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Magnelli, Enrico

Teodoro Prodromo, Rhod. Dos. 9.201 : critica testuale ed esegesi

2023 - LYSA Publishers

P. 429-445

  • In the much disputed sixth line of the hexameter oracle inserted by Theodore Prodromus in his novel Rhodanthe and Dosicles (9.196-204), one should consider the possibility of reading e léfsete, a minimal alteration of the transmitted text. A detailed analysis of the evidence shows that Byzantine poets and learned men admitted the existence of léfso as future tense of léfsso. This accounts for the mistake of Strato, Rhodanthe's old father, who reads eléfsete, an alleged future of eléftho, in the written text of the oracle instead of é léfsete: such a reading, together with the addition of an undeserved punctuation (a kind of awkward metacharaktirismós), leads him to utterly misunderstand the god's words. In other words, in this passage Theodore Prodromus appears to make fun not only of the Byzantine obsession with oracles, but also of but also of some of his contemporaries, who were not so skilled in interpreting ancient texts written in capital letters and in scriptio continua.
  • Finally, brief remarks are added on lines 222-24, where Lysippus, Strato's son's father-in-law, also proves not very clever in understanding Apollo's hexameters. [Publisher's text]

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Virtute vir tutus : studi di letteratura greca, bizantina e umanistica, offerti a Enrico V. Maltese. - ( Colibri ; 4)