“Over the years, I have become convinced that Hellenism as a culture represents not a static condition of uniform sublimity mysteriously achieved and maintained as an effect of some racial advantage. Rather it should be understood as an evolving process, governed by a dynamic of change, as both language and thought underwent transformational alteration caused by a transition from orality to literacy. The instrument of change is discerned to be the invention of the Greek alphabet, at a quite late stage in the history of developing cultures.”

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

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Eric A. Havelock 5
1903-1988, British classical philologist 1903–1988

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