Taking The Tablets

Paul Chrystal puts the record straight regarding how we know what we know about the Romans.

We assume that most of what we know about the Romans comes from the writings of Greek and Roman historians, such as Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch and Dio Cassius. While this is true up to a point, there are many other primary sources that combine to give us a more complete picture of the Roman world. The Romans had access to a mass of information and many communication systems, records and archives – all of which was engineered to disseminate and record data, legislation, propaganda – and also misinformation – to state and religious officials, citizens, the military and to the ubiquitous enemy, wherever they were in the Roman world.

These additional sources are no less important than the work of Roman historians, letter writers, poets and novelists. They include a wealth of recorded information and communications that have survived for up to 3000 years in various forms. Indeed, these historians themselves would have relied heavily on earlier records as primary source material.

Together, they shine much-needed extra light on social, economic, political, legal, military, religious, linguistic and medical history. They sometimes lend a more objective and authentic picture, relatively free from the subjectivity and bias that can tinge and taint Classical authors, authors who may have ancient axes to grind or who are influenced by contemporary or past events and personal experience. Propaganda and political self promotion apart, the non-literary records reflect everyday life and real facts and factors: indeed, it is very hard to embellish, misrepresent or exaggerate a receipt for dead sheep supplied to the local palace, or cargoes of grain shipped to Rome, or a list of rations. In essence they help to define ancient Roman life by telling it precisely how it was: often mundane in the extreme but invaluable for all that.