L’anello debole della catena. L’egemonia macedone nella tradizione antica sulla translatio imperii

The paper investigates the fortune and misfortune of Macedonian hegemony in the schema of translatio imperii. Despite tendency to minimize or underestimate its importance in some authors (Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appianus) and in the Greco-Roman world (in particular, in the Second Sophistic, hostile to Hellenistic royalties), an exam of the whole tradiction sketches a more complex picture. The concept of Macedonian hegemony was widespread in the propaganda and sources related to some Hellenistic kingdoms; furthermore it was inherited or used, with some changes and attention paid to eastern part of oikoumene (mostly in opposition to Rome), by non-Greek or half-Greek monarchies.