The Greek Legacy

Abstract

The introduction of the Greek letters into inscription somewhere about 700 B.C. was to alter the character of human culture, placing a gulf between all alphabetic societies and their precursors. The Greeks did not just invent an alphabet, they invented literacy and the literate basis of modern thought. Under modern conditions there seems to be only a short time lag between the invention of a device and its full social or industrial application, and we have got used to this idea as a fact of technology. This was not true of the alphabet. The letter shapes and values had to pass through a period oflocalization before being standardized throughout Greece. Even after the technology was standardized or relatively so--there were always two competing versions, the Eastern and the Western-its effects were registered slowly in Greece, were then partly cancelled during the European Middle Ages, and have been fully realized only since the further invention of the printing press. But it is useful here and now to set forth the full theoretic possibilities that would accrue from the use of the Greek alphabet, supposing that all human impediments to their realization could be removed, in order to place the invention in its proper historical perspective. It democratized literacy, or rather made democratization possible. This point is often made, but in simplistic terms, as though it were merely a matter oflearning a limited number ofletters, that is, learning to write them. Hence even the Semitic system has often been erroneously credited with this advantage. If Semitic societies in antiquity showed democratic tendencies, this was not because they were literate. On the contrary, to the extent that their democracy was modified by theocracy, with considerable prestige and power vested in priesthoods, they exhibited all the symptoms of craft literacy. The Greek system by its superior analysis of sound placed the skill of reading theoretically within the reach of children at the stage where they are still learning the sounds of their oral vocabulary. If acquired in childhood, the skill was convertible into an automatic reflex and thus distributable over a majority of a given population provided it was applied to the spoken vernacular. ,