The Liar School of Herodotos 905063088X, 9789050630887

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THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

THE LIARSCHOOL HERODOTOS

W.KENDRICK

PRITCHETT,

Emeritus Professor of Greek in

the University of California, Berkeley

J.C. GIEBEN,

PUBLISHER

Amsterdam

1993

OF

DHL, FBA

CIP-DATA KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Pritchett, W. Kendrick The liar school of Herodotos / W. Kendrick Pritchett. Amsterdam : Gieben With index. ISBN 90 5063 088 X

Subject headings: Herodotos / Greek historiography. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the author.

O by W.K. Pritchett, 1993 / Printed in The Netherlands

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have had the good fortune to have stimulating discussions with two of my colleagues at Berkeley, Ronald S. Stroud and Crawford Greenewalt, about several of the problems in this volume, and thank them for helpful suggestions. Dr. Judith Binder has generously dispelled a little of my almost total ignorance about monuments on the Athenian Akropolis. My travels with John Camp have served to refresh my memory about several features of the topography of the Thermopylai region. There are still things to be checked, and we plan a campaign in 1993. I again thank Professor Barbara Rodgers for her skill and patience in transforming onto a floppy disk my not always legible manuscript, in which my wife's proofreading spared me several errors. The formatting of camera-ready copy is the work of Dr. Sara B. Aleshire, who generously interrupted her important studies on the sacred officials of ancient Athens. J.C.

Gieben of Amsterdam has undertaken the publication of the text in the most efficient and gracious manner.

The manuscript was completed in September 1992, although a few additions have been possible. Volume 60 of L'année

philologique was the most recent volume available to me.

Tux Liar SCHOOL or HERODOTOS I

N EXAMINING THE PLACE OF TOPOGRAPHY in testing the veracity of ancient historians, which has been the thrust of our volumes on topography, we explained in the Introduction to Topography VIII that we had reserved a separate treatise to examine the position of a group of scholars who label the History of Herodotos as a compilation of lies—the term is theirs—concocted to amuse his audience. In an appendix to Volume IV (1982), we devoted pages 234-285 to an examination

of the publications of one of the exponents of this school, O.K.

Armayor, and the results were well received by at least one serious scholar, A.J. Graham,

Gnomon 59 (1987) 124, which we

gratefully acknowledge. At the time, we passed over the work of D. Fehling (pp. 245, 281) as requiring a full volume to refute, if one cared to take the time. This work has now been revised and translated into English: Herodotus and his ‘Sources’ (1989).

In reviewing A.B. Lloyd’s work on Herodotean Egypt, D. Fehling (CR 105 [1991] 309-310) writes, “He is inspired by an

enthusiastic persuasion that all the old problems and dilemmas must find their solution, if they are tackled with common sense and full use of all knowledge on Egypt (Egyptological, archaeo-

logical, geographical etc.) that can be had today. ... His commentary belongs to an age of Herodotean scholarship which I hope is drawing towards its close, and it avoids important issues which should be faced today.”

Stephanie West, in reviewing a work by Lateiner, writes in similar vein in the same (1991) volume (p. 24): IWe reviewed ı) Herodotos’ measurement of the Black Sea (4.86), 2) the

Exampios bronze vessel (4.81.2-6), 3) the bitter springs of the Hypanis (4.52), 4) the dark-skinned Kolchians and their practices of circumcision and weaving of linen (2.104), 5) catalogues of the Persian empire (3.89—96, 7.59-99), 6) the two reliefs of "Sesostris" in Ionia and the road from Ephesos to Sardis (2.106).

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Much of L.'s discussion is undermined by his failure to face squarely the questions raised nearly 20 years ago by Detlev Fehling's examination

of Herodotus'

source-citations

available in a revised English version,

Herodotus

and

(now

his

‘Sources’: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art [Arca a1, 1989]),

and, working from an interestingly different standpoint, by O. Kimball Armayor. Their painstaking examination of a great many passages where it is hard to credit what Herodotus claims or implies about the sources of his information is of the utmost relevance to L.'s concerns, though his rather patronising verdict, ‘A thorough refutation of their historiographical assumptions is wanted’, suggests that he has failed to appreciate the significance of their arguments.

According to the rigors of the game, it must be observed that Lateiner did indeed examine critically many of the passages examined by Fehling and Armayor (and West!) and refuted

them. This willful neglect leads me to conclude that, when we come to examine her own claims against Herodotos, her repeated failure to cite evidence in the literature which contra-

dicts her is deliberate. Criticizing Lateiner for not remarking on Herodotos' *gullibility, West chooses as an obvious example Herodotos' acceptance of a legend that the infant Kyros was fostered by a bitch (1.122.3): "Herodotus was led to believe that

the ingenious fantasies of a half-caste dragoman with a smattering of Greek culture represented the received traditions of

Persia and Phoenicia." Since the story is critical for his source theory, Fehling devotes a page and a half (110—111) to it, claiming that it must be Herodotos' invention, concluding: In arguing for this view I am not obliged to discuss later versions. Where classical authors mention the basic story of Cyrus and the bitch (Justin 1.4.10, Aelian, Varia Historia 12.42), it can

be argued that Herodotus himself is the source. As for the much

later Persian parallels, the most important of which is Firdusi's

INTRODUCTION

3

story of Kai Chosrau, we can be quite certain that these are no proof of the antiquity of the story in Persia itself.

If West had extended her readings beyond Herodotos and Fehling, she might have recognized that the legend of the exposure of a future king and his suckling by an unlikely animal is among the commonest legends which existed all over the Near East. For Persian examples, see F. von Spiegel, Eränische Altertumskunde 2 (Leipzig 1875) 270; Herzfeld, Arch. Mitt. aus Iran (1929) 158. Cf. C.J. Gadd, History and Monuments of Ur (London 1929) 86, who states that the stories of the suckling of Sargon, inscribed on stone, and Kyros the Great are common legends, explaining the rise of a successful upstart. The Budé editor refers to R. Schubert, Herodots Darstellung der Kyrossage. Justin gives a lengthy unrationalized form of the legend about Kyros and the bitch in 1.4-5. The choice of a bitch

|

for Kyros' foster-mother agrees with Zoroastrian reverence for

|

the dog, Some students of Herodotos might be acquainted with early Roman legends. Here the suckling of Romulus and Remus was done by a wolf. The story, although mythical, represented the traditional belief of the Roman people respecting their origin. Recently, R.N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich 1991) 83, has written: Binder has convincingly indicated that the various elements in the «Cyrus» saga such as the abandonment of a royal child and its nourishment by an animal (dog, wolf, eagle or cow) are very widespread motifs relevant to the founder of a new dynasty, and probably found to ancient rites of nomadic young warrior fraternities (Männerbünde) on the steppes of Central Asia. ... One may accept the premise that the stories are much more than just tales or literature but do have cultic and ritualistic origins. The

saga of Cyrus must have been attached to his birth and ancestory [sic] soon after his death, for the life of Cyrus became an

almost mystic symbol for later rulers of Iran. The testimony of

'

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Plutarch (Life of Artaxerxes, 3) that a new Persian king had to be initiated into his new position at Pasargadae by following a ritual of wearing Cyrus' robe and eating the simple food which Cyrus ate, indicates the great respect for tradition of the Iranians and the value of the saga as more than a tale. Since a later writer, Aelian (hist.anim. 12,21) says that Achaemenes,

ancestor of Cyrus, as a child was nourished by an eagle, we can see the extension of the variants of the myth backwards in time, as well as forward to the Arsacid and Sasanian founder legends.

The Shähnäme, of course, has many variants of the story of the abandonment of a child and its rearing by an animal

See also O. Murray, CR 81 (1967) 329—330. This example serves to illustrate our problems in examining

the claims of the liar school. Superficially, it seems naive to a twentieth-century historian that Herodotos might believe that any animal was a foster-mother to a human. It is necessary, however, to turn to authorities on Persian historiography,

where we find the story is explained as an element of a saga relating to upstart kings. Herodotos told similar sagas, or legends, about every country in which he traveled. The difficult task is to seek out authorities on the historiography of each country and to weigh their judgments on such stories, and, finally, to answer the question as to whether the Greek-reading world of the mid-fifth century would have accepted as "history" such sagas. Fehling states his method of procedure as follows (p. 255): The first step is to demonstrate that in a considerable number of individual passages the citations are objectively false. In each

case the demonstration is independently argued, though certain arguments frequently recur in these demonstrations: dovetailing of independent reports of fictitious events, citations governed by rules for which no realistic explanation is possible, the way

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY

5

accounts from sources conform to Herodotus' own intentions

and interests, and artificial constructs of Ionian (pseudo-)science in the mouths of local sources.

Fehling's procedure requires us to test seriatim the cases where he charges Herodotos with mendacity. But, first, a few words are in order about historiography in general and Herodotos in particular. We organize the material under the following headings: 1, General Remarks on Historiography 2. Fehling's Examples of Herodotos' Fabrications 3. 4. 5. 6.

S. West's Epigraphical Examples Hartog and Skythia Opinions of Specialists on Individual Logoi The Genre of Travelers

7. Topography 8. Herodotos' Audience 1. GENERAL

REMARKS

ON

HISTORIOGRAPHY

F. Jacoby, Atthis (1949) 321 n. 5, wrote, "Herodotos is not a subject for dissertationes inaugurales, the young authors of which

appreciate one side only of this complicated figure (which is at the same time so simple as a whole), and see that side incompletely or from a wrong angle." It must be conceded that there are some works which tell us much more about the authors' scholarship and their graduate instruction than they do about Herodotos and fifth-century Greece. The difficulty is that Herodotos was both a logopoios and an historian, who molded the two fields into a unity. Archaeologists of many diverse nationalities find traces of the Herodotean record from

the Altai mountains in Siberia to the Sahara Desert. In language, poetic craft, myths, folk tales, traditions, geography, material culture, religious cults, etc., we must attempt to place him in the milieu of the middle of the fifth century between

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Homer and Thucydides. Legends bulk large in the first four books, which, because of the range of his professed travels, require a study of those of various cultures as well as present us with the problem of the cross-fertilization of legends. For geography, we may attempt to map his world; but in accounting for his misconceptions, we must enlighten ourselves by comparison with his successors, who at times made even more serious errors. For an evaluation of him as an historian, we must master

the entire corpus, not making the mistake of separating out one logos, determining, if possible, his sources of information and the limits of his selection. For topography, there is no substitute for autopsy, but this lies beyond the range of any one scholar. Many remind us that history was born to epic in union with the spirit of the Ionian enlightenment, a theme developed by J. Griffin, “Die Ursprünge der Historien Herodots,” in W. Ax's Memoria

Rerum

Veterum (Stuttgart 1990) 51-82.

Perhaps the most illuminating characterization of him, although applied to his style, is the remark of the author of the Περὶ ὕψους that he is ᾿Ομηριώτατος. He is steeped in the Homeric poems; echoes of their phraseology occur on almost

every page, and the ‘episodic’ arrangement of his work with its frequent digressions skillfully welded to the main theme is thoroughly epic. "My history," he says (4.30) "from the first sought opportunities for digression,"? and Dionysios (Letter to Pompeius 3) puts this down to a deliberate imitation of Homer

for the purpose of giving it variety. His book is largely interspersed with "imitation" in the Platonic sense (Rep. 3.393); he

speaks in the persons of his characters and endeavors, so far as

he can, to make us believe that it is not Herodotos who is speaking but someone else. This dramatic element no doubt owes something to the direct influence of Attic tragedy. Parenthetically, I pause to mention the problem, which is

promulgated in some quarters, of whether any attempt to write ὡπροσθήκας yàp δή μοι ὁ λόγος ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐδίζητο.

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY

7

history results in fiction. The most eminent student of Greek historiography of this generation, Arnaldo Momigliano, did not refer, so far as I am aware, to the various attacks on Herodotos as a liar, but concentrated his attention in his last papers on the position of Hayden White denying the possibility of writing narrative history: “The Rhetoric of History and the History of Rhetoric: On Hayden White's Tropes," Settimo Contributo alla storia degli Studi Classici (Rome 1984) 49—59; and "Herodotus Today," SStor. 7 (1985) ı-3, the latter article

being the opening one in a special volume Herodotos. I extract a few comments:

devoted

Hayden White in a recent development in his thought on history (and with a tribute to Lacan) denies the possibility of real narrative history as opposed to annalistic history (W J.T. Mitchell ed., On Narrative, Chicago, 1981, 1-23). As Herodotus

was to our knowledge the first to claim that he was capable of introducing some distinction between reliable and unreliable information about the past, he has consequently become the first of those whose right to exist is contested. ... Two of the oldest and still valid tests for the choice between two stories are what Herodotus called autopsy (being present at the events instead of reporting what other people said) and what Polybius called experience (knowing war at first hand or having traveled in the country the story of which you are telling). ... We historians of course quarrel about the validity or at least the limits of effectiveness of the various instruments at our disposal. But what has come to distinguish historical writing from any other type of literature is its being submitted as a whole to the control of evidence. History is no epic, history is no novel, history is not propaganda because in these literary genres control of the evidence is optional, not compulsory. ... There is no evident principle in the reportage by Herodotus and in the criteria whereby he prefers one version to another. The only constant element in Herodotus’ method is the open

to

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intrusion of the writer’s judgement both in the choice and in the evaluation of his stories: «At this point, I am compelled to express an opinion which I know most people will object to: but as I believe it to be true, I will not suppress it» (7,139). Herodotus is

determined to discover an interesting world for himself and his readers. His world contains by implication eternal truths and memorable experiences about gods and men, but they are truths and experiences collected by the individual Herodotus observing and remembering what other men did in their own days. The element of discovery is never separated from the element of appreciation; and both discovery and appreciation imply a complex effort of research, by traveling, by questioning (and therefore selecting) witnesses, by comparing customs and events and finally by giving precedence to certain types of evidence in comparison with others. Herodotus tends to prefer what he sees to what he hears and is generally (but not exclusively) inclined to take a greater interest in the recent past rather than in the dis-

tant past.

Pieter Geyl, eminent Dutch historian, cogently described

history as "an argument without end." We may add, as any elementary student of historiography knows, that granted that any set of facts can be variously interpreted, that there is no such thing as an absolutely correct description of anything, and that there are rhetorical conventions on which all writers, consciously or unconsciously, depend, the historian, nonetheless, refers to monuments, inscriptions, artifacts, which either exist or do not.3 We are also aware of Carl Becker's doctrine of

3Cf. ΤΟ. Rosenmeyer, Clio 11 (1982) 245: "The historian knows that as a

recorder of the past he has had to be selective, arbitrary, and judgmental, and that his work will be respected only to the extent that these properties are openly acknowledged. Herodotus is the Father of History also in that he makes a proud show of his tentativeness, his occasional irresolution in the face of a bewildering mass of materials pressing for recognition and winnowing." Lucian (Hist. Conscr. 50) speaks of the historian as a sculptor, a

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY

9

“Everyman His Own Historian” and Charles Beard’s doctrine of “History as an Act of Faith,” which are capable, when loosely construed, of breeding mischief of a serious character among laymen.* Opinions on the nature of history vary between complete cynicism and a belief in a serious process of inquiry into the past of man in society. À recent treatment of the subject is that of ΕΗ. Carr, What is History? ? (London 1986). The

writing of history entails selection and interpretations, therefore, every historical work is necessarily imperfect, tentative, and partial (in both senses of the word). To put it simply, historians recognize the fallibility and selectivity of the historical record and that the results are relative and contingent, but are none the less indispensable, rejecting the idea that "anything goes." In any case, we are concerned in this monograph with a group of scholars who deal not with the philosophical aspect of historiography, but with one that advances the thesis that Herodotos was consciously fictionalizing, as denoted by the word liar, under the false pretense that his work represented reality. The claims and objective of one who is writing history are quite different from those of one who is writing a work of fiction.

Pheidias or a Praxiteles, whose materials—gold, ivory, and marble—are supplied to him by someone else, but he must fashion them himself. 4Cf. Napoleon's phrase, "History is a fable agreed upon."

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OF HERODOTOS

OF HERODOTOS'

FABRICATIONS

There is little in Herodotos’ account in the various logoi which Fehling endorses. A complete commentary the size of Macan would be required to deal with all of his passages. In his chapter

1 (pp. 12-86), Fehling presents his "crucial cases," termed “demonstrably false source-citations." We take these up one by

one in the order of his presentation. Where there are multiple listings under one entry, we choose the first. We make little

claim to originality, but have deduced authorities which Fehling apparently feels free to overlook because they are "apologists." Thereafter, I limit myself to passages to which he devotes several pages. Since he openly scorns at citing archaeological and topographical publications or the writings of those

he labels as “apologists” and has apparently avoided L'année philologique, our selection represents a fair sample about which we can offer generalizations later. We emphasize that we have avoided any "selection," but have abided by his criteria of cru-

cial passages and length of treatment, taking up individual cases according to his pagination.

1. In accordance with his general thesis that whenever Herodotos gives two or more sources, any passage is an invention, Fehling's first example is the story about the Persian flight after a battle at Delphi (8.38—39). He writes (pp. 14-16), *It is hard to see how the story could have reached the Persian side or indeed how Herodotus could have had the improbably

good fortune to come across anyone on that side who knew it. ... I therefore regard it as certain that Herodotus’ Persian source is pure fiction." As noted by Cobet, Gnomon 46 (1974) 740, and Marincola, Arethusa 20 (1987) 28, Herodotos does not claim to have spoken to anyone on the Persian side (Loeb tr.): The survivors fled straight to Boeotia. Those of the foreigners who returned said (as I have been told) that they had seen other

2. FEHLING 8 EXAMPLES

11

signs of heaven’s working besides the aforesaid: two men-at-

arms of stature greater than human (they said) had followed hard after them, slaying and pursuing. 39. These two, say the Delphians, were the native heroes Phylacus and Autonous.

Most commentators are agreed that this story was invented, or adapted from some minor skirmish, by the Delphians to disguise their culpable immunity. A detailed treatment is that of Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle1 (Oxford 1956) 171-

174. Herodotos makes no claim to have spoken with Persians.

The entire story was reported to him. Those who returned, presumably Greeks on the Persian side, said to the Delphians that they were harassed by two superhuman warriors. The Delphians explained that the warriors were two heroes who had shrines at Delphi. Herodotos chose to separate the story into two parts, the claim of those who fled, and the explanation of the Delphians. That the Greeks believed in the epiphany of heroes need not detain us; see, for example, the inscription from the Karian temple of Zeus Panamaros studied in War 3 chapter 2. Add Garbath, ZPE 65 (1986) 207-210, and the recent book by R. Garland, Introducing New Gods (Ithaca 1992). Recently, J.A.S. Evans, EMC 36 (1992) 59, has offered a different explanation: Persians of high rank were no doubt captured by the Greeks as hostilities continued after 479 ».c. (Pausanias captured members of the Achaemenid house in Byzantium in 478 a.c.) and

vice versa, and "Persian" story sounds like an exculpatory tale told by a Persian officer, which was intended to explain a defeat due to panic The Delphians, like the Ithacan who described the

game which Penelope's suitors played, appear as local authorities who supply a footnote: the names of the superhuman pursuers. In itself, the account that Herodotus presents is not implausible.

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Herodotos’ Persian sources will be discussed below in section 6. Diakonoff, in his account of Media in CHI 2 (1985) 89, writes: It is assumed that the information of Herodotus on the history of Iran, apart from possible personal observations, came from the accounts of Zopyrus, a Persian emigrant belonging to one of the great houses of Persia, and also from someone or other of the descendants of the Median magnate Harpagus who played a fatal röle in the years of the fall of the Median kingdom and subsequently became Persian satrap of Sardis. His descendants had apparently settled in Asia Minor, more precisely in Lycia, not far from Herodotus' native city of Halicarnassus.

See Herodotos 3.160.2 (“Zopyros who fled from Persia to

Athens

..."). However, we believe with Momigliano

that

Herodotos' Persian sources were much more numerous than generally recognized.

2. The second of Fehling's “crucial cases" (pp. 17-21) is Herodotos' chapter (2.104) on the claim that the Kolchians

were of Egyptian stock, as confirmed by color, circumcision, and the weaving of linen: *To describe the average Egyptian in these terms is peculiar, to say the least; and for Herodotus' Colchians the description could not be more wide of the mark" (p. 18) ... “I have also shown in 1,2 that the similarity and the common negroid appearance attributed to the Colchians and

the Egyptians in 2.104.2 is unfounded. We may well wonder how

such

a claim

ever

came

to be

made"

(p.

131).

In

Topography 4 (1982) 258—262, we collected twelve sources of testimonia?

including Pindar,

Hippokrates,

Diodoros,

two

5Omitted from the collection was a passage in Apollonios about which O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (London 1985) 31, has written: "The

(Alexandrian) library was particularly valuable as having a very good collection of up-to-date scientific works. Apollonius of Rhodes wrote there and

2. PEHLING'S

EXAMPLES

13

authors of a periplous, Ammianus, and Christian writers, as well as modern literature, on the color of the Kolchians (although different words for color are used and differently interpreted),$ and their alleged Ethiopian or Egyptian origin;

the distinction for Herodotos being immaterial, as Snowden has stated (The Blacks in Antiquity [Cambridge Mass. 1970] 121). The problem of race on the African continent bulks large in the modern literature. We note that in the Unesco General History of Africa 2 (Berkeley 1981), the editor of the series, G.

Mokhtar, Professor in the Arab Republic of Egypt, devotes the entire first chapter to reviewing the anthropological evidence about the Egyptian race, concluding that "the ancient Egyptians are unquestionably among the black races." On p. 59, J. Vercoutter endorses this position, "Ancient Egypt was peopled,

“from its Neolithic infancy to the end of the native dynasties,' by black Africans." On pages 36—37, Mokhtar endorses all of

Herodotos’ statements about what he takes to be the negroid character of the Egyptians, maintaining also that Herodotos was correct in the 2.104 passage concerning the Kolchians. For a in Rhodes his Argonautica, a largely geographical epic poem. In one passage, evidently as a result of researches he had made, he claims that in early times a party of emigrants from Egypt to Colchis, on the east coast of the Black Sea, erected pillars on which some sort of map of their land and sea journey was etched." The reference is to Argonautica 4.259—293, esp. 279-281.

SFor some bibliography on terms of color, in addition to that in Topography 4.255 n. 48, see Edgeworth, Glotta 59 (1981) 141. The Αἰθίοπες of Herodotos are judged to be the ancestors of the modern Tebu: J. Chapelle, Nomades Noirs du Sahara (Paris 1982) 33-37.

7D.S. Wiesen, "Herodotus and the Modern Debate over Race and Slavery," Ancient Society 3 (1972) 3-16, treats the passage, not from the standpoint of veracity, but with regard to its use in the debate over race with copious anthropological bibliography. D.C. Braund and G.R. Tsetskhlandze have contributed an article on "The Export of Slaves from Colchis," CQ 83

(1989) 114-125, to which some testimonia may be added from Topography 4.261-262. Egyptian mercenaries were apparently used in great numbers by the Persians (Xenophon Kyr. 6.2.10), and these were given cities in the realm

(7.145).

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different view of the Egyptians, see F. Snowden, “Bernal’s "Blacks, Herodotus, and Other Classical Evidence," Arethusa Special Issue (1989) 83-109, esp. 88. It seems almost incredible

that nothing of the vast literature collected in Topography4 or in the references in the works cited above is mentioned by Fehling on pp. 17-21 of his 1989 edition.

As to circumcision, much material listed in Topography 4.256 n. 3 (add 23). The operation of circumcision is Old Kingdom; and in the Tebtunis

is collected in the studies A.B. Lloyd, 3 [1988] 22depicted in a relief of the papyri, circumcision is a

condition of admission to the priesthood. Herodotos' passage about circumcision

is twice quoted by Josephus

(Contra

Apionem 1.169—171; Antiq. 8.262), who informs us (c Ap. 2.141)

that "priests are circumcised and all refrain from pork" (the latter confirming Herodotos 2.47). Herodotos claims (2.37) that

he got much

of his information in Egypt from priests. G.

Mokhtar, General History of Africa 2.37, endorses Herodotos' statement, adding, "As with many peoples in black Africa,

Egyptian women underwent excision of the clitoris." See Strabo 17.2.5.824. None of this material is in Fehling.

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica ııth edition, 6.389 s.v. Cir-

cumcision, we read: The origin of the rite among the Jews is in Genesis (xvii.) placed in the age of Abraham, and at all events it must have been very ancient, for flint stones were used in the operation (Exodus iv.25; Joshua v.2). The narrative in Joshua implies that the custom was introduced by him, not that it had merely been in abeyance in the Wilderness. At Gilgal he "rolled away the reproach of the Egyptians" by circumcising the people. This obviously means that whereas the Egyptians practised circumcision the Jews in

the land of the Pharaohs did not, and hence were regarded with contempt. It was an old theory (Herodotus ii.36) that circumci-

sion originated in Egypt; at all events it was practised in that country in ancient times (Ebers, Egypten und die Bücher Mosis,

2. PEHLING'S EXAMPLES

15

i.278-284), and the same is true at the present day. But it is not generally thought probable that the Hebrews derived the rite directly from the Egyptians. As Driver puts it (Genesis,p. 190): "It is possible that, as Dillmann and Nowack suppose, the peoples of N. Africa and Asia who practised the rite adopted it from the Egyptians, but it appears in so many parts of the world that it must at any rate in these cases have originated independently." ... It was an ancient custom among the Arabs, being presupposed in the Koran. The only important Semitic peoples who most probably did not follow the rite were the Babylonians and

Assyrians (Sayce, Babyl. and Assyrians, p. 47).

G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (New York 1959) 45, writes, "In the mastabas there are representations of naked workmen which bear witness to the practice of circumcision. Two scenes of the operation and some rare texts men-

tioning the age 'when the sex-organ has still not been unbound', prove that this mutilation was imposed on youth at about the age of puberty." Mastabas are the private tombs of

the Old Kingdom. In the Unesco General History of Africa 2 (1981) 44, we read: According to the extract from Herodotus quoted earlier, circumcision is of African origin. Archaeology has confirmed the judgement of the Father of History for Elliot-Smith was able to determine from the examination of well-preserved mummies that circumcision was the rule among the Egyptians as long ago as the protohistoric era, i.e. earlier than -4000.

F.M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass. 1983) 10, remarks on the Ethiopian practice of circumcision and in pl. 19 publishes a scene with circumcised Negroes on a

fifth-century pelike by the Pan Painter in Athens. The rite was observed by the Aztecs and by tribes in Australia and on the Amazon. Writing of the Tuarag in the Sahara, F. Rennell

16

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

Rodd, People of the Veil (London 1926) 179, observes, “As in

the case of all good Moslems, the boys are circumcised at the age of a few months.” On p. 103, Fehling returns to the subject chastising Herodotos for providing "bogus information" about the Ethiopians outside the realm of the familiar world. As to the weaving of linen, we collected in Topography 4.257 evidence which speaks of the twin fame of Kolchian and Egyptian linen in antiquity. As to Herodotos' statement, "The Kolchian linen is called by the Greeks Sardonic," E. Lucchesi,

"Remarque sur le lin sardonique d'Hérodote, Hist. IL105," Orientalia 47 (1978) 109—111, has shown that the word from

caprTovikóv means wool in Egyptian. In Kyn. 2.4, Xenophon states (Loeb tr.), "The purse-nets

should be made

of fine

Phasian or Carthaginian flax, and the road-nets and hayes of the same material." For a summary of excavations at Kolchis, see O.D. Lordkipanidze, "Colchis in the Early Antique Period

and her Relations with the Greek World," Archeologia 19 (1968) 15-44. For the export of flax, see p. 38. Starting with the

epic poet Eumelos and Hesiod, the author lists numerous references in the Greek literature to the myths, legends, geography, and history of the region.

3A. The third “crucial case” is Herodotos’ magnificent story of Arion's rescue by a dolphin, which he says he heard in both Korinth and Lesbos (1.23-24). Fehling (pp. 21-24) claims it must have been invented by Herodotos: "The notion that sto-

ries can survive through generations in a local tradition, which was developed at a time when scholarship was under the spell of the Romantic movement, is generally unrealistic. Stories exist primarily in the heads of individuals, not in the collective consciousness of social groups. ... (The story) can have only one place of origin and so cannot be expected to turn up in a

second place. It is surely surprising that Herodotos should find a suitable figure in the ‘right’ place for a story he had heard

2. FEHLING 8 EXAMPLES

17

elsewhere. ... If the statue had no inscription at all, how did Herodotus know that it had been set up by Arion?” Εἰς.

Since Fehling views Herodotos through the eyes of a twentieth-century rationalist with little effort to recover the mythological and religious environment of the early fifth century, we note in the beginning that T.F. Higham, inspired by an article

in the Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand

(1956) giving an illustration of a'Tarantine coin of ca. 450 B.c. showing Taras riding on a dolphin and a photograph of Mr. Wells of New Zealand riding on a dolphin, devoted a note, *Nature Notes: Dolphin-Riders, Ancient Stories Vindicated," G&R 29 (1960) 82-86 with pL 5, to the playfulness, the love of

applause and showing off of this creature of the sea, which Plutarch says (Mor. 984c) *is the only creature who loves man

for his own sake," an observation which visitors to Marine Museums today might confirm. Higham endorsed the story of the dolphin which carried a boy on its back in the Lucrine Lake as told soberly by the elder Pliny (NH9.8.26) and more elabo-

rately by his nephew (Ep. 9.33). Even more impressive is a wellillustrated article on the dolphin

in the September

1992

National Geographic by a Professor of Natural History at the University of California. The dolphin, not a fish, but

a mam-

mal, is said to be among the most intelligent animals on the planet in the respected company of chimpanzees and elephants with a memory capacity which equals our own. In the Bahamas, fifty to one hundred Atlantic dolphins come daily to flirt and

play with swimmers. Christian martyrs are said to have been bound and thrown into the sea, but saved by dolphins. The subject is treated in detail by E. Diez in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 3 (1957) 667—682. In their notes on Plutarch's Dialogue, "The Cleverness of Animals," Harold Cherniss and

W. Helmbold have annotated Plutarch's lengthy treatment of the dolphin stories with a mass of references in the ancient literature (Loeb vol. XII, pages 431, 441, 453, 468—477), from the

18

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

Homeric Hymns, Archilochos, Pindar, Plato, and later authors.® The great currency in classical mythology of tales about well-

known figures being saved from the sea by dolphins (Arion, Eikadios, Enalos, Koiranos, Phalanthos, Taras, Theseus, et al.) is

illustrated by a mere listing of names. Others had their corpses

brought ashore by a dolphin (Palaimon or Melikertes, Dionysios and Hermias of Iasos, Hesiod, and an anonymous boy at

Naupaktos). Later saints have been rescued or brought ashore by dolphins (Martinianos of Kaisareia, Kallistratos of Karthage, Basileios of Constantinople, Loukianos of Antioch). See A.B. Cook, Zeus 1.170171.

E.B. Stebbins, The Dolphin in the Literature and Art of Greece and Rome (Johns Hopkins diss. 1929) collects some thirty-four references in Greek and Latin literature to Arion and the dol-

phin (pp. 66—70).9 She states that "the Arion story is linked only with those places where there was already a Dolphin-rider cult, as Corinth, Methymna, Tarentum, and Brentesion, and Taenarum." She also lists (p. 110) eight references to “a cult

statue to which the Arion story was subsequently attached." She quotes Usener, who in Die Sintfluthsagen (Bonn 1899) traces the development of the dolphin-rider myths, to the

effect that the story is an early legend which became a popular folk tale.° For later bibliography on Arion, see Cahn in Lexicon SFrg. 140B (Snell-Maehler) of Pindar closes with the lines, “acting like a dolphin of the sea, whom the lovely tune of flutes has excited in the expanse of a waveless sea." 9For a more recent monograph, see M. Rabinovitch, Der Delphin in Sage und Mythos der Griechen (Dornach-Basel 1947).

V Usener believes that the folk tale of Arion derives from the myth of the

epiphany of Dionysos ( Homeric Hymn to Dionysos). One of the finest of the Exekias cups (530 B.C.) shows Dionysos with dolphins. Apollo is also linked with the dolphin in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The epithet Delphinios

applied to Apollo is commonly derived from the slaying of the dragon Delphyne (usually called Python); but there is also a version which has Apollo showing the Kretan colonists the way to Delphi while riding on a dolphin; see Wachsmuth and Jessen, RE s.vv. Delphinion and Delphinios

2. FEHLING’S EXAMPLES

19

Iconographicum 2.1 (1984) 602-603. Quoting Schefold and Buchholz, Cahn concludes, “Nach unserer Auffassung besteht

kein Anlass, an der Glaubwürdigkeit Herodots zu zweifeln." According to Head, Historia Numorum? (Oxford 1911), coins as early as the second half of the sixth century B.c. show Taras riding

on

dolphin

(pp. 54-57).

Fifth-century

coins

from

Kyzikos have Nereid on dolphin (p. 525). Coins from Aletium in Calabria (p. 51) and Brundisium (p. 52) also have Taras on dolphin. A coin, dated 500-480 ».c., from Peparethos (Sko-

pelos) has a dolphin-rider. An archaic coin attributed to the island of Syros has a naked youth riding a dolphin (p. 480). Young Hermias, swimming with his left arm over dolphin's back, appears on coins of Iasos (p. 621). Finally, coins of Methymna, dated by Head from 330 B.C. onwards (p. 561), show Arion in long chiton and chlamys seated on dolphin, holding lyre. The coins of Methymna are studied by P.R. Franke in H.G. Buchholz, Methymna (1975) 163-176; the Arion types are listed by H.A. Cahn in LIMC 2.1 (1984) 602. G. Daux and A. Laumonier, BCH 47 (1923) 346-348 with fig.

15, publish a relief, of archaic style, found near the theater on the island of Thasos, representing a man on a dolphin who they suggest was Arion: “On sait l'importance d’Arion dans la

(1901) 2312-2315. For dolphin riders on vases, see Brommer, Arch.Anz. 57 (1942) 65-75. The Lysikrates monument in Athens, dated to 334 B.c., shows a human figure at the moment of his metamorphosis into a dolphin. A redfigured lekythos of ca. 470 B.C. depicts an Eros riding a dolphin. See Ridgeway, "Dolphin and Dolphin-Riders," Archaeology 23 (1970) 86—95. For two recent articles on Arion and the dolphin, see V. Rosaria, Ramus 15 (1986) 93-104, and J.T. Hooker, G&R 36 (1989) 141-146. A lightly researched article on the “Incredible and the Credulous" (Z.M. Packman, Hermes 119 [1991] 399-414) begins with the story of Arion and the dolphin, referring to

Fehling's analysis as "damaging," which it is for her dependence on it, but the author means to Herodotos.

UDouris of Samos (Jacoby, FGrHist 76 frg. 7) tells the story that when Alexander was at lasos, he talked with a boy who was saved by a dolphin which took him on his back and swam to the shore.

