Ancient Literacy

It is integral to contemporary liberal Bible scholarship that literacy was a very rare achievement in the ancient world. This is essential to their case, lest any think the gospels early and authentic. So they say. But is it true?:

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 often assumed in ancient drama and literature not to be literate. The fictional rural foundlings Daphnis and Chloe were taught to read and write, but this is understood as exceptional:

"When the two men had this dream, they were upset at the thought that the children were to become shepherds and goatherds, although their tokens had promised greater things. Indeed, because of this, they had brought the children up rather delicately, teaching them to read and write and to do everything that was regarded as elegant in the country." (Daphnis and Chloe, Longus, p. 291, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, edited by B. P. Reardon).

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 much 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, women less so than men.

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:

We have grown familiar in our day with school shootings; a similar sociopathic rampage was reported in antiquity of the boxer Cleomedes. Annoyed that his Olympic prize was withheld, he went postal and brought the roof down on top of a school-house full of innocent children:

"At the Festival previous to this it is said that Cleomedes of Astypalaea killed Iccus of Epidaurus during a boxing-match. On being convicted by the umpires of foul play and being deprived of the prize he became mad through grief and returned to Astypalaea. Attacking a school there of about sixty children he pulled down the pillar which held up the roof.

"This fell upon the children, and Cleomedes, pelted with stones by the citizens, took refuge in the sanctuary of Athena. He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead." (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6.9.6-7).

Up until Cleomedes climbs into the chest (and disappears), this is a straight-forward report from the crime blotter, but then it becomes an X-File, as was prone to happen in antiquity. In any event, whether the incident actually happened this way or not, whoever told the story expected his hearers to believe that an undistinguished locality like Astypalaea would be likely to have a school with sixty children enrolled in the fifth century B.C.

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 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 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."

Quintilian

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.

I've added Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory to the Thriceholy Library just in case you too, dear reader, should encounter one of these 'Jesus Seminar' types who wants to deny that there were ever public schools in antiquity. Given the wealth of documentary evidence that survives from antiquity, it is hard to fathom how such misconceptions can gain a hearing:

Eusebius mentions in passing that "every city" has its school: "But since the matters which have been mentioned are not known to all, it seems to me well to pass from this point to subjects which are self-evident to all the learned, and to examine the oracular responses of most ancient date which are repeated in the mouth of all Greeks, and are taught in the schools of every city to those who resort to them for instruction." (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, Book V, Chapter XVIII).

'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 represented the transitional generation: "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). During much of the epoch of classical antiquity, school-teachers, at all levels: primary, grammar and rhetoric,—were private entrepreneurs who collected their fees from their pupils' parents. However, at some point 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. There are pros and cons to both systems, as Pliny the Younger pointed out in making his very generous offer to pay one third of a teacher's salary for his home town:

"If you put your money together, what would it cost you to engage teachers?. . .Now, as I have not yet any children of my own, I am prepared to contribute a third of whatever sum you decide to collect, as a present for our town such as I might give to a daughter or my mother. I would promise the whole amount were I not afraid that someday my gift might be abused for someone's selfish purposes, as I see happen in many places where teachers' salaries are paid from public funds. . .People who may be careless about another person's money are sure to be careful about their own, and they will see that only a suitable recipient shall be found for my money if he is also to have their own." (Pliny the Younger, Letters, Book IV, 13).

Public Library

Another institution found in antiquity was the public library: "M. Varro is the only person, who, during his lifetime, saw his own statue erected. This was placed in the first public library that was ever built, and which was formed by Asinius Pollio with the spoils of our enemies." (Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book VII, Chapter 31); and "This practice of grouping portraits was first introduced at Rome by Asinius Pollio, who was also the first to establish a public library, and so make the works of genius the property of the public. Whether the kings of Alexandria and of Pergamus, who had so energetically rivalled each other in forming libraries, had previously introduced this practice, I cannot so easily say." (Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Book XXXV, Chapter 2). Julius Caesar envisioned the library project: "He also projected a most spacious theatre adjacent to the Tarpeian mount; and also proposed to reduce the civil law to a reasonable compass, and out of that immense and undigested mass of statutes to extract the best and most necessary parts into a few books; to make as large a collection as possible of works in the Greek and Latin languages, for the public use; the province of providing and putting them in proper order being assigned to Marcus Varro." (Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius Caesar, Chapter 44). In assigning priority to Asinius Pollio Pliny is overlooking Greek precursors. But why make "the works of genius the property of the public" if the public is illiterate?

