummy
water, it was acceptable to the priests for ritualistic
writings and was in general vogue for several centuries
thereafter under the name of (blue) "vitriolic"
ink, notwithstanding the fact that there could not be
any lasting chemical union between such materials.
It was the so-called "vitriolic" ink, which is said
to have "corroded the delicate leaves of the papyrus
and to have eaten through both parchment and
vellum."
These deductions, however, do not agree with some
of the historians and scholars like Noel Humphreys,
author of the "Origin and Progress of the Art of
Writing," London, 1855, a recognized authority on the
subject of ancient MSS., who but repeats in part the
text of earlier writers, when he says, p. 101:
"Examples of early Greek MSS. of the last century
previous to the Christian era are not confined
to Egyptian sources; the buried city of Herculaneum,
in Italy, partially destroyed about seventy-
nine years before the Christian era, and injured by
subsequeut eruptions, till totally destroyed by the
most violent eruption of Vesuvius on record, that
of the year 471 A. D. having yielded several
specimens."
The MSS. examples mentioned in the citation, must
of necessity refer to specimens of writing made with
"vitriolic" and even more ancient inks. They are to
be considered in conjunction with the historical fact
that these cities were buried for more than sixteen
hundred years, counting from the first eruption, before
they were brought to light (Herculaneum was discovered
A. D. 1713 and Pompeii, forty years later);
also that they must have been subjected to intense
heat and a long period of decay which could only operate
to rob them of all traces of natural ink phenomena.
Furthermore, the information Mr. Humphreys
seeks to convey, dates contemporaneously with the first
eruption of Vesuvius, which occurred seventy-nine
years AFTER the Christian era and not seventy-nine
years BEFORE it.
This stupendous blunder involves a period of one
hundred and fifty-eight years; if it is rectified, the
"early Greek MSS." are shown to emanate from the
second half of the first century following the birth of
Christ and confirming to some extent the deductions
hereinbefore made, although the probabilities are that
they belong to later periods, included in the third and
fourth centuries.
It is affirmed that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
A. D. 79, did not entirely destroy the cities of Herculaneum
and Pompeii, and that they emerged from their
ruins in the reign of the Emperor Titus. They are
also mentioned as inhabited cities in the chart of
Peutinger, which is of the date of Constantine.
The next eruption, A. D. 471, was probably the most
frightful on record if we exclude the volcanic eruption
of Mt. Pelee, which occurred in Martinique, West
Indies, in 1902, destroying thirty thousand human
beings in fifteen minutes and devastating nearly the
entire island. From Marcellinus we learn that the
ashes of the Vesuvius volcano were vomited over a
great portion of Europe, reaching to Constantinople,
where a festival was instituted in commemoration of
the strange phenomenon. After this, we hear no
more of these cities, but the portion of the inhabitants
who escaped built or occupied suburbs at Nola in
Campania and at Naples. In the latter city, the Regio
Herculanensium, or Quarter of the Herculaneans, an
inscription marked on several lapidary monuments,
indicates the part devoted to the population driven
from the doomed city.
The ancient inkstand found at Herculaneum, said
to contain a substance resembling a thick oil or paint
characteristic of a material which it is alleged, "some
of the manuscripts have been written in a sort of
relievo, visible in the letters when a 'leaf' is held to
the light in a horizontal direction," it is not impossible,
indeed it is quite probable, belonged to an era centuries
later than the period to which it has been assigned.
"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
center of which stood a sort of rectangular bookcase.
"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 can be learned, 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 Caesar and Antony."
Beginning with A. D. 200, the employment of inks
became more and more constant and popular. Rediscoveries
of ancient formulas belonging to a more
remote antiquity multiplied in number. Silver ink
was again quite common in most countries. Red ink
made of vermilion (a composition of mercury, sulphur
and potash) and cinnabar (native mercuric sulphide)
were employed in the writing of the titles as was blue
ink made of indigo, cobalt or oxide of copper. Tyrian
purple was used for coloring the parchment or vellum.
The "Indian" inks made by the Chinese were imported
and used in preference to those of similar
character manufactured at home. The stylus and
waxed tablets though still used, in a measure gave way
to the reawakened interest in ink and ink writings.
A greater facility in writing, due to the gradual
reduction in size of the uncial (inch) letters was
thereby attained.
There were "writers in gold" and "writers in
silver" who travelled from the East into Greece and
who bad found their way before the third century
into the very heart of Rome. Their business was to
embellish the manuscript writings of those times. It
was considered en regale for authors to "illuminate"
their MSS. and those who failed to do so suffered in
popularity.
These authors frequently allude to their use of red,
black and secret inks.
Martial in his first epistle points out the bookseller's
shop opposite the Julian Forum where his works may
be obtained "smoothed with pumice stone and decorated
with purple." Seneca mentions books ornamented
"cum imaginabus." Varro is related by the
younger Pliny to have illustrated his works by pictures
of more than seven hundred illustrious persons.
