Laudator Temporis Acti

Herbert C. Youtie, "ΥΠΟΓΡΑΦΕΥΣ: The Social Impact of Illiteracy in Graeco-Roman Egypt," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 17 (1975) 201-221 (at 201):

The society in which we are now living has two determining characteristics: it is a technological and a democratic society. The stress that it places on scientific applications on the one hand and on the manifestations of popular opinion on the other, imposes on every member of the society the obligation to become and to remain literate, i.e. to cultivate the capacity to read and to write the language that is in use for these partly cultural, partly political operations. The upshot of this requirement is that suspicion and contempt attach themselves necessarily to the illiterate person, and his economic possibilities are correspondingly limited. This estimate of the sociological situation in modern states is not exaggerated. Here is a typical statement of the current point of view: "The dimensions of illiteracy throughout the world and its grave economic, social, cultural, and political con sequences point up the need to find practical means for the eradication of this brake on human progress and welfare ..."¹⁾

Graeco-Roman Egypt presents us with the spectacle of a society very different in kind, living on quite other presuppositions and with purposes remote from those of our day. That society was both pre-technological and pre-democratic. We shall find that it made a large place for illiteracy. The illiterate person was able to function in a broad variety of occupations, to be recognized as a respectable member of his class, to attain financial success, to hold public office, to associate on equal terms with his literate neighbors.

1) L.H. Hughs, Innovator (Univ. Mich. School of Education) 6, No. 7, 1975, 8. Indicative of modern concern with world literacy is the series published by Unesco under the title "Literacy:, beginning with the report for 1965-7 (Paris).

Id. (at 220):

This summary enables us to recognize three main categories of writers for the illiterate: (1) relatives, preferably close relatives, but when these were lacking, more remote connections; (2) business associates or colleagues in government service; and finally (3) professional scribes, who might or might not have personal knowledge of their clients. Of these, the first group is by far the most striking because it shows illiteracy operating as a centripetal force in an ancient non-technological society. The special needs that stemmed from wide spread illiteracy confirmed the traditional rules that governed the selection of kyrioi or male "guardians" as well as the selection of guardians for minor children. These were kept as far as possible within the family. Illiteracy similarly promoted domestic cooperation, what we should be inclined to call family solidarity. This is nowhere seen more clearly than in the frequency with which illiterate fathers and mothers supplemented their own lack with the literate capacities of their sons.