Françoise Letoublon discusses the socio-linguistic distinction between orality and literacy, viewing them as successive stages in human cultural evolution. The boundary between them is marked by the invention of writing, which allowed its permanence. The invention of writing is often found in myths, such as the Greek myth of Cadmus introducing Phoenician letters into Greece. While it is generally assumed that once a culture knows writing, it does not return to orality, Greece provides a counterexample with the loss of Mycenaean script during the Dark Ages. This example highlights the complexity of the orality-literacy transition and the need to avoid simplistic judgments about literacy's value. Orality and literacy are fundamental polarities in ancient societies, not tied to specific dates but to the stage of the society. Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were literate societies long before Greece. The Mycenaean script, which was syllabic, may have been adapted from Linear A for the pre-Greek language of Crete. Literacy does not necessarily affect the whole society; in Antiquity, it was often the domain of a class of scribes, while the general population remained oral. However, when literacy becomes dominant, it brings significant changes in ways of thinking. In classical Greece, three paradoxes of literacy are highlighted: Antigone's paradox, Pindar's paradox, and Socrates' paradox. These figures, living in a literate world, stood for oral speech as the deepest human feature. The Homeric epics exhibit features characteristic of orality, such as catalogues, genealogies, typical scenes and formulas, and similes. These features suggest an oral tradition, with repetitions and formulas serving as key elements of poetic composition. The world of the Homeric epics is full of meaningful objects and places, with different names and meanings for humans and gods. Objects, places, and animals have symbolic significance, often reflecting the cultural and religious values of the time. In the world of literacy, objects lose some of this semantical density, but signs on the skin, such as scars, serve as clear markers of identity. The transition from orality to literacy is marked by a shift in how meaning is conveyed and understood, with oral traditions emphasizing ambiguity and symbolic meaning, while literacy introduces more fixed and defined meanings.Françoise Letoublon discusses the socio-linguistic distinction between orality and literacy, viewing them as successive stages in human cultural evolution. The boundary between them is marked by the invention of writing, which allowed its permanence. The invention of writing is often found in myths, such as the Greek myth of Cadmus introducing Phoenician letters into Greece. While it is generally assumed that once a culture knows writing, it does not return to orality, Greece provides a counterexample with the loss of Mycenaean script during the Dark Ages. This example highlights the complexity of the orality-literacy transition and the need to avoid simplistic judgments about literacy's value. Orality and literacy are fundamental polarities in ancient societies, not tied to specific dates but to the stage of the society. Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were literate societies long before Greece. The Mycenaean script, which was syllabic, may have been adapted from Linear A for the pre-Greek language of Crete. Literacy does not necessarily affect the whole society; in Antiquity, it was often the domain of a class of scribes, while the general population remained oral. However, when literacy becomes dominant, it brings significant changes in ways of thinking. In classical Greece, three paradoxes of literacy are highlighted: Antigone's paradox, Pindar's paradox, and Socrates' paradox. These figures, living in a literate world, stood for oral speech as the deepest human feature. The Homeric epics exhibit features characteristic of orality, such as catalogues, genealogies, typical scenes and formulas, and similes. These features suggest an oral tradition, with repetitions and formulas serving as key elements of poetic composition. The world of the Homeric epics is full of meaningful objects and places, with different names and meanings for humans and gods. Objects, places, and animals have symbolic significance, often reflecting the cultural and religious values of the time. In the world of literacy, objects lose some of this semantical density, but signs on the skin, such as scars, serve as clear markers of identity. The transition from orality to literacy is marked by a shift in how meaning is conveyed and understood, with oral traditions emphasizing ambiguity and symbolic meaning, while literacy introduces more fixed and defined meanings.