20

THE

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OF HERODOTOS

création du drame; et ce marbre semble provenir du théátre, ot le poéte-musicien avait bien sa place: c'était peut-étre un ex-

voto consacré à son souvenir." Describing a fragmentary black-figure oinochoe in the British Museum, RT. Williams, JHS 78 (1958) 128, writes, "It is

possible that the youth represents Arion, and although his lyre is missing, the dolphin is there below waiting to take him back to Corinth." H.A. Cahn, in LIMC 2.1 (1984) 602, suggests that

the rider might be Phalanthos.' There are numerous examples of the depictions of dolphins, either individually or in combination with fish, which deco-

rated floors and walls of various buildings in the Creto-Mycenaean Aegean; see Sakellarakas, Thera and the Aegean World III vol. 1 (London 1990) 304. According to theories of the Greeks, early man was supposed to have been carried around inside a

fish as long as the world was covered with water; G.S. Kirk-J.E. Raven, Presocratic Philosophers (1962) 141; W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy 1 (Cambridge 1967) 103. Bólte, (RE s.v. Tainaron [1932] 2041), in studying the cults

and sagas of Tainaron, writes, "Das Bild des Reiters auf Delphin gehört ursprünglich in der religiöse Sphäre,” stating that the nearest parallel to Arion is the Koiranos legend (Archilochos, Phylarchos, Plutarch). Koiranos was shipwrecked in the Aegean and brought by dolphins to the island of Sikinos. Bólte quotes Neugebauer as saying that the earliest date for Herodotos' bronze statue is the middle of the sixth century. In a lengthy article, "Arion and the Dolphin," MH 20 (1963) 121-134, C.M. Bowra treats a passage in Aelian (NA 12.45), who,

in discussing the predilection of dolphins for song and music of the flute, refers to a monument of Arion on Cape Tainaron and proceeds to describe an epigram inscribed on it. Bowra arFor Phalanthos of Tarentum and the dolphin, see Bowra, MH 20 (1963) 132-

BAs with Arion, there are many variations in the Koiranos saga; see the RE article.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

21

gues that the epigram is not a dedication, but an inscription to explain what the statue represents, citing parallels. He writes,

“The manner is sufficiently terse and factual for a date in the fifth century, though perhaps in the later part of it, when the lines could have been composed for the actual statue known to Herodotus."

Pausanias

3.25.7 (not mentioned

by Fehling)

writes, "Amongst the votive offerings at Taenarum is a bronze statue of the minstrel Arion on a dolphin. In his history of Lydia Herodotus tells the story of Arion and the dolphin on hearsay; but I have actually seen the dolphin at Poroselene that was mauled by fishermen, and testifies its gratitude to the boy who healed it" (tr. of Frazer). Frazer comments on the passage, “A small bronze group representing Arion on the dolphin has actually been found among the votive offerings at Tae-

narum."

|

When we turn to Fehling's treatment of what he calls a "miraculous event ... which has all the simplicity of fantasy and is far too good to be true," maintaining that it could not "survive through generations in a local tradition," he directs the thrust of his argument against what he says is Herodotos' statement that "there was a dedication by him (i.e. Arion) in

the form of a bronze statue of a man on a dolphin (1.24.8)" at

Cape Tainaron. Fehling asks two rhetorical questions, "If the statue had no inscription at all, how did Herodotus know that it had been set up by Arion? If the answer is that the dedicator's identity was known locally, why did he not name Taenarum as a third source?" He condudes that this is an example of "Confirmation (of lies) by fictive objects." The text of the critical sentence is: καὶ 'Ap(ovos ἐστὶ ἀνάθημα χάλκεον οὐ μέγα ἐπὶ Ταινάρῳ, ἐπὶ δελφῖνος ἐπεὼν ἄνθρωπος. Clearly, Herodotos does not say that he heard the story at Tainaron; he adds the detail as confirmation of that part of the story that has

“However, Woodward,

bronzes represented Arion.

BSA 13 (1906/7) 251 n. 1, denied that any of the

22

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OF HERODOTOS

Arion ride a dolphin and land at Tainaron. The text answers Fehling’s second question. Herodotos reports the bronze dolphin without specifying whether an inscription was affixed. A cult of Arion at Tainaron is well attested, the obvious reason

being that it was where Arion landed. Here in the time of Thucydides was a sanctuary of Poseidon which was held in peculiar veneration by all Greece.!5 Since there was a cult, we can be certain that there were ex-votos. At Lindos on the island of Rhodes, there were ex-votos of Lindos, Minos, and other leg-

endary figures with inscriptions giving their names as dedicants; see War 2.243. The subject will be amplified below in dis-

cussing S. West's treatment of the dedications in the temple at Thebes. As Bólte pointed out, the phenomenon takes us into

the field of religion, of which Fehling and West are oblivious. From the position at the southern tip of the Mani and the association with Poseidon, we presume that, although the princi-

pal reason for Arion's cult in various cities may have been attributable to his musical and choral achievements,'é the reason for the cult at Tainaron was in connection with the dolphin

story.

%See Leake, Morea 1.304. Lida Moskou gives an illustrated survey of the remains at Tainaron in AAA 8 (1975) 160—177, indicating (p. 175) what she

takes to be the sanctuary of Arion (no. 7 on her map).

“There are many ramifications to the saga of Arion, but all are associated with music. Bölte calls the cult of Arion that of "Der Gott auf dem Delphin." We know much of the cults of the great heroes such as Herakles and of the oikistai such as Brasidas. At Athens, the worship of Harmodios and Aristogeiton was the special province of the polemarch (Pollux 8.91).

Any cult of a deceased personage must have had some association, whether of family or individuals or state, which sponsored it. At Methymna, Arion's birthplace, the cult became powerful enough to have his image placed on coins. Arion had lived and taught at Korinth. Herodotos got information at the most likely places. Modern "cults" are of a different nature. In America, the "cult" of Elvis Presley has made a museum of his home, collected his curios and possessions, perpetuated many myths, and placed his image on a postage stamp.

2. FEHLING' S EXAMPLES

23

Associated with all cults must have been stories about the foundation hero. There were cults of Arion at Korinth and Lesbos. From the custodians of such cults, Herodotos must have derived much information. Cults do not exist ex vacuo. Comparable to the adoration of saints, the Greeks honored certain individuals whose service in their lifetime had been

such as to merit apotheosis. W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass. 1985) states, "Great gods are no longer born, but new heroes can always be raised up from the army of the dead whenever a family, cult association, or city passes an

appropriate resolution to accord heroic honours." Early Christians of different cities shared similar stories of dolphins although of different saints, as earlier Athens and Argos, Athens and Thebes shared myths. Herodotos’ story in 2.121 of the two brothers who rob a treasury, until one of them is trapped and the other cuts off his head to avoid recognition, is a typical folktale, known not only in Egypt, where Herodotos puts it, but elsewhere.!? Lawrence, on the passage, says it is preHerodotean and cites Frazer as enumerating twenty-eight

versions. Before Fehling sets himself up as an authority on the origins and disseminations of myths and folktales, we would welcome citations from students of this difficult subject. J. Fontenrose, Folklore Studies18 (Berkeley 1966), has much to

say about

theories

of origins.

A Momigliano,

Settimo

Contributo alla Storia degli Studi Classici (Rome 1984) 271-281,

gives a brief survey of various theories on Greek mythology from K.O. Müller in 1825 to the schools of Detienne and Ver-

nant, for a of a their

from which I extract three passages: "The oldest evidence myth is not necessarily the evidence for the oldest version myth. A myth which the colonists brought away from homeland would have to be dated before the foundation

VFehling treats the 2.121 passage on his pages 210-211, concluding, "All stories

of master

Herodotus."

thieves

with

similar

motifs

are

descended

IBCf. G.S. Kirk, Myth, Its Meaning and Functions (Berkeley 1970) 38.

from

:

24

THE

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OF

HERODOTOS

of the colony even if the evidence is later” (p. 276). A preparatory element for interpretation of a myth is “the attempt to establish some connection between the myth and known historical facts which may have given rise to the myth” (p. 278). “He (Müller) realized that Homer and Hesiod presuppose a large body of myths and therefore create a terminus ante quem for much of what we call Greek mythology" (p. 285). Momigliano's observations apply equally to legends. The quotations from Fehling at the beginning of this case are the nearest that he comes to a statement of methodology on his treatment of "stories," and they are repeated many times: the

story has only one place of origin (which for him usually proves to be the earliest written source) and the same story

cannot appear in two different places. Since a saga, by usual definition, is a series of stories about a single character, it would seem that for Fehling the Greeks had no sagas. Fehling does not pursue the subject with its enormous bibliography. G.S. Kirk, writing on the importance of establishing methodological principles for the understanding of myths and legends (*On

Defining Myths," in Alan Dundes, Sacred Narrative [Berkeley 1984]), has much to say on the subject, "The Greeks seem to

have combined saga-type heroes, who survive more or less in-

tact in the Homeric epic tradition with another and more nearly divine type ... Only the Greeks possessed a heroic

mythology that blended all these three elements—saga, folktale, and myth—into an elaborate and superficially self-consistent system" (p. 55). Of all the folk-tales and sagas in Herodotos, none has more parallels in the Mediterranean than that of the fabulous and playful dolphin, including those of Christian saints and, I may add, of modern islanders. Whoever adopts Fehling's premises is endorsing the position that all "stories," or

what others call folktales, sagas, or myths, however loosely the

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

25

terms are used, are but fabrications by the writer in whose work the tale first appears.!9 3B. The Arion story is coupled by Fehling with the legend about Aristeas (4.14), who could make his soul leave his body

and return when he pleased. Herodotos says he was told elements of the saga at Kyzikos and Prokonnesos, cities in the Propontis, and at Metaponton. The saga is studied by R. Carpenter, Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley 1946) 160—163, who treats other examples of The Man

who Disappeared (Aristeas, Epimenides, Kleomenes, Odysseus,

Phoinix, and Salmoxis) and would trace the Aristeas story to a *cult brought to Kyzikos by the Thrakians." Herodotos narrates that Aristeas came back to life to write the Arimaspeia, af-

ter dying in a fuller's shop, an ancient version of Rip Van Winkle. Herodotos refers to an ἄγαλμα of Aristeas at Metaponton, a center of the Pythagorean brotherhood, which preached the transmigration of souls. Theopompos also (Jacoby,

FGrHist 115 frg. 248) refers to the cult of Aristeas

there. For testimonia on Aristeas, see Jacoby, FGrHist 1.2.35 pp. 259 and 551—555. J.D.P. Bolton, Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford 1962), has collected an astonishing amount of evidence and

modern theories on Aristeas, demonstrating Aischylos' use of the poem and presenting him as a devotee of Apollo in a state

of exaltation setting out in search of the Hyperboreans and reaching the Mongolian plateau.2° Aristeas’ later reappear9 Of the multitude of references in antiquity to Arion and to dolphin stories, Fehling quotes only the Aelian passage. Of the formidable modern bibliography, archaeological and literary, he mentions only the name of Bowra in a note. Of the significance of Herodotos' sources, he is unaware. For modern definitions and distinctions of myth, saga, legend, and folktale, about which there is little agreement, the reader may be directed to the bibliography in W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology (Berkeley 1979) 152—153. As indicated by the title, Martin S. Day has devoted a large

informative book to The Many Meanings of Myth (Boston 1984). 2G. Huxley, GRBS 27 (1986) 151-155, studying the topography of Prokonnesos, shows that there is nothing in the text of Herodotos about the

26

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

ance in Metaponton is a story put forward by the followers of

Pythagoras, himself known as “the Hyperborean Apollo” and a believer in metempsychosis, in an effort to attract to themselves the prestige of Aristeas’ poem. Bolton’s reconstruction, as others he cites, does no injustice to the veracity of the conflated version of Herodotos. Fehling, in formulating his theory, does not refer to Bolton in this context nor to any of the numerous theories cited by Bolton. The Aristeas story, like the Arion one, takes us into the

sphere of religion with a saga which developed around a cult. The Salmoxis (or Zalmoxis) and Aristeas sagas are noted by W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy ı (Cambridge 1967) 158-159, in his study of the Pythagoreans. He states that

they owed nothing to Greek influence, and, we may add, were certainly not “invented” by Herodotos.?' Our concern is lim-

ited to showing that Herodotos derived his information from two travelers meeting on the road from Artake to Kyzikos, as Bolton has it. "There was nothing miraculous about the meeting, and there is no need to follow Bolton in distinguishing a Cyzicene component of the legend from a Proconnesian; Herodotos treats the two sources as one, since they were in agreement." 21], Marazov, Thrace and the Thracians (New York 1977) 36, derives Herodotos’ story about Zalmoxis from a religious rite, connected with the Thrakian belief in immortality. Fehling finds the Zalmoxis legend fabrication, citing it as an example of "the more unlikely the story, the stronger the confirmation has to be" (p. 115). On p. 95, he writes, "This is the story of how Salmoxis deceived the Thracians into believing that he had attained immortality. This is not a thing that can be told by the people whom he succeeded in deceiving and who believe him to be a god; and so Herodotos makes the neighbouring Greek colonists his source." E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 144, writes, "That there was some analogy

between Zalmoxis and Pythagoras must have struck the Greek settlers in Thrace, from whom Herodotus heard the story, for they made Zalmoxis

into Pythagoras' slave. That was absurd, as Herodotus saw: the real Zalmoxis was a daemon, possibly a heroized shaman of the distant past." The contrast in method is apparent. The rationalist denounces the legend as unhistorical, and hence the invention of Herodotos; Dodds studies it in the context of the irrational in religion.

2. PEHLING'S

EXAMPLES

27

sources where cults existed or might be reasonably presumed to have existed.22

On his page 21, Fehling devotes only one meaningful sentence to his rejection of Herodotos' Aristeas saga: "There is a

dear underlying assumption that the memory of such astounding events lived on in these places" (ital. supplied). H. Mette in Der kleine Pauly 1 (1964) 555 writes, “Die ‘Arismaspeia’ haben gelesen Aischylos (Prom. 803-806), Pindar (F271), Hekataios (1

F 193f. Jac.; dann Hellanikos 4 F 187, Damastes 5 F 1), Herodot," etc. The Arismaspeia and the saga of Aristeas with its "astounding events" were in wide currency before the time of Herodotos. Herodotos says he derived his information from two places, Prokonnesos and Metaponton. In addition, he met

a man from Kyzikos, who disputed one item in the saga. If Fehling had presented an orderly methodology on the places which Herodotos names as his sources, he might have seen that Herodotos consistently names cities which might be authorita-

tive for the various sagas (cults, birthplaces). We could hardly have stronger confirmation of the Herodotean record. 4. Fehling devotes four pages (24-27) to Herodotos' report of flying ὄφιες and their skeletons. The historian (2.75) says that

he saw the remains at Buto near Arabia. Linforth (Univ. Cal. Publ. in CP 9 [1926] 9) has shown that in this section of the

Egyptian logos, Herodotos has adopted an animal-scheme for the information he imparts about Egyptian religion, focusing on the use and treatment of animals in religious practice, cattle, sheep and goats, swine, and miscellaneous creatures (2.38—76).

In offering an explanation why the ibis was so highly venerated in Egypt, Herodotos states that the Egyptians and Arabians

were in agreement

that they killed winged serpents. At 2.74,

he refers to sacred serpents at Thebes which are buried in a 22For reviews of Bolton, which are chiefly concerned with the date of Aristeas, see W. Burkert, Gnomon 35 (1963) 235-240; C.J. Herington, Phoenix 18 (1964) 78—82. Herodotos placed Aristeas about two hundred years before

28

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

temple of the god to whom they are sacred.23 The cerastes, or horned viper, has been “found mummied at Thebes and was

regarded as an embodiment of the goddess of healing” (A.W. Lawrence). Herodotos then digresses to say that he went to a

place near Arabia to make inquiry about winged creatures, and was shown the ὀστέα and ἀκάνθας these winged creatures came flying but were met and destroyed by Hutchinson, "The Flying Snakes of

of ὄφιες and was told that from Arabia toward Egypt, ibises. As noted by RW. Arabia," CQ 52 (1958) 100—

101, our passage is to be connected with 3.107 and 3.109, where

Herodotos specifically refers back to the ὄφιες which attack. Egypt. Hutchinson argues that ἄκανθαι of our passage means the exuviae of insects, which he takes to be the locust. Earlier, Lawrence commented on our passage, "The natural interpretation is that these creatures (also mentioned in iii.107, of S. Arabia) were locusts, which come to Egypt out of the east

and can be destroyed by ibises (Ray Lankester, Science from an

Easy Chair, 1910, p. 124); but this is inadmissible if Herodotus saw the bones, because locusts have none." But in 2.75, the καί may be taken as epexegetical, ὀστέα καὶ ἀκάνθας, common in Herodotos, as noted by Powell (p. 176, 88 times). He saw "the

remains, in particular the exuviae." According Modern

Greek

“remains.”

uses κόκκαλο

to Pring,

for bones, but ὀστοῦν

for

Cunliffe notes that in Homer the plural often

denotes the bodily framework as typifying the body: Mm ' ὀστέα θυμός. It is true that with humans the framework is os2) Pottier, in DS, Dictionnaire 2 (1892) 403-414, has a detailed treatment of

the snake, particularly in oriental cults, which is not entirely superseded by A.B. Lloyd's commentary on our passage. The story of winged serpents, obviously not a Greek invention, occurs in "the fiery flying serpent" of Isaiah 30.6. Megasthenes (Jacoby, FGrHist 715 frgs. 21 and 22) reported the existence of winged snakes and winged scorpions in India, and the latter was said by Pammenes to occur in Egypt: Aelian NA 16.41—42. Pausanias (9.21.6)

claims that he saw a specimen with wings in Ionia. Pliny (NH 8.14.37), after quoting Megasthenes, says that the skip and jaw-bones of a snake 120 feet long were preserved in a temple in Africa for more than one hundred years.

2. PEHLING 8 EXAMPLES

29

seous; Herodotos has applied the word to the dead remains of insects. The T scholiast on Iliad 12.386 notes that ὀστέα is used for σῶμα, and H. Erbse, VII. Index V. Addenda (1988) p. 147,

writes, “ὀστᾶ = τὸ ὅλον σῶμα." Thucydides uses the word for the “remains” of the dead which included more than the bones: 1.126.12. The word was regularly applied to the wardead. Herodotos, as Aristotle later,24 not to mention Xenophon (large sparrow = ostrich), had no professional entomological vocabulary and had difficulty in describing animals and various creatures. More impressive than the remains is the topographical confirmation of Herodotos' description of the

pass running into Egypt from the Arabian desert at the site of Buto, which Lloyd (vol. 2 p. 327) concludes, *is an area which fits H's description well.”25

Any sound methodology leads us to start with what can be checked in the story. First, Lloyd testifies that the place can be

identified as a pass running into Egypt from the Arabian desert. Secondly, Hutchinson assures us that locusts do indeed invade Egypt from Arabia every spring and are eaten by ibises. Having what can be documented, we then proceed to see whether the rest of the story conforms.

5. The next example, that of the differentiation of skulls of the dead on the battlefields of Pelousion and Papremis (3.12),

takes us into the field of Physical Anthropology. Fehling (p. 28) refers to this as "the most devastating passage for apolo-

24Fehling (p. 242) ridicules Herodotos' highly impressionist portrayal of animals, but does not tell the reader that Aristotle in the HA did little better. Lloyd adduces four possibilities for the ὄφιες, favoring the suggestion that they are flying insects. From the evidence of rock-drawings and osseous remains, the zoologist, E. Kadar, Acta Classica Univ. Scient. Debrecen. 8 (1972) 11316, observes that many species in Africa are now extinct.

A number

of authors state that there were flying scorpions in Africa: Strabo 17.3.11.830, Pausanias 9.21.6, Pliny NH 11.89, and Lucian De dipsadibus 3. Aelian (NH

16.42) states that Pammenes, who lived in Memphis, reported flying scorpions from personal observation.

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gists,” claiming that “Herodotus puts Greek ideas into the mouths of his avowed sources.” The position is advanced, (1) that Hippokrates speculated about the moistness of bodies (Aér. 20), (2) that Herodotos knew of such speculation, (3)

that "No one will believe that the Egyptians, who had no knowledge of this Greek theory, could by pure chance have made an incorrect observation that was in conformity with it. ... The phenomenon of Greek theory issuing from the mouths of Herodotus’ informants occurs in a place where, according to prevailing opinion, it had no right to be found."26 T.R. Glover, Herodotus (Berkeley 1924) 159, without citation,

claims that Herodotos is confirmed: "The mummies, it is said, confirm the fact he states, and it is attested (or was till lately) by

the capacity of the Egyptian head for being beaten in life by the Turks." We merely note, (1) that physical anthropologists in their analysis of skeletal remains put some stock in the thickness

of the skull in racial classifications. J.L. Angel, "Skeletal Material from Attica," Hesperia 14 (1945) 280—363, uses thickness as one

criterion, applying such terms as heavy, fragile, etc. (2) Fehling adduces no evidence that Hippokrates or any other Greek advanced the theory that thickness was due to exposure to the

sun. (3) Fehling adduces no evidence that the Egyptians could not have entertained such a theory. (4) The crux of the matter

and the basis of Herodotos' observation is that Egyptian youths shave their heads in childhood (see the note in the Budé)!

"The Egyptians (they said) from early childhood have the head thick have skulls

shaved, and so by the action of the sun the skull becomes and hard." By contrast the Persians wore tiaras and so thin skulls. Lawrence writes, "The fact that Egyptian are extremely hard may be due to occasional influxes of

26 Fehling’s undocumented observation would make him a laughingstock in many Afro-American classrooms in America, where Egypt is being taught as vastly superior to Greece in science and technology.

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population from the Upper Nile."?7 G. Mokhtar, Unesco's General History of Africa 2 (1981) 35, writes, "Among the criteria

accepted in physical anthropology for classifying races, the osteological measurements are perhaps the least misleading (in contrast to craniometry) for distinguishing a black man from a white man. By this criterion, also, the Egyptians belong among the black races." According to this determination, it would be unnecessary to assume with Lawrence that there was an influx from the Upper Nile. Herodotos would have used a valid criterion. In any case, there is no evidence that the theory was "Greek," or that the Egyptians could not have made such an elementary anthropological observation; whether right or wrong, we leave to the anthropologists. One chairman of a department at the prestigious City College of New York is widely quoted in the press as supporting a theory that the skin pigment melanin endows blacks with physical and intellectual superiority, and that the "ice people" of Europe are inferior to the “sun people" of Africa.?? Different myths are developed in all societies about the difference in races, and Herodotos' observations may reflect one held at the time. I note that in the subject index in my university library, there are more than one " hundred entries under “Craniology” arranged according to countries or races. S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania from Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical ?7Early bibliography on measurements of Egyptian skulls is provided in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th ed. vol. 9.43: "for measurements of Egyptian skulls, Miss Fawcett in Biometrika (1902); A. Thomson and D. RandallMaclver, The Ancient Races of the Thebaid (Oxford, 1905) (cf. criticisms in

Man, 1905; and for comparisons with modern measurements, C.S. Myers, Journ. Anthropological Institute, 1905, 80)." I know of no investigation of

Persian skulls. Herodotos may have tested an Egyptian who had suffered from scurvy, which does thicken the bones. 28Mokhtar

(GHA 2 p. 35) assures us that his test of mummies

for

melanin, the insoluble chernical body responsible for skin pigmentation, preserved for millions of years in the skins of fossil animals, proves that the ancient Egyptians were among the black race, but makes no claims of superiority.

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Anthropology 83 (1990) 35-48, writes that predynastic Egyptian

crania show tropical African affinities. 6. Fehling's next example (pp. 31-33) couples Herodotos' geological theories about the Nile (2.10.1) and the Vale of Tempe (7.129). I find it impossible to follow his line of reason-

ing, although he says he is disposing of a modern theory “of attributing Ionian speculation to local sources." He denies in the latter passage, without documentation, that Xerxes sailed from Therme to the mouth of the Peneios: This futile expedition is generally taken to be Herodotus' own invention and to have no other purpose than to bring in the idea of Xerxes’ scheme. In any case, there can hardly have been any authentic record of a conversation between Xerxes and his Greek guides. ... The only basis for the story was a rumour that Xerxes had contemplated flooding Thessaly.

By contrast, Grote, Grundy, Burn, Hammond and others accept the historicity of the incident. Burn suggests that Herodotos got his information from Zophyros, son of the Megabyzos who fled to Greece after his father's rebellion. In the 2.10 passage, Herodotos argues kat’ ἀναλογίαν, with a series of examples of Greek alluvial rivers, that "the whole region above Memphis formed at one time a gulf of the sea." Lloyd, on this passage, has deduced the evidence of geologists to the

effect that in early geological times this was true (2.60): "The observation of H. and the Ionians have not, therefore, played them false." But whether true or not, both Herodotos and Egyptian priests, as well as many other Egyptians, could have looked at a long stretch of alluvial land and reached the same judgment, just as persons who are not geologists view the mouths of the Alpheios and Acheloos and conclude that these rivers over time have brought down heavy sediment. It was not necessary to be schooled in Ionian science to make such obser-

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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vations. The main event in the life of Egypt was the rising of the Nile, and speculation on the age and extent of the alluviation required no knowledge of science, Ionian or other. The number of authorities a modern scholar may cite to support a theory is not the decisive factor in the falsity or veracity of the theory. No example could better illustrate the absurdity of a theory that because Herodotos cites a supporting source, he has invented a false theory. Herodotos’ other examples, taken from Greek geography, are of course true. In 7.129, Herodotos reports, “It is said that of old the gorge (Vale of Tempe), which

allows the waters an outlet, did not

exist ... but made Thessaly a sea.” He continues by saying that the Thessalians say that the gorge was caused by Poseidon,29 but he believes on seeing this rent that the hills were torn asunder by an earthquake. Philostratos (Imagines 2.17.3) de-

scribed Tempe as follows (Loeb tr.): Europe once suffered the same experience in the region of the Thessalian Tempe; for when earthquakes laid open that land, they indicated on the fractures the correspondence of the mountains one to the other, and even to-day there are visible

cavities where rocks once were, torn from them, and, moreover, of the heavy forest growth that tain sides when they split apart; left.

which correspond to the rocks traces have not yet disappeared must have followed the mounfor the beds of the trees are still

and How-Wells (2.176) comment: The ups and downs on either side the valley correspond closely to each other, and the rocks are of the same kind and appearance. Modern geologists would agree with H., except that

29The schol. to Pindar Pyth. 4.245 says that Poseidon was worshipped as

IIerpaios in Thessaly in commemoration of this geological interference.

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they might substitute a series of volcanic movements for a single earthquake. H. is at his best in such questions of geology and physical geography.?°

What Herodotos’ speculation on early geological times proves about his veracity is a mystery to me. The root of the difficulty may be the failure to recognize that Xerxes made a special excursion because he intended to march by the mountain pass which led from Leibethra over Mount Metamorphosis to Gonnos at the western end of the Tempe Pass; see AJA 65 (1961) 369-371. 7. Fehling's seventh case (pp. 33-38) is a collection of numerous examples of what he titles, Stories of national origins, all attributed to the invention of Herodotos since a source is given. Actually, Herodotos is following the practice of the early logographers in giving traditions about origins and genealogies of people; see, for example, Jacoby, Klio 9 (1909) 85ff. The subject was a popular one with Pherecydes and Hellanikos and continues down to Strabo and Dionysios Hal. in his Ant.Rom., recording local traditions of different cities and nations. E.]. Bickerman, CP 47 (1952) 65-81, collects twenty-five Greek accounts of the origins of Rome, as found in Dionysios and Latin sources! The important point is that the Trojan saga of the

Wanderings of Aeneas, recorded as early as Hellanikos, was accepted by the Romans as the story of their founding, a clear

J9For other descriptions of Tempe, see Livy 43.18, 44.6; Pliny NH 4.8. 2H.). Rose, Modern Methods in Classical Mythology (St. Andrews 1930) 33,

writes, "I hold firmly to the orthodox position, reached long ago by a succession of investigators led by Schwegler, that all such tales as that of Romulus and Remus sons of Mars, Hercules the ancestor of the Antonii,

and so on, are pure and simple Greek. ... I prefer the view I hold because it accounts easily for all the known facts and makes no suppositions necessary, other than assuming that what we know to have happened many times, namely importation of Greek or Hellenizing stories, has happened on all occasions."

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example of the saga of one nation being adopted by another. Fehling begins with these statements: Ancient literature contains many stories of national origins. Most stories of this type are said by way of confirmation to be the story told by the nation itself. This body of stories of national origins provided the main material for Eduard Norden's demonstration

of the wide dissemination

of certain motifs in

ethnographic literature. These include an arrangement first found in Herodotus in which an author cites a series of different opinions and finally says that he is leaving the question open. The

individual

opinions

cited

are

clearly invented

(though

"invented" is perhaps putting it rather strongly; it is hardly more than a fagon de parler in which “some are of the opinion" stands for “one possibility is”). For a general study of sourcecitations in Herodotus this is clearly going to be a very important body of material. ... Curiously enough, Norden does not go on to conclude that they are fictitious. Nevertheless, that is the only possible conclusion. ... There is not a single instance, how-

ever, of one of the sources assembled in such reports being independently preserved. Hence the obvious conclusion must surely be that these sources never existed. Nor is it possible to evade

that difficulty by imagining that all the sources involved were oral ones. ... In other authors, too, it makes not the slightest difference whether statements about the remote past are said to

come from the natives or not.??

There is utter confusion to all classical literature. For origins, whether found in phers, Pindar, Thucydides, Oddly he would have it that

here. Fehling's indictment applies him, all statements about national the logographers, the mythograApollodoros, Livy, etc. are false. any extant written source that re-

#The reference to E. Norden is Die germanische Urgeschichte in Tacitus Germania (Leipzig 1920).

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ports on origins has invented the story. Fehling sees Greek through the eyes of a twentieth-century rationalist who discredits all myths and legends. We may not believe that Theseus founded Athens, but according to Thucydides the Athenians held an annual festival to celebrate the event. The abundant references

in the literature only prove

the interests

of the

Greeks in their origins, which resulted in the foundation of cults and sanctuaries, the search for bones of their founders, etc. Granted that the sagas of the aftermath of the Trojan War, of Minos, etc., can be questioned in whole or in part, they were believed by the ancients. Our only concern is with the veracity of Herodotos: Did he “invent” the numerous stories of national origins he records, or, are they stories believed by the peoples to whom he attributes them? Although we have little means of proving or disproving these traditions, I select Fehling's first ive examples, which seem trivial. 1) 1.173.1: Herodotos says, “the Kaunians in my judgment are aboriginals; but by their own account they came from Krete." He then explains that in customs they differ greatly from the

Karians; hence, we assume, judged them to be aboriginals. The Kretan origin is well attested in the Mythographers; see Stoll in Roscher, Lexikon Myth. 2.1006; Frazer's note on Apollodoros 3.1.2; and Demargne and Metzger, RE s.v. Xanthos (1983) 1380.

Kaunos was the son of Miletos, who in turn was the son of Apollo and Areia of Krete. Miletos fled from Minos to Karia with Sarpedon, where he founded the city. Sarpedon became king of Lykia. The Karian city of Kaunos is on the boundary with Lykia. At the time of Herodotos, Kaunos was an important city. Thucydides (1.116) speaks of the expedition of Perikles to the parts about Kaunos (ca. 440 B.c.). The city is

listed in the first year of the Athenian tribute-quote lists, and in 425/4 it was assessed the enormous tribute of ten talents. At

some early time, the city acquired the name of Kaunos, a figure

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

37

known from the saga of Minos of Krete. Whether there was a founder cult, we can only guess. Ruge, RE s.v. Lykia (1927) 2272, writes, "In dieses Land sind nach Herod. I 173, vgl. IV 45,

die Lykier aus Kreta eingewandert, die sich selbst Tramilen (Termilen) nannten. Die Verteilung der epichorischen Inschriften auf den küstennahen Süden spricht durchaus dafür, daf das Land von See her besiedelt worden ist." Similarly, Neumann, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 809, states, "Die Lykier,

ein Volk mit Mutterrecht, waren Einwanderer aus Kreta." T.R. Bryce, The Lycians in Literary and Epigraphic Sources (Copenhagen

1986) 30-31, writes, "The sheer persistence of the

Cretan-Lycian association in a variety of literary sources which are spread over many centuries and are obviously not dependent on a single source must in itself furnish a reasonably strong presumption that the association is not without some historical foundation." He quotes the 1959/60 studies of Weick-

ert to the effect that Miletos was settled by Minoan immigrants. "The traditions of a Minoan immigrant to Miletus passed into local Anatolian folk lore and subsequently came to Lycia via the Lukka people." Finally, Bryce (p. 191) notes that a cult of Kaunos is epigraphically attested at Xanthos.33 The details of the Kretan origin clearly do not derive from Herodotos. All of this is foreign to Fehling. 2) 4.78.3: Herodotos

refers to "the town of the Borysthe-

nites, who, according to their own account, are colonists of the Milesians." Fehling could not have chosen a more unfortunate example to support his theory about source-citations. In 4.18, we are told that the Skythian agriculturalists were named Borysthenitai by the Greeks, bearing the name Olbiopolitai, who settled on the Hypanis (= Bug). The Greek settlement is the famous one of Olbia settled from Miletos. Strabo (7.3.17.306)

equates Olbia and the city of the Borysthenitai. Dio Chrysos33According to Stephanos, the oikistes of Xanthos was from Krete or Egypt.

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tom city the the

(The Thirty-Sixth, or Borysthenitic, Discourse) visited the and explained, “Although the city has taken its name from Borysthenes (= Dnieper), the actual position, not only of present city, but also of its predecessor, is on the bank of

the Hypanis” (Loeb). The two rivers at the mouth are said to

be separated by about four miles. E.H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (1913) 450, says the river-name was applied to the re-

gion and by strangers to the city. The ancient testimonia on Olbia-Borysthenes are conveniently collected in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography 2.471-472. Bibliography may be found in C.M. Danoff, RE Suppl. 9 (1962) 10921104; and in the Princeton Encyclopedia 642-643. "Olbia is the

clearest example of a Milesian colony,” says Minns, and I know of no dissent. Herodotos has made a true statement, as interpreted by all archaeologists from the region. To sustain his source-theory, Fehling, whether through ignorance of the location of the site or whatnot,3* quotes an example which contradicts it. 3) 4.147: Herodotos reports that after Theras left Sparta, he

became

the oikist of the island of Thera, formerly called

Kalliste. Fehling, in cataloguing Herodotos’ invented sourcecitations, writes, “The island of Thera was formerly called Calliste (literally ‘most beautiful’, a very naive invention) and then renamed after a certain Theras.” The so-called “a certain” Theras bulks large in Greek legends, which are collected in Roscher, Lexikon Myth. 5.64-652. There are various traditions,

but the Dorian origin is defended by Hiller, RE s.v. Thera (1934) 2279. Pindar (P. 4.258) referred to Thera as Καλλίστα, as does Apollonios Arg. 4.1762. See also Pausanias 3.1.7: "Theras

changed the name of the island, renaming it after himself, and even at the present day the people of Thera every year offer to him as their founder the sacrifices that are given to a hero." Here we have the evidence of a founder cult. No one who has 34As usual, Fehling gives no bibliography.

