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<p>[QUOTE="kevin McGonigal, post: 4960293, member: 72790"]The Roman and the Greeks, at least of the Hellenistic period, were putting inscriptions, verbal text on their coins, for whatever reasons they had, but obviously they were doing this because they had an expectation that people were reading this text, otherwise they would not have taken the bother to inscribe them. Had there not been a significant percentage of people capable of reading inscriptions they would not have so inscribed them with words. I did some research on this and the common conventional conclusion was that about 15% of the population circa 300 BC to 300 AD was literate enough to read and that about half of those could write as well. Most of the literate population was to be found in urban areas, which may explain the presence of walls of graffiti covered with everything from the political to the scatalogical. I am guessing here but perhaps the Hellenistic monarchs and Roman emperors concluded that among the population of the mercantile class there were a sufficient number of members who could read coin inscriptions, that they were the ones most commonly handling coins, and that they were the ones who had the most influence, and on whom written inscriptions would be the most efficacious and practical means of getting across messages to the populace. In other words, while the total number of citizens who could read coin inscriptions was not large, the important members of the citizenry could, and for them inscriptions were an efficient use of a medium they would be handling on a daily basis. Images for the proles, inscriptions for the cognoscenti.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="kevin McGonigal, post: 4960293, member: 72790"]The Roman and the Greeks, at least of the Hellenistic period, were putting inscriptions, verbal text on their coins, for whatever reasons they had, but obviously they were doing this because they had an expectation that people were reading this text, otherwise they would not have taken the bother to inscribe them. Had there not been a significant percentage of people capable of reading inscriptions they would not have so inscribed them with words. I did some research on this and the common conventional conclusion was that about 15% of the population circa 300 BC to 300 AD was literate enough to read and that about half of those could write as well. Most of the literate population was to be found in urban areas, which may explain the presence of walls of graffiti covered with everything from the political to the scatalogical. I am guessing here but perhaps the Hellenistic monarchs and Roman emperors concluded that among the population of the mercantile class there were a sufficient number of members who could read coin inscriptions, that they were the ones most commonly handling coins, and that they were the ones who had the most influence, and on whom written inscriptions would be the most efficacious and practical means of getting across messages to the populace. In other words, while the total number of citizens who could read coin inscriptions was not large, the important members of the citizenry could, and for them inscriptions were an efficient use of a medium they would be handling on a daily basis. Images for the proles, inscriptions for the cognoscenti.[/QUOTE]
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