1 - Introduction

Summary

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,

Self-pitying, dirty, sly,

For whose appearance even in city parks

Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Robert Graves

‘Make and send me copies of Books 6 and 7 of Hypsicrates’ Komodoumenoi (Men Made Fun of in Comedy). For Harpocration says that they are among Polion's books. But it is likely that others, too, have got them. He also has his prose epitomes of Thersagoras' works On the Myths of Tragedy …'

Note added in another hand: ‘According to Harpocration, Demetrius the bookseller has got them. I have instructed Apollonides to send me certain of my own books which you will hear of in good time from Seleucus himself. Should you find any, apart from those which I possess, make copies and send them to me. Diodorus and his friends also have some which I haven't got.’

Letter found at Oxyrhynchus, second century AD

‘Oh, he's illiterate’, someone may say, and they mean, not that the object of their scorn is unable to read and write, but that he is uncivilized — or simply boorish (as above), or that he has not read the great works of literature, that he is not educated to a high standard. In other words, we use the descriptions ‘literate’ and ‘illiterate’ today to denote a whole range of meanings, for both the ability to read and write, and the degree of refinement or culture.