La stele dei Megaresi caduti durante la seconda guerra persiana

Abstract

The stele belongs to a funerary monument erected in the agora of Megara in honour of soldiers fallen in the Persian Wars (480-479 BC). The inscription is made of three portions of text: a prose introduction, an epigram in elegiacs, and a final prose annotation. According to the introduction, the epigram is a re-inscription, due to the initiative of the archiereus Helladius, of a post-Persian text, which time had damaged. The inscription attests to the fundamental importance of the memory of the Persian Wars both in the immediate aftermath of the war and several centuries later, when a historical document dating to nearly a millennium before was still perceived as crucial to the civic identity of Megara.