The Historian and the Virtual Past

BY DONALD OSTROWSKI*

Of whom and of what indeed can I say “I know that!” This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.1

ISTORIANS construct hypothetical models that seek to present plausible explanations of how the extant sources have come to be. But these models always H remain hypothetical. All we can say is they are

representations of a virtual past. How and in what manner this virtual past corresponds with the real past we are unable to say. A number of other views have been expressed about the relation- ship of the historian to the past. The difference between these other views and the contention of this paper can be seen in the diagram on the next page.

*

The virtual past is the construct in the mind of the historian. In the traditional view, the virtual past is equivalent to the real, historical past. In a source-oriented view,2 the construct in the mind of the historian provides subjective insight into the object that is the source. The historian cannot approach objective knowledge of the historical past in the sense of verifiable statements, but he or she can approach objective knowledge of a

*The author is Research Advisor for Social Sciences at Harvard University. ‘Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York, 19551,

14. *See Donald Ostrowski, “A Source-Oriented View of Historical Study,”

Diogenes 143 (1988). Here Murphey’s distinction is accepted between the memorial past (each person’s own remembered, experienced past) and the historical past (the past that is beyond each person’s own remembered experience). Murray G. Murphey, Our Knowledge of the Historical Past (Indianapolis, 1973), 12-13.

201

Coherence (Oohesholt) Past-Based, Past-Oriented

Construc,riotiist (Miirphev) Source-Based, Past-Oriented

r - - - - - - i

1 virtual I historical 1 virtual I historical I Past , , past , past

r - - - - - - i

Marlnst (Topolcki) Coiwspnnilence (Mundelharirn) Non-Source-Based. Past-Oriented Peht-Based, Past-Oriented

Source-Based, Sowc.e-Oi-iented Theory

r - - - - - - i I virtual , past ,

Virtual Past

source in that sense. For example, the statement, “This paper is turning brown,” tells us something about the physical character- istics of the source. It articulates a perception. Likewise, the statement “This letter was written by Cromwell to his wife after the battle of Naseby” tells us something about the physical ink marks on it. It articulates a conception, a “thing of the mind.” But without a hypothetical construct we would not be able to say anything about the possible meaning or significance of those ink marks. The hypothetical construct occurs in the mind of the historian as a conceptualization of what he or she perceives. It cannot be verified by recourse to Cromwell’s actual writing of the letter, if he did. All the historian can say is that this piece of paper with ink marks on it could have been written by the stated person at the proposed time. But, in the end, we do not know when any historian’s statements about the historical past (statements that are of a conceptual nature) are true; we can only know when their statements about the written source or object (statements that are of a perceptual nature) are true. We have access to the written source or object in order to verify the historian’s perception; we do not have access to the historical past in order to verify his or her conception about that past. Thus, we cannot say anything about the historical past; and what we say about the virtual past is limited to what we can say about the sources.

Let’s take a well-known case to illustrate this point. In textbooks that include a survey of the ancient Middle East, the dates that encompass Hammurabi’s reign often differ:

At the outset of this history stands the powerful figure of Hammurabi (2123-2081 B.C.), conqueror and lawgiver through a reign of forty- three years.3 After a century of such warfare there came to the throne as the sixth in the Amorite line of kings at Babylon one Hammurapi, 2067-2025 B.C.4

On the accession of Hammurapi (1792-1750) Babylon was still but one of a number of petty state^.^

”ill Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, vol. 1 of The Story of Civilization (New York, 1935), 219; see also Morns Jastrow Jr., The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria: Its Remains, Language, History, Religion, Commerce, Law, Art, and Literature (Philadelphia, 1915), 146.

4James H. Breasted, Conquest of Civilization (New York, 1926), 145. Breasted does allow that Hammurabi’s reign was “possibly 120 years later,” i.e., 1947-1905 B.C.

Qoan Oates, Babylon, rev. ed. (London, 1986), 61; see also H. W. F. Skaggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon: A Sketch of the Ancient Ciuilization of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (New York, 1962), 66.

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Its [Babylon’s] greatest king, Hammurapi (c. 1728-1686), concen- trated on providing internal justice during his first 29 years but then seized an opportunity to conquer all of Mesopotamia.6 The credit of gathering together the entire land of the Two Rivers under a single sceptre finally fell to the most illustrious of the Babylonian sovereigns, Hammurabi (1711-1669 B.C.), though not without a lengthy struggle with his last rival, Rim-sin of Larsa, who was driven from his capital only in 1683.7

