«PERIEGESI DI UNA BIBLIOTECA»: ANCORA SU ATENEO E LE SUE FONTI

Abstract

Recent scholarship has re-evaluated Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistae, no longer viewing it as a merely passive compilation but rather as a complex cover text, in which the preservation of fragments entails their re-functionalization and possible mediation through intermediate sources. This study investigates the ambiguity of indirect transmission in Athenaeus through a specific case study regarding Chamaeleon of Heraclea. The analysis focuses on a passage concerning Corinthian ἑταῖραι (Athen. XIII 573c-574c), which preserves, among other material, a fragment from
Chamaeleon’s On Pindar (Chamael. fr. 35 Martano). By examining the formal features and structural coherence of this section, the paper argues for the existence of an unacknowledged intermediate source from which Athenaeus derived this complex thematic unit, tentatively identified as Didymus.