Philosophy on the Nile Herodotus and Ionian Research

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Philosophy on the Nile: Herodotus and Ionian ResearchAuthor(s): Daniel W. GrahamSource: Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, Vol. 36, No. 4 (December2003), pp. 291-310Published by: De GruyterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40913950 .

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Philosophy on the Nile: Herodotus and Ionian Research Daniel W. Graham

In the mid-fifth century BC a young Greek tourist made a voyage up the Nile. Armed with the latest ideas, gifted with a keen eye and a prodigious memory, and perhaps animated by the hope of writing an engaging travelogue, he sought to learn the sources of the Nile and the causes of the river's strange behavior. His experiences and explanations have gone down in the annals of history, for the tourist won everlasting fame as the father of history. Herodotus should be interesting to us because he was not just a chronicler, but a researcher well-versed in the philosophy and science of his time.1

We can tell from allusions of dramatists that Presocratic thought had an impact on the intellectual community of Herodotus' time.2 But even when we consider their reactions with the fragments of the philosophers

1 His own terms for research point us to the office of a histor, a judge or arbitrator (a term he does not explicitly apply to himself): 'The patterns of arbitration associated with the word iGicop provide a powerful metaphor for intellectual activities including the rigorous examination of evidence, choosing between conflicting claims and versions, assessing responsibility, and the consequent building of a consensus within a community' (Connor [1993], 9; for etymology see Floyd [1990]). '[Herodo- tus] has applied to historical problems the latest methods of other branches of inquiry, making at the same time his own contribution to their development' (Fowler [1996], 86).

2 Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all seem to have repeated Anaxagoras' account of the Nile floods: Sen Q Nat 4a.2.17 = DK 59a91; A fr 300 N, Supp 497, 561; S fr 797; E Hei 1-3 and fr 228.

APEIRON a journal for ancient philosophy and science 0003-6390/2003/3604 291-310 $15.00 ©Academic Printing & Publishing



292 Daniel W. Graham

themselves, we get no clear picture of how thinkers responded to each other.3 It is precisely here that Herodotus' observations can help us out, as he plays the philosopher/scientist. Although one now venerable logic textbook notes that 'the procedure he followed in rejecting some hypotheses and accepting others is still a model of scientific method,'4 his researches on the Nile have excited only slight interest among historians, and less among philosophers, historians of science or historians of ideas.5 In this paper I wish to (I) examine Herodotus' treatment of theories concerning the Nile floods, (II) show how in responding to them Hero- dotus reveals the importance of these theories, and (III) argue that we can glimpse in Herodotus the application of methods that dominate later philosophy.6

I

In his discussion of Egypt, Herodotus introduces a problem of how to explain a phenomenon unique to that land:

(20) Some of the Greeks who have wished to advertise their wisdom have expounded three approaches [hodoi] concerning this water [sc. the Nile floods], two of which I do not think worth commenting on except only to relate them. The first says the etesian winds7 cause the river to

3 Heraclitus is atypical in reacting to his predecessors and contemporaries by name and with invective. There are a number of allusions of one Presocratic to another. But in none of the surviving material do we find one philosopher providing detailed evaluation or criticism of another.

4 Cohen and Nagel (1934), 201; cf. 197-204, where it is used precisely as a model of scientific inquiry. This notice, however, in an introductory work, does not involve a historical study of the theories themselves.

5 For instance, the passage is not discussed at all in Brunschwig and Lloyd (2000), which does pay attention to Herodotus (but see p. 29). G.E.R. Lloyd (1979), 29-30, 53 n 224, 171 n 231, 253 n 18 cites the passage in connection with other investigations but does not discuss it at length. It is ignored in Hankinson (1998).

6 There is a general methodological discussion of Herodotus in relation to the Presocratics in A.B. Lloyd (1975), 156-70.

7 The 'annual' winds blowing from the north in the summer in the Mediterranean: Aristotle Meteorology 361b35 ff .



Philosophy on the Nile 293

rise by hindering the Nile from emptying into the sea. Yet oftentimes the etesian winds have failed to blow, but the Nile flooded all the same. Further, if the etesian winds were the cause, all the other rivers that flow in a direction contrary to the winds would experience the same effects as the Nile for the same reason, and all the more so in proportion to their weaker currents, since they are smaller rivers. Yet there are many rivers in Syria, and many in Africa that experience no such effects as the Nile.

(21) The second approach is more unscientific than the aforemen- tioned, and more fantastic to relate. According to it, a current from Ocean, which is supposed to flow around the earth, brings this about.

