archaic truth

23
Accademia Editorale Archaic Truth Author(s): Thomas Cole Source: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1983), pp. 7-28 Published by: Fabrizio Serra editore Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20538760 . Accessed: 15/04/2013 08:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Fabrizio Serra editore and Accademia Editorale are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.214.161.15 on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:51:27 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Archaic Truth

Accademia Editorale

Archaic TruthAuthor(s): Thomas ColeSource: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1983), pp. 7-28Published by: Fabrizio Serra editoreStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20538760 .

Accessed: 15/04/2013 08:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Fabrizio Serra editore and Accademia Editorale are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.214.161.15 on Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:51:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Archaic Truth

Archaic Truth

Thomas Cole

The study of early Greek notions of truth is still dominated, fifty years later, by Heidegger's influential restatement1 of the view2 that to a-lethes is, originally and essentially, to me lanthanon?i.e., the "unhidden" or "unforgotten". If Heidegger and his followers

are correct, al?theia must be a quality inherent in objects perceived or information received: a certain self-evidence, abiding clarity or

memorableness3. Against this view (though also, by implication,

against those who reject altogether the correctness or relevance of

the derivation from the root lath-)4 Bruno Snell has recently suggest ed 5 that the l?th? excluded by a-letheia is something found in per

1 In Sein und Zeit (= Jahrbuch der Philosophie und ph?nomenologischen Forschung 8, 1927) 33 and 220-223. Cf., also, Piatons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Bern 1947, 26-33 and 'Al?theia (Herakliit, Fragment 16)', in Vortr?ge und

Aufs?tze3 3, T?bingen 1967, 54-61. 2 First stated by J. Classen, Beobachtungen ?ber den homerischen Sprach

gebrauch, Frankfurt 1867, 195. 3

See, most briefly, the articles in the etymological dictionaries of Frisk

(s.v. 'al?th?s') and Chantraine (s.v. 'lanthan?'), and, most exhaustively, J.-P. Le

vet, Le vrai et le faux dans la pens?e grecque arch dique, Paris 1976. 4

E.g., A.W. H. Adkins, 'Troth, Kosmos and Arete in Homer', Class.

Quart. 66, 1972, 6-7. Cf., also, Friedl?nder's suggestion {Plato1 1, eng. transi.

New York 1958, 221?modified and largely abandoned in Plato1 1, Berlin

1964, 234-236) that the word may not even be Indo-European. 5 In AAH0EIA, Festschrift f?r Ernst Siegmann (= Wurzb?rger Jahr

b?cher f?r die Altertumswissenschaft 1, 1975), 1-18. See, especially, 14 "fckr?ic ist das im Ged?chtnis l?ckenlos Festgehaltene (das in seiner F?lle hergez?hlt

werden kann)", and 11, "...in einem bestimmten Wissens-Kontinuum nichts

der Lethe anheimfallen lassen". Snell seems indebted to T. Krischer's study, 'ETYM02 und AAH0EZ', Philologus 109, 1965, 161-174 for his notion of

al?theia as the larger whole from all of whose parts the process or idea

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8 Th. Cole

sons rather than things: forgetfulness rather than hiddenness or being

forgotten. A-lethes is that which is retained in the memory without

any of the gaps to which such le the would give rise. In this "subjective" reformulation of the established, "objec

tive" interpretation, al?theia becomes the result of the way an original

apprehension remains in the perceiving subject's memory, not an

aspect of objects or information as originally apprehended. But per

ception or apprehension continues to be of major, if no longer cen

tral, importance. The discussion which follows accepts Snell's sub

jective interpretation in the main but argues for further reformula

tion, this time in terms of the processes of communication rather

than perception: al?theia is that which is involved in, or results from, a transmission of information that excludes l?th?, whether in the

form of forgetfulness, failure to notice, or ignoring6. The semantic

development thus posited, by which a word that originally meant

something like "conscientious reporting" became a synonym for truth

(etymon or eteon in the earliest attested Greek) has a close parallel in the transformation of Latin accuratus ("careful", usually of speech

or writing) into English "accurate". The Greek counterpart to this

development is more complex and harder to trace: al?theia absorbs

some of the original meaning of two other more specialized terms

(n?mert?s, atrek?s) and transmits some of its own to a third (akrib?s) before finally becoming, in the mid-fifth century, the most general and important word for truth. Moreover, the initial and terminal

stages of its history are much better documented than the interven

ing ones. But the development in all its phases is worth an attempt at reconstruction, even if the consequences for the history of Greek

thought are less spectacular here than where the Heideggerian etym

ology serves as a point of departure.

Snell's subjective reformulation, whether as originally presented

associated with the lath- root is excluded. For Krischer this idea is that of

being "unnoticed" rather (than "unhidden" or "forgetful", so that an aleth?s

logos is "...der Bericht der die Dinge darstellt... ohne das dabei etwas unbe merkt bleibt" (op. cit. 167; cf. 165: "...so aussagen das nichts [dem Angere

deten] entgeht)". 6 As in the corresponding verbs lanthan? and l?thomai, the distinction

between unintentional forgetting or failure to notice and intentional ignoring is not strictly observed. The meaning posited is broad enough to include both.

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Page 4: Archaic Truth

Archaic Truth 9

by him or in the revised version to be offered here, removes the most

crucial problem posed by its objective alternative. Hiddenness (or failure to be remembered) and its opposite are conditions which

should attach to things as well as to the content of statements. Yet

it is almost exclusively to the latter that al?th?s refers in its first two

and a half centuries of attestation. A Greek may, from the very be

ginning, speak the truth (or "true things"), but it is not until much

later that he is able to hear it (Aesch. Ag. 680), or see it (Pind. N.

7,25), or be truly good (Simonides 542,1 Page), or believe in true

gods (Herodotus 2,174,2). And it is later still that al?theia comes to refer to the external reality of which discourse and art are imita

tions. Other lanthanein derivatives?lathra, lathraios (and alastos, if it belongs to this group)?are applied freely, at all periods of their

use, to persons, things and situations; why not al?th?s as well7 ? The

question becomes fairly easy to answer if al?theia is taken to be, in

origin, a kind of "unforgettingness", a specifically human quality and

one which is most crucially and consistently important in the realm

of human discourse 8.

