La gelosia impossibile. Per una semantica di ζῆλος in tragedia

In this paper, I try to reconstruct the semantic range of the noun ζῆλος, meaning “eager rivalry, zealous imitation, jealousy” (LSJ), and its derivatives in classical tragedy. Not being attested in the Homeric epics, perhaps because of a degree of censure toward a base feeling, it can be found circulating in archaic and classical literature, starting with Hesiod. Methodical research reveals that ζῆλος continues to be an infrequent lexical choice in tragedy (6x), and it is reasonable to suspect that there is often a margin of stylistic markedness. On a semantic level, it seems to center more around the idea of admiration, affective desire, and attainment of a good, rather than of irascibility, underlying the Homeric use of ζηλήμων (Od. V 118) and δύσζηλος (Od. VII 307). In general, tragic poets found it easy to shift the verb ζηλόω into the ambit of the ideal and the pathetic μακαρισμός, and it appears difficult to assign the modern sense of jealousy to any term from this lexical family.