19. Incontri di filologia classica (2019-2020)

Gli Incontri di filologia classica (INCF) sono una rivista scientifica internazionale a cadenza annuale. Nata per accogliere le relazioni discusse da studiosi appositamente invitati all’interno dei seminari che si tenevano presso l’Università di Trieste (da qui il titolo Incontri triestini di filologia classica, conservato fino al volume IX), la rivista pubblica, previa valutazione, contributi inviati alla redazione e/o discussi nell’ambito di incontri scientifici in Italia e all’estero.

The origins of law coincide with the origins of language, as both Plato and Horace highlight. Thus, a systematic attempt to discover the etymological roots of words simultaneously reveals the source of legality. The article examines the etymological doctrina (‘learning’) of poets vis-à-vis the etymological reasoning of learned jurists. The Twelve Tables, Catullus, and Labeo engage in similar etymological pursuits. Ovid’s Byblis responds to Labeo’s etymologies. The jurist Ulpian echoes the poetics of Latin love elegy. Lawyers and poets meet on the common ground of etymology in their attempts to lay down the law.

This paper discusses the use of the word γλίσχρος (‘sticky’), which Platonists use to disqualify certain, mostly Stoic, etymologies. I argue that the expression derives from Plato Crat. 435c, a passage in which Socrates sets out a theory of word formation that informs Stoic etymologies. I furthermore suggest that when Neoplatonists use γλίσχρος to reject certain interpretations of Plato’s texts as misguided, this is because these interpretations are reminiscent of Stoic exegetical practices.

In the late Latin world, a crucial role in using etymology and in providing us information about etymologizing (and the general debate around this topic) is played by grammarians, commentators, teachers, mythographers, encyclopaedists, Neoplatonists, Christian apologists and writers, who developed these issues and whose influence on later approaches was enormous. Focusing on the etymology of Saturnus, the paper deals with the scope and purposes of etymologizing in late Latin authors.

The aim of this contribution is to offer an essay that investigates the different ways in which Maximus plays in his astrological poem with the (presumed) origin of the words used by him or with their meaning. We will first see how our astrologer is able to put etymology at the service of the composition of his predictions; then how he exploits the semantic ambiguity of certain terms, not only to show off his erudition, but also to make his poem more in keeping with the dictates of astrological literature; finally, how he implicitly succeeds in establishing what is for him the correct interpretation of a word susceptible to different and conflicting readings.