Ancient Literacy

A Priori

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

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

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

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

Desiderata

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

Reality

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

It Takes a Village

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School-houses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).

Normalcy

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

Hellenic Civilization

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

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

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

Voting

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

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

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

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

Liberal Education

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

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

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

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

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

Old Deluder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talmud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Cleobuline

The evidence of ancient literature is that, at every level, women were less likely to be literate than men, but literate women were by no means unknown or uncommon as is sometimes represented today. While the idea that girls as well as boys should be educated was not the majority view, some as early as Cleobulus (600 B.C.) did think so:

Cleobulus practiced what he preached: "He [Cleobulus] had a daughter Cleobuline, who composed riddles in hexameters; she is mentioned by Cratinus, who gives one of his plays her name, in the plural form Cleobulinae." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume 1, Book 1, 89). Or perhaps explaining how Cleobuline "composed riddles in hexameters" without being literate will not tax our modern scholars' ambition, given what else they're willing to accommodate to their assumption of ancient illiteracy.

Sappho

"'Who was Atthis?' men shall ask,
When the world is old, and time
Has accomplished without haste
The strange destiny of men.

"Haply in that far-off age
One shall find these silver songs,
With their human freight, and guess
What a lover Sappho was." (Sappho, XXXIV)

'Who was Atthis?' A victim of child molestation, posterity replies. At any event, Sappho was literate.

Phaedra

Surviving caches of letters preserved by Egypt's dry heat contain many letters written by women. The partisans of ancient illiteracy point to the presence in the ancient world of business establishments that correlate with Kinko's or Mailboxes, Etc., where an illiterate client might dictate a letter, or have one read. There were indeed such establishments, and even literate persons like Paul preferred to dictate letters, as indeed many do today.

For this reason this page stresses letters whose authors might not have wanted their contents made public, like an adulterous love note...or a suicide note. Had Phaedra called in her stenographer and purred, 'be a dear and take down this suicide note,' would not this functionary have raised a hue and cry throughout the palace, that the queen was planning to do away with herself?

The plot of Euripides' 'Hipploytus' hangs upon Phaedra's suicide note, with its lethal false accusation. After Phaedra hangs herself, her husband notices a tablet tied to her wrist:

If Phaedra did not write this suicide note, who did? If Phaedra was illiterate, how did she manage to write a suicide note?

Whatever Phaedra's ontological status, the author and his audience saw nothing out of place in a woman writing, in her own hand, a suicide note.

Pindar's Relative

"There was an old woman in Thebes who was closely related to Pindar and had learnt how to sing most of his songs. Pindar came to this old woman in a dream and sang a hymn to Persephone; as soon as this sleep left her she wrote down everything she heard him singing in the dream." (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume 1, Book IX, 23.2)

Notice she did not go out to her local Kinko's to record this posthumous work of Pindar, she wrote it down herself "as soon as this sleep left her."

Among the Scythians

The Scythians were a barbarous people with whom the Greeks had contact. Their region includes modern-day Russia. A civilized, Greek-speaking woman happened to marry a Scythian chieftain, according to Herodotus, and naturally enough taught her son Greek:

How did this woman, who must have been illiterate,-- as were, modern scholars assure us, almost all women in classical antiquity,-- manage to teach her son "the Greek language and letters"?

Pythagoras' Mother

"Pythagoras, on coming to Italy, made a subterranean dwelling and enjoined on his mother to mark and record all that passed, and at what hour, and to send her notes down to him until he should ascend. She did so." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II, Book VIII, Chapter 1, 41).

Some say his wife, Theano, also wrote treatises.

Leontion

Epicurus the philosopher is reported to have written letters to Leontion the courtesan and to Themista, the wife of a disciple:

"Also that in his letters he wrote to Leontion, 'O Lord Apollo, my dear little Leontion, with what tumultuous applause we were inspired as we read your letter.' Then again to Themista, the wife of Leonteus: 'I am quite ready, if you do not come to see me, to spin thrice on my own axis...'" (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II, Book X, 5)

Diogenes, an Epicurean, waxes indignant at these reports and seeks to discredit them, although he concedes these women were part of Epicurus' social circle. Whether or not the philosopher who made pleasure the end of life corresponded with courtesans, these reports cannot have originated in a social milieu in which women were assumed illiterate and incapable of assimilating private correspondence.

