Table Of ContentIntentional History
Edited by Lin Foxhall / Hans-Joachim Gehrke / Nino Luraghi
Intentional History
Spinning Time in Ancient Greece
Edited by Lin Foxhall / Hans-Joachim Gehrke /
Nino Luraghi
Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 2010
Cover illustration: Akharnai, Attica, stele with
the ephebic oath and the oath of Plataea, middle
of the fourth century BCE
© École française d’Athènes
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CONTENTS
1. Introduction 9
LIN FOXHALL AND NINO LURAGHI
2. Representations of the past in Greek culture 15
HANS-JOACHIM GEHRKE
3. Myth as past? On the temporal aspect of Greek depictions of legend 35
LUCA GIULIANI
4. The Trojan War’s reception in early Greek lyric, iambic
and elegiac poetry 57
EWEN BOWIE
5. The Great rhetra (Plut. Lyc. 6): a retrospective and
intentional construct? 89
MASSIMO NAFISSI
6. Collective identities, imagined past, and Delphi 121
MAURIZIO GIANGIULIO
7. Fish heads and mussel-shells: visualizing Greek identity 137
JOSEPH SKINNER
8. Media for Theseus, or the different images of the Athenian polis-hero 161
RALF VON DEN HOFF
9. Ulterior motives in ancient historiography: what exactly, and why? 189
KURT RAAFLAUB
10. Tragic memories of Dionysos 211
RENATE SCHLESIER
11. Connecting with the pat in Lykourgan Athens:
an epigraphic perspective 225
STEPHEN LAMBERT
12. Intentional history: Alexander, Demosthenes and Thebes 239
IAN WORTHINGTON
6 CONTENTS
13. The demos as narrator: public honors and the construction
of future and past 247
NINO LURAGHI
14. God and king as synoikists: divine disposition and monarchic wishes
combined in the traditions of city foundations for Alexander's and
Hellenistic times 265
KOSTAS BURASELIS
15. “They that held Arkadia”: Arcadian foundation myths
as intentional history in Roman Imperial times 273
TANIA J. SCHEER
16. Ethnography of the Nomads and “Barbarian” History in Han China 297
NICOLA DI COSMO
17. Beyond intentional history: a phenomenological model
of the idea of history 325
JONAS GRETHLEIN
18. Constructing antiquity and modernity in the eighteenth century:
distantiation, alterity, proximity, immanency 341
KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With one exception, the papers collected in this volume were presented at the con-
ference Intentionale Geschichte – Spinning Time at the Albert-Ludwigs-Univer-
sität Freiburg on September, 14-16, 2006. For financial support the editors are es-
pecially grateful to the Deutsche Foschungsgemeinschaft, and to Freiburg Univer-
sity itself, in particular to the Zentrum Antike und Moderne, the Promotionskolleg
Geschichte und Erzählen and last but not least the Seminar für Alte Geschichte, in
the person of our colleague and friend Astrid Möller and her staff, for all their
help and support.
In the process of turning the contributions into a book, the editors have incurred
further debts that they wish here to acknowledge. The articles by Hans-Joachim
Gehrke, Luca Giuliani, and Tanja Scheer have been expertly translated from the
German by Helen Imhoff. Rose McLean has done invaluable work on formatting
files written in a surprising array of different formats and with an even more sur-
prising variety of Greek fonts. At Steiner Verlag, Katharina Stüdemann and her
staff, especially Harald Schmitt, have been unfailingly supportive. Uwe Mieth of
Cicero Computer GmBH has walked us through the preparation of the manuscript
with skill and patience.
It is now ten years since the foundation of the European Network for the Study of
Ancient Greek History, spearheaded by our friend Josine Blok. Looking back on a
decade of invaluable scholarly and personal exchanges, the editors wish to ex-
press their deep gratitude to the other members of the Network, especially to Jos-
ine, the soul of the group, and to Oswyn Murray, our Nestor.
Lin Foxhall
Hans-Joachim Gehrke
Nino Luraghi
1. INTRODUCTION
Lin Foxhall and Nino Luraghi
Intentional history (intentionale Geschichte) following Gehrke (2001: 286, 297-8;
this volume) is the projection in time of the elements of subjective, self-conscious
self categorization which construct the identity of a group as a group. Gehrke de-
veloped the concept in an attempt to understand the function of the past in the
self-definition of communities of Greeks, and has explored this theme particularly
in relation to identity and alterity. The phenomenon of ‘intentional history’ serves
as the starting point of this book, from which we move on to explore its ramifica-
tions in a range of case studies, culminated by two theoretical papers. The concept
can be taken much further to investigate the dynamism of the past in creating the
present, of the present in evoking the past, and in attempts to shape the future, be-
cause of the prescriptive and foundational value attributed to the past (Gehrke
2001: 300). This also raises the whole question of why it might be considered ne-
cessary to locate an event in time, at a specific point or in a much more vague and
undefined position, where it might shape the present and future as well as the past.
A key issue is that of social agency in the formulation of ideas, notions and
stories about the past, and how these become, or aspire to become, shared posses-
sions of a whole community. ‘Intentional history’ is never history in a vacuum. It
always belongs to someone, sometimes an individual, but usually a group of peo-
ple, often in the Greek world functioning as a collective entity. And, it is generally
set in specific social, political, economic and geographical/spatial contexts. There
is a strong proprietary aspect to it. If ‘intentional history’ is a way of giving mean-
ing to the past, then who gives the meaning? In trying to answer this question, we
need to go beyond the concept of ‘the invention of tradition’ to focus on both the
space in the margins which allow creative engagements with the past and the
frameworks which make it difficult or impossible to change some aspects of the
past. Groups, and identities, are not of course monolithic, and within groups there
may be alternative or conflicting versions of those elements of subjective, self-
conscious categorization, some of which may ultimately predominate. As histor-
ians, it is often hard to determine whether we are party to a conversation between
conflicting discourses, whether we have received a particular version of tradition
which ignores or overrides other versions, or whether we are reading the outcome
of a compromise. It can also be difficult for us to ascertain the degree of agency of
specific individuals or groups which can play a major part in the creation and
transmission of notions and narratives relating to the past, historical and/or his-
toricizing, in classical antiquity. On the other hand, the existence of frameworks
of ‘fixed points’ in the past serve as a foundation of belief in the truth of the past
for most societies. Without such beliefs it would be pointless to invent or manipu-
late tradition; indeed such waypoints serve both to anchor and to validate narra-
