Parrasio e i limiti dell’arte. Una lettura di Seneca contr. 10, 5

Abstract

The paper focuses on Seneca the Elder’s Controversia 10, 5. The text concerns the charge to the painter Parrhasius of torturing to death an Olyntian slave that had served as a model of a Prometheus. The interests of declaimers highlight the concept of realism in art, introducing a theme, that of the relationship between real and believable, which crosses several times issues on which the rhetoric has produced deep and accurate reflections.