Renzo Tosi

1a. Indirect tradition of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, 1b.  Plutarchus' important  view of Greek and Latin writers.
2a. Greek scholiography and lexicography, 2b. Method of studying ancient lexicography
3a. History of european proverbs from the classical literature until to our days, 3b. Classical sources of aphoristic genre, 3c. Gnomology, Paroemiography and Humanistic Adagia, 3d. Proverbs about music
4a. History of Classical Philology, 4b. XVIIIth. century and the classics (above all Clotilde Tambroni), 4c. Niccolò Tommaseo, 4d. Classical languages and european schools.
5. Greek tragedy (above all Aeschylus)


R. Tosi's main research interests are: ancient exegesis and indirect tradition of the classical texts; scholiography, lexicography and their interactions (see Recenti acquisizioni sulle metodologie lessicografiche [2003]) and their relationship with the classical authors, expecially Aeschylus, Sophocles (see Osservazioni sulla tradizione indiretta dell'Edipo a Colono [2003]), Thucydides, Plutarchus (see Tucidide in Plutarco [2004]). A very important reference work is Studi sulla tradizione indiretta dei classici greci (1988), which analyzes several kinds of indirect tradition (scholiography, onomastics, lexicography, grammar, paroemiography) and their problems. Moroever, he worked on the origins of lexicography, its relationship with the Alexandrian culture and poetry (see La lessicografia e la paremiografia in età  alessandrina ed il loro sviluppo successivo, paper given at the 40th. Entretiens Hardt, Callimaco e i Glossografi omerici [1997], Appunti sulla filologia di Eratostene di Cirene [1998] ) and with the Armenian culture (Tradizione esegetica della tarda grecità e traduzioni della «Scuola Ellenizzante» [2003]). He edited the section about lexicography of Filologia e storia, is one of the editors of the lexicographic papyri within the project Commentaria et Lexica Graeca in papyris reperta (Istituto Papirologico "G. Vitelli", Florence) and is member of the editorial board of the Journal "Eikasmòs", founded by E. Degani and actually considered as one of the most important reviews in the field of classics over the world. Furthermore, he worked about topoi, proverbs and aphoristic literature: he published a collection of Greek and Latin proverbs and sentences, with a commentary about ancient and modern  deliverance (Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche, 1991). During the last few years he also published several articles concerning specific proverbial texts (see Storia di un aforisma: veritatis simplex oratio est da Eschilo a Oscar Wilde [2000], Per la storia di un topos: ‘la donna è mobile' [2001], Aforismi italiani e ipotesti classici [2003], La musica nei proverbi greci [2006]), the Erasmus' Adagia and the Menandri Monosticha; in 2004 he gave a talk about the history of the proverbial tradition at the FIEC International Conference (Ouro Preto, Brasil). As for the history of classical scholarship he's mainly interested in the culture of the 18th.and 19th centuries, expecially in Clotilde Tambroni (the edition of her poems with a commentary is forthcoming at Patron publisher) and Niccolò Tommaseo. He's also interested in the Greek theatre and prose.