Il dibattito sulle costituzioni nelle Storie di Erodoto

The ‘Constitutional Debate’ in Herodotus (Book III, 80-83) is one of the most important contribution to the development of political thought in antiquity. It’s raises many issues about its authenticity, sources and purposes. That contribution focuses on the representation of the power of a single man and on the vocabulary used by the protagonists of the debate with a particular attention to the notion of the laws of the land (the nomaia patria). We can identify two points of view: Otanes speaks according to a Greek perspective: he criticizes the the tyrant, the enemy of the political and ethical values of the polis; Darius describes and praises the legitimate power of the king, guardian of tradition: the monarchy is the only choice for the Persians. In that page Herodotus compares the irreducible difference between the world of the polis and the world of Asian empires.