F. Gazzano, L’altro dell’altro? Persia e Oriente in Valerio Massimo

The essay examines the passages (listed in the Appendix) of the Facta et dicta memorabilia in which Valerius Maximus deals with the Persians and, more broadly, with facts and figures of Near Eastern history. In view of the chronological gap, it is not surprising that the episodes relating to the Achaemenid kings and their predecessors, in Asia and above all in Anatolia, are all drawn from the Greek literary tradition, and reflect its general interpretation and distortions in terms of ideology and opposition. Yet, a detailed comparison with the information preserved in the Greek sources shows Valerius’ dependence on Hellenistic and Latin works rather than on the original Herodotean materials, but reveals also that the episodes were selected, reworked and reinterpreted by Valerius himself according to the canons of his time and with very different aims, moralistic rather than ideological. This seems confirmed by a first comparison between the passages concerning the ancient East of the Greeks and those Valerius dedicates to the Oriental characters of the Roman period.