Abstract
Anaxilas in fragments 25 and 30 K.-A. deliberately alluded to Pindar’s fragment 137 S.-M. and the mystery references it contains, but at the same time completely redesigned the sense of the Pindaric phrase for a strong comic effect.
Highlights
Anaxilas, a comic poet dated to the middle of the 4th century BCE, from whose comedies only forty-three fragments survive, did not hold back from personal satire
Anaxilas in fragments 25 and 30 K.-A. deliberately alluded to Pindar’s fragment 137 S.-M. and the mystery references it contains, but at the same time completely redesigned the sense of the Pindaric phrase for a strong comic effect
A comic poet dated to the middle of the 4th century BCE, from whose comedies only forty-three fragments survive, did not hold back from personal satire
Summary
166: “una battuta umoristica forse associata proverbialmente a Ctesia nel linguaggio corrente”. As reminds Silvia Barbantani (2009: 312), Pindar – along with Homer, Hesiod, Menander, and Euripides – belonged to the core authors read and interpreted at schools by the grammatikoi ὄλβιος ὅστις ἰδὼν κεῖν’ εἶσ’ ὑπὸ χθόν’· οἶδε μὲν βίου τελευτάν, οἶδεν δὲ διόσδοτον ἀρχάν. Blessed is he who sees them [the mysteries] and goes beneath the earth; he knows the end of life and knows the Zeus-given beginning. In my opinion, the fact that in Anaxilas teleutē is accompanied by negation does not weaken, but even strengthens the analogy: in this way the comic poet emphasises the essential violation of the expected pattern
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