Riferimenti alla scrittura cuneiforme in Eschilo? Alcune riflessioni su Sette contro Tebe, v. 468

This paper is focused on line 468 of the Aeschylean tragedy “Seven against Thebes”. The scout is describing the shield of the third enemy, Eteoclus, who is located at the Neistai Gates. Eteoclus’ shield is decorated with the scene of an armed man mounting a ladder against the enemy’s wall, shouting in “syllables of letters” that not even Ares could cast him out from the bulwarks. Despite the number of studies devoted to the complex and extremely fascinating interpretation of the scenes on the shields of the Seven, the utterance in line 468 has not been appropriately analysed so far. Based on philological and historical evidence, this study argues for an underlying reference to the cuneiform script and, more precisely, the Old Persian cuneiform script in this line.