Ό Άχιλλεύς Θερσιτοκτόνος του Χαιρήμονος : Άνασύστασις μιας μετακλασσικής τραγωδίας
Part of : Πλάτων : περιοδικό της Εταιρείας Ελλήνων Φιλολόγων ; Vol.ΛΔ-ΛΕ, No.67-70, 1982, pages 55-67
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55-67
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Chaeremon's Achilles Thersitoctonus : Reconstruction of a post-classical tragedy
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An attempt is made here to reconstruct as fully as possible a lost, postclassical tragedy, the Achilles Thersitoctonus of Chaeremon, an early fourth-century tragedian. The evidence on this play consists of two fragments, an Apulian volute-krater of c. 350/340 B.C., and an inscription recording a victory of Achilles in the third century B.C. The play was based on post-homeric sources such as Arctinus' Aethiopis, Quintus Smyrnaeus, and others. Thersites taunted Achilles with his sympathy for the dead Penthesilea. Achilles got furious, killed Thersites and left his body unburied. Diomedes tried to avenge Thersites, a relative of his, but a conflict with Achilles was prevented by the Atreidae. Athena probably intervened as dea ex machina and told the epilogue in which the purification of Achilles for his crime was probably foretold. The play, involving pathetic and rhetorical motifs (refusal of burial, rhetorical debates) seems unlikely to have been a satyr-play, as suggesterd by earlier scholars. The inscription recording a third-century victory of Achilles shows that the characterization αναγνωστικός - writer ascribed to Chaeremon, namely a writer whose plays are intended for reading, cannot be taken in its literal meaning.
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