Written sources

Written sources are the results of the application of a human script. This category can be subdivided into primary sources, that is, sources that are the immediate result of past actions (documents), and secondary sources, that is, sources that have been mediated, have gone through some filter such as a historian’s selection and arrangement (literary sources). The opposition between primary and secondary sources is not absolute but relative: whether a source is considered primary or secondary depends on the questions asked. For example, if one is interested in the social and economic dimensions of slavery in the ancient Greek world, plays in which slaves figure are a secondary source, as opposed to primary sources such as so-called manumission decrees, texts drawn up when a slave was granted his or her freedom. But if one is interested in how Athenians of the 5th century or the 4th century imagined slaves or slavery, those same plays, written and watched by contemporary Athenians, have turned into primary sources. And this would certainly be

Antiquity: Greeks andRomans in Context, First Edition. Frederick G. Naerebout and HenkW. Singor. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The case if one chooses not Athenian slavery but Athenian drama as the object of one’s research.

The ancient world has left us a wide range of written sources. First, we have countless inscriptions, also called epigraphic sources: all texts cut into a carrier of some sort, usually stone, ceramics, or metal. Many texts written with ink or paint on hard surfaces or laid out in mosaic are also classified as epigraphic material, although these are strictly speaking not inscriptions. Inscriptions have been produced by every society that was able to write. They range from the codification of laws to shopping lists, from epitaphs to obscene graffiti. Inscriptions can be archival texts, for example, many of the inscribed clay tablets of the ancient Near East; or texts put up in some public space, for example, many of the hieroglyphic texts of ancient Egypt; or texts put to some more specific use, for example, the inscriptions on so-called oracle bones used in large quantities in ancient China. The Greek and subsequently the Roman culture displayed a most remarkable propensity to make public texts of many different kinds by having these inscribed and put up for all to see. Thus, for the study of classical Greece, the Hellenistic world, and the Roman Empire, epigraphy is a very important source indeed: we have thousands upon thousands of texts, and new ones are found all the time.

Written sources other than inscriptions from the ancient world are rare: papyrus, parchment, paper, and other perishable materials, as bamboo or silk, have only seldom been preserved. In the Mediterranean world, papyrus was the most common kind of writing material, as was paper in China from the 2nd century AD. Alas, most texts written down on these carriers have been lost, the only exception being Egypt, where papyri have been preserved in large numbers owing to the desert conditions prevailing in most of the country.

Many written sources have not been preserved in ancient texts, but have been handed down to us: the writings of most ancient poets, philosophers, historians, orators, and so on, have survived by being copied, usually repeatedly. For the millennium between the epic poetry ascribed to Homer, of which the version that has come down to us should probably be dated to the second half of the 8th century BC, and 200 AD, we have now over 20 million words of over 1600 authors, and by far the largest part of this huge amount of texts is known to us from medieval manuscript sources. Still, this large corpus is only a small part of Greek literature, as we know from references or small fragments. With Latin texts it is not different.

The modern historian, of course, relies heavily on the works of ancient historians that have managed to survive. There we find the ancients reflecting on their own history and society. But other written sources can be as important, or, depending on the subject, even much more so. Literally every text that has survived, in its original form or via tradition can be put to some purpose in studying the ancient world.