Sul metodo storiografico di Acusilao di Argo

Abstract

An analysis of the surviving fragments of Akusilaos (Acusilaus) shows that the Argive historian worked out a critical method to check the early poetic and oral Greek traditions as an instrument for his historical work. Fragment 28 in particular suggests that the historian, by choosing a Tirynthian myth instead of the Argive tradition, i.e. the civic tradition of another polis, regarded the critical examination of his sources as more valuable than local patriotism and that he wrote his genealogical work before the Battle of Sepeia (494 BC), when the Spartan victory caused an unbridgeable and long-lasting rift between Argos and Tiryns. Akusilaos is thus reinstated as the earliest historian for whom we have substantial fragments.

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