final passing out of the roll and victory of the book are contemporary
with the victory of Christianity over Paganism and its adoption as the
religion of the empire.

[Illustration: Byzantine Binding of about 1000 A.D. (The plate is metal
and the decorations are enamel and jewels.)]

CHAPTER IV

_Making the Manuscripts_

As has already been said the papyrus manuscripts were ordinarily written
in columns at right angles to the length of the roll. These columns were
from two inches to three and a half inches in width. They were
ordinarily written on one side of the roll only. As the older writing
materials were always scarce and expensive, the backs of the rolls were
sometimes utilized, but very rarely for the continuation of the matter
written on the other side. If writing appears on the back of a roll,
except in the rare cases where the handwriting is identical with that on
the face, the subject matter is of an entirely different character from
the original and may safely be regarded as much younger. The title was
ordinarily placed at the end of the book although sometimes it appeared
at the beginning or in both places. The title was sometimes written on
the outside of the roll but more often was written on a tag which was
attached to the end of the roll or to the stick upon which the papyrus
was rolled. Very wide margins were left at each end of the roll. The
ends of the roll were trimmed, rubbed smooth and sometimes colored. The
rolls were sometimes wrapped in cloth and sometimes put in cylindrical
cases. Whether or not this was done, the rolls were usually kept in
cupboards piled on shelves; hence the usefulness of the tag bearing the
title.

When the vellum book took the place of the papyrus roll consideration
was at once given to the peculiarities of the material. The hair side
and the flesh side of the skin are different in color and texture. Care
was taken to arrange the sheets in quires in such way that the two pages
which were under the eye together should be made on the same side of the
skin. The outside page of a Latin codex was ordinarily the skin side. By
reversing the fold of the inner sheets of the quire, pages two and
three would be the flesh side, four and five the hair side and so on.
When paper began to come into use it was at first strengthened by having
a covering sheet of vellum for each quire, very much as we use a sheet
of cover paper on the outside of a pamphlet. A sheet of vell