That the word should be applied to the verbal manifestations of this quality rather than the people who exhibit it, whether verbally or non-verbally, is unexpected, but certainly not unparalleled. One

may compare the related adjective n?mert?s (below, pp. 13-15), also

used regularly of discourse, even though the verb from which it is derived is rarely so used and always takes a personal subject. Nor

7 Usage thus tells strongly against the relevance of W. Luther's contention

('Wahrheit, Licht und Erkenntniss in der griechischen Philosophie bis De

mokrit', Archiv f?r Begriffsgeschichte 10, 1966) that the Homeric world is one

which knows "keinen Unterschied zwischen Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit" (31), and in which "die Dinge und die sie bezeichnenden W?rter noch in einem untrennbaren Wirkungszusammenhang stehen" (37). This may be true in general, and for etymos (text, p. 13), but not for al?th?s. Cf. Snell (above, n. 5) 11, n. 4, and 17.

8 This link to the meaning found in the noun l?th? or the medio-passive lethomai seems to be regular in lath- derivatives with a long vowel in the root

syllable. Cf. epil?thos, epil?smon, l?thargia, Uthedanos, l?thiponos. L?thanemos h?ra dit Simonides 508, 4 Page may be the season which eludes the wind, but it is more logically taken as the one which allows men to forget about the

wind (cf. lathik?d?s)?which leaves lesimbrotos (H. Herrn. 339) as the only secure instance of such a derivative with the "objective" meaning found in the active lanthan?.

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10 Th. Cole

are personal, non-verbal applications of al?th?s completely absent.

One such appears in the earliest clear gloss on the word, Hes. Theog. 233-236 9:

Nrjpea 8* ?ipsuS?a xai akrft?a yelvocto IIovto?

irpscr?iiTaTOV ira?Swv a?x?p xa\?ou<n y?povua o?vExa virpEpTife te xai ??tcio?, o?S? ds[xicri:?wv

Mj&ETai, ?\Xa Sixaia xai ijma 8iQV?a o?Sev

and another is to be found at Iliad 12,433 (below, p. 14). Also in favor of Snell's subjective interpretation are the contexts

in which a number of Homeric instances of al?th?s appear. Com

pleteness, non-omission of any relevant particular, whether through

forgetting or ignoring, is certainly what is expected of Phoenix when

he is posted as an observer so that he can keep track (memne?ito) of the course of the race and report al?thei?n concerning it (II.

23,361); and it is also what Tdemachus requests from Nestor in in

quiring of Agamemnon's fate (Od. 3,247, 254) and gives to Penelope (17,108) in his detailed account of the trip to Sparta and Pylos (cf.,

also, 22,420 [Eurycleia's enumeration of the guilty serving maids]). But against these five passages one can set others which are more

difficult to square with Snell's definition ?and suggest the need for the

further reformulation mentioned earlier. Al?theia, for example, seems

to be a property of all the substantially true stories Odysseus tells?

from the exceedingly full versions of the career of Neoptolemus and

the trip from Calypso's island found at 11,506-537 and 7,241-297, to the nine lines (16,226-234) that inform Telemachus of the how and why of his arrival in Ithaca, to the five-line statement (21,212

216) of how he plans to reward Eumaeus and Philoitios. There are,

moreover, contexts where it is not freedom from omissions but just the opposite?freedom from irrelevant or misleading inclusions?that

the word seems to designate. Such inclusions, in the form of encour

aging but ill-founded leads on the whereabouts of Odysseus, are prob

ably what Eumaeus has in mind when he says that travelers are

unwilling al?thea myth?sasthai in the tales they tell Penelope (14,124

9 For later glosses which seem to establish a similar link between al?theia and unforgetfulness, see Pind. 0. 10, 3-4 and Plato, Phaedr. 248b (in conjunc tion with Rep. 10,621a?cf. H. D. Rankin,

< A-AH0EIA in Plato ', Glotta 41, 1963, 51-54).

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Archaic Truth 11

125). The pseudea {ibid.) which result are not simply untruths but, as Eumaeus himself indicates three lines later (128), elaborate fab

rications: no one confronted, as the travelers are, with the prospect of being rewarded for any good news he brings can resist the temp tation epos paratektainesthai. Priam may be on his guard against similar elaborations?<as well as tactful omissions?when he asks

Hermes (disguised as a servant of Achilles) for pasan al?thei?n (II. 24,407) on the fate of Hector's body.

Di?neke?s, which is used twice in contexts suggesting it is a near

synonym of the non-epic al?the?s 10, seems to have the same double

reference. Applied (Od. 7,241) to the narrative (cf. above) described as al?thei?n in 1,291, it contains the idea of starting from the begin ning and proceeding, point by point, to the end. But the word refers

to something quite different at 4,836-837: not ia "straight-tbrough''

telling without omissions but a "straight-out" telling without evasion

or inconsequentiality (Penelope's dream refuses either to say di?neke?s

whether Odysseus is alive or dead n

or?the alternative?to indulge in windy talk \_anemolia hazein]). Here the contrast seems very much

that drawn by Eumaeus (cf. above) between straightforward, cir

cumstantial al?thea and pseudea (fuller, presumably, and more de

tailed) based on guess-work and invention.

In even briefer compass, the serving maids' conviction that Odys seus "meant just what he said" (cp?v yap \xiv akrftia jxu?hfaacrfrai:

18,342) in threatening to report Melantho's insuk to Telemachus is

simply the other side of the coin to Telemachus' justification of his

refusal to help the supposed beggar at 17,15 ("I am given to saying

just what I mean": fj yocp ?[xol cp?V ocXiQ&?a pAJ??)o,a<rdai). Odysseus and Telemachus are both saying what is strictly on their mind?no

more than what one intends to do in the former instance (as also in

the promise to Eumaeus and Philoitios at 21,212-216 [above, p. 10]),

10 Perhaps excluded for purely metrical reasons. Synizesis (? X rj fr ? to <;

is required if the word is to fit into a hexameter at all, and the resulting shape (^_) is largely confined to line end?a position which truth formulae

usually reserve for a verb of saying, 11 The same meaning at Od. 12,56-57 (Circe's refusal to say di?neke?s

which path to follow between Scylla and Charybdis). Cf., on the word in

general, Levet (above, n. 3), 192-194.

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12 Th. Cole

no less than what one feels in the latter. Context determines whether

emphasis is on the no more, the no less, or equally on both.