These various dates, spanning a period of over 400 years, appear with the assurance of established historical fact.8 All of these statements are made as though they were about the historical past without any indication that any particular set of dates might be speculative. They are not marked as speculative, but rather marked in exactly the opposite way, as though no other view exists. Even the most unrepentent past-oriented historian must admit that something is awry here. Clearly, all these dates cannot correspond to the actual time when Hammurabi ruled, unless we postulate a n unusual characteristic of the personage that was Hammurabi. It is not possible that all these dates are correct, but it is possible that one set of dates is correct or that none of them is correct. I t is not possible to ask Hammurabi, “When did you rule?” Even if we found his remains (or the dust that was his remains) he/it would not respond. Also, no one now living was alive when Hammurabi was living. Therefore, we cannot ask any other living being to confirm the dates of his reign in the same way we could ask someone who is presently alive, “When did the Beatles first become popular in the US.?” That answer might take the form, “Well, let’s see, I was a freshman in college when I first heard a Beatles song, and that was 1964.” Nor can we go back in time and watch, like a fly on the wall, while Hammurabi becomes king and while he dies. Even the person who may have been Hammurabi is a postulation. We don’t know that he really lived. All we have is a name in a few sources and a pictorial representation on a stele. The word “Hammurabi” is merely a convenient term under which to group some source testimony.

Chester G. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, 3d ed. (New York, 1983), 46.

’Marcel Ihnan, ed., Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History (Paris, 1964), 60.

“For some of the difficulties involved in ancient Middle East chronology, see Wilbur Ileveraux Jones, Venus and Sothis (Chicago, 1982). 73-114. Jones points out that three sets of dates, which span 123 years, are now considered possible for Hammurabi’s reign. But, new evidence or reconsideration of old evidence could easily change those sets of dates.

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terms under which to group the source testimony. This view has become rather well established but no one has worked out the full implications of what this proposition may mean for historical study.

We cannot confirm our present statements by resort to the historical past. Although no one argues against the proposition itself, almost all historical theorists either ignore the proposition or tend to see it as a problem to overcome. One of the few to acknowledge the proposition is C. I. Lewis, who has challenged those who say the past can be known “to tell us how the past, which is really dead and gone, can be known.”g In response, the analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto at first dismisses Lewis’ question as “absurd,” then says that it is “premature” to say how the past can be known.1° Danto never gets around to saying how it can be known, but he presents his examples from the historical past as though they are already known. In other words, there is a fundamental flaw in all of Danto’s examples, whether he is discussing Caesar’s death in 44 B.C., the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the climbing of Mt. Ventoux by Petrarch, or whatever. He presumes that these events actually happened in reality. This is clear from his proposition: “If I had been in Rome in 44 B.C., then I would have had Caesar-dying experiences.”Il Therefore, he concludes, historical statements are verifiable in principle and therefore meaningful. Yet, continually and almost imperceptibly he shifts his ground from statements that are ostensibly about past events to the past event itself. In other words, when he asserts that we could in principle verify the statement “Caesar died in Rome in 44 B.C.” by returning to Rome and experiencing the event, he presents a circular argument: that is, we know that Caesar died in Rome in 44 B.C. because if we went back to Rome in 44 B.C. we would experience Caesar’s dying. Perhaps so, but what if we were to return to Rome and not experience the Caesar-dying event? That is, what if Caesar did not die in Rome in 44 B.C.? What if there had been no Julius Caesar? What if there was no Rome in 44 B.C. and all our statements about the historical past are just plain wrong and mistaken? How then would Danto verify his statement? He tries to avoid this problem by a special use of “verify” to mean both verify that a n event occurred and verify

%.I. Lewis, Mind and the World Order (New York, 1956), 150. loArthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History (New York, 1965), 27-62,

lllbid., 47. esp. 39-40.

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that a n event did not occur. Danto might argue that in principle he could verify that Caesar did not die in 44 B.C. Yet, he does not provide a n example of going back in time to verify that something did not occur.

Danto also overlooks a more serious problem, one that is fatal for the conclusion he is trying to reach. He argues that if we were to return to Rome in 44 B.C., then we would be able to verify in principle that Caesar died in Rome in 44 B.C. If we accept his argument, then we are obliged to accept its logical continuation- that is, since we are not able to return to Rome in 44 B.C., then that means we are not able to verify in that way that Caesar died in Rome in 44 B.C. or, for that matter, that he did not die in Rome in 44 B.C. Since Danto offers no other means of verifying past events, as though this is the only one, then Danto’s argument would seem to support the point he is trying to refute-that is, statements in the present that are ostensibly about past events cannot be verified one way or the other. In addition, he seems to assume that a statement we make in the present can be about a past event. Thus, he writes: “Just think, for a moment, of how plainly we understand the sentence ‘The Battle of Hastings took place in A.D. 1066,’ and how vivid a n image many of us have of this battle.”12 What Danto does not consider here is that the image we have in our minds is not the Battle of Hastings. We did not experience the Battle of Hastings, therefore we cannot have a n image of the battle itself. We each individually have an image of something we might conjure up whenever we hear the phrase “the Battle of Hastings.” But our images differ from each other and from the real battle itself.

