This chapter turns to Herodotus’ unique narratorial reticence in making firm truth claims. "What is said" and "what seems" are found with much greater frequency than "what is true." Juxtaposing the Histories with contemporary discussions on epistemology will demonstrate the extent to which truth was problematized as a standard of inquiry in the fifth century. The narrator’s response to this is to use truth as an elusive criterion in order to highlight the difficulty of meeting its conditions. The final portion of this chapter looks to the frequency of "veridical" εἰμί in the Histories and points to its status as a criterion of accuracy in Presocratic epistemology. It argues for its incorporation in historical narrative as a distinctive marker of epistemic certainty.

Starting from the Solon-Croesus episode, this chapter argues that Herodotus’ inquiry establishes a horizon of expectation in which historical memory (through the narratives of Tellus and Cleobis and Biton) opens up a new space for philosophical knowledge. The second half of the chapter suggests that the Histories’ generic affiliation with history over philosophy is anachronistic in the fifth century BCE. It demonstrates that Herodotus was not interpreted as a historian in his own time and that "inquiry" and "love of wisdom" characterize the dynamic and highly experimental intellectual culture of this period.

The author detects which principles Ephorus stated in his Histories for research, and how he practised his inquiry. This enables the author to see whether Ephorus’ practice of inquiry was in line with the principles he stated or not, and also to draw an overall balanced evaluation of Ephorus’ historiographical method and the nature of his historical discourse.

This chapter depicts the witnesses who heard sounds or picked up clues before, during and after the massacre on the night of October 23, 1789. It brings to life the moment when the crime was discovered and the initial reports of the investigating judicial officials, as well as surgeons who examined the bodies.

Death investigation was a central aspect of forensic medicine. However, doctors struggled with uncertainty in defining and evaluating signs of death, at the same time as popular fears of premature burial abounded. Moreover, they faced considerable difficulties in distinguishing between homicides, suicides, and natural or accidental deaths and in determining the cause of death. Anxiety about insufficiently trained and incompetent practitioners who performed medicolegal duties that exceeded the limits of their knowledge and skills fueled demands for medicolegal reform. As medicolegal expertise played a more and more decisive role in criminal investigations and prosecutions, flawed forensic expertise became an increasingly salient problem that sparked ongoing debates about possible structural solutions.

Male medical experts faced challenges and uncertainty in examining presumably pregnant or postpartum women, particularly condemned women facing execution who declared pregnancy, as well as women accused of infanticide. Forensic doctors’ efforts and methods to establish the facts of infanticide cases commonly elicited criticism from other medical men or judicial authorities, and their conclusions were frequently at odds with the accused’s version of events. In many cases, forensic reports and testimony appeared to be the most decisive factor in shaping jury verdicts. However, all-male juries often weighed forensic evidence against evaluations of the character and life circumstances of the accused, and the sympathies of jurors shaped the interpretation of forensic evidence as well as judicial verdicts. Medical men’s role in the search for material proof of the crime was often both crucial and problematic, and changing, ambivalent social attitudes towards infanticide shaped the interpretations and consideration of forensic evidence.

This chapter describes the duty of States to prevent and investigate deaths that occur while a person is in their formal custody or is otherwise being detained by the authorities. When a person is held in a place of detention, the risks of him or her being killed or seriously harmed, whether at the hands of warders or by other inmates, are acute. In addition, a detainee may decide to commit suicide, whether as a consequence of mental health issues, the broader circumstances of incarceration, or directly as a result of his or her treatment while in detention. Inadequate provision of medical care, food, or water may also contribute to a premature death. Of course, detainees can and do also die from natural causes.

Chapter 10: This chapter covers a broad range of practices, from science public engagement events to collaborations between artists and scientists, theatre for young people, drama education initiatives, and global activism projects. Several case studies are examined: first, examples of exhibitions, lectures, and demonstrations focusing on Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and on public autopsy demonstrations as well; second, arts-science collaborations, known as ‘sci-art,’ with reference particularly to the work of Y Touring; and third, theatre and activism in relation to climate change, as exemplified by Climate Change Theatre Action project. The discussion is framed within the author’s own experience as a practitioner working at the boundaries of theatre and science.

This chapter assesses Phlegon of Tralles’ paradoxographical works Peri Thaumasion and Peri Makrobion, and demonstrates that Phlegon’s use of source citation and other strategies of authentication in these works is designed to appeal to a range of readers and reading cultures in the cosmopolitan Roman empire. In the tradition of Greek paradoxography that dates back to the Hellenistic era, Phlegon offers many citations from literary sources for the marvels he reports; these are all Greek authors, and predominantly Hellenistic or earlier in date, and would fulfil Greek-speaking readers’ expectations for the traditions of paradoxography. Other strategies, however, seem designed to appeal to Roman expectations. Phlegon’s use of autopsy as an authenticating trope echoes what Latin authors (Mucianus, Pliny the Elder) brought to the genre. Finally, Phlegon’s citation of documents such as census records is designed to appeal to inhabitants from across the empire who would have had personal experience of Imperial record-keeping. By combining all three of these authenticating methods so that they mutually reinforce one another, and dovetail in a believable way with readers’ extratextual experiences, Phlegon updates what was originally a Hellenistic, highly literary genre for the contemporary era and his boundary-crossing readers.

This paper outlines some of the historiographical tools and perspectives the Annals may have received from Livius Andronicus’ Odyssey and Naevius’ Punic War. The topics of allegory and authority structure the discussion. Section 1 explores the Annals’ construction of the past in relation to that of its Latin epic predecessors, particularly their use of allegory in the representation of history. Section 2 argues that Ennius’ unique blend of auctoritas is an expansion of Naevius’ simultaneous evocation of Hellenic historiographical authority of first-hand experience (theōria, empeiria, autoptēs) and divine inspiration from the Muses. The analysis here brings Cato’s Origins into dialogue with the authorizing techniques that are central to the historiographical personae of Rome’s first epicists. I conclude by suggesting that the genealogies outlined in Sections 1 and 2 explain the generic hybridity of Ennius’ res atque poemata.