The Art of Mythical History and the Temporality of the Athenian Epitaphioi Logoi

Abstract

Abstract This essay examines the use of myth and history in the Athenian public funeral speeches (epitaphioi logoi), concentrating specifically on temporality implied by the impulse to “mythologize” recent memories through speech, logos (Dem. 60.9; cf. Pl. Menex. 239b7-c7). While Loraux and other scholars are correct that the epitaphioi endowed Athens with a certain eternity by construing the present through the timeless lens of myth, the prevailing tendency to suspend the Athens of the epitaphioi outside of time leads to difficulties. As I argue, the chronological organization of the epitaphioi grants these speeches an important temporal element and situates them in the same continuum as the present – a move further reinforced by the tendency of the orators to rationalize the Athenian myths much as historians might; accordingly, I propose an adjusted taxonomy with which to approach the temporal status of Athenian epitaphic encomium: the epitaphioi are “mythical” less because of their eternalizing perspective than because of the malleable and pluralistic way in which they conceived of the past and molded it to their ideological purpose. Borrowing from anthropological and cognitive psychological frameworks, I further suggest that by routinely reconsolidating the past in the collective memory of the polis the epitaphioi positioned themselves in opposition to historiography.