(22) The third approach, which is by far the most plausible-sound- ing, is in fact the most wrong-headed. For it too is mistaken, claiming the Nile, which flows in Africa through the middle of Ethiopia, and ends up in Egypt, originates from melted snow. (Histories II)8

To Herodotus and the Greeks, the Nile floods are anomalous because they occur in summer rather than in winter, when Greek rivers run high owing to winter rains.9 Winter is also the rainy season in Egypt, affecting virtually all other rivers, yet leaving the Nile unaffected.10 Herodotus quickly identifies three theories purporting to explain the anomaly, with the intention of dwelling only on the last one, the one that is prima facie most plausible, but ultimately, as he lets us know at the outset, indefen- sible. These theories manifest a number of features well known from early philosophical inquiries. First, they are all theories deriving from Greek thinkers speculating about a recurring event that is both puzzling and amazing, a ihauma or marvel. Herodotus nowhere tells us who the respective authors are, but we can determine them from other ancient sources. The theory about the etesian winds comes from Thaïes, the theory about Ocean currents from Hecataeus, and the theory about

8 This and all other translations my own unless otherwise noted.

9 Hdt 2.19: the Nile acts in a manner opposite to other rivers. In the words of Lucan, leges aliarum nescit aquarum, de Bello Civili 10.228.

10 In fact the Nile travels its last 2000 kms. without receiving hardly drop of water from local runoff: Bonneau (1964), 12. Rain water falls in a significant amount only from Cairo north, ibid., 16 and n 4.



294 Daniel W.Graham

melting snow from Anaxagoras.11 Evidently these Greek thinkers were attempting to explain unusual phenomena not only from their own regions, but from places at the limits of their world, from the sixth century BC on. Second, the theories are all naturalistic, presupposing some sort of natural, rather than supernatural, causes, which will ultimately remove the event under discussion from the realm of the marvel- ous to the realm of the mundane. Third, there are already, by sometime in perhaps the mid-fifth century BC, three competing theories about the same phenomenon, indicating an ongoing interest in the phenomenon, a tradition of inquiry.12

These points are typical manifestations of early Greek philosophizing. In the sixth and fifth centuries certain Greek intellectuals undertook to give naturalistic explanations of phenomena, including what had hith- erto been regarded as prodigious or ominous events. Originating with Thaïes (as far as we know), the leading early practitioners of this method were Ionians, and so we may call the debate they started the Ionian tradition. Each seems to be aware of theories of his predecessors, and to repeat, elaborate, or replace those theories. There is, then, some sort of ongoing conversation about the natural world among the natural philosophers. But what we never see in the fragments of philosophers is how the conversation proceeds, and, more specifically, how in detail one thinker reacts to another.

It is instructive to see how Herodotus continues:

(22.2) Now how could [the Nile] flow from snow, going from the hottest places to places most of which are cooler?

In support of his point he gives several considerations: (1) winds from the south of Egypt are hot; (2) (a) the region is sunny and devoid of ice;

11 Thaïes: Sen Q Nat 4a.2.22, Aetius 4.1.1; Hecataeus: fragment F302 Jacoby with Lloyd (1976), 100; Anaxagoras: Hippol Haer 1.8.5 = DK 59A42, Aët 1.4.3, Sen Q Nat 4a.2.17 = A91.

12 We cannot date Herodotus exactly, but he is generally thought to have written around the mid-fifth century. (Lloyd [1975], 61-8 puts his visit between 459 and 430, and more likely after 449.) From the standpoint of theories of the Nile floods, we can roughly confirm the dating: Herodotus knows Anaxagoras' theory of the Nile floods, but not those of Diogenes of Apollonia (Sen Q Nat 4a.2.28-30 = A18) and Democritus (D S 1.39.1-3). Meanwhile, Aristophanes alludes to Herodotus7 theory in the Clouds (line 273), a work performed in 423.




(b) when it snows it always rains within five days, which does not happen in Egypt; (3) humans in southern Africa are burned black by the sun's hot rays; (4) birds such as cranes and swallows do not migrate from there, as they do from cold countries. All of these considerations prove that there is no snow inland in Africa. More important, they show that Herodotus is practicing Ionian historié, drawing on observations, local information, and 'obvious' inferences to evaluate theories.

