Memorie focidesi. Il passaggio dei Persiani nella valle del Cefiso

This article focuses on the Phocians’ siding against the Persians in the Greco-Persian Wars on account of their rivalry with the Thessalians. The connection between neighbourly battles and medism is investigated in two ways. First, the milieu in which it has been shaped, identified in a Phocian version of the Thessalian-Phocian battles and second, the specific function it plays in Herodotus. To this end, a survey of Herodotus’ passage on these battles is carried out and the elements that appear to be Thessalian on the one hand, and Phocian on the other, are highlighted. Among Phocian elites especially, there was a desire to spin the narrative to justify their non-medism vis-à-vis their fellow Phocians after the disaster of Thermopylae. That disaster had dreadful consequences for the inhabitants of the region, after Xerxes marched his army into the Cephisus-valley, leaving a trail of death and destruction. The article then proceeds, first, to investigate the extent to which the above connection might have been admitted and put to work in a new function in Thessalian environments distant from the Alevadae, and, second, to explore how these stories reverberated in Athenian circles, both pro- and anti-Phocian ones. The analysis concludes with an examination of the partial resemantisation of this link by Herodotus.