Pencil

Elongated piece of solid wood that has a thinned and prominent end that ends in a round tip and a body with a circular section that progressively decreases in thickness until the opposite end, which is finished with a flat and blunt surface, currently partially fractured. .

Styluses, styluses or punches are instruments used to write or make marks on wax tablets or soft materials. They were used since ancient times, both in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and their use was widespread even until the Middle Ages. The pointed part is intended to trace the signs or letters on the wax, while the opposite flat part serves to crush the wax and erase (vertere stilum) the lines made, once again leaving the surface ready for a new writing with a different message. .

Precisely because of this ease of writing and erasing in the classical Roman world, the style was one of the most widespread elements of writing in the domestic, school and commercial spheres, to transmit ephemeral messages whose permanence was not essential to preserve, as in the case of learning. from children, letters and notes between friends, merchants and families, but they were even used in official and private documents that did not need to be kept. The support of writing contributed to this widespread use of the style, that is, the wax tablet or tabula cerata (diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs made of hollowed wood filled with natural wax) since they were easy to transport, weighed little and their wax was It could be reused numerous times and changed for a new one when necessary. Styles of wood, the most numerous, but also of metal, bone and ivory, have been preserved, and their use in tablets has been documented in numerous fresco pictorial illustrations (Pompeii) and in original tablets from archaeological sites (Vindolanda, Pompeii , Dacia, Transylvania).

To prepare texts intended to last, such as laws or literary works, the Romans used the calamus, a hollow wooden stem to write with ink (atramentum) on wood, parchment or papyrus. Even more lasting was the incised writing on stone, metal or ceramic.

Regarding Roman writing on tablets, we can point out as general characteristics that the texts are not punctuated, and only occasionally differentiate the header from the rest. There is a tendency to tilt the letter to the right (italics) and letters are located at different heights. Abbreviations, symbols and ligatures between two or more letters are frequently used, and between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD. The capital letter predominated and later gave way to the lowercase letter.