Ancient Literacy

A Priori

Modern scholars offer a priori assumptions about ancient literacy, based on such reasoning as this:

1. Some parts of Europe presented very low literacy rates well into the nineteenth century. Therefore ancient literacy rates must have been even lower, or the premise of universal progress is disconfirmed.
2. Modern universal literacy is associated with the Industrial Revolution. Cultural phenomena like literacy are dependent upon productive technology and more particularly the ways and means by which production is financed and controlled. Therefore ancient literacy rates must have been low, or Marxism is disconfirmed.

But some factors holding down European literacy are known not to have been operative in some ancient communities, like political absolutism. Despots have reason to fear a literate populace. And high literacy rates were achieved in communities not yet transformed by the Industrial Revolution, such as Scandinavia and the American republic when its populace was still overwhelmingly rural.

Given that a priori calculations of ancient literacy rest upon doubtful assumptions, by far the best evidence is what the ancients, a voluble lot, themselves said about who could and who could not read and write. Rustics: shepherds, landless agricultural workers,-- are commonly assumed in ancient drama and literature not to be literate. While the slave population included learned philosophers led in chains from conquered towns, those born to the condition, like the slave-boy in Plato's Meno around whom the action revolves, could not generally expect any effort or expenditure to be put into their education.  Subtracting these two admittedly large groups, rustics and slaves, leaves free-born town-dwellers. The evidence of ancient literature is that this group was generally literate.

Desiderata

Writers in classical antiquity propounded universal literacy as a desideratum. Plato calls for mandatory education in his Laws:

Reality

Compulsory literacy instruction for all males was enacted into law in at least one ancient community:

It Takes a Village

"No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution...And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private -- not as at present,when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole." (Aristotle, Politics, Book VIII, Chapter 1.)

This passage promises more than it delivers, because the "citizens" of Aristotle's ideal state are a far more restricted body than at Athens. Aristotle, no democrat, leaves mechanical arts to foreign slaves, not the free men who pursued these vocations at Athens. As for the curriculum, Aristotle is content with what is "customary:"

"The customary branches of education are in number four; they are -- (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic exercises, (3) music, to which is sometimes added (4) drawing. [...] It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble...Thus much we are now in a position to say, that the ancients witness to us; for their opinion may be gathered from the fact that music is one of the received and traditional branches of education. Further, it is clear that children should be instructed in some useful things -- for example, in reading and writing -- not only for their usefulness, but also because many other sorts of knowledge are acquired through them." (Aristotle, Politics, Book VIII, Chapter 3).

The prominence of music in the educational system they inherited from the "ancients" perplexed the Greek political theorists, and they explained it in various ways. The likeliest explanation is that Greek popular education arose from choral schools set up to train the youth choruses that would accompany the great religious processions:

"Very well, I will tell you what was the old education. . .In the street, when they went to the music-school, all the youths of the same district marched lightly clad and ranged in good order, even when the snow was falling in great flakes. At the master's house they had to stand, their legs apart, and they were taught to sing either, 'Pallas, the Terrible, who overturneth cities,' or 'A noise resounded from afar' in the solemn tones of the ancient harmony." (Aristophanes, 'The Clouds').

Instruction in reading and writing would have supplemented this choral training very suitably, as anyone can testify who has heard little ones murder song lyrics, like the rousing chorus, 'Lead On O Kinky Turtle.' Plus there is a limit to the lyrics that can be memorized, while a literate chorus can go on all day.

This musical knowledge, both practical and theoretical, was at one time more widely disseminated than any such skill today:

"For when their wealth gave them a greater inclination to leisure, and they had loftier notions of excellence, being also elated with their success, both before and after the Persian War, with more zeal that discernment they pursued every kind of knowledge, and so they introduced the flute into education. At Lacedaemon there was a choragus who led the chorus with a flute, and at Athens the instrument became so popular that most freemen could play upon it." (Aristotle, Politics, Book VIII, Chapter 6).

Those modern Bible scholars who seek to persuade their readers that literacy was rare in antiquity, would do well to show us a comparable illiterate society in which "most freemen" can play the flute. Then skeptics will be convinced that these less literate societies really are good analogues for the world of classical antiquity.

School-houses

History attests the existence of school-houses in antiquity, including one at Chios which suffered a frightful disaster:

Plutarch mentions in passing that the Greeks sent their sons to schools, as we do today:

"For the Falerians, like the Greeks, had a single teacher for all their boys, wishing their sons from the start to grow up in a herd together." (Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 10, Plutarch Lives)

This Italian teacher, by the way, showed good faith neither to his city nor to his young charges and suffered the scorn of the indignant Roman general:

"When Camillus was besieging the Faliscans, a school teacher took the sons of the Faliscans outside the walls, as though for a walk, and then delivered them up, saying that, if they should be retained as hostages, the city would be forced to execute the orders of Camillus. But Camillus not only spurned the teacher's perfidy, but tying his hands behind his back, turned him over to the boys to be driven back to their parents with switches." (Frontinus, Stratagems, Book IV, Section IV.)

Another mention of a school-house is found in Thucydides' 'Peloponnesian War,' where the atrocities reportedly committed by the brutal Thracians in a "small city" named Mycalessus included a Beslan-style massacre of school children:

"Among other things, they broke into a boys' school, the largest in the place, into which the children had just entered, and killed every one of them." (Thucydides, 'Peloponnesian War,' Book Seven, 29).

Thucydides unfortunately does not provide population numbers, but this "small city" evidently had more than one school, because this unfortunate place is said to be "the largest."

