Development of the System Was Due
Especially to Tiro, a Slave, in the
First Century B.C.
Shorthand is so closely associated with the hurry and rush of modern
business that it is startling to think of it having been in use among
the ancient Greeks and Romans. Yet there seems to be no doubt that the
orations of Cicero were committed to paper with as much skill and
rapidity as the modern stenographer can boast.
Just how old the system of abbreviated writing is which the ancient
Greeks called tachygraphy, it is impossible to say. Xenophon is believed
to have used it in taking notes of the lectures of Socrates, which would
take it back to the fifth century before Christ. This is disputed by
some authorities, but there seems to be no doubt about its use in the
first century. A writer in the Chicago _Tribune_ gives some interesting
facts about it.
The development of shorthand was due especially to Marcus Tullius
Tiro. Born in Latium in 103 B.C., Tiro, who was a slave, was brought
up with Cicero, who was some years his junior. Freed, he became
Cicero’s secretary, and in this capacity aided him greatly. In the
famous trial of Catiline (63 B.C.) the stenographic rapidity of Tiro
was at its height.
In the first century before Christ a discourse of Cato Uticensis,
according to Plutarch, was taken down by shorthand reporters.
Early in the third century Anno Domino is found the term semeiograph
(stenographic character), used by the Greek orator, Flavius
Philostratus.
Origen, of Alexandria (185–254 A.D.), noted his sermons down in
shorthand, and Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian of the fourth
century, said that parts of the sermons of St. John Chrysostom were
preserved by the same process.
The shorthand that they used was a form of writing in which each word
was represented by a special sign. The letters of the alphabet, with
modifications, connected so as to admit of great rapidity of
execution, formed the elements of these characters.
Manilius, who was a contemporary of Cicero, Vergil, and Horace, mentions
it in verse. He says:
In shorthand skilled, where little marks comprise
Whole words, a sentence in a single letter lies,
And while the willing hand its aid affords,
Prevents the tongue to fix the falling words.