The red paint was employed to mark the initial letters or sections of
the MS. Its connection with portraiture and other pictorial subjects on
a small scale is entirely owing to its accidental confusion by French
writers with their own word _mignon_, and so with the Latin _minus_. In
classical times, among the Romans, the "miniator" was simply a person
who applied the _minium_, and had nothing to do with pictures or
portraits at all, but with the writing. That the rubrication of titles,
however, was somewhat of a luxury may be gathered from the complaint of
Ovid when issuing the humble edition of his verses from his lonely exile
of Tomi:--
"Parve (nec invideo) sine me liber ibis in urbem:
Hei mihi quo domino non licet ire tuo.
...........................
Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo
Non est conveniens luctibus ille color.
_Nec titulus minio_, nec cedro carta notetur
Candida nec nigra cornua fronte geras."[1]
_Tristia_, Cl. 1, Eleg. 1.
[1] "Go, little book, nor do I forbid,--go without me into that city
where, alas! I may enter never more.... Nor shall whortleberries adorn
thee with their crimson juice; that colour is not suitable for
lamentations.
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