Classical World

The article argues that an alternative perspective on ancient autobiographical writing becomes possible when the emphasis is placed on first-person narration as a narrative strategy per se. Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Seventh Letter and Isocrates’ Antidosis are examined as the earliest extant examples of extended first-person narration from Greek antiquity. The following issues are highlighted as significant factors to be kept in mind in the reading of the texts: the context of rivalry within which the selected examples functioned; the role of the apologetic, protreptic, and paraenetic communicative purposes pursued by the authors; notions of “fictionality” and “factuality” in light of recent theory of autobiography; ancient and modern thinking about the persuasive power of first-person narration; and the intersection of apologetic, protreptic, and paraenetic communicative aims with first-person narration in the selected examples.