Newspaper

Perhaps the first example of what could be called a newspaper was the Acta Diurna - roughly, "Daily News" - that Julius Caesar introduced in 59 BC. This was a handwritten news-sheet posted daily in the Forum at Rome and in other common meeting places around the city. Of course, a lot of the news would be out of date in the sense that, for example, it took a long time for reports of a victory in a distant country to get back to Rome. Nonetheless, a lot of the items included are similar to those found in more modern newspapers: news of battles, as already mentioned, as well as political and military appointments, political events, and even a social diary recording marriages, births, and deaths. One mustn't forget sport - if that is what you'd call it. Just like modern fans of football, sports-minded Romans could keep up with the latest results of the gladiator contests. People who lived in the provinces and wanted to be kept up to date would send scribes to Rome to copy the news and have them send it back by letter. Many of these scribes could make extra money by providing the news to more than one client. Quite a few of them were slaves and would go on to use the extra money earned to buy their freedom.