phrasis2010-01.

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Some Distinguishing Features

of Deliberate Fictionality
in Greek Biographical Narratives

OWEN HODKINSON
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES LAMPETER

Telling Li(v)es: The Overlap of Biography and Fiction

Even among modern works, there is a greater potential overlap between fic-
tion and biography than between fiction and other historiographical forms.
This is because to tell a life (if it is attempted as fully as possible) is to tell of
and speculate on private moments and inner thoughts, in a manner and to an
extent which is less important and not essential to many other kinds of his-
torical narrative. These private events are far less accessible to the historian,
and more leeway for speculation is accorded to even the most serious modern
biography than to the history book. It is for this reason that the fictionality of
biographical texts is not simply of interest to scholars interested in biography
ancient or modern, but is in fact of crucial importance to those interested in
definitions and defining features of fiction itself, since it is on the borderline
between different kinds of narrative.1
For ancient biography and fiction, this importance is all the more evident:
for it is well known that the extent to which a fully-formed or clear concept
of ‘fiction’ existed in Antiquity – in the absence of a word or definition (in
Greek or Latin) which corresponds to our own term or means exclusively
something like ‘fiction’ – is a complex and ongoing debate.2 The absence of a
clear concept or definition means that we must look for instances of metafic-
tion, that is points at which a text displays self-consciousness about its own
status as fiction, in order to show that fictions are deliberate rather than
examples of ‘bad historiography’, ‘bad biography’, or ‘forgeries’/‘pseudepi-

1 As Cohn recognises (1999: 18-37, 79-95). For ancient biography Momigliano (1971: 56) agrees: “the
borderline between fiction and reality was thinner in biography than in ordinary historiography”.
2 Plasma is the closest: see e.g. Bowersock (1994: 1-27); Gill & Wiseman (1993); Morgan & Repath
(forthcoming).

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OWEN HODKINSON

grapha’ (in the case of e.g. autobiographical works and letters attributed to
historical figures), and that at least some ancient authors and readers had
some fairly clear notions of what constituted fiction and what modes of dis-
course and conventions were appropriate to it as distinct from other forms of
writing.
In ancient as in modern biography, we have a borderline case: while there
are several ancient texts which everyone accepts as deliberate fictions on the
one hand3, and many more which everyone accepts as ‘serious’ history or
biography by intentionality on the other4, many and perhaps the majority of
‘biographical’ texts or bioi from Greek Antiquity stand somewhere in
between these poles: are they supposed to be read as historical accounts
(their falsehoods and impossibilities put down to differing standards and
methods from those of modern historians or to being examples of bad his-
tory by the standards of the day), as fabrications to deceive contemporary
readers, as ‘popular’ biographies mythologising or fictionalising their sub-
jects deliberately for a particular readership5, or as deliberate (even self-con-
scious) fictions intended to be recognised as such by readers? The detection
of modes of discourse peculiarly appropriate to fiction, and of distinctions in
the practices of different authors in employing these or not, may be one, or
in some cases the only, method available for deciding such questions about
ancient biography especially. If distinctions in authorial practices can be
established, the presence of fiction-specific modes of discourse in certain
texts may in fact be taken as metafictional indicators which the intended,
educated audience would have recognised and used in deciding to read the
text as a deliberate fiction (i.e. to approach it as they would the novels of
Longus or Heliodorus).

Defining Fiction by Form not Content

While this may seem all very well in theory, it might not be possible in prac-
tice to determine the existence of such a clear distinction in the conventions

3 The ancient novels, containing very clear instances of metafiction and many other indicators besides.
4 Herodotus, Thucydides, and so on for history; primarily Plutarch for biography; though differing
standards of historiographical responsibility might redefine some of these today as other than histori-
cal, intentionality is important here. I am not of the school which avoids reference to authorial intent,
as will have been gathered; in fact it is impossible to talk of or define fiction and still less metafiction
without reference (even if implicit) to authorial intent.
5 See Hansen (1998: xvii-xxiii) for an excellent discussion of the applicability of the idea of ‘popular
literature’ to ancient Greece.

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

in fiction and non-fictional forms of writing (i.e. broadly linguistic, not con-
tent-based features) in Antiquity.6 Cohn provides excellent discussion and
examples of this distinction in modern writing7, e.g. in the use of tenses:
‘Now was his last chance to see her; his plane left tomorrow.’ […] in
a novel [… such] sentences strike as as perfectly logical – or better,
they don’t strike us at all. (1999: 24-5)

By contrast, such a sentence in a serious, historical biography would be

incongruous, although a fictionalising biography/biographical fiction (how-
ever one chooses to label the biographical equivalent of a historical novel)
might well employ this form of writing. The example sentence breaks a
(modern, at least) convention of serious historical writing in employing inter-
nal focalisation, as the Genette school of narratology and many others would
analyse it: the biographer employing it would be slipping surreptitiously into
the mind of the subject to narrate events from his perspective, thus allowing
her/himself the luxury of omniscient and even psychically omniscient narra-
tion. Serious biographers can legitimately permit themselves to speculate on
their subjects’ thoughts and to narrate private events, of course, but the form
in which they do so is different: they use phrases such as ‘must have done’, or
‘perhaps did’ to indicate their speculations, and employ the simple past ‘he
thought/felt’ only when they can adduce documentary evidence to support
such assertions.8 Internal focalisation and the narration of private events are
of course to be found aplenty in ancient Greek texts of many kinds, but the

6 Indeed, Cohn (1999) in proposing this as defining fiction goes against many established theorists who
hold that fictionality resides entirely in the content and/or intentionality, or elsewhere, but crucially
never in the form of words; see e.g. Searle (1975: 327): “The utterance acts in fiction are indistin-
guishable from the utterance acts of serious discourse [… so that] no textual property […] will iden-
tify a stretch of discourse as a work of fiction.” In the face of Cohn’s arguments and examples (ibid.:
18-37, 79-95, 109-31), however, a strong counter-argument indeed would be needed for the Searle
position to seem at all convincing.
7 Cohn (1999); i.e. writing in English and other modern languages, though examples in her book are in
English whether original or translation.
8 Cohn (1999: 27). Additional arguments for the position outlined in this paragraph are to be found
in Cohn (1999: 109-31); e.g. related factors in the case for thinking there is a difference in kind of
discursive mode between fiction and history are that “[history] draws on a language of nescience, of
speculation, conjecture, and induction (based on referential documentation) that is virtually
unknown in fictional scenes of novels (including historical novels) cast in third-person form” (ibid.:
122), and that “fictional narratives demand, historical narratives preclude, a distinction between
the narrator and the implied author” (ibid.: 124, quoting Hernadi 1976: 252; see Genette 1993:
72-9). These seem to me at least broadly applicable to ancient Greek texts as much as modern
writing, though the Greek historiographers (including the ‘historical’ biographer Plutarch) employ
a far smaller proportion of admissions of nescience and speculation etc. than their modern counter-
parts.

