e of .
the Idea of HistoIY
ID tIqUlty
V
Gerald A. Press
The idea of history. and especially the Klea that history is goal-directed,
has figured prominently in Western thought since the Renaissance. pro-
viding the conceplUal foundation for philosophies ami theologies of
histor)' as well as of a varlety of social theories. Therefore an extensive
schola rly literature has come into existence in the past century which
discusses the origin and early history of the idea. It is widely held that
in ancient Creek and Roman thought history is understood as circular
and repctiti\'e (a consequence of their anti-temporal metaphysics) in
contrdSt with Judaco-Christian thought, which sees history as linear and
unique (a consequence of their messianic and h~nce radically tcmpond
theology).
This account of the idea of history in anttquity exemplifies a more
general vlew: that the Craeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian ('uhures
were fundamentally alien and opposed cultural forces and that. there-
fore. Christianity's victory over paganism included the replacement or
supersession of onc intellectual world by another.
In this study Dr. Press shows thal COntrary 10 this belief there was
substantial rontinuity between "pagan" and Christian ideas or history in
antiquity, rather than a striking opposition between cydic and linear
patterns. He finds that the foundation of the Christian view of history
as goal-direcled lies in the rhetorical rdlhcr thall the theologiCdl motives
of early Christian writcr!..
-<,
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
THE IDEA OF HISTORY
IN ANTIQUITY
Gerald A. Press
Printcd in Can..d..
Reprintcd 200'
and to Vida
for helping me
to understand
what I find
Contents
ItdtnQ'WltdgmmLs IX
I JmroducUon 3
1tP/>t'1di.x: Bibliography of Wor.b Oil tht Arctptnl Vit'w of tilt Id,a of 147
fliskJry it! Antiquity
Indnc tororum 15 J
J wish to express my gr.uilude to all those who. in various ways, have helped
to make this book possible. In particular I would like to thank Jason L.
Saunders and Paul Henry, SJ., whose leaching most directly led to and
guided this work, and Richard H. Papkin, Herbert Marcuse. and Stephen
CrilCS. who have been inspirations both as teachers and as creative Ihinkers.
I would also like to thank Sleven L. Goldman. Thomas St!'Cbohm. and W.
Kendrick Pritcheu for reading earlier versions and providing muchneeded
encouragement, Paul P.soinos for invaluable help with the noles and in-
dexes, Vida Pavesich for aid, counsel. and solace from lirSllO last (bUl nOI
for typing the manuscript). and David Fate Nonon. over many years teacher,
editor, adviser. friend.
Abbreviations
Introduction
(1953): 171-92; Louis Green, " Hi5torical In terpl'"elat ion in the Fourteenth Century
Florentine Chronicles,"' JHI2R ( 1967) : 16 1-78; and Donald J. Wilco.:. TII, Dtllflopmt"1
.f FlfIfflItiM Hllmtlllist Hisl~,iol rflplg ill lite Fiflu~tA CmlllTJ , Harvard Hisl0f"ical Studitll,
82 (1969).
I Bacon. AallllllC""tllf of l~t,"li"" Bk. 2, Pt . I, para . \ .
of phi losophies o f history; illld his to ry has hccll ta ken to he the proof
o f Chris tia nit y as wt' lI as its illl1l'(llIOSI ('sst'nCl', il s different'e from
and sUJXriorily to all o th"r n' li)(ions. I1 is not a n t'Xaggeration 10 say
th at the idea o f histo ry. is Ollt' ur tilt' most wid('1\". innut'lllial a nd for
ma tivt' idt'as in du' modt'm \\'(' S\(' rtl iult'llt'e tu al world . '
Til t' idea of hi story that has inf()rml'n th,' di slinel iwly modem so-
cial thco ri rs, philosophies, and th('uluJ.(i('s is that his tory is tdie. or
goal-directed : then' is an ('lid or glial- a 1,los- lOwarn which his tory
is (incvi tably ) mO\'in)(, whidl mOlY he kno wn ('itlll'r h ~' ration a l in -
q uiry in to the la ('ts ur hy renlatioll. and in rela tion tu which all prior
actions and CVCntS ha\"(' hot h their nU'allin .~ ;mci tlH'i r \alur. I n the
past hund rcci years this icka has hfTIl t'X H'lIsiwly cliscussect , ilS ori-
g in s sought in "ar l ~ .J ewis h Ill" Christian thuug h t, its , 'ariants dassi-
Ii ("d , its cnnscqu(,IIC('s prais('d o r niti('i . . I'(t. a nd it has ht,t'n C"ompan'd
with n tht'r and ('arli t'r id t'as ur history. In the SlIt:(""('l'(l ing " haplcrf> I
shall lry III d t'\('rOlit ll' tlt(' d('\'c,lupnH'u t ('1' dJ(' id,'a fir history ill a ll-
t;quity, taking as my horiwll this inllUl'11l ial a mi Illodl'rn ;d (,,;1 or his-
tory as goa l dir('ct('d . Bill th is is (Jnly a " htll';zon" nc'(ausf'. dcspiu'
the weigh t o f p r('\'iolls disnlss;o n , t ill' ('v idt'lll"l' slmws Iha t tht' id('a of
his to ry a s going sunwwlll'n' i", l1<1t li .u nd in llllli{llJiI Y.
T hc'rt' is . as I haw just s tl!o:~t's H'd . a wic\t'ly ;IlT ('~h'd accoun t I o f
thc id t a of history in antiquit y, ,llId it pr('suppusc's thitt there was a n
o p posit iOlI h(' tWt'{'JI tlu' GI':t('c',,- Rt IOlal) a lld .Juda(f)-C hristian c' ul-
lures. Although this oppusi tiun \\<lS all'f':l(l y ,Hlu mhrillt'd in H q.~I' I :'
Ih" mOSl inlluc'ntia l st u n~' Ilfil li ,,, thf' <iisnlss;llllclfth " id(,a uflli slUry
' Ibjo H o lhurll l"(;r.. tk ,w ti ~ I "d " n' Cum... p. ~ " I' Hi M\lr~ , " .1111 IU 1I!9J ;:fj
sa ~ $: " On ly in H .. I1f'nic :md WI'"lIi I.. rn ,;,il; l .lI inn flid hisl"ri"OI I thu II)!: h. ,\ItIU;r.... Iruly
funda m('ntal rot(' for Ihf' ... h"lr Ju unUl'(' of .uhur ..... Simil;u ly . Kos l;u Papaioallll ou .
"'nlt COIl~c nl,li'H I Hr H i5l"~ :' /)j~ltfM ' :! O !ItiI.Jl ::.t!I- :l5. ".Iul H tnr~' , SJ .. l ,IY' [St .
lug l/Slillt 0/1 P, .sQltlfli(l j !'IitW Y" rk: "Jat'mil hm , I ~ijill ) , 11, :151 111:11 I ht idras o f Ht''' li"n .
ptrlorHl lit ~. l. ncl h;NtHr y ,UI" limd .. m r nl l.t in nllld (, rll Wt Sttnl Ihlllll!;lll al1d t l1li rtly
u nk nllwn ill IhrM' ti.rm N In 11", ;\llt'i"11\ ,..",Id . K a r l Rl'illllilrdl l" " h iln o.ophy ann H is
to ry amlOll,l1; Iht (;rttks." (;'NU and R MII. It . ~ . I I HI~I.I) : H1 _!IO I,md rnak ..s III r xplain
w hy {irrt k IIIUII)(III . nn tik., lIl"d(' I'll , r:< lK'rir nrtd 1111 W" h l('1ll :,b"u! Ih r rrl ;lI il'ln~ h i p
Ilt l \\ rt u ph ilfl!lOph y allll h iN t.... ~ . :\ nd t ))wah l S ..... IlJ.:IIr I Th, Dulllft '!IIIr, 11 ;'M , :! ,101.
( "tW Yo rk : Knnpr. 1!11m , I : 1:1:.11 d l"nits his turit':\1 l""Il S" iUII ~Ut~~ 11> t hr " Chusical
soul. -
' Thr t"oll owi,,)!: di~(,1l5~ic ll1 "".hillil,; pllSSa!{h Ir"m \:... i"u~ sd ll!lars ,md thinktn il
lus trati ve: of the: .-it\> Ihat i~ ... idd ~ :u'('t' pl m ,HId p;ort k ul:lr ,,"iuu in it. :\ mo rt
rS ltuS;H list uf wurks Ih;1I fXl'Uulltl llr i""ukt Ihi~ ,'k w will hI' found ;n Ihl' ,\ppt'n
di x.
" Sf't . In. I'sa m plf', HI'!{<'l, 1.NI~ w rill IIr, I'ltilo ,,,p~ r '!/ Ili" (I~ I". Ira m . J. Sihrf't j ;-';tW
Ym k: Colunial " rl'ss. J ~ l(lO l, 1'1. :t, S... :1. C ha ll. 1, pp, :1I11- :W,
Introdutt;on 5
l.a ~rthormitr~ , 1.1 rifl/ism( duili", t l l"ldifl/iS1M ITn (Paris, 1904; reprinted Paris:
Edilion de Scuil, 1966),
I Ibid .. pp. 245-46. j. Guiuon [u Tr>fl/n " r i,""il; rhn PIi" rl SI. Auplttrw (Paris:
KQvin, 1933). p. 357 1 cites LaberthOf1R~~ in i.ll~ <:OUrK of arguing ror the ~.
placem~nl of cycles by a hillo riul world "with spiritual sigoificancc,"
6 Uta of HjJto~I'
personaii/ia, taking JI{Q(( bllt OMt. and [he' c hara c u~ r of tht'st' aCI!I, agret'
ably 10 the entire consciousnt"ss of lim (' . is of f'ssf'ntia lly rdigiou5 sig-
n ificanCf'.R
11 Kostas Papaioa nnou, "Nature a nd History in the G n:dll. Conception of Ihe Cos-
mos," DiftlntfJ, no. 25 (1959), p. 9. Likewise Robert E. Cushman, ~Greek and C hris
tian Views of Time," j(JllrJullllj Rdilio" 33 (1953): 256.
It Papaioannou , ''Cosmos,'' p. 26.
rectilinear, once and for all, and directed toward the end or goal of
the Messianic Age. In contrast with Graeco-Roman theories of
" purposeless cycles, history was now seen 10 be linea r, progressing in
a straight line from th e six days of creation to a single day of Judg-
ment. "n Thus, " to Ihe Jews and Christians .. . history was primarily
a history of salvation.":M There is but one history, that of the Divine
Economy: " the Biblical conception of the unfolding of God's plan for
the creation, and particu larly for man's red emption in history . "~ As
unders tood in Judaeo-Christian thought , " terrestrial history is a for-
ward-moving process of a very special kind. It has an txortw, a cen-
tn"", and afinis, a definite beginning, a middle or focal point, and a
definite end ."" Each event is thus unique, playing its unique role in
the economy, and therelore meaningful.
This new conception of history, so it is thought, can be seen in the
development of Christian historiography. On the one hand, the new
importance attached to history is seen in the invention of altogether
new forms of historical composition, ecclesiastical history and the
biography of saints. But more significantly, in the confiden ce of the
early church historians-Eusebius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen,
and Evagrius-it is seen tha t Divine Providence guides all events:
"The Church his torians' task had a basic unity, for all the historians
and their readers would agree that church history was properly and
essentially a record of the power of God and of the action of God in
human affairs. Thus church history was a test of the truth of the
faith .. .. Hence the church historian had a special vocation within
the church, not only as a narrator of events, but as a channel through
which the truth of the faith was proclaimed."7/
It is widely agreed , then, that for Judaeo-Christianity, history-
that is, the eschatological history of salvation-is linear, once and for
all, and therefore meaningful in the goal-directed sense of fulfilling
["T ime in the Old Tellament," in PToflliu otl F_ljillmnt.l, W. F. F. Brutt (Edinburgh:
T. &. T . Clart, 1963), pp. 1 7~1 distinfl:uishe$ among circular, horizont"l, "nd
vertical time.
D Constantinos A. Palridcs, T!u PIt_ix.vul tM Lu/in (lkrkdey: University ole ... li-
fOrnia Press, 196.5), p. 6.
h LOwith, MtaJIi"'l ill H iJlory, p. 5.
n R. A. Markus, " Pleroma and Fullillment. The Significance or H istory in St. I~_
nacus' Opposition to Gnosticism," Vi,UUu CltrutUvuu 8 (1954):2 13.
,. Baillie, Bflitj ill Pr9,RJJ, p. 84. Likewise C ushman, "Vicws of Time," p. 254.
"Glanville Downey, "The Perspective: or the .arly Church Historians," GRBS 6
( 1965) :69.
10 Idta oj History
Goo 's promise ofsalv3lion for his people, whereas for Grac:co-Roman
culture history is circular, repetitive, and therefore meaningless .
Since philosophy of hislOry is inconceivable apart from history under
stood as meaningful , it is fair 10 say Ihal this fund amentall y new
philosophic pursuit is a consequence of JudaeoChristianity. " The
very existence of a philosophy of history and its q ues t for a meaning
is due 10 the history of sa lvation; it emerged from faith in an ultimate
purpose: .... History . .. is meaningful only by indicating some tran-
scendent purpose beyond the actual facts," wrote l..ow ith .lII And it is
in this sense thal Augustine 's /)t rivitalt Dei is often sa id to be the firsl
treatise on the philosophy of hislOry. " The Christian philosophy of
hi story was fi rst enuncia ted by Augustine in response to pagan
claims that this new religion was responsible for the sack of Rome by
Alaric's Got hs in 410."29 Again , " Augustine may righ tly be called the
father of the C hristian ' philosophy' of history. His major work on the
subject, De dIJitall Dti {o nlra pa,(QI'IOS ... was written in the apologetic
and polemic vein typical of mos t of his writings . "~
The widely a ccepted view of the id ea of history in antiquity that 1
have been outlining is, as is clear, a part of a more general discussion
of the relationship between C racco-- Roma n and J udaco-Ch ristian in-
nuences on the formation of Wes tern thought a nd civilization . It is a
commonplace that Western thought is Ch rist ian (or Judaco-
C hristian).'l Bu t although it is !l;cnerally and vaguely agreed that
111 Uiwilh, M,tmi", /" lIiJI01.J, p . ~. Tht vi~ that J udaro-Chri.... ianil y is responsiblt
ror the inven tion of philo5oph) or his lory is aometi~s u rritd to the e)ltrem" or su p-
posing Iha t only a Chrislian can Il:a ll ~ undemand hislOr)" al all. J. N. loiAgis, ror
vcample. wriU:I: ~Tht hiSlorical ttmpcraTTlCCnl. or ..... hat,.v,. r you n il il, 10 be ge nui ne
must be deeply impregnated with the Christian Slory- IC1triJti~lfil.f ~lId HiJlo~, ( Lon-
don: Finch, 190~ ), p. \'iiil . And A. N. Wildtr IE,,~~ C1trilli~1I RlttltPir (London:
S.C .M ., 1964), p. 136J gua evt n further and daim~ Wnn prnpl,.~ ha \ ~ a history in tht
true .eMe (Keep' Israel and thos,. thal ha\"( tnltrrd into in undtrstandinR or man.
The re.ality.sc nle or other human KrouP! is prehistorical and prtpcrsonal br compari-
son." Emile Brchitr ," Quelqu,.s traits dt I ~ pll ilosophi,. dt \'hiS\oir,. dans I'anliqu ilf
clauiq\I(," R . " IIiJl8i" tI Philostl/lftit Rtl(citttm ( 1943). (>. 38-401, hnw,.,rr. holds that
Ih( StOlet af1d Polybiu" w;lh their not ion o(, h,. Un il} ofmankind. rrtalrd philosophy
of his lory; Christianit y did nOI.
Jt Brandon, ~ BC . and A.n .. ~ p. 191. J ean Dllniclou I"SI. I ren~ rl It. origines dr-
la theologie de I'histoirt," R. dt J( imu " U,iMt 34 (1947) : 227-3 1J finds tht origin in
Irenaeus' C"lIplana ti on oftht relation !xtwttn Irn- O ld a nd Ne .... TeslamentS in Irrms
of a progressive ~ucation of hum ani t ~.
,. Patrides, P1tot~ i.t, p. 13.
" Sce, ror tJ:llmple, Lynn White. 'Christian Myt h and C hrist ian History:' j H/ 2
( 1 942) : \4~; Frank li n La Van Baumer, cd., M aill Cumllls ~J U'rsUnI 11HJulltI (New
York: Alfred. A. Knopf, 196 11. p. 20: :lOO B~JK II"rilill;(J ~ Sdilll AUl UJli",. cd. l>I'ilh
Introduction II
Just as the two thought-worlds arc taken to bf' complete and un-
changing, so their ideas art' taken \0 be complete and unchanging,
the resuh of no process of development, independt'nI from and op-
posed to one another. M The transformation of the idea of history,
11 Cushman, "ViewJ of 7i'1PH'," p. 2.l<l . f.yo:n J. B. Bur)" whoso: lliJlor;J of Ih, lAlrr
RQmtllf ",p;u 12 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1889)/ cOluidrrs Ihl!' connlions bcl""~n
ChriSlianilY and paganism, sees Ihe ChriSlian rel igion as "rntircly oppoKd 10 Iho:
Roman .pirit which it was destined to dis,sol\'r" ( I :26).
,. That tilts uppositiun or slonic \ic ..~ is II rashiofl in histurioll inlt'rprelil1iun has IlC'en
recognilCd by W. den Botr ni.clfl'le Renlarll5 un tht: Bc:ginlLiugs of Christian
Historiott;raphy," Sllldi, Pa/,iJlia. <I : 348). And at IUlt as regards thc idea of,iml:, il
hu bem soundly C1'iticiud by Aroaldo Momigliano I"Timr in Andrnl HistorioR-
raphy," H f:I n ., Beihert 6 (1966), pp. 1-23: noprintcd in MomigliallO. QIl,r/Q COII/n-
hl4 011, S'~ri, drlli S,lIdi CitJJsiti (Romc: Ediziooi d i Slofia e IrUeralUra, 1969), pp.
13-4IJ. who concludes that there art no neat and mutua11y exclusivc \ it ..... , about
time to be found in the writings ur tne a nci~nu . For some uamplts oflhis pluralism.
St:c J ohn Ca11ahan, Fon Vitu 'J af T;mr ill AIWifll/l'lti/IJJOplty (Cambridge, Mu.! ., 1~8 ).
Beside. MOlnigliano, there: art also tc ndrncirs 10 rocus on the continuities among
patriSlic scholars; sec, ror txamplr, C. Fabt-idus. " Der sp1'achliche Klanitismus dtr
griechischtn Kirthenv.itu. Ein philugischc:s und gtislesjteschichlliches Problrm_"
jb.A .C. 10 ( 1967) : 187- 99, and M. tuhrmann. " Dir lateinilchc: Uttratur deT
Splilantikt:. Ein literarbistorische1' 8eitrall; 'l.um Kominuiliupwblo:m ," .h/iA, fllld
A6netll4tUl 13 (l967 ): ~- 79. Typical is f _ D. McClo),'$ argument [MThe SenS( or A1'-
linic Form in the MentalilY or the G r~k fathrn." Stvtli4 PIJtrU,(C, 9 : 69- 75 1 thal Iht
rathen havl: a s.c:nse oI'beauly and Ihat it is an aspecl oI'lheold paidtia Ihal h:u bt"rn
continu/!d in Christian roh ure. S. ~bc(;'''''Inack I"'Roma. COlISlantillo polis, "nK' Emperur.
and hu Geniw. ~ Cla.uiml QtUII1",ry 2; (1!175l1 "~k.~ 10 conlril>ule 10 Iht' diK'US-
.!ion on t;hangl: and t;Qnlinuil y. and. mort' specifkal1r, 10 Ihe problcm oI'whal ma >' be
understood by conversion rrom paganism 10 Christianit), in latl: antiquil(' (p. 131 ).
Introduction 13
which I hope to make clear in this study, was on this view not a
transformation at all, but only a substitution or supersession of one
idea by a wholly different, alien, and oppposed one bearing the same
name. For a transformation requires a self-same entity, which under-
goes the transformation .
Insofar as those who hold this orthodox view profess to be account-
ing for the interaction of Gracco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian
thought, of course they affirm continuity and genuine transformationj
but fundamentally, they believe that Christianity brought something
entirely new into the cultural world . W. G. de Burgh, for example,
states that Christianity "revolutionized the entire fabric of Mediter-
ranean civilization";U but his footnote 10 that statement says: "This
assertion is perfet:t1y compatible with the recognition of the historic
continuity between Christianity and pre-Christian Jewish and Hel-
lenic thought. A fair mind can hardly fail to be impressed by the
disparity between the Christian faith ... and any other creed known
to history. Affinities in points of detail would not be so arresting,
were not the differences ofspiril and influence so profound ."
While it is certainly true that Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian
ways of thinking are very different, it is no It.:ss true that the one
passed into the other, and not all at once ("with Ihe conversion of
Constantine"), but gradually and over a long period of time. So it
was that Christianity had such evident social effects on the institu-
tions of tht.: Roman Empire long before it became the official religion
that Gibbon could attribute partially to its influence the decline of
the empirt.:. So it was, too, that the cultural ferment occasioned by
the presence of a large and affluent Jewish community in Alexandria ,
the cultural center of tht.: Hellenistic world , produced the first at-
tempted philosophical fusions of the Judaeo-Christian and Graeco-
Roman cultures in the writings of Philo and the first Gret.:k version of
the Pentateuch, the Septuagint. so called after the alleged number of
the translators.
The acCt.:pted account of the idea of history, then, is nondevel-
opmental. It is an account of substitution or supersession. not of
transformation, and it is rooted in an equally nondevelopmental view
of the relationship between Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Chriscian
thought as the sources of our own intellectual tradition. But to under-
stand our own tradition we shall have to seek a developmental and
As early as 1904 t, J. Di'iIRtr loond it IIn~at i s ra('t o~' 10 study Ihf' ~ ;ul ~' (;h riSliill1
wrilingl with a view solely \0 the history of d~ma . What illtf'rf'Uf'O him, instf'ao , was
Mlhe process by wh ich the classical ci\ilitalion. as it rlli ~ t ~ in th f' first th r ~ ('f' nt ll-
ries, wu uansformrd intO the Chri Jt iilni~ ('lIlturf' of the four ('(' II IU";f'1 Ix-gi n n in~
with Consla nlinf'~ [ E. A. Judge, '''Antikt und C h "; s t~nl llm : Somr Rf'cf'nt Work from
Colognt," P",linetia (Auckla nd ) ~ (19731: 11. His n ....1I sllldil"S lOf'r~ puhlishf'd in his
personal journal , Allti.l:t 11'''/ ChriJiI'IIIIIIII : his prf'1lrflm has Ix-tn nrried 0111 in tlx- R,af-
lu iJ:.(ItI for A ~Ii.tt u,,1i CI!risltnllllll ano the jah,bu.d, fo r .h likt IlnJ C,'hrillmllllft. 8111 Ihue
p ublications have no, llC't n widf'I r rnif'wf'd. anothr I>~'rra ll f'nlf'rpri~ oflO'hit'h they
a re a pari has, as a 'ellll!, had lilllt illnlltn('e on the fashions i ll scholarly work on
la te ant iq uit y, For a comprthrnsh'f' ni lin l s lud~' of' OiiI,ICer and tht current Ilill., of
Ihe enterprise, sce Eelwin A. J ud,R;f', M'Antikf' und Chris tt nl llm-: T owards i1 l>dini'ion
of th.. Field. A 8 ilJlillgmphk..1 SI1 I'\"'~',w ;11 .iuJ.vl"f, I/Iul XII'f/l'lI(f" "R tI~, " j m,,,h,H 11', 1/. H.
Temporini and W. f-laaJC {Berlin : Dt- (;nll'tc'" I!';\' ). Pt. :? \ ',,1. :?:I: I. (If'. t - :.i\.
" That Cu llmann, at leaM , mtans Jomf't hinll dilff'ff'nt h~' ~ hi s lUry" -n a md r . th~
put- than does Augustinf' is rt<'Ognizffi or R..'\ . ~brku$. SalOl/lflll : Hifllt~I, 1t1ld SKit ! I'
i1l /ht 71tn/ItV of SI . ..f.Uf"J /illl' CCamorid.R:r: C;lnlhrid.1(1" ( ' nil'f'rsit~ rrf'.~s, 1 ~70 ). pp.
23 1- 32.
Introduction 15
JI Jaqu, PlI.idtia, Irans. Gilb!:rl Hig ht t 3 \'015. (New York: O,.;Wn:l l lnivtni t)"
Press, 1 939-4~), 3: 300, n. 3 (to Bk . 4, C hap. 2 ). His t.iJrl.! CIt'il'iQ ~ iry ""d Gr! Paitifill.
(Cambridge Harva rd Unive rsity Pr~H , 196 1) oUllinn " tht transrorma tion of the tri.-
dition ofCrk paidcia in the Christian ccnluti'l of la It an tiquityH (Prc[) .
.. Von Frill. "NOOI and NQlN ill tht H"mt rK P'll"ms," c;r :It! , ]94:1):79. 8 nmu SIlt"II
rOit Spt'"...:he 1fl}m~r~ ~b Au","Iruck lCin~r ~lan kcn..,.t1t ," X"" l,,/rr/tildorr fu r
Allliu rnuJ DnltscN Bildlllll 2 (1939) : 393-410) had alreadr derended analrsi) or the
languagt as a sour ror und~TSllnding tht thought-world oC antiquit). Tht view
perhaps has its source in Hegtl: " Die i\u sg~d~hnlt ronsequenlt Grammalilt iSI d as
Werk des I>enk~ns, tla, leinr Kategoritn darin Ix'mtrkl ith machl," EiII/rit""" i. dir
Introduction 17
interest because these terms still comprise the heart of our intellectual
vocabulary and because therefore a knowledge of their development
will clarify persistent problems by disclosing where, when, and in what
context the terms acquired such significations as made for confusions
about them or as a result of their employment.
A word has , ordinari ly, many significations- some very diverse-
but there is reason to suppose that an examination of the attested uses
of a word at a given time and place may be discriminated into a
relatively few kinds from which may be determined a basic meaning or
underlying idea. This should provide a starting point, a backdrop,
against which the acquisition of new areas of signification or the loss or
decline of older ones will appear either as further developments of
older (original) facets of the idea or as the introduction of new ones.
An exami nation of the uses of the ancient Greek words lmoQEiv,
lO'tOQa, lO'toQu(6s:. and their an~stor, ImwQ. and the ancient Latin
words /ristoria and Iristoricus will reveal what the term " history " in its
various linguistic forms was taken to mean . This, properly speaking, is
what " history" was thought to be in antiquity, and this, therefore,
should be the primary focus for explicating the idea of history in
antiquity. Secondarily, an examination of such semantically related
terms as 'to 1tQO'YeyOva'ta and res gestae and of political, religious, and
philosophical attitudes toward the past , would provide a more com-
plete picture of the ancient idea of history, and, in particular, would
enable us to see what, if anything, the ancients thought about the
especially modern use of "history" as the whole temporal process . But
these latter questions do not and need not form a part of the present
study , because the weight of previous work , as I have argued, is, in
fa ct, about ideas and attitudes toward the past; and while to somt
extent it examines uses of the Gretk and Latin words based on tUtu){),
it considers {UtoQia and /riston'a to mean the same thing as 'tCt nQOye
ytSvata or res gesitU-which, of course, by a modern dtfinition they do .
I have been arguing that a study of the development of the idea of
history in antiquity must , in the first place, take a cultural-historical
J!nl,s."ll~ ilbtr dj, Plli/osophi, tilT ,ucllulrlt, 5amuu!u W,rt, (Su,IlIgart: Fromman, 1928),
I : l OO. At leau one stutknt of von Frill, Marlin Ouwald, hall [Nbtw-; IIM IN Bt,ill-
rUII,J 6f lAt A.thtnj~ DnnOCTOCY (Ox.ford: Cb.reooun Pr"" t 969)] employed this method
in Oil book-length anal ysis of the terms N~ and EkOJA6o;;, which allempll to explain
and :lUes, the signiflcance of the replacement of the latter by the (ormtT as the ordi
nary word for "Statule" at j ust about the time ofCle15thenes' reforms in the Athenian
democracy.
18 Idea of HiJto ~.,
standpoint, and must, in the second place, proceed frum the mean-
ings of the term "history." The~ have bten a few philological studies
oflhi!! term in the past century. and it will bt well to review them . By
the fifth and fourth centuries, (atOPlU, with a lengthy period of d e-
v\":lopment alrudy bthind it , was onc of a variety of words in use for
designating knowledge or th e acquisition afknowledge. This constel-
lation of Greek words- oo<plo., yvw~'1. yvWOl ~ . oUVEOlC;, {mopCn,
lJ.uEh)J.lU , btlOTiU1Tr-was liTs! studied collcctivt:ly in the dissertation
of Bruno SocII ..... He follows and supplements Aly'sU work on lO'tWQ,
the ancestor of [(JTO{)E~V and to'tOQiu; but he is concerned with
" history" insofar as it became one of tht' words for knowledge ;n the
vocabulary orGre~k philosophy and his con cern ends with th e prriod
of ~arly Greek a chi~vemenl. Co n s~qu e ntl y , various o lher and latt'r
meanings are omiued . Moreover. Snell, like Domban's study of his-
tona somewhat earlier,u is circumscribed in its citations.
Soon after Snell's ground breaking work F. Muller'! undertook a
somtwhat more extensive study of tht term , but still nOI extending to
lat ~ antiquity or 10 non .Grar-co Roma n sources. 8lichsd , in the arti
de "lO'tOQEW (tmopla)" in Kiltd 's work ," Iikt'" Sneli , begins by (;on
sidering to"tmp along with l<JtOQELV and tmopCa . How('ve r, Bik hsel
takes Ihis broad v i~w only until Ihl: fa mily of wurds becomrs asso--
dated with history writing; the substan ce of the article concentrates
on Greek and C hristia n historiography. Two olher sludi('s, tht dis
sertation of Karl Keuck and the" shortC"r st udy of Rupp and K oehl~r'
10 Bruno Sndl, ~ Di t AuWriid.t rut dem Htgrin' dts Win tn, in dtr \'()rpl a t oni~ch el"l
PhilO5Ophie," Plrjfol~l iKAI U" I, rJllclrngnl 79 (19'141 : 100, Snell, huwt,t r, omitted vo~
and vori:\I. Thtle terms were t xamined pilrtiall)' h~' J (nchim Boc-hmt in Dil Ste(, IIM
da$/rlr im Homtrisdt", F.pos ( Berlin : Tt ubntr, 1929), brJuliu5 Srt l"lul ["Zur Entwick
lung des GtisttlbtgrifTes in der gri hiKhen Philowphie." Dir A"lit, I (1925): 244fT.l.
somtwhilt furthe r by Sndl in his \"iew or 80ehmr [Gl\Omo~ 7 ( 193 1) : 71fT. l. and finally
thoroughly in four articJeA by Kur. \"on Fritz: (I) op. cil. in n. 39 . 1IIprG : (2) "Nov~,
NOiv and Their Otrh 'at ivn in PrrSocra ttc PhilO5Oph)' (txdudinll: AnuIRoru) . PI.
I. From the Ikginnings to Parmcnidcs," CP 40 (1945) :223-42; (3) PI. 2 of umc
il"KIt, -rhe I'OSI"armrnidcall Irtillcl .~ (;1' 41 (1 !I'lti): I:.!- :i4 : and 1-1 ) "Iter :'\l~ tits
Alluagor;u,~ Ar, lril, j Ur B"Kiff.r..t"hkhfr !I ( IYtH );M7- 1II:.!.
01 AI)" D, A",Ir.,ti topi(J t~,barwm (lIpll(J ltfHIG t Bl'rI'n: Pormcttn, 19(6).
t: Oombatt, " Histotia," Ardtir fo r 1",lri"iKIr, I~Xffog .apllit IIM GrGmrMlit 3 (uipzig:
Tcubntr, 1B86 ) : 2~0-34 .
n Muller, " Ut ' H istonae' vocab ulo atqut OOtione,MM ....... ol)" 11.1 54 (1926) : 234-
57 .
.. Gcrhard Kittd, 1"~"'., Hij.trrllllrh ... 111 !,i,u,," Tr.""_'" (StuUIf"n : ~uh lhammcr.
19331: ill Engli.orh, trans. and~ . Gc..ffrt:~ W. 8roll1ilt~ (;tand Rapid~ : Wm. 8 . Eerdman5.
