Memorie mitiche e memorie identitarie nell'Argolide. Osservazioni sui miti della siccità e del "giudizio dei Fiumi"

The paper examines two mythical episodes belonging to the collective memories of the Argolid region: on one side, the discovery of water springs in Argos by Danaus and the Danaids, on the other the judgment by the regional river-gods between Poseidon and Hera. Both can be related to the famous epic motif of “thirsty Argos” (πολυδίψιον Ἄργος). Usually, they are both associated to the city of Argos, and they are presented as connected in a passage of Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca. However, literary, mythographic, historical and geographical evidence rather suggest that, while the myth of the Danaids’ streams is an important part of the “civic” mythology of Argos, the judgment by the river-gods (anche the character there involved, most notably Inachus) might be a product of the Eastern “province” of the Argolid, specifically of Mycenae, linked to the other tale just in classical times and in Panhellenic sources, while remaining essentialy foreign to the specific tradition of Argos.