Incidenza dell'antico Dialoghi di storia greca

In the wake of Carlo Ginzburg's more recent book, Il filo e le tracce, this short paper dwells on a theme constantly present in the historiographical reflection, that is the meaning of the real and of the representation of the real. Hence some other questions are discussed: the truth (or falsification) of the real and of its representation, the relationship between truth and likelihood, the different ways in which historians on one hand and artists on the other are used to represent the real.

Many Tyrrhenian places of ancient Sicily and Italy were identified from immemorial time, and also by local people, with the main stages of the Return of Ulysses (Cyclopes, Aeolus, Circe, etc.). Therefore, some Hellenistic critics (for example Aristarchus and Polybius) thought that the voyage of Ulysses, after the loss of the course because of the storm at Cape Malea, had just to be imagined in those sites. But how to explain that Homer places the voyage from Circe to the Hades over the Ocean? Just a pseudo-geographic poetic touch? Crates of Mallus didn't think so: in his opinion, only some of the numerous adventures had taken place in the Tyrrhenian Sea, while Homer had placed some other exactly on the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the ancient name given to the Straits of Gibraltar). Whichever model we uphold, the route of Ulysses results to be so unlikely - from the point of view both of the objective reality and of the poetic imagination - that Eratosthenes held that, from Cape Malea onwards, Ulysses switched from the real world to a world of a fable narration which doesn't take into account geography at all. Although modern critics are inclined to agree with him, there is, as a matter of fact, an extremely serious objection raising against this thesis: the myth and the epos of Greeks, since the most archaic era, are strictly linked to the geography and the topography as well; they are radically refractory to a fable narration totally lacking of time and space landmarks. A different solution, that neither the ancient nor the modern critics have ever guessed, can be suggested by combining Odyssey's data with those we can reconstruct for the earliest form of the Argonautic saga, and taking also into account the chronology of the Greek western colonization: up to around the middle of the VIIIth century b.C., the Greeks thought the Ocean to flow just after the Sicily Channel, essentially coinciding with the so-called Tyrrhenian Sea, still completely unknown at that time. This new perspective can well justify the objective disorder of Ulysses' route. Above all, it bears a deeper poetic sense: the Hero had the chance to know and to experience not only some far and exotic countries in general terms, as it can happen to any off course sailor; but he met the very boundaries of the surfacing lands and the rushing waters which encircle the terrestrian disc, bordering the external cosmic abyss. Ulysses came back home alive, still able to tell stories about over where no human being could ever sail without losing his life. In fact that borderline, even being gegraphically clearly located, marks at the same time the insuperable bound between the physic and the meta-physic world.

An Athenian expedition to North-Western Greece led by Phormio, on request of Amphilochians and Acarnanians striving against the Ambraciote 'co-settlers' of Argos, and the ensuing alliance between Athenians and Acarnanians are briefly reported retrospectively by Thucydides (II 68,7-8) without any clear chronological indication. This paper, after discussing the several proposed datings (spreading from ca. 455 to 432), builds on the evidence on Ambracia's military involvment in the clash between Corinth and Corcyra to suggest 435, perhaps its second half, as the most plausible date. It endeavours also to define more precisely ways and goals of the Athenian intervention and its impact on the relations between Athens and Corinth on the eve of the Peloponnesian war. Finally, it is argued that the shift of this event from its proper historical context in Thucydides' work can be explained away less through his alleged pro-Athenian bias than through his complex arrangement of the historical stuff of the pre-war years.

Isaeus' VIIIth speech, On the Estate of Ciron, offers several statements concerning evidence and arguments to be used while reconstructing events from the past (t¦ p£lai gegenhmšna). The orator defines the role of ¢ko», martur…ai, and tekm»ria, and suggests the latter to be of greater value, and more reliable than direct or secondary witnesses and, of course, hearsay. Forensic strategy naturally plays its role here, but a strong link can be seen with Thucydides' so-called Archaiologia, the best known inquiry on the past in classical Greek literature. Two separate texts, of deeply different inspiration, objectives, and weight, seem to share a similar background, in the construction and presentation of a Discourse about past events, a Discourse to be considered first of all as a demonstration (™p…deixij), requiring specific tools, evidence and arguments.