1966-7 1).
t) Ka rl Keuek, HU,-ri4. Cucbicltl .tl U"O,ltl .. ,.J Ki~. Bdn<llIlfl '" ill tin A",it, I I.tul."
Introduction 19
following him, deal with antiquity in a few pages and devote most of
their attention to the diffusion and diversification of cognate words in
the Romance languages during and after the Middle Ages. And both
of them focus on lmopa and hutDriO while paying little attention to
the related verbs and adjectives that would further illuminate its
meaning and thus contribute to understanding the basic idea in-
volved in its use. A thorough understanding of the meanings of these
words and the changes that occurred in them requires that attention
not be restricted to one realm of discourse--history as a kind of
knowledge or in connection with history writing-or to one part of
antiquity, or to only some of the words involved ..s In general, the
philological studies have limited themselves t~ one language, one
realm of discourse, or one period of time, and have not considered
the words in the broader context of cultural history . My enterprise,
then, is to integrate the aims of previous philosophical and theologi-
cal studies wilh Ihe methods of the philological studies and to avoid
the shortcomings of both ; thus ( I) to study the term " history" as a
member of the Gu.:ek, Latin, and thence of our own intellectual vo-
cabulary; (2) to determine, through the study of the term , the content
and development of the idea of history in antiquity ; and (3 ) through
the determination of the history of the idea of history, to learn some-
thing about the cultural transformation of the ancient world (a) as a
detailed study of the specifically intellectual relationship between
Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian cultures and (6) as it reexami-
nation of the popular linear-cyclic account of the idea of history in
the two cultures. This is, therefore, a study in the history of ideas or
the history of culture; for, rejecting customary limitations of lan-
guage, realm of discourse, and period of time, it focuses on Ihe im-
pact ofJudaeo-Christianity on Graeco-Roman ideas . It is also, I be-
lieve, a philosophical inquiry because its aims and consequences are
properly philosophical- self-knowledge through a deeper under-
TII",Dlliu hell Sp,tultn! (Lcchte: EmMellcn, 1943). H . Rupp and O . Korhlcr, " Hino,;a,
Guc hichte," SDII/M1II 2 (1951) : 249- 72. See ,1..1$0 G . Stadmucllcr , .. Aion , Sattulum,"
SIUOIIM1II 2 : 31~-20. I have been unable 10 find the ,1.rtidc by A . rcnkian t"hnWQ,
ImOQiw, 1010(110," R. dts EIMtin IUII-EllroptOl I (1938)] that is mentioned in a
bibliograrhy of Ihe author. I am unable to read J. WikaJjak's 5hort article on the
history 0 /tiSl"ri" in Fil"",al" (1962-63), pp. 204-9.
.. In his study or the iIIndent idea of philotogy, Heinrich Kuch IICCS ill similar focus
as proper, and similar problems with some of the previuus literature (P/tif.lollU
(Dculschc Akad . d . Wissensch. Berl ., Sckt. fiir Ahenumlwissen$ch., 48. Berlin,
1965) , p. 6J .
w Uta of History
mi c cycles. then' ar' al so OIh(,f \'ie ..... s expressed and no o ne says that
his tory is circ ular, rep= titiuus. Of m ('a llin~l('ss. The Greeks and Ro-
man s were not pessimislic ahou! history . nor did thrir \'iew ofhis lory
fail to sati sfy their spiritua l Iw('ds. On Ih(' olhe r hand . lhe ancient
Jews and C hristia ns . whatt\'t'r lh<,y ma y han- thought about Iht'
creation and cnd of the world . did nm think Ihal hi story was recli ~
linear and uniqut'. The)" w('n' 1101 ('s puialty upt imistic ahout histo ry.
1I0r was their vi('w of his tury spiritually sa tisfying. Fru m their own
poin t ofvi('w Iht")" WIT!' nOI ('Il){iI/otin,lot i .. s pn'ulat iull ahoul the nature
and meaning (If hi story .
All of Ihest:' denials an' has('d (Ill and mOl\" ht" rt'dun-d to two fun-
damental ncgaliw ins ights ahou t th~ d('\"('lopn1l'TlI or Ih(' id~a or his
tory in antiquity : tirst. till' idl'a of hi story was nof all influential and
rormative idea in antiquity as il has h l'TII sinn' thl:" R l:"na issanc(";'~
and second , in antiquity his tory was 1101 thOlI.lthl to ht, a r("al ("ntity,
capable of txhihitin~ a patttTlI . ha\'inlo: a Illt"an ing. ins piring hopt'o or
possess ing a mllun'.
I ( is often sa id that his tory l 'onlt'S to ht' SI'(' n as mraningiul and
goal-dirl'ctrd undl'r thl' imparl of Christianity . This is true, hU1 not
in tht' SC I1Sf' in wh ich it is usually mcam . H islOry ca me to bc seen as
meaningful as :t rI'sult 1I0t "rrdll'l"tiOI1 011 tht dt'tails Hr C hristian
belief, but of apolflg"ctkal disputl's with tll(' nun-Christ ian Gr('('ks and
Ro mans: the idt'a of history as ~ual-direc t ed is not so much tht'ologi-
l'al as rht'tori("al. It" tht ori.l{inal utility nr this dl ,wgt'd idt'a nf hi sto ry
was rhetorica l. hnwt\(r. it has ntnlt' \0 hr transl('rrt,d to tht, n.-aim u f
inquiry in mock"rn sodal t!u'i ll'its. philusophit's. allel tlwologies uf his-
to ry , And altho ugh thl' id,';1 wa .~ [.lIld is ) adl"I"all' ti)r p"lt-mil'al pur-
poses, it has ht,t'" " sou rn' of persist!'''1 pl"Ohl('l11s whl'n put to o lhc r
u s~s, or whic h tilt' qU" s l lilT ulldt' rS talldill~ is lInly n!H', Tu put thc'
poinl som('what mort' spt"(:ifil'ally , whill' tht' ,'jc'\\- th;1I hisltJry is ~tJal
direc tt'd may he adrquatc' wlwl1 it is usrd tu win adht' Tt' nts , it poses
prohlems when it is rmployt'd in sc)("iat tlU'tlril's that pn'scrib(' actions
o r in phil uso ph ic~ that purpurt In olli.'f Itll d n standing or knowkdKt' ,
1 /1. 18.499_501. The proper interpretation or th is whole pan age has been debated;
cf. Lcar, }HS 8 : 122" ., and Murray in the Locb edition of the Iliad, Vol. I, p. 324, n .
I. Where not olherwiK indiClil tcd the transla tions are my ow n.
24 lrita of Histo~r
In hOlI! passages the imwQ is 1I1It'" whu adj udi cates a diffc rC'nce of
opi nions between two pa nics:II Iht' rl'qu('sl orlhe panics t he mselves.
More preciseJ}', he decides a caSt' in whi ch cnn lJicting accounts a re
given by the disputants about some thing di sti nct from hut of interest
to bot h of them . And tht' dispute.', ur thl' s u~j('(' t of il. is a lso of great
emotiona l impact upon ils ;t udi('IIt:(, or thr l"o mmull ity in whi ch it
occurs ..l The di spuI (' nel"'cen Ajax and IdumC'lH'us pOrlf'nds a splil in
the ranks of th e H r llents ~II j ust t ill' moment when their ten-rear
stalemated siege of Tray is ahou t 10 s u c'('I' fd . Tht' dispute O\'fr lhe
bloodpricc:, too, is emot iona lly ('hargrd . as l'3n he infr"rrt'd both from
the fac t that the pc:uplt are ,I(at ht'n'd a!)tlll l rooti ng for une man or Ihe
other and from obs('rvali{)1I of the im porTance a ttached by other
primitivc: occidcntal dvili;..atilltls In Ih(' payment of bloodpricl!' a5 an
instit ution for mainta ining t,:j"i(' peacc:} E\'idently. then, the tOtwQ is
onc whose authorit}' in d('ddinlot s uch disputrs is well known; hf' is
good a t such things. It is in Ihis eOl1\'(' nlinnal sensr', rather tha n in
an y official sensf'. t ha t thr m lf' I,flh(' lOl'WQ is on(' ofarnitration . And
what he determint's is ..... hosr a("C'Ounl fir Iht' rnallt'r at issut' is the
more acc uralt': so that Ih,' result of h is adj tld ieatioll ill a maller of'
law is j us tice and in a mall('r fir p{"rcf' ption ;tc('urale information . He
is pe rce pti\'e or judidous. It i .~ in this srnst' that Hesiod says of the
[mW{' . p.cu,a YUI! t voov 1tEllu)(aop.tvo~ tadv. th at he is sound
wilt('d , mat u red in mind. u r ..... isf' .. Similarly . the .....ord is used adjec.
ti" ally in a H omeril' H ymn etn 10 drsrrib(' Ihe a bilitirs of the t\lust's
as to,[OQEt; tPbilr;. knowlrdg('ahle fl f \\'I'll s kill ed in song." Here too the
t 11. 23.4115-87 . Th~ In. nsla lion is l.all illluftS. Mllrra\' t1~b ) rrndrrs Ihr ronciud
ing phrase. ivo Y"Wn; MOl{VIlJ\', mort liltr:llIy: ~I hat thou ma yt'.ll [tarn b~' pa ~' ing
Iht pricr .~
' Thi~ is a puint Iha l is u~ualt y mis~r,1 ill a,'('''lWI 5 nr iutW{l and Ihr origin of
lotoQdv alld 10000OQia . as ro, "J(ampl,' h~' Pohl.. ,,/. I Jlm)t/lIl. d" ItSII G'JLlli(JrIu(/l"i~,
ifS ..lbfndllllldrJ (Btrlin: Ttubntr. Ht:l 1) . " . HJ : " (011l.1Q i~ 1 ul sprunl!lkh drr Z('ugr.
d u t lWU gtsehtn hal. 11110 noch <la rh drm all lS"'lr l1 R ....:hL ... nur du ~l ... ugrn soil.
was er allS ei,LI:ene r Wah rn ... hmung wtis$. mit t'i,LI: rlltn ."ugen btobachlrl hal, "'rilrr
dan" dtr Schird. ridllrr. rkr nur(h " .. rh' .r cltT ,\u.l!;l'n'ttugl' n sir h t'in \\'isstll anrignrl
(l/ . J 8.50 I ) .~
'This is a repea trd fa us.. of lil i.l{alion ill (h .. Sa~" '!t' IJ"' 1I1 ;\j/ a nd of b"'lIlr in
ikDwfllf. Ln ci te only 1"'0 instan(' ... ~ .
' Hrs. Op. 793. I.allimorr Iranslal..,,: "wc-Ita rm...! with hrairu. "
Trans. E... I ~ n.\\h iL ... /L..nrb); d : Barrh~' J.. Epul . 9.-44 : tntW'V iO'toQC; XOUQO L.
History as Inquiry 25
I The other thr cita lions lis ted in the Ditls-Kranz ~ Regi5le r" use tmOQlo in nei
ther dirtel nor indiuct quotation, bUI rathe r, in the surrounding literary contexl, and
ther~rore ma y not be spifically a uri butl, i.e., 10 Aeu~i l aus or 10 H teatae u$.
D- K', I : 159; Fr. (22) B35 - Clem. AI. Slrom. 3. 14 .140 (Di ndor/) . cr. Porph. A6sI.
2.49 : lmtoQ yQQ ttoUw-v 6 mwo; .IA~o; . T~ wording ma) be C lemenl's; bUI
Wilamowiu (Phil. Unlm. I :2 15) considers Ihe plluse genuine:, and it is thus used
bere.
I Fucman, AMil/ 10 /Ju Pmralit: PltiloJkm (Odord: Blackwell, 1962), p. 27.
~ D-K', I : 180; fr. (22) BI 29= D.L. 8.6. R. D. Hicks (Loeb I. oro. L., 2 :325),
however, translates: " ... and in this scltetion of his writings made: himself a wisdom
of h is own, showing much learning, bUI poor workmanship."
11 Heraditus' dislike of x ol.uJlQ9 t'l is also alienee:! by ~r. 40: " Polymathy don nOI
teach understanding, otherwise it would have taugh t Heslod, Pythagoras, Xeno-
phanes, .. nd HeCltaeus" (trans. Wheelwright).
26 Uta of lIiJto~,
A similar idea seems 10 underlie another cognate that appears for
the firs t lime in the pre-Socratic li u:raluTe, Ihe verb {(JtOQE~\I. Ikmo-
crilll S says: "~ I have travellrd most cxtcnsi\cly of all m('n of my time,
have pursued inquirirs (i,OtoQEW\! ) in tht' most dis tant places . and
haH seen the most climes and lands. and have heard the greatest
num~r of learned mt'n ; and 110 OI1C has en:r s urpassed me in the
compOl;ilion of treatises with proofs:" ! He r(' 100 what is suggested is
getting the acwunt right, t hough as dist inct from thf' earlier occur-
rences of tCJtwQ and totO(lITj . iO'tOQElV. a \'('rh. stems more 10 indi-
cate the activity or pruCt~ss of gelling tilt. right account or getting the
account righl. 11 is in Ihis !it'ns!" that onr should understand the usual
tran slations of this pa ss a~(' ano of (OlOQEIV gt'oerally as "making
inq uiries" or " pur,>uing illquiri('s:' tt Al1d inttr<,stingly. De mocritus,
unlike Heraciitus, s(t'ms tu think hi.lil:hly of this kind of knowledge.
There is ont' rt'maining (K't'urrcnc(' of lO'toQiu in these writings.
According to th(' later Epkurcan. Philodrmus. a logo,(lraphfll named
Naus iphanes di stinguisht's nl:twn:n lOlOQ(U a nd " knowledge of the
facts" (dO'lOlS '[Wv 1tQuYJ.l.Q'[l!)v), sa ~' illg , " For he says Iha( the cause
of the power to persuade aris('S not from lm:OQlU but from knowledge
of the fa cts; so that just as h(' Ise. the lIatural scil'ntist, cpuol)(6r;J
persuades thesf me n, S I) might hr pcrsuadf any group of men . "11
This usage s('ems to ht, at vilrian(,(, with that oftO'twQ. l(rmQElv, and
IOtOQlu earlier Im . Hul the t'xprcssion dbTJOlS '[Wv 1tQaYIlQntJv is so
unlike an ything in the prt"-Socratil' remains tha t it se<,ms more likely
a paraphras(' or all rxampl(' of th(' I<lm("o(alll(' stal(' uf corruplion in
ou r text of Philodcmus. 1'o
In the litera ry remains of 1he fifth century, the time of the Athe-
nian tn~ge mollY O\'('r tht' furtune s , both political and c ultural. of the
Hellen ic world. the sit uatioll is rather diff('r('nt. Thr literary remains
are more subs tantial than fi)r the earlier period : and in these writings
the re are far mor!:' frequellt m'cuncnces than previousl}', so that one
may now, with some confid('nc(', dclim:atf' the mean ings of th e words
based on lO'tWQ ,
UC ltm . AI. Sttam. 1.1 5.69; n _KJ, 1, 2011. t'r. (68) 8299.
IJPhitip Whatwright. rh,P"JlKlatiCJ (Ncow York: Od yuty, 1966), p. 186: ,,'rtC'
m~lI , Alfrilla. p. 119.
11 Fr. (75 ) 8 2. D _K l . 2, 249, 3- 5 '" Phld. HI! . :.1 . 19, 1- 20. 7 (col. :15); er. I. 299,1 - 7
(col. 25).
11 Von Arnim, howC'\'tr. UCtp l5 thr rtading all gconu;nC' jI....IHII ,,,"' If,.A, du Difl !lOll
P""sa (Btrlin . 1898). p . 48/.
Hislory DJ Inquiry 27
But when I asked the priests whether the Greek account (Myoc;) of the
Trojan hU!liness were vain or true, they gll.vc me the following answer,
'10 Aac h. A,. 676--80, trOl.ns. Smyth (Loeb). Hu t Morshud ( Random Hou$e) ,
~dcscriet ."
.. Hdl. 1. 56. 1-2.
~ Hdt. 2.99. 1
30
~'.I\"i n )( Ihal , h l" - had In<l uintI (iHTu!,,#n) :tllll kll('\\ (liMI>UI) wha t Mt'-
ul'iaus l, il1lSC'lf IIad ~; I id . , I
T I,,'\ p.t .. lilt" I'r i t'~ l s l ";111 1 111:11 ~"IU(, fl l lhl'~' Ih i l1!o(~ till" klll'l' h I ill-
Il ui rilll-: (UTTI'iK!l'fL .. , im'T'Tmrtlull. h w that tilt"- ' 11<lk,' \\ illl ,,"Soh"!
kllllwlt'dRf' I 6. T llExl w~ tn Una IJ.fVOI I ;\11<_'" \ \\'ha l ha pl>tllrd in th r ir
m , '1I COU IlI t\', tI
. .. lac lu3 1 rq)()rts on II't'OlI'raph )', ,'USIOmS, rac ia l char at' tfr a nd r<:,lig iou5 br:licfsK mis-
ta ke th<:' S<!:co ndaq' for thr pri mary m<:'a ning. Po h\<:' n;r;, HtrtJol. p, <H, is nUI'<:' r Ihe
mark in d <:'fi ning Ih<:' Ionian [m ool" , " a ls a llgt mrintl1 Ausd ruc k HiI' t:;rk undung ' ,"
History aJ' Inquiry 31
++ I bid. '451 a35-b6. for summary or the dehat c, $eC C . O . Brink, "Tragic History
and Aristode'. Schoot," Ptoc. CfI'"I6,. PM/o/. 5..:., N.S. 6 (1 960) : 14- 19.
., Arisl. Cui. 298b2 .
.. Arist. Dt lb . 402a4.
"AmI. CA 716b31 , referring 10 his own work which, ~rhaps b<-cau$e or the$e
rereren~s, has come to be called HiJlfITJ r1 A"i",als. Similarly: CA 717.33-34,
728bI3- 14; Rllp. 477a6-1, 418a21- 28. Or he may refer simply to " the histories": CA
719alO, 7fOal3, 746a15, 7Mlb31 , 7.53b I 7, 761alO, 763b16; and Rup. 418b!.
.. Arist. HA 49hll - l l .
., Arist. APr. 46a24-27 .
34
I I n 1836 Droystn called his work 011 the Diadochi and Epigoni GtMltidllt an Ihl/ar
U"'IU. He did not, or course, invelll the ttrnl. In the ! i:o:tctnth ntury, J . Scaliger
inlerprrtcd'Elloalot and ' EJJ.l1v tGto( in the n me passage as a contrast between
Jews who u!('d Htbrrw and I~ who usl Grrek in thtc synagog ue. D. Heinsiu!, on
the oth('r hand , thoug ht Ihat Ihe Jewish' EU.I')VtO'to( used a special dialect (1i"J~/J
/ul/arull((J ) which is identical with The language or thc Scptuagint. In the sevent centh
century, C. Salmasius denied that this was a special d iale(l, but retained the term
li"lltlt IwlltniJli((J ror O ld TCSTamtnl and New Testament Gruk . In the cip; hteen th
century, J. G. Herder used ~ Hdlenis mus" to indicate the wa)' or thinking or Jews and
other Gree k-speaking O ri('nla ls. And in Ihe ni ne teenth ntury, J. Matter connected
" Hcllenismc" with Ihc thoughl of Greek-speaking Egy ptian J ('ws. The classic accoun t
orlh(' history of lhe term is R. LaqU<'T, Hdlarumru (Gleue n, 192!'1). On Droysen's/lwlI
oonfu,ion .aboul lhe meaning oflhe term, ~ A. Momigliano, "J . G. Ornyu:n Or:twetn
G r('cks a nd J('w,," HiSID'.! /1Nl 7ltor} 9 ( 1970): 139- 53.
Uta of
. Hislorr.
Thr H e llenis tic Age, or Hellenism , was , from all accoums, an age
of unprecedented cultural productivit y. At Athens, still the home of
philosophy, the school s of Pla tu, AriSlollr. f:picurus . Diogenes the
Cynic. and Zeno the St oic nuurish('d. pt'rpttually (,Ilgagrd in quarrels
with each other and steadil y attrarlill~ numtx' r~ of stud('nts from all
over the Greek-speaking ..... ork!. Blit Atlll"tls was 110 longer the ('enter
of all Gret"k cultural life. With Ih(' l"Cl1I<jU{"sts of Al exander. intellec-
tual acti\"it) had rn-come intl"flliItiunal.
Art and sc ience in th e H('llen ist i(' Age were c{"nterrd in Alexandria.
Primarily Ihi!> may be attrilmltd In tht' ric h t'ndowmellls of lhe Ptole-
mit's. PlOl emy I f(lImdrd till" :\Im.( um . " home for the Muses. as a
workshop and training gwund Ii,r sd\\llars hip in all fields- apart
from till" tu rmoi l of mundallr ncis uIUT . Il h('('a ml' Ih(' rcr:ognized
institu tion for ('stablishing ddinili\'(' I('XIS. pn'paring critical iitions,
and publishing OIlllhurilaliH ,'omlllt'II!l1ril's UII t'arli('r \\'riters.
11to lem y 11 Philadt'lphus ,j)und('d IllI' ~r(,'1I I.ibrary Ill' Alexandria ,
which ultimatdy ,'amI" \'rry Iwar its Ij,undcrs lnl(:uliun or col l(:c ling
Greek literalllrt' in ils t'tHirt'IY : lilr it n!lllain('d perhaps 700,000 \'01-
umes when. in 47 11 ,1:. , it wa s hUTlwd durin ~ Ih(' ,I{('Ilt'rall'onflagrdtion
o f tht: harbor d istrit' L In additiun IU Alrxalldria and Athr ns, how-
eHr, Pergam um , Antioch, <lncl RhtKI('s ilt "ariuus tim('s and for "ary-
ing pe:rioo!> wrrr It's.~I' r ,'rlltrI'S Ill' \'ig-UTOUS l' ultural lirr . .-\11 of these
cities produced Utlt only wHrks Ilr scholaf'llhip and philosophy, hut
a lso poetry. drama, and hili tory, as wdl as s tucl i('.~ of riwlOri C, gram-
mar, mathematil's, astrunomy , nwdicillt', g-mgr:lph y, and techno logy .
f'rcguenlly a \'ari(,IY uf tI\I'Sl' '\I'Tt' prudtll't'd hy a s ingll' pt'rsull .!
Yet of all "f Ihis l'ultuml ,uti,iI Y \'(TY litlk Tt'ma ins nesidt"s the
Icstimon;t's Iha I il t.K:l'urrt'tI . I TIlt' philostl l>lw rs an' knu\\ 11 h~' a lew
rragmellts and hy nulil:('s ill dllxo,l{filphit's. Iht'llIsl'l\TS sUT\';"ing onl )'
in fragments in man y I'asr s, whkh allrihuu' llUm('rous wurks 10 the
philosophrl'S. Of tht, man y histnri,lIls whnst' namt'S \\'t' know , , li rre
I Th.. li brarians "I' AI"x;lndril' :lr<' .... ' rt:pu"'!!: Zrnudutus. Apollunius uf RhodMl.
(ta\< th.. rus. Arisluphanr, or 8yzantium. "\p"lIun;u ~ ,hr IdO!l:rdph.. r. and Arisla r'
chus . Callimachu s, Ihou,II: h n .. " .. r hrad Hr .h .. I.ihra ry, cl ...... up th.. first ('alal"l'tu.. of
ils holdin,ll:s .... hich Pi.am alonr ran up to I'll) hooks. BUI lx-sidC'S Ihis h.. is t rc:d iled
with works A.. C.lflulJ, C,ulINRJ ".f F."it" PHJ/II'f , Nil-m ~r ,11, Jl'tlI/d, .lion, ls, and 0"
,"':rmplls. 10 nam .. on l)'" rrw . anrl abo \'" lul1l(,S fir Nml1r" a nd EpiX,tlIlfJ. ~imilarlr ('XI~n'
5i\'t: int t: II"(lu al alu,inmt:nlS ar .. :utri h ut",d 10 Ihr Stoic I'o,idunius of Ap<tm ..a. Ih",
t: picu rn n I"hilod .. mu s, .h .. p.. ripal ..lit Thr:ophras tus. anI'! EraloSlhrnrs .
Sn . ...1/1 .. 1':. A. 8ari)(:r' ~ ('ommtnll; on Ih e: .. t;'aRmrnt;ar~ nalur.... ofthr Hrlknistic
IU",rar), rtm~in$ in , h.. (.allf/)' id~, .~ "..If'" Hisltl~I' 7 :l'4!I.
History as Q Littrary Gtnrt 37
are only fragments ; the sole work that has survived in anything like its
integrity is Polybius' account in Creek ofthe rise of Rome. And so it goes
for the greater part of the literary output of the age.
In circumstances such as these it is not surprising to find that occur
rences of lmoQElv, imOQla, and tCJtoQU~e; arc not at all widely disper
sed through the cultural remains; indeed, they occur mostly in the
works of two writers, Polybius and Dionysius ofHalicarnassus, a lead
ing proponent of the first-century reaction against the degeneration of
literary Greek that call ed itself Atticism . The confidence with which
conclusions may bedrawn on the basis of such evidence will have to be
qualified accordingly. Generally speaking, however, the uses of these
words in Hellenistic writings continue and solidify the tendencies op-
erat ing during the decline of the Hellenic period. The idea of history
undergoes little change .
'IO'TOpla is still used in its older signirlCation as the facts or a factual
account about some person or some important evenl in the person's life.
It is so used by Dionysius , praising the continuity ofHerodotus's work,
"even though he added a [moQla. ofXerxes' flight .'" Similarly, Poly-
bius interrupts the main line of his Histories to give a description (tt;'\,YTI-
me;) of the Italian Celts, but he says he thinks that " the lmoQlav of
these people") is worth remembering in order to understand the sort of
people against whom Hannibal had to fight in nonhern Italy.
The noull seems to retain its reference to natural facts throughoullhe
Hellenistic Age, and indeed throughout antiquity.' According to Thro-
phrastus, successor to Aristotle as scholarch ofthe Lyceum, Thales was
the first among the Hcllcnes to "set fort h history about nature" (nEQl
CPilOEO>c; tmoQ(av);' Plato 100 concerned himself "about history ofna
ture."B And at least within the circle of Peripatetic philosophers in the
Hellenistic Age, factual inquiry about natural things seems to have been
practiced and to have been called [atoQCa,9 meaning the racts or a
ractual account about natural phenomena .
D. H . Pomp. 3. 14.
) Plb. 2. t4. 1- 2.
' f: 'lh Plb. 2.14.7; 4.40.3; and Thphr., fr. 12, in Dids, D O 4%, 17- 21 .
I Thphr. Fr. I (D O 47~ , 10- 13).
I Ibid . f'r . 9 (DO 484, 19-465, 4).
' To Theophrastul an:: attributed iJol4lficGi His/llri,s, Astrf)io,il:Gi Histllry, NllmtriClI1
H istoriu vf Gr/IfD1II, o-lri'GI HuIDri,S, Hislll'J IIf 1111 DiuiM (D. I.. ~ .46-.50) , and the
dOllographical 0,. PJ,picGI Op;,till1U, whi ch may have been called 0.. Nllhtraf HiJID'J
(Oiels, DC, Pro!., p . 102). Menon is said to ha ve written a history of medicine and
Eootmus of Rhodes a NMmffll;Q/ H iJtoq, (;,o",,'ri( 1I1 HislQrUs, and AslrrHlI,iull His/Driu.
38 Idta if Hi.s/o~)'
The re is a related and ver)' importalll occurrence in the first sur-
viving trt'!3tise on grammar. that of (1)(' s('cond-u'ntury scholar Dio-
nysius Thrax, a student of Aris tarchus. who succeeded Aristophanes
of Byzantium as chief librarian at Alexa ndria . According to Diony-
s ius, the third of the s ix parts (If grammar (YQ<lIlIlOtunl) is YAWOOWV
t:E XOl lO'tOQlWV JtQOXElQOf; CtJ'tOOOOll!;. Iht' n ' ady t'xpositio n of lan-
guages and histo ries .'" In antiquity. as in Ih(' !\Iiddlr Ages,
"gra mmar" referred to halh lllf' tht'Ort,tical Of !It:ientifk slUdy of lan-
guagl!' (our "grammar") and Iht' first stagt ill tlJ(' litera ry 1'1lu(.'al ioll
ofa child (our "grammar st'hool "). Oftht, " parts" into which lJ;ony.
sillS divided grammar. :;om(' arr scirnli li c and som(' p("dago~kal . But
he is interested on ly in th(' sri,'lltifie. sn hr riot'S not {'xplain ..... hat h('
means by an "exposi tion ul'languagr s and his lOrics." What hr is talk-
ing about, though , is familiar to ;m yon(' who has takt"n a courst' in a
classical language; the pedagogi ca l (t"rrain has nut c hanged much in
twenty-fi\'e centuries .1! Going ov('r ('x('rl"lsrs or reading assignments.
one comes across unfamiliar words or linguistit- forms and unfamiliar
names of persons , places, obj('clS. or (,VI'nts. These til t" ( 'adler identi
fies. Such identification nf an unfamiliar .....ord of li nguistic 10r01 is
still called , following tIlt" u sa~t' of th(' ;l1It"lt' nt ~rammarian s, it
"gloss "; and the idrnlifi catiulI uf an unkno ..... n pt'rsnll , plaet'. nhj('ct.
or event would consist in gi\'ing som(' f.u:ts Ilr information ahout it.
'ImoQlQ is thus he re bring llsrd, as in th(' Jlrect'ding ,l:('fOUp of uses, to
indicate facts or a factual a('("f)Ullt, hut with a somewhat wider signi fi-
ca tion that includes, besidrs natural ()I~i('cts or phe n()nwna , pt'rsons,
places, and events.
H ere . then . history makes its modest debut in the t!dut:ational I:\lr-
riculum of Western civilization ; not as a discipline. a sci('n ct', or a
body of knowledge, nor c\'('n as <tcquaintanct.' with t he writings of
historians primarily. but as informatinn ahout various matten men-
tioned in whatev('r literaturt onC' stud it'd. The t r('atis(' of Dionysius
Thrax was ver}' brief. but it was ("xtraordinarily popular, It imm('di
atdy became the nasic text un th(' sU~('ct: it was t:antinually copied ,
edited , and provided with cummt'ntaries until the twelfth crntury;
and it has provided the foundations lor both Greek and Latin gram-
mars until the present time. The scholia on the passage of Dionys ius
we have been discussing suggest that the ancient commentators
understood latoQla more narrowly than Dionysius did . h is ex
plained as " narratives (bLl'JyT'UJ.ata)," the " narrating of ancient do.
ings (l1w..aui.rv l't(Kll;toov a4rr\"('Ilm!!;)," and "the narration of affairs in
earlier times (tTiv blT'l'Y'lOlV 'tWv l'tclAal l't(KlYv.ci'tWV)." 12 Although the
scholiasts whose commenta ries have survived are much later than
Dionysius Thrax , their explanations mark a development in the us
age of {O'tOQla that had already begun in the Hellenistic Age.
In addition to the older and narrower use of the word as informa
lion about natural phenomena, and Dionysius' wider use as infor-
mation more generally about whatever arises in a literary text, in the
world of lette:rs {tnoQ(a more: onen has to do with social a nd political
eve:nts. Polybius says, for example, that " the history of pas t events
(tTJv ... itntQ 'tWv l'tQOYEyov6'twv ... LmoQlav) in Asia and Egypt
has already been published many times a nd is well known.""
Thus fa r the contexts in which {atOQla is used do not provide
enough informa tion to make it clear whether history is the informa-
tion about certain objects-such as natural things, persons, and the
like-or an account of the information, the fa cts or a factual account .
However, the uses exam ined so far in the Hellenistic materials seem
to emphasize the matter or content of the history, its fa ctua lity.
The second broad group of uses that may be discriminated in the
period emphasizes the manner or form of the history, considering it
precisely as an account . Where the first group concerns history as
facts, a kind of knowledge, the second concerns history as an account,
a kind of literature . T he beginning of this modal distinction between
history as facts and history as account was in Herodotus' calling his work
Iomp"".
Polybius regularly uses tatOQla as a referential term when he is
reflecting upon the account he is engaged in giving. He says, for ex-
ample, that a resume (tl;1i"('llOl!!;) of Greek history to the 140th Olym ~
piad is "appropriate to the arrangement of the history ( l'tQ6~ nlv 'ril!!;
{O'tOQla~ cnNtQ;lV otxElav)." I4 These are the concluding lines of
'1 &""; j" Di.llpi; T1IrIKiJ A TltIIt Gr.smml;cam. Tht ci tatioos ar!:' rt3Iptctivdy rrom
Mdampos (or Dioml:'de5'; j" 14. 19: Sltphtn or Byzantium, p. 303.4; and Ht liodoru! .
