this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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They're called books.
Also, the romans were in Britain for some 400 years after the death of Caesar - the story was available. Furthermore, some great literary works (like Dante's Divina Commedia) re-tell the story
Yeah, I meant what books and the like would Shakespeare have read. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Suetonius's Twelve Caesars is usually the oldest source for the story. After ~900 the English population was highly literate and many people could read Latin as well as Old English so many Roman histories were available to them
I see! Looking a little before the time of Shakespeare, what was the main way for the British to read histories before the invention of the printing press?
Mainly through the Catholic church, as monks were the main copiers of texts. Monasteries were most likely to have copies of history books but often local churches had their own libraries (this is fairly unique to England among western Europe at the time). As far as I understand if you wanted to learn something you would ask a member of the clergy for help, and they would inquire on your behalf to local churches, monasteries, and aristocracy's libraries. If they found a book on the subject you wanted you would usually travel to where the book was kept and a priest or monk would be in the room with you while you read it (reading silently was a rare practice at the time, so they could monitor how you were reading the text) They would also usually try to get anyone with this level of curiosity to join the church professionally
If you were a landholder your priest might be loaned the book and he would bring it to your house, watch/listen to you read it, then take it back to the church for the night.
This time period is also when Oxford and Cambridge universities become prominent so they might have been a resource available but I'm not sure how accessible they were to normal people
Before the printing press books were copied by hand, making them very precious. Monasteries, churches and universities were the primary keepers of libraries in medieval Europe. People who were wealthy or connected enough to pursue an education would read at institutions like that. Only extremely wealthy people would have personal libraries of more than a small amount of books and most would have none (And no access to getting any. Hence why so many peasant demands of the church were more rural preachers to literally read them the bible, as they otherwise had no means of doing so)
As an addendum to my post: that last point is one of the reasons why I will never respect the idea common among Internet leftists that the catholic church used to be good or that protestantism is inherently worse. The medieval catholic church not only opposed by violence the notion that the word of God should be translated or available for all to read, they also resisted by violence the demand that they do their one fucking job (Administering the sacraments and reading the bible to anyone who didnt have a title)