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Discover the Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System with 4,000 Symbols Commissioned by Cicero

 

You can still type a symbol originally invented for Cicero nearly 21 centuries ago — at least if you configure your keyboard properly.  The character ⁊ appears in Unicode as U+204A, but is better known as the “Tironian et”: the “et” is Latin for “and,” and the “Tironian” comes from its creator, a man named Tiro, or in full, Marcus Tullius Tiro. Tiro wasn’t a relative of Marcus Tullius Cicero, as you might expect, but rather his onetime slave: after being emancipated, he not only took on two of his former master’s names, but also remained his secretary and confidant. It was in that capacity that, at Cicero’s request, he created the system since known as Tironian notes.

Though now credited as “the father of stenography,” Tiro didn’t invent shorthand itself. Like so many developments in ancient Roman civilization, Hellenic inspiration was involved: no sooner did Cicero learn of the existence of Greek shorthand systems, so the story goes, than he asked Tiro to come up with one for Latin. It’s possible that he did so as early as 75 BC, when Cicero was assigned to Sicily and needed to encode his communications, especially those having to do with the corruption of local officials. Back in Rome, it became useful indeed for rapidly transcribing onto wax-covered tablets what the great orator had to say, in situations ranging from everyday dealings in the Forum to — as recorded by Plutarch — denouncing Catiline’s conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic.

Tiro created about 4,000 symbols to stand in for syllables, words, and other elements of language, and other of the system’s users, including Seneca, later brought the number up to 5,000. But “as Rome declined, so did shorthand,” writes Anita Kreitzman at the National Court Reporters Association. “The Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century, contemptuously forbade its use.” Yet Tironian notes survived, especially among the annotators of manuscripts, expanding and merging with other systems to contain 14,000 signs during the Carolingian dynasty. Alas, “Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1212–1250) considered the use of shorthand symbols ‘diabolical’ and ‘ordered the destruction of all shorthand characters.’ As a result, shorthand quickly became a lost art.”

Thereupon came the Dark Ages in which “learning and shorthand seemed to no longer exist.” Leave it to court reporters to equate abbreviation with civilization. Yet the association is hardly spurious, and can’t be accidental that its revival began in late sixteenth-century London, when the world’s transformation over the subsequent centuries was getting into motion. Many shorthand systems have risen and fallen since, and the digital technologies of recent decades have made the whole practice superfluous for most of us here in the twenty-first century. Yet we can still have ⁊, thanks to inadvertent preservation by the medieval Irish script and Gaelic type that use it as an ampersand. It may not have the same function in English, or even the Romance languages, but typing no other symbol could make us feel quite so Ciceronian.

 

 

Article

Discover the Ancient Roman Shorthand Writing System with 4,000 Symbols Commissioned by Cicero | Open Culture

 

Tironian Notes, Possibly the Earliest System of Shorthand

63 BCE

 

 

A: Roma, Lazio, Italy

Image Source: upload.wikimedia.org

Tironian glossary in the 9th century Codex Casselanus. (Ms. philiol. pl. 2 1v).

 

 

Plutarch records that in 63 BCE the system of shorthand known as Tironian notes was used to record Cato the Younger's denunciation against Catiline:

"This only of all Cato's speeches, it is said, was preserved; for Cicero, the consul, had disposed in various parts of the senate-house, several of the most expert and rapid writers, whom he had taught to make figures comprising numerous words in a few short strokes; as up to that time they had not used those we call shorthand writers, who then, as it is said, established the first example of the art."

"Tironian notes (notae Tironianae) is a system of shorthand said to have been invented by Cicero's scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro. Tiro's system consisted of about 4,000 signs, somewhat extended in classical times to 5,000 signs. In the Medieval period, Tironian notes were taught in monasteries and the system was extended to about 13,000 signs. The use of Tironian notes declined after A.D. 1100 but some use can still be seen through the 17th century" (Wikipedia article on Tironian notes, accessed 04-20-2009).

There are no surviving copies of Tiro's original manual and code, so knowledge of it is based on biographical records and copies of Tironian tables from the medieval period. 

 

 

Article

History of Information

 

Tironian notes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Tironian notes
9th century sample
Script type	shorthand
Creator	Marcus Tullius Tiro
Created	60s BC
Period	1st century BC – 16th century AD
Status	a few Tironian symbols are still in modern use
Languages	Latin
Unicode
Unicode range	Et: U+204A, U+2E52; MUFI
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Tironian notes (Latin: notae Tironianae) are a form of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Cicero, who is often credited as their inventor. Tiro's system consisted of about 4,000 signs, extended to 5,000 signs by others. During the medieval period, Tiro's notation system was taught in European monasteries and expanded to a total of about 13,000 signs. The use of Tironian notes lasted into the 17th century. A few Tironian signs are still used today.

Note on sign counts

Tironian notes can be themselves composites (ligatures) of simpler Tironian notes, the resulting compound being still shorter than the word it replaces. This accounts in part for the large number of attested Tironian notes, and for the wide variation in estimates of the total number of Tironian notes. Further, the "same" sign can have other variant forms, leading to the same issue.

