His master\u27s voice: Tiro and the rise of the roman secretarial class

Abstract

The foundation for Rome\u27s imperial bureaucracy was laid during the first century B.C., when functional and administrative writing played an increasingly dominant role in the Late Republic. During the First and Second Triumvirates, Roman society, once primarily oral, relied more and more on documentation to get its official business done. By the reign of Augustus, the orator had ceded power to the secretary, usually a slave trained as a scribe or librarian. This cultural and political transformation can be traced in the career of Marcus Tullius Tiro (94 B.C. to 4 A.D.), Cicero\u27s confidant and amanuensis. A freedman credited with the invention of Latin shorthand (the notae Tironianae), Tiro transcribed and edited Cicero\u27s speeches, composed, collected, and eventually published his voluminous correspondence, and organized and managed his archives and library. As his former master\u27s fortune sank with the dying Republic, Tiro\u27s began to rise. After Cicero\u27s assassination, he became the orator\u27s literary executor and biographer. His talents were always in demand under the new bureaucratic regime, and he prospered by producing popular grammars and secretarial manuals. He died a wealthy centenarian and a full Roman citizen. © 2000, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc