Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/180

PALAEOGRAPHY the diversity of the latter that the rhythmical sentences or lines of sense were differently calculated by different writers ; but the original arrangement of St Jerome is thought to be represented in the Codex Amiatinus at Florence, and that of Euthalius in the Codex Olaromontanus at Paris. With regard to St Jerome s reference to the division per cola et commata of the rhetorical works of Demosthenes and Cicero, it should be noticed that there are still in existence MSS. of works of the latter in which the text is thus written, one of them being a volume of the Tusculans and the DC Scncdute in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. The same arrangement of the text of the orations of Demosthenes is also men tioned by the rhetoricians of the 5th and subsequent centuries. It is a. curious circumstance also that the text of the only two surviv ing documents of the Roman chancery addressed to Egyptian officials in the 5th century (see above) is written in lines of various lengths, apparently for rhetorical convenience. Corrections. For obliteration or removing pen strokes from the surface of the material the sponge was used in ancient times. While the writing was still fresh, the scribe could easily wash off the ink by this means ; and for a fragile material, such as papyrus, he could well use no other. On vellum he might use sponge or knife. But after a MS. had left his hands it would undergo revision at the hands of a corrector, who had to deal with the text in a different manner. He could no longer conveniently apply the sponge. On hard material he might still u-^e the knife to erase letters or words or sentences. But he could also use his pen for such purposes. Thus we find that a very early system of indicating erasure was the placing of dots or minute strokes above the letters to be thus "expunged." The same marks were also (and generally, at later periods) placed under the letters ; in rare, instances they stood inside them. It need scarcely be said that letters were also struck out with strokes of the pen or altered into others, and that letters and words were interlined. Along sentence, however, which could not be admitted between the lines, was entered in the margin, and its place in the text indicated by corresponding reference marks, such as hd. hs. = hie dcest, hoc supra, &c. Tachygraphy. The systems of tachygraphy which were followed by both Greeks and Romans had an effect upon the forms of contrac tion found in mediaeval MSS. The subject of Greek tachygraphy has lately received a good deal of attention on account of recent dis coveries. How far back the practice of shorthand writing existed among the Greeks there is nothing to show ; for, although certain words of Diogenes Laertius have been taken to imply that Xenophon wrote shorthand notes (viroffriiJ.ciw<rd[j.ivos) of the lectures of Socrates, yet a similar expression in another passage, which will not bear this meaning, renders it hardly possible that tachygraphy is referred to. The first undoubted mention of a Greek shorthand writer occurs in 195 A.D., in a letter of Flavins Philostratus. But unfortunately there appear to be no very ancient specimens of Greek tachygraphy in existence ; for it is denied that certain notes and inscriptions in the papyri dating from the 2d century B.C., which have been put forward as such, are in shorthand at all. The extant examples date only from the 10th century. First stands the Paris MS. of Hcrmogenes, with some tachygraphic writing of that period, of which Montfaucon (Pal. Gr., p. 351) gives some account, and accompanies his description with a table of forms which, as he tolls us, he deciphered with incredible labour. Next, the Add. MS. 18231 in the British Museum contains some marginal notes in shorthand, of 972 A.D. (Wattenb., Script. Grxc. Spccim., tab. 19). But the largest amount of material is found in the Vatican MS. 1809, a volume in which as many as forty-seven pages arc covered with tachygraphic writing of the llth century. Mai first published a specimen of it in his Scriptorum Vctcrum Nova, Collcctio, vol. vi. (1832) ; and in his Novx Patrum Bibliothccx torn, sccundus (1844) he gave a second, which, in the form of a marginal note, contained a fragment of the book of Enoch. But he did not quote the num ber of the MS., and it has only lately been found again. The tacJiygraphic portion of it is now being made the subject of special study by Dr Gitlbauer for the Vienna Academy. It contains frag ments of the works of St Maximus the Confessor, the confession of St Cyprian of Antioch, and works of the pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. The writing used in these examples is syllabic, and appears to be a younger form of tachygraphy as distinguished from an older system, the existence of which may be inferred from the occurrence of certain signs or symbols of contraction used in the minuscule MSS. For, while many of the signs thus used correspond with the tachygraphic signs of the above examples, there are others which differ and which have been derived from an earlier source. For a system of tachygraphic contractions had been developing at an earlier period ; and its elements have been traced in both cursive and uncial MSS. as far back as the 5th or 6th century. If then we may suppose that the new system of tachygraphy was an invention of the 9th or 10th century, this will account for the occurrence in MSS. of that period of two forms of abbreviation for certain syllables-rthe one adopted from the old or ordinary