This edited volume seeks to discuss the concept of ‘pluralism’ in Classical, Hellenistic and later Greek historiography. The volume asks ‘what concept or concepts of truth the ancient historiographers subscribed to’ (p. 7). The contributors on the whole follow the prerogative of the volume to explore ‘truth, belief and coherence’ (p. 57) in the historiographers, who act as ‘generators of plural truths’ (p. 8). A variety of authors are subsumed under the umbrella of ‘plural history’ given the cultural negotiation of the ancient Greeks between rhetoric, poetry and narrative technique.
J. Stenger, in ‘Pluralising and Reducing in Pindar's Victory Songs’, provides evidence of a ‘circular structure of history’ that shows us ‘models’ of a ‘typically epinician way of linking past and present’ (pp. 23–4). For Pindar, ‘if coherence and memory are established amid the mass of events [only then] can the past be fruitfully applied to the present’ (p. 25). However, in his principle examples Nemean 5, Isthmian 6 and Isthmian 5, Stenger notes the ‘oddity’ and the ‘seemingly erratic train of thought’ (pp. 21–2). He defines ‘pluralism of pasts’ as the product of an expert historiographer who tells stories by making choices that are either from shared memory or from mythic events that mean different things to different people (p. 20). His is a piece that focuses to a large extent on the author's claims to authority.
Like Stenger, R.’s ‘Tragedy and Fictionality’ discusses the concept of ‘coherence’. R. dissects what coherence and consistency mean to a tragic audience. Both modern and ancient audiences are discussed, as is the uniqueness of our inability to recover what ancient Athenian spectators knew. From indirect evidence in the comic poets he concludes that fiction was part of theatre but that ‘Greek tragedy … was perceived as making a truth claim about the past’ (p. 37). A story can be coherent and therefore stable but ahistorical or historical. Stability does not ensure truth. The phrase ‘tragic reference’ is usefully designed to describe ‘what it is that the audience might believe in’ (p. 41). By relaxing the notion of truth (i.e. skipping the complication of myth, p. 46), there exists a ‘set of audience beliefs … both plural and incomplete’.
M. Wright provides a broad perspective on plural truth, belief and consistency in a case study of ‘Seventeen Types of Ambiguity in Euripides’ Helen’. He employs two main methodological assumptions. He borrows William Empson's definition of ambiguity in English poetry, especially for Shakespeare. It is defined as ‘any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language’ (p. 56). He also makes reference to semiotics given that Helen is suffused with ambiguity regarding the meaning of some key themes, such as marriage and sex, or specific words, such as sophos.
C. Darbo-Peschanski follows with a piece on ‘Multiple Ways to Access the Past’. She provides a thematic link between the first seven chapters, bridging verse and historiography. With respect to poetry, she focuses on the Oedipus myth and its creative reinterpretation in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. She then pairs key passages in Sophocles with those in Herodotus’ Histories. She borrows from Claude Lévi-Strauss a supposed structure of myth, for whom a myth is a ‘bricolage intellectuel’ that is a midway point between precepts and concepts (p. 83). Both Sophocles and Herodotus have characters who act as historians. Information is provided to the characters via two routes, either through divine revelation, which she identifies as aletheia (‘truth’), or through gradual physical evidence as historein (‘inquiry’) (pp. 84–93). Identifying ‘tragic episodes’ in Herodotus, she connects these two routes of reality in Sophocles to those in Herodotus. She argues that tragedy is the ability to ‘place revelation in competition with inquiry’ for both authors (p. 93). She concludes that ‘inquiry by itself does not lead to aletheia’ (p. 100). The article is comprehensive and methodologically clear.
A. Ellis, in ‘Fictional Truth and Factual Truth in Herodotus’, prioritises a less demonological view of untruth in Herodotus in favour of Herodotus as either a liar or a truth-teller (p. 83). Ellis redefines Herodotus ‘the liar’ as a Herodotus who makes ‘creative and repeated use of two quite distinct narrative personas’ (p. 104). Herodotus has a ‘Historical’ persona who is an empiricist and scientist who gathers data and draws conclusions inductively (pp. 105–10). The other is the ‘Mimetic’ persona who is a Homeric-style omniscient narrator who makes use of general truths and draws conclusions deductively (pp. 110–15). He concludes that Book 2 is in fact a product of Herodotus’ choice between these two forms of inquiry and not, as C. Fornara (Herodotus: an Interpretative Essay [1971]), had suggested, that it ‘was the work of a younger, more polemical, empirical writer’ (pp. 117–18). Ellis, however, does concede that there are instances in which these personae overlap.
Like Ellis, K. Wesselmann, in ‘On the Use of Untrue Stories in Herodotus’, begins with an anecdote on Herodotus ‘the father of lies’ (p. 130, cf. 104). The effect of including untrue stories in the Histories is to provide impartiality and entertainment (pp. 132–9). Herodotus records a ‘plurality of versions’ of which some are untrue in his opinion (pp. 139–40). While the plot may be factual, modern audiences should still regard it as fictional ‘such as Homeric epic’ (p. 147, cf. 145). She provides the most extensive use of Homer of the articles in the volume.
