Avtorski »pečat« in umetnostni ekskluzivizem v antični poeziji

Sphragis, “seal”, is a Greek word used by literary historians to denote an authorial “signature” included in the text, not as an informative paratext but as an intrusion of empirical reality into the literary work itself. Though the expression was never used as a technical term in classical antiquity, it was used as a metaphor by the elegiac poet Theognis of Megara, probably in the 6th century BC. Theognis’s “seal”, which purports to protect the poems from theft, change and degradation, is variously interpreted as a reference to the inclusion of the author’s name in the text, as a reference to the recurring address to Theognis’s beloved Kyrnos, or even as literal seal protecting the material text. The scholarly debate centers on the relevance of the written word to Theognis’s metaphor: did Theognis see his poetry as a written text to be protected from textual interventions and plagiarism? While leaving the problem of written vs. oral expression and of (protection of) authorship open, this article argues that Theognis’s anxieties regarding the (oral) publication of his poems prefigure the authorial fears and exclusivist postures of the Roman poets of the Augustan era