I Dialoghi degli dèi di Luciano: il racconto mitico tra passato e futuro

Abstract

In his Dialogues of the Gods Lucian is able to link mythical situations which happen in the present with the past or with the future. In this essay some passages from Dialogues will be analysed in order to point out the different way of presenting the connection between the past and the future. Sometimes what happened in the past is simply recalled; less often, past and future are mere hints, and present is an aition of what will happen afterwards. At least in some dialogues the mythical contents are arranged according to the connection between past and future and sometimes the future is represented as a prophecy. Anyway, the different ways of linking past and future are in Luciano’s Dialogues the privileged practice to recover what cannot be told more clearly and to extend the temporal horizon by hinting at mythical events well known to the audience.