Eve fell victim to the serpent’s persuasive “fake news” about the forbidden fruit, so subsequent history became misery. Vergil’s Sinon convinced the Trojans to bring the wooden equid offering inside Troy’s walls. This was real “fake news” in a mythical fiction: false facts about new phenomena promoted public persuasion with personal and Achaean team profit as its goal.
“Fake News” conceives and manipulates recent events in order to deceive consumers of information, then spreads these words and/or images to gain advantage over competitors and enemies. The term “fake news” now registers both for individuals and entities who wish to cancel accurate reports about their own unacceptable activities, and, more objectively, for disinformation or misinformation intentionally shared and widely known.[1] “Fake news pretends to have the distinctive qualities of news such as truth, accuracy, reliability, relevance…” (Benedikt Strobel 31).
In this volume, Greek and German scholars offer twenty-one papers from conferences held in Trier and Athens in 2022. These papers address Hellenic “fake news” from Herodotus to Libanius and even unto seventh-century Theophylact Simocatta and one about Hebrew Biblical and Greek Christian hagiographical texts. The collection aspires “to offer a first selective approach to the phenomenon of ‘fake news’ in ancient Greek literature” (11). The editors, after their introduction, organize contributions into five uneasy groups: Philosophical, Fictional, Scientific, Historiographical, and “Socio-Political Implications” (3, 3, 3, 6, 6 papers each). They discuss definitions for the slippery term, distinguishing “fake news” from adjacent phenomena such as lies, post-truth assertions, alternative realities, and Frankfurtian bullshit. They helpfully explore ancient “media” and what constitutes “publication.” How does “fake news” relate to misinformation (false, unintentional), disinformation (false, intentional), and mal-information (twisted truths, intentional), rumor, or propaganda (any of these truth deformations institutionalized)?[2] “Fake news” intends to mislead consumers for a purpose, must resemble “real news,” and must circulate more widely than gossip (5, 22). Fraud and defamation, slander and libel, bleed in at the margins of the newish designation, when officials direct pleas on papyri to higher-ups (Spyridoula Bounta, Amphilochios Papathomas). Many spurious and mischievous reports surface in Attic tragedy (Aikaterini Koroli on Euripides’ liars and fakers) and historiography, as Fornieles’ has usefully demonstrated elsewhere.[3]
The present volume opens untrodden areas worth exploration for the ancient Greek usage of deceptive techniques. As in any multi-authored collection, certain persons, authors, and genres receive less attention than expected (here: Archaic and Hellenistic epic, Attic comedy),[4] while others attract more attention than one would have predicted—three chapters on Plato, two on imperial papyri, one each on paradoxography, Aristotle’s biology, and Nonnus’ cluttered Olympian epic. Hera’s deceptions of speech, dress, and intention are common to this poem and common among “unsubstantiated rumours” in “planting doubt, insecurity and fear in …listeners” (Katerina Carvounis 117).
All authors and titles are listed below. Positioning first the categories of Ancient Philosophy, Fiction, and Science was unstrategic. Perhaps it was unwise to include them at all, given the topic’s usual parameters. Rather than foregrounding these nine chapters, the editors might have placed them last, since these genres’ dubious new facts are only marginally “fake news”—produced rather for utopian politeiai, or idle entertainment, or scientific description.[5] The first category never provided news, and the third, when scientific in any modern sense other than TV advertisements’ white coats, rarely offered breaking developments. Fictional novels imitate historical predicaments, thus respectably present second-order examples of “fake news.” But, then, why not seek motivated malformations in Athenian and Laconian social history, beyond oratory, and in archaic epic (third-order?). Attic oratory provides some of this—Rosalia Hatzilambrou on Demosthenes and Lycurgus, and Andreas Serafim on Aeschines and Demosthenes’ references to opponents’ bodies. Authors in these first three sections struggle to demonstrate their texts’ relevance to “fake news” as currently understood.
Pia De Simone examines “Lies as pharmaka” in Plato, ambivalent healing or lethal entities. Platonic Socrates’ creations of the so-called “noble lie” and the fable of persons chained in a cave (Resp. 3.414-15, 7.514-17) constitute novel, fabricated wonder-tales but without connection or similarity to actual events; not news, but rather mythologizing frauds, fabulated for the elite to keep the masses docile. In fact, these scrupulously opportunistic untruths must remain secrets (Resp. 7.514a). The ambivalent pharmaka metaphor is justified, since certain situations might legitimate lies (συχνὸν ψεῦδος καὶ ἀπάτη, Resp. 5.459c). Plato thought that propaganda, disinformation, and rhetorical training pervaded public discourse. He legitimates Socrates’ choice fables because they fool opponents and fellow citizens for admirable and healthy purposes (76).[6]
Nikoletta Kanavou compares Chariton and Achilles Tatius’ novels, leaving the charlatanical tomfoolery of Heliodoros’ Kalasiris unmentioned. She highlights the “meta” character of fictional pseudangelia. She made me wonder when it is that rumors—that are believed true but then propagated by those who know them to be false—become “fake news.” In the Greek novels, fake news or misinformation about heroes/heroines’ apparent deaths must be fake, because readers expect a good ending (100). Chaereas and Cleitophon summarize faked deaths, near-deaths, their beloveds’ apparent deaths in public for largish audiences. They skip over unpleasant (i.e., self-damning) details (104), They narratize their self-exculpatory fake news by implication and selective facticity. Many untrue statements may be more credible than truths, especially when fake news aligns with its audience’s dubious wishes (itself a trope, e.g., Thuc. 4.108.4, Dem. 3.19).
