Literacy in the Roman Empire

[jimmy olsen]

I came across this chart over on wikipedia. That can't possibly be accurate with regards to literacy rates in the Roman Empire can it? 
What do you guys think a reasonable estimate is?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Literacy_1-2000.jpg/800px-Literacy_1-2000.jpg

[Syt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education#Greece_and_Rome

It has been argued that literacy rates in the Greco-Roman world were seldom more than 20 percent; averaging perhaps not much above 10 percent in the Roman empire, though with wide regional variations, probably never rising above 5 percent in the western provinces,[44] and that the literate in classical Greece did not much exceed 5 percent of the population.[45] The argument for these claims is that ancient governments did not invest in public education.

Sourced links:

[44] ^ Harris W.V. "Ancient literacy", 1989, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
[45] ^ Scragg D. G.; "Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England", 2003, DS Brewer, ISBN 0859917738, 9780859917735, at page 185: "The numbers of the literate .... even in classical Greece did not much exceed 5 percent of the population", citing Harris W. V.; "Ancient Literacy", 1989, Cambridge, at page 328

[Habbaku]

That chart seems to heavily exaggerate both the crest and the trough of the pre-Renaissance period.  I'm not sure I buy it without some serious studies to back it.

[Josquius]

Maybe its just citizens or somesuch?- but even there a lot of them would be illiterate and just hire slaves for that sort of thing I'd imagine.

[Ideologue]

That chart seems to heavily exaggerate both the crest and the trough of the pre-Renaissance period.  I'm not sure I buy it without some serious studies to back it.

Yeah, even in the stupidest time, I find it hard to believe that literacy declined to near-fucking-zero.  Though if so, I suppose it would help explain why administration was so difficult and diffuse more than any other sociopolitical factor.

[Viking]

Functional literacy in the Roman republic was limited to aristocrats and greek paedogog slaves and freedmen. We have examples of graffiti which suggests that the plebeans did have some limited reading and writing ability and the Roman tradition of posting important information in stone or marble in public places (e.g. the Res Gestae or 12 Tablets) suggests that everybody had somebody they trusted that could read. There was a constant lack of litterate people in the system in general. The lack of literate people to run the administration is possibly what drove the generals in the crisis of the 3rd century to consider allying with christians, they could no longer rely on the aristocrats to do the administration. This is also possibly an explanation of why the Church attacked all sources of learning outside the church, who can replace the church if nobody else can read?

I, the radical atheist here, don't think the Church was a source of a drop in literacy in the early mideival period. I am not convinced that there was a drop in literacy. The trope is powerful, but that's all. Christianity had a book, they wanted people to be able to read the book. To the best of my knowledge it is not until after Canossa and a decline in lay Latin knowledge that the Church starts to claim that religion is what the church says it is and people sto reading the bible.

[Malthus]

That chart seems to heavily exaggerate both the crest and the trough of the pre-Renaissance period.  I'm not sure I buy it without some serious studies to back it.

Yeah, even in the stupidest time, I find it hard to believe that literacy declined to near-fucking-zero.  Though if so, I suppose it would help explain why administration was so difficult and diffuse more than any other sociopolitical factor.

I can believe the troughs, if not the peaks. For example, King Alfred the Great had trouble finding enough people who could read to man his churches when he launched his civilization drive, and made literacy for churchmen & high nobles a deliberate part of his strategy - indicating that before him, these things were vanishingly rare, at least in Anglo-Saxon England prior to him. 

Part of the problem was that, in order to understand any of the great works of scholarship and religion, not only did you have to read, but you had to read Latin, as very few works were availabe in the vernacular (Alfred himself is said to have translated several books into English!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great#Religion_and_culture

The result was that there were only a small percentage at times who could read ... but by the "high middle ages" I would have thought this would have increased considerably. Certainly, it is hard to believe that the situation in 1200, with monks and lawyers all over the place ( )  is anything like the situation prior to Alfred in England.

