“Predicare nel deserto” : buoni e cattivi maestri, tra Lemno e Scizia

This article aims to highlight some analogies between the protagonists of Sophocles' 'Philoctetes' and 'Prometheus Bound', and the situations in which they are implicated: in particular, the presence of a sophistic or authoritary figure (Odysseus and Zeus) who, by using falsely didactic attitudes, attempts to force himself on the hero; the figure of the marginalized suffering hero, confined in remote places and excluded from civil society; his didactic role and his moral force, by which, even though in a situation of powerlessness, he reveals himself to be ethically superior to oppressive power and changes this periphery into a center of paideia. From this comparison it is clear that the tragic figure of 'prophet in the desert', placed in a mythical 'elsewhere' but performed in the center of Athens and in the public context of a Dionysiac festival, becomes very important for communicating values that are essential to the identity of the polis.