470.4. On Ihe innutnct DionY$ius Tbra", set J ohn Edwin Sand y!, A Hutory of
CJ/Usicat Sdtol"rslril' (New York: Hafner, 1958), I : 138-4{1.
11 Plb. 2.37.6; see also .s.31.6.
"lbid . 3.118.2.
40 /dta of HjJIO~"
I) Polybius marks Ihe' distinCIKm bttwttn the' O\"e' rall narra ti\t and some Ifut' r pari
in the n m(' wa y at 2. 14. 1-2 and at 3.57.+.-.... using the infiniti\"(, t; lJviloaotku. See
a lso Plb. 1.3.8; 2.37.3; 3.4.11, ....9, 58. 1; 4.1.2. 28.4: and 6.2.2- 3. But D. H. P, "'/'. 3.14
has bu'rt'10U; fOl'" the major, I(J'I"OQlO for the minor narr:/Il;', .
Ii According to Athen. [ 13.35; 5758 - Jacob~', FI/(' ( 125) Fr. 5 ].
11 D. H . A".". . 2. 15: s~ also 77t. 5. ilvaypO:4>oYt(~ {(J'(OQ10>; and Plb. 2.62.6;
.... 33.2-3; and 8.9.2.
,I D. H. 71. 1.9, 16. a nd 41 : see al$(l.b/. Rom. 5. 11.3. He also has a rormulaic wa y
of appealing for confirmation of his evidence to 01 )tOtvoi IcnOOiUl . Ih(' commonly
known (published?) hi51orie5; Alll m. 1.:1 a nd 11. Para . 3 refers to Iht co mpilc rs of
biog raphin (oi. tou>; JHov>; ilv6Qcirv U\1Yta~J.lEVOl ) .. nd 11 10 A I/his of PhilochoTUs.
His/ory aJ a Lilerary Gtnre 41
there and having inspected the terrain" a nd having made the cross-
ing himself.?' The verb is also occasionally used in the close ly rdated
sense of learning or knowing by inqui ry. or, as we might ca ll it,
" historical knowledge." Thus Philodemus sap that those who a re
ignorant of the proper medi ci ne for curing a disease are conq uered
" by their own lack of expert historical knowledge (unO t Ow fouot Wv
. . . [m:oQ1'Jx6twv). "7$ Litera lly lranslatt'd. Im oQ"x6 twv means
" things th at have been learned by inquiry:'
Although the verb is somr limes used in these rela tively older ways ,
in its mos t common usage it mea ns to " repon " or 10 "rela te" some
facts about persons, things , or events. Thus Dionysius of Halicarnas-
s us und erta kes to pro\'(' tha t Demosthenes p ubli shed twel ve s p~ch es
bc: fo~ Aristotle began wri lin ~ his R htlOri(, usi ng ev id~nce " from
things tha t hav(' been reported (tx 'twv l OYOQOUfAEVWV) .""lI; And
Theophrastus says, "This was an abridged version of things rela ted
(n iIV (mOQ11J1.vwv) about firs t princi ples, written down not accord-
ing to time, b ut accord ing to simil arity of opinion."1; Al so, both Allt i-
gonus of CaryslUs, the thi rd-century para d oxograp h ~ r , and Polrbius
use: the verb in this way freq uently.tlI
Finally, a word about thr adjectiv(' (otoQ l x6~ in the Hellenis tic
Age. It is used pri marily in the su bstan tivl' way fou nd earlier in Aris-
totle; it means " historia n," on(' who engages in LotoQi o. Dionys ius of
Halica rnassus, fo r example, discusses the " task of a historian (lQYov
[otOQ1XOU) ,"19 And there is also Ih(' word (otOQ 1 OYQ<l 4K>~, " historical
writer," to indicate the historian in hi s more d istinctly litera ry
aspecl.)O In fact, this aspect who lly domina tes the uses of the adjec-
tive in thi s period , Ujonysius has a pet ph rasl', Tj l mO(Ux"; n pay-
j.lo l d a , in which the att ribu tive usage de ri ves from th e subs tant ive,
so that the phrase ind icates " the his torica l busi ness" or "craft ,"JI
And this craft is litera ry , not scientific or philosoph ic.
:H Pl b. 3.48. 12; Kt also 1.63.7: 2.17 .2: 3.38.2- 3: 9. 19.3- 4; and Phld . Rh. 1..14,
16-21.
1\ Phld. RA. 1. 345. 1- 8; Itt" al$O 2.105 (t, . 12). 51f".. and Mh. 2.62.6 and 3.6 1.2- 3.
:M D. H . .1",,,,. 1.4; Kt al!oO .1 ..1. Rom. 5. 17.4, 56. 1, t"1 ("".
n T hphr. PhJliul Op illiolll, Fr. 8 (Dit"l5, DG 484. 17- 18). T his pauagt suggtSiS thal
al lu .st ror Ihe Ptr i pall~li c:s, a .. ltistory ~ did nOI rr-quirt" chrnnological arrangt"mr-nL
Anlig. pp. 6. 27, 80, 169, 179-80, 192 , 194. 191 , t 99. 202, 205, 207. Plb. 1.37 .3:
2.16.13- 14,11.2; 4.8.4, 41.2; 6.49.2. 54 .6.
" D. H . PfHllp . 3. 13; also Phld . Rh. 1.28, 301-:/9. 101. 1.200. 18- 30 a nd Cail. 124.3 .
.. Plb. 2.62.2; 8.11 .2; Antig. p. 180.
II D. H . Pom.p. 3.8; A",,,, . 2.2: Tit. 2 and 24.
Hutory as a Literary Genre 43
n " or a rbu mi or C iccro's in nu cnce, sce Richard McKf'On. " Introduction tu Ihe
Philosophy ofCicero,Mpp. \ - 9 of Ihfo Cllirlll E"if;~ o/Cim. (C hicago, 19501. ~t/)fe
diffuse is John C . Rolre. Ciu", 1111" /lis J~j1"OIrr (Ne .. York, 1963); and for a n intrrell+
ing application, $~ Slcphen Bottin, ~Cictro as a RoIr Modtl for arl~ Atnl'fica n
Lawyers: A Case Stud \' in CllIMicallnnucnct: q 7~ ( 1 ~177_;R) : :\1 ~2 1.
History as a Literary Genre 45
,. M.". 247-48.
1:1 Nep. CaU) 3.3; see also All. 16.3.
-Gell. Nil. ~.18.8-9.
" Fr. 1 in H. Peter, HiJU)ricanun R_MnufI F1I~lmnlla (Leipzig, 1883 ).
46 Idea of Histo~.,
Fr. 2 (I'eter) .
.., N~p . PtlllfJ. 1.1.
... Ntp. 1"1Irm. 9.1: also I.ucil. 6 11.
"Ntp. Air. 11.1 .
" Varro RWJI . 2. J .2.
History as 12 Liltrary Genre 47
enflamed with zeal for history. Art/to studio Izjsto ri(1t:'.~l Again , Anlo-
nius in the dialogue 0" Orotory11 d efends the subordination of history
to oratory: "And as history, hislono is the witness of Ihe times, t he
light of truth , the life of memory, the tutor of life, lhe messenger of
antiquity, by what olher voice than the orator's can she be
commended la immortality?"
Where "islaria in the first group of uses meant a written work abou t
political events, in this second group il seems 10 indica te a branch of
litera ture or lit erary culture. the species of ..... hich the " histories" in
lhe first group arc indi vid uals. This is perfec tl y dear in the Bru/us
when he discusses the !tistoria of Licius Siscnna , obsen 'ing Ihal "this
type of writing, genus lux scriplionum" has yet to be cultivated in Latin
litera t urt'.11
In another cluster of occurrt:nces, historia is d efi ned or distin-
guished from other species of literature. In his youthful Dt invtntione,)4
historia is d efined as a nt: of the subspecies of the genus " narrative" ;
for narra tive " is divided into two parts: one is conce rncd with events
(ntgo/iu), tht' other mainl y with pt'rsons. That which con.sists of an
exposition of event s has three parts: fabula, hiItoria, and argumtnlum.
Fabula is the term applied to a narrative in whi ch the events are not
true a nd have no likeness to truth .. . . Historia is an account of things
done, remote from the- me-mory of our own age , hisloria ut gtsfa rts ab
attatis nos/rat rtmola . . .. Argumtntum is a fi ctitious narra tive which nev-
ertheless cou ld have occurred ." O n th(' o ther hand, in Tht Oralor\~
Cicero attributes 10 the Greeks the view that his/orias, along with eu-
logies, descriptions, and ex horta tions, com prise the class of epideinic
speech . Likewise. in his discussion of the idt'a l orator, Cicero has
occasion to distinguish historin from the o ratorical styll' of thl' Soph-
ists. For " history is nearly rela ted to this class, hui{ gtntri llistoriajini-
tima tsf' in that it 100 na rrates, describes countries and batt les. and
includes speeches; hut they d ifft'f in tha t history seeks a smooth . flow-
ing s tyle, unlike tht' tersl'. vigorous styll' of an oration ..;o
However, Antonius, in the dialogue On Orato~)'.\) reported ly gives a
For who does nOf know that history's first Jaw (primam .. . Iristoriae
l,gnn) i~that one dare not say what is false? Next that he must say
only what is true? That there be no suggestion uf favor in his writing?
Nor of malice? These foundations, that is, are known to all; the fin-
ished work, however, rests on the things and the words ("htu tllH,his) .
The order of things (mum 1alio) requires lemporal arrangement and
grographical description; .. . Ihe plans of campaign , Ihe uecutive ac-
tions and results, also what Ihe wriler holds 10 be important, and tha!
it be declared among the Ihings done nOI only what was done and
said, but also in what manner; and while speaking of consequencC1,
that all the causes be explained, ei ther accident, or wisdom, or fool-
hardiness, and of the people themsdves not only the things done (res
gulal), but abo the life and character of those who excel in renown
and in dignity. However, the order of words and the type of speech
(tJoerlx1rum ratio lt l"'us orationis) to be sought are the easy and nowing.
in this sense. In fact, one problem with rendering the term by our
word "facts" is that for us the notion of facts might require explica-
tion; for the ancients historjQ did not. The questions that they felt
comptlled to ask and answer about " history" were questions ofart.6Ii
It is only in its primary mea nings as a spccies of literature that
history is a branch of intellectual culture; it is not a science. In its
secondary meaning as "accurate information" it might indicate a
kind of knowledge; but this is not taken to be a branch of intellec tual
culture as it has been since the Renaissance. History in this latter
sense is not a subject of discourse; one might relate the facts , but not
discuss them. History is not a subj ect for philosophical inquiry; one is
either acquainted with the facts or onc is not.
In neith er of the modes of its usage, then, did history raise scien -
tific or metaphysical questions of the sort that so exercise modern
philosophers and historiographers. On the other hand, the subjects
for history seem to have remained the same for quite a long time;
history has to do with persons, things, or events. It does not have to
do with the origin and descent of the gods, the origin of mankind or
of the world, or the acts of the gods a mong mortals . Ciccro was
slightly scandalized by the fact that the Hellenistic historian Timaeus
had incl uded certain accounts of the wishes of the gods in his work .r.II
History and poetry are different genres; in the latter it is perfectly
proper and customary to dea l with mythological subjects, but in the
former it is improper and grounds for criti cism. The employmen t of
[O'tOQELV, {OtOQ(a, historia, and so forth implies that the thing being
talked about is matter of public and observable fact; the accounts of
the gods are not.
It is against this backdrop of regular usage in Greek and Latin tha t
one must exa mine the usage of these words by Jews and C hristians in
the ancient world . In this way one may compare the GraecoRoman
with the Judaeo--C hTistian idea of history.
Of the many national groups who inha bited Alexander's cosmopo-
lis not the least was the J ews, who, accord ing to Philo,"" numbered
III Harry Austryn Wolfson IP.IIil, (Cambridgt: Han'ard U nivrnity Pr~S5. 1947),
I : 781f.) denies txtensive cultural (including educational) inter~no: tratKm . Howtvl'!r,
L. H. fddman (EM.JC1optdia jll.daic,. ;m ide 00 " Hellenism poinll OUI that there was
H
)
no 'pc'cial Jewish educational system in Egypt and that what thert was taught tht
lOur Gretk caminal vi rtu~ . Pa rt of the dispute invoh'ts contraT')Ointerpretations of
the decree of the empuor Claudius diKouraginJl Jews from srnding their childrrn to
the "",lIlui a and tplitM" .
History as a Literary Gmrt 53
s tall ed " in a way wry new aucl wOrlh being re'co rd ~d (o.SlOV lato-
QT)6l'1vm)."1I Hr uses Ih(" same phrase in anolhrT plac~ , s aying ' . ' Th~
mann~r of his [i.t'.. Noah'sJ prcs('n'alioll . as the sacred books contain
iI, is " 'orlh heing rt'c()rdf'd hoth :.t ~ a mar\'cl and for Ih(' improvement
of charaClcr, " 71 The \'nh is thus lI s t,cI only ill tht' passh'c. whkh . as
alrtady nOled . is typically Hrllrnislic ilnd thl' ml'alling suggested .
also typically 'i ('lI('nistic. is " ht'in~ n'nmlcd " ra lhrT than lil(" u ldfl'
sense of " iuquin ... TIll' U Sil,I (t' is .~ landard . hut the ohjects in\'()iwd
art' cenainly 1I0t ; Ilx 1111' inl(lrmaliufI n '('o rdrd has to d o with ,he
o rigin of I h(' Passo\'('r FCllst. tlu- installa lion tlf , he .J l'wis h prit's ts. and
tht t scap{' fir ~I)ah from till' Iwlly flI" Ihr wha\r , Thr firsl IWO,
conc.:erned wi ll! Ihe rilt,s IwrlclI'lTlrd hy :l errt"iu proplt' , easily ('o m
pare with history undt>I'Stoud as t' lhno,' traphil'al informatio n ; and the
acco unt of Noah '~ ('s('a l)(' is nIT likr histnTY IIndl'r~IfHKt as an ('mo
tionally chargt""d "\'t' nl in 0\ p,' rson's lifr ,
This same ness and dim'n'lH'\' "Iso ;tppt'ars in Philo's uses of lO-
lopla a s fat'ls ur informaliotl. Tht'rt' is 11 fir s I Kroup tlf liSt'S c:onct' TIl -
ing nalural phenome na , In a ,'tt' lwrai ~t' II St' Ill' ~ay.s Iha l nflhusf" ....hn
!i!;0 abroad for 101l!i!; p('rind s Ill' liml' "smn(' acquiT(' lmoQCav or what
they did not know pr('viously,"- ' Mort, s pel'ifil'ally, ht, points out that
his in q uiry into Ih(' rcaSlJII why l\ l os('s sp"ak!! uf Ih(' "li ps" of a ri\'('r
" is nol about Ihe hi~l(Jr y or rin'rs (1lEpi Jlt)tu~,uov iOToQ(a~ )": ;'; and
he memio ns Ih(' {(JlOQia ahuut tht, Ski li an slrails and tht' imoQlav
about the ~('OKraphy (If I)t'los and Rlul{lt's , ,.
Thr last two passagrs an' liHlIld in Philu's statrm('nt and c.:ritidsm
of four argume nts 'ilT tlu- cl't'alio l1 and futurf' ti{'Slruction of the
world , Th(' fi-lUTlh argumt'111 ru11S as ,i./tows;
And if indeed people must say that the a ru are coeval with the race of
men, then they muu speak with natural histo,), (110' [atOQ'o.s: <l>UOIX-
ils:) , not unquestioningly and carelessly. And what is the history? (~6 '
{UlOQ{o.l'~ ; ). 18
What foll ows ( 146-49), that is, the "na tural history," is a very gen-
era l account of the cyclic destruction of things on earth by fire and
water, which seems to be largely derived from Plato's LaW! and Ti-
matltS.79 In a ll of these cases, {moQla is concerned with natural phe-
nomena and indicates the facts or information o r a fac tua l account
about them , that is, a piece of knowledge of a certain kind , rather
than the account in itself. a piece of literature of a certain kind .
There is a second g roup of uses of {otOQ{a as lacts or information,
which reminds us of Dionysi us Thrax because of the repeated men-
tion of " history" as a part of grammar and hence of education .
" Knowledge of the encycylical studies," he says, "adorns (he whole
spiritual house; grammar on the one hand, searching into the poetic
and investigating the [oroQ(av of ancient happenings."1O I have
t.ranslated the genitive plurJi tyxUXMWlI, in the lil'st line of l his pas-
sage. "of the encyclical studies," as an ellipsis for i 'Yx:ux).,ws -nO-WE(o. .
This phrase. recurrent in ancient writings,' ! sugges ls the same sort of
.. Wernu Ja~Rer' s infl utn tial illlnpretati ol! ot'anfient ~ducational thought . Pllidt ;lI,
should perhaps be supplemrnled hy MarTOu ( dll(lIlioll jll Antiqll i~'I, especially P. 2.
Cha.p. 11 :.Ind COIlc:t1,l~ ion , This f lll1"'dica.1 Mucation .... as takt o o"tr by tht Romans,
who ga"t 10 tht s1,lhjf'cU Iht collrt!i\'c namt lilwr,,{u (II /, J, Tht " Ii brral arlS.- at first
oinf' a nd later Sf'\'cn, alld di" id rd ;111 0 lh~ T rh';um and tht Quadri\';um. werr Ihe
$ulmance of mlit"al td ucation, St~ M , I.. W, ]'aiSIIlf'r. " Pagan Sc:hools and C hri s-
tian Tcac ht~." in Lib,r F lon'tk.... lIilltll"lti~ iJrll' SIIIlJjt~. p, IAlm"~n ~ ..'" 65, G,6..,lsIIII
1'/L'ia,",I, I, B, 8 i$chon' a nd S , 8nl;httr. pp, -1 ' -61. Tht "b"lI/~ ,,,Its mar hll"~ fallen
into some disrepute .1monR thr SdHlllUtin, hut 5IiJllo rm M Iht bas is for th ~ r~m:.lki rlg
oI' the curri<'. ulum OfWf'SICrn civiliulioll llurin,l( the Kf'nais5a.nn~ , Sft I.. A~tSOll . T1it
&,,"" Libnlll A"s (:'-Irw Yurk. 19(6): and , for a ~kt tch oftht. de\'clopmcnt of the ~u
,,"wo; .. 'F...,"""".......
cr..&. ... Imlll ;mtic.luic.~' tu IlH Mlt-m it \ , ",'c' 11. J ~ IMI ", .. crlhf."' .~
( :\'I'''I<'l!1U1Il 117 ( I!lf,Cl ): ~~ ",,:\tt7 ,
' ., Ph ilo Co~,( ' , 15 and 7-1: cl: SO,"II . 1.'lU5,
.. Philo Clln. 105 .
.. " hilo Somll , I.W5.
lIiJlOry as a Literary G'tnrt 57
'" tl. l . Marrou has nOled l~ 'Dtx,rilla' et 'dOOpl.na d;,".~ la languc des pt"re$ de I'eglise,
Arcllivu",l..ahniratis M t"d;; A...... 9 ( 193-1): 12J hUlOo wo rd$ ;Kqllire no:-,, mo:-an in~ ~ bo:inl{
applied Hlo;J Ihings of Ihe Christian religion."
I in Idea "111 i.I/II"!
run ( UlUlter tll the ilSS4K:iatiulls whk h, as pre"iulIs dis("lIssiull has re-
vealed , those w(lrds (:;crriet! ill (;"eek .md R(lman thought . O ne insliulCe
of this IlO1I1ial (hul only pm1iaJ ) tit in the language has JUSt been ex-
ami lled, Cl lllt:ernillK tl lc a llcgl)fK'a! illtcl"j)relatiulI ( If hisltlry. Similarir,
a((Hllnt s of the ()ri~ill o f the wurld ur of mankind were nut nmsiden.:d
histo r~ . I'lalU himsdf. in lht' \'l'I~' diOllogut:: \i'OIll whkh I'hilt) derives his
"natural hishlry" of 1t'ITcslrial disastt'rs, has TimaClIS argue Ihal sill(c
we ,ll"t: only hunl<ln \\"(' mllst lx' S<llistil't1 \\'ith a " likeJ~' swr~'- (J.lU6oc;)
al)(llI t sUf h matters. ~t(m'tJ\'(' I' , hisll ll"\' ill till' (;!"at.'t:(~ R( )11li 11l 11~ ldi liCIl1
suggests a puhlid ty uf tht' "i111;)\"lIIaliou": il SIlKKt.'S I ~ Ihal Ihf"st' 'I:lt."Is"
could be known lin;thalld hy an~'Ulle \,'ho too k Ihe paim that the his-
toriall himsdf 1",,1 takt'l1. This is, pc.'I"haps, why (;n:c.,k ane! Ruman
historians (II"1 t"1l indll(le in ,ht.ir ll;ll"I' ll in !s SOUli.' alTtlunt 01" the ~OUlTt'S
c)f t hci r ill f01"1 11<11ic 111 a lid t'n'll ~ II1 It.' (Til k'ism (If Iht'se S4 I11 ITt'S. Bill there
is nu sur h at"l"CJUl U i n Iht, 1'l'nl;lh'\1I; h ur Ihl' II"!"itt,,'s SUUlTt'S u r of his
criticism of Ihem: ill !:II"I . Iht.'I"(.' i.. IIU sigil of Irho wrote Iht:' Inlrk . .\m\
besides all o f .heS(' dillirnhit,s. thnt' is simply 1111 St!1lst' in which ;..tost.'S
Hr any mht'r ll1tll1allllighl ha\(' anl"ireti (Iirsthand ) inlimmllio ll ahout
1he (Tea' iun "f t IU' world or nf 111;111. ' ht' J{1I;l r,111H Ir It11' a II ~' such i Kl"()\1Il1
would han' 1<1 he a Kot! . nut. :tJ,{ain , I'hiln doc.'!<I llot ;U:lually S<ly that the
l'ent;tl ellt'h is;t hisrm,. 1Ii.. mts tlf i.ITTOJlE~I), I.frmpLa, 0111(1 lo-ropt.KO<; as
applied tn cen ;lin matins in .Jelfish n 1l((n't' rc.~ I 1I1 in lilt' i1l1pl k .lI ;o ns
that tht., 1;l(1S Ihat history imlKales might t!1t:lI1st'ln:'s he signs of ~) Il1 C
olhn thin).;, ,lIld ,Iial Ihe 1'diahilit y Ill' till' bl(tS might ht' ~lIa,,"ueed
n OI hv their puhlicit~ hut hy rlwir dh'im' origin . 't would , hOl\"t'n-:1". he
far uverstepping tht' l'l'i<i t' lIn' to .~ UppOSl' ,ha' these ;1I't' any IIIOrt thall
suggeslions ;I' this perilKI : Illu rht, way.. in \rhkh Philll's uS<lgc difftOrs
from the nrtlinan' is In ht.' ol))<;(:'I\"I;"I:\.
IV
' E.g., Apul. FI",. 16: PIt/I. 1.4.7: ~'tS IUS {J/"JJ. Lal. J.t. ~bmtnini . p. 150, 35-36:
Gell. .\ '.4 ~ . 14 . 1-2: H H~ . AJI . p. 77, I: PI;n}" p o 3.5.6: ISoranus l. Q, ,\f~d., in Kart
tkichg ri l:H:r, Dir Gri"lt iMh~ Empiritmrhlllt IBtrlin, 1931 t. pp. 90, 21- 9 1. 2.
~ .1/;., HYI/;. All, . p. 19, 1- 7: Quint . 11U1. 1.4.4. 8.18, 8.20.
I .E.g., Cdl. 1\'A 2.16.6-7: H OT. C,,""_ 3.7.20: 0 ,. Am. 1A.H : T,. 1.4 16: Phd ,. Fd.
4.6.2; P1io) II"' 35.139: Prop. 1.l.Iti, 4.7.64.
I E.!!;., .ronm, p. 198. 8: Sun RJr" . 1.:1.
His/Dry as Story 63
\ E.g., Col u m(lI ~ RIIlI. 1.; .3; ).'estUI Glm. 1.11 1. I .U. Obsid ium. p. 210. 5- 9; Cdl. NA
1.1 1.1; Dv. n . 2.443--44; Sen. Cllfl l r. I.prat r: 18 , 3 .pra~r: 8, 10.5; SI/IIJ. 6. 15; Sen. Efl.
95.2, 11 ;.11; Suet. CIII"d. ; 1.1 , ;1.2, 42.2; DIIm . 20; Cal. 3. 3; Vd!, Pa l. 2.9.S.
Apul. AfxJ/. 30; Ffo, . 9, 20; Iior. <Ann. 2.12. 10; Man . F..piX. 2.1. 1- 2; Ptl ny IIN
7.205; Pliny E/I. 2.5.5; Q uint. but. 2.8.7; Sen. SurJS. 5.8; S~n . Dial. 9.9.7; SUN . Calil'
34.2.
1 E.g., Cd l. NA 2. 16.8, 5.18.4- 5; Pliny 1'.1.33. 10; Q ui m . 1,.11. 2.4.2- 3. 2.4. 18- 19.
I t'ronta, p. 122, , ; Quin t. hu t. 3.8.61; St.:n. po 24.11 .
' Fronta, p. 100,2-4; Ccll . NA 13.29.2; Pliny E/I . 5.8.5, 1.9.8; Q uinl. hut. 9.4. 129.
" Au4. 1.1.5;$cc a lw l .I.3, 1. 1.6; Ju v. S4t. 7.23 1.
" J uv. &t. 6.450.
Th~ s~co lld mode .. Iso includes the usage or hislorirus in earl ~' im-
peria l limt's; it is used s uhstantively to indica te ..... riters (If histories,
that is, hi storians. So m~tim es parli cular hi storians ar/' m('nt iOl~ cd . tJ
but more often it is historians as a group .1I Se neca USt'S hJl/oricus to
indicatt" those who ..... rite descriptions of nat ural t hin~ s, " natu ral
hi stories"; 1l but otht'r ..... ise hislorir; a rf" thuse ..... ho ..... rilt" ilbtlllt social
and political events. And it is as wrillrs that Ihf")' arl' rd t"rrf'ci 10.
They a rt' dist ing uis hed rrom utht'r kinds of ..... rit('rs l ; hy ~ i\' ill g a
s traightrorward accoont of c\'('nt s l ~ ilnd Decause of th t' U SI' uf lan-
~ u age tha t is charaCleri slie n fthem ;11 and they pro\"idc us \\'ilh exam-
ples. I ~
Th e uses of his/oria and hiSloricus in early impt'rial lilllt"S see m \'u y
much the samt'" as those of tll(' republican pe riod, hut it is \\'orlh
noting that t he second mode, lilrrar}" gr nrr , is predominant in th e
Helle nistic period , while both arc of rqual frcqu r ney ill th(' Roman .
In addition to lhe shift in hala nce, the usage- of hiS/Drill is t'xpanrled
in t .....o ..... a ys . The lirst is it drve-lopmcllt of a n t'arlirr use, lI!"igillally
ohserved in the Attic drama and s till found in ('arl y imperial rinlf's. 10
indica te an accounl of Ihr life- or a cru cia l ('vent in thl' lif,' hf 11 per-
son. In t ha t use Ihe persons (or e hara cte-rs) \\hose " hi s turirs" wt' re
referred tu wer(' semilcgendary. They had , perhaps, al one lime heen
real human beings. But the-ir Ji"es had ncrn conlinuall y Tt',' xanli ncd
and reinterpreted by the poets and playwrights. tlit' r1 \t'l\) r jc iall ~ a nd
philosoph ers, and Ih us he-came in limr archetypal li\"l's, st uries Ihe
common beli ef in which pru\"id rd Ihe alfcnj,,. has is for tlw u!lity of
Ihe G ree k people . I f lh(')' w('Tt' " persuns," Ihe-y we rt' not I.rdinary
persons, not ord inary individuals, hu t what might he l."illkd g"1'ne-ric
persons, Ihal is, capable of signifying the wholt' na tion , ) 1" ra("(" For
exampl e, wha tt" 'cr particular mistake O edipus made, still it h,tS ar
chetypaL Oedipus is EV('fyman in thf" sense that his mi sl a~. , ;:lT1d his
fate are possibilitif's for each of us. And Ihr matt('!" was:-;n Lmli e-rstood
.
even 111 antlqully.
..
11 E.g. G( II. NA 15.23.cap.: ~n . CO". Vt . 9.1: SW/If . D.2 1: SUO:I. (; 1/1"."' , 1:1. 2tr. ' f'II .
Pal. I.J 7.2.
H E.g., t'~cu, (;I.JJ. l...al . J.II. salula ri l porta, p. ~ 36, 27- :.18; Quint. !rul. 1.10.40,
2.104 ; ~n . C. III. 7.2.8: Sw,u . 6 .14; S UO: I. RAtI. 1.5; Ti/). 6U .
I ' SO:Il. Q.Nllf. Llt .2; 4.3.1; r r. hiJf"jrll {j~l"/I , Q.,V/lI. 1. 13.J .
" Cdl. ,\tt 13.7.6: Gran. tir .. p. 33, 10; Quinl. iNJI. 10.2.21 - 22: Sen. (. O~ . Hx. 9.1.
... Pw. &(rr. lIB.6; Sen . .1pocol. I.
" !'Iiny E/!. 9. 16 .1: Q l,l int . I~J I. 1.6.1. 6. 11 : tt.D.G!> .
Quill l. /tu l. 12.2.22, 11.1 7.
History as Story 65
In imperial limes, however, the persons whose " histories" are men-
tioned have ~gun to lose that stature. The younger Pliny , for exam-
ple, encouraged to write history by his friend Capito, says that he
wants to do 50, "Not that I have any confidence of success . . . but
~cau se I hold it a noble task to rescue from oblivion those who
deserve to be eternally remembered , and ex tend the fame of others, at
the same time as our own ." 19 Pliny wants to rescue the deeds of certain
individuals, not necessarily of heroic proportions, Similarly, Suctonius
tells us that L. VohaciJius Platus "set forth the cxploits (m gtSlas) of
Pompey's father, as well as those of the son, in several books. He was
the first of all freed men to write history (scribtrt hiJtoriam ), in the
opinion of Cornelius Nepos, which had been written on ly by men of
the highest position before that time."20 FronlO, too, was encouraged
by Marcus Aurelius to write a " history" of his brother's deeds ,21 and
history about an ordinary mortal is a common use by Aulus Gellius .l1
Gellius seems almost aware of the lesser intrinsic importance attach-
ing to a Jlistoria as he uses the term . He tells us " the en tertaining
history (ioamda JriJtoria )" of how Papirius Praetextatu s got his sur-
name." Although the tex t of Book 8 of his NIXtes Auicat has disap-
peared, the titles of the various chapters survive; that of Chapter 16 is
"A pleasant and remarkable history (JriJtoria ... iocunda tt miranda )
from the books of Heracleides Ponticus." And Chapter 5 of Book 6
contai ns "A noteworthy history (Jristoria , .. mnnoralu digna ) about the
actor Polus ." Earlier, to call something a " history" at leas t impli ed
that it was an accurate account , and that thcre was some importance
attaching to it . For Gellius , however, what seems 10 be important is
not so much that the account be true or important but that it be
entertaining or that it point a moral. 24
Aristotle had already distinguished poetry or fables from history on
the grounds that poetry aims at pleasure, while history aims at truth or
" PHny Ep. 5.S. I, trans, Mtlmoth (l...(M:b).
ilDS uet. Rful. 3; cr. Pliny Ep. 6. 16.71f. The account 10 TacilUs of h is uncle's deuh in
tht eruption or Vcsuvius is leiJlltrilf, though he is aware that " there is a great difference
belwC'Cn a lelter and a IeUll/rill."
71 Fronto, p. 191,4-5.
!t E.g . Gell. NA \.8. 1, 23. 1; 3.7.cap.; ...5.cap.; " .5.6 ; 14.u .p.; 6 .19.ca p.; 7.9.ca p.;
13.2. t .
ft Cell. NA 1.73.cap.
:k Gell. NA 4.20. 10; and cr. Apul. Md. 2.17, 6.29, 7, 16, 8.1. ThaI Gclti UI had leu
than scholarly intentions in writing hil wort is indicated by his sayinR that it was hi5
el1deavOII' (ne"f0tiNIII) only "10 It"'W Ihese NiI,ltt$ or mine ligh tly here and Ihere wilh ;It
few of theK nowers of history (ltiJtorilU j1o.fClliis)" [ t 7.21.1, \rans. Rolre (Loch ).