For Danto, the historical past seems to float free, unconnected with the present. He does not connect Julius Caesar or any other name or event in the historical past with why we have a concept of that name or event in the present. Instead, as I will argue later, a statement in the present couched in terms that would seem to indicate it is describing a past event is in fact describing source testimony available in the present. Such statements are not verifiable by witnessing the event they are supposedly describing, but are valid and meaningful insofar as they accurately describe and try to explain presently existing source testimony. If we had no presently existing sources that mention Julius Caesar, then we would have no need for the construct “Julius Caesar.”

Danto, in contrast, disparages the idea that historians’ state- ments are ultimately about source testimony:

“Zbid., 43.

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But surely, knowing about the Battle of Hastings is quite a distinct thing from knowing about the evidence for it. To know about the evidence, for instance, might be to experience certain sheets of parchment. But I am certainly not referring to sheets of parchment when I refer to the Battle of Hastings. I am, instead, referring to a scene of human strife.13

Danto is, in effect, saying we have direct knowledge of events of the past. That is, the image each of us has of the Battle of Hastings is of the battle itself. Yet, even Danto’s “knowing” about the Battle of Hastings is based on a source or sources, whether he read about it in some history textbook or a history teacher told him about it. His “knowledge” about the Battle of Hastings is no more and no less than the sum of the information he has read, seen, or heard that is contemporary to him and that can be grouped under the phrase “the Battle of Hastings.” None of that information is the battle itself.

Knowledge of a real historical past is not relevant in order for Danto to create his analytical structure, but the concept of knowledge of a real past is necessary for his structure to be valid. One might think of Danto’s analytical structure (and by extension the philosophical structures of all analytical philosophers of history) this way: In a possible universe with a possible past this is one way of looking at possible knowledge of that possible past; therefore, that possible knowledge is actual knowledge, and that possible past is the real past. Danto’s views reflect the tendency to hang on so desperately to the traditional notions of the historical past that we are unable to comprehend the possibility that these notions might be wrong. Both the authority of the tradition and the identification of the political elite in a society with propagation and maintenance of that tradition tend to inhibit questioning of prevailing views of the historical past.

If history as a field of study does not provide knowledge of the past, then what good is it? It would seem then not to provide the lessons of the past or perspective on the present that many people argue for it. For example, in a guide for students, Edward Anson writes that “the real value of history is that it helps us understand the present through a n examination of the past.” Yet, on the previous page, Anson asserts that history “consists of various interpretations of currently available evidence.”14 Is there not a t some level a contradiction here? Is he equating “current evidence” with the past itself? Is he equating “interpretations” of that evidence with “examination” of the real past? Which do we really believe? That history is merely opinions about objects that exist

‘SIbid., 44. “Edward M. Anson, A Civilization Primer, 2d ed. (New York, 1988), 7-8.

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in the present or that it is knowledge of the past? If we believe the former, then is the latter just something we tell our students to make our work seem more important? If we believe the latter, then how do we get from opinions to knowledge? I will argue that not only can we not have knowledge of a real historical past, we also do not need the concept of such knowledge, in principle or otherwise, to make historical study work.

* If the historical past cannot be known and there is no way to

show that it can be known, then what are the implications for historical study?

Facts are the result of hypotheses we form to account for those things that confront us. Confronted with something, we form a hypothesis about it: what it is, where it comes from, what it means, and so forth. When we perceive something, we perceive information that is already processed to a degree by our senses (a process we might call “perceptualization”). We tend to perceive what we expect to perceive. Then our brains process the information further. In dreams, for example, external stimuli are often processed to become part of the dream. The philosopher R. Stephen Humphreys has argued that

it is a commonplace not only of modern philosophy but also of comparative linguistics and anthropology that the aspects of an object, and indeed objects themselves, are not objectively given; rather they exist only relative to some framework of perception.’“

Besides the fact that Humphreys could also have included quantum physics in that list of disciplines where this idea is well known, he could have made it clearer that our framework of perception affects not only what we perceive but is also affected by what we perceive. This interactive process is what I mean by perceptualization.

In historical study, our examination of a physical source results in a set of descriptive hypotheses (perceptualization), about which we formulate further imaginative hypotheses (conceptualization), which in turn lead to a concept of the virtual past (historification). The conceptualization process is not inter- active with anything outside the mind of the historian.I6 That is,

15R. Stephen Humphreys, “The Historian, His Documents, and the Elemen- tary Modes of Historical Thought,” History and Theory 19 (1980): 4.

‘“his is what I think Lakatos means when he writes in relation to science that “Propositions can only be derived from other propositions, they cannot be derived from facts.” I. Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (Cambridge, 1970), 99.

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conceptualized propositions derive from perceptualizations in the mind of the historian, not directly from the objects that are being perceived. We do not look at a n object and conceptualize; we look at a n object, perceptualize, then conceptualize from the percep- tualization. We intellectualize what we perceive in order to be able to use the information in an abstract way. All thought proceeds this way.

