Literacy in the Roman Empire

[The Brain]

Source?

Rome and the Barbarian Invasions, or something like that.

Total War games don't count.

[Solmyr]

Source?

Rome and the Barbarian Invasions, or something like that.

Total War games don't count.

EU: Rome?

[The Brain]

Source?

Rome and the Barbarian Invasions, or something like that.

Total War games don't count.

EU: Rome?

No one played it.

[Viking]

Source?

Rome and the Barbarian Invasions, or something like that.

Total War games don't count.

EU: Rome?

No one played it.

I played it and went bankrupt when everybody and his dog added so many cohorts to my army I was both unable to pay them and unable to disband them as well as being unable to refuse more "volunteers".

That was silly. Those guys were illiterate, I wrote each one of them a note saying (in latin), we have enough soldiers and we don't  have enough money to pay you, please go home.

[The Brain]

Tell me about the dog.

[dps]

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

Source?

AFAIK, he's right about the private part, but who knows about the expensive part.  Sure, probably it was expensive to acquire a full classical education, but basic literacy?  I'm not so sure.

[Queequeg]

Why would literacy rates crumble after the adoption of Christianity and not after, say, the crisis of the Third Century?  Why would there be such high literacy rates in the largely rural west?  That graph strikes me as full of shit.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Why would literacy rates crumble after the adoption of Christianity and not after, say, the crisis of the Third Century?  Why would there be such high literacy rates in the largely rural west?  That graph strikes me as full of shit.

Agreed.

The figure for "Christian Europe" for 600.....0.01%...........has got to be utter bollocks given that half the Byzantine Empire was in Europe and Christian.

[Razgovory]

Why would literacy rates crumble after the adoption of Christianity and not after, say, the crisis of the Third Century?  Why would there be such high literacy rates in the largely rural west?  That graph strikes me as full of shit.

Oh yeah, that's bullshit.  I've seen similar graphs about "scientific advances".



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The origin of the Graph seems to come from here http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm

As far as I can tell there are no number behind the graph.  It's simply arbitrary lines and colors.  Of course it also implies that only Europeans can do things.  What about the Chinese or Japanese, or any East Asia country.  What about Africa or India? If Christianity actually caused a massive gap like this you would expect other cultures to jump a head.

[Malthus]

Why would literacy rates crumble after the adoption of Christianity and not after, say, the crisis of the Third Century?  Why would there be such high literacy rates in the largely rural west?  That graph strikes me as full of shit.

Oh yeah, that's bullshit.  I've seen similar graphs about "scientific advances".



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The origin of the Graph seems to come from here http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm

As far as I can tell there are no number behind the graph.  It's simply arbitrary lines and colors.  Of course it also implies that only Europeans can do things.  What about the Chinese or Japanese, or any East Asia country.  What about Africa or India? If Christianity actually caused a massive gap like this you would expect other cultures to jump a head.

Even on its face it is silly, since the Dark Ages were hardly *caused* by Christianity.

Also - anyone *really* want to see Roman Emperors armed with nukes? Facing off against multiple rivals? Instead of "exploring the galaxy" we could easily now be "bombed back into the stone age" ... 

[Barrister]

Also - anyone *really* want to see Roman Emperors armed with nukes? Facing off against multiple rivals?

Somewhere in Korea, Tim just got a boner.

[Razgovory]

It also implies that Romans had a level technology on par with the European Renaissance.  I guess I missed the part about Roman cannons, printing, trans-Atlantic voyages, etc.

[Viking]

Even on its face it is silly, since the Dark Ages were hardly *caused* by Christianity.

Also - anyone *really* want to see Roman Emperors armed with nukes? Facing off against multiple rivals? Instead of "exploring the galaxy" we could easily now be "bombed back into the stone age" ...

It is a pretty silly argument that Christianity caused such a stagnation in progress. You have exactly the same sort of stagnation happening in the muslim world with the end of itjihad and the emergence of Al Gazali which ended the Muslim Golden Age of Science and you have the Mongol Conquest of China ending the Sung Enlightenment both of which happen in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Scholastics emerge in Europe at that time and over the next 300 years they embrace all the Muslim and Chinese advancements that they had ignored during the Dark Ages. So it's not like if we had not gone christian Colombus would have gone to the Moon not America. The other issue is that cultural and economic conditions decide how far science can advance in a society as well. So what if you could have had much more progress, if you don't need a technology it's not going to be invented and if the society around you works in such a manner that you can't get paid for the technology it's also not going to be invented.

However, what is special about the dark ages is that in the western roman empire kept western europe at a higher technological level than it's social and economic structures would suggest. After the plagues, climate change and socioeconomic factors which depopulated the western roman empire the loss of connection with the east that germanic conquests caused the west to regress to the level of tech it would have maintained had it not been part of rome.

[Razgovory]

I don't think there really was that much "Stagnation" in the world at the time.  Not much more then there was during the Roman Empire.  It's not like people "forgot" how to make Iron or ride horses.  The biggest loss were cultural.  Philosophic tracts, literature etc.  Math did take a big hit though and likely engineering.  But the I think that can be attributed more to depopulation then anything else.  If the number of cities declines dramatically the need to build aqueducts to them isn't that important.  So it may have been lost due to lack of use. Much is made of of the loss of medical knowledge, but that's really kind of a wash.  Roman and Greek medicine wasn't that effective.  It was based on principles that had no relation to actual health (and many procedures were injurious to human health).  Sometimes they did the right thing but based it on incorrect assumptions.  The Roman knew that people got malaria around swamps and made great efforts to drain those swamps.  They concluded that it was caused by bad smells (which is where the word Malaria comes from.  It means "bad air". Medicine didn't really become that effective until the enlightenment.  And they didn't actually understand what caused disease until the 19th.


So Viking, what was that word you used for a religious apologist who's so out there that it might be a parody?  "Poe" was it?  Perhaps we can apply it to the Atheist who came up with that graph.

[Siege]

I'm iliterate.