Quando i metri vengono da soli: a proposito di Luc. Men. 1

In the opening scene of Lucian’s Menippus, the protagonist, after citing some Euripidean trimeters, explains that his metrical delivery is due to his recent meeting with Euripides (and Homer) in Hades; in these self-explanatory words Harmon detected a comic iambic trimeter (αὐτόματά μοι τὰ μέτρα ἐπὶ τὸ στόμα ἔρχεται). The paper aims to demonstrate that this metrical segment, far from being incidental, is not even a comic quote, as Harmon himself suggests, but rather a slip by Menippus, metrically rough precisely because it is not intentional; the literary meaning of this Lucianic verse is then investigated.