Sui racconti di fondazione di Cos

Abstract

The ancient sources preserve traces of different foundation accounts about Kos by Aeliades, Makareus, Merops, Herakles and by the Dorians. The account preserved by Pherecydes, Ps. Apollodorus, Tzetzes and some scholia ascribes the foundation of Kos to Herakles, who kills the koan king Euripylos and generates two sons: they will be the future kings of Kos. Herodotus ascribes the origins of the Dorian ethnos in Kos to the Dorians from Epidaurus. The account preserved by Strabo ascribes the foundation to the Dorians who returned in the Peloponnese after the Trojan War and who founded Megara. These foundation accounts seem to show different mechanisms for the representation of the «being Dorians» in Kos.