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OWEN HODKINSON

peculiar use of tenses to signpost the one is not, and the tell-tale conventional
markers for speculation may not have their equivalents either. In short, it may
not be possible to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction by linguistic
features at all in ancient Greek. But why should it be possible to do so, and
why would it be desirable?
Intuitive definitions of ‘fiction’ tend to refer to the truth-value of the
(propositional content of a) text rather than to its linguistic features or any-
thing else. But this only works if ‘fiction’ = ‘untruth’ or ‘lie’, not for ‘fiction’ as
literary text, since all texts, fictional or not, can contain through design and
error both truths and untruths as well as things not subject to this distinction,
such as hypothetical propositions. To distinguish fictions among literary
texts, other factors must come into play, and these may be linguistic, as in the
examples from Cohn above. A more important decisive factor, however, is
authorial intention: a work of historiography or text-book which contains
untruths because of e.g. bad research, out-of-date disproved hypotheses, or
authorial error is not a work of fiction, even if it is so bad that the majority of
its contents are untrue – it is simply a bad work of historiography or text-
book; a literary fiction which contains a great amount of factual truth, even if
the majority of its statements are facts (because it is an extremely well-
researched historical novel), is not a work of history, and anyone who read it
as such would clearly have missed the point. Authorial intention is evidently
crucial in determining whether such works are history or fiction (not the pro-
portion of truths : untruths!), but while this can usually be easily determined
in modern works (from the cover, from how a book is marketed, etc.), it is
notoriously hard to determine in ancient works. The addition of linguistic
criteria such as Cohn’s for modern texts, if such could be found in ancient
Greek, would therefore be highly desirable.
Unfortunately, there is no special perversion of the tenses which is com-
mon only to fictional texts in ancient Greek as in English; but fortunately,
it is the underlying phenomenon of which this is an indicator which is the
focus of Cohn’s distinction (building on the work of Hamburger).9 Cohn
and Hamburger argue that, contrary to the kind of narratological analysis
that describes ‘internal focalisation’ by an ‘external narrator’ (e.g. a biogra-
pher ‘seeing’ events from the perspective of her/his subject), such forms of

9 Cohn (1999) and Hamburger (1973). Cohn revises and at times disagrees substantially with Ham-
burger, while taking the germ of a theory from her work, so it is to Cohn’s work only that I refer in
any detail in this chapter.

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words should not be seen merely as that – i.e. as a mode of discourse – but
as a (or perhaps the) defining feature of fiction; as a mode of discourse that
is ruled out in non-fictional texts (Cohn 1999: 25, 119). This is the argu-
ment for the strangeness of the example sentence quoted at the beginning
of this section, were it to appear in a work of history; but also for any ‘inter-
nal focalisation’ (however worded) in a third-person narrative indicating its
fictional status10, since by definition this gives the narrator such omnis-
cience, even psychic omniscience, as would seem extremely incongruous
without a disclaimer making it clear that the author either had evidence for
the subject’s thoughts at the time (such as an autobiographical memoir by
her/him) or was speculating rather than reporting a known fact (this is
where the ‘s/he must have thought…’ formulation comes in). This seems
entirely consistent with modern writing and reading practices11, and if it
were applicable to ancient texts this would give a simple way of determin-
ing (intentional) fictionality: simply scouring the Greek bioi and other
works for examples of ‘internal focalisation’ would produce the answer, at
least for texts where this form of language is found.12
There are problems with this approach, however: unlike Hamburger,
Cohn emphasises that these ‘rules’ are not hard and fast, but that we notice
when a text shifts from one perspective to another and thus become newly- or
extra-aware of the fictionality of the text: the ‘rules’ hold in general, and
explain why:
biographies that regale us with inside views of their subjects strike
us as somehow illegitimate; and, conversely, why a novel that
remained from start to finish in the mode of external focalization on
the protagonist would strike us as something of an anomaly. (1999:
26)

The lack of a hard-and-fast rule regarding the use of internal focalisation in

modern texts does not inspire confidence for finding such in ancient ones;

10 Autobiographical texts are ruled out of the present study since entirely different criteria and argu-
ments must be used in this case (internal focalisation is the norm in autobiographical texts, and there
is nothing ‘psychic’ or ‘omniscient’ about narrating private moments and thoughts in them!
11 Cohn has many more examples in the relevant chapters and elsewhere (1999: 18-37, 79-95).
12 This last qualifier is needed because the absence of internal focalisation/psychic omniscience would
not prove that a text is historical, obviously; its presence is ruled out, on this hypothesis, in non-
fiction, but its presence is not a necessary condition for fiction, it is only a device available to (and
widely employed by) writers of fiction.

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OWEN HODKINSON

however, examining the ways in which internal focalisation or psychic

omniscience (and related phenomena) are employed in ancient texts may yet
be revealing. Another, potentially larger problem is simply that it may not: is
Cohn’s (last-quoted) statement true for ancient Greek texts? ‘What would
Plutarch do?’ This is something that must be left for the investigation
itself13, which will begin with some examples from Plutarch as test-cases,
before moving to biographical texts whose fictional or historical status is less
clear-cut.

Procedure of the Argument

Taking as a starting point Cohn’s observation that in modern fictional biogra-
phy as in other fictional forms, one of the clearest markers of deliberate fic-
tionality is the psychic omniscience of the narrator14, and her argument that
it is constitutive of a narrative’s fictional status, since it is logically ruled out
by non-fictional narratives, this paper will investigate the actual use made of
psychically omniscient narration in ancient Greek biographical texts, to see if
any conventions or differing practices in its use can be found. At the same
time, the potential applicability of such observations and therefore of Cohn’s
argument to these ancient texts will be considered, since there may be prob-
lems with transferring the theory to Antiquity as noted above. The central
focus of the investigation will be on biographical texts whose fictional status
is in question: they might be taken as (deliberate/conscious) fictions (whose
intended readers could read them in the same way as they might have read
Chariton or Achilles Tatius); or ‘popular’ romanticising or mythologising
texts aimed at uneducated and credible readers; or as historical biographies
which due to differing expectations of historiographical responsibility in
Antiquity now appear to us as anything but historical; etc. The texts used as
examples here are Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the Aesop Romance, the Alexander
Romance, and Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii. These texts have all been consid-
ered at least by some readers and scholars as ‘fictional biographies’ (if not

13 A further problem may be the far higher proportion of direct speech used in ancient texts of most
genres than in their modern equivalents; this could reduce or replace the need for narratorial psychic
omniscience. But provided enough examples can be found, it does not matter that they are propor-
tionally fewer.
14 Or in other terminology, any use of ‘zero focalisation’, and/or any striking uses of internal focalisation
of the biographical subject. I largely follow Cohn’s terminology in this paper.

