Tra il sogno di Nectanebo e l'incubo di Saturnino: un rompicapo storiografico aperto

This paper elaborates on J. AJ 18, 67-80 and 81-84, and deals with some issues concerning the development of historical and literary memories. Starting from a historical event occurred under the emperor Tiberius (the expulsion of Isiacs and Judeans from Rome in 19 A.D.), Flavius Josephus joins together a true story and a fictional one modeled on a well known episode of Nectanebo and Olympias in the Romance of Alexander. The narrative characteristics of the fictional story are contextualized through a series of parallels up to Boccaccio’s Decameron, some of which not well known or even new. This reveals a successful, long-term literary memory. Between fiction and reality, problems of identification of those involved in both stories are discussed, matching the real story to an historical scandal involving the pre-eminent Sentii Saturnini. Besides, the structure of Josephus' narrative allows to determine the author’s disparaging scope against the Isiac community in Rome and in favour of the Judeans. This excludes any possible interpretation of it as affecting the memory of the Sentii Saturnini, which stands instead on a secondary level, and in a different scenario concerning the Roman gentes.