"The desire to know the events of the day," says J. B. Williams," to be told what distant friends are doing, and to hear of occurrences in far-off countries is an instinct implanted in human nature." Accepting the truth of this dictum, it must follow that instincts implanted in human nature will always find some channel through which they can be satisfied. The instinct to know the events of the day and to hear of occurrences in far-off countries has always found some vehicle for the exchange of news and for the formation of public opinion. Among the early Greeks poetry and every other form of literature became the medium of exchange.[1] The Greek agora gave similar opportunity and St. Paul in speaking of the Athenian Areopagus tells us that "all the Athenians, and strangers who were there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing."
"If the ancients," says Gaston Boissier, "did not feel like ourselves the need of newspapers, it was because they had some thing else which took their place." These substitutes, he goes on to say, were first of all placards. The Romans had not much taste for home life, but strolled abroad and spent most of their time in the Forum. The placard never grew into a newspaper, but remained the medium of publicity until the end of the Empire. The Roman Corpus with more than 200,000 inscriptions indicates the extent to which these placards were a medium of communication between those wishing to give and to receive news. Literary publicity, newsmongers and news-letters, the Acta Senatus and Acta Diurna were all means among the Romans for gratifying this instinct for news.[2]
The Roman baths gave a similar opportunity, and Jebb finds in the oracles, common both to the Greeks and the Romans another organ of public opinion. Juvenal does not name the journal when he speaks of a Roman lady passing the morning reading the paper,[3] but Mommsen, presumably an anti-feminist,
- ↑ R. C. Jebb, "Ancient Organs of Public Opinion," Essays and Addresses, PP, 127– 163.
- ↑ Gaston Boissier, "The Roman Journal," Tacitus and Other Roman Studies, pp. 195–229; "Le Journal de Rome," Revue des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1895, 132: 284 - 310.
- ↑ This statement has been repeatedly attributed to Juvenal, but it is impossible unhesitatingly to substantiate it. The various passages so interpreted have received quite different explanations from different editors.
