How did people store their writings in Ancient Greek and Rome?

Submitted by petalised t3_yl2qxa in history

From what I found online, quill was invented only in 600 AD. Greeks and Romans used wax tablets and stylus.

Was it stored on wax tablets as well? Was there any way of copying?

Say, Aristotle works. There are about 1500 pages. You definitely couldn't write with as small of a script on wax, so one modern page should have at least 2-3 more text. That means, there should be at least 3000 wax tablets to for Aristotle works. That's like a full room of tablets! And that's only his works. What about the works of other authors that he read.

10

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

LateInTheAfternoon t1_iuyam9v wrote

Wax tablets were only for temporary notes. You wiped it clean when you were done, and then it was ready to be reused, so you only needed one. Books, and more permanent texts, were written on papyrus scrolls and later also on parchment. Scrolls were stored in wooden boxes with labels, one scroll per box. Scrolls could not have as much texts as our books today (that they only wrote on one side made sure of that) and literary works of considerable length made up several scrolls. For example, nowadays we can get Plato's Republic in one book, but back then it consisted of 10 scrolls (and also ten wooden boxes). As a vestige Plato's Republic is still divided not in chapters, but in books (marked with Roman numerals; this is also the case with many other works from antiquity).

12

petalised OP t1_iv01cf4 wrote

But none of them survived till our days, right? We only know about it from Medieval sources?

1

LICK_MY_SCROTUM t1_ivhhfsh wrote

I recently visited the papyrus museum in Vienna. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome both used papyrus for paper, and if my memory serves me, a reed pen with a special type of ink. However, much of the documents didn't survive because papyrus is biodegradable and Europe has historically a lot of soil.

Egypt and Arabia both have tons of remaining papyrus documents from thousands of years ago, but that's because it's such an arid climate that stuff stays preserved for much longer.

1

Naymerith t1_iuxcolc wrote

They wrote on wax tablets but also things like leather and papyrus. The oldest found papyrus scroll I beleive was in 3000 bc, so it way predates the roman times.

5

petalised OP t1_iuxhgnu wrote

What did they right with on leather and papyrus?

2

Naymerith t1_iuxisf3 wrote

Speaking for ancient egypt, they actually made ink from a number of materials and, though more expensive, even were able to produce different colors.

Writing was done with different materials, for instance pens carved from reed plants. Like this: https://d18xwelq3wp3pf.cloudfront.net/community/blogosphere/wp-content/uploads/Rachel/Image_3.jpg

Basically, aslong as you have ink and are creative you can use anything as a pencil.

6

tatramatra t1_iv55vum wrote

Depends which writings and when. Papyrus scrolls were used to store large literally works, but papyrus was expensive and had to be imported from Egypt. Vellum and parchment were used too, both been made from skins of calf or sheep/goat respectively. Another alternative was sheets of textile -paradoxically some ancient literally works were preserved to our times because they were reused as wrappings for mummies in Egypt (up to Roman imperial times).

Note that all above materials were fairly expensive and not readily available for commoners. While today textile for example is cheap and mass produced, in historical pre-industrial times textiles had to be laboriously made by hand. Similarly vellum and parchment had to be laboriously made by working off and thinning out the skins of animals.

For shorter more day to day texts and records, clay/pottery was used. Either in form of sun dried tablets or shards (called ostraca).

1

LateInTheAfternoon t1_ivey1pl wrote

Papyrus, while not exactly cheap, was not expensive either. Sure, a long roll would cost you, but shorter formats would have been easily affordable to most. Most of the extant papyri fragments testify to this, as ca 90 % are letters, archival notes, records, accounts, and contracts. Every day use objects in other words. Vellum and parchment on the other hand were much more expensive.

1

tatramatra t1_ivezb3m wrote

In Egypt for sure. In Greece, no. And then even in Egypt it was in every day use by higher ups. Common people did not even know how to write.

There is reason why people were busy looking for alternatives. If papyrus was inexpensive every day item for most, people would not use sheets of leather laboriously made by tinning out skins of animals instead.

1