The Greek alphabet was apparently created only once, but the culture of writing it spawned was characterized by variety: local alphabets—green, red, shades of blue—fashions of writing on pots, and epigraphic habits more broadly.Footnote 1 It is therefore striking that the language of early Greek writing shows, as we shall see, a notable degree of uniformity. Particularly remarkable is a pervasive rhetorical strategy which, somewhat paradoxically, consists in personifying objects for the purpose of identifying humans closely associated with them: ‘I am the kylix of Korax’ (ϙοραϙō ημι ϙυλιχς), declares a late eighth-century wine-drinking cup from Rhodes; ‘Mantiklos dedicated me’ (Μαντικλος μ᾽ ανεθεκε), announces an early seventh-century bronze statue from Thebes; ‘I am the remembrance of Glaucus’ (Γλαυϙō ειμι μνημα), avers a late seventh-century marble block from Thasos.Footnote 2 Such ‘speaking objects’, as they are called, also include bottles, gems, coins, boundary markers, signs, etc.Footnote 3 So deeply ingrained was this practice that it appears to have been taken over by other cultures which learned writing from the Greeks.Footnote 4
The Greeks themselves developed their alphabet on the basis of a Semitic model, but there is no Semitic parallel for such ‘speaking objects’. There were first-person Semitic epitaphs, but there is a difference between a first-person inscription on an object and a first-person inscription which identifies itself as the object, as a ‘speaking object’.Footnote 5 Even if Greek speaking objects in the strict sense were inspired by Semitic objects with first-person inscriptions, we would still need to account for the apparent ease of their reception as a widespread Greek epigraphic convention in the Archaic Age.Footnote 6
Burzachechi gave oggetti parlanti their name, but his interpretation of them as an expression of animistic views was not well received.Footnote 7 Svenbro's proposal—namely, that personification served as a way of attracting attention to an object which in itself was devoid of life—has met a mixed reception; it in any event cannot explain the uniformity of this practice.Footnote 8 Recently, capitalizing on the ‘material turn’ and in particular on the work of Gell, Whitley has argued—in what might be seen as a nuanced revival of Burzachechi's views—that the use of the first person derives from the perception of such objects as agents.Footnote 9 Though he forcefully objects to ‘reading’ speaking objects, rejecting approaches indebted to the superseded ‘linguistic turn’ and insisting on writing as a primarily material practice, Whitley cannot but rely on their language in his argument.Footnote 10 This language repays more sustained attention.
I begin by building on the work of Wachter, who has suggested that the speech of speaking objects—votive epigrams in particular—is rooted in ritual oral language.Footnote 11 In the first part of this article, in an attempt to explain where the standardized speech of speaking objects comes from, I extend the discussion to other genres and seek to provide some evidence for his hypothesis. I then turn in the second part to the question why writers employed the strategy of personification, setting it in the broader context of early Greek writing and literature.
1. ORALITY
Speaking objects present themselves as engaging in speech, but their language does not represent a straightforward transcription: it is not easy to imagine a situation in which one would have exclaimed, for instance, ‘I am the kylix of Korax’.Footnote 12 Where, then, does it come from?
To Korax's kylix, Mantiklos’ statue and Glaucus’ memorial let us add as a representative sample another statue, an aryballos, a lekythos and a shelf of rock, respectively:
The language of these objects was not composed ad hoc. Their speech is evidently governed by rules: a first-person enclitic occupies the second place in the sentence, conforming to Wackernagel's Law; the first-person accusative pronoun is preceded by the nominative and is followed by a verb (NOM. με V.), while the first-person singular present of εἶναι is preceded by the genitive and is followed by the nominative (GEN. εἰμί NOM.). The first formula is frequently used to identify the object's donor, or the artisan who crafted it.Footnote 17 The second (sometimes [GEN. εἰμί]) is typical of inscriptions concerned with ownership, which can include epitaphs, and also votives.Footnote 18 Other formulas employed by speaking objects, such as [NOM. εἰμί GEN.] or with a prepositional phrase replacing the initial genitive, are manifestly related to them.Footnote 19 Set against the geographic spread and orthographic variety of these objects so early in the Archaic period, their standardized diction—in verse as well as in prose, on sympotic objects as well as on herders’ graffitiFootnote 20—requires explanation, no less than the formulaic language of hexameter verse. Greeks had at their disposal ample resources to announce a donation or claim ownership in a variety of lexical, syntactic and other ways.Footnote 21 How are we to explain these formulas?
