Il γάμος e gli elementi del paesaggio tragico nella parodo delle 'Supplici' di Eschilo

Abstract

The parodos of the Suppliant Women (1-175) shows references to natural elements and landscapes described in words by the characters, but not represented on scene. A closer observation of the ways these landscapes are mentioned allows to go back to hints of social and religious notions, and to practices related to marriage in V cent. B.C, as well as to recognize the imagery linked to divinities like Hera and Zeus Teleioi, whose action is alluded to, but not directly expressed in the text. The description of landscape gives the parodos a circular structure (sea-land-sea). My analysis will focus on the strategies of verbalizing landscape, trying to bring up divine actions through natural elements. Indeed, nature is where the Greeks recognized the presence of the gods and the setting of their manifestations. This is why landscapes turn to be a good field to investigate religious mentality of V cent. B.C. Athens. The aim of this paper is to show that the spectators of Attic drama were deeply influenced by their own socialized and religious experience of natural spaces and landscapes. Therefore, dramatic descriptions of space are modelled and conveyed to the audience according to shared competences and notions where ritual habits, divine powers and attributes, and every-day practices of landscapes are horizontally crossed together. By enhancing the religious components of the spaces where the Danaids are supposed to act, I will show how their uncompromising hostility towards sexuality and marriage is, from the very beginning of the play, destined to be normalized according to the divine τέλος prescribed by Hera -and Aphrodite- to all unmarried girls.

Giulia Re è dottoranda di ricerca in Scienze dell’Antichità e Archeologia, curriculum antropologico, presso l’Università di Pisa, in cotutela con l’École Pratique des Hautes Études di Parigi. Il suo progetto di ricerca consiste in uno studio del paesaggio religioso nel corpus della tragedia attica di V sec. a.C. Lo scopo è analizzare le strategie di verbalizzazione del paesaggio in tragedia e le intersezioni tra la nozione di spazio e le forme del pensiero religioso e sociale di età classica, con particolare attenzione agli aspetti legati alla polivalenza delle manifestazioni divine che caratterizza il politeismo greco. Porta avanti il progetto Euporia LanGT (Landscapes in Greek tragedy) per l’annotazione digitale dei testi tragici, in collaborazione con l’ILC (Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale) del CNR di Pisa. È membro del LAMA (Laboratorio di Antropologia del Mondo Antico) dell’Università di Pisa.

Keywords: landscape, tragedy, Greek religion, Hera, navigation