Ancient Literacies

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

meant to be discussed and consulted extensively on the stone, though this


might be necessary only for a relatively elite group of grain dealers rather


than the mass of the Athenian citizenry.^62 It is also interesting that the


Ten men are to be elected rather than chosen by lot, a sign of their


importance,^63 and one supects that was also meant instinctively as a


check against getting by lot someone incompetent and incapable of carry-


ing out these important functions for the city. These functions would


indeed involve a degree of what we called above commercial literacy, not


to mention considerable know-how about the workings of the grain


market. We seem to return here to the commercial literacy and list


literacy that we have been finding relatively important.


There is more research to be done on the relative appearance and


accessibility of the big public inscriptions, particularly in the fourth cen-


tury.
64
There are cases in which relevant inscriptions are clearly not read


by all who would benefit, as well as the opposite; and cases in which


inscriptions are clearly meant to have powerful paradigmatic and symbolic


force, whether they are carefully read in detail or not (see note 54


above, p. 37). What we may be seeing in these developments of the
democracy’s administration is a growing reliance on written documents,^65


which meant that even semi-literates or illiterates would be surrounded


by lists and accounts if they were active enough to be on theboule, or its


sub-committees. I have called this tentatively ‘‘officials’ literacy.’’ There


would have been a sliding scale of growing competence in this as the


democracy developed in which merely adequate ability in the 470s was


outclassed in the next fifty years, and so on.


This is quite different from the skills needed to compose and write out


a speech in good Attic. It is also at a distance from the level of education of


the elite envisaged by Plato when he assumed that the ‘‘achoreutos,’’ the


man unskilled in singing in a chorus, was uneducated. In some ways these


men with ‘‘officials’ literacy’’ would have had a certain power through


their supervision even of tribute lists, perhaps all the more annoying if it


were perceived as a new (and inferior) kind of literacy by the traditionally


educated elite. These were different types of literate practices, and there


was a gulf between them. Each was linked to a series of attitudes to


writing and its uses. The demagogues parodied in theKnightstended


to possess one kind of literacy, whereas the ideal of the civilized gentle-


man who traditionally provided the leaders embraced another.



  1. Stroud 1998, 47; cf. Thomas 1992, 138 9 on central importance of the publicly
    displayed laws and decrees.

  2. Stroud 1998 passim, esp. 70 1.

  3. See (for example) Liddel 2003, and judicious remarks in Rhodes 2001.

  4. As argued in Thomas 1989, ch. 1, seeing a significant sea change by the mid fourth
    century; Pe ́barthe 2006 would put this earlier but accepts some escalation in the latter half of
    the fourth century.


Writing, Reading, Public and Private ‘‘Literacies’’ 41

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