Download Ancient Rome

Allison Hanford
World Civilization :Writing System in Ancient Rome
The superior language in Ancient Rome was Latin. Latin and Greek were the official
languages of the Roman Empire. Although other languages were important regionally, Latin was
the original language of the Romans and remained the language of imperial administration,
legislation, and the military throughout the classical period. Furthermore, the Latin alphabet
(minus U, W, and J) comes from the Cumae Greeks. The Cumae Greeks created the Ancient
Roman alphabet. The “Cumae variant of the Greek alphabet had differing letters, such as the use
of Χ to represent /ks/ instead of the more common Greek letter Ξ.” Every version of the Latin 1
alphabet was inspired by scribes in Ancient Egypt, who were “so fed up with hieroglyphs that
they made their own alphabet.”2
In 700 BC, the Cumae Greeks from Chalcis settled on the west coast of Italy near
Naples. Although the Etruscans were their enemy during the last half of the 6th century and the
first half of the 5th century, it was the Samnites who, after destroying Etruscan supremacy in
about 440, overwhelmed the Greeks of Cumae in 428 or 421. Crucial aspects of the Greek
culture were then eliminated, although in many respects the Greek character of the town
survived. The beautiful coins of Cumae were no longer produced, “and an Italic dialect, Oscan
(and later Latin), replaced the Greek language.” Rome subjugated Cumae in 338. Under the
empire, it became a “quiet country town, and in 1205 it was destroyed.” Remains of the
fortifications and graves from all these periods have been found on the city’s acropolis hill and
elsewhere throughout the area.
At the height of the Roman Republic and soon after the Roman Empire, the Roman
system of education gradually found its final form. Formal schools that taught Latin were
established, which accepted paying students. Very little that could be described as free public
education existed.Both boys and girls were educated, though not necessarily together.In a
system much like the one that predominates in the modern world, the Roman education system
that developed arranged schools in tiers. “The educator Quintilian recognized the importance
of starting education as early as possible, noting that memory not only exists even in small
children, but is specially retentive at that age" . A Roman student would progress through
schools just as a 5 student today might go from primary school to secondary school and then to
college. They were generally exempted from studies during the market days which formed a
kind of weekend on every eighth day of the year. Progression depended more on ability than
age with great emphasis being placed upon a student's “ingenium or inborn gift” for learning,
and a more tacit emphasis on a student's ability to afford high-level education. After
conquering the Greeks, the Romans became interested in philosophy. The most popular school
of philosophy with the Romans was stoicism. “Stoicism taught that the universe was very
ordered and rational.” It said that everyone, regardless of their wealth and position, should
always try to do their best. These ideas
appealed to the Romans. Famous Roman philosophers include “Seneca, Cicero, and Emperor
Marcus Aurelius.”
Important documents were written on papyrus scrolls (made from the papyrus plant in Egypt) or
on parchment (pages made from animal skin). They wrote with a metal pin that they dipped in
ink. For more temporary day-to-day writing they used a wax tablet or thin pieces of wood. Many
historians such as the most famous Roman historian Livy, wrote 142 volumes of history that
covered events from the founding of Rome up to the reign of Augustus. Other important
historians include “Pliny the Elder, Sallust, Tacitus, and Quintus Fabius Pictor.” Each
bookkeeper had their techniques towards the way they wrote. Romans are famous for keeping
lots of written records. It was how they kept their large empire so organized. They had records on
every Roman citizen including things like age, marriages, and military service. They also kept
written records of wills, legal trials, and all the laws and decrees made by the government.
Nevertheless, the Roman writing system started in Naples Italy, it spread across the entire
Roman Empire. It began in Europe, stretched to Western Asia, and ended in Northern Africa. It
is the language of romance that eventually helped to create Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian
and Romanian. Each empire used the Latin language to create their language by taking words or
letters and changing the way it sounds. For example, the letter “J” has the “H” sound in the
Spanish culture.
Saint Jerome is the father of Latin scripture. He was a Latin Catholic priest, confessor,
theologian, and historian. He was born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia
and Pannonia. Jerome was born of well-to-do Christian parents. His education began at home,
and was continued in Rome when he was about 12. There he studied grammar, rhetoric, and
philosophy. A “serious scholar enamored of Latin literature, he frequented the catacombs and
near the end of his Roman education was baptized (c. 366), by Pope Liberius.” Jerome spent
almost three years (379–382) continuing his pursuit of scriptural studies. He translated 14 of
Origen’s homilies “(sermons)” on Old Testament books into Latin. Here too he translated the
church historian Eusebius’s Chronicon “(Chronicles)” and continued it to the year 378. But the
most decisive influence on Jerome’s later life was his return to Rome (382–385) as secretary to
Pope Damasus I. There he pursued his scholarly work on the Bible and propagated the ascetic
life. More importantly, he revised the Old Latin version of the Gospels based on the best Greek
manuscripts at his command and made his first, somewhat unsuccessful, revision of the Old Latin
Psalter based on a few Septuagint “(the Greek translation of the Old Testament)” manuscripts. He
wrote a “defense of the perpetual virginity of Mary, Jesus’ mother (383), and attacked the view of
those who espoused the equality of virginity and marriage. But his preaching in support of the
monastic life and his relationship with the ascetic coterie, his castigation of Roman clergy, lax
monks, and hypocritical virgins, and his correction of the Gospel text provoked such a storm of
criticism and calumny,” especially after Damasus’s death
in December 384. The literary legacy of Jerome’s last 34 years is the outgrowth of contemporary
controversies, Jerome’s passion for Scripture, and his involvement in monastic life. Jerome’s
biblical production in Bethlehem includes two introductory works helpful to biblical scholars:
“Liber locorum (“Book of Places”)” , a useful translation and adaptation of Eusebius’s work on
Palestinian place-names; and “Liber interpretationis Hebraicorum nominum (“Book of
Interpretation of Hebrew Names”)” , an alphabetical list, with quite fanciful “etymologies or
origins” , of Hebrew proper names in the Bible.
