>ig2 PHILOSOPHICAL TFvANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1731. 



author is of opinion they were designed for a different purpose, for which he 

 produces very cogent reasons. 



He observes, that before the use of pens, the ancients performed their 

 writing with an instrument called by them a stylus or graphium. The matter 

 of it was gold, silver, brass, iron, or bone; the shape various, but alike in 

 being pointed and sharp at one end, and flat and broad at the other: the first 

 for writing, or rather cutting their letters, the latter for defacing or rubbing out 

 whatever wanted correction ; for all which, as well as for every thing else asserted 

 by him, he produces sufficient proofs from proper authors. 



He observes, that the styli made of iron, were sometimes used as daggers, 

 and quotes two passages out of Suetonius to prove it; one where Julius Caesar 

 is said to have wounded Cassius in the arm, graphio ; the other, where he tells 

 us it was customary with Caligula to get his enemies murdered, graphiis, when 

 they came into the Senate-house, and confirms these two passages by a third, 

 taken from Seneca's first book De dementia. He supposes the stylus made of 

 bone was for the use of women and children, as less dangerous than those of 

 metal ; by a quotation from Prudentius, it appears that Cassianus the Martyr 

 was killed by his scholars with iron styli. 



He agrees with Petavius, or his editors, that the implements which gave 

 birth to this dissertation, were styli, and not fibula? ad connectendas vestes, 

 as Monfaucon and other antiquaries have imagined; and thinks an objection, 

 that the tongues of the styli must have been much longer than the tongues 

 of their supposed fibulas, to be of little weight; since there must have been 

 some of them longer, and some shorter, according to the different fancies of 

 the writers. Military men might sometimes write with the point of their dag- 

 gers, and from this practice the words stylus and pugio came to be confounded; 

 but men of business and private persons cannot be supposed to have made use 

 of daggers for writing. He observes also, which is no small argument for his side 

 of the question, that if Monfaucon had consulted the numerous draughts he 

 has published of the habits belonging to the old Greeks and Romans, he 

 would not have found one of these implements, either as a fastening or an or- 

 nament on them. 



He proceeds next to a description of these styli found in Scotland, and 

 shows how they were accommodated to the business he supposes them designed 

 for. But as the copper plate prefixed to his dissertation will give us a much 

 clearer notion of that, the reader is referred to it; only observing that the 3th 

 figure in it is entirely different from the others, that he is in some doubt about 

 it, and owns it might have served the aruspices, in examining the bowels of 

 animals, and have been one of those instruments called exstispicia. However, 

 he thinks that if he had pronounced it to have been a stylus, he should not 



