Scopo di questo articolo è gettare luce sul testo di alcuni passi di De beneficiis, De clementia, Apolocyntosis, Dialogi di Seneca e della commedia anonima Querolus sive Aulularia. Una nuova edizione di De beneficiis, De clementia e Apolocyntosis per la Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis verrà a breve pubblicata da R. Kaster e io ho avuto occasione di leggerne una prima bozza. In questo articolo io discuto circa 70 passi di Seneca e 5 del Querolus: per la maggior parte di essi io propongo nuove congetture (la mia conoscenza delle lezioni dei manoscritti è basata sulle edizione esistenti, inclusa quella di Kaster). Per esempio: De ben. 2, 28, 3 al posto di fert si legga fer<a>t; De ben. 5, 4, 2 si aggiunga itaque <bonus>; De ben. 6, 3, 1 si legga <ni>si cito; De ben. 6, 37, 2 non est… pudet deve essere espunto; De ben. 7, 2, 6 al posto di prorsus si legga pronus; De clem. 2, 7, 2 si aggiunga eius <levius>; Apocol. 4, 3 si aggiunga <solito> sonum; De ira 3, 28, 3 al posto di dolor si legga dolus; De ira 3, 13, 7 al posto di tota si legga tuta; Consol. ad Helviam matrem 10, 3 al posto di potest si legga potitur; Querolus sive Aulularia 26 si legga fall<er>is
The article deals with a passage from the prologue of Aristophanes’ Acharnians, vv. 30–31. Close reading of the passage and analyzing each verb of the series in vv. 30–31 shows that the entire series of verbs in Acharnians 30–31 describes Dikaiopolis’ suffering and constitutes the culmination of the woes listed in his monologue. This last and greatest of his woes cannot be mere annoyance at having come first to the Pnyx and not knowing how to kill time. στένω must mean a lament tragic in tone, and κέχηνα intensifies this vocal lament though adding a comic bathos. σκορδινῶμαι does not refer here to drowsy stretching as it is usually interpreted by scholars but to convulsions of rage and despair. πέρδομαι indicates acuteness and intensity of Dikaiopolis’ disappointment; the relationship between σκορδινῶμαι and πέρδομαι is similar to that between στένω and κέχηνα, where the second verb emphasizes and marks the culmination of the first (“I’m moaning so much that my mouth is open wide” and “I’m convulsed to the point of farting”). παρατίλλομαι must mean “to tear out the hair on one’s head”, a gesture that is obviously a sign of sorrow and despair. The verbs γράφω and λογίζομαι describe Dikaiopolis writing out and assessing his debts sitting in the assembly place. The lines that follow are tightly connected to 30–31 and explain the reason for the protagonist’s despair: Dikaiopolis dreams of the countryside and hates the city, but due to the war cannot return to the country (32–33); his hatred of the city is further explained by the enormous expenses city life entails.
This article analyses the role of the prophet Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides in the particular context of sophistic influence. It views the originality of the prophet’s depiction as reflective of Euripides’ creative self-consciousness within an agonistic genre that relied on the malleability of ancient myth, particularly towards the end of tragedy’s “golden era”. Our particular aim is to present the prophet independently of the Sophoсlean background against which Teiresias is often viewed, and as a more complex figure than a (not especially satisfactory) radicalization of his earlier incarnations. The prophet in Bacchae is a liminal figure poised between tragedy and comedy, man and god, male and female, tradition and innovation. As such he parallels many of the “doublings” characteristic of Dionysus himself. The analysis re-examines the extent and nature of the comedy in the early Teiresias–Cadmus–Pentheus scene (170–369) in the context of the most recent scholarship. It then offers a close examination of the so-called sophistic speech by the prophet (266–327) within the framework of contemporary attitudes to sophism and how this has unfairly influenced scholarly perception of Teiresias’s authority as a dramatic character. The argument aims to establish Teiresias’s incarnation as both fifth-century intellectual and representative of traditional values. He thus reflects the tension between old and new in the integration of Dionysiac religion in mythical Thebes