genealogy and achievements. Pindar (518–438 bc) is of course the master of the genre, but Bacchylides of Ceos is the other famous epinician poet, whose uncle Simonides of Ceos had also written epinikia. Leslie Kurke sees the epinikia generally as systems of exchange of symbolic capital between victor and family and between victor and his polis, both sides being engaged in noble gift exchange (Kurke 1991). Christian Mann
emphasizes the differing political functions of the odes in each city, as in the case of Hieron of Syracuse’s use of seven songs by Pindar and
Bacchylides to describe his ideology of rule (Mann 2001: 48–9; 248–73).
Though victory odes in part allude to historical events, their primary
function is one remote from history’s avoidance of bias, namely unqualified praise written for and paid by wealthy and powerful patrons.
Why No Historical Tragedies?
Athenian tragedy began in the 530s bc, or possibly together with democracy, around 508/7 bc, and the vast majority of tragedies dealt with heroic myths. Only three historical dramas are known: Phrynicus’ Capture of Miletus (492 bc), his Phoenician Women/Persians (476 bc [?]), and Aeschylus’ Persians (472 bc). The reasons for a virtual taboo against historical drama in Athens may include an obvious avoidance of shaming fellow Greeks in a serious, publicly performed genre; conversely, the many oblique commentaries on Greek life embedded in tragedy, famously the
allusions to the Areopagus and to Ephialtes’ reforms in Aeschylus’
Eumenides; the fact that Old Comedy (mid‐ to late fifth century) filled the gap by parodying and ridiculing prominent men; and the coming of
age of historical prose in the second half of the fifth century. In short, tragedy, comedy, and history each had different but complementary social functions, at least in Athens. The audience evidently did not seek or
accept historical events being performed in the context of tragedy; it
highly approved of the lampooning of current public figures in comedy
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during the democratic era – and yet the much more limited public
treatment of political events in historical texts was perfectly acceptable.
Generally speaking for the fifth century and earlier periods, poetry and prose were considered antithetical in content: prose, including history and oratory, was the normal medium for factual discourse, while drama
and other poetry conveyed broader truths. Aristotle’s famous passage in the Poetics (1451b) asserts that “poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry speaks more of universals, history more of particulars.” For Aristotle, the materials of poetry are, according to Stephen Haliwell (1987 ad l.), “approximating to universals” by token of their adherence to probability and necessity, not because they claim
gravity and deep truth, or vision, as in a Romantic view of poetry. Behavior and experiences are understood at the level of general or universal categories (more on this in Chapter 5). Yet, in our view, data‐based historical discourse could also present universally significant narratives, reflecting on typical human thoughts, feelings, and actions through its selection of crucial events and elaboration of fictionalized speech and detail. Aristotle seems to downplay the deeper meanings of historical narratives for a
sharper contrast with poetry.
Falsehood and Fashioning, or Veracity, Verisimilitude,
and “Versionification”
History’s subject matter comes encumbered with cultural biases and
potential agendas that other genres avoided. Ancient history primarily
treated the contemporary, and therefore topics much less malleable to
treatment: recent individuals, deeds, and the fates of cities. For an audience with its own oral sources, accuracy, or at least plausibility, posed a problem of versions competing for validation and for support by different groups. There arose critical dissonance and the production of variant
readings (we might term the process “versionification”), alternative and challenged explanations, and fame and the defamation of individuals,
families, citizens, and ethnicities. (German Fassung conveys better than our “version” the notion of “framing” or “mounting” as a picture, or
“setting” as a gemstone, or “wording” or “formulation” in writing.) In
short, the political and social stakes are more immediate and subject to contention. So the historian, unlike the poet or philosopher, must be on guard and highly self‐conscious about veracity, not primarily to adhere to some quasi‐scientific ideal of objectivity, but to undertake personal
responsibility for his own published version of a past involving persons
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still alive, interested, and able to gain or lose much from a particular narrative representation. Thucydides saw the historian’s problem of bias of reporting a war in which one is involved (1.21), and in public rhetoric Thucydides’ Pericles (Th. 2.35) notes the difficulty of balancing praise that will not arouse envy in the audience. (See Flory 1990 on to mutho ̄ des in Thucydides 1.22.4 meaning “patriotic storytelling”; also Marincola
1997: 158–75.) “For ancient historians, [Marincola] observes, the
opposite of ‘true’ is ‘biased’; and bias is seen as specifically occasioned by favours or injustices (past or anticipated). Even patriotic bias is linked with what one’s patria gives one” (Walbank 1997: 236).
