Actually Athenian culture was pretty thoroughly oral. In the
5th century oral contracts only were binding, written contracts
having no force of law. Plato says somewhere that his central
doctrines cannot be expressed in writing but only in speech.
Scholars still debate whether Homer even knew how to read
or write, and in any case writing would only be used as
a sort of aid, with major "composition" probably going on orally.
If you consider the writing technology available even into the
19th century you can see why writers would have to do a lot
of the work in their head or by mumbling to themselves rather
than by writing.
Carrol
