8 Alexander C. Loney narrative but later will occur on the narrative timeline, at which time it will be recorded as fact by an aorist17. The second mode of discourse that Bakker delineates, as previously mentioned, is the “discourse of the observer”. He terms this the mimetic mode, again following Platonic terminology. A narrator can use this mode, Bakker argues, to create enargeia, “vividness”. The narrative becomes “vivid” through the displacement into the past of a perceiving consciousness, upon which the narrator can draw for his audience in the present18. Thus the narrator recedes from the audience’s view in his role as mediator between past and present and instead affects for his audi- ence a pretended experience of historical events; he creates “the illusion that events are seen on the spot”19. The purpose of this mode is to move the narrative beyond establishing “facts” as such –indeed, inasmuch as “facts” exist absolutely, independent of perception, the mode is incapable of establishing “facts”– and into making the events compelling to the reader, creating enargeia. The systematic relationship of the imperfect and aorist tenses in this mimetic mode is rather different than in the diegetic mode. The primary grammatical means by which the narrative is conducted –and in par- ticular how its action is retold– is by the imperfect tense. Rather than a “backgrounding” function, as in the diegetic mode, the imperfect in this mode has the function of displacing the observation of events into the past. It takes immediate events, perceived as they occur, and places them “far” from the reader’s present into the narrative past. Despite this displacement, the events remain in a condition of occurrence. So we as readers are invited “to imagine that past, to participate in what is ‘far’”20. In this environment the aorist can also occur and articulate an event that is perceived as a whole or completed occurrence with respect 17 The example Bakker gives of this is from book five of Thucydides’s History (5,82,2-3) when the Spartans are said to march to the aid of the oligarchs. This event appears to be a foreground item, but it is in fact a background item in view of the fact that the event will be recorded in full as having truly occurred at a later point in the chronicle (“Verbal Aspect”, 32-33). 18 That is, there are two consciousnesses at work in the discourse. One is “near” to the act of narration (I use the term “narration” here and elsewhere loosely, where in strict nar- ratological usage “description” or “recollection” might be more appropriate) and external to the events of the narrative. This we would associate with the voice of the historian. The other consciousness is “far” from the narration and internal with respect to the events of the narrative. This is the “perceiving conscious”, which acts as a witness of the events for the sake of the discourse’s audience. 19 Ibid., 37. 20 Ibid., 25.