Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
21. 'Stories Embroidered Beyond Truth': Reading Herodotus and Thucydides in Light of Pindar's Olympian 1
Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
Jonas Grethlein [+]
University of Heidelberg
Description
It is controversial whether ancient historians subscribed to the same notion of truth as modern historians. This chapter, rather than viewing ancient historiography from the vantage-point of modern history, envisages it against the backdrop of other ancient genres dealing with the past, notably poetry; more specifically, it looks at how truth is understood in Thucydides and Herodotus in light of Pindar’s Olympian 1. The chapter first explores Pindar’s rejection of the tradition of Tantalus’ gruesome banquet. Pindar’s critique is strikingly similar to Thucydides’ methodological reflections. On the one hand, Thucydides’ polemics feature elements of the poetry against which he rants. On the other, an assertion that in our eyes seems banal is highly charged in an attempt to distance historiography from poetic memory. The chapter then argues that Pindar, while rejecting the traditional Tantalus myth, grants it much space. He integrates into his ode a rumour which resembles the rejected tradition and explains its genesis. More incisively, metaphors and other features continue to evoke the story which Pindar deems untrustworthy. This playful engagement with a rejected myth can be fruitfully compared with the prominence of alternative versions in Herodotus’ Histories. While critical scrutiny places Herodotus firmly in the intellectual milieu of physiologists and sophists, the eagerness to juxtapose divergent stories parallels, with due qualifications, the engagement with various traditions in poetry. The chapter concludes by touching on the question of how Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ understanding of truth deviates from the positivist notion accepted by most historians today.