Fliaci. Testimonianze e frammenti

[Machine translation] This study represents the first attempt to analyze in a systematic way a set of varied and yet intimately coherent materials: the uses and the value of the term π? α; the testimonies and fragments of two dramatic poets, Rintone and Sopatro (who both lived between the 4th and 3rd centuries, respectively in Taranto and Alessandria), whose works are defined as π? From ancient sources; the testimonies and fragments of two other poets, Scira di Taranto and Bleso di Capri (both chronologically uncertain), whose dramas, not defined as π? From the sources, they are, however, similar to those of Rintone and Sopatro. The material under consideration needs a multi-level analysis. First, some historical issues arise. All these poets, in fact, were active in prominent centers in the ancient world, whose cultural life we know, however, to an infinitely more limited extent than that of Athens: this fact raises many questions about the type of dramatic production spread outside Attica and its relationship with the Athenian one. In addition, the fragments of the poets in question have significant literary and philological implications: the distinctive trait that united the dramas from which they come, in fact, was that of closely interacting with tragic and comic Attic models, often in a parodic key, but not without innovative capacity and refined taste, as clearly emerges in terms of linguistic and stylistic choices. The material collected and discussed here therefore testifies to the first phase, still in a high-Hellenistic age, of the dissemination, reception and reworking of Athenian dramatic production outside the borders of Attica, before its recovery in the Roman world.