If so, there is a vendor who is selling a copy of the opening chapters in roll format, here. It’s interesting to see how ancient books really appeared.
Roger Pearse
Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Well, the people at Forum Traiani haven’t done their research. Caesar was the first to use the book, i.e. (if Suet. 56.6 is correct) he invented the bound papyrus codex (cf. Roberts-Skeat 1983, “The Birth of the Codex”, Oxford, 18-19). He did write in columns, though, probably two per page. But the handwriting is completely wrong. It’s quite different from the actual capitalis rustica the Romans used in the 1st century BC.
And it has spacing between the words…that’s also wrong, isn’t it?
That depends on the manuscript. The Herculaneum fragment of “De Bello Actiaco” (written between 31 BC and AD 79) uses middle dots to separate the words. Even in cursive handwriting there was a natural tendency to separate at least some of the words with a slight spacing.
Hello,
here is the Forum Traiani Team. Just want to know where we did a mistake in the papyrus of caesar.
I dont have a good german translation of Suet Jul.56.6 just the summerys of his discriptions.
Please help me if we did a mistake we will change it for sure.
Andi
Firstly, your product is very nice indeed! Thank you for making it available.
However there is some debate about what a book of that period should look like. The comments above indicate issues raised. You would need to research these points and get a professional opinion.