Le ‘Epistole’ di Sinesio: forme di memoria comica e strategie allusive

Synesius in Epistulae plagiarises verbatim or with minor amendments phrases, sen- tences, even paragraphs from earlier authors. This practice, of selecting a handful of ideas, words and phrases from one passage and then redeploying them in a new order and adapded context, can be seen most effectively in Synesius’ exploitation of comedy as a source. This paper investigates a few interesting and uninvestigated techniques used by Synesius in the manipulation of his sources and in the comic quotations in Epistulae.