Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/22

 12 PALIMPSEST PALISOT ancients used the word in this sense, but they also applied it to leaves or books used by au- thors for a preliminary writing of their works, which were so made that the ink could be wiped off in order to make corrections and re- visions. After the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, western Europe was cut off from the papyrus which it had previously drawn from that country, and the supply of parchment being limited, recourse was had to the erasure of ancient manuscripts. This practice, which prevailed in the West from the 7th or 8th cen- tury throughout the dark ages, and in the East, which was not deprived of papyrus so soon, from about the llth century, was long sup- posed to have caused the destruction of a vast amount of classical literature, sacrificed by the monkish transcribers to the needs of missals, antiphonaries, and other religious writings; but it has resulted rather, through the de- ciphering of the expunged works, in the re- covery of important fragments of ancient au- thors, many of which would otherwise have been lost irrecoverably. Two processes were used by the mediaeval scribes in the preparation of palimpsests, in the first of which the writing was washed off with a sponge and the parch- ment smoothed when dry by rubbing with pumice stone ; in the second either entire lines were scraped off with a sharp blade, or each letter was erased separately, the surface being afterward rubbed smooth with pumice stone or with a polishing tool. The success of the erasure depended materially on the kind of ink with which the writing was executed. If vegetable, it was easily expunged, as it did not strike into the body of the skin ; but if it con- tained animal or mineral matter, it was im- possible to remove entirely the original writing, traces of which could be distinctly seen in many cases even after the surface had been rubbed off. Most of the ancient manuscripts were written with ink composed of lampblack, gum, and vitriol, which so penetrated the skin that it could not be entirely removed ; for, if invisible to the eye, its presence can still be detected by proper chemical treatment. Vari- ous jnearis have been adopted in modern times to revive the erased writings of palimpsests. Among the first was to wash the parchment with an infusion of galls and to expose it after- ward to the light. This process frequently reproduced the ancient characters so that they could easily be read ; but in some cases it black- ened the entire parchment so as to render illegible both the old and the later writing. In 1787 Sir Charles Blagden proposed a "new method of recovering the legibility of decayed writings," viz., to dip the manuscript, after a careful washing in water, into diluted muriatic acid and afterward into a solution of prussiate of potash. A similar treatment was proposed by Prof. Gioberti of the university of Turin, and a preparation founded upon it received the name of tinctura G-iobertina. A preparation of sulphuretted ammonia has also been used with success. "When the ink contains some animal substance, such as the blood of the cuttle fish or milk, Prof. Mone recommends that the parchment be immersed in oil in a close vessel and subjected to a heat of 400 E. By means of these and other modes of treat- ment the ancient writing of many palimpsests has been rendered legible enough to be deci- phered by experienced palaeographers ; and in several cases two writings have been brought to light under the superficial one. Among the earliest to direct attention to palimpsests was Louis Boivin, who thoroughly examined and described the text of the Ephraem palimpsest (see MANUSCRIPT, vol. xi.,p. 133), discovered by Peter Allix near the close of the 17th century. Montfaucon also called attention to the impor- tance of palimpsest manuscripts in his Palato- grapliia Grceca (1708) ; but it was not until the last half of the 18th century that much pro- gress began to be made in their decipherment. In 1762 F. A. Knittel published a portion of the Epistle to the Romans in the Gothic text of Ulfilas, found under a copy of the Origines of Isidorus in a manuscript preserved in the li- brary at Wolfenbtittel ; and in 1773 P. J. Bruns recovered and published a part of the 91st book of Livy from a palimpsest in the Vatican. But by far the greatest explorer in the field of pa- limpsest literature was Cardinal Angelo Mai, who published from 1814 to 1853 many in- valuable fragments of classic authors before reckoned as lost; among them were the De Republica of Cicero and portions of the his- tories of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Diony- sius of Halicarnassus, Dion Cassius, Appian, and lamblichus. His success gave zest to the study, and through the labors of Niebuhr and others the greater part of the Institutes of Gaius were recovered from a manuscript at Verona and published in 1820. Other inves- tigators who have rendered important service to literature in this department are Barrett, Blume, Peyron, G. H. Pertz and his son Karl Pertz, Gaupp, F. J. Mone and his son Fridegar Mone, Cureton, Hase, Tregelles, and Tischen- dorf. (See MANUSCRIPT.) PALIMJRUM, a promontory of Lucania in Italy, on the Tyrrhenian sea, about half way between Velia and Buxentum; lat. 40 N., long. 15 15' E. It derived its name from the tradition, recorded by Virgil, that on this spot Palinurus the pilot of ^Eneas was buried. Some ruins of ancient buildings, still visible on the summit of the headland, are popularly known as the tomb of Palinurus. Near this promon- tory, during the first Punic war, 253 B. C., a Ro- man fleet under the consul Cervilius Caepio and Sempronius Blaesus was wrecked and 150 ves- sels lost ; and again in 36 B. 0. a portion of the fleet of Octavius was lost on the coast between Velia and Palinurus Portus, a harbor formed by the cape, and now called Porto di Palinuro. PALISOT, imbroise Marie Francois Joseph Beau- vois de, a French naturalist, born in Arras in 1752, died in Paris, Jan. 21, 1820. He sailed