Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Liber

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

LIBER (βίβλος). Literally, the fine bark or rind of the Egyptian papyrus, which was used for writing upon; whence it came to signify the work or MS. so written, which we call a book. (Plin. H. N. xiii. 21.) To form this, a sufficient number of strips were glued together into one long continuous sheet, which, for convenience in use, was made up into a cylindrical roll (volumen), so that the reader gradually undid it, as he went on, in the manner represented by the annexed example (Liber/1.1), from a Pompeian painting; hence the expressions pervolutare, volvere, evolvere librum, mean to read a work. Cic. Att. v. 12. Tusc. i. 11. Brut. 87.

2. When the work extended to any length, and was divided into seperate parts, it was usual to roll up the MS. containing each one of these parts into a separate volume; which was then called a book, in the same sense which we attach to the word when we say the twelve books of Virgil. Cic. Div. ii. 1.

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  Liber/1.1