Capitalis QuadrataDescriptions of scripts are from Michelle Brown's A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 London, The British Library: 1990 Within the orbit of professional scribal activity and the widespread literacy of Antiquity a system of scripts arose which was adapted to a wide variety of written forms. At the top of the hierarchy were Square Capitals, an angular bilinear script whose forms were ideally suited to production with the chisel for monumental epigraphic inscriptions (scriptura monumentalis). Square Capitals were occasionally used for high-grade manuscripts, but a more fluidly written variation, known as Rustic Capitals, which were better suited to the reed pen (calamus), and its fourth-century successor, the quill (penna) were favoured for de luxe manuscripts. Curiously, the script was in turn adopted by the stonemason, giving rise occasionally to Rustic Capitals in stone (scriptura actuaria). The earliest extant example of Rustic Capitals is a fragment of a poem on the Battle of Actium which was buried at Herculaneum by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Diffusion and duration: s. i BC-c. AD 600; the extent of the Roman Empire.
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