Martial in his first epistle points out the bookseller's shop opposite the Julian Forum where his works may be obtained "smoothed with pumice stone and decorated with purple." Seneca mentions books ornamented "cum imaginabus." Varro is related by the younger Pliny to have illustrated his works by pictures of more than seven hundred illustrious persons. Martial dwells on the edition of Virgil, with his portrait as a frontispiece. The earliest recorded instance of the richer adornments of golden lettering on purple or rose-stained vellum is given by Julius Capitolinus in his life of the Emperor Maximinus the younger. He therein mentions that the mother of the emperor presented to him on his return to his tutor (early in the third century), a copy of the works of Homer, written in gold upon purple vellum. The fugitive character, as before stated, of a great many of the colored inks, and indeed most of the black ones which were undoubtedly employed, is the principal reason why so few specimens of them remain to us. Those which have proved themselves so lasting in character as to be still extant, bear evidence of extreme care in the preparation of both the inks and the materials on which the writings appear. Perhaps one of the finest illustrations of this practice is to be found in a book of the Four Gospels of Italian origin, discovered in the tenth century (a work of the fourth century) and deposited in the Harlein Library. This book is written in "Indian" ink and possesses magnificently embellished and illuminated letters at the beginning of each Gospel, which are on vellum stained in different colors. St. Jerome calls attention to this class of books in a well-known passage of his preface to the Book of Job, also written in the fourth century, where he explains as translated: "Let those who will have old books written in gold and silver on purple parchment, or, as they are commonly called, in uncial-letters,--rather ponderous loads than books,--so long as they permit me and mine to have copies, and rather correct than beautiful books." It has been said that the Tanno-gallate of Iron Inks (iron salts, nut-galls and gum) were first used in the fourth century. There is positively no credible authority for such a statement, nor is there a single monument in the shape of a documentary specimen of ink writing of that one or an earlier century made with such an ink in any public or private library and as far as known in existence.