Correspondence Ink Etiquette

The Romans used both black and red ink, because we find Pompeian inkstands with double receptacles. Nero, that uncommon brute, when he composed verses, wrote his lines in gold. – Depiction of Nero
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Occasionally, the schoolboy, meddling with the sacredness of his father's writing table, finds the bottle of red ink, and indites a letter in brilliant carmine. Then his elders explain to him what a horrible crime he has perpetrated. The next unconservative urchin who does that may nonplus his parents by informing them that the Roman Emperors who were deities disdained commonplace black ink, and signed only in red. The Romans used both black and red ink, because we find Pompeian inkstands with double receptacles. Nero, that uncommon brute, when he composed verses, wrote his lines in gold.– The New York Times, 1897

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