66 Idta of Hisfo~"
accuracy. Th is ancien! dis tin ction between pot"try and hi story is now
beginning to fade . Scnt'ca advises Ih e hot-te mpe red man 10 train his
mind . " Let the reading of pocms soothe it and let history hold it by
its fables ifabulis); let it be led solil y and ddi ca lt'l y:' ~" Suetonius in-
fo rms us abou t Tiberius that " his spt'cial a im was a knowl edge of
fabulou s history (noliliam his/{)riatjabularis). which he ca rrird to a silly
and laughable rxtcnt. ":/I, And j lls t as G('lIius fqui vocalffl in Iht" d is-
tinction between hisloria ami nnnaltJ. so IUO h(' ('quivoca les about his-
loria and Jab ula . Tilt" title of Book 16. C h apler 11 is: "His/oria taken
from Iht' books of Hrrodotus a ho u! tht' destruc tion or,h(' " s)'Hi": but
then he says l ha l it was in Ih(" lo urth huok uf Hf' rodotw; that he
found " this fablc (Mncjaouiam) ahout tht Psylli ."!;
This firs t e xpansion ur tilt' idra uf history suggests a relaxation of
the earlier standard s. The Ilt'rsons itn'oh-m a re sti ll. for t he most
part , fa mo us. hut thry a r(' simpl y not of th(' sut:ial and cultural stat
ure of the ea rlier usagr. Ami as t he di sti nction bcl\.\t'f'1l history and
~ try is blurred . truth or a C (' ur ac ~' as th(' dis tinni\'l' ('haract('ristic of
t he kind of a C'count called histaria ~i\'('s way s()mt'what to e n(rrtai n
mt:nI o r pleasu rf' . Hf'rf' hisloTio s('t"ms \ 0 han' murr Iwad y the mean
ing of o ur wurd "story" th an nf o ur word " his tory"': indted . this
would seem to be Ih(" brginning of tht dt"\'rlopmc llt of .. S lOry ... .. If a
his to ry is an ar.co unl of Ih(' 1i1(' I!'i ahoul Tt' al thi nKS tht Ilt)in! of which
is to inform , and a titbit is an a Cl'uun l of unTral thin~ s the point of
whi ch is 10 enlcrlain or In pltasf'. 111(' 11 a s tory is all a ccount of the
fac ts about real Ihin~s thr puint of whidl is to ('nterta in. please. or
point a mo ral.
The second ex panded USt' of hisloria is history a s the past. l\lost
uses of historia about (,\'en ts ha\"(' to du wit h Ih(' li te,MY genre . When
il means thr- fac!s or informa tiun . hO\\'r\,('r. the limits nf il an' \"agu('.
History about pe rsons is usua ll y limited tll ;t particu lar episode in Ihe
person 's life ; prrh aps this is h('uusl' of t ht rx igt'ncit's of dramatic
lite rature in w hich this USt' is most often found. a nd prrha ps ht"cause
PlO;. or what we should call " biography," was a literary genre dis-
tinct from history.'19 The limi ts of a history about natural things are
those of the kind of thing that is the subj ect-genus. The limits of a
history about events as literature are tho!>e of a particular written
history. HiSloria as facts about events should derive its limits, li ke
history of natural things. from the limits of the subject-genus . But
whereas the limits of a genus of material things is, a t least broadly
speaking, clear, the limits ofa genus of immaterial things-for ex",m
pie, the events of a nation or people-arc not clear without furthcr
specification. Thus history as facts about events of a nation could be
taken , ana logously with history of natural things, to indicate all the
facts, the aggregate of information, the past as it were--though it is
not in general clear whether it is the whole past or some portion of
the past.
When Cicero complains that through the preservation of laudatory
speeches " the history of our affairs (Jrisloria rerum nostrorum ) has been
made more faulty," )O it is not clear what "affairs" he means, though
by "our" he presumably means " of Rome." He says this explicitly in
another place, observing tha t "Roman history is obscure {obscura ut
Iristoria Romana)," since we do not know the name of the father of
King Ancus Martius.'1 Elsewhere, however, Itiston'a seems 10 indicate
a more extended past . He criticizes the Epicureans because "in your
discourses history is silent (ltistoria muta tst ). In the school of Epicurus
I have never heard ment ion of Lycurgus, Solon , Mihiades. ThemiSlO-
des, Epaminondas. "32 And he sometimes even seems to be thinking
of the past altogether; for it is objected tha t, although the oracle at
Delphi has declined , still "you must admit what cannot be denied ,
unless we pervert all history (nisi omntm historiam Jurvtrttnmus ), that for
many centuries the oracle was true. ""
History as the past is a somewhat more frequent use in imperial
times. Propertius says, " Fame, Rome, is not ashamed of your history
(Fama, Roma, tuat non pUdd hislonOt)."J' Aulus Gellius relates a dis-
course of the philosopher Taurus about the courtesi es that fathers
The Af1If'id ..... as Sct vro by AU/ot;U5tus , althou!(h I \'r'q~ i ll himsdf had
prO\'ided in his will that th(' parIS !If it that hr had nUl publishc:d
shou ld not survi ve: which Ser\ius \ 'arus atte~ t s in th(' followin.': cpi-
gnm :
'\ Gt!I. ,v. , 2.2.n p.; rr. IO. 16.np.: Epi.f. . H , I!.!!.
~larl .
... Plin~ H,' 11.1 23. Thf' Slory of Cipus is .t! .. lro oolh in Q v. ,\lrl. IS.S65 and in
\ al . :.tax, 5.6.3. Gdli u! un f" f'n riiSlinKui1h IX1"f'f'JI kuowill!it aboul PraXilf'lf's tJ/
liI"iJ I1 tJ/ himmll Cl3. 17.4) .
" V f'r!( , CIIIIII. 11 (1 4). h.
Hislory as Story 69
tions Asellio "and several other writers of Roman history," and tells
us things that are "written in Greek history."" Similarly, Pompeius
Festus tells us how Rome got her name according to .. Antigonus, the
writer of Italian history" and mentions a "writer of Cuman
history."" " History" in these passages may refer to an unspecified
written account-that is, the proper reading may be "writer of an
Italian history" or "written in a Greek history"~r it may refer to
the subject of the writing, the Greek, Roman , or Italian past. Perhaps
there is some of each involved .
The unity of a history as the facts about events was previOusly
episodic, similarly a history about persons. In a larger or smaller
compass, it was the facts about some past events. In this second ex-
pansion , history as the past, these racts are being drawn together into
a conceived whole. There are not very many such uses in early im-
perial time5 , and they are often equivocal. However, ror the first time
lu'ston"a is being used to indicate Ihe whole past of a nation or a
people; for thc= first time " history" resembles what we mean when we
say that something "has a history."
Arter the Battle or Actium the political dependence or the Greek
world on the Roman was complete. Mainland Gr~ce, along with
Macedonia and Thessaly, had already been united as thc= province or
Achac=a. And now Egypt was being exploited ror Rome. A hot~ of
anti-Roman sentiment and hence kept 5ccurely under Roman domi-
nation, Alexandria ceased to be the greatest eenter of literature and
science; the Greek cities of Asia Minor, to whom Rome granted a
measure of municipal freedom , came to have a vigorous cultural lire
in the first centuries of the Roman Empire. This is reflected in the
unfamiliar names of the towns rrom which many writers or this
period came.
The remains of Greek intellectual life under the early empire are
far more extensive than those of the Hellenistic Age; but they show
little creativity, little originality. If this later age: sees the: first flow-
ering of the: prose romance, it also sees the increased production of
catalogues, compendia, anthologies, and compilations. There is a
marked decline in poetry; the living movements or the age were in
prose, but a prose which, like the Latin prose or the same time, is
'" Ho...ever, A. 1::. Dougla:s l ~ l ntrodu(:tion~ tu .11. 1;'1/; (;j(t1(111 is n""~J, ed. l>O ugl,u
(Oxford, 1966). pp. xii-xi"1 arguc5 that the Alli(:ill COlllro\,rfS>' 'us fral but Ihat ~ill
significance has bren greatly cuggeralM b)' modern !cholan" (p. xiii). Sce .. Iso E. S.
Gru~n, "Cicero and Calvus," Han.'fJrd SI. i~ Cl. Pfti/III. 71 ( 19661 : 2:12-:1:1.
I' ArT. pUI. 2 .14.28, Ludan SJ'. D. 11. Piu. C~,iIlJ . 5 16C, S.I:: . .\fa/ft . 11.191.
"Arr. pit /. 3.7.1. S.E. Ma/It 11.1 91.
" Act. PIN. 5.7 (L>ie\s, IX; 419. 12- UII. Uel';'l. Q. " "11<. p. Ii!I. ~I- l i. l'I u . .\I lt. 11 ~5 F.
QCO!lI" i .70IC. I!.7:l38 . S.E. Py :-1.215. 232.
.. See Ihe Gakn ic tr~albt 1t:EQi riJ~ il(X0tTJ~ o!pi}a[~ in Ka rl D('ichgrlibt r. D jt
Grittltu,ltt Empiritmcm.lt (Berlin. 1930), p . 127, 11. 2 1. 25, and 1211. I. Tt is arguable
that [mOOtl\, means " to inquirc" al 127, 2B, 31. 35, lInd cspedall>' 12B, 20. But
latOQia is dcfined as ~ thc narnllioll (6u'lyflOt;) of whal has oftell br~n experienced in
thc same wa y" ( 121.9- 10; and cp. [Gal.] t/ooyWyTj '" latQC'll; 100. 11- 20),50 Ihat
n ch or the arguablc citations abo,C' ('I n bt read as r('laling In thosc ... ho ha,c handed
do ... n, i.c. " rel ated" or " rconied" ("as(' hi5loriu.
" E.g. Luda n Alu. I , .se",,,.
B. S.l::. Malll . 11.1 91.
.1::.11'. D .C . 7.25.6 (Zonaras ), 7.2.5.1. Hdn . HiJI. 3.7.3. 7.6. Lucian HiJl. { //fIIf'. 1.
Piu. Gill. AI1I. 3470-1::, Athen. 6.23.5C-D. 1.217 f, 8.211." . 13.60.50-1::,14.6 158,6481::.
History Q$ Story 71
stature. Sextus Empil"icus sets down things tha t arc "recorded" about
Pyrrho:' the founder of Skep ticism, and about Pythagoras ..a Then
again, what "is related" may have to do with people famous in politi-
cal affairs. Dio Cassius spea ks of a certain Quadratus whose mistress,
Marcia, became the mistress of the emperor Commodus, elder son of
Marcus Aurelius: " It is related ({moQlTUt) that she greatly favored
the Chrisfians and did them many good turns, in sofar as she could
do anything with Commodus.".9 The ~rsons are also sometimes just
ordinary people, though notable for some particular. Sextus Empiri-
cus, for example, cites Aristotle's Mtleor%gica (3.4 ): "Aristotle tells
(lmoQEi) of a Thasian who fancied that the image of a man was
always going in front of him . " )0
There is a second relaxed sense of lO'tOQElV in which the stature of
the persons involved is greatly enhanced; for it is also used to
"relate" episodes in the lives of the gods outside the dramatic con-
text . Dio Cassius remarks that Commodus strangled two Cilician
brothers, "j ust as Heracies, when an infant, is reporled (LOT6{tTat)
to have strangled the serpents sent against him by Juno."SI Similarly,
in his Homtric QutStiotu, the literary critic Heracii tus says, " It is re-
cord ed ({moQOuOl, lit ., they say) that Mnemosyne is the mother of
the Muses" and several times observes what is, or ought to be, re-
corded about the gods . n Plutarch, too, frequently teUs us what is
" reported" about the gods. s3 These relaxed uses also suggest that the
earlier pres umption, that what was being related was facts of some
imparlance, no longer holds so strongly. Among those whose
" reports" are ci ted in these texts are not only historians, in the broad
sense of anyone who writes a prose account of past events, but also
philosophers, antiquarians a nd scholars, poets and rhetoricia ns. For
Pluta rch, at least, the factuality of what is reported seems to have
little to do with the instances in which he uses the verb; he even tells
us5-t what " the mythographers relate (Ol ~u8oAoyoiivT~ [0-
tOQOuol) . "
./ .llalh. 1.272 .
.. MalA . 9 ,366; cf. Piu. QCOIII>. 7. 715, 733C, 8. 728E, etc.
.. 72.4.7; cr. Piu. A/"". Ftnt. 330A, 33 1F, QRD"'. 2720, elC.
,co Pp . 1.84; cf. Piu. Mill . I 136C, QRDIft. 267B-C, 272F.
" 72.7.2; cr. Hdn. Hut. 1.1 1.5.
" pp. 39, 15--40, 9; 63, 5- 13; 77, 9---19; 80, 20-81, 9; 84, 11- 16; ilnd 89, 2- 15.
'It E.g., Piu. FD1t. R_. 3208 ;
759A, 27810'. 285E .
"'tU. 11368; QCfllI. 9.738f , 74 IA; QGr. 2938 ; QRfIf/I.
... Piu. Qjltml. 2680.
72 /dta of Hislory
!IIE.g., D.e . 72.23.2, Mu. T yr. Diu. p. 28, 5; S.t: ..\flflh. 1.063.
'" E.g., D.e. 37 .17.4; 4O.6H: Did. III D. 12. 47; Hdn . Hil l . 1.11.1 : 2. 1.1 : 15. 11 - 13;
Lucia n H UI. (1I1lSf'. 55; PIu. Cni6J. 5 17F.
" Th~ exp~ssion ImOQiov O\l"fYQO!piv occurs frtqul'llI l ~': Hid. r~IIJ(,. 2, 4. 5. 6. 16,
17 .
... Lucian Hid. tlllUCT. 1.8, and 10; er. Hdn . J/isl. 1. 15.7 fin .
\4 Ibid. 9; d . 42 and 63.
ie Ibid. 39; Max . T yr. also appreciatts th(' td ul'a tional \';llu(' of .IIislQ~1 [DiSI . p. 28,
CH;) .
Hd n. Hut. 1.1.1 , 1.4.
11 Piu. M lfUglI . 855B-F.
() Piu. HQ" PQJs. 1092!-'- 1095A: cr. Max. Tyr. Diss. p. 18, 5.
.. D.e . 54.23.]; 57.24.6; 59.22.-S; 66.9.4: 67.8. 1; 72.18.3.
~ D.e. 56. HI.!; VllI. (;, ... ~ 75 1!...C
"E.g., App. H L>l. 12.103; (;.. 1. '1'11'11. 'F.ml>., p. :.!~i . m... IK: l'lu. Q!.:,,,,;o. 8.i2.jIJ.
~' QQiat . (127,9- 10 D.); a lf;nio. 3.2. 12 (95, 15-2OD.); dooy. (91. ~33 D.).
to dooy. (100. 17- 20 D.); 1..-(. 11/1. ril. (9 1, 29-33D ).
History 4$ Story 73
" atMt. ~. ( 147, 27-31 D. ).~ T~ empirio use prior !mOQla ;u much as
possible:" (~C't . (127,8--9 D .)].
?o t'qllOT. ( 126, 23- 127, I D.): ~ ... it is impossible for um: who is learning to happen
upon all symptoms and 10 make his ow n obse rya tion of eyerylhing. So, le5t he spend
his "'hole: life karning, but rat he r 5Orn('liltl(" make U K of the art, fo r this reason they
!Mlr th at history is usefu l for pr-Klicing medicine: (xpi,n...,a u ",pO<; TO Lo.TPruUV "'"
(aT~(lv) . "
" Ibid. (97 , 9-11 D.).
n Ibid. ( 121, 11-14 D.).
n Ibid . ( 127, 20--30, 128, 3 D.) and ' bm. 41uo:avEl . (128, 12- 20 0 .).
,. PSC'lIdo-Lllcian E...,. 8.406, trans. Macleod (Locb); cf. PhiiOltr. [".. 2.9.7 (p. 355,
15); C alli'tr. S/#I . 5.4 (p. 427, 22).
" ' bid. 15.41 4. tran,. Madc:ud (l..oc:l . The S<lmc: stor )' ;5 mentioned by the: fc:a l
l ucia n (I".. 4) ..., a j.LV80o;.
74 Uta of History
lOQlau;) or arc enigmaticall y expressed- arc usdess . -' 1" And he re-
la tes that the Argo was the first ship 10 sail the seas, as " it has been
handed down by history (OtU ~; {moQta;:), "71 Plutarch addses
busybodies to mind their own business: " Shin you r curiosity from
things without and turn it inwards; if you enjoy dealing with a his-
tory of troubles ([moplu XQxfuv), you have much to do at hOI1lC:"M
There are a lso a few instances in which. para llel I/) the l.alin. 10-
TOQ(O seems to indicate th e aggregate of past facts . Lucian says, ., ,.\
few points from ancient hi story (rile; oQxatC; lOloQlac;;) I remember
arc to the point , and I may as \Veil add Ihf'm. " ;" And Appian. speak-
ing of the risc of Rome, sapi. "These things many C rC'('ks anci many
Romans ha ve already written down , and Iht' history (,; imoQlo) is
even longer than that of Maccdon , which was thr 101lA:l'S I h<-Iore
then . " 11(1
It is not entirely clear in these passages 10 what t'xtrnl " Iht, past "
is meant and to what extent written " histo ries." It seems prudent to
suppose that both are meant ; or, rather, th.u "thr past" is a meaning
Iha l has not ye t become scparalt-d from the older mranings.
There is anothrr use of thr 1I0un as factual account. found only in
th e Greek : history of o pinion!! or ideas . Beginning his inquiry into
moral virtue, Plutarch says: 'It is bellrr. howr\,er, to run quickly
through Ihe opinions of o thers, 1I0t sn much lor thr sake of history
(OUx {moQlo~ EvEXO) as of making the- proJX'r unt's drarer and morc
firmly established , when Ihesr ha\'e bern pn:sc nltxt ... ~ t
Scx tus Empiricus uses " history " in the samt way 10 rrfer 10 an
account of pre\'ious opinions. Concluding a r('view of Ih(' opinions of
Democritus and others , he !lays. "Tht" hi !l lory of the anci('nts, Ihen,
about the criterion of truth ( ~ tWV ItOAO LWV ItEQl T01) XQttllQLO\J ti) ~
aA'TjOf,ta<; Unopw.) was SIIth .....' :\11(\ lilt' Sloit Epklt'lus OhSI'I'\t:S
that the Master Argument has three in('Ulll l)atihle premises: ' If.
then , somebody asks mc, ' Bul which pair of thest' do you maintain ?'
I shall give the an~wt:r to him that I do lIo t know (oux olba) but
" S.t:. M. II! . 1.2 78. lranl. 8u",' ( l.~bJ. AI5<J 2.96: ~ . 57 .
n S.E. AI.tIr. 9.32; cf. Luo.n HipI'. 2.67 .
" Piu. CM,iOJ. 5 15D; also 5 1SC. an d er. 5 1(;1),
'" Luci.n Laps. 7; cf. MlIJI . T r r. Diu .. p . 28. 6 .
., App. p,tl(j 12, but h(' prut'ds tu talk .bou! !hl' prnpc-r arrall,l1;('",I'''' ofhi ~ work :
cf. B Cil'. 9.67 .284 .
" PIu. P,4 Vi,l. 440t:.
a S.E. M all!. 7.140: 8. 14; also 7. 190.
History as Story 75
that I have been given the following history ({(J"[OQlav To~a{rtllv )."1I3
He goes on to list pairs of premises that various philosophers have
accepted . In giving his own reply, Epictetus compares himself with
the grammarian who uses a similar formula when asked for his own
view about a literary maller; but while that is of no great conse
quence in a literary matter, according to Epictetus, philosophers are
not entitled to give that reply ," So while we seem to have a distinctly
philosophical use of " history" here, history so understood i:i still cun
sidered philosophically insufficient.
Certainly this third new use of "history" in Greek to indicate a
factual account of opinktns is not entirely new. Aristotle often usedl\\
an account of the opinions of his predecessors la clarify the issues on
a given subject. The same practice seems to have been followed by
his successors,- And in their desire for catalogues, compilations, and
anthologies the Hellenistic and Roman ages, the Gr~k and the La
tin, produced a whole literature of the recording of opinions and
ideas, doxography." What is new under the empire is calling such an
account in Greek a "history,"
The ra nge of possible su bjects for h isloT)' has grown, and now in-
dudes ordinary or famous persons , and the gods-history unders tood
as slory . Two chara cteristics of history from its ('arl it's t beginn ings-
discerned already in the U~5 of iO'twQ in the Iliad-arc accuracy of
account and social im porla nce of subjrcl. When history is u nde r$lood
as story, however, the social importance of subj ect is somewhat di-
luted. Accounts of ordinary or fam ous peopl e mar be 1l00('worlhy o r
interesting, but they have not the impacl of the account of Oedipus,
10, or Hecuba . If importance of subject is diluted , accuracy of ac-
count is virtuall y 105 1. Wh a t is important to a story is nOI that it be
accurate, but that it be e ntenaining or edifying. Then too. (1,\ least in
Greek , pas t idt=:as or opinions ahoul a topic a rt=: now a s uhjecl for
hislOry. Galen 's d oxographical Histc'.~ cJ Plrilosop".l (1(Ql q,tAooOtpou
{atOQlOS)1M rt=:prcsenls pro bahly Iht=: earl ies! occurrencr of thr cx prrs-
sion "history of philosophy ." It s hould he dear, howcvl'r, Ihat by
"history" he re is mea nt s im ply the fa cts. or accu rate information.
Galen 's slend er book is a sorl of fi eld guidr to phi losoph y. He ht=:gins
with a b rit=:f account of the origins uf ph ilosophy. tht'" succession of
philosoph ers, and the parts, problems. and te rms of philosophy. Thl'
remainder of Ihe work ill la rgrly tak('n up wit h various problrms of
physics and the opinions that had been hdd abou l Ihrm hy prc,ious
philosoph ers. Thi s is history of philosophy. tht=:n . not in the srnsl' Iha!
prt=:vious philosophies arc ta kt=:n 10 he integrated whoks in wh ic h con-
dusions a rc advanced on the basis of argumrnt s adducr-d , bU I in the
sense that these arc th e fa cts as 10 what pTt. ,ious philosopht=: rs said
about a given problem or tupic. And fina ll y. du"rc is th(' inci pie nt use
of " history " to indica le the aggregatt=: of fac ts about Ihl' past (If some-
thing.
(1942): 8O-U)9. On Clement'! coneeplion of natbfia, SN'J Wpus. ' Paid t"ia aod
Pronoia io the Work! or Clemeru Aleuoorinus, ~ I'i,f!i/itl, C1t' ;Jli"',~r 9 ( 1955): 14B-S8:
on hi$ attitude to the pagan 1tat6da, $l!'r Pirrrc Camrlot, ~ Lcs irlfn tir Clc' men l
d' Aluandric sur I'utilisation des sdf'necs rt dr la IillrralUrf' profanr:' R,rI.rffhrJ dr
JC1'n ttr ,.li,irrm 2 1 ( 193 1): 38-60.
" for a skctch of nrly Christia ni t~ as a ('uh urr , SN' M . Prllf'g rino, " (.a ('u ltu ra
erislia na net primi u coli," c.mrimrm, N.S. 1 11954 1: 151- 10.
History as SIOry 79
"And in ord er that we may see that nOI o nl y philosophy and history,
but even rhetoric art': not free of the like failing , it is wt'1I 10 set forth a
few instances from Ihem ."<I\ In the same vei n Talian the Assr rian ,
educa ted in philosophy , rhetoric, and Sophistic, denies Ihat the
Greeks invenled the arts, for " the writers of annals of the Egyptia ns
taught you to compose hislOry ( l(Jto()(a~ UlJvtannv at nap' Alyun
,;lOll; TWV xQ6vwv avaYQacpal) . "116
" History" is also used to refer to particular historical works . In the
courst of C lement's argu ment that Jewish institutions and laws are
older (and hence more reliable) than G~ek philO!loph y, h(' ciLes the
"'histories" of Apion . Berosus. and Josephus. and he elsewhere cites
those of Thucydides and Antiachus.'; Tatian also men tions the his-
tory of Ikrosus, and , like C kment , ci tes th~ hist o ri ~s of the Phoeni-
cians, Throdotus, Hypsicrat t's and Machus, to tht' dfect that Most's
is much older than Homer, lor " in the historits of the aforesaid writ-
ers it is shown that the abduction of Europa occurred under onc of
the kings,"911 but we know that the kings are all more recent than
Moses.
"History" is also used in its ot her mode as the facts or a factual
account; and , first, about ~rso n s, Tatian argues for the greater an-
tiquity of Moses simply on the grounds that no o nc agrees when
Homer lived . He says: " For it is possible 10 sho ..... tha t the opinions
held about the maller ar~ also fal se. For where the recorded dates do
not agf1:e together, it is impossible that thr hislOry br true (oubt la
tf)~ {m:OQ(Q~ <ik,.,OEUElV bUvQtov) . For ..... hat is the cause of rrror in
writi ng if it is not the selling down of things tha t art' not true?"!"!
Tatian also cites the tes timon y of Heros us as tn tht' antiquity of
Moses, establishing the writer's reliabi li ty by referencr 10 Juba, say-
ing: " Herosus is a very reliabl~ man. and a wilness to this is Juba,
who, writing about th e A!lsy rian!l, sa ys that he learn ed the history
(JlE:l-lo91lxivm Ti\v totoQlav) from Herosus. " I'" And C lemrnt usr s
"history" as the facts about natural things while li sting the 5ubjCi:IS
that it will be usefu l for tht' ca techu men 10 know. Ht' writes : "T he
same account a lso appJit's to astronomy. For treating ofl hl': his tory of
faith , he says : "Fa ith, therefore, having justified these befofe the law,
made t hem hd rs of the divine promise. Why. then , s hould I review
and adduce any further testimonies of fa ith from the history in our
hand s (ix 'ttl ~ nap' ,,~iv {otoQ(Q~ ) ?" h'; And q uoting Hebr("ws 11
again , he proceeds to argue that faith is the foundati on of all knowl-
edge and su~ri o r to knowledge. It is 11 01 clear whether Clement
means by history h CT(, the Epistle 10 lilt' Hcbre ....s. from which h(' has
just ~en citing exa mples of fai th , or Iht" I't"ntatt"uch, from whi ch all
of those exa mpl es uhimatrly com('. Whichever is ('orrret. il is inl e T-
('sting that a wrincn work tha t occupies an ('xaltrd pl act' in the com-
munity is said 10 he a history in some sens(', Since. howeve r. it is the
only instance in these early materials. there' is lillk 10 infer from it.
The verb IoTopElv is used hy t ill' ea rl y C hristian writers in Sl'IlS(!S
that are ontin<lry fo r Iht" lilll t". <lhhough . i lS Iht" uSt"!\ u f1lit" IlUHIl fnrm
s uggest, the objects or thes!" uses arC" mos t olten concerned solel y
wi th matters or religious interrst. Thus C lrmenl Iwicr uses Ihr H~r b
in its oldest sense as " inquire" or " invcst iga tr," but in both cases he
has in mind inquiry intn d ivin!' things. Ht' ('ncourages us to work
loward salvation b)' spreading the good news. hut warns against do-
ing so out or vainglory . Ht" writes: " And according to tllis view 1I
Thess. 2:.>-7J those who lake' part in thl' d i\il1l' words mu st Ilr 0 11
their guard , lest they engagt." in this as they would in tht." building of
cities, inqui ring (l cnoQ~oavu:~ ) only rur the sakr o r curios ity."IOII
Similarl y, he d escribes the lipiritual improvement or education: .. And
by astronomy, again , raised rro m Ihe ea rth in his mind . he is t'1t'valed
a long with heaven. and will ft'volvc wit h its rt-volution . 8t ud ),i ng (lo-
tOQWv) always d ivine things and their harmony wi th t'itch olher.""!!!
Most onen , however, the \'('rh means " relatt''' or " record :' Onc or
the ways in which C lemen l pursues his attack on Iht' pagan gods is
by holding up to rid icule Iht' religious customs of a particular place
or people: "And among you tht' Thessa lia ns pay di \'ine hom age to
slorks according to the ancient custom : Ihe Thehans 10 weasels 011
account of (their assistanct' at) Ihe birth of Heracles. And again,
what about the Th ~sa lian ~? They are reported (tcnOQOUVlUl ) 10
worship ants since they learned that Zeus, putting on the likeness of
an anI, had inte rcourse with Eurymcdusa , tht' daughter of ClelOr,
and begot Myrmidon. And Polemo relates (lO"[OQEt) that the people
who inhabit the Troad worship lield-mice."lIo Also indicative of this
use are similar accoun ts given about Sparta, Sici ly, Thuria, Phocaea,
and Persia. III Clement tells us what is " related " a bout fam ous persons
in his argument that G reek philosophy is derived from non-Greeks.
"Pythagoras is reported (imOQEl"tQl) to have been a disciple of Soches,
the Egyptian archprophet, a nd Plato of Sechnuphi s of Hdiopolis." 112
What is related a bout the gods is used in the First Apology of Justin
Martyr to rebut the cl aim that the C hristia n accoun ts a bout J esus are
sill y. The immacula te conception, fo r example, is no sillier than wha t
is believed a bout Ze us, Mercury, Asclepius, a nd Bacchus. He says :
"And wha t kind of deeds are recorded (lmopoil"v(m) of each of the
sons of Zeus, it is not necessa ry to tell those who already know." And ,
he proceeds, even in death J esus was like the sons of Zeus: " For their
sufferings at dea th a re recorded (latOQEitm) to have been not alike,
but diverse; so that the peculiarity of (His) suffering does not seem to
make Him inferior to them ."1!]
Th us wha t is believed a bout J esus is no worse tha n wha t is bel ieved
about the gods; and, indeed , Justin argues that it is much better. For
whereas the accounts of the pagan gods are the products of myth-
making (llu90110U"19d ol) and have no proof, wha t is said a bout J esus
is proved by the fulfillm cnt of prophecy. Li t In the Dialogue with T rypho,
a literary product of theJewish controversies of the second centu ry, he
goes further and claims that the accounts about the sons of Zeus are
originall y borrowed from the O ld Testa ment prophecies, saying," . . .
and wh en they relate (lmoQWol) that being torn in pieces , and having
died, he rose again and ascended to heaven ... do I not perceive th at
(se., the Devil ) has imita ted the prophecy a nnounced by the patria rch
Jacob and written down by Moses?" II) Clement 100 tells us wh at
Panyasis relates (l(J(OQEi) a bout the gods. "'
The Christian atlack on polytheism naturall y ex tended to idol wor-
ship, since one of the recurrent causes of persecution was that the
Christia ns refu sed to pay their respects to the images of the gods or to
'" Ibid. 4.36.H. 47.6; d . 4.. 7.2. 48,2, 54.3; and :H 5.3.
III Ibid. 4.57.3, I~ns . Wilson (A.' f) .
lit J. Man . Dial. 62 (PG 6. 6 178).
171 Clcm . AI. SI,I7I'II. 5.6.32.
111 Ihid. 2.20.103.
In Ibid. 2.1.1 .
171 J . Man. Ap.i. 1.53 ( Pe 6, 4088 ).
I,. Clcm. AI. SI1O"'. 1.21.142; 6.2.24. and 26 (latOQloyQ6:4K>; ).
" ~ Tatian Ai GT. 3 1 (PC; 6. 869A).
History as Story 85
torian, and is set up as having the same cultural stature in the Jewish
and Ch ristian world as Homer has in the Greek and Roman world .
