Vergilius Romanus in the context of "Manuscript Illumination"

An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is decorated with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers and liturgical books such as psalters and courtly literature, the practice continued into secular texts from the 13th century onward and typically include proclamations, enrolled bills, laws, charters, inventories, and deeds.

The earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts are a small number from late antiquity, and date from between 400 and 600 CE. Examples include the Vergilius Romanus, Vergilius Vaticanus, and the Rossano Gospels. The majority of extant manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance. While Islamic manuscripts can also be called illuminated and use essentially the same techniques, comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted.

The Eclogues (/ˈɛklɒɡz/; Latin: Eclogae [ˈɛklɔɡae̯], lit. 'selections'), also called the Bucolics, is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil.

A miniature (from the Latin verb miniare 'to colour with minium', a red lead) is a small illustration used to decorate an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple illustrations of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment. The generally small scale of such medieval pictures has led to etymological confusion with minuteness and to its application to small paintings, especially portrait miniatures, which did however grow from the same tradition and at least initially used similar techniques.

Apart from the Western, Byzantine and Armenian traditions, there is another group of Asian traditions, which is generally more illustrative in nature, and from origins in manuscript book decoration also developed into single-sheet small paintings to be kept in albums, which are also called miniatures, as the Western equivalents in watercolor and other media are not. These include Arabic miniatures, and their Persian, Mughal, Ottoman and other Indian offshoots.

In Greek mythology, Sinon (Ancient Greek: Σίνων, from the verb "σίνομαι"—sinomai, "to harm, to hurt") or Sinopos was a Greek warrior during the Trojan War.

He is not mentioned by Homer, but his story is given in the Aeneid of Virgil and other accounts, as a treacherous agent of the Greeks who misleads the Trojans, encouraging them to bring the Trojan Horse inside the city. He sometimes appears in art, usually being dragged into Troy as a captive, with the horse behind him.

Rustic capitals (Latin: littera capitalis rustica) is an ancient Roman calligraphic script. Because the term is negatively connoted supposing an opposition to the more 'civilized' form of the Roman square capitals, Bernhard Bischoff prefers to call the script canonized capitals. The script was used for writing secular texts.