BMCR 2009.04.41: Scappaticcio on Mackay, Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman World (Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, Volume 7). Mnemosyne Supplementa 298

E. Anne Mackay (ed.), Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek
and Roman World (Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece, Volume 7).
Mnemosyne Supplementa 298.  Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2008.  Pp. vi, 281
p., [8] p. of plates.  ISBN 9789004169913.  $158.00.

Reviewed by Maria Chiara Scappaticcio, Istituto Italiano di Scienze
Umane, Napoli ([email protected])
Word count:  1997 words
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In July 1994 an International Conference on orality and literacy in the
ancient Greek and Roman World was organized by Ian Worthington and held
in Tasmania; two years later, some papers were published in one of the
Supplements of Mnemosyne, borrowing the title from the conference
itself: "Voice Into Text". Since then, the same conference has taken
place every two years, moving from Australia to Africa and from New
Zealand to America, and has always focused on some particular aspects
of the link between orality and literacy into the Classical World.[[1]]

This volume edited by Anne Mackay with the assistance of Miriam Bisset,
collects some of the papers from the seventh biennial International
Conference hosted by the University of Auckland (New Zealand, July
2006), whose title "Orality, Literacy, Memory" has partially given the
name to the book itself.

The studies here collected are presented in a chronological order and
are divided in two categories (p. 2): the cognitive analyses--that is,
the way in which memory works--and the observation of what it
remembers.

A summary of the volume contents will follow. For each paper the key
concepts and the criteria followed by the authors will be underlined.
Each paper is followed by a bibliography, while a rich overall index is
at the end of the book.

In the introduction (pp. 1-7) Mackay discusses the criteria she adopted
in assembling the twelve papers and notes that the papers are written
by scholars working in different fields and so have different
scientific objectives; nevertheless she can identify a common thread in
all the papers--the importance given to the utterance, to the spoken
word and to the identification of memory with something which has to be
remembered.

Ch. 1: In "Spatial Memory and the Composition of the Iliad" (pp. 9-34)
written by Elisabeth Minchin, the focus is the meaning and the
functions of the spatial memory, which is often neglected when talking
about visual imagery in the oldest Greek oral epic. Homer's epic system
suggests to the audience of his time real images and ideas through both
actions and words while movement itself from a location to another has
a leading role. Looking at the way in which the movement from one place
to another is the basis of the structure of the pikono tales of the
Duna people in Papua New Guinea and of the songs connected with the
Djanggawul-myth from Arnhem Land in Northen Australia, which create a
deep link between the singer and his audience, Minchin makes an
attractive parallel with the Odyssey and Iliad. In particular, she
analyses the first and the last books of the Iliad and the movement
which is hidden behind an apparent static way of being and shows how
the poet gave great emphasis to location, which she argues is an
"indicator of a memory-based strategy developed for sustained oral
performance" (p. 23). Moving from the landmarks in the Iliad to the
role of spatial memory in the Catalogue of the Ships, she points out
that Homer used location to prompt memory and make up the scenes of his
verses: space created the events. This paper is completed by three
tables: two trace physical movement in Iliad 1 and 24, through the
mention of Homeric places, while the third has a "horizontal axis"
concerning the setting of the Iliad, in which are listed elements
concerning both the city and the ships.

Ch. 2: Beginning with the definition of a discourse marker, in "Memory
and Visualization in Homeric Discourse Markers" (pp. 35-64) Anna
Bonifazi outlines how some ancient Greek particles, as well as adverbs
and adverbials, fit the definition. The author summarises the main
concepts concerning Homeric discourse. She shows how discourse markers
have both a narrative and a visual function and how each function can
model itself on the other, like in a mirror. She concentrates on
discourse markers beginning with au (<greek>au)ta/r</greek>;
<greek>au)=te</greek>; <greek>au)=</greek>; <greek>au)=tis</greek>;
<greek>au)ti/ka</greek>; <greek>au)tou=</greek>) and, through key
passages, identifies them as long-shot, mid-shot and close-up shifts,
zooms in, and flashes. All these elements also show the viewing and
experiencing "I": this is the "performative continuity" (p. 60), as
Bonifazi observes.

Ch. 3: Egbert J. Bakker's paper, "Epic Remembering" (pp. 65-77), also
concerns Homeric epic. He wants to stress the importance of the epic
remembering as "remembering within epic" (p. 67) and the role it played
in a society in which memory had a central position and was not simply
considered something for replacing writing. He makes a deep analysis of
the verb <greek>mimnh/|skomai</greek> and the idea of embodiment
implied in its semantics. Through some verses from Iliad and Odyssey,
he shows how remembering is something physical, too: remembering is
epic, epic is singing, singing means having strong lungs.

Ch. 4: By a keen reading of fragments 55, 193, 96, 94 and hinting at
others, without denying that Sappho used to record verses through
writing, in "Someone, I say, will remember us: oral memory in Sappho's
poetry" (pp. 79-96), Andre/ Lardinois argues that Sappho's main
interest was to know of the performance of her poetry in the future and
to imagine herself to be a singer-poet after death; in particular, he
concentrates his attention on the Cologne papyrus, of which Hardie's
and West's reconstructions (the last one preferred) are both given, and
shows the way of  remembering Sappho in the Underworld.

Ch. 5: Alexandra Pappas' "Remember to Cry Wolf: Visual and Verbal
Declarations of LYKOS KALOS" (pp. 97-114) is a skilful work which joins
visual art and literature and explores the Greek superstition that one
could became mute if seen by a wild animal. She analyses the parts of
the Republic in which, talking about justice, Socrates tells
Thrasymachos that if he had looked at him, he wouldn't have been able
to speak, and Kyniska's silence in Theocritus's Idyll 14. She then
creates a strong parallel with Onesimos' red-figure cup and its phrase
Lykos kalos. This superstition is, in fact, linked to the symposion and
Onesimos' cup shows, through its play with the proverb, how the proverb
involved both sight and word dimensions.

