Lo spazio, lo sguardo, la voce

A good example of literature’s power to continuously rewrite geographic space by renewing inherited paradigms could be found in Prudentius’ Peristephanon, which provides a sort of re-mapping of the Western landscape in a martyrial perspective. My paper focuses in particular on the narration of Cassian’s martyrdom, providing a new in-depth analysis of Peristephanon IX. Firstly, the poet claims possession of the martyr’s place, Forum Cornelii, by dismissing its pagan past; then, in the ekphrasis of the fresco depicting the martyr, he enacts a complex itinerary of the gaze and elaborates a complex retractatio of the description of Juno’s temple of Verg. Aen. 1.446-465; finally, the introduction of a second-degree narrator provides an authoritative interpretation of the image, leading to appropriate devotion to the saint. The poem, thus, provides both an interesting example of integrated intermediality, and a reflection on the hermeneutical risks of unmediated viewing in a Christian scopic regime.

Moreschini. Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism

Review of Moreschini, A. (2019). Apuleius and the Metamorphoses of Platonism. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015, 420 pp.

La lunga vita di un εἴδωλον

The essay reconsiders the well-known problem of the platonic interpretations of Od. 11.601-603, concerning Heracles’ εἴδωλον. Starting with a detailed description of the interpretive problems traditionally raised by the Homeric passage, the article provides an accurate analysis of Plutarch’s and Plotin’s different approaches to Heracles’ myth and to the eschatological concepts involved. The common rationalising surface hides deep conflicts inside the Platonic tradition. The cultural appropriation of the Homeric texts depends therefore to a large extent on the deliberate manipulation and misunderstanding of its original meaning.

Aeschylus’ Satyr-Play Heralds

This paper attempts a reconstruction of Aeschylus’ satyr-play Heralds. As the myth of Erginus’ heralds and their mutilation by Heracles is shown to be unconvincing on many grounds, it explores the possibility that the satyrs turned up or out as ‘heralds’, i.e. ‘sacrifice attendants’, in the Eleusinian preliminary sacrifice, sought by Heracles (polluted by the slaughter of the Centaurs) before his descent to Hades. To complete this conjectural picture, the potential topicality of such a plot is emphasised in relation to the genos of Ceryces and of Callias (II), who in the 480s was able to avoid ostracism. Moreover, a tragic trilogy is conjecturally set out as revolving around Ixion’s marriage, crime, purification, sacrilege, and around his son Pirithous (stepbrother to the Centaurs) joining the Calydonian boar hunt and thus having to do with Meleager (a figure linked, in many ways, to Heracles). As to topicality, it is suggested that the trilogy would thus cast a negative light on Thessaly. Finally, Aristophanes’ Clouds may contain allusions to this (hypothetical) tetralogy, and the so-called Dike-fragment may belong to Heralds.

Storie di Linceo

The article reviews the testimonies on Lynceus, son of Aphareus, a ‘minor’ Greek hero, renowned in Antiquity for his extraordinarily penetrating gaze. I focus on the characteristics attributed to this superpower (vision from afar and through solid surfaces) and the areas in which it operates (heroic combat, navigation, art of discovering veins of ore). Through the analysis of the texts, I try to bring out some important cultural models, connected in the mythical narrative with the ὀξυδερκία: since this topic is widespread in the international oral tradition, I found it useful to compare literary data with folklore parallels. In order to grasp further facets of this phenomenon, the case of Lynceus is considered against the background of other characters with extraordinarily sharp eyesight (be it gods, heroes or animals), to finally trace in the Grimm’s fairy tale nr. 71 a significant moment of the motif’s fortune outside classical Greece.

Riflessione filosofica e linguaggio poetico nell’Orfeo boeziano (cons. 3 carm. 12)

The Neoplatonic thought on the illusory nature of earthly goods and on the soul’s enslavement to the passions pervades the incisive images of Boethius’ Orpheus poem, especially through an accurate use of lexicon.

Henrichs. Greek Myth and Religion

Review of Henrichs, A. (2019). Collected Papers. Vol. 2, Greek Myth and Religion. Edited by H. Yunis. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 606 pp.

Tra militia e amor: il nesso castra sequi nella poesia erotico-elegiaca

The paper contextualises the occurrences of the iunctura castra sequi in three elegiac Latin poems (Prop. 2.10.19, Tib. 2.6.1 and Ov. am. 3.8.26), with the addition of two further passages (Verg. ecl. 10.23 and Lucan. 2.348): these latter ones, indeed, though belonging to different eidetic contexts, exhibit important links to characteristically elegiac topoi. In all of the passages under consideration, castra sequi reveals itself, so to say, as a marker of the crucial dichotomy between love and war, militia and amor, which can only find some sort of recomposition via the metaphorical plexus of militia amoris.

Did Gorgias Coin Rhetorike?

Thirty years after E. Schiappa’s self-styled ‘coining-of-rhetorike thesis’, the assumption that rhetorike was invented by Plato in Gorgias (448d) is meeting with increasing consensus; yet the foundations of the ‘revised’ approach, besides contrasting with Aristotle’s narrative and all our ancient sources, have never been examined in detail. Indeed, Plato’s Gorgias is our main evidence to the contrary, since an unbiased reading of the dialogue very clearly points to the sophist from Leontini as the teacher who first ‘disciplined’ rhetoric and coined rhetorike. It is my aim to put Gorgias in context, and to reconsider in a different light both his relationship with the earlier logon techne and his statements about speech in Helen. The new discipline’s powerful impact on contemporary politics seriously alarmed Plato, fuelling his attack against the sophist’s school. Once we put Gorgias back in place, the absence of rhetorike in fifth-century texts is no longer an anomaly, and the missing word is readily found where it might be expected to appear.