The verbs “to write” and “to read” in the inscriptions of Dacia

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The paper analyzes the uses of the verbs meaning “to write” and “to read” in the Latin inscriptions of Dacia, in order to discern what they can reveal about literacy and the attitudes toward it in this province of the Roman Empire. The verbs denoting the writing ability that are epigraphically attested are the following: scribere, conscribere, describere, proscribere, subscribere, and scire, the latter in the syntagm litteras scire. Out of these aforementioned verbs, scribere is the most frequently employed, with more than sixty occurrences, and it is found in different types of inscriptions, while its derivatives conscribere, describere, proscribere, and subscribere are each attested only once. Litteras scire is found thrice and exclusively in the wax tablets from Alburnus Maior, in the phrase se litteras scire negavit, a statement expressing the lack of knowledge of writing. On the other hand, only the verb legere is used to express reading and it is encountered just twice, both times in funerary inscriptions. As the occurrences of verbs denoting the writing ability exceed so overwhelmingly the ones denoting the reading competency, it is evident that the inscriptions stress and express one facet of literacy (writing) to the almost exclusion of the other (reading).