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archaic period in which writing first developed, the elite educated class relied heavily upon writing, and the rest of the population was mainly affected by writing, as in the operation of their government or in having literature or government decrees read to them aloud. But some of the characteristics of an oral culture remained present in ancient Greek society—notably the widespread reliance on and cultivation of memory, and, in certain contexts, an ambivalence toward or distrust of the written record. To the extent which some of us are presently imbued with the classical tradition of Greek liter- ature, philosophy and science, which is based on surviving elements of the written record, contemplating the ancient Greeks’ ambivalence and distrust of this written record may remind us how far we are removed from the ancient culture on which so many of our traditions are based. It may also remind us to continue an element of the tradition by taking a critical view of what we read today.
The Greeks are thought to have inherited from the Phoenicians the use of wax tablets and the leather roll for writing, along with the Phoenician alpha- bet, and to have developed their writing system in the mid-eighth century BCE. The earliest known Greek inscriptions date from 770-750 BCE, and they match Phoenician letter forms of circa 800-750 BCE. Many scholars believe that the Iliad is the oldest surviving work of literature in the ancient Greek language, making it one of the first works of ancient Greek litera- ture—a work which originated long before writing. It is believed that the Odyssey, sequel to the Iliad, was composed after the Iliad. Both epic poems, products of the oral tradition, may have undergone a process of standard- ization and refinement out of older material beginning around 750 BCE, when they may have been first committed to writing. The Greek script, adapted from a Phoenician syllabary, made possible the notation of the complex rhythms and vowel clusters that make up hexameter verse. Homer’s poems appear to have been recorded shortly after the script’s invention: an inscription from Ischia in the Bay of Naples, ca. 740 BCE, appears to refer to a text of the Iliad; and illustrations seemingly inspired by the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey are found on Samos, Mykonos and in Italy in the first
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