Démosthène fabuliste ? L’ombre d’un âne entre comédie, proverbe et fable chez les scholiastes et les lexicographes

In the end of Demosthenes’ demegoria On the Peace, we can find a strange metaphor, which have proved to be hard to explain : “ over the shadow at Delphi”. Demosthenes is thinking about the Amphictyonic Council, that he pretends to be despising. This metaphor is framed from the proverb “ over the shadow of a donkey”, which can be found before Demosthenes’ time in Aristophanes, Sophocles, Plato and later in Menander. It is also the title of a lost play from Archippos. As explained by scholia and lexica, it has its origins in an apologue. Some of them assert that Demosthenes is the author of this apologue : he would have been telling this story before the Ecclesia or before some court. By this way, scholiasts and lexicographers try to fill a gap in the corpus demosthenicum and to make of Demosthenes a master in telling fables too. They want to offer him as a model to those practicising preliminary rhetorical training (progymnasmata). We cannot find any fable indeed on Demosthenes’ works that have survived. The only pieces of evidence we have are an account by Plutarchus and a metaphor that can be found in Against Aritogeitonos I, which is imitated in Against Aristogeitonos II. All these stories deal with dogs, wolves and sheep, currently used in Aesopica in similar patterns. So fables might have been typical of oral speeches. That would explain why we have so few pieces of evidence in Demosthenes, whereas Aristophanes and Aristotle say us orators used telling fables

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