According To Tradition, The Fledgling Roman Republic Was Held Together In A Trying Time By An Aesop Fable

Although Rome, according to tradition, shed its monarchy around 509 BCE to become a republic, it took the Romans a long time to work out the power structure of their new society. No doubt, the fledgling republic was first ruled by an aristocratic oligarchy, probably from both patrician and non-patrician powerful families. After the monarchy was outed, the new oligarch leaders apparently became tyrannical in government practices such as land-distribution and debt policies, which caused anger between the wealthy and the poor. The first great crisis between the well-to-do leaders and the struggling commoners was said to have occurred in 494 BCE, when the debtors and the oppressed of Rome reportedly abandoned the city and decided to form their own government. This so-called Secession of the Plebs was major step in the foundation of the Plebeian identity, and the office of tribune is dated by tradition to that time.

Such an exodus of people would always cause concern for a government, but the oligarchs of Rome were at the time particularly urgent to regain the cooperation of the commoners. One reason for their sense of urgency was that Rome began to increasingly feel the encroachment of the Volscians and Aequians toward the end of the 490s BCE. With foreign raids increasing, Rome needed to make sure its military remained in a functioning state, which was difficult when much of the city-state’s light infantry manpower was in mutiny during the Secession of the Plebs.

Rome’s leading class reportedly sent a certain likable, smooth-talking spokesman named Menenius Agrippa to negotiate with the commoners. He was apparently a wealthy non-patrician who was a member of the oligarchy, but also had friends among the poor. Menenius joined the commoners on their hill and opened up his negotiations by telling a simple fable.

Once upon a time, claimed Menenius, in the most primitive times of the distant past, the different limbs and organs of the human body had minds of their own. The arms, legs, teeth, mouth, stomach, so on and so forth, controlled their own actions and possessed their own thoughts and feelings. The different pieces of this primordial body coexisted for a time, but, before long, certain individual parts began to notice a troubling trend. The feet and legs walked to food; the hands and arms gathered the food; the teeth and mouth ate the food—the stomach, however, did nothing but take what all the other parts of the body worked so hard to provide.

One day, claimed Menenius, the different laboring sections of the body decided that they would no longer put up with the stomach’s greed. After plotting together, the legs and feet quit walking; the arms and hands stopped gathering; the teeth and mouth stopped eating and swallowing. Thus, all the other parts of the body besieged the stomach and cut it off from its food supply. As the siege went on, however, odd things began to happen—the legs grew sluggish, the arms began to weaken, and the primordial body, as a whole, began to deteriorate and become emaciated. Before the allied limbs and organs realized their mistake, the whole body withered away and died from starvation. So ended the fable.

After hearing Menenius’ story, the commoners on the hill reportedly saw the existential threat that their revolt posed to Rome, and they agreed to enter into negotiations for a solution. According to the Roman historian Livy (c. 59 BCE – 17 CE), this Secession of the Plebs was brought to a close when the oligarchs of the republic agreed to recognize the tribunes as representatives of the commoners. Yet, this was merely a working relationship, and it would take many more years for the oligarchs to start respecting the power, much less the legal proposals, of the tribunes.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Picture Attribution: (Illustration of a fable from "The fables of Æsop, selected, told anew and their history traced" (1894), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
• The Beginnings of Rome by T. J. Cornell. New York: Routledge, 1995. 
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/plebeian 
• https://fablesofaesop.com/the-belly-and-the-members.html

Emperor Domitian Wrote A Manual On Hair Care

Domitian ruled the Roman Empire from after the death of his brother Titus in the year 81, until the year 96, when a group of fearful conspirators had him assassinated. Domitian’s character remains difficult to assess—his reign was undoubtedly filled with heightened authoritarianism and executions, yet the cause and effect is debatable. Did Domitian’s oppression of the Senate and further centralization of government cause Senators to conspire against him, or did corruption and plotting among the ruthless members of the Senate spur on Domitian to brutally rein in the Senatorial class? Whatever the case, Domitian and the Roman elites were at odds and it did not help his reputation that the great contemporary writers of his age, such as Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, were his bitter enemies. Interestingly, the most positive account of Domitian arguably came from the biographer, Suetonius, who usually had few good words for most of the emperors after Augustus.