The existence of these contrasting usages could perhaps be ex

plained as the result of a natural extension of the meaning posited by Snell. An original "the whole story?no d?lections" becomes also "the

whole story?no additions" so that al?theia is alternatively the whole

truth or nothing but the truth. But the "extended" meaning can, I think, be derived more simply and plausibly from the same source as the "original" one?by assuming that the forgetting excluded by al?theia involves primarily the process of transmission?not the

mental apprehension on which the transmission is based. The

reference will then be, not simply to non-omission of pieces of in

formation through forgetting or failure to take notice or ignoring, but also to not forgetting from one minute to the next what was

said a few minutes before, and not letting anything, said or unsaid,

slip by without being mindful of its consequences and implications

(cf. the later use of the verb lanthanein, with or without a reflexive

and followed by a participle, to indicate doing [or saying] something without realizing it). It would be appropriate to describe a com

munication which arises under such conditions as a-l?th?s, whether the

the adjective derives directly from l?thomai (like, for example, aphrad?s from phrazomai) or indirectly, via an almost unattested

l?thos (Theoor. 23, 24; cf. ak?d?s from k?domai via k?dos), and to think of the communication as containing, or being itself an instance

of, al?theia. What is involved is strict (or strict and scrupulous)

rendering or reporting?something as exclusive of bluster, invention or irrelevance as it is of omission or understatement. It is not, as

the interpretations of Snell and Heidegger imply, the compelling clarity of a perception or the percipient's total command in recalling it that come to be combined in a (to us) confusing way with the idea

of truth. It is, rather, truth and method, the what and how of a

given communication that are so combined.

The positive evidence (18 instances of aleth?s or ai?thei? in Iliad and Odyssey) on which this modification of Snell's view is based

stands, as will be seen, in substantial accord with the much larger

body of evidence obtained by considering and comparing those Ho

meric passages in which al?th?s jai?thei? is not used, but some' other

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Archaic Truth 13

truth word instead (over 100 instances)12. The commonest of such

words (eteos, etymos, et?tymos) derive from the root et- and seem

to have much the same range of meanings which al?th?s was to

acquire in the fourth century. They can be applied to a communica

tion which is 13, or will prove to be 14, in conformity with the facts, or to what is in fact the case 15, by contrast with uninformed report,

wishful thinking, or as yet unconfirmed hypothesis. In compound

proper names (Eteooles, Eteocretes) and in the phrase nostos et?tymos at Od. 3, 241, the meaning seems to be "real" or "genuine".

Less common than these, but more common than al?th?s, are

two words, n?mert?s and atrek?s, which are parallel to it in form

and seem, like it, to have a more specialized meaning. All three

show the same privative prefix (derived from the Indo-European

syllabic nasal), with n?mert?s referring to that which does not miss

its mark (hamartano)16 and atrek?s to that which does not deviate

or distort (cf., for the root trek-, Latin torqueo and, for the metaphor, the phrase o?x ocv Eywys/aXXa -rcap?J; eltoi[xi ^apaxXiSov o?8' ?rca

Tifau at Od. 4,348 and 17,139). Though the isolated (ap)hamar toep?s (II. 3,215; 13,824) is the only corresponding non-privative form attested as a contrary for any one of these words 17, their original

privative force is still strong enough to prevent their being used with a negative18. The primary reference of all three is to the transmission

12 In what fallows I am much indebted the clear collection and classifica

tion of all Homeric examples given by Levet (above, n. 3). 13 Cf. II. 10,534; 14,125; 20,255; 23,440; Od. 4,140; 19,203 and, by a

natural extension from speech to speaker, II. 22,438 (et?tymos angelos). 14 Cf. II. 1,558 (of a promise), 2,300 (prophecy), Od. 16,320 (portent),

and 19,567 (etyma krainousin ["bring true things to pass"], said of dreams which say things that come true).

15 Usually in the phrase el ete?v (ye)... Cf., also, II. 13,111; 18,128; Od.

23,26 and 4,157. 16 What is not missed is presumably the truth (etymon), though there is

often the added idea of speaking unerringly what one's interlocutor wants to

know (cf. Snell [above, n. 5] 13-14) and occasionally that of not coming up with the wrong thing to say: cf. the adjective (ap)hamartoepes at II. 3,215 and

13,824, and the phrase ou8' ifpapxavE p?dwv (Od. 11,511). 17 On the other (rare) occasions when a contrary appears it is pseud?s

(Od. 2,19-20 = 337-338 [contrasted with n?mert?s] and 14,124-125 [text, p. 10]). 18 On the two occasions where al?th?s appears alongside ouk or oud*

the negative forms a single idea with the verb: ouk ethelousin at Od. 14,124 (text, p. 10) and o?S' ? Y ?XTjft?oc eins, rc?XLv S' o ye XA?eto ^?frov at 13,254.

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14 Th. Cole

of information through discourse, whether the transmission be un

erring, undeviating and undistorting, or strict and scrupulous (i.e.,

"unneglectful")19; and since these qualities attach as much to the

speaker in the process of framing his discourse as to the transmitted

speech, they all suggest forms of truthfulness as well as truth: sure

trathfulness, straight truthfulness, strict truthfulness. More accurate

ly, perhaps, one could say that the idea of truth or truthfulness is not

contained in the words themselves but, in the normal course of things,

implied by the context in which they appear. Unerring speech is

normally true speech, but n?mert?s may be used, as etymos is not, of a plan that will not miss being realized (Od. 1,86; 5,30)20 or of a person who is infallible (in the phrase y?pwv akioc, vrpEpTife at Od.

4,349, 384, 401, 542; 17,140). The same holds true for atrek?s in most contexts, though on one occasion (Zeus' instructions to the

dream in II. 2,10) the information to be transmitted is false; and it

is strict, unneglectful accounting, not truthful teffitag, that charac

terizes the yuv?) xepvffri? akr$fr\ci of II. 12,433 as she raises the

balance aloft to make sure that the wool on one side equals the

weight on the other21.

The sure, the straight, and the strict and scrupulous are not

so far apart as to exclude the existence of statements that are all

three, and many of the Homeric speeches termed n?mert?s, atrek?s

and al?th?s seem, when considered in isolation, to fall into this

category?hence to provide little basis for empirical verification of

the meanings just suggested. But their number is radically reduced

In the latter passage oud}... eipe is a negative way of saying palin lazeto.

Odysseus did not speak out, but instead held back, the ale the a my thon he

might have told. 19 The preference for adverbial atreke?s as against adjectival and substantival

al?th?sIal?thei? and adverbial-adjectival n?merte?s/n?mert?s may reflect noth

ing more than the constraint of hexameter composition. Atrekeia and atrek?s

require, to be metrical, a different scansion of the initial syllable (atrekeia, atrek?s) from that given currency in the normal ?trekeos, whereas n?merteia

has a pattern (_^) largely confined, like that of al?the?s (above, n. 10) to

line end. 20

Cf., also, H. Apoll. 132, 252, 292. 21 The variant al?tis (still favored by, e.g., Levet [above, n. 3] 91-93 and

Mette [Lexikon der fr?h-griechischen Epos, s.v.]) requires the unlikely as

sumption that a wandering beggar woman could also be a piece worker earning a wage (chern?tis).

