Silent but Readly
September 29, 2014 8:18 AM Subscribe
"Midway through the Confessions, St. Augustine recalls how he used to marvel at the way Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, read his manuscripts: 'His eyes traveled across the pages and his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and tongue stayed still.' Scholars have sparred for decades over whether Augustine's offhand observation reveals something momentous: namely, that silent reading—that seemingly mundane act you're engaged in right now—was, in the Dark Ages, a genuine novelty...Could the earliest readers literally not shut up?"
Looking forward to reading these. I just had to jump in early and applaud OP's use of ALT/hover text on those links.
posted by Pfardentrott at 8:34 AM on September 29, 2014 [24 favorites]
posted by Pfardentrott at 8:34 AM on September 29, 2014 [24 favorites]
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!
posted by IAmBroom at 8:37 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by IAmBroom at 8:37 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Actually, he was reading Plato's description of a "wine-dark sea" and realized that the ancients could only see the color red. This realization so shocked him he lost his voice.
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [19 favorites]
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [19 favorites]
Homer, surely.
posted by sobarel at 8:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [10 favorites]
posted by sobarel at 8:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [10 favorites]
damn
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:40 AM on September 29, 2014 [9 favorites]
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:40 AM on September 29, 2014 [9 favorites]
It's true that people have argued about this for decades but I think since Bernard Knox's seminal 1968 article the pendulum has swung pretty decisively in favor of silent reading being a thing in antiquity. The Augustine example is fascinating but it's surprisingly difficult to find another good example of someone surprised by silent reading. This isn't to say that reading didn't work quite differently in antiquity and had a strong oral/aural component -- Quintilian, for example, goes into some detail about the importance of being able to read aloud correctly. The first chapter of William Johnson's Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire is a good recent overview of these questions (not available online for free, I think).
posted by dd42 at 8:40 AM on September 29, 2014 [7 favorites]
posted by dd42 at 8:40 AM on September 29, 2014 [7 favorites]
or more appropriately, d'oh!
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2014 [9 favorites]
posted by Curious Artificer at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2014 [9 favorites]
Even Curious Artificer nods.
posted by Thing at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by Thing at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
Or more or less what Burnyeat tells Fenton in the first link.
posted by dd42 at 8:43 AM on September 29, 2014
posted by dd42 at 8:43 AM on September 29, 2014
I had never encountered this idea before -- that ancient readers may have normally read aloud with silent reading being an impressive trick. With no previous biases, I found the "not shut up" article far more convincing than the "could" article despite the latter's assertion that "the evidence against it is strong." A few descriptions of texts being read "quietly" (interpreted to mean "silently") does not seem like strong evidence, and in particular does not directly refute the contrary arguments.
I'd summarize the contrary arguments as 1) texts with no spaces are almost impossible to process visually (and there is experimental and brain imaging evidence consistent with this) so that 2) the most efficient way to process them would be to pronounce them aloud and then interpret them aurally instead. Then add the plausibility arguments that 3) there weren't many texts to read anyway, so how much did the ability to "sight read" (this seems really analogous to skill of reading musical notation without playing it) really matter, and how much opportunity did people have to practice it, given that they'd mostly see the same texts over and over again? and 4) There weren't that many people who could read anyway, and those who could were proud of their arcane skill and had an interest in keeping it arcane and difficult.
I don't see any assertion that reading silently was impossible, but only that it was an impressive accomplishment, rather like counting the number of days between two calendar dates (in different months/years) silently and in your head, in our calendar system. Certainly it can be done, but it's quite difficult.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:45 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
I'd summarize the contrary arguments as 1) texts with no spaces are almost impossible to process visually (and there is experimental and brain imaging evidence consistent with this) so that 2) the most efficient way to process them would be to pronounce them aloud and then interpret them aurally instead. Then add the plausibility arguments that 3) there weren't many texts to read anyway, so how much did the ability to "sight read" (this seems really analogous to skill of reading musical notation without playing it) really matter, and how much opportunity did people have to practice it, given that they'd mostly see the same texts over and over again? and 4) There weren't that many people who could read anyway, and those who could were proud of their arcane skill and had an interest in keeping it arcane and difficult.
I don't see any assertion that reading silently was impossible, but only that it was an impressive accomplishment, rather like counting the number of days between two calendar dates (in different months/years) silently and in your head, in our calendar system. Certainly it can be done, but it's quite difficult.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:45 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
The "silent reading" side seems interested mostly in demolishing the arguments of their opponents but they don't put forth any really solid arguments themselves.
I've taught adults to read. After you teach them letters and phonemes they start practicing reading. They do this by using their finger to keep their place and by reading aloud. They're not doing it just to impress others. I saw them in the courtyard after class off by themselves quietly reading a poster out loud, proud of their new ability. In my experience, we had to tell them to shut up.
My mother taught my dad to read. Even as a child I recall him muttering in the corner as he read his books. Later, he became more silent, but I could see him moving his lips. Even later, did he advance to completely silent reading. He learned that society did not like mutterers. But it was something he had to work toward.
Of course most people today are silent readers. But, my argument from experience is that this is not a natural state. And, if it is not, then how did we arrive at this?
posted by vacapinta at 8:52 AM on September 29, 2014 [12 favorites]
I've taught adults to read. After you teach them letters and phonemes they start practicing reading. They do this by using their finger to keep their place and by reading aloud. They're not doing it just to impress others. I saw them in the courtyard after class off by themselves quietly reading a poster out loud, proud of their new ability. In my experience, we had to tell them to shut up.
My mother taught my dad to read. Even as a child I recall him muttering in the corner as he read his books. Later, he became more silent, but I could see him moving his lips. Even later, did he advance to completely silent reading. He learned that society did not like mutterers. But it was something he had to work toward.
