Cum tacet, vertit: Cicerone traduttore dal greco al latino (in cinque puntate poetiche) (original) (raw)

2020, Figure dell'altro: Identità, alterità, stranierità, a cura di Giovanna Alvoni, Roberto Batisti e Stefano Colangelo

In: EIKASMOS: Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica. Studi Online, 3, a cura di Giovanna Alvoni, Roberto Batisti e Stefano Colangelo, Bologna 2020, pp. 53-75. Abstract: Since Antiquity, translations played a crucial role in the development of cultures. Aesthetic sensibility, the exterior form of works, and even the moral values present therein are handed over and begin to thrive in a new environment. However, it must be observed that the adaptation of primary cultural models through the process of translation paradoxically leads to the creation of concepts quite different from the original. Since changes are often almost imperceptible or easily explainable with the necessity of adapting the original to another culture, translations – if ‘employed’ by a skillful visionary – can become a very effective instrument for the intellectual (not to say ‘ideological’) development of society in the host culture. Marcus Tullius Cicero is doubtless such a visionary, indeed one of the founding fathers of Western civilization. Often deprived of a voice on the political scene, he resorted to the force of artistic expression – including the practice of translation – to promote his ideas and to assure to himself a ‘longue durée’ in his writings. In the course of our analysis it will be shown how Cicero, by the means of his translations, handed down to us his vision of the ‘perfect Republic’ – a vision that has nourished the minds of succeeding generations until our own.