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Archaic Truth 15

when one considers certain types of context where one word or the

other is consistently favored or excluded throughout Iliad and

Odyssey. True statements about the future, for example, unless they refer to a speaker's intentions (Od. 18,342 and 21,212-216 [above,

p. 11])22 or what will occur because it occurs habitually (Od. 4,383, 399) ^ are either n?mert?s (Od. 5,300; 11,96, 137, 148; 12,112) or designated by an et- word?never atrek?s or al?th?s. Here the

difficulty of forgetting or letting slip by unnoticed something which has not yet occurred practically excludes al?th?s; and atrek?s suggests, if it does not demand, non-deviation from a model that is already in

existence. On the other hand, the clear parallel between the spatial distance separating a marksman from his target and the temporal distance between delivery and fulfillment of a prophecy makes n?

mert?s an obvious choice for such contexts.

When reference is not to the future, n?mert?s is regularly dis

tinguished from atrek?s by the greater urgency or importance of the

information to be communicated24, atrek?s from al?th?s by the greater

accessibility of the information and its greater ease of transmission.

Atrek?s assumes as a matter of course that the speaker is in full

command of what is to be communicated. It is thus the only word

found in connection with verbatim transmission of an order (II. 2,10

[above, p. 14]); and in the standard formula alX9 &ye pm t?Se zii?

xa? ?cTpEx?w? xoctocXe^ov it does little more than contribute a certain

epic elevation to hundrum inquiries of the tl? izb?ev tic, ?vSpwv

variety25. This very routiness, however, may create special overtones

22 Cf., also, H. Herrn. 459 (atreke?s).

23 The two speeches of Eidathea introduced by atreke?s katalex? in these

lines contain advice and prediction, but they are largely concerned with where Proteus is regularly to be found and what he does when someone attempts to use force against him.

24 News of Odysseus, for example (Od. 3,19 [below, p. 18]; 17,561;

19,269; 23,35), or Zeus' orders to Calypso (5,98), or what the suitors want 'to know about Telemachus' departure and intentions (4,642). See, for other

passages, text, p. 19 (II. 6,376 and Od. 15,263-264) and below, n. 26 (?/.

14,470). 25 For the routineness of the information sought or supplied atreke?s,

cf. Od. 1,169, 179, 206, 214 (name and parentage), 24,256 (master's name),

11,140 and 16,137 (immediate practical instructions), 24,287 ("How long since...?") II. 24,655 ("How long until...?") and 380 ("Where are you going and what are you doing?"). The communication is more important and com

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16 Th. Cole

in passages where a possibly discreditable piece of information is

involved (four times in the exchanges between Odysseus and Dolon, II. 10,384, 405, 413, 427), once at II. 15,53 [Zeus to Hera] and once, perhaps, at Od. 24,123 [Amphimedon's ghost to Agamemnon's]). If a transmission is not atrek?s it can only be because of deliberate

distortion?not the temporary lapses or partial ignorance that might result in a failure to be al?th?s or n?mert?s. And so to insist on

atrekeia in a situation where there is some reason to believe that

accurate transmission will not occur can be equivalent to demanding, or offering, undeviating disclosure?even at the cost of self-incrimi

nation 26.

Al?theia, by contrast with atrekeia, presupposes a certain deter

mination, concentration or effort at recall on the part of the speaker, and so a degree of commitment and concern, whether to produce a

given effect on others or to maintain a standard for oneself (cf. the

recurring phrases [xvifaacrdE ... aXxfjc;, \zka<7[izda/'kzka<T\xi\)ov ... ccX

xt)<;, ?Xxffe-\affby\xoii where a similar concern, or lack thereof, is linked to the absence, or presence, of l?th?). The gods are regularly above (or below) such concern, secure as they are of their own effec

tiveness and unavailability in all dealings with men. And so the

pronouncements they make during the course of those dealings, whether directly or through seers, are never al?th?s 27. (Cf. the two

phrases quoted earlier [p. 14]: y?ptov ftXioc vTnn?pTT)<; and yuvtq xzpvfiiic,

plicated, but neither urgent nor difficult to make, at Od. 4,486; 11,457; 15,353 (news of someone other than Odysseus); 1,224; 16,113 (the political situation at Ithaca) and 8,572; 11,170 and 370; 14,192 and 15,383 (past experiences of the informant).

26 If this suggestion is correct, atreke?s might have been expected in a similar demand for a demaging admission at II. 14,470. Polydamas must there answer yes ?to Ajax's question, "Tell me n?mert?s: wasn't the man I killed

worth as much as the man you killed?"?and so acknowledge that he has been powerless to prevent Ajax from getting his revenge. But Ajax wishes to be insulting as well as force an admission. He knows the answer to his question

perfectly well, but sarcastically uses a word (n?mert?s) which suggests urgent need for information of the sort only a seer such as Polydamas can supply.

27 Gf. Snell (above, n. 5) 15: "Bei Homer ...wurde akrft?c, nie auf ?ber

menschliche Wahrheit angewandt". The generalization does not, of course,

apply to what gods say when disguised as mortals (H. Dem. 121) or when

talking to each other (ibid. 433 [Persephone's full, circumstantial account of the painful details of her abduction] and, probably, Hes. Theog. 233-236

[text, p. 10] where Nereus' themistes are presumably given to gods, not men).

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Archaic Truth 17

ocXtqotq?, with their contrasting images of divine infallibility and human

accountability).

Though the characteristic semantic field of al?th?s is best seen

through the contrast with atrek?s, the two words are alike in that

they may not be used in the course of one character's corroboration

or impugning of what another has just said. It is possible to know

on the basis of one's own information that a particular statement is

etymos, or even that it is unerringly so (cf. the use of n?mert?s ect

II. 3,204, Od. 17,549, 556); but to be in a position to judge the atrekeia or al?theia of anything more elaborate than a brief statement

of present intention such as that found at Od. 18,342 (above, p. 11)

implies prior possession of all the information being conveyed. And

this will normally exclude needing or desiring to hear the speech at

all. Even narrower restrictions apply when the plausibility or prob

ability of a speech is at issue. Odysseus is adept at telling pseudea which are etymoisin homoia (19,203)?i.e., recognizably the sort of

thing that actually occurs and so (presumably) readily believed. But

there are no recurring characteristics to permit such recognition in

the case of those statements which, at different places and times and

in the mouth of various speakers, happen to be unerring, or undeviat

ing, or strict and scrupulous. Eumaeus says (above, p. 10) that

Penelope's informants are unwilling to speak al?thea, but this is

less an immediate reaction to the reports themselves than an explana tion of why they always turn out to be false. And their falsity is

something of which Eumaeus is convinced on other grounds?whether because nothing ever comes of them, or because they insist on the

imminence of the one thing?Odysseus' return?which he is certain

will never occur (cf. 14,363-368). The various restrictions to which the use of the three words

under discussion is subject may be set forth in summary form as

follows:

Truth Word n?mert?s atrek?s al?th?s Time reference

? only past or present

Speaker ? ?

human

Nature of information important or urgent less important or rou- ?

conveyed tine

Transmission ? non-problematic (in- difficult

formation readily ac

cessible to speaker) Verifiability

? not immediately verifiable

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18 Th. Cole

The restrictions are maintained with sufficient consistency to

justify closer scrutiny of those passages which seem to violate them.

