Referential Verisimilitude, Narrative Necessity and the
Poetics of Vision
Classical Greek Historiography between the Factual and the
Fictional
Claude Calame, Translated from the French by Rodney Coward
In Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales Volume 67, Issue 1, 2012, pages 79 to 102
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Articles
Histories of Knowledge
Referential Verisimilitude,
Narrative Necessity
and the Poetics of Vision
Classical Greek Historiography
between the Factual and the Fictional
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In the wake of the linguistic turn, the “pragmatic turn” has led to a reopening of
the debate on the nature of fiction. The controversy has primarily focused on the
different forms of literary fiction, in particular the novel. Attempts have been made
to identify a set of criteria of a linguistic order which would make it possible to
distinguish between fictional and factual narrative. Confronted with the difficulties
entailed by an undertaking inspired by narratology, the philosophy of speech acts
took up the problem and proposed a purely pragmatic definition of fiction. According to John Searle, the writing of fiction is of the order of “playful pretense,” and
corresponds to pretend-statements. Indeed, in the domain of fiction, “The author
pretends to perform illocutionary acts by way of actually uttering (writing) sentences. In the terminology of Speech Acts, the illocutionary act is pretended, but the
utterance act is real.” Which is to say that, from the enunciative point of view,
nothing distinguishes the assertions of “serious discourse” from the assertions of
fictional discourse. Everything depends upon the pragmatic contract concluded
between the author, with his own intentionality, and the reader. But on the topic
of novelistic genres, John Searle also proposes that a distinction be made between
the vertical (and referential) connections of serious speech, and the horizontal
conventions concluded between author and reader. Indeed, everything depends
upon the acceptability of the “ontology,” that is, the possible world created in the
This article was translated from French by Rodney Coward, revised by Claude Calame
and edited by Stephen Sawyer.
Annales HSS 67, no. 1 (January-March 2012): 81–102.
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Claude Calame
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discourse or the “world of the text.” Thus, discussing the references found in detective novels, the philosopher of language recognizes that “most fictional stories contain
non-fictional elements: along with the pretend references to Sherlock Holmes and
Watson, there are in Sherlock Holmes real references to London and Baker Street
and Paddington Station,” if only through the characters appearing in the narrative.1
From the referential point of view, therefore, the limit between the fictional and
the factual is, to say the least, porous. In particular, it is doubtless upon these
external references that not only the internal coherence of the possible world
constructed in and by the discourse, but also its acceptability, and hence its verisimilitude, are dependent.
Reference and verisimilitude, then, are the two aspects of an ostensibly fictional discourse that we would like to examine here, but by directing attention to
the type of discourse to which it is now opposed, that is factual discourse, and
more particularly historiographical discourse. Our perspective is at once linguistic
and anthropological since the oblique critical gaze adopted will be informed by
contact with a radically different culture, that of ancient Greece. Though Herodotus has been considered the “first Western historian,” and Thucydides has long
been thought of as the founder of political and event history,2 the fact is that
neither author made a distinction between the actions of men which we would
consider as belonging to the area of myth and those which belong to the domain
of history. Indeed, they made no distinction at all between “fictional narrative”
and “factual narrative.” The historical truth-value of the protagonists of heroic
history such as Minos, Helen or Theseus was never called into question, either
by the investigator of Halicarnassus nor by the Athenian historian. These heroic
figures obeyed anthropological motivations that were no different from those of the
protagonists of more recent history—the Median wars or the Peloponnesian war.
Further, as will be seen subsequently, Aristotle’s Poetics inscribes poetic representation of a narrative type in the order of the possible and the verisimilar. It is doubtless
no coincidence that the question of verisimilitude is remarkably rare in the current
debate on the fictional and the factual in the writing of history. This observation
is borne out by a collection of studies published very recently in Le Débat under
the title “L’histoire saisie par la fiction” [History apprehended through fiction].
In sum, the model provided by the classic novel remains the reference for the
literary dimension of the writing of history.3 In this sense, we hope that our detour,
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1. John R. Searle, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse,” New Literary History 6
(1975): 319–32, here 327 and 330; on this subject see also the references given in the
article by Jean-Marie Schaeffer, “Fiction,” in Nouveau dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences
du langage, ed. O. Ducrot and J.-M. Schaeffer (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1995), 373–84.
2. As indicated by the title of Max Pohlenz’s still classic book, Herodot: der erste Gesichichstschreiber des Abendlandes (Leipzig: Teubner, 1937); on Thucydides, see the critical
study by Nicole Loraux, “Thucydide n’est pas un collègue,” Quaderni di Storia 12
(1980): 55–81.
3. See in particular the studies by Pierre Nora, “Histoire et roman ; où passent les
frontières ?” and Antoine Compagnon, “Histoire et littérature, symptôme de la crise
des disciplines,” Le Débat 165 (2011): 6–12 and 62–70.
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CLAUDE CALAME
HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE
guided by a question which does not belong to the field of narrative plot alone
and through a culture that was not yet acquainted with the form of the novel,
should prove salutary.
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The above considerations of a theoretical and a practical order, then, are offered
as a prelude to a brief linguistic and anthropological reflection on the question of
historiographical verisimilitude with, on the one hand, its criterion of internal,
logical and semantic coherence and, on the other, its dimension of external reference which, as will be shown below, is essentially grounded in the visual. This
verisimilar brings together in a single concept the internal logic (the “plausible”)
of a discourse—generally of a narrative order—and external adequation with factual
and historical reality. With its dual referential dimension, verisimilitude appears
as one of the (necessary and sufficient) conditions required to ensure the pragmatic
effects of discursivisations which belong to both the factual and the fictional fields.
The verisimilar helps to ensure cognition, conviction and adhesion, in particular
by aesthetic means. In the present article, “fiction” is understood in the etymological sense as the discursive construction, by verbal and rhetorical means, of a
possible world, from the starting point of a given referent. It thus falls within
a culturally, spatially and temporally inscribed “regime of truth” of a cultural order.
Fiction, then, is neither reduced to its pragmatic conditions of production and
reception as a (shared) “playful pretense,” nor is it the discursive creation of an
autonomous possible world.4 Rather, it is apprehended as the domain of the “fictional,” thus emphasizing the blurred nature and porosity of the apparent boundary
between strongly referential discourse on the one hand and the discourse of literary
and artistic fiction on the other, that is, between factual and fictional discourse.
According to this definition, fiction belongs to the order of configuration and discursive aesthetic representation, a consideration which points to the permeability
between the different forms of narrative historiography (or anthropological description) and the different forms of the realistic or science-fiction novel. Fiction as a
“poietics” corresponds to specific regimes of truth, through a pragmatics grounded
not only in a probably common representational capacity of a neurological order,
but also in the numerous modes of inescapable semantic (and hence cultural)
reference and in the various enunciative strategies that are the vehicle for all
linguistic and discursive form.
4. See in particular Silvana Borutti, “Fiction et construction de l’objet en anthropologie,”
in Figures de l’humain. Les représentations de l’anthropologie, eds. F. Affergan et al. (Paris:
Éditions de l’EHESS, 2003), 75–99, despite the criticisms by Jean-Marie Schaeffer,
“Quelles vérités pour quelles fictions ?” L’Homme 175–176 (2005): 19–36, made from a
mentalistic position asserting the cognitive specificity of playful and artistic pretense;
see also the decisive pages written by Silvana Borutti, Filosofia dei sensi. Estetica del
pensiero tra filosofia, arte e letteratura (Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2006): xi–xlviii.
