A Companion to Classical Texts (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: contain all that was essential to the Faith: it could withstand constant use and could be produced cheaply enough to satisfy the demand of the poorer classes who were the earliest converts to Christianity. By the fourth century the codex had become a serious rival to the roll. Basil and Jerome use both forms of book, but Jerome himself in his letter to Marcella offers a typical instance of the change that was everywhere taking place. He there describes the condition of the library of Pamphilus of Caesarea. The rolls in it were found to be in a state of decay towards the end of the fourth century and two priests, Euzoius and Acacius, undertook to transcribe their contents upon codices. In profane literature the growing popularity of the codex is attested by specimens belonging to the fourth century which still survive in a fragmentary condition (e.g. Vatican Vergil 3225, usually quoted as F): and with this century begins the gradual transference of the ancient literature from roll to codex, though the use of the roll certainly survived among the cultivated pagan remnant in the West till the fifth century. The influence which this 'codification' of ancient writers may have had upon the texts of their works is a factor which must enter into any critical estimate. Such a transference is like the change in the gauge of a railway which is bound to affect the rolling stock. One result, which was not long delayed, was a shrinkage in the bulk of the older literature. The vellum codex was costly, though cheaper for a long work than a large number of rolls. Authors survived or perished according to the value set upon them during this period. Many works of the highest value were allowed to decay in the roll form and passed out of existence, e.g. the historian Theopompus. It is to this p...