“Doni sonori e intelligenti”. Le tradizioni mitiche sull’origine della scrittura tra Grecia e Roma (VI a.C. - II d.C.)

This study delves into mythical narratives about the origins of writing, as documented in Greek and Latin literary sources from the sixth century BCE to the second century CE. Its primary goal is to recon-struct the earliest stages in the extensive history of reflection on writing by exploring how Greek and Ro-man authors conceptualized this technology. To achieve this, the research involves collecting, translating, and systematically organizing the relevant sources into a coherent corpus. This corpus serves as a cultural archive, facilitating the identification of distinct lines of thought and the reconstruction of the various metascriptural conceptions embedded within them.
This study, grounded in the methodological framework of the historical anthropology, aims to chal-lenge the prevalent belief that antiquity merely holds embryonic ideas about writing, which only later ma-tured in modern scholarship. While certain continuities can indeed be identified, the evidence shows that reflections on writing from Archaic Greece to Imperial Rome do not form a seamless intellectual path lead-ing to the nineteenth century. Instead, the sources reveal a diversity of perspectives—often varied and sometimes conflicting with the dominant paradigms that have shaped modern understandings of writing.
Alongside the reconstruction of these early reflections, the study also aims to contribute to the broader rethinking of writing that has taken place since the late twentieth century. Mythic narratives of the origin of writing, understood as culturally situated forms through which shared knowledge is articulated and transmitted, prove particularly valuable in this respect. On the one hand, they allow us to trace, albeit indi-rectly, how ancient societies conceptualized the nature, function, and significance of writing. On the other, they invite a critical reassessment of our own assumptions by confronting us with alternative frameworks of thought. In this sense, the encounter with ancient representations of writing operates as a productive form of estrangement, unsettling familiar categories and opening new perspectives on a technology that remains central to human cultures.