Marianna Thoma addresses the question of fake news in Phlegon’s sensational but presumably fictional Thaumasia. Ripley’s Believe It or Not franchise of snippets successfully attracted idle readers (like me) to the “incredible” and the disgusting for nearly a century. As with fiction, his thirty-five paradoxical narratives never purport to be news (pace Thoma 171). The dead Philinnion long ago came back to life, another woman once birthed twenty children in four deliveries (#28), and Polykritos’ cannibalized child’s head prophesied. Paradoxographers collect grotesqueries, accredit them with belief-inducing specifics of name, time, and place, and publish them to amuse the idle. Thoma cautiously asks only how Phlegon’s second-century collection is related to fake news. The stories share elements with news or historiography (183), but that does not make their data either of those. Oliver Hellman addresses popular “myths,” again not “fake news,” about animals and fishermen’s tales in Aristotle.
Frank Daubner reviews “fake news” in forged letters as a stratagem. He starts with Herodotos’ text in which Cyrus the Persian Father and Faker writes himself a letter (1.125) pretending that Astyages wrote it. Intended interception seems like a cheap trick, but, like bogus wartime defectors, it sometimes works (244-5). Rarely successful are cases where the actual author pretends to the receiver that someone else wrote the letter. Sertorius, a notorious forger (as well as feigner of dreams and omens), was murdered as the result of falling for this trick (Gell. 15.22.2, Plut. Sert. 26). Fear of fake news can lead to tergiversation and loss of opportunities when the information is actually true. Daubner concludes that it is easier to mislead one’s own people than enemies who are rightly suspicious immediately (249). Tsiampokalos discusses the moralizing rumors surrounding Kimon’s private life that contributed to his ostracism: alleged incest (Plut. Kim. 4; cf. Keramaikos ostrakon 6875), drinking in excess, laziness, and Laconism.
Good analysis of epistolary fake news (in circulation or in feared publication) appear in Bounta and Papathomas’ sensitive treatments of real Ptolemaic and Roman papyri, collected in the “Socio-Political Implications”[7] miscellany. Grammatiki Karla’s analysis of Libanius’ laudatio, Or. 59, an attempt to rewrite a Roman failure as Constantius’ unique success (Battle of Singara, 344 CE), met Julian’s not so oblique critique of Libanius’ “fake news” in Or. 1. Julian downplays or disparages the emperor’s role in the conflict and will admit no victory.
Anastasia Petropolou analyzes untrue news as a literary topos in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and hagiographical texts where slander serves as common currency and perjury could rarely be proven (390). After the Hebrew Serpent’s priority in Genesis 3, Joseph in Genesis and Susanna in Daniel face trials and capital charges. Susanna’s Jewish judges threaten to provide false witness. Guards of Jesus’ corpse were allegedly suborned to report “fake news” that his body was stolen (Matt. 28) in order to weaken the case for miraculous resurrection of the flesh. Not only John Chrysostom but a Mary who lived as both a man and monk named Marinos were defamed—the latter falsely convicted of impregnating an innkeeper’s daughter. The truth was only exposed when the fake man’s corpse was washed before “Marinos’” burial. Epistemic dysfunction indubitably exposed!
Athena Bazou compares panic rumors and fake news about three historical plagues, when scapegoats were needed and discovered. Plagues afflicted fifth-century Athenians, Marcus Aurelius’ subjects, and Europeans in the mid-fourteenth century Black Death. Patrick Reinard and Christian Rollinger discuss fake news connected with imperial usurpations: Avidius Cassius’ revolt and a possible but shady Byzantine imperial survivor (Theodosius III). Announcement of one man’s “imperial rule was not ‘fake news’ but political reality” for his subjects (Reinard 264). “Fake news,” that is, pronouncements that faced other contingent outcomes could have become accurate report and history. Rollinger’s “#notmyemperor” whimsical title belies a scholarly dive into imposters (like the earlier false Neros) and battling “fake news” countering narratives—this one, the seventh-century “Heraklian Disinformation Effort.” Perhaps Theodosius III was truly the sole surviving son of unfortunate Emperor Maurice (582-602 CE) and lived to serve as a Persian puppet. Byzantium’s successful Sassanian enemy crowned him in public but not in the capital. Real fake news, the Official Version (Theodosius dead, as Theophylact and Thophanes write) meets the shadowy actual news (Theodosius alive protected by Shahanshah Khosrow). Whose disinformation succeeded? Who was the legitimate emperor, Phokas or Theodosius? Was the crowned Theodosius really Maurice’s son or a Pretender promoted to the throne?
