Introduzione generale: stirpi, gruppi dialettali e lingue letterarie; la fonologia del greco e le sue radici idioeuropee; alfabeti locali, testi arcaici, edizioni ellenistiche.

This is a general introduction to a handbook dealing with the different Greek literary languages: it offers an updated treatment over a number of problems related to the Greek dialects and their Indo-European roots. The linguistic approach is updated (traditionally the linguistic problems of Ancient Greek are described in very old-fashioned terms that are now unacceptable); special attention is devoted to problems of writing (there were many archaic alphabets in Ancient Greece) and to the editorial problems of literary texts. My introduction ends at page 96; the rest has been written by some pupils of mine.