Telesilla

"Above the theater stands a sanctuary of Aphrodite. In front of the goddess's place Telesilla, the composer of the songs, has been carved on a slab of stone; her books are thrown about at her feet; she is looking at a helmet she has in her hand and is going to put on. Telesilla was a very famous woman and a distinguished poet." (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume 1, Book II, Corinth and the Argolid, 20.7)

Pausanias quotes verses by Telesilla, so evidently there was actual poetry circulating under this name. Another female poet Pausanias mentions is "Moiro of Byzantium, who composed epic and elegiac verse" (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume 1, Book IX, Boiotia, 5.4).

Corinna

Another woman poet reportedly won a prize in competition with Pindar, though Pausanias grouses it must have been her dialect that won, not her poems:

"The memorial of Korinna, the only Tanagran composer of songs, is at a conspicuous point of the city; in the training-ground there is a picture of Korinna tying her hair with a ribbon for the victory she won over Pindar at Thebes." (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume 1, Book IX, Boetia, 22.3)

Praxilla

"Praxilla, the Sicyonian poetess, was also celebrated for the composition of scholia." (Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Banquet of the learned of Athenæus, Volume III , Book XV, 49).

Lovers' Leap

"The lofty promontory gives a suggestion of the following tale: A boy and girl, both beautiful and under the tutelage of the same teacher, burned with love for each other; and since they were not free to embrace each other, they determined to die at this very rock, and leaped from it into the sea in their first and last embrace." (Philostratus the Elder, Imagines, Book I. 12.3)

The Loeb edition adds another citation for this tale: "Cf. Xenophon, Conviv. 4. 23...'This hot flame of his was kindled when they used to go to school together.'" I'm not suggesting this event actually happened any more than that jilted Indian maidens flung themselves from all the rock outcroppings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania from which they are alleged to have done so; certain landscape features just seem to elicit this story.

Nevertheless, to those to told the story to Philostratus and to Xenophon before him, there seemed nothing implausible about a boy and a girl going to school together.

Anyte

"The Sanctuary of Asklepios was in ruins; it was originally built by Phalysios, a private individual. He had an eye disease and was nearly blind, and the god at Epidauros sent Anyte the poet to take Phalysios a written and sealed tablet. She thought this order was a dream, but she suddenly awoke and found the writing with the seals on it really in her hands: so she sailed to Naupaktos and told Phalysios to take off the seal and read what was written. He felt it would be beyond him to see this writing, because of the state his eyes were in, but hoping for a blessing from Asklepios he took off the seal and as he looked at the wax he was cured; so he gave Anyte what was written on the tablet: two thousand gold pieces." (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, Volume I, Book X, 38.7)

Leave aside for the moment the entrepreneurial Anyte's creative way of making a living: I'm surprised she didn't tell Phalysios she was from Nigeria and had cancer. She was nevertheless a real person, and a real poet.

Timoxena

"As for love of ornament, do you, Eurydice, read and try to remember what Timoxena wrote to Aristylla." (Plutarch, 'Rules for Husband and Wife,' 48).

Timoxena was Plutarch's wife. His little daughter Timoxena, whose untimely death prompted his 'Letter of Consolation to His Wife,' was named after her: "But this one I know was especially dear to you...and so I gave her your name."

Love-Letters

One of the givens of the modern assault on ancient literacy is that women were almost never literate. This assumption can be confirmed neither from ancient Greek nor Roman literature, which reports unfaithful wives writing love-notes to their lovers:

The premise that almost all the populace in antiquity was illiterate is crucial to the modern deconstruction of the New Testament. It is assumed by secular Bible scholars from Rudolph Bultmann onward that Jesus' lore was conserved orally for decades before ever being committed to paper, as if he were a sage on a savage South Seas Island. This idea never could have gained credence when most people had a basic familiarity with the literature of the Greeks and Romans, because widespread illiteracy is not what's found in that literature.

If most city-dwellers were literate, then there is no reason to suppose the memoirs of Jesus' followers conserved in the New Testament are anything but early and authentic. The contrary premise is therefore critical to modern 'Jesus' scholarship and thus should be examined carefully by fair-minded seekers.

