Bibliomania: A scribe by any name is still a scribe



Of course, before the advent of mechanized printing, copyists copied books. And because of the importance of scribes to the culture of learning in ancient Greece, words evolved to differentiate between kinds of copyists.

From  Manual of Classical Literature, by Johann Eschenburg:  
[Those] who had distinguished skill in writing, were called * Those, who applied themselves to take down discourses or addresses, and so made use of notes and abbreviations, were named  and Such as wrote in golden letters, or ornamented with golden initial letters manuscripts, in which places had been left for that purpose, were termed
In later years, when the Romans had the ascendancy,
... transcribers received the Roman appellation of notaries (notarii). In the Middle Ages the work of transcribing was especially the employment of ecclesiastics and monks in the convents and abbeys, in which there was usually an apartment expressly fitted for the object, called the scriptorium.
Alexandria was the principal resort of the copyists in the later periods of Grecian literature. Here the Calligraphi were very numerous even until the irruption of the Arabs.
*I can't read Greek, either.

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