Johnson William A. - Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome

EDITED BY

William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker

2009

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ancient literacies : the culture of reading in Greece and Rome / edited by William A. Johnson and

Holt N. Parker.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-19-534015-0

1. Transmission of textsGreece. 2. Transmission of textsRome.

3. Books and readingGreece. 4. Books and readingRome. 5. LiteracyGreece.

6. LiteracyRome. I. Johnson, William A. (William Allen), 1956II. Parker, Holt N.

Z1003.5.G8A53 2009

302.224409495dc222008020329

Figures is printed by permission Luciano Pedicini, fotografo.

On April 2829, 2006, the University of Cincinnati convened a Semple Symposium under the rubric Constructing Literacy among the Greeks and Romans. That conference was the origin of the volume in your hands, and first thanks must therefore go to the Louise Taft Semple Fund, whose financial generosity made the conference possible, and to Louise Taft Semple herself, to whose memory we dedicate this book. We hope to have succeeded in forwarding her wish to make vital and constructive in the civilization of our country the spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic inheritance we have received from Greece and Rome (establishment document, Louise Taft Semple Fund). We also thank the many colleagues and students and friends who formed such a lively and invested audience during the two days of the conference. But this is no simple volume of proceedings, and we must also express our gratitude to the contributors, who not only gave splendid lecture presentations, but took seriously the charge to refashion their talks into chapters for this book and also graciously received and responded to editorial demands for further revision. Finally, it is a pleasure to record the contributions of our graduate assistants: Jamie Reuben, who adroitly managed the myriad details of organizing the Semple Symposium, Austin Chapman, who has done a masterly job in proofreading and other aspects of the production of the book, and Dana Clark, our helpmeet in the final stages of production.

William A. Johnson
Holt N. Parker

William A. Johnson

Rosalind Thomas

Greg Woolf

Barbara Burrell

Simon Goldhill

Thomas Habinek

Florence Dupont

Joseph Farrell

Holt N. Parker

George W. Houston

Peter White

Kristina Milnor

William A. Johnson

Shirley Werner

David R. Olson

Trained at New York University and at Harvard, BARBARA BURRELL has dug at sites across the Mediterranean, including Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and currently in Israel, where she is Field Director for the Promontory Palace Excavations at Caesarea Maritima. Her specialties include Roman provincial coins, Greek epigraphy of Asia Minor, and Hellenistic and Roman imperial architecture, art, and history. Her major work on cities that built temples to the imperial cult, Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors, appeared in 2004. She is currently Associate Professor of Roman Archaeology at Brock University, as well as Associate Research Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati.

FLORENCE DUPONT is Professor of Classics at the University Paris Denis-Diderot. With interests in Roman theater (tragedy and comedy) and the anthropology of Roman culture, her research now focuses on ethnopoetics. In 2007 she founded the Groupe de recherches en ethnopotique (GREP). She is the author of many books and articles. Her most recent books include Lorateur sans visage, essai sur lacteur romain et son masque (2000), Faons de parler grec Rome (2003), coauthored with Emmanuelle Valette-Cagnac, and Aristote ou le vampire du thatre occidental (2007).

JOSEPH FARRELL is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses on Latin literature and Roman culture. He is the author of Vergils Georgics and the Traditions of Ancient Epic (1991), of Latin Language and Latin Culture from Ancient to Modern Times (2001), and of papers on various aspects of Latin literature.

SIMON GOLDHILL is Professor of Greek at Cambridge University. He has published extensively on Greek literature from Homer to the late antique, but specializes on Greek tragedy. His current research projects include a five-year program,