Ancient Greek Writing Instruction and Its Oral Antecedents, Richard Leo Enos

• Synopsis
• Athens was the first literate community in ancient Greece.
• Evidence for literacy can be found in statues, pottery, epigraphs, grafitti, dipinto (Italian for painting).
• For Athens, writing was for civic purposes. For Sparta, writing was for military communications. For Rhodes, rhetoric was for cross-cultural issues.
• Writing was not uncommon among certain classes of Athenian women.
• Writing was used by artisans to teach trade-skills.
• Writing instruction ranged from social interaction, trade-skills, to sophisticated, high-level education.
• Writing Instruction in Ancient Greece
• Writing instruction was part of oral instruction -- as an aid to memory for speech.
• Writing was also used for tallying for quantitative memory.
• Writing was used for problem solving mathematics.
• Homeric Tradition
• Before writing, Greece was an exclusively oral culture.
• Greece was (1) oral, (2) musical, and (3) athletic.
• Education took place in the family.
• The sumposium passed wisdom from family elders to the youth.
• Family education was oral.
• Youth learned animal husbandry, Homer, participated in athletic competitions orientated toward military skills, and music.
• Education moved away from the family with the gymnasium -- for military and athletic training.
• Progymnasmata were elementary rhetorical exercises.
• Foreign educators (metics) would come to Athens.
• Many famous Sophists were non-Athenians who came to Athens for freedom and to pursue the pedagogical skills.
• Tales from the Iliad and Odyssey were performed orally.
• Aoidio - Homeric bards
• Rhapsodes - later bards
• Aoidio and rhapsodes told and preserved Homeric "literature."
• Homeric paideia would be challenged by writing. Writing challenged the fabric of Greek society.
• Writing would attain intellectual excellence under Isocrates, but was initially only a facilitator of oral tradition.
• Writing instruction was written and oral, as written composition was intended to be recited aloud, meant to be seen and heard.
• Some used writing for their trades, some used writing to express complex cognitive skills.
• Standardized writing education did not exist before the Homeric oral period. Writing was a function task.
• Pre-alphabet, thoughts and sentiments were transmitted orally from mentor to apprentice.
• Memory was mastered by the guild of Homeric aoidoi and later rhapsodes -- viewed as techne.
• Preserving Greek literature orally was a god-blessed gift, not a broad-based skill.
• Eventually, rhapsodes would preserve Homerica using writing.
• Greeks never learned to read silently.
• Writing evolved to be more than just a memory aid.
• Alphabetic Influences
• Pre-alphabetic scripts were used as memory aids and for accounting.
• Writing was a technology and the alphabet drove that technology.
• The alphabet was 24 letters that captured essential sounds of the language. It was simplistic and monumental.
• Pre-alpabetic scripts were hard to learn. The alphabet was easy to learn and could be taught to children.
• The alphabet moved writing from a specialized craft to a skill easily mastered by non-experts.
• Literacy became democratized where the entire community could become literate, which helped stabilize society with written laws.
• Thus, writing was able to evolve from a craft-skill to a tool for social power (techne).
• Writing Instruction and Civic Power
• paideia - the virtue and value of educational excellence
• dunamis - writing as a source of power
• heuristic - a process for enabling someone to discover or learn something on their own
• Writing was a heuristic, an aid to creating discourse and to refining patterns of thinking and structuring reasoned arguments.
• Writing was a source of civic power in Athens.
• Writing facilitated cross cultural communications with Phoenicians, Romans, Etruscans.
• Writing was indispensable for recording trade agreements across cultures.
• Evolution from Functional Craft-Skill to Intellectual Art
• The alphabet made the scribe less necessary, but it created a need for artisans who could inscribe and engrave works.
• Despite writing existing in 800 BCE, not everyone was literate.
• One of two groups who could write: Homeric rhapsodes, who orally transmitted tale of Homer and other poetry.
• Homeric rhapsodes began writing instruction to preserve the oral quality of Homer.
• Writing became an aid to memory and necessary for passing their craft from mentor to apprentice.
• This writing instruction was not public.
• Second of two groups who could write: artisans of the thetes (labor) class.
• Writing was part of art (pottery, monuments, public buildings).
• Both rhapsodes and artisans learned writing as a craft literacy.
• Both of these forms of writings nurtured public literacy and popular writing instruction.
• Writing became more directed to public readers.
• Despite reading being more democratized, writing instruction was not widespread.
• Writing was composed by artisans from select groups to be read by the broader citizenry.
• Classical Period: Writing in Service of Orality
• In the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, writing instruction changed.
• Writing to read was still for the upper class.
• Writing for oral composition became more widespread.
• Writing was needed in Athens to record oral and civic events.
• Sophists assimilated writing into advanced studies.
• Sophists would prepare speeches for others.
• Sophists sought audience agreement. They would write arguments and refine them to provide an effective heuristic for their listeners.
• Controversy over Writing Instruction after 450 BCE
• Writing became a public activity where writers and readers could benefit from the interaction of comment and response.
• More and more, writing became part of daily life for all class levels.
• In education, writing shifted from a function tool to a heuristic for advanced thought.
