The two historians would have kept silent about the presence of mercenaries alongside the Greeks, as shown by the molecular tests on the remains of soldiers who fell in the battles of the fifth century BC.
Fake news already existed at the time of Ancient Greece: one would have been spread artfully even by Herodotus, the “father of history”, who would have voluntarily omitted the presence of mercenaries in the pay of the Greeks of Sicily in the epic battle of Imera that he saw them prevail over the Carthaginians in 480 BC
Fact-checking comes after more than two thousand years thanks to the analyzes conducted on the remains of 62 soldiers by an international team led by Katherine Reinberger of the University of Georgia. The results of the study, which was also attended by the archaeologist Stefano Vassallo of the Superintendence for Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, are published in the journal Plos One.
The work of scientific investigation demonstrates how important it is to interrogate the archaeological remains to verify the veracity of the stories handed down by the ancients. In the case of the battle of Imera, Herodotus wrote in his work ‘Storiè that the Carthaginians had enlisted mercenaries to launch the attack, while the inhabitants of the colony had defended themselves thanks to the support of the Greek allies from other parts of Sicily. According to another historian, Diodorus Siculus, in the second battle of Hymera in 409 BC the help of the allies failed and the Carthaginians prevailed. In search of evidence, the archaeologists tried to reconstruct the geographical origin of the fighters who defended Hymera by examining the isotopes of calcium and strontium fixed in the enamel of their teeth: in particular, they analyzed the remains of 62 soldiers (51 protagonists of the first battle of Imera and 11 of the second) then comparing them with those of 25 inhabitants of Imera. The results show that a third of the soldiers employed in the first battle were local, compared to three quarters of the second battle: this would confirm what was said by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus about the help of the allies.
On the other hand, however, many of the fighters who came from outside came from far away, outside the Greek territories, and therefore were mercenaries. According to scholars, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus would have kept silent about this detail so as not to hurt the pride of the Greeks, who considered all foreigners barbarians.
COPYRIGHT today © breaking latest news