Scribes of Rome

In a society in which only a fraction of the population was literate and numerate, being one of the few specialists in reading, writing and reckoning meant the possession of an invaluable asset. The fact that the Roman state heavily relied on these professional scribes in financial and legal administration led to their holding a unique position and status. By gathering and analysing the available source material on the Roman scribae, Benjamin Hartmann traces the history of Rome's public scribes from the early Republic to the Later Roman Empire. He tells the story of men of low social origin, who, by means of their specialised knowledge, found themselves at the heart of the Roman polity, in close proximity to the powerful and responsible for the written arcana of the state – a story of knowledge and power, corruption and contested social mobility.

Benjamin Hartmann is a former Research and Teaching Assistant in Ancient History at the University of Zurich and currently works as an independent researcher. His research focuses on the role of literacy in the ancient world, ancient cultural and social history and Latin epigraphy. He has mainly published on writing on everyday objects and small finds from the Roman world.