BMCR 2008.07.11

Response: Ramelli on Lamberton on Ramelli, Allegoristi dell’età classica: Opere e frammenti. Il pensiero occidentale

Response to 2008.06.27

Response by

I am very grateful to the reviewer for his perceptive reading, his interest, and his appreciation. Here I only need to explain a couple of points concerning minor criticisms. The rationale for my collection is indeed found, not in this book, but in my monograph on allegory (Milan: Vita & Pensiero, 2004), of which the present collection provides full documentary support.

In particular, the selection and disposition of the Stoics’ fragments in the present book closely follows the division of the material in my monograph, chap. 2 on the ancient Stoics, with relevant subsections. There I bring together and carefully treat all these groups of testimonies (adding new fragments to von Arnim’s collection, too), and I explain their grouping and show their relevance to Stoic philosophy, also discussing recent scholarship (chap. 9). It is true that in my collection I do not always reproduce the whole of a von Arnim fragment, when I do not deem it necessary, but each time I provide the reference to the ancient source from which the specific text derives, in addition to the reference to the SVF fragment (when the passage is actually included in von Arnim’s edition), so that my citations are never partial or inaccurate.

As for Cleanthes’ fragment, I intended to indicate, not the corresponding words in Plutarch ( φίλοις ‐ πόρναις), but the underlying pun in Cleanthes, which I think was on ἑταίροις ‐ ἑταίραις, as I explain in my Allegoria I, chap. 2, note 60. In fact, Euripides in Electra 428-429 has neither φίλοις nor ἑταίροις, but ξένοις· ξένοις τε δοῦναι σῶμάτ’ ἐς νόσους πεσόν / δαπάναισι σῶσαι. Plutarch, Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat 33C10 (= SVF I 562), cites this as φίλοις τε δοῦναι κτλ., as does Stobaeus 4.31a.7.4. I suspect that Cleanthes intended to produce that pun, which I wished to suggest with the words in parentheses: in this case, they were not meant to reproduce Plutarch’s words in the fragment.

But after these small, necessary clarifications, I wish to thank the reviewer very much for his attentive reading and appreciation, which gladdened me.