It has been argued that the language of early Greek writings, particularly epitaphs and votives, was indebted to the formulas of Phoenician inscriptions.Footnote 22 But it is enough to consider the Mantiklos and Nikandrê inscriptions to realize that the debt is at best limited. While the syntax of the openings ([donor] ἀνέθηκε [god]) may be originally Semitic, their metre and diction (the epithets ἑκηβόλος and ἀργυρότοξος) are firmly rooted in the traditional language of Greek hexameter verse.Footnote 23
Like hexameter verse, the language of votives is grounded in oral practices. Though they did not necessarily feature transcriptions of actual Kultsprache (‘language of cult’), they nevertheless represented a Kunstsprache (‘artificial language’) which evoked the occasion of the original dedication by drawing on ritual language, in particular divine epithets, prayers, as well as the proclamation of the donor's name.Footnote 24 Indeed, they were performative utterances.Footnote 25 Wachter has attempted to reconstruct the actual Kultsprache, suggesting a number of possible hexametric verses which the donor would have uttered, referring to him- or herself in the third person, and perhaps using the second in reference to the object.Footnote 26 In Wachter's reconstruction, writing will have led to the standardization of such formulas as well as to the use of the first person for the object.
While Wachter's reconstruction is hypothetical, evidence for the transformation of an oral formula into the personified written formula can be found, I submit, when we turn to the ownership formula [GEN. εἰμί NOM.]. It too is paralleled in hexameter poetry. In Iliad Book 6, Hector imagines the speech of a passer-by who, long after the Greeks have captured Troy, comes upon his wife Andromache, now enslaved (459–62):
And someone will say, seeing you shedding tears: ‘This is the wife of Hector, who was superior in war to all Trojan horse-tamers, when they fought around Ilios.’ So someone will say …
The same construction, with the possessor's name in the genitive, followed by a proximal demonstrative pronoun and the nominative possessee, can be found in Iliad Book 7.Footnote 27 It is again Hector, yet again imagining what has been called tis-speech (86–91):Footnote 28
And someone to be born later, as he sails over the wine-dark sea in a many-benched ship, will say: ‘This is the mound of a man who died long ago, whom glorious Hector slew though he was once excellent.’ So someone will say, and my fame will not perish.
The use of this construction in tis-speech is not limited to Hector, nor to epic. A particularly famous variation of it is used by Theognis, who shortly after announcing the sealing of his verses with the proximal demonstrative (τοῖσδ᾿ ἔπεσιν) boasts (22–3):Footnote 29
So everyone will say: ‘The verses are Theognis of Megara's, and he is famous among all people.’
