«Μέγα τὸ τῆς θαλάσσης κράτος» (Θουκ. Ι 143, 5): αρχαιολογία της ιδέας

Abstract

This is a philological study that deals with the articulated ideas and it is not in the least concerned with the historicity of events; it is not the events but the ideas that I thought are worth writing about (cf. I 22, 2). ‘Archaeology’, the title of this paper, refers – with a certain degree of ambiguity – first to the Archaeology of Thucydides, next it includes the connotation of Archaeology as excavation of the idea in Thucydides and Old-Oligarch, the sea-power of Polycrates in Herodotus, the Catalogue of the Ships in the second Book of the Iliad and the third chorus of the Persians of Aeschylus (852-907). In addition, the notion of ‘archaeology’ involves the components of the idea in Hesiod and Homer, and its survival in Xenophon’s Hellenica and in Isocrates, and, finally, its philosophical foundation in works of Plato and Aristotle; the study of the notion of Archaeology culminates with Atlantis and the works Timaeus and Critias of Plato.