La Lidia di Plinio il Vecchio

The essay takes into consideration the encyclopaedic work of Pliny the Elder – his Natural History – as a test-case to collect and study the information he gives about the region of Lydia, in a double direction: on one side, it discusses the data he offers about the mythical and historical past of the Lydian kingdom from a “Greek” perspective, for their historical and historiographical value; on the other side, it takes into account Pliny’s description of Lydian geography and economy in his times, analysing them from a “Roman” point of view. The aim is to advance some methodological observations about the value of Latin texts as “cover-texts” for the history of Archaic Greece (and Lydia).