These utterances were not composed lackadaisically either. They are marked by hyperbaton as well as by ring composition.Footnote 30 Indeed, Hector expects his rival's supposed epitaph to earn him undying kleos, which is also what Theognis promises Cyrnus (245).Footnote 31 Scholiasts accordingly characterized Hector's tis-speeches as ‘epigrammatic’, and modern scholars have associated them—and recently Theognis’ tis-speech too—with epitaphs, some even claiming that they attest to Homer's awareness of writing.Footnote 32
As with votives, the language of epitaphs was not a transcription of ritual funerary language, but it was none the less related to it, and its formulaic diction suggests an affinity with oral traditions.Footnote 33 The use of this construction, moreover, as we can see, was not restricted to epitaphs, and would appear to have been appropriated by their authors rather than to have originated with them. But it is not necessary to argue that the third-person ownership formula was originally oral, for the three tis-speeches present it being used orally, and independently of written texts. In all three cases the hypothetical speakers are indeed speaking (εἴπῃσι or ἐρέει, or both), and though their speech is inextricably connected to material bodies—sealed epê, a mound, a perhaps statuesque woman—it is only as a metaphor that they can be said to be ‘reading’.Footnote 34
There is a close, rich relationship between the literary material bodies and the inscribed speaking objects. Whereas the literary bodies are mute but provoke speech in the form of third-person ownership statements,Footnote 35 speaking objects prompt first-person ownership statements by third parties. We can thus say that it is only when objects are literally read that they speak; when they bear no written message others speak for them, but when they are inscribed they appropriate the speech of their readers as their own.Footnote 36 The literary bodies and speaking objects are also related with regard to their function. In the third-person epigrams ownership is declared not by the owner but precisely in and because of his absence: Theognis seals his song in anticipation of its flight, not to mention the threat of theft (238, 19–20, respectively), and for Hector and his rival their respective tis-utterances function as quasi-epitaphs. It is no coincidence that a variation on this construction served speaking objects in identifying their own absent owners; it would appear that it was for this purpose that it prominently served. In fact, the lone difference between the first-person and third-person formulas attests to their kinship: like eimi, the proximal demonstrative also expresses the speaker's perspective, and in verse can even refer to the speaker, accompanying egô.Footnote 37
I therefore propose that Hector and Theognis’ imaginary epigrams provide evidence for an oral formula used to declare ownership, which in some cases was transcribed, but in others underwent personification in the process of being written down.Footnote 38 This formula could have been of use in a range of ritual contexts, as the curse immediately following it on Tataie's lekythos suggests.Footnote 39 One particularly attractive context for some of these objects—following Giovanni Colonna's intriguing interpretation of speaking objects in pre-Roman Italy—is exchange, or the presentation of gifts, which in Homer typically involves formulaic narratives regarding the history of their ownership.Footnote 40
This reconstruction of the oral origins of the personified ownership formula has three advantages to recommend it. First, tracing the origins of the written formula to an established oral formula accounts for the linguistic uniformity of so many speaking objects throughout the Greek world. Second, its derivation from such an oral formula explains the motivation to make use of it: the claim to ownership would acquire authority by virtue of being expressed in an already-established idiom of ownership. Third, it fits well with the broader continuity between orality and literacy and the tendency to make use of early writing within pre-existing semiotic systems, not as a means of breaking out of them but rather as a supplement to current practices: with the advent of writing, the oral texts which material bodies provoked could be inscribed on them in adapted form.Footnote 41
What remains to be explained is this peculiar adaptation, namely the strategy of personification. Why not stick with the third-person ‘this is Korax's kylix’? Or why did Korax not inscribe ‘Korax says this is his kylix’, or in direct speech ‘Korax declares: this is my kylix’? Given its diffusion, it is hard to believe that personification was simply an experiment that went well. For it to flourish throughout the Greek world, it had to sprout from fertile soil. We therefore turn to the broader context of early Greek writing.
