In 1983, Colin H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat published their valuable book The Birth of the Codex. In Chapter 4, 'From writing tablet to parchment note-book', they go through the surviving sourccs and conclude that parchment as a writing material in codex format was used by the early Romans for temporary records, including drafts of literary works. My aim in the present article is to offer a more detailed philological-literary approach to the sources, since a close reading of the oft-debated passages in question lies outside the scope of The Birth of the Codex.