Luisa Prandi

Pausanias referring to the case of Theseus, the democratic king, argues against the false beliefs and even more against those who are ignorant of history and consider trustworthy whatever they have heard from childhood in choruses and tragedies. After an overview of the main issues raised by this passage, the paper focuses on the relationship between Greek narrative poetry and its performances and their impact on the audience...

SUMMARY: Some ancient authors (Heraclides Ponticus, ps.-Scymnus and Dionysius Periegetes) accuse the Sybarites for attempting to organize Panhellenic Games in competition with the Olympic ones. A careful scrutiny of all evidence, including the relations between Sybaris and Olympia in archaic age, leads to disbelieve it and to pinpoint two matters of fact: a) the polis of Sybaris might have planned to increase its prestige among the Western Greeks, managing and strengthening some local athletic games, as Corinth did with Isthmian Games at the beginning of the same VI century; b) the idea that these games were set in the same days of the Olympic Games for the purpose of competing with Olympia is due to a typical postclassical misinterpretation of the wealthy past of the Sybarites, which marks the greater part of the tradition about them.