To our knowledge, these ruling lines have never been ascertained in Herculaneum papyri, nor has Gardthausen’s claim been further investigated or verified. Gardthausen specified that remnants of the latter are sometimes still visible in Herculaneum papyri and postulated that they either disappeared over time or were deleted by scribes after redacting the text 7. Between the 19th and the 20th century, Viktor Gardthausen maintained that, in most cases, only two consecutive vertical lines were drawn by scribes to mark the left border of each column and that, in some cases, horizontal lines were additionally traced to mark single lines within a column. In 1805, Johann Beckmann documented that some medieval manuscripts from the 11th and 12th century exhibited lead-drawn ruling lines 6. The first modern scholars who alluded to the use of rulers and leaden disks for the layout of manuscripts were, in 1629, Claude de Saumaise and, in 1756, Christian Schwarz 4, 5.
#PAPYRUS BACKGROUND FREE#
As a consequence, scribes might not have followed one and the same method and, occasionally, they might even have felt free to design the layout of the roll relying only on their own training and accuracy or simply following the horizontally running papyrus fibers as guidelines. It stands to reason that every scribe had his own working method, either inherited from his own master or developed by himself over the years. 62), the ruling lines drawn by scribes marked the top and the bottom as well as the left and the right borders of each text column this implies at the same time a delimitation of the corresponding intercolumns. By keeping the disk between the thumb and the forefinger, they drew it along the rightly positioned ruler, so that the metal, being barely pressured so as not to damage the papyrus fibers, would leave a blunt grey line on the papyrus surface, just noticeable enough for the scribe’s trained eye.
In conclusion, it can be inferred from these testimonies, ranging from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD, that the scribe’s tools remained the same for many centuries and, in particular, that ancient scribes used leaden disks with rounded and smoothened borders to design the layout of the papyrus surface. In all these cases, the scribe’s equipment regularly includes, among other tools, both a ruler and a leaden disk.
63–68), which describe the tools consecrated to a deity by an old scribe who is retiring from his job. This information is confirmed by another six epigrams belonging to various authors from the Palatine Anthology (6. Shortly afterwards, the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder attests that one can trace lines with a piece of lead (certainly also on papyrus), resulting in dirtying one's hands by the material that comes off ( NH 33. Philip of Thessalonika (AD 30/40) includes among the scribe’s equipment, along with a ruler, a leaden disk “which marks the side of the columns” ( Palatine Anthology 6. In the 1st century BC, the Roman poet Catullus criticizes Suffenus’ awful verses for being written on luxurious books in which all parts are “squared through lead” ( carm. The Greek epigrammatist Phanias (2nd-1st century BC) mentions, among the scribe’s tools, a ruler and a “piece of lead used as a marker” ( Palatine Anthology 6. Up to now we knew about methods and instruments used to this purpose only from a few classical authors such as Catullus, Pliny the Elder and some epigrammatists 3. All this required that scribes were able to organize their work before they started transcribing the text, by preliminarily discriminating the written space from the space to be left blank. blank spaces left by the scribe at the beginning and the end of the roll) was an indicator of the manuscript’s quality, with broader blank areas corresponding to a more luxurious book. In general, the width of the non-written parts (intercolumns, margins and agrapha, i.e. The scribe’s goal was to realize the tidiest and most pleasant book possible through the accurate and regular alternation of written and non-written parts. The first and the last line of each column were carefully written at the same height of the roll, so as to leave a regular blank space both at the top (upper margin) and at the bottom (lower margin) of the roll, with the latter usually being slightly larger than the former 1, 2. Columns were separated by blank spaces, or intercolumns, of equal width. It is well-established that Greek and Latin literary works were written on papyrus rolls organized in text columns of regular size.
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