Elysio di Terina, Crantore e gli Accademici di Sicilia

The work examines the account transmitted by the Academician Crantor, regarding a citizen of Terina, Elysios, and his son Euthynoos who died suddenly in his youth. The account is taken up again by Cicero and in Pseudo-Plutarch's work, Consolatio ad Apollonium. The possibility, already sustained by others, that the story dates from a period when Terina must have been influenced by Pythagoreanism, probably the mid-5th century BC, is confirmed;

the investigation then passes to the period that saw the spread of the story, stressing aspects that connect it to Platonic thought. The moment of the presence of Plato and his followers, particularly Senocrates, in Sicily is identified as the moment when the story could have been of interest to the Platonic school; later Crantor, a pupil of Sencrates, took it up again in his perì penthous. [Publisher's text]