WTF is a Codex?

What is a Codex?

A codex is an ancient book format consisting of pages bound together along one side and protected by wooden covers. While codices (plural) are the historical ancestor to our modern book, they technically refer only to older manuscripts, which are handwritten texts. The codex first appeared in the 1^st century CE, but society wasn’t into this new-fangled invention. It finally gained popularity in the 5^th century CE, eventually replacing the scroll as the dominant book format.

How to Make a Codex

Codices consist of folded gatherings of papyrus, parchment, or vellum sheets. These gatherings are called quires. 

1. One quire is 4 sheets folded in half down the middle, making 8 leaves, which is 16 pages.¹ A book of sheets folded in half is a folio. Alternatively, you can grab as many sheets as you want to make your quire. 4 is the standard, but you do you. 
2. Another method allows you to create a smaller codex, which simply requires more folding. This time, take one sheet and fold it down the middle. Then fold it again. Now you’ve got 4 leaves and 8 pages, making the format a quarto. Don’t forget to cut the tops of the leaves to free them from their brethren.
3. If you want to go even smaller, fold that baby a third time to get 8 leaves, 16 pages. This is an octavo.
4. Whichever method you use, make as many quires as desired for your literary masterpiece.
5. The next step is to grab some boards for covers. The ancients often used wood, but you can use anything you’d like. Now sew those quires into the boards through the folded crease. Decorate the shit out of your boards to make a fancy-ass cover. 

For detailed instructions so you don’t fuck up, check out the Dartmouth Ancient Books Lab’s step-by-step guide to making your own codex.

A Brief History of Codices

Let’s dive into the history of codices to see where they first pop up in history and how they became the dominant book format.

Scrolls Reign Supreme

For much of antiquity, scrolls (volumen) were the primary writing format. The ancients made scrolls with sheets of papyrus and later, parchment. 

Ancient libraries in Egypt, Greece, and Rome were filled to the brim with scrolls. Librarians arranged them on shelves by stacking them on top of each other. Each scroll had a tag identifying its title and author, so readers could select the text of their choice. The Ancient Greeks called these tags sillybos (syllabus) and the Romans titulus (title).² Longer texts were split into multiple scrolls, so it could be a pain in the butt to find parts 1, 2, 3, etc. on the shelf. When not stored in shelves or cabinets, scrolls were kept in stone or wooden jars.

Disadvantages of Scrolls

Despite being the dominant text format, scrolls were a bitch to handle. You had to unroll one side and roll up the other while reading. This is a lot of unrolling and rolling, especially for long texts. Scribes wrote texts vertically or horizontally, but the latter was most popular. When you were done, you had to be sure to reroll the scroll for the next guy. Be kind, rewind. 

There were other clear disadvantages to scrolls. Since you’re using both hands to keep the scroll open and are in a constant state of unrolling/rolling, you can’t do things like take notes or pick your nose. You could try using weights to keep that sucker open. But has anyone tried to open a rolled document, and it zips right back up before you can even weigh down one side? It’s annoying AF. 

Additionally, scrolls are not conducive to jumping around in the text. If you want to skip ahead, good luck doing it without any page breaks. You also can’t bookmark your place, which is not ideal when you’re reading a long text. Some scrolls could be over 30 feet long. Although placed in a tomb and not read in a library, The Book of the Dead: Papyrus of Ani from Ancient Egypt was originally 78 feet long! 

Precursor to the Codex

Scrolls weren’t the only writing format the ancients used. There was a long tradition of writing on wax tablets. Tablets could be in the form of diptychs, which consist of two ivory or wood panels hinged together. The writing surfaces were the inner panels coated with wax. Scribes used a stylus to incise the wax, which they could erase by rubbing. Therefore, most texts were ephemeral. There was no way you could write an epic poem for posterity on one of these.

Other tablets consisted of stacked boards bound together on one side with a cord. The number of boards varied but could be as many as ten.

1) Portrait of a Young Woman holding a wax tablet and stylus, 1st century CE, Pompeii, fresco. National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy. Public domain. 2) Portrait of Terentius Neo and wife (holding scroll and wax tablet with stylus, respectively), 1st century CE, Pompeii, fresco, 22.8 x 20.8 inches. National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy. Public domain. 3) Douris (late 6th century–mid-5th century BCE), painter, Attic Red-Figure Cup with student writing on tablet, c. 480 BCE, clay, H. 4.5 inches, D. 11 inches. Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, Germany, CC BY-SA 4.0. 4) Panels of a writing board, c. 721–705 BCE, Neo-Assyrian, Mesopotamia, Nimrud, ivory, 13.19 x 6.3 x 0.59 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain.

