All this may be compared to the evidence for private uses of writing.
The period in whichinstrumentum domesticumwas produced in the great-
est quantities ran from the late Republic to the middle of the third century
C.E. But stamps already appeared on Greco-Italic amphorae produced in
the early second centuryB.C.E. Cato’sOn Agriculture(composed around
160 B.C.E.) takes for granted extensive use of writing for running a farm and
for commercial contracts. It may be inferred that the property classes were
already keeping private archives of written tablets in case of legal challenge
from this point.^50 As some became involved in taking state contracts, for
which Polybius also attests the importance, these private uses of writing
will have intersected with the needs of the state. But it is difficult to say
that most of these uses were responses to a bureaucratization of Roman
government. The Romanius civilewas growing in complexity and volume
over this period, too, to cope with the new demands made on it by the
same processes of growth. By the end of the last centuryB.C.E. it had
developed a body of what was, in effect, commercial law, a set of instru-
ments that enabled agency, partnership, and contracts of various kinds to
be formed. Most or all of these involved extensive use of writing. But these
innovations, mostly introduced by the praetor’s edict, were essentially
responsive. It was the transformation of the Roman economy that pro-
vided the stimulus.^51 More generally, it seems the private uses of writing
develop rather gradually from the needs of landowners whose activities
and interests were increasingly complex. As more owned multiple prop-
erties, produced goods for sale, made increasing use of slave and ex-slave
managers, and relied more and more on formal legal arrangements, so the
need to develop new uses of writing grew. For those who were mostly
concerned with commercial lending or trade, for example in the growing
international trades in slaves and food, these needs were more acute.
If we ask what role the state played in all this, there seem broadly
two acceptable answers. One is that the Roman state’s needs evolved
alongside those of its most powerful citizens. The other is that when
those powerful citizens took time away from managing their farms
and urban properties, and from engaging in contracts to supply the
growing metropolis and its growing armies, they adapted existing
private solutions to the more complex tasks they faced as leaders of
colonies, legislators, and generals. That Roman literacies were joined up
will have helped enormously. Perhaps choosing between these two an-
swers is only a matter of emphasis. But a strong case can be made that the
documentary explosion of official texts in Rome during the last two
centuriesB.C.E. represents an appropriation, for the needs of the state,
of writing practices developed first of all to suit the private needs of
its citizens.
- Meyer 2004, 36 43 on this.
- Morel 1989 offers the best account of this.
64 Situating Literacies