The Athenians had enjoyed the use of a public library from the days of Psisistratus the tyrant:

"Psisistratus the tyrant is said to have been the first who supplied books of the liberal sciences at Athens for public use. Afterwards the Athenians themselves, with great care and pains, increased their number; but all this multitude of books, Xerxes, when he objected possession of Athens, and burned the whole of the city except the citadel, seized and carried away to Persia." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Volume II, Book VI, Chapter XVII, pp. 42-43).

Why are books for public use required for a populace which is, ex hypothesi, overwhelmingly illiterate? The library at Alexandria had a very extensive collection:

"A prodigious number of books were in succeeding times collected by the Ptolemies in Egypt, to the amount of near seven hundred thousand volumes." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book VI, Chapter XVII, p. 43).

The author unfortunately does not break this near-seven hundred thousand number down, counting how many were unique titles. Why an illiterate populace required so many books to be written is left unexplained.

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 step toward subsidized public education was taken by 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?

This theme, that education makes good citizens, continues to be struck by orators, even long after the only functional democracy that remained was on the municipal level; at the level of the state, the Roman emperors were autocrats on a par with Josef Stalin:

"For nowadays, you know, you make the mistake which the Athenians once made. I mean, when Apollo said that, if they wished to have good men as citizens, they should put that which was best into the ears of their boys, they pierced one of the ears of each and inserted a bit of gold, not understanding what the god intended. In fact such an ornament was suitable rather for girls and for sons of Lydians and Phrygians, whereas for sons of Greeks, especially since a god had given the command, nothing else was suitable but education and reason, for it is natural that those who get these blessings should prove to be good men and saviors of the state." (Dio Chrysostom, The Thirty-second Discourse: To the People of Alexandria, Section 3).

The ancient world as a whole received the imprint of Greek civilization after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the conquering Romans built upon the foundation laid by their greatly admired predecessors. Democracy requires an educated populace. If the ancient world never had one, as these people are telling us nowadays, then that would certainly explain the collapse of democracy, but it would never explain its prior flowering.

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?

For a later Roman example of the principle, consider Tarius' home court trial of his son on a charge of attempted parricide:

"When Tarius was ready to open the inquiry on his son, he invited Augustus Caesar to attend the council; Augustus came to the hearth of a private citizen, sat beside him, and took part in the deliberation of another household. He did not say, "Rather, let the man come to my house"; for, if he had, the inquiry would have been conducted by Caesar and not by the father. When the case had been heard and all the evidence had been sifted — what the young fellow said in his defense, and what was brought up in accusation against him, Caesar requested each man to give his verdict in writing, lest all should vote according to his lead. Then, before the tablets were opened, he solemnly declared that he would accept no bequest from Tarius, who was a rich man." (Seneca, On Mercy, Book I).

Was it a given that Tarius' male relatives and hangers-on were literate because Tarius was a patrician? No, he was a self-made man: "Lucius Tarius Rufus, a man of humble provincial origins, had a long and distinguished career, rising to the rank of consul (16 B.C.) and acquiring considerable wealth." (Moral and Political Essays by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, John Madison Cooper, Cambridge University Press, footnote, p. 147). John Calvin, in his commentary on Seneca's 'On Mercy,' identifies this Tarius with one mentioned by Pliny: "This Tarius of whom Seneca speaks is he who is mentioned by Pliny, a man of humble birth, raised from abject poverty to the highest pinnacle of fortune and even elected consul through Augustus' kindness." (John Calvin, Commentary on Seneca's 'On Mercy,' Chapter 15, p. 164). Pliny says of him, "L. Tarius Rufus, a man who, born in the very lowest ranks of life, by his military talents finally attained the consulship, and who in other respects adhered to the old-fashioned notions of thriftiness, made away with about one hundred millions of sesterces, which, by the liberality of the late Emperor Augustus, he had contrived to amass, in buying up lands in Picenum, and cultivating them in the highest style, his object being to gain a name thereby; the consequence of which was, that his heir renounced the inheritance." (Pliny, Natural History, Book XVIII, Chapter 7).

Tarius was "born in the very lowest ranks of life," yet his family had no problem delivering written verdicts on sealed tablets. This 'secret ballot' method of rendering a verdict would have inconvenienced and embarrassed illiterate persons and, may I suggest, likely would not have been used if literacy were not a given.

