Vita di un impero: tracce di metafore biologiche in Tucidide

Abstract

Although we do not find in the narrative of the Peloponnesian War an explicit analogy between the phases of human life (more or less distributed) and those of the great political bodies, it remains nevertheless fruitful in my opinion to explore the text in search of clues for biological metaphors. In particular, I will follow the traces left throughout the narrative by three crucial elements: daring (τόλμα), desire (ἔρως), disease (νόσος). The biological metaphor of the 'degrees of development' of the living being in Thucydides does not find fulfillment in the senectus. His absence was charged by Reinhart Koselleck as a distinctive feature of Greek historiography, especially of the classical age.