The , also known as the linen rolls, were a collection of books in

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...

written on linen, a technique attributed to the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roug ...

. The Linen Rolls have not survived to recent times. They are known primarily from references to them in the writings of Roman authors, who refer to the Linen Rolls as sources for their writings about history or mythology. The Linen Rolls were records which, according to one recent theory, originated from notes jotted by officials on their linen clothing, allegedly contained antique lists of annual state officials, and perhaps included records about other matters also. The mysterious Linen Books, stated to have been preserved in the

temple of Juno Moneta The Temple of Juno Moneta (Latin: Templum Iunonis Monetæ) was an ancient Roman temple that stood on the Arx or the citadel on the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Roman Forum. Located at the center of the city of Rome, it was next to the place whe ...

, need not be dismissed as sheer forgeries fabricated by Gaius Licinius Macer. Yet it is not very likely that they went back to the fourth century BC, as he believed they did; they may not have been more than a hundred years old. The Linen Books were also used, with less confidence, by another historian,

Aelius Tubero The gens Aelia, occasionally written Ailia, was a plebs, plebeian family in Ancient Rome, Rome, which flourished from the fifth century BC until at least the third century AD, a period of nearly eight hundred years. The archaic spelling ''Ailia'' ...

, who likewise wrote about myths.

References

*''Roman Myths'' by Michael Grant Classical Latin literature Linen industry {{ancient-rome-stub