The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece by Deborah Tarn Steiner, and: Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece by Rosalind Thomas (review)

418 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS connection between the Pandora/Prometheus myth and the Mesopotamian myths. Not present, though, in the Mesopotamian myths discussed by Penglase is the element that woman is the source of evil. That role, so congenial to Hesiod, belongs to woman in the version of the Fall described by the writer of Genesis, in which the serpent plays the role of Prometheus and, though this role is played down, is ultimately responsible, with the compliance of the first woman, for man's punishment with toil and sorrow and for acquiring the arts of civilization. This book is highly recommended as a source of Mesopotamian myths for classicists wishing to gain their first acquaintance with this field, and as a challenge for scholars in the area seeking to assess the likelihood of Mesopotamian influence upon Greek myths with the purpose of discovering how the Greeks made intelligent and creative use of a living tradition. Newly edited Mesopotamian literature is constantly appearing, and Penglase's bibiographical references to both primary and secondary sources are up to date and judiciously stated. Slips are few: in particular, note 11 is wrongly put on 19, where the cuneiform sign-number 11 appears. There is a tendency to be repetitive in argumentation, most obviously on 234£., where two pottery scenes are described with ten lines of bibliographical references as though they had not already been described and referenced on 204f. RAYMOND J. CLARK DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS THE MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDLAND ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND A1C 5S7 DEBORAH TARN STEINER. The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii + 279. US $39.50. ISBN 0691 -03238-6. ROSALIND THOMAS. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 201,4 figures. ISBN 0-521-37742-0. Steiner says (xiii) that Thomas' book came to her notice too late for her to consult, but these two books cover much of the same ground and present some similar views, though they differ substantially in their approach and conclusion. The most fundamental points of BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 419 agreement between them are that the introduction of writing to Greece was neither so revolutionary in the field of communication nor so influential in the development of Greek thought as has been frequently maintained. Steiner's book is a revised version of her doctoral dissertation (1991) written at the University of California, Berkeley. It has five chapters with an introduction, an epilogue, a bibliography, an index for passages cited and a general index. Though the order of the five chapters is roughly chronological, for the most part she treats subjects synchronically. In the first chapter she looks at the alphabetic letters written on objects which function as tokens (semata) and points out that these letters did not deny the traditional nature of tokens, but mostly complemented it. In the second chapter, Steiner studies the relationship between inscriptions and religious rites, including dedications (agalmata), and arrives at the same conclusion as in the preceding chapter, that writing did not diminish the traditional function of religious rites, but forged more effective instruments to further their traditional significance. In the next chapter Steiner strengthens her point, referring to the use of the analogy of writing in describing physical and mental states. Here again, she argues, the images of writing brought those undefinable conditions into sharper focus by the use of analogy. In the fourth chapter Steiner demonstrates that literacy in fact helped and promoted despotic rulers, though it has been widely believed to have fostered democracy. In the final chapter she maintains that orality was generally associated with democracy, while literacy tended to act as a characteristic tool of oligarchy. In the epilogue she discusses the ambivalent and contradictory nature of literacy, stressing the aspect of literacy as a tool for despotism. She concludes that the issue is still relevant today, quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka, Claude Levi-Strauss, and others. Steiner's contribution to the better understanding of literacy in the ancient Greek world is significant and undeniable. There are many important observations and fresh insights, and arguments are cogently presented, though...