Intended for both classicists and nonclassicists, this volume explores the beginnings of literacy in ancient Greece and Rome and examines the effects of written communication on these cultures. The nine articles, written by classical scholars and educators in the field of communication, discuss the following: the superiority of the alphabet over previous writing systems and its impact on the Homeric epics; a comparative study of the earliest Greek and Phoenician inscriptions and a contrast of Greek and Semitic poetry; the composition of the Homeric epics, their communicative function and special type of language; the origins of propaganda in Aristotelian persuasion; literary evidence of how the Greeks and Romans learned to write; the ancient telegraph--its use for military purposes and the connection between its development and the spread of literacy; the ways in which the visual arts, temples, and sculpture of Greece communicated the ideas of the semiliterate early Greeks; and the effect of literacy on Greek historical writing, particularly the conflict between the aims of oral narration and those of written communication in the reconstruction of the past. (MAI)