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Factual Narrative/Fictional Narrative: Verisimilitude
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Thus, when envisaged from the perspective of fiction as a discursive and
cultural configuration, the distinction traditionally drawn between the various
forms of “the writing of history” and “the writing of fiction,” between the factual
and the fictional, proves to be particularly porous. It can hardly be retained other
than as an operational tool. This permeability is grounded on the one hand on the
recognition that factual discourse and fictional discourse are of the order of (verbal,
discursive and cultural) representation. Which is to say that in both cases recourse
is made to discursive procedures of schematisation, generally of a semi-figurative
nature and buttressed by different enunciative strategies. These procedures thus
have a visual and pragmatic impact, one whose role in cognition, as is well-known,
is essential.5 This porosity is, moreover, the corollary of the fact that, in their
rhetorical and aesthetic use of the verbal, factual discourse and fictional discourse,
or more exactly factual narrative and fictional narrative, exploit the creative polysemic potentialities present in all language. In all discursivisation, verbal creation
builds upon and extends further our representational capacity, one of a neurological
order, so as to develop new powers of evocation, which nevertheless are inscribed
within a structure of cultural references. In more specifically narrative fictional
forms, emplotment combines with enunciative rhetoric and with polysemic verbal
representation to create a world which, while doubtless possible, still requires
interpretation. In emplotment, an essential role is played not only by the causal
logic, which ensures the internal coherence of the narrative, the motivations to
which the actors of the story are subjected or, at the enunciative level, the processes
of enunciative deixis and pragmatic reference through verbal gestures of demonstratio ad oculos; but what is also of importance is the semantic configuration that, in
particular through vision, provides the narrative with further external reference,
related to the present cultural and historical conjuncture.6 Thus, we once more
encounter the dual criteria of internal coherence and external reference, which
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5. On the role of semi-figurative categories, in particular in anthropological discourse
with its function of transferring an exotic culture into the Western scholarly paradigm,
see Claude Calame, “Interprétation et traduction des cultures. Les catégories de la
pensée et du discours anthropologiques,” L’Homme 163 (2002): 51–78. As well as the
existence of a possible representational and fictional competence of a neuronal, cognitive order (see Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Pourquoi la fiction ? (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1999),
145–79) and a human mental-modelling capacity animating the aesthetic relation, mention must also be made of the capacities of discursive creation specific to our verbal
activity.
6. The role played by emplotment in temporal configuration in the domain of history
has been explored in particular by Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit (Paris: Éditions du Seuil,
1983) I: 85–136, building on Aristotle’s reflections on poetic mimésis and on mûthos as
an “arrangement of the incidents”; see infra n. 7, and also the critical reflections I have
offered on this subject: Claude Calame, Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire. Représentations
de l’espace-temps en Grèce ancienne (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 15–40, insisting on the
integration of space into memorial practices. The interpretative dimension of the possible world and constructed truth in historical discursivisation is explored in particular in
the essay by Enzo Traverso, Le passé, modes d’emploi. Histoire, politique, mémoire (Paris:
La Fabrique éditions, 2005), 66–79.
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are those of the verisimilar, when it is also envisaged from the perspective of its
pragmatic component.
In very schematic terms, this means that narratives that are received as factual
and those experienced as fictional will be inscribed, from the perspective of fiction,
as poiésis on a scale of interpretative gradation, as much on account of their internal
coherence as through the intensity of their relation with the natural and cultural
world on which they are, in any case, dependent. This gradation towards the referential is achieved in particular by means of enunciative deixis and through the
evocative and “visualizing” capacities of all forms of discourse. Narratives of both
types are, then, fictional discourses, located on a scale of “fictionality” which is
pertinent for both historiographical discourse and anthropological discourse—the
former on account of the temporal distance separating it from the historical reality
of which it gives an account; the latter by virtue of the geographical distance
separating it from the institutional reality which it represents. As verbal configurations, both are marked in their inevitable fictional component, by a distance of a
cultural and symbolic order, one of either time or space.
In order to adopt in this respect the decentered, mediated gaze that a detour
by way of a different culture imposes, I will take examples from ancient Greek
historiography and the indigenous reflection to which it gave rise: the “emic”
notions and representations, then, together with the “etic” categories peculiar to
classical Greek culture which, as trained scholars and adepts of academic criticism,
we naturally can only apprehend from the perspective of, and through the filter of
our own “etic” categories. The examples selected will be taken from the early
Greek historiographers. Indeed, they were faced with a history corresponding to a
heroic past whose memory was configured by aoidoi and inscribed in an epic poetic
tradition. Logographers such as Herodotus or Thucydides reshaped, in the name
of an implicit anthropology, facts that to their eyes had actually taken place but
which, with our temporal distance from events and because of our different pragmatic and cultural frame of reception, appear implausible to us and closer to our
modern category of “myth.” We will, then, attempt to argue in favor of a historical
anthropology of classical Greek historiographical discourse, the better to stimulate
reflection upon reference and the pragmatics of modern discursivisations, of discourses which, to our way of thinking, belong to the category of the fictional.
Indeed, without a referential relationship, however tenuous, there can be no regime
of truth, nor any pragmatics; and without a referential relationship, there can be
no cognitive or aesthetic effect.
Coherence: The Verisimilar and the Necessary
Aristotle: Representational Emplotment
In order to attempt to define the specificity of historiographical discourse, particularly from the perspective of its fictional aspects, and to distinguish it from the
mimetic arts of poetry, the difference on this topic pointed out by Aristotle has
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constantly been cited in the literature. The celebrated passage in the Poetics on
the unity of the object in the arts of representation provides a pertinent example.
As far as the mimetic art par excellence of narrative poetry is concerned, such unity
lies in the coherence of the plot (mûthos).7 The necessary (tò anagkaîon) and the
verisimilar (tò eikós) are the criteria for such narrative and mimetic coherence. And
it is in this regard that the craft of the poet (ho poießtéßs) differs from that of the
“investigator” (ho historikós). Thus, the province of the master of the mimetic art
is what might occur and what is possible “in the order of the likely or the necessary,” while that of the historian is what actually occurred. The concern of poetry
is the whole (tà kathólou), whereas that of historiographical investigation is whatever is of the order of the particular (tà kath’hékaston). The “general” is envisaged
with reference to what a man might generally say or do, in accordance with necessity or verisimilitude. Because of the central role ascribed by Aristotle to mûthos
(plot) as the “arrangement of actions” (sústasis tôß n pragmátoß n) in the mimetic art
of narrative poetry, one might be tempted to relate the necessary to the internal
coherence of mimetic discourse and the verisimilar to its external reference; especially as, in Aristotle’s preliminary treatment of the question of the unity and
coherence of plot, the verisimilar, as tò eikós, corresponds to the probable, to what
occurs “most often” (hoß s epì tò polú).
The conclusion which can be drawn without the slightest ambiguity from
this division between the craft of the poet and that of the historian is that “it is
clear, then, from what we have said that the poet must be a ‘maker’ not of verses
but of stories (mûthoi), since he is a poet in virtue of his ‘representation,’ (mímeßsis)
and what he represents is action.” But, as I recently had occasion to point out,
people always forget to mention the complementary remark which ensures the
porosity of a distinction which otherwise might have seemed water-tight. Indeed,
Aristotle added that the poet could also relate what actually happened (tà genómena),
particularly when the events recounted coincided with what was verisimilar and
possible!8 Thus, the craft of formulation and representation entailed in mimetic
and poetic creation could also be applied to men’s actions in the past. The external
reference to the probable could go hand in glove with the task of achieving internal
verisimilitude, with its logic of the necessary, which was ensured by emplotment
and the art of mimésis.
