For temporary purposes, they usually wrote on wax tablets with styluses, which could be easily melted and re-molded for reuse. They came in little boxes with a

For temporary purposes, they usually wrote on wax tablets with styluses, which could be easily melted and re-molded for reuse. They came in little boxes with a protective cover and were used for temporary records and drafts and personal letters: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Table_with_was_and_stylus_Roman_times.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Table_wi... And there's always sand! It's probably apocryphal but the legend is that Archimedes was slain by a Roman soldier during the taking of Syracuse when he objected -- "Don't disturb my circles!" -- to how the soldier marched through his trigonometry problems.