Hellenica Oxyrhynchia), and so some of the drier accounts in these texts may have prompted his views on those writing on “particulars” (specific
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data), notably in the style of the Oxyrhynchus historian. We recall here Aristotle’s specific mention of “what Alcibiades did” as an instance of a
“particular,” namely the actions of the Athenian general Alcibiades in
those very narratives of this period.
Explicit interest in mime ̄ sis as used in historical narrative and speeches is found in later theoretical works on historical writing, notably in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Letter to Pompeius (first century bc), where we read that
“the representation of characters and emotions” ( e ̄ tho ̄ n te kai patho ̄ n mime ̄ sis) is one of the virtues of historical prose style and is exemplified in Herodotus, who excelled in portrayals of character, and in Thucydides,
who excelled in portrayals of emotion (D.H. Pomp. 3.18 ). Dionysius admires some of Thucydides’ speeches for their imitative skill, but he also faults the style in some speeches for being unsuited to occasion and
psychological strategy (D.H. Th. 45–7). The Athenians’ bald statement of rule of the stronger in the Melian dialogue (Th. 5.89) is thought to be appropriate to barbarian kings addressing Greeks, but unfit to be spoken by Athenians to the Greeks whom they liberated from the Medes, namely that justice is the normal conduct of equals to one another, but violence is [the law] of the strong against the weak. (D.H. Th. 39, Pritchett, adapted) Pseudo‐Longinus’ treatise On the Sublime (first century ad) also appreciates the mimetic art in both history and oratory (without making much
difference between them): “the best prose writers imitate the effects of nature for the same effect [of altering argument in periods of emotional stress]” ([Longin.] Subl. 22). Dionysius and Longinus had strongly rhetorical measurements of what counts as appropriate content – criteria arising from specialized rhetorical training that may seem irrational to us today. The “rule of the stronger” discourse of the Athenians in the Melian dialogue does seem like that of a “barbarian king,” as Dionysius complains, but that does not make it historically improbable – indeed
Thucydides deliberately alludes to Herodotus’ Xerxes (Hdt. 7.8–9), to
imply that Athens is the new tyrant state. Given their criteria, Dionysius and Longinus may even put “appropriateness” above the truth. These
odd notions aside, those critics did advocate a mime ̄ sis in historical narrative that has earlier roots.
Indeed an earlier, explicit theory of historical mime ̄ sis is evidenced in Duris of Samos (c. 340–260 bc), roughly a contemporary of Aristotle and possibly one of his second‐generation pupils (Gray 1987: 467–86, esp.
470–4 on Longius and 475–86 on Duris; also Morgan 2007: 559). In a
famous fragment that opens his history, Duris says that his contemporaries
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“Ephorus and Theopompus fell very short of capturing past events. They
achieved no mime ̄ sis or pleasure [ he ̄ done ̄] in their narration, but paid attention only to the writing itself” ( FGrHist 76 Duris F 1; Morgan 2007: 558–9). Duris, it seems, placed historical writing alongside Aristotle’s tragedy (Arist. Po. 1452b), as a powerful medium that could arouse pleasure through the representation of emotions. Duris’ intended source of
pleasure from historical texts has been debated: is it from his language or from his effective descriptions of “the objective actions and subjective reactions of the historical characters” (Fornara 1983: 124 and n. 47)?
Likely from both, it seems: Thucydides was unusual in explicitly
renouncing pleasure in his programmatic introduction (Th. 1.22.4), but
most ancient historians, even Thucydides, and all ancient and modern
prose authors succeed through their ability to move the emotions as well as instruct, to involve the reader in the narrative, and to convey their version of the truth, shaped in an attractive form. Duris did not “invent”
the resonances of history with tragedy (i.e. the use of scenes, reversals, narration, speeches and dialogue of characters in the historical narrative) but, importantly, gave more space and a sharper emphasis to the mimetic narratives than had been done in the prior century, combining the
teaching aspect of rhetoric with poetic‐style pleasure (Marincola 2003: 285–315; Fornara 1983: 124; Rutherford 2007). Scholars have reasonably proposed that Duris in fact represents one side in a polarization of historical style – namely the side that focused on the psychological and dramatic element (seen here in his concern with mime ̄ sis), as opposed to the side more focused on philosophical sententiousness (Timaeus and
followers of Isocrates) and with political lessons (Polybius) (Gentili and Cerri 1975; Wiedemann 1980: 237–8; Momigliano 1978: 8).