Furthermore, according to Clement, his philosophy is in part
"historical" or "historylike." For he writes: "The Mosaic philosophy
is accordingly divided into four paris-into the historic (,to latOQl-
xCrv) and that which is specially called the legislative , which two
properly belong 10 an ethical treatise; and the third, that which re -
lates to sacrifice, which belongs to the physical science; and fourth ,
above all , theology ." 126
The earliest Christian use of Latin parallels the use of the Greek
terms both in meanings and in contexts of use. Sometimes "history"
indicates a written work, as when Tertullian recounts the visit of
Pompey to the Jerusalem temple, on the authority of Tacitus "in the
fifth book of his Historiu {in quinla Hisloriarum suar1lm )." 111 More often,
however, at least for Tertullian, "history" refers to an informational
account as such rather than as a literary product. The subjects of
such an account vary. In the old se nse of natural history, he men-
lions a history of dreams (Izistoria somnium ) in five volumes by Her-
mippus of Berytus, 1211 and , rejecting someone's evidence of a transmi-
gration of souls, he suggests that the account may have been found
"in some very obscure histories (in hiJtonj5 aliquibus occullioribu.5 )."'2'J
Tertullian uses "history" in reference to social events when he replies
to the charge that the Christians arc the cause of certain public disas-
ters by pointing out that there were plenty of such disasters before
Christianity bt=gan . " Where were the Christians, then, when the Ro-
man state furnished so many histories of its disasters (tot kistorias (aho -
rum 5uofllm) ?"11O And he seems to use " history" as the past in his
demonstration that Moses is of greater antiquity than Homer: " we
must look into the history and literatu re of the world (in his/ona5 tI
litterQJ orbis) ."UI
We also find Tertullian using "history" as story . Against the at-
tacks on Christianity, he argues that what is said about the gods by
those who accept them vilifies them : " Is not their majesty violated ,
their deity defiled by your plaudilS? But you really are still more
religious in the amphitheatrr , where over human blood , over the dirt
of pollution or capital punishment, your gods dance, supplyi ng
themes and stories (argummta tl his/orias) for the guih)'- unless it is
that often the guilty play the parts oflhe gods."1'I1 Again, in attacking
the Roman spectacles, he:: contends Ihal the ans and art works arc
products of the daemons: .. ..'or oonr but themselves would have
made provision and preparation for Ihe objects they had in view; nor
would they have given tht" a rts to the world by any but those in
whose names and images and stories (hi.Jloriis ) they S(' t up for their
own e nds the artifice of consf'cralion ."HI Similarly, the heres)' or
Valenlinus is said 10 be concerned wilh " the stories (his/orills ) and
Mil esia n rabies or their own A("ons." I:1I finall y, both Tenullian and
Minucius Felix use historicru substantively as " his torian ."I !;
These Greek and Latin uses or " history" by Iht' C hristian writers
or the first two centuries art", aside rrom the predominance or re-
ligious subjects. not extraordinary. In some instances they invoke the
dis tinctions among literary ~enres that Wf'rt" c urrent in the Greek and
Roman thought or t h(" lim('. While th('y usr the distinction, they do
nOI make it, Ihal is, they do nOI state nor do they ev;nct' any interest
in the grounds C)r delails of Ihe distinction . This leatuT(' or their uses
'<l l hin . t5.4 (360-6 1). Irans. {;)mt' 11.oth!. :Id .....",. 1.10 {(;~il. :ZU.80. '>-9). it
atlllosl l'f,blll;", idefllit al with (ht ~Isa~t t itM in Iht ItXl . .'\h hou~h Iht' pair,
tJrAII"""hlml hiJIO';II. ha\t:l prior his(ory ofUH' ,u t I ) a d islinl'lion he\wrt'n 11-\'0 s ptcits
nflht Rt'lI uS 1111"11/;1'11 or "Imlllzo and a~ (1) dislin('1 parll in tht' n:lI1SlrIL{,lion ofa It'!l:al
('ase, Ihole mol"(' lor-mal aud rigorous USM art htrt lran_~ltrrtd 10 lht domain of pot'.
Iry . Thus Uo lmu (,1.\'1-) Iranlialt's " p,onr "nd plot ."
" ' Tw . Jp. 10 (('SE I. 'lO. I:t. 14- 111. AI ..10' Sa l. 'L I (95. 5-HI ht' ash. h a ,htIOf-
ic alllu~lion . wht' lher wt oURht t" 1M'lit'H in .. gud whom " hislory has Ihrown IltiJ-
/11"11 ,lIr/IIZ'II ) OIl liS." In Ihe pre('l'dinR p;"lr .... graph ht' ha.<; lislt'd a nd dts<'ribtd hrit'fly
th(' I h rt'f' sorts o r .~od~ \ ."rno ,I iSIiIlI{uidHd. " Ih .. jlh ~ ,iral rlass. of' which till' philoso-
phl' n trl':lI, th(' mylhk rla 5s. wh tf h is Ihe ," ""Ialll huntl'1l uf Ihl' poneu. ann Iht
g~nlilt class. ",hir h ,hr "at; nn ~ ha\'<' ;,dulllnl ""r h "UI" I" r iut' I[" P;"lrattelisms o r
coMl r u{'liun SU.ll:!,:I"SI Iha t hit/Mi" rd"r~ I{I lht sl"{'und dass. thal ,,1' Iht' """IS. and
should Ihl'rrrure acr o rd iull.ly h.. Ir: ms blni "~Iur~ . " Ruhrrl Dirk Sinr r ["Trrtul1ian.
0 .. /h, .'iIwu'J: ..\ n ..\ " ,d ~_.i_, . " ./olll1lal "I n"v/"Kitlll SI"di, . n.s. ,!!I I I !1711 ) : 3~!I--G5! ~ 'lIIIutS
Ihat th r da ssical rh, t"rk al pri""'plr. "f ' ' ""I-,,,, ili..,, Mr lit .. l, ~~ ",,' "HI ~ t" 'hr
I:III,11;u a llllt'. hut Oils" I" ,h.. , h.. "I,,!:~ " I Trrlullia" S .... " I"" hi." .. S, .... ttu .. a nd !)c' Mgn in
U.,
lht' ' Ik rrSUrrl"l'li OIll' ... uorum' ,,1' !',rlullia.n. I Zlf.tfint c:ltml ,,,"u, 13 ( I 9!ill1: I i 7-9ti
M
a nd .III'-;"~I RIt,If/,ir mill/it, :1rt '!f Tr<I,,!linn 1;0.; I"W Y"rk : O .d ; ,rcl L' " h .. rsi z~ Prl"s ~. I!1711.
" ''I'm . I), . I n. :/:1 ( (;.'>1. :to.:!:II;. 1+-IIH.
" . Te n . ,.\pal. I!I.-I I PI. 1.:1117 \: :\Ii .. . 1'.. 1.0( /. 1 1. / . "\ K;.ius ~ 11,.. d" im Ih:" Ihr .Ipo-
foX"""'" i, 311 r l' id .. k li, ' IK:rt: h. I.. ",, ~ .I . S"'iIl " rp;u n l " r"l".. n. k Rhr! o.k in Tnlu l-
lian 's .Ipofoxrl /(II"' ." l AM",,, . 1 7 , 1' 1:-,111 IItH- n I I hat ;1 i_" a I; ... ~n_<k ' pt'r('ll ",hic h aims
boil! In drf~ lId Ihr Chri " i:HI~ ,HId n.m Ih~ ,,, ( u." ~li,,u ~ "Ila i ll~ ' Ih"i .. ,,,{' .. ~rr .
History as Story 87
T HAS LONC BEEN THE CONSENSUS of Wes l e:rn scholars that a pro-
I found transformation of the ancient world ~gan in the third cen-
tury. Since Gibbon it has been customary to refer to this as the
"crisis of the third century" and to the complete transformation as
"the decline and fall of the Roman Empire," although, far from dis-
appearing, the empire survived anOlher thousand years, albeit cen-
leTed in Byzantium and although the social and economic problems
of the third century had a marked effect on the very formation of the
Byzantine Slate.'
The second century saw the highes t development of the imperial
system; it was a time, relatively, of peace and prosperity, and the age
of the "good empcroTS"-Hadrian, Trajan, Antonius Pius, Marcus
Aurelius. However, the reign of Commodus ( 180-93), the son of
Marcus Aurelius, was followed by a hundred yea rs of wars, civil dis
order, soldieremperors, and disintegration of the em pire into provin .
cial armyfactions. War, plague, and famine thinned the population
and laid waste the land ; as cities and towns decayed , commerce d e
clinl and tax revenues dwindled . Tht! unt!asy toleration that had
f Qr S()ffie rC1:C1l1 discussions Qf the qUClIKm. s MQrlimer C hambers, ~ Thc C ri sis
of,he Third Cemury," in T/w TraJU/mn6tiOfl ofth ROfIIIIII Wort', cd . Lynn While ( Ber.
kcley: Un iversity Qf C alifornia p~u, 1966); rh FilII of R~mt: Q.II If B~ ",ptaill~,{! ~ .
MQrlimer Chambcn (New York: Hoh, Rineharl a nd Win.ston, 1967) ; Andrus
AJffildi, Sftltiitfl <:" r Gtultid/ff 4tT WdfkriSf tits 3. JaifrltulI'"ts (DarmM"dl : WiSSCn!chaft
lithe Buchgesellschart, 1967) ,
90 /din ol
. lliJ"lor. )'
been accorded all fon' igll ('ullS gan' way, wit h inu'rn,,1 Sl rrss. 10 JX'r
sccu l;on of the Ch ri stians i,,'rr (Ilia tor (-;\';1 disobedi('ll c(". T he decli ne
of the cent ral au thorit y n'adH'd ils pt'ak unde r G allic ll us (260- 68) ;
Aurd ian (270- 75) rt' s torl'(! tl f(IN and hegall a for lifkat ifl ll of the em-
pin' against ha r barian (' ll nOaC hm l' llts. which was cnmplf'l('d hy I)io-
clrlian (284- 305) . D ioclc ti all also aw' mpt<.'d 111 sl al>il ll',(' lht' goq' rn-
ment and to makt the im pt' ria\ ad minist ration more r mc;rnl. All
trace's Ilf n:publican islll fina ll y ,";w is hl'd; tht, emperor was lh t, abso-
lu u' rukr. In add ition. thrrt' was it slron .,\: H' ndcllcy 1U !t'\"(' ling of
older loca l a nd nationa l di stinctions. pri\"ill',I!:t'S. a nd lihcrt ies: It aly
and Ro me onk iall y ht'(',m lt' prorinrrs a m ullf..( pwvinn 's, I)i odl, ti a n '~
alxl ieation was 1;,1[11\\'1,<1 hy llill(' U' I'U yt'ars of str u~!{ I l's alllO Il~ his
" (n ll ('agu~s, " From t h('s(' s lr U)(~ I ('S (: ulI S(a 11l im ' I' nl(' r~('d as solc
ruler, C hris ti ani lY as tllf' Slal(' rrl iginll , a lld Byza ntiulll , nuw ca ll ed
Cunsta nlint"s poli.l- C onsta nli tIUpi r -as II, t, 111' \\' ~api l a l (If l Ilt' (' 111 -
pi n', T ht' la ll('r P,I\'ro tilt' \\'ay li ,r Ihl' srpa ratillll of East a nd WCS I.
which was consu mmalt'ci in :S6-1 wilh th(' making of \" a klll inian c m-
peror of Iht' \\"('st. Vaklls t'mpt' ror "f tilt' Eas t. T hus wha t had ill -
ways bt:cn thouRhl of as lIlt" h('a rtland of lilt' Ruman Enlpirf'-Spain,
Gau l, and Ila ly- C"Uuld fa ll to Ih(' harharia ns in t ht' li ft h ("(' Il lu ry ,
while yet " the (' m pin '" sUl"\'i \"l'd ,
The decl ine in Ih(' c ultura l trad ition of G r('c('e and Rom(' was al-
readv . .
noted !J\' T ari tus in Ih(' s('t'und l"('n IU f\'. , Th c irn ita ti \'clless and
triviality of m uch of later im p<'riill li lt"ra tu n ' may h(' a ll ribulr d in
part 10 the dt"ciinr ill thl' im pnrta nl'(' flf n llllllllL nil y lilr thoU charac-
terius the period, il nd in parI to lh(' ull;vI' rsa l i llllul~ lI..:t' of rlWlOric in
t"dU{:al iul1 ami IC Il f' rs, aln'ady Iln lf'd in ('onlU'C'lion with thf' ea rl y ('m-
pire , Wh al li lrra tu r(' tiu're was, was rhrlorlra l. a nd imd l('C lu al (' 11-
('rgy produced i l ,~ mus t e rcal;\'!' r('suits in \'umnlt'lltari('s 011 Ill(' all -
cient mast('rs, Likr the literary Irad ition , lite trad ilion of math('ma t-
ics a nd naw ral scicnc(' a lso dcdi lwd Ihr(Ht~ h lack of crcat ive fo rc{'
and loss of a ll confide nce ill t h(' dli ntcy of r('ason , Simil a rl y, phi los-
oph y expend('d its ('Ile r!(it's 1111 (')(honali nns In mora l condun .
commt'nta rit's on t"ar li ~r p hilosophrTS, fi r wurking uul Ih(' (It'tai ls ofa
Pl atonic Ihc.ology, By Ihe fo urth cen tu ry Ihl' C hristia ns a lrt'ady IU'ld
the leade rship of Ihe ilU ('lIrCl ua l \\'(lrld , Fur th('s(' r('asons, and ht-
cause of the act ual pa ucity nl' 1111' lite ra ry rr ma ins, onl y it hri<-f ('xami-
nat ion of non-C hristian C r('('k and Roma n usage s('('ms in ord t'r h('-
fore proceedi ng In Iht' C hris tia n ascrnda ncy ,
Sacred and Profone History 91
In the Latin writings of the later empire [he shifts in usage already
noted a re continued : from history as a li tera ry gen re to his tory as an
account per se and the decline of the accuracy or factuali ty implied in
the use of the word .
Historia is still used to ind ica te the literary genre;2 it is dis tin -
guished from other literary genres,' certain rules a re laid down,' and
the word is also used to indicate particular works, instances of the
genre " history."5 But historia is more ofte n used in its ot her mode as
the facts or a factual account about somethi ng, emphasizing the con-
tent ra ther th an the literary form . The su bjects of history in this
sense may be natural thi ngs ,' social and political events,' a nd , in the
grammatical tradi tion, fo llowing Dionysius Thrax , inform a tion in
generaJ.' More oft en, however, the subjects of history are gods and
heroes; thus hi story as Story , Servius, the commentator on Vergil , fo r
example, noting the disagreement a mong Cato, Va rro, and Oiomedes
a bout the arrival of Anchises in Ital y, remarks, "such is the variety
and confusion of stories (hi.rtoriarwm ) a mong them.'" Pomponius Por-
phyria, a commentator on Horace, onen ex plains obscu re points by
invoking the known story (nota historia) of a god or hero, a nd he a p-
plauds Pindar as a singer of new stories (novas historias) in dit hy-
rambs." That the use of historia no longer implies the accuracy, fa c-
tuality, or truth of the ma tt er is furth er suggested b)' Servius' use of
otra h.istoria, a true story,lI reminder of a simila r use by Aulus Cellius.
If the uses of historio indicate the persistence of change from the
earlier to the later empire, the adjecti ve historicus does not ex hi bi t a
similar continuity of developm ent. For the most pa rt it is now used
subslantively to indica te a historian , thus retaini ng its intima te can-
I Sen.. A,II_ 1.443; Porphyria CII"". 2.1 .17; Mar!. Cap. 5.526.
I Auson. 5.20. 7~ ; 21.25- 26; 26. 1-4 ; 18. 10.2 1- 22; Man . Ca p. 5 ..s~; S~n. . AtII.
1.]73, 382.
E.g., Amm. Marc. 27.2.11; 26. 1.1 ; tOrlUIl. Rhtl. pp. 83, 10-13; 84. 14--20; M art.
C ap. 5.55 1-52; Serv. A(Ir. 9.742.
) E.g., Am m . M art:. 24.2. 16; Dar. Phryg. T,II. pp. I , I"'; Diom. Grll"'", . 1 (1,34 1, 4);
Porphyrio Cann . 2.1.1 ; SUM . 1. 1.1 0 1- 2; V~el . Mil. 1.8; 4.28.
t Scn. Arll . 2. 15; 3.76.
, Ausoll. 20. 15.69; Porphyrio Caf/ll . 2. 1.1 0, 12. 1; St"". 2.1.l.J .
Diom. Gf/l","'. 2 (1. 426, 18- 26); 3 (1.482, 11 ); Domu. V. 1'" .(. 19 1- 99.
f &rv. Aell. 4.427; cf. 1.1 68, 487; Auson. I :t. 10; Macrob. Sal. 1.6A; Porp hydo Cann .
3. 19.
10 Porp hyrio Ca nn . 1.6.8; 3.7. 16; 19. 1-3; 4.2. 10; 7.27- 28; Ep . 3.9- 10, 17.!I.
11 S~rv . AIII"I. Ani. 1.6~1 ; cf. Scrv. Am. 1.526 and Auson . 19.76.1--4 .
92 ltitQ of Hi.fto~,
nection with hislOTY as a lit erary genre.!! 11 is a lso used 3m ibutin:ly,
0 11 occasion , as "factual. "Il
In the Gree k writings of Intt' antiquity the occu rre nces of [OlOQElV
a nd lmoQ,a arc lound mostly in the liH~ra t u rt' of commentary a nd
doxography. Th ey reOccI Ih t" pecu liar concern of Ihal literatu re, a nd
perhaps of that ag(, gem-rally, to hand down and explicate the
tho ught of the old masters.
T he verb is still occasionally USt-d in ils old es t se nse, " 10 inquirt","1I
but mort: frequently in ils lalest ~t"nse. as what is 'related." This may
be events,1l nat ura l phenomena ,'" well-known persons, 1' or the gods;"
but usua lly il has 10 d o wilh opinions. I" carrying on a use first found
in the wrili ngs of Plularch. St'xtus Empiri cus. and Epi ctetus. The
noun is occasionally us<"o as .. li t<"rary .....o rk .' hut rOf Ih (" most part a
" h istory" is an info rmational accoun t Of inlo rma tion. It is su used hy
Alexander of Av h nx t isia.~. knuwn :l'i 1-.\:1'1(1'11'.. onc: ur Iht' most "olumi-
nous u f the ' IlIr i(!nI (HllIllle lllalo)"s UIl Aristot lt, and rertainh' the Illost
impo nam fu!' the SHhSCI.tHCIlI 11":lIlilioll . Ht' ohs~ r\'t's Ihal. 011 Arislutit"s
,jell". "both facls am i hi.~ I OI"it'S (at jUllhiuu~ Tt: Kai. {mopuu)" a rt' dt'rin.'d
especially fru ll1 h cari ll~ , whe rt',ls klluwlt'c i,!{t' (hn(TT"11J.1.1)) WIIlt'S espt'-
ciall~' fi'on! ,isi()Il. ~" And h('rt' ag";lin , the old IIPIJ',.~ iljoll hel \It't'1I history
and I'< lIil111011 or {'OIlIell1pia tiw kllo wlt'e1!{t' is St't'II . On tht' olht'r hanel .
I.unblichus. lhe 1'\c..'tlplaleJl lisl. ("(IIU"ISIS UrTop(o:t with 8&yJ.l.QTa. illlc.mll-
ing us that (as<:".li 01 lile :lfit'l" cit'it,h .m .' knowll from hOlh kinds of
It E.g .. " mm. MarC". 11. 10.6; 23.4 . 10: :\ UJOII . 18.5A 1- 42; :\1aC"rob. S.I . 5.14 . 11 ;
!kn...1..... 7.678; 8.190; l \ufl . ..1/11. IA I: 3.33.; \ rgrl. .IW. I.pratl:
11 E . ~ ...",uson . 12.2.4: I) iom . (;'11","' . 1 ( 1.0. 21. :1 (\ .482. 3 1 sqq.l: Srr\". ."",rl .
.' rll . 9.144.
".",rl. P/(ll. t Dirb. f)(; 307a4-8 1; :\I ~Jt .."'ph . 111 .I/rlr .. VP. 40. 13- 24: :i1. i--8: /11
Stili . p. 4. 13- 17.
I'. O lymp. I" :lIr . pp. lr.7. 23-14 : 15.S. 16-17; 1.\-1. !1_ lU l'itin j,l Xr u. un thr Pr rsian
It/llbEC/l .
.. A!ex. ''Vh. In .\11'11'. PI" :11 . 1 1- 22: :Ii. ;...9: I H .li/ ,.. .. p. i!!.~ : Olm,p. IH .-4 /r ..
p. 2 111. 14-- 1 ~; !'md. In (;0111 . p. :14. 24.
11 lamb. I'P. pp. I\. 3; 22. 4: 23. 9; 2'>. 11; 41. 12; 68. 13: 99. 7; 105. 12; 106. 11 ;
136. 13: Ilorph. 1". Pyllr . 6 1 Ip. 52, 7- !1\. 55 Ip. 47, 20- 22 1.
I. Porph. V. P"~I~ . 2 ( UI. 10- 12) .
1- E.g . Alu. Aph. 11I Mdllplr .. pp. 51. 11: 52. 10; 11U, I. 6. 15- 17; Ol ynlp. III tI(t .,
pp. 43. 12; SO. 8: Porph. r. p..rllt. 44 140. 20- 23); Simp. lit Cad. 51On41 ; /" PII.,. r. 2Y
16 l Dirb. 0(; 483. H- IO) .
... E.!I., Porph . !h l' . 1 tp. -"S. 14- tlH: r . P'1~1r . .') Ip. t!l. t.'- l il .
.., III &"J .. p. 12.6- 10.
Satrtd and Pro/mu H istmy 93
In TIlt u nt'l'"ioll ojCOIII/Gllfill' , ed. J onn W. t:die (New Yo rk : Iloh, Rinehan aoo
Win"on, 1971) thrff distinct possible imerprelattoOl arc offered-( I) tha t he W.1.$
merely a political pragmatist, (2) tha t he was a pagan syncrctisl, aoo (l l Ihat he WaJ
a ge nuine C hristian convert-as well as a synthnis of all three.
" O n Julian 's use of educatton 10 promote Ihis re\'i\'al, see Glan\'j]Je I)owne~. "The
Emperor J ulian and the Schools," Cl 53 ( 1957): 97- 103.
III On An t;och itself and its role in the cultura l hisIOf) of the ancien t world, 1
Glanvilk Downey, TM lIiJ/tlr.J of .-h/iN" ( Princelon: Princrlon Uni\'enil) Pr65, 196 1)
and An/iMA- ill IA-t A6t of 17ttodosilU (Norman, O kl a.: Universi ty of O klahoma Preu,
Sacral and Pro/ant History 95
cults shows that they are false; and he cites numerous exa mples, of
which onc is that, "as those who have inquired (01 LOtOe"OavtE~ )
explain ," the Pelasgians learned the names of the gods from the
Egyptians but do not worship the same gods as the Egyptian s.
Among the earliest historians of the new com mun ity, totOQEtv is
also used in the very ancient sense of firsthand visual inquiring, al
most equivalent to seeing. Gelasius, for example, ust:s it about natu
ral things and socia l customs .U But more often it has to do with
social and political events. Thus Eusebius tells us that he "was
present and observed (tmOQi)ool'tv)" C hristians being tortured and
beheaded ,l6 and that he " was present and saw (u naQ<ilv xal [mo
eTlOO~)" idolatrous cities that had been desolated in accordance with
divine providenceY And he has Constantine, showing the benefits to
the people of his reign a nd of the Christia n God, say that the people
" have Ob5Crved (lot6QTloov) battles a nd have seen (t6ECr.oavto) Ihe
way in which the providence of God assigned the victory to the
people." Similarly, Sozomen talks about " those who wanted to see
(ol {(JtOQi)OOvtE~ )" Didymus and Paulinus. 39
The more common meaning of the verb is " to record, " as it has
been since the Hellenistic Age. Sometimes what is " recorded"
concerns natural things or human customs. Basil explains that heat
causes the existence of waters all over the ea rth, as the writers of
world travt:ls have recorded ( {moQ1'\xaOlv ).~ Theophilus of Antioch
establishes that the Pentateuch is older than the writings of any other
nation, accord ing to what Manetho, Menander, and J osephus " have
rtcorded (lmOQl1XoOl) about our chronology ." For the Pentateuch
does not merely include the years from some great war or king, but
from the creation of the world , which is not tht: number of years that
Plato alleges, "nor yet 15 tim es 10,375 years as we have already men-
tioned that Apollonius the Egyptia n recorded ( tUtOQElV ) ,"tl What is
recorded also sometimes has to do with fam ous persons or the gods .
"Alhan . C. .~tIIl. 10.1: ,r. flfr, /i.b , 50.1: Tht'Ophillls , 11I11l1. 'J. .i IP(; 6. IOS7 Al ;
Sotom . II.E. 1.1.1 6- 11; Eus. D,m. El', ".16.5 ( (.'(.';\ 'J.3 . IIH. 24- '1.7).
" "Ihan . tu. I'"b. :U.7: Th~ophih's 1.. INloI. :U B IN; 6, 11458 )1 5p~a ks ut "our
p rOphl"1 and l hI" st:'r"am "r God. ~I,,~n Kh ; II.~ ,UI an'ount of ( ll;lOUJoQWV) lhl' oti.l('in
of tht world: '
"Thf'OdorI" IU$ Q. 0,,,1. tU ( P C; 80. 4088 ): d . ,. ZMIt. . IUO (Pr; Ill. (956 8 ); Did/.
3 (N; 83. 157:\): G~r. AI. ln .l o, (1'(; n 1661>1: Gt:'I:n. H.', '1.. 17.18: Sow ln . II...
8.18.8 ,(>" lllr 0 .1'.): 1 .1.5 (on Inr S : 1'. I.
\ Mt l h . Rm m , 3.18..1-5 (p. 4l.i 13-18): d : ).5.11: Thc-lxlorl"l US Q. H,X, 3 IP(.' 80.
140),
"s.nom. I/... 1.7 ( Pt;:1O, 91B- 9:H \ 011 GC- IIC-S;S: Ltl n05(; ). 1. 1(1 ( 1I 2AI. 1.11
( t I60>\) 00 J OstphllS: :U (2'1U'\) ('n I. lI k~ ; 3.4 ,UtA) un I)to ll ~ li us, .
" Sozom. nE. 7.'J. UI: d . 7.11A. \\'hH~ [OlOQtl~tvwV is lht:' rl'$uh ur $ 1~11'
OOVUtlV, a nd EllS. H .t::. 3.6 (PG \1(1, l:ZO:JC ) .
Sacwl. and Profane History 99
Then'! is another use of the verb by Method ius, which has the ad -
ded feature that " what is recorded " refers to something other than
the literal meaning of the words; fOI" example, on a passage in Judges
(9:8-15) in whkh the trees choose a leader, Methodius commenLS:
"Now it is dear that this was Ilot sa id about trees that have grown
from the earth . For unensouled trees would hardly assemble them-
selves to elect a ruler, since they are fixed in the ground by roots.
Rather this is recorded (lO'tOQEi:tat) wholly about souls, which , be-
fore the Incarnation of Christ , had all grown to wood through their
s ins ." ~ This sort of use becomes increasingly important in C hristi an
writings .
The uses of lOlOQla by the Christian writers of la te an tiquity still
reflect the modal distinction betw~n a kind of account and a kind of
literary work ; but the lauer sense is now very rare. There are some
few cases: Sozomen uses lO'tOQ(o quite generally as " narrative" in his
Prefatory Address to the emperor Theodusius;4' and he elsewhere
notes the accuracy that is n!quired of history!>!) and sta tes that what is
fitting in a history (I.(J'Tnp1;l Tl'piTl'Oll), it.. tas k, "is only I() relate what
happened ."\) Theophilus of Alllioch refers to what is contained in hi s
own book, no longer extant, On Hisloriu and to the Histories of Her-
odotus and Thucydides. 52 Theodoretus refers to the History of J ose-
phus and to the "first History of tht Maccabm . '~J
Nearly always, however, the noun is used in the old er of the two
modes of its usage, emphasizing the content rather than the form , as
information or an informational account. Among old er su bjects, it is
still used , at least by Basil , about natural things.}' Sozomen uses {o-
'toQCa for first hand acquaintance with buildings and places famous
for sacred or secular reaso ns .~l " History" referring to cvents is used
by John C hrysostom in introducing his account of the provenance of
the Septuaginti he says, "But in order that you might learn that the
place did not sanctify the books. but rather polluted them, I shall
recount to yo u the ancien! his tory ({moQlav n(U..mQv).".'It> Theo-
doretus uses " hi slOry" about a famou s person . and. of course. it is a
J>l!rson famou s for H:ligious Tt'asums . In the beginning of his account
of the life of Peter Ihe Ascetic'. he sa ys, .. , know the st"a of his
successes, and on account orlhis I am afraid 10 approach the his tory
(lOtoQlO) of what hits been told ahnul him ." ;; And Eusebius gi\'es us
the account (lo'tOQla) that Julius Africanu s had giw!1 to ex plain the
a pparen t inconsislf'ncy rn-I .....cen :Vl al1hcw' s and I.ukc's \'(Tsiuns of
Christ's genea logy .....
Among subj!"c!s. IhrTf an' alsu histori('s about the
mun' r(" ( tllt
god s. The second book of Throphilus ' apo \ogfliC' Ad ..Iulo~ycum la k("s
up the standard attack on h('lid in Ih(' pagan ~ods . In tll(' introduc-
tory section (2. 1) 11(" say!i th.1I hI' wanls 10 sa\'(' his audi .. n c(" from
\'ain worship, " huI aiS(), I want to mak(' th(" Irut h d ('ar ICJ yo u fro m a
few of your O WII his (Orit's (tw\, xata ot {otOQtwv ) which you read
but d o nOI quite unders tand ." He" j1;()('s Oil (2.21 to argut' Ihat tht'rt, is
a contradiction bt'twecn imagining (h(' gnds as mrn and (hrn wor-
shiping the m as gods. " and Ihi s is whal happens to you . IOU, in read-
ing thl' histories ( to.~ fmoQla; ) and )o!;t' lu'a lngi('s of Ih(" so-ca llrd
gods." He su ms up a nuthf'r arlo:UIll("1l1 in 1111' same book : " \\'(' ha\'l!
shown from their own hi:r;wrirs (tl; Utl'tWv t WV l<JlOQtwV) that the
names of thos(' who an' t'a llt-d .l(o<is art' )()Uncl 10 h(' IlIr names of men
who lived among th("m ." ....
Of course, an informationa l a Ct'ounl abou l thr C\'eI1IS of 1hr Ill'W
com munity, the n("w tX)(J"lloiu. will ht' an txXATjOlUottX'~ totOQIU.
The founder of tilt.' n("w litrrary ,ll;f'nrr r ilJlrd rcdcsias ticai his tory is
Euscbius, who inl ("I1O S. h(' trlls us. " If) writ( an a CC()UI1l ofl h(" suc('("s -
sions o f the ho ly ap()st l("s . as well ;IS nf tlit' lifllt's whi ch have elapsed
from the da ys of o ur Saviour tu uur uw n : i\Od 10 rt"!ittt' the man y
imporlanl eve n ls w hic h arl' saio 1(1 ha\'(' OCC'UI'rt'd inlhC' histo ry o f the
church (xo'to. tilv XXA.TjotaO'ttxilV to'tOQtuv)."'" H r is a ware that o f
carlic r ecd("sias tic-al wri lers IlWV EXXA.llOCUo-tlXWV OUYYQOq,EWV)
.!,,'.
... 10. Chr~"S . All','. I.ti { P(; HI. 8.') 11: EUJ. al$ll uS<'sicrtOQio ;!buUI PIISt t\t llts
[HE 1.7 (PG 20. 968 ): 1.5 18IA- R)[ ,\Ild about f urrtllil'HnU [ f'. CtIII ll . 1.23 (CeS
1.19. 10- 12 ). Pr. CMJ/, i. W (r.C'i 1.2 15. 8- 1011 . ;lIId " ppuSt s l ; o.Qxa(wv IO'tOQ/or;
10 T~' tldo" rQO$lj" III..:.!.I 11:11.\ 1).
" ThtodortlUS Rt!. 1Ii." . !l 11'(,' H'l. 1:1110\ .
I::U5. 11.1:.'. 1, 7 (PC; 20. 898- CI .
.. TIltophil u5 , 11.'/01. 2.3". lnons. D"ds 1.1.\ '1--''1.
9' l-:us. II.F.. 1.1 IN; 'lit ~HH l. 'r;lIIs. Ril-ha rdson (.\ P.\'f).
Sacred ami Profam HUlory 101
crence. In his Homily on tilt Hexatmeron, Basil sa ys (6.2) Ihal " the
dogma of theology is sown mystically everywhere in the history (nov.
lUlOU tfJ lO"tOQlCjl)," that "the history ('I') iotO{)La) wishes 10 exercise:
O UT mind" (2 .3) , and that "in the form of history (tv {otoQlao;: dhu)
legis lation is given out" (2.8) that the day has priorit) over night.
