Diodore et les monuments d’Agrigente : la réversibilité des signes

Abstract

The present study focuses mainly on the monuments of Agrigento which are the only ones that, along with those of Syracuse, benefit from a relatively developed treatment in Diodorus. The mention of these monuments does not always appear at the place in the story where one would expect it. The changes of place, the silences and the choice to develop the descriptions more or less obey, for the historian, a narrative and dramaturgical purpose: it is a question of emphasising the links that unite certain episodes sometimes distant from each other depending on a moral causality. Part of the study is reserved for the Phalaris bull. Depending on the sources, the invention of this instrument of torture is attributed either to the tyrant or to the artist Perilaos. Diodorus very likely made Phalaris responsible for the machine in order to highlight a parallel between the cruelty of the tyrant and that of Agathocles.