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

always in these exact words)15, and arguments for this status have varied
according to the (propositional) content of the text, what (if anything) is
known of the author, etc.; but they have not included reference to their lin-
guistic features determining their fictionality.
It will be helpful, then, to test these (Cohn’s) criteria as applicable to
ancient Greek texts by discovering whether texts which we would class as fic-
tions either intuitively or by other scholarly arguments will come out as fic-
tions on Cohn’s definition, i.e. if they all employ the fictional language of
psychic omniscience. The first stage of the investigation, though, is to test the
ground with a Greek novel whose status as deliberate fiction is not in ques-
tion, and with Plutarch, who of all ancient Greek biographers (and in a very
small minority of surviving biographical texts) is accepted as the most ‘histor-
ical’ or ‘serious’, using standards of historiographical responsibility that were
acceptable in his day and are akin to those that his modern equivalent
employs.16 The comparison between these will enable us to see which of
these two the main texts under investigation are most like in their use (or
avoidance) of psychic omniscience.
If this distinction appears to hold true by and large for ancient Greek bio-
graphical narratives (though perhaps with exceptions, since these are not
‘hard and fast’ rules, as noted above), it will not only add extra weight to
cumulative arguments regarding the (deliberate) fictional status of these par-
ticular biographies and others to which it could be applied, and potentially be
expanded to texts in all (third-person narrative)17 genres in Antiquity – it will
also, and more importantly, reveal something about authors’ and readers’
concepts of fiction in ancient Greece, by showing that a linguistic or formal
feature might have been at least implicitly recognised as a convention appro-
priate to fictional writing, above and beyond any arguments ancient or
modern regarding the truth-value of texts’ propositional contents, authorial
intentions, or anything else. The use of psychically omniscient narration

15 Holzberg (1995: 14-9) is a classic example, labelling precisely these four texts as fictional biography.
See Karla (2009) for discussion of this classification: she argues for a further distinction, labelling the
Aesop and Alexander Romances ‘novelistic biographies’. For my purposes here, it is only the distinction
between (deliberate) fictions and (‘serious’) biography which matters, not the precise label given to the
former class of texts nor any sub-categories into which it might be divided. See also Jouanno (2009)
on the fictionality and generic categorisation of these two texts.
16 Pelling (1990) is the classic examination of Plutarch’s historiographical responsibility and of how far
he will go in the direction of fiction – the result being ‘not very far’, though further than his modern
successors.
17 See note 10 above.

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OWEN HODKINSON

could be counted in Antiquity as well as in modern literature as a signpost

pointing to a text’s fictional status, i.e. as a metafictional marker – which
when recognised as such by the experienced reader ensured the text was read
as the author conceived it, rather than as a bad piece of historical biography
or anything else.

Limit Cases: the Novels and Plutarch

For comparison then, here is a passage from one of the Greek novels; these
are evidently conscious (and self-conscious) fictions, and therefore their nar-
rators naturally enough allow themselves psychic levels of insight into the
characters’ thoughts and private actions18:
[…] !"#$%& "'$() *"+(),-+-+, .+/ 0 1"+()23 4) 156723 !589. : 7( µ;)
2<) 1"+-8&) 2=. >?&( […] @-A ?; +=7#3 &B8& 7C) DE89), .+/ 7F)
GH%+$µF) 2=. *.5'7&( .+/ "2$$I *$'$&( J'H)()· 752H#3 Kµ,$&(,
)L.765 KM5L")&(, 7#3 !M,$A3 .+7&H5N)&(·

[Chloe] went away, thinking how handsome [Daphnis] was. And

that thought was the beginning of love. She didn’t know what was
happening to her […] Her heart ached; her eyes wandered uncon-
trollably; she kept repeating “Daphnis”. She took no interest in
food; she lay awake at night; she disregarded her flock […]
Longus Daphnis & Chloe (trans. Morgan) 1.13.5-6

Of course, this form of expression is perfectly acceptable to a novel’s reader-

ship, and this is true of Antiquity as much as today. By contrast, let us con-
sider the work of a biographer who exercises historiographical responsibility,
namely Plutarch, and his practices when intending to convey the thoughts of
his characters.
Now Plutarch does frequently communicate the thoughts of his charac-
ters, and sometimes in a manner similar to the fictional narrator’s psychi-
cally omniscient perspective, but there is often explicitly and always

18 In the absence of any biographical text so obviously (consciously) fictional as the novels and univer-
sally accepted as being so, the fictional limit of the fiction-history spectrum must be represented by
the example of the Greek novel. The examples in this section only serve to demonstrate ancient
authors’ awareness and employment of distinctions between forms of narrative technique particularly
suited to fictions and unsuited to historiography and biography, so the lack of a fictional biography to
provide examples here is not important.

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

implicitly an explanation for this privileged insight. Some examples taken

from his Alexander19:
OH%A ?, "27& .+/ ?5'.6) .2(µ6µ,)A3 7#3 P$Eµ"('?23 "+5&.7&-
7+µ,)23 7Q -Rµ+7(· .+/ 72S72 µ'$(-7+ 72S T($U""2E 7V) 1567+ .+/ 7I3
H($2H52-L)+3 !µ+E5F-+( $,M2E-(), W3 µA?; H2(7X) 17( "2$$'.(3 "+5’
+=7C) !)+"+E-Nµ&)2), &Y7& ?&U-+)7' 7()+3 µ+M&U+3 *"’ +=7Q .+/
H'5µ+.+ 7#3 ME)+(.N3, &Y7& 7C) 0µ($U+) W3 .5&U772)( -E)2L-A3
!H2-(2Lµ&)2).

