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Literacy And Inscriptions

Fritz Graf

Introduction

Greece and Latin do not have a specific term for "literacy." The Greek has the terms téchnē, "practical knowledge", and sophía, "wisdom." Literacy is more than a téchnē with which it shares the need for training and the necessity for mastering formal techniques, but it is more fundamental than any other téchnē; and it is less than sophía because sophía is all about content. In its origin in Greece, writing is close to practical knowledge and far from sophía that sometimes was claimed as an upper-class virtue.

I frame my account of early Greek writing with two stories that are about 350 years apart. In Iliad 6, Glaukos the Lycian tells the story of one of his famous ancestors, Bellerophon, prince of Argos. When he was a young man, he was accused by the local queen to have tried to seduce her. Her husband did not dare to kill the well-connected and popular young hero; he sent him to Lycia to his father-in-law, with "baleful signs, having written many soul-destroying things in a folding tablet" - a secret order to kill the bearer of the message. When the recipient "received the bad sign from his son-in-law", he sent Bellerophon off to kill the monstrous Chimaera. Obviously neither the narrator nor his audience had a clear idea of what was going on: in the heroic past, people could send each other messages through signs - either a memory of Linear B writing as practiced in the Greek Bronze Age, or of Near Eastern writing customs that some Greek traveler had noticed. In both cases, the background is a writing system that is handled by experts only (syllabic writing in Linear B, cuneiform or hieroglyphic writing in the Near Eastern case); heroes don't read or write - and writing is dangerous anyway, since it can convey messages over distances, unknown to the naively trusting carrier.

There is another story on the other side of my trajectory. In his Phaedrus, Plato narrates how the Egyptian god Thoth invented writing ("letters") and recommended to his king to made this new art widely known. The king refused: writing would make people neglect their memories, since by writing down things they would not have to memorize them any more. This is a somewhat lonely voice in an age of widespread literacy, not the least in philosophy: from the beginning of philosophy in the six century BCE, philosophy was tied to the prose book. Plato, however, cultivated the life discussion as the sole tool for philosophical insight; the written philosophical treatise is, at best, a way to spread philosophy to non-philosophers and a recruitment tool.

The Introduction of the Alphabet into Greece

Greek alphabetic writing was adapted from some Northwest Semitic alphabetic system close to the Hebrew alphabet. It entered Greece in the early eighth century and spread rapidly. Its creators were most likely traders, perhaps Greeks from the island of Euboea. Euboeans had trading posts both in Northern Syria and in the Greek West, such as the settlement of Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia in the Northwest of the bay of Naples. It was a typical trading colony, used as a spring board for trade with the mainland Etruscans: Greeks traded their pottery against local iron ore and lead. It was here that one of the first, if not the first preserved Greek texts was found, inscribed on a pottery cup and comprising three verses praising the cup and setting it against Nestor's cup, known from the Iliad. This must have been a party piece by someone who knew his epic narrative and wanted to show the modern art of writing.

Key Features of the Writing System of Early Greek Inscriptions

1. Simple and easy: The Ischia inscription showcases the features of the new system that explains its immediate success and that puts it into a social framework. The system is phonetic, each letter denotes a specific sound; words are clearly separated, as are the verses, and there are no abbreviations as in later writing cultures. The writing system thus records a spoken voice; its conventions are extremely well adapted to this purpose. There are no complex spelling rules as in Hittite cuneiform or Greek Bronze Age Linear B, and there are only 24 signs to memorize, not the about 80 of syllabic writing or the several hundred of the Egyptian system: it is a writing system for everybody, not for specialists only nor for the elite: it was invented for traders by traders.
2. Used for long-distance communication: This system was used for business communication by the Greek merchants that needed an easy means of information. We still have sixth century letters, written on lead foil by Ionian traders in the Black Sea. Ionian colonization of the Black Sea started before 600 BCE and was promoted by Milesian merchants. The same city of Miletus was also the origin of the first prose books that dealt with philosophy: the business letter might well be the inspiration for the philosophical treatise - both communicate over wide distances; contemporary poetry on the other hand was based on oral performance, not written communication.
3. Used for Codification and Publication of Laws
   From early on, writing was used for public inscriptions, not the least of laws: Cretan law codes were inscribed on the walls of city temples; the Ionian island of Chios gave itself a democratic constitution and published it on a large stone pillar (c. 575 BCE). Such publications play a key role in early democracies: once they were published, every citizen was able to check the laws, to control the performance of those in power, and to seek help against abuse. The condition for this is widespread literacy, at least among all the citizens. It might not be a coincidence that Chios is basically a merchant's city; but archaic Cretan towns were agrarian settlements, ruled by citizen warriors.
   
   (This does not mean that there were no specialists for writing in early Greece. An important inscription preserves the decision of the assembly of a small Cretan town (sixth century BCE) to hire what they call a poinikastas, a "specialist on Phoenician things": he is basically the secretary of the assembly and the person responsible for setting up all public documents, but at the same time he is a key officer of the city, participating in all deliberations of its administrative body; he gets a big salary, impressive privileges, and the job will be hereditary.)

Indications of Wide-spread Literacy in the Sixth Century BCE

Early inscriptions and texts point to wide-spread literacy in early Greece. To give a few examples:

• From the island of Thera, we have a number of homoerotic graffiti on the rock walls of the seventh/sixth BCE century gymnasium, some explicit, others less so.
• Greek (and Carian) mercenaries scratched inscriptions on Egyptian buildings already in the sixth cent. BCE
• The first schoolhouse we hear of is again on the island of Chios, before 500: it made news because its roof collapsed.
• The existence of ostrakismos in Athens, the vote to expel a prominent citizen, achieved by writing his name on a pottery shard that served as a ballot. It was introduced in the late 6th cent. BCE; in theory, each citizen should be able to scratch the name of a politician whom he wanted evicted on a pottery shard (ostrakon). In practice, things may have been less ideal: hoards of shards were written in the same hand, to help those with voting who were not confident enough to write or who did not have a shard read. One hopes that these citizens could at least read...

Strategies of Alphabetization

• The Ischia text is a conversation piece: the all-male symposium that has also important political functions, is a place where one could rouse curiosity and spread the new skill.
• The same is implied by an Attic cup (late 6th cent. BCE) with an alphabet written on the outside where other cups have mythological scenes: instead of telling the stories to entertain conversation, the participants of a symposium could memorize the letters.
• An early 6th cent. BCE writing tablet found in Southern Italy has the alphabet inscribed on its frame: this helps a student to memorize and check the letter forms while writing.

Summary

In Greece, the alphabet started as a medium that was used not by the elite but by merchants for easy long-distance communication. Its simplicity made it quickly an instrument of democratic politics: the ability to read (and write) was fundamental for the establishment of an egalitarian political system where knowledge was widely dispersed and not detained by a narrow elite as in the Bronze Age cultures of the Ancient Near East (or of China) with their very complex writing systems.

Images

1. Euboan cup from Ischia (Pithekoussai)


2. Reconstruction of the inscription on this cup:


Translation: "Away with the cup of Nestor, so good to drink from! / Whoever drinks from this cup will immediately be seized / by desire for Aphrodite with the beautiful crown."

4. Writing Tablet from Italy


5. Athenian drinking vessel, c. 550 BCE