It is difficult to say to what extent illuminated manuscripts were known to the ancient Greeks, but they were certainly not uncommon in Rome towards the close of the Republic; and it may fairly be assumed that it was from the Greeks that the very inartistic Romans derived the custom of decorating manuscripts with painted miniatures. _Illustrations in Roman MSS._ Pliny tells us (_Hist. Nat._ XXXV. 11) that a number of manuscripts in the library of M. Varro in the first century B.C. contained no less than 700 portraits of illustrious personages. That the original manuscript of Vitruvius' work on _Architecture_ was illustrated with explanatory pictures is shown by the frequent reference in the text to these lost illustrations which are mentioned as being at the end of the work; _e.g._ see III., _Praef._, 4. A manuscript written in letters of gold is mentioned by Suetonius (_Nero_, 10); this was a copy of Nero's own poem which was publicly read aloud to an audience on the Capitol, and was then deposited in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. _Writing in gold._ Again, two centuries later the mother of Maximus, who was titular Caesar from 235 to 238 A.D., is said to have given him a manuscript of Homer's poems written in gold letters on purple vellum; see Jul. Capit., _Max. Vita_. There is, in short, abundant evidence to show that illuminated manuscripts were common among the Romans of the Imperial period; and there is a very strong probability that manuscripts decorated with miniatures were no less frequent in the great libraries of the Ptolemies and of the Attalid kings, in fact throughout the Greek world from the time of Alexander the Great downwards, if not earlier still. _Greek miniatures._ Some notion of the great beauty of the illustrations in Greek manuscripts may perhaps be gathered from an examination of the masterly and delicately graceful drawings incised in outline which decorate the finest of the Greek bronze _cistae_. Nothing could surpass the perfect beauty of the outline engravings on the so-called _Ficoronian cista_, which is now preserved in the Museo del Collegio Romano in Rome. Part of this series representing scenes from the adventures of the Argonauts is shown on fig. 1. _Two sources of knowledge._ With regard to the general scheme of decoration in classical manuscripts, we have the evidence of a few existing examples dating from about the time of Constantine, and also a large number of copies of Roman manuscript-pictures of earlier date than the third century A.D., which are to be seen in various Italian and Byzantine manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Part of the drawing engraved on the bronze _cista_ of Ficoroni, dating from the early part of the fourth century B.C. A beautiful example of Greek drawing.] _Isolated pictures._ _Mediaeval method._