Communicating Question

[Vibius Tiberius Costa]

Usual period (150-ish bc)

 

How could an illiterate but rich-ish (if it matters) plebeian communicate with someone many miles away?

Were letters or papers or scrolls available for plebeians? was there a postal service? could a messenger deliver certain speech?

 

vtc

[Ingsoc]

I don't why the fact that someone is Plebiean should matter in 150 BC, anyway scrolls were available to anyone who could pay for them and usually if you were rich you had a slave which wrote your letters.

[Primus Pilus]

A formal postal service doesn't seem to have been developed until the Imperial era. In the time period your suggesting, message delivery and communication was a matter of private facilitation. As Ingsoc suggests, slaves, or 3rd party paid couriers could have been employed for such a task.

[The Augusta]

I don't why the fact that someone is Plebiean should matter in 150 BC, anyway scrolls were available to anyone who could pay for them and usually if you were rich you had a slave which wrote your letters.

 

 

Indeed - and don't forget that letters could also be written on wax tablets - a diptych tied with string. This may have been a cheaper solution for the less wealthy, as the recipient could write his reply on the same tablet and send it back with the same messenger.

 

Another thing to consider is the possibility of a messenger memorising a verbal message too. This was not unheard of.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Given widespread literacy in the Roman world, it wouldn't have been difficult to find someone to whom you could dictate your message. That message could have been carried by any of a stream of travelers -- couriers, teamsters, traders, etc. I guess the interesting question has more to do with the intended recipient: Is the recipient literate? Does he or she expect the forthcoming message?

[Nephele]

I haven't much additional information to that already provided, except to offer the Latin term for such a servant who would write letters for his master, and that is: amanuensis. Wikipedia gives a brief history of the development of the term, as well as its modern usage, here.

 

I know you didn't ask about how the message was transcribed and sealed before delivery, but I'll just add that the amanuensis would take his master's dictation in an abbreviated long hand, and later re-write it out more fully before submitting it to the master for approval and sealing. While wax tablets didn't quite correspond to our modern-day envelopes, the tablets could nevertheless be "sealed" for delivery by tying two tablets together with thread (the diptych tied with string, as mentioned above by The Augusta), dripping hot wax over the knotted ends, and then the master would stamp the wax with his signet ring (which, effectively, also served as his personal signature on the message).

 

-- Nephele

[caldrail]

I seem to remember somewhere that a letter from one family member to another travelled across the mediterranean by the hand of a courier paid to deliver it. Given the romans had no sytem of adresses his task wasn't as easy as might be imagined, since he might only know the general area where they lived.