Vatican Vergil ManuscriptThe Vatican Vergil codex was produced circa 400 CE, for an aristocratic audience. It consisted of about 440 folios of fine parchment, but included some leaves with minor defects. A skilled scribe wrote its script in fluent Rustic capitals, although the text includes some errors and omissions. Two hundred eighty framed paintings illustrate the codex, interrupting the text at appropriate places. Since the ninth century, this codex, reduced to only a fraction of its original length, has been studied, as “the most impressive surviving example of an illustrated classical literary text”.