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Epistolary Writing in Roma Antiqua
People have sent messages to each other, written lists, kept notes and accounts, and so on, for millenia. Cave paintings were a way to convey messages, as were the stained windows in medieval cathedrals. That the Romans wrote letters we know from many sources, including over 800 surviving letters written by Cicero alone. Letters were written on tablets, on parchment, on skins and on papyrus. They were sent within the city of Rome, throughout Italy and to regions all over the empire. But how were letters sent?
As early as 539 BC, the Persians had established an extensive postal system that covered their own huge empire. In a system similar to the United States' Pony Express, Persian horsemen rode in relays to deliver official messages, covering a 1600-mile route in nine days. Although this system was designed for state messages, private messages nevertheless were likely delivered as well. Also, the riders could narrate news of interesting events.
In contrast, Roman citizens, to include politicians and the wealthy, usually sent their mail using hired messengers, or trusted slaves, or a friend embarking on a trip to or towards the intended destination. Cicero's son, for example, wrote to his father from Athens (where he was studying) and complained that he had waited 46 days to receive a letter from him. During the republic, messengers who carried state mail were called tabellarii while those who carried private mail were called publicani.
With the development of the Empire, Augustus, anxious to maintain the Pax Romana, first organized a network of couriers using young men of military age. He later developed the system into a series of relay inns and ships by which one man could carry a message through to its destination. The system developed by Augustus was called cursus publicus but it was not public in a modern sense. Like the Persians' mail, this system was reserved primarily for military purposes or official messages. On average a messenger could travel 50 miles a day, but urgent messages could be sent much more quickly. When the army of the Rhine revolted, Galba received the news at Rome in nine days, indicating that the messenger had traveled about 150 miles a day. Subsequent emperors Trajan and Hadrian, both intent on receiving timely news, improved both the roads and the courier system.
Pliny the Younger, writing in the 1st century AD, explained the use of birds to carry messages. The noble Brutus, besieged by Mark Antony in the city of Modena in northern Italy during 44 to 43 BC, still managed to communicate with his allies by tying his dispatches to the feet of pigeons. What use to Mark Antony, Pliny wryly noted, were his rampart and watchful besieging force, and even the barriers of nets that he stretched in the river, when the message went by air?
Swallows too were used to carry messages. Pliny wrote:
One Roman gentleman who was particularly fond of chariot racing would catch swallows from a nest at his country home and take them to the races in Rome. To give his friends advance results, he would paint the birds with the color of the winning team and release them to fly back to their nest. Swallows were excellent carriers as their speed meant they were rarely caught by predators.
Roman writing tablets in general had wooden or bronze frames into which melted beeswax was poured and messages scratched into the hardened wax with a stylus. But, in 1973, over two hundred writing tablets of a different kind were found at the fort of Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall in Britain. These new discoveries consisted of thin slices of wood that had no frame to contain wax; instead, the writing was done with pen and ink. These tablets had been well preserved by the moist soil, allowing one to read letters, food lists, and accounts. One tablet contained a private letter to a soldier that said in part:
I have sent you socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals, and two pairs of underpants.
Some of these letters were written when the Roman army had started building Hadrian's Wall in AD 122. Some more fragments:
Erasmus cuidam Lubecensi s.d.
Salve vir integerrime.
Marcus Q. Fratri S.
Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater, tune id veritus es...
A Roman letter would commonly start off with one of these openings, frequently using abbreviations:
Typical letter conclusions:
Joan Jahnige, January 1998
Revised 2006
Sources:
Ancient Inventions Peter James, Ballantine Books, New York, 1994 pp. 520-529.
Activity Book, British Museum Press, London, p. 16.
As the Romans Did, JoAnn Shelton, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998 pp. 121, 285-286.
Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford University Press, New York, 1970, p. 869
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