Previously, Herodotus was unable to resist criticizing the etesian winds theory when he introduced it, though he had promised only to mention it; now he cannot resist an attack on the Ocean current theory. This theory does not admit of refutation (ouk echei elenchon) because no one has never encountered any such body of water. As far as Herodotus can tell, Ocean, the stream that circles the disk of the earth in Homer and Hesiod, is pure myth. Herodotus regards the whole geographical framework of his age as suspect: there is no assurance that the world is apportioned into three continents symmetrically arranged around the Mediterranean sea and surrounded by Ocean.13 Thus any theory founded upon these untested assumptions is insupportable. In fact the Ocean theory was destined to find some sort of empirical vindication from early explorers.14

13 Hdt 4.36.1, 4.42.1

14 The discovery that there was an ocean surrounding Africa could lend support to Hecataeus' theory. The early explorer Euthymenes of Massalia (as early as 530 BC: cf. Jacoby [1909], Cary and Warmington [1929], 46, but date uncertain) seems to have combined the theories of the etesian winds and a source in Ocean when he observed the mouth of a river on the Atlantic coast of Africa (the Senegal?). Assuming the river to be the Nile because of its having flora and fauna similar to the river in Egypt, he claimed it emptied into the sea violently while the etesian winds were blowing (in the Mediterranean) and was calm when they ceased to blow (Sen Q Nat 4A.2.22). (This need not be a 'wild fable' as Thomson [1965], 77 suggests, since a Portuguese explorer made the same inference in the fifteenth century AD: Carpenter [1966], 102.) In the late fourth century BC Pytheas of Massalia, who 'must rank as one of the world's greatest explorers' (Dicks [1960], 179) despite criticisms from Strabo and others, sailed up the Atlantic coast of Europe and reached Great Britain (see Roseman [1994], Cunliffe [2001]). Dicaearchus later defended the theory deriving the Nile floods from Ocean (Lydus Mens 4.160). Keyser (2001), 368-9 points out that he may think Ocean is more elevated than the Mediterranean, so that water from it flows downward. Homer // 21.195-7 views Ocean as the source of all rivers.



296 Daniel W.Graham

Herodotus could with some justification declare the subject of inves- tigation beyond the capacity of mortal understanding; he could go so far as to declare the very attempt to explain the origin of the floods blasphe- mous or hubristic. Instead, he immediately enters into the conversation. It quickly becomes evident that he shares many assumptions with the theorists whose work he is criticizing. There is some recurring phenomenon to be explained here; it is to be explained in naturalistic terms, and in light of other explanations. The present theories fail not because they are irrelevant or patently absurd, but because they fly in the face of empirical facts which tend to disconfirm them (in the case of two theories), or they make extravagant assumptions unnecessarily. If the etesian winds caused the Nile floods, all rivers with certain orientations should experience the same effects; and if the winds failed to blow at the appointed time, the floods should fail to materialize. Neither of these results is seen to occur.15 If the floods resulted from melting snows, there should be evidence of cold conditions and precipitation in southern Africa. There is not; hence there is no reason to accept the explanation.16 The criticisms are astute: Herodotus looks for data to confirm or disconfirm the explanations and finds they tend to disconfirm them. Indeed, he tacitly uses the techniques familiar to us from modern scientific method: if we vary the factor that by hypothesis is the cause (the etesian winds do not blow), we should see a variation in effect (no flooding). If we examine the class of all relevantly similar rivers (those flowing contrary to the etesian winds), we should see the same effects at the same time. The observations are inconsistent with the hypothesis.

But Herodotus is not through: he coyly offers to give his own explanation.

(24) Since it behooves a critic of the present views to give his own view concerning the hidden causes, I shall give my view as to why the Nile floods in summer. In wintertime the sun is driven from its previous course by storms so that it comes to the upper regions of Africa. To put

15 The view is still considered plausible by Lucretius, 6.714-23, and by Pliny, HN 5.10.55.

16 In fact, there is precipitation in the form of both rain and snow in central Africa; the Nile does originate from melting snows, though they do not contribute to the flood conditions: Bonneau (1964), 15.




it briefly, this explains everything: it stands to reason that whichever region is nearest the god, and whichever lies under him, will be thirsty for water, and the local streams will dry up.

(25) To explain in more detail, traveling through upper Africa the sun has this effect: because the air in these countries is continually clear and the region is hot and devoid17 of cool winds, the sun has the same effect it usually does in summer as it travels through the midst of the sky. It draws water to itself and then disperses it to the upper regions, where the winds pick it up and dissolve it by scattering. And appropri- ately there are winds that blow from this region, the south and the southwest winds, which are by far the most rainy winds of all. I believe that the sun does not disperse all the annual water from the Nile every time, but it retains some of it around itself.

