494 I'HILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1731. 



and among the Latins byPIautus. They were made of all sorts of wood, 

 ivory, and skins, covered over with wax. They were likewise of several 

 colours, as red, yellow, green, saffron, white, and others. Being waxed over, 

 any thing was easily written on them by the point of the stylus, and as easily 

 rubbed out, and altered by the fiat part of it. Sometimes these pugillares were 

 made of gold, silver, brass, or lead, and then there was a necessity of an iron 

 stylus to write or cut the letters on them ; which explains that passage in the 

 igth chapter of Job, Quis mihi det ut exarentur in libro, stylo ferreo et plumbi 

 lamina, vel certe sculpantur in silic.e. They consisted sometimes of 2, 3, 5 or 

 more pages, and thence were called duplices, triplices, quintuplices, and 

 multiplices ; and by the Greeks, AiTTTup^a, TfiVruj^a, &c. 



The diptychs and triptychs that were covered with wax, served only for com- 

 mon occurrences ; the other sorts received every thing else that was written on 

 chartae or membranae, and were sometimes called by the Greeks palimpsestae, 

 from the rubbing out of the letters on them. 



The chartae linteas, and bombycinae, which were made of linen or cotton, 

 were of much later date ; and from these we learned to make the paper now in 

 use of linen rags, an invention probably of about 600 years standing. 



Writing was practised on all these chartae with a reed, and afterwards with a 

 pen, except on the pugillares. These reeds grew on the banks of the Nile ; 

 the Greeks also used reeds imported from Persia for the same purpose. Calami 

 argentei are also mentioned for writing. 



Their letters were formed with liquors of various colours, but chiefly black, 

 thence called atramentum, and in Greek jxikccv or ^Caviov. It was sometimes 

 made of the blood of the cuttle fish, sometimes of soot. Apelles composed a 

 black of burnt ivory, which was called elephantinum. They had ink also from 

 India of an approved composition, as Pliny says. 



The titles of their chapters and sections were written in red, or purple: hence 

 the titles of the Roman laws are called rubricae. Their purpura was an exceed- 

 ingly bright red, or crimson, much in vogue with the Byzantine writers, and 

 called Kin-aga^K ; which was a liquor made of the murex boiled, and its shell 

 very finely powdered; or as Pliny relates, of the blood of that fish. Almost all 

 the ancient emperors wore this colour ; their names were painted in it on their 

 banners ; and they frequently wrote with it, and wore it. This colour was 

 often the distinction of a Roman magistrate, and to put on the purple, was the 

 same thing as to assume the government. This colour was so admired by the 

 poets, that they called every thing which was very bright and fine, purple ; as 

 Horace compliments the swan, which is never of any colour but while, with 

 purpureis ales cloribus. We find even snow honoured with the same epithet ; 

 whence some have imagined that purpureus signified white. 