Rhetoric and History
For the Greeks, history was a branch of rhetoric, not of the more speculative philosophy. Both prose genres relied on clear, direct expression to convey opinions and actual events. Speaking well meant speaking effectively, achieving the pragmatic purpose of persuasion in court or the assembly, exhortation in military affairs, and ceremonial exposition as in a funeral oration. Ancient theorists divided oratory into three types, judicial, deliberative, and epideictic (for “display”), and history has aspects in common mainly with the judicial and the epideictic (in its praise and
blame) (Woodman 1988: 95–8). Rhetoric, like history, demands selection for a purpose and claims to be a true and objective account. But, unlike history, rhetoric involves performance for specific occasions, does not confine itself to narratives of past events, and does not espouse preserving the fame of men for eternity. Effective public rhetoric was, of course, a way of life among the Greeks centuries before its formal theory and teaching in the fifth century, as Homer’s speeches evidence. Teaching and theory began, legendarily, with Corax and Tisias in mid‐fifth‐century Sicily and evolved greatly in the hands of Gorgias in the later fifth century, and even more with Plato and Aristotle in the fourth. Chronologically,
rhetoric actually matured as a self‐conscious art contemporaneously with Herodotus and Thucydides, in the fifth century. But it is impossible to imagine Herodotus presenting the rich and polished speeches of his history without a highly sophisticated evolution of the rhetorical genre in daily practice by the era of the Persian Wars. So the mutual enrichment of rhetorical technique and historical standards of evidence came about
simultaneously in the genres, despite the fact that one purported to
convey the unvarnished truth and the other was known to be delivered
with partisan bias, just to prove a point (Fornara 1983: 170). When we
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encounter speeches in ancient historians, we must be aware of several
issues that modern scholars confront, specifically three questions debated for each author: truth versus invention (the degree of fidelity to the
original argument – leaving aside verbatim reports, which are rare – versus the historian’s adding what seemed appropriate in the situation); formal conventions (different types of conventional rhetorical speeches – debates, exhortations, exposition of facts
, etc.); and how speeches mix past with present issues (using examples from history, and adopting aspects of
former speeches for their own purposes) (Marincola 2007: 118–32;
Fornara 1983: 142–68).
The Logographers: From the Silly to the Serious
Modern scholars have long sought to understand the beginnings of
historical prose writing prior to Herodotus, in texts that survive today only in sparse fragmentary quotations. (The texts were systematically
organized by Felix Jacoby in a multivolume collection, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker [ FGrHist], which still remains authoritative but is currently being revised by a collective of scholars. Pearson 1939 gives a still useful account of four major figures.) From the sixth to the fifth century, a series of prose authors undertook several different modes of writing about the past: genealogies from heroic times to the present, ethnographies of foreign lands, horographies or local histories recording yearly events in a city‐state since its foundation, and chronographies
validating time‐reckoning methods by correlating events. These authors
were given the name logographers ( logographoi; also logopoioi or logioi) –
that is, “story (or speech) writers” – which was meant to distinguish them from the poets. Each subgenre had its political motives: local elite families sought validation of their lineage; cities and their peoples legitimized their origins; non‐Greeks were subordinated as less civilized and strange.
With Herodotus, these approaches were all united in what we might call
history proper, a chronological narrative of men’s deeds, usually unified around a defined period or major event.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in the later first century bc, summarizes the names and subject matters of prominent historians writing before the Peloponnesian War. The reliability of his account in many
details has been disputed, but David Toye has demonstrated that
Dionysius seems mainly correct, and Jacoby mistaken in claiming that the aim of logographers is to describe heroic genealogies and early histories of an ethnos or city, and not strictly to establish a general chronology of
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Hellenic history (Toye 1995). The passage is quotable, as it gives a
valuable ancient summary of the subjects of history prior to Thucydides’
work around 400 bc:
All of these showed a like bent in their choice of subjects and there was little difference in their ability. Some wrote treatises dealing with Greek history and others dealt with non‐Greek history. They did not blend these histories
[into one work], but subdivided them by nations and cities and gave a
separate account of each, keeping in view one single and unwavering
subject, that of bringing to the common knowledge of all whatever
records or traditions were to be found among the natives of the individual nationalities or states, whether recorded in places sacred or profane, and to deliver these just as they received them without addition or subtraction, rejecting not even the legends which had been believed for many generations nor dramatic tales which seem to men of the present time to have a large measure of silliness. (D.H. Th. 5, Pritchett, adapted)
Dionysius highlights aspects still generally considered characteristic of these earliest historians, their focus on cities or ethnic groups, and their largely uncritical acceptance of traditional tales. What they had achieved was an attempt at reconciling various traditions and inevitably some correction of their sources. Pearson attractively suggests that the logographers’ bare quoting of official records may have been for political reasons:
To glorify and magnify the past, perhaps at the expense of the present, as epic poetry did, was dangerous, if not actually forbidden under the Persian domination. But simply to tell the truth, to describe events as were
described in the annals of their cities, could not possibly be considered dangerous or subversive of authority. (Pearson 1939: 16) Genealogies go back to Homer and the more systematic Hesiod, particularly his Theogony and Catalogue of Women. Logographers, notably Hecataeus, were concerned with improving the continuity and synchronization of genealogical records with ample criticism of Hesiod. Several important logographers come from Ionia and reflect the intellectual
revolution of that region. Hecataeus of Miletus (fl. c. 500 bc) is arguably the most significant of the logographers prior to Herodotus, and the only one cited by name by that later historian. He is the author of works
embracing both geographical and genealogical interests, namely
Genealogies or Inquiries ( Genee ̄ logiai or Historiai) and Circuit of the Earth ( Periodos te ̄ s ge ̄ s or Periodos). The Circuit was, interestingly, in two books, “Europe” and “Asia” (which included Africa), a clockwise journey
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around the Mediterranean, perhaps inspiring Herodotus’ later ethnographic excursus. Herodotus mentions Hecataeus as a respected Milesian citizen
consulted twice by the leaders of the Ionian Revolt (500–494 bc) and
wisely warning against it, and once as a traveler to Egypt who describes his ancestry, sixteen generations removed from a divine forefather (Hdt.