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:

"In short, this book of mine should be generally useful — useful alike to the statesman and to the public at large — as was my work on History. In this work, as in that, I mean by "statesman," not the man who is wholly uneducated, but the man who has taken the round of courses usual in the case of freemen or of students of philosophy." (Strabo, Geography, Book I, Chapter 1, Section 22).

This is not to say every free-born lad actually received such an education, but it was understood to be shameful if his parents neglected to give him his birth-right:

"'It was with higher hopes than this, men of Athens, that I reared this boy. From the hour of his birth I expected him to be a support in my old age; I gave him the upbringing that befits a free man; I gave him an excellent education; I had him enrolled in my phratry and my clan; I entered his name in the register of ephebes; I proclaimed him a fellow citizen of yours according to the laws; I anchored the whole of my life on him. But he shows no gratitude for all I have done for him.'" (An Ethiopian Story, Heliodorus, p. 363, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, edited by B. P. Reardon).

When the conquering Roman general Mummius reduced many of Corinth's children to orphans, he sorted them out on the basis of their legal status by asking them to write down a verse:

"But that Corinthian captive boy excelled all, who, when the city was destroyed, and Mummius, taking a survey of all the free-born children that understood letters, commanded each to write a verse, wrote thus:— Thrice, four times blest, the happy Greeks that fell. ("Odyssey," v. 306.) For they say that Mummius was affected with it, wept and gave all the free-born children that were allied to the boy their liberty." (Plutarch (2011-03-17). Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies (Kindle Location 5031-5035). Symposiacs, Book IX, Kindle Edition.)

This was an effectual method for separating slaves from free-born boys, because, in general, 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. Flavius Josephus explains how important education was to his Jewish constituency:

"Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well; and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us." (Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, Book 1, Chapter 12).

As he explains, this education is directed toward understanding the laws: "Nay, indeed, the law does not permit us to make festivals at the births of our children, and thereby afford occasion of drinking to excess; but it ordains that the very beginning of our education should be immediately directed to sobriety. It also commands us to bring those children up in learning, and to exercise them in the laws, and make them acquainted with the acts of their predecessors, in order to their imitation of them, and that they might be nourished up in the laws from their infancy, and might neither transgress them, nor have any pretense for their ignorance of them." (Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, Book 2, Chapter 26). 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. Early Christian literature is filled with exhortations to read the scriptures:

"Be constant as well in prayer as in reading; now speak with God, now let God speak with you, let Him instruct you in His precepts, let Him direct you." (The Epistles of Cyprian, Epistle 1, To Donatus, Section 15, Writings of Cyprian, Volume I, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, pp. 12-13).

"Let no day pass by without reading some portion of the Sacred Scriptures, at such convenient hour as offers, and giving some space to meditation. And never cast off the habit of reading in the Holy Scriptures; for nothing feeds the soul and enriches the mind so well as those sacred studies do." (The Epistle of Theonas, Bishop of Alexandria, To Lucianus, the Chief Chamberlain, Section 9, ECF p. 303).

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 [21a])

This compulsory education was the beneficiary of municipal expenditure:

"Raba said: Under the ordinance of Joshua ben Gamala. children are not to be sent [every day to school] from one town to another, but they can be compelled to go from one synagogue to another [in the same town]. If, however, there is a river in between, we cannot compel them. But if, again. there is a bridge, we can compel them — not, however, if it is merely a plank.

"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).

This same discussion brings up teachers in the alley-way or courtyard: "Come and hear: If two persons live in a courtyard and one of them desires to become a Mohel, a blood-letter, a tanner, or a teacher of children, the other can prevent him! — Here too the reference is to a teacher of non-Jewish children." (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra, 21a.). . .but explains those were for the Gentiles residing in the place. It would appear the Greeks pursued a municipal model of education, the Jews centered instruction around the synagogue, while the Romans pursued a free enterprise model: teachers in the alley-ways or booths or other low-rent locales charging a fee for their services. 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 neither can the literate population in that day have been as small as the modern-day 'Jesus' industry represents. Progress in this metric is incremental, and where history grants us a glimpse, Jewish literacy is not seen to be the preserve of a tiny elite. The association between synagogues and schools is so close and unbreakable that the word for 'synagogue' in several European languages is 'school:' "This aspect of the synagogue persists in Jewry even today; the German, the Italian, and the Yiddish terms for synagogue is 'school' (Schule scuola, shul)." (Samuel Sandmel, Judaism and Christian Beginnings, p. 147).