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visited the island would question the appropriateness of the early Greek name. As to it being "a very naive invention," it was certainly not original with Herodotos. Pindar's Pythian 4 celebrated a victory of 462 B.C. Fehling knows nothing of Pindar or Pausanias or the legends of a "certain" Theras. Again, his source-citation theory collapses. 4) 4.191.1: In his catalogue of Libyan tribes, Herodotos says, "These people are named Ma£ves. ... They besmear their bodies with red ochre, and they say that they are descended from the men of Troy." Fehling, offering no bibliography, attributes the Troy connection to the invention of Herodotos, although why the historian would have concocted the origin is not revealed. Hekataios (FGrHist ı frg. 334, from Stephanos Byz.) referred to Libyan nomads by the name of Μάζυες. The two are generally identified; see the long entry of Kees in RE s.v. Maxyes (1930) 2576-2580, and Liebs in Der kleine Pauly 3

(1969) 1122, although L. Pearson, Early

Ionian

Historians

(Oxford 1939) 93-94, is not in agreement. How-Wells write, "For prehistoric migrations of Trojans cf. V.13.2 (the Paeoni-

ans), VII 20n., and Thuc. VI.2.3 (the Elymi at Egesta). For pos-

sible joint attacks of Libyan and Asiatic tribes on Egypt cf. App. X.8." The last reference is to the Libyan cooperation with the Peoples of the Sea in their invasion of Egypt. We suggest that there may be a closer connection. Dessau, in RE s.v. Mazikes (1931) 5-6, identifies these Libyan people with the Maxitani of Justin 18.6-7 and suggests that they are the same as the Mazyes (Maxyes). All of these variant names are shown by Oric Bates, The Eastern Libyans (1914) 77, to derive from the same radical,

and apparently may represent no more than the generic term applied by all the Berbers to their own race. See also F.J.R.R. Rennell, People of the Veil (London 1926) 457. Justin tells us

that the king of these people Hiarbas desired Dido, the reputed founder of Karthage, for his wife and that she committed suicide to avoid the marriage. Hiarbas is mentioned thrice by

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Vergil (Aeneid 4.36, 196, 326). See also Servius ad Aen. 1.367, and Eustathios ad Dionys. Perieg. 195. E.). Bickerman, CP 47

(1952) 65-81, has shown conclusively how one people may take over legends from another, a study expanded by E. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome (Berkeley 1991) 13-

15, and Carpenter, in his Sather lectures, has shown how widespread the Trojan saga was. Far more important for the student appraising the veracity of Herodotos, although ignored by Fehling, is the fact that various customs attributed to these people have been confirmed by ethnographers of the region. Moreover, there is abundant evidence that cults associated with the Trojan and Argonaut sagas had reached Libya before the time of Herodotos' visit. Much of the evidence is found in F. Chamoux, Cyréne sous la monarchie des Battids, Bibliothéque no. 177 (Paris 1953). Our passage cannot be dissociated from

others in the Libyan logos. 4.178 refers to the Argonaut saga, which Herodotos says he was told (ὅδε

λόγος

λεγόμενος),

but is omitted by Fehling contrary to his principles. 4.188 refers to the cults of the Argonaut

(Triton and Poseidon)

and to

Athena. Moreover, Herodotos gives a history of the Battiad regime, including Argesilaos’ consultation with Delphi before his return from exile (4.163). The Ninth Pythian Ode of Pindar was sung at Kyrene in 474 B.C. The yearly rites of Pallas (lines

98ff.) and the Olympic games and those of Mother Earth are local festivals held at Kyrene. It was the armed Pallas that was worshipped at Kyrene. The Fourth and Fifth Pythian Odes were sung at Kyrene in 462 B.C. when the city was under Battiad control. The fifth ode (lines 82-85) tells us that Antenor and

Helen came to Libya after Troy was destroyed by war. Pindar refers to the festivals of Apollo, presumably the Karneia; so there were clearly Greek cults in the city of Kyrene, the birthplace of the poet Kallimachos. The Pindaric scholia preserve a fragment of Lysimachos of Alexandreia (Jacoby, FGrHist 382 frg. 6) referring to the cult of the Antenoridai at Kyrene. The saga of the Argonaut also locates the home of Triton on the

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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coast of Libya. In Pythian 4, Pindar alludes to the god Triton and Lake Triton. S. Gsell, Hérodote (Alger 1915) 119, would

place the Maxyes in the region of the Triton river. For Triton and his part in the Argonaut saga, see Herter, RE s.v. Triton (1939) 254ff.; cf. Herter in Der kleine Pauly 5 (1975) 967-969, and LeGlay, 969-970, for Lake Triton. For the latter, see also Weld-Blundell, BSA 2 (1895/6) 113-140. Finally, we have the

much discussed foundation decree published by Meiggs and Lewis, GHI? no.s with the title, “The Foundations of Cyrene: late seventh century B.c.” Colonies brought cults and sagas with them. It is clear that cults and legends about the Trojan and Argonaut sagas grew up around the Battiad royal house, where the Greek language was understood; and there is nothing anomalous in Herodotos' attribution to a Libyan tribe of a claim of descent from Troy. In 4.170, Herodotos tells us that the Libyan natives imitated the customs of the Greek settlers.

Greek cults were part of the cultural mix in Libya. Among the numerous Greek inscriptions from Kyrene, the fourth-century Diagramma of Ptolemy I (SEG 9.1) tells us that children of a Greek father and a Libyan mother were to be regarded as citizens and included in the politeuma of Kyrene. See also Diodoros 14.34.4 (401 B.c.) and Aristotle Politics 6.2.10.1319b. Hekataios (frg. 343) referred to a Libyan city Kybos as Ionian;

cf. S. Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris 1914) 345 n. 2. In Hekataios, there is a large proportion of Greek place-names for Libya; see L. Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (Oxford 1939) 92-93. Diodoros (20.57.6) says that Meschela was

founded by the Greeks returning from Troy. Plutarch (Sertorius 9.4) relates that a legendary Lydian king had raised "a Greek army composed of the Olbians and Mycenaeans who were settled in those parts by Heracles" (Loeb). Just as Pindar composed for a Greek-speaking audience at Kyrene, Herodotos must have interrogated such people at the time of his visit.

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5) 5.9.3: Herodotos describes the customs of a people who

live beyond the Ister named the Ziyuvves, “who wear, they say, a dress like the Medes ... they call themselves colonists of the Medes; but how they can be colonists of the Medes I for my part cannot imagine. Still nothing is impossible in the long lapse of time. Sigynnai is the name which the Ligurians who dwell above Massilia give to traders, while among the Kyprians the word means 'spears'." In accordance with his source theory, Fehling calls the story "fabrication," adding that Herodotos never spoke with these people. Actually, Herodotos does not say who his informants were. The ancient testimonia for the X(yuvves are collected by Weisback in RE s.v. (1923) 2458. Strabo (11.118.520) describes a tribe, the Siginnoi in the Cauca-

sus "who live in general like Persians." The Budé

editor,

Lasserre, discusses the Strabo passage on p. 173.35 J.L. Myers

devoted a special article to the Herodotos passage, "The Sigynnae of Herodotus," Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward B. Tylor, ed. by H. Balfour (Oxford 1907), 256-276.36 Myres thought that Herodotos was right, and that his informants had deduced the Median origin of the Sigynnai from their distinctive features of Median dress, the jerkin and trousers, which were worn by Germans and Celts in historic times, but perhaps introduced to Europe by the Steppe-peoples. He attempted to associate the Sigynnai with Thucydides' Μαιδοί in western Thrake. But it has now been demonstrated that the population of the western Steppes was predominantly Iranian, that the Sarmatians and Skyths were Iranian-speaking peoples: see Sulimirski, Cambridge History of Iran 2 (1985) 147; Rostovtzeff, CAH 11.91; Kretschmer, RE s.vv. Scythae (1921) 924, and Sarmatae (1920) 2543.37 When Fehling complains that Herodotos

35See also Apollonios Rh. 4.320 and scholiast.

36See also Sophus Müller, Urgeschichte Europas (Strassburg 1905) 161. X] infer that our passage and justification for the Sigynnai legend about their origin was treated by Rostovtzeff in a reference ("Mitt. Vorderas. Ges.")

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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"had never spoken with a single member of the tribe," he distorts the meaning of λέγουσιν. 8. For a second group of Herodotos' stories of national origins, Fehling (pp. 39—41) focuses on that of the Phrygians (7.73 and 8.138) and Karians (1.171), two examples where Herodotos

gives two sources. For Fehling, dual sources indicate the inventions of Herodotos. Herodotos says that according to the Makedonian account the Phrygians dwelt with them and bore the name of Brygians (7.73). Fehling states (p. 39), "Since the

Macedonians were illiterate, they could hardly have retained any knowledge of events over 700 years before Herodotus wrote." It is only natural for the early history of Makedonia to turn to Hammond, who is not known to Fehling. In HM 1 (1972) s.v. Bryges passim, Hammond combines the literary evidence (Skymn. 434ff., Stephanos, Strabo 7.7.8-9, Appian BC

2.39, and Herodotos) with the pottery and other archaeological evidence, associating the Bryges with the Lausitz invasion, and concluding, as summarized in CAH? 2.2 (1975) 709-710, that

the Bryges "lived next to the Macedones and had their capital below Mt Bermium ... These Briges of Europe were certainly related to the Phryges of Asia; indeed the similarities between the twelfth-century Lausitz pottery of Macedonia and that of Troy VIIb are very marked." An eminent scholar (perhaps there are others) has developed a position which ought to be examined before we impeach Herodotos. Turning to the Karians (1.171), Herodotos tells us that they

were once called the Leleges and had dwelt on the islands,3® where they were subject to Minos. This is what the Kretans say,

which I have not been able to track down. For bibliography on the Sigynnai, see G. Nenci, Fondation Hardt Entr. 35 (1990) 313 n. 18. S Strabo (13.584 and 605) speaks of Pedasos as a city of the Leleges opposite

Lesbos. Philip of Theangela (Jacoby, FGrHist 741 frg. 2) asserts that the Leleges were used by the Karians as domestic slaves. Bibliography on these people is given by Neumann, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 551-552.

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whereas the Karians claim to be autochthonous. Fehling (p. 39) writes: Here

the first version

is attributed

principle of citing the obvious

to the Cretans

on

the

witness as source, since the

Carians are supposed to have been subject to the king of Crete. The implication is that information was still available there from authentic memory. That is obviously unrealistic, and the

unreality is proof that the account is an invention.

A recent authority, J.M. Cook in CAR? 2.2 (1975) 794-795,

writes in part as follows: The origin of the Carians is archaeologically inscrutable. At Miletus a Mycenaean settlement has been discovered; and, south

of this, late Mycenaean finds have been reported near Mylasa. But otherwise this coast is almost blank on the map of the sec-

ond millennium B.C., and the interior of Caria seems to have been virtually uninhabited throughout prehistoric times. In the

main, the Carians cannot then have been occupying Caria. In Greek tradition they were an aboriginal people of the Aegean. ... In the present state of our knowledge, the more convenient hypothesis is the one which, following the Greek traditions, regards the Carians as a people of the Cretan and Achaean world who moved into Caria under pressure of Greek expansion. It was only in the fourth century that the Carians began to adopt the Greek way of life in its totality. But in western Caria at least they had long been in close contact with the Greeks, and especially under the cultural influence of Miletus; they had been associated with the Ionians in mercenary service

overseas, and perhaps in voyages to the west.

Suffice it here to point out that Greek traditions about the presence of Karians circulated among the Greeks. See, for example, Gomme, HCT 1.106-107, and J.M. Cook, The Persian

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

45

Empire (London 1983) Index s.v. Caria. What Herodotos had

to gain by inventing his account for a Greek audience is not explained by Fehling. Nor, if Herodotos and other sources were wrong, does he enlighten us on what their origin was. 9. To sustain his theory that where Herodotos quotes more than one source the stories are fabricated, Fehling devotes eight pages (41-49) to Herodotos' account of the origin of the Skythians (4.5-13). Herodotos claims to have three accounts,

that of the Skythians themselves, that of the Greeks who dwell about the Pontos, and a third which he considers the most probable. Here we are dealing with legends, and one can only apply standards of probability about how such accounts originated. One may compare the tale of the Argonautai, who according to the traditions of the Greeks (Pindar Pyth. 4; Homer Od. 12.69; Mimnermos in Strabo 1.46; etc.), undertook the first

bold maritime expedition to Kolchis for the purpose of fetch-

ing the golden fleece. All myths contain unreal elements, and very little can be "proved" one way or the other. Fehling's method is to pinpoint elements of the legends which he says are inappropriate to their sources and to conclude that Herodotos invented them. We select a few of his elements to illustrate the method. Of the Skythian version, he rejects the "actual narrative motive" that four gold objects fell from heaven as a sign in favor of the youngest son, because this "element has no parallel," but adds in a footnote, "Modern parallels, however, can never prove anything, since if there is any connection at all the possibility of indirect dependence on Herodotus can never be ruled out." The latter statement is made à propos of parallels offered out of Russian folklore by a scholar in 1891.39 W. Aly, Volksmärchen,

39Rhys Carpenter (Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics [Berkeley 1946] 17), writes: "Russian ballads (byliny) of the so-called Kiev

Cycle are still known and recited in many parts of Russia, often hundreds, even thousands, of miles from the city of Kiev. They refer specifically to

46

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und Novellen

bei Herodot (Göttingen

1921), not men-

tioned by Fehling in this context but included in his bibliography, had noted in his detailed study of the passage (pp. 1128.) that the episode of the burning gold recalls a stock feature of

Russian folk-tales, in which buried treasure turns to hot coals when discovered. In his section on the Skyths in the Cambridge History of Iran 2 (1985), the late Sulimirski studies all three leg-

ends: pp. 165-169. Of the first, he concludes, “the legend stems from the Late Bronze Age, and was connected with early Iranians belonging to the Srub culture. ... All four golden objects which fell from the sky are mentioned in the allocation of Transcaspian Sakas to Alexander the Great." The editor of the CHI, I. Gershevitch, adds a lengthy footnote, "In Avestan tradition the beginning of Yima's millennium was marked by divine intervention comparable to the dropping from the sky, in the Skythian legends, of the four golden objects," etc. The second account (4.8) by "the Greeks who inhabit the

Pontos" says that Herakles, when he was carrying off the cows of Geryon, came to the country now called Skythia, where he met a snake-woman who bore him three sons,*? one of whom Skythes won the test of bending the bow and became the first king. The legend is also told by Diodoros (2.43), who makes

Zeus beget a son Skythes by the snake-woman. The story has been taken as a Hellenized version of a legend designed to exmatters and men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They correctly remember, as leading cities of Russia, Kiev and Chernigov (then at the height of their power and in mutual rivalry). The valley of the Dnieper is still the center of their attention; and even when their modern place of survival is the far north of Russia or Siberia, their scenery is still South Russian." Whereas Fehling is prepared to believe that what he regards as a tale created by the Greek Herodotos could have penetrated Russian folklore, by a strange inversion he argues vigorously (pp. 59-65) that no legend of Proteus and Helen could have reached Egypt. 49Art historians have traced the Greek version of the origin of the Skythian race as being from the union of Herakles with a snake-woman (4.8—10) to part-woman-part-snake figures appearing in South Russia; see G. Azarpay Laws, AJA 65 (1961) 31-35 with bibliography.

2. FEHLING'S EXAMPLES

47

plain the origin of the three principal tribes which had dealings with the Greeks, taking their names from the three sons. Sulimirski writes (CHI 2 [1985] 168): "From Scythes sprang the

Scythian kings. His brothers bear the names of two peoples one would like to identify with groups of Scythian culture situated close to ancient Scythia, one to the west, the other to the east, outside the confines of Scythia and independent of the Royal tribe.” Fehling's line of reasoning is the following (p. 46) (after citing the myth in Hesiod's Theogony 295-305 that the monster Echidna lived in a cave with Typhon in the country of the Arimoi): That is not in itself sufficient proof of its non-authenticity, since it is explicitly cited as Greek and a knowledge of Hesiod may be assumed for any Greek source. On the other hand, the links with Hesiod are far too precise for an orally disseminated story. And, since the evidence accords extremely well with the results for the other examples, it should be interpreted in the same way. In other words, the most likely author is Herodotus himself.

In the LIMC 5.ı (1990), two hundred double-column

are devoted to the Herakles myths vase representations. King Skythes sented on an Apulian krater of the the LIMC s, the editors compare

pages

and bibliography, with 3520 is studied on p. 117 as repreDarius painter. On p. 115 of Herodotos 4.8—10 with the

Tabula Albana (Jacoby, FGrHist 40.1a.93—96), where Herakles

is said to have begotten two sons in Skythia. Herakles' encoun-

ters with snake-legged creatures are well attested for all periods of vase paintings. According to the scholiasts to Theokritos 13.56, Herakles learnt archery from a Skythian named Teutaros and they cite Kallimachos and Herodotos for the statement that his bow was Skythian. Herodotos' story implies the contrary view; see Gow on this line. Cf. Pfeiffer on Kallimachos frg. 692. In 4.10, Herodotos says that to his day the Skyths wear goblets at their belt from the circumstance of Skythes' magic

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girdle. According to the Budé editor, this has not been confirmed.4! For the third version, Sulimirski (CHI 2.168-169) writes: The third version, which Herodotus considers the most probable, relates to the crossing by the Scyths of the Araxes-Volga and the Don. This event may plausibly be connected with the data furnished by archaeology. According to these data, there were at least two, or perhaps three, westward expansions of the Srub culture from beyond the Volga, the bearers of which were presumably Iranians. Only the last of these migrations, which is believed to have taken place in the 1oth or oth century B.c. may

be connected with the migration of the "Royal Scyths". Archaeological evidence indicates that a branch of the Srub people crossed the Caucasus along the Caspian coast, in accordance with the account given by Herodotus, and settled down in the steppe of modern Azarbaijan, the ancient country of Sakasene which derived its name from them.

When we turn to Fehling, we expect to find devastating criticism of the third version, since the second was condemned on the basis of its context. We find rather (pp. 46—48) that he concedes that it: looks quite realistic and historical ... When Herodotus concludes this third version by ascribing it to Greeks and Barbarians, thus conferring greater authority upon it, this means no more than that he prefers it because it is not fabulous ... The obvious conclusion is that Herodotus took over the third version of the origins of the Scythians from Aristeas but modified it by replacing the fabulous Issedones by the historical

4' The golden goblet in which Herakles traveled is well attested; see Frazer on the Loeb Apollodoros vol. 1 p. 213; but this is not connected with the Skythian myth.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

49

Massagetae ... At all events the third version of the Scythians’ origins is not based on any local tradition.

Aly, Dumézil, Hartog, and probably others, offer interpretations of the same myths. Sulimirski has interpreted the stories in accordance with his knowledge of Skythian archaeology.4? Fehling's method is to attribute to the first literary author who mentions the story its invention. If this theory were extended to other authors, there are no myths, only stories, and when attributed to any source, they become lies. J.G. Frazer (in the Introduction to the Loeb Apollodoros) writes that Herakles “looms still so dim through the fog of fable and romance that we can hardly say whether any part of his gigantic figure is solid, in other words, whether the stories told of him refer to a real man at all or only to a creature of fairyland," and continues by discussing at length the difficulties of distinguishing myth, legend, folk-tale, and fiction. In short, authorities on Skythia find nothing incongruous in the stories Herodotos tells about the origins of these people, whether or not we accept their specific interpretations. On the

other hand, one who accepts Fehling's thesis of fictionalization is endorsing his view that all stories (i.e. myths, legends) can have only one source, and that a written one; myths are simply a literary genre lacking reality or belief in the minds of Herodotos' audience. 10. On pages 49-50, Fehling treats what he titles "Greek myth in the mouths of non-Greeks," claiming the stories are 42 Sulimirski returned to the subject of the three myths in CAH? 3.2 (1991) $53—554. Lévi-Strauss and other social scientists of our time work extensively

with such archaic myths of pre-civilized peoples, finding in these myths the basics of human thought and behavior that are blurred or muted in later sophisticated accounts. They turn to South American Indians, African bushmen, Borneo Head-hunters, Eskimo fishermen, and in particular to the Mahabharata from India and the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia to plumb the nature of myth.

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fantastic, the inventions of Herodotos, adding, “I avoid all unprofitable discussion of evasive theories devised by apologists.” The first three in this category are: 1) 3.111, which Fehling calls "the Arab's fantastic account of how cinnamon is obtained;” 2) 4.177, "localisation of Homer's Lotus-eaters;" 3) 4.148.3, “the

natives dwelling in the vicinity of Mount Atlas call it the Pillar of Heaven. In fact the phrase comes from Odyssey 1.53f.” I take up the three in reverse order. In a section concerned with North Africa and the legends of the Atarantians,4? Herodotos (4.184) writes: At the distance of ten days' journey there is a salt-hill, a spring, and an inhabited tract. Near the salt is a mountain called Atlas, very slender and round; so lofty, moreover, that the top (it is said) cannot be seen, the clouds never quitting it either summer or winter. The natives call this mountain “the Pillar of Heaven"; and they themselves take their name from it, being called Atlantes. They are reported not to eat any living thing, and never to have any dreams.

The “Pillar of Heaven" is not taken from the Odyssey. An isolated mountain called Udan exists close to the salt mine of

Amadghor. The mountain is described as "like an enormous factory chimney set on a gigantic base" and exceeds 9,000 feet in height: Col. F.F.X. Flatters, Documents relatifs à la Mission dirigée au sud de l'Algérie (Paris 1884) 430. It was only natural

that Herodotos’ Greek informants would call the mountain after the giant Atlas, who carried the weight of the sky on his shoulders. Similar formations are said to occur in the Saharan range, but this is to the south. In his account of Libya, Herodotos describes the country of the Lotus-eaters as in a Libyan district bordering on the Syrtes,

43See Frazer, Golden Bough 1 (1911), Magic Art, p. 404; etc.

2. PEHLING S EXAMPLES

51

lying on a caravan route which led to Egypt, stating in 4.177 (tr. of Powell): But a headland that runneth out into the sea in the territory of the Gindanes is inhabited by the LoroPHAGi:, who live by eating the fruit of the lotus only. Now the fruit of the lotus is like that of the mastic-tree in size, and comparable in sweetness to the date. And from this fruit the Lotophagi also make wine.

Combining

Herodotos with Pliny 5.28 and Ps.-Skylax 110,

who says the lotophagoi live on the island of Brachion, A.W. Lawrence identifies the place as the Island of Jerba in the Gulf of Gabés in Tunisia. That Herodotos calls it a promontory is explained by the fact that one could wade from the island to the mainland, and, indeed, modern maps show a road connecting the two. The identification was made at least as early as V. Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée 2 (Paris 1903) 102. The island is said to be covered with date-palms, and many identify the lotos with the date. The region also has a prickly shrub, Zizyphus Lotus, which bears a sweet-tasting fruit eaten by the natives,** which is taken to be Herodotos' plant, since he dis-

44See Encyclopaedia

Britannica uth edition s.v. Lotus-eaters, p. 23. R.

Carpenter, AJA 60 (1956) 234, in tracing the Saharan caravan route, places

the lotos-eaters on a projecting foreland east of the town of Tripoli, and identifies the lotos as the African date. Carpenter returned to the subject in his chapter on Inner Africa, pp. 106-142, of Beyond the Pillars of Heracles (1966). For the Egyptian plant, see also S. Gsell, Hérodote (Alger 1915) 94—96; for the Libyan district, see his pages 130—131. Hiller, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969)

742, lists numerous sources giving three candidates for the locality of the lotophagoi in Libya, opting for Jerba as that of Herodotos. The localities are also discussed by A. Peretti, Il Periplo di Scilace (Pisa 1979) 303-344. Strabo (17.3.17.834) offered as proof that the island of Jerba (or Djerba - Meninx)

was the land of the Homeric lotus-eaters the fact that there was an altar there which had been dedicated by Odysseus. Such a dedication was a typical Greek practice; see F. Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Giessen 1909)

148. The lengthy account of the island by the distinguished geographer

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the date, as does Athenaios

(14.651D) in

quoting Polybios (= 12.2). The various plants with which the lotus has been identified are discussed by Stein, RE s.v. Lotos (1922) 1526-1530. Add Ziegler, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 743. F.W. Walbank, HCP 2 (1967) 319-320, gives a convenient sum-

mary of the evidence. There is an enormous bibliography on the Lotophagoi, with which Fehling seems unfamiliar. We are not dealing with a "myth," Greek or Libyan, manufactured by Herodotos, but with an actual Libyan tribe, which Herodotos thought lived on the fruit of the tree,45 in a particular locality. Denys Page treats the lotus-eaters in the opening chapter of his

Folktales in Homer's Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass. 1973). His book is a demonstration of the fact that the Greeks in remotest

times revelled in folktales. In

a section

(3.107ff.)

describing

the

spices

of Arabia,

Herodotos devotes 3.111 to cinnamon, a tree which today is said to be grown in Egypt, Ethiopia, and, in particular, Ceylon. In a lengthy passage, Herodotos tells the story that cinnamon grows in places where Dionysos was reared,*6 having just referred to Ethiopia (3.97.2) as the place where Dionysos is the god of their festivals.47 Great birds, Herodotos continues, bring dry sticks (kapdea) of cinnamon, with which they build their nests high on precipitous crags. He then relates a tale as to how the natives James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus (London 1800) 624634, is still serviceable. 45Herodotos makes no reference to the Homeric folktale, which D.L. Page has studied in chapter 1 of his Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass. 1973). Herodotos may have thought that he had discov-

ered the home of the lotos-eaters of the Odyssey, who ate a food which had magical qualities, but he refrains from mentioning the folklore element.

46Parenthetically, I judge that Fehling is confused about the phrase φασὶ τινὲς αὐτὸ φύεσθαι ἐν τοῖσι ὁ Διόνυσος ἐτράφη, as if the Arabs had used the name Dionysos. Actually, as Linforth has demonstrated and as is attested in the 3.97 passage, it was Herodotos' practice to equate foreign gods

with Greek gods. 47Theophrastos

(9.5.1-2) gives a detailed account of cinnamon, saying

that it is grown in ravines, apparently in Arabia.

2. FEHLING 5 EXAMPLES

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dislodge the sticks. There is nothing Greek about the folk-tale nor is there any reason to attribute it to the imagination of Herodotos. The “great bird” has been identified by all as the roc, or more correctly, RUKH, a fabulous bird of enormous size, which gave rise to many legends, Arabian and other, collected by E.W. Lane in his edition of the Arabian

notes 22 and 62) and by Thousand and One Nights, the carcass which the roc prize is diamonds instead

Nights (chap. 20

H. Yule on Marco Polo. Sinbad is carried up to the takes for its young to eat, of cinnamon. Marco Polo

In the nest in but the (ed. H.

Yule and H. Cordier, vol. 2 [London 1921] p. 412) in the thir-

teenth century was told an even more fantastic legend, which he apparently believed: For persons who had been there and had seen it told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like an eagle, but one in-

deed of enormous size; so big in fact that its wings covered an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 12 paces long, and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call the bird Ruc, and it has no other name. So I wot not if this be the real gryphon, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this I can tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird as our stories do relate; but enormous as they be they are fashioned just like an eagle.

Yule devotes seven pages (415-421) of fine print to manifold

stories of the roc, suggesting that the versions of the Hindus, Persians, Palestinians, Arabs, Greeks, et al. derive from the same original fable. In any case, one who is tempted to follow Fehling in attributing marvelous legends to the imagination of Herodotos might read extensively in the literature of the travelers.

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R. Carpenter (Folk Tale, Fiction, Sage in Homeric Epics pp. 5-6) has stated the perplexities of the general problem in another context: Some commentators, noting that stories of essentially the same content may be found dispersed over a huge area among races of very different speech, have concluded that such wide (even world-wide!) occurrence of comparable variants of a story is proof that once long ago, in a sort of primal Eden older than the Tower of Babel, there was told a primal story, an Urmärchen, from which all the modern counterparts are descended, like the animals of today which pious belief claims for descendants of the weirdly assorted zoólogical household afloat in Noah's ark. The theological and the folklore creed are equally naive. But it is easier to mock the dispersion theory than to find a satisfactory substitute for it. Let us grant that the range of story patterns is limited, and that more than one mind can think the same thought and construct the same story, or even that such tales, being reflections of universal wishes, hopes, and fears, must share the sameness of all human psychology. We shall still be left with a residue of inexplicable coincidences. Probably the solution is complex—almost as complex as the folklore material itself; and we shall have to be resigned to try every case on its individual merits. We shall therefore neither maintain that all the most familiar folk tales came originally from India or the Near East or from anywhere else, nor yet hold the extreme opposite view that like begets like, that any story can spring up anywhere at any time, and that the comparative study of folk

tales is merely an exploration of the behavior of the human mind. We shall admit the possibility that there can be folk tales told today which have been told in strikingly similar form not merely centuries but thousands of years ago, since there is no

good objection to such tenacity of oral memory and oral transmission. We shall admit the possibility that classical Greece was not the beginning of all Western literature, since

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55

behind its literature of reed pen and papyrus, unexplored and of vast extent, may have stretched an unwritten literature which lived by tongue and memory alone.

We shall return to the problem of such stories in the section

below on the genre of travelers. We note there that Fehling with his theory of fictionalization has established no methodology on the subject. 11-12. On pages 50-59, Fehling treats at length Herodotos' Prooimion (1.1—5). Herodotos attributes to Περσέων

οἱ

λόγιοι

a series of encounters between the Greeks and the Phoenicians followed by one between the Greeks and the Kolchians, commemorated in the voyage of the Argonauts, and another between the Greeks and the Trojans before the Persians took up the cudgels in a feud between an Hellenic “Europe” and an Oriental "Asia." Stories of the learned men of Persia present history, as Herodotos sees it, as a series of encounters between representatives of diverse and conflicting civilizations, a sequence which succinctly agrees with his view that the conflict between the Greeks and the Achaemenidae in the fifth century was the continuation of older conflicts, providing a suitable introduction for his history. Herodotos records certain differences by the Phoenicians and the Greeks with the Persian tradition. He then makes the statement, which, along with two others to be studied below (7.125.3 and 2.123.1), is critical for

students of historiography by clearly distancing himself from such stories: ἐγὼ

ἢ ἄλλως

δὲ

περὶ

μὲν

κως ταῦτα

ὑπάρξαντα

ἀδίκων

τούτων

ἐγένετο, ἔργων

οὐκ

ἔρχομαι

ἐρέων

ὡς

οὕτω

τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ἐς

τοὺς Ἕλληνας,

τοῦτον

# There are differences with usual Greek legends. Io, for example, was turned into a heifer, and wandered until she came to Egypt, where she bore Epaphos; but this is not in Herodotos.

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προβήσομαι καὶ μεγάλα

ἐς

τὸ

πρόσω

ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων

τοῦ

λόγον,

ὁμοίως

ἐπεξιών.

(For my own part, I will not say that this or that story is true, but I will name him whom I myself know to have done unprovoked wrong to the Greeks, and so go forward with my history, and speak of small and great cities alike. Loeb tr.)

As Jacoby writes (FGrHist 3b.Suppl.ı p. 7), Herodotos broke new ground by leaving aside “the history of the heroic age and setting himself the task of collecting the traditions preserved from the century and a half preceding the Persian Wars, and of composing as far as possible a history of the ἀνθρωπηΐη Aeyonevnyeven under the historical aspect of the age-old

conflict between Asia and Europe." The anti-Greek bias of the Persian story is clear. The Persians claim to have demonstrated how Io's departure with the Phoenicians started a series of events leading to the Trojan (and ultimately to the Persian) war, for which the Greeks must

bear the responsibility. Legrand, in his Budé Hérodote, Livre 1 (1932) pp. 10-11, summarized: Et je ne vois pas de raison convaincante pour mettre en doute sa parole. A mon avis, il n'est aucunement invraisemblable qu'il ait existé de son temps en Asie, comme aussi in Égypte, des λόyıoı barbares instruits des légendes helléniques, soucieux de les interpréter dans le sens de leur amour-propre ou de leurs intéréts nationaux,

et pénétrés du

rationalisme ionien; aucune-

ment invraisemblable, que le reproche fait aux Grecs d'avoir engagé une guerre sans merci, la guerre de Troie, pour une femme qui n'en valait pas la peine, vienne de milieux perses oü Hérodote fréquenta, ainsi que la facétie irrévérente à l'adresse du beau sexe dont ce reproche s'accompagne; (on peut méme trouver que le mépris de la femme, qui est au fond et de l'un et de l'autre, convient bien à des Asiatiques); aucunement in-

2. FEHLING'S EXAMPLES

57

vraisemblable, que, sur l'affaire d’Io, les Phéniciens, incriminés

par les Perses, aient eu leur version particuliere. Des observations comme celle-ci, à propos des ravisseurs d'Europé: οὐ yàp ἔχουσι (les Perses) τοὔνομα ἀπηγήσασθαι, ou cette autre, à propos du ressentiment conservé par les Perses de la prise de Troie: τὴν yap Aoinv

καὶ Ta Evorkeovra ἔθνεα βάρβαρα

οἰκηιοῦν

ται οἱ Πέρσαι, ont bien l'air de notes ajoutées par l'auteur à ce qu'il tenait d'informateurs barbares. Il est curieux de voir qu'entre Perses et Grecs on discutait alors sur les responsabilités de la guerre et qu'on se demandait «qui avait commencé». Hérodote, dans le résumé qu'il nous donne de ces discussions académiques, expose généreusement les arguments de l'ennemi national et semble se placer à son point de vue, —tout au moins tant qu'il s'agit de conflits légendaires.

Moreover, in presenting the Persian version that the Greeks were greatly to be blamed because in the Trojan War they had invaded Asia before the Persians had attacked Europe, A. Momigliano (Settimo Contributo alla Storia degli Studi Classici [Rome 1984] 71) believes that Herodotos was sympathetic to

this position. He says in so many words that themselves in the Ionian rebellion, the Athenians ginning of many evils for Greeks and barbarians” pointedly, he remarked that after the repression

by involving were "the be(5.97). Quite of the rebel-

lion, Dareios eliminated tyrants from the Ionian cities (6.43).

We focus here only on Fehling's position that the Persians could not have dealt with these legends: Scholars have on the whole reverted to complete faith in the author's own statements, comforted by a belief that all difficulties can be disposed of by the simple assumption that the Persians and Phoenicians he consulted had had the benefit of a Greek education. ... The whole story said to be told by Persians and amended by Phoenicians has clearly been developed without any intermediate stage directly from the Greek myths con-

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cerned, and moreover from the most common forms of these myths, the ones familiar to us from epic and tragedy ... Summing up the descriptive part of our discussion we may say that the Persians’ story is an integral creation in full accordance with the procedures of Greek mythical history.

As we shall see in the case of the Helen legend, Fehling has a fixation that only Greek nationals could deal with Aegean legends. In an interesting paper, "Origines Gentium," E.J. Bickerman,

CP 47 (1952) 65-81, lists some twenty-five Greek ac-

counts of the origins of Rome, collecting a mass of examples of one national either accepting or recording the legends of another. Fehling formulates no methodology on the transmission of legends. There are various solutions to the problems of our passage. A.W. Lawrence, in his commentary, wrote, "Evidently some Persians, especially those exiled to Greece, studied foreign myths and tried to correlate them with their own, just as the

Greeks were doing."49 We make much of a few Persians and Greeks under Persian sway who were exiled to Greece proper. We forget that it was a two-way street, particularly for an element which was attracted towards a stable order which seemed to ensure protection for the wealthy class and furnished shelter from restless neighbors. A. Momigliano, in A. Ryan, The Idea of Freedom (Oxford 1979) 140-141, writes: The Persians attracted intellectuals, especially doctors, from Greece and turned for political and military advice to Greek exiles. We know perhaps about 300 names of Greeks who served the Persians in the two centuries before Alexander (ordinary

mercenaries and artisans are by definition excluded as their names would be known only exceptionally). ... We shall never

*9Xenophanes and Herodotos were not the only mythographers to become exiled.

