Παρθικά-Parthica. Richerche sulla storiografia greco-latina di età imperiale sull’impero partico: il caso della Παρθική pseudo-appianea

Appian’s principle surviving work, known as Roman History, inspects the events occurred from Rome foundation until the reign of the Emperor Trajan. Among its different books, we can notice the Parthian History. Despite Appian’s intention of writing a Parthian History, the test that reached us – called Παρθική – is made only of excerpts from Appian’s Syrian History and from Plutarch’s Life of Crassus and Life of Antony. It is clear that the characteristics of this test have generated an intense debate on its authenticity. Object of this work is to shed light on this issue, writing a new critical edition of Παρθική, that takes into account the latest studies of the Roman History manuscript tradition. Furthermore, this work has the aim of taking a position on the question of authenticity through a deep study of Appian’s historiographical method and his use of sources. From this analysis it results that Παρθική is not adherent to Appian purposes and its contents does not match with the information he had available. For these reasons it doesn’t seems possible to take the position of the book authenticity.