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236 THEORIES OF STYLE IN LITERATURE
Equotuticum nor Bristolian Clifton can ever have been as
" hard up " for water as the Mecca caravan. And the differences
were as great in respect to the want of paper bet\vtvn
the Athens of Pericles or Alexander and the Rome of Augustus
Caesar. Athens had bad poets, whose names have come down
to modern times ;
but Athens could no more have afforded to
punish bad authors by sending their works to grocers
" in vicum vendentem pus et odores,
Et piper, et quicquid chartis amicitur "
ineptis
than London, because gorged with the wealth of two Indies,
can afford to pave her streets with silver. This practice
of applying unsalable authors to the ignoble uses of retail
dealers in petty articles must have existed in Rome for some
time before it could have attracted the notice of Horace, and
upon some considerable scale as a known public usage before
it could have roused any echoes of public mirth as a satiric
allusion, or have had any meaning and sting.
In that one revelation of Horace we see a proof how much
paper had become more plentiful. It is true that so long as
men dressed in woolen materials it was impossible to look for
a cheap paper.
well for ten guineas a copy.
Maga might have been printed at Rome very
Paper was dear, undoubtedly,
but it could be had. On the other hand, how desperate must
have been the bankruptcy at Athens in all materials for receiving
the record of thoughts, when we find a polished people
having no better tickets or cards for conveying their sentiments
to the public than shells ! Thence came the very name
for civil banishment, viz. ostracism,
marked on an ostracon, or marine shell.
because the votes were
Again,
in another
great city, viz. Syracuse, you see men reduced to petalism, or
marking their votes by the petals of shrubs. Elsewhere, as
indeed many centuries nearer to our own times in Constantinople,
bull's hide was used for the same purpose.