Ettore Bignone

Ettore Bignone (17 December 1879 – 11 August 1953) was an Italian classical philologist and scholar.

Biography

Born in Pinerolo, the son of Carlo and Anita Matteucci, Ettore Bignone graduated in Turin in Classical Literature, with a dissertation on Lucretius, in 1901 and in Philosophy in 1902.

Bignone began his apprenticeship as a teacher, from a gymnasium in Sicily to the Manzoni high school in Milan, and obtained his habilitation at the University of Pavia under Giuseppe Fraccaroli and Carlo Pascal.

On December 14, 1910 he was initiated into Freemasonry in the Lodge "Colonia Augusta" of Verona.

On January 1, 1922 he was appointed Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Palermo. When he arrived at the university chair his authority as a scholar was already established with his writings: in 1916 a work on Empedocles, mature fruit of a preparation of years, awarded by the Academy of Sciences of Turin, followed in 1920 by a very important analytical study on Epicurus that testified to his solid philological preparation and that made him known in philosophical circles.

The following year were published: Eros, il libro d'amore della poesia greca and the Epigramma greco, and in 1924 The Idylls of Theocritus, to which a valuable critical study was added ten years later. Preceded by the reputation of an expert, in 1925 he was called to Florence as a professor of Classical Philology and then of Greek and Latin Literature; and as such he continued his teaching until his dismissal in 1950.

Assumed the direction of the magazine Atene e Roma in 1933, Bignone also had the opportunity to return to Sicily when he prepared with great success the representation of Sophoclean tragedies Women of Trachis (1933), Oedipus at Colonus (1936), and Ajax (1939), which he translated into verse.

Before a period of "officialdom" (he received the Mussolini Prize in 1938 and was appointed "Accademico d'Italia" in 1939) he published in 1936 his major work L'Aristotele perduto e la formazione filosofica di Epicuro ("Aristotle lost and the philosophical formation of Epicurus"), which remains one of the most significant acquisitions of the philology of the twentieth century.

In 1937, he published studies on Sophocles, Euripides and Horace collected in the volume Poeti apollinei and in 1938 Studi sul pensiero antico containing, in expanded form, some essays previously published on Antiphon. Of 1940 is Il libro della letteratura greca and the following years a Libro della letteratura latina.

Since then he devoted himself almost completely, in addition to the reprinting of his works now out-of-print, to a great Storia della letteratura latina ("History of Latin literature"; 1942–1950, 3 volumes).

He was preparing the material for the fourth volume, supported and helped by his sister Adelina, when he died in Florence.

Works

• "Il pensiero platonico e il Timeo", in Atene e Roma, 13 (1910)
• I poeti filosofi della Grecia: Empedocle (1916)
• Epicuro (1920)
• Eros, il libro di amore della poesia greca (1921)
• L'epigramma greco (1921)
• L'Epica di Omero e Virgilio (1926)
• Teocrito - Gli Idilli (1924)
• Sofocle - Le Trachinie (1933)
• Teocrito - Saggio critico (1934)
• Edipo a Colono (1936)
• L'Aristotele perduto e la formazione filosofica di Epicuro (1936)
• I poeti apollinei: Sofocle, Euripide, Orazio (1937)
• Studi sul pensiero antico (1938)
• Le tragedie di Sofocle tradotte in versi italiani (1937-1938; 4 volumes)
• Le tragedie di Eschilo tradotte in versi italiani (1939; 2 volumes)
• Il libro della letteratura greca (1940)
• Il libro della letteratura latina (1946)
• Storia della letteratura latina (1942-1950; 3 volumes, incomplete)
• Problemi e orientamenti critici delle lingue e delle letterature classiche (1948-1951; 2 volumes)

References

• Eugenio Garin, Ettore Bignone storico della filosofia, in «Atene e Roma», 1953, pp. 165–170.
• Vittorio Bartoletti, in «Gnomon», XXVI, 1954.
• Luigi Alfonsi, Ricordo di Ettore Bignone, in «Convivium», 1954, pp. 373–377.
• Adolfo Omodeo, Il senso della storia, Torino, Einaudi, 1955, pp. 75–77.
• Domenico Pesce, Ettore Bignone interprete del mondo classico, in «Atene e Roma», 1956, pp. 127–140.
• Giovanni Semerano, Scienza e dolore. Un grande filosofo classico: Ettore Bignone, Firenze, Sansoni antiquariato, 1960.
• Vittorio Enzo Alfieri, La filosofia e la poesia greca nell'opera di Ettore Bignone, in «Filosofia», 1965, pp. 403–416.