“In My Own Hand”: Grapho-Literacy and the Apostle Paul 55 someone else to do that task is a sign of their status and/or wealth.) The first-century BCE author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium disparages the copying of full texts: The laborious is not necessarily the excellent. There are many things requiring labour which you would not necessarily boast of having done — unless, to be sure, you thought it a glorious feat to have transcribed by your own hand whole dramas or speeches! (72). Thus, one finds that many of the grapho-literate individuals in the ancient world employed slaves or freedmen who had been trained as copyists (73). The use of copyists, via one’s own means or patronage (74), displayed that one had the ability to avoid the menial task of writing. This does not mean that rhetoricians, procurators, rabbis, or Pharisees did not compose their own letters and writings from time to time (75). They most certainly did, as demonstrations of this literacy were critical to their authority, as it was critical even for Petaus — only a town clerk — to demonstrate his limited abilities. Significant in this respect is that the author of the Rhetorica does not disparage compositional writing or epistolary writing, but the rote copying of entire works. Quintilian (first century CE) shows how different gradations of writing were regarded as status symbols: The art of writing well and quickly [i.e., shorthand] is not unimportant for our purpose, though it is generally disregarded by persons of quality. Writing is of the utmost importance in the study which we have under consideration and by its means alone can true and deeply rooted proficiency be obtained. But a sluggish pen delays our thoughts, while an unformed and illiterate hand cannot be deciphered, a circumstance which necessitates another wearisome task, namely the dictation of what we have written to a copyist. We shall therefore at all times and in all places, and above all when we are writing private letters to our friends, find a gratification in the thought that we have not neglected even this accomplishment (76). (72) Rhet. Her. 4.4.6 (CAPLAN, LCL). (73) Many, perhaps most, early Christian copyists were slaves or freedmen. See HAINES-EITZEN, Guardians of Letters, 21-40. (74) According to Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.23, Ambrose was a patron of Origen, providing short-hand writers, copyists, and calligraphers for him. Jerome, Vir. ill. 61, also notes this fact. (75) BAGNALL, Reading Papyri, 25. See also the ca. 400 CE carving of a Roman vicar in the act of writing his name, even though scribes attend him on either side, in J. NATANSON, Early Christian Ivories (London 1953), figure 8. (76) Quintilian, Inst. 1.1.28-29 (BUTLER, LCL).