Abstract
The first lecture will focus on the relationship between poetry and prose in Late Antiquity. Far from being worlds apart, poetry and prose share the same expressive and communicative aesthetic, based on an atomistic idea of phrase and rhythm, in turn regulated by the colon, a brief unity of meaning and accomplished rhythm whose assembly into larger structures ensures the" euphonic harmony ", which was considered the essential quality of literary expression. Authors practicing very different genres, such as Libanius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonnos of Panopolis and the anonymous composers of epigrams on stone, are united by expressive choices which are a consequence of rhythm and at the same time condition it, and which aim to favor the oral dissemination of literary speech.
