This project studies the reception of a ‘Denkform’ from classical antiquity: the notion that there is a natural ‘transfer’ or succession from one culture to the other (the so-called translatio). In antiquity, authoritative schemes of translatio were, e.g., the translatio studii (transfer of intellectual culture or learning) from Greece to Rome, or that of the translatio imperii (transfer of empire) from Troy to Rome. In Early Modern (Neo-Latin) literature this same notion of ‘transfer’ was employed in order to legitimize innovative shifts of power or learning.