(1999-2003) DIARIES (IÑAKI URIARTE)AND HOW SHORTSIGHTED PEOPLE COULD GET BY BEFORE OPTICS DEVELOPED.

It is true that people used to read aloud at that time or, at least, by moving their tongues. And it is also true that the first person known for reading silently was Saint Ambrose. We know that thanks to Saint Augustine in his “ Confessions”. I heard about that many years ago in an article by Borges, and this image was etched in my memory. It seemed wonderful to me that someone had invented silent reading suddenly and so late , especially because it implies something unbelievable: apparently neither Plato nor Seneca, for instance, had never known how to read in low voice. Somehow I did not really believe it. Seneca was said to have read all the books in Rome with a water-filled balloon. Since glasses did not exist, he used that gadget as lens. I do not think that he could even do it by reading aloud.

The first glasses did not seem to appear until around the 13th century . Before that, people used to get by quite well with home-made solutions, like -Seneca´s or the so-called “reading stones” which managed to magnify the size of the letters. In my view, the invention of glasses is, together with that of the toilet, one of the things that make us real civilized human beings.