Moreover, a serpent was once seen lying stretched out by the side of
Olympias as she slept, and we are told that this, more than anything
else, dulled the ardour of Philip’s attentions to his wife, so that he
no longer came often to sleep by her side, either because he feared
that some spells and enchantments might be practised upon him by
her, or because he shrank from her embraces in the conviction that
she was the partner of a superior being.
Alexander 2.4

In this passage, though private events and thoughts are communicated, the
underlined phrases show that (a) Plutarch is not claiming outright or on his
own authority the historicity of these statements, only reporting what others
had written or speculating himself on possible psychological explanations for
the events he reports, and (b) in considering alternative explanations (a prac-
tice familiar in historiographers from Herodotus onwards) and not choosing
between them, he is actively disclaiming the kind of psychic abilities appro-
priate to a novel’s narrator.

19 I choose Alexander for my examples because its subject has perhaps the most prolifically fictionalised
and mythologised (as well as biographically and historically documented) life of any of Plutarch’s bio-
graphical subjects; thus if he had been tempted to lapse in the histioriographical responsibility with
which he treated a life and employed ‘fictional’ forms of narration, this would be one of the most
likely texts in which to find such lapses. The same kinds of examples and resulting discussion could
have come from any of Plutarch’s Lives, though, and Plutarch’s statements about his techniques and
intentions in any of the Lives can be taken to apply to all of them. Other likely candidates would of
course be Romulus and Theseus; Plutarch claims for the latter (Theseus 1) that he will follow others’
accounts, mythologising though they be for such an era, but will try to subject it to reason and ‘purify
the mythic’ in it (cf. Bowersock 1994: 1-2). But cf. Pelling 1990: 41-2 on the consistency with which
Plutarch is ready (or not) to reconstruct or invent across the series of Lives. Text and trans. of Alexan-
der from Perrin 1919.

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OWEN HODKINSON

In another example (this time of narratorial omniscience but not of the

psychic kind), Alexander 30.4-7, the realism in the Greek author’s verbatim
knowledge of an explicitly private speech delivered by the Persian king Darius
in the company only of his eunuch (4: “7V) &=)2S82) *)?27,56 7#3 -.A)#3
!"+M+MR)”; “leading the eunuch away into a more secluded part of his tent”)
is questionable: how could Plutarch have come by a text of this speech? What
likely source was there for the preserved speech after Darius’ death which was
shortly to follow? Aware of this passage’s potential similarity to the omni-
sicient narration of a novelist, Plutarch closes the section as follows (7): 7+S7+
µ;) 2Z76 M&),-%+( 7& .+/ $&8%#)+U H+-() 2[ "$&\-72( 7F) -EMM5+H,6) (“that
these things were thus done and said is the testimony of most historians”),
thus avoiding a necessary claim to the historicity of this private speech and
therefore a claim to believe the sources for it, while managing to include the
story nonetheless.
A final type of example from Plutarch is one in which no explicit dis-
claimer is made for his psychic abilities, e.g.:
7N7& ?’ 2<) 0 ]+-($&^3 !)(+%&/3 7_ µ&7+",µD&( 72\3 µ;) -75+7(R7+(3
2=. 1H5+-& 7V !$A%,3, !$$’ […] !)'.$A-() *-9µ+)&).

At the time, then, although he was annoyed by the summons, the

king did not tell his soldiers the truth about it but […] sounded a
recall.
Alexander 33.7

But even here there are indications of a potential disclaimer; in its opening
words, Plutarch gives us to understand that Alexander may have revealed his
true feelings at a later time, and thus they came to be recorded in one of his
sources. Moreover, even without this hint, there is always an underlying and
implicit reliance on other historians’ accounts in Plutarch – the fact that they
are frequently alluded to in phrases such as ‘we are told’ or ‘most historians’
(as above), and occasionally even by name, means that we are entitled to
assume that Plutarch is using sources also at other times; such claims in par-
ticular cases are also to be taken as claims for the properly researched and
documented (by ancient historiographical standards) nature of the whole
biography.
Therefore at this other end of the fiction-history spectrum from the Greek
novels, in Plutarch’s bioi, though there are examples which appear to be for-

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

mally and logically the same as fictional writers’ psychic omniscience and
other omniscient narration, there are either explicit disclaimers to be found in
close proximity, or else disclaimers elsewhere in the text (in the form of men-
tioning historiographical techniques and sources) can be taken by implication
to cover the whole of the bios. The task of the remainder of this paper is to
examine texts which sit more towards the middle than the extremes of this
history-fiction spectrum (by common scholarly consent and by their own rela-
tive lack of clarity regarding their historical or fictional status), and to discover
what their authors’ practices are in using or avoiding psychic omniscience.

Psychic Omniscience in Fictional(ising) Biographies

There is obviously great difficulty, given the difference between ancient and
modern approaches to historiographical writing (ancient authors far less fre-
quently stating that they are using, still less specifying, earlier accounts or
other evidence), in determining what is to count as a case of ‘psychic omnis-
cience’: many (perhaps all) passages posited as examples might be countered
by arguing that they are in fact instances of ‘serious’ biographers suppressing
their sources. Some circularity in arguing for cases of psychic omniscience
might not be avoidable therefore. This is perhaps least likely to be thought
dangerous to my argument when examples come from texts which present
many other indications of their fictional status, whether internal (i.e. formal)
or external (e.g. comparison with their authors’ practices in other texts, or the
likelihood of the author having access to any sources for the events he
relates).
This being the case, I shall begin with Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, for the fol-
lowing reasons. First, we can compare his practice in writing this text with his
practices as a ‘serious’ historiographer on the one hand and as a writer of
Socratic dialogues on the other. Even slight familiarity with the former kind
of writing reveals that Xenophon is of course capable of maintaining an
appropriate level of historiographical responsibility when he chooses; and
with the latter, that he is perfectly happy to fictionalise the lives of historical
figures in the appropriate genre.20 Given the Cyropaedia’s hybridity of genre,
including both more historiographical-style writing and also extended dia-

20 One would be hard pressed to find a scholar now who believed that Socratic dialogues such as those of
Plato or Xenophon make any pretense to be historical accounts.

