Identità etniche e territorio: le origini dei Dori secondo Erodoto (1.56.3)

The territory of Doris plays a central role in the mythical traditions regarding the origins of the Dorians. Other territories, close to Doris, were equally involved in the most ancient layers of the tradition on the ‘archaeology’ of the Dorian people. This paper focuses primarily on Herodotus’ testimony, to show how in his critical reconstruction he takes into account all previous traditions, describing a path of the Dorian migration that touched all the territories linked to the genesis of this ethnos in previous myths. Herodotus aims to challenge the schematic mythical representations that traced the origins of all the Doric communities back to a unitary ethnic substratum created by a close intertwining of descendants of Dorus and heirs of Heracles.