The Socioeconomics of Fabrication: Textuality, Authenticity, and Social Status in the Roman Mediterranean

Abstract: This article analyses the figure of the "fabricator" within the complex ancient discourses that produce and limit authorial status. We map Roman discourses of textual fabrication in three distinct yet intersecting deployments: the fabrication of documents, the fabrication of texts, and the fabrication of meaning. A wide range of sources from the high Roman empire illuminate how elites used this discourse of fabrication to characterize forms of textual production, invention, and interpretation as illicit. The discourse of fabrication, with its contrasts between elite and banausic skills and spaces, served to manufacture and maintain differences between elite intellectuals and the low-status workers who supported them. Accusations of fabrication were a discursive practice used to dismiss individuals, deride arguments, and (re)produce cultural and social boundaries in the Roman Mediterranean.