2. WRITING
Among discussions of early Greek conceptions of writing, Svenbro's stands out for his attention to speaking objects. On the basis of their ‘egocentrism’, he argued that ‘Greek writing was first and foremost a machine for producing sounds.’Footnote 42 Bakker has well criticized this view, observing that such inscriptions are not ‘egocentric’ but ‘reader-oriented’, that rather than engaging in monologue they are in fact involved in dialogue, answering questions which are frequently—but not always—implicit, as in the following fifth-century inscription (CEG 286):Footnote 43
It would therefore seem that the purpose of speaking objects was not so much to attract the reader's attention to the object as to bridge the distance between author and reader and facilitate communication between them, on the most basic model of communication in an oral society, that of conversation.Footnote 44 This should not be taken for granted: though a long line of thinkers, starting with Plato (Phdr. 276a8–9) and Aristotle (Int. 16a) and extending through Rousseau and de Saussure, saw writing as speech transcribed, in effect as a copy of speech, a comparative perspective undermines the immediate association of writing with speech.Footnote 45 In the case of archaic Greek culture, however, speaking objects—especially in the light of their widespread distribution—indeed suggest the conception of writing as a means of representing speech.Footnote 46
Yet, as we have seen, the speech which speaking objects represent is not a transcript, and the communication they facilitate does not consist of ordinary language but rather of marked language which is at home, for instance, in the Kunstsprache of hexameter verse. The Romanist Oesterreicher has stressed the importance of distinguishing between orality as a medium, opposed to writing, and orality as a conception, an informal style contrasted with a more formal one. This distinction allows us to recognize more complicated linguistic forms such as written informal language, as one finds in personal written communication, as well as oral formal language of the kind one hears in a lecture. While the medial distinction is dichotomous, the conceptual distinction lies on a continuum: Oesterreicher characterizes its informal pole as a language of immediacy, most appropriate for personal contact, in contrast with a language of distance which is better suited to impersonal interaction.Footnote 47 Building on Oesterreicher's work, we can say that early Greek writing typically draws on language which was oral in terms of its medium but not in terms of its conception.
Such language of distance was, for example, the vehicle of the epic tradition, which employed a Kunstsprache not spoken by any Greek, and whose practitioners presented their authority as deriving not from themselves but from the Muses. The most famous among them, Homer, was a man almost without qualities, allowing numerous Greek poleis to claim him as their own.Footnote 48 Just as Homer was constructed as a distant figure who gains in authority by virtue of his impartiality, the oral ownership formula was designed to avoid the appearance of prejudice: it was not the owner who laid claim to an object out of self-interest, the claim was rather made impersonally.Footnote 49 In this it shares an affinity with the language of early Greek law, whose formulaic constitution necessarily points to oral precursors.Footnote 50 Early Greek legal language consistently introduces the polis as its source, as in the following law inscribed during the second half of the seventh century on the eastern wall of the temple of Apollo Delphinios in Dreros, Crete:
The following has been decided by the polis: when one has been kosmos for ten years, the same man shall not be kosmos. If he does become kosmos, whatever judgements he gives, he shall owe double …
Here, as elsewhere, the verbs used to attribute legal language to the polis are impersonal (ἔϜαδε, ἔδοξε); it does not speak as a person, or as a collective of people, though it easily could—far more naturally than a kylix. There is also no use of the first or second person, nor any third-person references to specific individuals. As it represented itself through the language it used, the polis was not composed of individuals and did not interact with individuals. Early Greek laws were in fact attributed to various legendary figures, but these legendary nomothetai came from afar—notionally (from outside the establishment), if not geographically—and the survival of their nomoi depended on their distancing themselves from their compositions. In Svenbro's words, nomos had to be autonomous.Footnote 52
The authority of written language in archaic and classical Greek societies was a real concern, and the language of distance offered one way to overcome the difficulties stemming from the separation of the enunciation from its enunciator.Footnote 53 Establishing abstract distance thus curiously partnered with the attempt to overcome concrete distance in forming the early Greek conception of writing as an instrument for enacting oral communication at a distance.Footnote 54 Epistolography, exceptionally, had little use for the language of abstract distance—intended for a limited and specified group of addressees rather than for an indeterminate audience, it typically was not concerned with establishing authorityFootnote 55—but early letters serve as a paradigm for the way in which archaic Greek writing sought to bridge concrete distance.
The earliest extant Greek letter is a lead sheet from Berezan on the Black Sea, dating from the second half of the sixth century. Its rolled-up outside surface makes use of the traditional ownership formula:
Achillodorus’ piece of lead, to his son and Anaxagoras.
