Il particolarismo grafico nelle testimonianze papiracee: una nuova riflessione

A comparative inquiry on papyri reveals the existence of differences in Greek and Latin scripts due to the fact that manuscripts were produced in different areas. Since the introduction of writing, Greek world has known differences of this kind, overcome during the Hellenistic period, and which occurred again in Late Antiquity, in new forms, mainly because of the outcrop of local substrates in areas that were deeply, yet not fully, hellenized, like Egypt and Syria. In the world of the Latin writings this phaenomenon, not previously attested, appears at the end of Antiquity, and has features which are partly similar (out-crop of pre-Latin substrates), partly different (the continuity of use of Latin script in germanized areas). Thus, this analysis allows to see graphic particularism under a new perspective: it is not only exclusive of Early Latin Middle Age, but even-during in the history of writing in the West.