Writing Tablets in Antiquity

In Natural History, Roman author Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) states that private documents were written on wax tablets. He cites Homer, noting these tablets preceded Trojan times.³ He’s technically correct, since the earliest existing wooden tablet is from the Uluburun shipwreck in modern Turkey, c. 1300 BCE.⁴ 

We see these wax writing tablets throughout antiquity. They appeared in the Middle East during the Neo-Assyrian era circa 720–710 BCE. We see them in Greece and Italy as well, as Greek pottery and Roman frescoes demonstrate.

At some point, likely in the 1^st century CE, Romans were like…Oh, hey…we can do this kind of thing with gatherings of papyrus or parchment. Ta-da! Behold the mighty codex.

Enter, the Codex

The first ancient author to mention the codex was the Roman poet Martial (38–104 CE). In his first book of Epigrams, published 86 CE, he lets readers know they can purchase a parchment codex of his work from the bookseller Secundus. 

“You who want my little books to keep you company wherever you may be and desire their companionship on a long journey, buy these, that parchment compresses in small pages. Give book boxes to the great, one hand grasps me. But in case you don’t know where I am on sale and stray wandering all over town, you will be sure of your way under my guidance. Look for Secundus, freedman of lettered Lucensis, behind Peace’s entrance and Pallas’ Forum.”⁵

Martial also wrote several couplets accompanied by gifts of parchment codices of Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy. He reveled in the fact that these great works of literature fit into portable single volumes rather than multiple long-ass scrolls.

Example of a codex and its binding. Acts of the Apostles, 5th century CE, Middle Egypt, vellum, 109 leaves, bound, 4 3/4 x 4 3/16 inches. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS G.67, Gift of the Trustees of the William S. Glazier Collection in 1984.

While Martial raved about parchment codices, they were also made of papyrus, particularly in Egypt. However, by the 4th century, it was clear parchment had won out. A letter from Saint Jerome, dated c. 385 CE, refers to a project of transferring papyrus codices from the Church of Caesarea to parchment after they were damaged. Additionally, in 325 CE, Emperor Constantine told the scholar Eusebius about his orders to write the Scriptures only on parchment.⁶

As our friend Martial demonstrates, scribes copied standard authors into codices, which were part of the Roman book trade at the end of the 1^st century CE. And yet, the ancients still didn’t widely adopt the format until much later. It was nifty, but they weren’t that into it. The codex only became commonplace in the 5^th century, but even then, scrolls were still around.

The Codex and Christianity

There was one group of people, however, who were super into the codex. It was the early Christians! They loved it and used it to copy their Bibles and other religious texts. According to scholar Lionel Casson, the earliest Bibles are from the late 2^nd century or the beginning of the 3^rd century CE. There are 11 Bibles in total, all of them codices.⁷

Why the Christians, you ask? Possibly because the codex first appeared in Rome, and there were tons of early Christians living there. Yeah, you know…the ones who were fed to the lions during amphitheater games. It could also be that the scroll was associated with Jewish and pagan religious writings, so they wanted their own thing. Who really knows, though?

Codex is the New Supreme

Early Christians popularized the codex, which clearly had major advantages over the scroll. Let’s go through them.

1. Codices have spines, which have titles. It’s so much easier to browse and select your book of choice from a shelf.
2. Shelving these suckers is more efficient than dumping a bunch of scrolls on a shelf. Since they stand upright, they’re easier to arrange and grab. In earlier years, when codices were stored flat on shelves, they created a much neater pile than a mass of scrolls.
3. Longer texts could be compiled into one volume because you’re able to write on both sides of the leaf. This wasn’t possible with scrolls.
4. As our friend Martial pointed out, codices are portable. You’ve got only one volume to take on vacation, not a mountain of scrolls that fill an entire suitcase.
5. Codices allow readers to access the text much more easily. You can flip through the pages and skip ahead.
6. Codices have actual pages, which means you can bookmark them.
7. Since you’re not in a constant battle of unrolling/rolling like with scrolls, you can hold a codex in one hand. Imagine what you could do with that free hand!
8. Covers protect the pages from damage.  

As a result of these features, by the early Middle Ages, the codex became the new supreme. 