The evidence is there in bushels, because the ancients, for all their purported illiteracy, were a voluble lot who couldn't stop themselves from filling up libraries, all unread. A good place to start:

Hortensia

From Cleobulus' day to Quintilian, there was never a time when women's literacy lacked advocates, nor practitioners such as the eloquent Hortensia:

Virginia

The nefarious Appius Claudius sought to abduct the chaste Virginia where?-- on her way to school:

"Appius Claudius was seized with a criminal passion for violating the person of a young woman of plebeian rank. Lucius Verginius, the girl's father, held an honourable rank among the centurions at Algidum, a man who was a pattern of uprightness both at home and in the service. His wife and children were brought up in the same manner. He had betrothed his daughter to Lucius Icilius, who had been tribune, a man of spirit and of approved zeal in the interest of the people. Appius, burning with desire, attempted to seduce by bribes and promises this young woman, now grown up, and of distinguished beauty; and when he perceived that all the avenues of his lust were barred by modesty, he turned his thoughts to cruel and tyrannical violence. Considering that, as the girl's father was absent, there was an opportunity for committing the wrong; he instructed a dependent of his, Marcus Claudius, to claim the girl as his slave, and not to yield to those who demanded her enjoyment of liberty pending judgment. The tool of the decemvir's lust laid hands on the girl as she was coming into the forum--for there the elementary schools were held in booths--calling her the daughter of his slave and a slave herself, and commanded her to follow him, declaring that he would drag her off by force if she demurred. The girl being struck dumb with terror, a crowd collected at the cries of her nurse, who besought the protection of the citizens." (Livy, History of Rome, Book III, 50)

Sulpicia

"At last the love I've waited for has come.
(No shame to say so: more to cover up).
My Camenae called on her in prayer,
and Cytherea brought him to my heart.

"Venus kept her promise: now she can tell
my tale of joy to those who don't believe.
I hardly want to give this letter up
so no one else sees it before he does.
I'm glad I did it -- why wear a prudish mask,
as if he wasn't good enough for me!" (Sulpicia, Six Poems).

Notice please that Sulpicia the poet does not want to give her love poem up to any but its gentleman recipient. None of the machinery postulated by the promoters of ancient illiteracy: the transcriptionist et al,-- is present.

Cleopatra

"A man from the country came bringing a basket, and when the guards asked what was in it, he opened it and taking off the leaves showed them a dish full of figs...After eating, Cleopatra took a tablet which she had already inscribed and sealed and sent it to Caesar." (Plutarch, Life of Antony, 85, Plutarch's Lives)

Cleopatra, bitten by the asp, made use of no intermediaries to communicate her final wishes to Caesar; those around her were under orders to prevent her suicide. Her impressive language skills were not a family tradition:

"With few barbarians did she [Cleopatra] ever converse through an interpreter, and to most of them she made her replies without help, as, for instance, to Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Medes, and Parthians. She is said to have known the speech of many other peoples besides, though the kings, her predecessors, had not troubled to learn even the Egyptian tongue, while some of them had given up the Macedonian." (Plutarch, Life of Antony, 27, Plutarch's Lives).

Sempronia

"Among their number was Sempronia, a woman who had committed many crimes that showed her to have the reckless daring of a man. Fortune had favored her abundantly, not only with birth and beauty, but with a good husband and children. Well educated in Greek and Latin literature, she had greater skill in lyre-playing and dancing than there is any need for a respectable woman to acquire, besides many other accomplishments such as minister to dissipation." (Sallust, The Conspiracy of Cataline, Chapter II.)

This 'pink lady' was involved in Cataline's conspiracy.

Detractors

Not only were there advocates of women's literacy, there were also detractors, like the misogynist Juvenal, who ridiculed literary women:

"But worse is the woman who, no sooner than she sits
At dinner, praises Vergil, forgives dying Dido, pits
The poets against each other, and weighs Vergil on the scale
With Homer. Grammarians yield, rhetoricians are beaten, turn tail,
And the whole assemblage is silent.
No lawyer, no auctioneer,
Can get a word in, nor even another woman." (Juvenal, Satires, Book VI, 434).

In spite of themselves, the detractors testify that there were such women.

Where the satirists did draw blood perhaps was in the lack of depth of women's education. Lactantius contrasts elitist philosophers with Christian preachers in that the latter exhort all humankind to virtue, include women, slaves, and barbarians, while the former address themselves only to that small segment of the population which had completed the liberal arts curriculum which was philosophy's antechamber. This curriculum included, not only "common" literacy, but such arcane and time-consuming studies as geometry and astronomy. Lactantius makes clear women did not study these subjects, whether for the reason he suggests: because their study time was taken up by 'home ec,' or from a societal disinclination to invest in women:

