Codex

A codex is a book of pages stacked and bound at one edge, the ancestor of the modern book, first described in the 1st century CE, when the Roman poet Martial praised its convenience. The ancient Romans developed it from wax tablets, and early codices were mostly of papyrus, later of parchment. Early Christians favoured it from the 2nd century; the codex equalled the scroll in number around 300 CE and had replaced it across the Christianised Greco-Roman world by the 6th century.