Ancient Greek Ideas on Speech, Language, and Civilization (review)

The featherless biped endowed with speech is perhaps naturally inclined to speculate whence this defining characteristic arose that sets him apart from the beasts that bray and coo. Who invented language? Did animals once speak? What language do the gods use? How do words relate to things, and how come there are so many languages on the broad earth? The Greeks raised these fundamental questions insistently because they viewed language and her sister reason as a means of defining what it is to be human. Gera's modest book undertakes to give a survey of Greek thought on these subjects, while bringing in Biblical, Enlightenment, and even modern views by way of comparison. And that is perhaps its problem: the topic is too large and complex for a general overview.

Gera's study begins promisingly with a chapter entitled "Polyphemus the Linguist" that examines the Homeric Cyclops, whose linguistic competence, like his other traits, vacillates between the idyllic and the primitive. The ogre's limited communication skills mirror his low level of civilization and technology, but his conversation with his ram suggests a vestige of the golden age when animals spoke. Homer does have more to say about language (for instance about the language of gods and men, which Gera does treat elsewhere), but her topical rather than chronological approach tends to fragment not only Homer's views, but also those of other authors, like Plato. Often one feels frustrated that just as things are beginning to get interesting, she moves on to the views of another writer.

Gera's discussion of the language of the golden age begins with Babrius and works back via Plato and Enlightenment thinkers and even modern linguists to Hesiod. Whether that primal language shared by men and beasts and even gods was a perfect mirror for things or primitive in its expression depends on one's views of human progress or decline. Plato's Statesman and his Cratylus appear to offer opposing views, but these differences are not engaged in any detail. Too often we dart from one passage or author to another; each paragraph introduces another text, but little context. More sustained is the discussion of Hesiod, where Gera suggests that men and gods shared the same perfect language in the golden age, but Pandora is "the first to possess a mortal tongue, a language which is known as human speech" (54). This is intriguing, but I am not sure that it is right. The real problem throughout this chapter is that most writers on the golden age do not directly engage with the question of language, so much ends up in the realm of "perhaps" and "maybe."

Gera's chapter on "Psammeticus' Children" moves from a survey to a diachronic account of the famous experiment by the Egyptian Pharaoh and its influence both in practice (four monarchs tried it) and in theory, especially among Enlightenment thinkers. But she rightly points out that, while Psammeticus wanted to find out who were the most ancient peoples (who turned out to be the Phrygians since the children's first word was Phrygian for "bread"), his epigoni were more interested in the origins of human language as such. Actual accounts of feral children, as Gera notes, demonstrate that they never acquire genuine linguistic competence.

The meatiest part of the book is Gera's survey of the Greek traditions surrounding the invention of language, whether as a divine gift (Hermes, but apparently not Prometheus) or a human acquisition—but without a protos heuretes. Most commonly, language is viewed as a communal human invention among others such as building, the discovery of fire, and laws, but what is intriguing is exactly when in this evolutionary process language makes its appearance; for instance, language appears in Protagoras' myth in Plato's Protagoras after religion, whereas in most other versions, before. Is reason prior...