Zeus e Asclepio nel terzo stasimo dell'Agamennone (Aesch. Ag. 1022-1024)

At Aesch. Ag. 1022-1024 the lack of responsion between the trasmitted Ζεὺς αὔτ’ ἔπαυσε and v. 1007 ἀνδρὸς ἔπαισεν reveals a corruption. Hartung emended long ago the passage by writing Ζεὺς ἀπέπαυσεν, but many interpreters have rejected this conjecture by pointing out the difficulty it entails with οὐδέ, which should be interpreted as adverbial (‘not even the man who had the right knowledge to resurrect from the dead was stopped by Zeus without arm’). Objections have been raised also to the too flat litote and to the excessive emphasis on ἐπ’αβλαβείᾳ resulting from this interpretation. However, the text of the passage, as emended by Hartung, can be regarded as perfectly satisfying once we recognize in it a peculiar use of οὐδέ introducing a mythical paradigm which illustrates the consequences of violating the boundaries between gods and men. This kind of expression is richly exemplified by the final verses of the Hymn to Artemis of Callimachus (Dian. 260-267), where four sentences beginning with οὐδέ (one of them containing a litote very similar to Ag. 1022-1024) explain through mythical paradigms what happens to mortals who do not appropriately worship Artemis. Callimachus was probably picking up an epic expression of the hymnic tradition, that Aeschylus too reuses and adapts here to the particular case of Asclepius.