Il canto della paura e del dolore: osservazioni metriche e critico testuali al primo stasimo dei Sette contro Tebe

stefano novelli

2024-01-01

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Abstract

This essay focuses on the salient points of the first stasimon, where the protagonists are the anguished Theban virgins. Aeschylus describes the terror of the women, who, at the approach of the enemy army, burst into expressions of fear and anguish, prefiguring for themselves a destiny of death or slavery in a foreign land, and for the city an utter devastation. These images are conveyed by a notable formal elaboration, in which the lexicon of fear is expressed through hapax, neoformations or rare terms and, on a rhetorical level, by metaphors, similes or insistent figures of sound, such as alliterations or assonances.