The Jewish Encyclopedia summarizes this history as,

"The founder of the system of elementary education was Simon ben Shetah (Yer. Ket. viii. 11, 32b). The school was not in immediate connection with the synagogue; but sessions were held either in a room of the synagogue or in the house of the teacher. The teachers ranked in the following order, namely, sage, scribe, hazzan (Sotah ix. 15). Between 63 and 65 C.E. Joshua ben Gamla reformed the system by constraining every community, no matter how small, to provide instruction for its children (B. B. 21a). In accordance with Oriental custom, the pupils sat on the ground in a semicircle about the teacher, who sat on a raised platform (Meg. 21a). The compensation of the teacher was not stipulated, but consisted of a restitution for loss of time." (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, Article Pedagogics).

Bethar

From 132-135 A.D., a Messianic aspirant who styled himself Simon Bar Kochba 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 if anyone had gone around counting, it seems unlikely they would have come up with precisely 400 of everything, or 500, or whatever. And inasmuch as Bethar was the doomed capital city of the false Messiah bar Kochba, the Rabbis' favorite imposter, there may well be an impetus to puffery. 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 well less than 10% of the populace was literate. Why believe that, against all available testimony?

Incidentally, as to the project of using the writing stylus as a weapon, this has been done: "Within my memory the people in the forum stabbed Tricho [or Erixo], a Roman knight, with their writing-styles because he had flogged his son to death; Augustus Caesar's authority barely rescued him from the indignant hands of fathers no less than of sons." (Seneca, On Mercy, Book I). Others who reportedly lost their lives in this fashion include Quintus Antyllius (Plutarch, Life of Caius Grachhus, Section 13). Perhaps the advocates of widespread ancient illiteracy can explain how a mob could quickly gather in a public place armed with the sharp writing stylus (for inscribing a wax tablet) if, as they claim, hardly anyone was literate. Truth to tell, some of these stylus-attacks are patently set-ups, and the weapon more accurately called a 'shiv,' but a case where an outraged mob spontaneously attacks with this implement in hand does testify to widespread literacy.

Another Talmudic encouragement to mass literacy is the claim that king Hezekiah employed the sword to cut down on truancy:

"R. Isaac, the Smith, said: [This means,] the yoke of Sennacherib shall be destroyed on account of the oil of Hezekiah, which burnt in the synagogues and schools. What did he do? — He planted a sword by the door of the schoolhouse and proclaimed, 'He who will not study the Torah will be pierced with the sword.' Search was made from Dan unto Beer Sheba, and no ignoramus was found; from Gabbath unto Antipris, and no boy or girl, man or woman was found who was not thoroughly versed in the laws of cleanliness and uncleanliness." (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 94b).

Though this cannot be an accurate description of conditions under the ancient king Hezekiah, it certainly does show that, as of the time of writing, someone had made the obvious connection between mass literacy and conformance to the law. It remains to be explained why, even knowing this, the community could still only achieve miniscule literacy rates. After Bar Kochba's failure, the repressive measures adopted by the Roman government included criminalizing instruction in the Law, presumably precipitating decline from the high point once achieved.

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?

This phenomenon, of literary lions rising from humble beginnings, is by no means limited to the Latins; by some accounts, Euripides' mother sold vegetables: "Theopompus says, that the mother of the poet Euripides gained a livelihood by selling vegetables. . ." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Volume III, Book XVI, Chapter XX, p. 177).

At least some persons of modest means in ancient times perceived education as, not a luxury their kind could not afford, but rather as the very means of upward mobility which would enable their children to enjoy a better life than they had:

"'Hey, Agamemnon!. . .You're a cut above us, and so you laugh at what us poor people say. . .And my kid is growing up to be a pupil of yours. He can divide by four already. If God spares him, you'll have him ready to do anything for you. In his spare time, he won't take his head out of his exercise book. . .Still, he's already well ahead with his Greek, and he's starting to take to his Latin, though his tutor is too pleased with himself and unreliable — he just comes and goes. He knows his stuff but doesn't want to work. There is another one as well, not so clever but he is conscientious — he teaches the boy more than he knows himself. . .Anyway, I've just bought the boy some law books, as I want him to pick up some legal training for home use. There's a living in that sort of thing. He's done enough dabbling in poetry and such like. . .Well, yesterday I gave it to him straight: "Believe me, my lad, any studying you do will be for your own good. . .An education is an investment, and a proper profession never goes dead on you."'" (Petronius, The Satyricon, Book XV, Dinner with Trimalchio, pp. 60-61,