When winter abates, the sun returns to the middle of the sky, and from there it draws water from all the rivers alike. As long as much rainwater is mixed with them, the rivers flow plentifully, because the rainwater of the region runs off into them in torrents; but when the rains stop in summer and they are drawn by the sun, the rivers shrink. Since, however, the Nile does not receive rainwater, when it is drawn by the sun, it alone of rivers during this season naturally flows much more weakly than it does in summer. For at that time its waters are equally drawn along with all the others, but it alone is drained in winter. Thus I consider the sun to be the cause of these events.

Despite his professed scorn for theories of the Nile's floods, Herodo- tus shows himself to be keenly interested in the question. The problem presents a contest which he wishes to enter and to win. Yet his own explanation seems at least as problematic as those of his predecessors. He takes the explanandum to be not the rising of the Nile in summer, but its fall in winter. This is an original suggestion, but it does not seem helpful by itself. As Diodorus Siculus would later object, why do not the other rivers of Africa also feel the effects of the winter sun?18 This seems to pose precisely the kind of problem for Herodotus that Herodotus poses for the theorists he criticizes: why do the same causes not have the same effects in all cases? Herodotus' apparent answer is that the other

17 Adding aveu with Madvig.

18 1.38.8-12; cf. Aristid Egyptian Discourse 341.21 ff. Jebb.



298 Daniel W.Graham

rivers are fed by rainwater in the winter, which cancels the effects of the sun's evaporation. In the summer, by contrast, the sun's effects are seen on local rivers because they are not fed by runoff. This explains the strength of the Nile in the summer relative to other rivers, but it does not account for the strength of the Nile relative to itself}9 If the sun is directly over the Nile in summer but not in winter, it should cause more evaporation in summer than in winter, and hence should cause the Nile to be lower (assuming a constant flow from its source). If, on the other hand, the sun is directly over the southern stretch of the Nile in winter as it is over the northern stretch in summer, the evaporation should be roughly constant throughout the year.

There is, however, a way of making good sense of Herodotus' argument, in two steps. First, we must adopt one reading of the text that helps make some sense of the situation. When Herodotus says, in the penulti- mate sentence of the passage cited, that the Nile 'alone is drained in winter', he means to imply, not that, although all the rivers of the region are drawn equally, only the Nile is drained owing to the lack of runoff, but that because at that time the rivers are not 'equally drawn', only the Nile experiences significant evaporation.20 That is to say, in the winter the other rivers are not drawn by the sun at all or hardly at all, while the Nile is strongly drawn. This situation could happen in part because the other rivers are shorter than the Nile and do not extend south to the place where the sun resides in winter. This reading seems to be confirmed by Herodotus' statement in the last paragraph quoted above that 'when the rains stop in summer and they [the rivers other than the Nile] are drawn by the sun [sc. as they were not in winter], the rivers shrink.' When the sun crosses the sky far to the south of the local rivers, it has little or no effect on them. Yet, as we have seen, this by itself would not be enough: the Nile would have to be more strongly drawn in winter than in summer to account for its being lower in winter. But how could that be?

The second step is to supply some sort of reason for the increased evaporation of the Nile in winter. A.B. Lloyd (1976, 106) takes it that the first sentence of ch. 25 is meant to indicate that conditions are ideal in

19 /rThis [Herodotus'] suggestion might serve as a possible explanation of the lowering of the water in winter, but it leaves untouched the question of its overflow in summer' (Tozer [1964], 63).

20 Cf. How and Wells (1912), 170-1.




upper Africa for increased evaporation in winter. But the sentence seems rather to point to the fact that evaporation takes place in winter just as it does in Egypt in summer, having not a greater but 'the same effect'. Otto Gilbert (1907), 442 n 1, focusing on the second sentence of the chapter, claims that when the sun moves north it gives up the water it has gathered in winter, which falls as rains to swell the Nile. But Herodotus says explicitly that 'the Nile does not receive rainwater' (25). This might mean that it does not receive rainwater in winter, but Herodotus does not make that restriction explicitly.21 Herodotus does not give any un- ambiguous reason in the text to account for the greater evaporation of the Nile in winter than in summer, and commentators have failed to find an adequate account in it.22 It would, of course, be ideal to find the reason in the text; but lacking that we must look for a background theory that would make sense of the different rate of evaporation.

