Sofocle. Tiro. Introduzione, testimonianze, testo critico, traduzione e commento.

This thesis offers a new critical edition of Sophocles’ fragmentary Tyro, with introduction, testimonies, an Italian translation and a complete commentary. Indeed, still today there is no edition exclusively devoted to Sophocles’ Tyro, while the latest commented edition is that by A.C. Pearson (The Fragments of Sophocles), including all of Sophocles’ fragments, and dating back to 1917. A study on Sophocles’ Tyro cannot overlook the problems specifically related to the play, and the difficulties in editing a lost tragedy preserved by indirect fragments. According to the ancient scholia and the Byzantine grammarians and lexicographers, Sophocles wrote two plays with this name. Unfortunately, the only indirectly-preserved fragments (except for a doubtful papyrus) are slight and short, and some of them are uncertainly attributed; this picture does not allow a clear distinction between the two Tyro, that is whether they were originally conceived as different tragedies or the second was a revision of the first. The available material, considered together with the ambiguous mythological sources and the figurative and dramaturgical evidence, allows only a speculative and incomplete restoration of the plot(s). I tackle the mythological background, iconographic and dramaturgical testimonies, homonymous title, plot, characters and chronology – with a specific focus on the second Tyro – in the general introduction, where I also clarify my methodological approach. Afterwards, I consider and analyse separately the 19 surviving fragments of Sophocles’ Tyro included in my edition. The fragments’ text is based on the autopsy of all the manuscripts, which led me to reconsider some of the previous editors’ choices. Finally, the commentary investigates some textual, exegetical, lexical, stylistic, metrical-rhythmical and dramaturgical aspects, explaining the context of the transmission of the examined fragments, their possible interpretation and their hypothetical re-contextualization within the play.