History

Development

Before Tironian shorthand became popularized, literature professor Anthony Di Renzo explains, "no true Latin shorthand existed." The only systematized form of abbreviation in Latin was used for legal notations (notae juris). This system, however, was deliberately abstruse and accessible only to people with specialized knowledge. Otherwise, shorthand was improvised for note-taking or writing personal communications, and some of these notations would not have been understood outside of closed circles. Some abbreviations of Latin words and phrases were commonly recognized, such as those of praenomina, and were typically used for inscriptions on monuments.

Scholars infer that Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC) recognized the need for a comprehensive, standard Latin notation system after learning about the Greek shorthand system. Cicero presumably delegated the task of creating such a system for Latin to his slave and personal secretary Tiro. Tiro's position required him to quickly and accurately transcribe dictations from Cicero, such as speeches, professional and personal correspondence, and business transactions, sometimes while walking through the forum or during fast-paced and contentious government and legal proceedings. Nicknamed "the father of stenography" by historians, Tiro developed a highly refined and accurate method that used Latin letters and abstract symbols to represent prepositions, truncated words, contractions, syllables, and inflections. According to Di Renzo: "Tiro then combined these mixed signs like notes in a score to record not just phrases, but, as Cicero marvels in a letter to Atticus, 'whole sentences.'" Tiro's highly refined and accurate method became the first standardized and widely adopted system of Latin shorthand. The system consisted of abbreviations and abstract symbols, which were either contrived by Tiro or borrowed from Greek shorthand.

Controversy

Dio Cassius attributes the invention of shorthand to Maecenas, and states that he employed his freedman Aquila in teaching the system to numerous others. Isidore of Seville, however, details another version of the early history of the system, ascribing the invention of the art to Quintus Ennius, who he says invented 1100 marks (Latin: notae). Isidore states that Tiro brought the practice to Rome, but only used Tironian notes for prepositions. According to Plutarch in "Life of Cato the Younger", Cicero's secretaries established the first examples of the art of Latin shorthand:

This only of all Cato's speeches, it is said, was preserved; for Cicero, the consul, had disposed, in various parts of the senate-house, several of the most expert and rapid writers, whom he had taught to make figures comprising numerous words in a few short strokes; as up to that time they had not used those we call short-hand writers, who then, as it is said, established the first example of the art.

Introduction

There are no surviving copies of Tiro's original manual and code, so knowledge of it is based on biographical records and copies of Tironian tables from the medieval period. Historians typically date the invention of Tiro's system as 63 BC, when it was first used in official government business according to Plutarch in his biography of Cato the Younger in The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Before Tiro's system was institutionalized, he used it himself as he was developing and fine-tuning it, which historians suspect may have been as early as 75 BC, when Cicero held public office in Sicily and needed his notes and correspondences to be written in code to protect sensitive information he gathered about corruption among other government officials there.

There is evidence that Tiro taught his system to Cicero and his other scribes, and possibly to his friends and family, before it came into wide use. In "Life of Cato the Younger", Plutarch wrote that during Senate hearings in 65 BC relating to the first Catilinarian conspiracy, Tiro and Cicero's other secretaries were in the audience meticulously and rapidly transcribing Cicero's oration. On many of the oldest Tironian tables, lines from this speech were frequently used as examples, leading scholars to theorize it was originally transcribed using Tironian shorthand. Scholars also believe that in preparation for speeches, Tiro drafted outlines in shorthand that Cicero used as notes while speaking.

Expansion

Isidore tells of the development of additional Tironian notes by various hands, such as Vipsanius, Philargius, and Aquila (as above), until Seneca systematized the various marks to be approximately 5000 in number.

Use in the Middle Ages

Entering the Middle Ages, Tiro's shorthand was often used in combination with other abbreviations and the original symbols were expanded to 14,000 symbols during the Carolingian dynasty, but it fell out of favor as shorthand and was forgotten until interest was rekindled by Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in the 12th century. In the 15th century Johannes Trithemius, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim in Germany, discovered the notae Benenses: a psalm and a Ciceronian lexicon written in Tironian shorthand.

In Old English manuscripts, the Tironian et served as both a phonetic and morphological place holder. A Tironian et represented the sound-sequence /ɑnd/. On its own, this could represent the Old English word and /ɑnd/, which meant 'and' (it is indeed the ancestor to modern and /ænd/). However, the Tironian et could be used within other words in the same way: for instance, if it followed l (thus written as l⁊), then it would represent /lɑnd/, meaning 'land' (ancestral to Modern English land /lænd/). This additional function as a phonetic as well as a conjunction placeholder has escaped formal Modern English; for example, one may not spell the word land as l& (although this occurs in an informal style practised on certain Internet forums and sometimes in texting and other forms of instant messaging). This practice was distinct from the occasional use of &c. for etc., where the & is interpreted as the Latin word et ('and') and the c. is an abbreviation for Latin cetera (' rest').