Quintillian in his Institutes of Oratory addresses the 'home-schooling versus public education' debate, realizing that public education had won the favor of the "most famous states:"

"But the time has come for the boy to grow up little by little, to leave the nursery and tackle his studies in good earnest. This therefore is the place to discuss the question as to whether it is better to have him educated privately at home or hand him over to some large school and those whom I may call public instructors. The latter course has, I know, won the approval of most eminent authorities and of those who have formed the national character of the most famous states." (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, Book 1, Chapter Two).

It is jarring to realize that there are people today who do not think this latter option, chosen by "the most famous states," was even available in antiquity. This error has clouded New Testament studies for more than a generation. Quintilian ultimately comes down on the public side, concerned that the solitary mind "becomes mildewed like things that are left in the dark": "But even if large schools are to be avoided, a proposition from which I must dissent if the size be due to the excellence of the teacher, it does not follow that all schools are to be avoided. It is one thing to avoid them, another to select the best." (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, Book 1, Chapter Two). This is a difficult choice to rationalize if the public option did not even exist.

'Public schools' can be one of two things: those schools open to the public, the instructors expecting to collect a 'Minerval' fee from the parents, or those funded by the public. According to Jerome in the Eusebian Chronicles, Quintilian himself made the transition: "Quinctilianus of Calaguris from Spain, who was the first at Rome to (open) a public school and receive a salary from the exchequer, became famous." (Jerome, Eusebian Chronicles).

At some point these publicly-funded schools would seem to have become the norm throughout the empire, as Eunapius reports:

"And when Julian had departed this life, and Athens desired to choose a successor of equal ability to teach rhetoric, many others gave in their names for this influential sophistic chair, so many that it would be tedious even to write them down. But by the votes of all there were approved and selected Prohaeresius, Hephaestion, Epiphanius, and Diophantus. . .For in accordance with the Roman law there had to be at Athens many to lecture and many to hear them." (Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, 488).

While the various schools of philosophy—Academics, Peripatetics, Stoics, etc.—were able to co-exist peacefully so long as they were competing for private funds, evidently this happy concord did not remain once they were pushing each other aside for a place feeding at the public trough.

Grants to Education

The historian Polybius chides the Rhodians for accepting a charitable gift from a private citizen to pay school-teachers' salaries:

Polybius thinks it improper for such a wealthy community to "go a-begging," implying Rhodes should have paid its school-teachers from public revenues.

Who paid to educate the children? As today, it was a varying mix of Mom and Pop, private philanthropy, and the state. When the Athenians abandoned their city in the face of the invading Persians, the city of refuge also paid to educate the children:

"On the voting of this decree [to abandon Athens], most Athenians sent their wives and children to Troezen, where the Troezenians received them most hospitably and voted to maintain them at public expense, allowing them two obols apiece daily, and permitting the children to pick fruit anywhere, and paying, too, for teachers for them." (Plutarch, Life of Themistocles, 10, Plutarch's Lives).

Another ruler who subsidized public education was the Emperor Vespasian, who put teachers of Greek and Latin rhetoric on the public payroll:

"He was a great encourager of learning and the liberal arts. He first granted to the Latin and Greek professors of rhetoric the yearly stipend of a hundred thousand sesterces each out of the exchequer." (Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, XVIII.)

Normalcy

"For some time his [Cimon's] career was entirely undistinguished, except that he earned a bad name for disorderly behavior, heavy drinking, and in general for taking after his grandfather, Cimon, who was said to have been so stupid that he was nicknamed Coalemus, or The Booby. Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who was a near contemporary of Cimon's, says that he never acquired a literary education or any other of the liberal accomplishments which a Greek normally possessed, and that he was without a spark of true Attic cleverness and eloquence..." (Plutarch, Life of Cimon, 4, Plutarch's Lives).

Hellenic Civilization

The modern apostles of ancient illiteracy put Athens and Persia on the same plane, as societies where a thin literate layer rested atop a vast but powerless illiterate mass. But the self-consciousness of the Athenians and the many who emulated their civilization was quite different. They believed their investment in human resources had wrought something new in the world:

According to modern secular Bible scholars, all this talk is empty propaganda.

But is it? These ancient institutions of Athenian democracy and the Roman constitutional republic inspired our founding fathers, who were imitators as much as innovators. Once revived after centuries of abandonment and neglect, these institutions brought out the people's dynamism and creativity...for the very first time? Why do these institutions work for us, as we certainly think they do, when they never worked for those who invented them? Did these political institutions indeed leave the Athenian populace the same hopeless, powerless, illiterate mass as the Persian population, or did they work the same then as they do now?

Voting

One method of voting in the Athenian assembly was to write a candidate's name on a broken piece of pottery. Ostracism, exclusion from the community, was voted in this fashion:

"The procedure, to give a general account of it, was as follows. Each voter took an ostrakon, or piece of earthenware, wrote on it the name of the citizen he wished to be banished and carried it to a part of the market-place which was fenced off with a circular paling." (Plutarch, Life of Aristides, 7, Plutarch's Lives).

Illiterates could, and did, ask others to help them with this task:

Illiterates of the present day suffer embarrassment when they must ask a literate person for help. Great ingenuity has been expended in explaining how a majority illiterate community could vote in this manner, to save the modern hypothesis of widespread ancient illiteracy. But what requires explanation is why a community would employ a method of voting embarrassing to illiterates if most members of that community were themselves illiterate. What prevented the majority from voting in a method of balloting, like raising hands, acclamation, or passing in white or black stones, which did not draw attention to their incapacity?