In The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius ended the work with a section on Domitian—it was very critical of the emperor (unsurprisingly, as Suetonius was Pliny’s protégé), but he did praise a few of Domitian’s policies. The biographer looked in favor on Domitian’s efforts to rebuild Rome and to refill its libraries after the damage caused to the city during the fire of year 80. Suetonius also mentioned that the emperor prohibited barbaric practices such as castration, and actively sought to end corruption among magistrates and governors (likely a reason as to why the senators detested him).

Suetonius also commented on Domitian’s academic interests. During the reigns of his father (Vespasian) and brother (Titus), Domitian apparently was enthusiastic about literature and poetry. Yet, when he became emperor in 81, he seemed to have little time to devote to writing, or otherwise thought being an author was an unnecessary distraction. Nevertheless, he reportedly tried to revive interest in the arts during his reign by funding competitions of rhetoric and music.

Despite his eventual withdrawal from writing, Emperor Domitian is known to have produced one book—De cura capillorum, a manual on hair maintenance and care. It was an ironic book, because Domitian was reportedly bald, but a fragment that survives from the text—“Yet my hair will go the same way, and I am resigned to having an old man’s head before my time”— suggests he may have written the piece before he completely lost his hair (Suetonius, Domitian, section 18). Although Domitian reportedly was sensitive about his baldness, his book on hair was allegedly witty and humorous. Unfortunately, the text is lost except for its catchy title (Care of the Hair) and two small fragments that were preserved by Suetonius.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Painting of Emperor Domitian by Domenico Fetti  (1589–), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Twelve Caesars (Domitian, section 18) by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves and edited by James B. Rives. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Domitian 
• https://www.ancient.eu/domitian/ 
• https://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/titus_domitian.html 
• https://www.historytoday.com/rhys-griffiths/emperor-domitian-ad-51-96 
• https://britishschoolatrome.wordpress.com/tag/domitian/ 
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/639608?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents  

The Origin Of The Phrase, “Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Fire”

Throughout history, many cultures have created sayings that denote the progression from a bad situation into an even worse outcome. In modern English, perhaps the most famous of such sayings is: “Out of the frying pan, into the fire.” Although this phrase is still widely used by many modern English speakers, the saying was actually coined more than half a millennia ago.

The first person believed to have used the saying in the English language was Thomas More, who, in 1528, used a version of the phrase in one of several treatises he published over the years against the religious beliefs of William Tyndale. Even though Thomas More was presumably the first person to write the saying in English, another author had specifically written of frying pans and fires almost two centuries before More.

The Florentine author, Giovanni Boccaccio (c. 1313-1375), wrote a huge piece of literature, labeled The Decameron, which was likely produced between the years 1349 and 1352. In the book, ten characters camp out in an abandoned villa during the time of the Black Death plague in Europe, and they decide to amuse themselves by telling each other stories over a span of ten days. Every character tells a story on each of the ten days, resulting in one hundred total tales being told by the end of the book. The theme for the stories presented on the second day in the book has to do with people who suffer misfortunes, but, in the end, they somehow receive a semblance of joy or happiness from their hardships.

The first story told in day two of The Decameron is about a group of three jesters who went to see the body of a saint being displayed in a church. Yet, the sanctuary was so packed with people that the jesters could not get close to the holy corpse. In order to bypass the crowd, one of the jesters, named Martellino, pretended to be paralyzed while the other two carried him through the crowd, all the while clamoring that their friend needed a miraculous healing. Once the jesters reached the saint’s body, Martellino pretended to be miraculously healed, but he was immediately recognized as a fraud by someone in the crowd. The outraged people in the church then began to viciously beat up Martellino, and he was only saved from the clutches of the mob when one of the other jesters called over a soldier and accused Martellino of being a thief. At that point, the battered jester was hauled away by the soldier and rescued from the clutches of the angry church-goers.

