Early Writing Metaphors in Performance

Abstract This article investigates the intersection of writing and performance in early Greek poetry. It takes as a springboard the performed literacy of Callias’ Alphabet Tragedy , and notes the wealth of references to books, writing, and literacy across Old Comedy. Whereas the papyrus roll came to represent poetry as writing from the final quarter of fifth-century BCE , earlier Greek poetry uses a range of writing technologies as metaphors for performance, such as the skytalē , the sphragis , and epigraphic inscription. Other indications that poetry is conceptualized in terms of its written medium in Archaic poetry are examined, including references to poems as lines of text and direct quotation of earlier poets’ work. The article ends with a discussion of how these phenomena relate to what is commonly termed the poet’s sphragis ; the origins of this usage are discussed, as is its suitability to the broad range of phenomena it purports to index.