Laudator Temporis Acti

Jerome, Letters 8.1-2 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 54, pp. 31-32; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow, with his notes):

The comic poet Turpilius,² speaking of the exchange of letters, says: “It is the only thing which makes the absent present.” Though made in a bit of fiction, the remark is not untrue. For what is there so present, to put it that way, when we are absent from each other, as to be able to speak to and to hear those you love through correspondence? Take even those primitive Italian people whom Ennius calls the casci³ who, as Cicero states in his books on rhetoric,⁴ hunted their food like wild animals: before papyrus and parchment came into use, they used to exchange conversation through notes hewed into wood or the bark of trees. Hence men called the bearers of these “board-bearers,” and the writers of them “bark-users,” from their use of the hark of trees.⁵ Under how great obligation then are we, living in a world civilized by the arts, not to discontinue a practice afforded themselves by men living in a state of stark savagery and, to an extent, ignorant of human ways!

² Of whom only some few titles and fragments survive; floruit 130 B.C.

³ Cf. Ennius, Annales 24: “quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.” Cascus = “old,” “very old,” “primeval.”

⁴ Cf. Cicero, De invent. rhetorica 1.2.

⁵ Letter carriers were called tabellarii, the name deriving from tabula, a “plank,” “board,” “writing tablet.” Scribes were called librarii, this deriving from liber, the "inner bark” or “rind” of a tree, “paper,” “parchment,” “book.”

Turpilius comicus tractans de vicissitudine litterarum: 'sola', inquit, 'res est, quae homines absentes praesentes faciat'. nec falsum dedit, quamquam in re non vera, sententiam. quid enim est, ut ita dicam, tam praesens inter absentes, quam per epistulas et adloqui et audire quos diligas? nam et rudes illi Italiae homines, quos cascos Ennius appellat, qui sibi, ut in Rhetoricis Cicero ait, victu fero vitam requirebant, ante chartae et membranarum usum aut in dedolatis ex ligno codicellis aut in corticibus arborum mutua epistularum adloquia missitabant; unde et portitores earum tabellarios et scriptores a libris arborum librarios vocavere. quanto igitur nos expolito iam artibus mundo id non debemus omittere, quod sibi praestiterunt, apud quos erat cruda rusticitas et qui humanitatem quodammodo nesciebant!