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How to Write History: Thucydides and Herodotus in the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition

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How to Write History: Thucydides and Herodotus in the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition How to write history: Thucydides and Herodotus in the ancient rhetorical tradition A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Scott Kennedy, B.A., B.S. Graduate Program in Greek and Latin The Ohio State University 2018 Dissertation Committee: Anthony Kaldellis, Adviser Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Will Batstone Copyright by Scott Kennedy 2018 Abstract Modern students of Thucydides and Herodotus may find it odd to think of them as rhetoricians. Yet in the ancient world, both historians (and especially Thucydides) played an important role in rhetorical schools. They were among the favorite authors of ancient teachers of rhetoric and served as foundational pillars of the ancient curriculum, providing themes for school exercises and even for such seminal texts as Hermogenes' theoretical treatises on rhetoric. Modern scholars might never read technical rhetorical texts such as Hermogenes. They almost certainly would never turn to Hermogenes and his kind to help them understand Thucydides or Herodotus. But for our ancient intellectual predecessors, such an approach would have been unconscionable, as ancient rhetoric was the theoretical lens with which they understood and appreciated historical writings. In this dissertation, I explore the confluence of rhetoric and historiography in the ancient world through an examination of how Herodotus and Thucydides were used in ancient schools and then by later historians. Chapter 1 and 2 outline how these historians were embedded and encoded within the rhetorical curriculum. In Chapter 1, I examine how Herodotus and Thucydides entered the rhetorical curriculum and how rhetors incorporated them into the rhetorical curriculum through an examination of the surviving progymnasmata, scholia, and pedagogical myths. Chapter 2 then turns to the practice of declamation, that is the writing of practice speeches in i which the declaimer impersonated a figure from the past. Through an examination of how rhetors wrote a historical declamation on themes from Herodotus or Thucydides, this chapter illustrates how rhetors were trained to invent a speech for a specific historical occasion. After outlining what assumptions and ideas about historiography these beginning exercises taught students, chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate how they translated these ideas into practice through an examination of imitations of Thucydides by later historians. In chapter 3, I look at imitations of events in Thucydides, such as plague, sieges, strife, and battles. Taught that Thucydides was the canonical example of these kinds of event, later historians treated him as a template for their own historical writing and often sought to improve their model or even surpass him. Or they might use him as a template for the invention of new historical scenes such as an earthquake or famine. This chapter thus challenges us to think of imitators of Thucydides as participants in a dynamic rhetorical tradition of competition and emulation. Chapter 4 then examines how emulators of Thucydides crafted Thucydidean speeches in light of their rhetorical training. It sees historical speeches as a product of declamation, which mediated Thucydides for later generations. It also seeks to reveal how rhetorical practices encoded the historian with webs of meaning, which modern scholars miss because they are generally unaware of ancient rhetorical practices. Throughout antiquity, Thucydides and Herodotus played an important role in training students to write and think about history. This dissertation helps us understand the links between rhetorical practice and historiography and more broadly step into the literary workshop of an ancient historian. ii Vita March 15, 1990……………………...Born-Phoenix, AZ 2008…………………………………Deer Valley High School 2012…………………………………B.A. Greek, B. S. Accounting, University of Arizona 2014…………………………………M.A. Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University 2014-2017…………………………...Graduate Instructor, The Ohio State University 2017-Present………………………...Junior Fellow in Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Field of Study Major Field: Classics iii Acknowledgements In writing this book, I have incurred a number of debts. First, my thanks is due to my committee Anthony Kaldellis, Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, and Will Batstone, who read through this dissertation and encouraged me through the long writing process. My gratitude is due as well to Craig Gibson at the University of Iowa for reading through this dissertation and offering numerous thoughtful suggestions. Marion Kruse at the University of Cincinnati also read part of Chapter 3 on Prokopios and my thanks are due to him for his incisive comments. My colleagues at the Ohio State University also provided a wonderful and warm environment in which I was able to toss around ideas and garner much needed feedback. Finally, thanks are due to Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington DC, which provided a friendly and thought- provoking context in which I completed this research. To all these individuals and institutions, I owe my sincerest thanks. All errors and infelicities are my own. iv Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................i Vita .......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .........................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: Thucydides and Herodotus in the ancient rhetorical tradition ............................ 1 1. The Beginnings of Thucydides and Herodotus as Rhetorical Texts ....................................... 3 2. The Place of Thucydides and Herodotus as Stylists in Subsequent Schools ........................... 7 3. Reading and Writing History: The Progymnasmata and Beyond ........................................ 12 A. On the Malice of Thucydides: Probability and Bias ....................................................... 12 B. Herodotus and the Mythical Approach to History .......................................................... 23 4. When did students read Thucydides and Herodotus? .......................................................... 28 5. Reading Thucydides in an ancient classroom ..................................................................... 32 6. What parts of Thucydides and Herodotus did schools read? ............................................... 38 7. Pedagogical Myths and Thucydides ................................................................................... 42 8. Thucydides in the Ancient Rhetorical Curriculum: an Overview ........................................ 46 Chapter 2: Thucydides and Herodotus in Declamation ........................................................ 47 1. History and declamation: writing a historical declamation ................................................ 51 2. History and declamation: character................................................................................... 69 3. Theory in action: Sample historical declamations .............................................................. 73 A. Libanios and Chorikios on the legacy of Miltiades ........................................................ 74 B. The reputation of Athens: Libanios versus Gregory of Cyprus ....................................... 81 C. A Historian Rewrites Thucydides: Nikephoros Gregoras................................................ 91 4. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 97 Chapter 3: From textbook to history: imitating Thucydides ................................................ 98 v 1. Thucydides' greatest hits .................................................................................................. 104 2. On Strategies of Imitation ................................................................................................ 114 3. Emulation ........................................................................................................................ 140 4. The Creation of New Scenes............................................................................................. 150 5. The decline and fall of Thucydides in Middle Byzantium .................................................. 158 6. Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................ 168 Chapter 4: Thucydidean Speeches ....................................................................................... 170 1. Declamation and historical speeches ............................................................................... 170 2. Rhetoric and intertextuality ............................................................................................. 177 3. Thucydidean characterization .......................................................................................... 180 4. Declaiming Periklean Athens in Rome: Dionysios of Halikarnassos ................................ 182 5. Thucydidean Propaganda: John Kantakouzenos .............................................................. 188 6. Speaking Hidden Truths ..................................................................................................
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