Of course most people today are silent readers. But, my argument from experience is that this is not a natural state. And, if it is not, then how did we arrive at this?
posted by vacapinta at 8:52 AM on September 29, 2014 [12 favorites]
In an age where writing is done on parchment and papyrus, and reading is done in badly lit rooms, it was probably also good manners to read aloud if you have the privilege of holding a manuscript.
posted by ocschwar at 8:54 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 8:54 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
This thesis reminds me of bicameralism, another idea that people in ancient times were very different from us. While fascinating to speculate about, I think these are extraordinary theories without extraordinary proof. People were probably the same back then as now. They probably read aloud sometimes and quietly at other times.
Nonetheless, an interesting post with great links as it illustrates how we think about the ancients! Who knows what future generations will infer about our minds from the random MF comments that survived the ravages of time?
posted by Triplanetary at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2014 [5 favorites]
Nonetheless, an interesting post with great links as it illustrates how we think about the ancients! Who knows what future generations will infer about our minds from the random MF comments that survived the ravages of time?
posted by Triplanetary at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2014 [5 favorites]
I may be wrong, but i don't think they had punctuation. Letters were in a stream eg
posted by stbalbach at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
Scriptio continua. It might make reading aloud a benefit as your try to figure out the words.I m a y b e w r o n g b u t I d o n o t t h i n k t h e y h a d p u n c t u a t i o n y e t l e t t e r s w e r e i n a s t r e a m
posted by stbalbach at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
You know what else people often do silently while subvocalising? Thinking (in words).
I don't doubt that the ancients could think without speaking aloud - but does anyone know of any conclusive textual evidence that this was the case? i.e. an example of an account of someone thinking something without saying it aloud.
posted by iotic at 9:10 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
I don't doubt that the ancients could think without speaking aloud - but does anyone know of any conclusive textual evidence that this was the case? i.e. an example of an account of someone thinking something without saying it aloud.
posted by iotic at 9:10 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
vacapinta: He learned that society did not like mutterers. But it was something he had to work toward.Does not follow.
Of course most people today are silent readers. But, my argument from experience is that this is not a natural state. And, if it is not, then how did we arrive at this?
You (convincingly) argued that new readers tend to read out loud. You produced no proof that anyone would continue to do so after becoming a skilled reader, even if there is societal pressure hurrying that process along.
The same societal pressure would exist in a scriptorium, BTW. Imagine that you are carefully transcribing a book, with a hand-carved quill pen and handmade inks onto a calf skin (aka vellum) that has had the illumination already carefully sketched out, to limit your writing space. Several other monks are doing the same beside you, with other texts - or perhaps the same text, but at a different individual rate. Each one of you is mouthing aloud the words you are copying. As someone who has worked in calligraphy, I assure you: THIS WILL LEAD TO DISASTER!
Ergo, they read silently.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:11 AM on September 29, 2014 [5 favorites]
I first encountered this argument in Colleen McCullough's "Master of Rome" novels. She mentions that Julius Ceasar could silent read, which astounded his clerks and military staff. In the novel it is definitely not the norm. In checking just now to make sure I had the memory correct, I find that CM's research was so thorough that she was actually awarded an honorary PhD for her work! And I remember reading these novels 25 years ago, so this theory has been kicking around for a while. I tend to think that it is certainly reasonable to think that some if not most could not read silently, especially if that is the way that you had been taught.
posted by seasparrow at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by seasparrow at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
stbalbach: I may be wrong, but i don't think they had punctuation. Letters were in a stream egYou are wrong but not in the waI m a y b e w r o n g b u t I d o n o t t h i n k t h e y h a d p u n c t u a t i o n y e t l e t t e r s w e r e i n a s t r e a m
y you think * They had sentence
stops periods and they certainly
had word spacing *~*~*~*~*
posted by IAmBroom at 9:14 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
Also of note is that fact, as I understand it, that the process of auditing was something done aloud as well, hence the use of the Greek "audi-" as the root. Consider the mental proficiencies needed to not only handle tracking numbers read aloud, but organizing them and searching for errors that way in addition to the pen and paper/parchment math.
I've heard that our memory was used and trained in a very different manner before the printing press came along, and one many people could be able to recall and recite huge amounts of spoken words after only hearing it once. One the printed page became the primary tool of education, it's use from early childhood on shaped how we use our memory forever.
If the videos had not been removed a while back, I could link to some relevant parts of the first series of James Burke's Connections that covered this, which is where I first learned of this. If any of this has been challenged and/or disproved since then, I'd love to hear about it.
posted by chambers at 9:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
I've heard that our memory was used and trained in a very different manner before the printing press came along, and one many people could be able to recall and recite huge amounts of spoken words after only hearing it once. One the printed page became the primary tool of education, it's use from early childhood on shaped how we use our memory forever.
If the videos had not been removed a while back, I could link to some relevant parts of the first series of James Burke's Connections that covered this, which is where I first learned of this. If any of this has been challenged and/or disproved since then, I'd love to hear about it.
posted by chambers at 9:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Converts to Christianity in the Early Middle Ages sometimes transitioned from oral languages to Ecclesiastical Latin; being able to read without mouthing out the phonetics could have been considered an example of fast learning and high accuracy in retention.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:17 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:17 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
IamBroom:
The last article explains that while some ancient cultures did have word spacing, there really weren't any that had word spacing and written vowels. In particular Greek and Latin manuscripts in ancient times were written without spaces.
Also, "You (convincingly) argued that new readers tend to read out loud. You produced no proof that anyone would continue to do so after becoming a skilled reader."
But people weren't taught to read at the age of five back then, I don't think. Adults can of course learn to read; adults can also learn foreign languages. But it seems possible to me that someone who learned to read as an adult will never be quite as fluent a reader as someone who learned as a child, just as they will never be a quite as fluent a speaker of a foreign language as someone who learned that language as a child. (I'd be interested to know what kind of research has been done on that question. Surely someone has studied it?)
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:24 AM on September 29, 2014
The last article explains that while some ancient cultures did have word spacing, there really weren't any that had word spacing and written vowels. In particular Greek and Latin manuscripts in ancient times were written without spaces.
