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Herodotus
Herodotus
A Roman copy (2nd century AD) of a Greekbust of Herodotus from the
first half of the 4th century BC
Born c. 484 BC
Halicarnassus, Caria, Asia Minor
Died c. 425 BC (aged approximately 60)
Thurii, Calabria or Pella, Macedon
Occupation Historian
Herodotus (/ h ɨ ̍ r ɒ d ə t ə s / ; Ancient Greek : Ἡρόδοτος Hēródotos) was an ancient Greek historian who was
born in Halicarnassus, Caria(modern-day Bodrum, Turkey) and lived in the fifth century BC (c. 484–
425 BC). He has been called "The Father of History" (firstly conferred by Cicero), and was the first historian
known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent, and arrange them in a
well-constructed and vivid narrative.[1] The Histories—his masterpiece and the only work he is known to
have produced—is a record of his "inquiry" (or ἱστορία historía, a word that passed into Latin and acquired
its modern meaning of "history"), being an investigation of the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars and
including a wealth of geographical and ethnographical information. Although some of his stories were
fanciful, he claimed he was reporting only what had been told to him. Little is known of his personal history.
Place in history
Herodotus announced the size and scope of his work at the beginning of his Researches or Histories:
Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται,
μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲν Ἕλλησι, τὰ δὲ βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, τὰ τε ἄλλα καὶ
δι' ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι.[2]
Herodotus of Halicarnassus, his Researches are here set down to preserve the memory of the past by putting on
record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples; and more particularly, to show how
they came into conflict.[3]
His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been
debated. His place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within
which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact. However, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, a literary critic of Augustan Rome, listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their
works as simple, unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including
popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naive, often charming—all traits that can be found in the
work of Herodotus himself.[4] Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain. According to the ancient
account, these predecessors included Dionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of
Lesbos, Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus . Only fragments of the
latter's work survive (and the authenticity of these is debatable)[5] yet they allow us glimpses into the kind of
tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories, as in the introduction to Hecataeus's
work, Genealogies:
Fragment from the Histories VIII on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2099, early 2nd century AD
Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write these things as they seem true to me; for the stories told by the
Greeks are various and in my opinion absurd.[6]
This points forward to the 'folksy' yet 'international' outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one modern scholar
has described the work of Hecataeus as "a curious false start to history"[7] because, despite its critical spirit,
it failed to liberate history from myth. Herodotus mentions Hecataeus in his Histories, on one occasion
mocking him for his naive genealogy and, on another occasion, quoting Athenian complaints against his
handling of their national history.[8] It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as
stated by Porphyry in a quote recorded by Eusebius.[9] In particular, it is possible that he copied descriptions
of the crocodile, hippopotamus and phoenix from Hecataeus's 'Circumnavigation of the Known World'
(Periegesis/Periodos ges), even mis-representing the source as 'Heliopolitans' (Histories 2.73).[10] But unlike
Herodotus, Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, nor did he include the oral
traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental history.[11] There is no proof that Herodotus
derived the ambitious scope of his own work, with its grand theme of civilizations in conflict, from any
predecessor, despite much scholarly speculation about this in modern times.[7][12] Herodotus claims to be
better informed than his predecessors, relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive
schematism. For example, he argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the older theory of a
perfectly circular earth with Europe and Asia/Africa equal in size (Hist. 4.36 and 4.42). Yet, he retains
idealising tendencies, as in his symmetrical notions of the Danube and Nile.[13]
His debt to previous authors of prose 'histories' might be questionable but there is no doubt that he owed
much to the example and inspiration of poets and story-tellers. For example, Athenian tragic poets provided
him with a world-view of a balance between conflicting forces, upset by the hubris of kings, and they
provided his narrative with a model of episodic structure. His familiarity with Athenian tragedy is
