Resumen de Dal Laurio a Drepane. L’Attica nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio
This paper focuses on the choice and the use of some place-names in a section of Apollonius’ Argonautica book IV (ll. 323-1169). An accurate analysis shows that the poet, through subtle but clear linguistic and thematic associations and thanks to casual geographic homonymies and eponymies in the Adriatic region, intended to hint simultaneously at what can be defined as a parallel Attic itinerary. The first halt deals with Dionysus, Icarius and Erigone in a context clearly related to tragedy. Then, three other references lead to the hierà hodòs and finally to Eleusis. All of them are part of a complex architecture, that blends Hellenistic erudition (something that could sound like a bare list of geographic names to a modern reader) with a deep Dionysiac and Eleusisian mystic feeling. The indirect and complex way followed by the poet suggests, furthermore, that the Attic parallel scenery was not immediately comprehensible to the contemporaneous audience as a whole, but only to the readers who knew Athens and who were initiated to the Lesser and to the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries.
