POxy LXXI 4808: contenuto e problemi

POxy LXXI 4808 transmits either a private text writtenby a learned reader or, more likely, a fragment from a handbook composed for schools and for the pursuit of more advanced learning. Through schematic accounts of three historians of Alexander the Great (Onesicritus, Cares, and Cleitarchus) and of Hieronymus of Cardia and Polybius, the document clearly favors historiography that is devoted to the representation of reality and the reconstruction of events that is as accurate as possible, as opposed to an encomiastichistoriography focused on great personalities and moreoriented towards myth and the fabulous or pure entertaintment.