and social milieu, have often been attested.^24 Rome was not one of them.
As a result, transactions were easier between loosely embedded writing
practices.^25 New usages were easily developed. The marshaling of writing
to serve innovations in law and cult are cases in point. Different kinds of
text often used the same writing materials. Papyrus was used and reused
for administrative and literary purposes, for accounts and schoolbooks,
for sacred and profane writing, and it was written on in a number of
languages. Literacy approached the status of generalized skill that it has in
our societies. As a result, those who learned to read in the army might
make use of the skill in commerce and theliteraticould read—and be
astonished by—religious tracts emerging from unfamiliar sources. The
state innovated, too—for example, in creating ‘‘sacrifice certificates’’ in
the third centuryC.E. But in general, the power of this generalized literacy
was most widely felt beyond the narrow realm of administration.
- WHAT ROMANS WROTE
It is important to appreciate the textual background noise out of which
some of our longest and most complex texts emerge. Most ancient texts
were short. Less often noticed, their very shortness meant that many
required very particular reading skills. Like the highly abbreviated labels
on food packaging today, many ancient texts were formulaic and required
the reader to supply a good deal of knowledge. Most of the difficulties
involved today in the study of what epigraphists terminstrumentum
domesticumderive from our lack of that knowledge.^26
It is difficult to compile an exhaustive account of all the kinds of
writing produced in the Roman empire, but there is a pretty complete
inventory for one province, and that is Roman Britain. The province was
hardly typical; indeed, it was probably poorer than most in terms of
writing. The military zone accounts for most of the stone epigraphy, in
which funerary slabs and votive altars predominate.
27
Very low levels of
urbanism, the poverty of monumental epigraphy, and the very limited
evidence that euergetistic monumentality ever took root, together with
the near complete absence of Britons from the ranks of attested imperial
elite, make it likely literacy levels were always relatively low, however we
- Street 1984 for the classic statement of this.
- Bowman 1991, 123 7.
26.Instrumentum domesticumis conveniently characterized by Harris 1993, 7, as ‘‘most
kinds of inscribed portable objects from Roman antiquity, and its major categories are held to
be amphora inscriptions, brick and tile stamps, makers’ names on terracotta lamps, and
stamps and graffiti onterra sigillata.’’ - Biro ́1975 for discussion and maps. Harris 1989, 268 shows Britain has the third
lowest density of inscriptions per 1,000 km^2 in the western provinces. For discussion of the
reasons see Mann 1985.
Literacy or Literacies in Rome? 53