Such a theory can be found in Herodotus' geography. According to his theory about the source of the Nile, the river rises in western Africa opposite the sources of the Danube in Europe and flows across the southern continent eastward like its European counterpart.23 Thus for most of its length it lies directly below the sun at its southern station.24 A short river would not lie directly under the sun, and a long river that ran mainly south to north would lie under it only it for a relatively short period of time (and thus if the Nile were such a river it would be little affected); but a river running along an east-west axis under the path of the winter sun would be exposed to its heat constantly throughout the winter. Thus, in accordance with Herodotus' geography, astronomy, and physical theory, because of its unique disposition, the Nile should

21 Cf. Weidemann (1890), 110.

22 Weidemann (1890), 110-11, Bonneau (1964), 188-93 can make nothing of Herodotus' theory.

23 Hdt 2.31-4. Herodotus bases his view on a report of some Cyrenians that Etearchus king of the Ammonians had learned of a river like the Nile from the tribe of Nasamonians (chs. 32-3); thus it is not mere invention on his part, but it does seem heavily influenced by a schematic view of geography such as he professes to distrust. Herodotus may be confusing reports of the Niger river with the Nile: Plin HN 8.77 with Hyde (1947), 278-9.

24 'Obviously the Nile was regarded [by Herodotus] as on or near the winter "tropic" '

(Heidel [1937], 21).




indeed give up more vapor to the sun than any other river of the region in winter. It alone should experience a significant amount of evaporation when the sun was at its southern tropic. I take it that this is precisely what Herodotus is implying, however obscurely, in defending his own explanation. During the summer, when the sun crosses the sky directly above the other rivers, and over the northern stretch of the Nile, it draws them and the Nile equally. But in winter the Nile experiences heavy evaporation as the sun moves not across it as the river flows due north but along its long axis where the river flows due east. Only in summer can the normal flow of the Nile be observed as it is not subject to the massive evaporation that it experiences in winter.

Of course Herodotus can only speculate on the path and extent of the Nile; he misjudges the distance of the southern tropic, and in any case he is not aware that the earth is spherical. But given his assumptions and reconstructions, his theory makes sense. More important for us than his success in the debate is the fact that he makes his case within the framework of his predecessors. Like them, he assumes that there are recurring natural conditions sufficient to account for the phenomenon of the Nile floods. The motions of the sun are governed by winds and atmospheric conditions, as is typical in early Ionian thought.25 The sun's heat 'draws' or evaporates water, which is dispersed by winds, some of which produce rain. This account of the water cycle goes back at least to Xenophanes.26 It is interesting that Herodotus refers to the sun as 'the god', yet he ascribes to the deity only physical powers, and indeed has atmospheric conditions control its orbit. (Is he trying to deflect potential criticism with the epithet?)27

II

In a number of ways Herodotus is a player in the same game as the Ionian philosophers. He is, in the first place, himself from Halicarnassus in Ionia, and writes in the Ionic dialect. He is a kind of eclectic researcher

25 The earliest recorded case is the theory of Anaximenes: Hippol Haer 1.7 A, Aët 2.22. 1 = B2a.

26 B30 with Arist Meteor 1.8 and Gilbert (1907), 402 ff .

27 Cf. Socrates in PI Ap 26d-e.




like other Ionian intellectuals, interested in diverse tales, events, and phenomena from diverse places. He makes naturalistic assumptions like the Ionian philosophers: the world consists of natural powers whose actions produce natural events. Although Herodotus allows room for supernatural interventions, he often minimizes them.28 And he performs his own researches to try to understand phenomena. He shares with us his attempts to find out about the sources of the Nile:

Concerning the sources of the Nile, no Egyptian, African, or Greek with whom I have conversed has claimed to know, with the exception of a scribe of the temple treasures of Athena in the city of Sais, Egypt - but he seemed to be putting me on when he claimed to have certain knowledge. (2.28)

The scribe says there is a bottomless abyss between Syene and Elephan- tine from which waters well up and flow north to toward Egypt on the one side, and south towards Ethiopia on the other. But Herodotus does not believe him. 'I was not able/ he continues, 'to get information from anyone else, but I investigated as far as I could, traveling personally as far as the city of Elephantine, and making verbal inquiries from there' (2.29.1). Herodotus is consciously pursuing scientific research as well as geographical exploration.

Clearly the historian is capable of using information he gleaned to test theories, such as that of Hecataeus. Among his other virtues, Herodotus has the integrity to tell us when he cannot find adequate information, for instance about the sources of the Nile. Indeed, these were not discovered until the nineteenth century AD, when European explorers finally pushed deep into what had been to them terra incognita.29 And only in modern times was it determined that the cause of the Nile floods was

28 A couple of examples are his skepticism about a story that Heracles killed tens of thousands of men who were trying to sacrifice him (kcoç cpúoiv £%z' noXkàq ¿rupiótôaç (poveÛGoa;), 2.45. The gorge of the Peneus is said to have been made by Poseidon, who causes earthquakes; Herodotus tactfully grants that it may have been caused by an earthquake, 7.129.4. But he believes in oracles and in divine interventions, e.g., 8.77. On Herodotus' attitudes to the gods and religion, see Lloyd (1975), 159, 168-70.

