Ancient Literacies

coin-shaped bronze tokens.^19 The fourth-century juror thus had his writ- ten badge, as it were. The courts were an environment ...

COMMERCIAL LITERACY? THE CASE OF THE MERCHANT ‘‘Commercial literacy’’ is another case in point. It is increasingly tempting to s ...

the messenger: written messages, he says, are used only when it is necessary to conceal the message from the bearer, or else for ...

non-Greek. Writing might seem to offer an extra, unchangeable proof of agreement in which witnesses might be thought not totally ...

A further element in the Pech-Maho tablet suggests an even greater distance between its world and that of Athens. Thearrabonin t ...

Figure 2.7Kerameikos ostrakon inv. 2242, DAI. Here we see a double list with names and numerals in the Attic form, and some extr ...

Though it is unique, and extremely puzzling to us, it is not actually a complicated text. Although we need careful decipherment, ...

lie in an interesting category, for listsdoseparate the words. Lists on stone and whitened boards form an intriguing subgroup of ...

70–72, the list of public debtors, much checked, 40 the list of men owing equipment to the city, 41 the list of traitors read ou ...

those tried for homicide by the various homicide courts and convicted, those guilty of massacre or attempted tyranny. It is thos ...

exemplary lists on the Acropolis like the wooden tablet of state debtors (see examples above, pp. 31–2). Searching a single name ...

Figure 2.9Fragment of IG i^3 422, col. III. Dedications and dedicatory inscriptions are also interesting in this con- nection, t ...

that someone with the mere rudiments of letters might be able to figure out the name. We may be back again to ‘‘name literacy,’’ ...

ATHENIAN OFFICIALS AND THE CHANGING DEMOCRACY: THE LITERACY OF THE OFFICIAL Many other spheres in the Athenian democracy involve ...

For instance, the developing Athenian empire seems to have generated administration and some documents, possibly rather simple, ...

arranges for Hellenotamiai to make lists on asanisof tribute defaulters and to put the list up in front of some public building ...

still less in composing and recording verse (i.e.,mousike). But it was the type of literacy needed by an Athenian active enough ...

meant to be discussed and consulted extensively on the stone, though this might be necessary only for a relatively elite group o ...

CONCLUSION: LITERACY AND LITERACIES IN ATHENS To return to the problem of functional literacy, what it means at any point, and h ...

Proceedings of an International Conference Celebrating 2500 Years since the Birth of Democracy in Greece, Held at the American S ...