https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695823-008 Fausto Montana Poetry and Philology. Some Thoughts on the Theoretical Grounds of Aristarchus’ Homeric Scholarship It could hardly be denied that ‘la scelta di un metodo esegetico comporta auto- maticamente un’idea di poetica’, 1 and for this reason ‘pare assurdo pensare che Aristarco non avesse idee proprie sulla poetica’. The problem is that we struggle to find positive evidence of them. But that should not be a surprise, since ‘è troppo ovvio trovare scarsi indizi su questioni teoriche ed epistemologiche nei frammenti filologico-esegetici conservati’. 2 The history of research on this topic shows that this difficulty has not led to discouragement — quite the contrary. Two approaches have been explored and remain fundamentally in play. The first is the historical reconstruction of the two phenomena — the Athenian Peripatos and the Alexandrian Museum — and their respective contexts, accompanied by a fo- cus on figures, circumstances, and situations where the two overlap. The second approach consists in recovering methods and content specific to each of the two cultural experiences, in order to document and measure at a formal level their degree of affinity and relation. Interaction between these two points of view is useful, and methodologically desirable, in order to prevent partial and unbal- anced readings. In other words, once we admit in general and intuitive terms the difference between the two realities (philosophy and philology), the comparison of Peripatetic reflection on the art of poetry with the practice of Alexandrian phi- lology on literary texts in the Hellenistic period will gain by focusing on the cor- responding historical, conceptual, and critical categories, and by translating the  1 Montanari 1987, 17 (‘the choice of an exegetical method automatically brings with it an idea of poetics’). 2 Both passages are from Montanari 1993a, 263 (‘it seems absurd to suppose that Aristarchus did not have ideas of his own about poetics’, ‘it is quite natural to find only a few indications of theoretical and epistemological questions in the philological-exegetical fragments which are preserved’), who continues (n. 62): ‘Che la Poetica di Aristotele non sia citata negli scolii è un’ov- vietà che non dimostra niente: perché dovrebbe esserlo, a commento di quale passo (soprattutto considerando la riduzione del materiale)? Fornì invece strumenti di pensiero e posizioni critiche’ (‘That the Poetics of Aristotle is not cited in the scholia is a self-evident point that proves nothing: why would it need to be, in comment upon which passage (above all considering the reduction of the material)? Yet it provided tools of thought and critical positions’).