Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

One last instance of visual/verbal interplay invites yet another set of


reflections on the materiality of writing and the impact of its form on the


awareness of the reader. An Eudoxan (or pseudo-Eudoxan) verse acrostic,


Eudoxou tekhne( ̄Õ ̃ˇ ̨ˇÕÔ ̄× ̋ ̇), from the back of Pap. Louvre 1,


dated to the early second centuryB.C., is of special interest because it


illustrates both alphabetic and numerological virtuosity. As Nicholas


Horsfall has noted, the iambic preface contains ‘‘twelve lines (one per


month, as line 6 observes) and 1130 days in the monthþ 35 ¼ 365


letters (that is, the days in a Great Year, as line 8 observes).’’^62 The pattern


is not unique to Eudoxus: a similar numerology marks the Propertian


Monobiblos, which describes an entire year (totus annus) of a waxing and


waning love affair with a woman named for the goddess of the moon


(Cynthia) in the same number of couplets as there are days in a lunar


year.
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In each instance, the graphic transmission of language calls atten-


tion to one aspect of its own materiality: the enumerability of letters in


the one case, of verses in the other. Moreover, the significance of the


respective numbers 365 and 354 would obtain regardless of the content of


the texts transmitted by the letters and verses. Here language in effect
disambiguates writing: it makes us aware that the significance of the


production of specifically 365 verses is to be found in the equivalence to


the number of days in a solar year.


The use of modes of symbolization disconnected from speech


seems particularly appropriate for works by Aratus, Vergil, Eudoxus,


and Propertius that make reference to the movement of heavenly bodies


and their relationship to terrestrial experience. Speech, writing, and the


movement of the stars are related to one another as systems of communi-


cation, but each follows its own internal logic. Indeed, some ancient schools


of thought, especially Stoicism, provided explicit theorization of the ‘‘sym-


pathy’’ between cosmic and microcosmic systems of signs and therefore of


the possibility of divining meaning from both.^64 In the Stoic view at least,


the connection is not one of metaphor or symbolization, but of embodi-


ment—the subtle and dynamic movement of thepneumathroughout the


cosmos and the impact of all bodies on all other bodies.
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In this, as in other


contexts, we might regard Stoicism as the rationalization and intensification


of more widespread, ‘‘folk’’ understandings of the world, such as those


made manifest in the games and other practices outlined here.


The traditional way of viewing graphic word games is to see them as


‘‘trivial’’ and ‘‘bizarre’’; as learning gone haywire; in particular, as deform-


ations of the natural function of writing.
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Clearly they can be understood



  1. Horsfall 1979, 31; for the text of Ps. Eudoxus, see also Blass 1997.

  2. Habinek 1982.

  3. This view was especially popular among Roman Stoics, as evidenced by Cicero,
    Vergil, and Seneca. See, for example, Schiesaro 1997, Rosenmeyer 1989.

  4. Sambursky 1959.

  5. For the expressions ‘‘trivial’’ and ‘‘bizarre’’ see Horsfall 1979, 29 and again 1979, 32.


Situating Literacy at Rome 135

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