The arrest of Martellino, however, was not much of an improvement over the angry crowd in the church. He was falsely imprisoned in a dungeon for the charge of thievery and even suffered sessions of torture at the hands of his jailors. It was at that moment that Martellino’s friend who had arranged for the arrested cried out: “We have taken him out of the frying-pan, and dropped him straight in the fire” (Decameron, Second Day, first story, trans. G. H. McWilliam). Yet, the tale had turn of fortune. At the end, Martellino’s friends convinced a local prince to intervene on the imprisoned man’s behalf and all three jesters ended up better off than they began.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Engraved portrait of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) by Raffaello Sanzio Morghen (1758-1833), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Decameron (Second Day, First Story) by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by G. H. McWilliam. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Emperor Claudius’ Giggly Debut As A Historian

Despite being portrayed unglamorously by ancient Roman historians as a stumbling, bumbling, stammering, drooling, and nervously-ticking idiot, Emperor Claudius (r. 41-54) was likely one of the more scholarly emperors of Rome. The biographer, Suetonius (c. 70-130+), joined in describing the emperor unflatteringly, but he also hinted at there being another side to the man when he reported that Claudius was a multilingual author who published a forty-three-volume history of Rome, an eight-volume history of Carthage, a twenty-volume history on the Etruscans and an eight-volume autobiography. In addition to these major works, emperor Claudius also wrote a piece defending the late Roman orator, Cicero, and even published a book about the Roman alphabet. Suetonius further reported that Claudius’ Greek works were placed in a so-called Claudian Wing within the Library of Alexandria. Sadly, his many texts are lost except for small fragments.

Despite the speech and movement impediments that unfortunately caused the emperor to be ceaselessly teased and undervalued by the senatorial class and even his own family, Claudius reportedly decided to debut his Roman history with a public reading. If the event truly occurred as Suetonius claimed, then none of the Romans present at the reading would ever forget their experience.

As the story goes, Claudius was just beginning his public reading when a late arrival tried to sneak his way into the audience. The latecomer, however, was evidently a very, very obese man, so his wading through the crowd was in no way subtle. Nonetheless, the late person eventually reached a bench with available space and quickly lowered his weight onto the wooden seat. With the eyes of the audience, and Claudius too, curiously following the large fellow, the unfortunate latecomer broke the bench with his immense bulk, consequently sending himself and his bench neighbors tumbling to the ground. Lamentably for the heavy gentleman, the bizarre sight caused the attending audience to roar with uncontrollable laughter and, as Claudius was also known to be a man prone to laughing fits, he happily joined in with the mirth of the crowd.

After a while, the audience calmed down and their laughter subsided again to attentive silence. With everyone settled, the public reading resumed. Nevertheless, Claudius was apparently unable to banish the image of the seating tumult from his mind. Every time he attempted to begin narrating his history, he recalled the collapse of the bench and the flailing arms of surprised Romans. With such mental imagery bubbling up to the forefront of his mind, he found he could not finish a sentence before a giggle or a renewed bout of laughter interrupted his speech. Suetonius did not record if Claudius was able to finish that debut or if he gave up in the end. Whatever the case, Claudius eventually decided to hire professional orators to deliver public readings of his future written works.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Caractacus Pleading Before the Emperor Claudius in Rome, by Thomas Banks, 1774-1777, marble - Stowe House - Buckinghamshire, England. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves and edited by James B. Rives. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.

One Of Julius Caesar’s Most Famous Quotes Actually Came From An Ancient Greek Play

In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar rested with his army on the Gaul side of the Rubicon River. By crossing the Rubicon, he would be moving his forces without authorization from Gaul into Italy, officially igniting a rebellion against the Roman Senate and Pompey. To honor the momentous occasion before plunging the Roman Republic into civil war, Julius Caesar reportedly delivered one of his greatest phrases. Suetonius, representing the Latin tradition, claimed that Julius Caesar crossed the river after stating, “the die is cast” (The Twelve Caesars, Divius Julius 32). Plutarch, representing the Greek tradition, instead wrote that Caesar proclaimed, “let the die be cast,” and commented that the phrase was actually a quite commonly-used quote by people who are about to expose their fortunes to peril (Life of Caesar, 32).

