Ancient and ArchaeologyΒ permalink
Literacy Levels in Ancient Rome
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) ** on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
The current TV series 'Rome' makes a great play of graffetti in ancient Rome. I understand that there is evidence of graffetti at Pompey and other Roman sites. This indicates that literacy levels were high and even the relatively poor could read and write.
Thus how high were the literacy levels overall and how do they compare to more recent periods? -
Message 2
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) ** on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
I can't answer the question about literacy levels but the presence of graffiti in Pompeii (not Pompey, that's Portsmouth!) does not automatically indicate high literacy rates - graffiti is not the preserve of the underclasses and under-educated (as many perceive it to be today).
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Message 3
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) ** on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
While graffiti may be the preserve of the underclass it still requires a basic ability to read and write - was there much graffiti in the Medieval era?
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Message 4
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) ** on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
Erm, I said it is NOT the preserve of the underclass. Far from it - you'll find plenty of graffiti any old desk in all schools, regardless of whether it's a state school or your poshest public school.
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Message 5
Posted by Colquhoun (U3935535) ** on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
Sorry, misread your post. However I understand that the 'graffeti' in Pompeii included charge rates and comments about prostitutes again implying widespread literacy.
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Message 6
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
I do not know, I think there had been found graffiti from archaic mercenary Greek soldiers in Egypt - though I might be wrong... If I am right then it is quite strange that mercenaries that usually derived from the lower income classes were leaving graffitis . It is known that Alexander's soldiers were often writing graffitis or signing the blades of their weapons. The widespread use of writing (even the most irrelevant things) on the most irrelevant objects since archaic times shows that for most places the illiterate (we are talking about men) were rather the minority.
It should not be strange - afterall the alphabet was there for anyone to use... even if people did not go to school they had only to learn 25-27 letters, something they could do in a week even at a mature age, hence they had only to ask someone who knew. Illiterate people were mainly the women of lower classes, many of the slaves, and from the free men those living in the provinces (agriculturers), thus in less contact with the city dwellers who were exposed to writings.
That fashion continued well into the Roman times. My guess would be that even an illiterate slave would at some time ask a literate co-slave and have a basic understanding of the latin and greek alphabet (well at those times it was pretty much one alphabet with three-four variations) in pretty much the same sense that an English man reads a Greek/Russian newspaper: he recognises certain letters (for the greek one he remembers from maths), he is not sure of some other letter but if he asks a Greek/Russian guy, in a week he may read pretty much well the words (it is another thing if he understands their meaning, but he will read certainly). Now in those times, words were written not in the historic sense but as they sounded. The written greek started having a historic writting officially since the 1st A.D. century (though roots go back to 6th B.C. century) while Latin a bit later. But a slave in Rome of 1 A.D. century could easily identify the written word with the sound heard while if he wanted to write the word he wuold simply use the letters (hence he would write the verb "write" as "rait").
Now if I was to give arbitrary percentages:
For Roman society in the Italic peninsula (mid and south but not its north), I would go for the sum of free men, an 80% could read and roughly understand, a 70% could read, understand and roughly write, a 50% had some basic education and a 20% had some pretty good education. For the sum of free women the equivalent was 50%, 30%, 20%, 5%. For slaves it would be similar to that of women (many slaves were actually very educated - atferall it was singlehandedly slave greeks that educated Romans in Republican Rome.
Now if you went north of Rome and to the west the above percentages were largely irrelevant as from 80% up to 99% of the population would be totally illiterate (depending on the Roman presence in the neighbourhood). Hence, when Roman control ceased in these areas, there was no spectacular drop of literacy as areas with 90% iliteracy just continued along the same lines (this time it was not Roman bureaucracy but the church that kept the rates).
