The Papyri

Taking notes was a typical activity in school. From Plato’s Republic to Plutarch’s How to Study Poetry to Basil of Caesarea’s Address to Young Men on Greek Literature, students were advised to discard or select certain passages for various reasons, mostly ethical ones.¹ In particular, papyrology reveals interesting information in anthologies written by students of various levels of schooling. One may guess that most of the time these students copied from books or from samples provided by their teachers, but when the mistakes are considerable it is possible that they jotted down what they heard. A few examples follow, proceeding in order of difficulty. First, P.Köln III 125 is a Ptolemaic fragment of a papyrus roll that underwent an unusual treatment—it was washed and erased.² The remnants reveal notes by two different students. The first, with his name Maron at the bottom, writes two Homeric verses and three unidentified iambic trimeters in a crude hand. The second hand is slightly more skilled but less competent and writes anapestic verses from a tragedy of Aeschylus.

Another example from a school anthology, P.Yale II 135, dated to the second to third centuries CE, contains brief extracts from authors like Demosthenes and Homer. In addition, the anthology shows a hexameter containing all the letters of the alphabet, which is sometimes present in beginners’ texts in both Greek and Coptic. This kind of exercise, a tongue twister, was called chalinos (gag) and joined letters difficult to pronounce; these texts curiously later passed into Hesychius’s Lexicon, where they received some pseudo-meanings.³ Thus, school exercises were an important part of culture. This student had grabbed a papyrus with an account on the front and wrote his exercise on the back. He had a large, crude hand and curiously adorned some of his letters with decorative serifs and roundels.

Some papyri consisted of various fragments of notes, such as P.Mich. inv. 3498 and 3250a, b, and c.⁴ A short roll originally cut from a larger one resembles a small school roll that is visible in a mummy portrait found in a student’s household shrine.⁵ Not only do both sides of the papyrus exhibit writing, but the front (recto) also reveals a previous text that had been erased. Shortly after the papyrus was manufactured, a patch was used to cover some damage on the back, where the papyrus is in some places dark and abraded. Students did not have many chances to get hold of high-quality papyrus, and therefore they would end up cutting a piece, relying on scraps of inferior quality, and using the verso, that is, the back of a papyrus where the fibers were vertical.⁶ A look at the two different hands that inscribed the front and back confirms the suspicion that this papyrus is an example of notes written as schoolwork. The hand that wrote the text on the back is further hampered by having used a large Egyptian pen, but it is the uncouth penmanship on the front that fully displays the characteristic hallmarks of a student’s hand.⁷ The front of the papyrus contains a list of lyric and tragic first lines (incipit), many of which are unknown, while the back contains fragments of Euripidean lyric. The writer of the incipit had attempted to complete, but then abandoned, an alphabetical order. His idiosyncratic notes formed a small collection. The verses could have been merely a mnemonic exercise, or they could have led to a longer text.

Another list from the first century CE contains epigrams mostly by Philodemus (with some by Asclepiades), with the text written on both sides.⁸ There are three different hands, none alike. Hand A wrote the first column, while hand C wrote the rest of the text. The first hand is rather irregular, including different interlinear spaces and corrections and showing endings of some lines that protrude on the right. The rather coarse handwriting suggests a student without much experience. Hand C is smaller and faster and appears quite accomplished, revealing some familiarity with documentary handwriting. On the top part, in a space between columns two and three, a third hand (B) wrote text that contains corrections, marked ink dipping, and poorly formed letters. This writer shows some ambition in style and inserts a few finials at the end of the vertical strokes. While the first writer tended to write complete texts, the second hand wrote incipits of epigrams. The text written by the third hand is a recipe for a cough remedy. This writer was interested in practical matters and greedy for any scrap of papyrus. All these texts are notes used as memoranda.

