The Purpose of Writing: From Things to Thoughts in the Ancient World

Plato’s Critique of Writing

A course site in Communication Technology taught at National Illinois University provides a well-known excerpt from the Phaedrus by Plato in which Socrates examines the invention and value of writing.
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The entire text of the Phaedrus, translated by Benjamin Jowett and preceded by summary and commentary, is available here from the Project Gutenberg Web site.
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An Imaginary Letter Written by Sappho to Her Lover, Phaon

Epistle 15 of Ovid’s Heroides, in Alexander Pope’s translation (1707).
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A Shakespearean Appropriation of Ovidian Scenes of Writing

Act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

The events in the scene take place some time after Lavinia, the daughter of Titus Andronicus, a Roman general, has been raped by the two sons of his antagonist, Tamora, Queen of the Goths. Following the rape, Chiron and Demetrius have severed Lavinia’s hands and cut out her tongue to prevent her from identifying them. In this profoundly violent and equally literate play, Lavinia here emulates Ovid’s Philomela. The Ovidian heroine, having been raped by her brother-in-law, weaves an account of the attack into a tapestry, since he had cut out her tongue and left her in an isolated hut in order to protect his reputation. Ovid treats this story at some length in Book 6 of the Metamorphoses. After Philomela and her sister, Procne, take a terrible revenge on Tereus, Procne’s husband, they turn into birds; Philomela becomes a nightingale.
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