This character, Echion, is identified as a "rag merchant," yet he found the means to educate his son. School-boys in antiquity used to copy out edifying mottoes on their waxed tablets, an exercise which did double duty, inculcating not only penmanship but inscribing useful and memorable sayings on the mind. Several of these sayings make the point that education is, not a luxury for the already-wealthy to enjoy, but an investment that can never be stolen:

"There are observations on the value of education, of course, such as: 'Men's culture is a prize that none may steal,' 'Their education men can never lose,' or 'By education all are civilized,' together with incentives to industry and exhortations to avoid idleness: 'Work hard, and you will win fair livelihood,' 'Though rich, if you are idle, you'll be poor.'" (Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, p. 174).

It's hard to argue with these sentiments. If you invest your money in a farm, all it takes is a string of bad harvests and your creditors own your farm, whereas, who can take from you what you know? Lucian the Syrian is another who 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 our fallen race, or suffer perplexity, that the costliest slave on record should have been a grammarian? The enthusiasm for this science knew no bounds in antiquity: "'We re given over to Grammar,' says Sextus Empiricus, 'from childhood, and almost from our baby-clothes.'" (Citation from Adv. Gramm. 1.44, p. 28, 'The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity,' Edwin Hatch). Seneca knew of nouveau-riche gentleman who, to appear learned, purchased at great cost slaves 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! This accomplishment was coveted by many in antiquity including, if Dio Chrysostom can be believed, virtually the entire populace of the dilapidated frontier settlement of Borysthenes: "And although in general they no longer speak Greek distinctly, because they live in the midst of barbarians, still almost all at least know the Iliad by heart." (Dio Chrysostom, The Thirty-sixth, or Borysthenitic, Discourse). Some in antiquity critiqued literacy as if it were the enemy of memorization, when in fact it is the stepping-stone that makes this feat possible.

Some slaves' daily tasks required literacy, like that speedy slave who took shorthand dictation for Ausonius. No field hand, this highly skilled operator knew what he was doing:

"'Slave, skillful minister of swift notes, come hither. Open the double page of thy tablets, where a great number of words, each expressed by different points, is written like a single word. I go through great volumes; and like dense hail the words are hurled from my noisy lips, but thine ears are not troubled, nor is thy page filled. Thy hand, scarcely moving, flies over the surface of the wax, but if my speech runs into a long circumlocution, you put the ideas on the tablets as if I had already spoken them. I wish my mind had as swift a flight as your right hand when you anticipate my words.'" (Ausonius, Epigram CXLVI, quoted p. 15, 'Later Roman Education in Ausonius, Capella and the Theodosian Code,' with translations and commentary by Percival R. Cole).

Aulus Gellius mentions a slave whose task it was to read aloud during supper: "Whenever we were at an entertainment given by Favorinus the Philosopher, and the dishes began to be served, a slave placed at the table read something of Greek literature or our own." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Volume I, p. 229, Book III, Chapter XIX).

Cato the Elder conducted a speculative business in training slaves to enhance their market value: "He used to lend money also to those of his slaves who wished it, and they would buy boys with it, and after training and teaching them for a year, at Cato's expense, would sell them again. Many of these boys Cato would retain for himself, reckoning to the credit of the slave the highest price bid for his boy." (Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder, Chapter 21, 7). This investment in human capital does not seem to have been the rule, however.

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. There is no doubt that, owing to the prevalence of warfare, there were times and places where a majority of the populace was enslaved, for instance,

"But Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that in the hundred and fifteenth Olympiad, there was an investigation at Athens conducted by Demetrius Phalereus into the number of the inhabitants of Attica, and the Athenians were found to amount to twenty-one thousand, and the Metics to ten thousand, and the slaves to four hundred thousand." (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned, Book VI, Chapter 103).

But these same people remembered a past in which slavery was uncommon! So 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 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.

Literacy rates in classical antiquity for one-half the human race were nothing to brag about, but neither were they zero:

Enlightened Audience

How did literary artists describe their 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.