• Writing was used to clarify and record advanced intellectual problems.
• Homeric education was being replaced, replacing music with writing.
• Writing grew into the paideia of Greek education. Small children learned the alphabet. From ages 7 to 14, they would learn exposition, interpretation, criticism, and finally argument. From ages 15 to 20, males would have military education, and after military service, they could study rhetoric.
• Manuels (technai) became a formal discipline of study before rhetoric.
• Handbooks were written by prominent rhetoricians like Isocrates.
• Plato criticized writing as it destroyed the dynamic and interactive exchange that took place through oral deliberations.
• Plato displayed his teacher's, Socrates', disapproval of writing in his dialogues Gorgias and Phaedrus.
• Plato: Writing is a constraint because it mediates the direct, oral intraction between thinkers.
• Plato: Writing devalued memory.
• Plato: Writing instruction by Sophists was a pragmatic technical skill, not an instrument for knowledge.
• Aristotle (Plato's student): Speech composers (writers) emphasized peripherals and missed the heuristic potential for rhetoric.
• Aristotle: Technographers taught and practiced only surfrace techniques instead of using rhetoric as an art for creating rational proofs.
• During Aristotle's time, writing was switching from an aid to oratory to an art itself.
• During Aristotle's time, thinkers recognized that writing instruction could be a system for enchancing more complex patterns of thought and expression than orality alone.
• Aristotle: Writing is an important part of thought and expression.
• Aristotle believed writing to be epideictic since it is intended to be read.
• Aristotle believed Sophists and (unfairly) Isocrates did not grasp the full heuristic potential of writing.
• Isocrates and Ratio Isocatea
• Isocrates and his school of rhetoric was the pinnacle of writing instruction.
• Ratio Isocratea - coined by Friedrich Solmsen for Isocrates' school
• Writing was used in higher education for aristocratic citizens.
• Sophists valued the pragmatic, functional features of writing. Plato viewed writing as a necessary evil at best. Aristotle saw writing's potential as unrealized by contemporary educators.
• Isocrates: Writing instruction is an integral part of intellectual growth.
• Due to Isocrates, writing is seen as an important feature of the epistemic development of higher education.
• Isocrates attacked the Sophists, illustrating his genuine concern for the worth of the individual.
• Isocrates distanced himself from Plato by arguing knowledge is derived from a study of people and cultures instead of from universal truth.
• Isocrates: Social knowledge and normative values can be applied to promote justic and guide human affairs, social conduct, and ethics.
• Isocrates is the father of humanities, as knowledge is derived from social and communal standards.
• Isocrates: Writing is a way of coming to view and understand reality.
• Isocrates did not write to gain an advantage, like the legal sycophants, but instead Isocrates wrote speeches to resolve social issues.
• Isocrates thought education should be a synthesis of the classical education: conditioning the body and developing the mind, a combination of talent, practice, and experience, harmony throguh self-knowledge and self-restraint. Wisdom and eloquence can be combined in writing to pursue virtue and justice.
• Isocrates: Writing is a central part of a process of developing social knowledge and language interaction that can only be mastered at the pinnacle of one's education and only with the most rigorous training of the best minds.
• Isocrates believed in broad based education including history, political science, poetry, ethics, geography, literary studies, mathematics, and oral and written rhetoric. Rhetoric was at the core, and writing was at the heart of rhetoric.
• Writing instruction was a source of civic power.
• Isocrates students sharpened critical thinking skills through agnostic verbal debate, an early form of casuistry. He also used group work for them to develop their own thoughts in addition to his own.
• Isocrates established the importance of writing in the classical curriculum.
• Isocrates: Education directed toward human concerns and social issues is noble.
• The two pillars on which classical education was built: Isocrates and Plato.
• Isocrates viewed techne as socially and contextually constructed knowledge generated out of the kairos of situations -- more situationally than Aristotle.
• Isocrates established writing instruction as an educational source for the development of civic rhetoric.
• Rival Illustrations of Greek Writing
• Sparta used writing for basic civil affairs and in battle situations, for fear of outside threats and slave uprisings.
• Rhodes used writing for effective communications across cultures due to its center for commerical trade.
• Conclusion
• The origins of writing in Greece are mundane and pragmatic instead of artistic and intellectual.
• Isocrates school is the pinnacle of of writing education in ancient Greece, not its start.
• Letteraturizzazione - the process by which features of oral rhetoric are appropriated and applied to writing
• Writing adopted techniques of oral rhetoric but also added new heuristics.
• A writer's tone and voice are a reside from oral rhetoric.
• This adoption of oral rhetoric can be seen played out between Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle.
• Plato: Writing was an aid to abstract concepts for refined philosophy.
• Isocrates: Writing was to account for and interpret social activities and human conduct.
• Aristotle: Writing was an essential heuristic to organize and explain phenomenon for better understanding.
• Each wanted to move beyond a recording device used by Sophists/logographers.
• Three ways to look at the development of writing in ancient Greece:
1. Two pillars: Plato and Isocrates
2. Four pillars: Sophists, Aristotle, Plato, and Isocrates
3. A more personal, letteraturizzazione approach, studying the development from Plato to Isocrates to Aristotle.