In spelling the accusative singular article with a partially assimilating mu instead of nu, in addition to the crasis of καί, the writer is evidently transcribing what he would usually hear.Footnote 56 The beginning of the message, however, inscribed inside the rolled-up sheet, is manifestly not a transcription of Achillodorus’ own words:Footnote 57
Protagoras, your father sends instructions to you. He is being wronged by Matasys, for he is enslaving him and has deprived him of his cargo-carrier [or: of his position as a carrier; or: of the shipment]. Go to Anaxagoras and tell him the story, for he [Matasys] asserts that he [Achillodorus] is the slave of Anaxagoras, claiming: ‘Anaxagoras has my property, slaves, both female and male, and houses.’ … (transl. Ceccarelli)
Achillodorus’ letter is not simulating communication between himself and his addressees, but rather between a messenger and an addressee, with direct speech converted to indirect.Footnote 58
Other letters adopt a different model, shifting to the first person after a third-person introduction, as in Apatourius’ early letter from Olbia:Footnote 59
Λήνακτι Ἀπατούριος⋅ : τὰ χρήματα σισύλημαι ὐπ᾽ Ἠρακλείδεω …
To Leanax, Apatourius: my goods have been seized by Herakleides …
The third-person introduction facilitates the transition to the first person, framing the message as direct speech of which he is the source. What both letters conversely share is the use of the second person. Early Greek letters are thus based on one of two models: Achillodorus’ letter represents a message delivered by a messenger, while Apatourius’ is delivered in person.
Both models underlie much of early Greek literature. The latter model is familiar from the monumental proems of early historians.Footnote 60 Hecataeus writes (fr. 1 EGM):
Ἑκαταῖος Μιλήσιος ὧδε μυθεῖται· τάδε γράφω, ὥς μοι δοκεῖ ἀληθέα εἶναι· οἱ γὰρ Ἑλλήνων λόγοι πολλοί τε καὶ γελοῖοι, ὡς ἐμοὶ φαίνονται, εἰσίν.
Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write what follows as seems to me to be true; for the tales of the Greeks, as they seem to me, are many and laughable.
Similarly Herodotus, whose opening inverts the demonstrative and the nominative noun phrase of the traditional ownership formula:Footnote 61
Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε … (1.1)
This is the display of the investigation of Herodotus from Halicarnassus …
… ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων ὡς οὕτω ἢ ἄλλως κως ταῦτα ἐγένετο … (1.5)
… of these things I am not going to say whether they happened in this manner or in some other way …
The former model, of a messenger speech, was used, according to Strabo (13.1.38), by Alcaeus:
λέγει δὲ πρός τινα κήρυκα, κελεύσας ἀγγεῖλαι τοῖς ἐν οἴκῳ·
Ἄλκαος σάος †ἄροι ἐνθαδ᾿ οὐκυτὸν ἁληκτορὶν†
ἐς Γλαυκώπιον ἶρον ὀνεκρέμασσαν Ἄττικοι. (401B Voigt)
He [Alcaeus] says to a messenger, instructing him to announce to those at home:
Alcaeus is safe; the Athenians hung his shield (?)
in the temple of Grey-eyed Athena.