Invisible Ink

Those of us who played at spying when little know all about writing with 'invisible ink.' These fluids appeared clear until treated or rubbed with another substance. The Christian apologist Hippolytus was familiar with this technique, though the people he knew of who used it were not spies. Pagan thaumaturgists, eager to impress the gullible public, would instruct their clients to write their pleas to the demon in 'water' on a paper which was then consigned to the flames, although not before the necromancer had recovered the 'secret' information:

"And (the sorcerer), taking (a paper), directs the inquirer to write down with water whatever questions he may desire to have asked from the demons. Then, folding up the paper, and delivering it to the attendant, he sends him away to commit it to the flames, that the ascending smoke may waft the letters to demons.. . .And within (the house), into a vessel full of water (the sorcerer) infusing copperas mixture, and melting the drug, having with it sprinkled the paper that forsooth had (the characters upon it) obliterated, he forces the latent and concealed letters to come once more into light; and by these he ascertains what the inquirer has written down. And if one write with copperas mixture likewise, and having ground a gall nut, use its vapor as a fumigator, the concealed letters would become plain. And if one write with milk, (and) then scorch the paper, and scraping it, sprinkle and rub (what is thus scraped off) upon the letters traced with the milk, these will become plain. And urine likewise, and sauce of brine, and juice of euphorbia, and of a fig, produce a similar result. But when (the sorcerer) has ascertained the question in this mode, he makes provision for the manner in which be ought to give the reply. And next he orders those that are present to enter, holding laurel branches and shaking them, and uttering cries, and invoking the demon Phryn." (Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies, Book Four, Chapter 28, ECF pp. 70-71).

If almost everyone was illiterate, as is alleged, who made up the target audience for this clever fraud? The super-rich? The gilded, Epicurean youth? Asking the demon-caller's factotum to write down the message for an illiterate client would scarcely yield the desired astonishment when, as it turned out when the performance unfolded, the demon 'revealed' to his boss the client's innermost thoughts, bared moments earlier for the demon's eyes only. Even the most gullible client must recall he had himself shared the information with someone on the demonologist's staff. To work, the 'invisible ink' scam requires a literate client.

Pagan religion greatly valued knowing the question before it was asked: "The Pythian Priestess indeed was accustomed to utter some of her oracles at the very moment before the question was put: for the god whom she serves 'understands the dumb, and hears the mute.'" (Plutarch, Plutarch's Morals, Treatise: On Talkativeness, Section XX). There are ways and means of achieving this feat: a friendly face in the vestibule, a chance meeting with a stranger not known to be a confederate of the Pythoness, a good listener eager to share whispered confidences,— is one promising route. In the particular case discussed by Hippolytus, the means chosen imply widespread literacy.

Banquet Menu

According to Athenaeus, ancient banquets featured written menus distributed to the guests:

"It was a custom at feasts, that a guest when he had lain down should have a paper given to him, containing a bill of fare of what there was for dinner, so that he might know what the cook was going to serve up." (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned, Book II, Chapter 33).

One wonders why, with illiteracy so prevalent amongst the population. Or maybe, the 'Jesus Seminar' will explain, the papers handed out showed little line drawings of the various dishes. It may be that the 'banqueting class' was a subset of the population, but at the great festivals, not a tiny subset.

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. Pompeii was plastered with election notices. Pliny the Younger mentions a 'haunted house' at Athens with a 'for sale' sign posted:

"However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this great calamity which attended it, a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold." (Pliny the Younger, Letters, Book Seven, Letter 27).

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 possessed 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 explain that he does not comprehend the difference between a quote and a paraphrase; rather, he apologizes that verbatim transcripts were not available to him. Stenographers were employed not only by the law-courts but also by private persons: "Accordingly, I engaged a stenographer, so that: '. . . the winds might not scatter our labor,' and I allowed nothing to be lost." (Augustine, Against the Academics, Book One, Preface, Ancient Christian Writers No. 12, 1950, p. 39.) If there ever were a never-never land whose inhabitants did not understand the difference between a verbatim transcript and a free invention, such would not have been the place that invented stenography, which assumes a meaningful difference between the two.

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 Lycurgus, 16, Plutarch's Lives).

The Spartan institutions were in part copied from those of Crete, which also involved mandatory literacy instruction:

"The following are the principal of the laws of Crete, which Ephorus has given in detail. . .The children are taught to read, to chant songs taken from the laws, and some kinds of music." (Strabo, Geography, Book X, Chapter IV, Section 20, p. 204).

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.

