Abstract

This paper considers Epicharmus’ fragments mainly from the point of view of dialogue history. We shall focus on the four following topics (each one of them will be examined in a specific paragraph): Concerning the history of dramatic dialogue, Epicharmus’ fragments furnish evidence of the otherwise unknown archaic and non-Attic dramatic dialogue. Moreover, they alone among the pre-classic dramatic fragments show changing voices and interlocution between the dramatis personae. Epicharmus is the first Greek author who brings together dialogic form and philosophical content. For this reason, he is a starting point in my hypothesis that philosophical dialogue as a literary genre has its origins in a certain tendency of Old Comedy to make fun of philosophers and philosophic theories. This hypothesis is consistent with the ancient sources that locate the source of inspiration for Plato’s dialogues in the Sicilian tradition of mime and comedy. In dealing with philosophical topics, Epicharmus’ aim is neither to discard previous theories nor to teach new ones, but rather to parody them in order to entertain his public, even adapting them to the comic situations they occur in whenever necessary. As far as we can see from the scant extant texts, the habit of parodying philosophy is established by Epicharmus and remains well alive even in Attic comedy. Finally, Epicharmus’ fragments show some of the verifiably oldest allusions and references to other writings, so that we can attempt to reconstruct the „intertextual dialogue“ between his texts (especially frr. 147, 213, 214, 275, and 276KA) and the parodied ones. Intertextuality is used here as an artful comical device, and implies the author’s familiarity with the texts he refers to. This confirms that some Presocratic works were well known and read in Syracuse at least since the beginning of the 5 th century BC.