Deafness in the Ancient World

Have you ever been curious about where the expression 'deaf and dumb' came from? Did you know that Deaf people have their own culture? This paper I wrote when studying ancient medicine explores the roots of western Deaf culture and attempts, as much as possible for a hearing person to do, to view the subject from a Deaf perspective.

            The Hippocratic view of deafness in the ancient world is based on a philosophical foundation rather than a physiological understanding. In the extant texts there is a clear linking of the function of intelligence to the ability to speak which placed a stigma on the deaf, particularly those deaf prelingually. The scholarship in this area to date has focused on the issue from a hearing perspective; that of deafness as a disability. I argue that the nature of the discussion needs to be changed to one of the roots of Deaf[i]culture in western civilization. The inability of Hippocratic medicine to understand deafness and the further marginalization of the deaf who were unable to participate in their native culture show the foundation of the problems that would eventually lead to the formation of Deaf culture united around their own form of language.

            Hellen Keller once remarked that “Blindness cuts people off from things, deafness cuts people off from people.”[ii] Language is the primary identifier of culture, in most cases a culture and its language are linked by the same name.[iii] It is through language idioms, grammar, and customs such as greeting rituals that an outsider to a culture may be most readily identified.[iv] Language is also the direct link to the cultural past and the means of carrying that culture into the future.[v] Perhaps nowhere can this be better seen than in the Deaf-World, a culture where all other ethnographic boundaries are crossed because of an identification with manual communication.[vi] The cultural identification of the Deaf is unique among disabled groups (though the Deaf do not consider themselves disabled), in fact studies have shown that when questioned if they wished they were unimpaired, the blind and those bound to wheelchairs overwhelmingly reply yes, while the Deaf reply no.[vii]

            This notion shares some similarities to the ancient Greek world, which was composed of both Greece proper and its far flung colonial Diasporas. In an age where communication over distances and travel was neither fast nor easy, the primary cultural link that kept the greater Greek culture united, in so much as ancient Greece was ever united, was their language. Yet the Greek convention of otherness is linguistically based by the word βάρβαρος which is an onomatopoeic word mimicking the sounds foreigners made; and means both speaking a non-Greek language and not being associated with Greek culture.[viii] This would have made the deaf, especially those who were born deaf or went deaf before learning to speak, the ‘other’ within their society.

            However, complex manual communication is a relatively modern development, and the notion of Deaf-World even more so. This then raises the question of how the deaf would have been viewed by the ancient world. It also raises the question of how the deaf would have lived their lives. While these questions are difficult to answer due to the scarcity of direct evidence, these questions will be addressed based on the information that does exist.

Laes bases his argument on the condition of muteness viewed with greater contempt over deafness by the Greeks based on the two words they used to describe the deaf; κωφός and ἐνεός. [ix] Κωφός is the only word that Herodotus used to describe the deaf son of Croesus[x]. Ένεός seems to be a later development; this term is in use by the time of Aristotle and Plato. Laes argues that this term shows a greater emphasis on muteness, and that deafness should not be considered when just ἐνεός is used.[xi] While there are conditions which can cause muteness without deafness, most of them are accompanied by severe functional issues that would be highly noticeable; I find it far more likely that the use of ἐνεός to have evolved from a desire to differentiate between the prelingually deaf and the postlingually deaf. This argument also likely shows little experience in interactions with the Deaf, for when interacting with someone prelingually deaf the communication barrier exists in both directions whereas dealing with someone who is only mute there is a one way communication barrier; a Deaf person can neither hear spoken communication nor communicate back with speech while a hearing mute person could not communicate back but could hear instructions from a speaking person. It is likely that the condition which would cause the most problems due to communication barriers would be the one viewed as more detrimental. However, there is no firm way to establish the argument and it may be the case that both lines of thought are correct. In either case, neither word is flattering to the deaf.

