Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

that someone with the mere rudiments of letters might be able to figure


out the name. We may be back again to ‘‘name literacy,’’ the recognition


of names—your own name if not someone else’s—in inscriptions, an easy


kind of literacy that was more widespread, and known to be more wide-


spread, than the ability to read a long continuous text.


Perhaps, then, we can isolate name literacy and list literacy as impor-


tant types of literacy to which some inscriptions deliberately catered:


we can perhaps see in Athens an attempt to make certain inscriptions


more accessible than others, easier to read, with more space and separ-


ation of words—particularly dedications and the big public exemplary


lists. After all, there seems no trace of the ideal of universal education


in the modern sense at Athens, despite the democracy (law-court


speeches talk of the institutions of democracy as educational).
49
This


still leaves the enigma of the great stoichedon inscriptions of Classical


Athens: very clear, very beautiful, very expensive, and laid out in a grid


plan that gives little visual help with divisions of words, phrases, clauses,


or sentence structure, though the clarity of the letters is superb.
50
What


we can at least see in the list inscriptions, as well as the dedications, is that
therecouldbe an attention to layout of the words on the stone that made it


very much easier for citizens or noncitizens to figure out the words. It is not


hard to see why dedicators should wish to publicize the name of the


dedicator, and we can speculate about why certain lists get the clarity


of layout they do.


The increase in inscriptions recording Athenian decrees of the people


will have at least provided a powerful image of Athenian democracy on


stone for the illiterate or barely literate, and anyone attending the Assem-


bly could hear them read out. Athenian public inscriptions do seem to


follow a democratic ideal of publicity,^51 though as with even modern laws


on freedom of information, theory and practice could diverge spectacu-


larly. Athenians at the low end of the educational scale may have been


encouraged to read by the increasing number and presence of such exem-


plary lists in the midst of their city. ‘‘Name literacy’’ and ‘‘list literacy’’


would probably be the simplest forms of literacy. The ‘‘functionality’’ of


someone’s literacy is related to the society in which it operates, thus in


Ptolemaic Egypt many could sign their name but little more, because


signatures were often necessary in everyday life. As the democracy be-


came more dependent on written records, name literacy and list literacy


would be ever less impressive or useful by themselves.



  1. Plato’s view that schooling was necessary for boys and girls inLawsIII was radical;
    equally radical, Phaleas of Chalcedon favored equal education, Arist.Pol. II, 1266b31 35.

  2. See, for instance, the Methone decrees, photographed clearly inATL, vol. II, plate 1.

  3. See Hedrick’s very useful survey of epigraphic evidence, 1999 (and note Teisamenos’
    decree, And. I 83 4); Hedrick 2000.


36 Situating Literacies

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