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know for certain, but a little story told by Herodotus must be authentic. Before the battle of Plataea a wealthy citizen of Thebes gave a banquet to which he invited the Persian commander Mardonius, fifty of the noblest Persians, and fifty of the most distinguished Boeotians. One of the Greek guests (from Orchomenos, not from Thebes) was Thersander, who lived long enough to entrust his recollections of the evening to Herodotus. A Persian and a Greek sat side by side on each couch, and the Persian who shared Thersander’s couch addressed him in the Greek tongue and ‘inquired from him from what city he came’. After these formalities the Persian frankly expressed his fears of a Persian (and therefore Theban) defeat and added: "Many of us

Persians to do as sorrows, Here we more of comrade

know our danger, but we are constrained by necessity our leader bids us. Verily it is the sorest of all human to abound in knowledge and yet have no power' (9.16). learn of a Persian who could speak Greek, and even the very human anxiety he could express to his Greek on the eve of the decisive battle.

Herodotos' Persian informants have also been studied in a chapter, "The Persian Friends of Herodotus," by the Herodotean editor, J. Wells, Studies in Herodotus (Oxford 1923) 95-111.5° G.G. Cameron, Acta Iranica 1 (1974) 45, notes

that Herodotos was offically a Persian subject, traveled throughout the Empire at a time of peace, and must have had "many Persian friends who made his sources so remarkably accurate.” N.G.L. Hammond

(HM 2 [1979] 98-99 and 3-8) ar-

gues strongly that Herodotos knew Alexander I of Makedon and that he was the source for a number of passages. W.G. Forrest, International History Review 1 (1979) 317-318, also stresses

the presence of Greeks in the Persian Empire. He cites John Boardman,

The Greeks Overseas? (1973) 98—105, and observes

50See also JHS 27 (1907) 37-47; H.F. Bornitz, Herodotstudien (Berlin 1968) 176ff.

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that if one examines the many names in the inscription (SIG? 46) from Halikarnassos, Herodotos' birthplace, dated before 450 B.C., he sees a great mixture of Greek and barbarian names.

As a youth, Herodotos may have picked up a smattering of another language. Bibliography on the phrase Περσέων οἱ λόγιοι is extensive and is collected by K. von Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung 1 (Berlin 1967) Anmerkungen 117-121, to which add

the strong objections to Fehling's treatment by H. Erbse, Ausgewühlte Schriften zur klassischen Philologie (Berlin 1979) 181-

186. The word λόγιος according to Powell occurs but four times and is rendered by him as “versed in history;"* the word Aoyorotós is applied by Herodotos to Aesop (1) and Hekataios (3).52 Lawrence notes that Persian influence has been traced in

other passages where Herodotos does not acknowledge it (1.7; 7.61, 150). In 1.95, Herodotos introduces the story of Kyros with

the remark, "And I shall write as a certain number of the Persians say, who desire not to magnify the story of Kyros but to speak the word of truth, ..." He then records an antiAchaemenid source. In 6.54 and 7.150, Herodotos attributes to Persians a familiarity with Greek legends. A similar knowledge is attributed to the Egyptians. In the 7.150 passage, Xerxes' herald is well-informed about the legends of Sparta. But the problem is not restricted to explicit references to Persian

* Ancient grammarians

knew about λόγιοι ἄνδρες as those who are

versed in local traditions. The scholia on Pindar Ol. 7.42b read: εἰκὸς

ὅτι ὁ Πίνδαρος παρὰ τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν λογίων ἤκουσεν

δας εἶναι

‘PoSious, μητρόθεν, on Ol.7.101:

δὲ

᾿Αμυντορί-

ἀπὸ τῶν κατὰ τὴν πόλιν

λογίων πυνθάνονται τὰ ἐπιχώρια οἱ ποιηταί. The word λόγιοι 1s also studied by G. Nagy in Arethusa 20 (1987) 175-184, and by W.R. Connor on pp.

259-260. 5 For a survey of meanings of the word λόγος current in the fifth century or earlier, see W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy 1 (Cambridge 1967) 419-424. It might mean “anything said or for that matter written."

Arrian (Anab. 5.6.5) applies the term logopoios to both Hekataios and Herodotos; the term was descriptive, not abusive.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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familiarity with legends. L. Pearson (Early Ionian Historians [Oxford

1939] 76-77)

provides

an

analysis

of Herodotos'

discussion of Asiatic geography in 4.37-41, showing that he is reproducing a Persian point of view which is more likely to be correct than the Greek. When

we turn in section 5 below to

modern evaluations of Herodotos' Persiaka, we find he merits a high rating. As Wells notes, the accuracy of his information as to Persian matters and the fullness of his details are quite outside the sphere of interest of an ordinary Greek. His tone is that of one who speaks with authority and who considers that he has sure sources of information. The scenario in the 7.150 passage is that learned men in Persia had familiarized Xerxes' messenger with the legends or myths of Sparta. But legends or myths are hardly the correct terms. The modern archaeologists' feat of disinterring a Minoan civilization and the ensuing dark centuries of which the Greeks were almost oblivious gives a twentieth-century historian an overwhelming advantage over Herodotos and Thucydides in trying to reconstruct the history of the late second millennium and early last millennium s.c. Herodotos and others made mistakes about matters of fact which were unknown and unknowable.5» For Thucydides, Deukalion and Minos (1.3

and 4) were real personages. He did not doubt the reality of a Helen, a Pelops, an Agamemnon, or the Trojan War. Jacoby writes, “For Thukydides the ‘mythical’ period is not mythical. ... Thukydides sees the history of the Greek people as a continuous development from Deukalion to his own time, punc-

53In 1.1-5, the Trojan War is interpolated between the date of the Greek

penetration into the Black Sea, which some archaeologists say does not seem to have begun until the seventh century B.c., and the date of the Lydian con-

quest of Asiatic Greeks. So far from trying to analyze and systematize the numerous and various legends dealt with by the Epic cycle, the Greek stage,

the logographers, and ora! sources, Herodotos, as all historians must, rather than write a book on the subject, selects a version formulated by the Persian λόγιοι ἄνδρες which suited his theme.

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tuated by the great Panhellenic wars."5* Of the meaning of the phrase τὸ

μυθῶδες

in Thucydides 1.22.4, Gomme

(CR 53

[1939] 208) writes that it "is not a reference to the mythological

period (Thucydides accepts Eurystheus, Agamemnon, Tereus), but is the 'story-telling element', so prominent in Herodotus, which may attach to quite historical characters." We draw a sharp distinction between mythography and history; but this did not pertain in ancient times. If there were professional historians in Persia or elsewhere, they were interested in what we call myths or legends. We need not defend the position that Persian learned men would be interested in the history of their age-old rivals. Setting up an imaginary scenario, we may speculate that in his investigations of what he calls ἀνθρωπηίη yeven, i.e. the period of Kroisos (1.6) and Polykrates (3.122) and thereafter, Herodotos concludes that history is a concatenation of encounters between representatives of conflicting societies. Wishing to introduce his work with a brief statement of encounters from the heroic (i.e. προτέρη) period conforming to this hypothesis, thereby providing a unity to his work, he finds an enormous

amount of conflicting material on particulars in the traditions of his own nationals, but no overall codification such as found in a foreign source. Historians of all ages work in this fashion. It is well recognized that we know little about mythography of Herodotos' predecessors of the sixth and first half of the fifth centuries. Our knowledge of this literature is due primarily to Alexandrian scholarship when most of the works were lost. Several are bynames preserved in lists by Dionysios and the Souda. Because of the prevalence of the Ionic dialect, it has become customary to classify all mythographers as Ionian, irrespective of their places of origin or nationality, but this is not an Herodotean classification. Enough fragments of a Persian subject of the sixth century s.c., Xanthos of Lydia, who wrote 54See Jacoby, FGrHist 3b Suppl. 2 p. 5.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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in Greek, are preserved to ascertain that he was concerned with Greek legends. Ephoros (in Athenaios 12.515p, Gulick) men-

tions him as the writer who provided Herodotos with his starting point! Ἡροδότῳ τὰς ἀφορμὰς δεδωκότος, which may incidentally be an allusion to our passage. Xanthos was concerned with Persian legends, speaking of Zoroaster as having lived 6,000 years before Xerxes' invasion (Diogenes L. 1.2). He also dealt with Greek myths as proved by his comment on the Homeric

line Iliad 2.783 (Pearson, EIH 105). Of Charon of

Lampsakos, who was certainly born a Persian subject, as were

Hekataios, Xenophanes, and others, the four remaining fragments are mythological in content (Pearson, EIH 141). Since Homer was in the view of Eratosthenes and Strabo the first historian (Pearson, EIH 15), we can be certain that any person

of the sixth and early fifth centuries who dealt with the history of the cities and peoples of Asia Minor wherever Homer was recited, was concerned with "legends." In short, if anyone, whether Greek or Persian or otherwise, was interested in the early history of the Aegean world, his subject matter was legends. Far from inventing these stories about rape and counterrape leading to early wars, Herodotos in 1.1-5 distanced himself from the traditions of a period which he did not regard as suitable for his investigations. Out of the multiplicity of myths, he selected versions from Persian λόγιοι ἄνδρες, Phoenicians,55 and certain Greeks suitable for his introduction. We conclude this section by noting that Fehling, having proved to his satisfaction that Persians could not have dealt with the legends of 1.1-5, claims thereafter that any mention of Persian sources is false on the basis of this study.

13. Fehling levies his sharpest attack on defenders of Herodotos in his treatment of the legend of Proteus and Helen 55Not only did he visit Tyre, but in 7.89 Herodotos tells us that Phoenici-

ans themselves regarded the shores of the Erythraean Sea as their original home. There is no reason to believe that Herodotos made up their version.

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(2.112-120), to which he devotes seven pages (59-65), conclud-

ing, “There is nothing for it but to accept that the whole story comes from Herodotus himself.” Herodotos attributes to priests at Memphis the story that the real Helen was brought to Egypt, where there was an enclave of Syrians around a temenos of Proteus with a temple of Foreign Aphrodite (ξείνης ᾿Αφροδίτης), whom Herodotos guessed to be Helen of Troy. Linforth (UCPCP 9 [1926] 16), writing of Herodotos’ practice of

identifying foreign gods with Greek gods, states the general principle: “It is a safe conjecture that his authority was simply popular usage and tradition amongst the peoples whom he visited and especially amongst the Greeks who were resident in foreign countries or who visited them frequently in the way of trade.” In our passage, Herodotos does not give a foreign equivalent. He says he made the identification because he had heard that Helen had passed some time at the court of Proteus. He continues by saying that he made inquiries of the priests about Helen and they told him the legend that Helen never went to Troy, a legend which Herodotos says Homer must have been familiar with, but “discarded because it was not as suitable for his poem as the version which he used.” Frazer gives a concise history of the legends in the Loeb Apollodoros 2 pp. 175-176.56 Oddly, the fact that Apollodoros knew the legend has dropped out of much of the literature. The essence of the problem is, could the priests of the Egyptian society be familiar with a Greek legend? Lloyd, in vol. ı p. 109, citing several Egyptian authorities, including F.L. Griffith, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, and Sir A.H. Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford 1961), answered in the affirmative:

56For one study of the legend, see Neville, “Herodotus on the Trojan War," G&R 24 (1977) 3-12. See also Powell, CQ 29 (1939) 76; Lloyd 3.45—48

(with bibliography). Virtually all writers on Herodotos and Euripides' Helen have something to say about the story.

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The presence of Greek material within the historical tradition which Herodotus claims derived from the priests does not in any way disprove the priestly origin of this historical material.

Greeks had been coming to Egypt long enough to inject into the stream of Egyptian folk-lore more than a little of their own ideas and traditions of Egypt (on which vide infra). Such matter (e.g. the Proteus legend) could quite naturally be taken up by the priests as part of their national history along with tales of purely Egyptian origin. It should further be remembered that in

the process of Herodotus' questioning the priests, assimilating what he had been told, re-assembling it for composition and actually writing it, these traditions would almost certainly acquire a fresh Greek varnishing. The plausibility of this view

gains considerably if we remember that the Egyptians were already importing Syrian matter into their mythology during the New Kingdom e.g. the Tale of Astarte and the Sea; that the Tomb of Petosiris, a High Priest of Thoth, which probably dates about the time of the Macedonian Conquest, shows a curious amalgam of Greek and Egyptian artistic conventions and that late Demotic tales show clear Greek influence.

À number of other scholars have answered the question at the beginning of this paragraph in the affirmative. By the time of Ptolemy II, Greek legends had been injected into the stream of Egyptian traditions and accepted by the High Priest Manetho; see Lloyd 1 (1975) 111. History in the modern sense had not been developed by the Egyptians. The

First Tale of Khamunas, extant in a demotic papyrus of the time of Christ, has for one of his characters a prince who “had no pursuit on earth but to walk on the Necropolis Hill of Memphis, reading the writings that were in the tombs of the Pharaohs and on the tablets of the scribes of the House of Light, and the writings that were on the —, and his zeal concerning writing was great": F.L. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford 1900) 20. An authoritative narra-

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tive, compiled apparently at the royal command, was written by Manetho to spread a knowledge of Egyptian religion among the Greeks: W.G. Waddell, Loeb ed. p. xxvii. The legends were there and regarded as historical; they were not created by Herodotos and Manetho. Cf. Helck, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 952-953: Für die Schilderung von Ereignissen stützte sich M. auf hist. Geschichten, wie sie von den Gelehrten mindestens seit dem M.R. niedergeschrieben worden sind. Es sind nicht, wie häufig behauptet, »Volkserzählungen« oder »Märchen«, sondern der Ägypter benutzte hist. Ereignisse, um an ihnen religiöse, moralische oder ethische Vorstellungen zu beweisen.

In publishing P.Oxy. 2506 (republished by Page as PMG. Stesichorus frg. 193), Page writes: (c) The fact stated here, that the Stesichorean Helen stayed

with Proteus in Egypt while her phantom went to Troy, was already familiar to us from the scholia on Aristides and from Tzetzes. Most modern accounts have rejected their testimony; wrongly, as we now see. ... The account given by the scholia on Aristides and by Tzetzes, being now confirmed in one respect, is quite likely to be reliable in another: that Helen was taken away from Paris by Proteus in Egypt (cf. 26 (a) 15-16 above). Finally, we have learnt a new lesson about the danger of the argument ex silentio: Herodotus (ii.113ff.) devotes some time and trouble to

looking for confirmation in early poetry of the story told by Egyptian priests about Helen's sojourn there. Homer, he thought, knew it but suppressed it; the Cypria knew nothing of

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it; not a word about Stesichorus, who was ready to provide just what the historian wanted.”

Probably the lengthiest defense of the legend is given by R. Kannicht, "Der Proteuslogos Herodots," Euripides Helena (Heidelberg

1969) 1.41-48,

who

concludes,

"Die

durchaus

ágyptische Tendenz des Logos scheint für die Annahme zu sprechen, daß Herodot die Geschichte tatsächlich aus ägyptischer Quelle und dann von den Ptah-Priestern gehórt hat, die er zitiert." A detailed analysis of the treatment of Helen in Egypt by Homer, Stesichoros, Herodotos, and Euripides is given by C.R. Ligota, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982) 9-13.

It follows

from

Herodotos'

account

that the

temenos of Memphis, beautiful and well adorned, was called that of Proteus before his arrival: Τούτου

de

ἐκδέξασαι

Μεμφίτην,

τῷ

κατὰ τὴν ᾿Ελλήνων γλῶσσαν

Elva.’

νῦν

τοῦ

τέμενος

καὶ εὖ ἐσκενασμένον, κείμενον. Τύριοι,

στρατόπεδον. τὸ καλέεται

ἔστι

δὲ

ἐστὶ

ἐν

δὲ

τὸ

ὁ χῶρος

δὲ

βασιληίην Μέμφι

τοῦ ᾿Ηφαιστείου

περιοικέουσι καλέεται

τὴν

ἐν τῷ τεμένει

οὔνομα κάρτα

πρὸς

τέμενος οὗτος

ἔλεγον

ὁ συνάπας

τοῦ

Πρωτέα καλόν

νότον

τοῦτο

ἄνδρα τε

ἄνεμον Φοίνικες Τυρίων

Πρωτέος

ἱρὸν

ξείνης ᾿Αφροδίτης᾽

H. Ranke, Studies Presented to F.L. Griffith (Egypt Exploration Society 1932) 415-416, has shown that the “Aphrodite” to whom 5’Writing of the Canobis mouth of the Nile, Strabo says (17.1.16.800), “In ancient times, it is said, there was also a city called Thonis here, which was named after the king who received Menelaüs and Helen with hospitality. At any rate, the poet speaks of Helen's drugs as follows: 'goodly drugs which Polydamna, the wife of Thon, had given her’.” The Horneric reference is Od. 4.228. See the commentary of Heubeck et al. (1988). On the Egyptian Helen, see K. Schefold, "Helena im Schutz der Isis," Studies D.M. Robinson 2 (Saint Louis 1958) 1096-1102 with pls. 89-90.

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the temple is attributed in Memphis was introduced by the Syrian inhabitants to whom Herodotos makes reference, a local cult of the Phoenician Ba'alit or Astarte. Tyre had close connections with Greece, having founded colonies at Thasos and Lemnos, and Sidon and Tyre were important centers of commerce.5® Just as the Syrians over time must have adopted Greek

legends, so one may assume that the legends from the Greeks at Memphis had infiltrated the Syrians. It is easy to believe that Herodotos' imaginative questions put to the priests had a great deal to do with the shaping of the legends; cf. Kannicht, p. 47. In any case, the basis of the legend was much older than Herodotos.59 We may add that if the Greeks had infiltrated the temenos in any way, as is suggested by their having given the name Proteus to it, there probably would have been manufactured relics of the legend, as at Lindos, Thebes, and elsewhere. Independently, the excavator at Maroc and student of Phoenician history, R. Rebuffat, has given a full-scale review of the legend, *Hélene en Égypt et le Romain égaré (Hérodote 11,115, et Polybe 1IL,22724)," REA 68 (1966) 245-263. He traces

the legend to Phoenicians, who in the seventh century had collected in the sanctuary of Astarte, which was probably coupled with a sanctuary of Melqart:

#The old work of C.F. Condor, Syrian Stone-Lore (London 1886), which

has been recommended to me, has much to say about the cross-fertilization of legends, particularly that of Herakles, but nothing about our goddess, whom he calls Ashtoreth. 59Carpenter (Folk Tale 61), noting that both the Iliad and the Cypria make Paris touch at Sidon, which does not lie between Cape Malea and the Dardanelles, on his way home, argues that in the saga is a memory of a heroic expedition which had Egypt as its goal. Carpenter continues by citing other evidence including an Egyptian relief depicting a great naval battle of the time of the Trojan war, finding a common basis in fact in the Greek and Egyptian sagas.

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Dans le cas précis qui nous occupe, il s'agit certainement de gens de Memphis, et trés probablement d'un personnel attaché au temple méme d’Aphrodite étrangére: en quel autre endroit aurait-on su tant de détails? Mais, dans ce cas, les interlocuteurs

d'Hérodote risquent fort d'avoir été soit des Égyptiens, mais qui tiraient l’essential de leurs connaissances de l'authentique version phénicienne de la légende, soit, purement et simplement, des Phénicens de Memphis. ... Telle qu'elle est narrée, la légende apparatt donc bien faconnée sur une donnée topographique phénicienne, l'existence des deux sanctuaires jumeaux du Delta, comme il est naturel si ses narrateurs sont effectivement Phéniciens. L'identification d'une source phénicienne peut d'ailleurs seule expliquer un des traits essentiels du conte. Etc.

We note that in 462 B.c., there was a cult of the Trojan Antenor, who had embarked with Helen and Menelaos, at Kyrene: F. Pfister, RVV 5 (1909) 156, citing Pindar Pythian 5.82ff.

Early Phoenician association with Egypt is explained by W. Culican in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 471: The campaigns of Necho in 609-605 a.c. briefly restored Egyptian suzerainty over Palestine and Phoenicia but his final defeat by Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish and the rise of the Persian empire ushered in a new era for the West. Meanwhile Egypt under Necho (610—595) and his successors Psammetichus Il (595-589), Apries (589-570) and Amasis (570—526) had turned

some of her trading interests towards other Mediterranean lands and seems to have fostered the growth of communities of foreigners in her own towns. Already during the Eighteenth Dynasty Canaanite shipwrights from the Phoenician coast had been settled in a district of Memphis called Prw-nfr, where the cults of Ba'al and Astarte were maintained by priests from the homeland. Phoenicians probably continued to work the Memphis shipyards in the Late Kingdom, when ‘Ba’al of Memphis’

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is mentioned in Twenty-fifth Dynasty documents. Herodotus (11.112) encountered a “Tyrian camp’ there. Its temple of "Proteus' is most likely that of Ba'al himself and in its precinct stood a temple of ‘foreign Aphrodite —certainiy Astarte. Herodotus does not state whether the resident Tyrians were engaged in ship-building, but the fact that pharaoh Necho invited the Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa (Hdt. IV.42)

must

surely mean that they had an arsenal to hand in Egypt. The triremes which Necho had built before his expedition to Syria in 609 B.c. (Hdt. 11.159) may also be attributed to Phoenician shipyards. It seems that Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 1.16.76) was

correct in regarding the trireme as a Phoenician invention.

We observe that in studying the story of Sethos in 2.141, one Egyptian authority, F.L. Griffith, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford 1900), finds it to be a Jewish legend taken

over by the Egyptians in the Saite period (p. 12): The story of Sethon, whether it have an historical basis or no, resembling as it does that of the destruction of the Assyrian army in the Book of Kings, might very well be accounted for as the product of Jewish intercourse with Egypt in the Saite dynasty, finally shaped by the pen of Herodotus after passing through the mouths of Greek interpreters.$o

All the authorities we have cited confirm the principle of the cross-fertilization of legends. Fehling adds to his treatment (p. 64), "the right of asylum (2.113.2) ... has no parallel in Egypt." Lloyd (2.48), with exten60Sauneron, in G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization

(New York

1959) 120, claims that surprising bas-reliefs excavated at Hermopolis show that before the time of Alexander, Greek aesthetic ideas had fused with Egyptian art styles. This is later than Herodotos, but cults, legends, myths, and ideas move across national lines; they are not contained by an iron curtain.

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sive bibliography, adduces proof that “in Ptol. times asyla could apparently welcome runaway slaves.” Earlier, A.W. Lawrence (1935) had written, This temple gave the Greek name to the place Heracleum, which the Egyptians called Karba; its chief temple was dedicated to «Ammon»

(Strabo, xvii,788,801), but «Heracles» must repre-

sent some other god. Branding the slaves would mark them as the property of the god, in accordance with a wide-spread primitive custom, and agrees with a presumed formula of asylum used in some Ptolemaic papyri whereby men and women dedi-

cate themselves to the service of the local god (in that instance Sobek of the Fayum) for service in the temple (Brit. Mus. Quar-

terly, vi, p. 32; see Sir Herbert Thompson’s forthcoming publication of these papyri from Tebtynis for right of asylum).

14. Fehling devotes pages 65-70 to Herodotos’ account of the founding of two oracles of Zeus Ammon in Libya and Zeus at Dodona

(2.54-57), stating that “the Egyptian version cannot

have come from Egypt.” He does not mention Cook's lengthy treatment nor refer to H.W. Parke’s book on the oracles of Zeus. In the English edition, he adds a reference to Lloyd: “Lloyd, 254, shows little understanding of the problem.” The reference to Lloyd should read 2 (1976) 251-264.

In a generally neglected study, A.B. Cook has addressed the problem of Herodotos’ veracity point by point with documentation from many sources. In Zeus 1 (Cambridge 1914) 364-371,

he writes, Herodotos, who—if any man—was

acquainted with the facts,

clearly believed that the cult of the Oasis and the cult of Dodona were akin. Two priestesses according to the Egyptian version,

two doves according to the Greek version, had simultaneously founded the twin oracles of Zeus. This testimony on the part of

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one who had himself visited both Thebes and Dodona is not

lightly to be set aside or explained away as a case of Aigyptomania.

After examining many accounts of the two oracles, he states (p.

369): In short, it appears that the whole apparatus of the oracle at Dodona—its grove, its oak of special sanctity, its doves, its holy well—was to be matched in the Oasis of Ammon. Strabon adds that both oracles gave their responses in the self-same manner, ‘not by means of words, but by certain tokens’ such as the flight

of 'doves'. Nor was the character of Zeus himself different at the two cult-centres. Zeus Náios of Dodona was essentially a god 'of Streaming Water’: the oracular spring—we are told—burst from the very roots of his famous oak. So with Zeus Ámmon. The close connexion between his cult and water comes out clearly in Diodoros' description of the Oasis.

He concludes (pp. 370-371), "The conclusion to which the evi-

dence here adduced appears to point is that the cult of Zeus in the Oasis was, as Herodotos declared, really akin to the cult of Zeus at Dodona." More conclusive is the evidence on the close relationship between Dodona and Egyptian Thebes and Ammon assembled by H.W. Parke in his book, The Oracles of Zeus (Oxford 1967)

206ff., which is devoted to the oracles at Dodona, Olympia, and Ammon. The account in Herodotos is examined in chapter 4, Ammon in chapter 9. Parke argues that the same story Herodotos gives was to be found in Pindar, who was proxenos of the Molossians in Epeiros (Nem. 7), and composed a hymn in honor of Zeus Ammon

(frg. 36 Maehler; Pausanias 9.16.1), the

first line of which is preserved, as well as a paean to Dodona

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Zeus, and who probably spent the winter of 462/1 in Cyrene.®!

Parke deduces a mass of evidence to support the position that the legend that represented both Ammon and Dodona as being founded from Egyptian Thebes was earlier than Herodotos: “One can say that Thebes was a city with strong links connecting it with Dodona from primitive times" (p. 208); Ammon “was authentically founded from Thebes” (p. 199).9? The evidence is strong that the account of Ammon and Dodona is not Herodotos' invention. Fehling's thesis that "the Egyptian version cannot have come from the Egyptians" was written without consideration of abundant evidence assembled by Parke, which cannot be reproduced here in detail, in a wellknown book not in Fehling's 1989 bibliography.®3 Oddly, 61 Pausanias (9.16.1) records a temple of Ammon

at Greek Thebes with an

image dedicated by Pindar and carved by Kalamis. Pindar's hymn was still to be seen carved on a slab beside the altar. P. Cabanes collects the testimonia for the Naia at Dodona in Nikephoros 1 (1988) 49—84. 92 Cf. Lloyd, vol. 1 (1975) 92: "The belief in the Theban origins of this centre

(Dodona) and, doubtless, a tale to explain them, was already current in Greece in the early Fifth Century."

63Fehling (p. 86) calls the reference to "black" for the Egyptian women “a telling detail" against Herodotos. G. Mokhtar, in the Unesco General History of Africa 2 (1981) 37, in citing the passage, is in disagreement. Aischylos (Suppl. 719) describes the Egyptians as “men with black limbs emerging from white robes." H. Friis and E.W. Whittle, in their commentary on the line (3, p. 81), cite several other passages. The Egyptians were known as the Melampodes; see Anne Burton on Diodoros 1.97.4. Fehling writes, "I add an

amusing detail that escaped me in the German edition. Herodotus makes his informants at Dodona say the two doves were black. Doves of that

feather have yet to be found. ... This is a telling detail; and in my view it can only point to Herodotus himself.” Herodotos uses the phrase δύο πελειάδας

μελαίνας. Aristotle (HA 5.544B) says,

ἣ δὲ πελειὰς

καὶ μικρόν. Hesychios defines πέλειαι as μέλαιναι (9.394C) writes, περιστερὰ

δὲ

καὶ

καὶ

μέλαν

περιστεραί. Athenaios

μέλαν ... Gulick translates μέλας

as

dark, D’Arcy Thompson as swarthy. The latter, in A Glossary of Greek Birds (London 1936) 227, regards the Dodona bird as the ring-dove or stock-dove. The Encycl

Britannica" explains that the stock-dove is a small species

without any white on its neck or wings. Incidentally, Charon ( FGrHist 262 frg. 3A) says that the first time the Greeks saw any περιστεραί which were

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Fehling is not aware even of the Pindaric evidence, which suggests to Parke that the legend that represented both Ammon and Dodona as founded from Egyptian Thebes was found in Pindar. Indeed, Fehling rests his case on the false assumption that Theban informants could have known nothing of Dodona. Bibliography on Dodona is listed by Fuhrmann in Der kleine Pauly 4 (1972) 325.67-326.35; on Ammon, 327.59-328.11. There is abundant evidence on the peoples of one state knowing stories of another, which might have spared Fehling six pages of utter tosh.64 The legend that was told at Dodona has a realistic flavor. Just as temples were repositories of monuments of "historical origins," we can be confident that a miracle was not only in full keeping, but apparently indispensable to satisfy the exigencies of the religious sentiment; anything less than a miracle would have appeared tame and unimpressive to the visitors of so revered a spot as Dodona, much more to the residents themwhite was when the Persians under Mardonios were shipwrecked at Mount Athos. Every statement in Fehling must be checked. The more confident he is, the more certain there is error.

64The Greeks adopted gods from other cultures; cf. W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology (Berkeley 1979) 105: "As to Adonis, his case is the clearest example of a Semitic god adopted by the Greeks in the archaic period, and the Greeks knew it." Not only Herodotos, but all ancients believed that Dionysos was a Thrakian god and that he had come to Greece from the north. Some modern scholars share this belief, although an Asia Minor origin is now fashionable. If gods could move, myths must have moved with them. The whole concept that myths and legends could not cross national boundaries is misguided. Myths of Ares were all over the world. The horned head of Ammon appeared on coins issued in the late fifth or early fourth century by Lesbos and Kyzikos: David Magie, "Egyptian Deities in Asia Minor," AJA $7 (1953) 165. In the time of Augustus, there

were Greek Rule

temples in Egypt: Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt under Roman

(Oxford 1983) 90. There was a cultural mix wherever commerce flour-

ished. I know of no study focusing on the cultural mix in Africa. S. Stucchi, in Libya, a History (ed. F.F. Gadallah, 1968) 211, reports the excavations of a fifth-century temple of Zeus at Cyrene. Where the Greeks took their gods, they took their myths with them.

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selves. That Herodotos should bluntly reject the miracle, recounted to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime circumstance in the origins of this holy place, is in keeping with his habit of dealing with historical evidence. In 1.60, he treats the story of Peisistratos passing off the injunction of Phye as the commands of Athena as a piece of silliness. While discarding the miracle, he lets it softly down into a story quasihistorical and not intrinsically incredible. The miracle redounded to the prestige of the oracle. 15 and 16. Fehling's final examples of "demonstrably false

source-citations" (pp. 71-86) have to do with the list of Egyptian kings and the chronology of the three hundred forty-five generations. The subject has produced an enormous bibliography, much of which has been collected and analyzed in the latter half of A.B. Lloyd's volume 1 (1975), a work not men-

tioned in this context by Fehling, who focuses on one treatment, that of von Fritz. Lloyd (p. 194), after his almost booklength treatment, concludes, "The details of his Egyptian Chronology are surprisingly accurate." It boggles the imagination to believe that Herodotos invented the list. Fehling focuses on Herodotos 2.100 (“Next, they read me from a papyrus the names of three hundred and thirty monarchs, who, they said, were his successors upon the throne"), commenting (p. 76): It is in itself somewhat odd when Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians solemnly read out to him a list of 330 names. When we try to visualise the scene, it becomes frankly hilarious: a priest droning an endless succession of names and Herodotus listening intently and trying to keep count, often desperately wondering whether a particular sequence of outlandish syllables counted as one name or two. What we cannot possibly conceive, however, is how the list could suddenly break off fifteen generations before Herodotus' own time with a remark by the priest that all 330 kings so far listed were of no importance. No

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Egyptian could ever have held a view of Egyptian history that squeezed all important events and the most familiar kings into the few centuries immediately before his own time.

It seems apparent, as Lloyd pointed out (1 p. 107), that the priests gave a breakdown of the contents of the list. The next section in Herodotos (2.101) begins, “The other kings, they said, were personages of no note.” The procedure is well exemplified in Diodoros 1.44.4 (Loeb tr.):55 For the rest of the time all the kings of the land were natives, four hundred and seventy of them being men and five women. About all of them the priests had records which were regularly handed down in their sacred books to each successive priest from early times, giving the stature of each of the former kings, a description of his character, and what he had done during his reign; as for us, however, it would be a long task to write of each of them severally, and superfluous also, seeing that most of the material included is of no profit. Consequently we shall undertake to recount briefly only the most important of the facts which deserve a place in history.

In his Introduction to the Loeb Manetho, the editor points out that we have such a Royal List in the Turin Papyrus (p. xxii):

65 Anne Burton, in her commentary on Diodoros Book 1 (Leiden 1972) 2529 and 143, states that Diodoros was not relying on Manetho and differs

from Herodotos in many details. "As will be seen from the commentary, much of Diodoros' information has far more support from Egyptian texts and archaeological evidence than has been previously imagined." Diodoros himself visited Egypt and in one passage (1.83.8) gives an eye-witness account. In 1.44.1, he gives the date of his visit (60-56 B.c.). In his introduction,

Diodoros tells us that he worked for thirty years collecting material, visiting the countries concerned. Incidentally, Diodoros tells of cults, rites, and legends, not mentioned in Herodotos, which were brought to Egypt from Greece. No methodology on the transmission of legends can be formulated on a study of Herodotos alone.

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... the Turin Papyrus, written in hieratic on the verso of the papyrus, with accounts of the time of Ramessés II. on the recto (which gives the approximate date, c. 1200 B.c.). In its original state the papyrus must have been an artistically beautiful exemplar, as the script is an exceptionally fine one. It contains the names of kings in order, over 300 when complete, with the length of each reign in years, months, and days; ... The papyrus begins, like Manetho, with the dynasties of gods, followed by mortal kings also in dynasties. The change of dynasty is noted, and the sum of the reigns is given: also, as in Manetho, several dynasties are added together, e.g. "Sum of the Kings from Ménés to [Unas]" at the end of Dynasty V. The arrangement in the papyrus is very similar to that in the Epitome of Manetho.©

There is much other evidence collected by Lloyd, including the Palermo Stone of the Fifth Dynasty, but we focus on the point made by Lloyd concerning Manetho, the Egyptian High Priest who wrote 150 years after Herodotos, with whom Fehling shows no familiarity. Lloyd writes (1.110): Manetho was writing Egyptian History for a Greek audience and for Greek tastes. His situation was, therefore, basically analogous to that of our hypothetical learnéd priest and we meet in his Αἰγυπτιακά precisely those ingredients which our earlier discussion has suggested we ought to meet when an Egyptian found himself in such a position. Let us consider some entries:

After citing eight parallels, Lloyd concludes (p. 111): Hence, in the writings of an Egyptian High Priest of the reign of Ptolemy II we find all the ingredients which characterize the 66Cf. Manetho frgs. ssff. and Pseudo-Manetho or Eratosthenes (?) as cited by Waddell on pages 212ff. of the Loeb edition of Manetho. See also the “Old Chronicle" cited by Waddell on pages 226ff. For Manetho and the Turin Canon, see Hayes, CAH? 2 Part 1 (1973) p. 44.

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tradition on Egyptian History in Book II of Herodotus’ History and we must conclude that the information of the latter on the

subject could have been derived from priests of high rank.

