Thesis title: Lingue e alfabeti dell’Italia antica - Edizione digitale e studio dei testi oschi in caratteri greci.
This research offers an updated edition and a systematic study of the Oscan inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet, a small corpus of extraordinary value for the understanding of linguistic and cultural contacts between the Italic peoples and the Greek world in southern Italy. The corpus comprises about 150 epigraphic testimonies, dating from the 6th to the 1st century BCE, which document not only a phenomenon of linguistic interference but also a broader process of cultural interaction and identity formation.
The work is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses on the graphematic and phonological analysis of the inscriptions, with the aim of reconstructing how the Oscan language adapted to the Greek alphabetic system. Through a detailed examination of the graphic signs and phonological correspondences, it seeks to identify patterns of continuity and discontinuity with respect to the Hellenic alphabetic tradition and, at the same time, to outline the structural features of the Oscan phonological system. This section also includes a broader reflection on the processes of bilingualism and diglossia, understood as indicators of the complex network of socio-cultural relations between Oscan-speaking communities and the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia.
The second part presents the critical edition of the Oscan inscriptions in the Greek alphabet from Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily. Each text is accompanied by a transcription, translation, linguistic commentary, and historical-cultural interpretation. In this context, several chronological, linguistic, and interpretative issues have been re-examined through direct verification of the autopsy reports and the available photographic material, in order to provide a philologically sound and up-to-date edition of the corpus.
Although limited in number, the Oscan-Greek inscriptions constitute a privileged vantage point for studying the fusion of two cultures: the adoption of the Greek alphabet by Oscan-speaking communities is not interpreted as a mere case of graphic transfer, but rather as the reflection of a complex process of linguistic and cultural mediation, in which writing becomes a means of expressing the multifaceted identity of the Italic peoples of southern Italy.