For Greece, the preliterate ages came to an end ca. 750 B.C. with the in- troduction of an alphabet whose letters were borrowed from Semitic neighbors, the Phoenicians. This event, Eric Havelock suggests, was "something like a thunder-clap in human history which our bias of familiarity has converted to the rustle of papers on a desk." For only with the introduc- tion of this powerful new technology for preserving human speech could Euro- pean man begin his journey from mythos (which for early Greeks was an oral utterance, and thus the telling of a story easily remembered) to logos, the reasoned analytical discourse which was destined to be the language of Western philosophy and science. The Greek alphabet "laid the basis for the destruction of the oral way of life and the oral modes of thought."

In this volume a group of renowned authorities on early Greek thought. joined by distinguished philosophers interested in their work, examine impor- tant aspects, and probe theoretical implications, of the emerging language and thought of early Greece in the centuries of transition from orality to literacy. and from mythos to logic, science and philosophy. Collectively, the authors of these previously unpublished essays expertly guide their readers through one of the most exciting and important of human intellectual adventures.

Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy has been welcomed as a major contribution to a subject of enduring importance by authorities in such diverse fields as philosophy, classics, communication theory, folk literatures, oral literatures and cultures, as well as by distinguished historians of philosophy, religion, and science.