            Laes is certainly not incorrect in emphasizing the importance of voice. The admiration of the ability of speaking persuasively can be summed up by the Greek δεινός λέγειν “Clever to speak” or “Clever in speaking.”[xii] In the Iliad there are several examples of the voice used to sway others. In leadership Odysseus masters the restless soldiers and overpowers the deformed Thersites, who is ugly both in appearance and speech.[xiii] As an advisor Nestor is most valued for his wisdom and speaking ability which he attempts to use it to keep the peace between Achilles and Agamemnon.[xiv] In the Argonautica a counterpoint is shown when Jason addresses the Argonauts and tells them:

My friends, I will state what I myself favor, but it befits you to accomplish its end. For in common is our need, and if anyone withholds his thoughts and counsel in silence, let him know that he, and he alone, deprives this expedition of its return home.[xv]

Here is seen the importance of the communal voice instead of the voice of the leader, which would have been especially true in democratic Athens. Even today the vote is often construed as the voice of the people, but in ancient Greece this shows the idea taken further, that contributing to public discourse was not only a privilege of common interest, but a duty to the continuance of the culture. While voting was most likely done in Athens by the show of hands, it was the speeches before voting in which the communal will would try to be swayed that was the birth of rhetoric.[xvi] In this light the prelingual deaf not only did not contribute but shirked the duty common to all. So far this line of reasoning supports Laes’ hypothesis, but there is another dynamic yet to be explored.

            There is an abundance of references in Greek literature regarding wasting words on the deaf. In Seven Against Thebes Eteocles gives commands to the chorus, and when they do not answer he asks ‘Did you hear me or not? Or am I talking to the deaf?’[xvii] This line distinguishes between not hearing and being deaf. Here deaf implies not only a waste of words, but a waste of thoughts and the breakdown of the ability to persuade others by language. In this manner deafness does not only lessen the person afflicted by it, but also degrades the language of everyone who would address them. So it appears that Laes’ hypothesis is less clear cut to say that muteness is more serious to the ancient Greeks than deafness.

            Further the idea of language as a cultural connector is illustrated by the Greeks. Anyone who has traveled can relate to running across someone who speaks their native language as their primary language and feeling a connection to their culture. This is due to both the close relation of language and culture as well as people feeling the most comfortable communicating and exchanging ideas in their primary language.[xviii] This idea is conveyed very clearly in the play Philoctetes by Sophocles. Philoctetes has been isolated on the Island of Lemnos for a decade when he meets Neoptolemus and his soldiers. Before even seeking aid for his wounds or an escape from the island, he begs for them to speak to him in his native Greek.[xix] His joy at the sound of their Greek is transcendent for him, a momentary release from his long isolation. However, the wound he is suffering from manifests as a bestial corruption of his speech and is an obstacle barring his reintegration with the Greeks until Herakles intervenes.

            Ovid also struggled with linguistic isolation after his banishment from Rome by Augustus. He writes lamenting the loss of his eloquence when surrounded by barbarian tongues.[xx] Here he is in many ways following the path of Philoctetes, cast into isolation by his people his own language began to be corrupted. This corrupted language was never able to win him a reprieve from his isolation.

            In Ajax language is the vehicle for expressing grief, pain, and anguish. A pun on the meaning of his name expresses his anguish at his shame, a symbolic transformation.[xxi]  Agamemnon also uses lack of proficiency in the Greek language as an insult against Teucer, saying he has a babbling tongue.[xxii] Given the deadly nature of their confrontation, it illustrates how serious an insult this was.

Thither further connects this idea of a shared linguistic and cultural identity, or λόγος, to issues of insanity; specifically a break from the λόγος as the agent of madness.  In the narrative of Philoctetes and Ajax this seems to be a clear distinction. But when applying this with the presence of deaf in the ancient world, it must first be differentiated between those prelingually deaf and those who go deaf after learning to speak. This is an important distinction, one that will be shown the ancients understood, as those went deaf after learning to speak are usually still able to  speak, although typically with a distorted voice. These people would have formed a connection with the Greek λόγος that would have diminished based on a degree of hearing loss and age of onset. For those born prelingually deaf they likely never formed a connection in the first place. This then raises questions when using Thither’s model; is deafness a form of madness? In modern medicine it is a fairly clear answer to the negative, but it is less clear to determine the answer in the ancient world.

