death in exposing unwanted children, by leaving them out in the cold to die. What about literacy? It is certain that rates of casual literacy* varied greatly between different parts of the empire. For example, in Pompeii, which was buried in a volcanic eruption in CE , there is strong evidence of widespread casual literacy.
Walls on the main streets of Pompeii often carried advertisements, and graffiti were found all over the city. By contrast, in Egypt where hundreds of papyri survive, most formal documents such as contracts were usually written by professional scribes, and they often tell us that X or Y is unable to read and write. But even here literacy was certainly more widespread among certain categories such as soldiers, army officers and estate managers. The cultural diversity of the empire was reflected in many ways and at many levels: in the vast diversity of religious cults and local deities; the plurality of languages that were spoken; the styles of dress and costume, the food people ate, their forms of social organisation (tribal/non-tribal), even their patterns of settlement.
Aramaic was the dominant language group of the Near East (at least west of the Euphrates), Coptic was spoken in Egypt, Punic and Berber in North Africa, Celtic in Spain and the northwest. But many of these linguistic cultures were purely oral, at least until a script was invented for them. Armenian, for example, only began to be written as late as the fifth century, whereas there was already a Coptic *The use of reading and writing in everyday, often trivial, contexts. 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.’ Mosaic in Edessa, second century CE .
The Syriac inscription suggests that those depicted are the wife of king Abgar and her family. Pompeii : a wine- merchant’s dining- room, its walls decorated with scenes depicting mythical animals. A N E MPIRE A CROSS T HREE C ONTINENTS T HEMES IN