RATIONES RERUM 20: Articolo Virgilio Costa

Descrizione

Rationes Rerum 20

VIRGILIO COSTA
Il giovane Plutarco e la storiografia ateniese

In the treatise De gloria Atheniensium, almost certainly composed in his youth, Plutarch affirms that Athens was not made great by its artists and men of letters, but by its political and military leaders. In doing so, he mentions several writers, chosen from the most representative of Athenian historiography (Thucydides, Cratippus, Xenophon, Clidemus, Diyllus, Philochorus, and Phylarchus), but his quotations are inaccurate and misleading. In particular, several clues suggest that Cratippus, contrary to the general opinion of modern scholars, was not a continuator of Thucydides, although there is no reason to deny his chronological placement between Thucydides and Xenophon.