E. Baragwanath analyses ‘Intertextuality and Plural Truths in Xenophon’ as a mechanism used to ‘generate truths’ (p. 155). Allusions can be overblown or subtle, misleading as to the degree of significance of a particular event or conversely underscoring the similarities of events or characters. She identifies examples of these characteristics in Arrian, Herodotus, Euripides and Xenophon (pp. 156–7). A particular Herodotus passage is mentioned but not cited on page 158. It regards the Herodotean texture of Hell. 5.2.26–7, in which the Spartan Phoebidas’ capture of Thebes is juxtaposed with the Macedonians’ assassination of the seven Persians at 5.17–21.1. Thereafter, she investigates in particular Epaminondas’ motivations and the importance of paraskeue in Herodotus and Thucydides, respectively, as strands that make visible Xenophon's intertextuality and, as a result, the plural truths embedded in the Mantinea narrative of the Hellenica. Xenophon, she argues, grasps at ‘a richer truth’ (p. 167).
A. Meeus brings novelty to the volume in ‘Ctesias of Cnidus: Poet, Novelist or Historian?’. His aim is to demystify whether Ctesias wrote history like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon or whether he fell into a distinct category that was more akin to historical fiction (pp. 173–80). Through an analysis of the genre of history and Ctesias’ fragments, Meeus persuasively argues that the historians were all poetic to some degree given their Homeric tradition (pp. 176–7). The accusations against Ctesias of being unreliable are simply part of the competitive rhetoric found within the milieu of the historians aimed at bolstering each individual's authority (pp. 182–3). Unfortunately, Ctesias’ fragments of the Persica and the Indica depend heavily on interpretation. Meeus makes an important hypothetical point that because Ctesias often disagrees with Herodotus and agrees with cuneiform sources, we can hypothesise that Ctesias’ disagreements were not fictional interpolations but genuine oriental ‘rival versions of events’ circulating in the Persian Empire (p. 187, cf. 194 n. 58).
N. Wiater, in ‘Narrative and Historical Understanding in Polybius’ Histories’, notes that the visuality of tragic history evokes emotional responses that either help to unmask historical causation or are used purely for entertainment. Wiater takes a reader-response outlook on Polybius’ writing. He argues that the historian Polybius was to some extent expected to write about the craft of his competitors in order to promote his own ‘aesthetics of truth’ (pp. 204, 208–9). Polybius’ aesthetics of truth elicits an emotional response from the reader and also ‘keeps it in check’, so that the reader may become a spectator standing ‘at a rational distance’. It is in this way that history is useful (pp. 212–16).
H., in ‘Truth and Moralising’, focuses on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Hellenistic historiography. Polybius’ Histories and Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheke Historike are the two case studies. The investigation begins with an analysis of the programmatic statements and how they compare with modern notions of truth. The argument relies on the ancient rivalry amongst historians on what were the characteristics of accuracy (akribeia) and the objective evaluation of actions through praise and blame (epainein and psegein) (pp. 227–8). Polybius, as expected, is the progeny of Thucydidean truth and accuracy, whilst Diodorus promises ‘the greatest care’ (pasa epimeleia, 4.1.4). In addition to moral-didactic purposes, history's memorialisation of heroes, from the present, the past or from mythology, has the dual purpose of document and worship (pp. 238–9).
J. Roisman's ‘Alexander and the Amazonian Queen’ is a piece that questions what elements in the story of the meeting between the Amazonian queen and Alexander are true. For Diodorus Siculus, the story is entirely true (pp. 251–2). For Strabo, the Amazons existed but the meeting with Alexander is untrue, in which he attempts to fault his source Cleitarchus because of a ‘geographical incongruity’ (pp. 252–4) for the meeting. For Curtius Rufus, the story is a thematic link between the stories on Alexander's sexuality and his change of habit (pp. 255–6). For Plutarch, the meeting is fiction for two reasons. First, many other historians agree it is untrue, and, second, he records King Lysimachus’ incredulous reaction in order to ridicule the story (pp. 256–8). Arrian omits the episode entirely, even though he does believe the Amazons did exist once, albeit no longer in Alexander's time (pp. 258–61). Finally, Justin is comfortable with the story, and it fits thematically into his work (pp. 261–2).
In the final article, ‘Lucian on Truth and Lies’, M. Tamiolaki investigates how the ancient Greek terms for ‘truth’ (aletheia) and ‘lies’ (pseudos) can lead to ‘competing truths’ and how a theory of historiography can be extracted from Lucian's De Historia Conscribenda and his other works (p. 267). On lies, she interestingly shows how and why Lucian ‘oscillates between rejecting and accepting the inclusion of praise in history’. The matter of praise is ultimately transformed into a gendered debate between the femininity of poetry and the masculinity of history (pp. 272–3). On truth, Thucydides’ famous methodological chapters (1.20–2) influence Lucian's concept of usefulness (chresimon), culminating in a disregard for the present over reconstructing the past or predicting the future. Tamiolaki concludes that ‘Lucian's arguments proceed by tensions: between denying and accepting praise, … beauty in the writing of history, and finally, … the demarcation of history from poetry and from rhetoric’ (p. 278).
Darbo-Peschanski carries great weight in the volume, forming connections between themes that permeate several if not all contributions: a must read. A fault in the collection is that Homer is nowhere extensively discussed, which is odd given the use of Homer by many writers as a historical source. Thucydides is also less discussed; however, Tamiolaki is an exception. This may be because the volume is the output of a collection of papers delivered at the Celtic Conference in Classics held in Bordeaux in 2012, for which there is at times limited control of the topics covered.
