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Although he criticizes poetic fictions as antithetical to the nature of his own inquiry, Herodotus often qualifies the truth claims of traditions he transmits by means of distancing devices (e.g., indirect discourse). Like Odysseus and the Hesiodic Muses, Herodotus often narrates “falsehoods that resemble true things,” while using rhetorical markers that alert his audience to implausibilities in stories attributed to others. Moreover, analysis of the Helen logos and the story of Cyrus’ upbringing demonstrates that accounts advertised as true may yet include material that is either of Herodotus’ own invention or indebted to traditional (mythical or folkloric) narrative tropes. Finally, the tension between truth and falsehood that Herodotus recognizes as primary narrator is also manifested in such Odyssean characters as Darius (whose lying enables him to overthrow the false Smerdis and seize the throne for himself) and Themistocles (a master of verbal deception and self-aggrandizing cupidity).
In the variety of the figures of the sixth-, fifth- and fourth-century Pythagoreans it is possible to perceive partly overlapping categories, but hardly any feature common to all of them. This chapter talks about a "family resemblance". This means that certain Pythagoreans had characteristics in common with some Pythagoreans, but not with others. Thus, Hippasus, Theodorus of Cyrene, Philolaus and Archytas shared an interest in mathematics; Democedes, Alcmaeon and Iccus were engaged in medicine; Alcmaeon, Hippo, Philolaus and Ecphantus wrote on natural philosophy; Milo, Astylus of Croton, Iccus and Dicon of Kaulonia were Olympic victors, whereas Milo, Democedes, Hippasus and Archytas were involved in politics. The Pythagorists of comedy and the real Pythagorizers launched the tradition of the existence (and then the coexistence) within Pythagoreanism of different groups, as a result of which two fictional categories of Pythagoreans appeared, the scientific mathematici and the religious acusmatici.
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