The legends which are found in both authors include the Sesostris tale and the Proteus legend, and otherwise show the integration of Greek and Egyptian traditions, a fact which has been vigorously denied by Fehling. It would be far-fetched, and an issue certainly not faced by Fehling, to argue that Manetho was writing a work of fiction. In his chapter on the nature of evidence for history in ancient Egypt, Ludlow Bull in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near

East (New

Haven

1955) writes, "There

is no ancient

Egyptian word known to the writer which closely corresponds to the English word history as used in the general title of these essays, nor is there any Egyptian text known to him which can be said to express an ‘idea of history’ held by an ancient Egyptian author (p. 3) ... We cannot say that they were great histo-

riographers, for no histories have survived from the dynastic period ... It should be recalled that the only historical work of any great importance known to us is the History of Manetho of which we have spoken already. It may well be thought of as inspired by the Greek view of history" (p. 20). As one would judge from Herodotos, there were king lists and much epigraphical material on monuments. The texts are autobiographical and propagandistic, written in a bombastic style. The rest was oral, embracing a great proportion of unhistorical traditions and popular legends. Cf. W.G. Waddell in the Introduction to the Loeb Manetho, pp. xx-xxi. On pages 6-7 of his Introduction, Fehling writes, "The almost complete absence of any elements of genuine Egyptian tradition has simply been explained ad hoc by the hypothesis of a low level of education among the priests and guides. Viewed in the cold light of day, what the proverbial ingenuity of scholars has achieved here is quite a piece of effrontery. ... The total

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lack of any echoes of genuine Egyptian literature is generally explained by an appeal to 'Volksüberlieferung', or ‘popular tradition'. Yet where do we ever find popular tradition without any contact with national literature?" Fehling does not enlighten as to what this Egyptian "national literature," which seems to have escaped Egyptologists, was, nor does he explain why Manetho and others did no better with Sesostris. Fehling's presumptuousness results from a failure to understand Egyptian historiography. The integration of Greek and Egyptian traditions is not restricted to those contained in Herodotos. In the light of Manetho's

reference

(frg. 50.102 Waddell)

to Aigyptos and

Danaus, Waddell writes, The tradition is that Danaus, a king of Egypt, was expelled by his brother and fled to Argos with his fifty daughters, and there "the sons of Aegyptus" were slain by "the daughters of Danaus." The legend appears to have existed in Egypt as well as in Greece: see Diod. Sic. i.28.2, 97.2. For attempts to explain the story in terms of Aegean pre-history, see J.L. Myres, Who Were the Greeks? (1930), pp. 323ff.; M.P. Nilsson, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (1932), p. 64.

Since the reference to Hekataios in our passage is discussed at greater length by S. West, we defer treatment to the next section. We have followed Fehling through all of his examples treated in Chapter One, ending with p. 86. He himself refers (p. x) to "Chapter Two, which in its whole mode of expression is geared to readers already convinced by much of Chapter One and is no longer concerned with argumentation but, in the main, catalogues examples." Fehling (p. 22 and passim), we have seen, invokes an "hypothesis of straightforward invention by Herodotus" of stories where he quotes sources. We have examined all of

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Fehling's crucial cases, finding the majority disproved by the

research of others whom Fehling does not cite. Parenthetically, we note here, and shall return to the subject below, that many of the alleged fabrications of Herodotos pertain to Greek sources (Samos, Athens, Korinth, etc.), whose people would easily have perceived that Herodotos had fabricated his stories about themselves. Much of Fehling's material has to do with double sources for various legends or myths. Fehling sees Herodotos through the eyes of a twentieth-century rationalist who discredits all myths, folk-tales, sagas, and legends. As a corrective, we offer the following passage by M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus? (London 1977) 23-25, which we believe has

captured the spirit of the ancients with regard to myths. Writing after the middle of the fifth century s.c., the historian Herodotus said (2.45), 'The Hellenes tell many things without

proper examination; among them is the silly myth they tell about Heracles. That myth describes how Heracles (now better known in the Latin form, Hercules) went to Egypt, was about to be sacrificed to Zeus, and at the last moment slew all his captors. How silly, says Herodotus, when a study of Egyptian customs reveals that human sacrifice was unthinkable among them. But Herodotus had no difficulty in believing that Heracles actually existed once upon a time. In fact, he thought there had been two. Herodotus was a widely traveled man; he found what he identified as Heracles myths and Heracles cults, or parallels, everywhere, in Phoenician Tyre and in Egypt as well as among Hellenes. He tried to sift out truth from fable and to reconale contradictions and discrepancies. Among the conclusions to which he came were that the name Heracles was originally Egyptian— for which Plutarch later accused him of being a 'barbarianlover'—and that there were actually two figures of that name, one a god, the other a hero. What more could Herodotus have done? The accumulated tradition of centuries of myths and legends, sacred and profane,

2. FEHLING 5 EXAMPLES

was all that there was in the way of early Greek history. Some of it was obviously self-contradictory from the beginning. In one respect the ancient Greeks were always a divided people in their political organization. By Herodotus’s time, and for many years before, Greek settlements were to be found not only all over the area of modern Hellas but also along the Black Sea, on the shores of what is now Turkey, in southern Italy and Sicily, on

the North African coast, and on the littoral of southern France. Within this ellipse of some fifteen hundred miles at the poles, there were hundreds and hundreds of communities, often differing in their political structures and always insisting on their separate sovereignties. Neither then nor at any time in the ancient world was there a nation, a single national territory under one sovereign rule, called Greece (or any synonym for Greece). Such a world could not possibly have produced a unified, consistent national mythology.

In the early centuries, when

myth-creation was an active process in its most vital and living stage, the myths

necessarily underwent

constant alteration.

Each new tribe, each new community, each shift in power relations within the aristocratic élite, meant some change in the genealogies of heroes, in the outcome of past family feuds, in the delicate balances among men and gods. Obviously a new version which developed in one area did not coincide with the old, or new, version known in dozens of other areas. Nor was agreement sought. Neither the myth-tellers nor their audiences were scholars; they were participants in their own social activities and they were not in the least concerned with the myths of others. It was altogether another world when a historian like Herodotus

engaged

in the study of comparative mythology.

Then it became necessary to manipulate the traditional accounts—manipulate, but not discard. They were checked for inner consistency, corrected and amplified with the knowledge acquired from the very much older records and traditions of other peoples—Egyptians and Babylonians, in particular—and rationalized wherever possible. Thus purified, they could be

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retained, as ‘history’ if not as anything more. A human society without myth has never been known, and indeed it is doubtful whether such a society is at all possible.

For Herodotos’ practice of assigning traditions and legends to entire groups (οἱ ᾿Αθηναῖοι, etc.), whom he considered as having special local competence, F. Jacoby, Atthis (Oxford 1949) 216, with accompanying note on 390, has written as follows: For the most important quality of his authorities is their being ἐπιχώριοι, and this quality is lacking in the Panhellenic poets, whom he usually denotes by "EAAnves: it is natural that ‘the Athenians themselves’ should be best informed about Athens, and this assumption (or this principle of criticism) is to Herodotos so natural that on the strength of their statements he ventures to contradict a distinguished earlier author or epic tradition

(the latter not in regard to Athens); or again, when

following a certain Athenian source, in which he has the greatest confidence for personal reasons, he adds also the general tradition of ‘the Athenians' because he does not venture to reject the latter. Herodotos feels this epichoric tradition as a unity, although it must have been handed down to him by individual persons. These λόγιοι may have been priests, and in Athens they may have been exegetai; but if so, they were λόγιοι not because they held these offices but because they came from circles where knowledge might be expected. ... We must not look for particular reasons for this vagueness (although it is tempting sometimes to do so): Herodotos similarly cites in nine passages the Λακεδαιμόνιοι (Σπαρτιῆται), naming Archias for one detail

only, although he may owe to Archias a great portion of his information about Sparta (3.55). The collection given in RE Suppl. ii, col. 398f. shows that it was an exception for Herodotos to give a name or an accurate characterization of a locally determined

source in either Greek or barbarian citations. The reason has

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long been recognized; it is the same as that for the rarity of citations of authors in pre-Hellenistic writers: what matters is the tradition, not the persons, sometimes determined only by chance, who hand it down, whether in writing or in narrative. But this attitude is possible only because local tradition was uniform in the main facts. The tradition about the liberation of Athens shows that in spite of this uniformity wide differences might exist concerning details; and modern investigation into sources was right in not being satisfied with these general citations; modern scholars try at least to establish the circles from which information comes. ... For historical events Herodotos does not simply cite the Ἕλληνες (as he does for events of the heroic age), he always qualifies: ol πολλοὶ Ελλήνων (6.75.3; the statements of the Athenians and Argives follow); πάντες Ἕλληνες

(6.134.1;

added); τινὲς

a subsequent

᾿Ελλήνων

(7.151);

account

of the

ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλάς

Parians

(which

is

agrees

with the Corinthians against the φάτις of the Athenians 8.94.4);

i.e. the local tradition of one city or the majority of cities. ... Herodotos probably narrated the various oriental λόγοι in the form in which his authorities provided them, but anyone reading without preconceived opinion his history of the Persian Wars will perceive at once that here he did not simply repeat a story shaped out by narrators, but collected his material on the spot in the several cities, composing it with perfect freedom in the framework offered by the generally known sequence of the few great battles.

Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison 1985) 19ff.

discusses "oral memories of groups such as villages, chiefdoms, kingdoms, associations, and various kinship groups," including traditions of origins. To Jacoby's treatment, we may append the observation of O. Murray in Achaemenid History 2 (Leiden 1987) 101:

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It is characteristic of Herodotus, and fortunate for us, that he

at least appears to represent each tradition separately: he does not seem to seek systematically to contaminate or to rationalise his sources. Instead he gives one account from each place: when variants occur, they are normally derived from different localities. In this he approaches the ideal of the modern observer, who is expected to record each tradition separately. In principle we must assume that Herodotus wishes us to believe that each account is drawn from those whom he regards as logioi andres. The model is impeccable, however faulty the execution. To postulate deliberate and wholesale deception (with Fehling 1971), rather than faulty execution, requires an answer to the question, who invented the model which Herodotus is thought to have abused? It implies a proto-Herodotus before Herodotus.

Centuries later, Pausanias was duplicating Herodotos' procedure of checking on the same myth in different places. In 8.25 and 42, he expressly states that "the same" tale about the

wrath of Demeter was told in Phigalia and Thelpusa. "It was mainly to see this Demeter that I came to Phigalia." Cf. W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology (Berkeley 1979) 127. Pausanias is replete with such statements as "Those about the sanctuary say" (8.37.5); "The story of the Arkadians is" (8.26.10).

Having dealt with the “demonstrably fictitious passages" for which Fehling claims (p. 11) a “moral charge of fraud," we turn to selected cases which he offers as "parallels" in the remainder of his book. We attempt to include those to which he devotes several pages. Since he writes of the entire history (p. 6), "To an enormous extent it is a matter of the absence of any correct information," a complete commentary would be required to treat all of his indictments. On page 149, Fehling asks the question in bold type, "Are there any indisputably genuine sourcecitations?", and answers, "There are only two cases for which I know of a positive argument." The two are 7.201, where the lo-

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cal name for Thermopylai is said to be Pylai, and 7.176.3, where the hot springs are called Χύτροι by the local people. In the light of such wholesale condemnation, only a sample of his citations is possible. Since the History ranges over the entire ancient oikoumene, no scholar can master all the bibliography necessary to control the veracity of every citation. We present sample cases in the order of Fehling’s pagination. 17. On p. 77, Fehling writes without any documentation, “No literate Egyptian in Herodotus’ day could have believed that Memphis had been the capital throughout all but the recent history of Egyptian history, when in reality it had ceased to be the capital a millennium and a half before.” Now, Herodotos in the section discussed by Fehling (2.99-142) never

uses a word for “capital,” or its equivalent in Egyptian, the palace of the king.$7 He says in 2.99 that Min was the first king of Egypt and that he founded

Memphis.

Manetho

(frg. 6)

writes, “The first royal house numbers eight kings, the first of whom Menes of This reigned for 62 years. ... Athothis, his son, ... built the palace at Memphis" (τὰ ἐμ Μέμφει βασίλεια οἰκοδομήσας, Loeb tr. pp. 27-29). Herodotos in the Egyptian logos does not use any form equivalent to τὰ βασίλεια, nor does he refer to the seat of any dynasty. Fehling has completely distorted the passage. Incidentally, in this same paragraph (2.99), Herodotos attributes to Min the construction of a dyke. In CAH? 1.2 (1971) 15, LE.S. Edwards writes, "There is certainly

no reason to doubt that the construction of a dyke would have been required before the city could be built. Until the introduction of modern methods of irrigation, the whole of the Giza province owed its protection from inundation to a dyke in the neighbourhood of Wasta. Such a dyke probably

67 Sauneron, in G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization

(New York

1959) 205—206, notes that the royal palaces were made of much more fragile materials than the great Egyptian ruins. He lists several sites.

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existed in the time of Herodotus, but did not necessarily date back to Menes.” 18. Criticizing the view that Herodotos is right until proven wrong, Fehling (p. 87 n. ı) reverses the process, “The burden of proof passes to the apologists’ side once it has been established for a given category that (a) a sufficient number of cases are not authentic and (b) not a single case is demonstrably authentic.” But we look long and hard in Fehling’s book for anything that is “demonstrably authentic.” In reading Fehling, S. West, Armayor, one may call to mind a statement by Peregrine Worsthorne about the modern journalist, "No journalist uses the word truth except as a synonym for dirt. Given the headline ‘Truth about Convent’, there would be no question of expecting the accompanying story to tell about prayer, sanctity or chastity." When a Roman relief has been cited as supporting a passage in 2.28 about the measurement of the Nile, Fehling (p. 89 n. 3) writes, this “proves nothing since it is most probably based on Herodotus." When Aristotle's Ath.Pol. has been cited as confirming Solon's travel abroad (Herodotos 1.29.1)

and Peisistratos' exile (1.62.1), Fehling (p. 227) writes, "That only goes to show how dependent on Herodotus later authors were." There is no limit to the impeachment of the record. Herodotos (7.89.1) says the number of Persian ships at Salamis was 1207. The same number is given by Aischylos (Persai 341-

343). But for Fehling, nothing in Herodotos can be right, so Aischylos' figure too must be wrong. Therefore, the argument

is advanced (p. 233) that "Aeschylus' figure is based on the assumption that Xerxes had as many ships as Agamemnon had in the Iliad." The number 1200, he adds, "is actually the figure later given by Thucydides for Agamemnon's fleet" (Thucydides 1.10.4). *... Aeschylus needs an irregular-looking number. For this reason the poet adds the small number seven to the twelve hundred" to make his account seem realistic. Thus Aischylos and Herodotos were both mistaken. Fehling does not

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tell us that the total number of ships in the Homeric catalogue was 1,186 (see, for example, D. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad [Berkeley 1959] 152); so Aischylos

had an “irregular”

number to start with, if he wished to duplicate the Iliad rather than the unborn Thucydides. We are to put no stock in such statements as those of Hammond (Studies in Greek History [1973] 266) on Salamis, "Herodotos, of course, wrote

a much

fuller account, based upon eyewitness accounts and written or recited for an audience which included many, who had participated in the battle," and ignore the fact that Aischylos fought in the battle and presented his play eight years after the event.65

The numbers for the Marathon dead are also regarded by Fehling as among Herodotos' lies (p. 234): The number given for the Athenian dead at Marathon in 6.117.1, a hundred and ninety-two (i.e. 200 minus 8) must also

belong here. It obviously makes a great impression when the number of men lost in a great battle is so small that it can be given right down to the last man. The rhetorical force of the number here can be stated as "not even as much as the small number x". In other words it is the converse of the common type *even more than the great number y".

Now

Pausanias (1.32.3) states that in the Marathon plain is

the grave of the Athenians and over it are stelai with the names of the fallen arranged according to tribes.69 The soros was exca-

vated in the 1890's, but there were no anthropologists at that time to count the bones among the incinerated dead, but

68 This is not to overlook the fact that there are problems with the numbers, since Herodotos

(7.184.1) gives the figure at Doriskos as 1,207 ships

strong; see Hammond 269-270.

69Plutarch (Aristeides 5) knew that two of the tribes had suffered most heavily, but he gives no numbers.

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the ancient would have known the number from the stelai. In any case, every schoolboy in Herodotos’ day must have known the record of the Marathon figures. Some Athenians had participated in the battle or visited Marathon. By Fehling's treatment, Herodotos, who wrote or recited for an audience which included Athenians, has invented a figure which his audience knew was false. 19. Under the heading, "Passages with simple source-citations, in which the fabrication is capable of proof," Fehling (p. 90) writes, "4.187.3: the Libyans believe that their practice of

cauterising children makes them the healthiest of all mankind. Greek theory lies behind this." Leo Frobenius, Atlas Africanus 5 (1921) 12, reported that cauterization was still practised in the

Sahara and along the Barbary Coast. A.W. Lawrence, in his commentary, cites Ibn Khaldun, in the fourteenth century, as putting the normal length of life as 80 years. Today, the term "Vienna caustic" is applied to a mixture of potassium hydrate and lime, forming a powder used in medicine as a caustic. The fact that Hippokrates (Aer. 20) attributes cauterization to the Skythians is no basis for evolving a theory that Greek science was interested in the subject, so Herodotos concocted a story and applied it to the Libyans. In 2.77, Herodotos couples the Libyans with the Egyptians as the healthiest of peoples. He re-

marks on the Egyptians' habit of purging themselves for three days every month; they pursue health by purges and emetics and believe that human disease arises from food. E.D. Phillips, Greek

Medicine (London

1973) 15, comments,

"Perhaps

the

most important Egyptian notion found in papyri was that disease was due to putrefying residues of food carried in the bowels and giving off gases which permeated the body. Hence the continual use of purges in Egypt." 20. Passages where native informants are said to have insisted on the uniqueness of an event are judged by Fehling (p. 91) to be entirely invented, of which we select the most interesting:

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“6.98.1: uniqueness of the earthquake on Delos” before the battle of Marathon. Thucydides (2.8.3) also reports an earthquake at Delos as being unique. Fehling writes, The odd recurrence of the earthquake at a later date, again with a remark that it was unique, in Thucydides 2.8.3 has been variously explained; see the commentators on both passages and

A.

Momigliano,

Stud.

It. 8 (1930) 87-9.

In the German

edition I left the question open, but in fact the only possibility is that Thucydides' remark is based on Herodotus but that he is drawing on him from memory and has unwittingly transferred the event to the time immediately preceding the Peloponnesian War. Consequently, when Thucydides says that the earthquake was taken as a portent, he cannot be speaking from any real per-

sonal knowledge. That means that Thucydides, too, was capable of making up connections where he thought them likely. Perhaps the best term would be historical licence.

Thus, Herodotos and Thucydides are both fictionalizing. The correct solution, we believe, is that of Gomme (HCT 2 [1956] 9), who annotates the Thucydidean passage: "Thucydi-

des cannot be referring to the same earthquake; nor, I think, is he correcting Herodotus. See my Essays p. 122 n." Cf. Capelle, RE Suppl. 4 (1924) 351.43-61

(two different

traditions).

As

noted in War 3.114-115, the yearly average of seismic activity in Greece is about 275. As one living within 100 meters of the great San Andreas fault in California, I have experienced many earthquakes which have faded from memory. In 490 B.c., some Delphians reported an earthquake. About sixty years later, the memory of this earthquake on the Sacred Island was lost, and there was a second report to Thucydides of one as being unique. I see no reason to believe that Thucydides had pored over his Herodotos so closely as to be aware of any contradiction. R.F. Newhold, PACA 16 (1982) 28—36, examines 94 reports

of earthquakes in five historians (excluding Herodotos), as well

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as modern ones, noting that they were often expressed with superlatives. See also Gabba, JRS 71 (1981) 56.

21. On page 96, Fehling devotes a section to what he calls miraculous stories for which some natural explanation is offered: Herodotus is constantly at pains not to stray beyond the bounds of credibility in anything he reports in his own name. This practice has worked wonders for his credit; and many of the passages 1 am now about to discuss have often been adduced as proof of his scrupulous honesty. In fact, as a whole series of passages unequivocally show, we are once more dealing with a literary form.

Fehling's first example which we have not already studied is 3.102, the story of giant ants in the desert near the town of Kaspatyros in India, which, as they burrow, throw up sand-heaps containing gold (Loeb tr.): There are found in this sandy desert ants not so big as dogs but bigger than foxes; the Persian king has some of these, which have been caught there. These ants make their dwellings underground, digging out the sand in the same manner as do the ants in Greece, to which they are very like in shape, and the sand which they carry forth from the holes is full of gold. It is for this sand that the Indians set forth into the desert.

On three following pages (97, 129, 166), Fehling returns to the story as an example of Herodotos' "fictiveness." There are two parts to the story which are challenged: the presence of so-called "great ants," found in India, at the Persian court, and the existence of the "giant ants." Aelian (NA 4.21) writes of an Indian animal which he calls the naprıxapas (“man-eater”) (Loeb tr.): "Ctesias declares that

he has actually seen this animal in Persia (it had been brought

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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from India as a present to the Persian King)" = Jacoby, FGrHist 688 frg. 45D. Xenophon in the Anabasis thrice refers to παράδεισοι maintained by the Persians: in 2.4.14, it is a "pleasure

garden" (Goodwin); in 1.4.10, it is a park adjacent to the palace; and in 1.2.7, Kyros has “a palace and a large park full of wild animals." In Hell. 4.1.15, Pharnabazos has a palace with nearby parks (plural) containing animals, some in enclosed places. In Kyr. 1.3.14, Astyages says to Kyros that after dinner he will show “the animals that are now in the park and I will collect others of every description" (Loeb). Ktesias in the Persika records an episode (frg. 71, Gilmore) when the king went out to hunt: éEέρχεται βασιλεὺς ἐπὶ θήραν. Curtius (Alex. 8.6) records a similar episode about Alexander while hunting. For Achaemenid hunting scenes, see M.A. Littauer and J.H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near

East

(Leiden

1979)

158

n. 65.79

In

the

article

on

“Zoological Gardens" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ııth ed., we are told that zoos were found in China as early as 1100 B.c., and were common in Egypt. J. Yoyotte in G. Posener's Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (New York 1959) 249, writes

that the maintenance of zoos was regular in the Late Period in Egypt. There is no reason to doubt either Ktesias or Herodotos about Indian animals in the menageries of the Persians. The Greeks had no scientific vocabulary. Xenophon (Anab. 1.5.2) calls an ostrich a μέγας στροῦθος, a great sparrow. Herodotos explains that his creature (μύρμηξ) was smaller than a dog but bigger than a fox. No one would regard Xenophon's creature as a sparrow; so Herodotos' is not a 7 Lafay, in DS, Dictionnaire 5.958ff. has collected a wealth of evidence on

παράδεισοι in Asia and Egypt for the collections of animals. C. Malamoud, in his study of Ktesias’ sources in the Introduction to J. Auberger's recent

edition (Paris 1991), states that, if Ktesias did not actually visit India, he must have come into contact with Indians at the Persian court. At the least,

his Indica must be regarded as a picture of India, such as it was conceived by the Persians. Many things in his description which were formerly looked upon as fabulous, have been proved to be founded on facts.

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"fabulous" insect.? Strabo (16.4.15.774) uses the phrase λέουσι

τοῖς καλουμένοις μύρμηξιν (lions called ants), clearly not referring to an insect. Again, in 2.1.9.70, he tells us that in India were μύρμηκες that mined gold. Aelian (NA 3.4) also refers to the μύρμηκες

of India, but there is a lacuna where Aelian

would apparently have told us what they are.

A more impor-

tant passage is Strabo 13.1.44.705 (Loeb tr.): Nearchus says that the skins of gold-mining ants are like those of leopards. But Megasthenes speaks of these ants as follows: that among the Derdae, a large tribe of Indians living towards the east and in the mountains, there is a plateau approximately three thousand stadia in circuit, and that below it are gold mines, of which the miners are ants, animals that are no smaller than foxes, are surpassingly swift, and live on the prey they catch. They dig holes in winter and heap up the earth at the mouths of the holes, like moles; and the gold-dust requires but little smelting.

Nearchos served with Alexander, and Megasthenes served on several embassies, sent by Seleucus I in 302-291 B.c. to the court of the Indian king.7? Pliny (NH 11.536.111) makes it quite clear that we are not dealing with an insect, what moderns call an ant, when he reported the remains of one in the temple of Herakles at Erythrai (Loeb tr.):

“The modern speaks of a “Great Dane,” which is not to be understood as a native of Denmark; the noun cannot be understood without the adjective. Herodotos

(2.71), as Aristotle later (HA 2.7.502a), uses the phrase ἵππος

ὁ

ποτάμιος, which we do not take to be a domesticated animal (a river's

horse). The Ethiopian species of monkeys was called sphinx in antiquity; see W.C. McDermott, The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore 1938) 67, 84. 720. Murray, CQ 66 (1972) 206, offers an appraisal of Nearchos: “Nearchus is a reasonably trustworthy and reliable writer, who reports largely what he saw, without romantic exaggeration. This is the account of an honest and perceptive soldier, not an intellectual."

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The horns of an Indian ant (formica) fixed up in the Temple of Hercules were one of the sights of Erythrae. These ants carry gold out of caves in the earth in the region of the Northern Indians called the Dardae. The creatures are of the colour of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves.

The skins seen by Nearchos are compared to those of a leopard. The animal has been identified as the Central Asian marmot, comparable to the American ground-hog. They live in sandy places and dig burrows. Gold may have been present in the great heaps of sand which they cast out. Gold is said to have occurred in the alluvium along the courses of many rivers between the Indus and the Yenisei. How-Wells comment: Busbecq. (Ep.Turc. 4) says that in 1559 a Persian ambassador

brought, among other gifts, to the Sultan Soliman at Constantinople, an Indian ant ‘magnitudine canis mediocris, animal mordax et saevum'. That ants dug up gold is a genuine In-

dian story; cf. Wilson, Ariana, pp. 135-6 (quoting the Mahäbhárata), who says the gold paid as tribute was called ‘ant gold’

(Pippílika).

In addition to the Mahabharata, Lawrence adduces several ref-

erences to the "ant-gold" paid as a tribute to the Indian king. Albrecht Dihle, in his chapter on Herodotos and India in Fondation

Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) 41-61, has much to say

about our passage in tracing the origins of Herodotos' information about India. Since Herodotos mentions the city of Kaspatyros in our passage and in 4.44 tells us that Skylax started his voyage down the Indus from this city, Skylax would seem to be a possible candidate, although he could have picked up the information about the marmot at a Persian zoo. Just as the term "great sparrow" (μεγάλη

στρουθός) is translated as os-

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trich in Xenophon (Anab. 1.5.2),73 confusion could be avoided by rendering "great ant" as marmot. Herodotos is frequently vilified for referring to "gold-digging ants," a rendition which is completely misleading. It clearly was a rodent, not an insect, and there is nothing "fictive" about the creature. The golddust was brought to light not by ants, but by marmots while

they were excavating their holes. 22. On the same page as the preceding case (p. 96), Fehling cites 4.195 as another example of a "miraculous story with a

Confirmation that safeguards his own credit": He chooses the Carthaginians as his source for a report that gold is panned by means of feathers smeared with pitch in a lake in the territory of the Gyzantes. If the normal rule of citing the obvious source were applied here and the Gyzantes were cited, this would be tantamount to making Herodotus an eyewitness. He cites the Carthaginians instead because they are the nearest trading centre.

Herodotos related that an island called Kyraunis was said by the Karthaginians to lie off the coast of the Gyzantes. It contained a lake where the maidens of the country drew up golddust out of the mud by means of feathers besmeared with

pitch. Herodotos did not know whether to believe this story or not, and he only reports what was related to him. He is, however, more inclined to believe it than otherwise, for he has seen pitch obtained in a similar manner from a lake in Zakynthos. Edward Dodwell (A Classical and Topographical Tour through

Greece1

[London 1819] 81) confirmed the analogy of

pitch skimmed at Zakynthos at the time of his visit in 1805:

7 Herodotos (4.175 and 192) uses the phrase oTpov0oi «ard yatot for ostriches.

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At a distance of two furlongs from the shore there is a spot, with which his description appears in every respect to correspond. This space is surrounded by the remains of a circular wall about seventy feet in diameter: it is indeed for the most part filled up with earth; but three or four small pits of considerable depth are encirded by the enclosure, within which the ground is far more tremulous than that which surrounds the first-mentioned fountain. These indications lead me to believe that this must have been the situation of the pit described by the historian; and it is singular that on this spot, the tedious process of extracting the bitumen is still in some measure the same as that which he has described; and the same kind of instrument is employed. In both these springs the bitumen is produced in a pure and perfect state, rising in large bubbles under the surface of the water, which is so impregnated with it that it reflects a most beautiful variety of colours.

Earlier, Richard Chandler in 1776 ( Travels in Greece 302) also

described the method of obtaining pitch as being exactly that of Herodotos.

Vitruvius

(8.3.8)

mentions

the bituminous

spring in Zakynthos. With this confirmation of what Herodotos says he saw, we turn to the Libyan reference. In his commentary on the Libyan logos, S. Gzell (Herodote [Alger 1915] 87) writes: Les Carthaginois qui, comme le chapitre suivant du livre IV le prouve, allaient acheter le précieux métal sur la cóte de l'Océan, auraient entendu parler de la maniére dont des femmes le re-

cueillaient. Les jeunes filles d'Hérodote péchaient les paillettes avec des plumes enduites de poix. Mungo-Park (Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique, trad. Castéra, II, p. 64) a indiqué que des femmes de l'Afrique occidentale mettent leur récolte d'or dans des tuyaux de plumes.

Gzell judges that Herodotos has made an error in his location.

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Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer famous as the first European to explore the Niger,74 devotes a lengthy account in his chapter 23 to a description of the collecting of gold-dust in the interior of Africa in 1799. He explains that the gold is washed

down by repeated torrents from the hills. When the harvest is over in December and the streams and torrents have subsided, the women are appointed to do the “gold washing." In the sentence alluded to by Gzell, Park states, "The gold dust is kept in quills, stopped up with cotton; and the washers are fond of displaying a number of these quills in their hair.”76 The natives exchanged gold for salt. Since gold was collected from streams in 1799, there is no reason to doubt that it was much

more plentiful twenty-two hundred years earlier. We have a firm basis for the Karthaginian story, although the location may be an error. 23. In 2.32, Herodotos describes a route taken by the Nasamonians into central Sahara of Libya. Fehling (p. 98) writes: I begin with the remarkable passage in 2.32.1-3, in which the story of the exploration of the upper course of the Nile only comes to Herodotus at fourth hand. He spoke with people from Cyrene, who know from Ammonians that the Ammonian king spoke with some Nasamonians, who had knowledge of the expedition made by men of their nation. This is laid on so thick and the basic motif is so obvious that there can be no question that Herodotus really got the information by such a route. As for the content, according to the rule stated in $$2,25-26 the

74See the Encyl. Britannica ııth ed. vol. 20 p. 826. In discussing Amenhotep's foreign policy (1391-1353 8.c.), A.P. Kozloff and B.M. Bryan, Egypt's Dazzling Sun (Cleveland

1992) 58, publish a cuneiform text which reads,

"Gold is like dust in your country, one has only to pick it up." 75 [n 3.106, Herodotos notes that in India the gold was washed down by the rivers. 76 Page 232 of ]. Swift's paperback edition (London 1983) of Travels in the Interior of Africa.

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possibility that the account contained genuine information is

not in principle excluded, but that certainly does not apply to the story of a great river with crocodiles in it. I grant it would be

easy enough to explain it as any one of a number of rivers in Africa, but our whole experience of such matters indicates that all that is intended by the story is a Proof of the symmetrical positions of the Nile and the Danube. We may compare the false statement in 4.44.1 that there are crocodiles in the Indus.

The authenticity of this journey is defended by A. Berthelot, L'Afrique

saharienne

et soudanaise

(Paris 1927) 178; and S.

Gsell, Hérodote (Alger 1915) 203-224, who point out that the conditions of a river flowing east-west and containing crocodiles is met by a route passing the river Niger. This route was endorsed by A.W. Lawrence in his commentary, and, more recently, by R. Mauny in the Cambridge History of Africa 2 (1978) 284.77 The latter writes: lt is possible to suppose that the young Nasamonians men-

tioned by Herodotus (11.32) crossed the Sahara with the help of chariots. These are not specifically mentioned, but the most logical itinerary by which the Nasamonians could have reached a great river on the borders of Negroland, which had crocodiles in it and which flowed from west to east (perhaps the Niger bend between Bourem and Timbuktu), would be the central Saharan

‘chariot track’.78

77F. Rennell Rodd, Peopleof the Veil (London 1926) 30, writes that there has been diversion of the Niger. 78For a colloquium on “Les chars préhistoriques du Sahara” and articles

on the subject, see Bibliographie analytique de l'Afrique antique 17 (1982) 9.

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The route advocated by Gsell, the leading authority on the Libyan logos,79 meets all the requirements, including crocodiles. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, attempts to recover Herodotos’ routes interested many explorers. Just as Leake, Gell, Dodwell, and others, traveled through Greece with Pausanias in hand, so explorers in other countries followed on the trail of Herodotos. Their reports have the advantage over modern accounts in that they were made when means of transportation approximated those of antiquity. In 1800, James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus, Examined; and Explained

(London)

431ff., 621, identified the route which

seems to be the same as that supported by Gsell and Lawrence, naming earlier travelers not available to me. In 1854. J.T. Wheeler, Geography of Herodotus (London) 571-572, endorsed

Rennell's route with the following account: The river seen by the Nasamones has been supposed to refer to the Yeou, or river of Bornou, and the vast morasses to Lake Tchad; we however strongly incline to the older opinion expressed by Rennell, that the river alluded to was the Niger, and the city of short black men was Timbuctoo. The westerly course of the Nasamones commenced long after they had entered the desert, and they crossed none of the salt hills, nor indeed passed along the beaten caraven track which would alone have led them to the Lake Tchad, as it led Denham and Clapperton. Herodotus supposed that the route of the Nasamones led to the south of the salt hills, whereas it led to the west. The recent origin of Timbuctoo is no objection to this view, any more than the

79See G. Camps, SStor. 7 (1985) 39-40. Gsell (p. 207) notes that the river

Komadougou is also a candidate and that the river Niger has probably modified its course since antiquity. Commentators are puzzled by the description of the route as running west, rather than southwest; but Herodotos has the same confusion at Thermopylai and in Skythia, which may be attributed to his map.

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small stature of the natives; and if we may regard the Nasamones as represented by the modern Tuaraics, they are the very

men to have performed a similar exploit to that described by our author. Every traveler describes the Tuarics as the finest race ever seen; tall, straight, and handsome, with a certain air of in-

dependence and pride, which is very imposing. Three Tuarics once told Richardson that they had eaten nothing for fifteen days, and that lamented traveler adds that there can be no doubt of the fact, as both the Tibboos and the Tuarics can at a pinch remain without food for ten or twelve days together. We therefore see every reason to believe in the thorough authenticity of

the story of the expedition of the Nasamones, and that these first labourers in the field of African discovery, actually reached the banks of the Niger, and penetrated the old city where now stands the still mysterious Timbuctoo.