5.36, 5.124–6, and 2.143). West 1991 questions the authenticity of these episodes on the basis of their suspiciously literary aptness, but the detail and the proximity in time to Herodotus suggest that they are probably
genuine. The encounter in Egypt may reflect Hecataeus’ Genealogies, debunking stories such as Heracles’ labors: Geryon’s cattle were fetched from the region of Epirus and not from Iberia or elsewhere, and Cerberus is not a dog, but a poisonous snake retrieved by Heracles ( FGrHist
1 Hecat. F 26, F 27). The involvement in the Ionian Revolt shows that
he was respected by compatriots and engaged in contemporary politics.
Hecataeus’ Genealogies opens with a self‐confident assertion relying on reason and not inspiration: “Hecataeus of Miletus speaks thus. I write
what seems to be true; for the Greeks have many tales which, as it appears to me, are absurd” ( FGrHist 1 F 1, West 1996). The author implicitly critiques a confusing mythical tradition for not applying criteria of selection of the better version; a narration had to be coherent and probable.
Hecataeus mistrusted the marvelous and selected sources according to
his critical judgement. To judge from Herodotus’ story of Hecataeus’
willingness to spend temple treasures to fund a navy, he was not a pious devotee of conventional religion either (Hdt. 5.36). In genealogical
subject matter, Hecataeus was an heir to Hesiod, but he innovated from
the “formalized social past” of the Hesiodic tradition, changing poetry to prose. Hecataeus evidences the stage of “agonistic intertextuality” (a term coined by Assmann 1992: 286–7) in the dynamic between author, predecessor, and topic, as well as between texts, object, and the criteria for assessing the truthfulness of a text. His pointing up of his own agency in writing (“I write,” grapho ̄) imparts an authority to his prose medium, fixed against other poetic versions, and appeals not to tradition but to a new role of the writer as logographer. Hecataeus’ choice of prose
might have come from the Milesian scientific prose in service of a new
rationality, but it might also have followed the traditionally first prose author, Pherecydes of Syros (c. 544), who wrote on philosophy and
mythography, close to a genealogical treatise. Hecataeus’ fixing of continuous, written lists of generations allowed the chronological calculation of present generations with the mythic past, and thus linked mythic time with historic time. The antitraditionalist Ionian poet Xenophanes (c. 570–475
bc) opened up critical attitudes to myth and, it has been suggested, he may
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have been the catalyst for Hecataeus’ undertaking a genealogical revision (following Bertelli’s perceptive analysis of Hecataeus, 2001: 67–94, for much of this section; see also Fränkel 1973: 142–7).
Hecataeus may have also led the way by including implicit political
commentary in his narrative. Herodotus relates Hecataeus’ account of
the Athenians “unjustly” expelling the Pelasgians from Attica (Hdt.
6.137; FGrHist 1 Hecat. F 127). Hecataeus here seems to sympathize with the “barbarians” against the Athenians. Bertelli suggests that this reconstruction of Athenian–Pelasgian relations is done “in light of the recent [514–506 bc] expulsion of the Pelasgians from Lesbos by
Miltiades” and that the historian may be critiquing the Athenian Miltiades’
“tyrannical hybris against an innocent people.” Hecataeus again counters tradition by making Greece a barbarian colony prior to Greek settlement there, “going against the exaltation of Hellenic identity in the Homeric tradition” ( FGrHist 1 Hecat. F 119; Bertelli 2001: 89). If Bertelli is right, Hecataeus’ implicit criticism is extended to matters political, and he is all the more a precursor of Herodotus and Thucydides.
Contemporary with Hecataeus in the late sixth and first half of the fifth century is the logographer Acusilaus of Argos, whose Genealogies (also known as Historiai, Inquiries) covered in three books divine, heroic, and human generations (Fränkel 1973: 347–8). It proceeded from the first
man, “Phoroneus,” to after the Trojan War and borrowed from conventional epic, without any evidence in the extant fragments of any rationalization or questioning of the received myths. Perhaps not coincidentally, Acusilaus lived far from the Ionian intellectual scene. From Hecataeus’
Greek Historiography Page 4