Just started reading a book by the German-born priest and social critic Ivan Illich. The book is actually coauthored with Barry Sanders, and it's called ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. It traces the development of written alphabetic language from its roots in the Bronze-to-Iron Age. There's also, I think, some material on the degradation of same, but I haven't gotten to the polemics yet.
What I can say is that Illich brings a good hand to his writing about the past:
The transformations brought about by Greek literacy are well symbolized by the appearance of Sybil, who replaces her older sister, the Pythia, as the model of the prophetess. Her story is told by Heraclitus, a Pythagorean who, through Cratylus, could claim Plato as a pupil. He was the first to distinguish the consonants (which he divided into the unvoiced aphthonga and the sonant aphona) from the vowels. Plutarch has conserved the passage from Heraclitus in which the Sybil makes her first appearance. In the image of the alphabet, she wrests utterance from its temporal context and turns prophecy into a literary genre: "Sybil, in her mania, makes the oracle of the god ring out a whole millennium, joyless, odorless, and unadorned..." She spells out the future. For the Sybil writes out her oracle on leaves, then later on tablets. She brings stone slabs to King Tarquinas, who reigned over the Campagne, south of Rome―over Etruscan towns through which the Romans got their alphabet. No one need strain anymore to hear the ominous murmurings of the Delphic Pythia. The menacing future can now be read.
It is pretty much impossible at this point to determine if the Sybil was based on a real person, exaggerated or no. But it does seem like Heraclitus's description of her details something real that was happening at the time.
2 comments:
Whereas my reading of general subjects has always been fairly broad your peripatetic journeying takes you to in-depth studies of subjects that sometimes leave me in the dust. This being an excellent example.
I've been under the impression Sibyls was the name of a group of prophetesses rather than a particular person. I guess it's far too late now to know for sure since it appears that what may once have existed as honest studies of real individuals have been lost in the mist of time.
I remembered having read a story about an early Sibyl and King Tarquinus, the last king of Rome. You can read a pointed, albeit rather silly, version of it here.
As far as prophecies are concerned it would appear the best prophets have always been somewhat vague: Nostradamus, for instance and, more recently, Edgar Cayce. Then again, as Shakespeare famously said, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'
Good luck with the polemics.
Oh, I didn't really go into this book knowing anything about it. I'd heard of Illich--who was also a Catholic priest--and heard good things about him as a writer and philosopher, so I wanted to read something of his for myself. Did find the book to be quite readable.
In truth I always thought the same thing about the Sybils that you did. Of course myths can change over time, and pagan Greece was around for a loooong time.
The cop show look at Tarquinius and his second marriage was pretty funny. I wonder how many of the charges against Tarquinius were actually true. He was the last king before a Rome became a republic, and an Empire from there. At some point the higher-ups of the Empire might have decided to embellish his flaws. Although it's also very plausible that he really did suck.
The "works both ways" prophecies have been very common. Maybe some people do actually get detailed footage of what lies ahead, but thus far the proof has remained nonexistent.
The polemics are subtle to the extent they're their. Illich and Sanders are very insightful on both 1984 and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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