Among the attested school exercises from Greco-Roman Egypt, many prove to be annotations when the text stands by itself and is not fragmentary. A Ptolemaic papyrus scrap, recovered from mummy cartonnage and dated to ca. 250 BCE, offered the ideal canvas for an exercise in a grammarian’s class.⁹ It is unclear why he completely filled the margins with the closing chorus shared by several plays of Euripides. Perhaps he was reminding himself that the chorus was identical in each play, or perhaps he wanted to make note of an interesting teacher’s observation. One Roman papyrus is fundamentally similar to the one with the incipits described above.¹⁰ In this example, a student had created a “page” by using thick lines of separation, perhaps in imitation of a codex’s layout. The two resulting columns contain incipits of verses from the Odyssey, and the student was preparing to prove that he knew his Homer. Memorizing the beginnings of verses from the Iliad and writing them down would call to mind the second halves.¹¹

Annotating in a Rhetor’s Class

The practice of annotation in schools of rhetoric began early. Quintilian expressed strong criticism when describing the erratic behavior of some orators who, drawing on their annotations, only juxtaposed clichés and clever remarks instead of trusting in their natural skills. As a consequence, their speeches could not hold together. Quintilian compared them to notebooks in which students copied down passages that they admired and excerpted from other people’s declamations and which were equally disorganized (2.11.7). The rhetor gave great importance to reading and listening as activities that would improve speaking and writing, but much attention had to be devoted to making a right choice.¹²

Theon, who composed his treatise on Progymnasmata in the first half of the first century CE, considered notes to be part of the composition process. When taking notes, a boy should aim to recreate an occurrence that happened to him or a public event, such as a tumultuous assembly, a procession, or a spectacle (p. 107).¹³ Moreover, the activity of listening to declamations and speeches would produce annotations of various parts of them, so that, for example, a student would initially record as much as he remembered of a proem, returning to the task over the next few days until his recreation of the whole text was satisfying. Next, little by little, he would repeat this exercise for the narration and the rest of the speech, which he would now be able to write down.¹⁴ This was only in part a mnemonic exercise; it recalls what Philostratus narrated about the students of Dionysius of Miletus.¹⁵ Dionysius was an eminent rhetor who was said to have trained his pupils by means of mnemonics. People thought that these young men had peculiar and formidable memories and that Dionysius was employing the magical arts. The sophist, however, revealed his simple method. He gave his declamations over and over so that his students listened repeatedly and memorized them. This was a common occurrence among sophists and philosophers who did not lecture only once on the same subject but instead repeated these lectures numerous times.¹⁶ Engraving lectures in the students’ memories was only part of his technique, while note-taking step by step formed another part for remembering and repeating the whole.

Libanius’s “good” students remembered a speech by dividing it into sections (Or 3.16). The rhetor hinted at a teaching strategy by which his pupils, during and after his lectures, could collectively reproduce his orations, learning at the same time to make them their own. The young men would listen very carefully as he delivered a speech and—according to Libanius—memorize different passages. After the lecture, the students would assemble the parts, each one bringing his own contribution, and by trying to fit all the sections in order they would attempt to reconstruct the whole speech. It would take them several days to accomplish this. They would later continue to recite the whole text, even to their fathers at home.¹⁷

Taking notes during lectures and declamations and later transcribing them with better ordering and handwriting was time-consuming. We understand this from Marcus, Cicero’s son, who was studying in Greece. He was not an exemplary student, however, and had landed in some trouble when he wrote to Tiro, his father’s secretary. As he was studying literature (philologia) and practicing Greek and Roman oratory, he urgently requested that a librarius, who could save him time by copying his notes, be sent to him from Rome.¹⁸ This librarius could be a professional scribe or perhaps was only a secretary, one of those at the service of prominent families. Most students took notes while listening to lectures to compensate for the lack of textbooks. Were they also in the habit of using stenographers? A well-known passage in Quintilian is interpreted as evidence that they were. Here, Quintilian explains that his urgency in writing his work on the orator’s education was due to the fact that two books on the subject were already circulating under his name, even though he had not emended or published either one. It is reasonable then, to surmise that slaves had taken down a two-day lecture using stenography, a task they would have been assigned. The other lecture course, spanning several days, had been recorded through notes and “published” by some of his students.¹⁹ Stenography at that time was seen in the Roman world as a slave’s task, and there are no examples of individuals with a liberal education using this skill.

Learning Note-Taking as an Aid to Declaiming

In addition to note compilation skills, students also learned oratory, in which note-taking was a fundamental part. Students learning oratory were encouraged and advised to take notes because they needed to have at their disposal some writing that reminded them of their teacher’s words. The main issues underpinning what follows are, first, why notes figure so conspicuously in sources about the delivery of speeches and, second, whether they were universally agreed to have held such importance in an oratorical performance.

