Wine and the Early History of the Greek Alphabet

Abstract

As far as the early epigraphic material is concerned, the thrill of the Methone excavations is that they brought to light so much new material but at the same time they seem to confirm many earlier scholarly insights and interpretations. Among other things, as the editors of the Methone volume rightly observe, the new finds confirm the importance of convivial inscriptions at the earliest attested stage of the Greek alphabetization. It is time, then, to ask some general questions about the manner such texts were supposedly to be used at symposia. In particular, I will focus on the fact that so many among the earliest Greek vase-inscriptions are first-person utterances ranging from short ownership statements to elaborate poetic compositions. I will try to show that, to account for the relative frequency of the first-person early vase-inscriptions, we

Schools, Reading and Poetry in the Early Greek World

“…56 Langdon (2015) discusses the unpublished graffiti of shepherds, some boasting of their ability to write, from late sixth-and early fifth-century Attica. Węcowski (2017) discusses the relationship between new epigraphical finds from Methone, writing and symposia: 'we are entitled to conclude that already in the second half of the eighth century BCE the symposion deserves to be identified with a culture-oriented banquet testing the cultural skills and competences of its participants' (323). 57 Henrichs (2003b); Assmann (2011).…”