Abstract

DENTICE DI ACCADIA, Stefano. Omero e l'origine della teoria degli stili. Nova tellus [online]. 2009, vol.27, n.2, pp.107-121. ISSN 0185-3058.

In this paper I examine some ancient comments on Iliad, 3, 203-224, where Antenor remembers the time when Menelaos and Odysseus came to Troy as ambassadors before the outbreak of the war, and describes their different speaking styles. From this examination one may conclude that: A. some characters in the Iliad (not only Odysseus and Menelaos, but also Nestor and even Antenor) were regarded by the ancient critics as orators, not merely as speakers. B. Homer was thought to know, if not to be the founder of, three different ways of speaking, i.e. three styles, which would later be imitated (N.B. not invented or refounded) by Lisias, Isocrates and Demosthenes. C. The ancient commentators did not hesitate to use technical terms, which belonged to the field of the codified rhetoric, in order to describe characters in a poem as old as the Iliad. Therefore it is possible to maintain that Homer in ancient times was thought to be the pater if not of rhetoric as a discipline, undoubtedly of oratory as a systematic practice and the first author who delineated, albeit sketchily, the theory of styles.

Keywords : Homer; Rhetoric; Iliad; Scholia; Eustathius.

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