Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

A single and simple pair of contrasting images will make the point most


vividly. When the embassy comes upon Achilles before his tent in Book IX


of theIliad, he is famously celebrating the famous deeds of men, singing


theklea andron. For oral theorists this is an archetypal moment of repre-


sentation, or even of bardic self-representation.^2 The hero in pursuit of


his own glory sings of the glory of past heroes. Poetry preserves the past


only in and through oral performance (as oral scholars would say), and the


poet lets us see Achilles as the subject and object of song at once. As the


bard sings of Achilles singing of the famous deeds of men, the bard’s


performance takes its place in the chain of performances constructing


kleosacross the generations.


This can be put in contrast with a delightful moment from Libanius’s


autobiography, a work that combines the whingeing of Aelius Aristides


with the self-obsession of Cicero and occasionally the narrative flair of


Achilles Tatius.
3
Libanius is being harassed by a drunken oaf from town,


who throws stones at him while he marches to give his lectures and


threatens him with more severe aggression. The oaf, with violence on


his mind, comes looking for Libanius in the very temple where he is
sitting by a pillar and reading to himself the speeches of Demosthenes.


Libanius sits absolutely still, and the oaf fails to spot him. ‘‘I owe my life,’’


writes Libanius, ‘‘to the Gods of Literature (theoi logioi), who saved me.’’


For Libanius, reading Demosthenes can save your life.


This heroic tale of a life threatened and saved by divine force self-


consciously plays off its Homeric antecedents. The image of the fourth-


century orator sitting quietly not in a military camp but in a temple


(a place of study, performance, and meeting), reading the great orator of


the other fourth century, is as carefully constructed an image as the


Homeric picture of Achilles by the tent. His lightly ironic reference to


the ‘‘gods of literature’’ seals the image of Libanius as the Muses’ favored


son and heir of the great tradition of Greek culture, Greek literary culture.


As we read Libanius, we are also being asked to see ourselves as partici-


pating in a chain of performance—the cultural inheritance of books and


reading—and to see Libanius as a hero of this tradition.


The contrast between Achilles and Libanius at all levels is telling, but it


certainly epitomizes how far from any simple ideal of orality we have


progressed. Whereas Achilles strums the lyre and sings, Libanius carries


his well-worn copy of Demosthenes. Whereas Achilles as hero performs


a song that embodies the logic of the fame he himself seeks through heroic



  1. See Nagy 1974, 244 55; Nagy 1979, 94 117; Segal 1994, 85 109, 113 41; Lynn
    George 1988; Redfield 1975, 1 41; Goldhill 1991, 72 93 all with further bibliographies.

  2. Libanius, writing in the second half of the fourth century, is obviously later in date
    than most temporal definitions of the Second Sophistic era, even when taking into account
    the well known difficulties of defining the Second Sophistic as a period or even as a coherent
    movement. But with his highly self aware look backward to Greek tradition, he captures
    in elegant form the tradition he wishes to see himself as embodying.


The Anecdote 97

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