Fra Siracusa e le Termopili: note di commento a P.Oxy. VI 857

P.Oxy. VI 857, a parchment leaf from a codex, retains some scraps of information concerning the journey of Cadmus of Cos to Delphi (on the recto) and the battle of the Thermopylae (on the verso). Though closely related to Herodotus’s account, the text on this fragment seems rather to be a reinterpretation of it, whose ideological nuances can be traced back to no earlier than the 4th century BCE. This paper provides a historical commentary of P.Oxy. VI 857 and, at the same time, is aimed to assess its original belonging to an epitome of Herodotus, as assumed by the first editors.