All these methods have been used: jurors used the pebble to render their verdict. Hippodamus suggested switching to writing tablets, so as to allow for 'split verdicts,' where the jurors could find, for instance, that the plaintiff had suffered damages, but not as much as he claimed:

"He [Hippodamus] was further of opinion that the decisions of the courts ought not to be given by the use of a voting pebble, but that every one should have a tablet on which he might not only write a simple condemnation, or leave the tablet blank for a simple acquittal; but, if he partly acquitted and partly condemned, he was to distinguish accordingly. To the existing law he objected that it obliged the judges to be guilty of perjury, whichever way they voted." (Aristotle, Politics, Book II, Chapter 8, 1268.)

As Aristotle pointed out, this method was impracticable: if the jurors came up with different amounts for the damages, how to reconcile them? But if the citizens were mostly illiterate, why suggest the change at all, to a voting method which could not have been used by the majority?

Liberal Education

"It may hold such a place as the instruction you received in school from the teachers of reading and lyre-playing and athletics. You were learning not in order to teach those branches yourself, but to gain the knowledge needed by a free citizen of Athens. Such things are part of a liberal education." (Plato, 'Protagoras,' quoted p. 36, 'The Living Socrates,' Pearl Cleveland Wilson).

A 'liberal' education is, literally, the form of education suited for a free citizen.

Slaves were not taught. What percentage of the populace were free? At some times and in some places in the ancient world, a tiny elite operated a police state against the majority of inhabitants who were slaves, like the Helots of Sparta. But this nightmare scenario was not the norm in antiquity. Aristotle, for whom terminology is a big thing, will not call a 'democracy' a society most of whose inhabitants are slaves; such a society is properly an 'oligarchy,' because it is not ruled by the many but by the few:

"Therefore we should rather say that democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich...Both of them [oligarchy and democracy] contain many other elements, and therefore we must carry our analysis further, and say that the government is not a democracy in which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the many who are not free, as at Apollonia, on the Ionian Gulf, and at Thera; (for in each of these states the nobles, who were also the earliest settlers, were held in chief honor, although they were but a few out of many.)...But the form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern..." (Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, Chapter 4)

So, by Aristotle's terminology, the freemen at Athens, which he does term a 'democracy,' must have outnumbered the slaves. Of course they did not outnumber the women, who did not vote; but not all women were illiterate, as shall be seen.

Old Deluder

In 1647 the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay colony required towns of fifty or more households to arrange for public education. The stated aims of this venture included opening the Bible, no longer hid under strange tongues of Hebrew and Greek, or the melodious nonsense rhyme of Latin, but still hid to those who could not read their own native tongue:

This act mentions no material or economic factors. It does not suggest universal literacy has at long last become possible by virtue of the invention of the steam engine, which in any case had not yet been invented.

That the religion of those whom Mohammed ibn Abdallah called "the people of the book" was helped along by literacy was not first discovered by the inhabitants of Massachusetts. God had commanded the Israelites to teach His law to their children:

"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).

Obedience to these commands is made easier by, if it does not actually require, literacy. The message was not lost on New Testament believers:

"But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 3:14-15).

Timothy's father was a Greek, not stated to be a believer (Acts 16:1). But Lois and Eunice made sure that Timothy knew the scriptures "from childhood."

The case of the 'Old Deluder Act' shows that literacy can seem valuable in people's eyes for reasons unrelated to the means of production, as was also the case with Scandinavia's anomalous early literacy. The pagans of classical antiquity valued literacy, as has been seen, and the believers valued it even more.

Talmud

Readers may protest the attention given here to Athens, one city among many in the ancient world. Even at the height of her political power, when she had subverted a mutual defense pact into an empire, she was never sole mistress even of Greece. And after Cleon, the George W. Bush of his day, had persuaded the Athenians to go and liberate people who were minding their business, the city lost even what she had had. When Athens set sail to liberate Sicily, the unliberated Sicilians fought bravely for their homes. Athens lost her fleet and her army and never rose back to her pre-war military stature. So why give so much emphasis to this one atypical place?

Because communities in the ancient world far from Athens were stamped in her mold. The degree of violence Hellenizers were willing to inflict to conform once independent societies to this pattern is revealed in the books of Maccabees. The Hellenizers brought the good and the bad: good things like Greek geometry alongside worthless things like pagan worship. Israel stoutly resisted. But for reasons of its own, Israel also valued literacy, and already had an elementary school system in the first century A.D.:

"So R. Jehudah said in the name of Rabh: May the memory of Joshua b. Gamla be blessed, for, were it not for him, Israel would have forgotten the Torah, as in former times the child who had a father was instructed by him; but the one that had not, did not learn at all. The reason is that they used to explain the verse [Deut. xi. 19]: 'And ye shall teach them to your children,' etc., literally--ye personally. It was therefore enacted that a school for the education of children in Jerusalem should be established, on the basis of the following verse [Is. ii. 3]: '. . . for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.' And still the child who had a father was brought to Jerusalem and instructed; but the one who had not, remained ignorant. It was therefore enacted that such school should be established in the capitals of each province; but the children were brought when they were about sixteen or seventeen years of age, and when the lads were rebuked by their masters, they turned their faces and ran away. Then came Joshua b. Gamla, who enacted that schools should be established in all provinces and small towns, and that the children be sent to school at the age of six or seven years..." (Babylonian Talmud, Tract Baba Bathra (Last Gate), Chapter II, p. 62)

This education was at municipal expense:

"Raba further said: The number of pupils to be assigned to each teacher is twenty-five. If there are fifty, we appoint two teachers. If there are forty, we appoint an assistant, at the expense of the town." (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra, 21a).