Recent historic use

In blackletter texts (especially in German printing), it was still used in the abbreviation ⁊c. meaning etc. (for et cetera) throughout the 19th century. However, as not all typesets included a sort for the ⟨⁊⟩ character, the similar R rotunda ⟨ꝛ⟩ was substituted (which produced ꝛc.).

Current use

Just one Tironian symbol remains in common use today, the Tironian et (⁊, equivalent to &), used in Ireland and Scotland to mean and (where it is called agus in Irish and agusan in Scottish Gaelic).

Support on computers

See also: Unicode input

The Tironian character set has limited support in Unicode. The et ⟨⁊⟩ is among the few that are included, because of its continued use as an ampersand in Insular script and then in Gaelic type. A number of other Tironian signs have been assigned to the Private Use Area of Unicode by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The Tironian et has a Unicode codepoint at U+204A ⁊ TIRONIAN SIGN ET, and displays (e.g. for documents written in Irish or Scottish Gaelic) on all common operating systems. Most modern Unicode fonts include a glyph for this grapheme. Commercially available computer fonts for Gaelic type should contain the glyph in a design that is consistent with the rest of the typeface.

Some applications and websites, such as the online edition of the Dictionary of the Irish Language, substitute the Tironian et with the box-drawing character U+2510 ┐ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DOWN AND LEFT, probably because it looks similar and was available before Unicode. The numeral 7 is also used in informal contexts such as Internet forums and occasionally in print.

Gallery

• • 
    "Letter of Consolation for Departing Warriors", 9th century

 

• • 
    Psalm 68. Manuscript, 9th century

 

• • 
    Tironian note glossary from the 8th century, codex Casselanus. "Notae Senecae", Seneca's notes.

 

• • 
    R rotunda substituting for Tironian et in the abbreviation etc. at the end of the nobility title list. 1768

 

• 
  Irish Green postbox at Adare, County Limerick, with the P⁊Ꞇ (P&T) logo

 

 

Wikipedia

Tironian notes - Wikipedia

 

Known as Tironian notes (notae Tironianae), this ancient Roman shorthand system was invented around 63 BCE by Marcus Tullius Tiro, the personal secretary and freed slave of the orator Cicero. Tiro created roughly 4,000 unique symbols to record speech at rapid conversational speeds. You can explore the Open Culture feature on Tironian Notes for more details on this script.

History and Evolution

• Invention: Tiro designed the system so he could capture Cicero’s fast-paced senate speeches verbatim.

• Expansion: Later Roman writers like Seneca expanded the symbol set to about 5,000 signs.

• Middle Ages: European monks taught and grew the system to over 13,000 signs.

• Decline: Use of the notes faded after 1100 CE, though fragments persisted into the 17th century.

Surviving Legacies

• The Tironian "et": The symbol ⁊, meaning "and," survived in Irish Gaelic writing.

• The "z" in viz: The abbreviation for videlicet (namely) uses a final character derived from a Tironian sign.

 

 

The ancient Roman shorthand system featured on Open Culture is known as Tironian notes (notae Tironianae). It was invented around 63 BCE by Marcus Tullius Tiro, a highly educated slave (and later freedman) who served as the personal secretary to the legendary Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero charged Tiro with creating a rapid writing method to accurately record his fast-paced dictations, legal proceedings, and famous Senate speeches in real time.

The Original System

• 4,000 Initial Symbols: Tiro's baseline system used abstract symbols and heavily simplified Latin letters to represent word stems, common phrases, suffixes, and inflections.
• Real-time Capture: The shorthand combined mixed signs like notes in a musical score. Scribes could capture entire sentences dynamically rather than writing word-for-word.

 

 

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During this era, Ayutthaya was a prosperous global trading hub. The Siamese kings regularly employed fierce, highly skilled foreign mercenaries—most notably the Luzones and Japanese samurai—to guard the royal palaces, protect the city walls, and fight in the frequent Thai-Burmese wars.

Key Roles of the Lucoesan Guard

• Royal Bodyguards: They provided highly trusted security details for the Siamese king and the royal elite, insulating the throne from local political coup attempts.
• Defenders of the Capital: They heavily fortified the Ayutthaya City Walls and strategic strongholds like Pomphet Fort against foreign invaders.
• Frontline Shock Troops: Alongside Kapampangan warriors, they were deployed to counter Burmese military advances during the intense sieges of the 16th century.

 

 

 

During the 16th century, the ancient capital of Ayutthaya in Siam (Thailand) was aided and defended by Lucoes (or Luzones) warriors—mercenaries and traders from pre-colonial Luzon in the Philippines. Historical accounts note that these Southeast Asian fighters served as valued military assets during regional conflicts.

 

The Role of Lucoes Warriors

• Merchants and Mercenaries: People from Luzon traveled widely across maritime Southeast Asia as active traders and sought-after military specialists.

• Participation in Siam: Historical chronicles indicate that Luzon warriors fought alongside the armies of Ayutthaya during the tumultuous 16th-century conflicts against invading forces, including Burmese campaigns.

• Combat Reputation: Contemporary Portuguese and regional accounts praised the Luções as fierce, highly capable combatants skilled in close-quarters warfare and early firearms.

 

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