giovanni cerri

From immemorial time, many Tyrrhenian places of ancient Sicily and Italy were identified (also by the local people) with the main stages of the return of Ulysses (Cyclopes, Aeolus, Circe, etc.). Some Hellenistic critics (for example Aristarchus and Polybius) assumed that it was from the various ancient and pre-Homeric myths that Homer drew inspiration, in the same way that he did with the myth of the Trojan War, which certainly occurred before him. Thus, the voyage of Ulysses, after his losing the course because of the storm at Cape Malea, had to be located in those sites. But how can one explain the fact that Homer places the voyage from Circe to the Hades over the Ocean? Is it only a pseudogeographic poetic touch, aimed to magnify the exploit? Crates of Mallus did not think so: in his opinion, only some of the numerous adventures had taken place in the Tyrrhenian Sea, whereas Homer had purposefully placed some other exactly on the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (th...

The essay considers synthetically the passages of Hesiod’s Theogony concerning Khaos, Gaia, Uranòs, and Tàrtaros as describing the cosmic structure at its very beginning and at its present state. The final result of the cosmogenetic process consists of three solid parallel disks of equal size separated from one another by the space of Khaos/Aèr. The whole structure is conceived of as an ideal cylinder (ideal because it has no real lateral walls), whose superior base is Uranòs (the Sky), the inferior one is Tàrtaros (the Hell) and the median section is Gaia (the Earth), dividing the whole cylinder into two high semicylinders full of Khaos/Aèr. From this Khaos/Aèr, the primal Four Elements (earth, water, misty air and fire) derive, as plants do from their roots, from which all other substances of the universe originate in turn. Thus, Khaos is arkhè (the ‘beginning’) not only in the chronological-historical sense, but also in the sense of an eternal generative substance of all things. ...

The essay offers a full reconstruction of the ancient Antigone myth at Thebes compared to Sophocles’ dramatic adaptation. In the Cyclic Thebaid and in Pindar’s odes an attitude of pious benevolence by the vi- ctorious Thebans towards the defeated Argives emerges with regards to the latter’s funeral honours for their dead. However, the mytheme of Polyneikes’ denied burial for high treason is not an invention of six- th-century Athenian propaganda. Actually, on account of Pausanias’ te- stimony, it can be argued that the myth of Polyneikes’ burial ban and Antigone’s ensuing rebellion were an integral part of the Theban myth, even though the outcome of the incident must not have been as lethal as it is in Sophocles’ Antigone. In that play, the narrative variant is introdu- ced to serve the dramaturgical project: its function was to point out the antinomy between ‘unwritten law’ and ordinary legislation, which was alive and well in the Athens of Sophocles’ time.

The author deepens the comparison between Lucr. 1, 21 and Parm. B 12, 3 D.-K., going beyond the two single verses already confronted by some modern critics out of their poetic contexts, and takes into account the whole structure of the two poems On Nature.

A report, widely diffused in the ancient world, but, as we shall see, little credited since, records that Leucippus was the teacher of Democritus. Diogenes Laertius, while narrating the life of Epicurus, made the following remark in passing: 1 … ὃν [scil. Λεύκιππον] ἔνιοί φασιν, καὶ Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Ἐπικούρειος, διδάσκαλον Δημοκρί-του γεγενῆσθαι.

After a brief reconsideration of the term sophia in archaic Greek, the essay focuses on the expression tò sophón, which recurs several times in Heraclitus’ fragments, with a constant meaning: the objective intelligence which governs the cosmos, granting its fundamental unity, and, at the same time, the correct intellection of it by the human mind. The Heraclitaean expression is polemically employed again by Epicharmus and by Euripides’ Bacchae; then expanded in a complex argument in Plato’s Philebus.

‘Pascoli e l’ultimo viaggio di Ulisse’, in AA.VV., Omero mediatico. Aspetti della ricezione omerica nella civiltà contemporanea, Atti delle Giornate di Studio, Ravenna, 18-19 gennaio 2006, a cura di E.  Cavallini, Bologna 2007, pp. 15-31; 20102, pp. 47-66.