The Author examines the possible existence of a relationship between the name of the Rutuli people of Lazio and the extensive set of Etruscan names having in common the abbreviation rut-. Study of Etruscan documentation shows the existence of the male first name *Rute, from which depend both the diminutive *Rutele (> gentilitial *Rutelena > Rutelna) and, (probably through the corresponding appellative), the adjectival derivative *Rutesie, which in turn was the base of the gentilitial *Rutesiena (> Rutšna, -nei). In neo-Etruscan times the female first name Rutia (: male *Rutie) was used as gentilitial ('Vornamengentile'), while the surname Rutania probably comes from *Ruta. A series of clues supports the hypothesis that the Etruscan *Rutele was continued in Latin by the gentilitial Rutilius. However, the possibility of a connection of the Etruscan *Rutele with the Latin adjective rutilus, «living red», is rejected, as is its relationship with the ethnonym of Rutuli, also to be kept distinct from the Etruscan forms examined.

This note reexamines the typology of the coins of Sybaris, refounded in 446/5 B.C., in order to reassert that this coinage originally hinted both to the Athenian presence (obverse) and to the Sybarite tradition (reverse), while only later elements of autonomy emerged. Furthermore, through the analysis the type of the bull it is possible to define the topographical location of the rivers Krathis and Sybaris as well as the close connection between the former and the town of Pandosia.

Peisthetaerus and Euelpides, the protagonists of Aristophanes' Birds, leave Athens and go to the Birds' City to found a new colony. The Upupa tells them the ideal city is on the Red Sea. Starting from this simple indication, the role of the Red Sea in the Greek imagination of the Vth century B.C is here analysed. The Erythraean dimension stretches to the Indian Ocean and encloses many peoples, Ethiopians, Arabians and Indians. In this comedy, the Erythraean Sea indicates an escape-place, a daydream, which is associated to idealizing fantasies, such as the Long-Lived source, where the sun rises everyday, and the southern eschatiai as blessed places.

The relationships between Athens and the Bosporan Kingdom are here reconsidered. Contrary to the arguments advanced by a recent paper of D. Braund, it is argued that such relationships, formerly being conflictual, had a positive evolution during the government of Satyros.

The relationships between the Greek cities and Hellenistic kingdoms have been based very often on acts of euergesia for the financing of city institutions. The euergesia, as Polybius asserted, has the same essence of the basileia. In the polybian ideology euergesia and philanthropia constitute the essence of the monarchy distinguishing it from tyranny. Among the civic institutions the Hellenistic monarchs showed a particular attention to gymnasium and to institutions for education of the paides. On of the reason of this interest is the central rule of gymnasion in the life of the Hellenistic poleis. Through the offerings of generous gifts, the kings reached the double goal of the thankfulness of the cities as well as making the gymnasia the organism for the safeguard of the dynastic fidelity. The aim of the present study is to show a picture of the phenomenon, its origin and chronological and geographic diffusion through the collection of the epigraphic and literary evidences. From this picture comes out a greater involvement of the Attalid kingdom and the concentration of gifts in the II century B.C. , first for the benefit of the poleis of Asia Minor.

This paper proposes a critical review of the series Papers and Acts from the Copenhagen Polis Centre (CPC) published from 1993 to 2005, and of An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis. An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre (Oxford, 2004). The review focuses on the territorial, political and religious structure of the Greek Polis and aims to show the close relationship between space and identity, paying special attention to topics like Unity vs Separation, Synoikismos, Sacred space and Identity, the way of naming Greek citizens. An anthropological and historical perspective can examine the great deal of useful information offered by the CPC's publications, in order to understand how the concept of space (chiefly: the sacred space) can connect the concepts of individual and collective identity.

In this article some topics about Greek religion and cultural history are discussed, taking as a starting point a recent book by Sally Humphreys (The strangeness of Gods. Historical Perspectives on the interpretation of Athenian Religion). The first section of the paper is a critical discussion about the book itself, chapter by chapter, with remarks on specific themes which are discussed more in depth in the second section. These are, among others, the relationship between the study of Greek religion and the history of culture, and the influences of the latter on the former; the interdisciplinary approach to the study of Greek religion; the productiveness of the Attic demes within Athenian religious life; the importance of Lycurgus the Eteobutad for the religious as well as economic life of fourth century Athens.