in favour of a
press (_armarium_), a piece of furniture which would hold rolls
(_volumina_) as well as books (_codices_), and was in fact, as I shall
shew, used for both purposes. The word (_armarium_) occurs commonly in
Cicero, and other writers of the best period, for a piece of furniture in
which valuables of all kinds, and household gear, were stowed away; and
Vitruvius[92] uses it for a book-case. A critic, he says, "produced from
certain presses an infinite number of rolls." In later Latin writers--that
is from the middle of the first century A.D.--no other word, speaking
generally, occurs.

The jurist Ulpian, who died A.D. 228, in a discussion as to what is
comprised under the term _liber_, decides in favour of including all rolls
(_volumina_) of whatever material, and then considers the question whether
_codices_ come under the same category or not--thereby shewing that in his
day both forms of books were in use. Again, when a library (_bibliotheca_)
has been bequeathed, it is questioned whether the bequest includes merely
the press or presses (_armarium vel armaria_), or the books as well[93].

The Ulpian Library, or rather Libraries, in Trajan's Forum, built about
114 A.D.[94], were fitted up with presses, as we learn from the passage in
Vopiscus which I have already quoted; and when the ruins of the section of
that library which stood next to the Quirinal Hill were excavated by the
French, a very interesting trace of one of these presses was discovered.
Nibby, the Roman antiquary, thus describes it:

Beyond the above-mentioned bases [of the columns in the
portico] some remains of the inside of the room became
visible on the right. They consisted of a piece of
curtain-wall, admirably constructed of brick, part of
the side-wall, with a rectangular niche of large size in
the form of a press (_in foggia di armadio_). One
ascended to this by three steps, with a landing-place in
front of them, on which it was possible to stand with
ease. On the sides of this niche there still exist
traces of the hinges, on which the panels and the
wickets, probably of bronze, rested[95].

It seems to me that we have here an early instance, perhaps the earliest,
of those presses in the thickness of the wall which were so common
afterwards in the monasteries and in private libraries also. A similar
press, on a smaller scale, is described by the younger Pliny: "My
bedroom," he says, "h