International audience The seemingly excessive position of the discourses within the Roman Antiquities may be justified by one of the side work of Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ literary project : to enhance speech mediation inside public conflicts during Roman history. By such mediation, the Vrbs brings to its peak the efficiency of Greek cities rhetoric. However, the linguistic theory from such enunciation levels, which are based on Ancients feelings, allows to discriminate between speeches and narratives. It especially emphasizes the « historian discourse » by which the author goes through the story in the way to give it a frame (« back references ») or a kind of proof (talking about likelihood of written narrative). The author may also bring pieces of evidence which reinforce him (extradiegetic narrative, far from written events ; legislative text, making a self-sufficient discourse). The discrimination between those different levels within the Roman Antiquities shows how writing is complex.