            In terms of the medical understanding of deafness in the ancient world, there are only two physiological ideas put forward on the subject in the Hippocratic Corpus; both ideas are based on a blockage of the veins in some fashion. In Internal Affections the cause is cited as a mistake made when cauterizing a main vein.[xxiii] In Sacred Disease the cause is phlegm clogging and damaging small veins in childhood.[xxiv] Here we have contrasting physiological causation, yet that is to be expected to an extent as they are describing different things. Internal Affections is describing deafness as caused by an error on the part of a medical practitioner, while Sacred Disease describes an illness in childhood. While neither description is especially anatomically accurate in terms of modern medicine, they did address the issue and move the question of deafness from the sphere of divine causation to natural causation.

            Most references to deafness in the Hippocratic Corpus are diagnostic tools addressing deafness as a temporary condition accompanying other diseases.[xxv] A reason for this may exist in the Science of Medicine when the writer defends doctors who do not take on incurable cases.[xxvi] The causes of deafness would have been beyond the technology available to doctors of that time and so a waste of time, according to the writer of the text. Yet the Greeks accomplished many astounding feats of intellect that they did not have technology to see or measure, such as atoms. However, in the effort to understand deafness and explain it, the Greeks dealt a blow to the deaf that has followed them up to our present day.

            The examination of the reasoning of deafness by the ancient Greeks begins in the Hippocratic Corpus with Fleshes. In this work the writer explains that those deaf from birth do not make speech, they only produce mere sounds.[xxvii] From there we see the issue addressed in the writings of both Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s reasoning, through Socrates, is two pronged. In Meno it is explained that a person is born knowing all things, as they progress they recollect that knowledge.[xxviii] An obvious sign of this would be a baby recollecting how to speak. In Theaetetus when discussing knowledge it is explained that anyone can express what they think if they are not deaf and dumb.[xxix] Together these depict those prelingually deaf as having been born with no knowledge, and thus incapable of intellect. Aristotle comes to much the same conclusion through a different route. In On the Soul Aristotle is uncertain if the soul is whole or comprised of parts, but he does believe the soul is moved by the senses.[xxx] Therefore the lack of a sense would essentially indicate a soul that was either missing a piece or damaged. In On Sense and the Sensible he reasons that intellect is served, in intelligent creatures, by sight and hearing; hearing takes precedent as words are thoughts and therefore the least intelligent people are the deaf.[xxxi] In History of Animals he echoes the writing of Fleshes in that the deaf make sounds instead of speech, but in this context it implies that the deaf are closer to animals than humans.

            Together these works paint a picture of the deaf as unintelligent and bestial. Further, both works indicate a damaged soul, either in that it is devoid of knowledge every other soul has, or that it is incomplete or physically damaged. This places the deaf, who in the absence of other conditions have no defects in appearance, in opposition to the Greek concept of κάλος και ἀγαθός, the idea of outer and inner perfection.[xxxii] It also placed them outside of Plato’s version of σοφός και ἀγαθός, the qualities of an honest person.[xxxiii]

            This assertion of a lack of intelligence persists through the modern day. The first attempts to educate the deaf did not occur until the 17^th century CE. There have been many obstacles to the formation of Deaf culture, including Alexander Graham Bell, a proponent of oralism who warned the National Academy of Science about the formation of a deaf race.[xxxiv] He was highly instrumental in placing restrictive educational conditions on the deaf; signing was essentially forbidden, with students caught doing so suffering corporal punishment.[xxxv]

Even today, though the use of the phrase deaf and dumb has essentially died out, this idea persists in other ways. When a deaf child is born to hearing parents they are presented with information by hearing medical staffs about deafness and sign language. They are told that deaf children using sign language graduate high school with an average reading level of 6^th to 8^th grade.[xxxvi] This is true, but the reason it is true is not presented; 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents yet less than 80% of those parents ever learn sign language.[xxxvii] This lack of communication between child and parents results in a developmental lag which is difficult for the child to overcome; yet deaf children raised in an environment where signing is the primary language perform as well as other bilingual students.[xxxviii] This has shown fairly conclusively that the use of appropriate language skills in childhood is the cause of the lag, but the hearing perspective is still a dialogue of the intellect of the deaf and the inferiority of manual communication.