Scrolls didn’t exactly bite the dust, though. They were still used for official documents well into the modern era. For example, from medieval times to 1849, the British Parliament recorded its public Acts on parchment scrolls. They switched to vellum book format in 1849 and, in 2015, finally switched to paper. 

Examples of Codices

De Bellis Macedonicis

The earliest Latin parchment codex is De bellis Macedonicis (On the Macedonian Wars) from 100 CE. Found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, a fragment is now in the British Library as Papyrus 745. Yeah, I know, the name suggests it’s a papyrus manuscript, but it’s parchment. Get it together, British Library. 

Codex Sinaiticus

The Codex Sinaiticus is a parchment manuscript of the Christian Bible in Greek. It contains the Old Testament and the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, both of which are heavily annotated. 3-4 scribes wrote the manuscript in the 4^th century CE. Until the 19^th century, the codex lived in the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, hence its name, which means “Sinai book.” Scroll up to the first image of this blog post to see the codex.

The codex is now split between 4 institutions: 347 leaves are in the British Library (do you sense a theme where everything is in either the British Library or British Museum?); 43 leaves are in the University Library in Leipzig, Germany; fragments of 6 leaves are at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg; and other parts of it are still at Saint Catherine’s Monastery. 

The four institutions digitally brought their parts of the codex back together. In 2009, they launched a website with the digitized codex. Check it out for a deep dive. 

Codex Theodosianus

The Codex Theodosianus is one of the most important books of Roman law. Commissioned by the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (401–450 CE), it consists of all imperial laws since 312 CE, in 16 books. The main guy in charge of compiling the laws was Antiochus Chuzon, who worked from 429 to 438 CE.

The Library of Congress has a 6^th-century parchment manuscript of books 6-8 of the codex. Florus of Lyons (died 860), theologian and author, owned this copy. 

Antiochus Chuzon, Active 429-438 CE and Emperor of Rome, Theodosius II, Pages from the “Codex Theodosianus,” Private Copy of Florus of Lyons, 6th century CE. Library of Congress. Public domain.

To learn more about the wonderful world of old books, check out the following blog posts:

• WTF is Papyrus?
• WTF is Parchment?
• WTF is Vellum?
• WTF is a Palimpsest?
• WTF is a Book of Hours?
• WTF is a Psalter?
• WTF are Illuminated Manuscripts?
• WTF are Incunabula?

Footnotes

1. A leaf is a single sheet in a bound book. It has two pages: the first is the recto, and then you turn it over to the verso. ↩︎
2. Howard, The Book, 10. ↩︎
3. Pliny, Natural History, 176. ↩︎
4. The British Library, “Keep taking the (wax) tablets.” ↩︎
5. Martial, Epigrams, 42-43. In Latin: Qui tecum cupis esse meos ubicumque libellos / et comites longae quaeris habere viae, / hos eme, quos artat brevibus membrana tabellis: / scrinia da Magnis, me manus una capit. / ne tamen ignores ubi sim venalis et erres / urbe vagus tota, me duce certus eris: / libertum docti Lucensis quaere Secundum / limina post Pacis Palladiumque forum; Martial uses the word “membrana,” which means skins and is the name Romans cave to a codex of parchment. ↩︎
6. Casson, Libraries, 131-132. ↩︎
7. Casson, Libraries, 129-130. ↩︎

Bibliography & Further Reading

*Several of the following links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no cost to you.

The British Library. “The Beginnings of the Codex.” Medieval Manuscripts Blog, June 12, 2015.

The British Library. “Keep taking the (wax) tablets.” Medieval Manuscripts Blog, May 8, 2019.

The British Library, National Library of Russia, St. Catherine’s Monastery, Leipzig University Library. Codex Sinaiticus. Last modified July 2009. Accessed June 8, 2025.

Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the Ancient World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Cave, Roderick, and Sara Ayad. The History of The Book in 100 Books. Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books U.S., Inc., 2014.

Howard, Nicole. The Book: The Life Story of a Technology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Library of Congress. “Books Six, Seven, and Eight of “Codex Theodosianus.” Library of Congress. Accessed June 8, 2025.

Lyons, Martyn. Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011.

Martial. Epigrams. Translated by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Vol. I. Harvard University Press, 1993.

Pliny the Elder, and John F Healy. Natural History : A Selection. Reprinted with revisions. London: Penguin, 2004.

Valentine, Patrick M. A Social History of Books and Libraries from Cuneiform to Bytes. Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2012.