How high approximately was the literacy in the Roman Empire at its height?
I'm curious could common people read and write?
I'm curious could common people read and write?
16% at it's height. 7% at the end.
How high approximately was the literacy in the Roman Empire at its height?
I'm curious could common people read and write?
Define common people.
Ok, seriously speaking I would assume that Roman citizens generally knew how to read and write especially if these Roman citizens have served in Roman Legions. Literate soldiers in well-disciplined forces were formidable and efficient warriors like an article from JSTOR proves.
Some issues like using passwords, giving written orders indicate that Roman soldiers had to know how to read at least if they wanted to receive promotions and receive better salary. I am not claiming that every Roman citizen could read but I am quite certain that literacy among Roman soldiers was pretty high.
Where's those numbers from?
Literature was made to be read aloud and not to be read quietly like today, because it was only in the middle ages when people actually started to read literature privately.
That's a myth that was refuted almost 40 years ago - it survival has more to do with how it stoked the ego of Medieval historians like Lynn White and his ideals about Medieval technological revolution vs. Classical/Roman stagnation than any sound basis is fact.
That this ideal still gets asserted in Medieval and Biblical history works/books/journals is profoundly worrisome given how comprehensive ejournal access and searching is now.
I had heard that as well. It puzzled me because some classical writers wrote knowing their work could not be read aloud because it was banned or they were in bad graces with the authorities. Juvenal and Ovid come to mind. Plus all the annalists wrote to maintain a record of events that were read in private.
Meanwhile I'm interested if you could point out some of the most important works which dispute this theory.
So reading a literary work silently would be like reading sheet music silently and for pleasure?
Umm... that seems to be a complete misinterpretation of what Augustine said, surely? "Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud." The emphasis on how 'anyone could approach him freely' doesn't sound to me like a condemnation of someone for being reclusive. And Augustine comments specifically on the fact that Ambrose is often discovered reading silently when he's alone - contradicting the Gillirad theory that this would be normal activity.
Of course, it may be a mistake to generalise about standards of literacy in 4th-century Italy to the rest of the Classical world...
What the heck? Why shouldn't someone be able to read silently?