Nor was the situation particularly different in the Islamic world or in the East

Throughout history, literature has generally been the province of people insecurely seated within the political elite. Literature, with a few famous exceptions (the work of ong a few others) is not written by actual rulers. Nor is it written by the landed elite. It’s usually written within societies that have grown large and complex enough that they need a body of learned administrators – people who depend for their livelihood on service to the state, in whatever form it might exist. And literature arises almost as an accidental byproduct of the creation of this class.

If there can be any defense made of literature, it’s that the ruling class usually doesn’t find it particularly useful, other than as an example of how to write good prose. Some of the literature we now read originally had some sacramental place in society: the plays of ancient Greece were performed in a yearly festival sponsored by a wealthy citizen. But more often, literature yearned for more importance than it had: Virgil tried to flatter Augustus with the Aeneid, but it had no effect on the governing of Rome (its effect was, if anything, more pronounced almost 1,300 years later, during the Renaissance, when it provided the seeds for an Italian national identity). Literature has an effect on future generations, if at all, when it is baked into a people’s conception of itself: as Petrarch, who died in exile, influenced the men who would someday exert so much influence in the republics of Italy.

Generally speaking, though, the most powerful people in history had little use for learning. The aristocracy throughout the Middle Ages was illiterate; with a few exceptions (Augustus, Claudius, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian), the Roman emperors were not patrons of the high arts; scholars have tried and failed to find any evidence in Alexander the Great’s life of the influence of his supposed tutor, Aristotle. (more…)