La fortuna di Milziade fra IV secolo a.C. e I d.C. Frammenti di una tradizione

This paper focuses on the portrait of Miltiades in the sources between 4th cent. B.C. and\r\n1st A.D., thus after Herodotus and before Plutarch and the Second sophistic. After the first\r\nparagraph, devoted to an introduction to the issue, the second one considers sources of the\r\n4th century: the orators usually praise Miltiades and therefore they rehabilitate his reputation\r\nafter he died in disgrace (par. 2.1); then his figure is analysed in authors like Plato,\r\nAristotle (par. 2.2) and Theopompus and Ephorus (par. 2.3). The third paragraph focuses\r\non the sources between 1st cent. B.C. and 1st A.D.: the only Greek-writing author is Diodorus\r\n(par. 3.1), but we have a number of Latin sources, like Nepos, Cicero, Seneca the\r\nElder, Valerius Maximus and others (par. 3.2). In the fourth paragraph it is provided a list\r\nof rare pieces of information preserved by the sources, concerning the battle of Marathon\r\n(par. 4.1), the events after the battle (par. 4.2) and other episodes (par. 4.3): the aim of this\r\nsection is not to ascertain the reliability of these pieces of news, that is usually very low,\r\nbut to use them in order to understand which portrait of Miltiades these sources intended\r\nto provide. The fifth paragraph offers final remarks and suggests that, notwithstanding\r\nMiltiades’ rehabilitation, due both to Cimon’s propaganda and to the new conditions of\r\n4th century Athens, his imagine remains at least partly controversial: criticisms are attested\r\n(e.g. by Plato), but also ambivalent judgments, such as that of Nepos, who wrote the only\r\nbiography of Miltiades.