demonstrated in a number of passages echoing Aeschylus's Persae, including the epigrammatic
observation that the defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis caused the defeat of the land army (Hist. 8.68
~ Persae 728). The debt may have been repaid by Sophocles because there appear to be echoes of The
Histories in his plays, especially a passage in Antigone that resembles Herodotus's account of the death of
Intaphernes (Histories 3.119 ~ Antigone 904-20)[14]—this however is one of the most contentious issues in
modern scholarship.[15]
Homer was another inspirational source.[16]
Just as Homer drew extensively on a tradition of oral poetry, sung by wandering minstrels, so Herodotus
appears to have drawn on an Ionian tradition of story-telling, collecting and interpreting the oral histories he
chanced upon in his travels. These oral histories often contained folk-tale motifs and demonstrated a moral,
yet they also contained substantial facts relating to geography, anthropology and history, all compiled by
Herodotus in an entertaining style and format. [17] It is on account of the many strange stories and the folk-
tales he reported that his critics in early modern times branded him 'The Father of Lies'. [18][19] Even his own
contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact one modern scholar[20] has wondered if
Herodotus left his home in Asiatic Greece, migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own
countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been
dedicated to Herodotus at Thuria (one of his three supposed resting places):
Herodotus the son of Sphynx
Lies; in Ionic history without peer;
A Dorian born, who fled from Slander's brand
And made in Thuria his new native land.[21]
Yet it was in Athens where his most formidable contemporary critics could be found. In 425 BC, which is
about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic
dramatist, Aristophanes, created The Acharnians, in which he blames The Peloponnesian War on the
abduction of some prostitutes—a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians' account of
their wars with Greece, beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines Io, Europa, Medea and Helen.[22]
[23] Similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a 'logos-writer' or story-teller.
[24] Thucydides, who had been trained in rhetoric, became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an
author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas Herodotus with his frequent
digressions appeared to minimize (or possibly disguise) his auctorial control. [25] Moreover, Thucydides
developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek lifestyle—the polis or city-state—whereas the
interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Asiatic Greeks (such as Herodotus himself), for whom life
under foreign rule was a recent memory.[24]
Before the Persian crisis history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family traditions. The
Wars of Liberation had given to Herodotus the first genuinely historical inspiration felt by a Greek. These wars
showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the city, of which the story might be told; and they
offered to him as a subject the drama of the collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was
born into Greece; and his work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance of Clio.— Richard
Claverhouse Jebb.[26]
Life
Relief of Herodotus by Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1806), Louvre, Paris
Modern scholars generally turn to Herodotus's own writing for reliable information about his life,
[27] supplemented with ancient yet much later sources, such as the Byzantine Suda:
The data are so few—they rest upon such late and slight authority; they are so improbable or so contradictory,
that to compile them into a biography is like building a house of cards, which the first breath of criticism will blow
to the ground. Still, certain points may be approximately fixed...
— George Rawlinson.[28]
Typically modern accounts of his life[29][30] go something like this: Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus
around 484 BC. There is no reason to disbelieve the Suda's information about his family, that it was
influential and that he was the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also
related to Panyassis, an epic poet of the time. The town was within the Persian empire at that time and
maybe the young Herodotus heard local eye-witness accounts of events within the empire and of Persian
preparations for the invasion of Greece, including the movements of the local fleet under the command
of Artemisia. Inscriptions recently discovered at Halicarnassus indicate that her grandson Lygdamis
negotiated with a local assembly to settle disputes over seized property, which is consistent with a tyrant
under pressure, and his name is not mentioned later in the tribute list of the Athenian Delian League ,
indicating that there might well have been a successful uprising against him sometime before 454 BC.
Herodotus reveals affection for the island of Samos (III,39–60) and this is an indication that he might have
lived there in his youth. So it is possible that his family was involved in an uprising against Lygdamis,
leading to a period of exile on Samos and followed by some personal hand in the tyrant's eventual fall.
