Že ko odpremo antologijo Vpletel bom belo vijolico, v kateri mag. Jelena Isak Kres predstavlja 124 epigramov štiriintridesetih abecedno razvrščenih avtorjev iz helenističnega obdobja grške ...književnosti, opazimo, da se uvršča med študioznejše izdaje v Logosovi zbirki Poezije, kar se za gradivo iz časa aleksandrijskih filologov tudi spodobi.
ALKAJ iz Mesene (ok. 200 pr. n. št.) Kdo te, ujetnik, tako brezbožno je vklenil v okovje, kdo ti je roki trdno zvezal za hrbtom navzkriž in zasnoval tvoj obraz ves umazan? Kje lok je okretni, fantek, ...kje trpki je tul, poln plamenečih puščic? Tisti kipar, ki je tebe, ki vnemaš s strastjo še bogove, v takole past prignal, ta se je mučil zaman. (AG 16.196)
Od leta 2004 dalje v slovenski prevodni književnosti spremljamo postopno zapolnjevanje bele lise, ki jo je do nedavnega predstavljal Plutarhov opus Moralia oz. grško Ethika, Etični spisi – zbirka 78 ...poljudnih in strokovnih razprav z najrazličnejšo tematiko od filozofije do naravoslovja (med njimi je tudi nekaj nepristnih).
Prokleon, osrednji junak komedije, je zaljubljen v sodišča in odvisen od vloge, ki jo ima kot atenski sodnik. To seveda pomeni – kot pove že njegovo ime – da je simpatizer zloglasnega atenskega ...politika Kleona, vodje radikalne struje, ki atenske sodnike, po večini revne starce, ki se preživljajo s sodniško dnevnico, posebej goreče ≫zalaga≪ s sodbami zoper svoje politične nasprotnike. Sporno ravnanje Kleona in njemu podobnih politikantov je dobro znano Prokleonovemu sinu Antikleonu, ki si bolj od vsega želi, da bi se njegov oče ozdravil obsedenosti s sodišči. Zato mu kar v udobju lastnega doma organizira improvizirano sodišče: Prokleon si tako lahko med sojenjem pogasi žejo z juho iz leče (pri čemer posodi za zajemanje priročno služita za glasovalni žari), pri roki ima nočno posodo, družbo pa mu dela petelin v kletki, ki naj bi ga zbudil, če bi slučajno zaspal med govorom obrambe.
Hecuba (Hekabe), once considered one of Euripides’ most successful tragedies - iure principem locum tenet, ‘it deservedly holds the pride of place’, according to its Renaissance editor - was ...relegated to the margins of literary attention by the scathing judgments of Romantic critics, who found fault with - among other things - its bipartite structure. It did not make its comeback until the 20th century, when it was identified as an ‘absolute tragedy’, possibly the darkest of the preserved Euripidean plays. Contemporary scholarship notes that the action of Hecuba is subtly welded together by the heroine’s search for justice, while the world around her neglects the basic postulates of Greek ethics, ordered by the reciprocity principle - concepts such as ξενία, ‘hospitality shown to a guest’, αἰδώς, a difficult term to translate, denoting ‘shame’, ‘reverence’, or ‘awe’, χάρις, ‘gratitude’ or ‘favour’, and ἱκετεία, ‘supplication’. Realising that nobody will help her obtain justice, Hecuba decides to find it on her own, taking brutal revenge on the ‘head-for-an-eye’ principle. While still acceptable by Athenian standards, this revenge finally makes the former Trojan queen more callous even than her tormentors having lost all she had, she loses herself as well.
Članek se osredotoča na dve sodobni umetniški interpretaciji mita o Antigoni: na film Katin poljskega cineasta Andrzeja Wajde (2007), ki govori o tragičnih medvojnih dogodkih v Katinskem gozdu, in ...dramsko besedilo Antigona Dominika Smoleta (1960), ki je bilo interpretirano kot implicitna navezava na slovenske bratomorne povojne poboje. Članek analizira, kako oba avtorja pristopata do poglavitne antične reference, Sofoklove tragedije Antigona, in se sprašuje, kakšno vlogo ima mit v dveh delih s primerljivo zgodovinsko tematiko, ki sta nastali v dveh različnih obdobjih.
