The contrast between einai and dokein-what is real, and what only seems to be real-is ubiquitous in Classical Greek literature. In Classical Greek historiography (especially Thucydides) this often corresponds to a contrast between ergon and logos: action and speech, or reality and pretence. If one comes to Polybius with these dichotomies in mind, some passages read rather oddly, especially his long digression in Book 31 on the training of Scipio Aemilianus for political life. This paper proposes to examine the use of dokein, to seem (or to have a reputation for, to be known for) 1 and doxa, opinion/reputation, in Polybius in order to investigate the role played by this traditional dichotomy in his Histories. The paper falls in two parts: first, the relationship between reputation and reality in the Histories will be explored through a close reading of the Scipio Aemilianus digression; then, we shall broaden the perspective to the rest of the Histories and investigate the use of dokein and doxa, partly in the light of Davidson's theory of the gaze in Polybius. At the end, this will lead to some conclusions about Polybius' view of historical causation, and the possibility of knowing reality.
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the Diodorus source problem and its bearing on the argument. It then offers a thorough analysis of the moral-didactic lessons and moralising techniques of Diodorus Siculus. It finds that Diodorus’ story universe is governed by divine forces, which are largely just, and that this makes piety the cardinal virtue of his historical actors. Diodorus also condemns brutality and cruel behaviour in any context, and especially when perpetrated against civilians or prisoners of war. Throughout, he recommends epieikeia, decent treatment of those in one’s power, as the most moral and most practically beneficial course. The chapter ends with an overview of differences in moralising between parts of Diodorus’ work based on different sources and briefly hypothesises about the moralising of these sources, some of which are going to be analysed in more detail in chapter 3.
This book offers an interpretation of the first 500 years of history writing as a moral-didactic genre, and argues that this does not invalidate ancient Greek historiography as history. In Part I, it offers a thorough analysis of the moralising techniques and moral-didactic lessons of Polybius and Diodorus Siculus and then analyses the fragments of a range of less well-preserved Hellenistic works of historiography (Timaeus, Phylarchus, Duris, Hieronymus, Agatharchides, and Posidonius) to see how far it is possible to trace similar techniques and lessons in these works. In Part II, the roots of Hellenistic historiographical moralising are traced in the Classical works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, and the fragments of the Oxyrhynchus Historian, Ephorus, and Theopompus. The book concludes that the Greek genre of historiography was moral-didactic from its inception, like most of the Classical Greek literary genres, and that this purpose became explicit and its techniques formalised in Hellenistic times, but that neither the writers nor the readers of the genre believed this moral-didactic purpose to be detrimental to the truth-value of historiography. Ancient historiography was history writing with an agenda: it was Moral History (in the same way that some modern historiography can be defined as, say, Feminist History or Postcolonial History), but it was still History.
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