Ch. 6: In "Social Memory in Aeschylus' Oresteia" (pp. 115-141), Ruth
Scodel's aim is to outline the process of social memory in the Oresteia
and the value assumed in this work by the Thyestean banquet and the
murder of Ephialtes: her work is very rich in analysing parts of the
play and showing how, through referring to some of the main events in
the Greek history, it is concerned with social memory. But in the last
play of the trilogy there is even an intervention in it: Eumenides, in
fact, indulges in the kind of manipulation of social memory, looking at
a remote past to give emphasis to some events which had to be
considered enlightening for the present, too.

Ch. 7: Geoffrey Bakewell's study of the Athenian Naval Catalogue, a
list of the crews of eight Athenian triremes, "Trierarchs' Records and
the Athenian Naval Catalogue (IG i3 1032)" (pp. 143-162), points out
that it has an honorific more than a administrative function since it
includes references to ages which were too far separated to fit the
usual administrative formulas and that the different trierarchs'
accounts give importance to the non-citizens (metics and slaves), who
worked side by side with the citizens to benefit Athens..

Ch. 8: After having talked about the inscription containing the so
called Lygdamis decree, concerning a meeting of Halikarnassians and
Salmakians and Ligdamis, and having traced the history of the studies
concerning it, in "What the Mnemones Know" (pp. 163-184), Edwin Carawan
concentrates on the mnemones and their role as official "remembers",
comparing this inscription with others. In the Lygdamis decree mnemones
are involved as official partners in transactions of properties which
were abandoned by their owners because of the civil conflict. Against
the common opinion that they had an extensive oral record which was
supported by written copies, Carawan suggests that, at first, mnemones
had to make face-to-face recognitions in legal contests and had to
acknowledge parties, properties or payments involved, without
memorizing them but through a well encoded memory.

Ch. 9: Demosthenes' symbouletic speeches, Against Androtion, his
speeches of the embassy trial in 343 BC. and, more specifically, his On
the Crown against Aeschines' Against Ctesiphon are the focus of the
Thomas Hubbard's paper, "Getting the Last Word: Publication of
Political Oratory as an Instrument of Historical Revisionism" (pp.
185-202). They can be seen as an anticipation of the defence arguments:
the speeches made during the trials were different from those edited
later, because the final versions often referred to the hostile
speeches. Moreover, the published forensic speeches had a different
audience from the original ones: the new audience is interested in
rhetoric.

Ch. 10: What Han Baltussen wants to outline in "Dialectic in Dialogue:
The Message of Plato's Protagoras and Aristotle's Topics" (pp. 203-225)
is that Plato's Protagoras can be explained by understanding how its
debating technique makes the role-reversal and the un-Socratic being of
Socrates clear: the dialogue has to be considered as the recording of
oral debating techniques. After having described the main theme of the
Protagoras, Baltussen describes the dialectical theory of Aristotle's
Topics to show how its eight books are a serious account of what the
Protagoras used as comic strategy. This could mean that in Athens oral
discussion practice was alive and touched the Academy too; Plato hints
at a new orality in the ethical debate, while Aristotle's work marked
the transition from orality to literacy.

Ch. 11: What did copies mean to Greeks and Romans? In "Visual Copies
and Memory" (pp. 227-251), Jocelyn Penny Small goes through the
passages of ancient texts, such as Cicero, Pliny the Elder and Pliny
the Younger, and examples both from antiquity and from actual events
(for instance, TV Guide) to analyze the value of recognition memory in
classical copies of classical paintings. She considers the two Roman
wall paintings of Perseus and Andromeda from Pompeii and Boscotrecase
and the Alexander mosaic from Pompeii to discuss the relativity of the
concept of perfection of copies in antiquity: a copy did not have to be
identical, it simply had to be equivalent, and this is a reflection of
what the human mind had made up in a world in which orality was still
very important.

Ch. 12: Augustus' autobiographical ambitions are the focus of Niall W.
Slater's "Orality and Autobiography: The Case of the Res Gestae" (pp.
253-273). Before analysing the Res Gestae, he looks at what Augustus
wrote about the Cantabrian War, which he suggests we call, rather than
Autobiography, Commentaries, a title which links this work with the
Julius Caesar's earlier text, the Commentaries on the Gallic War. The
Res Gestae, even if a resolutely written act of communication in the
third person which had to stay on bronze tablets before Augustus'
Mausoleum and speak with Romans with their divine value, are the mirror
of Augustus' desire for eternity and legibility, but they are also the
sui generis result of something which had a performance context too.

Slater's is the only paper concerning Roman culture and consequently it
signals a remarkable gap. Although each work is rich in information and
deep analysis, there is a visible imbalance as regards contents and
periods: 25% is occupied by Homeric epics and nearly 60% is made up of
papers concerning a period between VI and IV B.C. while the last 15% is
constituted by a more general work about arts and copies and the one
about Augustan age. Looking at the thirty six conference papers listed
at the end of the book, you can see that a much fuller picture: there
were papers about Egyptian folktales, Ovid, Seneca, the Prophet Balaam,
Apollonius and the New Testament as well. On the other hand, the
chronological gap is offset by the gathering of so many kinds of
evidence--inscriptions, papyri, painting, statues, lyrics, epics,
oratory--to show how orality is a complex and rich matter which
involves all the components of the ancient world.


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Notes:


1.   In the introduction (p. 1), Anne Mackay announces that the next
conference, in 2010, will take place at the Australian National
University in Canberra ACT. The previous one was hosted by Radboud
University, Netherlands, in July 2008.