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7. Aristotle, Poetics 9.1451a.36–51b.10; on this singular meaning of mûthos, see Claude
Calame, Mythe et histoire dans l’Antiquité grecque. La création symbolique d’une colonie (1996;
Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2011), 42–49; concerning the role played by the necessary
and the probable in the unity and the coherence of the mûthos, see Aristotle, Poetics
7.1457b.28–34 and 8.1451a.23–35, with the convergent commentary of Bérenger Boulay,
“Histoire et narrativité. Autour des chapitres 9 et 23 de la Poétique d’Aristote,” Lalies 26
(2006): 171–87.
8. Aristotle, Poetics 9.1451b.27–32, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vol. 23, trans. by W. H. Fyfe,
(Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press/William Heinemann, 1932); it is certainly no coincidence that, in this context, Aristotle refers to mimetic narrative using,
not the verb légein, “to recount,” but poieîn, “to create”; see Calame, Pratiques poétiques
de la mémoire, 61–64.
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The implicit relationship established by Aristotle, in the case of discursivisation of a mimetic type, between what actually happened and possible actions, is
essential for anyone whose preoccupation is less the quest for criteria distinguishing narrative fiction from historiographical discourse, that is, fictional narrative
from factual narrative, than the necessarily fictional dimension of the procedures
involved in the discursivisation of history. Thus, one may speculate on the role
played by the necessary and the verisimilar in the writing of history, in both ancient
Greece and the modern Western world: the necessary will be understood as the
criterion of internal coherence in a representational type of narrative; the verisimilar
will be understood not as an adequation between narrated event and fact, but as
a correspondence between what actually happened and the mimetic procedures
used by the teller giving an account of events. The terms of the referential relationship are, as it were, reversed: not a discursive configuration with which to refer to
historical reality, but a selection of facts in order to locate oneself in the order of
the possible, the verisimilar. Discursivisation, it should be recalled, the po(i)etic,
productive moment building upon various prefigurations, precedes the phase of
the countless refigurations to which discursive configuration gives rise—to borrow the three moments of mimesis distinguished by Paul Ricœur.9 It should be
added that such mimesis is not solely narrative, as Aristotle and, after him, the
French philosopher, would have it. Rather, it is a verbal and poetic mimesis that
belongs to the order of discourse creation.
What is at issue in this reversal of perspective, compared to the positivistic,
realistic approach of nineteenth-century historians, is the utility that Greek historians, starting with Thucydides who presented his treatise as a “possession for eternity”—an expression that we shall have occasion to come back to later—regularly
attributed to their task of writing history. It is a matter of submitting to clear
examination both past actions (tà genoména) and those still to come that are likely
to present resemblances by virtue of their human character, and thus of judging
them to be useful (oß phélimoi).10 Actions drawn from the referential world and which
have actually occurred are, then, selected and configured from the perspective of
their social utility; in the name of the constancy of a certain human nature, they
are destined to become exemplary. Hence the pragmatic dimension which, beyond
all considerations of exactitude if not of objectivity, underlies the various forms
of discursivisation of the past undertaken by the early Greek historians. In the
perspective of the permeability mentioned in our introduction between “factual”
discourse and “fictional” discourse, because of the combination of the procedures
9. See the references given in n. 6. According to Gérard Genette, Fiction et diction (Paris:
Le Seuil, 2004), 227, the emplotment of historical material is tantamount to the quasifictionalisation of factual narrative; confronted with the danger of panfictionalism,
Boulay, “Histoire et narrativité,” 184–185, proposes to distinguish a category of “serious
(non-playful) yet shared pretense.”
10. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.4; in connection with this often
cited passage see Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides I. Books I–III (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991), 59–62.
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HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE
CLAUDE CALAME
of verbal representation and rhetoric proper to all discursivisation, these operations of discursive configuration and representation in a pragmatic dimension are
also those of our own historiographical practices.
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During the imperial period, for instance, Plutarch unhesitatingly considered the
historian’s task to be the comparative biography of the most illustrious political
figures of Greece and Rome. On Lycurgus, the legendary legislator of Sparta, the
Greek historian and moralist, settled in Rome, stated clearly that nothing could
be said which was not subject to some controversy: his origins, travels, death, the
laws he promulgated, his action as a statesman; even the period of his political
activity in Sparta is a subject on which there was little agreement among historians.
When confronted with a tradition in which so much uncertainty prevailed, a tradition perpetuated by specialists as credible as Xenophon, Timaeus, Aristotle or
Eratosthenes, all that remained for the historian was to attempt internal coherence.
In biographical narrative (diéßgeßsis), therefore, it was essential to avoid contradiction
(antilógiai) while following the accounts of the most reputable eyewitnesses: in
sum, internal logic, necessity, accompanied by a few referential incursions, drawing
on Aristotle, for instance. In his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, the master of
political philosophy offered, as material evidence (tekméßrion) of the involvement
of Lycurgus in instituting the Olympic truce, the discus visible at Olympia itself,
which bore the name of the legendary legislator and founder of the Spartan constitution.11 We shall come back to the subject of these visual indexes capable of
giving weight to the plausible through external reference when internal necessity
of itself is not sufficiently strong.
When one turns from Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan political system,
to Theseus, the founder of the city of Athens, the problem of historical reference
becomes even more acute since, instead of the period of the foundation of the
Olympic games, whose beginnings are of a chronological order, one has gone back
to the heroic times preceding the Trojan war. This is the domain of the past of
the Greek cities, the traditional preserve of poets and “mythographers,” of a heroic
past from which the dramatists often drew the subjects of their tragedies. In the
modern anthropological doxa, this is a domain which is spontaneously defined as
that of the myth, with all that this concept implies as to the legendary, fabulous,
and hence fictional, character of the narratives thus labelled. These narratives of
the age of heroes afforded neither credibility nor “clarity” (saphéßneia), as Plutarch
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11. Plutarch, The Life of Lycurgus 1.1–7; Id., The Life of Numa 1.1 and 7; on the controversy
surrounding the question of the historicity of Lycurgus, the legendary legislator of
Sparta, see Mario Manfredini and Luigi Piccirilli, Plutarco. Le Vite di Licurgo e di Numa
(Milan: Mondadori, 1980), xi–xxvii; see Aristotle, fragment 533 Rose. As for the importance of eyewitness accounts in Greek historiography, see for instance the study by
François Hartog, Évidence de l’histoire. Ce que voient les historiens (Paris: Éditions de
l’EHESS, 2005), 45–88.
