Il Protesilao lucianeo e il destino della sua sposa: l’ambientazione cronologica dei Dialoghi dei morti 27 e 28

Lucian dedicates the Dialogues of the Dead 27 and 28 to Protesilaus. In the first dialogue the hero tries to find out where the responsability of his destiny, that deprived him of his wife, lies. In the latter, he begs Pluto to allow him to come back among the living men for a day: so he could see his wife again. The two Dialogues are connected by the identity of the leading character as well as by a close net of intertextual references, but are different from a chronological point of view: in Dialogue 28 the hero has just arrived in Hades, while the Dialogue 27, which seems at first sight to be placed in the eternal present of the afterlife, could be placed instead at a later stage of the mythical story when Protesilaus' expectations are disappointed and all the protagonists of the Trojan expedition are already dead.