It is alleged that there were 480 elementary schools in Jerusalem at the time of that city's destruction by Vespasian:

"There were 480 synagogues (batte kenesiot) in Jerusalem, each containing a bet ha-sefer, (primary school for the Scriptures), and a bet Talmud, for the study of the Law and the tradition; and Vespasian destroyed them all" (Yer. Meg. iii. 73d; Lam. R., Introduction 12, ii. 2; Pesik. xiv. 121b; Yer. Ket. xiii. 35c)." (quoted in article, Jewish Encyclopedia, 'Bet Ha-Midrash.'

Neither Jew nor Greek had achieved universal literacy, which cannot be had without laws against child labor and truancy. But the literate population in that day cannot have been as small as the modern-day 'Jesus' industry represents either.

Bethar

From 132-135 A.D., a Messianic aspirant who styled himself Simon Bar Kokhba fought for the independence of Judaea from Rome. He lost and an appalling number of people were slaughtered in his defeat, which resulted in the Diaspora of the Jews. Reminiscences of the destroyed city of Bethar mention the many schools of that place:

"Rabbi Gamaliel said: 'There were five hundred schools in Bethar, and the smallest of them had no less than three hundred children. They used to say: "If the enemy comes against us, with these styluses we will go out and stab them." When, however, the people's sins did cause the enemy to come, they enwrapped each pupil in his book and burnt him, so that I alone was left.' He affected to himself the verse: Mine eye affecteth my soul, because of all the daughters of my city. [Lamentations 3.51.]" (Midrash Rabbah Lamentations 2.2§4)

"Rab Judah reported Samuel as saying in the name of rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel: 'What is signified by the verse, Mine eye affecteth my soul, because of all the daughters of my city? [Lamentations 3.51] There were four hundred synagogues in the city of Betar, and in every one were four hundred teachers of children, and each one had under him four hundred pupils, and when the enemy entered there, they pierced them with their staves, and when the enemy prevailed and captured them, they wrapped them in their scrolls and burnt them with fire." (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 58a).

Admittedly these numbers are approximate; I don't suppose anyone went around counting, or if they had would they have come up with precisely 400 of everything. However, it is insulting to insist that the lamentations over a lost city focus on a quality the city never had at all. According to the modern 'Jesus' publishing industry, Bethar had hardly any schools because 10% or less of the populace was literate. Why believe that, against all available testimony?

Born of a Father Who Had Been Set Free

Some readers may object, 'The philosophical Greeks may well have treasured literacy, but not the practical Romans.' The literary remains of ancient Rome tell another story. Horace was "born of a father who had been set free," a freed slave. Horace remembered his education, and its importance to his doting father, thus:

Notice that the fall-back position for Horace's education, had his father not sent his gifted son away to a 'magnet school' in Rome, was not illiteracy and labor in the fields, but the "village school" where Flavius taught his pupils.

Suetonius, in his 'Lives of the Poets,' mentions someone jeering at Horace because his father had wiped his nose with his fist: "...for some one with whom Horace had a quarrel, jeered him, by saying; 'How often have I seen your father wiping his nose with his fist?'" (Suetonius, 'Lives of the Poets,' Life of Horace). I've added Suetonius's 'Lives of the Eminent Grammarians' to the Thriceholy Library so that readers can see for themselves the social background of the 'big names' of Roman literature. Some notable literati were 'to the manor born,' like Persius, but very many were either the offspring of freedmen or freedmen themselves. How is this consistent with the 'Jesus' Industry's claim that literacy was the exclusive possession of the upper social orders?

Lucian the Syrian also remembered his family background as far from affluent; a woman in his dream rails, "At the moment you're poor, the son of a nobody..." Yet, as with Horace, literacy was not at issue; he first received a primary education, and only when he left school in his teens did the question of his life's work come up:

"When I was a teenager and had just left school, my father started consulting his friends about my further education. Most of them thought that an academic training took too much time and effort, besides being expensive and requiring considerable capital -- whereas we had very little, and needed a quick return for our money. But if I was taught some ordinary trade, I could earn my keep right away, as a boy of my age ought to do, instead of living on my family." (Lucian, 'The Dream, or A Chapter of My Life')

He was thereupon apprenticed to his uncle, a stonemason and sculptor. This did not go well; the first day on the job, he broke a marble slab, was beaten by his uncle, and decided upon a literary life. This ambition he pursued, "undeterred by poverty." Why, if John Dominic Crossan and his peers are right about ancient literacy, had a young man who was "poor, the son of a nobody," already attended primary school?

Caius and Caia

Cicero defended Lucius Murena against the accusation of bribery brought by his friend and political ally Servius Sulpicius and the esteemed Marcus Cato. Though it might not be evident to modern readers why 'dissing' the opposing counsel is an important part of any court case, Cicero does take the time and trouble to disrespect Sulpicius' imposing reputation as a legal expert. Though the law was Sulpicius' "darling daughter" and his constant study, Cicero was not impressed; after all, "all" men know the law:

"Nor has any one any right to be considered skillful in law, because there cannot be any difference between men in a branch of knowledge with which they are all acquainted." (Cicero, For Lucius Murena, Chapter 13).

