Le consolazioni della memoria (e dell'oblio): declinazioni di un tema nel teatro euripideo

From the earliest literary documents, Mnemosyne is represented with two faces, one looking to the past and the other to the future: the same symbolic and mythical figure presides over the revelation and preservation of what has happened as well as its conservation in the memory of posterity. Within Attic tragedy, this dual function is clearly perceptible in Euripides, to a much greater extent than in Aeschylus and Sophocles. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the different developments of these themes (e.g. positive and negative effects of mmeme/ lathe kakon, survive in the memory of posterity as a reward of the suffering endured by the tragic hero, echoes from other literary genres such as epinikion, enkomion, funeral oratory, etc.).