The Historian’s Disposition

Abstract Starting from Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ remarks on the historian’s διάθεσις (diathesis: disposition or attitude), this chapter explores the different attitudes and stances that historians reveal towards the events and characters they treat. One tradition of writing history emphasizes the greatness of the deeds and characters, in which the narrator both ‘allies’ himself with his glorious subject matter while adopting an ‘inferior’ position that emphasizes such greatness; the other portrays problematic or disastrous events from which the narrator is ‘alienated’ and towards which he assumes a ‘superior’ position towards the vices and crimes in his history. Since the historian freely chooses his disposition, Plutarch’s attacks on Herodotus can best be understood as a fundamental criticism of Herodotus’ approach to and interpretation of not only the Persian Wars but also human action in general. For Plutarch the subject demanded an attitude of ‘alliance’ rather than ‘alienation’, and although Herodotus proclaims the former, it is clear that by consistently focusing on the less glorious and more problematic aspects of the Persian Wars, he belongs to the latter. By contrast, Plutarch’s use of ‘negative’ material in the Lives does not open him to the charge of malice because the overall disposition he brought to characters and events in the service of his pedagogy, and in which he emphasized greatness and glory, would be clearly evident to his readers.