¹ Throwing in en passant the remark, obvious once made (but has it been made before?), that the ancients did not have spectacles (15).

² As was still sometimes the case (and for all I know may still be) in the England of the early 20s of this century: ‘“Except to sign my name I can't manage writing” … The dealer who couldn't write was a far richer man than my uncle, or any of the Elmbury doctors, or the manager of the Bank’ (Moore, John, Portrait of Elmbury [1945], 83).Google Scholar

³ H. believes that graffiti do not ‘help to any great degree over the extent of literacy’ (106). I do not dispute this, but it would have been interesting to have his views on the καλ⋯σ-inscriptions, a genre with quite a long life (Dover, K. J., Greek homosexuality [1980], 112–113)Google Scholar.

⁴ Cf. H.'s index, s.v. ‘oral culture’.