The Scarcity of Scribes in the Late Roman Empire

 

Roman Sarcophagus Relief 2nd CE

(William Rockhill Nelson Trust)

 

While reading through an article by Raffaella Cribiore I came across a reference to the scarcity of scribes in the late Roman Empire. 

"Texts copied in book hands were produced at a slower pace and a higher cost. Such specialized scribes were not always available and may have been in high demand. We know that some writers, such as Cassius Longinus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea, deplored their scarcity." (Cribiore, 258)

In a cover letter that accompanied his Contra Eunomium I, Gregory of Nyssa wrote to two students of Libanius, John and Maximian apologizing for the long delay of his work.

"We Cappadocians are poor in almost all the things that make those who possess them happy—and poor especially in those able to write. This indeed is the reason for the long delay of my treatise, for though my refutation of the heresy has been finished for some considerable time, there was no one to transcribe it. It was this lack of copyists that in all likelihood brought on us the suspicion of slackness or of inadequacy for the task" (Ep.15, trans., Anna M. Silvas)

In a letter to the Presbyter Paeonius Basil of Caesarea wrote 

"I have had no writer with me, neither calligraphist, nor short-hand. Of all those whom I happen to employ, some have returned to their former mode of life, and others are unfit for work from long sickness" (Ep. 134)

It was so bad for Basil that he took to training his own scribes for the task. Note his instructional letter to a scribe in training.

"Write straight and make the lines straight. Do not let your hand go too high or too low. Avoid forcing the pen to travel slantwise, like Aesop's crab. Advance straight on, as if following the line of the carpenter's rule, which always preserves exactitude and prevents any irregularity. The oblique is ungraceful. It is the straight which pleases the eye and does not allow the reader's eyes to go nodding up and down like a swing-beam. This has been my fate in reading your writing. As the lines lie ladderwise, I was obliged, when I had to go from one to another, to mount up to the end of the last: then, when no connection was to be found, I had to go back, and seek for the right order again, retreating and following the furrow, like Theseus in the story following Ariadne's thread. Write straight, and do not confuse our mind by your slanting and irregular writing." (Ep. 334)

Similarly, in his reply to Porphyry, Longinus of Athens complains that there are few scribes available to make copies of books.

"Whatever else you may be expecting, do not hope for anything new of my own, or even for the earlier works which you tell me you have lost; for there is a sad dearth of copyists here. I assure you it has taken me all this time to complete my set of Plotinus, and it was done only by calling off my scribe from all his routine work and keeping him steadily to this one task." (Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 19)

The anecdotal evidence from these 3rd and 4th century figures indicates that there was a scarcity of high-quality scribes. Even for those who were well educated and connected to others across the empire, finding a good copyist could be a difficult task.

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Raffaella Cribiore, "The Dissemination of Texts in the High Empire." American Journal of Philology 140, no. 2 (2019): 255-290

Anna M. Silvas, Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters, Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2007)

Review of Nicholas A. Elder's "Gospel Media"

I recently reviewed Nicholas Elder's new book "Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions" (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024). I reviewed the book for the Evangelical Review of Theology and Politics.

Scribal Memory and Textual Fluidity in Copying Christian Texts

Marble Relief of a Scribe from Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (ca. 2nd cen. BCE)

Istvan Czachesz, "Rewriting and Textual Fluidity in Antiquity: Exploring the Sociocultural and Psychological Context of Earliest Christian Literacy" in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2010); 425-441.

I was recently reading the article by Czachesz, referenced above, that engages with early Christian scribal practices from the perspective of modern studies on memory. I came across a lengthy quote that intersected with my own research interests.

"With no institution existing to safeguard the faithful reproduction of religious literature, the fate of books in the ‘religions of the book’ was not very different from the fate of ancient books in general. Not all texts were, however, equally fluid. A book with very large circulation and high authority was arguably more resistant to modifications. If a text was relatively accessible and well known among the educated, like Homer in Graeco-Roman culture, alterations to it were more easily spotted and less likely to be accepted as original than changes made to less well- known texts. In this case, a rewritten text could be identified as a new literary work, dependent on a well-known, authoritative text as its source. In contrast, the random distribution and small circulation of less well- known works, or of new works aſter their release, made them especially vulnerable to changes. In such cases, it was oſten impossible to know that the text at hand existed in multiple versions or to identify the authoritative version." (Czachesz, pg. 431)

I do generally agree with Czachesz's observations here, that in the first century "A book with very large circulation and high authority was arguably more resistant to modifications." I only disagree in that a work that had a narrower circulation would also be resistant to textual change for exactly the same reasons as a more popular work. The difference being that a smaller group that circulated a less popular text may have greater success in getting the collaboration of everyone involved in order to alter that text. It would still require the agreement of all those circulating and engaging with the text in question for significant alterations to a text to take effect. I discuss this and other issues in my article,

Timothy Mitchell, "Exposing Textual Corruption: Community as a Stabilizing Aspect in the Circulation of the New Testament Writings during the Greco-Roman Era" Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43.2 (2020): 266-298.