However if you went in the Hellenic south and east the percentages were these and in the later times of the Byzantine Empire perhaps there were increased due to state education, the existence of state run schools and universities while a larger proportion of women had access to basic education (women in Byzantium had relatively more overall freedom than women in Rome). Again of course, the percentages varied considerably from cities to the provinces. Some pretty satisfactory literacy levels that of course dropped to an amazing 90% iliteracy during Ottoman times - thus talking about a real Dark Age, showing that it takes not a lot for an educated society to go back to the stone age! -
Message 7
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
Nik, though I largely agree with you I think that your percentage figures are unfortunately more speculation than evidence.
I reckon that the great majority of adults in Roman Italy, and some other provinces, could read and write. I base this on the graffiti evidence, already cited in this discussion, showing that even the lowliest prostitutes would write down letters and numbers. Also the fact that illiteracy is virtually never mentioned. No ancient writer mentioned people being unable to undertake any transaction due to illiteracy. Out of a wide range of documents found in Egypt, including death certificates, mortgage documents etc, I know of none where anybody had to sign with an X. -
Message 8
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 17th July 2007
Of course the figures I have are highly arbitrary. However, judging from other societies (say 18th century England) there must had been illiterate and certainly these were not prostitutes (who are generally too streetwise not to be able to read and write). I agree though with you that for some places, the figures I gave were a bit conservative. However don't we have to take into account the fresh newcomers from the provinces that often were illiterate?
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Message 9
Posted by Helena99 (U8659848) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
However I understand that the 'graffeti' in Pompeii included charge rates and comments about prostitutes again implying widespread literacy.
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Not all it implies about them, either!!! -
Message 10
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
In practice it could had been that some of them were illiterare but were employing the help of more knowledgeable ones as it usually happens in this case. However, indeed all these evidence shows that literacy levels were high.
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Message 11
Posted by Helena99 (U8659848) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
Course they were! Even common soldiers could teach a young Jewish wannabe rebel how to parse correctly when he was telling the Romans to go home.....
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Message 12
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
Literacy aongst the poorer classes was likely to be more common in the Army, I would suggest, because they wrote things down. Admittedly they had official scribes etc, but if you wanted promotion you needed to be able to at least read; the first officer grade was Tesserarius, 'Officer of the Watch', from the fact that the password of the day was written on tiles (tesserae) and distributed to the Tesserarii. (Also, you get graffiti in Roman military toilets - obscene, naturally!)
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Message 13
Posted by fascinating (U1944795) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
Anglo-Norman - have you any examples?
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Message 14
Posted by generallobus (U1869191) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
fascinating
There are many tablets and such extant from, I think, Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall, which give a fascinating, forgive the pun, account of daily Roman life amongst the military and their families. They are housed in the British Museum but I think you can prob get info from tinternet. -
Message 15
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Wednesday, 18th July 2007
Message 13:
Fascinating, the subject came up on the Roman Army Talk forum (pretty knowledgeable folks, there), and of course I now cannot find the relevant thread (they switched fora a while back, so it may even have been on the old one). However, I did find a generic discussion of legionary literacy
This post in particular is worth quoting:
Literacy rates are almost impossible to measure, but the indications are that especially among urban populations, reading and writing were common basic skills transmitted through generations the way we pass on bicycle riding...
... It was not particularly rare, especially at low levels (basic literacy with little practice or facility at writing and no deeper understanding of grammar or spelling conventions is all over the walls of Pompeii). Anyone in tactical command almost had to be at least passively literate, given the amount of paperwork the Roman army generated, An illiterate optio [deputy centurion] or signifer [standard bearer] is just not thinkable. Since these were often 'ex caliga' [from the ranks], that means a significant proportion of the rank and file could read and write...Β
NB - Optios and Signifers both had administrative duties in addition to their combat roles. -
Message 16
Posted by Bye_Jingo (U8587890) on Thursday, 19th July 2007
"There are many tablets and such extant from, I think, Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall, which give a fascinating, forgive the pun, account of daily Roman life amongst the military and their families. They are housed in the British Museum but I think you can prob get info from tinternet."
From my handy list o'links:
www.csad.ox.ac.uk
The Vindolanda Tablets are all on there, and fully searchable.
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