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OWEN HODKINSON

logue passages in the Socratic mode, the likelihood that Xenophon expected
his readers to accept his account of Cyrus’ life as (solely) a straightforward
piece of historiography with that genre’s implicit claims to historicity and to a
reliance on sources, is very slim; rather, he would have expected them to rec-
ognise that his work had other purposes (e.g. literary entertainment, philo-
sophical or political education, and the generic experimentation itself ) which
might justify or explain embellishment and even pure invention of speeches,
conversations, and events within his account.
Secondly, the likelihood that Xenophon could have had access to any
sources presenting the early years of Cyrus’ life in such detail as would have
been necessary for the writing of the Cyropaedia, is sufficiently slim that its
readers must at least suspect the historicity of some of the account – as indeed
readers long have done in labelling it a ‘romance’ or ‘novelistic biography’.21
In this case, then, all indicators point to a consciously fictionalising biogra-
phy, and this might be further confirmed by use of a form of writing which
seems (at least to modern eyes) peculiar to fiction, psychic omniscience; con-
versely, finding this form of writing in such a text might begin to build a
cumulative case that ancient authors too generally reserved it for deliberate
fictions.
The following is a classic case of what might be termed character or inter-
nal focalisation, which following Cohn I would label as psychic omniscience
on the part of the narrator:
0 ?; `S523 05F) *.]2A%2S)7+3 .+/ 72^3 @$$2E3 "+--E?U, *.]2A%&\ .+/
+=7V3 "5F72) 7N7& a"$+ *)?L3, 2b"27& 2cNµ&)23· 2Z763 *"&%Lµ&(
+=72\3 *d2"$U-+-%+(· µ'$+ ?; .+$I 4) .+/ e5µN772)7+ +=7Q f 0
"'""23 "&5/ 7V -Fµ+ *"&"2UA72. 2Z76 ?C *d2"$(-'µ&)23 "52-9$+-&
7Q g""h. .+/ 0 i-7E'MA3 *%+Lµ+-& µ;) 7U)23 .&$&L-+)723 j.2(, aµ63
?; &B"&) +=7Q µ,)&() "+5’ k+E7N).

When Cyrus saw the rest marching out with all speed, he put on his
armour then for the first time and started out, too; this was an
opportunity that he had thought would never come – so eager was
he to don his arms; and the armour that his grandfather had made
to order for him was very beautiful and fitted him well. Thus

21 It is so often discussed by scholars of the ancient novel/romance as a forerunner to the genre or proto-
novel that its absence from Reardon’s original Collected Ancient Greek Novels needs to be justified
(1989: 3).

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

equipped he rode up on his horse. And though Astyages wondered

at whose order he had come, he nevertheless told the lad to come
and stay by his side.
Cyropaedia (trans. Miller) 1.4.18

The underlined parts here show, in the first two instances, Cyrus’ thoughts,
and in the third, those of Astyages; the second case might be seen instead as
narratorial comment, but in its context surrounded by other internal focalisa-
tion it reads better as the narrator still giving us privileged access to the young
Cyrus’ perceptions and feelings as he donned the armour for the first time.
This form of writing is characteristically fictional: the information it con-
veys could not be known by a third person narrator, unless he had access to a
very detailed autobiography or authorised biography of the subjects in which
all their thoughts were relayed as well as their deeds. But more important is
the form itself, in which the narrator swoops with ease from an external,
bird’s-eye-view perspective, into the thoughts of one character then another,
then back out again – entirely natural in a novel or an epic, but not in histo-
riographical writing. An historian or a serious biographer can, of course, tell
us about the thoughts of their subjects, but this is usually phrased differently,
either in such a way as to show that the narrator is speculating or inferring
the thoughts from the actions (‘he must have thought…’), or to show that he
has grounds for making such a statement in the form of another historical
account or a source (see above for these practices in modern biographies and
in Plutarch).
This psychically omniscient form of expression is repeated countless times
in the Cyropaedia (there are further examples below), and this helps to ensure
that it is or can be read as a fictional text, or as a fictionalising biography. At
the same time, the fact that Xenophon’s project in the Cyropaedia seems for
several other reasons to be that of deliberately fictionalising an account of
Cyrus’ life, and chooses to use this form of expression, provides a first
instance in what will form a cumulative argument showing that psychic
omniscience was associated in Antiquity too with deliberate fictions and not
deemed appropriate for serious historiographical writings.22

22 Other examples can be found throughout Cyropaedia.: just in the vicinity of the previous example, see
1.4.15, 20 and 24 (all focalised through / with the narrator psychically reporting Astyages’ thoughts).

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OWEN HODKINSON

The so-called Aesop Romance is another biographical work which is (since

it is widely labelled as such) widely accepted as novelistic or fictionalising
biography, full as it is of folkloric and fable-like elements. But where precisely
is its fictionality signposted? Among other things, this is demonstrated by
omniscient (possibly psychically so) narration, as for example23:
l ?; mY-6"23, -H2?52S .+Lµ+723 n)723, &B"&) "5V3 k+E7N) “?L2 o5+3
186 !"V 72S "52-7'72E &c3 !)'"+E-()· .2(µA%9-2µ+( 7I3 72S
.+Lµ+723 7+L7+3.” *"($&d'µ&)23 ?, 7()+ 7N"2) […] !)&"+L&72. 1)%+
[…] 0 "27+µV3 p8&(· .+/ µ+$+.2S ")&Lµ+723 n)723 […] q&HL52E, 7I
8$2&5I 7()+8%,)7+ HE7I .+7,")&E-&) +b5+) 7#3 ",5(d Z$A3 […] r?,+)
.+/ "52-A)#.

It was very hot, and Aesop said to himself, “The overseer allows me
two hours for rest. I’ll sleep these hours while it’s hot.” He picked
out a spot [… and] went to sleep. The stream whispered and, as a
gentle zephyr blew, the leaves of the trees around about were stirred
and exhaled a sweet and soothing breath […]
Aesop Romance 6

In this passage, Aesop is alone, and so the narrator is necessarily taking an

omniscient perspective in order to relate this episode to us, as he does
throughout the text. Note that there is no historiographical apparatus in this
text – no claims to have heard or read the story elsewhere, or to have derived
it ultimately from Aesop’s own accounts of his life (the only possible source
for events which no one else was present to witness), which might make
implicit claims to cover the narrator’s apparent omniscience as with Plutarch
above. But in any case, Aesop is asleep at this point, and so there are no wit-
nesses to the changes in his surroundings as narrated here; there could be no
possible claim to documented historicity here, and readers can only conclude
that the author is consciously writing a fiction and allowing the fact to be
made plain to them. The underlined phrase “&B"&) "5V3 k+E7N)” (“said to
himself ”), if taken as a way of narrating Aesop’s internally voiced thoughts
rather than literally spoken out loud to himself, makes the narrator here psy-
chic as well as omniscient, but it is impossible to decide either way.

23 Text of Aesop Romance from Vita G (cod. 397 Bibliothecae Pierponti Morgan) recensio 3, edited by
Perry (1952: 35-77); translation by Daly in Hansen (1998: 111-62).