In most instances there are reasons for believing that the violation is

only apparent; in a few, formal considerations seem to have taken

precedence over semantic ones; I find none where the restrictions are

totally disregarded. To the first category belong several groups of passages where

the demands of an immediate context seem to have been overriden

by those of a larger one. Telemachus' request, made first to Nestor

(3,96-97) and then to Menelaus (4,326-327) not to gloss over or

embellish out of a desire to spare his feelings:

[XTjS? t? p.' aiSopisvoc [xeikivcrzo [xtq8' ?Xsatpwv, ?Xk9 su |xol xax?Xs^ov ottooc i]VTiQcra<; otzwtzti?,

leads one to expect al?th?s in the line with which the entire speech concludes: t&v vGv jxoi [xviQcrai, xai [xol vrpspxec ?vicrra? (3,101

= 4,

331. Cf. Priam's request at II. 24,407 [above, p. 11]). But the speech

itself, repeated verbatim in the later book, belongs to a larger pattern

of inquiry that begins with the injunction of Athena-Mentor (3,19) to seek out sure information (n?mertea) from Nestor. The line

quoted above recalls this injunction on its appearance in 3; and in 4

it recalls a similar injunction from Nestor, who cannot supply n?mertea

himself but urges Telemachus to seek them from Menelaus (3,327). The pattern is only completed when Menelaus reports what he has

heard from the yepoov aXio? vrpepTifc (4,349 = 384 = 401 = 542).

Here the larger context dictates to the immediate one, just as it does

on three other occasions in the book. Eidothea, though doubtless

capable of n?mertea, is only allowed to speak atreke?s at 383 and 399, lest her revelations to Menelaus compete in importance with the

subsequent ones of Proteus. At 314, on the other hand, Menelaus

is presenting as wanting to learn n?merte?s the reason for Telemachus'

presence in Sparta. Atreke?s is the expected form in such a request, but the line is a deliberate anticipation of what appears 17 lines later (331) at the close of Telemachus' reply: one of the pattern

determined requests for n?mertea already mentioned. Thirteen books

later (17,122) Telemachus will call the contents of this same reply

al?thei?, because there they are part of the larger al?thei? (17,108; cf. above, p. 10) of his entire narrative to Penelope. More simply,

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Archaic Truth 19

Odysseus' promise to speak n?mert?s to Penelope at 17,561 is at

least partially determined by Penelope's original offer (17,549, related verbatim by Eumaeus at 556) to reward the man who can tell her

n?mert?s about the fate of her husband. There n?mert?s was one

of the normal means of designating the sort of truth that is subject to corroboration by a hearer (above, p. 17)28.

On three other occasions variation between truth words involves

subtle distinctions in meaning or nuance. Theoclymenus' request

(15,263) for n?mertea about Telemachus' identity is only appropriate,

given his mantic profession and present situation?it is essential to

know for sure whether Telemachus has any ties to Theoclymenus'

pursuers or the man whose murder they are seeking to avenge. Telemachus' reply is the stereotyped -roiy?cp eyw toi %?ive, jx?X' ocxpE

x?co? ?yopzxxxu (266), and by bringing the exchange back to a more routine level it already conveys a measure of reassurance.

Urgency is also behind Hector's request (II. 6,376) for sure

information on Andromache's whereabouts?whether with his sisters,

his-sisters-in-law, or in the temple of Athena. He must return to the

battle soon and only has time to look for her in one place. In re

phrasing his question as "Exxop, euei [xocV ?vcoya? ?Vr)&?a [xu?hfaaa'dai

(382) before they reply, the servant women, like Telemachus, offer

a kind of correction?in the event that the original list was meant

to be exhaustive. They would be speaking n?merte?s if they simply replied, as they do at first, that Andromache is at none of the places

enumerated; it is only a demand for a full, strict account (al?theia) which requires them to add that, in point of fact, she has gone to the

city wall (386). To Hector's "Say to me with unerring truthful

ness..." they reply (coyly?) "Hector, in strict truthfulness we can

28 Al?thea at Od. 13,254 (above, n. 18) may be similarly determined by the tendency (text, p. 10) for all of Odysseus' true accounts to be called al?th?s. It is not simply the truth, but an account such as he earlier told Akinous that

he refrains from giving to Athena. 29 Cf. Snell (above, n. 5) 11 n. 8, who draws a somewhat similar contrast

between Hector's request for " Zutreffende

" and the serving women's modest

claim to know only "was ihr 'bewusst ist". But one would expect such a reply to contain less rather than more than what was asked?e.g., "We don't know

about the places you mentioned, but when we last saw her she was going to

ward the wall...".

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20 Th. Cole

More complex is Theoclymenus' ?Tp?x?co<; yap toi ixavTEUffo^xai o?S' ?7nxEUo,w at 0?/. 17,154, where the seer's insistence on the

certainty of what he has to say about Odysseus' whereabouts might lead one to expect n?mert?s. But the speech must be heard as a

sequel to Telemachus' conscientious and complete (al?th?s [above,

p. 10]) report of the trip to Pylos and Sparta. Theoclymenus rejects all that has been heard about Odysseus during that trip as uncertain

and imprecise: Telemachus (or Menelaus) o? ca?a o?Ssv (153).