"They [the philosophers] attempted, indeed, to do that which truth required; but they were unable to proceed beyond words. First, because instruction in many arts is necessary for an application to philosophy. Common learning must be acquired on account of practice in reading, because in so great a variety of subjects it is impossible that all things should be learned by hearing, or retained in the memory. No little attention also must be given to the grammarians, in order that you may know the right method of speaking. That must occupy many years. Nor must there be ignorance of rhetoric, that you may be able to utter and express the things which you have learned. Geometry also, and music, and astronomy, are necessary, because these arts have some connection with philosophy; and the whole of these subjects cannot be learned by women, who must learn within the years of their maturity the duties which are hereafter about to be of service to them for domestic uses; nor by servants, who must live in service during those years especially in which they are able to learn; nor by the poor, or laborers, or rustics, who have to gain their daily support by labor. And on this account Tully says that philosophy is averse from the multitude...Lastly, they never taught any women to study philosophy, except Themiste only, within the whole memory of man; nor slaves, except Phaedo only, who is said, when living in oppressive slavery, to have been ransomed and taught by Cebes." (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book 3, Chapter 25).

What Lactantius calls "common learning" he does not deny to women.

Grapte

"You will write therefore two books, and you will send the one to Clemens and the other to Grapte. And Clemens will send his to foreign countries, for permission has been granted to him to do so. And Grapte will admonish the widows and the orphans. But you will read the words in this city, along with the presbyters who preside over the Church." (Hermas, The Shepherd, Book First, Vision Second, Chapter 4).

Why give a copy of this prolix and confusing vision to Grapte? So she could use it as a door-stop? Or was this literate lady expected to explicate the book's contents to the widows and orphans?

Baker's Wife

Lucius Apuleius introduces a character into his novel 'The Golden Ass' who is evidently intended for a Christian. The baker's wife is "a despiser of all the gods whom others did honor, one that affirmed that she had instead of our sure religion an only god by herself, whereby, inventing empty rites and ceremonies she deceived all men, but especially her poor husband, delighting in drinking wine, yea, early in the morning..." (Lucius Apuleius, 'The Golden Ass,' Book Nine, pp. 144-145). Lucius, a devotee of Isis, loads this woman, a monotheist who practiced an 'empty rite' involving drinking wine in the morning (communion?), with every imaginable sin, from adultery to cruelty to animals to murder.

More to the point for present purposes, the baker's wife attended school. Prompted by a reference to an acquaintance, she recalls her as a school-mate:

"Then the baker's wife said: 'I know her very well, for her name is Arete, and we two dwelled together at one school.'" (Lucius Apuleius, 'The Golden Ass,' Book Nine, p. 146).

Hypatia

As this world draws to its close, we encounter the tragic figure of Hypatia:

"THERE was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in coming to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more. Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort." (Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, Book 7, Chapter 15).

Hypatia, a pagan, led an unexpected second, posthumous career as a Catholic 'saint,' St. Catherine of Alexandria.

Olympias

One of John Chrysostom's correspondents was a widow named Olympias. Notice that John instructs her to read his letter aloud. If Olympias, for her part in this correspondence, were following the procedure described by the partisans of ancient illiteracy: dictating her own letters, then having the replies read back to her, then John's request is in vain. If someone is reading the letter to her, then of course he is reading it aloud; how else to convey its contents to an illiterate person? Rather, he is telling her to read it aloud, an instruction only a literate person can follow:

Paula

We close the book on the classical world with the linguistically gifted Paula:

"The holy scriptures she knew by heart, and said of the history contained in them that it was the foundation of the truth; but, though she loved even this, she still preferred to seek for the underlying spiritual meaning and made this the keystone of the spiritual building raised within her soul. She asked leave that she and her daughter might read over the old and new testaments under my guidance...I will mention here another fact which to those who are envious may well seem incredible. While I myself beginning as a young man have with much toil and effort partially acquired the Hebrew tongue and study it now unceasingly lest if I leave it, it also may leave me; Paula, on making up her mind that she too would learn it, succeeded so well that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin. The same accomplishment can be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium..." (Jerome, Letters, Letter 108).

Enlightened Audience

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

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

Fame and Fortune

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

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

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

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

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

Another perk successful poets enjoyed, it would seem, is the approval of the fairer sex:

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

Sign-boards

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

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

Fair Warning

Gentiles were forbidden to enter the temple at Jerusalem:

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

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

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

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

Inscriptions

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

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

Spare No Pains

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

Those Left Out

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

Yet even slaves can not always be assumed to be illiterates; 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? 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. 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 30-35%.

Shorthand

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

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

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

Tokyo Rose

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

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

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

Sparta

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

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

Caesar's Army

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

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

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

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.

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