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Plutarch: An Ethical Historicity
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himself admited. And yet, as with the examples of Lycurgus and Numa, the biographer saw no reason not to compare Theseus, the founder of Athenian democracy,
with Romulus, the heroic founder of Rome. In historiographical composition, it
was simply a matter of “purifying” the “fictional” aspect (muthôß des) of the narrative
in order to submit it to argumented discourse and hence to reason (lógos), and
not of confronting it with the “facts.” It is thus that historiographical biography
assumed the visibility of investigation (historías ópsis). In this quest for a truth
beyond tragic appearances, the objective was tò eikós, the “verisimilar,” probably
out of an awareness, widely shared and developed in Greek culture, that human
action was located in a world of appearances. To this extent, and aside from any
objectivistic preoccupation, at the pragmatic level it remained to call on the
listener’s patience with this “archaeology,” with this narrative of heroic actions
belonging to a distant past.12
In this Greco-Roman culture of the imperial era, the spatio-temporal distance
from the past of the founding heroes was probably sufficiently great for a distinction
between myth and history not very different from our own to be made, whereas
such a differentiation did not exist among the Athenian logographers of the fifth
century. In this context, the cause invoked by the author of the epic poem devoted
to Theseus as justification for the intervention of the Amazons in Attica was
brushed aside by Plutarch: the jealousy of the beautiful Antiope over the marriage
of her young lover Theseus to Phedra undeniably had all the appearance of a
mythical narrative (mûthos) and of fiction (plásma, in the etymological sense of the
term derived from pláttein, “to shape”). On the other hand, as far as the rape of
the child Helen by an already fifty-year-old Theseus was concerned, the GrecoRoman biographer selected the version which he declared to be the most likely
because it was the most documented. A version which to our modern eyes would
belong not only to the category of the novel, but more especially to that of the
myth, in so far as her abduction was portrayed, and staged, as taking place while
she and a chorus of girls were performing a dance in the temple of Artemis Orthia,
in accordance with the scenario of the numerous legendary tales of the abduction
of nymphs by the gods. But this version was apparently considered all the more
convincing as it was widely shared, which is also the case with the narrative of the
abduction of Antiope, recounted by the best Atthidographers, the specialists of
Athenian local history.13 In this instance, authentication by numerous eyewitnesses
12. Plutarch, The Life of Theseus 1.1–2.3, see also Id., The Life of Romulus 2.4 and 3.1; on
the principles of Plutarch’s “archaeology”, see the excellent commentary in Carmine
Ampolo and Mario Manfredini, Plutarco. Le Vite di Teseo e di Romolo (Milan: Mondadori,
1988), ix–xvii and 195–97; concerning arkhaîa and historical truth, see Calame, Mythe et
histoire dans l’Antiquité grecque, 49–76.
13. Plutarch, The Life of Theseus 28.1 (see also 26.1, for the expression pithanótera légontes)
and 31.1–2, in contrast with the narrative of the sack of the city of Troezen by Hector,
which is considered as an alogía; see also Id., The Life of Romulus 3.1; on the meaning
of the Greek pláttein, see Claude Calame, Poétiques des mythes dans la Grèce antique (Paris:
Hachette, 2000), 38–47, and on “fiction” in the etymological sense of the term, see
Borutti, “Fiction et construction de l’objet en anthropologie,” 75–78; concerning Plutarch,
see again M. Manfredini and L. Piccirilli, Plutarco. Le Vite di Licurgo e di Numa, xi–xv.
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complements the internal coherence of the story, its narrative necessity, even if
the plot in fact corresponds to a scenario already found in heroic legend. What
counts in this case, from the point of view of external reference, is not the adequation between the heroic life of Theseus and a certain “historical” reality, but the
compatibility of the motivations of the narrative action with a paradigm at once
moral and religious. The factual existence of the Theseus of the heroic age, for its
part, is never questioned.
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Even in the critical and distant historiography of the imperial period, there is not
the shadow of a doubt about the historicity of founding heroes such as Lycurgus
or Theseus. This was already the case, even more so in fact, among the first investigators into the distant and the very recent past, Herodotus and Thucydides. Indeed,
the historian of the Peloponnesian War was confronted with this very problem
when, in his anamnesis of the causes of a virtually contemporary conflict, he
attempted to recount the history of the distant past of Greece and Athens, a
past which we would today label as “mythical.” In this tale of arkhaîa, told by the
poets and based upon oral tradition, the verisimilar undoubtedly plays an important
part; but the question is carried over from the referential level onto that of the
historian’s judgement on the course of events, in a shift from “narrative” to “discourse.” This is the case, for instance, with the first attempt to secure civilizing
control over the Aegean Sea, which prefigures the economic and political domination exercised by Athens upon the conclusion of the Median wars and just before
the outset of the Peloponnesian war: the extension of Athenian power proves to
be the “truest” explanation accounting for this war. If Minos, the contemporary
of Theseus in an, at best, relative heroic chronology, was the first person to free
the “Hellenic” sea from its pirates, it was, in all likelihood (hoß s eikós), in order to
increase his income.14 In sum, what is involved here is not only the internal, but
also the external logic of historical action. This action is, nevertheless, judged from
a referential and extra-discursive perspective, not in terms of its historical factuality,
but by the yardstick of human motivations consistent with the “nature” of man
(tò anthróß pinon), in accordance with the anthropology underlying the Thucydidean
conception of men’s historical action in the present.
If only by virtue of having a common root and hence through the intermediary
of etymology, the Thucydidean verisimilar is at times of the order of a comparative
conjectural procedure. Such is the case with, for instance, the Trojan war, whose
vast scale may give us a picture (eikázein) of the maritime expeditions, such as that
of Minos, that preceded it; or again, the opinion of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes
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14. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.4; concerning the translation of
the expression hoß s eikós, there is a hesitation among English commentators between “as
was likely” and “as was natural”: see Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, I, 22 and
33. See also the study by Pascal Payen, “Préhistoire de l’humanité et temps de la cité :
l’‘archéologie’ de Thucydide,” Anabases 3 (2006): 137–54.
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Thucydides: Mythical “Fiction” and Human Nature
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whom Alcibiades, by then a defector, advised to play off the Athenians against the
Peloponnesians: this advice may be conjectured from the actions already undertaken by the Persians under the influence of the youthful Athenian. But that is
not the heart of the matter since, in most cases, eikós was integrated into the
narrative to emphasize the normal character, consistent with human nature, of
the actions of the protagonists of the story—whether it be a matter of “ancient
times” (tà palaiá ou tà arkhaîa), that is, the time of heroes, or contemporary events.15
Beyond any (anachronistic) distinction between “myth” and “history,” what was
essential for the historiographer was that he should be able to ensure the credibility
of what he put forward. In this particular case, the historian grounded the credibility of his narrative of historical action not only in his own representation of what
was human, but also in the moral paradigm within which his implied receiver (a
late fifth-century Athenian citizen?) operated. It is upon this feeling of confidence,
experienced by the historian himself, that, from a pragmatic perspective, the
conviction secured by the historiographical configuration depended.
As for the credence that could be afforded specifically to the time of heroes,
Thucydides stated from the outset, in the prelude to his treatise: “For though
the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the
war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences (tekméßria)
which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point
to the conclusion that there was nothing on a great scale, either in war or in other
matters.” These indexical “evidences,” raised to the status of eyewitness accounts
as in Plutarch, largely anticipated the “indexical paradigm” more readily attributed
to the nineteenth century. In certain instances, they corresponded to material traces
that were inscribed and visible in the landscape, such as the city of Mycenae over
which Agamemnon ruled. But in this particular case, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the present-day dimensions of the city are so reduced that this index cannot
be used as a precise sign (akribès séßmeion) of the past grandeur of the city and the
vast scale of the expedition against Troy. Yet the verbal and poetic account given
by Homer remains: poems dependent upon the oral tradition can also provide
indexical markers (tekmeßriôß sai) and, to this extent, inspire confidence. One only
needs to take into account the embellishments and hyperboles due in all likelihood
(eikós!) to the use of epic language.16
15. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.9.4–5 and 8.46.4–5. Without calling
into question the historical truth of the heroic past, the expressions tà palaiá and tà
arkhaîa refer, in both Herodotus and Thucydides, to what has become, for us, a “myth”:
see Claude Calame, “La fabrication historiographique d’un passé héroïque en Grèce
classique : Arkhaîa et palaiá chez Hérodote,” Ktema 31 (2006): 39–49.
16. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.10.1–3, and also the well-known
passage in 1.21.1; on the parameters of Thucydides’ indexical history, see Calame,
Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire, 46–57, along with certain convergent remarks by Hartog,
Évidence de l’histoire, 76–80. The indexical paradigm was first formulated, it should be
recalled, by Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm,” in Clues, Myths
and Historical Method (1986; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 96–125.
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The consequence for the writing of history that can be drawn from this observation is once again of a comparative order. On the basis of the Homeric poems, one
can estimate (nomízein) that the Trojan War was a maritime expedition which,
while on a larger scale than its predecessors (such as Minos’ enterprise), was smaller
than contemporary undertakings. Once again, in the configuration of a verisimilar
discourse, external reference is combined with internal coherence. But this external
reference has less to do with the factual than with shared moral representation;
that is, a representation dealing, in the case of Thucydides, with the possibilities
of human action, with a representation of what is human and a certain anthropology.
It is in particular by incorporating heroic action into an anthropopoïetic paradigm
that the Greeks were able to believe in their myths.17
It should be recalled that just after drawing the contrast between the poetical
construction by means of narrative mimesis of what might happen and the historian’s
investigation into what actually happened (the genómena), Aristotle made the distinction permeable: in so far as actions that actually occurred can be situated in
the order of the verisimilar and the possible, the poet can also become a historian.
What is involved here is the pragmatic dimension of historiographical discourse
since, by definition, what happened is possible and only “what is possible carries
conviction” (pithanón esti tò dunatón).18
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An Epistemology of Vision and Diagnosis in Thucydides
Let us take, then, the short re-writing by Thucydides of the Trojan war considered
as a logical sequel to Minos’ first maritime interventions in the Aegean Sea. This
“archaeology” prefigures the extension of the power of Athens in this region until
the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. What is striking in the
archaeological task proposed by Thucydides is the role attributed to vision, whether
through metaphors or directly. Admittedly, in the particular case of Mycenae or
Sparta, visual signs were deceptive, making an indexical approach somewhat delicate. While, in the historian’s account, the dimensions of the scattered village of
Mycenae were out of all proportion with the importance the poets attributed to
the expedition that originated in it, and while the contemporary configuration of
the city of Sparta (still a collection of scattered villages and without any remarkable
edifices) was in no way indexical of its effective power, the visual impression
(phanerà ópsis) the city of Athens gave of its size would have led one to conjecture
(eikázesthai) that its power was twice as great as in reality.
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17. To borrow the title of the essay by Paul Veyne, Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes ?
Essai sur l’imagination constituante (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1983), 105–12; Veyne shows
that in Pausanias, the indigenous criticism of myth was still inspired by piety.
18. Aristotle, Poetics 9.1451b.15–18; for the rest, see n. 5 and 6.
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Verisimilitude and Vision: Obviousness
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But this somewhat surprising devaluing of vision, in an attitude of critical
relativism, concerned direct perception through the onlooker’s gaze. In contrast,
Homer himself, considered from the perspective of his ability to provide probative
indexes of recognition (tekmeßriôß sai), was capable of “revealing” (dedéßloß ken). Furthermore, to this extent he was, despite everything, trustworthy. The same is generally
true of the “ancient poets” who, in their description of Corinth as “opulent,” revealed
the power of the city at the time of the first naval engagement against Corcyra.
Similarly, the historiographer himself stated that, as far as the most distant past was
concerned, an enquiry leading to clear recognition (saphôß s heureîn) was often impossible, but personal observation (skopeîn) of indexes of recognition could induce
obviousness (deßloî moi) in the narrator and thereby inspire confidence and conviction. This is why enquiry into the distant past needed to be grounded in the most
visible signs.19
Incidentally, the point needs to be made that, as far as historiographical
procedures are concerned, there are striking analogies with the investigation that,
when faced with Tiresias, Oedipus undertakes, on the Attic stage and through the
will of Sophocles, into his own identity. The well-known confrontation between
the Theban hero and the seer is saturated with the verbs of an investigation based
upon vision: “to seek” (zeßteîn), “to investigate” (historeîn), “to prove” (tekmaireîsthai),
“to reveal” (deßloûn), and ultimately “to know” (eidénai), with the double pun introduced by the latter term on the name of Oedipus himself: “swollen foot,” of course,
but above all “Oedipus who knows without knowing/seeing anything” (ho meßdèn
eidòß s Oidípous).20 Just as the tragic investigation transforms itself into quest and
recognition, the task of the historian is defined in a dialectical movement between
observation and revelation; and it is in this dialectic that its utility is rooted.
Let us reformulate then the translation of the well-known passage, cited
earlier, which concludes Thucydides’ “archaeology”: “To the ear, the lack of the
fictional (tò mèß muthôß des) may well appear lacking in charm; but for those who wish
to have a clear vision (saphôß s skopeîn) of what occurred and what is likely to occur
in similar circumstances by virtue of human nature, it will be sufficient that they
judge it useful. More than a declamation intended to be heard in the present,
this configuration (súgkeitai) constitutes a possession for eternity.”21 The pragmatic
realization of historiographical discourse depends, then, upon the confidence that
the historiographer inspires in his public through procedures related to vision:
19. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.9.3, and also 1.3.3 and 1.10.3 and
1.13.5; see also 1.1.2 and 1.3.1, echoed, in ring composition, by 1.20.1.
20. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 316–462; see Bernard Knox, Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1957), 117–35, and the present author’s remarks concerning puns
on Oedipus’ name in Claude Calame, Masks of Authority: Fiction and Pragmatics in Ancient
Greek Poetics, trans. Peter M. Burk (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
21. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.4; see on this subject Bruno
Gentili and Giovanni Cerri, Storia e biografia nel pensiero antico (Rome/Bari: Laterza,
1983), 5–12.
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less an empirical, direct vision than compositional procedures aimed at rendering
visible. The guarantor of external verisimilitude, referential reality, would thus
appear to be present within the discourse itself.
This historiographical approach is made more explicit in connection with the
plague epidemic that swept through Athens at the start of the second invasion of
Attica by the Peloponnesians. Leaving it open to all, and in particular to doctors,
to form conjectures as to the causes of the epidemic and its effects, Thucydides
claimed to limit himself to the examination (skopôß n) and visual expression (deßlóß soß )
of the various forms assumed by the manifestations of the disease in order better
to be able to predict its possible recurrence. While, in this presentation, the historian of the contemporary period claimed to base himself upon his personal experience and his visual observations, the intention was above all to point out, to render
visible, and to a certain extent to make predictions. On the other hand, when the
Athenians sought to present the power of their city to the Lacedaemonians through
the evocation of facts, intended for the older segment of the population, who were
familiar (éßidesan) with them, and of facts, targeted at a younger segment, who had
no experience of them, the procedure was of an indexical order (seßmêßnai).22 In each
of these cases, his reading of various signs placed Thucydides in the perspective of
Hippocratic medicine: one that based its diagnoses on a veritable semiology.
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It is probably no coincidence that practically all the verbs used by Herodotus to
describe his work as investigator refered, from an etymological point of view, to
vision. In place of the invocation to the muse, which opened every ancient Greek
epic narrative of the great deeds of the past, the inaugural signature of Herodotus’
work presented, at the outset, the work of the historiographer as a historía. Although
grounded etymologically in the root vid- (which is, for instance, the base of the
Latin videre) the term refers more precisely to a verbal investigation founded on
the questioning of informants and eyewitnesses. In the form of the noun hístoß r,
it also indicates the enunciative position assumed by the historiographer of
Halicarnassus in his own discourse: less the posture of a eyewitness than that of an
arbiter (between, for instance, different versions of the same narrative), often
adopting the attitude of a judge, seeking to uncover motivations and apportion
guilt in historical action. Moreover, the function which Herodotus assigned, in the
prologue referred to above, to his lógos, his discourse, was not solely the memorial
function traditionally fulfilled by Homeric poetry.23 Indeed, the intention of
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22. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 2.48.3 and 1.72.1; Thucydides’
description of the epidemic which swept through Athens is tinged with medical diagnostic terms; see Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, I, 319–25; on the references to
vision and revelation with which the Athenians punctuated the scheduled speech, see
the various references in Calame, Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire, 50–61.