The statue of Herodotus in Bodrum
As Herodotus himself reveals, Halicarnassus, though a Dorian city, had ended its close relations with its
Dorian neighbours after an unseemly quarrel (I,144), and it had helped pioneer Greek trade with Egypt
(II,178). It was therefore an outward-looking, international-minded port within the Persian Empire and the
historian's family could well have had contacts in countries under Persian rule, facilitating his travels and his
researches. His eye-witness accounts indicate that he travelled in Egypt probably sometime after 454 BC or
possibly earlier in association with Athenians, after an Athenian fleet had assisted the uprising
against Persian rule in 460–454 BC. He probably travelled to Tyre next and then down
the Euphrates to Babylon. For some reason, probably associated with local politics, he subsequently found
himself unpopular in Halicarnassus and, sometime around 447 BC, he migrated to Periclean Athens , a city
for whose people and democratic institutions he declares his open admiration (V,78) and where he came to
know not just leading citizens such as the Alcmaeonids, a clan whose history features frequently in his
writing, but also the local topography (VI,137; VIII,52–5). According toEusebius [31] and Plutarch,
[32] Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work and there
may be some truth in this. It is possible that he applied for Athenian citizenship—a rare honour after 451
BC, requiring two separate votes by a well-attended assembly—but was unsuccessful. In 443 BC, or shortly
afterwards, he migrated to Thurium as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony. Aristotle refers to a version
of The Histories written by 'Herodotus of Thurium' and indeed some passages in theHistories have been
interpreted as proof that he wrote about southern Italy from personal experience there (IV,15,99; VI,127).
Intimate knowledge of some events in the first years of the Peloponnesian War (VI,91; VII,133,233; IX,73)
indicate that he might have returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an
outbreak of the plague. Possibly he died in Macedonia instead after obtaining the patronage of the court
there or else he died back in Thurium. There is nothing in the Histories that can be dated with any certainty
to later than 430, and it is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth
year.
Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect yet he was born in Halicarnassus, originally
a Dorian settlement. According to theSuda (an 11th-century encyclopaedia of Byzantium which possibly
took its information from traditional accounts), Herodotus learned the Ionian dialect as a boy living on the
island of Samos, whither he had fled with his family from the oppressions of Lygdamis, tyrant of
Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia I of Caria. The Suda also informs us that Herodotus later returned
home to lead the revolt that eventually overthrew the tyrant. However, thanks to recent discoveries of some
inscriptions on Halicarnassus, dated to about that time, we now know that the Ionic dialect was used there
even in official documents, so there was no need to assume like the Suda that he must have learned the
dialect elsewhere.[33] Moreover, the fact that the Suda is the only source we have for the heroic role played
by Herodotus, as liberator of his birthplace, is itself a good reason to doubt such a romantic account.[34]
It was conventional in Herodotus's day for authors to 'publish' their works by reciting them at popular
festivals. According to Lucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight from Asia Minor to the Olympic
Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous
applause at the end of it.[35] According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian,[36] Herodotus
refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade, by
which time however the assembly had dispersed—thus the proverbial expression "Herodotus and his
shade" to describe someone who misses an opportunity through delay. Herodotus's recitation at Olympia
was a favourite theme among ancient writers and there is another interesting variation on the story to be
found in the Suda, Photius [37] and Tzetzes,[38] in which a young Thucydides happened to be in the assembly
with his father and burst into tears during the recital, whereupon Herodotus observed prophetically to the
boy's father: "Thy son's soul yearns for knowledge."
Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides' tomb in
Athens. Such at least was the opinion of Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides.[39] According to the Suda, he
was buried in Macedonian Pella and in the agora in Thurium.[40]
Reliability
Dedication in the Histories, translated into Latin by Lorenzo Valla, Venice 1494
As a historian, Herodotus was sarcastically referred as the father of lies for "quoting eyewitnesses about
things they could have never seen, inventing and manipulating factual material." Ancient historians who
followed Herodotus preferred an element of show to accuracy and fairness, aiming to give pleasure with
“exciting events, great dramas, bizarre exotica.” [41]