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The expression ‘said to himself ’ is frequent in this text, in fact, and there
are examples where it must refer to internally voiced thoughts rather than
spoken out loud, e.g.:
[The wife of Aesop’s master Xanthus is about to wash the feet of an
anonymous rustic to win an argument between Xanthus and Aesop
and earn the latter a beating.]
r ME)C 72S s')%2E ?(I 7V µ\-23 7V "5V3 7V) mY-6"2) "&5(t6-+µ,)A
$,)7(2)… "52-,H&5&) 7C) $&.')A) 7Q d,)h. 0 d,)23 )29-+3 a7( *-7/)
r 2c.2?,-"2()+ "5V3 k+E7V) &B"&) “s')%23 *-7/ H($N-2H23· &c p%&$&)
72^3 "N?+3 µ2E u"V ?2L$2E "$E%#)+( *"(7&7'8&( @), &c ?, µ2( 7(µC)
"+5,86) 7C) ME)+\.+ 7C) k+E72S K)'M.+-&) "$E%#)+( *"(7&7'8&( @), &c
?, µ2( 7(µC) "+5,86) 7C) ME)+\.+ 7C) k+E72S K)'M.+-&) )UD+( µ2E
72^3 "N?+3, *µ+E7Q !7(µU+) 2= "&5(]'$$6, 2= "&5(&5M'-2µ+(...” .+/ ?C
)(D'µ&)23 !)&"+L&(.

Xanthus’ wife hated Aesop so much that she tied a towel around
her… and took the basin over to the stranger. He saw that she was
the lady of the house and said to himself, “Xanthus is a philosopher.
If he wanted my feet washed by a slave, he would have ordered it,
but if he has made his wife wash my feet to show me honor, I’ll not
disgrace myself and be a busybody…” And he took his ease while
they were being washed.
Aesop Romance 61

Clearly the rustic does not voice these thoughts, but rather sits back to have
his feet washed. The statement that “)29-+3 a7( *-7/) r 2c.2?,-"2()+” (“he
saw [lit.: “thought”, “realised”] that she was the lady of the house”) is also the
work of a psychically omniscient narrator. In the Aesop Romance, then, we
have another coincidence between a text that is considered for other reasons
and is prima facie fictional or fictionalising, and the use of psychically omnis-
cient narration.
The Alexander Romance contains a great many fantastic elements which
guarantee the fictionality of its content, but if its author(s) had chosen to
present themselves as historiographical biographers, merely recording these
fantastic voyages to the ends of the earth as found in others’ accounts of Alex-
ander’s life, we would be faced with a text of very different fictional status. As

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OWEN HODKINSON

it is, the text makes no claims to using sources or other historians’ accounts,
and thus again, unlike the case of Plutarch’s Alexander but as in the case of the
Aesop Romance, we cannot assume an implicit disclaimer or explanation of
the narrator’s psychic omniscience when it is used. Here is an example like
the last one from the Aesop Romance, using ‘he said to himself ’ to denote a
character’s inwardly voiced thoughts24:
[Alexander has come in disguise as an emissary to Darius but is rec-
ognised by one of Darius’ commanders.]
.+/ .+7+)29-+3 *"(&(.F3 7V) i$,d+)?52) &B"&) *) k+E7Q· “2v7N3 *-7()
0 T($U""2E "+\3, &c .+/ 72^3 7L"2E3 +=72S p$$+d&) […]” 2v723 2<)
"$A52H25A%&/3 […] a7( +=7N3 *-7() 0 i$,d+)?523, "52-+)+.$(%&/3 7Q
J+5&Uh &B"&) +=7Q· “[…] 2v723 0 "5,-]E3 i$,d+)?5N3 *-7() 0
w+.&?N)6) ]+-($&^3...”

And having taken a reasonably long look at Alexander, he said to

himself, “This is Philip’s son, even if he has changed his appearance
[…]” Convinced […] that it was Alexander himself, he leaned over
to Darius and said to him, “[…] this emissary of Alexander is the
king of the Macedonians himself [...]”
Alexander Romance 2.15

It is clear from what follows and from the whole context that the first ‘quota-
tion’ expresses his thoughts and not something said out loud. Therefore we
have here an example of psychic omniscience by the narrator. Another exam-
ple is given in the form of the following scene, which surely the king of Persia
would never allow anyone to witness; certainly the presence of anyone but
Darius is not mentioned:
l ?; J+5&\23 HEMI3 M&)Nµ&)23 4$%&) &c3 7V "+$'7(2) +=72S .+/ xUD+3
k+E7V) &c3 7V 1?+H23 !)2(µRd+3 ?'.5E-() *%59)&( k+E7V) […]
-EµH25+\3 ?; 72(+L7+(3 -E)&8Nµ&)23 *%59)&( k+E7V) $,M6)· “0
7A$(.2S723 ]+-($&^3 J+5&\23 […] )S) HEMI3 *M&)NµA) 15Aµ23…”

24 Text of Alexander Romance from the ] recension, edited by Bergson (1965); translation by Dowden in
Hansen (1998: 168-246; adapted).

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DISTINGUISHING FEATURES OF DELIBERATE FICTIONALITY IN GREEK BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES

Darius came, a fugitive, to his own palace and threw himself on the
floor, wailing and tearfully lamenting for himself […] In the grip of
such calamities, he mourned to himself, saying: “Darius, [once] so
great a king […] – now I have become a solitary fugitive […]”
Alexander Romance 2.16

The implausibility of this scene happening other than with the king alone,
unless a witness were mentioned in the text, means that the narrator is surely
granting himself privileged access to private events and thoughts here too.

The examples in this section thus far have come from texts which scholars
agree are either fictional or (perhaps for the Cyropaedia) fictionalising bio-
graphical texts – not to say that nothing any of them relates is true, but that
they contain so much clearly fictional and/or folkloric content and are written
in such a way that no one would claim that they are failed attempts at Plutar-
chan or similar serious biography, but are rather deliberate fictions. It is no
surprise then to find them all employing a trademark strategy of novelists and
other writers of fiction in psychic omniscience. As a final example, I now turn
to Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius (though this is not its original title, no one
would dispute that biography is one of the most important genres for the cre-
ation of this generic hybrid of a text25), a work which has increasingly been
compared with the Greek novels and come to be recognised as a work of fic-
tion.26 However, this text’s fictionality is self-consciously masked (or pointed
out) by an elaborate Beglaubigungsapparat, in the form of an invented bio-
graphical account by a certain Damis, a possibly invented and conveniently
very constant companion of Apollonius, upon which Philostratus is supposed
to have based his biography.27 This means that it has the same historiographi-
cal apparatus as a Plutarchan biography: it claims to be based on another
source, thereby distancing itself from necessarily claiming the truth of all the
‘facts’ it relates and making that source responsible for any knowledge that it
would be implausible for a historical biographer to have acquired about his
subject. Thus any seeming examples of psychic omniscience on the part of the

25 See most recently Jones’ edition for a concise summary of the issues concerning its genre (2005: 3-7).
26 See especially Bowie (1978, 1994); Francis (1998); Gyselinck & Demoen (2009); Schirren (2009).
27 On the fictionality of Damis, see Bowie (1978) and Francis (1998). For a discussion of the role of
‘Damis’ and his account in VA which aptly employs the concept of metafiction, see Gyselinck &
Demoen (2009).