Digital media have simplified truth- and image-damaging. Half-truths, kernels of truth, false accusations, decontextualization and recontextualization of factoids, gossip and rumors all contribute to the rather easy task of bending, disfiguring, manufacturing, and disappearing the truth. Hesiod knew of it, the Attic comic poets trafficked in it for laughs and prizes, and Socrates died because of it, in the court of public opinion and in the Athenian dicastery. This volume usefully explores a selection of viral ancient “information disorders.”[8] The English throughout is excellent.
Authors and Titles
Fake News in Ancient Greece: Why Does It Matter? (Diego De Brasi, Amphilochios Papathomas and Theofanis Tsiampokalos)
Ancient Philosophical Discussions on Truth, Falsehood, Opinion, and ‘Half-Truths’
The Seventh Division of Plato’s Sophist as a Guide to Understanding the Nature of Fake News (Benedikt Strobel)
Alethes Logos and Eikos Mythos: Thoughts on Plato’s Distinction in the Timaeus (Diego De Brasi)
Lies as Pharmaka in Plato’s Political Philosophy (Pia De Simone)
Fake News in Ancient Greek Fictional Texts
Fake News in Euripidean Drama (Aikaterini Koroli)
‘Fake News’ in the Novels of Chariton and Achilles Tatius (Nikoletta Kanavou)
Persuasion and Manipulation in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca: the Case of Semele (Katerina Carvounis)
Fake News in Ancient Greek Science
Fake News and Pandemics in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Athena Bazou)
Aristotle and Myths about Animals (Oliver Hellmann)
Fake News in Paradoxography of Imperial Times: The Case of Phlegon’s Book of Marvels (Marianna Thoma)
Fake News in Ancient Greek Historiography
Fake News from the Eastern Front: Herodotus and the Trojan War (Ioannis M. Konstantakos)
Fake News and Misinformation During War or Civil Conflict: Some Case Studies from Greek Historiography (Vassilios P. Vertoudakis)
‘Fake News’ as a Moralising Context: Rumours, Slanders and the Unmaking of a Political Career in Plutarch’s Kimon (Theofanis Tsiampokalos)
Forged Letters in Greek and Roman History and Historiography: Fake News as Stratagem (Frank Daubner)
Marcus Aurelius is Dead: Reflections on False News and on the Usurpation of Avidius Cassius (Patrick Reinard)
#notmyemperor: Theodosios (III), the Son of Maurice, and a Heraclian Disinformation Effort (Christian Rollinger)
Ancient Greek Fake News and its Socio-Political Implications
Fake News in the Public Discourse of Fourth- Century Athens (Rosalia Hatzilambrou)
As in a Game of Minesweeper: Fakeness, Imprecision, and Truth about the Body in Attic Oratory (Andreas Serafim)
ʻFake Newsʼ in Documentary Papyri from the Greco-Roman Period of Egypt: The Case of Calumny (Spyridoula Bounta)
Condemnation of Memory in the Greek Documentary Papyri: State-Sponsored Distribution of “Fake News” (Amphilochios Papathomas)
Fake News in Libanius’ Imperial Speeches: The Battle at Singara (Grammatiki Karla)
Fake News as a Literary Topos: The Case of Biblical and Hagiographical Texts (Anastasia Petropoulou)
Notes
[1] Strict definitions of “fake news” would disqualify all ancient examples because of radical changes in media and the information industry. Several papers here are “fake-news adjacent,” e.g. Ioannis Konstantakos’ delightful, incisive essay on Herodotos’ cunning in his pseudo-historical references to Persian logioi and his anti-Homeric Trojan Wars.
[2] Damnatio memoriae provides a retrospective inversion, in which true (and false) information is deleted: one-time “news” about a person or policy disappears; see Papathomas 352 and his catalogue of Geta and Makrinos’ incomplete obliterations. George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in 1984 inflicts censorship in the name of transparency.
[3] See ch. 7, “Fake News,” in Raquel Fornieles, The Concept of News in Ancient Greek Literature (2022). Sian Lewis’ News and Society in the Greek Polis (1996) deserves closer attention. Tom Figueira and Rosaria Munson recently published Misinformation, Disinformation, and Propaganda in Greek Historiography (January 2025), to which I contributed “Spartan Disinformation in Thucydides ‘Ten Years War’.”
[4] Hesiod’s report of his patron Muses’ range, from fake news to true, could serve as an epigraph: ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα (Theogony 27), “We know how to say many false things like to true ones.” Since Hesiod’s Muses propagate select information to manage mankind, some of their communications qualify as “fake news.”
[5] The profit motive activated Alexander of Abonuteichos’ “news office.” See note 7 below.
[6] These untruths and truthy assertions supply a “bodyguard of lies” that justifies the ideal state’s misrepresentations. The papers of Strobel and De Brasi examine the idea of “fake news” as epistemological problems in Plato rather than specific historical or literary examples.
[7] Andreas Serafim is preparing Making up the Truth: Fake News as in Invective in Greek and Roman Literature for Illinois Classical Studies (2025), in which I analyze Lucian’s Alexander, The Fake News Prophet.
[8] The book’s quaint, nineteenth-century cover illustration picturing the Athenian Agora and Acropolis provides misinformation, a publisher’s discarded conception of the city center.