Although the factual accuracy of the works of Herodotus is defended by some, [42] others regard his works as
being unreliable as a historical source. Fehling writes of "a problem recognized by everybody", namely that
much of what Herodotus tells us cannot be taken at face value.[43]
The accuracy of the works of Herodotus have been criticized since his own era. Sparks writes that "In
antiquity, Herodotus had acquired the reputation of being unreliable, biased, parsimonious in his praise of
heroes, and mendacious". His ancient critics included Cicero, Aristotle, Josephus and Plutarch. [44][45] Cicero
(On the Laws I.5) said the works of Herodotus were full of legends [46] or “fables”, and Harpocration wrote a
book on "the lies of Herodotus".[47] Duris of Samos called Herodotus a myth-monger.[48] Voltaire described
Herodotus as both "the father of history" and the "father of lies",[49] and Hartog more recently also called him
"The father of all liars".[50]
The reliability of Herodotus is particularly criticized when writing about Egypt. Alan B. Lloyd states that as a
historical document, the writings of Herodotus are seriously defective, and that he was working from
"inadequate sources".[51] Nielsen writes that: "Though we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of Herodotus
having been in Egypt, it must be said that his narrative bears little witness to it." [52] Fehling states that
Herodotus never traveled up the Nile River, and that almost everything he says about Egypt and Ethiopia is
doubtful.[53][54] About the claim of Herodotus that the Pharaoh Sesostris campaigned in Europe, and that he
left a colony in Colchia, Fehling states that "there is not the slightest bit of history behind the whole story". [55]
[56] Fehling concludes that the works of Herodotus are intended as fiction. [57] Depew and Obbink concur that
much of the content of the works of Herodotus are literary devices.[58]
In contrast, many scholars (Aubin, Heeren, Davidson, Diop, Poe, Welsby, Celenko, Volney, Montet, Bernal,
Jackson, DuBois, Strabo), ancient and modern, routinely cite Herodotus in their works on the Nile Valley.
Some of these scholars (Welsby, Heeren, Aubin, Diop, etc.) explicitly mention the reliability of Herodotus'
work on the Nile Valley and demonstrate corroboration of Herodotus' writings by modern scholars. Welsby
said that "archaeology graphically confirms some of Herodotus' observations." [59] A.H.L. Heeren (1838)
quoted Herodotus throughout his work and provided corroboration by scholars of his day regarding several
passages (source of the Nile, location of Meroe, etc.). [60] To further his work on the Egyptians and
Assyrians, Aubin uses Herodotus' accounts in various passages and defends Herodotus' position against
modern scholars. Aubin said Herodotus was "the author of the first important narrative history of the world"
and that Herodotus "visited Egypt."[61] Diop provides several examples (the inundations of the Nile) that he
claims support his view that Herodotus was "quite scrupulous, objective, scientific for his time." Diop claims
that Herodotus "always distinguishes carefully between what he has seen and what he has been told." Diop
also claims that Strabo corroborated Herodotus' ideas about the Black Egyptians, Ethiopians, and
Colchians.[62][63]
Herodotus claimed to have visited Babylon. The absence of any mention of the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon in his work has attracted further attacks on his credibility. In response Dalley has proposed that the
Hanging Gardens may have been in Ninevah rather than in Babylon.[64][65]
Reconstruction of the Oikoumene (inhabited world), ancient map based on Herodotus, c. 450 BC
Gold dust and nuggets
Herodotus provides much information about the nature of the world and the status of science during his
lifetime, often engaging in private speculation. For example, he reports that the annual flooding of
the Nilewas said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and he comments that he cannot
understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part of the known world, offering an elaborate
explanation based on the way that desert winds affect the passage of the Sun over this part of the world
(2:18ff). He also passes on dismissive reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa,
they "saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards". Owing to this brief mention, which is included
almost as an afterthought, it has been argued that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers,
for this is precisely where the sun ought to have been. His accounts of India are among the oldest records
of Indian civilization by an outsider.[66]
Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have both added to and detracted from his credibility.
His description of Gelonus, located in Scythia, as a city thousands of times larger than Troy was widely
disbelieved until it was rediscovered in 1975. The archaeological study of the now-submerged ancient
Egyptian city of Heracleion and the recovery of the so-called "Naucratis stela" give credibility to Herodotus's
previously unsupported claim that Heracleion was founded during the Egyptian New Kingdom.