The paper considers the perception of metals such as gold, silver, bronze and iron in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, composed around late 8th or early 7th century BC. An analysis reveals that ...gold appears exclusively as an attribute of the gods. Only gods wear objects of gold and their works are golden, too; indeed, they are described as golden themselves. Arguably this metal not only serves as a metaphor for the quality of the immortal and unreachable gods, i.e. Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hera, Zeus and Apollo, but also appears in the ‘distant territories of the divine cosmos’ – golden is Triton’s palace, golden are the apples guarded by a horrible snake on the edge of the earth. Hesiod’s golden race, the first mortal race, excellent in all aspects, free of troubles and hard work, is, significantly, also closest to the gods. The silver race, created after the golden one, is inferior to the first just as silver is less precious than gold. Hardly ever mentioned in Hesiod’s poems, this metal is omitted from descriptions of jewellery or weapons. What is described as silver are river whirlpools, the colossal pillars of the underworld, and the feet of the nymph Thetis. A possible interpretation is that all these objects are untamed and unreachable, similar to gold but not divine anymore. After the silver race, the gods create the bronze race. This is a race of violent giants, fierce and strong, who are born from the ash tree. Bronze is therefore even farther from the divine: it is human. Moreover, it is the first alloy, and the manufacture of bronze objects demands much more knowledge and skill in comparison with gold and silver. Hesiod uses bronze as a synonym for all that is hard and strong in both poems – bronze is the material of the anvil, of the high walls, door, and doorstep which hold back the Titans in Tartarus, and of the arms carried by Memnon and Heracles. The only race not associated with metals is the race of heroes, exempted in this respect from the progressive devaluation. The fifth and last race is the iron race, to which the poet himself belongs. It is described as beset by the sorrow, hard work and cares sent by the gods. Made of iron are mostly tools and weapons; iron is the soul of Death, hard and heartless. With iron, the worst of all metals, the cycle of devaluation is complete. However, archaeological investigations present a somewhat different picture. In the early Iron Age, i.e. contemporary with the two Hesiodic poems, iron ultimately prevails in the territory of today’s Europe. Yet it is not used only to produce weapons and tools – this period reveals a rapid increase in iron jewellery as well. The abundance of the latter shows that iron was not only new but even fashionable, despite being unsuitable for the making of jewellery. In fact, it may have been prized more than gold itself in this period. Why, then, does the poet characterise the iron race as the worst, despite all the advantages brought by this metal? Simply because iron is the material supplying tools and weapons, which are used in labour and warfare respectively. In the golden age, by contrast, men lived in peace, leisure, and opulence like the immortal gods. Innovation and technological progress, such as the knowledge of iron and its techniques, are not perceived to contribute to tranquillity and prosperity; rather, they are associated with harrowing work and war.
Aeschylus’ Persians has caused many quandaries and divergences in interpretation, both in terms of its exceptional (historical) subject-matter and of the author’s true purpose, that is, the function ...of the play. While reading works of antiquity through the cultural lens of our own age is unavoidable and may prove fruitful, it can only carry weight if it takes into account a basic hermeneutic principle, that is, if it includes a reflection on the interpreter’s own starting-points, shedding light on their relativity. The oldest preserved work of European drama is generally interpreted within cultural and political horizons as defined by modern epistemic concepts, while its religious dimension passes unnoticed, although it should not be neglected – not only because of the general cultic framework which determined the original “hermeneutics” of tragedies, but also because of the text itself. This conceptually conditioned neglect of the “non-negligible” is described by the author horizon. Moreover, springing from a shift in self-understanding, and consequently in understanding history and culture, rather than from an inherent logic of science, these changes are largely perceived as an expression of the prevailing zeitgeist. A different reading is suggested – one based on a religious interpretive horizon, where clarifications and interpretive shifts, sprung from a different understanding of the social and cultural context, may significantly affect the perception of the work as a whole, without reducing it to what is meaningful solely within a delimited culturological and sociological horizon. After surveying the traditional dilemmas of literary history (the framework of tetralogy, dramaturgical structure, critical opinions on the effectiveness and artistic merit of the play), the paper addresses the Persians’ association with, or even dependence on, factual history: the events portrayed (at times with obvious historical inaccuracy) and the cultural mentality of the original audience. In this context, the dream of Queen Atossa (176–199) is addressed as well, with an emphasis on the non-nationalist message at the core of the dream vision. Particular attention is paid to the symbolic dimension of clothing: as symbols, garments mark a secondary, non-basic feature, which is not the same as the (unnamed) primary, physical feature. In the symbolic economy of the Persians, the very garments and gear are connected to the central idea – the destructiveness of man’s hybris –, graphically illustrating the transience of all things human.
The first section of the article introduces the Alcestis Barcinonensis, comparing it with the Alcestis of Euripides and with another Latin version of the myth, the anonymous Vergilian cento Alcesta ...preserved in the Anthologia Latina (Codex Salmasianus). In spite of numerous parallels with the last two works, theAlcestis Barcinonensis possesses exceptional value because of its unique features. Some of them are compositional (Heracles, Thanatus and the chorus do not appear at all; on the other hand, the figures of the poet himself and Clymene are introduced, etc.), whereas others are typical of late antiquity (e. g. the seismic activity of the Earth, the phoenix, the transformation of the Greek notion of σωφροσύνη intopietas). Euripides’ Alcestis is shown to be an important point of departure for the Latin author’s association of Alcestis’ death with the theme of mystery cults (Demeter-Ceres, Bacchus, Orpheus). But while the Alcestis Barcinonensis is closer to Euripides’ play than it appears at first sight, the poem strikingly diverges from the Alcesta of the Anthologia Latina. Indeed, the author of the article demonstrates that there are no obvious resemblances between the two Latin versions of the myth. The second section of the article presents the author’s pioneer translation of the Alcestis Barcinonensis into Slovenian, accompanied by a short commentary.
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