Abstract

The evaluation of speeches in ancient histories by modern scholars is very varied. Tarn opened his discussion of ‘The speeches in Arrian’ with the following words:Speaking generally, one expects a speech in any ancient historian to be a fabrication, either composed by the historian himself or by a predecessor, or else some exercise from one of the schools or rhetoric which he had adopted.On the other hand, according to Fornara, ‘the fact does not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated that the ancients unfailingly endorsed the convention that speeches must be reported accurately’. When Fornara made a generalization, he wrote as follows:The ancients had unanimously adopted the Thucydidean principle of honest reporting of the things that were said as well as the things that were done.