The line was a well-known saying because it had been coined centuries before Caesar by the Greek dramatist and comic playwright, Menander (c. 342-291 BCE), who allegedly wrote over a hundred plays during his career. Regardless, what Caesar said at the Rubicon is still debated. Was it coincidence, or paraphrasing, or simply a later embellishment added by commentators? Julius Caesar’s own memoirs only add more questions to the conversation, as he did not deem whatever he said at the Rubicon to be worth recording in his war commentaries.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Julius Caesar "Crossing the Rubicon" from Abbott, Jacob, 1803-1879, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, translated by Robert Graves and edited by James B. Rives. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.
• http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Menander-Greek-dramatist  

The Frankish Scholar, Einhard, Saved The Genre Of Secular Biographies

Even though biographies of secular figures, such as state leaders, had been a common genre of texts in the classical period, the practice had fallen out of favor during the early Middle Ages. By the time the Frankish scholar, Einhard, was born around the year 770, the Christian church had all but reserved the biographical format for the purpose of documenting the lives of saints. Comments on un-sainted kings could still be found in historical annals, recording events year-by-year, or in other forms, such as poetry inspired by heroic deeds. A few decades before the birth of Einhard, Bede gave admirable attention to secular affairs in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in 731), but it was too broad in scope, and too shallow in intimate detail, for the secular sections to fit the bill of a biographical account.

Einhard joined the court of Charlemagne sometime during the early 790s, and by 796, he had become a highly respected member of Charlemagne’s scholarly circle. Sometime during his time with Charlemagne and the royal heirs, Einhard was inspired to write down a detailed account of the great king’s life and death. While today this idea seems natural, in his own time, Einhard’s determination to write solely about a secular king would have seemed almost revolutionary. There were very few, if any, contemporary biographies about state rulers that Einhard could use as a model for his own work. Instead, he had to reach back to ancient 1st-and 2nd-century Rome in order to study the formulas used by the famous biographers, Plutarch and Suetonius. Einhard latched onto Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars, in particular, using the ancient series of biographies as a rubric for his own account of Charlemagne.

When Einhard composed his Life of Charlemagne sometime between 817-827, he jolted life back into the genre of secular biographies. Despite criticism from contemporary saint biographers, Einhard’s small text quickly became one of the most popular written works of the Middle Ages. Before the end of the 9th century, Einhard’s work prompted new biographical works to emerge. Notker the Stammerer produced his own biography of Charlemagne (written between 883-887) in response to Einhard and, across the English Channel, a Welshman named Asser wrote a biography (c. 893) about the famous Anglo-Saxon ruler, King Alfred the Great.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Portait of Jean Mielot, by Jean Le Tavernier (–1462), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammer, translated by David Ganz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources translated, introduced and denoted by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.

Battles Of Insults In Icelandic Sagas

Most cultures seem to have a signature element that they like to add to their literature. The ancient Greeks and Romans enjoyed preparing long and elaborate speeches for their historical characters. The ancient Chinese had a fondness for wise parables and witty proverbs. The medieval Icelanders, too, were no exception. Even though writing sagas did not become popular in Iceland until the 13th century, the Icelandic authors were prolific enough with their literature to create one of the most extensive bodies of medieval European texts, preserving for posterity a great deal of folklore, mythology and history. In their writings, the Icelanders introduced several innovative literary techniques and styles, including the saga structure and skaldic verse. Yet, the focus of this article is an element of Icelandic literature that was a bit more coarse—writers of sagas frequently made their characters engage in verbal battles of wits and insults.

Usually, these debates of insults could be divided into two classifications. If characters randomly met and started spitting insults at each other in a field, the exchange would likely be defined as a senna. If the insult slinging occurred in a more organized environment, perhaps with the contestants sitting around a table, the scene could be labeled a mannjafnađr. Not only did these exchanges create fun dialogue between characters, but the participants in the verbal battles could also refer to pieces of mythology and folklore while insulting their opponents.

