130 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



generally stated, a prohibition of the exportation to 

 the kingdom of Pergamus, led to the invention of 

 parchment in that part -of Asia Minor*. Hence 

 parchment was called Charta Pergamtna, which is 

 still the name for the substance in Italy. 



Though parchment was thus introduced at Per- 

 gamus, about two centuries and a half before the 

 Christian era, and though it afterwards became and 

 remained for a considerable time the sole material 

 for writing employed in Europe, it was very long 

 before it superseded the use of papyrus. 



In the Augustan age, when the Romans, who had 

 hitherto been absorbed by war and conquest, devoted 

 some of their energies to literature, papyrus was 

 more extensively demanded at Rome, and the libra- 

 ries formed then, and under succeeding emperors, 

 were perhaps chiefly composed of books written on 

 this Egyptian paper. 



We can trace the general use of papyrus in Europe 

 some centuries farther down. A heavy import duty 

 was laid upon it by the Roman government, and this 

 duty, we know, was abolished at the end of the fifth, 

 or beginning of the sixth century, by Theodoric, 

 the first Gothic king of Italy. His minister 

 and favourite, Cassiodorus, has recorded, in one of 

 his letters, this gracious act of the Goth, and con- 

 gratulated "the whole world on the repeal of an im- 

 post upon an article so essentially necessary to the 

 human race," the general use of which, as Pliny 

 has remarked, "polishes and immortalizes man." 



In the middle of the seventh century, the supply 

 was interrupted by the Saracens, who conquered 

 Egypt, the country of its production. Down to this 

 period papyrus may have been scantily used, but it 



* This prohibition was said to proceed from one of the Ptole- 

 mies, who was jealous lest Eumenes, king of Pergamus, should 

 form a library as valuable as that at Alexandria. 



