institoresthe Roman jurists conceived of a mass of written communica-
tions linking them and their principals: these included reports, queries,
written instructions, and even a form of written dismissal. We should
probably also envisage the Republicanviliciof urbaninsulae, pottery
workshops, and farms using writing as a means of storing information
for actual or potential auditing. This was certainly the case in the Appi-
anus estate of third centuryC.E. Egypt, the accounts of which were so
detailed they included the cost of the papyrus on which they were
written.^20 Because financial records, even if often compiled by slaves,
ex-slaves, and freeinstitores, have to be potentially auditable and compre-
hensible to landowners, this is not really scribal literacy. Likewise, be-
cause these documents linked the richest men in the community with
their slaves and agents, this is not an example of commercial literacy or
craftsman’s literacy.
21
Roman landowners had good reason not to permit
the development of segregated literacies. The joined-up nature of Roman
writing practices—so different from those of Achaemenid Persia or
Anglo-Norman England—owed a good deal to the fact that the land-
owning classes of Rome also formed the political and military elite.
Perhaps the aristocratic household was the key node, the place where
most forms of writing came together. If so, then slavery was the key
institutional and cultural context. Slaves educated their masters’ children
and kept records of their property; they transcribed literary compositions
and compiled business letters alike. They kept complex accounts
(rationes) and must have managed some information systems if only in
connection with enterprises like leasing property or ensuring that indi-
vidual businesses were adequately supplied and made a reasonable return.
As managers of remote farms and productive enterprises, some slaves and
ex-slaves received their instructions and returned accounts in written
form.^22 As domestic slavery, supported by ever more complex legal
instruments, emerged as the key managerial mechanism for private and
public business alike, so writing provided its essential operating system.
Magistrates, and especially those serving away from Rome, relied on
their trusted slaves to assist them in their official functions. The ‘‘short
account of the entire empire,’’ passed on to the senate with Augustus’s
will, famously itemized not only the empire’s financial and military
resources but also those members of hisfamiliafrom whom more detailed
rationesmight be sought.
23
The imperial household is just the best
attested example of the use of domestics to conduct public business.
The long-term consequences can only be sketched here. Societies in
which multiple literacies coexist, distinguishable by language, function,
- On which Rathbone 1991.
- Harris 1989 for explanation of these terms.
- Aubert 1994 for all this.
- Suetonius,Divus Augustus101.
52 Situating Literacies