EL CONCEPTO DE SABIDURÍA EN LAS TRADUCCIONES ESLAVAS DE LAS SENTENCIAS ATRIBUIDAS A MENANDRO

Abstract

In previous studies, the Old Slavic translations of the aphorisms attributed to Menander, an Attic playwright of the fourth century B.C.E., have been used primarily as evidence for reconstructing lost or incompletely transmitted verses; in other words, the texts have been treated as if they were subsidiary to putative Greek sources. This approach is problematic,
inter alia, because the Slavic verses are not always translations of an authentic Menander. Often, they are demonstrably free adaptations or even Christianizations of post-Attic Greek sources (filtered through Byzantine compilations); in many other cases, where no plausible Greek text is known, the sayings may have been reminiscences of non-Menandrean sources or even non-Greek in origin. In this article, I study the Slavic proverbs attributed to Menander as evidence for medieval Slavic translational praxis and textual transmission processes. Particularly, I investigate selected key-words in the proverbs as documentation of the medieval Orthodox Slavic—in particular, monastic—worldview, as normative texts that were copied in order to instruct the readers how to live.