We formulate hypotheses to explain the source testimony, but we also accept a huge amount of received hypotheses handed down from previous historians. These received hypotheses, no doubt, were formulated to explain the historical past, but they have value only insofar as they account for the testimony of the sources. Historians’ thinking about and articulating their views as though they were studying the memorial past can be a useful stratagem for organizing the source testimony and for con- structing a model to account for that testimony. Historians present hypotheses about the source testimony as though they are describing their own memorial past because it is easier to deal with hypotheses in a familiar way. It is a convenient means of grouping the data.

A viewer on Earth, although not accepting a geocentric universe, will still speak of the “sunrise” and the “sunset” because it is more difficult to speak in terms of the Earth’s rotation bringing us into view of the Sun or blocking out the view of the Sun. Likewise, ships a t sea still navigate assuming a stationary Earth because it is easier to locate their position that way than via a moving object. We would not conclude from this that the universe is geocentric, or that the Earth does not rotate. Yet, theorists seem to find no difficulty accepting the proposition that historians’ narratives are telling us what really happened in the real past; that is, that they have knowledge of that real past merely because they use a device, the technique of narration, to handle the source testimony.

There is wide acceptance of narrative as a truth determiner.17 Hayden White has asserted:

So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused.

17See Jeffrey B. Russell, “History and Truth,” The Historian 50 (November

’*Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of 1987): 6.

Reality,” in On Nurrutiue, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago, 1980), 1.

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Yet, there are problems with this view of narrative. I might venture to argue that it is precisely because of our familiarity with narrative that it is so problematic. That is, we have difficulty stepping outside of it because we are continually immersed in it. One is reminded of Wittgenstein’s statement:

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something-because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all.-Unless that fact has at some time struck him.-And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, i s most striking and most powerful.19

The “stepping outside” narrativity is made even more difficult for historians because it undercuts any claims to their possessing special knowledge.

A narrative is merely a verbal description of a model to account for the source testimony we have in the present, not the telling of the story of the past. Nor is a narrative an explanation; it is a description of an explanation. One can have different narratives essentially describing the same explanation, but different explanations cannot be described by one narrative. A narrative, in itself, does not recognize the existence of other possible narratives and precludes all other explanations except the one it is describing. Humphreys has argued that “history is specifically descriptive in character rather than imaginative. . . .”2*

It seems to me that historical study is both descriptive and imaginative, but a distinction should be maintained, insofar as possible, between the descriptive part and the imaginative part. Historical study is descriptive at the level of perceptualization of the source testimony. Then it becomes imaginative at the level of conceptualization, using the source testimony as evidence to construct a model in the mind of the historian. Finally, it becomes descriptive again as historians describe in narrative form the imaginative models they have constructed. The strongest refutation of the historical profession’s jubilant justifications of narrative is John V. A. Fine’s simply stated goal in his recent book: “My aim has been not to produce a smoothly flowing narrative which can lull a reader into unthinking acceptance of the views presented, but to try to make him think.”*l But, alas, I

IgLudwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G . E. M.

*Wumphreys, “The Historian,” 2. 21John V. A. Fine, The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (Cambridge,

Anscombe (Oxford, 1968), pt. 1, sec. 129.

Mass., 1983). vii.

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as reader find that I do not want to think; I prefer nice stories instead. The fact that the Bible is in narrative form may have influenced the popular conception of the way historical works should be written. But there may be an even deeper affinity in each of us to narrative. Oliver Sacks, among others, has pointed out that we each have our own internal narrative, our own “life story, . . whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives.”22 Each of us gains our sense of identity from our own inner narrative. This may be why history as narrative is so prevalent; it provides a sense, however falsely, of continuity with the past, and a sense, however falsely, of our own historical identity. But for that purpose, any historical narrative will do.

The historian, like the historical novelist, imagines a way that events might have occurred, but in contrast to the historical novelist, the historian then too often says that his or her imaginative re-creation is the only way it could possibly have been; in other words, that he or she has imagined the truth. Erikson’s term for Luther’s “tendency to retrospective dramati- zation” is “historification.”2” “Historification” aptly describes what the historian does in creating a narrative, that is, drama- tizing retrospectively. Such a stratagem is not defensible in theory as the goal of historical study, nor as a means of ascertaining the truth about the historical past. That is, historians have a problem of verification if they try to test their historifi- cations against the historical past, which by definition is no longer present, extant, or able to be experienced.

To illustrate this point: the statement “In the year 49 B.C. Caesar crossed the Rubicon” has been taken as the quintessential historical fact since Carl Becker used it to represent a real historical event.24 But how do we know what Caesar did? Presumably because of source testimony that we use as evidence. What image do we have in our minds? I imagine Claude Rains, or maybe Rex Harrison, crossing the upper Schuylkill River. Whom or what do you imagine? A personification of Caesar’s bust, of his image on coins? Certainly not Julius Caesar himself since, unless you are over 2000 years old, there is no way you could have seen him (that is, if he existed at all). How accurate are our imagina- tions? Our subjective images may differ but they are joined by a

2201iver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife f o r a Hat and Other Clinical

23Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History

War1 Becker, “What Are Historical Facts?” Western Political Quarterly 8

Tales (New York, 1987), 110.

