Trabajos y Días como hipotexto de las obras simposíacas de Plutarco

Abstract

After analyzing the influence of the Hesiodic Theogony on all of Plutarch’s work in a former paper (J. A. Fernández Delgado, 2007), the study of the quotations of Works and Days just in the sympotic works by Plutarch is justified because, firstly, the number of these quotations throughout the whole Plutarchan corpus is so high that a complete approach to them would vastly exceed the limits of a paper; secondly, the number of these quotations in the sympotic works by Plutarch is not only relatively abundant, but it sometimes affects the treatment of organizational aspects of the symposium or illustrates a question as inherent to it as wine is; finally, such an important “question” as the first of the ninth and last book of the “convivial” ones deals with “On verse quotations made opportunely or inopportunely”, as if it were indeed a programme of our research, and two quotations from Works and Days respectively open and close the chapter. Those aspects of the quotations are dealt with in this paper as well as their different uses in each of the two sympotic Plutarchan works, their functional classification, and their greater or lesser degree of intertextual “tension”, in the sense of their relative distance from the Hesiodic statement.