With respect to ancient note-taking, Seneca the Elder and Quintilian offer much food for thought.²⁰ Seneca’s collection of Controversiae and Suasoriae has the appearance of an ensemble of annotations; in fact, the author himself presents it as such. As has often been remarked, this is a difficult text to parse. In the first preface, while vaunting his past feats of memory,²¹ Seneca says that age had much diminished his capacity for recollection.²² This protestation of a failing memory allowed him to exclude more recent examples from his list of prominent rhetors, instead concentrating only on those of his own age. Another of Seneca’s statements colored by rhetoric is that he was yielding to the will of his sons.²³ He apparently asked them to permit him to put down his observations without order (ne … certum aliquem ordinem) as he traversed his memories. Even though this is a frequent feature of random collections of notes, Seneca was likely addressing his general readers and asking them to curb their expectations.

Seneca’s observations about orators’ preparation and styles of delivery are noteworthy because they show the Forum intersecting with the schoolroom. Seneca warmly lauded orators like Porcius Latro, with his strong physique and unfailing memory, who never needed to reread his notes because he memorized his declamations by writing them.²⁴ He also painted a commanding portrait of the declaimer Cassius Severus, who did rely on notes when declaiming. Tacitus and Suetonius were less enthusiastic: Tacitus regarded Cassius with disdain, while Suetonius cast his net much more widely and was able to put the man in perspective.²⁵ With the body of a gladiator, a passion for jokes, and a voice both sweet and strong, Cassius made a powerful impression, especially when he was angry. Seneca contrasted Cassius’s written texts with those he delivered, concluding that his oral declamations were vastly superior: Cassius let his notes serve as set outlines and guide him, but he also trusted extempore speech. It seems that Cassius’s public persona was so commanding that people sometimes became overwhelmed.²⁶ He never spoke without notes (sine commentario numquam dixit) and did not use cursory ones (those in which nudae res ponuntur), instead employing annotations so detailed that they included possible opportunities for wit (salse dici, Contr. 3, Pr. 1–18, at 6). It seems that the combination of abundant notes and personal charisma was irresistible.

The degree of reliance on notes was a contested issue among orators. Would Quintilian have approved of Cassius’s long and colorful notes? Certainly not, as notes were auxiliary to a text. Instead, Quintilian allowed pleaders to bring short notes that they could glance at during delivery, but he was firmly opposed to those who brought whole summaries and full headings. Short notes could also be inserted into a written text in a moment of inspiration, thus strengthening a writing strategy (10.6.5). He observed that some pleaders often wrote brief annotations of their introductory statements beforehand and covered the rest through mental preparation (10.7.30). An inspiring mosaic at the supposed villa of Lucius Verus, located north of Rome on the Via Cassia, portrays a standing rhetor enveloped in an abundant toga. He is represented as in the act of oration, raising his right arm straight above in a dramatic gesture. His eyes are directed to a codex of tablets in his left hand. He is looking intensely at his notes.²⁷ Quintilian, speaking of hand gestures, reported that some did not approve of excessive gestures like raising an arm and a hand (2.12 9–10). Quintilian’s account is confirmed by Plutarch, who refers to speakers as getting up from their high chairs (thronoi) when they were ready to lecture with lecture notes (eisagogai).²⁸ At times these notes circulated, as in the case of Cicero, who wrote commentarii of this sort that were later collected by Tiro (4.1.69). Other authors’ notes were also disseminated, whether in the form in which they been composed, as aids for speaking, or even collected in book form (10.7.30–33).

Quintilian was a strong advocate for writing over improvisation and stated that it was best for a rhetor who was writing on tablets to maintain a blank one (vacua tabella) at hand for notes and additions (10.3.32)—an exciting example of literary and documentary evidence corresponding. The papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt show that this practice had become current. A first-century opisthograph papyrus roll from Oxyrhynchus (5093) contains notes for rhetorical epideixeis that were written informally by a rhetor preparing to declaim or teach. To the left of the single column on the verso, a large space was left blank for annotations. Other notes on rhetorical compositions are visible in some papyri (P.Mil.Vogl. I 20; P.Köln VI 250). A few documentary papyri contain presentations of legal cases. In all of these, a large space was left for the annotations of the advocate in court, who would select highlights from his material that might be useful while presenting. That this was the usual format for such documents is shown by an example in which the space for annotations was never filled (P.Sakaon 35).

The custom of bringing notes when delivering declamations and speeches continued in late antiquity, as the rhetor Libanius testifies. Weakening eyesight and crippling arthritis in old age could make it necessary to entrust others with that task. In Antioch in 385, Libanius, who had declared that he always took care of his writing duties personally, mourned the death of his secretary, who had at that point been writing the notes Libanius brought with him when declaiming.²⁹ The secretary’s highly legible and competent hand allowed the old rhetor to read them easily at a glance.

