William, Afterswift, Mike:

I have posted a brief outline of my position (vis postmodernism) as a
seperate email. Partly because I think it is a largely seperate issue to
the thread on ancient historians. However, it does seem to be the causal
element of all this discussion.

Naomi wrote (20/8):

"I can't speak for historians in the ancient Mediterranean, but Chinese
historians of the imperial period routinely made up speeches for their
protagonists in order to make particular points, either historical points or
to do with the character of the person in question."

Which is just about all I said for Thucydides. Some classicists might
agree, others might not, but the same could be said for Naomi's remarks on
Chinese historians. Yet my posting (three days later) has generated a far
greater response. An indication that meaning/authorship? is as much a
matter of reader as writer, perhaps?

Afterswift writes (28/8):

"In most of his [Thucydides'] writing he was the source: he was there and
was an actor in the drama "

Fair point. Though he was a pretty minor actor, a rather bad commander with
the wrong sympathies (note here his treatment of Demosthenes). Denys Hays
follows your line of reasoning, the guarantee of a classical author is
their own presence, the author is both author of the text and author of the
events. Which also means that Thucydides is both object and subject at the
same time, Thucydides says Thucydides did.

That is not the case for Chinese historians. Naomi or Mike correct me if I'm
wrong but I understand from a reading of Zurcher that Chinese historians of
the Former and Later Han were court historians working from documentary
sources available in imperial records.

I would like however to compare two remarks, one by Denys Hays (from
Annalists and Historians) and the other by Mike:

"And of course, if the putative historian is NOT citing sources (eyewitness
or otherwise) or if s/he fails to treat sources carefully, evaluating them
for accuracy, then as far as I'm concerned, the writer is either a bad
historian or simply not an historian at all (perhaps a chronicler or a
journalist)."

And from Hays

"There is no need to attempt even a succinct account of classical
historiography... partly because most classical historians are bad
historians - or perhaps one should rather say that they were attempting to
do something completely different from what is now regarded as the
historian's task."

The problem is the discourse of catholicism inherent in the 'modern
synthesis'. If features A, B & C are to be inherent in history (be these
empiricism, atheoretical language, history for its own sake or whatever)
then all those who do not subscribe to A, B & C must be enplotted outside
the narrative of history. And if the narrative is too well drawn, too well
established between speaker and audience, if the relation Thucydides as
historian cannot be broken, then Thucydides must have features A, B & C.
This is the problem Mike, William, Afterswift all have, it would be too
painful to remove Thucydides from the canon of historians and relegate him
to propogandist or journalist, so instead they must ignore and sidestep his
flagrant breaches of the basic rules of the 'modern synthesis'.

William,

"We are used to discussing the "nature" of sources, I suppose, but despite a
high level of literacy at least in places like Athens, the literary culture
was chirographic, which is to say you wrote and you read, and you wrote with
your audience's knowledge in mind."

Do you ever not write with your audience's knowledge in mind? Perhaps I am
mistaken about my audience's knowledge, or incapable of adjusting my speech,
or my writing reaches a non-audience, a reciever for which I did not intend
it. Still the historian/author writes always for an audience. This is
inevitable as historical proof is by its nature rhetorical proof, it is
proven if it convinces. (How you reconcile your statement with Thucydides'
that he was writing for all time ie his audience was not the people of
Athens, I'm not sure.)

"Sources?  Sources?  Your audience was a source and the jury, too!"

And experienced as well. You missed that those citizens would sit five
hundred at a time to judge between two competing narratives in the law
courts of Athens. I come back to my first point that what was thought of as
history (how to use sources, method, subject, objective, style) were not the
same for Thucydides as they are for many modern historians. Oh yes,
Thucydides makes very modern claims, that truth is his objective, that he
has weighed the various interpretations etc. Those same claims were made in
the work of Lysias, Demosthenes and the other law court orators. I could lay
it all out, but that's not necessary, I hope.

"Mr. Bracey might not know who Meletus was, but an Athenian audience would
have. This was a face-to-face society at least among its elites, and
Thucydides probably knew personally most of the major players, or had seen
them at unpleasantly close range through a hail of javelins or the dust of a
charging phalanx, or at public functions of the demos, not just the Assembly
but festivals, embassies, and whatnot--all this was very, very public."

Perhaps not as face to face as you suggest. 140,000 people spread across an
area the size of Wales. Large enough people could claim to be citizens of
one group without any other group of citizens becoming suspicious. The elite
more face to face, yes, though still possible that two men in their thirties
might never have met.

"read the way, oh, say Thrasymachus in Republic and Callicles in Gorgias
talk about power (both men were "real"). Though they take different views of
the arbitrariness of justice, coming through loud and clear is the worldview
of the historian--who has power, the rich and well-born who make laws to
control the demos or the lowly whose democracy unjustly restrains the elite
out of envy?  Mr. Bracey should read the debate over Mytilene between Cleon
and Diodotus, then those passages in Republic I and Gorgias, and then
imagine a society in which the issues were in the minds of everyone. "

Having read all the above let me turn the question round. One is philosophy,
an artifice intended to backdrop a study of the human condition. The other
is history, a rendering of what happened as closely as it is possible
(maybe). In a society that seems to draw so little distinction can we really
say that their conception of the two, literary artifice (as used in
philosophy) and reconstruction of events (as used in history), were the same
as our?

Or to put it another way if I were to write a speech for Washington on the
night before the attack on Trenton in 1776. If that speech were to form part
of a debate between Washington and another member of his command which dealt
with the problems of revolution, the inevitable creation of national
identity through conflict, the need for Spanish and French support if this
victory was to be more than a token, the conflict that would come later
between those who had fought against Britain and those who had fought for
America. Would that speech be true? Thucydides would say yes. I feel that
Mike would say no. I would say yes 2500 years ago and no now.

That reply falls a little short of your challenge but I hope you will
forgive me if I do not have enough faith in my literary prowess to try a
Thucydides style speech.

Robert Bracey
gandhara@geocities.com

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