But the most productive of ancient book-makers were the Romans. In Rome publishing houses were flourishing in the time of Cicero (50 B.C.). Atticus, one of Cicero's best friends, was a publisher. Let us see how a book was made in his establishment. Of course, there were no type-setters or printing-presses. Every book was a manuscript; every word of every copy had to be written with a pen. The writing was sometimes done by slaves trained to write neatly and rapidly. We may imagine 50 or 100 slaves sitting at desks in a room writing to the dictation of the reader. Now if Atticus had ten readers each of whom dictated to 100 slaves it took only two or three days for the publication of 1,000 copies of one of his friend Cicero's books. Of course every copy would not be perfect. The slave would sometimes make blunders and write what the reader did not dictate. But books in our own time are not free of errors. An English poet recently wrote: "Like dew-drops upon fresh blown roses." In print the first letter of the last word in the line appeared as _n_ instead of _r_. This mistake disfigured thousands of copies. In the Roman publishing house such a blunder marred only one copy. You can readily see that by methods just described books could be made in great numbers. And so they were. Slaves were cheap and numerous and the cost of publication was small. It is estimated that a good sized volume in Nero's time (50 A.D.) would sell for a shilling. Books were cheaper in those days than they had ever been before and almost as cheap as they are to-day, perhaps. The Roman world became satiated with reading matter. The poet Martial exclaimed, "Every one has me in his pocket, every one has me in his hand." Books became a drug on the market and could be sold only to grocers for "wrapping up pastry and spices." [Illustration: FIG. 8.--BOOK-MAKING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.] But a time was to come when books would not be so plentiful and cheap. With the overthrow of Rome (476 A.D.) culture received a blow from which it did not recover for a thousand years. The barbarian invaders of Southern Europe destroyed all the books they could find and caused the writers of books to flee within the walls of the churches. Throughout the Middle Ages nearly all the writing in Europe was done in the religious houses of monks (Fig. 8), and nearly all the books written were of a religious nature. The monks worked with the greatest patience and care upon their manuscripts. They often wrote on vellum (calf-skin parchment) and illuminated the page with beautiful colors and adorned it with artistic figures.