Una polemica in Pausania (I 3, 3): la storia “nei cori e nelle tragedie”

Pausanias referring to the case of Theseus, the democratic king, argues against the false beliefs and even more against those who are ignorant of history and consider trustworthy whatever they have heard from childhood in choruses and tragedies. After an overview of the main issues raised by this passage, the paper focuses on the relationship between Greek narrative poetry and its performances and their impact on the audience. From Thucydides to Polybius, from Philochorus to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the reliability of these poetic sources is criticized and disputed. However, the strong appeal of a performance, that is the combination of dance with song and music, subtly emerges from the pages where Plato is about to tell the (true for him) story of Athens and Atlantis. This contrast between historiography and performance so discussed in the ancient world is mirrored today by the pervasive impact of the films concerning real events, more impressive and uneasy to forgot than any book written by a historian.