Theoclymenus, on the other hand, is going to give an undeviating

report of what his mantic powers tell him. What he says is, by

implication, n?mert?s; but to call it that would make Telemachus

or Menelaus mistaken (hamartoep?s or pseud?s [see above, p. 13, with

n. 17]) by contrast. And this is further than Theoclymenus wants

to go. Of the three available truth words (al?th?s is not used for

mantic utterances [above, p. 15]), he tactfully chooses the one which

refers to straight transmission rather than 'infallibility or true state

ment. Since the transmission involves information not available to

Telemachus and Menelaus, a claim to atrekeia in making it need

not involve invidious comparisons. Formal considerations are probably decisive in two passages

involving the single most common truth formula ?W ayt y,oi TaSs

dn? xai ocTpEx?oo? xoct?cXe^ov. This phrase always precedes any re

quests for information with which it is connected. It may not, there

fore, follow another verb in the imperative; and when it introduces

a series of requests that are interrupted by a second generalizing order, the latter involves another formula: xai jioi tout' ay?pEuo-ov ?t/)tu

[xov, ocpp' ?? ?l8& (Od. 1,174 = 24,258). The questions which follow

the second formula are, however, no different in character from those

which precede. Either, then, et?tymon is here a purely formal vari

ant on atreke?s or else?since speaking atreke?s almost always in

volves speaking et?tymon (above, p. 13) but not vice-versa?a more

specific idea is being referred back to and continued by a more gen

eral one, as often occurs when the simple form of a verb takes up and refers to something first designated by one of its compounds 30.

The former suggestion seems somewhat more likely, given the fact

that, even when the et?tymon formula appears separately from the

30 See R. Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism. A Reader, Cambridge Mass.

1969, 77-85 and Studies in Greek Texts (= Hypomn?mata 43, 1976) 11-27.

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Archaic Truth 21

other (Od. 4,645; 13,232; 14,186; 24,403), it follows closely, in

every instance but the last (an indication of "lateness"?), another

request in the imperative.

For traces of semantically rather than formally dictated excep tions to the Homeric system described, one must go to Hesiod and

the Hymns; and even there the divergences are slight and infrequent. The clearest are at H. Herrn. 561 (ai?thei? of the responses of an

oracle) and 564 (atreke?s used to describe, not an oracular response, but the effort to elicit one)31. The generalization of meaning found

in the earlier passage may also be present in Hesiod's references

(Erga 768 and 818) to those who celebrate the last day of the month "on the basis of a true observing of distinctions" (al?thei?n kr mon

tes) and designate the 27th of the month "by its true name" (al?thea kikl?iskontes). On the other hand, it is just as possible?unless these

two lines are evidence for the lateness of the whole "Days" section

of the poem?that Hesiod is not thinking of truth but, in Homeric

fashion, of a strict keeping track?one which reckons consistently from the beginning of each calendar month, celebrating month end

when 30 days have elapsed rather than upon completion of a lunar

cycle, and calling the 27th the "third ninth day" (triseinas [814]) rather than?counting from the other direction?"fourth from last"

(tetras phthinontos)32. If so, the divergence from earlier usage is

purely syntactic (ai?thei? and al?th?s construed with kikl?isk? or

krino rather than a verb of saying).

Al?theia is also ambiguous in the famous claim of the Muses

(Theog. 28) to know how to speak al?thea as well as pseudea ... ety

moisin homoia. The word may be a simple variant on etyma, and

its use in connection with divine discourse?and discourse pertain

ing, at least by implication, to essomena (32) as well as present or

past?is certainly un-Homeric. On the other hand, the whole pass

age is often taken as referring specifically to the sort of poetry that

is to follow in the Theogony, in which case al?th?s may retain enough of its Homeric meaning to contrast Hesiod's circumstantial catalogue

31 For what may be a similar transfer of reference, see H. Dem. 294, where

n?mert?s mythes ant o does not mean "they spoke unerringly" but rather, "they

did not fail to say [what they had been commanded to say]" 32

For the different systems of reckoning involved, and Hesiod's own occa

sional inconsistency in using them, see West ad loc.

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22 Th. Cole

of cosmic dynasties and genealogies with the basically realistic (ety moisin homoia) but stylistically ornamented33 and extensively fic

tionalized narrative of heroic epic. Hesiod's Muses have learned to

do strict reporting as well as inspired celebration of past achieve

ment; and it is the content of their repertory, not the meaning of

al?th?s, that has changed. However one interprets this passage, the

promise at the opening of the Erga to speak et?tyma (10) falls well within the Homeric range of meanings: what follows is largely ex

hortation and so concerned with the future. N?mert?s would have

been a possible alternative, but perhaps an excessively arrogant one.

It qualifies divine speech more often than human (hence, no doubt, its position as the favored truth term in the Hymns)34.

Little can be learned from the isolated references to al?theia

which appear in other pre-fifth-century texts 35, and it is only with

Aeschylus (the most conservative?or Homeric?of later writers in

his truth terminology) that one encounters once more a body of

evidence large enough to suggest how and whether the original sys tem of meaning has changed. Here the functions of atrek?s and

n?mert?s (found only at Vers. 246) have been completely taken over

by al?th?s; and the latter now stands in somewhat the same relation

33 The absence from the Theogony of the "smooth, leisurely espansiveness" of the Homeric manner is noted by M. L. West (Hesiod, Theogony, Oxford

1966, 73-74). 34 41 per cent of all occurrences (see Le vet [above, n. 3] 33). For other

instances of essentially Homeric use of truth words in Hesiod and the Hymns, see the passages cited above notes 20, 22 and 27 and?most strikingly per

haps?Hermes' speech ?n his own defense before Zeus (H. Herrn. 368-386). The strict circumstantiality of the whole account is announced at the start (368: al?thei?n katalexo), as well as the speaker's infallibility (n?mert?s te gar eimi

[369]), but the crucial denial ("I didn't drive home Apollo's cows and never even ventured beyond my own threshold") is followed immediately by the in sistent atreke?s (380) that makes any accompanying untruth the result of delib erate falsification (text, p. 16).

35 E.g., FVS 22B 112 (Heraclitus) and FGrHist 1 F 1 b (Hecataeus), where

the promise to write &<; \xoi ?XTjd?a Sox?a slvou rather than reproduce the ri

diculous logoi current among the Greeks could indicate an un-Homeric unwill

ingness to make inferences about the al?theia of someone else's logoi (cf. text,

p. 17, with Krischer [above, n. 5] 173; and contrast FVS 21B 35 [Xenopha nes]: eoikota tois etymoisin). But Hecataeus may be doing nothing more than Eumaeus did (text, pp. 10 and 17) when he concluded that Penelope's informants were unwilling al?thea mythe s as thai.

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Archaic Truth 23

ship to et(?t)ymos as did the entire triad of words in Homer. It thus continues to refer, except in the adverbial al?th?s36, not to

what is merely true, but to what is truthful as well (cf. above, p. 14)

?or, in statements about the future, to what the course of events

will prove to have been truthfully said (Sept. 710, Ag. 1241, 1567)37 or cursed (Sept. 885-886, 946). The main innovation is that all

forms of truthfulness, not just the three for which there were specific Homeric words, are now covered **; and that et(?t)ymos is confined

(except at Prom. V. 293 and 595)39 to statements that are true without

being necessarily truthful. Messenger speeches can be al?th?s (Pers.