The two models could also mix, with a messenger speaking in the first person, embedding the epistolary introduction in the text. Archaic song was, in fact—as noted above—typically presented as speech conveyed by intermediaries.Footnote 62 At times poets explicitly identified as messengers: Theognis presents himself as an attendant and messenger of the Muses (therapôn kai angelos, 769), Pindar as their herald (kêrux, Dith. 2.23–5) or interpreter (prophêtês, Pae. 6.6), or simply a messenger (angelos, Nem. 6.57).Footnote 63 Solon adopts the pose of a herald from Salamis (1.1 IEG 2), but the act of assuming a persona—rendering the performer an intermediary—was itself characteristic of archaic song.Footnote 64
This is precisely the model which speaking objects follow, as messengers speaking in the first person. Their role as intermediaries is attested by the use of the ownership formula to introduce speech, as in Theognis’ seal, the ‘Philinna Papyrus’ and on Hipparchus’ herms.Footnote 65 We might indeed compare speaking objects with herms, inscribed bodies which are personified as messengers by iconographic rather than linguistic means; just as herms turned their arrested viewers into statues,Footnote 66 speaking objects transformed their readers into objects. This shift, from the personification of inanimate belongings to the objectification of persons as property, further suggests the slave in his role as messenger as an analogue: like speaking objects, wavering between personality and impersonality, subjectivity and objectivity, slaves were perceived as bodies of liminal status.Footnote 67 In Herodotus one such slave, sent from Susa to Miletus with a message branded onto his head (τὸν ἐστιγμένον τὴν κεφαλήν, 5.35), is in fact rendered a walking inscription.
One more analogue for speaking objects as messengers: the inscrutable skytalê (‘message stick’). If taken in Archilochus 185 IEG 2 as nominative, the stick delivering the fable of the monkey and the fox is a speaking object in the strict sense:
A grieving/speaking message stick, I will tell you a fable, Kerukides …
Even if construed as vocative or dative, Archilochus’ audience may still have recognized it as an object personified through its speech on the basis of the secondary meaning of ἀχέω [ᾰ], ‘speak’ or ‘utter’.Footnote 68 In Ol. 6.90–1, Pindar, in calling upon Aeneas to ‘urge’ his companions to praise Hera, addresses him as a skytala of the Muses.Footnote 69 Far from their later cryptographic use, these skytalai are not objects randomly portrayed as speaking; their function is rather to authorize the speech of a messenger in the absence of its author: Aeneas is a ‘straight messenger’ (ἄγγελος ὀρθός, 90), while Archilochus’ speaker is in competition with Kerykides, literally ‘the son of a messenger’.Footnote 70
As the skytalê authorized the speech of an absent author, so speaking objects were uniquely qualified to speak for their owners. The difference is that speaking objects, in contrast with the archaic singer, do not identify their senders as such. The reason for this is not far to seek, for, as we recall, the identity of the author of the ownership formula was opaque by design. Because impersonality was integral to its authority, Korax could not follow Achillodorus’ model and inscribe ‘Korax says: this is his kylix’, or even that of Apatourius, ‘Korax says: this is my kylix’.Footnote 71 This is true for speaking objects generally. Appending authorial prefaces would not only undermine their impersonal authority but also hinder their efficacy as speech acts. This is particularly clear in the case of votive inscriptions: ‘Mantiklos says that he dedicated this …’ would no longer be performative.
But because speaking objects were concerned with performing speech acts, the author also could not simply be dispensed with. Speech acts require authority and, if in archaic culture it was customary for performers to ‘project’ their ‘“I” onto a higher authority’,Footnote 72 some such authority was needed. Speaking objects, by providing a foil onto which readers qua performers would project their ‘I’, thus had an advantage over the third-person formulation ‘this is Korax's kylix’. This role was not thrust upon them by default; they were superbly suited to it. By virtue of their im-personality, or object-ivity, they augmented the authority inherent in the oral language of distance which they committed to writing. Unlike Achillodorus’ lead letter, which was merely the medium of his message, they were truly its subject (or object), and thus an author-ity on it. Moreover, as Plato would famously complain (Phdr. 275d–e), they could, or perhaps would, not answer,Footnote 73 which—in the manner of the legal language discussed above—discouraged their addressees from answering them. Their impersonality thus served to enhance their distance. They were not compensating for the author's absence but rather taking advantage of it.Footnote 74
The result is most remarkable: personified beings whose authority lies in their impersonality, material bodies which profess their subjectivity while stressing their objectivity, messengers disavowing their senders. Extraordinary as they are, however, this broader perspective of early Greek writing shows that they can be understood in relation to its conception as enacting oral communication at a distance, concrete but also abstract.