Duris’ practices were adopted by Phylarchus of Athens (or of Naucratis) (third century bc), whose Histories in twenty‐eight books took over from where Duris’ had finished, going from the death of Pyrrhus in 272 bc to the death of Cleomenes III of Sparta in 220 bc, and whose style was
savaged by Polybius (2.56–63) either for reasons of method or due to
Polybius’ political animosity:
And being eager to stir the hearts of his readers to pity and to enlist their sympathies by his story, [Phylarchus] talks of women embracing, tearing their hair, and exposing their breasts; and again of the tears and lamenta-tions of men and women, led off in captivity with their children and aged parents. And he does this again and again throughout his whole history, by way of bringing the terrible scene vividly before his readers … For the purposes of history and drama are not the same, but widely opposed to each
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other. In the latter [drama] the object is to strike and delight by words as true to nature as possible; in the former [history] to instruct and convince by genuine words and deeds; in drama the effect is meant to be temporary, in history to be permanent. (Plb. 2.56.7, 11, Shuckburgh, adapted)
Polybius also faults Phylarchus for not seeking the motivations (plans, modes of conduct, or characters: proaireseis) of individuals and the causes ( aitiai) of events, but only the depiction of actions (Plb. 2.16). Dionysius of Halicarnassus laments the neglect of proper composition – that is,
done with elegance, organization, and balance – by Phylarchus and many
others like him, for example Duris and Polybius, who “left behind
systematic treatises that no one has the patience to read from the beginning to the end” (D.H. Comp. 4). Yet Plutarch used Duris’ work for his own Agis and Cleomenes, and Athenaeus cites him frequently.
Several points are illustrated by this discussion of representation.
Despite Aristotle’s distancing of poetic mime ̄ sis from history’s truth telling, there is a long‐term association of history and its sister genres of tragedy and rhetoric with mime ̄ sis. Historical mime ̄ sis is a representation of character and emotion, and hence it is linked directly to an interest in connecting readers with the experience of human nature in the agents of history. The emotion related to mime ̄ sis has an ambiguous source, including probably both the emotion portrayed in historical persons and that in readers who identify themselves with the characters. Ancient historians can make explicit comments to the reader (through introductions, digressions, etc.), which do not use the mode of representation; but more often the narrative and the speeches make their point more obliquely,
through mime ̄ sis that involves engagement of the mind (e.g., in ironic situations) or representation of the actions and words of historical agents.
Thus the meaning of history is conveyed in great part through a reader’s feeling along with the characters, or through his/her experiencing the
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characters as one would in observing people firsthand, in the assembly or on the battlefield. Mimetic history may have been “introduced” by Duris in the sense that it was practiced more explicitly by him, but of course prior historians of the fifth century used mime ̄ sis frequently in their narratives and speeches.
We note here in passing that there is another sense of mime ̄ sis as related to ancient historians, namely that of any historian’s “representation” of his predecessors. The term occurs often in this sense, for example in
Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ remark that Thucydides is not “imitating”
( mime ̄ samenos) Herodotus, since he avoids the broad scope of his predecessor (D.H. Th. 6); and similar terms are used of those who seek to
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imitate Thucydides (D.H. Th. 52, with four references to literary representation). This form of “representation,” with connotations of
slavish copying, is perhaps better termed “emulation” or “rivalry” – ze ̄ lo ̄ sis in Greek (whence the English “jealousy”), a competitive relationship
common to all Greek literature, which at once is respectful of tradition and seeks to better one’s predecessors (Marincola 1997: 12–19). The
practice is long‐standing, dating among historians at least since Hecataeus, but the explicit theory clearly emerges only with Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Pseudo‐Longinus.
Philosophy and History
In addition to rhetoric, there is in the fourth century a new boom in
works proposing theories of human nature and values, by which we mean
here the philosophical texts that address views on how to lead “the good life” and how to reach it by observing the proper values and by restraining excessive or base emotions. These guides to values and morality are part of the general intellectual background of the age, and as important to
consider here as Marxism or Freudianism would be for studying modern
historical writing – even if a given author is not an orthodox follower of any trend or “school” of thought. Of course we have already mentioned
the sophistic movement in relation to Thucydides, and how Xenophon
fell under the spell of Socrates. But in the fourth century we find a wider and richer variety of philosophical schools and a proliferation of traditions, notably arising in Athens and often based in gymnasia, and most
famously beginning with Plato and his followers at the Academy in the
early fourth century, Aristotle and the Peripatetics at the Lyceum (from c. 336), Zeno of Citium and the Stoics at the Painted Stoa (late fourth century onward), and Skepticism, initiated by Pyrrhon of Elis in the
fourth century (then introduced at the Academy in the third century bc).
An account of how each school might evaluate historical writing is beyond our present scope; rather the object here is to note how the rising
philosophical schools posed questions for the use of historians (among
others), and suggested to them ever more sophisticated notions of human nature and the role of reason in relation to the emotions, applying them to both individual and collective motivation.
Brief summaries here suggest some general idea of the views of each
school in the relevant branch of philosophy, namely ethics, which dealt with the human soul, and how these views might enrich historians’ perspectives. All acknowledge the power of reason as needed to achieve the
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good life (Skepticism excepted). And most advise caution in judging by
superficial appearances (Skeptics included). Plato advocates the search for an ideal “good” by seeking truth through reason and in spite of the
senses. Very roughly, temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice are
four main virtues or “excellences” ( aretai) that correspond to a tripartite soul, made up of mind or reason, emotion or volition, and the appetites.
