Masters of Truth

The maîtres de vérité — masters of truth — are the three social figures in archaic Greece whose speech is privileged by the configuration of Alētheia: the poet, the diviner, and the king of justice. Detienne’s reconstruction groups them by the shared religious-social sanction that empowers them to speak truth.

The poet (aoidos) speaks truth through the Muses, whose memory bridges what was, is, and will be. The diviner (mantis) speaks truth through prophetic possession, through the interpretation of signs, through the oracular utterance that comes from a source outside the self. The king (basileus) speaks truth by pronouncing, under oath and before the gods, the dikē that settles a quarrel — a judgment whose authority rests on its ritual setting rather than on its demonstrability.

“All three — poet, diviner, and king of justice — were certainly masters of speech, speech defined by the same concept of Alētheia” (Detienne 1996). The three functions are interconnected: the poet and diviner share the gift of prophecy, the diviner and king share the oath and the oracle. What they share is the social position of the one who is permitted to speak truth because the community has granted his speech that standing.

For the Lineage, the masters of truth are the archaic figures whose privileged speech the philosophical tradition will gradually displace. homer, hesiod, and the figures of the Orphic-Pythagorean sects belong to this older configuration. Socrates, by contrast, stands at the edge of its dissolution: his daimonion still speaks from outside, but his method requires that truth earn its hearing in the public space.

Relationships

• aletheia-archaic
• mnemosyne
• muses
• mythos-to-logos
• dike

Primary sources

• detienne-masters-truth-archaic (Detienne 1996)