Also, "You (convincingly) argued that new readers tend to read out loud. You produced no proof that anyone would continue to do so after becoming a skilled reader."
But people weren't taught to read at the age of five back then, I don't think. Adults can of course learn to read; adults can also learn foreign languages. But it seems possible to me that someone who learned to read as an adult will never be quite as fluent a reader as someone who learned as a child, just as they will never be a quite as fluent a speaker of a foreign language as someone who learned that language as a child. (I'd be interested to know what kind of research has been done on that question. Surely someone has studied it?)
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:24 AM on September 29, 2014
But it seems possible to me that someone who learned to read as an adult will never be quite as fluent a reader as someone who learned as a child, just as they will never be a quite as fluent a speaker of a foreign language as someone who learned that language as a child.
More importantly, the vast majority of people in those times didn't read, of the few that did, the vast majority of them only read a few works *in their lifetimes* and often were deliberately reading to a group, so they would be required to vocalize. Scholars like Ambrose, who learned to read and then read a great number of works alone, were very rare, and rare things gets noticed.
If everyone had read as much as Ambrose and did so for themselves rather than a group, silent reading wouldn't be a surprise, just as it isn't a surprise in our very highly literate modern societies*.
And, hey, if you're reading this aloud to understand it? If that means you understand it, great. Writing words that are never understood is a loss to both the writer and the reader.
*Note that I did not say "completely literate" there. I don't think there is or has been a society where every human capable of reading and writing was able to do so.
posted by eriko at 9:31 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
More importantly, the vast majority of people in those times didn't read, of the few that did, the vast majority of them only read a few works *in their lifetimes* and often were deliberately reading to a group, so they would be required to vocalize. Scholars like Ambrose, who learned to read and then read a great number of works alone, were very rare, and rare things gets noticed.
If everyone had read as much as Ambrose and did so for themselves rather than a group, silent reading wouldn't be a surprise, just as it isn't a surprise in our very highly literate modern societies*.
And, hey, if you're reading this aloud to understand it? If that means you understand it, great. Writing words that are never understood is a loss to both the writer and the reader.
*Note that I did not say "completely literate" there. I don't think there is or has been a society where every human capable of reading and writing was able to do so.
posted by eriko at 9:31 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]
stbalbach: I may be wrong, but i don't think they had punctuation.
Much of that came after the Crusades; during the Saxon occupation of England, elements of Germanic/Frankish syntax - namely, future tense expression of verbs [I am (going to start) paving that road tommorow] within sentences. In written form, there were fewer ambiguities evident than there would be in spoken phrasings passed down from one generation to the next. Early attempts at English punctuation further emphasized structural tense by serving as verbal pauses, reflective of stopping for breath, or emphasizing particular passages. They were idiosyncratic to the author's preferance, and only began to become more standardized in the advance of Middle and Modern English.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:32 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
Much of that came after the Crusades; during the Saxon occupation of England, elements of Germanic/Frankish syntax - namely, future tense expression of verbs [I am (going to start) paving that road tommorow] within sentences. In written form, there were fewer ambiguities evident than there would be in spoken phrasings passed down from one generation to the next. Early attempts at English punctuation further emphasized structural tense by serving as verbal pauses, reflective of stopping for breath, or emphasizing particular passages. They were idiosyncratic to the author's preferance, and only began to become more standardized in the advance of Middle and Modern English.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:32 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
You produced no proof that anyone would continue to do so after becoming a skilled reader, even if there is societal pressure hurrying that process along.
The same societal pressure would exist in a scriptorium, BTW.
Thats just it, though. My argument rests on observation. It is a scientific argument at least even if its only a beginning. Your only counter to that is how you imagine things were in a scriptorium which seems much more dubious to me. The articles are just tossing around 2,000 year old obscure references but it doesn't appear that anyone has taken the time to look at how humans learn the process of reading in the first place. Understanding what the process of reading involves, informs the argument. It doesn't need to prove it.
posted by vacapinta at 9:46 AM on September 29, 2014
The same societal pressure would exist in a scriptorium, BTW.
Thats just it, though. My argument rests on observation. It is a scientific argument at least even if its only a beginning. Your only counter to that is how you imagine things were in a scriptorium which seems much more dubious to me. The articles are just tossing around 2,000 year old obscure references but it doesn't appear that anyone has taken the time to look at how humans learn the process of reading in the first place. Understanding what the process of reading involves, informs the argument. It doesn't need to prove it.
posted by vacapinta at 9:46 AM on September 29, 2014
I will make a reading suggestion of my own here.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 9:48 AM on September 29, 2014
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 9:48 AM on September 29, 2014
I just had to jump in early and applaud OP's use of ALT/hover text on those links.
As an aid to understanding the omitted images on text and audio browsers?
I can't tell, since I'm on a tablet at the moment.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2014
As an aid to understanding the omitted images on text and audio browsers?
I can't tell, since I'm on a tablet at the moment.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2014
To follow up on Smart Dalek about punctuation: as I mentioned in a recent AskMe answer, that style of punctuation geared for readers-aloud, indicating pauses for breath (of various lengths), is called elocutionary punctuation. It survived in various forms well into the 19th century, an indication that reading aloud until that time was much more common than it is today. Another typographical indication is the placing, in small type at the bottom right corner of a printed page, of the first word or words on the next page, so that the reader-aloud could carry on while turning the page. Here are examples of both in a 1712 printed booklet by Jonathan Swift — see punctuation on the title page, and the continuation words at the bottom of each text page. (BTW Swift, in this pamphlet, was proposing an English version of the Académie Française to better regulate the language. In contrast to his Modest Proposal to eat the babies of the Irish poor, he was serious; thankfully nothing came of his suggestion.)
posted by beagle at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by beagle at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
We learn to speak first, before we are taught to read. Beginning and inexperienced readers usually already have much experience and skill at talking. So, using an established skill as an aid for learning a new but related one, they do a great deal of "sounding out" of letters and syllables as a method of interpretation, hoping for the moment when they can go Oh hey, that sequence of sounds is a word, I recognize it, I've heard it before! Since language and language comprehension were already ancient when writing was first being invented it's very hard for me to imagine that humanity's first readers did not act exactly as beginning readers do now.
