THE CENSORSHIP IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

A CRITICAL REFLECTION

Abstract

This article analyzes censorship in Antiquity through its relationship with practices of selection, preservation, and control of written memory. It begins from the hypothesis that ancient censorship should not be understood merely as episodic repression directed at authors or works, but rather as the expression of a broader curatorial rationality responsible for defining which discourses could circulate, which should be corrected, and which would be excluded from the formative horizon of the community. To this end, the article examines philosophical, pedagogical, legal, and political manifestations of the Hellenic world, with special attention to the criticisms directed at poets and poetry by thinkers such as Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Plato, Plutarch, and Aristotle. It demonstrates that, in this context, the poetic word was perceived as a force capable of shaping beliefs, affects, and conduct, which is why it was subjected to moral, religious, and political criteria of surveillance. It concludes that censorship, far from constituting a simple negation of written culture, reveals one of its constitutive dimensions. Every policy of conservation implies choices, hierarchies, and exclusions, so that the formation of collections, canons, and traditions always takes place amid disputes over memory, authority, and oblivion.