Education was highly valued in ancient Roman society, especially amongst the elite classes. There exists a famous fresco unearthed from the ruins of Herculaneum that depicts a young wedded Roman couple. What is particularly interesting about this painting is not who is depicted, but how they are depicted. The woman holds a small wooden writing tablet and presses a stylus against her lip while here husband holds a rolled scroll. Clearly, the couple sought to immortalize themselves as having been educated and thus able to read and write and to this effect, their goal was achieved. While papyrus sheets and parchment scrolls existed during the Roman era, these commodities were highly expensive and were generally reserved for official or personal communications. Everyday writing was done with wooden tablets covered in a thin layer of wax. Words were etched into the wax utilizing a stylus which featured a sharpened tip for inscribing an a blunt end for rubbing out mistakes or erasing unwanted writing. While the styli could be made from a variety of materials, including reed or bone and ivory (as are these examples), the tablets were almost always made of wood. Called cerae or codices in Latin, these tablets had slightly raised edges forming what was essentially a shallow box into which the wax would have been poured. Traditionally, they were bound together in leather and folded in half much like a modern book or many tablets were bound together like an accordion. However, single tablets were also quite common and were one of the standard writing materials of Roman schoolchildren. This magnificent collection of ancient bone (or ivory) styli may have belonged to a single author or may have been the possessions of many. They are well worn and may have even been passed down from generation to generation considering the wealth of the material (as opposed to a common reed stylus). Hundreds of years ago, these styli would have glided across layers of wax leaving behind etched markings. Almost anything may have been written, from a child’s school lesson to a housewife’s shopping list. Much like a stylus would have served as a symbol for education in an ancient Roman fresco, today this set of styli symbolize the civility and literary glory of the Roman world.
- (X.0461)
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