Conclusion

In his much-cited outline of the evolution and development of Greek historiography Jacoby (1909: 80-123) identified local history or ‘‘horography’’ (the writing of annual chronicles of individual poleis) as the last to appear of the five sub-species into which he divided the genre (above, p. 6). His categorization has been very influential (e. g., Fornara 1983: 1-46), but has recently been called into question (e. g., Fowler 1996; Marincola 1999; Luraghi 2001c: passim). The criticism is well founded. For example, the close association of chronicle to chronography is manifest (Mciller 2001, and see the discussion above, §2). In addition, as has also been shown in more detail earlier, the first part of a Greek local history is hardly distinguishable from genealogy/mythography and, in fact, many authors in the genre devoted the preponderance of their attention to that aspect. On the other side, two of the best known and preserved local historians of Attica, Androtion and Philochorus, were clearly more interested in writing about their own times and could just as easily be classified as contemporary historians. Indeed, one could legitimately question whether writing the history of Athens, after it became an imperial city, was local in any other respect than that it was written from a partisan point of view (if, indeed, even that is true).

Furthermore, in the case of ethnography, one scholar has recently suggested that it was simply ‘‘local history of a non-Greek people’’ and claimed that Herodotus’ excursus on Egypt in his second book was a ‘‘likely example of local historiography’’ (Shrimpton 1997: 147). Whilst the basis of this claim (discussed above) is questionable, it raises interesting questions about the relationship between these two subgenres in both ancient and modern historiography. Maybe the difference is just a matter of perspective, whether one is writing about the same material from an insider’s or outsider’s point of view. But, in that case, if we continue to believe that Hellanicus of Lesbos (an outsider) wrote the first history of Attica (pace Joyce 1999), how are we to categorize his work - as an ethnography or a local history? And when somebody in the fourth century recreated the history of the Messenians (an ethnos not a polis) found in Pausanias 4.1-24 (cf. Pearson 1962), did he think he was writing a local history or an ethnography?

The close relationship between these two genres is further exemplified by the modern concept of local history. If one looks at the areas of research of any local history society, well represented by the compendious collection in the Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Hey 1996), one will find many topics that would fall in Jacoby’s classification under ethnography: for example, flora and fauna, architecture, monuments and marvels, and a whole range of cultural practices. Even more troubling, whilst most local histories today emphasize the role of the ordinary people, who often fail to appear in ‘‘grand’’ historiography, there is no indication that this was a primary focus of ancient Greek local history. By contrast, the annalistic framework and the rather cold, matter-of-fact style of the chronicle that is characteristic of the ‘‘historical’’ part of Greek local history (in Athens at any rate) is quite alien to the art of the modern local historian. We could almost be talking about two different genres.

In short, the type of history under review in this chapter does not fit easily into any convenient pigeonhole and this suggests that we have to reconsider the whole scheme of classification of the sub-genres of ancient historiography in use today. Such a reconsideration is already underway (see, e. g., the works by Marincola, Fowler, and Luraghi cited above). For the purpose of this essay, therefore, it may seem convenient to define the ancient genre that has come to be called ‘‘local history’’ purely on the basis of its format, i. e., that it organizes its material in the form of a chronicle. In this respect, Jacoby’s technical term ‘‘horography’’ (cf. Diod. 1.26.5) remains the more appropriate title. But this is just a name and hardly helpful in understanding the nature of the genre. It was in all likelihood hardly monolithic (Rhodes 1990: 81; Harding 1994: 8-51; Marincola 1999: 313); local historians could disagree over details, interpretation, and emphasis (though hardly over issues of political ideology, cf. Harding 1994: 47-51).

Nevertheless, it is the conclusion of this chapter that, whatever it became in the hands of later practitioners (like Androtion and Philochorus, in the case of Athens), the origins of Greek local history lay in the impulse of a community (polis or ethnos) to establish its identity, through its origins, cults, and traditions, specifically in regard to its right to its territory (cf. Gehrke 2001). This impulse was embedded in oral traditions that were continually refined through the prism of changing political, social, and territorial circumstances until they became part of the literary tradition (Thomas 1989: passim; Fowler 2001). That is to say, the origin of the local chronicle is not coterminous with its first manifestations in writing.

Furthermore, in contrast to the view put forward by Jacoby (1949: 201), namely that the impulse to compose ‘‘local history’’ was late and resulted from a desire to fit the story of a polis into the grand scheme of Greek history, the position adopted here is that the impulse dates at least as far back as the time of colonization (cf. Giangiulio 2001) and probably earlier. Conversely, it continued to be reapplied in a similar context as late as the Hellenistic period (cf., for example, the oral and written historical material cited in litigation over border disputes in Ager 1996: passim, but especially nos. 26 and 74). The interaction of oral and written discourse, as it is understood today, is more complex than Jacoby supposed (cf. Vansina 1985; Thomas 1989; Fowler 2001: 95-115). I suggest that the reader will find a rather intriguing model for the unique blend of oral tradition about mythical origins with written record of ‘‘real’’ events, of partisan advocacy with factual precision, that is found in the Greek local chronicle, in the recent written documentation of the oral traditions and historical memory of the Sto:lo First Nation of British Columbia in support of their land claims (Carlson 2001).

FURTHER READING

The first major study of the Atthis and the Atthidographers was produced by Wilamowitz in his analysis of the sources of Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia (1893: 260-290). There he put forward the thesis that the Atthis was fundamentally a democratic medium that had been based upon a preliterary chronicle in the keeping of priestly magistrates, called exegetai, one of whom had published it (anonymously) early in the fourth century.

Two important studies challenged parts of Wilamowitz’s argument (Bloch 1940; von Fritz 1940) and Pearson 1942 provided a brief overview of the genre, but these were soon overshadowed by Jacoby’s Atthis (1949) and his introductions to and commentaries upon the individual Atthidographers (FGrHist 323a-328 and 3B Suppl. 1 and 2). Jacoby thoroughly disproved his teacher’s theory of a chronicle published by an anonymous exegete and denied that any state had preserved historical notes attached to lists of magistrates from the archaic period. He believed that oral tradition, preserved by aristocratic families, was the source of most Athenian history (for arguments against this view see Stroud 1978, 1979; Harding 1994: 40-47), and for other states as well, because ‘‘all local histories in Greece’’ (1949: v) were the same or similar in character to the Atthis. Also, contrary to prevailing opinion, he argued that local history was not the first type of history but a late offshoot of ‘‘great history.’’ This involved him in disputing the dates in Dionysius’ essay on Thucydides (5.1), for which he has now been taken to task by Fowler (1996).

Specifically in the case of the Atthidographers he advanced the theory that individual Atthido-graphers wrote their histories from a politically biased point of view to influence political warfare in the fourth century, the dominant view until the 1970s, when it was challenged by Harding (bibliography in Harding 1994) and rejected by Rhodes 1990. These scholars argue that the Atthidographers differed from one another on detail, interpretation, and emphasis, but that they did not write with a view to influence contemporary politics.

Finally, Thomas 1989, following the work of scholars in other fields (e. g., Vansina 1985), has greatly refined and improved our understanding of the working of oral tradition, and the interplay between orality and literacy continues to be a focus of attention (cf. Luraghi 2001c). Her denial of the use of documentary evidence by local historians, however, has not been so well received (see Harding 1994; Sickinger 1999), and quite the contrary view has been put forward by Shrimpton 1997.