Taranto e l’enigma del tragos (PW 46 = Fo Q34). Oracoli, narrazioni locali, letteratura

The oracle Parke-Wormell 46 (Diod. VIII fr. 29 Cohen-Skalli) urges the Spartan colonists to abandon their ambitions on the land of Sicyon and to found Tarentum on the Satyrion, describing the site with the enigma of a goat embracing the sea. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Ant. XIX 1, 2-4) seems to offer a paraphrase of the same vaticinium, but in fact he knows an older version which Diodorus’ source, almost certainly Myron of Priene, reworked by introducing the proverb τὸ μεταξὺ Κορίνθου καὶ Σικυῶνος to emphasise the Spartans’ thirst for wealth. The oracle used the pre-colonial toponymy of local genealogies: Satyrion was the mythical original name of Tarentum. The paper clarifies the meaning of the comparison between the vine and the tragos, and between the port and the tragos, and proposes to place the oracle in a phase of the city’s history when, after the φόνος Ἑλληνικὸς μέγιστος of Hdt. VII 170, 3, one could no longer imagine Apollo promising the Tarentines to be a 'scourge to the Iapigi', as Parke-Wormell 47 did (Ant. FGrHist 555 F 13).