Textualizing Athens: the Eion Herms between history and neuroscience

This paper investigates the Herms of Eion with their inscribed epigrams, a fascinating document (ca. 477–476) which testifies to an early Athenian interest in textualization. This case study will serve as a vehicle for exploring key issues of textualization and literacy in general, in dialogue with recent findings in the field of neuroscience. The paper intersects a cognitivist approach to literacy, introducing some of the main results of the recent “science of reading,” a branch of neuroscience which in the last decade has yielded fertile results on the subject. It is argued that the interface between written and oral is most apparent in the textualization strategy of the Herms, which presents the double nature of hermaic monument and epigram. In this respect, the paper will propose a view of the Herms as a semiotic device that combines the memorializing function of writing with the oral inspiration of a speaking statue.