Another candidate is offered by R. Carpenter, AJA 60 (1956)

238-240, and endorsed by Lloyd (2 pp. 137-138). In tracing the trans-Saharan route described in 4.181—185, Carpenter argues

that Herodotos has He stipulates that roughly the size of was maintained by

duplicated the record in 2.32 and 4.181ff. Lake Chad in antiquity covered an area Belgium and Holland together and that it a long river-valley known today as the

Bodele Depression through which flowed a great ancient river. We cannot arbitrate between the candidates, offered independently of each other, particularly since further geological evidence is desirable, but note that Mauny is an authority on caravan routes (see his map p. 282) and would be predisposed to adopt his route supported by Gsell, Lawrence, and the four scholars listed by Lloyd 2 p. 138, and hence would infer that Herodotos did not duplicate his routes. When we turn to Fehling, we note that he cites none of the numerous authorities listed above, although he reviewed Lloyd 2. Moreover, in charging Herodotos with fabrication, he includes the Indus (4.44.1), where crocodiles (or alligators) have

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been attested from ancient to modern times. When Alexander saw crocodiles in the Indus, he thought that he had found the source of the Nile: Arrian Anab. 6.1.2. In his frenzied attempt to uphold his absurd source theory, Fehling displays a colossal ignorance of both geography and bibliography, which exceeds any error committed by Herodotos. 24. On p. 102, Fehling develops the thesis that in order to obtain credibility, Herodotos takes a custom which “finds a niche in every textbook of ethnology," but applies it inappropriately to a distant people about whom he has no information. As a case in point, Fehling refers to 4.196, where Herodotos gives an account from information given by the Karthaginians of silent barter on the Atlantic coast of Africa (tr. Powell): And the Carthaginians also say this, that there is a place in Libya where a people dwell beyond the Pillars of Heracles; and they go thither and unlade their merchandise and set it in order along the beach. Then they return to their ships and raise a smoke; and the people of that place, when they see the smoke, go down to the sea. Then they set down gold in exchange for the merchandise, and retire afar off; and the Carthaginians go ashore and look at the gold; and if they deem it sufficient for the merchandise, they take it and depart; but if they think it not sufficient, they get them back into their ships, and the people draw nigh and add more gold, until they are satisfied. And neither of them do wrong to the other; for the Carthaginians touch not the gold until it is made equal to the worth of the merchandise, and the people touch not the merchandise until the Carthaginians have taken the gold.

The place was identified with reasonable probability by early travelers in Africa, the evidence for which is collected most re-

cently by R.C.C. Law in The Cambridge (1978) 137-139. Hanno,

commissioned

History of Africa 2

by the Karthaginians

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early in the fifth century s.c. to establish colonies along the Atlantic coast of Africa, recorded a Periplous of which a Greek translation is preserved (“spätestens 450 v. Chr.”®°).

Hanno

reports that a trading post was founded on the island of Cerne (modern Arguin).®: In turn, in the Pseudo-Skylax (Periplous 112), we have the following account (tr. Law): The merchants are Phoenicians. When they arrive at the island of Cerne they moor their ships, setting up tents for themselves on Cerne. They unload their wares and take them across in small boats to the mainland. There are Ethiopians on the mainland, and it is these with whom they trade. They trade for hides of deer, lions, leopards, hides and teeth of elephants, and hides of domestic cattle. The Ethiopians use ornaments and cups of ivory.

Law notes that whereas Pseudo-Skylax describes a trade for hides and ivory, Herodotos refers to gold. However, that Cerne in the fourth century B.c. was a base for trade in gold is attested by Palaiphatos “Antota 31.8? As to the method of

trading, it was found in antiquity on the frontier of Egypt and Ethiopia and in Eritrea (Philostratos VA 6.2 and Cosmas Indic. 100), in the Far East (Pliny NH 6.24.88), and in Central Asia

(Peripl. M. Rubr. 65). Lawrence adds, "It may have persisted in 5o Treidler, Der kleine Pauly 2 (1967) 937. J.T. Wheeler, The Geography of Herodotus (London 1854) 579-581, offers an English translation of Hanno.

The Greek text is published by C. Müller, GGM vol. 1. J. Blomquist devotes a monograph to the subject with text and translation, dating it about 500 B.c.: The Date and Origin of the Greek Version of Hanno's Periplus (Lund 1979). Pepermans in Hermeneus 51 (1979) 341—346, gives a Dutch translation. There

are many studies of the voyages of Nekos (4.42) and Hanno. J. Desanges discusses recent publications in the Univ. of Nantes journal Enquétes & Docum. Nantes-Afrique-Amérique 6 (1981) 13-29. 81See Mauny, REA 57 (1955) 92-101. 82For the date, see Gártner, Der kleine Pauly 4 (1972) 416. J. Rennell, The

Geographical System of Herodotus (London 1800) 730, observed that in his day gold was collected farther to the south.

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the Arguin region, for the Venetian Cadamosto found the Moors and Negroes bartering salt for gold in this manner in the fifteenth century, and Europeans had adopted it by 1620, exchanging salt and trinkets for gold (R. Jobson, Golden Trade, 1904, p. 130).” We find no valid evidence for questioning the

Herodotean account, accepted by explorers and scholars alike. 25. Herodotos

2.73. Fehling (pp. 103-104) claims that the

story of the phoinix is an "ingenious invention ... Herodotus' claim to have seen pictorial representations

of the Phoenix

must at all events be fictitious” etc. The phoinix legend is taken by most authorities as an Egyptian solar myth, the bird representing the sun, which seems to perish each evening in its own fires, only to be reborn at dawn. The phoinix symbol of death and resurrection was appropriated by the Christians. The bird is identified as the benu, which is a heron-like bird, the embodiment of Re (Ra in older books) sacred to Osiris. It was deified

and worshipped under the form of an Osiris with the head of the bird.53 The benu has a red neck and breast, suitable for a bird of the sun. Herodotos apparently saw only the head in representations of Re and compared it to the eagle in size and

shape. It was generally thought that the phoinix makes its first appearance in Hesiod (frg. 304), but R. Van den Broek argues

that the name is to be found in the Mycenaean po-ni-ke, which Ventris and Chadwick first took to mean griffin,®4 an interpretation which Van den Broek defends and would explain by the supposition that griffins came to the Mycenaean world via Phoinikia. There are at least three books on the subject: J. Hubaux and M. LeRoy, Les myths du phénix dans les littérateurs grecques et latines (Liege 1939); M. Walla, Die Vogel Phoenix in der antiken Literatur und der Dichtung des Laktanz 8G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (New York 1959) 240, gives one picture of Re from the XIXth Dynasty with falcon head. 84 See now the second edition of Documents in Mycenaean Greek (1973) 344 and 502.

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(Vienna 1969); and R. Van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix, According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions, trans. I. Seeger (Leiden 1972). The latter two books are reviewed by Hudson-Williams in CR 86 (1972) 122 and 89 (1975) 165-166; Van den Broek's book by M. Smith in AJA 77 (1973) 462 (rather unfavorably) and by Delcourt in Latomus 33 (1974) 198—200. Lloyd treats the legend in 2.317-322, and Türk in Roscher ML 3.3450-3472. In the Temple of the Sun at

Heliopolis was a great obelisk, still extant, on either side of which stood a boat, one for the day and the other for the night journey of the Sun. There are divergencies of opinion, but there is no reason to doubt that Herodotos was told a solar myth at Heliopolis (which he did not believe), saw representations of the god Re with benu head, and applied a Greek name of a fabulous bird already attested in Greek mythology for its longevity. 26. 1.65.4. Herodotos relates that the Lykourgan system was given to the Spartans by Delphi, but the Lakedaimonians themselves asserted that the legislation was derived from Krete. Here we have a thorny problem which has given rise to an enormous bibliography, both ancient (Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Ephoros, Polybios, Plutarch, Strabo, and special writers of Κρητικά) and modern, which is dismissed by Fehling (p. 111) without any references; the one story is “mythical,” the “more realistic version is given the more authoritative source citation as a mark of authenticity." Ephoros treated the problem at length, attributing the common constitutions as the gift of Zeus to Rhadamanthos

(see Walbank,

HCP 1.726; 2.198, who

discusses the Polybios 6.45-47 passage on the subject), a version not derived in its entirety from Herodotos. Even the everSkeptical J. Fontenrose (The Delphic Oracle [1978] 271) writes

that the Delphic response in its simplest form "may be the ear-

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liest authentic Delphic response that we have."55 G.R. Morrow, Plato's Cretan City (Princeton 1960) 32-35, reconciles the two

traditions by suggesting that the oracle sanctioned the legislation which Lykourgos had drawn up as a result of his travels in Krete. In any case, there is nothing “mythical” about either version. Herodotos reported two traditions current throughout antiquity. The theory that because a historian cites two sources, he has fictionalized, is utterly bizarre. 27. Fehling finds the Zalmoxis story (4.94-96)

fabrication,

citing it as an example of "the more unlikely the story, the stronger the confirmation has to be" (p. 115). On p. 93, Fehiing

writes, "This is not a thing that can be told by the people he succeeded in deceiving, and who believe him to be a god; and so Herodotos makes the neighbouring Greek colonists his source (4.95.1)." The story was treated by G. Mazarow, “Zalmoxis,” Klio 12 (1912) 355-364. I. Marazov in his chapter on

Thrakian religion in A. Fol and I. Marazov, Thracians (New York 1977), writes, “Zalmoxis

Thrace and the seems to have

been the chief hero of the Getae ... Herodotus described a religious rite, connected with the Thracian belief in immortality ... That is why the ancient historian used the word athanatizo, meaning to make immortal. This expressed the hope of every Thracian to join Zalmoxis. The belief that after death man became an anthropodemon and a new hero was preserved up to Roman days, and is attested to by many reliefs which have come

down

to us"

(p. 36). See also no. 3b above.

In the

Charmides (156) Sokrates says that he learned the incantation for the cure of a headache during his Thrakian campaign from a disciple of the Thrakian Zalmoxis.

85 The reviews of Fontenrose's book by Bernard Knox in The American Scholar 48 (1979) 558—562, and by Peter Green in New York Review of Books 26,5 (1979) 12-16, and the subsequent exchange of letters in the issue of September 27, 1979, can be recommended.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

28. The Marathon),

epiphanies Epizelos

to

105

Pheidippides

(6.117: Marathon),

(6.105:

before

and Dikaios

(8.65:

Thriasian Plain) are the fictions of Herodotos, Fehling says (p. 117), because they were recounted by an informant and fall into his category "The X say." These epiphanies were studied in War 3.6—7, 23-25,8°6 and restudied, without knowledge of my

collection of war epiphanies, but with some additions, by K. Garbrah,

ZPE 65 (1986) 207-210.97 In the 6.105

passage,

Herodotos continues by saying that the Athenians, believing in the truth of Pheidippides' report, dedicated a precinct to Pan under the akropolis; cf. Pausanias 1.28.4. The archaeologist J. Travios, for example, writes, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (London 1971) 417, "The worship of Pan in Athens and

generally in Attica was introduced after the Persian Wars when the cave was consecrated to Pan." Thus, we have two stories, the veracity of which the Athenians of Herodotos' audience would recognize, but regarded by Fehling as fiction. The epiphanies of Pheidippides and Epizelos are now studied in detail by R. Garland,

Introducing

New

Gods (Ithaca 1992)

chapter 2: "Archaeological evidence for the cult of Pan in Attica bears out perfectly Herodotos' claim that it was only after the battle that the god became officially incorporated into the Athenian pantheon." Etc. Writing of visions and hallucinations, E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 116, states, "Among

the Greeks, by far the commonest type is the apparition of a god or the hearing of a divine voice which commands or forbids the performance of certain acts." He observes that several of these "experiences have an interesting point in common; they all occurred in lonely mountainous places, Hesiod's on Helicon, Philippides' on the savage pass of Mount Parthenion,

Pindar's during a thunderstorm in the mountains." Cf. Georg

86 Cf. War 4.5-6.

87See also the note of Frazer, Pausanias 5 p. 347.

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Luck, Arcana

Mundi (Baltimore 1985) 170. They are also fre-

quent during the stress of battle. Fehling has not explored the non-rational factors in human experience. 29. In the Egyptian logos, Fehling (p. 126) finds a fictive element in “2.126.1, where we are told that the Egyptians do not say how much money the king’s daughter earned by prostitution; the Egyptians would not have included such a prosaic detail in a fabulous story.” There is confusion here; the second clause does not contradict the first. Herodotos writes of the payment, "How much, I know not; for they did not tell me this.” The Egyptians did not include the sum, and apparently Herodotos did not ask. W.S. Smith in CAH? 1.2 (1971) 169, at-

tributes the story to "the lamentations of the time after the collapse of the Old Kingdora when men bewailed the uselessness of great tombs which could not protect the bodies of the kings buried in them." Lloyd (2.71) fully documents the common folk-tale as one of a series of world-wide motifs of a woman selling her favors for a particular purpose. There is nothing un-Egyptian in the story, as Fehling has it. It all hangs together. 30. In 2.106, Herodotos refers to various stelai of King Sesostris, including two τύποι in Ionia, one on the road from the land of Ephesos to Phokaia, the other on that from Sardis to Smyrna. Fehling devotes pages 134-136 of the English edi-

tion, amplifying his earlier study; and Stephanie West pp. 300301 of the CQ 1985 article. O.M. Armayor treated the subject in "Sesostris and Herodotus,” HSCP 84 (1980) 51-74, a treatment

which I criticized in Topography 4 (1982) 267-280. Fehling confidently writes, "Herodotus mentions two rock reliefs in Asia Minor, which are still in existence," taking the reliefs to be those in the Karabel pass. The thrust of his argument is about the inscription which Herodotos says ran across the shoulder. Noting belatedly in the English edition that Bittel did find traces of letters on the worn relief, Fehling invokes his double-

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

107

source theory, based on Herodotos' statement that he had determined elsewhere that the figure was not that of Memnon, concluding, “The explanation given above renders any further discussion superfluous." In turn, Stephanie West writes, "The road from Sardis to Smyrna does not run through the Karabel gorge but four miles north of it, and the natural road from Ephesus to Phocaea would be through Smyrna," quoting Ramsay in 1882: "It is certain that neither the road from Smyrna to Sardis, nor that from Ephesus to Phocaea could have gone through this pass, which is very far from the proper track," concluding that Herodotos is wrong, not only about the typoi, but also about the roads. The problem of the identification of the reliefs in the Karabel pass is tied to a passage in the sixth-century writer Hipponax, which gives an itinerary for a traveler going westwards from Lydia to "Smyrna" (frg. 42 M.L. West): tréape

[..... ] δεύειε

τὴν

ἰθὺ διὰ Λυδῶν παρὰ τὸν

ἐπὶ

Σμύρνης

Αττάλεω

τύμβον

καὶ σῆμα Γύγεω καὶ [Σεσώ͵στρίιος) στήλην καὶ μνῆμα Twtos Μυτάλιδι πάλμυδος,

πρὸς ἥλιον δύνοντα γαστέρα τρέψας. As I earlier noted, (1) Ramsey, in his Gifford lectures, adduced

evidence to the effect that Hipponax's "Smyrna" was probably a locality at Ephesos which in the sixth century was called Smyrna. (2) Sayce in 1931 claimed that he had deciphered the inscription of the southern Karabel relief as Hittite Tu(a)-ti =

Greek Tos. Thus, the Hipponax route would be Sardis, tomb of Gyges, the stele (of Sesostris), and the mnema

of Tos. (3)

Four typoi are now reported to exist in the Sardis-Karabel region. We do not have a corpus of reliefs and inscriptions of Herodotos' day, and we do not know how many have been de-

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stroyed or remain undiscovered.®® (4) As to the EphesosPhokaia road, Bean noted in 1966 that the Herodotean route

would depend on the lowest point at which the Hermus river could be forded, and that the ancient road probably ran through the Karabel. (5) I would be unwilling to reject outright Bergk's reading of [Σεσώ]στρίιος)

adopted

by M.L.

West. S. West labels M.L. West's reading "an ingenious guess, but far from certain." My only reservation about accepting the above route for that of Hipponax is the fourth line, that "the traveler is to keep his belly facing westwards"; he is hardly to go southwards towards the Kayster valley. Clive Foss, “Explorations on Mount Tmolus," CSCA n (1978) 21-60, has now explored the region of Mount Tmolus and the Kayster valley, identifying the route between Sardis and Ephesos used by the Athenians in 499 B.c.

(Herodotos 5.100) as one running east of the “easy pass of the Karabel," containing two typoi. For recent bibliography and a study of the Sesostris legend, see now Lloyd, 3 (1988) 20-21, 2628, and below pp. 248-250. As noted in Topography IV, we are dealing with figures which have been heavily eroded, even since they were first identified. Bittel worked from an 1874 cast in Berlin and Sayce

from another cast in Chicago, offering different texts. Sayce thought that there was an inscription, not only on the field beside the head, but on the shoulder. Both Lepsius, an Egyptologist, and H. Clark opined that there were originally other rupestral reliefs in the limestone cliffs.?9 The total identified in the entire region is now four. By Cook's interpretation of the Greek text, Herodotos is referring to two roads, one using the Karabel. I offered considerable documentation from the travel88Prominent rupestral inscriptions in the Vale of Tempe and on the island of Salamis have been destroyed when roads were enlarged.

89 Bean comments on the "soft rock" formations. The second figure in the Karabel was cut on a fallen rock and is badly damaged. It was not found until 1875.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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ers in confirmation that a road from Ephesos to Phokaia did

use the Karabel, the route of the highway today. My guess is that Herodotos referred to a relief in the Karabel and another on a Sardis-Smyrna road, although the latter route has not been mapped in the way that Foss has traced Herodotos' 5.100 road. There are first-rate authorities going back to Lepsius and Kiepert and distinguished linguists who disagree as to whether one, or both, or none of the Karabel reliefs are those identified by Herodotos and about the carvings on the reliefs. A. Philippson in Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen, Ergänzungsheft No. 172 (1911), has provided a large fold-out map in color. Before further progress can be made, perhaps the new photographic and laser techniques developed by M. Chambers for the decree containing the Athenian alliance with Egesta could be applied to resolve the difficulties over the conflicting readings, made primarily from different casts, for the eroded Karabel reliefs. In the light of S. West's strictures about Herodotos' treatment of the Sesostris legend, we quote from two recent (1990)

accounts.

D.

Asheri,

"Herodotus

on

Thracian

Society,"

Entretiens 35 (1990) 151-152, holds that the legend was a piece of

Egyptian nationalistic propaganda circulating in Memphis in the sixth century and greatly expanded after conquests by Dareios and Alexander: 1) The first event in Thracian history recorded by Herodotus is Sesostris' mythical conquest of Scythia and Thrace. ... After conquering the whole of Asia, Sesostris invaded Europe and subdued "the Scythians and the Thracians" (in this order). In Herodotus' opinion, these were the farthest nations to whom his army extended its march, "for in their country the pillars he erected are visible, while beyond them they are no longer found" (II 103, 1). What

Herodotus

has

in

mind

are

the

so-called

“Sesostris’ pillars" that he himself saw in Palestine (II 106, 1)

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and possibly in Thrace as well. Most significantly, it is easy to realize that when he writes about Sesostris he is really thinking of Darius, who also crossed into Europe after conquering (or rather reconquering) the "whole of Asia". He reveals the secret when he tells the story of Hephaestus' priest at Memphis, who once refused to place a statue of the Persian king next to those of Sesostris and his wife, claiming that while Darius had subdued all the other nations. Sesostris had subdued also the Scythians, whom the Persian king had been unable to conquer (II 110,2). It sounds as if, under the guise of a striking historical analogy, a piece of nationalistic propaganda of the late sixth century was still circulating in Memphis about sixty years after Darius' retreat from Scythia. ... In later sources, the whole comparison between Sesostris and Darius changes. In the account of Hecataeus of Abdera (FGrHist 264 F 25, ap. Diod. I 55, 6-7),

Sesostris, after conquering the whole of Thrace, gives up—like Darius—the idea of conquering Scythia. In other accounts, etc.

In the ensuing discussion of Asheri's paper, Lloyd (p. 168) states, The second issue on which I should like to speak is the question of the propagandist dimension in the Sesostris tradition— and here I am simply expanding on the observations of Professor Asheri. I am quite sure that the Sesostris figure of Herodotus has his origins in Egyptian tradition as the model, or at least a model of divine kingship. He does all the things expected of an Egyptian king. As such, he had decided potential as an instrument of nationalist propaganda. When confronted with the triumph and humiliation of the Persian occupation, the Egyptians both for themselves and for others used Sesostris as a symbol of their national greatness and achievement, and, if it becarne necessary to modify the details of the Sesostris logos for propaganda purposes, this was done. In Darius' time, and probably earlier, national self-esteern required that the Egyptians

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

111

should be able to boast of a ruler who surpassed, or at least

equalled, the conquests of the Great King. Sesostris is, therefore, presented in II 110 as even conquering the Scythians, something which Darius had signally failed to do. In later Greek tradition we find a development of this process when it became necessary for the Egyptians to cope with the culture-shock of Alexander’s conquests. Then we find that Sesostris’ conquests are expanded to equal or surpass those of this new threat to national self-esteem.

The nationalistic propagandist ideology of the pharaohs is illustrated by A.P. Kozloff and B.M. Bryan in their history of Amenhotep III (c. 1391-1353 B.c.), Egypt's Dazzling Sun (Cleveland 1992) 56-57: According to official ideology, the pharaoh was master of the world. Just as in the writings of the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus the conquests of the legendary king Sesostris were reported to have eclipsed those of Darius and Alexander the Great, so even Amenhotep III claimed sovereignty over Troy and Mycenae, Assyria, and Babylon. Rows of bound captives, foreigners, and hundreds of exotic people and places appear on the bases of statues, on column drums, and beneath the pharaoh's throne, pictured as "namerings." The latter are the names of foreign peoples and places enclosed within ovals representing the crenelated walls of fortresses, surmounted by busts of foreigners, their arms tied behind their backs. In this guise the Aegean place-names, Amnesos, Phaistos, Kydonia, Mycenae, Messenia, Nauplia, Kythera, Ilios (Troy?), Knossos, and Lyktos, make their first appearances

in

hieroglyphs,

on

the

base

of a statue

at

Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple (Figure II.13).

In the context of trade relations between Egypt and the Minoan world, this so-called Kom el-Hetan list of Amenhotep III

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is discussed by B.J. Kemp and R.S. Merrilles, Minoan Pottery in Second Millennium

Egypt (Mainz am Rhein 1980) 279 (with

bibliography, including Edel's earlier study of the list). W.C. Hayes, CAR? 2.1 (1973) 340, comments in part: Although the entire military career of the easy-going, luxury-loving pharaoh seems to have consisted of one relatively unimportant expedition into Nubia and possibly the sending of a few troops into Syria some years later, Amenophis III lost no opportunity in his reliefs and inscriptions of representing himself as a mighty warrior and world-conqueror. Florid accounts of the Nubian campaign of the Year 5 are preserved for us in seven different inscriptions—at Thebes, Aswan, and Semna— and in these records the king is described as a ‘fierce-eyed lion’, a ‘lord of strength’, and a ‘fire’ which ‘rages’ against his enemies. ... Long rows of bound figures, personifying conquered foreign states, on temple walls and statue bases of Amenophis III give the impression of continuing foreign conquests; and in the great dedicatory inscription of the temple of Amen-Re-Mont at Karnak we are asked to believe that the building was constructed from ‘the tribute of the chiefs of all foreign lands which His Majesty had taken in his victories as trophies of his strong arm’.

The pharaohs claimed worldwide Egyptian domination of lands well outside Egypt’s sphere of influence. See also Hayes, op.cit. p. 366.9° One of the best clues that Herodotos visited Egypt is that he records propaganda consistent with Egyptian traditions which could only be learned there. 31. Acommon method of Fehling and West is to focus on a folk tale or legend which they believe is foreign to the country (usually Egypt) to which Herodotos attributes it, and then to 9°Lloyd (1 p. 121) suggests that vague memories of Amenhotep III survived, embedded in oral tradition and eventually given form in Homer (II. 9.379ff.; Od. 11.522).

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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claim that it must be the invention of the historian. This is illustrated in their treatment (Fehling, pp. 136-137; West, CQ 81 [1987] 262-271) of the story (2.141) of field mice repulsing an

invasion of a foreign army by gnawing at the enemy quivers and bowstrings at the battle of Pelousion. Herodotos concludes his account with the sentence (tr. Powell): “And now this king

standeth in stone in the temple of Hephaestus, with a mouse in

his hand and writing saying thus: Let a man look on me and be pious.” We take up the two elements of the story, the field mice and the statue, separately. Strabo

(13.1.48.604),

after mentioning

Skopas'

statue of

Apollo with a mouse below the image, writes of the Teukrians (Loeb tr.), “The attack took place round Hamaxitus, for by night a great multitude of field- mice swarmed out of the ground and ate up all the leather in their arms and equipment."

Eustathios

(on

Homer

Il. 1.39) says that the Trojans

reverenced mice (σμίνθοι) "because they gnawed the bowstrings of the enemy,"9?! using the phrase περὶ ὁπλοφάγων μνῶν. Philomnestor (Jacoby, FGrHist 527) was the author of a

work titled, “On the Sminthian Festival at Rhodes," and Sminthios is attested epigraphically as the name of a month at Rhodes and Nisyros, evidence for the high antiquity of the cult. For other references, see Bürchner, RE s.v. Sminthe (1927) 724—725. Eustathios explains that the festival was so named be-

cause Apollo killed the mice who were destroying the vines. Frazer (on Pausanias 10.13.5) adds much evidence on “Mouse-

Apollo." The entry for Apollo in LIMC 2.1 (1984) pp. 231-232, contains numerous references to Apollo Smintheus in the literature on vases, coins, and statuary. G.F. Hill, JHS 36 (1916) 136, writes, "Keller says that alleged rats in ancient Egyptian sculpture are neither mus rattus nor m. decumanus, nor even m. alexandrinus; but he does not say what the animals are." 91 Cf. Sayce in his commentary on Herodotos 2.141.

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The reference is to O. Keller, Antike

Tierwelt (1909) 1.205.

However, on p. 206, Keller illustrates the “Springmaus”

of

Egyptian

of

art.

Aelian

(HA

12.5)

discusses

the

temple

Smintheus in the Troad where mice were kept and fed at public expense, and white mice had nests beneath the altar, explaining that mice at Hamaxitos "gnawed through the shieldstraps and ate through their bowstrings." Herakleides Pontikos (frg. 154, Wehrli) refers to this same mouse cult in the Trojan

Smintheion. There is nothing particularly Greek or un-Greek about rats being ὁπλοφάγοι, and we do not need to follow West (p. 269)

in looking to China and Tibet for a source nor Fehling in saying that the tale was Near Eastern.?? The parallels are welcome, but there is no reason to believe that only the Egyptians were prohibited from developing a folk-tale about the ubiquitous rodent. In the CAH? 3.2 (1991), both A.K. Grayson (p. 111) and T.C. Mitchell (p. 367) associate the swarm of fidd mice with Sen-

nacherib, as Herodotos has it. The latter, after quoting II Kings 19:9-34; Is. 37:9—35, writes: This is followed by a much debated statement that during the night the messenger, or angel, of Yahweh struck down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp; they were found in the morning to be dead. Following this Sennacherib withdrew and returned to Nineveh (II Ki. 19:35-6; Is. 27:36-7). Since the time of Josephus this has

commonly been taken to be a reference to sickness of some kind in the Assyrian camp, and it has been further suggested that a garbled reflection of it is to be found in an Egyptian tradition, quoted by Herodotus, according to which the army of Sennacherib which was besieging Pelusium was forced to retreat as 92To some it might seem even stranger that when I was stationed on a long-abandoned

island in the Pacific in the war, rats (in this case ship rats)

entered our tents and devoured our cigarettes, specializing on one brand, Lucky Strikes.

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a result of the destruction of their equipment by a swarm of field mice. It has been pointed out that in both the Old Testament (I Sam.

6:4-5) and Greek literature the mouse is a symbol

of

plague. The apparently very large number of those who perished is given in the form ‘hundred eighty and five ‘alep’, and one possibility worth considering is that 'alep {᾿ elep), ‘thousand’, here was originally ' alup, ‘commander of a thousand’, or ‘picked man’, subsequently misunderstood and wrongly vocalized, and that the passage is stating that 185 picked men died. An element of speculation must at present remain in the interpretation of this passage, but that the Assyrians did indeed withdraw without taking Jerusalem is tacitly admitted in Sennacherib's annals, where no claim is made that Jerusalem capitulated.

To turn to the statue, which Herodotos mentions at the end of his account, as quoted above. It is to be noted that he does not say that the statue was made as a thank-offering for the battle, as many interpret it, nor does the alleged inscription convey any such idea. It is Herodotos who connects the statue with the battle. If he were inventing a text, he could have composed one which made the connection explicit. In Greek art, Skopas' statue of Apollo with a mouse is well attested. Is there any reason to believe that in Egyptian art a figure could not be portrayed with a mouse? Lloyd (2 p. 303) has collected evidence for the cult of the “shrew-mouse, fidd mouse" in Egypt. The Egyptians looked on the mouse as the sacred animal of Horus, who was the warrior protector of Egypt.93 Both W. Spiegelberg, "Die Glaubwürdigkeit,” Orient und Antike 3 (1926) 26ff. and H. Bonnet, Reallexikon der aégyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin 1952) 749, regard the statue as being

of Horus of Letopolis in the temple of Ptah at Memphis; cf. Lloyd 3 pp. 104-105. In short, there is nothing un-Egyptian in 93For the position of Horus in cult, see also Lloyd, 1.96—97.

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the story. Herodotos was told an Egyptian folk-tale about the rodent at the battle of Pelousion to which he added a confirmatory detail as a result of seeing a statue at Memphis. Basic

to West's

interpretation

is her

statement

(p.

269):

"Herodotus does not claim to have seen the statue himself— just as well, since it stood within the temple precincts (ἔστηκε ἐν τῷ ἱρῷ τοῦ Ἡφαίστου), and was thus out of bounds to the laity, whether native or Greek." She cites no authority for this taboo, and I find no support for it in Lloyd's long study of the sources; see especially 1 pp. 112-113, refuting Spiegelberg's idea of the mandarin-like nature of the priests. The word ἱρόν, according to Powell, may mean "temple" or "temple-precinct." In 2.110, Herodotos describes two statues "set before the temple of Hephaistos," where we might expect stone statues to be, and in 2.2 says he conversed with priests of the temple of Hephaistos in Memphis. In 2.143, he is within the megaron of a temple. In 2.136, he describes in great detail the propylaia of the temple of Hephaistos with many statues; and in 2.153, describes the court of Aphis opposite the temple, it too having many carved figures. The huge image that lies supine before Hephaistos'

temple is described in 2.176. That Herodotos did not see all of this, including the statue of 2.141, defies credibility. 32. On p. 138, Fehling writes: The only Greek example «of monuments with inscriptions» I propose to discuss here is 5.59-61. Herodotus claims to have read in Thebes three hexameter inscriptions in “Cadmaean writing", which he says was largely similar to Ionian writing and came from the time of Oedipus. There is no clearer case of falsification than this. If the writing is Greek, the theory of the imaginative guide cannot be invoked. ... The earliest form of writing known in Boeotia after the Mycenean ... has no special points of resemblance with the Ionic alphabet, as can be seen at a glance from the table at the back of Jeffery's book ...

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and so on for three pages; and S. West (CQ 79 [1985] 290-297)

continues this exercise in insidious disparagement, devoting five pages to the same Herodotean passage. Actually what L.H. Jeffery wrote about the passage (in The Early Age of Greece [1962 ed. Wace and Stubbings] 546) was that they were "either rank forgeries in pseudo-archaic Greek made by the priests or genuine archaic dedications on old athletic prizes, barely legible and freely translated."94 About the legend of Kadmos, J. Boardman

(BSA 52 [1957]

26) writes: Herodotus (v. 57-58) tells us that it was the Phoenicians who

came with Kadmos who taught the Greeks their letters. Among them were the Gephyraeans who accompanied him to Boeotia and settled at Tanagra. They were subsequently ousted by the Boeotians and moved to Athens where the family settled, eventually to give the city her tyrant-slayers. From what we now know of the origins of the Greek alphabet it is clear that Herodotus' story is in part based on a true tradition, although Kadmos and the actual immigration of Phoenicians to Greece must remain suspect. The 'Phoenicians' and Gephyraeans are rather those Greeks who had no doubt lived a while in the Near East and had returned to teach what they had learned there, in-

cluding the alphabet. Just as, on archaeological rather than literary grounds, we have suspected the Euboeans to have done. The Gephyraeans themselves, as Herodotus admits, say that they came originally from Eretria, and we may perhaps accept

94Cf A.R. Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece (London 1968) 53: "The story that

the ‘Phoenician’ Kadmos invented them, believed by partly of well-meaning systematisation, and partly the excavations of the Kadmeia, cylinder seals have Syrian and Babylonian, some dated to the fourteenth

Herodotos, is a product of clerical forgery." In been found, which are century B.c. According

to Greek tradition, Kadmos arrived in Greece from Phoenicia, searching for

his sister Europa who had been abducted by Zeus, founding the city of Thebes. The Greek legend may have some historical foundation.

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the family’s account of its own origins, and still retain the essence of Herodotus’ story.

Herodotos quotes as the reading of the inscriptions on three bronze tripods at Thebes three groups of hexameter lines saying that the tripods were dedicated by (1) Amphitryon, (2) Skaios (both of whom Herodotos places at the time of Laios, father of Oidipous), and (3) Laodamas son of Eteokles. It is

overlooked by the critics of Herodotos that Pausanias (10.7.6) saw a tripod in the same temple purporting to have been dedicated by Herakles when he had served there as a boy priest. The epigraphical repute of the priests of this same temple at Thebes was recognized by the author of the Aristotelian De Mirabilibus, who tells the story of an inscribed stone that was found

in the country

of the

Ainianes,

near

Hypata

(843B

n0.133, tr. Hett in Loeb): In the country called Aeniae, in that part called Hypate, an ancient pillar is said to have been found; as it bore an inscription in archaic characters of which the Aenianes wished to know the origin, they sent messengers to Athens to take it there. But as they were traveling through Boeotia, and discussing their journey from home with some strangers it is said that they were escorted into the so-called Ismenium in Thebes. For they were told that the inscription was most likely to be deciphered there, as they possessed certain offerings having ancient letters similar in form. There having discovered what they were seeking from the known letters they transcribed the following lines: I Heracles dedicated a sacred grove to Cythera Persephassa, and so on for several lines.95

95One of the speakers in Plutarch's De genio Socratis is represented as having been present at the discovery of the grave of Alkmena at Haliartos which was marked by an inscription (Mor. 577F, Loeb tr.): “Before the tomb,

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After the penetrating study of Pausanias by Habicht, few would doubt that Pausanias saw in the temple at Thebes a tripod purported to be dedicated by Herakles. In War 3.245—247,

I collected a long list restricted to military articles which are said to have been dedicated by heroes and legendary figures in various sanctuaries. Any seasoned epigraphist is aware of the catalogue of forty-four offerings in the temple of Athena Lindia, as published by C. Blinkenberg, Lindos: II Inscriptions 1 (Copenhagen 1941) no. 2b, pp. 162-170, also studied in War 3.243-245, which included dedications by Kadmos and Hera-

kles. The Greeks believed that many objects in their temples had been dedicated by heroes. Extending our list beyond military objects, we note that Sir John Forsdyke, Greece Before Homer (London 1956) 43, wrote

the following noteworthy, but neglected, passage in a context of his study of the Herodotean epigrams: Relics of legendary heroes and heroines were shown in many temples

and

were

regarded

with

respect

or

amusement

according to the piety or common sense of the observer. Among

the more fantastic were the swan's egg laid by Leda, which was hung with ribbons from the ceiling of a temple at Sparta, and the tusks of the Calydonian boar, which Augustus removed from Tegea in Arcadia to Rome, where one of them, ‘exactly half a fathom long' according to Pausanias, was preserved in the imperial gardens. The hide was left in the temple, where Pausanias saw it 'very much decayed by age and quite bare of bristles’. A letter sent home from Troy by Sarpedon and kept in

some temple in Lycia puzzled Pliny for a wrong reason, because it was written on papyrus. Many of these objects must have been

however, lay a bronze tablet with a long inscription of such amazing antiquity that nothing could be made of it, although it came out clear when the bronze was washed; but the characters had a peculiar and foreign confrontation, greatly resembling that of Egyptian writing."

