History of Reading News. Vol.XVII No.2 (1994:Spring)
by James T. Chambers

Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, by Jesper Svenbro. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv, 233. Index. $37.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper).

It seems fitting that a book on this topic is offered by a student of the late Eric Havelock, whose Preface to Plato thirty years ago helped stimulate a rich debate on literacy and orality in ancient Greek culture. While paying due homage to his mentor and acknowledging the importance of this continuing debate, Svenbro laments its preoccupation with the "emission" side of written communication. To redress this imbalance, Svenbro seeks to understand how the ancient Greeks read and what they thought about the reading act. The result is a set of ten insightful essays, several of which do not strictly pertain to reading, e.g., a chapter on the function of Greek names, two chapters on law and lawgivers, and a lengthy analysis of Plato's Phaedrus. Given the brevity of this review and its venue, the following comments are restricted to the book's treatment of its main theme, reading in ancient Greece.

The book's title incorporates the name of an Athenian maiden, Phrasikleia, who died c. 540 B.C. and was commemorated in typical archaic Greek fashion by an inscribed koure statue. Not the least of Svenbro's achieve-ments is a sophisticated reading of this monument, which relates the etymology of her name, the visual imagery of the statue, and the verbal symbolism of the inscription. Funerary inscriptions like Phrasikleia's usually have been studied by themselves in isolation from their monuments, but Svenbro's analysis suggests that scholars would do well to pay closer attention to interplay between the texts and their accompanying sculptures.

Svenbro's analysis is conditioned by an awareness of a distinctive feature of Greek reading: to read was to read aloud. As the author puts it, "Greek writing was first and foremost a machine for producing sounds" (p. 2). Perhaps the book's greatest service is to emphasize this fact, which is rarely fully appreciated, and draw out its implications. The very technology of inscription (lack of word separation, arbitrary line wraps) favored, almost required, reading aloud. Poetry naturally lent itself to oral performance, but even prose works, such as the History of Herodotus, were regular-ly read aloud in late fifth century Athens. Svenbro also shows that some inscriptions distinguish between "readers" and "hearers," who understand the inscription only upon hearing it read aloud. All of this suggests a semi-literate culture, in which only a few people were fully literate. Although he doesn't explicitly take sides in the recent debate over the extent of literacy in antiquity, Svenbro would seem to side with scholars such as W. V. Harris, who tend to minimize it.

As he pursues the psychological ramifications of reading aloud in a semi-literate society, Svenbro stresses the instrumental status of the reader, whose service is required to make the writing effective. In the act of reading, the reader becomes the vocal instrument of the writer. This instrumentality is most apparent in a category of "egocentric" inscriptions, e.g., "I am the monument of Sosias," or, "Megas made me; I am his," in which the reader completely surrenders his ego. Interestingly, Svenbro rejects an older animistic interpretation of these "speaking objects," just when some scholars, such as Christopher Faraone and Rosalind Thomas, have become more receptive to the nonrational functions of Greek art and writing.

By emphasizing the semi-literate context Svenbro also clarifies the etymology and original sense of Greek words relating to reading and law. Thus, epilegesthai, generally translated "to read," literally means "to give voice to." Another word for reading, anagignoskein, derives from the root meaning "to recognize" and probably conveys the recognition that comes upon hearing words vocalized. Ananemesthai, which derives from nemein (to distribute), denotes an oral distribution of words or recitation. The same verb produces the Greek word for law (nomos), which was read aloud, even sung. Contrary to our modern notion of exegesis, Svenbro argues, the powerful civic officials known as "expounders" (exegetai) of the law were less interpreters than simple readers.

Silent reading eventually made its appearance, of course, and Svenbro discusses this in Chapter 7. Earlier scholars, such as Bernard Knox (1968), have attributed its appearance to the simple need for more efficient processing of a growing body of literary texts and dated its emergence to the late fifth century. Svenbro argues that silent reading represented a radical break with earlier oral practices and required a new mental framework engendered by the experience of the theater. There, instead of reading a written text aloud, literate spectators passively heard the "vocal writing" of the actors who recited the dramatic text. The silent reader merely internalized the theatrical experience and passively "listened" to writing. Svenbro would date the appearance of silent reading somewhat earlier than Knox, finding evidence of it in the writings of Aeschylus, Herodotus, and at least one late sixth century Attic inscription. Although Svenbro's arguments for the earlier date are persuasive, one wonders if the dramatic experience was all that different from hearing earlier forms of poetic performance. Also, might the relatively late proliferation of prose writing have helped engender silent reading?

Svenbro finds evidence of several fascinating metaphors that may illuminate Greek thinking about reading. For example, could not reading be considered a form of metempsychosis? Through acts of reading, a succession of souls (authors) come alive and reanimate a single body (the reader), which thus experiences a changing of souls. In a poem of Sappho, Svenbro finds an allegory that sees the reader as a suitor to the author's daughter (the poem) and conveys the parent's anguish at this circumstance. Finally, he argues that writer/reader relationship was seen as analogous to that of partners in Greek pederastic love, where the active partner (erastes/writer) pursues and penetrates the passive partner (eromenos/reader). Svenbro suggests that awareness of this pederastic metaphor may be the key to the full understanding of some problematic Greek texts, such as the Phaedrus, where Socrates' great speech on love may be seen as an illustration of the proper relationship of reader and writer. While this last metaphor is no surprise in a culture that condoned pederasty, the allegorical reading of Sappho is more problematical. The poem is usually read as a straight forward expression of a lover's longing.

Despite the reservations expressed above, Phrasikleia is an intelligent and imaginative book that provides important insights into the realities of reading in ancient Greece. The translation from the French by Janet Lloyd reads well, and almost all Greek is transliterated and translated, making it accessible to English readers. This reviewer has two minor complaints concerning the book's production. The lack of a bibliography is frustrating, although the inclusion of modern authors in the thorough index mitigates this problem somewhat. The only photograph in the book is that of Phrasikleia's statue, and it is poorly rendered.

REFERENCES
Faraone, Christopher A. Talismans and Trojan Horses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Harris, W. V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Knox, B. M. V. "Silent Reading in Antiquity," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 9 (1968): 421-435.

Thomas, Rosalind. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Reviewed by James T. Chambers, Associate Professor, who teaches Greek and Roman history at Texas Christian University.