Alle fonti di Cornuto

• Main Author: Andrea Filoni
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ENS Éditions 2018-12-01
• Series: Aitia : Regards sur la Culture Hellénistique au XXIe Siècle
• Subjects: Cornutus; allegory; etymology; Apollodorus of Athens; Περὶ θεῶν; Allegories on Hesiod’s Theogony
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/aitia/2913

The Quellenforschung of Cornutus’ Epidrome is a difficult task not only because Cornutus does not mention his sources, but also because he usually reworks, often strongly, the interpretations of his auctores. It was undertaken, partially by K. Reinhardt and in a more comprehensive way by B. Schmidt, with the means available at their time. The treatise About the Gods by Apollodorus of Athens resulted to be its main source.Nowadays, further research can be conducted—also to verify Apollodorus’ role—thanks to a better knowledge of the Alexandrian philological tradition, in particular of Aristarchus’ and Apollodorus’ methodology in explaining/interpreting literary texts, which allows to go beyond a mere comparison of Cornutus’ works with Apollodorus’ fragments, which Reinhardt and Schmidt have already made indeed. Other criteria, such as internal consistence in the Cornutean chapters (cf. § 2.2.2) and the presence of Homer, the leading authority for Apollodorus (cf. § 2.2.3), can also be employed.This new approach is applied to the analysis of chapter 22 (on Poseidon), characterised by extreme consistence, a Homeric nature, and comparable with Apollodorean fragments (cf. § 2). Poseidon is described as the god of fresh and sea waters—his name’s etymology consistently showing ties to this role—as well as of earthquakes, since these are stirred by underground water movements; as the god of earthquakes, Poseidon can either destroy through, or protect from them. Horse and bull figure as his sacred animals as they, like the sea, show Poseidon’s typical features, such as the colour black, loudness, strength and violence.A comparison between the structure of Apollodorus’ About the Gods and Cornutus’ Epidrome is useful to understand both (cf. § 3.1): the former treatise aims to describe Zeus’ cosmos, and no particular attention is paid either to cosmogony or to the theory of the elements. In the Epidrome, the chapters comparable with Apollodorus’ work are 9–35—with the exclusion of those deriving from other sources (see below).Other suggestions may result from comparing Cornutus’ work with a Byzantine text, already noted by Reinhardt, namely John Galen’s Allegories on Hesiod’s Theogony. This text deserves to be re-evaluated: apart from some Christian (Galen’s) and Neoplatonic additions and, obviously, a general rewriting, it very well preserves a learned Hellenistic commentary on Hesiod’s poem, of Stoic tendency, which mostly interprets it in a physical, specifically meteorological, way; its termini post quem are Apollodorus and Posidonius. A description of this scarcely known work is provided (cf.. § 1.2).A comparison between Cornutus and Galen (cf.. § 1.3) indicates that Cornutus depends on the Hellenistic commentary on Hesiod in chapters 2–8 and 17–18. The focus of this comparison are what I call the “proemium” of the Stoic commentary (Cornutus’ chapter 17: cf.. § 1.3.1), the birth of the first gods (§ 1.3.2), Titans and Kronidai (§ 1.3.2), and the birth of Athena (§ 1.3.4, where Posidonius’ theory on divine and human hegemonic seems to emerge).The distribution of Cornutean chapters in these two sources is confirmed by two facts: 1) the chapters from Apollodorus almost lack any philosophical terminology or issues; 2) the features of the allegorical interpretation of the same chapters are consistent with Apollodorus’ method. As a whole, the Apollodorean chapters (9–16 and 19–35) and those drawn from the Stoic commentary (2–8 and 17–18) have a very different facies.With regard to this main bipartite division, however, it must be added that Cornutus tends to move the material of the sources: the etymologies of Kronidai’s names, from Apollodorus, are anticipated with respect to their own chapters, and located in those drawn from the Stoic commentary; the same occurs with the allegorical interpretation of the goddess Rhea. The allegorical interpretation of Athena’s birth, drawn from the Stoic commentary, is placed at the beginning of chapter 20 (on Athena), which is Apollodorean (cf.. § 1.3.4). With respect to Apollodorean material, the Erinyes, which in Apollodorus are related to Hades (chap. 35 in Cornutus), are placed among Zeus’ ministers (chap. 10), whereas the Horai, Zeus’ ministers according to the grammarian, are dealt with immediately after Demeter (chap. 29: cf.. § 3.1).Differently, Cornutus’ first chapter seems to be drawn from a work by Posidonius (the Μετεωρολογικὴ στοιχείωσις, as rightly sustained by Zeller), and can be compared with similar parts in the ps.Aristotelian treatise About the world and Arius Didymus (cf.. § 3.4).Both at a general and more detailed level, the Epidrome results to be a free compilation of these three main direct sources. The choice and combination of the original material are strictly connected to the composition of the work: Apollodorus’ About the Gods was a very rich source, but probably had no theogonic-cosmogonic account—or perhaps not such a fully developed one—which, on the contrary, was provided by Hesiod’s Theogony explained through the Stoic commentary. In the first chapters, Cornutus seems to allude to the birth of the cosmos, from the proto-aether of the ekpyrotic time (Uranus, chap. 1, from Posidonius), down to the birth of the elements (Kronidai, chap. 2–8, from the Stoic commentary) and Zeus’ cosmos (chap. 9 ff., from Apollodorus). Notably, this is obtained by compiling from different sources.In Cornutus’ Epidrome the authority of Apollodorus’ About the Gods and of Posidonius, both present in direct or indirect ways, is clearly perceivable: Apollodorus in the Stoic commentary on Hesiod, in Cornutus and in the ps.Aristotelian About the World (the epithets of Zeus: cf.. § 3.2); Posidonius in the Stoic commentary (cf.. § 1.3.4) and in both ps.Aristotle and Cornutus (cf.. § 3.4). This fits in extremely well with the cultural scenario of the first century CE (cf.. § 4).