Yet, as the brief digression will
afford an opportunity for the explanation of certain terms used in MSS.,
we will avail ourselves of it.
The ancient form of writing upon skins and papyrus was that of the roll.
The Hebrew, Arabic, or Greek terms for this do not concern us, but its
Latin name was _volumen_, "something rolled," and from this we obtain
our word volume. Such words as "explicit liber primus" etc., which we
often find in early MSS., refer to this roll-form; _explicare_ in Latin
meaning to unroll; hence, apropos of a chapter or book, to finish. When
transferred to the square form, or codex, it simply means, "here ends
book first," etc.
The modern book shape first came into use with the beginning of the
Christian era under the name of codex. Here it will be necessary to
explain that _caudex_, _codex_, in Latin, meant a block of wood, and had
its humorous by-senses among the Roman dramatists, as the word block has
among ourselves, such as blockhead.[5] So _caudicalis provincia_ was a
jocular expression for the occupation of wood-splitting.
[5] Terence, _Heautont._, 5. 1, 4.
Whether the word had originally any connection with _cauda_, "a tail,"
is not here worth considering, as if so, it had long lost the
connection; and when used to mean a book, had only the sense of a board,
or a number of boards from two upwards, fastened together by means of
rings passed through holes made in their edges.
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