This volume brings together studies by a distinguished classical scholar that address specific problems associated with the development of literacy in ancient Greece. The articles were written over a twenty-year period and published individually in various journals and books. They deal with Greece's technological and intellectual transition from a preliterate to a literate culture, showing the effects registered by the introduction of the alphabet as the written word came to replace its oral counterpart in the literature of Greece and of Europe.

Eric A. Havelock is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Classics at Yale University. His numerous publications include The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (Yale), Preface to Plato (Harvard), and The Greek Concept of Justice (Harvard).

Originally published in 1982.

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