Turning from ancient medical understandings of deafness to look at the potential religious views of the subject, we find most references to deafness or muteness in mythology as a punitive action. The gods themselves, if they broke an oath sworn on the River Styx were laid low for a year without air or speech, and then a further ten years, an isolation from their culture.[xxxix] In the city of Herculaneum young men who did not grow their hair out to honor Iölaus were struck mute and were ‘like the dead’; a condition which could be reversed by taking a vow to properly observe the rites.[xl]

Despite this view of deafness as a divine punishment in religious terms the deaf would likely come to these sanctuaries to seek help, particularly if the Hippocratic doctors viewed deafness as incurable. there is epigraphical evidence of miraculous cures at the healing sanctuaries of Asclepius, a deaf girl who saw a snake and screamed, being cured, as well as a boy who when his father was asked to promise a thank offering replied the affirmative himself.[xli] There have been many thank offerings found at the sanctuary sites of ears, mouths, and whole heads; Rose argues that this is difficult to interpret as it is impossible to tell if these were left for deafness, muteness, or some other affliction of the ear, mouth, or head.[xlii] I would agree with Rose’s assessment in this matter, the offerings are too ambiguous to draw much from on a large scale, but some of them include information which explicitly show that at least some of these were indeed for deafness which was cured.[xliii]

There are some interesting aspects of mythology to look at. Orpheus, perhaps the pinnacle of speech based heroism, was able to use his voice to overcome all the obstacles of the underworld and even sing his lost wife a passage from the underworld; yet he is undone by the long silent ascent.[xliv] It is more common for the element of sight to be emphasized in his undoing, but for a character so essentially linked to sound it would seem that the silence was the causation of his turn more than the light; it was the need for his eyes to supply information that his ears could not. The modern poet Guy Gavriel Kay has written a poem that emphasizes the silence of that climb.[xlv] We also see the idea in Orpheus that his speech can affect inanimate objects, such as stones.[xlvi] This casting of speech so powerful that it can affect inanimate objects seems to imply that it resonates on a level beyond just sound; that it does not affect the deaf perhaps ties back to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle of a damaged soul.

To turn from the opinions and religious views of deafness to what their lives may have been like will attempt to be drawn from the few examples existing of historical deaf people of this time. There are not many examples to draw from, and they are mostly brief. Nevertheless it is what is available to infer from.

The most detailed story we have comes from Herodotus who writes about the Lydian king Croesus who had two sons, one of whom was deaf. Both Rose and Laes spend a good amount of time on this story; Croesus has one son who is deaf and is therefore completely discounted as a son. From this we see that among the elite, at least, there is no value in a deaf child. If there is no value in these children why are they not all exposed at birth? The answer to this may lie in roots of humanity towards the children, but it is also very likely due to deafness unaccompanied by any other defects is often not easily detectable in infancy. The first word of infants in ancient Greece happened after the first birthday; during the babbling phase it would take careful observation to note that the baby was not reacting to sounds.[xlvii] As such by the time it may be realized the child is deaf and not merely delayed, the ritual of acceptance would have been long passed and bonds may have been formed with the child. Croesus indeed sought aid for his afflicted child, consulting the Oracle at Delphi seeking a cure; however once no cure could be found the deaf child, who is never mentioned by name, becomes a non-entity.[xlviii] Not only does this underline the disadvantaged positon of the deaf of the time, it reinforces the idea shown by modern research that hearing parents seek to fix their deaf children, but do not try to connect with them through the channels open to them. Croesus seeks to make his son hear through the gods, when that fails he does not seek to learn to communicate with him but instead considers him not to be a son.

Quintus Pedius, a son of a distinguished senatorial family, was born deaf. He was to be taught the art of painting by Messala Corvinus as a profession, which apparently he did well at until his death. Curiously the permission of Augustus was sought in this matter; under most circumstances it would be hard to imagine the permission of the princeps to be needed for such a thing.[xlix]

The emperor Julian took as his division of booty during his Persian campaign a deaf boy who was a skilled pantomime, according to Ammianus Marcellinus.[l] The Deaf, who must communicate with a large number of people who do not know their language on a daily basis, are often skilled pantomimes, and this may have led to a profession in the ancient world as entertainers. This idea is further given credit by an inscription at the Via Appia Columbarium, which tells us that a mute actor of the household of the emperor Tiberius was the first to imitate lawyers. Laes mentions that the word mutus here could refer to this slave’s use of pantomime and not his hearing condition, which certainly is a possibility.[li]

From these examples it can be seen there are a limited number of options for the deaf. The first option was to stay at home; especially for the non-elite this would likely involve simple labor jobs around the house or farm. There is also an indication of opportunities in the visual and performing arts, which may have been a more fulfilling career. Yet especially in the performing arts it may have left the deaf person open to being an object of derision. Rose discusses an epigram which mocks a woman who brings the wrong type of food, when the two foods have a similar sounding name.[lii] While this almost certainly indicates hard of hearing instead of deafness, it does illustrate how the public may have publicly mocked the deaf, and also raises the issue of hearing loss in old age.

