Oracles and etymologies or when Aeschylus goes to extremes
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Tsantsanoglou Kyriakos
Abstract: Aesch. Sept. 576–579, from the Messenger report on the mantis Amphiaraus in the scene of the seven pairs of speeches, is one of the most puzzling passages of Aeschylus, in which the poet, as he is speaking about a mantis and is partly reproducing his words, makes use of the cunning contrivances of the oracular language; a language that is not in principle so remote from the poetic language, but, at least as Aeschylus applies it, is more abstruse and arcane, sometimes reaching to extremes. Within this framework, the present paper attempts to construct the intricate period, to interpret the enigmatic words, to approach the poetic etymologies and to associate them with the myth. In addition, some more passages reproducing oracular language in Aeschylus are examined and interpreted, mainly in the oracle of Calchas and the utterances of Cassandra in Agamemnon.
© De Gruyter 2013
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Coordinated sequences of analogous topics in the Delian and Pythian segments of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
- Od. 3, 392 and Theoc. 7, 147: a case of interpretatio Homerica
- Typhon and Eumelus’ Titanomachy
- Oracles and etymologies or when Aeschylus goes to extremes
- Divine names in the Derveni papyrus and Mesopotamian hermeneutics
- Victory, Mythology and the Poetics of Intercultural Praise in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices
- Aristotle, Eratosthenes and the beginnings of Alexandrian scholarship on the Archaia
- Levels of authorial presence in Anonymus Londiniensis (P.Brit. Libr. inv. 137)
- Beyond Impotence Some unexplored Ovidian dynamics in Petronius’s sketch of the Croton episode (Satyrica 126. 1–140. 12)
- List of Contributors
- Statement
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Coordinated sequences of analogous topics in the Delian and Pythian segments of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
- Od. 3, 392 and Theoc. 7, 147: a case of interpretatio Homerica
- Typhon and Eumelus’ Titanomachy
- Oracles and etymologies or when Aeschylus goes to extremes
- Divine names in the Derveni papyrus and Mesopotamian hermeneutics
- Victory, Mythology and the Poetics of Intercultural Praise in Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices
- Aristotle, Eratosthenes and the beginnings of Alexandrian scholarship on the Archaia
- Levels of authorial presence in Anonymus Londiniensis (P.Brit. Libr. inv. 137)
- Beyond Impotence Some unexplored Ovidian dynamics in Petronius’s sketch of the Croton episode (Satyrica 126. 1–140. 12)
- List of Contributors
- Statement