However, reading and writing were themselves already very ancient in Augustine's lifetime (354 – 430 AD). The Tărtăria tablets, which certainly look like writing, are carbon-dated to the Neolithic period. Even if they aren't writing (nobody knows what they might say) Sumerian cuneiform tablets go back to the 4th millenium BC and they're definitely writing because scholars can read them. It seems as if there would have been plenty of time in those thousands of years between the Sumerian scribes and Augustine for many people to have become expert enough at reading to leave the sounding-out stage behind. (Good readers notice that it's an annoying impediment that holds them back.) The actual number of readers would have been limited by the small size of the scholar/scribe class relative to the whole mostly-illiterate population, but even so we have Augustine's own report of at least one silent reader in his day. Hard to imagine there had not been others, and for quite a long time.
> I've heard that our memory was used and trained in a very different manner before the
> printing press came along, and one many people could be able to recall and recite huge
> amounts of spoken words after only hearing it once.
According to a segment in the BBC's "In Search of the Trojan War" videos, there are still people in Turkey who make a living by memorizing Iliad- and Odyssey-length poems and performing them live while accompanying themselves on Turkish musical instruments. There are video clips of such people performing. Nobody learns to be that kind of bard by hearing a multi-evening performance of some Turkish epic just once and remembering it; it takes a lengthy apprenticeship. But it seems it's still a thing people can do, even today.
(That said, I'm glad somebody did write the stuff attributed to "Homer" down, because if they had not it would certainly all have been forgotten and lost.)
posted by jfuller at 9:59 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
However, reading and writing were themselves already very ancient in Augustine's lifetime (354 – 430 AD). The Tărtăria tablets, which certainly look like writing, are carbon-dated to the Neolithic period. Even if they aren't writing (nobody knows what they might say) Sumerian cuneiform tablets go back to the 4th millenium BC and they're definitely writing because scholars can read them. It seems as if there would have been plenty of time in those thousands of years between the Sumerian scribes and Augustine for many people to have become expert enough at reading to leave the sounding-out stage behind. (Good readers notice that it's an annoying impediment that holds them back.) The actual number of readers would have been limited by the small size of the scholar/scribe class relative to the whole mostly-illiterate population, but even so we have Augustine's own report of at least one silent reader in his day. Hard to imagine there had not been others, and for quite a long time.
> I've heard that our memory was used and trained in a very different manner before the
> printing press came along, and one many people could be able to recall and recite huge
> amounts of spoken words after only hearing it once.
According to a segment in the BBC's "In Search of the Trojan War" videos, there are still people in Turkey who make a living by memorizing Iliad- and Odyssey-length poems and performing them live while accompanying themselves on Turkish musical instruments. There are video clips of such people performing. Nobody learns to be that kind of bard by hearing a multi-evening performance of some Turkish epic just once and remembering it; it takes a lengthy apprenticeship. But it seems it's still a thing people can do, even today.
(That said, I'm glad somebody did write the stuff attributed to "Homer" down, because if they had not it would certainly all have been forgotten and lost.)
posted by jfuller at 9:59 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
Here is something I found which cites research regarding the comparitive fluency of people who learned to read in adulthood and those who learned to read as children, for what it's worth. Of course in our time many "adult neoliterates" are of lower socio-economic status than people who learned as children, so to control for that, they also consider a different group of adult learners:
The performance of the neoliterates has curious similarities to that of a very different group: educated people who master in adulthood languages that have scripts different from their native scripts. These may be staff of international organizations, civil service agencies, volunteer graduates, private sector, or universities who need language such as Thai, Hindi, Nepali, Arabic, Bengali, or Amharic. These learners are often highly educated people with sophisticated phonological processing skills. Many acquire a high-level command of the languages and may live abroad for extended periods. However, they report protracted difficulties in reading: limited fluency, high error rates, dependence on sounding out to understand meaning, and tendency to forget letters soon.
To me this constitutes further evidence that ancient readers, almost all of whom would have been "adult neoliterates," no matter how brilliant their minds, probably did (on average, not universally!) struggle more than modern readers. Add that to the "no spaces" thing and the lack of opportunities to practice and I'm beginning to think that the claim that ancient readers could mostly do this silently is quite an extraordinary one, and would require pretty extraordinary evidence to convince me.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:04 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
The performance of the neoliterates has curious similarities to that of a very different group: educated people who master in adulthood languages that have scripts different from their native scripts. These may be staff of international organizations, civil service agencies, volunteer graduates, private sector, or universities who need language such as Thai, Hindi, Nepali, Arabic, Bengali, or Amharic. These learners are often highly educated people with sophisticated phonological processing skills. Many acquire a high-level command of the languages and may live abroad for extended periods. However, they report protracted difficulties in reading: limited fluency, high error rates, dependence on sounding out to understand meaning, and tendency to forget letters soon.
To me this constitutes further evidence that ancient readers, almost all of whom would have been "adult neoliterates," no matter how brilliant their minds, probably did (on average, not universally!) struggle more than modern readers. Add that to the "no spaces" thing and the lack of opportunities to practice and I'm beginning to think that the claim that ancient readers could mostly do this silently is quite an extraordinary one, and would require pretty extraordinary evidence to convince me.
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:04 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]
There are modern languages with writing that does not have spaces between words (Japanese is one that immediately comes to mind, there are others), and they manage to read pretty quickly and quietly, so that's probably not an issue.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:07 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:07 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]
> that style of punctuation geared for readers-aloud, indicating pauses for breath (of various
> lengths), is called elocutionary punctuation. It survived in various forms well into the 19th
> century, an indication that reading aloud until that time was much more common than it is
> today.