Similarly, Theodoretus explains Ihal Zachariah's predktion of living
waters going fOTlh from Jerusalem refers to Jesus, addi ng that " it is
permitted to discern the prophetic truth in (hl' history (latoQlav )
itsdf,"19 Methodius tells U ~ that " Ihe history (lOlOQlO) abou t J o na h
contains a grt~at mystery."1Itl J ohn C hrysostom thinks that WI!' should
learn and teach the " histories " in order 10 strengthen o ur souls.RI
And in Orig~n ' s tre ati s~ On I'irst Pn'nciplts (4. 1.9 ), tht' r('cognition
that then~ are conlradictory s tatements in Scripture histories occa-
sions an ex tended discussion of tht' principles of interpretation to be
u s~d in such cas~s . Bri ~ n y , th~ point is that tht' histories contain
certain mys teries that aim at the improvcmt:nt of our souls; thus they
may be und erstood both fig urativel y ( tQOnt'Xw ~) and bodily ( ow~a
tLxw~ ) , and the contradictions or things that did not happen which
we may find in these hi s tori ~s are pu t then' to force us to se(' that
there is a figurati ve meaning. Of course, nOl all the histories did not
actually hap~n . Indeed . mos t of them are true: but whereas th~
whole Scripture seems to have a spiritual o r figu ra tive sense, the
whole does not seem to havt' a bodily sense .lrl
" Throdou: tus IN z,,(A. 14.B (PC.' BI , 19!13D); d . Q. R" . I , Q . 7 (PG 80, !l37C), 111
PSallll . 13 (PG 80, 949B), hI lslli. 1~ . 2 (PG 81. 34OD). /11 Eu~h . 3 1. 1" (PG BI. t 125C),
III HIlA. 2.1 (PG 81 , 1797A) .
IQ Melh . RWlfJ . 2 .2~. 1 (p. 380, 16- t9).
" 10. Chry*. Dt full. 1 ( PG~, 1.s9); d . III PJG/III. >46. 1 (PG !IS, IB8) .
a On Scrivt\lr~ s~aking {(J'[0Qt1(~, S~ ThKIorclus hi na". 1104 1 (PG 8 1. I !l3'l).
Orillen Lw. Fr. 2 17 (GGS 49.32 1), C)'I . AI. In ./ . (PG 1:1, 960C, 96 1BI.
Sacred and Pro/aM Hislory 105
IT Arn. Atlv. /1,'111. 5. 1; cr. 1.38. Sid. Apoll . Ip o I. t . IQI di slin,ll:uis hl's IIIJ/(I';II rmm
~iJ hilfl,
Lacl. Div. J~JI. 1.13.8 (PI. 6. 1888).
" Hitron. In)". 3 (on 11 : 11) IPI. 24, 1891 .
to H itro n. p . 22.29.7 (PL 22. 416). This m a~ hc Ihl' liru inslanc!: orIriJI~'ill as a n
a utobiographical account. It is I'clwtd in the title or .l,btlard$ H is /tI .ilf (~ I"millll~"' .
Sid. Apoll. lEp. 7.9.5] rd atl'S an anl'rdotl' alxllIl a r ('nain philoSQphl'r which Ms/o, itl
UlfflIilf riJ rd at"; and cr. 8.3.-4 .
" ATn. Adv. NIlI. 1.3, 5.8.
~ La CI. Dfv. ltul. fiJi. 17 ( Pl. 6. 6 ...... ,\).
Satrtd and Profane His/Dry 107
becoming more powerful than the good. Cyprian was another African
rhetor turned Christian, and bishop of Carthage during the persecu-
tion of Decius. In a letter about the Donatist problem of baptizing
heretics, he recounts how it happened that many people were led
astray under such circumstances earlier; he says, " I want to set forth
to you from history (de historia ) what was done among us relating to
this same thing."U In these passages, his/Dria has to do with plagues,
crimes, the careers of famous people of earlier times. These are like
the events with which histories have had to do for a very long
time----cvents in the public, human world . In the first two passages
the plural is used, so that they might mean the account of these
events. But in the latler two the singular is used , suggesting the
meaning " past"; so that Lactantius would be saying that " the past"
is full of examples, and Cyprian would be selling forth what hap-
pened "from the past ."
A second subgroup of uses of historia in the sense of " the past" may
be marked off. concerning events not in the public, human world . but
in the biblical world . In order to understand the non temporal ar-
rangemen t of the Psalms, for example, Hilary of Poitiers says that
" . .. we should be thoroughly instructed in the history of deeds and
times (in gtstorum et lnnporum historia ). For according to historia the
third Psalm is later than the fiftieth."t' So that historia means the
events orthe biblical past. Similarly, Hilary instructs us, in interpret-
ing the psalms, to examine the supc=rscriptions in order to find out
which ones have to do with his/oria. He says, "But other superscrip-
tions, which signify eithe::r events according to history (secundum his-
wriarn), or times, or days, or have ~en composed of something else,
show in what a psalm consists either in the interpretation of names ,
or in a comparison of deeds, or in similarity of kinds . . . e::.g., a psalm
with 'of David' or 'to David ,' or 'Saul' in the title:: is foresee::n to fall
under the:: history of deeds (sub geJtonJ.m historia )."!r.i Similarly, Jerome
observes that Paul's state::ment (Gal. J : 17) that he went to Arabia
and returned to Damascus before he:: went to Jerusalem disagrees
with what is relatm in Acts. "The order of history (historiae ordo) does
not sc=em to agree with it, recalling what Luke says in the Acts of the::
"Cyprian Ep. 75. 10 (CSEL 3.816, 17- 18); er. Hieron. I" Daft. t (on 4:la), Bp.
60.5.3 (PL 22, 592), /" ~It.. 3, on 12 : 3 (PL 25, 1(20).
"Hi!. h Prologus 9 (PL 9, 2388).
'" Ibid. 22 (2'4M- B); cf. 5 (235A), 9 (2388), Ps. 51 (309A), 54. 1 (347C), 63. t
(407C) .
108
Thus there are now understood to be both true and fanciful ac-
counts of the gods, that is, accounts that are properly histories and
those that are properly poetry or fable. Hisloria is being used to indi-
cate what, in the opinion of the Christians , is true about those who
are popularly esteemed gods, as distinct from myths or fables about
them. Arnobius is willing to consider the latter hisloriat too, indeed he
I"epeatedly calls them that in the fifth book of his apologetic discourse
Adversus Nationts, which is devoted to attacking the gods. He rejects
the imagined defense of the accounts as bei ng meant only allegori-
cally,lCH on the grounds that one cannot tell an allegorical story from
a nonallegorical one, and insists that all of them are records of actual
events (rerum testarum conscriptiones) and hence arc damning evidence
against their divinity .H~
In the Latin Christian writings of late antiquity, as in the Greek,
hislOry most frequently has to do with an account of something from
the Old or New Testament. Most generally, it is suggested that they
are or contain histories. Replying to the charge that the Old Tes-
tament is false, Arnobius says, " but if that historia of events is false, as
you say, then how in so short a time has the whole world been filled
with that religion?"lOl Rufinus, translating Origen , says that the be-
lief that the world began in time is "one of the ecclesiastical articles
that is held principally in accordance with faith in our history (StCfJR -
dum historiae nostratfidnn )." 101 And J erome, quoting Exodus, refers to
The most usual di stinction , however, is between the lener and the
spirit of a text, or between hiltoria and inttlligtntia . These are taken to
be different ways of reading and understanding the Scriptures. About
J esus' se nding two of the disciples to take an ass, J erome says,
" Indeed it seems to me to pertain rather to the higher understanding
than 10 simple hislory (magis ad alliortm inlelligentiam , quam ad simplium
hislorjam). " II~ Although they are different , they are usually under
stood to be coordinate or complementary . Filastrius lells us, "Neither
shall we lose historia, which makes it 70 years that the people were in
Persia, nor shall we spurn spiritual knowledge. "111 Ambrose likewise
says, " It seems to you highly exalted if you understand the letter.
Cross over to the spiritual understanding, because the law is spiritual
. .. ror the letter kills, but the spirit vivifies."1II J erome, speaking
aboul the prophets, tells us that "every thing is to be taken spiritually ,
after the truth of history (historiae veri/alem )." And in two different
places he says that histona is the foundati on or spiritual understand-
ing. m
The uses of historicus by the Christians in late antiquity tend in the
same new directions as the uses of hislona , and show a renascence in
the attributive usage. Historicus is used substantively to indicate writ-
~rs of histories abou t the gods by Lactantius, Arnobius, and Sidonius
Apollinaris.''lO Prudentius speaks of " M oses, the histo rian (hisloricus )
of the world's birth . "111 But most often the adjective is used attribu
lively and in relation to what has a lready been ~een as the
" historical " dimension of the Scriptures. Of the Scriptures, Ambrose
says that Luke is a historian (hisloricus ), and adds that " he kept to the
historical (hisloricum ) order and revealed to us many miracles among
the Lord 's deeds. " And he also observes that the Gospel " is a rranged
in his torica l style (histoneo Sly/o) . "I'U But usually historicus is used . n OI
of the Scriptures thl'! msl":lvts, bu t of ,he way in wh ich we are to deal
with them. Cassian tells us that "'earning explains the simple order of
historical (xpositio n (historicOl ccposiIiQ'Jis). in which no more hidden
knowledge is contained except what resounds in the words." 'u J e-
rome, tOO, mentions this " historical" exposition, and says that he will
pass on 10 the spiritual treatment of Isa iah no ....' tha t "we ha\'e laught
the historical interpretation (historieD inttrprttationr) . "I~ I
on Am b. bp. W . Prol. I (PI. 1~. 1607), Prol . .. { 1 609 ~-q . Proi. 7 ( 161IBl : cf.
Cass. <Ani. 8.7.3 (PI. 49, 732A). But Sid. ApoIJ. (Ep. 7.9.2) says that he- al'oidl'd Ihe-
/H1N1mJ iiJ"'riccr in his own work.
"'Cau. Ctl1Il . 14.8. 7 (PL 49, 965A- 8 ): d': B. 3 . 5~. I4.B. )-1. 101.10.3.
l to Hieron. I" MallA. I (PI. 26. M B\. III IJlli . 5.proi. (PI. 24 . 154. IB3 ). and ~.23 . 28
(206 B).
11'0 Aug. CD 2.18.2.22.3. 17,3.26. 4.6.18.40.
IIf Aug. CD 2 .3; cr. )8.40.
u: Aug. CD 16.8, 16 .11.
III Aug. CD 22.B.
119 Aug. CD 4.3 1. 7.27.
uo Aug. CD IB. 12, 18.13.
Sacred and Profane History 113
ing. De civitate Dei is the greatest and most influential of all the Chris ~
tian apologies . m It was written to counter the claim that Christianity
caused the fall of Rome. Its basic moves are those of aJl Christian
apologies, and before them of Jewish apologies; one Iirs1 shows the
inferiority of the pagan gods and cuhs, and then the superiority of
Christianity. The device by which Augustinc pursues the task is the
comparison of the "heavenly" and "earthly" cities. Thus, while the
first part of the work (Books 1- 10) show how bad things in the
earthly city are and always have been, the second part (Books 11 - 22 )
is a sustained comparison of the two cities as regards their origins
(Books 11 - 14), their careers (Books 15-18 ), and their ends (Books
19-22). The examination of their careers is largely an exposition of
the Old Testament.
The Scriptures are or contain "histories" on Augustine's view . He
responds to the question what " the writer of this history (scriptor huius
hisloriae) intended in recording the generations from Adam ," '!2 and
he insists that we should believe or accept these histories, saying ,
" Now it seems to me that the hutono is to be defended , 1('.51 Scripture
be unbelievable when it says that a city was buih by one man at a
time when no more than four men , or rather three, after brother
killed brother, were seen on earth .... "m In his essay On tile Cllaracter
of tile Eccitsia, he is even more vehement. HavingjusI put forward the
curious argument that the ecciesia must be good because it depends
upon good beliefs, he says (29.60) that the only possible objection is
to suggest that the writing may be false; but no one would say that,
h~ insists , " For Ihe compl ~t~ p~rvers ion of all literature will follow,
and the abolition of all books handed down from the past, if what is
III AURustinc himself so calls it (Rtfr. 2.69. 1; and cf. Ep. 169. 1 and 184A.5).
Momm$cn L"St. Augu.Jlinc and thc Christian Idea of Progreu," )HI 12 ( 19.51 ) :346-
74J hu nOted that it mak" all the same moves as Tertullian, Lactantius, and Am()o
biuJ. Both Allaner { PDI,.loV, tr.ns. HiJda C . Graef(New York : Herder a nd Herder,
1961 ). p. ~3J and Bardenhewer (PdltoloV', tral\$. ThomasJ . Sha hen (S I. I.o uis: Her-
der, 19(8), p. 481] C(lnlider the work an apology. P. S. Hawkins (" Polemical counter-
point in the f), civil.'t On," AlIllUlill;dll SluIJiu6 ( 1973): 97_I06j ar!tUCS that the con-
tra" between the two citi" is nOI a theological or historical one, but an act of polemi-
ul evangelism . That it is the best of the early Christian apologies has been recog-
nized by Johannes Cdfcken lu.vi l rittiistlu" Apologtfttl ( Leipzig and Berlin , 1907),
pp. 318- 211 . C. N. Cochrane { CltriJliDllig lUll! ClIJSlic<ll Clllhm (New York: Oxford
Univ(rllity Pn:ss, 1944), pp. 359-98j, and Oklf Gigon (Dit alllit, KIII/~r IIlId du Cl"is-
tntlllm (Gii leoloh, 1966). pp. 123- 30).
IJ1 Aug. CD 15.20; cf. 1.5.8, 18.38. Ulit. Crtd. 3.8.
III Aug. CD 15.8.
114 Uta of HjJ lo~ r
For in ..... ha\ narratioll uf "a ~ 1 r\"t' m ~ t'uule! Wt' 1~IIt' r trust than ollr
which also prroicl('(1 ("o minl( (,,\'(,1115 Vil/llra ) whid! wr tlOW S('T hdorr
ou r ('res? For Iht' "rry d i5aKrrt'nH' IH o f histurians (kistorjrorum) ;UllOII,l(
themsd ves gi\'f'S us grounds titf trustill,lo( radt r r him wh .. du('s 1111\ ('011 -
lrall icl the d i"inr hislorio th at ,,'r hold .... IThl' Jla~;lJIs. s(' dn~ Ihr
contradictio ns amOIl!{ tht' iT hi slnria ll ~. knuw lIut " 'hum tu hri irn',) But
we, relyin!!: on ri i" inr authority ill our rrJi!l: iuu 's his tor) Ii/l /I(1,I/m( rdi-
g io"iJ lriJIO ria) ar(' in 110 dO llht that wha tr\t'T r('.~is t sth a t is rumplr ' t'ly
fa lse. ..... ha.('\('r ot h(' r th i1\J,:s mal" h(' in .~ t,tlIl a r lit(' ratun'. wl,i('11
whet her th(' y b(' 1ru(' ur ,;.Is('. [onl ribulI' Illllhinll;: ..I' irnpurtatKI ' hy
which we might lin' ri):tlllly nr hI Nist'dly.llt
All that Scri pturt. thr. rdorf' . which i5 calkcl tht Old Tr5larm:nl , IS
I~ Aug. CD 18,40; et: 18.jfl. l i ra Hr! . .".0,99, IJI. Ch, . i .i8 .H , On Augustine- 's
~-iew or the- authorit~ 0{ Scriptur!' a nd the- ITlatio" I)(' t"'e-"n ltiJluria a nd 'Tophl/ia as
disclosure-s or G od's purposn. Sff R. :\. ~Iarklls. SirtfMl''''I: HjJI(I~ r ItRt! s.ti,{r ill /h,
17ultlfJ!{~ G/ SI. AWRltSlj", (Camb ridF!'" 19701, p. Ifl7-96.
11> Aug. CD 17.3.
I" A ug. CD 15.21.inir
10; Aug , CD 18,44 ,
So.cwi. and Profane History 11 5
handed down four fold to them who desire to know it; aecording to
history (StClfl,Jwm hislorilJlfI ), according to aetiology, according to anal
ogy, and according to alkgory; according to history when there is
taught what hath been d one; what not done, but only wrinen as
though it had been done. AccOf'ding to aetiology, when it i ~ shown for
what reason anything hath been done or said. Acc;ording to analogy,
when it is shown that the two Testaments, the Old and the New, are
not contrary to onc another. According to allegory, whcn it is laught
that certain things which have been written are not 10 be taken in Ihe
letter (aJ litltram ), but are to be understood in a figure (filurall)Y
The same four ways of setting forth the Scripture generally are else
where noted . I" ".Jerusalem," he tells us, refers to both the terrestrial
Jerusalem according to hisroria and to the celestia l J erusalem in a
figure .I .o But he says that the whole book of Genesis should be exa
mined first as hisloria then as prophecy, and where the li teral sense is
not worthy of God we should take things figuratively .141
The latter half of the City of God is an extended account of the
origin, career, and end of the two cities . In this di scussion is found
the largest concentration of uses of historia anywhere in the early
Christian writings. And there is here a fifth group of uses of hisloria as
informational account about the past or past events i n which the
Scriptures, as embodying or containing the hisloria of the Chosen
People, is distinguished from and opposed to the hisloria of the non-
Judaeo-Christian peoples. On the one hand , there is the sacred (sac-
Ta ) or divine (divina ) hisloria. In spite of lack of physical evidence for
the longevity of people in the Old Teslament, he says (15.9) thal
" faith in this sacra hiItoria is not to be wi thdrawn ." The sorra Jristor;a
shows that Nahor, the brother of Abraham , left C hald aca and se tll ed
in Mesopota mia ( \6. 13). Elsewhcr(' we examine wha t this soaa his-
ton"o says abou t the son of Selh .'u And to lhos(' who worry a bout how
ma ny peop le there were when Cain lo undf'd his ci ty, he replies ( IS.8)
that "the writer of this samrlristor;a d id n OI haw' to nc("essa ri ]\' na me
a ll the people who wert'! the n, bu t on ly . hus(' whom the plan of the
work requ ired . For the ai m of that write r. th roug h w hom the holy
Spirit was working, was 10 com(' down to Ahra ham ... and t hen 10
proceed from Ab raham to God ' s people. w hich \~' a:o; S(' I a pa rt from
the other nat ions (0 cd rr;J grn(i6us) and wou ld Sl' f\ T tu prd igur(' and
foretell all things t hat rr la t(' to thr city .... " Su this sarr(l histl)ria has
to do with God's peoplt'. who are st"pa ra te fro m Ihr ntht'r gtnttJ or
peoples.
O n the ot her hand , ther(' is th(' hiJIl)rin of these JX'op\t's , the hislorin
gentium. The h.i.Jtoria gmlium praises the marw lous construction of
Babylon ( 16.4), b ut " the historio gmtium tlt'i t ht' r G reek nor Latin
knew" about the Flood ( 18.8). It tells, t{)(I. abou ttht' wondrous works
or miracles by which the gods pt'rsuadt'd proplt to worship , hem
(10. 16, 18). And the hiJlol"iu gnltiuIII also ("( lIlIaius IlUlIlemtlS punents. 11<
When the Sc.:riptun!s art' n~ ft' ITt"d tu a.' hi.\(mill it is with a
view more to th('ir con tent- wh at kind of ,,("("OUll t t h('y a rt'. faclOa l or
fi gura tive-tha n to their J(lrm. In tht, OPPOS iliull be tween sacr('d his
loria and the historin I)f thl' pcoplrs. hiJ10rin 5t'('ms tu indica lt' a mi xture
of the meanings informa tional account "I)( ,ut pa ~ t e\'rlHs a nd tht, in-
forma tion itself or " tlu' past:' though l eat1 ill .~ morr [oh'ard Iht' fo r-
mer.
T here is a fin al group of uses of histaria in which th(' mixture of
these two strains lea ns mor(' toward " th('" past" per se. The fir st half
of the Cii.J of Gad raised thr s tandard apolog(,l ic def(' nse against the
charge that the fall of Rome was due to Ihr wors hip of th(" l1("h' God
and forge tfulness of th(" old gods who gave RoOlt' peace and victory.
Augustine replies " tha t for Ih('" most pa rt they (0 01 (" about against
their will. not only fa bl("s. lying abou t ma n r II Iill~s a nd ba rel y ind i-
cating or showing any thing true. bUI also Ro ma n history itself (ipso
Ramona h.istaria) test ifies ."14I Agai n, "both ancien! his tory (vrtus Ms-
tona ) testifies and the unhappy experience of our own times teaches
us" that people are sometimes reduced to cannibalism .,n And , a rgu -
ing that the 89th Psalm is a prophecy ofJ r::sus, he says ( 17. 10) tha t
the dire descriptio n of the state of the world in lines 39-45 applies to
the earthly city, " but of the way in which these things came upon
that kingd om . hisloria is the indicator of event s (index rerum gtstarum l,
if it is read ."
Finally , an even clearer example is found in his t reatise about the
discovery and expression of the meaning of Scripture, On Christian
Doctrine. The twO chief sources of obscurity in Scripture are unknown
and ambiguous signs. In the second book he claims t hat ignorance of
signs is to be remedied in part by knowlcclge of the origina l languages
and con texts and in part by knowledge of things. In the quest for
greater knowledge of things he permits the use of some profane
sources; bu t profa ne knowledge may be of ei ther human or d ivine
institution. Some of the former , for exampl e. astrology a nd divina-
tion. are superstitious; bu t some are no t. Among those kinds of
knowledge useful for und erstanding the Scriptures that a re not of
merely human institution Augustine includ es histo ry. H e says:
Whatever, then, informs (us) about the order of past times- Ihat
which is called history (Quitiquiti i&ilu, tit o,dint tnnporlim /'lllUae/orom
intiiea/ ta quae IlPfHlla/uT his/ofia)-assists us vc:ry much in understanding
the sacred Scriptures, even ir it is spoken outside the Ecclesia as a
matter of childish instruction.
,~, ..\u/t . 0 0/. f .llI . :.1 .:.1I1.4:.1- H . t hI 1110' IN t/",'lmfU Ihml i",,,,. " ... 11, \ .... tidn . " "1"10("
Su bj ',("1 alKI Slnll"IUrl' "," .'\ll.l(m , illl'~ I), """I' i~" dt,,,li,m,,:' . l u!!It"i~ i(llt S'U ";'. 11
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,., "'''.1(. (."1) 1.:l7: d :1.:11 , 0.",. Chi . 1 .111.-1-1 .
Sacrui and ProJant Hiswry 119
H E ANC IENT W O M-!) to"tooQ either m eant someo ne who was known
T for a capacity "see" clearly which of two conflicting accounts
(0
the Christian and non-Christian ideas of history are that the Chris-
tian is almost always applied to maners of religious interest and that
it regularly occurs in the context of apologetical attacks on the pagan
gods and defenses ofChristianily.
Non-Christian Greek and Latin usage during the later empire gen-
erally continued the developments of the preceding centuries. The
shift away from history as a literary genre to hi story as an informa-
tional account was very marked , and the former became infrequent.
The requirement of accuracy or factuality of the account continued
on the wane. The Christian usage of the later empire reveals the
divergence between East and West in the dirrering devc10pmenls Ihal
the idea underwent in Greek and in Lalin . In both languages il ap-
pears most often in two contexts: bibli cal exegesis and apology. In
both languages history is involved in exegesis because scriptural ac-
counts or the Scriptures themselves are consid ered hislOrics; these
histories , however, are capable of bearing another meani ng. Lileral
exegesis is " according to history," as opposed 10 various kinds ofligu-
rative or spiritual exegesis. In the apologetical writings, however,
therf! is a difff!rence betwf!f!n the Gretk and the Latin. Thf! Greek
Christians carry on the same USf! of history in the apologies tha t
charactf!rized thf! earlier period, that is, history as story. But the
Latin writf!rs rf!3Ssert the old requirement of accuracy, and argue
that the truth about the gods, thf! histories about them, show them 10
be unworthy of worship. Thus what history mea ns u, them, th eir idea
of history , is trUf! informational accounts or informatio n about per-
sons, events, and gods, and the relalionships between peupl e and
thf!ir gods; and they even seem to have used history in the collective
sense as the past, implicitly distinguishing thf! history of the Chosen
People from that of the non-Christian peoples .
lt is in this last usage that Augustine makes his great innovation.
For whilf! his usage is in no essential way different from that of his
Christian contemporaries , he makes of the distinction that they only
implied- the distinction and opposition between the sacred, provi-
dential history of the celestial city and the peoplf!s' hismry of th e
earthly city-the dominant literary and rhetorica l moti ve of his City
of God. Although thi s distinction and opposition is present, history in
both caSf!S seems on the evidence to indicate an informational ac-
count or the information itself, rather than the hypostati c unit ), of lilt:
past, which our word " histoT)'" sometimes mea ns. ' Th e opposition ,
I R. A. Marku5 iSaI"fllI.",,: H illflry fllft! StKid.J ilf l~ T1t.tfllol.r af Sailt/ .. IIW'l/i", (Cam
124 Uta of lliJIOrl'
the n, might better be expressf'd by ",he sa c r~d ur di\'inc aCCOUnl of
things" and " the peoplrs' account of things:' The hi!Hory is,
moreover, meaningfu l both in the sense Ihat besides the literal mean-
ing there may ht a "high er" liT "s piritual " way in ..... hich il is 10 be
unders tood uud in the sense Ihat aCC'I)"n!s of earlier {'\"cnlS are pro.
phetic of la tu. What Augustine means by ,hI," te rm " history," then. is
true and meani ngful informational accounts about th(' ~ods and (di-
vi nely IiIled ) c\'cnts ora pcuplc ,
It lollows from all this that Ihl" widely acccpterl ac(Ounl of the id ea
of hislOry in antiquity is wrong nn a number of points. In tile fi rs t
place, history was not it phi losophical problem to the Greeks or the
Romans. I1 is no ..... here disrussrd hy th(' philosoph('rs , It ta rn(' in for
som(' cri licism among th e pr('-Socra lics: Plaw's Socralt's rejecled it as
philosophically insuflic:it'nt ht'('aus(' it did nOI ('xplain Iht' ca uses; Ihe
Stoics, Epicurea ns, and Skeplics sca rcely mention('d it. ,-\ristotle sa id
Ihat poetry was mort' philosophical tha n hislOry, hut hf' also st'f'med
to think that his tory in tll(' s(' lI ~r of accurate info rmation ahout a
su bj l"ct was u~eful or nrC'('ssary as a prerequis ite tu the prope rl y
philosophical enterpri~(' of IrarninK tht' ca uses , This "it'\\' sun'iH''(t in
the Peripat etic School lon~ "rH'r Aristot\("s d('al h, and durin~ Iht
renascenc(' of tht' school in late antiquity ('\,('n the Mas ter's rcsumr-s
of earlier opinions alxlUt wha t('wr problrm Iw happrnro to hc con-
s idcring wcre ca lled hislOri('s hy AI('xandtr of Aphrodi~ias and Syria-
nus, But for all thaI, history was s till not a philosophical problem ,
And this is not s urprising; ielr history, as has bt'cn 5('(' 0 , was nul an
entity or a category of rea lity ~u('h that O ltt' might h:",c dillicuhy
understanding il.
S('cond, his tory was not rela terl by a ncir nl writ('r5 to the ways in
which Ihc\' understood tim(', Time did COnll" in ror som(' consid era-
tion by philosopher'S and ot he rs; and il i~ ollr of Aristotlc's categories,
al least in som(' ('lIumerations of them in th(' corpus, BUI if time as
the "when" of something j>IS(,S phi lo!'iuphi cal problems, time as the
medium of hisHlr), does nOl , Pr rhaps this rr Ot'clS a kind of philoso-
phical nai'vr-:tf about the logical rr-:lat ionship \x't w('ell the ideas of
time and history , hut it s('cms unlikdy that this problem would occur
to someone who did nOI Ihink aOOUI tht c at e~ory or ('ntity " history,"
brKl!!~ , 1970), pp, 14-1 5,231-32 1 m"krs trn- umt point w hill' $hl!w;n,1I; tht dHrl'fl'ncC'
~(wt~n what AURuSl; nt :m d Cullma nn mun b~ "!L<III'Tl'd his lOrr,"
125
and did not think that history indicated the whole temporal process
of a thing. The idea of history, then, is not understood as being
dependent on or derivative from the id ea of time. At any rate, there
is not a single view of lime as a circle that all Creeks accepted, as is
supposed (see p. 12. n. 34 supra).
It is also not the case, third , that either time or his tory was a
great problem from the point of view of Greek or Roman religious
thought. So it is a misunderstanding of ancient thought to say that ,
sin ce time was understood as cyclical, it "must be experienced as an
enslavement, as a curse ... everythi ng keeps recurring . . . . That is
why th e philosophical thinking of the Greek world labors with the
problem of time and also why all Creek st riving for redemption
s~ ks as its goal to be freed from this e ternal circula r course and
thus to be freed from time itselr. '" Time may have been a puzzle to
certain ancient writers, but there is no evidence of its having been
experienced as an .. ensla ....ement" or a curse." Nor is it the case
tha t philosuphers " Iabor" with the problem of time, nor does any
Greek stri .... ing for redemption seek to be liberated from time. In -
deed the stri ....ing for rlemption is a ty pi cally C hristian goa l, bUI
not Greek or Roma n.
History is also not a theologica l or religious problem for the
C hristians. It figures in their apologetical and exegetical writings,
but in neither case are there problems posed Ihat relate la C hristia n
doctrine. History does not fi gure in the creeds or in the antiheretical
lite rature in which C hristian doctrine was bdng fo rmula ted . There
were speculati ....e problems raised and discussed in this earl y period
of Christianity, but hiuary was not one of them .
Fourth , neither Greeks no r Romans nor C hristians understood
history as ha ....ing a pattern . No Greek or Roman has been found
saying tha t it is repetitive, nor any C hrist ian saying that it is li nea r
and once and for all . In order for someone to fi nd a pattern in
history, history must be taken to be the sort of thing th a t is capable
of exhibi ting a pattern ; that is , a composi te whole, made up of parts
capable of being organized in a conceivable pattern . I n other words.
history must be understood as the coll ected temporal career or
process of a thing. But no one in antiquity unders tood history in
this way: not the Greeks and Roma ns, and not the Chris ti ans . It
might be argued that Augustine comes very near or that he creates
the condi tions for unders tanding history in this new way; b ut this is
10 read Augustine from th(' point of \'iew of lalcr tradition.
Finally, whi le history dot's. as is widely belifvcd . hecome mean-
ingfu l in Christian tho ught . this d O<'s n OI secm 10 be due 10 reflection
on [hdr rel igious hc.-lids, or for any th eological reasons. Rather. the
J ews and , foll owing them , thl' Christia ns s uppose that their Scrip-
tures were or conta in ed histories. In this Ih ey conformed 10 contem-
porary usage, which allowed that a history mig ht be ahoul gods or
divine acts and t ha t it need nol he trlle in the older s('nse of conform-
ity to observed lacl. In Ihe apologies lh('!'.c histori{'"s WCT!' used 10
s how how bad the popular rrligioo was and how mu ch better C hris-
tianity was, And in tht ('xt"grtica l .....orks apparent incon sistf'n cies or
immorali ties were ,'xplainrd hy th e U Sf' of nonlilcral exegesis. Nonlit-
e ra l exeges is .....as a G reek iTn-ention. dating hack 10 Ih(' l'iflh century
at leas!. So t here ..... as nothing n('w in tht' C hristians applying nonlit -
eral exegesis to thrir Scriplur('s. What i:-; lIew is that the samr ac-
count Ihat is called a his tor y is also sa id 10 ha\'(' some other meaning ,
Thi s is a reg ular feature of the C hristian exegr-ti cal litr-rature. so tha t
history acquires th(' capacity to hea r som(' otht"r mt'anin!<!: in con nec-
t ion with rel igion and through Iht, a~ elll' y of C hris tian thought . but
for reasons that are not so much theological as apologctical and ex-
egetica l, Put some ..... hat differe ntly. th(" wid('l y accepted account finds
the vast difference hctween the Graeco- Roman andJuclaeo-Chris tia n
ideas of his tory to be religious or. more precisciy . theological; accord-
ing 10 the evidt"nce examined Il('rt", the ralha slight dif1(:renccs arc
rht"lorical and litt-rary. It is, again. only from the standpoint of tht"
later trad it ion , a nd reading ancient It'xts f(~ trospt'c ti\'(: l y, th at the
changes appea r to be rela lt'd to C hristian doctrint"; for it is Iypica ll y
modern to suppose Ihat history is the ~sse n ct' of C hri stianity. Cull-
mann may be correct when he argut's that "All C hristian theology in
its innermost essence is Bihlical his tory."! hut he is not correct in
supposing that tht' C hris tians saw themselvt,s and Ihr-ir fait h in that
way in the early cemurit"s. Nor is he correct in s uppos ing that the
Chris tian view of history is fu nda me ntall y d ifferent from and opposed
to the Grae<:o-Roman .
