Incidenza dell'antico Dialoghi di storia greca

The article takes into consideration the position of the Finnish scholar Gunnar Mickwitz in the1930s debate about the relationship between the monetary economy (Geldwirtschaft) and the natural economy (Naturalwirtschaft) in Late Antiquity. In counterposition to the Weberian and the positivist theories of a gradual and definitive assertion of the natural over the monetary economy, Gunnar Mickwitz returns to and reelaborates the theories of Ludo Moritz Hartmann, of Ernst Stein and of Axel W. Persson and proposes a different interpretative scheme: the two economies coexisted and there was a competition between a private 'monetary' sector and a public 'natural' sector of the economy.

The author provides an assessment of Filippo Càssola' contribution to studies in Greek history, with particular reference to his methods, his works on Ionia from Mycenean times to the archaic age and his many essays on Solon and Greek historiography.

The investigation of the relationship between history and rhetoric is indispensible for establishing the epistemiological statute which antiquity attributed to history. In particular, to be studied whetherascertaining and verifying the attendability of the news had a role in the antique thought on historiography and whether the antiques had a real and proper concept of the historic truth. The article attempts to point out such aspects and knots which animate the debate taking into particular account the few recent contributions, in which though, the theme of verification and attendability of the news within antique historiography is faced in a precise and accurate way. Only starting from the distinction 'Thucidean' between antique history and historym not induced by rhetoric. The historiographic reflections of Aristotle, which strongly feel the influence of Thucidides, confirm this conclusionm and thereby also the reflections after Aristotle.

The article gathers together and discusses some fragments which can be traced to Pericles' speech in honour of the dead from the Samian War (441-439 B.C.). Such fragments, reported by Stesimbrotos of Thasos, by Ion of Chios and in Aristotle's Rhetorics demonstrate the 'terrible' character of Pericles' oratory, well known to the poets of Attic comedy and even to his admiring biographer Plutarch. Compared to the speech for the fallen of the first year of the Peleponnesian War (Thuc. II 3447), the speech for the dead of the Samian War has 'stronger' tones, includes provocatory ideological and cultural motifs and is in antithesis to the cultural tradition of the logos epitaphios and the Athenian setting in general. It is possible to see he influence of the thought of Protagoras and of Anaxagoras and the active participation of Pericles in the innovating and 'heterodox' climate operating in all fields of knowledge, from medicine to historiography.

The author takes issue with a recent contribution of A. Morandi Tarabella, who has claimed that a Latino-Roman origin for the Etruscan gentilitial Rumelna, as seen in an Archaic Etruscan inscription (end of the VI century B.C.) in the necropolis at Orvieto. Unlike the author, who has sustained the theory of an Etruscan origin for the name in question, Morandi Tarabella believes that it is the Latin gentilitial name Romilius which passed into Etruscan as a loan word, where it would have become Rumelna. The author believes it possible to confute the theory of a Latino-Roman origin of the gentilitial name Rumelna in Orvieto, sustaining on the contrary that it is the Archaic Etruscan male first name *Rumele, found in Etruscan, which is at the base of the gentilitial *Rumel(e)na, which itself gave rise in Latin to the gentilitial name Romilius. In the last instance, the author believes it useful dwell on some general principles, which are well founded and explained, and which aare stressed in this contribution.

The following is an attempt at interpretation of the short fragment DK 31 B 25 (« … for it is noble to say one must even twice») by Empedocles which in turn is considered an ideal starting point for grasping critical moments of his reflections. As a consequence 'Repetition' is considered the founding element of the philosopher's thought. He does not simply try to describe linguistic repetition, which has a didactic or persuasive intention and is to be considered separately from reality as a whole. This would not be compatible with the profound unity of the physis, which dominates all the fragments and in particular the fragment DK 31 B 23 which introduces a close connection between the means of expression and the nature represented through that means. Neither does repetition indifferently trace out the repetition of the cycle of natural elements. Repetition as introduced and used by Empedocles is intended as a purely linguistic characteristic to fix and determine that which, at the level of becoming of nature, turns out to be undeterminable, and, therefore, not even thinkable, while at the same time it is a characteristic which can 'mobilise' fixing and homogenise it to the becoming of the world.

The numismatic documentation, but not alone, permits tracing the history of Pandosia from the end of the VI to the first half of the IV century B.C.: in this period phenomena of longue durée qualitatively restore the historical and cultural level of Pandosia and of the Oinotrians in the history of the Calabrian hinterland. The centre, the regal site of the Oinotrians, was soon absorbed into the structure of power of Sybaris and then passed to Crotone. Only in the mid-V century did Pandosia recover a certain autonomy which, however, never completley liberated it from the influence of the nearby Greek cities: Thurii, the Achaean League and at a later date the Italiotic League. In the IV century the Brettian conquest conferred a new structure to the territory which would last until the Roman conquest.

The essay attempts to expound how Giorgio Colli's reading of Antiquity constitutes the beginning and end points of a circular thought: 'Greek wisdom' is the place where reason, and thus philosophy, is born, and it is also the place to which the analysis of the complex abstract edifice of reason leads back. Colli, who declares himself a philosopher, not a historicist of philosophy nor a philologist, formulates the basis of his personal doctrine from Greek thought. A further sign of this circularity can be seen in the fact that Colli's last work, entitled La Sapienza greca, is an unfinished attempt at a critical edition about Pre-Socratic thought and the mythical, religious and archaic background from which this thought began while his first intellectual debut was Physis kryptesthai philei.

In recent years two new volumes have been published on the Sirens: Loredana Mancini, Il rovinoso incanto. Storie di Sirene antiche, il Mulino (Antropologia del Mondo antico, Collana del Centro di Antropologia del Mondo Antico dell'Università di Siena a cura di M. Bettini), Bologna 2005, pp. 296 and Elisabetta Moro, La santa e la sirena. Sul mito di fondazione di Napoli, Imagaenaria (miliaria italica), Ischia 2005, pp. 173. Both works identify the 'archaeology of myth' within a distinctive anthropological perspective. The first publication investigates the mythological tales on a planimetric level paying special attention to the present; the second one develops a vertical, stratigraphical perspective, focusing particularly on the founding myth of 'double' Naples.

The contribution discusses some of the complex issues of a recently published book (L'uso dei documenti nella storiografia antica), which comprises the proceedings of a similarly entitled conference and which can be considered the outcome of a collaborative research project promoted and executed by four Italian Universities. Attention is not only directed to the computerized databank for all the documents used in ancient historiography created by the Centro di Ricerche Informatiche of the Scuola Normale in Pisa, under the direction of Paolo Desideri (co-ordinator of the four research groups), but also towards the use of epigraphic documents in ancient historiography, a topic specifically dealt with by a few scholars attending the conference and which, in contrast with the so-called 'narrativistic theories', share the fundamental scientific assumption of the research project: despite the variety of their approaches and specific interests, the ancient historians worked on the assumption that history could be and should be written providing documentary evidence and guarantees of reliability.