In the opinion of the medieval Icelanders, who lived in an age very different from our own, charges of unmanliness or homosexuality were the gravest insults a person could spew. The latter accusation was considered so dire in Iceland that anyone who used that insult unjustly could be outlawed. Even so, the heroes of the Icelandic sagas often used such verbal attacks in their arguments. In fact, in only two paragraphs of dialogue, the character Sinfjotli (from the popular Saga of the Volsungs), used both insults in multiple ways during a senna between him and King Granmar.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Loki Taunting Bragi in a meeting of Æsir, by W.G. Collingwood (1854 - 1932), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Saga of the Volsungs, by an anonymous 13th-century Icelander, translated by Jesse L. Byock. New York: Penguin Classics, 1990, 1999.
• https://www.jstor.org/stable/40918297?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents  

Thomas Jefferson Sold More Than 6,000 Books To The U. S. Library Of Congress

In August, 1814, British forces burned Washington D.C., the capital of the young United States of America. Capital Hill was damaged by the flames, and the Library of Congress was lost. Luckily for the fledgling country, one of the founding fathers of the United States had an obsessive addiction to collecting books. Furthermore, he was plagued by debts and was more than willing to sell his possessions.

In 1815, Thomas Jefferson sold an enormous collection of 6,487 books to the government for an estimated total of $23,950. The collection contained both ancient classics and modern works—Jefferson’s favorite ancient author was Cicero, by whom he owned at least forty texts. The wide variety of genres and topics in the collection caused a stir among the members (and observers) of the Congress, who thought that the U. S. government should not have paid for some of the odd volumes that Jefferson stumbled across during his studies.

Despite Jefferson’s still existent debts, he continued to buy an endless supply of books, even after selling thousands to the Library of Congress. When he died in 1826, he had still been burdened by a debt of $107,000—a sum that equates to more than 2 million modern U. S. dollars. Shortly after his death, Jefferson’s second massive collection of books (numbering in the thousands) was auctioned off, along with most of his other possessions.

Sadly, on the Christmas Eve of 1851, around 2/3 of Jefferson’s original contribution to the Library of Congress was lost in another fire. Interestingly, the Library of Congress is trying to procure copies of the texts that were destroyed.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture attribution: (Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, by Mather Brown (1761–1831), in front of a library painted by Rudolf von Alt  (1812–1905), both images are [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html 
• http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter10/jefferson.cfm 
• https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/debt 
• http://www.history.com/topics/war-of-1812  

Most Speeches From Ancient History Books Are Fake

This statement will not come as a surprise to those who are well-versed in history, but others who know less about the evolution of historical writing may find the idea shocking—most speeches recorded by ancient historians were falsified. Unless the historian from antiquity specifically stated that an included speech within his work was derived from an official tablet or monument, you can safely assume that most of the speech was fabricated by the author. For the most part, the earliest historians (except Thucydides) did not see this as a problem; the goal of most ancient historians was to make their work dramatic and exciting, even at the expense of truthfulness.

Although the speeches recorded by ancient historians were usually falsified, that does not mean that the ideas and strategies presented in the speeches were inaccurate. Most of the classical historians, even if the speech was wholly their own creation, tried to write their speeches in the character of their subject. If the historian was writing a speech for a cautious man, the speech would be written from a viewpoint of caution; if the speech was for a man of rash action, the wording would be tailored toward careless impulsiveness. In short, ancient writers usually had no clue what the people they wrote about actually said, so they made do with fabricating speeches that they believed were in character with what these people would have said.

Some ancient historians who were writing about contemporary events did likely hear speeches from the people that they wrote about in their books. Yet, the ancients did not have the convenience of televised speeches or audio recordings that now grace us today—it was simply much harder to record or remember speeches with accuracy in the days of old. As a result, even speeches that were written down by first-hand witnesses were more often than not simplified summaries of what was actually said.

Thucydides, regarded by many to be the greatest historian from ancient Greece, openly wrote about the use of fake speeches in history books, including his own:

“In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listed to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.”

