Ex Oriente grammata. L’origine dell’alfabeto greco nel dibattito antico sull’analogia

In the ancient Greek world the awareness is attested that the alphabet has a non autochthonous origin and in many cases the idea is documented, sometime expressedin mythical terms, of its Phoenician provenance, which corresponds to the most recent acquisitions of the research. Through an investigation in the scholia to the Techne grammatike attributed to Dionysius Thrax, in Georgius Choeroboscus and Varro, the article reconstructs the role played by this belief in a discussion involving Aristarchus of Samothrace and Crates of Mallus and apparently dealing with the applicability and validity of the criterion of analogy to determinethe linguisticcorrectness, in a phase that turns out to be crucial for early studies on the languagein the Hellenistic age.