“…Sed magis amica Voluptas”: le lettere ‘platoniche’ di Aristeneto (1.3 e 1.18)

On toying with literary tradition, Aristaenetus often rewrites entire passages so as to conform them to his mildly comic style. Such an approach can be detected in his two most ‘Platonic’ epistles, namely 1.3 and 1.18. The latter abounds in echoes from passages, such as Agathon’s speech in the Symposium, which are clearly not representative of Plato’s point of view. By combining such passages, Aristaenetus’s letter eventually results in a paradoxically anti-Platonic concoction of Platonic texts. Something not altogether different can be seen in 1.3 as well. This letter is replete with allusions – not yet fully explored – to the locus amoenus of the Phaedrus and its rich reception. In Plato’s Phaedrus, however, the landscape points to the hyper-ouranian world and entails an uncompromising devotion to logos as opposed to bodily pleasure. By contrast, Aristaenetus resorts to the same materials in order to celebrate erotic and sympotic pleasures, something that can be arguably construed as an ironic reversal of the model.