Rome was in danger.
A rogue senator named Catiline was plotting to overthrow the government, and only one
man had the courage, poise, and relentless eloquence to prevent revolution.
That man was Marcus Tullius Cicero; and his speeches against Catiline – fated to become
a bane of Latin students in future centuries – illustrate the power of news in ancient
Rome.
Rumor had brought the plot to Cicero’s attention.
So it was fitting that he sought to combat it with the power of public opinion.
At a meeting of the Senate, he accused Catiline of fomenting rebellion, knowing that a network
of informers, gossips, and couriers would carry his words to every corner of the city.
His strategy worked all too well: Catiline fled Rome, but the news of his conspiracy
generated so many rumors that Cicero had to reassure the Roman people in a public address
the following day.
Cicero’s response to Catiline illustrates the remarkable, and potentially dangerous,
efficiency with which news traveled around Rome.
Most of the city’s million inhabitants lived in dense, close-knit neighborhoods with strong
social bonds.
When an important or interesting bit of information reached one of these neighborhoods, it roared
through the crowded apartment blocks with the speed of a summer fire.
Getting the news was an informal process in ancient Rome.
Certain matters – including, as anyone who’s been to Pompeii knows, candidates for political
office – were publicized with streetside graffiti.
But in a society whose literacy rate likely hovered around 10%, most people learned by
listening.
During public assemblies, festivals, and games at the Colosseum, orators and heralds addressed
the people, informing them of Roman victories in the provinces, distributions of free grain,
and any other news that served to confirm the greatness and generosity of Rome’s leaders.
The crowd’s response, enthusiastic or otherwise, was part of the process: members of the crowd
sometimes bantered with the herald, or even with the emperor himself.
Less formally, news spread through the city on countless interlacing threads of rumor
and gossip.
The hub of the hubbub was the Forum, where the stentorian voices of lawyers and politicians
rang through the forests of columns, and semi-professional rumor-mongers lingered around the rostra,
voices all but lost in the ceaseless buzz and hum of conversation.
Fired by this engine, news could spread very quickly indeed, especially under the threat
of disaster or war.
Rumor, like public addresses and even graffiti, was a potent source of news.
But the most interesting means of disseminating information – and, to our eyes, the most
modern – was the daily gazette, the newspaper of ancient Rome.
Even today, it can be hard to get the news you want.
The problem, as in the gossip-filled Roman Forum, tends to be too much information from
too many sources.
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From the late republic to late antiquity, the Roman government published the acta diurna,
or daily gazette.
Each issue began with the statistics for the day’s births and deaths.
These particulars were accompanied by summaries of important court cases and decisions of
the Senate.
News relating to the imperial family was given a full treatment, even if the emperor and
his clan were away from Rome, as was the progress of imperial building projects.
The gazette might describe Roman victories, along with any skirmishes or marches that
the government saw fit to publicize.
But it was the human interest section of the gazette which, one suspects, most Romans followed
most avidly.
Here were reported the oddities and prodigies of the day – examples mentioned in our sources
include the tragic tale of a dog who stayed loyal to its master’s corpse, a bloody brawl
at a funeral, and the story of how an architect straightened a leaning portico with a system
of pulleys.
The flavor of the gazette is captured by a parody in a Roman novel, in which the clerk
of an obscenely wealthy freedman reads the daily report for his master’s estates.
After rattling off the statistics for births and harvests, he mentions – among much else
– the crucifixion of a slave, a destructive fire, and the messy divorce of a freedwoman
who had been caught having an affair with a bath attendant.
The gazette was produced by a small staff of minor officials, assisted by reporters
known as notarii, who jotted shorthand notes at court cases and prowled the Forum in search
of tips.
We don’t know how many copies were made of any given edition of the gazette, but the
number was probably quite small.
A few copies were sent to archives and libraries, where they could be consulted by historians
and other researchers.
The rest were posted on public notice boards, to be read, re-copied, and proclaimed.
Since, as mentioned earlier, most Romans were illiterate, the contents of the gazette were
broadcasted by street criers, or praecones.
Their patter was part of the daily din on the streets of Rome; one author compared an
especially strident orator to someone “bawling the gazette into your ear.”
Although we don’t know how they read the news, the epitaph of one crier may provide
some idea: “He was modest, trustworthy, and honorable.
That is all.”
Scribes – often the slaves of wealthy families – copied the gazette as soon as it was posted
and sent their facsimiles to the homes of the Roman elite.
Since there was strong demand for news from the capital among Romans living in the provinces,
merchants and couriers carried the gazette to every corner of the empire, and even to
the legions on the frontiers.
As Cicero once said when describing a document he had publicized, “There is no place on
earth, where the name of the Roman people is known, that it did not reach.”
He might have said the same of the Daily Gazette.
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