(New York, 1962), 139.

(September 1955): 32829.

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single statement. That statement evokes in our minds different images, not the past event itself. There is no way to confirm that statement if the referent is the historical past or the images in our minds; the only possible way we can confirm it is if the referent is source testimony, that is, that which is extant in the present.

If someone were to make the statement “Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 63 B.C.” (as indeed someone once wrote me), then that statement might be correct about the past, but meaningless for us. Caesar might have crossed the Rubicon in 63 B.C., .who knows? One simply cannot confirm whether that statement, when made about the past, has any meaning; nor can one deny that it might be correct. That statement cannot be evaluated, nor even chal- lenged, especially if stated by someone who claims that the past exists and that they have knowledge of it. Why quibble with someone who knows what really happened? The Leningrad historian Ia. S. Lur’e describes as “ghosts” such unfounded assertions that get established in the historiography:

The introduction of unproven statements becomes a real danger in those cases when the lack of evidence is not made clear and when such statements become the basis for other deductions in a pragmatic construct . . . they pass from one work into another, and become “common knowledge.” In repeating them historians no longer think about their origin and about the degree to which these statements have been proven. As a result, rather idiosyncratic historiographic “ghosts” are born: opinions expressed by scholars in the form of a guess or even because of a misunderstanding begin to occupy a firm place in the historiography, gain the strength of a n indisputable fact, and even become “commonplaces.”25

Most historians are able to cite any number of historiographic ghosts in their own special area of study, but ironically often find themselves using such ghosts when teaching courses and writing books and articles that take them out of their own specialty.

But, if the statement “Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 63 B.C.” were made to describe the available source testimony, then that statement can be evaluated as meaningful, but wrong, because the extant source testimony does not support the assertion that he crossed the Rubicon in 63 B . C . ~ ~ Since, as Lur’e has written, the only legitimate basis for historical knowledge is source testi-

‘”a. s. Lur’e, “Problems of Source Criticism (with Reference to Medieval Russian Documents),” trans. Michael Cherniavsky, Slauic Review 27 (March 1968): 21.

2fiThis example is a correct use of the argument from silence. See G. M. Styler, “Argumenturn e silentio,” in Jesus and the Politics of His Day, ed. Ernst Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (Cambridge, 1985), 101-107.

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m ~ n y , ~ ~ we need continually to test the statements in historians’ constructs with recourse to the source testimony.

Let us take a closer look at the account of Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon-by the poet Lucan in his poem the Pharsalia.

When he had arrived at the waves of the little Rubicon, the mighty image of his trembling country distinctly appeared to the chieftain in the darkness of the night, bearing marks of extreme sadness on her features, letting loose the white hair from her tower-bearing head, with her long locks dishevelled, standing with her arms all bare. . . . At that time winter gave it strength, and now the showery Cynthia with her blunted horn for the third time had swollen the waves, and the Alps were thawed by the watery blasts of the eastern breeze. First of all the charger is opposed obliquely to the stream, to bear the brunt of the floods; then the rest of the throng bursts through the pliant waves of the river, now broken in its course, across the easy ford. . . .2*

The French historian G6rard Walter claims that “Lucan gives us some extremely valuable information not to be found anywhere else.”29 And, furthermore, after discussing “how the crossing of the Rubicon by Caesar and his army appeared to the eyes of a poet,” Walter makes the kind of claim that one typically finds, but is nonetheless astounding whenever one comes across it in otherwise serious literature: “It [Lucan’s poetic rendering] is much nearer the truth than the spectacular scene imagined by the historians.’’3o To be sure, there are elements of concoction in the accounts of Plutarch, Suetonius and Appian; one would like to ask Walter to tell us how he knows Lucan’s poetic rendition is “much nearer the truth.” Maybe Walter has access to a time machine that allows him to decide which account is truer about a past event than any other account. If he does, then one wishes he would tell us exactly where Caesar crossed the Rubicon; indeed, we do not even know where the Rubicon was. There are guesses to be sure: it could be one of several modern streams, the Luso (declared by a Papal decree of 1756 to be the ancient Rubicon), the Pisatello, the Rugone, the Pluso, or the Fiumicino (which since Mussolini’s time has been officially renamed the Rubicon); or the Rubicon could have followed the Pisatello in its upper course and

27See Lur’e, “Mikhail Dmitrievich Priselkov-istochnikoved,” Trudy Otdela dreunerusskoi literatury 18 (1962): 470; D. S. Likhachev, V. L. Ianin, and Ia. S. Lur’e, “Podlinnye i mnimye voprosy metodologii izucheniia russkikh letopisei,” Voprosy istorii, no. 8 (1973): 200.

28The Pharsalia of Lucan, trans. H. T. Riley (London, 1853), 11-13. 29GCard Walter, Caesar: A Biography (New York, 1952), 328. 3oIbid., 329.

