Like his earlier study The Greeks and Their Past, this new book by G. is an investigation into literary memory in Antiquity. While the former publication emphasised the similarities in the attitudes towards the past across different literary genres, this monograph focuses solely on ancient historiography. In particular, G. tackles a methodological problem that still bothers historians nowadays: while scholars are separated from the events described by a temporal distance, they, on the one hand, have the advantage of hindsight. By capitalising on retrospect, they are able to evaluate the development in the light of later events and thereby give their narrative a strong teleological design. On the other hand, historians intend to draw a vivid picture of the past. They are interested in the perspective of the historical agents and have to downplay hindsight to describe the past as it was experienced back then. Thus, teleology and experience are the poles between which narratives of the past oscillate. The aim of G.'s inquiry is to explore the tension between these poles in selected works of Greek and Roman historiography.
An introduction (Chapter 1) outlines the methodology and goals. Locating his study ʻat the intersection of theory of history, narratology and Classics' (p. 8), G. combines philological analysis with theoretical reflections. In this sense, he refers to various theoretical models such as Gadamer's ʻLebenswelt' or Morson's ʻsideshadowing' and finally adapts and expands Arthur Danto's idea of ʻnarrative sentences' in order to develop his own notion of Futures Past. This dynamic concept allows G. to determine the relation between teleology and experience in a given narrative: the more the future of the historical agents is treated as the past by the historian, the stronger the teleological design becomes. By looking at ancient historiography in this way, G. also tries to show that experience and historiographic narrative are not as opposed as is sometimes emphasised. In the following chapters G. provides selected case studies. As there is no development in the treatment of experience and teleology in ancient historiography, these case studies are not arranged in a chronological order but according to the two poles of Futures Past.
As might be expected, G. starts his first part on experience with Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War (Chapter 2) followed by Xenophon's Anabasis (Chapter 3). Both historians build their narrative mostly on experience and use similar techniques – graphic description, internal focalisation, speeches and sideshadowing – to create presentness in the past. At the same time, G. identifies some differences, which he convincingly links to the diverging goals pursued by the respective historians. Thus, the mimetic narrative is used by Thucydides to put the readers in the position of the historical agent; this allows them to experience different situations and is closely connected to Thucydides' claim to utility. Xenophon for his part solely focuses on one person and informs the reader about his own thoughts and motifs. That way the vivid narrative supports the overall apologetic tendency of the Anabasis.
Despite different nuances in the representation of experience, G. is able to identify the narratological categories of time, voice and focus as crucial for mimetic narratives in all genres of historiography. In the following chapters he turns to Plutarch's Alexander (Chapter 4) and Tacitus' Annals (Chapter 5) to prove this assumption. Although the protagonist's death provides the Alexander with an obvious telos and the presence of a narrator together with the episodic structure further reinforce the teleological design, Plutarch's Lives also feature mimetic scenes. The thereby created vividness serves Plutarch to highlight moral values the readers can apply to in their own lives: ‘rather than moving the reader to the past, Plutarch brings the past to us’ (p. 181). Very much in contrast, Tacitus tends to reproduce the insecurity the historical agents experienced in the past by reporting rumours and referring to alternative versions. This reduces the temporal superiority of the historian and his readers and puts them in the shoes of the protagonists; the misbehaviour of the Roman ruling class thereby becomes obvious. Thus, Tacitus builds his narrative on experience in order to reinforce his critiques of former emperors and senators.
The second part of the volume is dedicated to teleology. Beginning with Herodotus' Histories (Chapter 6), G. demonstrates the ways in which hindsight allows the historian to deal with the fragility of human life. Herodotus presents the politics of his own lifetime as a result of the Persian Wars and creates a temporal gap between the experience of the historical agents and the readers. By way of this retrospective, Herodotus is able to recognise causality and to evaluate persons and their actions in the past. While the teleological design, however, is only implicit in Herodotus' narrative, it becomes explicit in Polybius' Histories (Chapter 7), whose aim it is to show how Rome has risen to power. Any historical explanation is therefore strongly interwoven with hindsight. Only his superior vantage point allows Polybius to understand earlier events and to write universal historiography. Whereas the teleological design of the Histories helps the authors to cope with contingency and temporality, it serves another purpose in Sallust's historical monograph Bellum Catilinae (Chapter 8). The therein covered conspiracy not only appears as a symptom of the decline of the Roman Republic, but also as the telos to which earlier events lead. The teleological structure in Sallust's narrative increases the importance of the incident and that of the Bellum Catilinae as a whole.
Before turning to modern historiography in the epilogue (Chapter 10), G. presents a test case that belongs to a different time and a different genre: Augustine's Confessions (Chapter 9). Whereas Augustine also uses techniques to create experience and teleology in his narrative, his treatment of time goes beyond these categories: ‘in striving towards the timeless sphere of God, Augustine aspires to transcend experience and teleology’ (p. 315). Here G. reaches the limits of his concept of Futures Past.
This well-produced volume is completed by a substantial bibliography and helpful indexes. Although G. explores a topic that has been in the focus of scholarship for decades and each case study contains little that is fundamentally new, his comparative approach provides innovative results and allows us to see similarities and differences where they were not to be expected. But maybe G. goes too far in this point: with the two poles of Futures Past providing the structure of the volume, the case studies inevitably tend to display a somewhat one-sided picture of the historiographical texts. As a result, the study sometimes offers connections where actually disparities predominate. Despite this objection, the study nevertheless offers an excellent contribution to the research of ancient historiography. Its strength lays in G.'s ability to combine theoretical reflections with close readings and to see the complex intertwining of narrative form, purpose and historical circumstance.