The account that has been accepted by scholars for such a long
lime tradi tionally claims the authorit ), or early Christian thought.
The essential s of this account are: ( I ) the circula r pattern of time and
! Ibid,
COlldwilJ1I 12 7
Several observations might t,c mad c at this point. Rat he r than the
radical change thal is widely hclie\'ed, the d e\'e!opmenl of the idea of
history in antiquity diliplays considtrablt" conlinuity bolh in Ihe sub-
jects that a his tory might be about and in the kinds oflhin g or {'Illity
that a history might be . Tht' ea rlies t su~iccts. ('vcnts of social or po-
litical imporlanCl', natural things, and Ihl' particularly dramatic use
about episodes in the lives of pcnons of great cu ltural s tature, re
COllrius;Oll 129
the changed usagr of his lOry is louno . a nd t ilt' kind of roll" played by
the te rm in Ihest' wo rks sug!itt's t. as a s.'col1d ohs('n'alio n. thal the
changes a rc dul' to lilt-rary a nd rhe tori ca l. filther tha n theological.
consideratio ns.
11 has a lready iwcn nu!r-et t hat Ih(' C h ri J; ti;l1l w filt'rs If Ih(" tirSI IWO
('("nl uries wrn' rhetoricians hy training ,' The litl lH'rs of Ih(' la lt'r
JX'riod . too. w('rr Ira inl"d rhrlUrs . .-\m o tl~ Ill(' (:rccks. th t' Cappado~
c ian Fathe rs, Bas il Iht" Gna .. (;rcR(lry of :":aziamms. and Gn'gnry of
~yss a \,'e rr all nul only lrainrd in rlwlnric. hut il lso \ \ '( ' rt' rht'tors hy
profess ion for SO t1l(' l il1ll' ," GI'(,~tlry of ~a7.ia Il Z Il S \\'as known as thr
"C hristian D e t1l()S\ht'I\Cs" III lilt' lhz'IIUilll" sdmlilrs. ill1d his (J,a tiuns
werr a subjec t Clf com m r nl:try duwn 10 tll\' s ixh'('I\l h {'C'lllllry ,: :\ moll!(
tht" Antiochen('s, 1;U1wd Iflr th t'il" li lt'rott or " his lnri eal " l'X('!( 'sis, T tl{'o-
dart' of Mops urs lia was a s w <lrlll ur till' ('mint'll! pa!(i11l orator I.iha-
lIius. as w(' 1t as {lfIlL(' C h r ist ian D io<!orus o rTar.ms .~ .\ ne! DicKtorus'
o lher famou s pupi l W;! ~ J ohn. (';IIIt'd Chrysostolll . tha t i ~ . (;old (' ll-
llIo u tnr d , Iflr his c'loqu(,lltT frum th(' pulpi l. \\" h idl \'it'(l \\"i lh thal uf
Libaniu s in thl' Council, " Amc)I!g tht, I.<l tin f:I\ lwrs. ( : ~prian . .-\rn o-
bius. Lactanlius, itlld Augu stim. ;111 Afril-'lIis, \HTC' all rilt'tors hy
Il' ainin~ <lfId prulrssin n hl'liWt, lurnin,lC ,11Ii .. tlllt'III S III 111 (' SI' r\' j(,(, Ill"
C hristillni ty.' '' i.aC'lan(i us was na med hy Diudc'li ;m prul(-ssor of rll('I-
I.."
\ I'p, K1 0-101' . ;iI)f )W, f c'n li!!;!!,,1 ",'i""
I / ~I /i" till NlUlHI.. ,m/I'I'''' ", 1,/ 11,/ /#111\"" ,ig..
CI',crk I\rlt'). " , 1:l1'l 1 ''' t' I'W S Ihal h,'I",, :I;,CI, Clll i~l~cn In iWr< \\" ' ft ' ~ lil~1 ,md
lQrr lll051 a polOjl r lit"'II wr'l r rs li,l( llIin )l, '\)I, ,\in ~ 1 p'I.II::lni slll" HUrl Ih" h('~ \\"('rt all
IrainM in rhl'I ori r (p. Hij l. Oil 1111' Ilun tiOlI1 " r r rrn~(''' ~' kC M" , lril c::(' nrph ir..s"phy.
\\" jlli a m R, St'hOf"d1'1 r " l)hil"!i' ~ l h ~ lmrl Nh .. t,,,-i,' ill 1111' .Idl t"tf' IW"" " I ..r ' rl'llarus,"
I i,rdia' Cltril /I/IIIIII 13 I I!15~ L ) : :!2 _:I:! 1 ,', .uduil rs 110;" . 1 - ",;os ...." 1111(" I I.cn:d ~ " , rl",~tI
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Ih t solt pu~ of rd'u l ill~ Ih,' (;"' ~ Ii ..,., l p, :1:.1 1. C l: K. :'ol. (' r:tl lI , " Ifrml(,u~ :tI1I1
H.. lk o i ~li r Cuhurt," Ilnn-tlld T hml , Rn , ,n lI ' I-4!ll : -4 1_,i l
.. 0" Ras iI: 8f<rl h" ld ,\h a llr r. I'II/mlo,( t . Iram. H ild:, C . (;ra(' r r ;\(''' \' " r k: H rnt n
and H(' ml'r. l\1G 1), " , :I:"i; J uhamll's QU:I~ I rn. l 'n/ml"I:, r (t t ...dl1 -:\ Ill " r T'p' Spi"'1rum ,
196:1) :i :':..1(1-4. On Grt!(..ry ;-'; ,''I.i,,,",' I' : .-\11:111(,1'. 11, :HI;; QlI:\51 t n, :I ::n ti , RI>M'mary
Kariliml KUI' Irn- r I li" ,l1o~r 'if .\"1I.:illll~ ~ I , R",/o/ 111111 1'III/n' I/ph" 10 ,d illd: C I:UIl1doll.
1%9 )1 shflws hnw, in ( ; r"~" ry , 11... :lu6" nl I-' \" " r~ IM''''''''11 phil"s"phy :l1u1 rh.- I""" i,
Ira u, IOrn"".1 jll'"'' "IInlli,'I I)f'I\,,,,'" " I" ,. " " "I,,l i ,s " I II ",,,,!!I,, " hid , li'Tm hi~ mind
:Ind u" dtrl ir his wri " n l!~" lp, is !. O n (; "t1I:"n " r :'\ Y-'~" : ,\ II,I1 ... r. 1" :01 ; \.! ":I ~ lrn .
3 ::1:1-4 ,
' ,\lI ant r. PIIII D(D~ !" p, 3-4;; <..!u"slrll . P"'",(~~ c :I : :!:lh,
:\h a nrr. 1'11/10(0,( r. p, :I 70; QU;ISII'Il . I''' 'IO'O~I' :1: -4-111 ,
~ .~h ar'l rr. POI IQ/o,(I'. p. :11:1: QU:Ulrtl , Pntr,uo,(I' :1 : I~H -:l5. Harry ), 1. I-Iubotll
I~ Ch""SO$I "n> a nd Rhl'w rir ," U' I!. C1!-l2-4 J :21; 1- ; li l n :!rninrs hi ~ Ira tl sform atinll of
thr rlaicaJ rllcomiu lII ,
"' On Crpria n: .~ h a nl' r, /'(1 11"'0.( 1-. )1 , 1 ~1:l : QU :I ~I r n . Pnll~lu~ r 2 : 3-41 , l)n ,~rn"biu l :
Ahan(' r. p, 205: Quas,t n. :1 : 38:i. On ' H ,r,anlius: :\lta no"r, p, :lU8: Quast.. n. :.! : :!!-I:l-93,
Cmu:tusior, 131
" Paul Ciholas [- 1-" 011,,: TI,.. :\ 11 ;" ~ I .,.I'~!" ( :/tU ,l IlO I .. ... ,Id 7"! I t!I7I1- 79 1] ".,rrl'l' ll}
u: m;nd s us ,h"l Ill .. rlu hr rs oI1rll n ,ntr:Ulrcl PIa l.. "il l! .\ Iosl's. ,J rl!; uill!/; I",r " ,hl'
dep"ndrll"r ur 1'10110 0" Old "J'rsl:""r nt pmp h" ls .\IId r~ I I(" 'i"lI r 'Ill !> I {)SI'~ " Ip. 121).
" In 1924 Harn.' Huhhrll ("' (: h r\"~ . wm "l ", , "!C' lir,II link Wa$ kl1 nw/l .)1" .hl' I'arl}"
Conclusion 133
biJlory ofChriuian rh eloric, but Ihat by the fourth century rhetoric was in complele
conl.rot of p~a ching . In 1928 a nd 1929 Aime Pucch pu blished a ninf'-parl ~ tudy of
" L' Eloquence chretienne au IV' siede" in the R'VUf dtS COlI'S t/ Co>ifirnfus [29 : 1
(1928), 421 - 31, ;81 - 93, 673-68; 29:2 ( 1928), 177- 87, 633-4.5; 30 ; I (1928- 29),
7!l-a6, 223-3.5. 443-54, 56.5- 76 ]. More rccc:ntl y, in addition 10 the art icles cited car
lier in this chapter, Jacger [Ear{1 e/tris/ill"i!! aM Gruk Paidtill (Cambridge: Harvard
University Prns. (961 ), C haps. I and 2] has discuu cd the early fathen ' adoption of
clau ical rhetoric as part of their transforma tion of G reek filii/till . On the rhetoric of
the New Te5lament itselr. $CC AmO!l N. Wilder, EII,/.1 Christill" RAt/one. TIt, LAfI8l1l1l t gf
IN G.J/M/ ( London: SC M Pre$!, 1%4) . There arc also several \'l~ry detail-oriented
piecn by Antoaio Quacquarclli: LA IftoriCII 41Clirll IIlbirio ( Rome: Edi~ioni Scientifiche
Romane, 1956); Rtlfriat t lilllflill IIIIlnri(nrll (Rome, 1960); $(IUi PII/ril li,i (Hari,
197 1"" {burdtmi fl " Vtlm Cll riJlill'lflnrm - 5), C hap. 1 " I prcsuppositi filosorlCi della
retoriea patriSlica," and " ln ~n t io cd eloc:ulio nella ulorica crisliana anlica," VrI .
CII,. 9 (1972) : 191- 218. Michad McGcc ]"Thematic Reduplication ill C hristian
Rhetoric," Q!llIrltr/.1 jfH4mll / of SfJtII 56 ( 1970) : 196- 204 ] arg ues that "The C hristian
WOf'ld ,ie... . . . changed the INfJJli1lg . . . rathe r tha n the /11"" or rhetorical thcor)M(p.
201). And tbere have brtn a couple or imere5ting SlUdics of Lact<l.ntius debt to Cic
ero: .P. Monat [" Lac tancc Cl Ciccron. A propo$ d ' un rr agment de J ' H~ '~i"J , " R,/lIU
its EtIlduLAtiMS .53 ( 19 7.5) :248-67 ); a nd E. Gareau 1 " 8~t tll'tTt loqwi: Lacun ce et la
conceplion cicironienne de rorateus ideal," Rt~'w dts E/tu/rs U//MS 55 ( 1977) : 192-
202]. Gcorge Ke nncd y ["The Present State of lhe Stud y of Ancient Rheto ri c," CP 70
(1975)J has promised (p. 281 ) a th ird volume in his hislory of rhetoric and ora tory
that wiJIlake u~ 10 .... u. 800 IInd conclude-, by say ing that " Ihe mOl l open rro ntier now
seems 10 lie in examina.tion of the relationship' between the cla.S5ica l tradition and its
varia nts or alternativcs within J udaism, Christianity, Islam. or the cullUrel 01 Africa
or Asia." The brief stud y or ''Judaco-Christi an Rhetoric" in his CIMSitll1 RAt~'it lI11d
lis Cltris/illlllllld Stcviar T1adi/io" fio m AIICinrl/o .\frJd"" Timts (C hapel Hill; Uni vusi ty of
North Carolina PreM. 1980). pp. 120-60, is the OOt to date; scc: my re" ie!>' in Ihe jrmrnal
of W Hiltory <! PAilosopJr:r. fonht:oming. 801 at present th e~ is still no thorough
stud y or early Chri$lia.n rhetoric or of rhetoric's place in the cultu ral hislory of laIC
antiquity. Hcinrich Kuch's stud )' or Ihe idea or philology is part or the work lha!
need~ 10 be: done: Pfli/ol0llU (Berlin, 196.5), scc C5ped all y the r~ !umi, pp. 122- 28.
16 Glan"ille Downey, "The Perspeclive of the Ea. rl y Church H istorians," GRIJS 4
( 196!l): 69. Similarly, J a mes T . Sholwc]/ , "Christianity and HillOty," .J. of Phi/osop"".
PJ}cJcolol}, 0114 So mtific .'oft/hod 17 (1920) :8.5-94, 11 3- 20, J41 - .50] $Cts Ihe sp~ad and
triumph of' C hristianit y as a calamity ror histo riograph y and da.ims Ih al in Euscbiu5
" history is the rCKrvoir not of argumen t, bul of proor' (p. 141 ).
134 Idta of Hu to~}t
tht: task of ecclesiastical hisloriography throughout the Middle
Ages. 1I And it is interest ing to notc that it was pursuant 10 this per-
suasive task , to which history writing was turned by the early Chri s
(ians , that hi story wriling first ca mt' to rd y upon ('x lt'nsi\'t use of
documentary evidence"~ What had first been the tool of the Jewish
apologclicaJ historian Joscphus became the tool of the C hrist ians and
thence a reg ular feature of the discipline call rd history. Eusebius is
fa mous for this, but it is also characteristic of the less famou s church
historians Socrates and So7.0men .
Such changes as were made in the idcOI of history under the impact
of Judaco-C hristianil )" Ihen, w('re rhetorical. and it ....'ould be appro-
priate to sa)' that thl' idl'a . so altered, is a rhetorical idea. But more
important , and notwithslanding the d l'tail inlo ..... hi ch Ihl'Sl' pages
have gone, lhe idea of history in antiquity ..... as not an important idea ,
not one of thl' formati \'(' and widel y inflU('nlial id ras ei dler in th('
Gracco-Roman or in the JudaeoC hristian culturf'. Then' are such
id eas in both cultures. In lhr Graeco-Roman cuhurl'. nature ( qnJ OI~ ,
natura ), wisdom (ootP(a, JiJpitnlitJ) , and tht, good (o.ya86v, honum)
continue to be objects of inquiry and action throughou t alltiquity and
in a ll fa cets of cuhurl'. Simi larly, thr C hristians brgan in tht' third
celllury an examination of thrir beliefs, in which tht" ideas of Ion'
(q,yCll't'l , chorilas), faith ( 1t (O'tl~ .fidtS), and th e tri- unity and perfection
of God ( 8E~, Dtus) figured prominently . On c might Kin other lists
of the important ideas; then' a re other malleTS frequemly d iscussed .
The relationships between tllt" two l'u \lu rcs with respl'ct to such
idras an: many . Sometimes an idea im portant ill G raeco- Ro man cui
ture is taken over whole cloth into Judat'o-C hri sti;:m culture; some-
times an idea originally fo rmulated in Graceo-Roman cu lture is car-
ried over and rrformulated ill Judaeo-Chris lian cult ure . And there
are differencrs be tween the Iwo cuhu res as to t he imponancl' aI-
tached to various ideas. Tht' idea of God. for l'xamplt' , is found in
both cultures . The interpretatio ns given by the two ('ult u res art' quite
different ; but in addition to thal it does not seem 10 be tht' case that
anywhf:re near as much importance is attached to tht' id ea by Ihe
Greeks and Romans as bv. tht' Ch rislians. Th is is not 10 sav. that Ih e
" cr. f loyd Scward Lear, ~ Tht Mtdit"al Aniludr toward H isI00 .~ Riu In llillllt
Pa",pftlt/ 20 ( 1931): I ~- 77.
le i\rnaldo Momigliano, ~ Pa1l: a n a nd C hriStian H isloriO!l; raphy in Iht Fourth etn
IUry I\ .D .," in PafaniJm atld Cllris/ill"i!, ill llu FOII,,1t Ctlll~~F. td . MOOliglia no (Oll(ford :
Ctarendon Prs, 1963). p. 92.
C01Ic/usi011 135
Grt:t:ks and Romans did not havt: or did not attt:nd 10 tht:ir gods and
tht:ir rt:ligious dutit:s as they conct:ived tht:m; but rather. that they
did not experienct: them as g rea t mysteries, puzzles, o r problems to
~ di scussed and allalyzed. In the rt mains of Greek and Roman lit
era lure, discussions of tht: nature of the God head are relat ively infre
quent and seldom of fi rs t-ratt importa nce. It is a measure of the
retrospt:clive misunderstanding of these discussions that thty are of-
ten excerpted and exa mined by modern writers as thnugh the idea:oo
were as important to andent civilization as they are 10 modern . On
tht: other hand , tht:re are ideas which are prominent in Greek and
Roman thought but which, carried over into early C hristian thought .
have little importance. Such, for exa mpl e, is the idea of nature.
Given these difft: rent kinds of relationships between the cuhures as
regards ideas , and given the pro minence that the idea of history has
had in Western cuhure for the past thrt:e or four centuries, it is all
the more in teresting to observe that tht: idea of history was not an
important idea in antiquity. Histo ry does not pose any theoretical or
speculative problems. History nei ther explains anything nor itself
net'ds explanation. In fa ct, the o pposition between history and reason
or explanation lasts throughout aOliquity and provides the basis for
the con tinuing reject ion of history as philosophica lly insufficient. 19
When history was discussed by the Greeks a nd Romans, the literary
genrt: was meant a nd the discussions were carried on by rhetoricians.
The pro bl ems that history posed for them were problems of art , not
problems of science or knowledge. There was " na tura l history" a nd ,
in the later period , " history of opinions"; but history here was just
accurate info rmation , th e facts, or an account thereof. Such knowl-
edge as thi s indicated was knowledge by acquaintance. Hi story was
disl.:usscd by the C hri stians not directly but , rather, in the contex t of
Bible criti cism. Here history, similarly, was the literal or somatic
level or dimension of Scripture, and it was to be unders tood straight-
forwardly . Tht:re was no probl em about understanding "according to
history" ; the problems in exegt:s is had to do with nonliteral exegesis .
Tht: C hristians had a histo ry, found in the Scriptures, which served
them as their equiva lent of the histories of the Greeks and Romans
and which they acceptt'd on faith . Bu t here too there were no specu
.. h wa~ n:jeclcd a5 a rl y a5 HeradilUs; er. p. 25. lUpm. The op~lion m wt'Cn history
and l"C':HOn or ex planation was rei terAted in the exegetir.al diSllnction bctwccn historical
and imdlcc tual inlerpTCUtion.
136 /dta of Hisro~r
lalive or scientific pro blems; on(' Ilt'eded only to be acquainted with
the fa cts.
If the idea of history ..... as not important in a ncient cult ure. it cer-
tainly became so later on . August ine set up tilt' opposition brtwren
sacred and gelllile hisIHr~' ;L~ differe nt hislOries. \\'ith different begin-
nings and ends. going ClII al Ihe SO IlIlt' time and in the :;';1111(, place. The
twO cities are sid t by side ill this world and in th e ulli verst', But the
history of the cel est ial city is provicicntia l and ils ('nd is sah-alion: ilS
meaning a nd e nd arc nul thosr (lf tilt' hisl!lry of Ill(" !e rrt'striai ci lY.
T he g r ea l allth()ril~' t'luorcd h ~ AU).::tl Sl illt" and tht' IlUi lll t'IT tll )It'<1
availabilit y of the Cify Iif' (;011 during the StLtH'ctiing n'lIt uries estab-
lished the distinction between sacrf'd a nd prnfillle' hi stOry as a fun -
damenta l (metaphysical) di stinctio n in W" ~>I nn thouKht. .. But
sacred and profan e his tory wrrc fl ot only u nde rs!Uod 10 tw d iO(: rt nt.
It came to he unders tood a lso that Ih(' sa(rld his tory. which bega n
with the creat ion nf t h.. world and wo uld ('nd willl thl' st'colld coming
of the messiah ,t' which dcpendf"d for its r('liahilily upo n th(' di\ine
a uthority of inspired authorship rath('r than upon tht' In("rf'l y human
authority of observat ion and inquiry, was IIl1' mcasu r(' of all oth('r
his tories . If th en' was a confl ict octW(,I'1I what wa ~ found in the
sacred histor\, and what was saki som('wlwrt, l'lse, til t' laller had to
~ considered incorrect, l.ikcwi s(", since th(" sacn'd history began with
the crea tion of the world. any local or na tional history was under-
s tood as taking place ..... ithin tht, tim(" continuum established therehy.
The histories ..... ritten durin,!!; tht Middk Ages W('f(' , fo r tht' mos t part ,
ecclesiastica l his tories, tdlill,Lt about 111(" p ro.'::r('ss of the ce lestial ci ty.
the kingdom of God 0 11 t'a rlh , and procf'r"din.':: from ('rea linn Y It was
gun with I h~ CIr''''''''II/'III11 ofJulius Articanul. which lI r\'ull'd IWO hook! U) Ihr pc:riod
from cru,ion 10 M ~ . This ... u rotlo"'l'd b\' i::uS('btus in Ihr ,'onsuucli un of hil
Cltrlllliclt, which was a hiSloric:al sourCl'lxlok (or'lhl' lIe~1 th0ll5:lnd ytau. t:r. Milburn ,
111/.1 CA,ls/ill" 1",,,.pt'II'i"~s 81 His/o~t, pp. ,S8-tiO.
11 for u.amplr . PrO'Jpt'r of Aquilainl" s CIr,o~i("1tt .1I".e.lI," pn)('l'm, !rum ..\ d am \I')
A .D . "55. GrrKOry of Tours' Hislorio Fra~ro"'''l beRilll ... il h thl' rrtalion . l ~ido rl' of
Seville's C/t,omu ,"lIll1rll is a uni \'l'rsal chronidl' from crl'ali'lIl 10 ... . 11. 6 15. Thl' ..... ork,
of Ouo of Frtising a nd VinCl'I1' of fkoau\'ai5 bolh procffri from crl'alion tn Iht' I'lId of
Imlt: .
Conclus;on 137
(Berkeley: Unive n ilY uf California Preu, 1964), C hap. 6; J ohn Baillie. TIlt BtUt! ill
P'n,rtsS, C hap. 3; Wallace K. Ferguson, TAt RtJllliml1l(t ire His/flric/d 17t~tlet, Chap. I.
'" See Oon Cameron Alien, 1 ~ U6rrJ '" NNIt (U rbana: Univeuity u( lIIinoiJ Preu,
1963), Chap. 6, espially pp. 117fT.
71 Accounts of these his loriograph ical devdopmen ts d uring the Renaissance may be
round in: Grace E. Cairns, Pllilolophiu of HiJ/(1) (New York: Philoso phical Li brary,
1962), Pari 2 C hap. !I; Frank Man ud, ShflPu of PleilaS4lf1llitlri His/ory (Stanford: Stan
ford Univenily Pms, 196!1), Chap. 3; Pa lrides, Pltonix IIM LA" tr, C haps. 5-8, a
more detailed s tudy: Winston H. f . Ba mes, "On Hi"ory. I.- Hiuorical Inq ui ry,"
Dwrltsm UII/vmilJ' j OllrM/ 8 (1946-47): 89-97; S. G. F. Brandon, "B.C. and A.D. : The
Chrin ian Philosophy of Hislory," History T.dflY t !l (1965): 198-99; 8eatrice Reynokb,
"Shifti ng C un-ents in Historical Criticism," j lll 14 (1953), especially pp. 480-92.
138 Idea of HiJto~1'
concerned , this consti tut es a return to the ancicnt Grt'ek and Roman
idea of his tory as an account of even ts in t he hum a n world, d istinct
from myth and fable in that il ('xclude's accou nts of gods . miracles.
a nd lhe like. But while lhl' biblical beginn ing and ("nd or the histor-
ical cOnlinuum and tht" miraculous ('\"enlS of Iht' sacred history
dropped OUI of the later dew. t ht" pro\'id ellt ia l mf'a ning attribuU'd to
eve nts has proved more persis lt'nl. Ew n t ho ugh lht Juriaco-C hris tian
beginning and end of histury Wf'rt' n'lrgalt'd 10 Iht' sta tus of
"mythology ," the notion that history is movi ng toward somt' goal or
cnd has sun'j\'ed. Bayle. Vohairr, and othtTS "f,he rn~ I'(lopidiJ ltJ may
not have believed that history was going anywhrTr. hut the G erman
Roma ntics did , If the p n)\'idt:ntia l ml';U1in ,~ of hi"tory was ft'movcd
by seve nu~enth - and eightet'nlh-ct'nt u ry Frt'nc h thinkers, it \\'as put
bac k by eighteenth- and nin r tt'enlh-('rn tury German philosophers of
history- with the differr nce that for thr ill th (' dt'\'('lopme nl is im-
manen t ra the r than tra nscrnden 1. Thus history has ht"l'nmt" a ma tte r
of sustained phi losophica l and thcologica l inu'rt'''1 ill Iht' modrrn
world ,
All of these deve lopments- and this is, (If courst', only a "kru:h of
the later fortunes of the idea of history- an' hased on Augustin(,' s
distinction between the twO histori es and thl' attribution to t ill' sanf'd
history of a provide ntial or salvational mea ninJi!: ' In urder for lh('r(' to
be philosophies or theologies of history, hO\\,l'\'('r, hi "tory mu st fi rst
be und erstood LO !)(' the sort of thint{ about which Iherl" (1111 bl' a
philosoph y or a theology, That is to say, history must bt- un d('rSlood
to indicate the whole temporal proc('ss or ca n 'eT Cif a thin!!; takt'n
collec tively , History in Ihi s sense is some lhin~ ra (hrr dilte rrlll from
the various senses oflh e term that ha\'{' bc{'n ('xa min ed in th{' prt'ccd-
ing c hapters. In Greek a nd Roman a nd Christian writ ings alik{', his-
tory meant an informational aCCOUnl or accurat{' inform,u ion about
various sorts of things. Thrrt' was a grnl'ral distinc tion brtwet'1l uses
in which the form was emphasized and IhOst' in which the content
was e mph asized ; that is. he twcen his tory as a l itera r~ grnre and his-
tory as informational accoullt. Tht' lallt'T ~e nu s ca ll1(' to ha\'t' samt'
modified senses in t.tler a ntiquity: an informational aC(,(IlIlH ill
which accurdC)' was less important than ellleTlilinment Ill' imlrut'tKIIl,
history as stor y, <md Ihe infurmation abuut some thing 0 1' somcune
taken as a collecti\'e whu\e, histury <IS Ihe ~Sl . This last sense most
near ly approximates histol'Y in the se nse rt"tjuired 1'01' philoso phy UI'
theology of history. BUI in al1liquit~ ;1IIt! t'\'('1I ill Augustint' Ihis does
Conclusion 139
not seem to be quite the same sort of history, for all the ancient
histories are human productions.
Written works called "histories" arc, of course, the products of hu-
man art; and history as a literary gcnre is largely concerned with the
rules and styles for producing them . History as informational account
is also a human product, both in the earliest sense that it is the result
of someone's inquiring and in the later sense that an accou nt of the
information about something is possessed by or known to someone,
handed down or reported by someone. Here a very great difference
between ancient and modern ideas of history appears. For while in
the ancient world there is no hiSfory apart from human thought and
art , in the modern world there is such history, and it is this to which
human thought and art are applied . The difference is between ( I )
someone giving, writing, or knowing the history of something, and
(2) something hIJuing a history, which someone might attempt to learn
or tn communicate. The difference may be described as one of in-
dependent existence or subsi:. . ..;nce. In modern thought there is his-
tory independent of any knower or writer as an aspect or dimension
of Ihe subject thing, person, or nation whose history it is. History
thus has become a category of reality, and in that sense a subsistent
entity . And j ust as one may theorize or speculate about time, space,
and number, .)\o one may speculate about history .
But history is not this sort of thing for late antiquity or for Augus-
tin e. Their usage of history as the past is closely conn ected to the
notion of information or the facts as human productions and posses-
sions, not as possessions of the subjects of the history. Augustine may
want to talk about the history of the two ci ties in this later sense as
the whole temporal process or carttr, but he never uses historia or any
cognate word for this purpose. His words are cursus, excursus, and pro-
rursw.~ The inquiry thus comes to a second signifi cant negative ob-
servation about the idea of history in antiquity: that history was not
understood as a subsistent en tity . But Augustine'S rhetorical and
apologetic differentiation between the two histories and the notion
III Augustine speaks of the "tourn ((I! rJIU) of the most glorious city" (I!I.IS) and the
"courses (CltrSW) of the two cities" ( 15.21), of the "origin and career (tJrfllrSIIJ ) a nd
final end o f t he two cit;e,~ (11.1), and their "career (txCUnus) . . . until hUffiiln beings
ce.:ue to reprodua:~ (1 5.1). their ~origin and progreu (pt'orurm.) and final end"
( 1.3!1 ). The very first sentence or the work declares Augustine" inten tion 10 derend
" the most glorious cily orGod both in this (Quuc of timcs ( i~ A ImI/HInl m curSII')" and
in eternity ( I. pracf.); similarl y 10. 15. Sce aoo IR GtMJim G6 ulkram ImptrJIdimt 5.4
and Df DtxtrilfG ChriJliaM 2.16.25.
140
th at each had its ow n beginning, course, and end provide the starting
poi nt for tha t pa rticula r phase in the developmen t of the idea of h is-
tory fro m which it emerges as , in one sense , this subsisu:nt enti ty. So
that the later idea of history as a 5ubsistrn l ('mit )'. which is the idea
involved in modern philosophies and theologies of his tory. develops
from-and only develops from- Ihe rhelOrical inlerprelation which
Augustine adumbrated in his Ci~, of God.
An objection might be raised at Ihis point. and respond ing to it
provides an occasion to reca pi lUialC' the argument of thi s book. T he
accep led account has been Iha l tht' Judaeo-Ch ri st ia n idea of history
was somet hing entirely new and essentia ll y oppost"d to the G raeco-
Roman, which it s uperseded. T ht' latt('r was history as drcul ar. rep('-
litive, and meaningless. bu t th(' rorm('r made it lint-ar, onct' and lo r
all , a nd meaningful. Thus C hris ti ans in\,cntro thc ph ilosophy or his-
tory, a branch or p hilosophy tha t is or grrat in tcr('!;( in thr: modr:rn
period, whi ch fi rst camr: to express ion in AU!i!:ustinC"s Ci{I' ofGod. T he
r:ssentials of this account art' innova tion, op position, and SUpt'fSt'S-
sion, and it cha racterizes not only stucl i('s spl'C'ilically or tllf' idea of
history in a ntiq ui ty , bu t also general st udies or th(' relation hetween
"pagan" and "C hri stia n " in thf' cult ural history of tht' anci("nt world.
I have been argu ing, on , ht' COllt rary, tha t wha t t hl' C"arly Christian
writers meant by history was not somt'l hin .~ c'sscn tia ll y ncw and dir-
ferent , th at there wer(' nm widely 3t't't'ptt'd paltt' fIl s of t' irC'lt's \s.
lines, repet ition vs . uniqueness, and so rorth , and that neither cuh urt'
inve nted ph ilosophy of history or philosophized abou t history at a ll .
because neit her und('rstood history to he tht' whol(' t('m poral process
of a th ing taken coll ecti q 'l y and unders tond to tw a possess ion or
att ribute orthat thing (i.('., as indt'penrlt'n tl y s uhsisti ng) which is p re-
requisite 10 any theorizi ng or p h il osophizi n~ abou t it.
G iven tha t a rgument , tht' objt'ct ion is this : if I :<\ay that al though
Augustine does not usc histaria lo r this, h(' might S('f'm (o r may ha\'t=
wanted ) to tal k about hi:<\!ory a:<\ the- whole- ("o urs!' of a people's
career, am I not ad mi tting, in cITect. tha t somtthing rad ica ll y new i5
rou nd in Augusli nr.' s thought, a nd thus tha t ttu: acct'ptt=cl accuun t of
the idt=a of history in antiqui ty can he dt=rended in a morlifit'cI for m?
The argument would hr t ha t there really is a nt'\\ and op posed idea
of history here, but th at it is not ('onnectt'cI wi th hi5tO,io a nd in cog-
nates unt il laler ill the \\'es tf'rn traditiOIl.
