Poco affidabile, pur sempre un amico. Erodoto in Elio Aristide

The paper focuses on the reception of Herodotus in the works of the 2nd century rhetorician Aelius Aristides. In two orations in particular, namely On a Remark in Passing (28 Keil) and The Egyptian discourse (36 Keil), Aristides quotes Herodotus explicitly and makes some extended and quite original comments on his work and his method as a historian. In Or. 28, entirely dedicated to the topics of self-praise, Aristides reads Herodotus’ proem as a sample of the historian’s (assumed) high self-estimation, while in Or. 36, in which the vexata quaestio of the flood of the Nile is discussed, the rhetorician extensively examines the passages Herodotus dedicates to the same subject (2, 19-34) in order to demonstrate the historian’s unreliability. In doing so, Aristides employs arguments which are typical of a certain anti-Herodotean ‘attitude’ of his age, but, at the same time, he distances himself from this trend by avoiding to push his criticism too far, and by acknowledging Herodotus’ numerous virtues, among which the one of inspiring Aristides himself to discover Egypt.