Con il coltello tra i denti. Il silenzio come arma: Achille nei Mirmidoni di Eschilo

In the Myrmidons, Aeschylus develops the strategy of silence that Achilles uses in the Iliad into a dramatic scheme of great expressive power, which remained so impressed on the imagination of the Athenian public that it prompted Aristophanes to explain its characteristics and how it worked. The scheme involves the repeated failure of speech, which proves ineffective in both its manifestations of accusation and threat on the one hand, and persuasion on the other; it establishes the victory of silence as a means of communication of discomfort and unavailability, but above all as a means of opposition.