Cicero had already explained that the law in former times was an arcane pursuit understood by only a few, but that the publication of 'cheat sheets' of legal terminology by a certain notary had de-mythologized the law: "A certain notary was found, by name Cnaeus Flavius, who could deceive the most wary, and who set the people records to be learnt by heart each day, and who pilfered their own learning from the profoundest lawyers." (Cicero, 'For Lucius Murena,' Chapter 11). He goes on to mock the very law itself for its 'mumbo-jumbo' and slavish devotion to precedent, epitomized by the fact that the Roman legal system kept on mindlessly marrying the same two people over and over again, Caius and Caia.

While Cicero's contention that "all" men understood the law was doubtless an exaggeration, and excludes at the outset women and slaves who were not eligible to plead in the law-courts, it remains difficult to place in the context of John Dominic Crossan's ancient world where hardly anyone was literate. If hardly anyone was even literate, how did it come about that "all" men, "omnes," knew the law? Of what use to illiterates were Cnaeus Flavius' 'cheat-sheets'? Since Sulpicius' specialized knowledge would inevitably be open to very few in an illiterate world, why embark upon the pointless, lost-cause pursuit of disrespecting it? Why represent it as a common thing when it cannot have been? But Cicero says that it was.

Down on the Farm

There is good reason to think the literacy rate in the country-side was lower than that of the towns. But the rural literacy rate was far from zero. Varro advises farm proprietors to arrange for their herds to be tended by educated masters:

"'As to what pertains to the health of man and beast," resumed Cossinius, 'and the leech craft which may be practiced without the aid of a physician, the flock master should have the rules written down: indeed, the flock master must have some education, otherwise he can never keep his flock accounts property.'" (Varro, Of Country Life, 'Of Shepherds').

There are two reasons the herd master should be literate: keeping accounts, and keeping track of all the various recipes for ointments and medications the animals will need when they injure a hoof, etc. There are too many of these for the herd master to store them all in his head:

"So far as concerns the health of the flock, there are many things I might add, but, as Scrofa has said, the flock master keeps his prescriptions written down in a book and carries with him what he needs in the way of physic." (Varro, Of Country Life, 'Of Sheep').

"What shall I say of the health of these animals who never have any [goats]? yet the flock master should have written down what remedies are used for certain of their maladies and especially for the wounds which often befall them by reason of their constant fighting among themselves and their feeding in thorny places." (Varro, Of Country Life, 'Of Goats').

"As to medicine for the horse, there are so many symptoms of their maladies and so many cures that the studgroom must have them written down: indeed, on this account in Greece the veterinarians are mostly called hippiatroi (horse leeches)." (Varro, Of Country Life, 'Of Horses').

Varro suggests the herdsman will find it helpful to read Mago the Carthaginian's treatise on farm management:

"The rules for taking care of the health of neat cattle are many. I have those which Mago has recorded written out and I take care that my herdsman reads them frequently." (Varro, Of Country Life, 'Of Neat Cattle').

Varro also advises that the farm house rules should be written out and posted:

"All these rules should be written out and posted in the farmstead and the overseer especially should have them at the tip of his tongue." (Varro, Of Country Life, 'A Calendar of Agricultural Operations').

Why this would be helpful if the rural population is altogether illiterate, Varro doesn't say. I've uploaded Varro's 'Of Country Life' to the Thriceholy Library for the reader's benefit.

Learned Slaves

The literacy rate amongst the slave population, amounting to perhaps a third of the total population, cannot have been high, yet it was not zero. Exquisitely educated Greek philosophers fell into this condition when their towns were sacked. Some home-born slaves were educated by their masters, including Terence:

"Publius Terentius Afer, a native of Carthage, was a slave, at Rome, of the senator Terentius Lucanus, who, struck by his abilities and handsome person, gave him not only a liberal education in his youth, but his freedom when he arrived at years of maturity." (Suetonius, Lives of the Eminent Grammarians, Lives of the Poets, Life of Terence.)

The home-born slave who fetched the highest recorded purchase price in antiquity was a grammarian:

"The highest price ever given for a man born in slavery, so far as I am able to discover, was that paid for Daphnus, the grammarian, who was sold by Natius of Pisaurum to M. Scaurus, the first man in the state, for seven hundred thousand sesterces." (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book VII, Chapter 40).

Shall we take comfort, reflecting upon this fallen race, or suffer perplexity, that the costliest slave on record should have been a grammarian? Seneca knew of noveau-riche gentleman who, to appear learned, purchased at great cost slave who knew Homer by heart, and could 'prompt' him:

"Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank-account and the brains of a freedman. . .His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam,— names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants. No major-domo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them,— no such man, I say, calls off the names of his master's tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes. But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So he devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves,— one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod; he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric
poets. You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue, he began to make life miserable for his guests; he would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch, and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word." (Seneca, Epistle XXVII).

These high-priced slaves must have been literate, to learn the poets by heart. Those "made to order" must have been instructed to read and master the poets, a task requiring the purchase of a second reader-slave if the first had not been literate!

Some people seem to think the great majority of the population in antiquity were slaves, but a more realistic figure is a third, as in the American south-land before the Civil War. A society one third slave and two thirds free is stable and sustainable. Those places which had a higher ratio of slave to free stand out, because society must be organized like an armed camp, as was Sparta, if a minority of free men must keep the majority in subjection. Warfare in antiquity was labor-intensive; numbers matter.

