Interplay between Documents on Different Writing Materials in Classical Greece: Paragraphoi and Columnar Formatting

This paper deals with administrative documents in Archaic and Classical Greece, both at Athens and in other poleis. Starting from the assumption that ancient literate habits were complex and that only some documents were selectively committed to writing in permanent form for display on stone in some public or sacred space, it shows how an approach focusing on writing media can bring new significant insights into the question of ancient literacy by exploring the interplay between documents on different writing materials. The first part of this paper briefly deals, as an introduction, with the role played by public documents on perishable materials – first of all wooden tablets and papyrus – as a means for both temporary display and archival safekeeping. In the second part, it focuses on the early history of the paragraphos which appears in a number of public epigraphic lists and accounts, often (but not always) laid out in a columnar form, mainly on stone stelai but occasionally also on bronze and lead plates (and sometimes in surprisingly early texts) and suggest that its use in inscriptions could have reflected, and originated from, the formatting of the original copies written on perishable materials.