Despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many ways an oral society. This is the first serious attempt to study the implications of this view. Dr Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their character and interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communication. Drawing on anthropological discussion, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, building up a picture of Athens' traditions about its past and examining why they changed and disappeared. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians. It also has major implications for the interpretation of ancient literacy.
This book explores the role of written and oral communication in Greece and is the first systematic and sustained treatment at this level. It examines the recent theoretical debates about literacy and orality and explores the uses of writing and oral communication, and their interaction, in ancient Greece. It is concerned to set the significance of written and oral communication as much as possible in their social and historical context, and to stress the specifically Greek characteristics in their use, arguing that the functions of literacy and orality are often fluid and culturally determined. It draws together the results of recent studies and suggests further avenues of enquiry. Individual chapters deal with (among other things) the role of writing in archaic Greece, oral poetry, the visual and monumental impact of writing, the performance and oral transmission even of written texts, and the use of writing by the city-states; there is an epilogue on Rome. All ancient evidence is translated.
One of the most arresting of Herodotus' ethnographic tales is the famous story of Darius' anthropological investigations in which he asked certain Greeks and Indians how they treated the corpses of their parents when they died (3.38). The Greeks burned their dead parents, the Indians ate them. The Persian king asked each group how much money it would take to get them to treat the parental remains as the other group treated theirs. Each group expressed pious horror at the others' customs, each was convinced that their own practice was the proper one, the other outrageous. So, Herodotus concludes, this shows, as Pindar said, that nomos is king of all; if you were to ask any people which customs were the best (τοὺς ϰαλλίστους) of all nomoi, they would certainly choose their own.
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