29 Writing in the first century AD Pliny the Elder describes what is known of the Nile's course, HN 5.10.51-4; cf. also Str 17.1.4. Aristotle believed the source of the Nile was in the Silver Mountain, Meteor 350bl2-14.



302 Daniel W.Graham

monsoon rains falling on Ethiopian Plateau and draining into the Blue Nile and other tributaries.30 In any case, Herodotus was eager to gain as much knowledge as he could, short of leaving the civilized world on a dangerous safari. And he seems to have brought with him on the Nile a curiosity informed by his Ionian predecessors.

One signal difference between Herodotus and the Ionian philosophers seems to be the fact that he does not have a unified theory to promote. He borrows meteorological conceptions, pursues geographical, historical, and ethnographic information,and retains at least a modi- cum of religious commitment. He takes a critical stance to meteorological theories, geographical reports, and schematic cosmography. But he does not have any systematic theory of his own to replace the philosophical theories with. It is possible that he would defend his own eclecticism as the only rational response, given the fact that empirical information is not adequate to justify any unified account of the phenomena. He might agree with Xenophanes' dictum,

The gods did not from the beginning reveal all things to mortals, but in time by seeking they find what is better. (B18)

Herodotus is not a systematic thinker, but deals with problems ad hoc. His strength is his breadth of knowledge and his pragmatism. Grand theories built on a priori hypotheses are intellectual luxuries he does not allow himself.

We can see from Herodotus' reactions that at least some intellectuals of the fifth century who did not see themselves as philosophers or scientists took philosophical-scientific theories seriously. Herodotus regards the several theories of Nile flooding as worth considering, if only for a moment. More importantly, he regards them as being the right sorts of explanations to give of an unusual phenomenon. They assume natural events and conditions as the only principles relevant to explaining a problematic phenomenon. Naturalistic explanations fail when they do

30 Bonneau (1964), 1 6-25; the view that rains were responsible was held by Democritus (above, n 9), Aristotle (who wrote a lost book on the Nile floods, frr. 246-8 Rose3 - but perhaps the book is by Theophrastus: Steinmetz [1964], 278-96), Eratosthenes (Proclus In Tim 121.8-11), Posidonius (Str 2.3.3 = F49.130-5 Edelstein-Kidd, Cleom 1.6.31-3 = F210.20-3 Edelstein-Kidd), and Strabo (17.1.5), who (following Eratosthenes) regards the view as confirmed by observation, though it is unclear how empirical the observations were (Edelstein-Kidd [1988] ad loc).




not account for ways in which the putative cause should act (e.g., the etesian winds should act equally on all rivers with a certain orientation), or they posit unverifiable existents (e.g., Ocean), or they presuppose impossible conditions (cold in upper Africa). But within the general framework of naturalistic explanation, the researcher can find a plausible account that will explain the phenomenon. The responsible researcher should ideally know as much as possible about the phenomenon in question, and its geographical setting; only so can some hypotheses be evaluated reasonably. And it is only reasonable to inquire of the locals to find out what they know about the phenomenon. Within the broad framework of the Ionian tradition, Herodotus may regard himself as doing the field work necessary to determine the right answers to questions that cannot be adequately determined a priori: he is an empirical researcher among abstract theorists.

We find a striking contrast between the curiosity of the Greek researcher and the complacency of the locals:

(19) . . . Concerning the nature [phusis] of the river I was not able to get any information either from the priests or from anyone else. I was eager to find out from them why the Nile comes down in a flood, beginning at the summer solstice and continuing for a hundred days, and when these days are fulfilled, the current subsides back to its former levels so that it continues shallow the whole winter until the next summer solstice. Well, concerning these thing I was not able to get any information from any Egyptian, when I inquired of them what power the Nile has to act by nature in a way opposite to other rivers.

Like the Ionian philosophers, Herodotus cannot even imagine that this question is beyond solution. And it must have seemed amazing that the learned priests of Egypt had no knowledge of the causes of this annual phenomenon.31 But so it was. And so we see the difference between the

31 The Egyptians do have explanations for the flooding - it is caused by one or other of the gods. But if they shared these with Herodotus he did not regard these as genuine explanations: Lloyd (1976), 94-5. The Egyptians may have seen Ocean as a source of the Nile, and may have recognized in mythical terms a correlation between the etesian winds as the floods (Bonneau [1964], 143-5, 151-2), but it does not follow that they could translate these conceptions into a rational account that would satisfy Herodotus. Lucan puts a long discourse on the sources of the Nile in the mouth of an Egyptian priest, who, in good Ionian fashion, addresses and refutes the views



304 Daniel W.Graham

Greeks and their Egyptian neighbors, and between Ionian curiosity and traditional lore.