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genuine antiquities, and could offer archaeological information even to Pausanias, who says on one occasion:

That all weapons in the Heroic Age were bronze is shown by Homer,

and

I am

confirmed

in this belief by the

spear

of

Achilles, which is dedicated in the temple of Athena at Phaselis, and the sword of Memnon in the temple of Asclepios at Nicomedia, for the blade and the spike on the butt of the spear and the whole of the sword are of bronze. Historical fraud began when such objects were inscribed by their possessors with statements purporting to be contemporary

with them, or when inscriptions in unintelligible scripts or languages were translated into Greek. One or both of these processes must have been applied to the Theban tripods.

The temples were repositories of many objects of historical

fraud. It is our opinion that Jeffery was right in the Herodotean hexameters as "rank forgeries chaic Greek made by the priests." Since we do shape of letters in pseudo-archaic Greek, we do

characterizing in pseudo-arnot know the not know why

Herodotos thought they were Ionic, and no reference to Jeffery's tables by Fehling and West is of any validity. Pliny (NH 7.56.192) cites two schools of thought which agreed that

the alphabet imported by Kadmos was of sixteen letters; see also Diodoros 3.67 and 5.57. The literature associating Kadmos with

Thebes is extensive, and excavators have uncovered what they call the palace of Kadmos. But possibly "fraud" is too harsh a word to apply to the creation of priests. Some of the present generation believe that

we are witnessing the creation of myths about one element of the population,96 but those creating and endorsing the myths

96See Mary Lefkowitz,

The New

Republic February 10, 1992, 29-35, ap-

propriately citing among other works M. Bernal, Cadmean Letters.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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occupy high places in the educational and political world and lecture on our campuses, driven by the ideology of Multiculturalism with its politics of ethnic and racial redress.97 The subjects of Greek vase-pictures are almost always mythical scenes, and the gods and heroes who form the dramatis personae were invested with the outward form and external circumstances of humanity, preserving a rich store of these popular legends which circulated among the Greek people and were doubtless believed by many. It was an easy step for a priest adding prestige to his temple, or a devout believer, to commission inscribed works of art, which we would call historical frauds, but were accepted by common people as historical.98 33. On p. 144, Fehling writes, In 5.49.1 the Spartans tell how Aristagoras of Miletus came

to

them with a map of the world made of bronze. This is clearly an object bordering on the miraculous, since the only such object known to us, the famous Babylonian "map of the world", displays only about a dozen details and in this respect is not at all comparable with what Herodotus describes. One naturally thinks of Eratosthenes' statement that Anaximander drew a 37] have never read a study by multiculturists on the subject of Egyptian science which quoted the work of a most eminent authority on the subject, O.

Neugebauer,

The

Exact Sciences

in Antiquity?

(Providence

1957).

Afrocentrism proves to be Egyptocentrism, although few could claim Egypt on the large continent of Africa for their origin. Blacks are urged to reject Western civilization, with its treasure-trove of masterpieces in literature and the arts, as a white man's contrivance, yet invited to take credit for its origins. Behind the demand that history be rewritten lies the reemergence of the concept of lineage, in which one's ancestry rather than one's individuality bestows status. If we want the best, there is no question whose history should be studied. 9$ My concern is only with the veracity of Herodotos and the allegation

that he fabricated the story of the inscribed tripods. Many have written on the subject of Kadmos and so-called Kadmean letters; see, for example, Ruth B. Edwards, Kadmos the Phoenician (Amsterdam

that the letters were Linear B!

1979). Some have argued

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map of the world (Strabo 1.1.11), but that is merely a hypothesis based on this very passage of Herodotus.

Maps on bronze had Babylonia.99 Meissner, Landkarten,"

Klio19

been made centuries earlier in "Babylonische und griechische

(1925)

gives

an

illustration

of the

Babylonian map on p.97. J.L. Myres gave a detailed study of Aristagoras’ map in JRGS 8 (1896) and returned to the subject in Herodotus (Oxford 1953) 34ff., writing "an obvious rectangle (iv.38-39) between a square Pontus, as in the Scythian map,

and a square Levant, recognizable because 'it has Cyprus in it?'." Footnote 3 reads, “Aeschylus, Prom. Sol. fr. 191, Murray.”

Size is not a factor, since Myres reconstructs the map on a half page of print (p. 36), as does Meissner.!°°

Any

elementary

student of the subject should be aware of Aristophanes Clouds 206ff.: αὕτη

δέ σοι γῆς περίοδος dons:

Opds; αἵδε μὲν

᾿Αθῆναι. Theophrastos in his will (Diog. L. 5.2.51) gives directions concerning τοὺς πίνακας, ἐν οἷς αἱ τῆς γῆς περίοδοί εἰσι. Aelian (ΝΗ 3.28) has Sokrates bring Alkibiades, who prided himself on his landed possessions, to a chart of the world

and bade him

find Attika. Aristotle

(Met. 2.5.362b)

laughs at the maps of the world, and the Loeb editor (facing p.

102) gives a fold-out of that of Aristotle, as based on Bunbury, Warmington, and others. Plutarch relates how, before the expedition to Syrakuse, young Athenians spent their days in the palaestra, tracing the map of Sikily, and marking, in a chart of Africa, the situations of Carthage and Libya. The literature is extensive, and there are many reconstructions; Kubitschek has given us a monograph-length study in the RE s.v. Karten (1919), with a discussion of the map

of Aristagoras in cols.

2050-2051. All of this vast literature of primary and secondary 99See A.R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks? (Stanford 1984) 198; and, in detail, Lasserre, Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 130. 100See also Pfister, Philologus 82 (1927) 359—363.

2. FEHLING’S

EXAMPLES

123

sources has escaped Fehling (“only such object”). One who writes that our passage is the source for an hypothesis that

Anaximander drew a map of the world has no understanding of source material or its evaluation. As Diels notes (Frg. der Vorsokrater 2 Anaximandros 12 A.6), the reports of the map go back to the great Alexandrian geographer and librarian Eratosthenes. Agathermeros is cited by Diels for the following passage taken from Eratosthenes: ‘A. ὁ Μιλήσιος ἀκουστὴς Θαλέω πρῶτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην Ev πίνακι γράψαι. W.K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy ı (Cambridge 1967) 74, studies the map in the context of Anaximander's geo-

graphical and astronomical interests. About the content of the map, Lasserre in Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 130, writes: Ebenso legte auf der ersten bekannten Weltkarte—Anaximandros größeres Gewicht auf die Umrahmung der von dem Ozean umflossenen Oikumene und auf die sie kreuzfórmig teilenden Wasserstrecken (Herakles-Säulen, Mittelmeer, Schwarzes Meer, Phasis, Kaspisches Meer und Ister-Nil) als auf die Gestalt der Länder, auf die Ansetzung von Städten und von Verkehrswegen.

That Eratosthenes deduced from the Herodotean passage that Anaximander had made a map of the world is an utter absurdity. 34. Fehling devotes pages 191-192 to his condemnation of Herodotos' account of the Table of the Sun and the story of Kambyses' invasion of Ethiopia (3.20ff.), of which we give his

first and last statements: One particularly straightforward

example is the lengthy

story of the mission to the Ethiopians in 3.20-25.1; and in this

instance it is quite easy to demonstrate that the whole thing comes from Herodotus. In the first part, the Table of the Sun, which is the main objective of the mission (3.17.2—18, 3.23.4), is

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an obvious Greek creation, ... Thus the first and third parts of the story are certainly not anything Herodotus could have brought back from his own travels. Furthermore, though the story has the usual tripartite structure, the three parts of it are disparate in character and do not form a self-contained whole. In the broader setting of Herodotus’ work that is by no means inappropriate, but we may be sure that this story had never had any independent existence in such a form; and hence any possibility of a Greek source for it is ruled out as well.

Several of the details in the account have been annotated by A.W. Lawrence, but there is difference of opinion about the invasion. As to the Table of the Sun, C.L. Woolley and D. Randall-MacIver, Karanog (Philadelphia 1910) 56, describe vases, found in Nubia, which show animals feeding from items of food found on altar-like tables, concluding, "It is perhaps not too fanciful to seek an explanation for this in Herodotus' description of the ‘Table of the Sun’ at Meroe.” Of the early form of a temple at Meroe, excavated by Garstang, A.J. Arkell, A History of the Sudan? (London 1961) 150, writes, It was known to Herodotus, the Greek traveler, who in his account of the expedition made by Cambyses against Ethiopia ... describes the Table of the Sun as in a meadow outside the city. This is an apt description of the site of the Sun Temple, which is outside the city of Meroé on the east side, on the edge of a depression well described as a meadow, for in it still to-day grass and bushes grow better than on the surrounding gravel plain. In

101 From their study of Bacchic scenes on vases, the authors also offer confirmation (pp. 54-55) of Herodotos’ statement (2.29) that the Ethiopians

worship Zeus Sarapis and Dionysos.

2. PEHLING S EXAMPLES

125

another place Herodotus confirms that in his day (c. 455 B.c.)

.!°2 Mero? was the capital (μητρόπολις) of the ‘other Ethiopians’

There is a difference of opinion whether the story of Kambyses’ advance into Ethiopia and ultimate defeat was a piece of anti-Persian propaganda told to Herodotos or an historical event. Strabo (17.1.5.790) says that Kambyses advanced as far as

Meroe and gave it his sister's name. Similar statements are found in Diodoros 1.33 and Josephus Antiq. Jud. 2.249. E.A.W.

Budge, The Egyptian Sudan 2 (Philadelphia 1907), discusses the campaign and the Herodotean story at length. The stele of Nastasen, an Ethiopian king of the Napata dynasty, contains the text (p. 94): "The Chief Kambasuten came, and I made my bowmen to advance against him from the city Tchart. There was a great slaughter. ... I routed and overthrew him,” etc. The author concluded, "When we compare the group of characters with the variant spellings of the hieroglyphic forms of the name of Cambyses which are known from other monuments, there is no reasonable room for doubt that the foe of Nastasenen was Cambyses." However, the date for Nastasen has been challenged, and F. Hintze, Studien der Meroitischen Chronologie (Berlin 1959) 17-20, believes that the name repre-

sents a variant of Khabbash, a local chieftain of ca. 338—336 B.c. Shinnie, in CHA 2.225, sides with Hintze, adding, "unless the whole chronology of the kings has gone astray." A.W. Lawrence would reject the archaeological evidence for the chronology of the kings, stating, "The double resemblance between this name (vocalized perhaps as Kambasuden) and Ka(m)buziya, the Persian form of Cambyses, and between the Greek and Ethiopian accounts of the disaster, is so close as to

outweigh the indecisive archaeological evidence upon which Reisner assigns Nastesen to a place at least 140 years later in the

102 The identification is accepted by F.M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice (Cambridge Mass. 1983) 57.

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sequence of Napatan kings.” Our leading authority on Persian history, J.M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London 1983) 48-49,

accepts the reality of the campaign, but attributes Herodotos’ account to Egyptian sources: Meanwhile Cambyses had sent spies into Ethiopia and he proceeded to advance up the Nile. A contingent was despatched to the oasis of Ammon. But with his main force he continued southward, presumably with Meroe as his objective. It was until recently thought that the inscription of an Ethiopian king Nastasen, recording the defeat of Kmbswdn somewhere north of Meroe, referred to Cambyses. But the experts insist on a fourthcentury date, and it is true that Nastasen talks of his enemy as someone whose territory could be overrun, while according to Herodotus the Persian losses were due not to defeat in battle but to starvation with cannibalism resulting. Unfortunately the Eastern Greek levies in Cambyses’ army were not taken on the Ethiopian campaign (III 25), and consequently Herodotus had to rely on Egyptian sources which consistently denigrated Cambyses. So we cannot with any certainty write the campaign aff as a disaster. The one thing we can say is that after Cambyses, as before him, the military outposts of Egypt were at the First Cataract (Elephantine and Syene). But a few years later people of Kush (Ethiopia) were included among the subject peoples listed by Darius and depicted on the Persepolis Apadana reliefs as negroes bringing gifts of elephant tusk, an okapi (or, we are now told, nilgai), and perhaps incense; these Ethiopians who acknowledged Persian rule, Herodotus says, were the ones bordering on Egypt whom Cambyses overran, and they brought biennially gifts of specified amounts of gold, ebony, boys, and elephant tusks, but were not actually subject (III, 97).

In Fondation states:

Hardt.

Entretiens 35 (1990) 245-246, A.B. Lloyd

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

127

There is no valid archaeological evidence of an attack by Cambyses on the Siwa oasis. Despite that, the operation seems to me to be intrinsically probable. Siwa had formed part of the territory of the Saite Dynasty which Cambyses had deposed, and nothing could be more likely than that he should have attempted to bring it under his control also. Subsequent events make it clear that this assault, if it was made, was unsuccessful. We can account for the lurid details which we find in Herodotus by regarding them as products of the influence of the anti-Cambyses tradition.

Such confirmed details as the crystal coffins and the Ethiopian bow can hardly be the inventions of Herodotos. At the least, the entire Nastasen stele confirms the wide-spread use of propaganda in African monuments. 35. Fehling’s attack on Herodotos is concentrated on the legends and folk-tales which by their nature are partly fictional, and ridicule is easy for one not familiar with what the ancients regarded as history or what sources were available to Herodotos. We find little in his work about the Persian Wars with their battles and campaigns. Occasionally, he must ven-

ture into the “historical” fidd where sources are cited. Although the occasion is a century earlier than Herodotos, in the reign of Kroisos, Fehling (194-195) writes of 1.27, Croesus plans to subjugate the Greek islands with a navy. When he hears a bogus story that the islanders plan to attack him with cavalry, he reacts by ridiculing them— only to have the folly of his own plan pointed out. This story is intended as an explanation of the fact that the Lydians had never ruled over the islands as the Persians later did. ... The story in 1.27 is thus closely bound up with this aspect of the overall plan of the work, which makes it extremely unlikely that he found it in any source. ... The other question that might be asked is why

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Herodotus begins with Croesus and relegates his predecessors to an excursus. The likely answer is that his one real source for the early period was Greek poets, who probably said hardly anything about them.

The last two sentences reveal that Fehling knows little of Xanthos of Lydia, of L. Pearson's work on that mythographer, or of Jacoby, FGrHist. He apparently has in mind the much discussed play Γύγης (Oxy. Pap. 2382). No effort is made to place Herodotos in his milieu, a statement which applies to all of Fehling's work. We reproduce the latest treatment of the Herodotean passage by a historian, M. Mellink in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 651: The struggles with individual cities in Ionia now became a series of actions aimed at subjugation and tribute (Hdt. 1.26—7); even Ephesus was not immune. The story of Croesus' ambition to build ships and attack the islands serves mainly to emphasize his real power, the Lydian cavalry (Hdt. 1.27). For Croesus, hegemony over Western Anatolia, including Phrygia as far as the Halys, is explicitly stated, with a list of other Anatolian subjects, from which only the Cilicians and Lycians (who had their

own kingdoms, although Cilicia had become the target of interest to the neo-Babylonian kings) remained exempt. The result was the fulfilment of Alyattes' policies in western Asia Minor, increased organization and communication for the main centres in this part of the country, commercial and military routes functioning well, and messengers traveling back and forth.!93

The fabric of the record in 1.27 is true. 1. The destruction of

the Phrygian kingdom encouraged Kroisos in his policy of expansion. 2. The strength of Lydia was in its cavalry. The country had long been famous for horses: Iliad 20.431. A line in the

103Cf Weissbach, RE Suppl. 5 s.v. Kroisos (1931) 458.

2. PEHLING'S

EXAMPLES

sixth century elegiac poet Mimnermos reads: Λυδῶν

ἱππομάχων

129

(frg. 14 M.L. West)

πυκινὰς kAovéovra φάλαγγας.

Writing of events more than a century before his time, Herodotos was clearly dependent on some sources, written or oral. Xanthos, the Lydian historian, is thought to have supplied Nikolaos of Damaskos with the estimate of the Lydian strength in cavalry as 30,000.!°4 Nikolaos made great use of Xanthos’ Lydiaka, a work which Dionysios of Halicarnassos said was “second to none in establishing the history of his own country,”!% and Ephoros tells us that Herodotos used Xanthos. Moreover, a somewhat different version of the story is recounted in Polyainos 1.26, which duplicates Diodoros 9, frg. 25, as Melber notes, and hence he concluded was “ex Ephoro.” There is certainly a basis for believing in the Xanthian origin of the story of the strength of the Lydian cavalry. In any case, in dismissing the story as “bogus,” Fehling has not taken the trouble to investigate the literature. As explained under Nos. 11 and 12 above, Herodotos began the history of the ἀνθρωπηίη γενεή with Kroisos, and Ephoros

tells us that Xanthos provided Herodotos with this startingpoint. As with other logographers, i.e. the historians of the times, Herodotos and Xanthos blended anecdote with more sober historical narrative. 36. Herodotos 4.181-185, a description of Libyan people along what is generally considered a trans-Sahara caravan route. Fehling (228-229) devotes two pages to what he calls the fantasy of the record: The most unequivocal example, however, is the description of the desert route westwards from Egyptian Thebes in 4.181-185,

which if we took Herodotus at his word, would mean that Nature had thoughtfully provided the caravans with six successive 104See Müller, FHG 3 p. 382 = Jacoby, FGrHist 90 frg. 44.10. 105See Laqueur, RE s.v. Nikolaos 20 (1936) 388.

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oases at equal intervals of ten days’ journey, a picture that needs no clarification of the map for us to see it for the obvious fantasy that it is.

It seems obvious that we do not measure a “day’s journey” over different terrain on a map. Fehling refers only to the commentaries of How-Wells and Legrand, and the article of R. Carpenter who traced what he thought was the route (AJA 60 [1956] 231-242). Of Carpenter, Fehling says, “I now believe that the

atternpt to import reality into the passage is inadmissible.” Carpenter wrote without reference to the Libyan authority 5. Gsell, Professor in College de France, who studied the route in

volume 1 of his eight-volume Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris 1914-1928), or to Andre Berthelot, L'Afrique saharienne et soudanaise, ce qu'en ont connu les anciens (1927). He ignored A.W. Lawrence's lengthy commentary (1935).

Momigliano has observed that the people who went vate Egypt and Mesopotamia had primarily Herodotos guide. Similarly, explorers for several centuries have on the paths of Herodotos. Their accounts are more

to excaas their followed than of

antiquarian interest, being written before the days of motor roads. Moreover, they studied our route in the context of passages mentioning the region in Strabo 17.813, Pliny NH 5, and

Ptolemy. In 1800, James Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus (London) 545—575, offered identifications of three of the oases which are still held valid today. To Arnold H.L. Heeren (1760-1842), who wrote many works on ancient topography, is attributed an attempt to recover Herodotos' route on the thesis that it corresponded with the contemporary caravan route (cf. J.T. Wheeler, The Geography of Herodotus [London 1854] 563), a position which is generally accepted today with the notable exception of S. Gsell (cf. his Hérodote [Alger 1916]

63). It is generally believed that Herodotos made a major error in placing the first oasis as ten days' journey from Thebes, whereas it is estimated as from seventeen to twenty, although it

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has been suggested that by Thebes Herodotos meant the administrative district of Thebes which extended to Dakha, ten days removed (Lawrence), or that he substituted Thebes for Memphis (How-Wells). Herodotos did not traverse the route; his information was founded on hearsay. We test him, then, not as an explorer, but as a reporter of second-hand information. One may be reminded that in military texts, there is an enormous variation in day's marches; cf. Topography 8.14 n. 23. Distances are one of the poorest criteria to judge veracity. If we judged Strabo by distances, we might conclude that he was not a geographer; if Arrian, that Alexander did not leave Makedonia. Even today, a traveler will often get false instructions, particularly when the distances involve scores of miles. Moreover, when Fehling refers to a map of the oases, he does not tell us whether it is one of Mobil Oil, or of Carpenter or the 1800 one of Rennell (facing p. 545). Fehling makes a blanket indictment

without informing us where he would place the oases. It is striking that confirmation has been offered for many of the descriptions of items along the route, including the very ones which Fehling ridicules. Lawrence observes that Johannes Leo, known as Leo Africanus, who according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., 16 p. 441, "started on his famous Sudan and Sahara journeys (1513-1515) which brought him to Timbuktu, to many other regions of the Great Desert and the Niger Basin, and apparently to Bornu and Lake Chad,” refers (7.299B) to the buildings in the Saharan oases constructed of rock salt (Herodotos 4.185), while others are made

of salt mud which hardens like cement. Although Herodotos mentions only two colors in this salt, Leo refers to white, red, and ashen. Many later travelers confirm this construction. The salt, but not the houses, is mentioned by Carpenter. Pliny (5.34) also testifies to the houses: domus sale montibus suis ex-

ciso ceu lapide construunt. Gsell (Hérodote 180) says the practice was still observed in his day and in his note 7 cites four other authorities. The mountain which Herodotos calls Atlas,

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being slender and a complete circle, enveloped in clouds (4.184), has been identified by several authorities as one described “like an enormous factory chimney set on a gigantic base” and exceeds 9,000 feet in height. Fehling writes of this mountain, “It is no less than the Greek mythical figure Atlas rationalised into a huge mountain whose peak is always so shrouded that people cannot see whether or not it is holding up the sky." The Trog(l)odytes (4.183), or dwellers in holes or caves, were also known to Pliny (5.34); cf. Pausanias 10.17.2, and Diodoros 4.30.5 and 5.15.4, who tells of a tribe, driven into the

mountains by the Karthaginians, living in underground abodes. Gsell (Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord 1.184-185) collects considerable testimonia for life in grottos, natural and artificial. Gsell (Hérodote 106) notes that the κρήνη

ἡλίου

(4.181) was well documented in antiquity, being mentioned by Diodoros, Curtius, Arrian, Pliny, Lucretius, Ovid (see his n. 3),

and photographed by moderns. Lawrence devotes five pages of commentary (414—419) to our passage, and Gsell has many ref-

erences in his an index. The several of the the context of

study of the entire logos, which, however, lacks physical geography is faulty, and the locations of tribes are controversial and must be studied in other ancient authors; but it is striking that the

items which a twentieth-century rationalist regards as fantastic are the very ones which have been confirmed. Gsell (p. 107) attributes errors to Herodotos' informants. 37. Fehling, publishing in 1989, devotes great attention to the Exampios krater, writing as follows (p. 223): 4.81.3: the gigantic vessel to which every Scythian contributed one arrow-head, which Herodotus claims to have seen for himself, is six times as big as that dedicated by Pausanias at the entrance to the Black Sea. It is six fingers thick and holds six hundred amphorae. These dimensions are several orders of magnitude beyond anything conceivable. Six hundred amphorae is

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about twenty-five cubic metres, or approximately the volume of a room with a floor area of nine square metres and a ceiling of normal height; and the weight of such a vessel has been estimated at over twenty metric tons. This is not something that can be explained away by metrological manipulations or any of the various hypotheses of wrong estimates by Herodotus. The facts of the matter are fully expounded by Armayor loc. cit. (n. 9). Up till then many scholars for whom credulity was a matter of principle, from Jacoby (252 and 257) to von Fritz (129f.), had believed in the existence of this remarkable artefact [sic].

A refutation of Armayor's treatment of the same passage was published in Topography 4 (1982) 245—252, with considerable evidence and bibliography relating to the Exampios χαλκήιον, most of which is not repeated here. As to size, Fehling exaggerates; but, in any case, Herodotos says it held six hundred amphorai. An amphora is judged to be equal to about nine gallons; so the vessel held about 5,400 gallons. So far from being "beyond anything conceivable,” the figure is identical with the capacity of the silver krater drawn by six hundred men in the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphos (Jacoby, FGrHist 627

[Kallixeinos] frg. 2), which has been given a book-length study by E.E. Rice, The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford 1983). There was also a wine-skin holding 30,000 gal-

lons.!°6 We are concerned with size for mixing-bowls used at festivals.1°7

106The askos containing the wine was made of leopard skins. The cart on which it was placed measured 37.5 x 21 feet, and was pulled by 600 men. Rice (p. 70) suggests that the skins were stitched together with their seams covered in pitch to prevent leakage. Rice cites several representations of large cart-drawn askoi, and states that “the askos held nearly twice as much liquid as the celebrated Wine Cask in the Heidelberg Schloss.” Of the tripod in the same procession, Rice comments (p. 119), “The tripod measuring fortyfive feet is comprehensible only in the context of the scale of the other gigantic objects appearing in the procession.” So far as being “beyond any-

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Another bowl at Samos is described by Herodotos (4.152.4) as

being made from a dekate of ingly, misinterprets the Greek the weight. Herodotos says the the rim and was supported by

six talents. Fehling, not surpris(p. 224), giving the six talents as χαλκήιον had griffins' heads on three colossal kneeling figures.!°®

R. Hampe and E. Simon, The Birth of Greek Art (Oxford 1981)

254, point out that fragments of a large number of cauldrons have been found on Samos, and were clearly produced there, as well as griffins’ heads of monumental proportions. A bronze figure of a kneeling gorgon, found in the sea off Rhodes, is considered the support of another Samian bowl of the late seventh century: CAH Plates 1.352.

In 1.51.1, Herodotos refers to another krater, this at Delphi, made of silver by Theodoros, likewise holding six hundred amphorai (5,400 gallons). He explains that the Delphians fill it

at the time of the Theophania ("appearance of the god"). He or the manuscripts have made a slip, for the festival in question was the Theoxenia, epigraphically attested as is a silver mixingbowl used at this festival (Wilhelm, Ath. Mitt. 30 [1905] 220).

The repair of this bowl is attested in the fourth century; see Topography 4.250. Wilhelm also notes that another krater was used for wine at the Paionion festival on Delos. What is at stake

is the quantity of wine used at great festivals. At that of Ptolemy, we have seen that at the minimum the amount was 30,000 gallons. Five thousand gallons does not seem like an unreasonable figure for a festival at Delphi with hymns, paians, and sacrifices, which celebrated, according to Cleochares of Athens, Apollo's coming to Delphi. As to Theodoros, who,

thing conceivable," a visit to modern wineries and breweries would be instructive for skeptics. 107Kretschmer (RE s.v. Scythae 924.20-21) endorses the meaning of ᾿Εξαμπαῖος as "heilige Wege," a name which might suggest a place of festivals. 108 The notion of exceptional size apparently has no place in the original meaning of the word kolossos, but here Herodotos gives a measurement.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

135

Herodotos says, made the vase, we have further information about him from Pausanias and Pliny (NH 35.12). Fehling and Armayor ignore the fact that these large mixing-bowls had a utilitarian purpose and offer us no research on festivals. The Skythians, Delphians, Delians at great festivals can easily be believed to have mixed five thousand gallons. As to the krater commissioned by the Spartans for Kroisos, which ended up in the Samian Heraion, Herodotos gives the capacity as three hundred amphorai or 2,700 gallons (1.70.1).199 P. Cartledge, CQ 76 (1982) 247, writes in part as follows: It seems clear that Herodotus had actually seen the bowl and corslet in the Heraion: G. Dunst, 'Archalsche Inschriften und Dokumente der Pentekontattie aus Samos’, AM 87 (1972, publ.

1974), 99-163, at pp. 122f.; Tölle-Kastenbein (n. 9), pp. 60-2, 108.

The practice of sending a krater as a gift was possibly a Lydian custom in origin; cf. Hdt. 1.14.3 (Gyges), 25.2 (Alyattes), 51.1

(Croesus). The krater sent by the Spartans was perhaps of the type of the Vix krater: Boardman, Greeks Overseas, pp. 100f. and fig. 261.

Dunst cites the opinion of Kunze, authority on bronzes. The work of R. Tólle-Kastenbein, Herodot und Samos, is particularly important, because as excavator at Samos, she has written

109]G. Griffith, Festinat Senex (Oxford 1988) 5-23, in comparing the Vix krater with two of Herodotos 1.51 (silver) and 1.70 (bronze), argues that it is

physically impossible to construct the two large vessels in unreinforced precious metals which would handle the weight of the liquid, and concludes that the two numerals in Herodotos must be emended. Some kraters were used at festivals for mixing wine and water, and it does not follow that they were filled to capacity. Somehow the desired amount of liquid at any given time was mixed and then ladled out. Other kraters, as well as colossal tripods, were votive offerings, as E.E. Rice has demonstrated. The author does not treat the Ptolemy krater, where we have an entirely different manuscript tradition. Herodotos says of the Exampaios krater that it was of the thickness of six fingers' breadth.

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the guide to the excavations, as well as Samos XIV.u° Her focus

is on the “three great wonders” seen by Herodotos, none of which is mentioned by Fehling. Six bowls dedicated by Gyges at Delphi, weighing thirty talents, whether each or the sum-total is not clear, are attested in 1.14.1. We have the evidence of Pha-

nias of Eresos (Müller, FHG 2 p. 297) that Gyges made a considerable dedication of gold and silver: "The Pythian previously had neither gold nor silver." Theopompos (Jacoby, FGrHist 115 frg. 193) also tells us that cauldrons were dedicated

by Gyges. The Exampios krater was six times the size of the bowl which Herodotos (4.81) clearly implies that he had seen at

the mouth of the Pontos (ὃς δὲ μὴ εἶδέ κω τοῦτον,

ὧδε

δηλώσω, “To any who has not seen this, I shall explain”). This cauldron was dedicated to Poseidon with a vainglorious epigram; cf. Nymphis of Herakleia (Jacoby, FGrHist 432 frg. 9), who says the bowl was in existence (early third century B.c.). Nymphis says the bowl was dedicated to the gods, implying that Pausanias added the epigram. Students of Herodotos who are inclined to follow Armayor and Fehling would do well to study the book by E.E. Rice on large votive offerings. If Herodotos had referred to the enormous bronze knucklebone, weighing over 205 pounds, dedicated at Didyma about 550 B.c., the text of which was studied

in War 5.80-82, we can well believe that Fehling would have applied modern criteria and claimed that the size was inconceivable for a knucklebone. With regard to the Exampaios krater, Fehling (p. 90) cites as a “fabrication that springs from the imagination” of Herodotos, the Skythian explanation of the vessel being made out of the arrow-heads conducted at a census of the subjects. Procopius

9 [n my study of the inscription recording the dedication to Hera of booty by Aiakes (War 5.73-77), I failed to note that the text was inscribed, not on a

statue of Aiakes, but of Hera, as determined by B.S. Ridgway, Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton 1977) 132-134, 145. This explains the dedication.

2. FEHLING 8 EXAMPLES (Bell. Pers. 1.18.52-53) reports a similar method

137 of taking a

census among the Persians (Loeb tr.): It is a custom among the Persians that, when they are about to

march against any of their foes, the king sits on the royal throne, and many baskets are set there before him; and the general also is present who is expected to lead the army against the enemy; then the army passes along before the king, one man at a time, and each of them throws one weapon (βέλος) into the baskets; after this they are sealed with the king's seal and preserved; and when this army returns to Persia, each one of the soldiers takes one weapon out of the baskets. A count is then made by those whose office it is to do so of all the weapons which have not been taken by the men, and they report to the king the number of the soldiers who have not returned, and in this way it

becomes evident how many have perished in the war. Thus the law has stood from of old among the Persians.

Many arrow-heads

have been found in the excavations of

Skythian tombs. In 1.73, Herodotos indicates that the Medes

took instruction from the Skythians in archery. Diakonoff, in The Cambridge History of Iran 2 (1985) 92, writes, "Scythian ar-

rows and probably all archery equipment were technically and ballistically superior to those earlier used in the Near East." He, too, comments on the numerous arrow-heads found in burial

mounds and the strata of ruined cities. See now the article of C. Preda, “Prämonetare Zahlungsmittel in Form von Pfeilspitzen an der West- und Nordküste des Schwarzen Meeres,” Klio 73 (1991) 20-27.

An amusing account of a similar primitive method of taking a census is narrated by A.R. Wallace in chapter 12 (“Lombock— How the Rajah took the census") of The Malay Archipelago (New York 1869) 186—192, a work dedicated to Charles Darwin

which received at least ten editions. Normally, the Rajah received a head-tax of rice paid annually by every man, woman,

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and child in the island. But the quantity of rice brought in diminished year by year, although the prosperity of the natives increased. $o, the Rajah concocted a scheme which he attributed to the great spirit of the mountain: And, after a short silence, the Rajah spoke again and told them that the great spirit had commanded that twelve sacred krisses should be made, and that to make them every village and every district must send a bundle of needles—a needle for every head in the village And when any grievous disease appeared in any village, one of the sacred krisses should be sent there; and if every house in that village had the right number of needles, the disease would immediately cease; but if the number of needles sent had not been exact, the kris would have no virtue.

The needles were brought in and subsequently served as a control over the size of the population. 38. Fehling reserves "for the end a passage" (p. 237) about the measurement of the Black Sea (4.86) on which he quotes

Armayor.

We devoted nine pages with bibliography to the

problem (Topography 4.234-242), no item of which is recognized by Fehling, who offers two alternatives, "All this might mean no more than that the calculation has been manipulated with a view to arriving at the result desired," or "Herodotus simply hit on two numbers by pure chance." Herodotos honestly reveals his yardstick, that of a sailing vessel. We follow Bunbury and others in believing that Herodotos in his squarerigger, in a sea subject to currents and contrary winds, misestimated the speed, collecting seven estimates for the Black Sea in antiquity, including Polybios, Strabo, and Pliny, differing by thousands of stadia, and quoting Wells to the effect that "inaccuracy in this matter is hardly evidence at all for inaccuracy in other respects." Without any knowledge of longitude and latitude and without anything approximating a modern

2.

map,

the ancient

Herodotos

FEHLING'S

authors

EXAMPLES

generally made

139

gross mistakes.

(4.99) thought that the Skythian coast ran straight

east, whereas it takes a great sweep to the north from the mouth of the Dnieper to Heraklea in Bithynia. 39. Fehling

(241-242)

regards it as conclusive proof that

Herodotos never went to Elephantine in Egypt because he refers to it as a city and not an island. Fehling does not understand that the Greek used the feminine substantive (2.28, 29, 30, 31) understanding the word island, which is feminine. That

there was a town on the island is stated by Arrian (Anab. 3.2.7) and Strabo (17.1.48.817) and there are reports that there are

many remains on the island. Fehling is the only commentator I have consulted who questions that Elephantine was both an island and a town. As to the "hills whose summits rose into a sharp peak” (Waddell),!À which lie between the island and Syene (Aswan), Lloyd (2.111-113) adduces evidence, following

Barguet, for there being rocks in the channel which have been quarried out. Fehling continues (p. 242), “Take the problem of his claim that it never rains there. Scholars have quickly wriggled out of this one by assuming that he happened to be there during the few months (normally said to be four) when they had no rain. But had he never talked to anyone else about

it? After all, Greece itself is often without rain for long spells, so a Greek would hardly be likely to jump to conclusions if he saw nothing but sunshine for a long time." In 3.10.3, Herodotos wrote, "In Upper Egypt it does not usually rain at all; but on this occasion, rain fell at Thebes in small drops." Sir J.G. Wilkinson, A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians 2 (London 1854) 250, writes, "In Upper I Herodotos uses ὄρος for small hills as well as for mountain chains; cf.

