The investigation of Aeolian foundation myths continues in this chapter, with examination of traditions of the founding of Boeotian Thebes. Ancestral Indo-European tradition is again evident, as is an Anatolian stratum, one which foregrounds technological expertise of Asian origin.

This chapter presents eleven epigrams (forty-nine dodecasyllables) copied in the margins of a number of manuscripts of Herodotus’ Histories, the most important being Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 70.6. The epigrams comment on the text of Herodotus next to which they appear, and thus can be characterized as verse scholia. These poems, which the author of this chapter has critically edited in a recent article, were known to scholars, but they had been misattributed to John Tzetzes. In fact, Tzetzes’ verse scholia on Herodotus survive in another manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 70.3), whereas our poems have more in common with the verse scholia on Diodorus Siculus in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, gr. 130. The authorial voice of Tzetzes and the attribution of the poems in Vat. gr. 130 to Niketas Choniates are investigated to help determine the context of composition of our verse scholia on Herodotus. On the basis of this comparison and other internal evidence, this chapter concludes that our eleven epigrams were first copied in the model of Laur. Plut. 70.6 at some point between 1204 and 1318, and probably before 1261.

Chapter 1 sketches the events that transpired in eastern Sicily during the turbulent years leading up to Hieron’s ascension to power, as would-be tyrants and bellicose kings grappled for political and military control of the island.

This chapter takes up the volume’s key notion of ‘dialogue’ by comparing – and thus bringing into dialogue – two periploi from the late Hellenistic and the imperial period, the description of the Red Sea in Diodorus’ Bibliotheke 3.38–48 and the island ecphrasis 2.17 in Philostratus’ Imagines. To the volume’s larger themes, the chapter adds the aspects of mediality and reader response. It shows how both texts employ a fairly similar ecphrastic technique characterised by contextualisation, historicisation and narrativisation, in order to afford their readers quite different experiences. The key element is their divergent strategies of mediality: the Bibliotheke is characterised by a marked ‘bookishness’, whereas the Imagines creates a feigned orality. Both strategies have their place in contemporary discourses and contexts. The Bibliotheke situates itself in the late Hellenistic debate on writing and reading history, and particularly in the discourse on the pleasures of reading historiographical texts, while the Imagines is part of a broader trend of enriching texts with structures and elements of oral communication in the imperial period.

The conquest and destruction of Selinus by the Carthaginian army in 409 B.C. and its reoccupation by the Syracusan general Hermocrates the year after provide an excellent case study for exploring two of the main themes of this volume. This chapter focuses on the destruction of 409 B.C., comparing Diodorus Siculus’ account with the archaeological evidence, in an attempt to evaluate both the physical damage sustained by the city and the reliability of the ancient author. This discussion is followed by a brief account of Selinus’ survival and recovery, always on the basis of Diodorus Siculus and the available archaeological evidence.