A recently published study by Ella Kirsh from Brown University analyzes shorthand manuals from antiquity preserved in papyri and wax tablets, revealing the complexity and diversity of stenographers’ training, who were mostly individuals from non-elite backgrounds, often slaves.
The study focuses primarily on a manual known as the Commentary, widely used for teaching shorthand in late antiquity. Kirsh argues that the inherent difficulty of the shorthand system heightened the ideological lessons imparted to students, conveying a coherent, if unsettling, view of society and the proper distribution of power within it.
The author highlights the case of Chairammon, a domestic slave in 2nd-century Oxyrhynchus (the city of Per-Medyed, now called El-Bahnasa, in Upper Egypt), whose master, Panechotes, invested a considerable sum—120 drachmas, enough to buy a house—to send him to learn shorthand, illustrating the value placed on this skill in late Roman society, though the exact motivations behind such an investment remain speculative.
What made shorthand training so valuable as to justify such a significant expenditure and the loss of Chairammon’s labor? Did Panechotes expect to recoup his investment by subcontracting Chairammon for secretarial work in the future? Was he planning his own literary career? Did he have so many slaves and so much money that the loss of one barely made a difference? Kirsh asks. Whatever Panechotes’ motivation, his enthusiasm for the project is evident from the terms of the contract. Chairammon was to study with the shorthand teacher Apollonius and his son Dionysius, living in a house full of stenographers until “the boy had learned the whole Commentary” and could take shorthand “flawlessly.”
The process of learning shorthand, as Kirsh reveals, was arduous and transformative. Students had to memorize thousands of words and their corresponding arcane symbols, a process that could take years and, according to sources of the time, left an indelible mark on the soul of the apprentice. This intensive training not only provided technical skills but also shaped the student’s perspective on society and their place within it.
Chairammon would fill, erase, and refill notebooks with complicated sections of the Commentary, draw the symbols, recite the words, study the content of his shorthand manuals until the symbols flowed from his fingers as quickly and precisely as words from his master’s lips. Even when he finished his training and returned to Panechotes, the rhythms of the Commentary would be his constant companion. The Commentary was the hidden text underlying every moment spent taking dictation; it framed and colored every interaction between author and stenographer. No other text, including the Scriptures, played such a central role in their lives, says Kirsh.
She notes that shorthand was an activity almost exclusively reserved for the unfree in late antiquity. Citing Seneca, who referred to shorthand as a profession for “the vilest slaves”, the author presents evidence supporting this characterization across several centuries. Although there was some social variation, with a few freed and freeborn individuals seeking shorthand training during hard times, most sources assume that stenographers, both men and women, were human property.
The article explores how shorthand training became a spectacle of power and obedience. Elite authors described stenographers working on their knees, head bowed, and their tongues still, capturing their masters’ words with a speed and precision often attributed more to divine powers than to human education.
What did “learning the Commentary” and using this system involve in practice? Deep memorization seems to have been key. Imagine the enslaved Chairammon transcribing Panechotes’ dictation after successfully completing his shorthand training. If Panechotes dictated the word δοῦλος (incidentally, the word used to identify Chairammon in the apprenticeship contract), Chairammon would first have to think and draw the sign for the tetrad to which the word belonged. In this case, it would be tetrad number 71: ἀπειλεῖ δεσπότης, δοῦλος σιγᾷ (“The master threatens, the slave is silent”). Without lifting the pen, Chairammon would have drawn the main sign of tetrad 71, a symbol that resembles a lowercase delta, starting with the bowl of the sign and ending with a stem so tilted it looks like it might fall over. The main sign of tetrad 71 is one of the few symbols that resemble real letters. Perhaps Chairammon would have wondered: δ for δοῦλος or for δεσπότης? Kirsh explains.
She adds that after drawing the main sign, it was necessary to specify which of the four words in the tetrad the given context referred to. This disambiguation was achieved by adding a tiny annotation: a small mark in the form of the syllabary sign for the ending of the word in question. Chairammon would need to remember that the word δοῦλος was the third word in tetrad 71. Next, he would note the main sign to the right. The sign, the tetrad, the order of the words, the inflectional annotation… all had to be recalled and transcribed instantly and precisely before the next word was spoken, and the process began again.
One of the study’s most innovative aspects is its analysis of the “Commentary” as a source of moral authority, in addition to its function as a technical manual. The author argues that this text profoundly impacted the intellectual and moral worlds of its subordinate students, addressing themes like subordinate speech and prejudices of otherness, which contributed to broader processes of social classification in late antiquity.
The article also examines the students’ responses to the “Commentary”, exploring the annotations made by apprentices in fragmentary copies of the manual and the techniques stenographers developed in Christian contexts to compensate for the limited expressive resources of the “Commentary”.
Kirsh concludes that, far from being a divine gift as some authors of the time fantasized, shorthand instruction was a decidedly human endeavor. The text of the “Commentary”, which generations of enslaved students recited, copied, and modified, served as a compressed mirror of late ancient society, faithfully reproducing within its framework the priorities and prejudices of the world as its students would encounter it.
This pioneering study opens new avenues for research into non-elite intellectual culture in the late Roman Empire and challenges conventional perceptions of education and literacy in antiquity. By shedding light on the lives of stenographers, Kirsh invites us to reconsider our understanding of the social and cultural dynamics in this crucial historical period.
SOURCES
Kirsh E. ‘Etched into the Soul’: The Education of Shorthand-Writers in Late Antiquity. Journal of Roman Studies. Published online 2024:1-24. doi:10.1017/S0075435824000261
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