The first three aretai stand in a one‐to‐one relationship to each of these parts. The three parts of the individual soul correspond in turn to three main components of the state: the ruling class, the military class, and the producing class. In the state as in the individual, justice extends over the whole: it is the product of maintaining a correct balance among the three parts, that is, allowing reason and, respectively, the ruling class to rule (see Irwin 1989: 85–117 for a good summary). Plato’s Book 1 of
the Republic infamously presents a defense of “injustice” and rule of the stronger through the persona of the historical rhetorician Thrasymachus, a view close to that of the Athenians in Thucydides’ Melian dialogue.
When Thrasymachus is silenced at the end of the book, Plato’s brothers
Glaucon and Adimantus, Socrates’ main interlocutors in the remaining
dialogue, put up a show of endorsing and expanding Thrasymachus’ ideas
in Book 2. How to navigate power politics to preserve justice is, to some degree, a concern common to both philosophers and historians in this
period. Plato naturally bridges Thucydides’ and Xenophon’s interest in
the tensions between justice and power and their interest in virtue, reason, and social stability (Grene 1965; Shanske 2007; Howland 2000: 875–
89). Plato’s schema of a tripartite soul can itself arguably be seen as an elaboration of the Sophists’ theories on the role of nature and culture ( phusis and nomos) in human formation and as a theory consonant with Thucydides’ sharp but less systematic observations on psychological
motivations throughout his work.
Aristotle (384–322 bc) expressed views that reflect popular Greek
wisdom on justice, moderation, and friendship and that are also to be
found in the historians of this age, but he organized them in an internally coherent, logical framework. He held that wisdom is a chief virtue since it helps people apply properly other virtues like courage and restraint (see esp. Nicomachean Ethics, Book 3); happiness can allow nonrational desires like those of eating, drinking, and sex, or the desire for honor, so long as they are controlled through moderation. Socially a human being
is a “political animal” (literally, a creature of the polis, in other words a social being) who heeds friendship and practices justice both for its own sake and for the good of mankind (including that person’s own good)
(Irwin 1989: 136–42); absolute self‐sufficiency – individually – is not
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desirable. Aristotle was famous for being grounded in the study of nature and basing his views on the natural world, defining all things by their form and function. But he was infamously hostile to democratic thought
in some of his more complex views, for example, about there being a
“ladder of nature” in the world – a hierarchy that placed humans above
animals, men above women, free men above “natural slaves.” All manual
labor should be done by noncitizens in his ideal society. Aspects of this philosophy, less systematically, all reside in Greek popular thought and are reflected in historians from Thucydides on: the need for moderation, for social bonds of alliance, for recognizing the phusis of humans, and for seeing a justification in the political and social hierarchies of people.
Stoics, too, regarded reason as fundamental for correct decision mak-
ing and virtue: knowing the logos (reason) and acting according to it was the life of the wise man ( sophos); coming to wisdom through empirical observation was one step toward the truth, but it had to be accompanied by knowledge of greater principles. Fate determined order ( kosmos) in the world according to a universal Logos – and this links Stoics more closely to Greek views on “the justice of Zeus” as a grand force of order. Such views resonate especially with Polybius and his notions of fortune
( tuche ̄), but they are also in tune with older views expressed in Herodotus, drama, and epic (e.g., Hdt. 1.32.1; see Marincola 2001: 143–4; Walbank 1972:
58–65). The Stoics saw emotions as all bad and virtue through reason as the way to happiness; in this respect they offer us a stricter formulation of similar judgments in historians (Rist 1969; Inwood 1985).
The Historians
We turn now from general considerations of philosophical and rhetorical aspects of fourth‐century historical writers to discussion of some specific, shadowy figures in the lineup, known only from randomly preserved
fragments of their works and the testimonies of other ancients. First we note the continuation of local histories, notably of Athens and Attica.
Then there are several successors to Thucydides’ chronicling of Greek
history, each beginning his account about where Thucydides left off
(though ending at different points): Xenophon (who takes it to the battle of Mantinea in 367 bc); Theopompus; the so‐called Oxyrhynchus
historian, author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia; and Cratippus. These authors differ from Thucydides by writing what has been called a “continuous history” or “Greek matters,” ta Hellenika, in which the focus is not on a single war but on the broader scope of Hellenic history of a
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chosen (usually contemporary) time period (Tuplin 2007: 159–70).
In other words this type of work is not restricted to local history or biographically focused (e.g., like Theopompus’ Phillipica), nor is it strictly a “universal history” that begins with distant origins, carries on to the author’s day, and aims (ideally or in principle) at coverage of all inhabited lands (the “universal” variety may sometimes be more limited in time,
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