And what is the use of 'dog-tags'? The Spartan army of old employed this device, to help the deceased soldier's friends identify him on the field of battle:

"When the Spartans were about the engage the Messenians, and, having resolved to conquer or die, had inscribed each man's name on a letter-stick attached to the left hand [επι τας σκυταλιδας τουνομα γραψαντων και περι τη λαια χειρι φεροντων] so that his friends could recognize him when the dead were taken up for burial, Tyrtaeus, desiring to strike terror into the Messenians by letting them know what the Spartans had done, gave orders that no great heed should be taken of deserting Helots, and the watch being relaxed these deserted as they chose, and told the Messenians of the desperate valor of their enemies." (Polyaenus, Stratagems i.17, quoted in Elegy and Iambus, Volume I, J. M. Edmonds, Ed.)

Would not an illiterate army have done better to try to recognize a fallen friend by his mauled face, or armor?

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?

Athens under the democracy had similar publication requirements:

"Those laws which are approved shall be inscribed upon the wall, where they were inscribed aforetime, for all to see.

"There was a revision of the laws, gentlemen, in obedience to this decree, and such as were approved were inscribed in the Portico. When this had been done, we passed a law which is universally enforced. Kindly read it. 'In no circumstances shall magistrates enforce a law which has not been inscribed.'

"Is any loophole left here? Can a single suit be brought before a jury by a magistrate or set in motion by one of you, save under the laws inscribed? Then if it is illegal to enforce a law which has not been inscribed, there can surely be no question of enforcing a decree which has not been inscribed."

(84-86, Andocides, Speeches, On the Mysteries)

Writing on the Wall

When the Roman city of Pompeii was entombed by the eruption of Vesuvius, ephemeral bits and pieces of city life were preserved, including grafitti. The messages left on the wall do not confirm that only upper-class people were literate; one exchange involved a romantic rivalry between two weavers:

"Yet to judge from the numerous expostulations and invocations of Venus on Pompeii's walls, romantic love was still a potent force in at least some people's lives. Vignettes of jealous needling or flirtatious wheedling capture moments of passion that leavened their subjects' hard lives, as in the case of two weavers from nearby workshops, Successus and Severus, who traded barbed comments on the walls of a bar. 'Successus the weaver loves a barmaid named Iris who does not care about him. And the more he begs, the less she cares,' writes one rival, only to be swiftly rebuffed in what develops into an increasingly ill-tempered exchange. Innumerable other couples flirt and bicker, their tortured emoting the only mark they left on history."  (Pompeii, the Living City, by Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence, p. 128)

If they were able to put "tortured emoting" up on the walls, then they must have possessed basic literacy skills. A written warning at Pompeii chased away street people:

"At one point in a Pompeian street, the eye of a straggler would catch this notice in doggerel verse:

"'Here's no place for loafers.
Lounger, move along!'" (The Common People of Ancient Rome: Studies of Roman Life and Literature, Frank Frost Abbott, p. 111).

No doubt it is the upper crust against whom 'No Loitering' signs are directed.

Innkeeper

The reader of ancient biographies not infrequently encounters anomalously literate walk-ons, like the innkeeper who was whiling away a slow day by reading a biography of a former emperor, when future emperor Severus came to Rome:

"On his arrival at Rome he chanced upon an innkeeper who was reading the Life of the emperor Hadrian at that very time. This he seized upon as an omen of future good fortune." (Lives of the Later Caesars, Severus, p. 202 Penguin edition).

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. John even gave a reading assignment to his congregation to complete at home:

John realizes that the poorer members of the congregation will have trouble complying with his request, but the difficulty he identifies is not illiteracy, but rather lack of means to purchase a Bible:

"There is another most foolish excuse of these sluggards; that they have not the books in their possession. Now as to the rich, it is ludicrous that we should take our aim at this excuse; but because I imagine that many of the poorer sort continually use it, I would gladly ask, if every one of them does not have all the instruments of the trade which he works at, full and complete, though infinite poverty stand in his way?" (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homily 11, 1)

This is a strange and really arrogant request to make if things are as the 'Jesus' publishing industry portrays them. Doesn't John know that practically all these people are illiterate?

This kind of request was incidentally not new:

"The mind must be strengthened, beloved brethren, by these meditations. By exercises of this kind it must be confirmed against all the darts of the devil. Let there be the divine reading in the hands, the Lord's thoughts in the mind; let constant prayer never cease at all; let saving labor persevere." (Cyprian, Treatise on Jealousy and Envy, Treatise X, Chapter 16, p. 49, The Writings of Cyprian, Volume II, Ante-Nicene Christian Library)

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).

