This graphic from a Pompeii wall shows an exceedingly hip young couple, he with scroll, she with tablet
[rk: look familiar? cover: Adventures of the Human Spirit, 7th edition]
Review of:
Writing on the Wall: Social Media — The First 2,000 Years
- Tom Standage
- Bloomsbury (2013)
Written text was originally a kind of spreadsheet on clay, tallying livestock and other forms of wealth. But by the time of the Romans, the social media were in use — at least by the rich.
Standage points out that even the noblest Romans spent time in the provinces as governors (or exiles). They still needed their networks at home, and letters from friends were a convenient way to stay in touch (and maybe wrangle a ticket back to Rome).
With a good postal system using good roads, such correspondence was highly popular — so popular that satirists poked fun (in their own letters) at the letter geeks hurrying to the port to pick up their mail from overseas.
In a sense, it was voicemail: the author of a letter dictated it to a literate slave, who wrote it down and made copies. Such letters were written as “rivers of words,” without spaces or punctuation. When they reached their destination, a specialist slave called a lector would read it aloud, putting in pauses and emphasis. (Standage observes that “slaves were the Roman equivalent of broadband.”)
Other media were equally social. For local texting, you could send a slave across town with a tablet holding a wax “screen” on which your message was inscribed. Your friend could smooth out the wax and write a reply, using abbreviations for stock phrases.
The Romans also had a daily news feed, created by Julius Caesar himself …
