"one thing that's almost universally acknowledged is that the literacy rate in Western Europe for centuries after the fall of Rome was in the single digits. Generally, only priests and some noblemen could read."
Um, no. For centuries, maybe; but that barely gets you into the Early Middle Ages. What we think of as medieval (eg., what you see in the movies) is basically 1200-1400 AD. And I've yet to see a literacy estimate below 10% for any part of the Middle Ages. The 10% literacy estimates are based on making the /assumption/ that only priests and noblemen could read, and then counting priests and noblemen; and those are also the usual literacy rates estimated for ancient Rome.
Plus, I think all estimates until very recently counted only people who could read Latin as literate, which gives Rome an unfair advantage. Being able to read your native language didn't count. By that method, the literacy rate today is much lower than in the Middle Ages.
I was in Maes'Howe in Scotland, a tomb that a bunch of Vikings were trapped in for a few days in the 12th century, and they'd written poems all over the walls.
As with everything medieval, if you use Google to try to find out "medieval" literacy rates, you'll find almost nothing but rates given for the 16th century onwards, which is after the Middle Ages. I don't think we know what literacy rates were in the High Middle Ages, but given the larger fraction of city-dwellers as compared to antiquity, I expect it was higher than in "Roman" times (a term which excludes about 2/3 of the lifetime of the Roman Empire, which didn't fall until 1453). Dunno about Greece, or Athens in particular.
"one thing that's almost universally acknowledged is that the literacy rate in Western Europe for centuries after the fall of Rome was in the single digits. Generally, only priests and some noblemen could read."
Um, no. For centuries, maybe; but that barely gets you into the Early Middle Ages. What we think of as medieval (eg., what you see in the movies) is basically 1200-1400 AD. And I've yet to see a literacy estimate below 10% for any part of the Middle Ages. The 10% literacy estimates are based on making the /assumption/ that only priests and noblemen could read, and then counting priests and noblemen; and those are also the usual literacy rates estimated for ancient Rome.
Plus, I think all estimates until very recently counted only people who could read Latin as literate, which gives Rome an unfair advantage. Being able to read your native language didn't count. By that method, the literacy rate today is much lower than in the Middle Ages.
I was in Maes'Howe in Scotland, a tomb that a bunch of Vikings were trapped in for a few days in the 12th century, and they'd written poems all over the walls.
As with everything medieval, if you use Google to try to find out "medieval" literacy rates, you'll find almost nothing but rates given for the 16th century onwards, which is after the Middle Ages. I don't think we know what literacy rates were in the High Middle Ages, but given the larger fraction of city-dwellers as compared to antiquity, I expect it was higher than in "Roman" times (a term which excludes about 2/3 of the lifetime of the Roman Empire, which didn't fall until 1453). Dunno about Greece, or Athens in particular.