ELECTRUM * Vol. 22 (2015): 87–106 doi: 10.4467/20800909EL.15.004.3942 www.ejournals.eu/electrum ὉΜΟΓΛΣΣΟΙ ΠǹΡᾺ ΜΙΚΡΟΝ? Antonio Panaino Università di Bologna, Ravenna Abstract: This article analyses the historical and linguistic implications that emerge from a very famous passage preserved by Strabo (XV, 2, 8 [C 724]), but probably belonging to Eratosthenes’ Geographika, which states that Persians, Medes, Bactrians and Sogdians would “speak approxi- mately the same language, with but slight variations” (İἰıὶ ΰΪλ μ εαὶ ὁηΰζIJIJδ αλὰ ηδελθ). This assumption is untenable, because even before Eratosthenes’ time the Iranian languages were well distinguished. The suggested homoglossia should be explained in political terms, as the result of a practical diffusion of a variety of Old Persian in the army and in the satrapal administration. In the framework of a socio-linguistic and ethno-linguistic analysis of the historical situation at- tested in the Persian Empire, this study also tackles the problem of the meaning to be attributed to the word arya- in a linguistic context, as that of § 70 of Bisutun inscription. This terminology is discussed not only in connection with the one attested in the recently discovered Rabatak Inscrip- tion, but also with the documentation preserved in the Khotanese Book of Zambasta 23, 4–5, and – outside of the strictly Iranian milieu – in the Aitareya Ɩraṇyaka III, 2, 5. With regard to the frequently claimed homoglossia, this study concludes that any description of the linguistic semi-unity of the Iranian ethne, or only of the North-Eastern Iranian ones, is a dream, and, as far as we know about the linguistic history of these peoples, not only a conclusion insufficiently grounded, but a highly improbable linguistic mirage. A “permafrosted” Irano-Aryan still spoken by all the Iranians as a sort of “Esperanto” ante litteram has no historical basis, nor does the idea that arya- was the name of a still preserved “common language,” if this expression should be interpreted as a surviving unifying archaic jargon of all the Iranians (and not a practi- cal Western Iranian koiné, imposed by the Old Persian authorities as a comfortable medium). The “Aryan” linguistic identity thus assumed other, fully historical, implications, although it was based on a tradition, partly original and derived by an ancestral cultural heritage, partly invented, especially in its socio-linguistic and sociopolitical implications, as normally happens when power and its legitimacy are strongly involved. Key words: Multilingualism and communication, Iranian languages, Achaemenian Empire, Sog- dian and Bactrian, “Aryan” languages, glottonyms.