Information in the Roman Empire

2025-06-19

After a brief survey of mechanical technologies for recording information in the Roman Empire, this chapter assesses how information was stored and circulated in a variety of social contexts: businesses and economic activity, acquisition of skills, the law, way-finding, personal identity, and large composite data collections. Cross-cutting these descriptive accounts, the chapter also offers three broader arguments. Even in contexts with massive amounts of documents embedded in full social networks, access to particular information was often restricted by access to or the biological memory of unique individuals. Subject matter experts are increasingly split between maximalist and minimalist accounts of Roman informational capacity; this chapter suggests a modified minimalist position. Finally, the information architecture of large organization made access much more difficult than storage.

Evidence for Cognitive Spatial Models from Ancient Roman Land-Measurement

Brain Sciences · 2025-04-04

Influential studies in the history of cartography have argued that map-like representations of space were (virtually) unknown in the Classical Mediterranean world and that the cause of this was an absence of underlying cognitive maps. That is, persons in that time/place purportedly had only route/egocentric-type mental representations, not survey/allocentric ones. The present study challenges that cognitive claim by examining the verbal descriptions of plots of land produced by ancient Roman land-measurers. Despite the prescription of a route-based form, actual representations persistently show a variety of features which suggest the existence of underlying survey-type mental models and the integration of those with the route-type ones. This fits better with current views on interaction between types of spatial representation and of cultural difference in this area. The evidence also suggests a linkage between the two kinds of representations.

Not in the Last Instance

2025-09-25

Abstract This chapter examines Cicero’s commitment to the ideal that the law should rule, and exceptions to it. First, it considers Pro Rabirio perduellionis and how, in certain circumstances, Cicero considered the lynch mob preferable to the processes of a formal trial. Next, it argues that Cicero’s De Legibus eliminates the criminal courts from his ideal state. Cicero’s core goal is best described by the theory of natural sociability offered in De Republica: people are meant to relate to each other, and the job of the state is to support the ongoing existence of the many bilateral ties between individuals and, in particular, to protect them from potential injustice. To that end, ‘rule of law’ is, at best, a second-order term for Cicero; the best government was one dependent more on acceptance of the personal authority of the ‘right’ sort of men. The chapter concludes that while, in Cicero’s view, many aspects of daily life ought to be rules-based, the survival of the state was more important than legal processes and best entrusted to the judgement of good men.

ROMAN VIEWS ON TIME AND SPACE - (R.J.A.) Talbert World and Hour in Roman Minds. Exploratory Essays. Pp. xviii + 308, ills, maps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. Cased, £71, US$110. ISBN: 978-0-19-760634-6.

The Classical Review · 2024-03-04

ROMAN VIEWS ON TIME AND SPACE - (R.J.A.) Talbert World and Hour in Roman Minds. Exploratory Essays. Pp. xviii + 308, ills, maps. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. Cased, £71, US$110. ISBN: 978-0-19-760634-6.

Laurence, Ray and Francisco Trifilò. 2023. <em>Mediterranean Timescapes: Chronological Age and Cultural Practice in the Roman Empire</em>. London: Routledge; 978-1-13828-875-1 hardback £125.

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal · 2024-09-23

This is a review of Mediterranean Timescapes: Chronological Age and Cultural Practice in the Roman Empire by Ray Laurence and Francisco Trifilò, published in 2023 by Routledge.

What Kind of Cognitive Technology Is the “Memory House”?

Topics in Cognitive Science · 2024-10-16 · 2 citations

Ancient Roman "technical memory" is not (as much of the modern specialist literature would have it) a generative technology of association. Rather it is (as a literal reading of the texts would suggest) a specialized tool for precise serial recall. Modern experimental evidence both confirms the fitness for the purpose of the technique and shows why that purpose is not trivial, as some have suggested. While the mechanism(s) by which the technique operates are not fully understood, a review of the current literature suggests that it would have had the advantage over other mnemonic techniques by virtue of recruiting a variety of cognitive capacities. These likely include spatial/navigational mechanisms and possibly visual/imagery-based ones as well. Finally, small differences between the method as recorded in the ancient texts and similar methods that have been the subject of laboratory experiments are used to suggest possible directions for further experimentation.

Do Benevolent Rulers Impose Economic Reforms?

2024-08-02

Several recent arguments have claimed that various features of Roman law (unavailability of an executory contract of barter; regimes of protection against latent defects and for land title; rules for generic sale) take the shapes they do so as to produce a variety of economic efficiencies. This paper offers two critiques of these accounts. (1) They lack an adequate account of the bounded rationality and motivations of the law-makers. (2) In many cases they misstate the legal rules in question in ways that exaggerate the resulting efficiencies.

Standardization as Economic Institution

Palgrave studies in ancient economies · 2024 · 3 citations

• Political Science
• Political Science
• Law

New institutional work tends to emphasize or simply assume the need for metrological standardization in service of increasing economic efficiency. The first section of the paper quantifies standardization across a broad range of temporal, geographical, and material contexts, finding it typically weaker than is often assumed. The second section attempts to contextualize that variation by examining its consequences in various use contexts, particularly by appeal to the notion of degrees and types of reliance on standardization by various audiences. The final section assesses the consequences of these findings for broader theory. Inter alia, attention must be directed to a variety of dimensions along which behavior may be regularized, not just the mechanics of metrological standardization.

Learning the Language of God: Tables in Early Christian Texts

Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023 · 41 citations

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Linguistics

In their scholarship, Origen and Eusebius made revolutionary use of tabular organisation, a device little known in earlier Greek and Roman contexts. This usage is driven by a variety of ideological motives but likely enabled by physical features of their working environment. In the more specific case of his Hexapla, Origen drew on the already quasi-tabular form of bilingual texts previously used for language instruction. This has consequences for debates about the meaning of the ordering and function of the individual columns. It also suggests that the reader was to be interpellated as a (subordinate) student, whatever their actual relationship to Origen or his text was.