TACKLING HOMERIC PROBLEMS IN ARISTOTLE’S ‘POETICS’AND PLUTARCH’S ‘HOW TO STUDY POETRY’
‘De audiendis poetis’ (How to study poetry) is a discussion of the danger, that is given to young men’s minds in poetry, and it is a proper guidance to how to avoid it and to make poetry more beneﬁ cial for readers. Plutarch is interested in “diﬃ cult places” of poetry that are deﬁ ned with moral issues, for example, the problem of divine nature. Most quotations belong to Homer. The circle of Homeric problems to Plutarch is pretty the same as it is to Plato, they are both concerned about morality: what the right actions of heroes are, how they should react in diﬀ erent situations. As regards solutions to poetry problems, solving methods of authors are as far as it can be. Plato’s method is to eliminate all quotations that seem to be a problem. While Plutarch tends to treat problems in a diﬀ erent way. First of all, he is sure that some problem can be solved. It can be compared with how he in the ‘De audiendis poetis’ and Aristotle in ch. 25 of ‘Poetics’ solve poetry problems. This article considers examples of the problems from ‘De audiendis poetis’ that only can be solved by a purely linguistic explanation. Porphyry will later call these solutions λύσεις Êκ τÍς λέξεως. The aim of the article is to show that Plutarch realized that some diﬃ cult places in poetry, consisting of pictures that greatly aﬀ ect the youth’s mind can be ﬁ xed by right interpretation of words.