23. Herodotus, Proem. On the meaning which can be attributed to historía on the basis
of its etymology, see the various references in Calame, Pratiques poétiques de la mémoire,
57–61 together with n. 46; see also Hartog, Évidence de l’histoire, 58–61.
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An Epistemology of Indication and Demonstration in Herodotus
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preserving for posterity the heroic glory of great deeds accomplished by both the
Greeks and the barbarians was coupled with a quest for the cause that set the protagonists against each other.
Now, in Herodotus, the investigation was often undertaken by the very protagonists of the narrative action. Their questioning was often directed at oracles
whose role was precisely to “indicate” (seßmaínein), to use Heraclitus’ famous expression. But the protagonists of the history also had recourse to the services of “scouts”
and “observers” designated, as katóptai or katáskopoi, by two terms that refer respectively to the gaze and visual examination. The Persian king Cambyses frequently
had recourse to their services when preparing his expedition against the strange
region at the extremities of the world, Ethiopia. Thus, through eyewitness accounts,
he obtained confirmation of the wonders that were told about its people, whose
way of life was not far removed from that of a golden age. But while he heeded
the spectacular accounts of observers, as did Herodotus himself in his investigation
into the way of life of exotic peoples, the king of Persia was overcome by greed and
madness and, without any preparation, launched an army which he thus condemned
to die of thirst and starvation. These investigations, internal to the narrative, were
in general carried out again by the narrator from a desire to see and know: idésthai
and eidénai, two verb forms based on the root vid- which refers to vision. The most
linguistically striking example is provided by the investigation carried out by a
Persian dignitary with the help of his daughter, in order to discover the identity
of Cambyses’ successor on the throne of Persia and to unmask the usurper, a magus
and homonym of the son of Cyrus. The woman, a member of the harem inherited
from Cambyses, initially answered that she had never seen (idésthai) the new sovereign and that she therefore did not know him (eidénai). Only thanks to a night spent
with the king was she able to touch his head and discover that her new husband,
who had previously been mutilated by Cambyses, was none other than the usurping
magus. She then hastened to indicate (seßméßnas) what has happened (tà genómena).24
Herodotus assumed responsibility for this knowledge of an implicitly visual
order, in particular when he declared at the beginning of his enquiries founded on
the interpretation of indexes: “For my own part, I know (oîda) who it was who
first undertook unjust actions against the Greeks.” Designating first Croesus, the
king of Lydia, this formulation, later re-used in the plural (“we ourselves know”:
heßmeîs ídmen), punctuates the first book of The Enquiries, with successive references
to Gyges of Lydia (the first offering from a barbarian in Delphi after the Phrygian
Midas), the poet Arion (the first composition and execution of a dithyramb),
the Lydian people (the first striking and first use of gold and silver coins), etc.25
24. Herodotus, The Enquiries 3.17.1–26.1 and 3.68.1–70.1; see Heraclitus, fragment
22 B 93 Diels-Kranz; on the modes of enquiry within the Historía itself, see the examples
analysed by Paul Demont, “Figures de l’enquête dans les Enquêtes d’Hérodote,” Annali
della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: classe di lettere e filosofia IV, no. 7 (2002): 261–86.
25. Herodotus, The Enquiries 1.5.3, and then 1.6.2, 1.14.2, 1.23, 1.94.1, etc. The various
motivations for historical action configured by Herodotus are cogently analysed by
Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, Le discours du particulier. Essai sur l’enquête hérodotéenne
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), 43–83.
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While etymologically visual, this knowledge is often of an auditory order: “As for
myself, I know what was the case as I heard it mentioned by the Delphians,” says
the investigator of Halicarnassus in connection with the consultation of the Delphic
oracle on the illness that struck Alyattes king of Sardis after the destruction of the
temple of Athena in Miletus. Oîda egòß akoúsas, in an etymological oxymoron which
Herodotus was not alone in employing, since it also came from the pen of Thucydides
on the subject of Minos’ first maritime undertaking: hôß n akoêßi ísmen, “what we
know by sight or hearsay!” But, to come back to the search for the root cause, in
the sense of both the origin of, and responsibility for, events, it was through the
intermediary of the verb seßmaínein, in the hermeneutical terms of an interpretation
of signs and indexes, that the quest was apprehended.26
Furthermore, without going into the dialectic of gaze and hearing in historiographical investigation as conceived by Herodotus, it is sufficient to recall the
methodological declarations of the latter in the well-known pages of Book II: the sayings of the Egyptians were explicitly complemented by observations based on “my
own gaze” (têßs emêßs ópsios). The legómena of the priests of Egypt and personal visual
examination, then, were the two foundations of an operation to which Herodotus
sometimes referred using the verb phrázein: “to indicate, enable to be understood”
(in particular by signs, but also through speech). It is in particular with this verb
conjugated in one of the future performative forms, that the investigator introduced
his own demonstrative interpretation of the cause of the summer flood of the Nile:
phrásoß di’hóti moi dokéei, “I will show the reason why it seems to me that...”; this
long development on the nature of the Nile is saturated with lexical items from
the domain of argumentation and reasoning grounded in vision, both real and
metaphorical.27 Without wishing to fall into the Heideggerian trap of a semantics
in which each use of a term can resound (and reason...) powerfully with echoes of
its etymological meaning, we need to return once more to some of the utterances
in the prelude-signature of the investigation. Here, it can be seen that the results
of the historía were the object of a “demonstration” of the order of action and of
demonstrational performance (apódeixis). This effect of meaning is to be attributed
to apódeixis which, taken together with the monstrative deictic héßde, designates the
investigation when presented, in the form of an act, to the ears or before the eyes
of the audience. And it is certainly no coincidence that the verbal form of this term
is used in the same inaugural utterance to designate the “well-attested” great deeds
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26. Herodotus, The Enquiries 1.20 and Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
1.4; see Pascal Payen, “Historia et intrigue. Les ressources ‘mimétiques’ de l’Enquête
d’Hérodote,” in Jeux et enjeux de la mise en forme de l’histoire. Recherches sur le genre historique
en Grèce et à Rome, ed. M.-R. Guelfucci (Besançon: Presses universitaires de FrancheComté, 2011), 139–60.
27. Herodotus, The Enquiries 1.5.3 once more, and then 2.147.1 and 2.99.1; the enquiry
into the sources of the Nile and the reasons for its floods: 2.19.2–26.2, and in particular
24.1; the same use of this future performative form can be found in 2.51.1 and 3.103.1.
On the topic of Herodotean modes of argumentation, see the chapter by Darbo-Peschanski,
Le discours du particulier, 127–63.
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(apodekhthénta) of Greeks and barbarians alike. This correspondence between, on
the one hand, the great courageous actions whose accomplishment is apprehended
by a monstrative verb and, on the other, a narrative which ensures its visual propagation, recurs throughout Herodotus’ narratives.28 Based on the personal hearing
of lógoi and personal observation, on audition and sight, the historía was intended
to render visible, in discourse, what was to be placed in the public gaze.