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OWEN HODKINSON

narrator can always be explained away by the intermediary of Damis. Take for
instance the following28:

[Apollonius has taken a vow of silence.]

72S72) *"("2)R7+72) +u7Q HA-( M&),-%+( 7V) ]U2) a$6) ",)7& *7F)
!-.A%,)7+, "2$$I µ;) MI5 &c"&\) 182)7+ µC &c"&\) […] $NM6) 7&
"52-.52E-')76) +=7Q "+5&\)+( 7I3 *$,Md&(3 7N7&.

He says that this way of life, which he practised for five whole years,
was extremely difficult. He could not speak when he had much to
say […] and when remarks offended him he deferred refuting them
for a time.
Philostratus, VA 1.14.2-15.1

Now of course many of Apollonius’ feelings and thoughts while silent were
accessible to him alone, and without the device of Damis or something simi-
lar, the narrator would have had to use a form of expression which constitutes
psychic omniscience to convey this information. But instead, he refers
implicitly here to the fact (HA-(, “he says”) that Damis had supposedly
recorded what Apollonius himself told him in the composition of his biogra-
phy; and 7N7& (“for a time”, lit.: “at that time”), implying that Apollonius
later came back to his erstwhile (inter)locutors to refute them, gives yet
another get-out clause for a narration wishing to avoid the fictional device of
psychic omniscience, since it would theoretically be possible to verify from
others’ accounts these tardy come-backs and the fact that Apollonius claimed
to have thought them up on the original spot!
Another example of the narrator informing us of Apollonius’ thoughts
which could have been treated by an author of fiction by the device of psy-
chic omniscience, but where Philostratus avoids it, is the following:
HA-/ ?; 0 J'µ(3 dE)(,)+( µ,), a7( µA?;) +c79-2(, 7N) 7& 75N"2) +=72S
.+%&65+.R3, .+/ &c?y3 &=8Nµ&)2) 72\3 %&2\3 &=8C) 72(+L7A), “z %&2U,
?2UA7& µ2( µ(.5I 18&() .+/ ?&\-%+( µA?&)N3,” *H&-7A.N7+ µ,)72( 05F)
.+/ *)%Eµ2Eµ,)h aµ2(2), 2Y&-%+( W3 +c79-2( µ,), ]+-+)Ut2( ?,, a 7(
µ,$$&( +c79-&().

28 Philostratos VA, text and translation taken from Jones (2005), with chapter divisions restored to the
standard numbering (see Hodkinson 2006).

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Damis claims to have guessed that Apollonius was not going to

make any request, since he had observed his ways, and knew that
the prayer he offered to the gods was this: “Gods, grant that I have
little and need nothing.” However, when he saw Apollonius silent as
if in meditation, he inferred that he was about to ask for something,
and was considering what it would be.
Philostr. VA 1.33.2

Here the inferences and insights into Apollonius’ thoughts are those of
Damis, not of the Philostratean narrator; in fact, Philostratus shows us a
glimpse of the supposed underlying text of Damis (the corresponding passage
of which could be reconstructed from this text), and he shows Damis’ narra-
tor himself to be avoiding psychic omniscience and thus writing a historical
biography. For Damis in the underlying text is reported to have stated explic-
itly that his insights into Apollonius’ mind were guesses and inferences based
upon familiarity with his subject’s previous behaviour. Thus Philostratus’ text
is insulated against the overtly fictionalising device of psychic omniscience by
a double layer of disclaimers: that of Damis’ historiographical technique first,
and then implicitly that of Philostratus’ only reporting an earlier text upon
which he must rely as a source for his subject, and reporting it as Damis’
‘claims’ rather than necessarily as facts which he accepts. And in fact, since
Damis’ text is always underlying that of Philostratus, but naturally not explic-
itly referred to at every point of fact upon which it was based (which would
force Philostratus to refer to it in almost every sentence), even examples
which look like psychic omniscience, if any are to be found, are implicitly
attributable to Damis and not necessarily invested with Philostratus’ belief in
the truth of them.
We might have here a counterexample to the thesis of this section, since
we have a fictional text which studiously avoids the device of psychic omnis-
cience by its actual author-figure/narrator (even if ‘Damis’ might use it). But
this is only a counterexample if we ignore the obvious reasons for this avoid-
ance;29 Philostratus’ text is a more sophisticated and self-conscious fiction
than others we have considered (as befits the Philostratean oeuvre in gen-

29 It is also only a counterexample if one posits use of psychic omniscience as a necessary feature of
fiction. I would make only the less strong claim that it is among the characteristic and defining fea-
tures of fiction (none of which are singly necessary for a text to be considered as fiction), and that a
text containing it must be fictional (or fictionalising history, biography, etc.).

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OWEN HODKINSON

eral).30 The fact that this device is to be found in several more overt and/or
less complex fictions on the one hand, but not in serious biography such as
Plutarch nor in the VA on the other hand, is in fact another argument for the
thesis of this section, that ancients authors recognised psychic omniscience as
a quality of very overtly fictional writing.31 Philostratus avoids it because he
wishes his biography to have the formal appearance of ‘serious’ biography, at
the same time as wanting to include events which would not be accepted as
rationally verifiable or likely by his more serious readers. He would not have
wished to be open to the charge of simply fabricating Apollonius’ life, but to
stick to (even) a Plutarchan level of historical likelihood would have under-
mined his project to tell the story and ‘hagiography’ of the wonder-worker. In
other words, Philostratus was writing biographical fiction or a ‘biographical
novel’ (by analogy with the modern genre of the historical novel) in which he
had licence to include acts of Apollonius which a sceptical intellectual reader
would reject in a straightforward account, because he employs elaborate
authenticating devices to distance himself from them.32