Ill

Herodotus' discussion is interesting not only as depicting his own involvement in naturalistic inquiries, but as foreshadowing later methods. The inquiry proper begins with a statement of other people's views on the Nile floods. These are indeed Greek views, which the native Egyptian populace, including the learned priests, are innocent of. By Herodotus' time there are already three competing theories by the Greeks of an unusual Egyptian phenomenon. Herodotus thinks the Egyptians could and presumably should have something to say about the phenomenon, but they do not. He enters the discussion by engaging previous Greek theories.

Already in the mid-fifth century BC we have something comparable to a modern piece of research: the investigator surveys the literature, identifies three hypotheses that purport to account for the problematic phenomenon. He then proceeds to criticize them, showing that all of them fail to account for the conditions and circumstances relevant to the phenomenon. Finally he proposes his own alternative, which he claims avoids the failings of other theories and adequately accounts for the phenomenon.

The theories of Presocratic philosophy have long been known from a secondary tradition of transmission known as doxography. As Hermann Diels pointed out in his groundbreaking study (1879), this tradition goes back to the work of Aristotle's colleague Theophrastus, whose multi-vol- ume study of physical theories became the basis of all later scholarship. Indeed, it was summarized, epitomized, and passed on in abbreviated forms which served as textbooks for later students. Theophrastus was heavily indebted to Aristotle for his understanding of the early thinkers,

presented by Herodotus (10.219-27 on the melting snows as a cause of the floods, lines 239-47 vs. the etesian winds, lines 255-61 on Ocean) in a speech to Julius Caesar. In light of Herodotus' experience this speech is ironic, but it is not anachronistic, given the almost three centuries of Hellenistic influence on Egypt by Caesar's time.




and he is sometimes excessively dependent on him.32 Recent studies, however, have pointed out that there are hints of doxographies even earlier than that of Theophrastus. Schematic accounts of early thinkers are found in Plato and Aristotle, suggesting an earlier organization of thinkers, perhaps originating in the sophist Hippias.33

In Herodotus we see a historian collecting opinions or theories on a phenomenon that had already become a topic of debate. To be sure Herodotus is not trying to generate a doxography, for he does not even mention the names of the theorists who have offered explanations of the floods. He suggests that even the fact that they offer opinions on the subject is a sign of excessive ambition. Yet clearly it is the existence of competing theories on a celebrated physical problem that provides the occasion for his own disquisition, and it allows him the opportunity to add to his own repute by outdoing his predecessors. Whatever resentment the historian may feel towards the tradition, he is dependent on it for the problem and the occasion to advance his own solution. A certain kind of very basic doxography is an inevitable by-product of the whole procedure. Herodotus' doxography is minimal because it is anonymous: he does not share with us the names of the theorists; and it is, so far as we can see, ad hoc: unlike the formal doxographies of later antiquity, there is no sign that Herodotus has inherited or created a systematic list of famous opinions about important topics. Yet from this very modest encounter between the scholar and his materials, we can see how systematic collections could arise from compilations of individual problems. Ultimately, the Theophrastean doxography is but a string of problems of natural explanation, become topoi, together with the proposals advanced to solve them. Indeed, the tradition abbreviates the theories until they are only opinions taken out of their theoretical context in a kind of smorgasbord of views that one could use either to provide foils for a new interpretation, or at worst, signs of erudition.

The first stage of Herodotus' inquiry is collecting views, including learned views, to account for the phenomenon. These views are what

32 See McDiarmid (1953).

33 Snell (1944/1966) was the first to recognize Hippias as making the first efforts in the direction of a history of philosophy, seconded by Classen (1965). See Mansfeld (1990), 22-83, 126-46.



