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A fragment of a military report (152)
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‘Old Roman Cursive’ was the script used for documents
and letters written in the Roman world in the first three centuries
AD. The characters are often small and sometimes resemble modern
capital (upper-case) letters more than lower-case letters. They
are joined by ligatures (225),
but are more usually written separately, unlike modern handwriting.
In the hundreds of different hands represented in the tablets the
quality of writing varies greatly. Some scripts are elegant and
sloping (248,
295),
some squarish and upright (218,
247)
and some clumsy (250,
310).
Tablets written by a scribe but finished by the author clearly portray
the differences in quality and elegance between different writers
(291).
152
presents one of the most elegant examples of calligraphic handwriting
from Vindolanda. Surprisingly this document is not a letter but
a fragment of one of the ‘all present and correct reports,
submitted by junior officers, the optiones.
The addresses on the backs of the letters are written in the same
cursive script, but the letters are larger and more elongated or
‘spindly’.
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Address on a letter to Flavius Genialis (218)
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© CSAD |
Word divisions are only sometimes marked, either by a space (225)
or by interpunct, i.e. the placing of a medial point between words,
not always easily distinguished from dirt and ink blots. Interpunct
is not often used consistently but placed here and there through
the text (297,
323).
Interpunct also sometimes marks out numerals. An oblique dash or
apex (plural – apices) was used over a and
o, sometimes distinguishing long from short vowels (291).
Words are abbreviated or represented as symbols in many instances,
for example military units or ranks, dates, weights and measures
and units of currency. The tablets provide new information on some
symbols, especially for the fractions
of the denarius. Other individual words are also sometimes abbreviated,
for example Cl for the name Claudia and Vindol for Vindolanda. Numerals
may be marked with a superscript bar or dots before and after to
distinguish them from ordinary letters.
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Image
details:
A line from book 9 of Virgil's Aeneid in
a capital script (118)
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© CSAD |
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Image
details:
An fragment with several lines of shorthand.
At the bottom (upside down) part of a text in capital letters
(122)
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© CSAD |
Cursive script is distinct from the ‘bookhands’, which
used capital forms for copying literary texts. Capital script is
however occasionally found in the tablets, for example in the the
line from Virgil’s Aeneid in 118
and in headings in some accounts and reports (162,
186).
Among the tablets is a small group of documents in shorthand, the
only Latin shorthand documents to survive from classical antiquity.
They remain undeciphered. Shorthand was known, in the late Roman
period at least, as ‘Tironian notes’, named after Tiro,
freedman secretary of the orator Cicero.
Historical context
The history of Latin handwriting can be sketched in a general way.
The ‘Old Roman Cursive’ (ORC) of the Vindolanda tablets
is very similar to the script of contemporary papyri from Egypt,
although coming from the opposite end of the empire. From the later
third century ORC was replaced by ‘New Roman Cursive’
(NRC), of which the letter forms are closer to modern lower-case
letters. NRC led directly to an early medieval script, Caroline
minuscule, used in 9th century France and Germany. This script in
turn was rediscovered in the Renaissance and is the basis for the
scripts we employ today.
However the detailed development of the Latin cursive script during
the imperial period is poorly understood. The relationship between
ORC and NRC is obscure and controversial, partly because of the
scarcity of ORC documents. Most Egyptian papyri for example are
written in Greek, only a small percentage in Latin. The Vindolanda
writing tablets are the largest group of Latin documents from the
western Roman empire, although now supplemented by other material
from Britain, including leaf tablets from Carlisle and curses scratched
on lead tablets from Bath. The Vindolanda documents clearly demonstrate
that there is much more variation within ‘Old Roman Cursive’
than had previously been thought. The history of Latin scripts must
be rewritten to take account of this complexity.
The history of scripts may seem like a historical footnote. However
their use and development can tell us much about the nature of education
and literacy. We now see for example that the same scripts and conventions
were in use for Latin documents at different ends of the empire,
in Northumberland and in Egypt. Since Latin documents in Egypt too
are usually found in military contexts, these common features may
be the product of scribal training within the army, about which
we otherwise know very little.
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