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the Fiumicino in its lower course.31 Walter could also tell us, since he disregards Suetonius’ testimony that there was a bridge, exactly how deep the Rubicon was when Caesar crossed it (by taking some measuring devices on his next trip back there). Walter rejects Lucan’s account of the discussion between Caesar and the “giant phantom of the Homeland in distress” in favor of the words Lucan puts in Caesar’s mouth after he crosses the river: “Here I bid farewell to peace and outraged justice. It is thee, 0 Fortune, whom I follow. Away with treaties! Let us surrender to destiny! Let War be our j ~ d g e . ” ~ 2 At the same time, Walter finds Suetonius’ rendition of Caesar’s words, “Let us go forward to where the signs of the gods and the injustice of our enemies call us. The die is cast” as “a little too close to fiction for the historian to accept it.”33 It is unclear on what basis Walter is able to separate what is “too close to fiction” from what is “much nearer the truth” since there are fantastic elements in both Lucan’s and Suetonius’ accounts.

There are a number of questionable aspects of Walter’s version. For example, Walter tells us “the date was January 12, 49, at dawn,”34 which is a different date from the usual date given in the historiography.35 In addition, Walter agrees with Lucan’s statement that the river was swollen by winter’s snow. But, if we were able to time travel, we might have to set our time machines to go back to 50 B.C., not 49 B.C., for, according to the extant sources, the Romans, before Caesar’s calendar reform, were still operating under the old decemviral calendar, which was 67 days Because of the calendar difference, the equivalent date of Caesar’s

”E.H.B. [Edward Herbert Bunbury], “Rubicon,” in A Dictionary of Greek

32Walter, Caesar, 329. 33Ibid., 328. ”“lid., 329. 35See Guglielmo Ferrero, Ciulio Cesare, vol. 2 of Grandetza e Decadenza di

Roma (Milan, 1907), 321-23; Durant, Caesar and Christ, vol. 3 of The Story of Ciuilization(New York, 1944). 182; J. F. C. Fuller,Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant (London, 1965), 179; Matthias Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 192-95; Michael Grant, Julius Caesar (London, 19691, 157; and Joseph Vogt, Die Romische Republik (Munich, 1973), 387, all of whom write that Caesar crossed the Rubicon River on the night of January 10 and arrived in Ariminium early the next day (January 11). My criticism of Walter’s date is not that it differs from the date of the others, but that he does not discuss this difference or provide reasons why his date might be more accurate.

36Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, 5 vols. (New York, 1!?08), 5: 438. See also, J P. V.D. Balson, Julius Caesar: A PoliticalBiography(New York, 1967), 120.

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and Roman Geography, ed. William Smith, 2 vols. (Boston, 1857), 2856-57.

Virtual Past

crossing would be November 4,50 B.C., that is, at a time of the year before the major snowfalls occur. In any event, the Apennines, not the Alps, feed the streams south of Rimini. And, in November in that part of Italy, it would have been the autumn rains that swelled the stream, not the melting snow. Perhaps, we could prevail on Walter to lend out his time machine for other historians to investigate other periods. I t would also be nice to be able to confirm Walter’s declarations about the Rubicon River, especially when we do not know where it flowed or whether it existed at all. But Walter’s method is not unusual; it is in keeping with the historian’s task as described by von Humboldt, who also describes the method:

[an event] is only partially visible in the world of the senses [sic]; the rest has to be added by intuition, inference, and guesswork. . . . The truth of any event is predicated on the addition. . . of that invisible part of every fact, and it is that part, therefore, which the historian has to add. . . . Differently from the poet, but in a way similar to him, he must work the collected fragments into a

In other words, Walter is not using a time machine to find out what really happened and to determine which account is truer; he is intuiting and inferring, and putting that intuition and inference together like a poet. In short, he is guessing, and equating his guesses with what actually occurred in the real past. With this mystical concept no one can dispute-end of discussion. Walter is right and he has determined the truth because his intuition tells him so, and of course, all other historians think they are right and, where they disagree with Walter and with each other, that he and the others are wrong because their intuitions, inferences, and guesses tell them something different. Perhaps the Holy Ghost of Historical Intuition descends on historians like a dove once they get their Ph.D.’s. As a result, every historical field is filled with unholy historiographical ghosts that have no basis in the primary sources. Of course, intuition or Vetstehen38 or inference, and so forth, do play a n important part in the work of historians, but one must object strongly to historians trying to pass off their poetic imagination as “truth” and “knowledge.”

*

31 Wilhelm uon Humboldts Gesammelte Schriften, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1903), 4:35. English translation quoted from W. von Humboldt, “On the Historian’s Task,” History and Theory 6 (1967): 57.

”For a discussion of the legitimacy of intuitive imagination in scholarly work, see the collection of articles: Marcello Truzzi, ed., Verstehen: Subjective Understanding in the Social Sciences (Reading, Mass., 1974).

