Writing an Audience, Part 1: Capitals, Repetition, and Formulas

This blog has already touched on different ways public writing functioned in the Roman world. It could be a vehicle of power, it could contextualize spaces, and it could record and solidify social agreements. However, one question still needs to be addressed: how could inscriptions be so important in a world where most people were not fully 'literate'?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Romans made inscriptions as easy to read as possible. They achieved this by using a number of different approaches which all acted to lessen the gap between the written Latin carved in stone and the spoken Latin the general public could understand. These approaches include:

1) The use of CAPITAL LETTERS. Have you ever noticed how you never see lower case letters in Roman inscriptions? We know Romans had cursive letters from various graffiti and some rare letters, but on monuments constantly use the same font of capital letters. This is because a consistent and clear font made reading easier for those less practices in reading. Just imagine trying to learn to read if the letters all kept changing; it would not be easy. Rather, the public only needed to learn the sounds of the different shapes and then 'sound out' the different inscriptions to hear what they said.

Note the use of large clear capital letters. Entrance sign to the Baths of Marcus Crassus Frugi in the Museo Archiologioco Nazionale di Napoli. Photo by Jack Hase.

2) The repetition of words and abbreviations. If you have ever tried to learn a second language, you know that one of the hardest parts is learning all the different vocabulary. Roman inscriptions tried to make this difficulty as small as possible by using common words and abbreviations whenever possible. This eased the task of reading by making letter combinations into ideograms so that the viewer could know the meaning of the writing without needing to really 'read' the words. For example, the abbreviation D. M., meaning Dis Manibus or 'To the Underworld Spirits', is used widely in funerary inscriptions. By using the same abbreviation at the start of many different texts, even a person with limited literacy can memorize the meaning and understand the intention of the text.

3) The use of formulas to organize the order of inscriptions. This could look different across inscriptions with different purposes: dedications usually put the name to whom the monument was dedicated first, after an individual's name is usually an abbreviation for who their father was, funerary inscriptions often include how old the individual was, and if an individual is a politician numbers are included to indicate how many times they have held different positions. Just as before, an onlooker with limited reading ability needs to do less work to understand a text if the words come in an expected order. Furthermore, some scholars think that the basic formulas used reflected verbal speech patterns better than more literary writings.

Note the use of Dis Manibus, here spelled out in full. Funerary Inscription of Lucius Nonius Martials in the Musei Capitolini. Photo by Jack Hase.

Together, all of these approaches allowed texts to be more accessible to a broader portion of the public. It was writing intended to be read by even the lowest common denominator. However, it is easier to see these methods in action rather than only in theory. Therefore, the following posts on this blog will be dedicated to demonstrating how different texts around the Roman city used these methods to make texts easy to read. Until then, Valete. 

Bibliography:

Corbier, Mirelle. "Writing in Roman Public Space." In Written Space in the Latin West, 200 BC to AD 300, edited by Gareth Sears, Peter Keegan, and Ray Laurence. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.

Woolf, Greg. "Literacy or Literacies in Rome?" In Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, edited by William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.