Teocrito e [Teocrito]: problematiche di paternità e di genere letterario nello Herakles Leontophonos1

Abstract

The contribution addresses the problematic attribution of the Herakles
leontophonos (Id. 25) to Theocritus. The poem is in fact an epyllion (as dialect, metre
and mythological subject confirm), but the pastoral setting and suggestions that
characterise it seem to indicate the author’s intention to experiment with new ways of
innovating the epos through a genre, the bucolic/pastoral one, which became famous
thanks to Theocritus – which probably determined the survival of the poem within the
Corpus Theocriteum. After dealing with the poem’s completeness (its ex-abrupto beginning
and its peculiar tripartite structure had in fact suggested the possibility that it had
not arrived intact), the paper illustrates how the ambiguity of the literary genre influenced
the manuscript tradition that handed it down (indeed rather late), influencing
the choice (and in some cases the ad hoc creation) of readings to emphasise imitation
of, or innovation with respect to, epics.