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J. H. Hexter has described what historians do when they narrate: “From available surviving records they try to tell the best historical story they can about the subject they have chosen.”39 I have no problem accepting this definition of what historians do. Hexter’s work is among the finest by any contemporary historian; there is much we can learn from it and from his discussions of historians’ practice. But Hexter does not explain what he means by “best historical story” or how historians know when they have arrived a t it. To be fair to Hexter, he does discuss this problem elsewhere. There he states that “historical truth depends on at least three components: fidelity to the record of the past, simple formal logic, and the rhetoric of history.”40 For Hexter, “the record of the past” seems to mean events that he thinks happened in the past, not the source testimony available in the present. He neatly skips over the problem of how we get from presently available source testimony to knowledge of the historical past. Although historians might benefit from training in “simple formal logic,” in order to avoid fallacious arguments, formal logic, as such, has limited application for historical study. As Rucker has remarked, “on the face of it, the application of formal logic might be expected to resolve all kinds of disagreements. As it turns out, though, the known laws of logic are too few in number to be of any great help.”41 And what Hexter means by “rhetoric of history” seems to be merely felicitous expression of his opinion in narrative form. We are back to storytelling as the way to truth. Finally, even if we tried to accept his components he leaves unanswered how he knows that correct use of these three components will lead us to historical truth. Where’s the proof? Does it require a historian of Hexter’s caliber to figure it out? Hexter ignores those obstacles to remark that the “best historical stories. . . instruct him [the consumer of history] better, they tell him more of the truth of the past.” Hexter’s historian leaps from “available surviving records” to telling “the truth of the past.” The equating of best story with truth of thepast is a breathtaking formulation, to be sure, especially when we have no idea what either is. Previously, in the same article, Hexter had argued that “After reading a book like Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada, even analytical philosophers find it awkward to claim that they know no more about the events it deals with than they did before.”42 But

3yJ. H. Hexter, “The One That Got Away,” New York Review of Books, 9

40Hexter, The History Primer (New York, 1971), 174. 4 1 R ~ d y Rucker, Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality

42Hexter, “The One That Got Away,” 24.

February 1967,27.

(Boston, 1987), 197.

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this claim of knowing no more, awkward though it may seem, is exactly what I am arguing. The present-day historian (or con- sumer of history) does not know the past events. For him or her, the Armada must always remain a working hypothesis, part of the virtual past, to explain available surviving records.

To take a n example from Hexter’s model: Mattingly, in the opening pages of The Armada, describes in evocative terms the execution of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. At one point, where Mattingly has Mary Stuart mount the steps to the execution chair, he writes: “If her hands trembled. . . no one saw.”43 Clearly, this statement does not tell us about the event, or about what people saw or did not see. I t tells us about surviving evidence-the eyewitness accounts. Perhaps someone saw her hands tremble, but did not write it down. Or, if they wrote it down, that writing has not survived. There are fifteen signatures on the report that the Earl of Kent purportedly submitted.44 But, if we can believe a contemporary drawing of the scene, many more than fifteen people were present.45 Does Mattingly really wish to maintain that he knows what all of them did not see? It would have been more accurate to have written: “we have no evidence that her hands trembled.” And, most likely, the methodologically trained historian would understand Mattingly’s statement that way. In the account found in the British Museum ms. Cotton Caligula B, V, fols. 175v-177, which James Emerson Phillips concludes is the basis for the official English published version, there is a statement that she fell to her knees “with great and intrepid courage, and without any change of color, nor giving any sign of fear of death.”46 Perhaps Mattingly understood trembling hands to be a “sign of fear of death.” On the other hand, Mattingly uses the “trembling hands” phrase as she mounts the steps just after entering the room, not at the point just before execution when the no “sign of fear of death” phrase appears in the Cotton Caligula manuscript .

At another point, Mattingly writes: “For a moment she held all their eyes, then she sank back into the darkness of her chair, and turned her graveinattention to her judges. She was satisfied that

43Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston, 1959), 2. 44Calendar of Scottish Papers, vol. 9, 1586-1588, no. 266, 269-73; see also a

shorter version in [Mary] Maxwell Scott, The Tragedy of Fotheringale (London, 1895), 263-65, printed from the Bodlein Library, Oxford, ms. Ashmole, no. 830, fol. 18.

45S~ott , The Tragedy, between pp. 200 and 201 (taken from the Calthorpe ms). 4“s. Cotton Caligula, B, V, fols. 175v-177, cited in James Emerson Phillips,

Images ofa Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature (Berkeley, 1964), 139.

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her audience would look at no one else.”47 It is possible Mattingly obtained or extrapolated the information from the eyewitness descriptions about Mary Stuart’s holding the attention of the audience or sitting in the chair, but what about “grave inatten- tion?” That concept does not appear in the eyewitness accounts. The closest the eyewitness accounts come to such a concept is in R.W.’s account where he writes:

During the reading of which comission, the said Queene was very silent listening vnto it with so careles a regard as if it had not concerned her at all, nay rather with so merry and cheerfull countenannce, as if it had bin a pardon from her Majestie. . . .48

Far from grave inattention, we get the impression of a n insouciant attentiveness marked by a demeanor that appeared “merry and cheerfull.” And, surely, no one could know whether or not “she was satisfied” that she had everyone’s attention, for, according to Mattingly himself, she was dead in a few minutes. If so, then she could not have told anyone about her satisfaction. She may have seemed satisfied to onlookers, although none of the onlookers’ accounts mentions her appearing satisfied, but that might be quite different from being satisfied. Here, Mattingly’s imagination has taken over the narrative.

