Page:The History of Ink.djvu/71

Rh reasonably placed at or about the year 100 of the Christian Era.

From Dioscorides to, (in the last century) the Materia Medica made no actual progress and received no scientific improvement; yet, eminent as is Dioscorides, he was so little known to his own generation or that next following, that it is now impossible to ascertain the exact date of his birth or of his death, or any facts in his life, but that he wrote two books, of which that here quoted is the best known, and has made him known 1700 years after his birth.

(We may mention that this Dioscorides was, in no traceable degree, related to the person of the same name, whose manuscript we have copied in our illustrations as the oldest extant specimen of Greek ink-writing.)

We give a translation of his brief but complete description of the ink used in his time, and the Latin version, that those who wish may satisfy themselves of the correctness of our rendering. It will be seen that it occurs at the close of the great work of Dioscorides:—

Atramentum, quo scribimus, e fuligine taedarum collecta conficitur. In singulas gummi uncias ternae fuliginis unciae adjiciuntur. Fit etiam e resinae fuligine et pictoria illa modo dicta. Hujus fuliginis