Heh, reinventing the wheel department. When my kids were old enough to enjoy long books (Treasure Island and friends) but still liked to be read to at night I downloaded many of these as text files, broke them up into breath-sized bites with actual line spaces between them, and printed them out for bedtime reading. (For such a rabid tree-hugger I've also always been a dreadful tree-killer.)
posted by jfuller at 10:14 AM on September 29, 2014
> lengths), is called elocutionary punctuation. It survived in various forms well into the 19th
> century, an indication that reading aloud until that time was much more common than it is
> today.
Heh, reinventing the wheel department. When my kids were old enough to enjoy long books (Treasure Island and friends) but still liked to be read to at night I downloaded many of these as text files, broke them up into breath-sized bites with actual line spaces between them, and printed them out for bedtime reading. (For such a rabid tree-hugger I've also always been a dreadful tree-killer.)
posted by jfuller at 10:14 AM on September 29, 2014
From a parallel textual/reading tradition from Classical Antiquity, all traditional Jewish texts have associated chants - some specifically assigned by phrases (Torah, Prophets, The Five Scrolls), others improvised by the user (Psalms, Talmud, later Rabbinic texts). The "silent", personal devotion sections of Ashkenazic public prayer are actually people sub-vocalizing (sometimes quite loudly). Many stories of traditional Jews being "caught" learning secular materials include a bit about observers being able to tell because they were reading silently.
My limited exposure to Zoroastrian (Classical Persian) practice is similar - religious texts are vocalized, not completely silent. As a non-member of that rite, I am sure there's a lot of practice I don't know. But in detailed conversations with currently active priests, aloud or muttering is their style.
So, for what that's worth...
posted by Dreidl at 10:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
My limited exposure to Zoroastrian (Classical Persian) practice is similar - religious texts are vocalized, not completely silent. As a non-member of that rite, I am sure there's a lot of practice I don't know. But in detailed conversations with currently active priests, aloud or muttering is their style.
So, for what that's worth...
posted by Dreidl at 10:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
The last link does mention Japanese phonetic script:
"Studies of brain-injured Japanese patients demonstrate that, depending on the site of a cerebral lesion, a person may lose the faculty for reading kanji ideographs, but not Japanese phonetic script, which lacks regular word separation--and vice versa. The implication is that, even if early medieval readers of scriptura continua somehow managed to keep their mouths shut, they were performing a mental task fundamentally different from that of contemporary readers."
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
"Studies of brain-injured Japanese patients demonstrate that, depending on the site of a cerebral lesion, a person may lose the faculty for reading kanji ideographs, but not Japanese phonetic script, which lacks regular word separation--and vice versa. The implication is that, even if early medieval readers of scriptura continua somehow managed to keep their mouths shut, they were performing a mental task fundamentally different from that of contemporary readers."
posted by OnceUponATime at 10:16 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Oh, and memorization of large texts - memorizing the entire Koran is, I believe, the original purpose of Madrassa schools - there are boys spending their 8th-15th years doing that in schools in North America (and elsewhere) right now. I'm not Orthodox, but I know the entire Jewish weekday and Shabbat services, plus about 120 or the 150 Psalms, by heart, to a variety of chants (called Nusach - different systems for different days and times of the day) and song tunes. That's about 400 pages of text, and it's considered average cultural literacy for Jews who have gone to part-time Hebrew School or a few years of adult learning. My auditory memory is nothing special
Memorizing Talmud pages is done differently, by eidetic visual recall. A much smaller group of men are able to do even some of that.
posted by Dreidl at 10:29 AM on September 29, 2014
Memorizing Talmud pages is done differently, by eidetic visual recall. A much smaller group of men are able to do even some of that.
posted by Dreidl at 10:29 AM on September 29, 2014
I think that Ong talks about this in Orality and Literacy, as a stepping stone between the oral/aural/memorization culture of early man to the later visual/literate/abstracting culture. Makes sense, especially if you consider that there would be outliers at any stage on the spectrum (e.g. at a period when quiet (but aloud) reading was the norm, some would've had no problem reading silently, and some would've had trouble reading at all.) and thus there's not much reason to over-generalize. Just like today.
posted by eclectist at 10:35 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by eclectist at 10:35 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
damn
posted by Curious Artificer
or more appropriately, d'oh!
posted by Curious Artificer
On the contrary!
That first comment is one of the very few un-selfconscious manifestations of the marvelous 'praising with faint damns' I have encountered in print -- it was like admiring an exotic animal in the zoo for years and then coming around a switchback on a hike and seeing it run across the trail in front of you.
posted by jamjam at 10:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Curious Artificer
or more appropriately, d'oh!
posted by Curious Artificer
On the contrary!
That first comment is one of the very few un-selfconscious manifestations of the marvelous 'praising with faint damns' I have encountered in print -- it was like admiring an exotic animal in the zoo for years and then coming around a switchback on a hike and seeing it run across the trail in front of you.
posted by jamjam at 10:39 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Maybe Augustine had a learning disorder, and was frequently surprised by the way other people read?
posted by benito.strauss at 11:03 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by benito.strauss at 11:03 AM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
stbalbach has the explanation I have always heard -- Letters were in a stream eg
I most recently heard this in Dale Martin's Yale New Testament youtube class. It was so good I watched the whole thing two times and although I don't remember which episode he says this my memory is crystal clear when he says the "no spaces between the letters" made reading aloud a necessity and also made copy errors not so readily detectable.
posted by bukvich at 1:43 PM on September 29, 2014
I most recently heard this in Dale Martin's Yale New Testament youtube class. It was so good I watched the whole thing two times and although I don't remember which episode he says this my memory is crystal clear when he says the "no spaces between the letters" made reading aloud a necessity and also made copy errors not so readily detectable.
posted by bukvich at 1:43 PM on September 29, 2014
The medievals certainly were better at reading comprehension than we are today. Perhaps reading aloud is just better when one wants to glean the meaning from a text.
posted by koeselitz at 1:54 PM on September 29, 2014
posted by koeselitz at 1:54 PM on September 29, 2014
I just had to jump in early and applaud OP's use of ALT/hover text on those links.
