La monografia su una guerra: dal ciclo epico al ciclo storico

The contribution aims at a better definition of the relations between epic poetry, and in particular the one dedicated, like the Iliad, to the narration of a war or a phase of it, and historiography. Epic poetry has offered historiography models of structures at various levels: from the macro-structure made up of actions (erga) and speeches (logoi) to large narrative articulations and typical scenes, which in turn contain recurring motifs. The analysis concerns above all the historiography of the fifth century BC, but extends to Xenophon, and in particular to the Anabasis, an innovative work that grafts encomiastic and technical themes into a narrative structure of erga and logoi. In the last section the focus shifts to the ancient theory of historiography and, in particular, to the definition of the form and content of historiography in Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus.