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.

This article is a preliminary semantic and etymological study of a selection of terms – from fake synonyms and speaking names to thoroughly Christianized and/or Platonizing reclaims of the epic vocabulary – from the I HC and the II HC and its aim is twofold: on the one hand, it focuses on a selection of key semantic variations that result from the Christian semantic reception of archaic vocabulary and especially interpretations featuring in philological works, such as commentaries, scholia, and dictionaries; on the other hand, the analysis shows the influence of biblical exegesis in understanding the re-semanticized Homeric vocabulary in return and this was employed so as to further the existing Christian interpretation. The analysis concludes that by the fifth century the interpretation of the Bible through biblical classicizing poetry reveals a strikingly positive stance towards the Homeric text as a cultural authority useful also for Christian exegesis.

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.

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 paper deals with etymological wordplays on proper names in late antique metrical inscriptions, discussing some select examples from the 3rd to the 6th century AD, of both funerary and honorary epigrams. In most of the texts etymological puns on proper names are usually quite ‘easy’ to detect, but there are examples of more sophisticated wordplays that require a higher level of engagement from the reader. Their presence is a further evidence that metrical inscriptions were meant also to be read. If the targeted audience were primarily cultivated people, performative reading (perhaps accompanied by on-the-spot exegesis) probably also enabled less educated groups to appreciate etymological wordplays, which were after all extremely popular in antiquity.