system, and the other being the neo-stenographic symbol. As to the first origin of Greek tachygraphy, it has been supposed that it grew from a system of secret writing which was developed from forms of abbreviation, and which the early Christians adopted for their own use. Evidence of the use of tachygraphy among the Romans is to be found in the writings of authors under the empire. It appears to have been taught in schools, and, among others, the emperor Titus is said to have been skilful in this style of writing. Elmius has been named as the inventor of a large collection of shorthand symbols ; but more generally Cicero s freedman M. Tullius Tiro is regarded as the author of these signs, which commonly bear the title of " Notai Tironianffi." The shorthand writers or notaries were well trained in the use of these notes, and in the early Christian times were largely employed in taking down the words of the bishops of the church which were preached in sermons or spoken in councils, and in recording the acts and lives of martyrs. In the Prankish empire the notes were used in signatures or subscriptions of charters, and later, in the 9th and early 10th centuries, they were adopted by the revisers and annotators of the texts of MSS. Of this period also are several MSS. containing the Psalter in these characters, which it has been suggested were written for practice at a time when a fresh impulse had been given to the ise of short hand in the service of literature. The existence also of volumes containing collections of the Tironian notes, and written at this time, points to a temporary revival. The notes appear to have gone out of general use, however, almost immediately after this, although in isolated cases, such as in subscriptions to charters, they linger ns late as the beginning of the llth century. A few of the forms of the Tironian notes were adopted in mediaeval MSS. as symbols of contraction for certain common words, as will be noticed presently. Contractions. The use of contractions or abbreviations in MSS. would arise from two causes first, the natural desire to write as quickly and shortly as possible words of frequent occurrence which could not be misread in a contracted form, and, secondly, tho necessity of saving space. The contractions satisfying the first requirement were necessarily limited in number and simple in char acter, and are such as are found with more or less frequency in the oldest MSS. But the regular system of contracted forms, with the view of getting as much writing as possible into a limited space, was only elaborated in course of time, and was in use in the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Different kinds of literature also were, according to their nature, more or less contracted. From early times abbreviations were used more freely in secular books, and particularly in works in which technical language was employed, such as those on law or grammar or mathematics, than in Biblical MSS. or liturgies. In the Greek fragment of a mathematical treatise of the 7th century, at Milan, there are numerous contrac tions ; and the same is found to be the case in a Latin MS. of the 5th century, the Verona Gaius. With regard to the different systems or styles of contraction, the oldest and simplest is that in which a single letter, or at most two or three letters, represent a whole word. Among Latin classical writers we know that these contractions were common enough, and ancient inscriptions afford plentiful examples. In the waxen tablets also they are found; and they survive in the later papyri of Ravenna, &c., and in law deeds. Next is the system of dropping the final syllable or syllables of a word, or of omitting a letter or syllable or more in the middle, such omissions being easily supplied from the general sense of the context e.g., ffx"n^ = ffxn/J-aTos, }i&buef = Juilnteruvt, Tpfm=patrcm. And lastly, there are the arbitrary signs and contractions formed in a special manner or marked by certain figures whereby they may be regularly interpreted. Traces of a system of contraction are found in some of the early Greek papyri. For example, in the papyrus of the oration ot Hyperides for Lycophron, of at least the 1st century B.C., the nu of the syllable a>v, when occurring at the end of a line, is omitted, and its omission marked by a light horizontal stroke above the line of writing ; and, as marks of reference to an accidentally omitted line, abbreviated forms of &vw and KO.TW are used. In the Bankes Homer also the sign ~j i" for TTOIT/TTJS is placed in the margin to mark the narrative portion of the text. In the ancient Greek Biblical MSS. the contractions are usually confined to the sacred names and titles, and a few words of common occurrence, as 0C = 6t6s, 1C = XC = I1NA = CHP = uiijT ?P> TC = ufos, ANOC = &v0pwiros, OTNOC = ovpavos, K, = * , T = TCK, $]=-/jiov, fjioi, &C. Final N, especially at the end of a line, was dropped, and its place occupied by the horizontal stroke, as TO~. This limited system of contraction was observed generally in the uncial Biblical and liturgical MSS. In the mathematical fragment at Milan abbrevia tions by dropping final syllables, and contracted particles and pre positions, arc numerous ; and in the palimpsest Homer of the 6th century in the British Museum final syllables are occasionally omitted. Such omissions were, however, indicated by strokes or curves, or by some leading letter of the omitted portion being placed above the line of writing. Certain signs also were borrowed from tachygraphy, at first sparingly, but afterwards, in the later and