Rhetorical techniques were pervasive in ancient historiography, so such elements do not detract from assigning any work to this genre.26 Historians used rhetorical techniques to make their histories persuasive.27 Greek historians knew how to present their material in an artistic way,28 and rhetorical conventions affected the telling of good history.29 This influence was especially prominent during the Empire, when rhetorical style affected not only speeches but even Roman literature.30 Romans not only continued the Greek emphasis on argumentative history with an “interpretive superstructure” for the information; they mixed it far more deliberately with rhetoric.31 Pliny the Younger declares that one orator’s histories were as charming as the writer’s speeches, though more concise.32 Even Tacitus, one of the most respected Roman historians and our principal source for the early Empire, was a powerful orator in his own right.33 Although Greek historians on the whole maintained a standard of accuracy in the events they told, rhetorical standards did influence the ways they told their stories and how they conceived historical verisimilitude.
Historians were interested not only in accuracy but also in plausibility and probability,34 as in rhetoric more generally.35 They might claim to prefer truth over style, but so did orators; such claims merely show that they dealt with information as well as style.36 The measure of each of these elements varied from one historian to another, but historians in general both appealed to the historical research tradition and sought to represent the past persuasively.37 Historians could draw on epic literary strategies and interests in how they told their narratives.38
Members of the elite class expected histories to conform to the appropriate historical style.39 Readers noticed when the pre-Christian Roman historian Sallust regularly displayed rhetorical tropes in his historical writing.40 A history written in a style between the normal historical and discursive styles could sell well among the rhetorically trained elite.41
Although some historians sought restraint in the use of rhetoric, no one opposed it entirely.42 “Pleasure and beauty” remained important purposes for any work.43 Not only Thucydides, but even the methodologically insistent Polybius could succumb to the temptation to exaggerate the unique importance of his subject matter.44 Rhetorical conventions also appeared in ancient biography, though more so in rhetorical biographers like Isocrates than others.45 If for no other reason, the prominent role of speeches in ancient histories made the heavy use of rhetoric inevitable.
Some ancient historians allowed rhetoric more control over their presentation of history than others did. As Clare Rothschild points out, ancient historians debated “not about whether, but about how methods of argumentation should be used”: should the orator persuade by logical appeal or “inferior means (obsequy, amusement, sensationalism)”?46 By the era of the Gospels, historians imitated and mixed the various types of earlier historical approaches, including “epic, tragic and scientific approaches.” Some “sacrificed standards of critical research for the immediate gratification of their audiences,” using especially epic and tragic techniques. Meanwhile, “others catering to more critical audiences imitated the more subtle argument strategies of Herodotus and his tradents.” Most mixed techniques to some degree to reach the widest possible audience.47
We should not, however, use the rhetorical element to summarily dismiss the historical value of ancient historical writers; if Theopompus’ rhetoric spoiled his history,48 that of the orator Tacitus did not spoil his.49 Even the best historians employed standards of rhetoric, but they used more restraint in rhetorical embellishment.50 Moreover, though historians even as early as Herodotus employed rhetorical strategies, history was written quite differently “from poetry, drama, oratory, and forensic argument.”51 Most historians recognized that historical inquiry required not merely rhetorical skill but research.52 The historian’s moral or political aims could weigh more heavily than literary artistry, and neither such aims nor rhetorical presentation meant that historians simply “‘revised’ the past to serve their own purposes.”53
Some writers explicitly criticized those more interested in showing off rhetorical skill than in historical truth.54 Lucian expresses this concern in a particularly emphatic manner, heavily criticizing those who overemphasize rhetorical embellishment in histories.55 In his essay How to Write History, Lucian summarizes the expectations of at least the more stringent historical critics (the standards by which other historians could expect to be evaluated).56 He complains about writers who wanted to praise their rulers and generals, but emphasizes that true history must not include any lies, unlike encomia.57
Such writers, Lucian warns, must recognize that history employs rules “different from poetry and poems,” which can blame their excesses on inspiration. 58 “This . . . is the one thing peculiar to history, and only to Truth must sacrifice be made”; one writing history must ignore all other concerns.59 Flatterers work for the present; historians preserve truth for the future.60 History’s purpose, he opined, should not be to give pleasure, but only to be useful; “and that comes from truth alone.”61
Of course, not all ancient historians agreed with Lucian, who is among the most critical writers in this regard.62 We have noted that Josephus was heavily rhetorical,63 for example, composing some speeches freely. Likewise in narrative, comparing his Antiquities with the LXX reveals the degree of his rhetorical adaptation.64
At the same time, we should not obliterate the distinctions between pure rhetoric and the use of rhetoric in historiography (outside its speeches). Pliny the Younger points out that, for all their commonalities, history and oratory are different disciplines: rhetoric focuses on trivial narratives, and history on famous deeds.65 He notes that in these different genres, style, vocabulary, rhythm, and subject-matter all differ.66
Various historians indicate the careful balance they often sought. Polybius recognized the epideictic function of historical writing, contending that historians must render judgments about whether peoples or individuals “are worthy of praise or blame.”67 Moral judgments and rhetorical artistry, however, did not require abandonment of historical responsibility; a history was not a speech (epideictic or otherwise). Thus Polybius at one point warns that in his history he had to differ from what he had earlier written about someone in an encomium. There he had exaggerated the person’s “achievements,” but “the present history, which distributes praise and blame impartially, demands a strictly true account and one which states the ground on which either praise or blame is based.”68 In a later period, Dio Cassius emphasizes that he has given attention to both tasteful literary style and historical accuracy in his narrative.69
Suetonius, though more disposed to credit scandals about some of his subjects than about others, avoids embellishment and would not easily be classed a “rhetorical” historian,70 in spite of his considerable interest in rhetoric.71 But his contemporary Tacitus, a renowned orator who also wrote about oratory,72 was no less careful a historian (and in some respects was more so).