That must be a feature that is not yet available in the modern theme with dark view?
the "no spaces between the letters" made reading aloud a necessity and also made copy errors not so readily detectable.
It slows me down, but when I encounter a passage (like the one someone typed above) with the spaces removed I am able to read it silently. I can definitely see how errors might go up, though.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:41 PM on September 29, 2014
That must be a feature that is not yet available in the modern theme with dark view?
the "no spaces between the letters" made reading aloud a necessity and also made copy errors not so readily detectable.
It slows me down, but when I encounter a passage (like the one someone typed above) with the spaces removed I am able to read it silently. I can definitely see how errors might go up, though.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:41 PM on September 29, 2014
OnceUponATime: To me this constitutes further evidence that ancient readers, almost all of whom would have been "adult neoliterates," no matter how brilliant their minds, probably did (on average, not universally!) struggle more than modern readers.
Plenty of children learned how to read in antiquity. Besides being taught by their parents or tutors, there were schools were the children of parents who could afford it were educated. If I remember correctly, kids started usually at seven years of age in ancient Greece and Rome, and by then had generally been taught some basics by their parents.
posted by Kattullus at 4:54 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
Plenty of children learned how to read in antiquity. Besides being taught by their parents or tutors, there were schools were the children of parents who could afford it were educated. If I remember correctly, kids started usually at seven years of age in ancient Greece and Rome, and by then had generally been taught some basics by their parents.
posted by Kattullus at 4:54 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm not an expert on this, but it seems to me that early writing systems necessarily involved an oral component. The pre-alphabetic systems often had multiple values for each "word", and their meaning wasn't always clear from context. In cuneiform, for instance, the same collection of symbols might be read together as a single sign, or as a spelled-out Sumerian word, or as a sounded-out Akkadian word. Even early alphabetic systems (e.g., Hebrew) can leave texts susceptible of multiple meanings, because they lack punctuation and vowels. So how did people transmit meaning using these systems? Educated guesswork could undoubtedly take you a long way, and they used a lot of standard documents ("ten sheep for the head steward at five shekels") which would be instantly intelligible. For the rest, though, I think the reader or messenger must have heard the message before transmitting it; the text was a mnemonic and source of authority, but the text alone wasn't necessarily sufficient to clearly convey the meaning. For that you needed an educated reader who had heard - and could transmit - the message orally.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:08 AM on September 30, 2014
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:08 AM on September 30, 2014
Joe in Australia, that's all interesting, but we're discussing a quote from the 4th century AD regarding Latin writing. Sumerians simply aren't relevant.
Now, everyone else who's concerned about the readability of unspaced Latin.... Latin, unlike undeclined (that is, most modern) languages, uses regular endings in words. Those endings help delineate the words themselves. IOW: every word ends in "-z", youznozlongerzneedzspaceszbetweenzwordsz. (Think how fast you'll be after just an hour of reading that.)
Take a gander at this page. My Latin is atrociously unpracticed, but at a glance, I'd guess: Paveo inquitet formido soli de domus huius operta.... (and I only know two of those words).
posted by IAmBroom at 10:17 AM on September 30, 2014
Now, everyone else who's concerned about the readability of unspaced Latin.... Latin, unlike undeclined (that is, most modern) languages, uses regular endings in words. Those endings help delineate the words themselves. IOW: every word ends in "-z", youznozlongerzneedzspaceszbetweenzwordsz. (Think how fast you'll be after just an hour of reading that.)
Take a gander at this page. My Latin is atrociously unpracticed, but at a glance, I'd guess: Paveo inquitet formido soli de domus huius operta.... (and I only know two of those words).
posted by IAmBroom at 10:17 AM on September 30, 2014
we're discussing a quote from the 4th century AD regarding Latin writing. Sumerians simply aren't relevant.
Sumerians are relevant to everything.
Anyway, the same feature carried through the invention of the proto-Semitic alphabet, which was mostly consonantal. The Phoenician version of this script spread to the early Greeks, who added letters to represent vowel sounds - not all at once, and not the same ones in each place. In each case, the alphabet as it was initially adopted must have been inadequate. The meaning of texts was transmitted by education ("this word in the context of business accounts always means 'a cow'"), recitation ("we call him HE-RA-KLE-OS"), and inspired guesswork. Even when later users added vowels, these patches weren't entirely adequate: not then, not today, where we have many vowel sounds and only a few letters to represent them. So what I'm saying is: early readers relied on oral memory a lot more than we do today, and the experience of reading must have been partly oral. I don't know to what extent this persisted in later Latin reading, but even today we don't have a direct correlation between text and meaning: there are unfamiliar words, homonyms, and other occasions to "sound things out" - mentally, if not verbally.
Ancient readers were closer to the oral tradition; they had fewer texts; and their writing systems were less sophisticated than ours. Draw a line from today (when adults are mostly silent, but all beginners start as verbalising readers) to a time when reading was necessarily performative. It implies that verbalising was much more common, and silent reading would once have been a feat worthy of being remarked upon.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:59 PM on September 30, 2014
Sumerians are relevant to everything.
Anyway, the same feature carried through the invention of the proto-Semitic alphabet, which was mostly consonantal. The Phoenician version of this script spread to the early Greeks, who added letters to represent vowel sounds - not all at once, and not the same ones in each place. In each case, the alphabet as it was initially adopted must have been inadequate. The meaning of texts was transmitted by education ("this word in the context of business accounts always means 'a cow'"), recitation ("we call him HE-RA-KLE-OS"), and inspired guesswork. Even when later users added vowels, these patches weren't entirely adequate: not then, not today, where we have many vowel sounds and only a few letters to represent them. So what I'm saying is: early readers relied on oral memory a lot more than we do today, and the experience of reading must have been partly oral. I don't know to what extent this persisted in later Latin reading, but even today we don't have a direct correlation between text and meaning: there are unfamiliar words, homonyms, and other occasions to "sound things out" - mentally, if not verbally.
