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Page 131
their accidental properties without changing their essential properties. Thus, in the narrative state corresponding to the time t-3, the Elder is a living Roman admiral, in t-2 he is the same Roman admiral undertaking certain unpleasant experiences, and in t-1 he is a Roman admiral who has accidentally died.
Nevertheless, what interests us is not a comparison between these different states of the same narrative world (which incidentally coincide, as far as we know, with the "real" world as it has been recorded by our encyclopedical competence). What interests us is that P1, as the subject of the uttered discourse in t0, shares with Tacitus (as his Model Reader) some knowledge apropos of the death of the Elder. At the same time, P1, telling Tacitus what happened in t-3, attributes to the Elder and to himself a different sort of knowledge.
We are thus concerned with two epistemic worlds: the world W0 of the beliefs shared by P1, Tacitus, and ourselves as contemporary readers; and the WNct-3 of the knowledge attributed by P1, as narrator, to the characters of the narrated eventsP1 is telling the story of himself and of his uncle who, twenty-five years before, saw a strange cloud and believed p (p being the content of the epistemic world WNct-3).
In plainer words, the Younger in 104 A.D. knew what he himself and his uncle could not know on August 24, 79 A.D., namely, that the cloud of unusual size came from the eruption of Vesuvius and that it was made of poisonous ashes and other harmful materials. To P2 the cloud was an amazing phenomenon (and so it was to E), whereas for P1 (and for Tacitus) it was, in short, Death.
This means that the fabula should tell about certain individuals of a given narrative world WNt-3, the individuals being P2, E, M, along with C (the cloud) and V (Vesuvius), this world hosting at least one narrative subworld WNc, representing the beliefs of the characters of the story (since it happens that at that moment the Younger, the Elder, and the Mother share the same epistemic world). In such a subworld WNct-3, the cloud is not yet linked with the volcano, is still amazing but not necessarily harmful, and, what is more important, is not supposed to represent the element that will kill the Elder.
On the contrary, the epistemic world of P1 and of his Model Reader contains at t0 the same individuals but endowed with rather different properties: E is a dead scientist, the cloud has a volcanic origin, Vesuvius was the cause of the disaster, the disaster (or Vesuvius itself) was the agent
It is important to maintain the difference between these worlds,

 
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