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Tragic History and Aristotle's School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

C. O. Brink
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Extract

The term ‘tragic history’ was coined in the 1890's by Eduard Schwartz. It was supposed to denote a certain Hellenistic type of historical writing with a twofold inspiration—tragic drama, for its scale, arrangement, and emotion, and literary criticism of the Peripatetic persuasion, for certain theoretical assumptions. The term was vague in the extreme, and being applied to works of writers no longer extant—from Duris to Posidonius—could not well be otherwise. Nor was it possible to prove, or else disprove, the alleged relevance of the critical works of the Peripatetic school, for there is no information on Theophrastus' De historia, and very little on Praxiphanes' work with the same title; and the master himself, Aristotle, seems to deprecate the course of action which his school is said to have commended. Vagueness and unfounded assertions remained awkward features of most subsequent discussions, whether they accepted Schwartz's original submission or not. In two recent papers F. W. Walbank has sought to break the spell. His result is radical: discard the term ‘tragic history’ altogether. This is not yet proven; but he has done much to rid the argument of mis-leading assumptions. In that process, however, he has perhaps discarded too much and, I think, has slightly mis-stated the most important piece of evidence we have—if tragic history is supposed to have a peripatetic nuance. Aristotle's Poetics is the only piece of evidence of which the context is known. But the context is notoriously difficult and the following remarks are concerned with these difficulties.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 6 , 1960 , pp. 14 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

page 14 note 1 C.Q. XL (1946), 22, 24–5Google Scholar.

page 14 note 2 Walbank, F.W., ‘Tragic History. A Reconsideration’, Bull. Inst. Class. Stud. (London, 1955)Google Scholar; ‘History and Tragedy’, Historia, IX (1960), 216Google Scholar, with bibliography.

page 15 note 1 Tate, J., ‘Imitation in Plato's Republic’, C.Q. XXII (1928), 16Google Scholar; ‘Plato's “Imitation”’, C.Q. XXVI (1932), 161Google Scholar. Tate was too ready to equate Aristotle's doctrines with those of Plato, but I regard his basic distinctions as eminently sound.

page 15 note 2 Walbank, F. W., ‘History and Tragedy’, pp. 218 fGoogle Scholar. ‘In the first chapter of the Poetics Aristotle in fact discusses the different forms of μίμησις exhibited by epic, tragedy, comedy, dithyramb and instrumental music. All these, he says, are forms of μίμησις…. What then is the form…peculiar to tragedy?…The special tragic form of μίμησις consists of putting people on the stage.’

page 16 note 1 Else, G. F., Aristotle's Poetics (1957) 307CrossRefGoogle Scholar, seeks to account for the difference in the wording.

page 16 note 2 ‘History and Tragedy’, p. 218.

page 16 note 3 In fact the καθόλου, the universal character, of poetry was so firmly attached to the topic of poetic imitation that it was preserved by that very unmetaphysical, Hellenistic, adherent of Aristotle's school to whom Horace owes so much in the Ars Poetica—Neoptolemus of Parium, if we may believe Porphyrion. Difficile est proprie communia dicere, says Horace, at A.P. 118Google Scholar, in a context similar to that of the Aristotelian chapter 9. There is no doubt that recent commentators of the Ars are right in referring communia to Aristotle's καθόλου.

page 17 note 1 Walbank, F. W., ‘History and Tragedy’, pp. 224 fGoogle Scholar.

page 17 note 2 Baldry, H. C., ‘Aristotle and the dramatization of legend’, C.Q. n.s. IV (1954), 154Google Scholar.

page 17 note 3 For this tripartite scheme, see Walbank, op. cit. p. 225. The difference of the scheme from Aristotle's argument has been correctly observed by Rostagni, A., Stud. It. n.s. II (1922), 119Google Scholar, and Arte Poetica di Orazio (1930), pp. lvi–lviiGoogle Scholar, although I see no evidence encouraging his ascription to Theophrastus.

page 17 note 4 C.Q. XL (1946), 24, n. 6Google Scholar. The point is made at greater length by von Fritz, K., Entretiens, Fondation Hardt (Vandoeuvres-Genève, 1956), IV, 122Google Scholar.

page 17 note 5 K. von Fritz, op. cit. p. 116, suggests that μᾶλλον at Poetics, 1451 b, 7 should be taken with as well as with . I agree, but this is surely no more than a small verbal point.

page 17 note 6 Over this point at any rate I find myself in agreement with Gomme, A. W., The Greek Attitude to Poetry and History (University of California Press, 1954), pp. 62–3, 73Google Scholar.

page 18 note 1 Walbank, F. W., A Historical Commentary on Polybius (1957), pp. 259, 262Google Scholar.

page 18 note 2 Jacoby, , F.G.H. 76 F 1Google Scholar, from Photius, , Bibl. 176, p. 121 aGoogle Scholar, 41, . I accept Scheller's, P. explanation that here refers, more Aristotelico, to the pleasure arising from , De hellenistica historiae conscribendae arte (Diss. Leipzig, 1911)Google Scholar.

page 18 note 3 Diog. Laert. v, 47, in the second of the alphabetical lists.

page 18 note 4 Marcellinus, , Vita Thucydidis, 29Google Scholar.

page 18 note 5 C.Q. XL (1946), 24Google Scholar. Praxiphanes certainly did write dialogues: in his work on poets he introduced Plato entertaining Isocrates in his country house and discussing the nature of poetry. C.Q. loc. cit. p. 21.

page 19 note 1 Walbank, F. W., ‘History and Tragedy’, p. 234Google Scholar.