To address sign language, also called manual language, in the ancient world we must look at modern sign language to have a basis of comparison. Even today, although sign language is mostly accepted as a real language at least academically, there are those who do not consider it to be a real language. A language must be communicated through a medium that decays immediately to enable further use of the channel. For oral communication this channel is sound, for manual communication the channel is light. In both mediums the sender and receiver must cognitively determine their role in the exchange and process the signal without the verbal or physical sign still being present. The meaning of sign language is conveyed through discrete and individually meaningless segments such as handshapes and movements that can be combined using agreed upon conventions to create meaning. These can then be combined to communicate previously experienced language or completely new concepts. It can convey both concrete and non-concrete ideas as well as entirely made-up ideas; lastly it can be used to talk about itself.[liii]

Sign Language today is a spatial language, signs conveying movement and travel should move correctly in the direction of travel. For example the basic sign for DRIVE is to hold the hands out as if they gripped a steering wheel at the 10 and 2 position and then move the hands away from the body, but in actual conversation the hands should move in the actual direction of the place you are driving to from the place you are at.[liv] It is also spatially referential, if the person or thing discussed is in view signs are made towards them or it or first referenced before signing, which may be done through either pointing or eye glance. If the person or thing is not in view it is signified and then given a spatial reference, when more than one such is being discussed, they are first identified and spatially referenced, and conversation then takes place with changes in the discussed person or thing indicated by a slight body shift to their referential location. American Sign Language (ASL) uses a word order structure with cases determined by order and hand shape. Pointing may indicate the nominative, accusative, or dative case based on order, while the open B-handshape indicates the genitive. Modern sign languages are very dynamic with facial expressions and force and speed of the signs filling the role that tone and volume play in oral communication.

As has been shown, sign languages today are complex and full languages. However in ancient Greece and Rome it is doubtful that such a thing existed. There would have been fewer deaf people and no social structure to support them. Rose makes two arguments, the first of which is that the small number of deaf in the ancient world means the deaf would rarely meet; the second is a bit curious in that she says that sign language cannot occur without it being taught.[lv] While she does say that deaf children who are not taught a signed language naturally develop a system of gestures this still presents something of a chicken and egg argument; if a sign language can only be taught, where did the first sign language come from?[lvi]

While the answer to the origin of sign language lies outside of the scope of this paper, it can be seen in Plato’s Cratylus, when Socrates proposes that, if lacking a voice or tongue, to make signs with the head, hands, and whole body to try and make things clear, as the deaf do.[lvii] This clearly indicates a use of manual communication on the part of the deaf and gels with modern research that suggests manual communication is the most comfortable and preferred method of communication for the deaf. Yet, especially paired with the earlier sections on pantomime, this does not indicate a complex and full language but an adaption to try and express themselves to hearing people through pantomime. The wider Greek view of this at least can be seen in the Agamemnon when Clytemnestra addresses Cassandra “If you don’t understand my words and they’re not getting through to you, then instead of speaking, express yourself with your barbarian hand.”[lviii]

The final avenue to examine regarding the lives of the deaf in the ancient world is surviving laws regarding them. The deaf were not allowed to hold public office, take legal action with the praetor, become guardians or act as judges; they could inherit, form marriages, and manumit slaves.[lix] While the deaf here maintain some of their rights, they lose many placing them more on the level of other holders of diminished rights, particularly women. This lines up with Kosak’s view of disease and the feminization of men depicted in tragedy.[lx] This instance draws the parallel between literature and real life of the culture of the time. This then raises the question of what deafness did to the social status of women, yet if deaf men are difficult to see in the ancient evidence deaf women are nearly invisible.