If we count slaves as one-third the population, then free-born men would be one-third and freeborn women one-third of the total. One third of the population, therefore, inherited literacy as a birth-right; however, disadvantages such as rural residence would have impeded their progress. Not until big yellow school buses criss-crossed the land was universal rural literacy in view. Yet there were volunteers to fill in the depleted ranks, from the outlying groups: slaves and women; their literacy rate was not zero, though literacy was not their norm. But perhaps there were not so many literate volunteers as to fill up the gap completely, of free-born men 'missing in action.'

A conservative estimate of ancient literacy would thus be one-fourth to one-third of the total population, 25% to 33%, not the 5% we hear of today. Most people were illiterate, yet this skill was not so uncommon as to force the gospels to have been written long, long after and far, far away, which was the point of scaling down this number. Ancient testimony, however, will not allow such a dramatic down-grade.

This would mean that the literacy rate did not advance but declined during the Dark Ages. People compare apples with oranges when they surmise that if the barbarian hordes who brought down the empire had a very low literacy rate, as they surely did, and their children and grand-children also had very low literacy rates, as they also did, then the inhabitants of the empire brought down can never have had any higher rate. This is the same as to say, if the barbarian hordes did not know how to make realistic-looking portrait busts, as they did not, then the Greeks and Romans never knew how to make them either.

Enlightened Audience

The word 'book' here need not imply a 300-page tome such as would be delivered by the Literary Guild, suitable also for use as a door stop; it could have been a pamphlet or flyer. What is the book from which the audience has learned to dispute: a manual entitled 'The Art of Disputation'? Or political broadsides? Or a plot synopsis or copy of the script for the play they are viewing? Whatever it was, it is unclear why an illiterate populace would bother carting around a book, pamphlet or flyer in the first place.

Art can be so much more, and also so much less, than a mirror to the world. What people do in the movies may or may not tell us about life outside of Hollywood. But gleaning literacy information from ancient literature is nevertheless a more promising and empirical approach than handing down verdicts from on high, delivered by the priesthood of an economic scholasticism, who decree what people must have done in place of what they say they did.

Fame and Fortune

To judge by the testimony of the Latin poets, the literary market of their days was so structured that fame and fortune lay within the grasp of the poet who could connect with the public:

How did Martial the poet come to be "known the world over" in world where almost everyone was illiterate?

Horace concurs that popular poetry gathers money for the Sosii, book-sellers:

"The centuries of elders damn a play
That nothing that's instructive has to say;
The haughty Ramnes scout the austere alway;
But every vote polls he that knows to blend
The pleasant with the useful, and to lend
The reader counsel and delight together.
Such books for Sosii the money gather;
They make their way across the ocean main,
And they immortalize the author's name."
(Horace, The Art of Poetry)

The contemporary United States of America is without doubt a literate country, yet American poets can scarcely aspire to the rewards Martial and Horace looked for. Isn't that strangely inverted, if the Roman Empire was filled with illiterates?

Another perk successful poets enjoyed, is the approval of the fairer sex, which is odd given their purported illiteracy:

"Reading my poems she'll aver
Rich men are odious to her,
For never woman more than she
Devoutly worshipped poetry." (Propertius, The Dream).

Pliny the Younger was surprised at the success his works enjoyed as far afield as Lyons:

"As I did not imagine there were any booksellers at Lugdunum, I am so much the more pleased to learn that my works are sold there. I rejoice to find they maintain the character abroad which they raised at home, and I begin to flatter myself they have some merit, since persons of such distant countries are agreed in their opinion with regard to them." (Pliny the Younger, Letter XCIX, to Geminus, Part XI, Letters).

Modern scholars like Bart Ehrman claim that all authors in antiquity were amateurs. This plainly is not so. Much of their income came through business strategies not now common, such as public readings and patronage, but they plainly did receive income from their literary endeavors.

The Public

What did these best-selling authors call their readership? "The public:"

"But if novelty had been as offensive to the Greeks as it is to us, what in these days would be ancient? What would the public have to read and thumb, each according to his taste?" (Horace, Epistles, II. 1.90).

When you stop to think about it, that is a really odd thing to call a small group of people who numbered less than 10 percent of the population.

"The fickle public has changed its taste and is fired throughout with a scribbling craze...skilled or unskilled, we scribble poetry, all alike." (Horace, Epistles, II. 1. 108-115).

Sign-boards

'For sale' signs and other public notices were commonly seen in the ancient world. When the cynic Diogenes wanted to shame some young hoodlums who had assaulted him, he walked around with their names on a sign-board:

Why would walking around with town wearing a sandwich-board bring Diogenes' attackers into "universal blame" when most people could not read? Why, for that matter, were ancient cities littered with written material: campaign posters, expensive chiselled inscriptions, even extemporaneous graffiti, invisible to the average person? I suppose they were waiting for the Industrial Revolution when people would at long last be able to read all that stuff, at least what survives?

Fair Warning

Gentiles were forbidden to enter the temple at Jerusalem:

"Enemies have stretched out their hands
over all her precious things;
she has even seen the nations
invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
to enter your congregation." (Lamentations 1:10)

"Say to the rebellious house, to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: O house of Israel, let there be an end to all your abominations in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood...Thus says the Lord GOD: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary." (Ezekiel 44:7-9).

A written sign stating this in Greek and Latin was considered adequate notice:

Realizing that the penalty for a curious Roman soldier who happened to wander past the line was death, why was written notice deemed adequate, if almost everyone of that day was illiterate?

Inscriptions

What reason did the Greeks themselves give for their habit of carving public inscriptions? So that everybody might know:

If the purpose of all this engraving is "that all may know," how does this expensive practice serve any such purpose in a society where almost everyone is illiterate?

