La fine dell'Iliade: il libro 23 tra agon, aethla e memoria

This paper deals with the institution of the Funeral Games for Patroclus in the context of the debate on Book 23 of the Iliad as the original ending of the poem. It reconstructs the public context of the burial of Patroclus and, by means of a semantic and anthropological analysis of the terms aethla, agon and sema, argues for the tight connection between the different phases of the funerary ritual and the games. In particular, they are shown as synergic strategies for the construction of memory in the context of a face-to-face society.