Aristotle, in examining the fitness of various definitions, considers the possibility that someone might define 'grammar' as the ability to write (how could he have known?!):

"Moreover, see if, while the term to be defined is used in relation to many things, he has failed to render it in relation to all of them; as (e.g.) if he define ‘grammar’ as the ‘knowledge how to write from dictation’: for he ought also to say that it is a knowledge how to read as well. For in rendering it as ‘knowledge of writing’ he has no more defined it than by rendering it as ‘knowledge of reading’: neither in fact has succeeded, but only he who mentions both these things, since it is impossible that there should be more than one definition of the same thing." (Aristotle, Topics, Book VI, Chapter 5).

He does not say, 'this definition is very natural, because we all know many who can read and not write,' rather he finds the definition defective in that it omits mention of the matching skill.

The unknown author of the Latin treatise 'On Rhetoric to Herennius' simply announces that those who know the alphabet can both read and write:

"Those who know the letters of the alphabet can thereby write out what is dictated to them and read aloud what they have written." (Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book III, Chapter 17).

If there is supposed to have been a disconnect between these two skills in antiquity, why did its discovery await modern times?

Barbarians

The Roman Empire ranged from the North Sea to Arabia, and included within its borders both the heirs to ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, and also wild men who lived in the woods, like the Germans and the Britons. The Spaniards at the time of the Roman conquest had so little concept of 'going for a walk,' a civilized pleasure, they thought the Romans who did so must be deranged: "The Vettones, the first time they came to a Roman camp, and saw certain of the officers walking up and down the roads for the mere pleasure of walking, supposed that they were mad, and offered to show them the way to their tents. For they thought, when not fighting, one should remain quietly seated at ease." (Strabo, Geography, Book III, Chapter IV, Section 16, p. 246). The Romans began the educational process:

"But most of all were they captivated by what he did with their boys. Those of the highest birth, namely, he collected together from various peoples, at Osca, a large city, and set over them teachers of Greek and Roman learning; thus in reality he made hostages of them, while ostensibly he was educating them, with the assurance that when they became men he would give them a share in administration and authority. So the fathers were wonderfully pleased to see their sons, in purple-bordered togas, very decorously going to their schools, and Sertorius paying their fees for them, holding frequent examinations, distributing prizes to the deserving, and presenting them with the golden necklaces which the Romans call 'bullae'." (Plutarch Lives, Sertorius, Chapter 15).

Many evils came along with Roman imperialism, and patriots like Queen Boudicca and Ariovistus saw no option but armed resistance. But there was some good as well, including broad-based education, a novelty to some folks. While this Oscan group were later reminded they were effectively hostages, wherever Rome set down her boot on subject people's necks, literacy rates rose, in some cases from zero. Within a few generations, the leading Latin grammarians were coming out of Spain.

Literacy rates were low amongst some 'barbarians' even in the presence of large populations and big cities. Strabo quoted Megathenes as witness to conditions amongst the inhabitants of India, who could field a large army yet were: ". . .a people who have no written laws, who are ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory." (Strabo, Geography, Book XV, Chapter 1, Section 53, Volume III, p. 105). Apparently the individuals with whom this witness was interacting were not literate. Literacy is sometimes imagined to be a simple function of population or economic development, although this fantasy cannot be confirmed by observation. Rather, certain polities set this as a central desideratum, others do not.

The longer a place had been plugged into the system, the more local conditions resembled those at Greece and Rome. France's Mediterranean coast was so fully civilized that Marseilles, originally a Greek colony, rivalled Athens as a magnet for philosophy students:

"The aspect of the city at the present day is a proof of this. For all those who profess to be men of taste, turn to the study of elocution and philosophy. Thus this city for some little time back has become a school for the barbarians, and has communicated to the Galatae such a taste for Greek literature, that they even draw contracts on the Grecian model. While at the present day it so entices the noblest of the Romans, that those desirous of studying resort thither in preference to Athens. These the Galatae observing, and being at leisure on account of the peace, readily devote themselves to similar pursuits, and that not merely individuals, but the public generally; professors of the arts and sciences, and likewise of medicine, being employed not only by private persons, but by towns for common instruction." (Strabo, Geography, Book IV, Chapter 1, Section 5, pp. 270-271)

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.