Spare No Pains

That it is the duty of parents to superintend their children's education is a commonplace of ancient literature:

Those Left Out

The literacy that was the normal condition for free-born town-dwellers was harder for other social groups to achieve. We are accustomed, when talking about the 'citizens' of the U.S., to mean just about everybody who lives here, excluding only illegal aliens. It must not be forgotten that in the ancient city-states, the 'citizens' were a sub-set of the population: offspring of two free-born residents, or indeed: legitimate offspring only, with both parents native-born.

Yet even slaves can not always be assumed to be illiterate, as already noted; the braggart soldier's slave writes a note to his former master:

Modern readers may complain, 'So what if slaves in theatrical plays could read? People do all kind of implausible things in soap operas on TV.' But the Roman audience was a very tough audience. Like the audience at the old Harlem Apollo theater, they were quick to hoot and holler. One of the things they were looking for was verisimilitude:

"If words the speaker's station fail to suit,
The Roman knights and commons laugh and hoot;
And wide indeed the difference it will make
Whether a rich man or a hero speak,
An aged man or man of youthful force,
A noble matron or a fussy nurse,
A merchant wont both near and far to roam
Or tiller of a thriving farm at home..."
(Horace, The Art of Poetry)

The audience's willingness to offer feedback imposed a discipline on these writers lacking for the soap operas.

Readers may enjoy perusing 'The Manual' written by Epictetus, the slave. Nonetheless, those masters who educated their slaves were felt to be going beyond what was required of them:

"There are certain things with which a master is bound to provide his slave, such as food and clothing; no one calls this a benefit; but supposing that he indulges his slave, educates him above his station, teaches him arts which free-born men learn, that is a benefit." (Seneca, On Benefits, Book III, XXI).

Many slaves were not 'indulged' by their masters. How many were left out? Ancient Rome was a city of immigrants, though many of them arrived in chains. Those reduced to slavery in war included northern barbarians who lacked any written alphabet; the literacy rates amongst such groups were zero, by definition. Even within the bounds of the long-civilized nations hugging the Mediterranean, literacy was lumpy. Modern-day detractors therefore prefer to focus on such countries as Egypt, where literacy was long the preserve of a small coterie of scribes. Lacking for a long while a true phonetic alphabet, this area likely did lag. Though the Chinese are showing the world a phonetic alphabet is not a prerequisite to universal literacy, a simple, easily-learned alphabet like the Greek is undoubtedly a great help.

Origen says that uneducated people outnumber the learned:

"And although, among the multitude of converts to Christianity, the simple and ignorant necessarily outnumbered the more intelligent, as the former class always does the latter..." (Origen, Contra Celsum, Book 1, Chapter 27).

He does not specify how many of the 'simple and ignorant' possess bare literacy and how many none at all. In a similar vein, Tertullian explains that 'the simple' are the largest group: "The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world's plurality of gods to the one only true God;. . ." (Tertullian, 'Against Praxeas,' Chapter III.) But who are "the simple"? People without a theological education? Or people who can't read?

Certainly some groups were left out, looking in on the literate world from the outside. But even the left-out groups: country-dwellers, women, and slaves,-- were never left out to the very last person; in all these groups some were literate. One literate rustic was Aeschylus, called by the daemon to literary pursuits from his vineyard, as Amos was called by the living God from his herds and sycamores:

"Aischylos said that when he was a boy he was asleep in the country looking after a vineyard, and Dionysos met him and told him to write tragedies. When day broke he wanted not to disobey, so he tried, and composed with the greatest ease. That is what Aischylos said." (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume I, Book 1, 21.3).

The rustic population, whose opportunities for education were spotty, must have been vast. It is interesting to note that this population lagged, not only in literacy, but also in adoption of Christianity; the word 'pagan' originally meant simply 'peasant, country-dweller.' But the urban population was also huge, nor was there any wall between these two worlds. Many city-dwellers, namely women and slaves, lagged behind, though none of these classes was completely locked out. A conservative estimate for the percentage of the total population, including all classes and conditions, who were literate, in the civilized world of the first century, is 25%-33%.

Shorthand

It is sometimes alleged by the modern 'Jesus' industry that people in ancient times had no concept of the difference between a quotation and a free invention, offering as evidence historians like Thucydides, who admitted to composing such speeches for his generals and politicians as seemed suitable. But not only did the ancients comprehend this distinction, they even employed shorthand-takers:

"He [Cicero] had previously taught those secretaries who were especially rapid writers to use symbols which served to compress the sense, and then had these men dispersed here and there through the senate house. Up to that time the Romans had not trained or even posssessed what we call shorthand writers, but that day, they say, the first move towards employing some such method was made." (Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger, 23, Plutarch's Lives).

Nor does Thucydides say any such thing as that he does not comprehend the difference between a quote and a paraphrase; rather, he apologizes that verbatim transcripts were not available to him.

Tokyo Rose

When Persian ships threatened Greece, the sailors rowing at their oars included Ionian settlers in Asia Minor, who spoke Greek. The Greeks appealed to these sailors:

"Meanwhile, Themistocles sailed along the coast, and wherever he saw useful harbors and places of refuge for enemy ships, he cut conspicuous inscriptions on such stones as he happened to find, or had stones set up near these possible anchorages and watering places, calling on the Ionians, to come over if possible to the Athenians, who were their ancestors, and who were risking everything for their liberty; and if they could not do that, to impede the barbarian army in battle and throw it into confusion." (Plutarch, Life of Themistocles, 9, Plutarch's Lives).