[Razgovory]

It's impossible to know.  It's actually rather depressing how little we actually know about the classical world.  The works that do survive don't give us much of an idea of the how the average person lived, and I sometimes wonder if some of the statements in the history are just lies.  Take for example Nero.  The History of Nero was written by his enemies after he was dead.  It was said that Nero built a ship designed to sink to kill his mother.  She escaped and he sent assassins to knife her then claimed it was a suicide.  What if that's just a nasty rumor that was spread around by his enemies?  It is an unlikely turn of events.  People are willing to believe strange things about others they don't like.  Here's an alternate scenario.  Agrippina did take a trip on a pleasure ship.  The boat sank accidentally, but she survived.  She was so overcome with grief she actually killed herself.  The rest was concocted by Neros enemies and the rumor became common currency amongst the senatorial class.  When history was written by the same senatorial class those rumors made it in.  There's no way to really know.  I find it somewhat depressing.

We know much more about the middle ages then we do about the classical world.  I don't think there is an equivalent to the Domesday book for Ancient Rome.

[jimmy olsen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education#Greece_and_Rome

It has been argued that literacy rates in the Greco-Roman world were seldom more than 20 percent; averaging perhaps not much above 10 percent in the Roman empire, though with wide regional variations, probably never rising above 5 percent in the western provinces,[44] and that the literate in classical Greece did not much exceed 5 percent of the population.[45] The argument for these claims is that ancient governments did not invest in public education.

Sourced links:

[44] ^ Harris W.V. "Ancient literacy", 1989, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
[45] ^ Scragg D. G.; "Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England", 2003, DS Brewer, ISBN 0859917738, 9780859917735, at page 185: "The numbers of the literate .... even in classical Greece did not much exceed 5 percent of the population", citing Harris W. V.; "Ancient Literacy", 1989, Cambridge, at page 328

That seems too go to far in the other direction, there's way too much graffiti written by blue collar types from literacy to be that rare.

[Razgovory]

Difficult to tell.  We don't know the policy of removal of graffiti.  None knows how long it's been there. It's also likely that literacy was not uniform.  Urban areas likely had more literacy rates then rural.  If 40% of the urban population could read and 1% of the rural could you would naturally have more graffiti in urban areas but still have a very low over all literacy rate.  In the late Roman empire Christians were considered more literate then the general public, probably because early Christianity was an urban phenomenon.  We know this because the term "pagan", which the Christians used to described their more traditional opponents means something like "provincial", "rural" "hillbilly".

[Admiral Yi]

All education was private, and very expensive, in the Roman Empire.  Not surprising that literacy was very low.

[crazy canuck]

Difficult to tell.  We don't know the policy of removal of graffiti.  None knows how long it's been there. It's also likely that literacy was not uniform.  Urban areas likely had more literacy rates then rural.  If 40% of the urban population could read and 1% of the rural could you would naturally have more graffiti in urban areas but still have a very low over all literacy rate.  In the late Roman empire Christians were considered more literate then the general public, probably because early Christianity was an urban phenomenon.  We know this because the term "pagan", which the Christians used to described their more traditional opponents means something like "provincial", "rural" "hillbilly".

It is hard to generalize.  Christianity had a lot of early support within the population of slaves most of whom were illiterate.  The early stories of artistocrats becoming Christian stand out because there were so few of them.  Pagan probably did have the prejorative meaning you set out at one point but it probably was not in the early Church.  During the early days Pagan probably meant "other than Christian".

As for literacy rates who knows really.  Christianity was able to spread amongst the slave populations because some slaves were able to read and could so could preach from Christian writings and write themselves.  However a good question is the degree to which reading form any text was as important as preaching from "divine revelation" since we know that was a basic conflict within Christiany early on.

[The Brain]

Emperor Augustus, Lady Augustus and their pet tortoise, Alan.

[The Brain]

All education was private, and very expensive, in the Roman Empire.  Not surprising that literacy was very low.

Source?

[Admiral Yi]

Source?

Rome and the Barbarian Invasions, or something like that.