Re: Emperor: Rise Of The Middle Kingdom 2.0.0.2 GOG CODEX
Cinty Bolner
The Ancient Romans developed the form from wax tablets. The gradual replacement of the scroll by the codex has been called the most important advance in book making before the invention of the printing press.[6] The codex transformed the shape of the book itself, and offered a form that has lasted ever since.[7] The spread of the codex is often associated with the rise of Christianity, which early on adopted the format for the Bible.[8] First described in the 1st century of the Common Era, when the Roman poet Martial praised its convenient use, the codex achieved numerical parity with the scroll around 300 CE,[9] and had completely replaced it throughout what was by then a Christianized Greco-Roman world by the 6th century.[10]
By a close examination of the physical attributes of a codex, it is sometimes possible to match up long-separated elements originally from the same book. In 13th-century book publishing, due to secularization, stationers or libraires emerged. They would receive commissions for texts, which they would contract out to scribes, illustrators, and binders, to whom they supplied materials. Due to the systematic format used for assembly by the libraire, the structure can be used to reconstruct the original order of a manuscript. However, complications can arise in the study of a codex. Manuscripts were frequently rebound, and this resulted in a particular codex incorporating works of different dates and origins, thus different internal structures. Additionally, a binder could alter or unify these structures to ensure a better fit for the new binding.[42] Completed quires or books of quires might constitute independent book units- booklets, which could be returned to the stationer, or combined with other texts to make anthologies or miscellanies. Exemplars were sometimes divided into quires for simultaneous copying and loaned out to students for study. To facilitate this, catchwords were used- a word at the end of a page providing the next page's first word.[37][43]
In the eastern Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine rises to power in the fourth century BC and develops Constantinople as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. After Constantine, Emperor Justinian the Great comes to power in the sixth century BC and develops his infamous code of law. However, the first important achievements of Byzantine scholarship start during the middle of the ninth century AD (Reynolds 2013, 58).
Over the course of the late Roman Empire, vellum - or animal skin - bound into the form of a codex - the form of our modern-day book - would become the preferred writing surface. A number of factors may have led to this change. The decline of the Roman Empire in the west and related unrest in the Mediterranean may have made the acquisition of papyrus - much of it grown in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean - more difficult. Moreover, as a product, a leather bound codex is more durable than a scroll made of papyrus. The rise of Christianity, too, seemed to play a role.
One of the most interesting discussion of books is by the Roman jurist Ulpian, who flourished early in the third century AD, during the reign of Caracalla. His legal opinions survive in extracts from the Digest, a consolidation of Roman law published by the Byzantine emperor Justinian three-hundred years later. Commenting on two other jurists who wrote in the first-century AD, Ulpian sought to define what exactly is meant by "a book," at least when donated in a will. "Under the term books are included all rolls, whether of papyrus or parchment or any other material....But are they due if they are in codex-form, either of parchment or papyrus or ivory or some other material, or of waxed tablets" (XXII.52)? When books have been bequeathed, parchments also are to be included. If one-hundred books have been given, "we shall give him a hundred rolls, not a hundred of what someone has measured out by his own ingenuity to suffice for writing a book. For instance, if he should have the whole of Homer in one roll, we shall not count this as forty-eight books, but shall take the whole roll of Homer to be one book" (52.1). Moreover, "books fully written out, though not yet hammered or ornamented, will be included. So will books not yet glued together or corrected; and even parchments not yet bound together will be included" (52.5). Blank parchment or papyrus obviously are not to be included although, if a scholar were to leave his entire collection of papyri when his library comprised nothing but books, then no doubt books were intended, "because many people commonly call books papyri" (52.4).
While non-Christian traditions such as Judaism used scrolls, early Christians used codices before it became popular. Christian scholars seemed to have used codices in order to distinguish their writings from Jewish scholarly works due to controversy and dispute particularly regarding the Old Testament and other theological writings. By the fifth century, the codex became the primary writing medium for a general use. While the practical advantages of the codex format contributed to its increasing use, the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire may have helped spread its popularity.
Codex entries can be categorized on a continuum. Some are free, in the sense that they are collected simply by completing quest tasks. These items help to clarify the basic background of various locations and central figures in a class story. Other codex entries are found off the beaten path, requiring some time to be spent on exploration and overcoming minor challenges. In this middle area, examples might include:
Many millennia later, after the rise of the Republic, Belsavis became known as an unremarkable planet in the middle of an ice age, populated by only a handful of primitives. It was only happenstance that caused Republic scouts to notice first the tropical rifts that defied the freezing temperatures, and then the strange vaults and the alien structures burrowing into the core of the planet.
Roman codices, meaning legal documents written on wooden tabulae, plausibly were the prototypes for Christian papyrus codices. The Jewish Revolt against Rome, 115-117 GC, resulted in carnage in Alexandria, a leading center of closely intertwined Jewish and Christian life. Perhaps political fallout from the Jewish Revolt prompted Christians to differentiate themselves from Jews and signal affiliation with Rome through the use of the codex for Christian scripture.[6] But another possibility is more in keeping with the upside-down Christian vision. Christians rejected the elite status competition centered on Greek literature. With codices, Christians set themselves apart from that type of literature and life. Moreover, while Christians did not seek the violent overthrow of the Roman Empire, they envisioned a higher kingdom and a greater savior than the Roman emperor:
[3] As a text storage technology, the codex has important advantages over the scroll. Because the rolling of a scroll is not easily reversed, a scroll typically has writing on only one side of the writing material. Hence for the same text, a book requires only roughly half as much writing material as does a scroll. In addition, the scroll is a sequential access technology. Just as for a magnetic tape, you have to scroll through to access a point in the middle. The codex, in contrasts is a random-access technology like a disk drive. You can access the text from any book page by seeking to open the book at that page. The main technological disadvantage of the codex relative to the scroll is that the codex requires slightly more skill to produce (the skills to cut uniform writing material and to make a binding and a cover).
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