Ancient readers were closer to the oral tradition; they had fewer texts; and their writing systems were less sophisticated than ours. Draw a line from today (when adults are mostly silent, but all beginners start as verbalising readers) to a time when reading was necessarily performative. It implies that verbalising was much more common, and silent reading would once have been a feat worthy of being remarked upon.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:59 PM on September 30, 2014
> stbalbach has the explanation I have always heard
It's supported in the linked Wikipedia article on scriptio continua:
posted by stbalbach at 9:25 AM on October 1, 2014
It's supported in the linked Wikipedia article on scriptio continua:
In the West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions use word dividers, but these are rare in the later periods when scriptio continua becomes the norm (in Classical Greek and late Classical Latin).Look at almost any scroll from the period and you can see it. I think there is a lot of misinformation in this thread on this point. This is a 5th century illuminated manuscript. Here's a 5th century codex. Looks like scriptio continua to me.
posted by stbalbach at 9:25 AM on October 1, 2014
Acts Of The Apostles, 8:27 through 8:31:
And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.
27 And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship,
28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet.
29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.
30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.
posted by newmoistness at 9:56 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert.
27 And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship,
28 Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet.
29 Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.
30 And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
31 And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.
posted by newmoistness at 9:56 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]
I think there really is something to this, and that the key to it is to be found in the bicameralism alluded to by Triplanetary above and initiated as a field of study by Julian Jaynes with the publication of his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Jaynes himself saw schizophrenics as a modern population embodying bicameral minds:
I think this tendency of schizophrenics to report that they had read aloud what they had in fact read silently means that those schizophrenics have lost the ability to read silently in the usual way, and are essentially mouthing the words to themselves without making sounds, as I've read that many children who are slow and below grade-level readers also tend to do.
And I would say the reason they've lost the ability to read silently is that the voice that reads silently in our heads for most of us has become in schizophrenics the alienated and hallucinatory voice of their delusions, and is no longer available to their consciousness for tasks such as reading -- and self-reflective introspection, perhaps.
But the ancients weren't a bunch of schizophrenics, of course, and I'm not sure how Jaynes explains the prevalence of bicameral minds among them, but I see his account of the historical breakdown of the bicameral mind as mere hand waving:
I'm not aware of any direct studies of issues with reading in people with PTSD, but I found a number of suggestive anecdotes:
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
Jaynes himself saw schizophrenics as a modern population embodying bicameral minds:
Jaynes notes that even in modern times[when?] there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of schizophrenia. Jaynes argues that schizophrenia is a vestige of humanity's earlier bicameral state.[2] Recent evidence shows that many schizophrenics do not just hear random voices but experience " command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts.[full citation needed] As support for Jaynes's argument, these command hallucinations are little different from the commands from gods which feature prominently in ancient stories.[2] Indirect evidence supporting Jaynes's theory that hallucinations once played an important role in human mentality can be found in the recent book Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination by Daniel Smith.[4][improper synthesis?]And in light of this post, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was anything out there discussing abnormalities in the way schizophrenics read silently and aloud:
Confusion between silent and overt reading in schizophrenia."schizophrenic patients showed a significant bias to report that they had read aloud words which they had actually read silently, or which were absent during the reading task."
Abstract
The present study was aimed at investigating whether schizophrenic patients are impaired in monitoring their own speech. In particular, we attempted to assess their ability to discriminate between overt and covert speech in a reading task, in order to verify whether they can correctly recollect the modality in which an internally generated action is produced. Subjects were asked to read either silently or aloud, items from a list of words. After a delay of 5 min, they were required to indicate in a new list which words had been read previously (either silently or overtly), or had never been presented during the reading task. With respect to normal controls, schizophrenic patients showed a significant bias to report that they had read aloud words which they had actually read silently, or which were absent during the reading task. The results are discussed in relation to recent neuroimaging studies on inner and overt speech in hallucinating schizophrenic patients. Our data favour the hypothesis that the inability to correctly discriminate between inner and overt speech may play a role in the onset of schizophrenic hallucinations.
I think this tendency of schizophrenics to report that they had read aloud what they had in fact read silently means that those schizophrenics have lost the ability to read silently in the usual way, and are essentially mouthing the words to themselves without making sounds, as I've read that many children who are slow and below grade-level readers also tend to do.
And I would say the reason they've lost the ability to read silently is that the voice that reads silently in our heads for most of us has become in schizophrenics the alienated and hallucinatory voice of their delusions, and is no longer available to their consciousness for tasks such as reading -- and self-reflective introspection, perhaps.
But the ancients weren't a bunch of schizophrenics, of course, and I'm not sure how Jaynes explains the prevalence of bicameral minds among them, but I see his account of the historical breakdown of the bicameral mind as mere hand waving:
Jaynes theorized that a shift from bicameralism marked the beginning of introspection and consciousness as we know it today. According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or "breaking down" during the second millennium BC. He speculates that primitive ancient societies tended to collapse periodically, (as in Egypt's Intermediate Periods and the periodically vanishing cities of the Mayas) as changes in the environment strained the socio-cultural equilibria sustained by this bicameral mindset. The mass migrations of the second millennium BC, caused by Mediterranean-wide earthquakes, created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses that required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. This necessity of communicating commonly observed phenomena among individuals who shared no common language or cultural upbringing encouraged those communities to become self-aware to survive in a new environment. Thus consciousness, like bicamerality, emerged as a neurological adaptation to social complexity in a changing world.Yet there is another modern population which often suffers from a kind of paranoia punctuated by near-delusive flashbacks, and is often plagued by uncontrollable and highly critical inner voices: people with PTSD.