The history of Roman literature begins around the 3rd century BC. It reached it’s "Golden
Age" during the rule of Augustus and the early part of the Roman Empire. The Classical Period
or Golden Age of Greece, from around 500 to 300 BC, has given us the “great monuments, art,
philosophy, architecture and literature” which are the building blocks of our civilization. The
Roman Empire and its predecessor the Roman Republic produced a majority of celebrated
literature; poetry, comedies, dramas, histories, and philosophical tracts; the Romans avoided
tragedies. Much of it survives to this day. However, Roman literature cannot stand alone. They
owe a debt to their neighbor, the Greeks (more specifically Athens). Most educated Romans were
well aware of their literary inferiority, and because of this Roman writers could easily copy
Greek classical themes, even going so far as to translate many of the notable Greek works into
Latin. However, too many Romans, this exercise would have been needless, for a number of
highly educated citizens could speak and read both Greek and Latin. Many young, upper-class
Romans even continued their education in Athens. Although the link to Greek Hellenism would
remain for years to come, the Romans would soon develop a rich literature of their own.
Unlike some other ancient cultures such as the Greeks who had formed a creation myth
where woman was a creature secondary to man and, more specifically, “in the form of Pandora, a
bringer of unhappiness and vices,” the Romans had a more neutral approach where humanity,
and not specifically the male, was created by the gods from earth and water. Roman women had
a very limited role in public life. They could not “attend, speak in, or vote at political assemblies
and they could not hold any position of political responsibility.” While it is true that some women
with powerful partners might influence public affairs through their husbands, these were the
exceptions. It is also interesting to note that those females who have political power in Roman
literature are very often represented as motivated by such negative emotions as spite and
jealousy, and, further, their actions are usually used to show their male relations in a bad light.
Among the upper classes, women seem to have been well-educated, some highly so, and were
sometimes praised by the male historians for their learning and cultivation. Some women became
socially prominent, and even relatively independent.
In conclusion, without the great influence of the Latin language, the entirety of ancient
Rome’s literature and writing system would be incomplete. Latin is the root for 60% of the
languages that are spoken around the world. To each their own, each empire edited the Latin
alphabet to how they wanted to pronounce the letters. Most historians under rule had to translate
the Bible, Testaments, and Chronicles into Latin as a new way of bookkeeping. This was the first
demonstration of copy and pasting in ancient times. What they did not know was that their efforts
set the basis for future technologies such as copy and paste for computer programming. Education
was highly influenced by Latin, young males of all incomes were taught and only young females
of high incomes were even considered to be educated. Even more so, males and females were
unable to go to school together, they were to be taught separately. Keeping males and females
separated in the school system was unbeneficial to the young adults because they were unable to
construct the feelings necessary to write heartfelt poetry. Saint Jerome was given the name “The
Father of Scripture” , I do not believe that Jerome should be given all the credit. 20 I credit the
Egyptian scribes who decided they needed a new language because hieroglyphics were too much
of a hassle to work with. They wanted a more simplistic way of writing where there would be less
detailed characters. Writing on the papyrus was an inventive way of using bamboo. In more
recent times, technology has created a way to make bamboo into reeds for specific wind
instruments with special sizes such as the saxophone and clarinet.
Words Cited
Burghart, Water John. "St. Jerome." Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Jerome.
Cartwright, Mark. "The Role of Women in the Roman World." Ancient History
Encyclopedia, Feb. 2014, www.ancient.eu/article/659/the-role-of-women-in-the-romanworld/.
Ducksters. "Ancient Rome Literature."
www.ducksters.com/history/ancient_rome/roman_literature.php.
Franciscan media. "Saint Jerome." Franciscan media, www.franciscanmedia.org/saintjerome/. Syme , Ronald. The Roman Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Tay, Oscar. “Who created the Latin alphabet for Rome?" Quora, 12 Aug.
2017, www.quora.com/Who-created-the-Latin-alphabet-for-Rome.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Cumae." Britannica,
www.britannica.com/place/Cumae.
Wasson, Donald L. "Roman Literature." Ancient History Encyclopedia, 27 Sept. 2017,
www.ancient.eu/Roman_Literature/.
Wikipedia. "Education in Ancient Rome." Wikipedia,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_ancient_Rome.