The term “fake news” is a neologism that has been heard more and more often in recent years. It became the word of the year in 2017 according to the Collins dictionary and this is due, of course, to the presidency of Donald Trump, who was the inventor of the new term. But the tactic of spreading fake news and disinformation is nothing new. The modern trend in classical literature is the consideration of the phenomena of modernity in the ancient world. A return to the origins of Western civilization could shed light on aspects of the experience we live today.

The area of ​​fake news, as then, was politics and even more war. “The first casualty of the war – the truth!” This oft-quoted dictum is said to have been uttered by US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918, shortly before the end of World War I.

In ancient Greek, there was a special term for fake news: “false news”. The term is used by the historian Xenophon to spread false news as a military strategy, and by Dio Cassius who gives a real-life example of this practice (the use by the Parthians in their war against the Romans).

Here is an example from antiquity about the attitude of the southern Greek cities to M. Alexander, transmitted by Arrian: In September 335 BC. while the Macedonian king was campaigning against the barbarians in the north, a rebellion was being prepared in Thebes. To make it easier to convince the Thebans, the ancients assured them that Alexander was killed in Illyria. It is even said in Athens that Demosthenes, the great rival of the Macedonians, presented to the municipal church a soldier who claimed to have seen the dead Alexander with his own eyes. Alexander, however, was alive! This false theory had very bad consequences for Thebes. The supposed death of Alexander sparked an uprising that led to the complete destruction of the city.

Another example, this time from Roman times, is that the false news of Cleopatra’s death led Mark Antony to commit suicide, according to Plutarch.

One difference between modernity and classical antiquity lies in the role of technology. While it is much easier to spread fake news these days, in ancient times the lack of advanced technology delayed the restoration of the truth.

“Fake News”: This term is used by the historian Xenophon to spread false news as a military strategy.

However, fake news is found not only in the political and military tactics of the ancients, but also in their fiction. A typical example is the three tragedies of Euripides: “Iphigenia in Tauria”, “Helen” and “Iphigenia in Aulis”. In Iphigenia in Aulis, Agamemnon sends a letter to his wife Clytemnestra informing him that their daughter Iphigenia will marry Achilles in Aulis. Good news is spreading. At first, only Agamemnon himself, Menelaus, Calchas and Odysseus know the bitter truth: Iphigenia will have to go to Aulis in order to sacrifice her in order to ensure the navigation of the Achaean ships stuck due to the calm.

In Iphigenia in Tavria and Helena, fake news is again part of the plan, but this time it is a plan to escape from a barbarian place and from a king hostile to the Greeks. In Iphigenia in Tauria, the spread of false news is part of the plan of Iphigenia, who manages to escape from the Taurian land and King Thoas, along with Orestes and Pylades, as well as the statue of the goddess Artemis; so in “Elena” the false news of the death of Menelaus formed the basis of Helen’s brilliant plan for the escape of her and her husband from Egypt and King Theoclymenes.

At the end of Khariton’s novel “Kallirroi” (I century AD), the central character (Khairei), the son-in-law of the Syracusan tyrant, after travels and adventures, returns to his homeland, to Syracuse, and sets out his experiences in front of a public city. His narrative reconstructs events that readers have already witnessed, hushing up or distorting everything that could have a political cost, and attributing to the speaker (the hero himself) more achievements than he really was due. Thus, the hero achieves the desired result in order to become famous among the people.

The dissemination of fake news for the purpose of entertaining the reading public is also found in the literary genre of paradoxography, which is focused on telling paradoxical stories and unusual phenomena. A typical case is Phlegon of Tralli in Caria, who lived during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. The first chapter of his On Miracles, a collection of 35 paradoxical events, includes the story of a young girl named Philinnion who has returned from the dead to have an affair with a certain Mahati, a guest at her parents’ home. In the story of Phlegon, set in Hellenistic Amphipolis, the modern reader will recognize many elements of fake news. Specifically, the event is recorded by a local official in the form of a letter and sent to the king (Philip of Macedon) with the intention of distributing it to a wider audience. The news is false, since the events described are far from reality. To convince his reader, Phlegon uses various strategies such as quoting his sources, describing crowd reactions to paradoxical events, and using pseudo-historical evidence. It is worth mentioning that even the authorship of “On Miracles” is false news, since in ancient times there were various rumors about the authorship of Phlegon’s works by Emperor Hadrian himself.

All this and much more, both from real history and from literary representation, was discussed at a double Greek-German conference called “Fake News in Antiquity”, organized last year at the University of Trier and EKPA. A general material volume will soon be published by an international publisher.

Ms. Marianna Toma, Nicoletta Kanavou, Katerina Koroli and Mr. Vassilis Vertoudakis teach Ancient Greek Philology at EKPA.