IDIOT, or Ιδιώτης, in our laws, denotes a natural fool, or a fool from his birth. See IDIOTRY.
The word is originally Greek, idiotes, which primarily imports a private person, or one who leads a private life, without any share or concern in the government of affairs.
A person who has understanding enough to measure a yard of cloth, number twenty rightly, and tell the days of the week, &c. is not an idiot in the eye of the law. But a man who is born deaf, dumb, and blind, is considered by the law in the same state as an idiot.
ΙΔΙΩΤ is also used, by ancient writers, for a person ignorant or unlearned; answering to illiteratus or imperfectus. In this sense, Victor tells us, in his Chronicon, that in the consulship of Messalla, the Holy Gospels, by command of the emperor Anastasius, were corrected and amended, as having been written by idiot evangelists: Tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis composita.