The ideas formed about the deaf in the ancient world have had a long lasting impact that persists today. They were unable to connect to their own cultures fully; like Philoctetes they were isolated, an isolation that lasted for centuries. It is little wonder then that they would eventually bond into their own culture, a culture that is centered on their own language that is in some ways a reflection of the ancient Greeks own valuation of language. The Deaf today face many challenges in education and identity that should be addressed in terms of their ethnic culture rather than as an imposed disability from the hearing perspective; a trend that perpetuates the views of the past.

Bibliography

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Bartee, James W., and John E. Meyers. 1992. "Improvements in the Signing Skills of Hearing Parents of Deaf Children." American Annals of the Deaf 137: 257-260.

Batterbury, S.C.E., M. Gulliver, and Paddy Ladd. 2003. "Reassessing Minority Language Empowerment from a Deaf Perspective: The other 32 Languages." Mercator First International Symposium on Minority Languages and Research. Aberystwyth: Mercator, August 04.

Bell, Alexander Graham. 2005. "The Question of Sign Language and the Utility of Signs in the Instruction of the Deaf: Two Papers by Alexander Graham Bell (1898)." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 10: 111-121.

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Dolnick, Edward. 1993. "Deafness as Culture." The Atlantic Monthly 272: 37-53.

Gaustad, M. G., and T. N. Kulwin. 1991. "Predicting Family Communication Choices." American Annals of the Deaf 136: 28-33.

Granger, Herbert. 2000. "Death's Other Kingdom: Heraclitus on the Life of the Foolish and the Wise." Classical Philology 95: 260-281.

Hedberg, Ulf, Harlan Lane, and Richard C Pillard. 2011. The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Hippocrates. 1984. Hippocratic Writings. Edited by G. E. R. Lloyd. Penguin.

—. 1995. Places in Man. Glands. Fleshes. Prorrhetic 1-2. Physician. Use of Liquids. Ulcers. Haemorrhoids and Fistulas. Edited by Paul Potter. Translated by Paul Potter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Rose, Martha L. 2003. The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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Appendix

Figure 1 Votive offering from the temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus.

Figure 2 Illustration from Dolnick's article showing the isolation of deafness.

Figure 3 Mural at Gallaudet University showing the hands, a symbol for sign language, as a liberation and empowerment of the Deaf.

Being Orpheus - Guy Gavriel Kay


What else could he have done?

Her steps were silent on the stone.

He could not speak or turn, he could not

Turn. Could not see if silence

wrapped her rising with him.


The road shrank upwards; light was far away.

Somewhere below, two figures watched in shadow.

But were they watching two ascend, or one?

Were those her footsteps that he could not hear?

Behind him was a god who never stained himself

with mercy. Light was a long way off.

What would he do if in the end

he turned under the sun and was alone?


And somewhere then, behind all mysteries,

where magic had its source, where

sorcery was woven and the gods were born,

a song began. A song of mourning and lament,

of sorrow not assuaged in all the years

that, following, towered into time.

Being Orpheus. A song of loss to break

the hearts of beasts, to break the grip

of earth on stone, to bend the starlight

streaming to the world.


Light was so far ahead it was a prayer,

and the only god who mattered was behind.

He could not speak. Silence was the law

through his contracting universe.

But still there grew a music,

spinning itself down within his making,

in places where he did not know he was.


A lament that was crying for a sorrow yet unborn,

sorrow that might not be unless he turned.

And yet the rocks would break, the trees.


The silence was a weight upon his life.

He could not speak to curse but

knew he had no curse to speak

for he had won. Had turned his eyes

without and walked a world to ending

to stand before a god and sing her back

to life. Being Orpheus. He could not

love her more. Had followed, living,

into ways where life was not.

He could not love her more.


The silence was a weight upon all life.

If he could reach back for her hand,

back to touch her robe, a strand of hair,

If he could know.


And somewhere now there was a song.

With words of loss to gather even Sirens

into stillness and the harrowing of grief,

and a music that had never been before.


A music that had never been before.

Somewhere, twice, the phoenix tried to scream.

There was an agony of silence, a plague.

We turned. There was light. I saw her eyes.


And what choice had been his?

Or ours, who follow after?

None of us could reach behind ourselves,

and when the breaking light came blindingly

how could we not turn, for whom

the sacrifice had long ago been made?


