¹. Aristotle, it should be noted, classifies Sokratikoi logoi with types of poetry (Poetics, 1447b), as if it were poetic prose: this becomes significant when one remembers that in Aristotle’s view it was the job of poetry to be fictional.

². Or – an interesting parallel – that our standards of historical accuracy apply to ancient historiographers either: see A. J. Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (Croom Helm/Areopagitica Press, 1988).