L’autore e la lettera: problemi di attribuzione e autorialità nell’epistolografia greca fittizia

Abstract

This paper investigates the collection of fifty love letters that a Vienna codex,
which dates from the 12th to 13th century and was discovered in the “Terra d’Otranto”,
attributes to an author conventionally identified by the name Aristaenetus. Almost
two centuries after the historic commentary of Boissonade (1822) and despite the care
of authoritative twentieth-century scholars – the most notable being Albin Lesky and
William Geoffrey Arnott – numerous questions remain unanswered. In particular,
the validity of the Vienna manuscript’s attribution of authorship to Aristaenetus; the
historical- literary identity of the author; and the dating of the collection.