השערות רבות הועלו בנוגע לדמותה של נערה צעירה זו מפומפיי, המחזיקה בידה חרט וקודקס (אבי הספר של היום). יש טוענים שהיא משוררת צעירה מחכה להשראה ויש הטוענים שהיא לומדת לכתוב (את האותיות). יש גם המכנים אותה ספפו, המשוררת הגדולה. בכל מקרה היא מופיעה בשער הבלוג שלי:)

. C. 79 CE. Diameter 37 cm. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.




By the age of seven Roman boys attended school; young girls, however, got their instruction at home. Some authorities believe Roman girls were educated to a greater degree than those in Greece; and that the more education Roman girls had, the higher their status at maturity when they were married—usually around 13-14 years of age (Avrin, 1991). The artifacts in the painting lead us to believe that this young lady could both read and write. However, like Roman males, she was probably taught writing (penmanship) separately before she learned to read—a practice quite different from today’s approach to literacy education. If training stopped early, the student may have been able to write, but not to read. Also, like writing, reading was learned in a part-to-whole fashion called the Alphabet Method. Learners first recognized and named the letters and then word parts and finally whole words and sentences.



The wax tablet with four wooden panels, held so prominently by the young Roman girl, was the forerunner of the book, as we know it today. The tablet with multiple writing surfaces attached together evolved into the “codex,” i.e. leaves of separate sheets of vellum made from animal skins secured between two boards (Harthan, 1981). The codex slowly began replacing the scroll by the end of the 1st or the beginning of the 2nd century CE, although they were used simultaneously for several centuries.



Early paintings of codices decorated the walls of underground Christian cemeteries, most notably the catacombs of Rome. While these frescos reflected the artistic traditions of the Roman Empire and Greek origins, they also were the true beginnings of Christian art (Katz, 2001). Since the early days of the codex were closely tied with the rise of Christianity and adolescence had been an acknowledged part of the Greco-Roman social structure, it seems no coincidence that in one of the earliest depictions of a book (in the Saints Peter and Marcellinus Catacombs, Figure 5), it is being held by a Roman youth.

תמונה גדולה יותר אפשר לראות בתגובה למטה.