Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Penna

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. 

PENNA. A quill, or large feather growing from the wing or tail, as contradistinct from pluma, the small feather composing the general plumage of the body (Columell. viii. 2. 10.); employed for various purposes, the whole feather for sweeping and dusting out confined or intricate recesses (Pallad. Nov. viii. 1.); the quill part for making tooth-picks (Mart. xiv. 22.); the feather end for making a wing (ala) to the arrow (Ov. Met. vi. 258.), which kepts its head straight, and directed its course through the air. SAGITTA.

2. A pen for writing (Isidor. Orig. xiv. 3.), made of a quill, as shown by the annexed example (Penna/2.1), from the Columns of Trajan and Antoninus, on both of which it appears in the hands of a female figure, personified as Victory, and occupied in recording the military successes of those emperors. The use of the quill, as an implement for writing upon parchment or paper, is, however, of a comparatively late period, the reed or cane (arundo, calamus) being solely employed for that purpose in early times. Beckman assigns the fifth century as the period of its introduction (History of Inventions, vol. i. p. 408. London, 1846); but he was only cognizant of one instance where it is represented on works of art — the marble of the goddess Egeria (Gronov. Thesaur. Antiq. Gr. 2. n. 28.), in which he suggests the probability of the pen having been added by a subsequent hand. Admitting that to be an established fact, instead of a supposition, the two instances quoted above will still remain to be disposed of; and as the object in question appears on both of them about midway up the columns, that is, at an elevation of nearly sixty-four feet above the ground, it would be mere folly to suppose that a scaffolding of that height was ever erected for the useless purpose of making any such addition. It is, therefore, obvious that quill pens were made as early at least as the commencement of the second century, when the Column of Trajan was executed, though they may not have come into general or common use until a much later period.

• 
  Penna/2.1