Sacrificed and having sacrificed,

we came into what appeared to be sunshine.

There seemed to be a clearing, trees and rocks.

There was a lyre. And somehow our hands moved,

or seemed to move, and then we sang.


Because there once had been

a song of grief, of mourning and lament,

of sorrow not assuaged in all the years

that, following, towered into time.

Because there once had been

a music that had never been before.

What else could we have done?

Once being Orpheus.

---

[i] I will use the Deaf cultural convention of capitalizing the D when referring either to the Deaf-World culture itself or to a person who is involved in/embraces Deaf culture and using the lowercase d to refer to the condition itself or to a person who is deaf but not involved in Deaf culture.

[ii] Dolnick 1993, 37.

[iii] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 3.

[iv] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 3.

[v] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 3.

[vi] Dolnick 1993, 40.

[vii] Dolnick 1993, 38. Culturally Deaf say no, the deaf would likely say yes, but that is not addressed.

[viii] LSJ sv Βάρβαρος “Not Greek; Barbarian”.

[ix] LSJ sv κωφός “Dull, blunt, obtuse”; ἐνεός “dumb; speechless”.

[x] Laes 2011, 453.

[xi] Laes 2011, 454-455.

[xii] Dr. Alwine, in class discussion.

[xiii] Homer, Iliad II.232-300

[xiv] Homer, Iliad 1.250-284.

[xv] Apollonius, Argonautica 3.133-206.

[xvi] Discussion with Dr. Alwine.

[xvii] Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 182-201 “ἤκουσας ἢ οὐκ ἤκουσας, ἢ κωφῇ λέγω;” here we see the form κωφός is used.

[xviii] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 5.

[xix] Sophocles, Philoctetes 224-230.

[xx] Ovid, Tristia 2.14.43-52.

[xxi] Sophocles, Ajax 430-433.

[xxii] Sophocles, Ajax 1262-1263.

[xxiii] Hippocrates, Internal Affections 18.

[xxiv] Hippocrates, Sacred Disease 11.

[xxv] Hippocrates, Coan Prenotions 186-194, Aphorisms 28, Prorrhetic 1.129.

[xxvi] Hippocrates, Science of Medicine 8.

[xxvii] Hippocrates, Fleshes 18.

[xxviii] Plato, Meno 81c-e.

[xxix] Plato, Theaetetus 206d.

[xxx] Aristotle, On the Soul 402b1, 406b10.

[xxxi] Aristotle, Sense and the Sensible 437a1-15.

[xxxii] “Beautiful and good”

[xxxiii] “Wise and good”

[xxxiv] Can be read at https://ia600302.us.archive.org/22/items/cihm_08831/cihm_08831.pdf.

[xxxv] Bell 2005, 111-113.

[xxxvi] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 4.

[xxxvii] Bartee and Meyers 1992, 257-258.

[xxxviii] Hedberg, Lane and Pillard 2011, 5-13.

[xxxix] Hesiod, Theogeny 790-805.

[xl] Diodorus, Library of History IV.24.3-5.

[xli] Laes 2011, 406.

[xlii] Rose 2010, 72.

[xliii] Peter Kruschwitz 2014. See figure 1 in appendix.

[xliv] Ovid, Metamorphoses X.1-85.

[xlv] See Appendices.

[xlvi] Ovid, Metamorphoses XI.15-18.

[xlvii] Thomas 2010, 197-198.

[xlviii] Laes 2011, 434-435.

[xlix] All references in this paragraph are from Pliny, Natural History XXXV.21.

[l] Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History XIV.4.26 “mutum puerum oblatum sibi suscepit gesticularium”.

[li] Laes 2011, 470.

[lii] Rose 2003, 73.

[liii] All references this paragraph Batterbury, Gulliver and Ladd 2003, 3-4.

[liv] For the description of signs in writing, I have adopted the convention used by Hedberg, Lane and Pillard of capitilization, with hyphens if more than one sign is combined.

[lv] Rose 2003, 74.

[lvi] Rose 2003, 72-73.

[lvii] Plato, Cratylus 422d-e.

[lviii] Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1060-1061.

[lix] Laes 2011, 466-467.

[lx] Kosak 2006, 49-52.