Did the ancient Greeks and Romans commonly read silently or aloud? Were they even capable of reading silently? Answers to such questions depend on
whom one asks. It is a long-held c...
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Did the ancient Greeks and Romans commonly read silently or aloud? Were they even capable of reading silently? Answers to such questions depend on
whom one asks. It is a long-held conviction in book history scholarship that readers in antiquity almost exclusively read aloud, except in a few cases of specially gifted and learned individuals โ such as Caesar, Cicero, or Saint Ambrose. The widespread practice of silent reading would have to wait until the Middle Ages when innovations such as word division and complex punctuation revolutionized written discourse. Yet many classicists provide an entirely different answer. A substantial body of research in this field flatly rejects the contention that ancient readers were unable or unwilling to read silently.