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Recalling the advice given by Aristotle to tragic poets, we are reminded of the
lógos that shows. In order to devise plots and shape them through diction (léxis),
one needs to place the situation before one’s very eyes. The poet, therefore, should
see the scene as if he were present at the events themselves. The aim of this visual
grounding of the operation of emplotment and configuration is stated explicitly: it
is to find (and hence re-create) what is appropriate (tò prépon), while avoiding
contradiction—a probable allusion to the dual criteria of verisimilitude and necessity mentioned above. To see the plot in action (energéstata) or in its clearest visualisation (enargéstata) is all the more essential as it is a matter of impressing the
spectator through the intermediary of actors themselves performing actions on
the stage. But as the example chosen by Aristotle shows, the aim of visual representation is something which constitutes the foundation of the poetic and mimetic
art: the “general scheme” (tò kathólou), the unity of plot which, as seen above, is
opposed to the particular, considered the defining characteristic of history.29 What
then may be said of historiographical discourse?
The question of vision, which is taken up again in the Rhetoric, is all the
more acute in the latter as the discourses of orators (and similarly the utterances
28. As well as the prelude, see Herodotus, The Enquiries 1.16.2 (said of actions “demonstrated” by a protagonist of the history), 1.174.1 (in a negative manner), 2.18.1 (egò
apodeíknumi tôß i lógôß i: a demonstration by means of discourse; see also 2.15.1 and 16.1),
etc. In Herodotus, the language of proof combines with that of vision and demonstration
(in the literal sense of the term): see, on this topic, the helpful comments of Gregory
Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990), 217–30, and the excellent remarks made by Rosalind Thomas,
Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 190–200 and 221–28, together with the observations of Egbert
J. Bakker, “The Making of History: Herodotus Histories Apodexis,” in Brill’s Companion
to Herodotus, eds. E. J. Bakker et al. (Leyde/Boston/Cologne: Brill, 2002), 3–32. See also
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.6.6.
29. Aristotle, Poetics 17.1455a.22–b.2; the ambiguity in the manuscripts surrounding the
morphology of ene/argéstata is significant of the force in action attributed to images; see
the references I gave on this topic in Claude Calame, “Quand dire c’est faire voir,
l’évidence dans la rhétorique antique,” Études de Lettres 4 (1991): 3–22 (re-published in
Sentiers transversaux. Entre poétiques grecques et politiques contemporaines (Grenoble: Jérôme
Millon, 2008), 191–204), and also the commentary by Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean
Lallot, eds., La Poétique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1980) 278–79.
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of historiographers) do not benefit from the mimetic mediation of actors, as is the
case in tragedy. Hence, in the Rhetoric as in the Poetics, an all the more compelling
point is made, namely that clarity, luminous transparency (saphéßs), is to be seen as
the foremost quality of expression or diction (léxis): “Let this be the case with what
was shown in the Poetics and let the principal quality of diction be defined as
clarity. The index of this is the fact that speech (ho lógos), if it does not reveal (mèß
deßloî), will not produce its particular effect (érgon).”30 Doubtless, a relationship
needs to be established between this capacity of discourse to render visible and
the faculty of imagination (phantasía), which can take the place of perception.
Unlike animals whose imagination is linked only to the senses, men have, according
to Aristotle, the advantage of possessing the faculty of producing images in their
(intelligent) soul. These images (phantásmata) can substitute themselves for sensations, and it is through them that the faculty of intelligence is capable of thinking
and conceiving forms that will be interpreted as signs enabling reasoning, deliberation and prediction.31 But in the treatise on the soul, this human faculty of
“creating before one’s very eyes” is envisaged independently of the mimetic capacities of discourse.
Between the Poetics and the Rhetoric, then, the reference to vision shifted from
the authorial moment of discursivisation to that of the pragmatics of the lógos. The
efficacy of the discourse depended upon the clarity of a “rendering visible” which
was defined in the same terms as those employed by Thucydides. Clarity, obviousness, were again the qualities which Plutarch attributed to the discourse that inspired
confidence and conviction when he raised the initial question of the credibility of
the biography of a hero from the heroic past, such as Theseus. But unlike Thucydides,
who acknowledged Homer’s ability to “reveal,” the historian and philosopher of
the imperial period denied the ability of poets and mythographers to produce
“verisimilar discourse” (eikòß s lógos); a discourse not unlike the one he had the
intention of offering on the great deeds of the Athenian hero.32 It is doubtless no
coincidence that in the short treatise on the reasons for the Athenians’ reputation,
Plutarch chose Thucydides to illustrate the well-known comparison between the
plastic arts and the arts of discourse. Taking as a starting-point the aphorism attributed to Simonides, which refers to painting as silent poetry and poetry as painting
that speaks, words and utterances appear as analogs for colors and patterns. And
hence, in so far as he had recourse to the mimetic means of narrative and written
composition, the historian himself could be seen as a creator of images (eidoß lopoiéßsas). The master of this “obviousness” attained through discourse and narrative
was none other than Thucydides. According to Plutarch, who exploited the pun
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30. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1404b.1–2, with reference to Poetics 22.1458a.18–20.
31. Aristotle, On the Soul 3.431a.14–b12; and also 434a.6–15; see, for instance, on this
topic Sophie Klimis, Le statut du mythe dans la Poétique d’Aristote. Les fondements philosophiques de la tragédie (Bruxelles: Ousia, 1997), 164–71.
32. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War 1.9.3 (see supra n. 18) and Plutarch,
Theseus 1.3 and 5.
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on enárgeia and energásasthai, the Athenian historian could “turn the listener into a
spectator and induce in readers the feelings of stupefaction and unease felt by
eyewitnesses themselves.”33
It turns out that this capacity of discourse to render visible relies, according
to the author of the Rhetoric, upon three mutually complementary means. First,
metaphor: in particular in its analogical form, metaphor possesses to the highest
degree the ability to “create before one’s very eyes” (prò ommátoß n poieîn) and hence
allows the public to “see” events taking place. But, it is when it readily leans on
the figure of speech of antithesis that the obviousness induced by metaphor is
most effective, especially if its object is a particularly dynamic term, such as a
predicative qualification in which its subject takes an active role. For example,
instead of using the expression a “four-square man” to designate an upstanding
individual, one may state “a man having attained the full flowering of his maturity”
to designate a man at the height of his career. Following the Homeric example, it
is a matter of transforming inanimate beings into animate beings, breathing the
movement of life into them, showing them in action—in a word, of creating enérgeia,
strength in action.34 What counts is the effect produced, since metaphors that
render visible are appreciated by the audience.
Now, enérgeia prefigures the concept (from which it is differentiated by a
single vowel) of rhetorical vividness, enárgeia, as developed in treatises written
after Aristotle and as reused by Plutarch—copyists, moreover, often mistook the
one for the other and repeatedly incorporated enárgeia into Aristotle’s Rhetoric.
Without recalling the long history of the notion of evidentia so dear to Roman
rhetoricians, we shall limit ourselves to pointing out one of the consequences
to which it led by quoting the treatise On the Sublime attributed to Longinus:
“Furthermore, my dear boy, dignity, grandeur, and powers of persuasion are to a
very large degree derived from images (phantasíai)—for that is what some people
call the representation of mental pictures (eidoß lopoíïai). [...] But in current usage
the word is applied to passages in which, carried away by your feelings, you imagine
you are actually seeing the subject of your description, and enable your audience
to see it as well. You may have noticed that imagery (phantasía) means one thing
for orators and another for poets, that in poetry its aim is to work on the feelings
33. Plutarch, On the Glory of the Athenians 346f–7c. On this topic, the interpretation offered
by Adriana Zangara is dubious, see “Mettre en images le passé. L’ambiguïté et l’efficacité de l’enargeia dans le récit historique,” Mètis 2 (2004): 251–72, who, with reference
to phantasía, constantly underestimates the role played in discursive obviousness by
lógos with its mimetic po(i)etic potential; see, on the other hand, the excellent study
by Alessandra Manieri, L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi (Pise/Rome: Istituti
Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1998), 105–12 and 155–72.
34. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1410b.29–36, 1411b.1–10 and 1411b.21–12a.10; enérgeia, “force
in action” by opposition to dúnamis as “potential force,” see Metaphysics 8.1048a.25–29;
on enérgeia and enárgeia, see the present author’s study “Quand dire c’est faire voir,”
18–20, together with Manieri, L’immagine poetica, 97–104.
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and in oratory it produces vividness of description (enárgeia) [...]. ‘Ah! she will slay
me! whither shall I fly?’ In th[is] passage the poet himself had ‘seen’ the Furies, and
he almost compelled his audience, too, to see what he had imagined (ephantástheß).”35
The mental image, necessary for both poetical and rhetorical discursivization,
is transmitted by verbal means to the addressee of fully efficient discourse. Based
on the adjective, which as early as Homeric poetry designated the splendour of
the divinity when it appeared in an epiphany, enárgeia was the expression par
excellence of the psychological and technical ability of the rhetorician to invoke
striking images through his oratory. Take Lysias whose diction (léxis), according
to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, stood out by virtue of just such “obviousness.” The
enárgeia attributed to the orator’s speeches corresponded to the power to make
available “to the senses” what was said, or bring to vision the events, to rub shoulders with the staged characters “as if they were present.” This power of discourse
depended on the rhetorician’s ability to observe human nature, capture emotions,
characters, and men’s actions.36 Dionysius of Halicarnassus made a very good point:
such a capacity for visualisation would render meaningless the question of eikós,
the verisimilar. For reality would then appear directly in the discourse. Once again,
at both the moment of production of the discourse and its reception, the terms of
the referential relationship were reversed.
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When transposed onto the question of the fictional aspects of historiography as
conceived of and practiced by the first Greek prose-writers, such a rhetoric of enactment and of vision through the verbal resources of discourse lead to a dual conclusion.
On the one hand, the referential verisimilitude of historiographical discourse
goes beyond the necessity imposed by internal reference, beyond the internal
coherence of emplotment and its plausibility. It is grounded in rhetorical procedures aimed at rendering visible, at setting, by verbal means, events before one’s
eyes, by leaning in particular upon eyewitness accounts of an indexical order. In
parallel with the selection of events and actions configured in a discursivisation
dictated by a logic of necessity, it is probably in this virtuality, capable of evoking
images, of a po(i)etic order, that the referential capacity of discourse lies, with its
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35. Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 15.1–2, trans. T. S. Dorsch in Classical Literary Criticism, ed. T. S. Dorsch (Harmonsdsworth: Penguin, 1965), 121 (Greek terms added by
the present author), quoting, in particular, Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 291–292, in
which Orestes is described as seeing visions, inspired by the Furies, and which constantly
change form; see Sandrine Dubel, “Ekphrasis et enargeia: la description antique comme
parcours,” in Dire l’évidence. Philosophie et rhétorique antiques, eds. C. Lévy and L. Pernot
(Paris/Montreal: L’Harmattan, 1997), 249–64, and, on the development of the notion
of fantasias, see Manieri, L’immagine poetica, 51–60.
36. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 7.1–2; on the rhetorical conception of evidentia
developed out of that of phantasiai, see Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 6.2.29–32; and
also Manieri, L’immagine poetica, 126–49.
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Modes of Reference
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pragmatic power of communicating knowledge through emotion. It is in these
effects of figurative meaning with a powerful emotional charge that the utility of
historiography is to be realised.
On the other hand, the visual, demonstrative character of historiographical
discourse constantly leans, in particular in Herodotus, on monstrative enunciative
procedures which point toward the very hic et nunc of the actual communication
of the results of the investigation. In this sense, it is not “On the enquiries of
Herodotus,” but “This is the public demonstration of the investigations of Herodotus
of Halicarnassus,” written, or rather, spoken by the historian who thus designates
his lógos, his speech. This inaugural gesture, announcing the signature of, and
giving a title to his work, carries over onto the enunciative plane the procedures
of a public “performative” demonstration of his discourse: apódeixis héßde, through
use of the Greek deictic of designation and presence.37 The Greek logographers
were soon aware of the fact that these discursive procedures of demonstrative
designation, combined with verbal obviousness, could tilt discourse towards the
spectacular, thus conferring upon it, by virtue of the pleasure induced, the deceptive effects of poetry. Ultimately, it was Gorgias who dissected the rhetorical strategies at work in this poetic prose, while at the same time making full use of them
himself.38 However, it would require another chapter, starting with the Homeric
térpein, to discuss the seductive effects of discourse, and this would lead on in any
case to the Platonic critique of the mimetic arts. What is involved, then, is an
aesthetics of verbal fabrications and representations whose pragmatics include a
strong emotional dimension.
Whether in historiographical discourse or in modern anthropological discourse, there is a requirement to make visible, by procedures of a linguistic order,
what is removed from the direct line of vision of the listener or reader. There is a
truism here: what is evoked and represented in discourse must be absent, either
through temporal or through spatial distance. It must, then, not only be rendered
visible, but also be made intelligible; in view of an intelligibility whose criteria
naturally vary in space and time, an intelligibility whose parameters are subject to
cultural change, depending upon the particular regimes of belief and paradigms
of truth in place.
Hence, the dual dimension of Greek historiographical verisimilitude, which
resides in its internal coherence and its external reference; a representational verisimilitude of a discursive and practical order which is based upon the enunciative,
rhetorical and poietic resources afforded by all language. By virtue of its discursive
character, this verisimilar corresponds to a configured world, and hence to a world
37. On the meaning of apódeixis, see n. 28; on the dual anaphoric and demonstrative
reference of the deictic hóde, see my remarks in Claude Calame, “Pragmatique de la
fiction : quelques procédures de deixis narrative et énonciative en comparaison (poétique
grecque),” in Sciences du texte et analyse de discours. Enjeux d’une interdisciplinarité, eds.
J.-M. Adam and U. Heidmann (Genève/Lausanne: Slatkine/Études de Lettres, 2005),
119–43.
38. The references can be found in Calame, “Quand dire c’est faire voir,” 21–22.
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of a fictional nature inscribed in the regime of truth of a cultural order. By appealing
to the imagination as well as external reference, its ability to evoke images reinforces the pragmatic dimension of all discourse: by reference to the present of
its enunciation, the aesthetic effect and the passional effect of historiographical
discourse play a central role, in this connection. Such might be the various conditions of existence of what could be termed, in a sophistic oxymoron, “referential
fiction.”39
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39. I have examined this concept in more detail on the subject of the heroic narratives
which we apprehend as “myths” and narrative fictions in Claude Calame, “La pragmatique poétique des mythes grecs : fiction référentielle et performance rituelle,” in Fiction
et cultures, eds. F. Lavocat and A. Duprat (Paris: SFLGC, 2010), 33–56; see also Claude
Calame, “Fiction référentielle et poétique rituelle : pour une pragmatique du mythe
(Sappho 17 et Bacchylide 13),” in Mythe et fiction, eds. D. Auger and C. Delattre (Paris:
Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2010), 117–35.
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Claude Calame
EHESS