ABSTRACT
To understand a culture, one needs to know how its beliefs, values and techniques are transmitted from generation to generation. Before the coming of literacy, this is mostly done orally, though often informally or indirectly. Aristophanes makes his heroine Lysistrate say (Lysistrate 1126f.): ‘Since I have often listened to my father and other old stagers talking, I am not badly educated.’ (Miss Beale and Miss Buss would have been horrified to hear her say that.)
To understand the culture of Athens we need to know the processes of oral instruction and also the inroads that literacy had made on their domain.