Croesus Receiving Tribute from a Lydian Peasant, byClaude Vignon
After journeys to India and Pakistan, French ethnologist Michel Peissel claimed to have discovered an
animal species that may illuminate one of the most bizarre passages in Herodotus's Histories. [67] In Book 3,
passages 102 to 105, Herodotus reports that a species of fox-sized, furry "ants" lives in one of the far
eastern, Indian provinces of the Persian Empire. This region, he reports, is a sandy desert, and the sand
there contains a wealth of finegold dust. These giant ants, according to Herodotus, would often unearth the
gold dust when digging their mounds and tunnels, and the people living in this province would then collect
the precious dust. Peissel reports that in an isolated region of northern Pakistan, on the Deosai
Plateau in Gilgit–Baltistan province, there is a species of marmot, (the Himalayan marmot), (a type of
burrowing squirrel) that may have been what Herodotus called giant ants. Much like the province that
Herodotus describes, the ground of the Deosai Plateau is rich in gold dust. According to Peissel, he
interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Deosai Plateau, and they have confirmed that they
have, for generations, been collecting the gold dust that the marmots bring to the surface when they are
digging their underground burrows. Later authors like Pliny the Elder mentioned this story in the gold
mining section of his Naturalis Historia .
The Himalayan marmot
Peissel offers the theory that Herodotus may have confused the old Persian word for "marmot" with the
word for "mountain ant". Research suggests that Herodotus probably did not know any Persian (or any
other language except his native Greek) and was forced to rely on a many local translators when travelling
in the vast multilingual Persian Empire. Herodotus did not claim to have personally seen the creatures he
described.[67][68] However Herodotus did follow up in passage 105 of Book 3, with the claim that the "ants"
are said to chase and devour full-grown camels. The details of the "ants" seem somewhat similar to the
description of the camel spider (Solifugae), which are said to chase camels, have lots of hair bristles, and
could quite easily be mistaken for ants.[citation needed] Images of camel spiders could give the impression that
this could be mistaken for a giant ant, but certainly not the size of a fox.[citation needed]
Some "calumnious fictions" were written about Herodotus in a work titled On the Malice of Herodotus,
by Plutarch, a Chaeronean by birth, (or it might have been a Pseudo-Plutarch, in this case "a great collector
of slanders"), including the allegation that the historian was prejudiced against Thebes because the
authorities there had denied him permission to set up a school. [69] Similarly, in a Corinthian Oration,Dio
Chrysostom (or yet another pseudonymous author) accused the historian of prejudice against Corinth,
sourcing it in personal bitterness over financial disappointments[70]—an account also given by Marcellinus in
his Life of Thucydides.[71] In fact Herodotus was in the habit of seeking out information from empowered
sources within communities, such as aristocrats and priests, and this also occurred at an international level,
with Periclean Athens becoming his principal source of information about events in Greece. As a result, his
reports about Greek events are often coloured by Athenian bias against rival states—Thebes and Corinth in
particular.[72]
Although The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism—Lucian of
Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among
the famous on the Island of the Blessed—modern historians and philosophers take a more positive view of
Herodotus's methodology, especially those searching for a paradigm of objective historical writing. A few
modern scholars have argued that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his
sources[73] yet his reputation continues largely intact: "The Father of History is also the father of comparative
anthropology",[18] "the father of ethnography",[74] and he is "more modern than any other ancient historian in
his approach to the ideal of total history".[75]
Herodotus and myth
It was not until the time of Herodotus that gods began to have less influence upon history that was written,
yet it was still implied because of the largely accepted view of the Greeks and the expectations that they
may have had of how The Histories would be written. History was becoming more of a “knowledge” rather
than an amusement.[76] Because of Herodotus wanting people to accept what he had to write, he
implemented stories that may have not directly correlated to gods, but rather implemented the idea that
miracles or supernatural events took place. As was the story of Arion and the dolphin. While on a boat the
men found out that Arion, who was a musician, was worth lots of money and decided to have him killed.
The crew gave him two options, that either he jump ship or they kill him on the spot. Arion flung himself into
the water and a dolphin carried him to shore.[77]
Herodotus was more concerned with putting pleasure before knowledge, unless he did not believe that the
gods had a dramatic influence on history and was rather just trying to please his audience. Like the story of
the king having his servant look upon his naked wife, and when spotting him hiding, asked him to kill her
husband.[78] This, like many stories of Herodotus, are told in great detail, and for the simplicity of dramatic
effect. This refers back to the way bards used to tell their poems or stories to their audience. Herodotus was
accused by many because of such detailed accounts, and even called a liar by some. In in his writing we
can already see that there was no direct association with gods.