A ambiguidade no discurso de Cléon sobre Mitilene: entre historiografia e comédia antiga

Felipe Campos de Azevedo

Resumo


Resumo: Este breve estudo pretende comparar a imagem de Cléon traçada por Tucídides no início de seu discurso sobre a batalha de Mitilene (3. 37-39) com alguns testemunhos cômicos selecionados que tratam sobre o mesmo personagem, dentre as obras de Aristófanes e também de outros poetas da comédia antiga, como Êupolis, Hermipo e Platão cômico. Nesse discurso de Cléon reconstruído por Tucídides darei ênfase ao uso de determinado vocabulário que se aplica mais diretamente ao âmbito retórico, mas que encontra paralelos marcantes com o vocabulário usado em geral na comédia ática, e sobretudo no discurso parabático, de tom mais autoral. Por fim a minha intenção será contrastar não apenas a descrição geral de Cléon como um demagogo em ambos os gêneros, historiografia e comédia, mas lidar com conceitos ambíguos que aparecem no discurso do político, que critica os seus opositores como pretensos intelectuais através do uso de uma série de adjetivos (σοφός, δεξιός, λεπτός, συνετός). Esses conceitos são encontrados em profusão também no registro cômico, e com a mesma polissemia peculiar a esses termos, de modo que uma comparação de seus usos entre os gêneros pode ser bem delineada tomando a figura e o discurso de Cléon em Tucídides como fio condutor.

Palavras-Chave: Cléon; historiografia; comédia ática.

Abstract: This brief study intends to compare the image of Cleon drawn by Thucydides at the beginning of his discourse on the battle of Mytilene (3. 37-39) with some selected comic testimonies that deal with the same character by Aristophanes and other Old Comedy poets, such as Eupolis, Hermippus and Plato Comicus. I will analyze this thucydidean version of the discourse of Cleon, emphasizing the use of certain concepts that are more directly applied to rhetorical vocabulary but that find striking parallels with the vocabulary commonly used in Attic comedy, and especially in parabatic discourse, with a more authorial tone. I intend, above all, to establish a contrast between the general description of Cleon as a demagogue both in historiography and in comedy and the ambiguous concepts that appear in his discourse, in which he criticizes his opponents as so-called intellectuals through the use of a series of adjectives such as σοφός, δεξιός, λεπτός, συνετός. These concepts are found in profusion also in comedy, and with the same peculiar polysemy. Therefore, a comparison of their uses in the two different genres in which they appear in abundance can be well delineated if one takes the figure and the discourse of Cleon in Thucydides as the guiding thread of a research, as I intend to do in this paper.

Keywords: Cleon; historiography; Attic Comedy.


Palavras-chave


Cléon; historiografia; comédia ática.

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Referências


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17851/1983-3636.13.1.253-278

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Direitos autorais 2017 Felipe Campos de Azevedo



Nuntius Antiquus
ISSN 2179-7064 (impressa) / ISSN 1983-3636 (eletrônica)

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