Studiare la lingua e la letteratura greca divertendosi: gli indovinelli greci nelle scuole di Bisanzio

The fourteenth book of the Palatine Anthology, the collection of Greek epigrams compiled in Constantinople in the tenth century CE, containing riddles, oracles and mathematical problems, is introduced by a short preface where we learn that these little poems have been collected with the aim of training the spirit of the students who like to struggle and work hard. It seems that these enigmatic epigrams have been written in order to teach the students subjects such as grammar, literature and mythology through a didactic method principally based upon play. The pedagogical use of similar para-literary forms is confirmed by the Byzantine witnesses who explicitly attest that riddles were used with the aim of stimulating learning.