Hmm, maybe? I don't really know the history of books, but I am under the impression ancient books were all scrolls.
Estimated at 1,693 years old and considered to be some of the oldest surviving bound books – 13 leather bound papyrus codices were discovered in 1945, buried inside a sealed
jar, by a local
man in the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper
Egypt.
The books, containing Gnostic texts, are dated from around the first half of the 4th century AD. Written in the Coptic language, the codices are thought to have been copied from Greek.
The Nag Hammadi codices can currently be found at the Coptic Museum in Cairo,
Egypt.
So bound books do seem to have existed towards the end of the
Roman Empire but I can't imagine that they were very common. Certainly as far as I am aware all the books that have so far been found in Pompeii were scrolls, but that was in the first century. I am sure that during the ensuing centuries of The
Roman Empire, a new thing like a bound book could easily have been invented or discovered.
Not that any of the above has anything to do with these "
gladius" pins, That's a different story.
Alex