Homeric Formularity, Tragic Repetition? Versus iterati in Attic theatre

In everyday communication, repeating phrases or whole sentences is a normal phenomenon, to be encountered in a variety of contexts and for many purposes. Conversely, within literature repetition is mostly associated with intentional emphasis, no artist being thought willing, or even capable, to shallowly write the same twice. Greek tragedy of the ‘golden age’ (5th c. BCE) seems a case in point, featuring very few identical lines among thousands of surviving ones; and these are explained ad hoc in terms of conscious verbal reprises through the critical categories of intertextuality or self-allusivity.

This workshop takes a first and fresh look at a so far neglected, but rather disquieting circumstance: that manuscripts and testimonies of Greek tragedy, especially those concerning Euripides, contain or testify (almost) identical line(s) more often than commonly assumed; only, more often than not one of the two identical transmitted lines, or pairs of lines, has been omitted in modern editions (it is at best briefly mentioned in the critical apparatuses) mainly because it produces a repetition. Sometimes, both identical lines have been judged spurious and deleted.

In its first section, Setting the theme, the workshop approaches the versus iterati from different perspectives: as genuine poetic repetitions, as interpolations, and in comparison with (other) instances of tragic formularity. The second section, Case studies, is devoted to the analysis of selected examples of iteration taken mainly from Euripides’ preserved plays, lost plays, and scholia.

Advance booking to attend in-person is required before Friday 23 May. Please email [email protected] after Friday 23 May to confirm if there is space for last-minute attendance.

Workshop Schedule
PDF can be downloaded here

Morning session: Setting the theme 

Chair: Marco Fantuzzi (Department of Greek and Latin of UCL/ Institute of Classical Studies)

10.00-10.10: Start of the workshop & Welcome

10.10-10.30: Laura Carrara (Università di Pisa)

Towards a survey of versus iterati in Greek tragedy

10.30-11.15: Giulia Colli (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)

Interpolated versus iterati in Greek tragedy: origins, motives, and editorial challenges

11.15 - 11.45: morning coffee (room 264)

11.45-12.30:  Andrea Rodighiero (Università di Verona)

A matter of style? The phenomenon of ‘tragic formularity’

12.30-13.15: Hannah Brandenburg (Universität Potsdam)

Sophocles and tragic formularity


13.15-14.15 lunch break

Afternoon Section: Case studies 

Chair: Marco Fantuzzi (Department of Greek and Latin of UCL/ Institute of Classical Studies)

14.15-15.00: Edmund Stewart (University of Nottingham)

Ignoble athletes: repeated reflections on eugeneia by Euripides

15.00-15.45: Giulia Dovico (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Iterations in Greek scholia

15.45-16.30: Michele Di Bello (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)

An iterated question: Medea, Peliades, or both? “Tell me more clearly”

16.30: Round table & Final Questions

Statuette d'Euripide (Marmor Albanum), 2nd c. CE
© Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines LL 15 ; N 1315; Ma 343
https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010277111

Photograph by Hervé Lewandowski, reworked by Stefano Rinaldi