You have given the answer to the problem you raise. That's the "beauty" of the historical style -- the sources are stated and assessed for their reliability or otherwise. That's exactly what a reader of history appreciates. Plutarch has succeeded as an ancient historian by distinguishing between "fact and fiction". He can tell readers there is much "fiction" in his source material that he is passing on. Thus an agreement between author and audience is set up such that the author can make some assessment of the value of the historian and his work.austendw wrote: The trouble with this, Neil, is that this isn't necessarily an appeal to "historicity", it's an appeal to "scholarship." For example, in his Life of Theseus, Plutarch uses all of these rhetorical tropes, which "appeal to having obtained the narrative itself from some source", but as Plutarch acknowledges that the stories are probably fabulous, he is not appealing to the "reality" of what is being said.
Exactly. And that's what makes historical writing different from, say, a fairy tale or one of the "erotic novellas" popular 1st century bce to 3rd century ce.austendw wrote:This isn't "an appeal to accepting the "reality" of what is being written"; it is an appeal to accepting the breadth and/or depth of Plutarch's scholarly research, and the scrupulousness with which he lays out the different versions, the differing narratives, he puts before us. Whether the reader takes them as historical or legendary or a fuzzy mixture of both, is determined by the reader's own sensibility/credulity; it is certainly not determined by Plutarch's explicit discussion of his sources.
Notice, too, that the author opens the invitation for readers to exercise their judgment and to engage in some form of vicarious dialogue with him. He does this by informing his readers of the very things you attribute to "scholarship". That's what history writing is about.
All writing implies some form of agreement between author and audience. It can never all depend on the author alone.
The point is that historical writing enables the dialogue with readers, the engagement of the reader with the ideas, the narrative, in the context of learning something of the author's interest and how he came by his material.