513, Ag. 622, 680, Choeph. 844), but only when they come from someone assumed to be in a position to control the accuracy of what

si said. The haxis of Ag. 477 that has a chance of being et?tymos is simply the second-hand gossip that arises on the basis of as yet

unconfirmed reports; and at Pers. 131 Darius' tout' et?tymon} refers

to his own anxious inference from what the messenger has just said:

it may be true, but it cannot be truthful. The cloud of dust which in and of itself tells of the approaching army at Sept. 82 is an etymos angelo s 40; but the beacon signals of the Agamemnon are conceivably

par aliagas ... al?theis (490-491), because, if true, they reflect the truth

36 Used to mean "really", "in fact" at Bum. 796, Suppl. 585 and 86

(panal?th?s) and Simonides 542,1 (text, p. 9). The usage may have originated through shortening of a parenthetical &<; a)o)frw<; eitue?v or the like: "to speak

truthfully", "to tell the truth", hence "really", "actually". Cf. the interrogative

8Xr\fe? ("Really?") of Attic drama and adverbial atrekes at II. 5,208, Od. 16,245 and Theognis 167, where it seems to mean simething like "I exaggerate not"

(said of a numerical figure [amphoter?, dekas, ondeisl that is likely to seem

too high or too low; compare the use of w? etco? eixe?v [ouSe?c/tcocc] to mean

"almost", "practically", when such exaggeration is involved). 37

Ag. 1547-1549 (alvov . .. ?XaMa cppEv&v -tcovtqo-ei,) contains a natural ex

tension of ?this meaning. Vhrenes are sincere (al?theis) when they are in harmony

with what is said, just as words are al?theis when they are?knowingly?in

harmony with -the facts. Cf. Pind. O. 2,92 (al?thei noo?). 38 This generalized meaning may already be present in Alcaeus 366/Z43

Lobel and Page (olvo? & (pikz -nm xal ?XadEa)?if the later writers (Schol. Plat.

Symp. 217e, Theocr. 29,1-2) to whom we owe our knowledge of the passage were right in taking the meaning to be in vino veritas.

39 Akribos oisth' at From. V. 328 is an additional divergence from the truth

terminology of the other plays (see text, p. 25). 40 Contrast the same phrase at Iliad 22,438 and H. Dem. 46, where no

such limitation of meaning is involved.

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24 Th. Cole

fulness of the original sender and a faithful series of transmissions.

Helen's name was bestowed et?tymos (Ag. 682), without foreknow

ledge (unless the namer was a god) of its aptness; whereas that of

Epaphos (Suppl. 312) was given al?th?s?presumably by his mother, in conscious reference to the touch of impregnation and release which

produced him. Even more conservative, or Homeric, is the syntax of Aeschylean al?theia?always depending on a verb of saying, or

modifying or referring back to a word for speech, speaker or speech act41. (Contrast, for et[?t]ymos, Ag. 1296 [et?tymos

... oisthd], Eum.

496 [etyma pathea] and Choeph. 948 [et?tymos Dios kord]). It is only in Pindar and subsequent writers that the Homeric

system disappears completely. Al?th?s now indicates all kinds of

truth, with et- words confined to specific forms (e.g., adverbial ety mos [Pindar and Bacchylides] or eteon [Aristophanes]) and speci fic meanings ("genuine"), or used sporadically and unpredicably for

reasons that are often unclear. The use of al?theia as the object of

verbs of perception (Pind. N. 7,25 [idemen]) or inquiry (Soph. Track. 91 [pythesthai]), or in contexts where it may be more than simply a quality found in discourse (Pind. O. 7,68-69: teXe?tocoev S? X?ycov

xopucpod ?v akaftz?a TCTOiom, I. 2,10: p^ix' aka?tz?ac, (k-z??) ?cyx^toc

?ouvov) suggests that the word is coming to be associated with the

objective as well as the subjective half of the logos-ergon dichotomy. One curious consequence of this generalization in meaning is

the (non-Aeschylean) use of atrekeia by itself, or of atrek?s as a modi

fier of al?theia, in situations where Homer would probably have had

a single al?th?s/al?thei?. Thus Pindar can suggest (N. 5,16-17) that

punctiliousness in telling exactly what happened (alathe? atrek?s) is

not always the more profitable (kerdi?n) policy (tactful silence is often soph?taton), just as Athena (Od. 13,291) was able to congratu late Odysseus for being kerdaleos beyond all his competitors because of his skill in deceit (he had just been restrained by his polykerdea noon [254] from speaking al?thea about his identity)42. At Pind. O. 10,13 it is the privileged position of the goddess Punctiliousness

41 Al?theis opseis at Sept. 710 may be "true visions", but they can just as well be "apparitions which speak truthfully".

42 The phrase eta alatheia read or restored by some scholars at I. 2,10

(text) and N. 7,25 would be a parallel instance of al?theia with a modifier in a context where Homer would probably have used the modifying word, or some

cognate, by itself.

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Archaic Truth 25

(Atrekeia) at Locris which makes it especially important that Pindar make amends for the lapse of memory that late delivery of a prom ised ode might imply. Even more striking is the prominence of

atrek?s/atrekeia in Herodotus, where it seems to suggest both the

precision of Homeric atrekeia and the scrupulousness of Homeric

al?theia. The result is a frequency (40 per cent of all truth words) higher than in any other author. This popularity proved to be short

lived, but only, one suspects, because the gap filled by atrek?s in

its expanded sense came to be taken care of in another way. In Attic

and all later prose the previously sporadic akrib?s (FVS 22B 101a

[Heraclitus], Aesch. Prom. V. 328 and the Hippocratic corpus)43 takes

over the function of Homeric atrek?s and al?th?s, a pair of words

whose sound as well as meaning it echoes 44.

In surveying the development sketched out in the preceding

pages one continues to be struck (cf. above, p. 8) by the absence, well into the fifth century, of any extensive trace of al?theia in a

purely or primarily objective sense. And this naturally raises the

question of whether and how far that particular usage was determined

by philosophical considerations?in particular by the tendency of

Greek thinkers, beginning with Parmenides, to assume that the truly real must display the same qualities as the content of strict and care

ful (al?th?s) discourse, and that such discourse is a better indication

of the nature of reality than observed facts and events. It is worth

noting that the earliest passage in which the extension of meaning has clearly taken place is Parmenides' famous account (FVS 28B 7-8) of journeying along a path which is simultaneously that of reality,

investigation and truth 45. The Pindaric examples quoted above (p. 24)

43 Compare the similar distribution in early texts (Prom. V. 102, 488 and the

Hippocratic corpus) of what may well have been an unsuccessful competitor of

akrib?s: skethros ("exact", "careful"). If derived from schein (see Frisk s.v.),

the word is semantically parallel to al?th?s: that which holds fast in the one

instance, that which does not let slip by in (the other. 44 The similarity of sound may well have been sufficient to suggest to

Greek speakers an etymological link, though the real origin of the word remains obscure.

