RE: Roman literacy
December 13, 2013 at 12:00 pm
(This post was last modified: December 13, 2013 at 12:10 pm by Anomalocaris.)
What constitutes average roman citizen changed dramatically over the history of Rome. Whether they were literate also depends on the threshold for literacy you set.
Before collapse of roman freehold society and rise urban poor between 250BC - 100 BC a sizable portion of male roman citizenery, possibly the majority, had redimemtary literacy. At that time the nuumber of citizens was relatively small, covering only freeborn of Rome and a few surrounding federated cities. The ratio between total number of citizens eligible to be called up for military service, and the total number that was called up during wars, was high. It was required for a roman soldier to be literate in order to be promoted beyond the equivalent of private. Nevertheless it seems the allure of promotion was strong in the roman army, this suggests Basic literacy was widespread amongst the grunts and therefore amongst the citizenry.
The percentage of roman citizens who were literate undoubtedly declined dramatically after 100 BC as the army became professionalized, citizenship was expanded out of political convenience to first cover free born in most of Italy and later free born of all of empire. literacy rate amongst the greatly expanded citizenary was probably just a few percent by start of the third century AD, same as literacy rate amongst the other literate iron age cultures.
Before collapse of roman freehold society and rise urban poor between 250BC - 100 BC a sizable portion of male roman citizenery, possibly the majority, had redimemtary literacy. At that time the nuumber of citizens was relatively small, covering only freeborn of Rome and a few surrounding federated cities. The ratio between total number of citizens eligible to be called up for military service, and the total number that was called up during wars, was high. It was required for a roman soldier to be literate in order to be promoted beyond the equivalent of private. Nevertheless it seems the allure of promotion was strong in the roman army, this suggests Basic literacy was widespread amongst the grunts and therefore amongst the citizenry.
The percentage of roman citizens who were literate undoubtedly declined dramatically after 100 BC as the army became professionalized, citizenship was expanded out of political convenience to first cover free born in most of Italy and later free born of all of empire. literacy rate amongst the greatly expanded citizenary was probably just a few percent by start of the third century AD, same as literacy rate amongst the other literate iron age cultures.