Martial dwells on the edition 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 third century),
a copy of the works of Homer, written in gold upon
purple vellum.
The fugitive character, as before stated, of a great
many of the colored inks, and indeed most of the
black ones which were undoubtedly employed, is the
principal reason why so few specimens of them remain
to us. Those which have proved themselves so lasting
in character as to be still extant, bear evidence
of extreme care in the preparation of both the inks
and the materials on which the writings appear. Perhaps
one of the finest illustrations of this practice is
to be found in a book of the Four Gospels of Italian
origin, discovered in the tenth century (a work of the
fourth century) and deposited in the Harlein Library.
This book is written in "Indian" ink and possesses
magnificently embellished and illuminated letters at
the beginning of each Gospel, which are on vellum
stained in different colors.
St. Jerome calls attention to this class of books in
a well-known passage of his preface to the Book of
Job, also written in the fourth century, where he explains
as translated:
"Let those who will have old books written in
gold and silver on purple parchment, or, as they
are commonly called, in uncial-letters,--rather ponderous
loads than books,--so long as they permit
me and mine to have copies, and rather correct than
beautiful books."
It has been said that the Tanno-gallate of Iron Inks
(iron salts, nut-galls and gum) were first used in the
fourth century. There is positively no credible authority
for such a statement, nor is there a single
monument in the shape of a documentary specimen
of ink writing of that one or an earlier century made
with such an ink in any public or private library and
as far as known in existence.
About A. D. 390 the inspired writings (often termed
pagan) of the classical countries, or at least the copies
or extracts of them, upon a special search made by order
of the Roman Senate, including those already mentioned
as of the time of Tarquin (some nine hundred
years earlier), were gathered up in Greece, Italy and
other parts and destroyed, because, as we are informed,
this Roman Senate had embraced the Christian
faith and furthermore "such vanities began to grow
out of fashion; till at last Stilicho burnt them all
under Honorius (a son of Theodosius the Great), for
which he is so severely censured by the noble poet
Rutilius, in his ingenious itinerary."
Not only Roman Arms the Wretch betrayed
To barbarous Foes; before that cursed Deed,
He burnt the Writings of the sacred Maid,
We hate Althaea for the fatal Brand;
When Nisius fell, the weeping Birds complained:
More cruel he than the revengeful Fair;
More cruel heth at Nisius' Murderer.
Whose impious Hands into the Flames have thrown
The Heavenly Pledges of the Roman Crown,
Unrav'lling all the Doom that careful Fate had spun."
The destruction of Rome by Alaric, King of the
Western Goths, A. D. 410, and the subsequent
dismemberment of the entire Roman Empire by the
barbarians of the North who followed in his wake,
announced that ancient history had come to an end.
It may be truly said as well that the ending of the
ancient history of the black and colored writing inks
which began in the obscurity of tradition between
2000 and 1800 B. C., a period of some 2200 years,
was also contemporaneous with these events.
The eclipse of ink-written literature for at least
500 of the 1000 years which followed, and known as
the Middle or "Dark" Ages, except in the Church
alone, who seem to have kept up the production of
manuscript books principally for ecclesiastical and
medical purposes was complete. Hence, any information
pertaining to those epochs about ink, writing
materials and ink writings, must be sought for in the
undestroyed records and the ink writings themselves
left by the fathers of the Church. All else is tainted
and of doubtful authority.
* * * * * * * *
"When waned the star of Greece was there no cry,
To rouse her people from their lethargy?
Was there no sentry on the Parthenon--
No watch-fire on the field of Marathon,
When science left the Athenian city's gate,
To seek protection from a nameless fate?
The sluggish sentry slept--no cry was heard
No hands the glimm'ring watch-fire's embers stirr'd.
Fair science unmolested left the land,
That she had nurtured with maternal hand;
And wandered forth some genial spot to find,
Where she might rear her altar to the mind.
"Long thro' the darken'd ages of a world,
Back to primeval chaos rudely hurled,
She journey'd on amid the gath'ring gloom,
A spectre form emerging from the tomb.
Earth had no resting place--no worshipper--
No dove returned with olive branch to her:
Her lamp burned dimly, yet its flick'ring light,
Guided the wanderer thro' the lengthen'd night.
Oft in her weary search, she paused the while,
To catch one gleam of hope--one favour'd smile;
But the dim mists of ignorance still threw,
Their blighting influence o'er the famish'd few,
Who deigned to look upon that lustrous eye,
Which pierced the ages of futurity.
"For ten long centuries she groped her way,
Through gloom, and darkness, ruin and decay;
Yet came at last the morning's rosy light,
A thousand echoes hail'd the glorious sight--
Joy thrill'd the universe--one iningled cry
Of exultation, pealed along the sky!
Science came forth in richer robes arrayed
She trod a pathway ne'er before essayed;
Up the steep mount of fame she fleetly pressed,
And hung her trophies on its gilded crest."