There arc severill d ifft' r('llt answcrs to this obj('ctioll . T o begin
with, when AU!i!:uslim' Sf'('ms, rrom n ur pn int IIr \'if'\\', IU be talki ng
Conclusion 141
a bout the whole temporal process, he uses (as I have pointed out
above), the words cursus, ~xcursU!, and procurJus. All of them derive from
curro, to run; thus cursU! means basically a running or course as the way ,
path, or passage run , a nd thus it comes to be used figu rati vely for the
cou rse (direction, way) of ho noTS ," ballles,2fI life,2!I o r, more vaguely, of
thingsJO and of times, the CUrJUS tnn/Jf1rum ,'1 which is precisely the phrase
that Augustine himself uses a t the o utset of the City oJGod ( I .praef. ).
ProcurslJ.s, again, basica lly mt.:ans a running forth or forward, as in an
a rmy's charge, and figu ratively the outbreak or first appearance of
something. Thus VaJerius Maximus speaks of " the origin and fi rst
manifesta tions (initio procu rsusq lJ.~ ) of virtue ... " Bu t when Augustine uses
the same phrase (CD 1.35) to a pply to the two citi es, translators are
tempted to render procursus as " progress ."]) I shall not dispute tha t
translation. But there arc two points to be noted about uses of these
words that allegedl y rerer to the whoJe temporal process: first, they
come from the traditional language a nd culture-the), arc no t
J udaw.Christian neologisms- so that if they indicate the whole tempo
ral process as a conceived unity in Augustine, there is no prima faat
reason why they should not have in the non-C hristian traditio n. There
would be nothing radicall y new on that account. In fact, in their con
texts the words do not carry such a burden but , rather, only refer, and
rather vaguely, to the successions of events; second, in Augustine as in
the previo us tradition, these words do no t have any particular a$Sacia
tions with history either as a literary genre or as an informationa l ac-
count, no r are they words that deliberately refer to processes tha t might
be analyzed for such fea tures as goal-directedness or pa tterns of any
sort. They are not, in short , part or the analytical , philosophical, or
theoretical vocabulary a t all . So if they rerer to the whole temporal
process-which I think they do not- it wo uld be misleading to suppose
that they deliberately refer to it in a ny philosophicall y serious way .
Jo c, ~,Cochrant, (;h1ij/il",i~r 4,,,1 Cltmi(tI! ( :/lII,m 1="1'" York : O ,do..r! l'n htr5 il !
Pr~ss , 19'11), p. 68. Such a \'i ~w is no!. hOWf\"f'r, rf'5lrirIMIII) il1ldl('('\ual hhlorilUl$ or
a pUI JII:~ntrat ion . Brnnk~ Od~ J l"irJi/..4 Sf"~r ill (;il'ifi~/J P"'/~I 1( h;lO rd : Clartnrlol1
Pros. 19(4 ), p. 3891 ohS("r\' ~ Ihal ' irjl;iI"", . . ~'II' in Rumr IlI r parllr!iRm and .toa l or
all hiswrical lI C"lid IY.- Cf. R. D, \\"i lli 'lm ~, - ' irgil." (i,"" &" HnH/l. X II,' S~I/"~I" ilf Ill,
C/4JJKJ :\"0. 1 (Oxford: C larC"nr! nn "rl'$.' , 1%7 1. p. n .
" Tht cri liqur skrlChtd hrn' is dl'\'r IOP'"d :ou IMlg lh hy Qu~nt in :-'kinnn... i\I r anin.1!;
~nr! Unden la ndinQ; ill Ih r H i$I" r~ uf Idl"Is." 11 ~ Th . H ,19l'i!l) : :1 .i:J. ~~. "'iIIl .Jnhn
Ouon , "Th~ IdrntilY of Ih r HiSlnry "f Ir! ra~. " Plu/nlf/l~r H ( I ~I : fI.) - II~ : 1.ouis O .
Mink , ~Chan!1:r and Causalit y in Ih,' Ui510'1 uf Idr:l$:' f.'itlllrmllr (;I"/U~I .\"IIIJi,., :!
( 1968- 69): 7- 2!i; anr! " Ifrrd Somali . .. :\Ir lhodlll,~y in thl' HiS l nr~ "I" IlI ra $: Th~ Casr
of Pi~rrt C harron ." ) otmlltl ~r IM II/J'''~ r '!f "hi1n'OP~1 I"!. { I!17-\ ) : i - :!.l . ..I, Irr :\( I ~ in 19-15
H:uo kl Chtrn i~~ had di~Jll:nn5l'd :. ~i miln rall; ... ~ in I'l r.. "ni. SI'h"la r~h ip a~
" r~uoj lion ": $1'1' Tbr RiJJI, ~f ,11, f.-m! r :Irnil,,!r f 8rlhh-~ : l"nhr rsi ll "r ClllilC,rnia
Prtu , 19'15: rriss urd . :"<tW Ynrk : KU.151'1I ,md R U~5r ll . 1!lI.i:! I, I'P, 1;111:
.. Su Skinnfr, " ~ll'an i n.l:" anI'! l ' nr!nSI ;tllrl inJ;: in Il i" h' ~' (,I' lr! r 'ls." I'P. Ill- I:!.
Conclusion 143
the fUlure, and earlier writers were not trying to say or saying badly
what later writers finally did say.)! Writers say what they mean as
best they can ; we must he careful not to confuse the two valuable but
different tasks of understanding what an author's statements mean in
their own context and understanding what was made of them by
later interpreters.
Thus the objection brillgs us back to an important point, already
premised in Chapter I , of methodology in the history of ideas: that
writers, texts, and ages are to be interpreted and underslOod not in
the inherited terms and categories of the interpreter's own age and
circumstances....- however familiar and unquestionable these may seem-
but, rather, in their own terms. As Quentin Skinner observes.
"The essential question which we therefore confront , in slUdying any
given text, is what its author, in writing at the time that he did wrile
for the audience he intended to address, could in practice have been
intending to communicate by the utterance of this given utterance.""
Augustine was not trying to invent the philosophy of history, nor
was he "anticipating" eighteenth- and nineteenth-century specula-
tions on the pattern and meaning of history ; because for him as for
the ancient Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions gen-
erally, history was not the sort of thing that could exhibit a paltern
and meaning. What Augustine was trying to do was to defend the
religion he had adopted with the weapons at his command. That the
rhetorical motif of two cities and two histories was used by later wri-
ters in such a way that history came to he that sort of thing, came 10
be conceived as a subsistent entity, does not mean he himself actually
did or " must" have had such an idea.
.. Erne!! G. Sihler, From A",c .... ' .... /0 .."'.( IIJ/i,... . E U'!YJ o~J S/"Ji,., [)(s/m.( 11 illt fllr COlI'
Conclusioll 145
I4c/ arlll (A'!f1icl ejClauir Pagallu m alld CltriJtiQlljl] (Cambridge: Camllridge Univenit y
p~ , 1923), p. viii.
- Ibid ., p . ~.
1. A. D. Nod: (CfllvtrJjo" (London: Oxford Universi ty Press, 1933: 1961), pp.
160-63J, realized Ihe rundamenlal dirrerence between what " religion' meant tn the
G~ks and Romans and what it mean. toJudaeo-Chrillianit}". Auguuint is the cru
cial figure in the cultural history orJale an tiquity !x:cause ht both crtattd and legiti
mir.ed the synthtsis of the Gratco-Roman and JudatO-Chrislian cultures that direclly
formed medieval Eumpt"an cultu re a nd Ihus indil"t'!ed y rorms our own. In H.1. Mar
mu's Sai"t AlIglIJti~ d /Qft" dt III ",/llIrt UliqlU (Paro: Hocard, 1938), the most innuen
tial mod~rn study or Auguslinr:'s thought in n:lation to classical culture, it is
rtfX"aledly observM Iha! all euitul"t'! is to be rdigious: e.g., " tht rigid subordination or
all manirestatioos or spirit to the religious end that dominates the entire doctrine or
culture" (p. 510) or " the care to subordinatt a ll cuhur~ 10 the only ne<:essary, the
I'tli~ious r:nd~ (p. 518). But tht rrligiocent rism in Christian r: ulture ....as nOI invr:nlcd
by Augunine; it may apprar 10 us sprcial in his thought b:ause ht is the first 10
explicitly acrrpl, in the lk doctrillQ cbriJlilUllJ, the " pagan" ans and scirncn and to
claim ror thrm an essential runction in the propagation orChriSl ianity.
Appendix: Bibliography of Works on the
Accepted View of the Idea of History
in Antiquity
A. GENERAl.
Patrides, Constan tinos A. Tht Photnix and tht LaddtT . Un i\'ers il) of
California Studies in English Literature. No. 29. 1964.
White, Lyon . "Christian Myth and C hristian Hi story." Journol oJ the
History DJ /dtas 2 ( 1942 ): 145- 58.
Collillgw()(KI. Robin Gcorge. -rh, f{/" , (If /'/U(OIY, espialJy I't. I. p,mLS.
3 and 4, :md Pl . 11 , I);II' IS. I and 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
194!i.
Den Bocr, W. "Some Remarks on the Beginnings of Christian
Historiography."' Studia Pa(n's(;ca 4 :348-62.
Downer, Clanville. ''The Pers~c li\'e of the Early Church Histori-
ans," Cud, Roman, and B'y<.an(ine Studies 6 ( 1965): 57- 70.
Milburn. R. L. p, Early Christian InltrprelalioTlj of Hislo'..'f. Lo ndon : A.
and C. Black, 1954.
Shotwell , .lames T. "C hristianity and History ." Journal of Philosophy,
P~1C"ology and Scirntijic ,\fe/hod 18 ( 1920): 85- 94, I1 3- 20, 14 1-50.
HE f.VIO NCE for the thesis developed in this study t:ullsists princi-
T pally of actual ll.'ieS of mopEiv, UTTOpW, hufmia , itnd the like by
ancient authors. The I ndex that follo .....s tabulates all passages cill..!
. in
this study. If is divided into Gn:ek and Latin authors. Every passage
indexed is cited at least once; some more than once. Citations followed
by an astelisk (*) do not (omain occurrences of U:rropfiv,lcrrop(.o., Itisturia.
and so fort h .
GREEK AUTHORS
Aesch. Aeschylus.
Ag. Agar1llfnnon 676--80
Eum. Ellmt'nidts 455.
PV Prm"t tJ"uJ Vinelus 632.
Act. Aetius.
Pill(, Pltla ln 5 .7 [DC 419, 12- 18].
Alex. Aph . Alexander of Aphrodisias.
/" MtliJph . I n Ari(toft'/if Mtto.pll),sirn Camml'lltmm [CAG Vol. I J
9,6; 16, 18; 23. 12; 41.17; 42. 22; 42. 25; 5 1, 12;
52.10; 60. 8; 120. I. 120. 6; 120. 15-17.
In Ari.stolt'lis MflnmJlogirunml/ibros Commmlal'w [CAG
Vo!. Ill . Pars III 3 1. 7-8; 31 . 21-22; 32, 11- 18:
37.5-9: 40. 2~2'1 ; 57. 2- 3: 57. ~5-28.
In Sn lS. In lib",", dl' SmJ11 Cmnmfnturillm [CAG Vo!. () I,
Pars 1] 4. 13-17; 12, H- 12; 72, 3-4.
Antig. Amigollus of Carystus [etl. Beckmalln J. pp. 6, 27,80,
159. 180. 192. 194. 197. 199.202. 205.207.
Ap. Appullonides Fr. 2 [T,CP (."<1 . A. NauckJ.
App. Appian.
RCn/, Bello (;if,ilia 9.67.281 .
Hist. His/aritlt' 12.103.
Pm,! Prof/alio 12.
Arist. Aristotle.
A.Pr. Amli}'(ica Priom 46a24-27.
Ca,l. 0 1' Carlo 298b2.
111111'\ l .rH'm 1111/
.'i''''I/I,. "illrlllllll" 1.1 Ji: I.I ;t.tl~ l : 711 .. I!! : I.:! 1.1 11 I. 1!!2. H~ ,
11. -I.' I . " _"~. ,-,'."! I.~ .I 1., 1. I"_ - I',
, ~ .... , .. ""
-' . _ 11111'"
. . , <)'1'1
~ . ~ "'H'
,"l
.,"1. "I ." ', '. H Hi. :!.1. :!ti: ti. IO.HU :
. -t . -I . ' I I'.-1.I I . I" 11" "I ..
_ .
li.II .!"'.
11Il1f'X UKOl'/11I/
i. ~U ) .
({(JOY ~UJu)'ti1y'T} ti
i.OTpI}<; I!II. ~!I-:\:\ : [UO. [7- :10).
' I'TT'TT: E'TTlS . (Le;; Ti) ' hrITOK lmou<; E1nS'T}IJ.LWv im0iJ.vlliJ.U I~ :\ 7.
H;- nq.
. I 'TT'TT .dnJcr. O! vI}. (~e;; TU ' 11T'TTuKpaTuu<; 1T(Pi. <!JOOEWC; O!v9pw1to\)
il'TTotL1ITlJ.L0' 112H, 12- 201 .
tn)ll9. <!xxPIJ. . 'TTEpi (1\)VOi(rEw<; cbop~.uiKWV 1147, 2/- :\1) .
Gelas. (;l'Iasius.
liE 1I1./lI l'ill E"'-/I'.li(/,\lirtl :1 . 17 .:\-:; , 2K, 29-;W : :UI.3;
:UI. I.
Hdn . Hen)(iian.
111.' . /Ii ,/llfi" , I. 1.1 : 1.1 1.1 : 1.1 1.1 :; : 2. 1.1 : 2. I:; .Ii; 2. I iU
, -Ill . : ,'\ .1-...~ : .'1. -1. ('I .
Hd .. H('I'O( lnIIlS 1. 1.1 : 1.21.7: \.;;IU-2 : l.Iil.2 : 1.122. 1:
2. 1!I.:\: t .2!1 . 1: '2 .:H . 1: 2.9!1.I : 2. 11 ~.I: 2. 11 H. \:
2. 11 !I.:\; :\.;') I. I: 3. 7i .2 : " . 1~12 ,:\.
Henu:1. Ht:rad ilu N,
Q.llolII . QIIIII'.(/;O ll/'.I JI'IIIiI'l'm/ r It'll . ()elomEJll (Leipzig:
!lllhm' l'. [~IIO ) I :\~I , 1:"1-111; li:t :". -1 :\ : li\l ; !I- I /;
77 . !I_ I!I : XU, 2U- to\! . 9 : XI. 11 - 11;: X9. ~ - I t.
Heradi l. I-kradillls I'h ilwiUl'hus (I>K. !/lo .q FI'I'. (22 ) B:E).
IHO . Ul2!1.
Hes. !-It'siOlI.
Up. O/lI'fII rf /);1'., i9:t
l-t om . I-I UIIIII' .
//. lIiw/ IN .j!19- 50 1: 2:\ AH:)-,IH/ .
". H ml/. 111'1,,11; /lflllln;,; :\2,2.
lamh. J:r nIIJlichlls.
\ I JI /11' \ ';/1/ J' YlllIIgIJf;('fl Ic t! ...\. 1': ;tuck (Ldpzig . I HtH)J
11 . :\: 22 , 4 : 23 , !1 : 2t" 11 : :'1), I:I- lli : \1 . 12 ; li6.
!1- [2 : liN, I :' : !~I , I : iU:; , 12: IOH. I J: I :\h. 1:' :
I@, :i .
10. C h r\'S
. \uaHIlt'S CIH'YSUS10ITlUS Uol1l1 Chrysnslum) .
:\(/1'. ./1111. ..\ dl 'I' r ill.' /1I/(a ('fI., 1.6 [/'(; 4 K. 1'15 I I.
D I' 0 (11'. JI/JIllilim' iI,' Om'itl" 1'1 ..... 111111' 7 (1'(; :",,1. I :IH, 7:)!IJ.
155
In MaUh . f10miliae in Matth eum 1.4 {PG 57, 16]; 1.7 [PG
57. 17).
In Psalm. Expositio ;'1 Psalmos 3.1 {PC 55. 35]; 46.1 [PC 55,
188).
hoc. lsocrates.
Pan . Panallienaieus 246.
J. Mart. Juslin Martyr.
Apel. ApoloKJ 1.21.4; 1.22.4 ; 1.53. 1; 1.53.8 .
Dial. Dialogue with Trypho 62 .2; 69 .2.
John ChrysoSlom Ste 10. Chrys.
Lucian
Al,.x. Auxandtr I.
Hipp. H ippiru 2.67.
Hist. corner. Quomodo historia eorncribenda sil2 , 4, 5.6, 7,8. 9,
10. 16. 17.39.42. 55.63.
Im . Imagillts 4 .
lA/M. Pro LapSll jut" Salll/nudum 7.
Scylh. Scyllw 8.
Syr. D. Dt Syria Dea 11 .
Max. T yr. Maximus of Tyre .
Dit!. DissntatiOlltJ [cited by e numeration of F. Duhner
(P";,, D;dol. 1840))28. S; 28 . S-6.
Melh . Methodius of Olympus (ed. Bonwetsch).
ReJurr. Dt Rtsurrtctiont 1.52. 1: 2.25. 1; 3. 17.3; 3.5.8;
3. 18.4- 5; 3. 18.8.
Symp. Symposium 3. 1; 3.9: 10.2.
Nausiph. Nausiphanes {D-K. Vors.'] Fr. (7') 82.
Olymp. Olympiodorus.
In Ale. In Pla/onis Alcibiadem eommenlarium [cd . L C.
Westerink (Amste rdam: North Holland , 1956)]
43. 12; SO. 8; IS4. 9- 10 ; 155. 16-- 17 ; 167.23-
24; 218. 14-I S.
Origcn
C. Gtls. Contra Ctl.mm 1.40: 1.42; 1.43 : 1.41 .
Luc. In Lucam Frr. 17e. 125.2 17, 223.
Princ. De Prinripiis 4. 1. 13: 4. 1.1 6.
Phld . Philodemus.
Rh. Volurnina Rhtloriea fed . Sudhaus. 2 vuls. (Leipzig:
Teuhner, 1892. 1896)] 1.28.34-29.1 1; 44 , 16-
21 ; 200 . 11>-30; 299. 1- 7; 34S. 1- 8; 2. 19. I; !OS
(Fe. XII). 5ff.
156 I mfn. 1.'11'111'11111
2.:\1.:\, 11; 2 . lil. :S~ ; 2 .62.2, I;; 2.71.2; 3.'1 .N: 3.5.9:
.!
; , . '},
_ ,: -
1 .
J ..\ \ "
"1 .. - ;:1
0 .':' oJ . " . 12 ' ."1
. ,!"1 . '10 .. .a/.
:- - 4 -.}, :, . ,'1" . } 1. " ". -.J.
:'-1 IH. I!!: 1.2.2: 4.8..1 ; 4.2R4: 4AO.3: 1,47 .2: 5.3 1.6;
- ...
:} 'l~ . ')
_ - ;'!. : :- 1.I:l
- . .:l - -I - .'\: "4"
" : , l' . ".:. . '} I . . . ') : fiI . 5"
... .v:: 0"q ... 2 :
ThcodorelUS
Dj,,/. Dinlo/(US III [PC 83. 257AI .
/ 11 Am . III Amu! 1.2IPG 8 1, 1668A ).
111 Dall . / "Ooll it fiJ 11 .27; 11 .28 ; 11 .4 1.
III El.. / " EurMtli.~ 31. 14 [PG 8 1. 1125C-D).
I II flOi. I" Ij(l;(lt 15.2 [PG 81. 340D).
h l .fi r. l " j trtmi(JdJ.4 5 {pG 8 1. 7068\ .
h i ,v"h. /11 Nallll ll/2 . 1 [P GH I.179A ).
/ /1 1'.1'. / 11 Psal",i., 1:\ [PG 80. 949B],
In Soph. III Suphrmitlf' 2. 12 1PG 8 1. IH52A ).
III Zach . / 11 ladmriar 14.8 (pC 8 1. 1953 8) ; 14. 10 [PG 8 1.
19568 ).
Pmv. iJt PI'f.!l,jdnllin III [pG 83, 5890) .
Q. D ill /. QlIfIIJl itlllf'.J il/ DtulnollO/niol! tU [PG 80, 4088).
Q. R'K QwltJtill1lf.( i" Libl'oj Rtgllm I . Q. 7 [PG SO. 537C) ;
Ill . Q. 66 JPG 80. 740AI.
Rt f. H i.Jl. Utligius(I I-lis/oria 9 [PGS2. 1377 D] .
T heophilus
Aulol. Ad Aulvl)'rulII 2. 7; 2. 13: 2.20: 2.30; 2.32; 2.34;
3. 18; 3.22: 3.23: 3.36.
T hphr. T hetlphraSlus [Diets, DC1 Frr. 1 1475. 10- 13]; 8
(4 84.17- 181: 91484 . 19-485. 4J : 12 1486. 17- 2 11
LATIN AUTHORS
Ambr. Ambrose.
Exp. Lu(, Expruilio El't1ngt/ii stculldum Ltu;am . Pro!' I [Pt
15. 1607AJ: Pm!. 4 [PL 15. 1609B-C I: Pm!. 7
[PL 15. 16 118J.
In P.J. Enarrationf.5 in Psalmos 36.80 [pL 14 . 1055q.
Amm. Marc. Ammianus Marcelli nus 2 1.10.6; 23.4 . 10; 24 .2. 16;
26. 1.1 ; 27 .2. I I.
Apll l. Apllleius.
Apol. AfJfJlogia 30.
Fiar. Florida Y. 16.20.
Mrt. MtlamorplwSfj 2. 12; 6.29; 7. 16: 8. 1.
PI(H. /Jf D()gtlllI/' p /[II01lis 1.'1 .7.
Arn. Arnubius.
Adv. Nal. Adt'"sUJ Nati()rn>s 1.3 ; 1.52; 5. 1. 5.S. 5. 14-1 5; 5. 18 ;
5.30; 5.32: 5.34: 6 .6; 7.38; 7.44; 7.46; 7.49.
Imln: LocVIlIII/
Aug. Augustine.
CD D,CivitattDti I.Prdef."', 1.5: 1.35: 2.3 ; 2. 14; 2. 18;
2.22; 3. \0; 3.17; 3.26 ; 3.3 1; 4.6 ; 4.3 1; 5. 12; 6.7;
7.27; 10.1 5*; 11.1 *; 12. 11 : 12. 14.1- 2: 13.20.inil .:
15. '*; 15.8; 15.9: 15. 15; 15.17: 15.20; 15.27.inil. :
15.27* ; 16.8; 16.9; 16. 11 : 17.3: 17.8 ; 17 .24.init .:
18.2; 18.8; 18. 10; 18. 12; 18. 13: 18. 16; 18. 17 ;
18.38; 18.10; 18.4 1; 18.4 4; 21.8 ; 22.8: 22.20.
Dort. CII,.. D, D OC/l'j'IQ Chri.d illna2 . l(j .2S* ; 2.28.42: 2.28.43 ;
2.28.14 .
E I1rh. En chiridiQII 3.9 .
Ep. EpistuJa, 169, 1.; 184A .S* ,
Gm. Imp. D, Gm,s; ad liltI'm m impnftctus lib,,. 2.5: 3.6.i llit. :
,.
- 4' .
GnI. Co Manu n. V , Gm,s; cOlllra M allt'chol'os 2.2.3 .
R,I,.. Retractionts 2.69 . *.
Uli/. C,',d. Df. Utili/al" C,.,dmdi 3.5; 3.6; 3.8 .
V,ra R~1. De V,ra R ,Jigi01U' 50.99
Auson. Ausonius 5.20. 7-8: 5.2 1.25-26; 5.26. 1--4; 12.2.4 ;
12 .10 ; 18.5.4 1- 42: 18. 10 .2 1- 22; 19 .76. 1- 4 ;
20.15.69.
Cas . Cassian.
COrti. Co"lal;o. ts [PI. 49)8 .3 [727A) ; 8.7 [732A) : 14.8
(962 8); 14.8 [965A- 8 ): 14.\0 )97IA).
Cic. Cicero.
Ae. Amdf1nica 2.2.5.
Alf. Epi.stuiat (Id Atti(fl11l 1.16.18; 1.1 9.10; 2,5.1:
2.8. 1.1 6; 2.20. 1; 12.3.1 ; 14.14.5; 16. I 'k.2.
Bm. Brntus 16 .62: 64 .228; 75.262 ; 8!\.2t:\fi.
Ca,l. Pro Catlio 17 .39*,
0 ,01'. Of OralO1., 2.9 .36: 2.15.62--64 .
Diu. Or Dil!inationl' l.I H.3 7; 1.l9.38: J.24.49. 50;
2.32.69.
Fam . Eputultu ad Fami/iam 3. 11 .2* ; 4 .2.3; 5. 12.2 :
5.12.3; 6.5.2,
Fit!. D" Finibus 1. 7.25; 2 .2 1.67 : 2 .3 3 . 107 ; 5. 2 .5 :
5.22.64.
In l1, D r intlffltionf t.l9.27 .
ILg. Df ugiblls 1.1.5; 1.2.5-7; 1.3.9.
Nat. D. D t' Nalll.ru D l"onlln 1.31.88; 2.27.69; 3.22.55.
Illll 111'/,:\ l .flHlrlll/l
Fili\str. Fitlstdll)'.
H III'I'. l .ilN'/" ,I"~ 1/(lI'I'n.'ilml' IlIi .H: I;\(). I : I :m .:~ : 1:\11.:".;
I ;i:!.I ,
FUrlUIl . h Irtl Inat i:u Ius.
m/ f t . A I"li,' I(1If'l1II11'(l1' / .illl'; //1 1,-,<1. Halm . 1(1I('luI""1 /.Jlf; ,/;
,\1;1/11/"".1 (I..t"ipzig : Teuhnt!r. 1863)), pp. H:i. 10-
J:~: 1'1.1. 1l-20.
Frnllltl ~ Ian:tl s ( :nl"llt'iills h o nto (et!. \'0111 t!ell H Oll l (Lci
lit'll . I!I;H )J . pp, !Un. 2~ 1 : 122. i : I ~IH , ~ .
(.;ell. ;\ ulus (~lIiu .~.
SA .\'111."/,, tI";I"tII' I.K I: 1. 11 .;: 1. 1:1.111: 1.2:tc:.a p.:
I "~'I I ', ')
_ ' J , ' _
' 'I' . ' .,
I"
\ 1. ('--"
...... "
_ . I c. '1 -, '-'I'
\1. 0u .. ;'\ .."1 . 0u .. ;)
<) , "'
(i.lli. 17.
I.udl. I.udlius )t(!' Marx. I!K):;), Il l::! ,
Macrob, ~I;K:rllbiLl S.
Sf/I. SII/III'I/(/I;/1 I.::! . ~.: UtA : ':U ,1.I1.
~ l al1 , ~Iilrtial.
I:'IJ;I{ H , I!J I ,
/:"fN.l,rJ"(III1I11II/111/ li/,,-; :!, 7, \- ::!:
Mar!. Clip . \Iarliantls ( :apdla :;.:I::!ll: :1.:)511: 5 . ;;!t 1 -~.
Min , FeI , !\Iinut'ius Fdix.
Or /. O('/fII';W 21.1: 2 104 .
Nep. CUl'Ildius Nt!pus.
A. lr. ;\lrihi(/(II'.\ 11 . 1.
All, AII;fII,l 1(1.:\
CIlI(1 (:11(11 :t:l.
p,./o/J, 1',.J0IJ;t/II.\ 1. 1,
Tltflll. n lf'lIIil(IK"I('.1 !I.I .
O\'. Ode\.
Am. A lI/IIfl',1 2..1..1\ ,
M ('I. "'I'f"wlllphll",I' 1:1,:165,
Tr. '1'1';.1/111 204 Ill: 2,+ I:H 1.
PelL 1'('ln miLls,
SlilYI', SIII\'I';('I11/ I I K.1l.
Phclr. PI!ae<lnl.~ .
/-'uh. FIIII/II",' ,\ ,6,2.
Plaut. Plaulus,
!laah, II" rrh irlf',1 I :'lH.
." 1'11. ,\/ ('1111/'1'/'1111 247- H4-
Tlill , T"l/fl/fl fllu.\ :H~ I ,
Prob. Probus.
Wag. Vita Vtrgili 22-28.
Prop. Propenius 2.1.16; 3.4. 10; 3.20.2'-28 ; 3.22.20:
4.1.1 19; 4.7.64 .
Prud. Prudentius.
/-Iamart. flamartigtnia 33~0, 723-24 .
Quim. Quintilian.
Inst. Instilutio oroJoria 1.4.4 ; 1.6.2, 11 ; 1.8.18, 20;
1. 10.40; 2.1.4 ; 2.4 .2-3, 18-19; 2.8.7; 3.8.67;
8.6.65; 9.4 .129; 10.1.101- 3, 10.2.21- 22 ; 12.2.22;
12.4. 1; 12.11.17.
Rufin , Rufinis.
Pr. Ong. De Principiis On'gtnis 3.5.1.
Sempr. Sempronius Asellio IH. Peter, Historiarrum Roma-
norum Fragme,iJn (Leipzig, 1883 Frr. 1,2.
Sen. Seneca (the Elder).
Con . Ex. Conlrovmiarnm fXttrpta 9. 1.
Conlr. Contrl1tln"Siae I.praer. 18; 3.prdcr. 8; 7.2.8; 10.5.
Sua<. SUllSOritu 5.8; 6.14; 6 .15; 6.21.
Sen. Seneca (the Younger).
Apo<oI. Apo<oWcyntruis 1.2.
Dial. Du.log; 5.9.1; 9.9.7.
Ep. EpUtul.u 24.11; 95.2; 114.7.
Q.NaJ. Naturaks 1.11.2; 1.1 3.3; 1.3. 1.
Q uaestjOFIt!S
Serv. Servius, StrVii Grammatid qui /mmtur in Vtrgili Car-
mina Commentarii. 00 . Thilo and Hagen.
Am . In Ameidru Librorom 1.168, 373,382,443,487,
526; 2.15; 3.76; 4.427 ; 7.206; 678, 742; 8.190.
Aud. Atn. Scholia. quibus Servij commentarius auctw tst lA I;
1.651; 3.334; 9.144 .
Sid. Apoll. Sidonius Apollinaris.
Ep. EpUtul.u 1.2. 10; 4. 1.2: 4.3.8; 7.9.2; 7.9.5; 8.3.4.
Suet. Suetonius.
Caiig. CaiiguJa 34 .2.
Claud. Divus Claudius 41.1, 2; 42.2.
/)om. DomiJinnus 20.
Gal. Calba 3.3.
Gramm. De Crammaticis 15, 20.
RMI. De Rhttoribus 1.3; 1.5, 3.
Tih. Tiheriw 6 1.3; 70.3.
11>1 / I/(/n; ! "NW " III/
Tac:. I at:illl.~ .
A,(,,,', A,.,'jrfllll '27*, :lY*.
HiJl. H i,lll/fi(lt' lAM, 4.:-\4 *,
Tt'11 . . rl'rllllli'll l .
Ad N al. A I/.v{/liflllt'.~ 1.9 [eSEt. :W.7:\ . 15- 1fi1. 10 180.!)-
9J. II [Hn, 2:.....26J; 2.1 195. ~ I .
IIpol. AplllflKrlirlllfl 1:-"' [pI. 1. ;\60-..{lIj: J(i;l !:if>4) ;
HI.2 PUt'l: 1~1.4 I:\X7 \: 19.7 [:i88 \.
Or A ll , Or . ~ "illlll 2 ~' [(;SJ~L 20.;t\(i, I+-IH], 28 [:-I4H, +-
:-, ): -Hi [:\7i. 1:\- IIiJ.
5/1"(', 111- :'i/Jl'f/f/rulil IU ICSf/. 20. I :~, I+- I i I.
Val. Ma=<. , .a It'nll ~ 1\'I a XlIllll
' S .'\ __'} .11111
' . h' ...1: -I. .
. : r;, J . '\ ,)..
\ 'aITo
LiIlK- H.t.!i.
/)1' 1.1111(1/(/ 1,1I1il/(/
R rl,I /. /)1' R,' Rn\Jim 2. 1.2.
VegCI. Vt.'Hclim.
M it. /:piflll//tI ft'; lIIilil(//lS I.I)rat'i'.: 1.8: " .28.
Veil. 1'<11. \ ' tl lt'i H ~ l'alt'tTn lus. 1.17 .~ : ~!.~1 5 .
\'crg. "(;'I)1;il.
CII /(I/. C(I/''{''IJlIIII 1 I ( ' .' ). 11.
\'il r. \ 'itnn'ius,
Ard,. nI' ,-t nhif"rf llm I . I .:{, :), ti.
Index lndicum
GREEK AUTHORS
LATI N A UntORN