More cruel heth at Nisius' Murderer.
Whose impious Hands into the Flames have thrown
The Heavenly Pledges of the Roman Crown,
Unrav'lling all the Doom that careful Fate had spun."

The destruction of Rome by Alaric, King of the
Western Goths, A. D. 410, and the subsequent
dismemberment of the entire Roman Empire by the
barbarians of the North who followed in his wake,
announced that ancient history had come to an end.

It may be truly said as well that the ending of the
ancient history of the black and colored writing inks
which began in the obscurity of tradition between
2000 and 1800 B. C., a period of some 2200 years,
was also contemporaneous with these events.

The eclipse of ink-written literature for at least
500 of the 1000 years which followed, and known as
the Middle or "Dark" Ages, except in the Church
alone, who seem to have kept up the production of
manuscript books principally for ecclesiastical and
medical purposes was complete. Hence, any information
pertaining to those epochs about ink, writing
materials and ink writings, must be sought for in the
undestroyed records and the ink writings themselves
left by the fathers of the Church. All else is tainted
and of doubtful authority.

* * * * * * * *