Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece [Hardcover]

This book examines the progress of literacy in ancient Greece from its origins in the eighth century to the fourth century B.C.E., when the major cultural institutions of Athens became totally dependent on alphabetic literacy. By introducing new evidence and re-evaluating the older evidence, Robb demonstrates that early Greek literacy can be understood only in terms of the rich oral culture that immediately preceded it, one that was dominated by the oral performance of epical verse, or Homer. Only gradually did literate practices supersede oral habits and the oral way of life, forging alliances which now seem both bizarre and fascinating, but which were eminently successful, contributing to the miracle of Greece. In this book new light is brought to early Greek ethics, the rise of written law, the emergence of philosophy, and the final dominance of the Athenian philosophical schools in higher education.

[A] magisterial study...[and] a major contribution. --Religious Studies Review

This book is fitting tribute to Havelock's lasting influence and the permanent changes he made in our thinking about the culture of ancient Greece....In so short a review I cannot do justice to the richness and breadth of Robb's learning....His views are always balanced and in my opinion usually right....The great strengths of Robb's book is to tie the nature and forms of ancient Greek culture directly to the technology of writing that supported it. --American Historical Review

This is an important book...and it is scarcely possible to do it justice in the space of a short review....a learned and original book with a great deal for all classicists, whether they be historians, epigraphers, philologists, or students of Greek law, literature, or philosophy. --Language in Society

This book is an intellectual jackpot, the sort of book that habitual reviewers yearn to receive and for which they plug precious quarter-hours into tomes l³¹