Rome - Prologue. Prologue

On one of my many trips to Europe, I stayed in a small village northeast of Rome. While I was there, I came upon a small bookshop. Curious, I walked into the shop looking for old historical books. I started to talk to the owner about the history and particularly the history of this region of Italy. He said he had several books, which he showed me. I had some of those books in English; his were in Latin. We discussed the original documents that some of the authors used as background material. That led to the discussion of the ancient Roman scrolls. He said he believed that some of the books we were looking at were translations of those scrolls. He mentioned that he had some scrolls, which he kept in a special room. I asked if I could see them, he said he would think about it.

Three days later, after me asking every day, he agreed to let me see them. He led me to a small room in the back of his shop. The room was unlit. He said he didn’t want them to be destroyed by light. He had five scrolls, putting on gloves, he took one down off the shelf, unrolled it for me. I noticed two things: one, they were in Greek, and two, the ink was brown and not black.

I knew that the early Romans made ink with soot and olive oil. I told him these weren’t authentic since the ink wasn’t black. He smiled and said, these are authentic. He had the analysis to prove it.

After a bit of a discussion and my pleading to read them, he agreed only if I met his conditions. It took me a little over a week to read them and another week to transcribe them into English. The transcription follows.