306 Daniel W.Graham

Aristotle later calls endoxa, reputable views.34 The next step is to refute all the false views, an elenchus. As we have seen, he carries out this portion of the argument ably. He challenges assumptions not based on empirical evidence, such as the existence of Ocean; he points out discrep- ancies between the purported explanations such as the etesian winds and what one would expect of them; and he questions the plausibility of other assumptions such as that of snow in southern Africa. Finally, he develops his own account, a theoria. The procedure Herodotus follows is much like that of Aristotle a century later:

We must, as in other cases, lay out the appearances [tithentas ta phainomena] and first resolve them so as to account for all the received views [endoxa] about these features, or if not, the greatest number and most important of them. For if the difficulties are resolved and the views are preserved, that is sufficient proof. (EN 1145b2-7)

After reviewing the standard views about his present subject, Aristotle observes:

Now the problems [aporiai] happen to be roughly these, of which some must be rejected and some accepted. For the solution of a problem is a discovery. (EN 1146b6-8)

Much of Aristotle's effort to prove a point appears in his criticism of rival views that he regards as untenable. His own theory is confirmed by its preserving as much as possible from common-sense views on a subject, while eliminating mistaken views. In some ways the differences between Herodotus' practice and Aristotle's methodology are surprisingly small. The practical difference is that Aristotle has a carefully developed theoretical system into which his final explanations fit, whereas Herodotus deals with questions ad hoc. But the rational and scientific approaches of both are similar.

There is one final area in which we can learn about Presocratic sources from Herodotus. One continuing mystery is how knowledge of the Presocratics, and particularly those who did not write or whose writings were not preserved, was transmitted. The philosopher most difficult to document in this connection is Thaïes, who seems to have left no writ-

34 EN 1145b2-7 with Owen (1961), Nussbaum (1982).




ings. How do we know about him then? Clearly we depend on some second-hand account, but from whom, and by what line of transmission? It is generally assumed that our knowledge comes from reports in his fellow countryman and student, Anaximander.35

In the present case we have preserved one explanation by Thaïes. But how did it arrive at Herodotus? Since Herodotus does not even name the authors of the several explanations, much less the sources from which he derived them, we must reconstruct. We already know the authors. What is interesting is the fact that alongside Thaïes' explanation, we have one from a fellow countryman: Hecataeus. Hecataeus wrote a historical /geographical /ethnographic study around 500 BC, on which Herodotus is dependent. If Hecataeus was interested in the Nile floods, he may have been interested in earlier theories about them, and at this point we have only one we can refer to: that of Thaïes. Since Hecataeus was a fellow-citizen of Thaies in Miletus, even if he lived a couple of generations after him, he was in a position to know by oral inquiry, if in no other way, what Thaïes' views on the topic were. It seems plausible to suppose that he transmitted Thaïes' explanation along with his own, and argued for his own in some such way as Herodotus did - that is by refuting the earlier theory and showing how his own views did not have any obvious disadvantages.

If that is so, then the Ionian practice of rational inquiry may have helped to preserve views that otherwise would have been lost, including some held by the founding father of the movement. The views of Ionian thinkers would be preserved precisely in the cases in which their follow- ers (whether admirers, critics, or both) investigated the same phenomena and had their own proposals to make. We find the beginnings of the strange world of contemporary philosophers in which the most famous thinker is the one most often refuted in the literature. A century-old

35 'Si Thaies n'a pas écrit sur la nature, il est possible que ce soit par la contradiction d'Anaximandre que ses opinions aient été connues' (Tannery [1887/1930], 92 n 1, followed, e.g., by West [1963], 175-6). Barnes (1979/1982), 6, points to Hippias as an intermediary between Thaïes and Aristotle, but observes that 'where [knowledge of at least two of Thaïes' theories] lay during the century and a half from Thaïes to Hippias, we cannot tell.' Contrary to most scholars (see, e.g., Kirk, Raven and Schofield [1983], 86-8), Gigon (1945), 43 assumes that Thaïes wrote a book that was subsequently lost. See now White (2002), 15-17 on oral transmission of Thaïes' ideas and O'Grady (2002), 8-28, who accepts the possibility that Thaïes may have written some books.




theory lives on as a possible solution to a question that remains unre- solved.

We see in this singular case of an Ionian tourist in Egypt the almost obsessive habits of inquiry that made the Greeks the intellectual leaders of the ancient world. Combining wanderlust, insatiable curiosity, and critical thinking, Herodotus did what he could on the basis of autopsy, queries, and reasoning to answer an open scientific question as he traveled up the Nile. Although we do not have any details of how early Greek philosophers carried out their inquiries, we must suppose that they combined the gifts of Herodotus with a passion for systematizing their insights. Herodotus gives us a snapshot of intellectual life in the fifth century that reveals more than an ancient scientific treatise could. He shows us that even before Socrates the love of wisdom could be a driving force behind a life of inquiry - indeed the defining motive of a way of life that could blur the lines between explorer and philosopher, tourist and scientist.

Department of Philosophy Brigham Young University

Provo, Utah 84602 U.S.A.

[email protected]

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