If these sailors were illiterate, why waste the expense of carving the inscriptions?

Sparta

Sparta was a militaristic communist state in southern Greece that vied with Athens for dominance. Even the Spartan boys learned to read and write, though likely just barely:

"The boys learned reading and writing, as much as they needed, but the rest of their training was to make them take orders well, endure pain, and be victors in battle." (Plutarch, Life of Lycurus, 16, Plutarch's Lives).

Caesar's Army

Caesar's army was swept by a 'The Germans are Coming' scare, and the men spent what they feared would be their last days on this earth putting their documents in order:

"Throughout the camp all the men were signing and sealing their wills." (Caesar, The Gallic War, 1.39)

To be sure it was as possible in that day as in this for an illiterate to make a legal signature. However it is difficult to envision the totally illiterate Roman army of the modern Bible scholars' imagination embarking upon such a project.

Small Print

Gaius Caligula Caesar levied "new and unheard-of taxes." The people wanted to know these laws, so as not to liable for fines in addition to the tax owed. But the devious and greedy Caligula published the laws...in small print:

"When taxes of this kind had been proclaimed, but not published in writing, inasmuch as many offenses were committed through ignorance of the letter of the law, he at last, on the urgent demand of the people, had the law posted up, but in a very narrow place and in excessively small letters, to prevent the making of a copy." (Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Gaius Caligula).

If hardly anyone was literate, why would the people have demanded this measure, and why would they have been inconvenienced when the 'small print' made it difficult to copy the new laws?

Ordinary

According to John Chrysostom, writing in the fourth century A.D., literacy is an "ordinary" achievement. Notice too how John says "children" learn letters; not 'some children' or 'noble children' but "children":

It sounds like, for those within the sound of John's voice, the illiterate man had become the exception, not the rule.

Believe it or Not

The story goes, an African tribe told a German anthropologist they had no knowledge of any link between sex and procreation. He dutifully noted down this fact in his notebook and went on his way, no doubt intending to publish in the scholarly journals this startling revelation. An English trader standing by protested, 'Why did you tell that man that?' The tribes-people replied, 'Oh, we just wanted to see if it's true what people say, that those Germans will believe anything.'

Some people say that, even though modern educators understand the synergy between reading and writing, it had not yet been discovered in the ancient world. Because educators in antiquity did not understand the connection between these two skills, they instead taught them separately, and consequently many could read who could not write at all. Is this what the ancient educators themselves say?:

"But these precepts of oratory, though necessary to be known, are yet insufficient to produce the full power of eloquence, unless there be united with them a certain efficient readiness, which among the Greeks is called εξις, "habit," and to which I know that it is an ordinary subject of inquiry whether more is contributed by writing, reading, or speaking. This question we should have to examine with careful attention, if we could confine ourselves to any one of those exercises; 2. but they are all so connected, so inseparably linked, with one another, that if any one of them be neglected, we labor in vain in the other two; for our speech will never become forcible and energetic, unless it acquires strength from great practice in writing, and the labor of writing, if left destitute of models from reading, passes away without effect, as having no director; while he who knows how everything ought to be said, will, if he has not his eloquence in readiness, and prepared for all emergencies, merely brood, as it were, over locked up treasure." (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, Book X, Chapter 1).

Balance

In the nineteenth century classicists idealized the civilization of Greece and Rome. The classicists of that era were likelier to overstate ancient literacy than to deny it. These optimists ignored substantial evidence against universal literacy in the ancient world. There were certainly very many illiterate persons, such as Justin describes:

"Among us these things can be heard and learned from persons who do not even know the forms of the letters, who are uneducated and barbarous in speech, though wise and believing in mind; some, indeed, even maimed and deprived of eyesight; so that you may understand that these things are not the effect of human wisdom, but are uttered by the power of God." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 60).

Yet this modern correction, which emboldens secular Bible scholars to think it plausible the gospel existed for decades only as oral tradition such as might be heard amongst a South Seas tribe huddled around the fire, is no correction at all. It falls overboard in the other direction, ridiculing and rejecting almost all of what ancient authors say about who could, and who could not, read and write. Why not credit their testimony?

Theory should be corrected to conform to facts, not facts trimmed to fit theory. Marxist economics, in the experience of the many countries who turned to this 'science' for guidance in managing their economies during the twentieth century, cannot explain even the simplest of things such as how to keep store shelves stocked with merchandise. Watching this 'science' throw up its hands in bewilderment at buying and selling, and seeing its expectations fail over and over in the last century, why would modern academics trust so fervently in Marxism's predictive powers as to deny a recorded fact: that free-born city-dwellers in classical antiquity were general literate,-- because this theory confesses itself unable to account for the fact? Given this unsuccessful theory's many failed predications, why not discard Marxist economics instead of discarding the ancient literacy which it cannot explain?

To the Marxist, democracy is a dodge. But history shows that democracy really is different. Ancient literacy first stirred in the cradle of democracy:

"Elementary education for all citizens was achieved early in Athens, at least a century before Socrates, and literacy seems to have been widespread. This reflected the rise of democracy." (I. F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates, p. 42).

After Philip of Macedon had enslaved the once free Greeks, his son Alexander proceeded to make the world safe for Hellenic civilization. What democracy had brought to birth was spread by methods by no means democratic. Greek slaves abducted from their homeland taught the Romans who had captured them how to sing praises to freedom. This paradox is not resolved by denying the Greeks, nor the peoples who learned from them, their literacy.