Blog Posts by Subject: Greek and Latin Literature

Literacy is good, illiteracy is bad. Literacy is the foundation of civilization and culture. Who doubts it? History, however, tells another story. The Incas, for example, were not literate, yet had a sophisticated culture.1 Instead of writing, they used a system of knotted cords called quipus to store information and send messages. When literacy came to the Greeks, it did not create a culture, rather, it put into writing a pre-existing culture. The main aspects of classical Greek culture — its architecture and poetry (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were originally oral compositions), political structure, and the 

Thanks to Candide, the term "pangloss" has come to mean "overly optimistic fool." The Greek roots in the name, "pan-" and "gloss-" can be read as "all tongue" – an apt characterization of the tutor's speaking-without-thinking style. But I have another sense of the word in mind when I say that Candide was published in the hangover years of a nearly century-long panglossomania binge.