Mietere il campo del drakos: un’allusione folklorica nei Theristai euripidei?

Reaping the field of the drakos: A folkloric allusion in Euripides’ Theristai? · The Theristai are an early-lost satire drama by Euripides, known to us only through Aristophanes of Byzantium’s hypothesis to Medea. It is possible that the Theristai were linked to the figure of Lityerses, the tyrannical king of Phrygia who killed passers-by by challenging them to a harvest contest, and who was in turn eliminated by Heracles. This is all the more plausible as so-called Oger-Dramen are very frequent among Euripides’ satirical dramas. What is certain is that this plural title, referring to the chorus of satyrs, stands out singularly in the known Euripidean satire production, where only names of protagonists and antagonists appear. This suggests that the mention of the «reapers» (in itself not particularly hilarious or bizarre, as in other cases of titles referring to the chorus’ occupations) must have aroused some particular association in the audience. The hypothesis is that there might have been a humorous allusion to an early version of a fairytale widespread throughout the Greek area (with traces also in Bulgaria, Turkey, Sicily and Calabria that seem to point to a Palaeo-Hellenic «cultural district»), which sees little Dekatris («Thirteen») and his brothers reaping the field of the drakos (the Greek ecotypical ogre, which is also attested in antiquity), who in many variants challenges them to a contest and threatens to devour them if they are slower than him. If this were the case, the satirical drama would once again prove to be welcoming to fairy-tale plots, and the allusion to a childish fairy tale could also be a reason for the early disappearance of the Theristai.