History · Ch 2 — An Empire Across Three Continents
Gender, Literacy, Culture
Gender, Literacy, Culture
The section opens by examining how gender shaped the social fabric of the Roman Empire, where the paterfamilias held sweeping legal authority over his household, yet women in practice enjoyed considerable freedom in public life, property ownership, and social influence. It then turns to literacy, noting that while the elite prized a classical education in Greek and Latin, the vast majority of the population remained functionally illiterate, with reading and writing concentrated among administrators, scribes, and the wealthy …
One of the funniest of these graffiti found on the walls of Pompeii says:
'Wall, I admire you for not collapsing in ruins
When you have to support so much boring writing on you.'
What it shows: Pompeii's walls were covered in everyday graffiti — jokes, election
notices, love poems, insults — scratched by ordinary Romans, not official inscriptions.
This one is a rare piece of ancient self-aware humour, poking fun at just how much …