I'm not aware of any direct studies of issues with reading in people with PTSD, but I found a number of suggestive anecdotes:
I don't think I've ever been able to concentrate on reading when there are people around, even before PTSD.In my opinion, there's not much doubt that the ancients typically had hugely traumatic lives compared to the average affluent person raised and living in a developed country today -- and there's another factor that may have increased PTSD among the ancients: rites of passage and initiation.
With PTSD I can't take the written word in very well at all. I have to take bits from academic books, and I do that by reading for short periods and writing down key information as I go.
----------------
Pre-PTSD I was a very avid reader and writer, largely in the academic sense. Post- PTSD, I can't concentrate enough to read, it's far worse when there are people around. Anything too serious, too academic, with any substance, with paragraphs that are too long- it's a no go. Lately I've found that fantasy books with absolutely NO substance and a very low reading level are manageable and help my brain focus on something besides triggers and paranoia. ...
Trauma happened while I was working on my Masters degree in Mexico- at the time, I thought the lack of focus was just due to massive amounts of reading in my second language. Since then, I've realized that it wasn't reading in Spanish that was the problem, just reading in general. At this point, I've put off starting my phd for over a year because I'm just not sure I would be capable of concentrating on so much reading and writing.
No therapists specialize in PTSD where I'm living now and I haven't been able to find any help for this particular problem. If anyone has any tips or suggestions, I'm open to trying anything at this point!
-------------
Stupidly, sadly, I'm finding it really hard to step up and acknowledge that I too can relate to this problem. For some reason I think I've held onto denial for a long long time around this issue.
I used to be an obsessive reader, both personally and professionally, and had what was really an extraordinary ability to absorb even very complex information, analyse and synthesise it and to retain that information. I could perform similarly in a written context, again both personally and professionally. My work has always demanded the ability to both read and write at a very high and analytical level, and I could...
Those days are further away now than I want to believe. Often I struggle to concentrate or focus on what I am reading at all, made all the worse by distraction or human observation in my physical environment, but real enough even in the absence of these things. I can read a document a dozen times and have no, or limited, ability, to comfidently summarise or be sure of its content or meaning. ...
------------------
Well, now I know why I can't read with people around AND why I retain NOTHING of what I read. I am also unable to understand written instructions and instruction manuals. This is while at home. This has to be ptsd related.
I have so many books I want to read and yet I just can't. If I try, I forget the characters of the book and always need to search back to find a name(character) and identify it and it's relationship to others AGAIN>
This certainly explains why I had so much trouble in school. But what is the actual reason this is going on? Is this just another part of the "Full Cup" theory?
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]
jamjam: “In my opinion, there's not much doubt that the ancients typically had hugely traumatic lives compared to the average affluent person raised and living in a developed country today -- and there's another factor that may have increased PTSD among the ancients: rites of passage and initiation.”
Jaynes is a complete and utter crackpot, and he should be immediately classed as one and dismissed.
Meanwhile, this really just isn't true. "The Ancients" are hundreds of millions of people scattered far and wide across many continents and across a thousand years in hundreds of thousands of communities which ranged from small city-states to large empires. Their living situations and the conditions they endured were utterly, mind-bogglingly diverse, and I think we really can't generalize about whether or not they might have suffered regularly from PTSD or anything like that. If one studies the ancients, one finds that even within single communities the differences in living standards could vary dramatically even from one generation to the next; parents raised in affluence could watch their children starving, whereas children who grew up in abject poverty could end up living on the fat of the land in rich times – just as we see today. And whereas some communities saw dramatic variance, other communities lived for a thousand years without a large difference in their affluence, living from generation to generation to generation in the sure knowledge that their livelihood would be assured by the rich conditions in which they found themselves and the abundance of water and ease of growing crops. The Egyptians were one such community. Athens, Sparta, and Crete each enjoyed periods of relative peace and prosperity for hundreds of years. And if you say 'oh, that's true of the upper class, but what about those at the bottom?' – that, too, was remarkably varied. Some communities had a large stock of relatively equal citizens, and, as Aristotle notes in the third book of the Politics, a city with a large middle class that shares a common equality is generally much more stable. Some communities like Sparta, on the other hand, had rather severe inequality.
In conclusion, antiquity is a land of contrasts.
posted by koeselitz at 10:45 PM on October 7, 2014 [2 favorites]
Jaynes is a complete and utter crackpot, and he should be immediately classed as one and dismissed.
Meanwhile, this really just isn't true. "The Ancients" are hundreds of millions of people scattered far and wide across many continents and across a thousand years in hundreds of thousands of communities which ranged from small city-states to large empires. Their living situations and the conditions they endured were utterly, mind-bogglingly diverse, and I think we really can't generalize about whether or not they might have suffered regularly from PTSD or anything like that. If one studies the ancients, one finds that even within single communities the differences in living standards could vary dramatically even from one generation to the next; parents raised in affluence could watch their children starving, whereas children who grew up in abject poverty could end up living on the fat of the land in rich times – just as we see today. And whereas some communities saw dramatic variance, other communities lived for a thousand years without a large difference in their affluence, living from generation to generation to generation in the sure knowledge that their livelihood would be assured by the rich conditions in which they found themselves and the abundance of water and ease of growing crops. The Egyptians were one such community. Athens, Sparta, and Crete each enjoyed periods of relative peace and prosperity for hundreds of years. And if you say 'oh, that's true of the upper class, but what about those at the bottom?' – that, too, was remarkably varied. Some communities had a large stock of relatively equal citizens, and, as Aristotle notes in the third book of the Politics, a city with a large middle class that shares a common equality is generally much more stable. Some communities like Sparta, on the other hand, had rather severe inequality.
In conclusion, antiquity is a land of contrasts.
posted by koeselitz at 10:45 PM on October 7, 2014 [2 favorites]
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