Introduction

Plutarch’s eloquent statement of generic distinction has often been quoted. It is a salutary warning against demanding from the biographer emphases and concerns which one might expect in a historian. Viewed from the other end, though, the remark is equally illuminating. Plutarch’s dictum might be taken to imply that the depiction of human personality and idiosyncrasy - integral to the modern notion of ‘‘characterization’’ - is a distraction from the narration of great events that is the primary concern of the classical historians. Indeed, the idea that biography and history are not only different but mutually inimical is one that has found purchase in the works of some of the ancient world’s modern inheritors.

As well as considerations of genre, the student of ‘‘character’’ in ancient historiography faces a more fundamental problem. This is the extent to which modern concepts of character or personality are relevant to the works of Greco-Roman antiquity. The word kharaktlr did not have its present-day meaning in classical Greek. It signified rather an impression, an engraving, or a distinguishing mark. The term translated as ‘‘character’’ in the passage above is e:thos. This covers some of the same ground as the English ‘‘character,’’ but by no means offers an easy equivalency. If by ‘‘characterization’’ one means the analysis of complex psychological drives, the delineation of quirk and foible, and the evolution and development of personality under the influence of external pressures, one has to be aware that the applicability of these ideas to the works of the classical past is both debatable and debated. A fortiori, their applicability to works of ancient history is debatable as well.

A final preliminary warning, most pertinent to an enterprise of the present kind, must be sounded. ‘‘Classical historiography’’ covers a diverse range of authors, writing in different languages and subject to different environments and influences, over a period of almost a thousand years. Sweeping statements about the nature of characterization in the ancient historians run a serious risk of imposing homogeneity where none exists. Herodotus’ way of handling character is in many respects different from Xenophon’s, while both are markedly dissimilar from Tacitus’. In what follows, I have attempted to give some sense of the variety of the relevant texts and what distinguishes the use of‘‘characterization’’ in each of them, as well as the traits which they share. It is worth remembering, though, that a discussion of this compass can only begin to scratch the surface.

Despite all these caveats, however, the subject of characterization in ancient historiography is an endlessly intriguing one. As we shall see, it is bound up with many other topics that are addressed elsewhere in this collection: the assessment of evidence, the significance of style, divergencies of focalization, and the significance of narrative structure. And for all the difficulties acknowledged above, the study of how and why the historians characterize the agents of their histories is by no means an idle or a fruitless one.