To conclude this section briefly: psychic omniscience is used in bioi which are
more obviously fictional or fictionalising; on the other hand they are avoided
in historical bioi such as those of Plutarch, and pseudo-historical fictional bioi
such as Philostratus’ VA, because he wants to give that text the appearance of
a ‘Plutarchan’ bios (i.e. one with a similar level of historiographical responsi-
bility or ‘seriousness’ to those of Plutarch). This shows that some Greek
authors and readers had already recognised the device of psychic omniscience
and its effects, though not named it; and that there does seem to exist the
same distinction among ancient as among modern texts with regard to the

30 For Philostratean metaliterariness, sometimes extremely complex, see e.g. Bowie (1994) on VA and
Heroikos; Grossardt (2009), Gyselinck & Demoen (2009) and Schirren (2009) on VA; Ni Mheallaigh
(2005: 53 note 215, 58 note 240, 198-204; forthcoming), Grossardt (2006), Whitmarsh (2009) and
Hodkinson (2011a, forthcoming) on Heroikos. If any ancient authors of fiction conceived of psychic
omniscience and its uses and effects in similar terms to my definition here, Philostratus was certainly
among them.
31 Of course for the sophisticated target readership of VA, authenticating devices are recognised as such,
as are uses and avoidances of particular formal and linguistic features in order to imitate historical
forms of writing; these therefore become metafictional signposts of the text’s fictionality at the same
time as overtly masquerading as signposts of non-fictionality. See Gyselinck & Demoen for the delib-
erate distinction Philostratus creates between narrator and author in VA, including the choice to limit
the narrator’s knowledge: “The knowledge of our primary narrator is, very explicitly, limited: he is not
omniscient, and therefore not a typical narrator of fiction” (2009: 108; passim).
32 See Gyselinck & Demoen (2009: 108-14) on the more miraculous elements of VA and Philostratus’
strategy in relation to them and to sceptical readers.

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kinds of text which use it and avoid it. There could always be counterexam-
ples, though I have not found any obvious ones (though the seeming coun-
terexample of the VA in fact works in favour of the thesis). But, for instance,
a badly-written serious bios could include psychic omniscience, which would
then seem as jarring in that text as it would if Plutarch had employed the
device – for the educated ancient reader as much as for us, I would argue –
and such a text might be taken as a deliberate fiction rather than an attempt
at a serious bios. The reverse type of counterexample would be a fictional text
which simply happens not to employ the device, rather than deliberately
avoiding it; but as argued above, this would not be a true counterexample
because my thesis is not that psychic omniscience (nor indeed any narratorial
omniscience) is a necessary feature of fiction, merely a characteristic feature.
Therefore, the formal, narratological feature of psychic omnisicence is a
feature which can (in conjunction with others) identify a text as likely to be a
deliberate fiction, and as likely to be recognised as such by ancient readers.
On its own this is not a secure means of distinguishing between categories of
Greek bioi for the reasons outlined above, but distinctions following this cri-
terion do accord with what is intuitive and/or scholarly communis opinio on
which are fictional and which non-fictional among Greek biographical texts.
This means that, as hypothesised at the beginning of this paper, they (and
indeed Greek works in other genres) can be defined and distinguished
(including by their contemporary readers) as fiction or not on formal criteria,
and not only by hypothesising their authors’ intentions from their contents
and their truth-value as has often been assumed.
Indeed, it is often tacitly assumed that because there is no clearly equiva-
lent and co-extensive word for ‘fiction’ in Antiquity, at least some texts which
we would recognise and be quick to label as fictions (not the novels, but per-
haps some clearly fictional(ising) biographies for example, especially where
the authorship or dating or genre or purpose of the work are disputed) would
not be thought of as belonging to a separate category cognate with our cate-
gory of ‘fiction’ by their authors or original readers. If my thesis here is
accepted, however, then we must be ready to see an implicit, and a more uni-
versal than hitherto accepted, conception of the category of fiction among
educated ancient readers. That is to say that formal, linguistic devices such as
psychic omniscience which are characteristic of fiction, must be recognised as
clear metafictional signposts which therefore necessarily mean that the texts
containing them are deliberate fictions, and are intended to be (and likely to

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OWEN HODKINSON

be by the target readership) read as such. This applies not only to biographi-
cal texts – questions over the fictionality of which are often particularly
fraught because of the lack of a clearly-defined genre before Plutarch and
because so many have question-marks hanging over their dates and author-
ship and therefore their purposes – but also, using bioi as test-cases, to Greek
fiction in general.

Further Essentials
In order for the arguments of this paper to be accepted more than provision-
ally, this investigation would clearly need to be expanded a great deal to
encompass all ancient Greek biographical narratives, and then a range of
other third person narratives, for comparison but primarily of course because
the argument concerns a general pattern – a few exceptions (i.e. ‘serious’ his-
torical narratives unashamedly employing psychic omniscience) would be
acceptable, but a large quantity of them would create a different pattern.
However, I have of course looked further than the texts used as examples here
and not found anything to alter the pattern at the time of writing. Addition-
ally, space does not permit the investigation to expand into other (candidates
for being) formal distinctions of deliberate fictionality, such as unrealistic lev-
els of narratorial knowledge, or narratorial omniscience, which however are
not psychic; or unrealistic levels of detail which are in the text for l’effet du
réel rather than because the reader needs to know them and which are there-
fore metafictional signposts to the fictionality of the text even while they pre-
tend to attest to its veracity.33 Such expansion is necessary because, although
psychic omniscience is a good starting point in seeking formal criteria for
deciding a text’s deliberate fictionality, it is in less widespread use in ancient
texts than in the modern novel, and it is more difficult to find clear cases
since it is far less often developed to the extremes found in modern texts.34
Whatever is found, then, in future investigations of the particular linguistic
defining feature of fiction highlighted here, and of the patterns of its usage, it

33 Though for the latter see Hodkinson (2011b, forthcoming), which examines metafiction in the letters
attributed to Chion of Heraclea, an epistolary biographical novel.
34 E.g. the extreme case of psychic narration in which the last thoughts and feelings of a dying character
who, by definition, had no opportunity to share them with anyone, are narrated. Cohn (1999: 21-3)
discusses this common topos of modern fictional biography, rightly pointing out that it is one of the
most obviously ‘unnatural’ forms of discourse, instantly marking a text out as a conscious fiction
(unfortunately there are no such cases to my knowledge in classical texts).

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is hoped that the investigation itself points the way to a fruitful line of
enquiry in the fields of Greek biographical writing, and of ancient fiction and
metafiction more generally.

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