Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

With respect to the latter phenomenon, we may recall Lotte Hedeager’s


argument, advanced in her discussion of status markers in north European


iron-age societies, that the prevalence of status assertion corresponds to


periods of insecurity and social change: in other words, there is less need to


display your wealth or status if no one is challenging it.^19 Following that


logic, we might read from the Roman results relative security about status


in the early period, coupled with insecurity about property lines, and the


reverse—insecurity about status, security about property—in the later


centuries. It is worth noting that of the dedications in the earliest period,


six are by anonymous donors to deities; the only one that names people as


both donor and recipient (namely, the Lapis Satricanus) is the exception


that proves Hedeager’s rule, for within a few years of its placement in the


temple of Mater Matuta, the structure was burned by a rebel army, the


dedication overthrown, and the inscription buried in the foundation of a


new building.
20
Competitive display by newly emergent elites (e.g., the


family inscriptions of the Scipiones,CILI, pp. 11–15) can be understood


as further illustration of the connection between status assertion and status


insecurity, although in this case the status that is insecure is one that is still
sought after: will past achievements entitle the clan and its descendants to


extend their authority forward in time?


More generally, the tentative results offered here for epigraphic writing


in the Roman republic provide an interesting prequel to Elizabeth


Meyer’s and Greg Woolf’s discussions of the relationship between epi-


graphic writing and social status under the early empire in their articles of


1990 and 1996 respectively. The concern to ‘‘fix an individual’s place


within history, society and the cosmos,’’ as Woolf puts it,^21 although it


certainly intensified during the Augustan era and subsequent periods


of social and cultural change, has its roots in the competitive, inclusive,


and contested nature of Roman identity evidenced from earlier periods


of history, perhaps especially the end of the third and beginning of


the second centuriesB.C., precisely the era in which Roman literary


culture took form. Epigraphic display both advances one’s position in


intra-Roman struggles for status and secures one’s position in the ever-


strengthening Roman community. In answer to the question, why did an


expanded literate culture take so long to develop at Rome, one answer


might be, because that’s how long it took for the Romans to require


clarification of their status and identity as Romans.
22



  1. Hedeager 1992.

  2. For the history and interpretation of the inscription see, among others, Versnel 1980,
    Coarelli 1995, Habinek 2005a, 37 40.

  3. Woolf 1996, 29.

  4. It might also be argued that the Roman inscriptional habit of the late Republic
    derives in part from the influence of Hellenistic Greek inscriptions. In general I find such
    arguments unpersuasive on their own, because they deny the recipient culture’s agency in
    choosing which practices to be influenced by and under what circumstances. Even if Greek


120 Situating Literacies

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