For a Definition of Hyperbola on the Scene of Ancient Greek Theater: Situations and Lexicon

Abstract

This contribution intends to focus on the presence of hyperbola in a series of texts that are part of ancient Greek theater, both tragic and comic. The choice fell on these texts, because if you need to use a single and short sentence to define the general spirit of the greek theater, it is certainly «the important thing is to exaggerate». In fact, the stature of the characters was exaggerated; the masks resting on their shoulders like diving suits, which amplified expression and voice, was exaggerated; the description of reality was exaggerated through expressions that amplified it by excess or defect. You call them ‘hyperbolas’ if you like.

But while the presence of the category of ‘hyperbolic’ is quite clear, the category of hyperbola (linguistic expression) is not so clear.

In Greek stylistic texts, hyperbola has usually been treated as a minor trope, crushed by the two dominant figurative uses of language, metaphor and irony, and hidden behind the shadow of similitude and metonymy, with respect to which it is significantly underestimated. Aristotle, who is silent in Poetic and does not seem to appreciate it in Rhetoric, identified hyperbola with metaphor. In De compositione Demetrius attempts a schematization that is, in my opinion, inappropriate, assimilating it to ‘simulitude’, to the ‘comparative of superiority’ and declaring ‘impossibility’ as its characteristic.

The chosen texts, (Aeschylus, Persians, Aristophanes Acharnians, Pherecrates Persians, Metagenes, Turiopersia, Antiphanes,Enomaus or Pelopes), configure the Persia as a place of abundance, a sort of ‘Eldorado’, and the Greece as a country of poverty through the proposition of hyperbolas (by excess: in Persia everything is gold, king Darius and king Xerxes are a god, the queen is wife and mother of a god), of numerical hyperbolas (by excess in relation to the Persians: «ten thousand horses», «thousand», «thirty thousand black knights», «ships five times fifty», «thousand ships», «a myriad of men»; by default in relation to the Greeks: « the only silver source of the Athenians», «three hundred and ten ships all together»), gastronomic hyperbolas (by excess: in Persia, «rivers of black broth and oily cakes», «rain of wine trees burdened by the weight of kid’s guts, thrushes and squid»; by default in Greece:«a maximum of four small pieces of meat weighing an obolòs» = 0.1 / 2 gram each, 2 grams in total)».

From the analyses conducted, we have come to identify the connotative elements of hyperbola (Definition. Classification. Distinctive trait. Statute. Function) and its space from the point of view of pragmatics (h. has nothing to do with inference, does not fall into the category of ‘What the text does not say’, has nothing to do with the implicature. Whoever builds hyperbola never aims to deceive, but to emphasize a certain concept and needs a recipient capable of evaluating the change in magnitudine).