The evidence presented above shows that notes (whether shorter or longer) were considered indispensable when delivering a speech, serving as tracks on which a rhetor’s speech could glide effortlessly. Seneca did not share Quintilian’s sacred respect for the dignity of a rhetor’s profession but cherished the flamboyant. For him, the use of abundant annotations might result in a more dazzling performance. For Quintilian, on the other hand, abundant notes infringed on the skill of a rhetor, exempting him from accurately memorizing a text (10.7.31–32). Notes were supposed to be brief, permitting the orator to show that he did not actually need them and to shine in all his bravura. However, were annotations adopted so much more frequently in court or at an epideixis than they were in preparing an individual text? Seneca and Quintilian were referring to public performances, where the presence of notes would be evident to the audience and therefore could be discussed and somewhat justified. A writer’s private strategies were less on display, even though we assume that rhetors based their compositions on notes.³⁰

1. Morgan 2007.

2. See Cribiore 1996, 232, no. 250. It was extremely rare that a papyrus was washed before a different text was inscribed on it. If possible, it was preferable to write on the back.

3. Anthologia Palatina 9.538. Cf. Cribiore 2001b, 166, 179.

4. Borges and Sampson 2012. See P.Mich. inv. 3498 and 3250a, b, c. The date is second century BCE.

5. Cribiore 2001b, 155, fig. 23.

6. Cribiore 1996, 57–62.

7. The editors Borges and Sampson (2012, 16–17) are unsure and prefer to think of the private hand of a scholar, but the irregularities, clumsiness, inability to keep a straight line, and continuous dipping in the ink point to someone with limited schooling.

8. P.Oxy. LIV 3724.

9. P. Yale I 20; Cribiore 1996, 240.

10. P.Ryl. III 545, third century CE; Cribiore 1996, no. 291.

11. Cribiore 1996, nos. 193 and 201, written in clumsy hands by novices.

12. Quint. 10.1.8 and 15–16.

13. Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, c–civ and 105–7 from an Armenian text.

14. Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, 106; the danger was that speeches taken down from auditors were considered authentic.

15. Philostratus VS 523.

16. Of course, there could be differences between the various lectures.

17. Compare the technique of Euclid Plato, Theaetetus 143a.

18. Cicero, Ad. fam. XVI.21.8. It is possible that Marcus was lazy or unable to use his notes efficiently.

19. Book 1, Proem 7: quantum notandum consequi potuerant interceptum, boni iuvenes. I give notare the usual meaning of “take down notes.” See Boge 1974; see also Teitler 1985 considering a later time.

20. On Seneca, see Fairweather 1981; Berti 2007; Migliario 2007.

21. Scholars such as von Arnim considered tales of the phenomenal memories of literary figures such as Seneca the Elder to be no more than some kind of topoi. Other strategies, like annotations, must have been used concurrently.

22. Controversiae 1, Preface 1–5. Seneca’s declaration, for example, that he had not exercised his memory in a very long time seems contrived, even though he is probably alluding to the difficulty of writing everything down.

23. This could be regarded as a rhetorical dedication that appears in many texts, such as those by Plutarch or Quintilian.

24. Contr. 1, Pref. 16–18. Those who write slowly, said Seneca, retain their compositions easily, but Latro, who wrote very fast, still kept his writing in his memory.

25. See Bloomer 2015, 121–22.

26. Some declaimers aroused incredible enthusiasm. Eunapius VS 101.1–108.4 (485–93) says that his own teacher, Proaeresius, had an adoring following with people licking his breast and kissing his hands and feet after a speech. Cf. Cribiore 2007a, 52–54.

27. Caserta 2012. I thank Christopher Jones for bringing this to my attention.

28. These eisagogai were introductory sections. Orators could write them down as reminders or glance at them.

29. Or. 1.232. See Festugière 1965, 632. Martin and Petit (1979, 267–68) follow this interpretation and presume that the scribe wrote down the whole text for the sophist to memorize but did not take into account that orators brought notes to the delivery.

30. Law commentaries of the classical period were a different matter. In nonjuristic works the text and the lemmatic commentary were located on separate rolls, and there was a connection between lemmata and the commentary. Not all parts of a text would need a commentary. Schulz 1946, 183–85.