Mattingly’s footnote on the chapter tells us more about the primary source information. He concludes that “two of the witnesses were Protestant in sympathy, two Catholic.”49 Phillips, in contrast, argues that all the eyewitness reports were by Protestants, and that all the Catholic reports were derivative from a published version no longer extant, which in turn may have been based on the ms. Cotton Caligula B, V.5O If Phillips is correct, then at least two of the eyewitness accounts that Mattingly uses were not written by eyewitnesses.

After reading Mattingly’s account of the execution of Mary Stuart, do we know more about that historical event than we did before? Not really. She either was executed or she wasn’t; she either mounted the steps or she didn’t; she either was satisfied or she wasn’t. Even Mary Stuart’s existence remains a n eitherlor formulation: either she existed or she didn’t. The reason is that everything that happened before we were born is outside our temporal purview; and the overwhelming bulk of what happens after we are born is outside our spatial purview. Anything that is

“Mattingly, The Armada, 3. 48A. Francis Steuart, ed., Trial of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1923), 177. ‘SMattingly, The Armada, 410. 5”See Phillips, Images of a Queen, 133-35.

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beyond our temporal or spatial purview in a n experiential sense is a hypothetical conceptualization for us. But Mattingly’s account does tell us something about what we might expect to find in the eyewitness accounts. And, in that sense, we have gained some working hypotheses about those accounts, hypotheses that we can evaluate by examining those accounts.

* While all epistemologists begin, or ought to begin, from a

skeptical position, most of them abandon it as untenable. R. F. Atkinson, for example, argues that skepticism creates a non- problem because even if the skeptics were right it would not change the way historical research is done.51 By this line of reasoning, we would be obliged to dismiss all theoretical findings in all fields unless these findings could be shown to have practical applications. C. H. Whitely, on the other hand, has stated that although “skepticism cannot be refused . . . in the long run it cannot be endured.” Whitely went on to argue that “what makes it [skepticism] intolerable is that it prevents one from discrimina- ting between stronger and weaker evidence, superior and inferior opinions.” Furthermore, he argues that “the skeptic cannot make constructive criticisms, cannot even try to improve his own or anyone else’s procedures for arriving at opinions.”52 I wish to take issue on this point. Skepticism in relationship to knowledge about the historical past is not only endurable and tolerable, but the only position one can legitimately take. Suppose a super- skeptic appeared who challenged all our conceptions of the historical past. How would historians reconstruct our conceptions of that past? Would they start by making such statements as: “In the year 49 B.C. Caesar crossed the Rubicon” and that Mary Stuart “was satisfied that her audience would look at no one else.” Probably they would, but it certainly would not begin to satisfy the super-skeptic. A better approach would be to say:

Here is a piece of paper with writing on it. Our best estimate is that this is a sixteenth-century copy of a ninth-century manuscript, which has since been lost and which in turn may have been a copy (some copies removed) from an original work composed by a certain Velleius Paterculus no earlier than 31 A.D. (eighty years after the purported event). If our chain of reasoning is correct, then that work is our earliest extant account describing a person named Caesar crossing the Rubicon River. There are other accounts (likewise

51R. F. Atkinson, Knowledge and Explanation in History: A n Introduction to

52C. H. Whitely, “Epistemologkal Strategies,” Mind 78 (January 1969): 26. the Philosophy of History (Ithaca, 1978), 53.

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maintained only in later copies) of a Caesar crossing. These accounts may or may not be independent confirmation that Caesar did cross the Rubicon River, although we cannot be sure of the exact location of that river, or whether i t might not have been less a river than a stream. In any event, it is the most likely explanation for the physical manuscripts that we have in different archives and that describe Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon River. For us to conclude that Caesar did not cross the Rubicon would leave unexplained or explain less well why these apparently independent manuscript texts seem to say he did.

For the execution of Mary Stuart the line of reasoning would be mutatis mutandis the same. Such a n explanation still might not satisfy the super-skeptic, but it would stand a better chance than merely making unsupported assertions about what really hap- pened. Nor is it the only possible explanation for the source testimony. One could, for example, argue that Paterculus made up the story of Caesar’s route, that the Rubicon had no particular significance as a border or otherwise, tha t the earliest mention of the Rubicon, which seems to occur in Strabo’s Geography, is actually a later interpolation, and that no river named Rubicon existed in ancient Italy. But these arguments are more complex than the one presented above. Nor are we necessarily getting closer to the truth about the historical past; but, then we are not necessarily doing so anyway. For while the virtual past is ours for the making, the historical past remains beyond our reach.

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