(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1, chapter 22)

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Pericles' funeral oration, painted by Philipp Foltz (1805–1877), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner and introduced by M. I. Finley. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972.  

The History of Paper Is Anything But Blank

It is amazing just how much we know about the history of stationery. Papyrus was the first popular light medium for writing. It was used in the Middle East and Europe after tablets and clay fell out of fashion. Papyrus production is believed to have begun around 3500 BCE in Egypt, and eventually became a sought-after item in the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman sources such as Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 CE) suggested that a shortage in papyrus shipments from Egypt led to the eventual rise of another form of stationery—parchment.

Although parchment grew in popularity after papyrus, it had already been around for a very long time. As far as we know, parchment was first produced sometime during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt (approximately 2613-2465 BCE). This material was created from animal skin that had been stretched out, scraped clean and dried free of unwanted moisture. Parchment had a few advantages over papyrus. For one, parchment did not mold and rot as papyrus did in the more humid regions of Greece and Italy. Even more importantly, parchment could be folded for more complex codices and books, while papyrus would snap and crack under the same stress. It is uncertain exactly when parchment overtook papyrus, but the Greek city of Pergamon is believed to have begun producing parchment in either the 3rd or the 2nd century BCE, during the reign of Eumenes I or Eumenes II.

In East Asia, another type of stationery was produced that would eventually displace parchment. The distant ancestor of modern paper is believed to trace well back before the production of Egyptian papyrus.  Based on the discovery of ancient stone tools, archaeologists and anthropologists have proposed that people in Southeast China may have begun producing barkcloth fabric from the beaten fibers of paper mulberry trees (Broussonetia papyrifera) as early as the 6th and 5th millennia BCE. Yet, this was far from our conception of paper. At first, the barkcloth was used for clothing and other aesthetic purposes, but, after thousands of years, it was utilized for writing. In the traditional folklorish account of the birth of paper, a man named Cau Lun (or Ts’ai Lun) is often given credit with the invention of paper in 105 CE. He is said to have created paper by mixing paper mulberry tree fibers with other substances, such as bast (a fiber from the phloem, or vascular tissue, of a plant) and discarded scraps of netting and hemp. Despite this story, many historians and archaeologists believe that this type of paper production in China began as early as the 1st century BCE. In corroboration of this, archaeologists digging near Dunhuang in Gansu Province found Buddhist writings on paper that was dated to around 8 BCE. Whatever the case may be, historians do not believe that paper stationary became a truly popularized item in China until the 3rd century CE. From China, papermaking traveled to Korea, and from there, it journeyed to Japan.

The expanding Islamic empires of the 8th century CE were responsible for spreading the use of paper westward. The first papermaking facility near the civilizations built around the Mediterranean Sea was constructed in Baghdad in either 793 or 794. There, the paper was made from more readily available fibers other than those from the paper mulberry tree. As a result, the paper from Baghdad was thicker, but less costly. Eventually, new paper mills were created in the Middle East and Europe. The cities of Damascus and Cairo were quick to pick up on papermaking. Similarly the Muslim-controlled city of Xàtiva, Spain, opened up a paper mill around 1120. Fabriano, Italy, also constructed its own paper mill in 1264, signaling that the use and production of paper was becoming more popular in non-Islamic Europe. England was probably one of the stragglers in local paper production, with a mill that opened up as late as 1588, in the town of Dartford.

Despite its rise in Europe and the Middle East, paper long remained an expensive and luxurious commodity that was not easily accessibly for all people. It would take industrialization and the invention of new machinery in the 19th century for paper to be mass-produced economically for the use of mankind.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Top picture attribution: (Collage of The Edwin Smith papyrus (left), Barkcloth clothing from Yunnan Province, China (Center), a vellum page from the Codex runicus (right), all [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies: The Role of Cross-Border Trade and Travel by Michael C. Howard. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012.  
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/papermaking 
• https://www.britannica.com/technology/paper  
• http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/people/faculty/bae/pdfs/2014-li-et-al-qI-in-press.pdf