Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

  1. WRITING, RITUALIZATION, AND MASTERY


The use of writing to assert status leads to a second line of inquiry, which


considers writing as a more generalized practice, encompassing epigraphic


as well as literary and economic uses. What is it about writing that allows


it to operate as an effective assertion of status? We can see the link in the


case of monumental writing, in which the size, expense, and permanence


of the monument itself speak to the status of its agents: the inscription on


the monument, as Woolf notes, specifies or disambiguates the monu-


ment’s symbolic significance.
23
But writing, as writing, does more than


just disambiguate. In monuments of varying sizes as well as in literary


texts, writing amplifies the persona of the writer, extending his reach as it


were; and it constitutes a mode of ritualization that generates new agen-


cies and new opportunities for mastery.


The first function, that of amplification and extension of persona,


I have already discussed in an earlier study, in which I argue that the


inscription and circulation of a text extends the efficacy of the authorizing


performance, thereby anchoring literary production even more securely
in the elite cultural contexts from which it emerges.^24 Republican-era


inscriptions corroborate this association of writing with extensibility,


albeit in a context quite different from that of literary production. For


example, in the case of thetesserae nummulariae(ILLRP2.987–1063),


bits of bone or ivory verifying that so-and-so the slave or freedman of


so-and-so inspected the contents of the container, there is a double


extensibility: from the authorizing practice, presumably the verification


of the metallic content of the coins, to the written certification, but also


from the master to the slave or freedman. Recent scholarship has shown


how Latin authors, not to mention Roman law, take for granted what


might be called the prosthetic nature of the slave, his or her function as an


extension of masterly agency.^25 To strike a slave is to strike his master; to


tell a free man to dig a ditch is in fact to tell him to have his slaves dig a


ditch, as the very language of Vergil’sGeorgicsand of Roman agricultural


treatises makes clear.
26
Thetesseraeexactly capture this sense of the slave


inscriptions (like Greek literature) provide an object for Roman emulation, we must still
account for the choice to emulate within the framework of Roman cultural needs and
objectives.



  1. Woolf 1996.

  2. Habinek 1998, 103 21, discusses the parallel between literary and epigraphic
    practices.

  3. Reay 2003, 2005.

  4. For example, at VergilGeorgics2.230 2, the second person singular of the verb in
    the expressions ‘‘you will identify’’ (capies), ‘‘you will replace’’ (repones), and ‘‘you will
    flatten’’ (aequabis) clearly encompasses both master (the immediate addressee of the poet)
    and his slaves. Cf.Georgics2.259 60; 2.274 5, VarroDe Re Rustica1.23: all examples from
    Reay 2005.


Situating Literacy at Rome 121

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