Literacy, Rome and provinces RALPH HAEUSSLER INTRODUCTION Literacy is conventionally defined as the ability to read and write. There are various forms of literacy depending on people’s membership in a particular culture. We need to distinguish between active and passive literacy: starting with the ability to decipher or write simple texts, to the creative composition of complex texts with the complex syntax which may also imply forms of critical thinking and a reflection of one’s self. Literacy may depend on people’s status, their profession, gender, and age-group, and their access to education. It may be limited to elites, professional scribes, traders, or sol- diers, but writing seems to have become increasingly necessary for the functioning of the Roman Empire. Writing can not only be used for legal, religious, economic, and political purposes, but also for private correspondence, drama, and literature, though it may also have a symbolic/religious role. To the individual and society, the spread of literacy may reflect far- reaching changes in Italy and across the Roman Empire, fundamentally transforming political, social, and economic structures and cognitive processes. We therefore need to not only consider the creation, dissemination, and evo- lution of both Roman and indigenous writing systems, but also their changing role and social impact (cf. Goody 1986). EARLY FORMS OF LITERACY There are various writing systems in Italy from the seventh to the first century BCE whose developments reveal the diverse identities and sociopolitical developments in Italy during the republic. Down to about the third century BCE, writing mainly served to perpetuate elite sta- tus. Besides texts of a ritual and funerary nature and the ever-present markers of owner- ship, commercial activities are among the ear- liest motors of literacy (e.g., graffiti in “emporia” like Genoa or Pech Maho), while monumental inscriptions in stone are a comparatively late development. Besides the Greek alphabet in Magna Graecia, the Etruscan alphabet dominated in Italy from ca. 700 BCE: the ca. 13,000 attesta- tions are largely limited to funerary and ritual texts, which mainly relate to the aristocracy. Etruscan writing is attested down to the Augustan period. From the Etruscan alphabet derive – directly or indirectly – many local alphabets in Italy, among them the Latin alphabet (seventh century BCE). Writing in Rome was originally largely restricted to offi- cial documents regarding religion, administra- tion, politics, and law. Earliest texts include the Duenos inscription on a kernos (early sixth century) and the boustrophedon written on the Lapis Niger (ILS 4913, fifth century). The evolution and diversification of Roman literacies (third–first century) appears as pre- mise for its adoption by other peoples. Other derivatives of the Etruscan alphabet are Oscan, Umbrian, Venetic, and Lepontic. Oscan is first attested in the fifth century BCE. It was used for complex religious and legal texts (e.g., lex tabulae Bantinae; cippus Abellanus, ca. 100 BCE) and coin legends, nota- bly the vı ´teliu ´ /Italia coins during the Social War. An Osco-Latin bilingual graffito on a tile reveals the literacy of two slaves from Pietrab- bondante. Oscan was still employed in the first century CE, notably for graffiti at Pompeii. Umbrian is closely related to Oscan: the lon- gest text, consisting of seven bronze tablets from Iguvium/Gubbio (Iguivine tablets), is of a religious nature, using both Umbrian and Latin (third to first century BCE). The Lepontic (or Lugano) alphabet was a seventh to sixth- century BCE adaptation for the Celtic language in northern Italy (Como/Lago Maggiore). Most of the approximately three hundred texts from the seventh–fifth century are short graffiti. But after the Roman conquest, more The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 4104–4108. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22182 1