PAPYRUS AND PARCHMENT.

23

mounted by a cluster of long, spike-shaped, drooping leaves.

This plant was woven

into sandals, mats, cloth

ing, and even boats; was eaten, raw and boiled; was manufactured into furniture; and was burned for fuel and light; when prepared for writ ing purposes, it was invaluable. The part under the water was selected, the outer bark removed, and the delicate white layers found. beneath were pressed together into sheets and dried. These were writ

EGYPTIAN Papyrus.

ten on with red and black ink, and some of them were elaborately ornamented with many-colored figures.

The finest papyrus was reserved for the priests, and never exported till they had used it. But the Romans, having invented a process for removing what was first written on it, imported it in large quantities; they also attempted its cultivation in the marshes of the Tiber, but without success. The Greeks did not use it extensively until the era of the Ptolemies.

Parchment was prepared from the skins of sheep and goats by polishing them with pumice stone and then rubbing in fragrant oil. Its name, in Latin pergamena, would seem to indicate Pergamus in western Asia as the place of its origin; but centuries before that little kingdom became celebrated for its library of parchment volumes, this material, or something very like it, was known. Herodotus mentions

its use in his time; and the Jews, as a pastoral people familiar with the art of dressing skins, wrote their first books on a kind of leather.

But if parchment was not invented at Pergamus, Eu'menes, king of that country, was certainly the first to make extensive use of it (175 B.C.). He had founded a splendid li

brary, which he determined should eclipse that of Alexandria. In the reign of Ptolemy Epiph'anes, king of Egypt, it was sought to prevent the transcription of books for the rival library by prohibiting the exportation of papyrus. This obliged Eumenes to resort to parchment as a substitute. From Pergamus it spread to Europe, finally superseding all

ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS.

25

other materials, and continuing in demand until the art of making paper cheaply from rags was invented in the fourteenth century.

Ancient manuscripts were put up in the form of rolls (volu'mina—whence volumes), made of sheets fastened together in a continuous strip, sometimes forty or fifty yards in length. This was wound round wooden cylinders, the ends of which were often set with jewels, or ornamented with knobs of ivory, silver, or gold. Titles were either suspended from these books like tags, or glued upon them as labels. An outside cover of parchment protected the scrolls, which, enclosed in cylindrical cases and placed horizontally on shelves ranged about a room, constituted an ancient library.

The Chinese, after writing for centuries, in common with their neighbors of India, on bark and dried palm-leaves, are believed to have discovered a process of preparing a pulp from cotton or bamboo, and to have manufactured it into paper as early as the commencement of our era. Perhaps, as observation of the silkworm spinning her cocoons led them to devise the art of weaving silk, they in like manner borrowed his cunning from the paper-making wasp, and thus early perfected an invention which has been of incalculable service to literature.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT

LITERATURE.

A comprehensive glance over the entire field whose treasures we are about to examine in detail, will enable us the better to appreciate and remember their relative age and

Beginning, then, with the most distant periods, we find a literature developed in Mesopota'mia, Egypt, Iran, and China, as early as 2000 B.C. At that date, the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris was the seat of a civilized Turanian people, the inventors of the complex system of cuneiform

writing, thought by some to be the oldest in the world. These Turanian Chaldees, mingled with a Semitic race, were then beginning to enjoy their golden age of letters; at the same time, the ancient Persians and Hindoos were composing hymns; the sages of China were busy on their sacred books; and Egypt had doubtless made considerable advance in both poetry and prose.

To trace the progress of literature in these remote times from century to century is impossible. Five hundred years, however, bring us to the Augustan era of romance and satire, epic and devotional poetry, in Egypt: they introduce us to Zoroas'ter, the founder or reformer of the ancient Persian religion, whose teachings are set forth in the Aves'ta; to the Ve'da, or Brahman Bible; to Moses and the Pentateuch ; and to Phoenician theology, science, and poetry. Meanwhile Chaldean literature declines, and Assyrian letters come into view. During the next five centuries, poetry and science continue to flourish in Egypt, though not perhaps with their pristine vigor; Phoenicia maintains her literary reputation; the Veda grows; and Persian priests are occupied in enlarging and modifying their sacred texts.

1000 B.C. was the era of the great epics. The epic, or narrative poem, based on some important event (in Greek, πoç) or chain of events, though first appearing in Egypt-the mother-land of literature as well as science and art--was simultaneously brought to perfection, about this time, by the Greeks and Hindoos, Aryan nations holding no intercourse with each other and separated by at least three thousand miles. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the wonder of Hellas, were paralleled by two stupendous Indian poems, the Râmâyana (rah-mah'yă-nă) and the Mahâbhârata (mă-hah'bah'ră-tă), the great masterpieces of Sanscrit poetry. To these, all dazzling with Oriental splendor, the epics of the Greek bard may yield in luxuriance of fancy and gorgeous imagery; but in power

GENERAL VIEW OF ANCIENT LITERATURE.

27

of description, sublimity of thought, and attractive simplicity of expression, Homer was without an equal.

While, then, the Semitic Hebrews and Phoenicians used prose as the vehicle of their earliest records of events, Greece and India, types of the Aryan stock, transmitted their legends to posterity in epic verse. Later times have not failed to perpetuate the taste, and measurably the ability; epic poetry has been cultivated by all the Indo-European nations, and to them it has been confined.-Contemporaneously with Homer, native poets were inditing ballads and pastorals in China, and the Hebrews enjoyed their golden age of secular and religious poetry; Egypt had entered on her literary, as well as her political, decline.

Henceforth our interest centres principally in Greece. Until 800 B.C., the poems of Homer and of Hesiod, his contemporary or immediate successor, constituted the bulk of Hellenic literature. Then began a transition to a poetry more natural-a poetry of the emotions-on themes that kindled love, anger, hatred, grief, hope; and for three centuries lyrics in different forms echoed throughout the land. Archil'ochus poured forth his caustic satires; Tyrtæus, his inspiriting warsongs; Sappho, her passionate strains; Anacreon, the joys of the wine-cup; Simon'ides breathed his touching laments; and Pindar stirred the soul with his grand odes, as with the sound of the trumpet. Prose also received attention, and Ionian authors took the initiative in systematic historical composition. Rude religious festivals suggested dramatic representations ; and the pioneers in tragedy and comedy rode about the country, exhibiting their novel art on carts which carried the performers and their machinery. Meanwhile in the East, Assyrian literature reached its highest development at Nineveh, to be buried beneath the ruins of that city, 625 B.C. Letters then revived at Babylon, and for nearly a century flourished there; Jewish poetry declined; and Con