45 Cf. Snell (above, n. 5), who seems to favor an affirmative answer to the

question (17) "...hat erst Parmenides den Wahrheitsbegriff geschaffen, der Sein und Denken in eins setzte, indem er das ete?v und das ?Vnft?? in einen Begriff verschr?nkte".

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26 Th. Cole

are, by contrast, much more ambiguous, nor can the possibility of

Eleatic influence be excluded. In particular, the parallel between

P. 3,103:

s? S? v?w tic ?X?L . . . ?Xai?z?ac, ?S?V...

and FVS 28B 2,1-4:

el 8' ay' ?yobv ?p?w, x?pi?om S? cb [xOdov ?xoucra?

oarap o S o i [xoOvai Si?^/jat?c ?10*1 v o f? o* a 1

?) [x?v otccoc; ?0*TLV te xa? ob? oux ?cm \ii] ??vai,

Iladou? ecti x?taudo? ('A X, tq 3* e t rj y?p ?7rr)S??)

may well be more than coincidental, given the completely unpre

cedented character of the way both passages speak of al?theia as a

pathway to be traveled in, or by, the mind46.

Such larger problems of interpretation, however, in so far as

they involve the period after 450 B. C, lie beyond the scope of the

present investigation. For the earlier period one is hampered by the

absence of any sizeable body of post-Homeric, pre-Aeschylean evid

ence, but one or two further suggestions may be in order. That

et(?t)ymosIetymos should give way to a more expressive, emphatic,

specific alternative is in accord with a general principle of linguistic history47 and need cause no surprise when it occurs in Greek. Most

strikingly, perhaps, one can compare the history of what may well

be a cognate of etymos, English "sooth". The word has the same

preponderant position in Anglo-Saxon as does the root et- in Homer,

but in modern English, like etymos in later Greek, it is confined to

isolated survivals. (Compare the oddly similar ways in which the

words continue to appear in two compounds designating a particular form of archaic discourse ["soothsaying"] and learned efforts to rec

over the content of archaic discourse in general [etymologia]). When

sooth gave way to truth it was displaced by a word which had orig

46 With akr\Mx? y?p ?it-nSet one may also compare I. 2,10 (?tju/ ?\aMa<; aYX^^oc ?aivov). It is perhaps worth noting that all the Pindaric passages which (allow an objective sense to al?theia (cf., in addition to those cited in the text,

O. 8,1 and 10,54) are from works which postdate the poet's Sicilian visit. 47

Cf. H. Frisk, '

'Wahrheit' und 'Luge' in den indogermanischen Sprachen', Kleine Schriften (= Studia Gothoburgensia 21, 1966) 17-18.

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Page 22: Archaic Truth

Archaic Truth 27

inally referred, like al?th?s, to a specifically human quality (reliabil ity, loyalty: cf. German treu and Middle English "troth") often re vealed in, but not confined to, discourse, and one which only later

came to designate the correctness of a statement (13th century) or

reality of a thing (14th-15th centuries)48. That Englishmen should look for truth to someone who is loyal

and Greeks to someone who keeps his mind on what he is about

should cause no surprise either. But something more specific than

ethnic stereotypes suggests itself as an explanation for the success

of al?theia over its two equally emphatic, equally expressive rivals.

In an age of intellectual inquiry and ferment, it might well have

designated a quality easier to come by than the dead certainty of

n?merteia and useful in a wider variety of situations than the exact

transmission of atrekeia. It was also a quality for the discovery of

whose presence rational criteria such as coherence and consistency could be devised, criteria which would be especially important dur

ing a period when oral communication was beginning, in certain con

texts at any rate, to be challenged by written as the principal vehicle

for the transmission of truth. Unlike akriheia (cf. Arist. Rhet. 3,12,2

1413b8-9), al?theia never came to be felt as a characteristic excell

ence of written discourse, but it had been associated, from the be

ginning, with qualities of care, precision, order and coherence that

are more readily available and more easily verified in written than

in oral discourse; and as truth came increasingly to be measured in

terms of such qualities it would have been easy to identify the thing measured with the measure: etymon with al?th?s m. Al?theia is, by

origin ?at any rate, sober, methodical, rational truth?first the pos session of men alone, though later Muses (Hes. Theog. 28), oracles

(H. Herrn. 561), and eventually even gods (Soph. Phil. 993; Eur.

Hel. 1150) learn to speak it, diluting and partially transforming its

character in the process. Its linguistic success can be explained?

48 See ?the entries in the OED, s.v. 'torue' and 'truth'.

49 The first prose writer in whom this identification is complete is Thucy dides; and dt may be more than mere coincidence that he is also the first writer to combine investigation of al?theia with a style and manner of presentation that makes complete use of ?a certain range of possibilities inherent in written

rather than oral discourse. See, for the latter, B. Gentili and G. Cerri, Le teorie

del discorso storico nel pensiero greco e la storiografia romana arcaica, Roma

1975, 22-26.

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Page 23: Archaic Truth

28 Th. Cole

approximately but, I think, truly?as yet another aspect of the gen eral passage in Greek thought from oral, mythical and poetic to logi cal and rational. To emphasize this connection is not necessarily to

downgrade the importance, during the period with which we have

been concerned, of more direct forms of cognition: revelation, the

non-verbal flash of awareness, the compelling "unhiddenness" of

things. It is merely to insist that, however important such phenom ena may have been for the archaic Greek, they were not what he

had in mind when he spoke of al?theia 50.

Yale University

50 The}' loom large, for example, in D. Bremer's Licht und Dunkel in der

fr?h griechischen Dichtung, Interpretationen zur Vorgeschichte der Lichtmeta

physik (= Archiv f?r Be griff s geschickte Suppl. 1, Bonn 1976); and the amount

of evidence assembled there is impressive, whether or not one accepts, as Bremer

does (p. 161, n. 144) the equation of al?th?s with "unhidden". Cf., also, R. A. Prier, 'Sema and the Symbolic Nature of Pre-Socratic Thought', Quad.

Urb. 29, 1978, 91-101.

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