Reading Roman Scrolls

[jbd_29349]

How do you read Roman scrolls?

I know that to read Latin you have top to bottom and left to right but how did the scroll unroll?

Would you hold the scroll on the right and roll out to the left?

Would you hold the scroll on the left and roll out to the right?

Would you hold the scroll on the horizontal and roll out from the bottom?

Would you hold the scroll on the horizontal and roll out from the top?

Is their a way or is it really up to the person reading the scroll or writing on the scroll papyrus.

[Lupianus]

I've seen the following technique: The text is written in columns. Scrolls are stored with the same amount of papyrus/parchement on each of the two wooden scrolls, one at the start and one at the end of the book (each book defined by the length of the author's original papyrus/parchement sheet).

The reader rolls up the scroll with his left hand, while his right hand rolls the scroll off. The text is grouped in chapters, which are the "pages" you can read between the two scrolls.

Of course, after the reading session someone has to roll up the whole thing again for the next reader - but fortunately there should be a slave at hand in any well-assorted library.

Anyway, God bless the genius, who invented the codex formatted book! 8)

[Epictetus]

Here is a mosaic in Tunisia dating from the later Imperial times showing the use of scrolls.

[Tertius Mummius]

Ingenious as they were, the Romans invented a wooden tablet with one edge curved to fit in the scroll, the so called pulpitum (yes, that's where pulpit comes from). Obviously, the use of it had to be taught, as one of the two pupils here is holding it upside down.
http://www.neumagen-drohn.de/Bilder/kas ... kmal-8.jpg

[SigniferOne]

Jan, your comment on the pulpitum is interesting. To clarify your description in my head, would the shape of it be a wooden tablet with an edge curved almost all the way around? That way a reader would insert the scroll into the resulting cylindrical space, and pull the page through the opening?

[Tertius Mummius]

To be honest, I don't know. The article I read about the pulpitum, however, described it just as a wooden tablet with a curved edge for better scroll handling, nothing was said about that edge being almost a tube, though, I must admit, the idea of it is tempting.