Topography 1.66, and G.P. Shipp, Greek

Evidence for Ancient

Greek

Vocabulary (Sydney 1979) 168—169.

U2Others have speculated that there were Nilometers, well attested before the time of Herodotos, one of which at Elephantine was described by Strabo (17.1.48.817) as constructed with close-fitting stones.

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Egypt no rain fell to irrigate the land ... modern experience shows that slight showers fell at Thebes about five or six times a year.” Similarly, A. Moret, The Nile and Egyptian Civilization (New York 1925) 35, states: “In Upper Egypt ... rain is almost

unknown.” Just as Herodotos takes rain at Thebes to be a "strange prodigy," so a slight fall of rain at Luxor was taken to be a sign of the French invasion of Egypt in 1797;—an

exact

parallel. Fehling, on the same page, writes, he "says not a word about the monuments of Thebes—this man has never been in Upper Egypt." Herodotos mentions Egyptian Thebes twenty-four times. His practice was to refer to monuments when they form the nuclei for ancient traditions and customs. Possibly, in his recitations at Greek festivals, if he gave them, he included much material he rejected for his history. He did not describe Olbia, Sidon, and Tyre, for example.?5 Fehling continues (p. 241) by rejecting Herodotos' excursion to Tyre. Herodotos

(2.44) writes, “I visited the temple (at Tyre) and found it richly adorned with a number of offerings, among which were two pillars, one of pure gold, the other of emerald, shining with great brilliancy at night." The pillars are mentioned by Theophrastos De Lapid. 25 and by Pliny NH 37.75 (the emerald one), and by Josephus Against Apion 1.118 (the golden one) and Eusebius Praep. Ev. 9.34 (as a present from Solomon). The

temple is described at great length in Josephus Jewish Antiq. Book 8. There is a vast literature on this temple of Melcart, the Baal of the Old Testament. The use of genuine emerald on the scale given by Herodotos is incredible, as Theophrastos remarked, and various explanations have been offered. Perhaps it 13 Applying the same criterion to Athens, Podlecki, Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean

in

Ancient

History (Berlin 1977) 246-265,

argues that

Herodotos never visited Athens. Yet the history portrays Athens as rising from a πόλισμα to an international power. He gives a full discussion to the nationality of the Athenians and emphasizes the position of Athens in relation to Ionia.

2. PEHLING S EXAMPLES

141

was a block of malachite. At Siwa, the object worshipped was made of emerald, surrounded by precious stones. Emerald mines were worked on the Red Sea. Pillar-worship was of course common. Fehling makes no effort to weigh this evidence about one of the best attested temples in the Biblical world. On P. 116, he ridicules the date given by Herodotos as 2,300 years earlier. As Waddell notes on the basis of pottery evidence at least for the city, “a not improbable date.” When

Fehling (CR 105 [1991] 309-310), in referring to the

work of A.B. Lloyd on Egypt, decries the "persuasion that all the old problems and dilemmas must find their solution, if they are tackled with common sense and full use of all knowledge on Egypt (Egyptological, archaeological, geographical etc.," adding "his commentary belongs to an age of Herodotean scholarship which I hope is drawing towards its close," and in his book disregards much of the scholarly literature as being written by “apologists,” such professions are but a camouflage for the neglect of a mass of material by specialists versed in divers fields of folk-lore, archaeology, history, and topography, who sustain the Herodotean record. In no case that we have examined has Fehling presented the reader with full documentation about the passages he treats nor recognized that Herodotos is a mirror of his age. Although his theory has to do exclusively with sources, there has been no systematic examination of the nature of Egyptian propagandistic ‘history,’ nor of traders' folk-tales current in Greece before Herodotos about the peoples of Skythia and the outer oikoumene, nor of Herodotos' contacts with Persians. We are given no methodology about cults and the sagas which evolved around these cults. For geographical lore, we are told nothing about the much greater fantasies of historians and geographers of a later date. Even more serious is his open dismissal of the rich archaeological material from all parts of the Herodotean world. In this context, it comes as no surprise that Fehling refers favorably to the one scholar, regularly used by Classical Review

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for books on Herodotos, who has frequently endorsed his liar theory: Stephanie West, 92 (1978) 232: It is unfortunate that L. [Lloyd] has not been able to assimilate the shrewd and illuminating work of Detlev Fehling, Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot (Berlin, 1971), whose forceful indictment

of Herodotus' veracity is not easily refuted.

100 (1986) 130: The book would be both more interesting and a fairer guide to contemporary Herodotean scholarship if W. [Waters] squarely confronted the questions thrown up by the rising tide of scepticism generated by Detlev Fehling's work on Herodotus' source-attributions (Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot , Berlin, 1971) and by a series of articles by O.K. Armayor. W. mentions Fehling

(and

includes

both

scholars

in

his

(extremely

idiosyncratic) bibliography), but does not attempt to do justice to his arguments, though they must seriously undermine our confidence in the literal truth of Herodotus' claims to autopsy and personal interrogation.

103 (1989) 191: Herodotus' account of his sources is here of the utmost importance, and L. [Lloyd) does not question it; his confidence in Herodotus' fundamental veracity remains impervious to the tide of scepticism which has been steadily rising since the publication of Detlev Fehling's study of Herodotus' source-citations.

2. FEHLING S EXAMPLES

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105 (1991) 24: Much

of L.’s [Lateiner's) discussion is undermined by his

failure to face squarely the questions raised nearly 20 years ago by Detlev Fehling’s examination of Herodotus’ source-citations (now available in a revised English version, Herodotus and his ‘Sources’, Citation, Invention and Narrative Art [Arca 21, 1989],

and, working from an interestingly different standpoint, by O. Kimball Armayor. Their painstaking examination of a great many passages where it is hard to credit what Herodotus claims or implies about the sources of his information is of the utmost relevance to L.'s concerns, though his rather patronising verdict, 'A thorough refutation of their historiographical assumptions is wanted', suggests that he has failed to appreciate the significance of their arguments.

101 (1987) 7-8: If the orthodox view of Herodotus is to be effectively challenged, it can be done only by the careful accumulation of counter-evidence ... The minority, on the other hand, sympathetic to a sceptical approach, may be disconcerted by A.'s [Armayor's] treatment of its outstanding modern proponent; Detlev Fehling's pioneering work on Herodotus' source citations is, to be sure, recorded in the bibliography, but receives no mention elsewhere, though its conclusions could, with profit, have been adduced in support of A.'s argument. I find this omission extremely strange.

These two helmsmen of the liar school are adrift in very shallow waters. We have found in Fehling no "careful examination of counter-evidence," rather, an ignoring of a mass of evidence as being compiled by "apologists." In no case has his source theory been found convincing. We turn in the next section to Stephanie West's own treatment of Herodotos.

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3. S. WEST'S

EPIGRAPHICAL

EXAMPLES

Near the beginning of her article, "Herodotus' Epigraphical Interests," CQ 79 (1985) 278—305, Stephanie West writes, That happy faith in the historian's trustworthiness which prevailed thirty years ago when Hans Volkmann published his essay on this topic has been called in question by Detlev Fehling, who, exploring systematically an approach attempted independently by Panofsky and (more readably) Sayce a century ago, has

raised

(or

rather

revived)

fundamental

doubts

about

Herodotus' honesty by a detailed examination of his source-citations. Fehling may at times appear excessively sceptical, but it is hard to see how anyone who has read his book with reasonable care (and his severest critics appear not to have understood his arguments) could remain unaffected by some anxiety that Herodotus' reputation for good faith can only be maintained at the cost of his intelligence; some may judge the price too high.

West takes up nine Herodotean passages referring to Greek inscriptions and eleven to Oriental. The list is far from complete if we include references without quotations to epigraphical documents; see War 4.169-170. Since Herodotos could not

read the Oriental languages, our emphasis is on those in the Greek language; but we take up all in the order of her presentation.!!4^ For examples discussed above under Fehling, we give cross-references. 1. Herodotos 1.51.3-4. West's first example is an inscription

on a golden lustral basin;!5 dedicated by Kroisos at Delphi, which was moved when the temple was burned, about which Herodotos writes (E. Powell tr.): "On the golden «vessel» is

inscribed writing which saith that it is an offering of the 14On her page 279, for 4.14.3 (Samos), read 6.14.3. 35 Marble lustral basins are studied by A.E. Raubitschek, DAA 370-413.

3. S. WESTS' S EPIGRAPHICAL

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145

Lacedaemonians. Howbeit the writing saith not truly; for this also is from Croesus, but a certain man of Delphi made the inscription, desiring to do the Lacedaemonians a pleasure; whose name though I know, I will not mention."16 West's comment is: "We may see here a warning against undue confidence in epigraphic evidence. But it should also be noted that Herodotus' inventory of Croesus' offerings is not so precise that this detail is really required; its function is rather to persuade us that he had access to particularly knowledgeable sources at Delphi." We are glad to be enlightened about Herodotos' purpose; but the account tells us more, namely, that Herodotos was exercising his critical faculty on the temple records. We measure the veracity of Herodotos' story by the standards and rules pertaining to inscribed objects in sanctuaries of his day. Combining the evidence of Philochoros, Plutarch, and Pausanias, we find a close parallel to the Herodotean inscription. In the so-called Second Sacred War of about 448 B.c.,7 Philochoros (Jacoby, FGrHist 328 frg. 34) recounts

that the Delphians granted the right of promanteia to the Lakedaimonians. Plutarch (Perikles 21), in turn, writes of this same grant: The Lacedemonians made an expedition to Delphi while the Phocians had possession of the sanctuary there, and restored it to the Delphians; but no sooner had the Lacedamonians departed than Pericles made a counter expedition and reinstated the Phocians. And whereas the Lacedzmonians had had the promanteia, or right of consulting the oracle in behalf of others also, which the Delphians had bestowed upon them, carved upon the forehead of the bronze wolf in the sanctuary, he se-

46 Plutarch (Mor. 4008) recounts how the Korinthians wished to inscribe

a gold statue at Olympia and a treasury at Delphi with their name. Delphi granted the request, but the Eleians refused out of ill-will. 17See H.W. Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle 1.185186.

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cured from the Phocians this high privilege for the Athenians, and had it chiselled along the right side of the same wolf.

Finally, we learn from Pausanias (10.14.7) that the bronze wolf

was in existence in his day and had been dedicated by the Delphians: There is an offering dedicated by the Delphians themselves near the great altar: it consists of a bronze wolf. They say that a man

stole some of the god's treasures, and hid himself and the gold in the thickest part of the forest on Mount Parnassus; but that while he slept a wolf fell upon him and killed him, and then went daily to the city and howled. So, thinking that the hand of God was in it, they followed the beast; and thus they found the sacred gold, and dedicated a bronze wolf to the god.

For the bronze wolf, see also Aelian NA 12.40, citing Polemo,

and NA 10.26. This example illustrates the fact that the supervisors of the sanctuary might authorize one national to inscribe a text on a monument dedicated by another national.

How-Wells, on our passage, note that A. Kirchhoff would find a motive for such accommodation towards Lakedaimon at the time of this same sacred war. From this same example, we gain some insight into the desire for philotimia resulting from dedications made in temples, corresponding to modern museums and art galleries, which occasioned so many fabricated objects, as discussed

above

under

No.

32,

“Kadmean

Letters."1:$

Falsification was a not uncommon official act. There is nothing in the Herodotean passage which offers a basis for discrediting the historian.

U8Cf. War 5.373-374, where we studied the example of the Thebans and Korinthians being annoyed because of lack of recognition on a Spartan dedication in the Peloponnesian War. For other examples, see L. Casson, Travels in the Ancient World (London 1974) 240—246.

3. 8. WESTS’S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES

147

2. Herodotos 8.82.1. As to the Greek thank-offering at Delphi for victories in the Persian War (Herodotos 8.82 and 9.81),

West writes (pp. 280—281): The golden tripod in fact rested on a column representing three intertwined serpents, not, as Herodotus says, one serpent with three heads, and the inscription ... is on the serpent-column, not, as he previously told us, on the tripod. These discrepancies are disconcerting in the description of a monument which we should suppose peculiarly interesting to him, dedicated at a sanctuary with which we are given every reason to believe he was extremely familiar. A historian of the Persian Wars might be expected to exploit to the full the testimony of this victory-inscription. ... This rather unbalanced and superficial treatment of a monument of central importance for the theme of the latter part of Herodotus' work raises the suspicion that his knowledge of it rests more on hearsay than on independent study.

These objections seem to be picayune and are not even raised by Macan. In writing éveypádnoav ἐς τὸν τρίποδα, Herodo-

tos is referring to the entire monument, not distinguishing the stone pedestal, the column, the krater, and the outer supports or "feet." Thus, Thucydides (1.132.2), in referring to the same

monument, does not distinguish the parts, but calls it a tripod: ἐπὶ τὸν τρίποδα

... ἐπιγράψασθαι, repeating in 1.132.3, ἀπὸ

τοῦ τρίποδος ... ἐπέγραψαν; and many modern historians follow suit. The second objection is to Herodotos’ phrase ἐπὶ τοῦ τρικαρήνου ὄφιος τοῦ χαλκέονυ (9.81.1). West says that Herodotos should have said, “three intertwined serpents.” If one looks at the facsimile sketches in H. Roehl, Imagines Inscriptionum

Graecarum

Antiquissimarum (Berlin 1907) 101,

or in Jeffery, LSAG pl. 13, one sees how easily the coiled mass might be described as that of a serpent, viewed face on. It is not without interest that How-Wells (1 p. 322) write, "The bronze

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triple serpent;” C.F. Smith in the Loeb note on the Thucydides passage, “tripod set upon a three-headed serpent”; and even the super-critical Macan, “three-headed serpent wound round a column.” One who views the reconstruction of the monument by Fabricius, in JDAI 1 (1886) 189, or that bv Furtwängler in SBAW (1904) 416—417, will see how natural it would be to

speak of a "three-headed serpent."!!9 It is to be noted that the name of the Tenians is engraved unskillfully and is judged to have been added later, thus confirming Herodotos' statement (8.82.1) that it was added. Such a petty matter hardly deserves this much space. This sort of nit-picking is emblematic of the content of West's article. 3. Herodotos

4.87. West (281-282) accepts the veracity of

Herodotos' account of Dareios' inscriptions commemorating the crossing of the Bosporos. One text was in Greek. The pillars, the historian says, were removed by the Byzantines and one block was seen by him near the temple of Dionysos at Byzantion. He adds, "The spot where Dareios bridged the Bosporos was, I think, but I speak only from conjecture, halfway between the city of Byzantion and the temple at the mouth of the strait." West writes, "The location of these stelae is not made as clear as it might be, though their re-use by the Byzantines probably implies that both were erected on the European side of the strait." Not noted by West is the fact that Herodotos' position agrees with that of Polybios (4.43.2) and

others, as noted by Walbank. We also note that if Dareios was responsible for the foundation of the town Dareios, located on the banks of the Sea of Marmora near the Mysian frontier, as studied by Wade-Gery in B.D. Meritt et alii, ATL 1 p. 479,29

U9A recent reconstruction of the monument is given by R. Krumeich, JDAI 106 (1991) 51. D. Laroche, BCH 113 (1989) 183-198, identifies the original

site of the monument at Delphi, offering photographs of the coils and much bibliography. 20 Cf. Schmitt, Acta Iranica 30 (1990) 197.

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the erection of stelai occasions no surprise. Almost all are agreed that the stelai which Herodotos (2.103) says could be seen in Thrake and attributed to Sesostris were the work of Dareios. The remains of five stelai which Dareios erected along the bank of the ancient Suez Canal to commemorate that project have been discovered; see M.C. Root, Acta Iranica 19 (1979)

61-68 for bibliography. Each stele is inscribed in Babylonian, Elamite, and Old Persian cuneiform on reverse and Egyptian hieroglyphs on the obverse.!2!ı The texts are not identical. One may imagine that the practice was common, and associate stelai attributed to Sesostris as being erected by Dareios and other Near Eastern monarchs. The “boundary stones" of Babylonia of an earlier period are famous; see Gadd in CAH3 2.2 (1975) 34ff.

Fehling (p. 190) rejects the inscription in the context of disavowing Darieos' Skythian campaign, which will be discussed below in the context of the Skythian logos. 4. Herodotos 4.88.2. West (p. 282) accepts the authenticity of the passage in which Herodotos describes the picture of the Bosporos bridge in the Heraion at Samos to which was attached an inscription as

a memorial of the work. Fehling (184-185)

disclaims the authenticity of the epigram, regarding it as another of the Herodotean examples of "filling Greek temples with fictive Proofs.” The implications of rejecting such evidence which would have been known to the Samians are discussed below in the section under “Audience.” 5. Herodotos

6.14. West (pp. 282-283) accepts the authen-

ticity of an inscription which Herodotos says, without quota-

UXCf. J.M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London 1983) 66: "It was once an

easy conjecture that Herodotus was romancing about Darius' canal (as also about Xerxes' canal). But, fortunately, as often, supporting evidence turned up. There survive parts of four red granite stelae that Darius set up to commemorate the completion of the canal." Etc. The ancient canals joined the Nile and the Red Sea. For a concise history, see the Ency. Britannica eleventh edition, Suez Canal.

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tion of text, still stands in the agora of Samos, erected in honor of the eleven trierarchs who stood their ground at the battle of Lade. Fehling has nothing to say about this inscription. I know of no one who has questioned the veracity of Herodotos about the monument; see War 4.165. If Herodotos had lied about the

monument, every Samian and every visitor would have known it. 6. Herodotos 5.77. The difficulties which 5. West (pp. 283285) finds in correlating Herodotos 5.77 with IG 12 394, an in-

scription on the base of a chariot-group on the Athenian akropolis made from the ransom money of prisoners from Chalkis and Boiotia, are of her own making. First, she objects to the reading in our Herodotean texts of the word ἀχλυόεντι, saying that there is “no parallel for the figurative sense 'gloomy, dismal'." Powell found no difficulty in rendering the word as "dismal," nor Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique 1.151), who gives the meaning of the word in our passage as “obscur, sombre." Since the word is not repeated until Aiexandrian times, the lack of a parallel for a metaphorical use in poetry is meaningless. However, M.L. West in ZPE 67 (1987) 19,

without referring to the work of S. West, points out that “dxvu- was regularly corrupted to the more familiar AaxAu’,” citing our passage among others; so there is no reason to quarrel with the ἀχνύεντι, restored in the epigraphical text as meeting the requirements of the stoichedon order, since it was the word M.L. West shows was used by Herodotos. The word ἀχλυόεις, studied by G. Iacobacci in Bollettíno dei Classici 11 (1990) 160-163, would violate the stoichedon order.

After a page of meaningless debate about the archetype of the MSS and an alleged stonecutter's error, S. West finds “a more worrying problem" in the monument's location, citing an article by Podlecki, who claims that Herodotos never visited Athens, and a debate by D.M. Lewis with Dontas on the meaning of the phrase "in front of the Akropolis" in another

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passage of Herodotos. Oddly, Lewis is defending what he considers to be the topographical accuracy of Herodotos. We quote West at some length, this passage representing as it does one of the most muddled interpretations ever given a monument: A more worrying problem is raised by the description of the monument's location: TO δὲ ἀριστερῆς χειρὸς ἕστηκε πρῶτα ἐσίοντι ἐς τὰ προπύλαια τὰ ἐν τῇ ἀρκόπολι. This seems to mean that it was just within, or almost immediately outside, the

entrance to the Acropolis, but this location is hard to reconcile with Pausanias’

account

(1.28.2), which

implies that when

he

visited the Acropolis the monument was near Pheidias’ bronze statue of Athena. A rock-cutting which would fit the chariot is still visible by the cutting for the base of the Athena Promachos. A double move obviously cannot be excluded: we might suppose that the monument was originally set up where Pausanias situated it and then, having been destroyed or removed in 480, was set up outside the pre-Mnesiclean propylaea when it was restored after Oenophyta, and stood there until it was transferred to its earlier position some time after Herodotus' visit. ... Taking these difficulties together with other topographical inaccuracies in Herodotus' work I think we should relegate the hypothesis of a double move to the status of a remotely conceivable possibility. It is a nice question how inaccurate a reasonably intelligent person may be in describing a site which he has himself visited, but it is surely anachronisic (sic] to suppose that Herodotus would have thought to make topographical notes or sketch-maps, as might a traveler in a more bookish age, and it should not surprise us if he had a better memory for poetry than for the lie of the land. But the gratuitous detail of this apparently erroneous information is noteworthy; there was no call for him to offer more than the fact that the monument was set on the Acropolis. Of course, this topographical difficulty takes on a rather different aspect if we suppose Herodotus to

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have written first and foremost for an Athenian audience; but that is not an assumption to be accepted without demur. It is, as Macan observes, a little surprising that Herodotus seems not to have asked himself how these relics of a victory a generation before the Persian invasion had survived the sack of Athens; but we all, at times, fail to ask questions which on subsequent reflection appear obvious.

A fragment of the original inscription for the chariot, en-

graved on Eleusinian limestone, was found in 1886 or 1887 to the northeast of the Propylaia. Four fragments of another base of white marble have been found engraved in a later script of about the middle of the fifth century. From this it has been inferred that the original chariot, set up about 507 B.c., was

destroyed or carried off by the Persians in 480 B.c., and that sometime in the middle of the century the Athenians restored the trophy.!22 It was this new chariot which Herodotos saw and described, since in the new inscription the two hexameter lines were transposed, and Herodotos quoted the inscription with the lines in the new order.

Copious bibliography on the inscriptions is given by A.E. Raubitschek,

Dedications

from

the

Athenian

Akropolis

(Cambridge, Mass., 1949) nos. 168 and 173. In the massive bibli-

ography on the western end of the Akropolis, we could find no architect who had questioned the veracity of Herodotos, including Judeich, who discusses the problem at length, the Dinsmoors, Stevens, Travlos, and the handbooks. Disagreement is found only in the strange article, cited by West, of A.J.

122When West chides Herodotos for not having "asked himself how these relics of a victory a generation before the Persian invasion had survived the sack of Athens," it is clear that they had not. A broken fragment of limestone survived, but the entire monument, chariot and base, were restored. Raubitschek (p. 203) suggests that the restored monument was made from the spoils of Oinophyta or from a more general fund as in the case of the Athena Promachos.

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1 53

Podlecki, "Herodotus in Athens?," Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History: Studies Presented to F. Schachermeyr (Berlin 1877) 259-260, who shows no knowledge

of an Old Propylon or the building program of Mnesikles.:23 S. West rests her indictment entirely on Pausanias! statement (1.28.2) that the quadriga was on the Akropolis in his day and the fact that a rock-cutting has been offered for its position, her “no-move” theory. G.P. Stevens, who over a period of years measured blocks and cuttings on the akropolis, wrote as follows (Hesperia 15 [1946] 81-82 with fig. 4): At 20, Figure 4, are a number of poros blocks partly buried beneath the Propylaea of Mnesicles. They have a different orientation from that of the Propylaea, thus showing that they antedate the Propylaea. What did the blocks support in 437 B.c.? The four-

horse chariot which Herodotus saw on his left as he entered the propylon? He was a native of Halicarnassus, but he is known to have traveled extensively from ca. 464 to ca. 447 B.c. and even to have been settled in Athens from ca. 447 to 446 B.c. Thus, as Mnesicles’ Propylaea was not started until 437 8.c., Herodotus

had opportunities to see the chariot. Both the width and the depth of the plinth upon which the chariot rested are known accurately within a range of error of no more than a few centimeters: from the size of the plinth we may 'judge'that the horses and charioteer were approximately life size. There are cuttings of the pre-Mnesiclean period to the west of 20 (cf. Fig. 4), but they are too small for the pedestal of the quadriga. Site 20 is an excellent one for the monument, because the ramp on the south side of it is parallel to it, and because the ramp wound around it so that three of its sides could be well seen. Moreover, in agreement with B3Jacoby, Atthis 221, writes, “Herodotos’ surprising lack of interest in the ‘archaeology’ of Athens can only be explained as the remarkable, though intelligible, consequence of the historical and political leading idea to which he subordinated his whole work."

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THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS what Herodotus says, it was on the visitor’s left, and thus not for one, but for three stretches of the ramp. It occupied the position we would choose for a monument which was to dominate the approach to the propylon. If 20, Fig. 4, was the position of the chariot when Herodotus saw it, then the chariot must have been removed when Mnesicles built his Propylaea, for the foundations of the Propylaea almost cover the foundation blocks proposed above for the chariot. Mnesicles, therefore, may have moved the chariot to a position between the Promachos and the Propylaea, where Pausanias saw it in the 2nd century a.p. There is a large rock cutting, suitable for the monument, about 8 m. to the northeast of the east portico of the Propylaea. ca. 150 A.D. Pausanias speaks of the chariot after describing the Promachos (I, xxviii, 2).

I.T. Hill, The Ancient City of Athens (London 1953) 181, agreed with Stevens in accepting the veracity of Herodotos, identified the large cutting in the rock, but disagreed in some particulars: Two other fragments of a base of Pentelic marble also found on the Acropolis have a portion of the same inscription in letters of Periklean date, from which it appears that the original monument had been destroyed by the Persians, and replaced by another. The chariot seen by Herodotos and Pausanias must have

been the later one, since the order of the lines, which has been changed in the second version, is that given by Herodotos. The position of the chariot has caused much discussion. Herodotos speaks of it as being on the left hand as one enters the Propylaea. Whether he means the Old Propylaea or the Mnesiklean Propylaea cannot be proved, but it must surely have been the former, for such a monument would have interfered shockingly with a view of the facade of the Propylaea. A large cutting in the rock suitable for a chariot and on the way to the Old Propylaea was in just the place to afford an admirable view of

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the monument on the left of the ascending visitor. When the orientation of the approach was changed to conform with the Mnesiklean Propylaea the old monument would presumably have been removed to give a clear and spacious entrance to the new Propylaea and placed where it was seen later by Pausanias. From his itinerary the natural conclusion is that in his time it

stood between the Erechtheion and the Propylaea but nearer the latter.

Since S. West says that a version of her paper was delivered before the Oxford Philological Society and read by a bevy of scholars, and hence might have a basis in information not disclosed, I enquired of Dr. Judith Binder whether there was any new evidence to add to that cited by Stevens and Hill, but not quoted by S. West. After consulting with Tanos Tanoulas, architect in charge of the Propylaia preservation and conservation project who has been working on the Propylaia for about fifteen years, she kindly replied that architects have not yet settled whether the Old Propylon had four columns in antis or only two.124 If four, it was possible that the chariot was in the 124 Mrs. Binder also states that Tanoulas has made measurements of the cuttings in the rock of the akropolis. Since the lapis primus of the tributequota lists stood on the akropolis, it would be highly desirable to see whether there are cuttings which correspond to the dimensions of this huge stele and to determine its exact location. Recently, C. Lawton, Hesperia 61 (1992) 244--

246, has claimed that this unique monument, weighing about four tons and standing about three and a half meters in height, carried no crowning member, and that the smoothly dressed band on the upper surface and the tormos, as the projection is called in architectural circles, can be explained away because the mason "worked back only so far as he thought necessary to create the impression from below of a completely dressed stele" (italics supplied). The author has turned over stale tea-leaves, reiterating the arguments of Meritt, without mastering the subject of masonic techniques for capping stones. The join exhibited on the lapis primus is categorized as of the tormos and enkope variety, and was studied in CSCA 5 (1972) 153-159,

a work omitted from the author's bibliography. This article did not find a place in the bibliography of David Lewis’ IG I? (no. 263), an officious and tendentious work notorious for its omission of material not sanctioned by

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the old Princeton school of epigraphy. I drew attention to a number of joins of the tormos and enkope type, none studied by Lawton, offering photographs (pl. ı nos. ı and 2) of the Kittylos Stele, found at Tanagra, which Mrs. Karouzou and Miss Richter agree had a capping member. Here the tormos measures 0.05 m. My attention was drawn to the similar treatment of the massive stones at the north gate at Mykenai, where George Mylonas estimated the tormos as 0.03 m., and his sketch was reproduced in

pl. 2 alongside one for the lapis primus. The reader is referred to the three photographs in GRBS 7(1966) pls. 6, facing p. 126, and 7, which will serve as a corrective to Lawton's descriptions and flat-surface drawing. The band on the stone is as highly polished as those on the slabs of the Erechtheion inscription, which would have permitted the superimposition of a capping member, allowing lines of text above and below the line of the join on the reverse side. This massive block of marble did not come from the quarry with the band and curving tormos as we view it; both were worked and must have served some

monument, we fragments of the of the akropolis person standing

architectural purpose.

As to viewing the top of the

pointed out that Pittakis in 1835 located most of the stele in the area of the Propylaia, referring to contour maps which prove that the top would be below the eye-level of a at the northwest corner of the Parthenon. Lawton's stipu-

lation that the monument

was fashioned only to be seen from below is

negated. It is naive to lump the lapis primus, unique in size, with a few Athenian epigraphical documents and to generalize about capping techniques without a study of Greek sculpture in general. Marion Meyer, Die griechischen

Urkundernreliefs (Berlin 1989) offers

a much more extensive

study of inscriptions with reliefs, none of which, however, has a mass approaching that of the lapis primus and hence offering no clue to the technique required for a monument weighing four tons. In the Tummelplatz, as L. Robert termed it, which resulted from my publishing the evidence about the top surface, not previously noted except by Pittakis, Meritt et alii never responded to the content of the 1972 CSCA article. We may again quote Pittakis, not an art historian, but one who inspected the individual fragments before they were transported, in which process some pieces were bro-

ken, and embedded in plaster: τὸ μῆκος καὶ τῶν δύο τμημάτων εἶναι 53 οἷο, τὸ ὕψος 27 o/o, καὶ τὸ πάχος 20 o/o τὸ ἄνω μέρος τῆς πλακὸς εἶναι τετμημένον ἐπίτηδες, ὅπως ἐπὶ τούτου τεθῆ γεῖσσον μετὰ ἀετώματος, ἐφ᾽ οὗ πιθανῶς ἦν ἐπιγραφή. My interest in the monument is primarily historical, sharing a disbelief with Gomme that there would have been a volte-face in Athenian policy to dismantle her empire and that the freed satellite cities would then have submitted to a loss of their new-found independence. Events in the world today only reaffirm my disbelief. Nor do I believe that space for thirteen lines of text at the top of the reverse side of the lapis primus would have been left uninscribed. The func-

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wider Old Propylon.?5 In addition, they see, along with Bundgaard and others, a plateia in front of the Old Propylon at a higher level than the bedrock of the slope, which would provide the bedding for the site; see no. 20 of Stevens' fig, 4 in Hesperia 15. However, there is agreement that Stevens’ approach to the Old Propylon is erroneous. Moreover, the poros blocks are not where Stevens shows them; they were reused for the Propylaia foundations, which Stevens does not say. One of them has a clearly visible curving edge. What is at the site of Stevens' fig. 4 in pl. 20 is a rock-cut bedding that could have been for the chariot. We are told that one would not normally enter a propylon through the center, but at the side. Thus, in the classical Propylaia the northernmost threshold is the only one with heavy wear. The pre-classical ramp is on the south side. So, Herodotos came up the south side (not zigzagging as in Stevens' fig. 4) and probably entered to the south. It seems quaint that one would refer to Herodotos' location of the monument as a "topographical inaccuracy" on the basis of nothing more than the inferred position given by Pausanias, who visited Athens more than five hundred and fifty years after Herodotos. In the interim, Athens had been sacked by Sulla. Much earlier, when the Propylaia was built, monuments tion of the tormos is only one part of the problem. We may take our cue from Herodotos who tells us that the Milesians would not take the tyrant Histiaios back "once they had had a taste of freedom" (6.5). The lapis primus sheds no light on the Peace of Kallias. In CAH? 5 (1992) 123 n. 15, D.

Lewis claims that an Agora fragment disproves the thesis that there was no text on the reverse side of the crowning member; to the contrary, it confirms the tormos. 25In the nineteenth century, the debate about the position of the quadriga centered on the meaning of the phrase τὸ

δὲ

ἀριστερῆς

χειρὸς

ἔστηκε

πρῶτα ἐσιόντι ἐς τὰ προπύλαια. As any elementary student of Greek knows, the indicative of εἶμι is used in prose and Attic as the future of ἔρχομαι. In the participle, it may be present or future; see Smyth, GG 1880.

Thus, some interpreted the participle as a future, "the first thing you see on the left as you enter the Propylaia." The argument was that it stood in the Old Propylon. See, for example, W. Miller, AJA 8 (1893) 503-509.

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on or near the site of the Old Propylon had to be moved. As Dr. Judith Binder reminds me, another consideration is that if one has not followed the physical history of Athens from the beginning to Roman times, one is not aware how the Athenians loved change and how often the Athenians changed their old arrangements, constantly redoing street networks, water supply system, moving sites of administrative offices, moving the site for the Eponymous Hero Monument, moving the site for public assemblies, moving the theater from the Agora to Akropolis South Slope, moving the bouleuterion, moving temples. Even Athena Polias was not restored to her original site in the Old Temple of Athena. As to S. West's “rock-cutting which would fit the chariot," there are authorities who believe that the site is that of the Trojan Horse, seen by Pausanias as he progressed from the Propylaia to the Parthenon (1.23.8). The reference to the

quadriga is made later in 1.28.2, and we are left to infer where it stood, according to Frazer (Pausanias 2.353) between the Propylaia and the Erechtheion. Our only effort is not to settle the problems of the Old

Propylon, but to establish that Herodotos has not been convicted of error by S. West. For the problem of the fetters, see W.B. Dinsmoor Jr., The Propylaia to the Athenian Akropolis 1 (Princeton 1980) 5 and 43 n. 25.

We are aware that the problem of the position of the quadriga is involved in the heated debate over the time of Herodotos' visit to Athens. Recently, Mattingly, AJA 86 (1982) 383-384, has argued that Herodotos was in Athens after 431 B.C., and that the Herodotean quadriga stood to the left of the Mnesiklean entrance until it was removed for the Agrippa monument, thus reviving a theory entertained by Frazer (Pausanias 2.353). The more

conventional early date is de-

fended by J.A.S. Evans, “The Quadriga at the Entrance to the Acropolis," RSC 27 (1979) 13-15; cf. Evans, Athenaeum 57 (1979) 145-149, and Jacoby, RE Suppl. 2 (1913) 237ff. Cobet

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treats the date of publication in Hermes 105 (1977) 2-27. The

latest positively dated event mentioned is the execution of Spartan envoys in 7.137 (430 B.c.). Travel in time of war is always hazardous, and the Peloponnesian War was no exception (Thucydides 2.67).26

West justifies her interpretation of the quadriga by referring to "other topographical inaccuracies in Herodotus' work,” citing one example, "his mistake about the orientation of Thermopylae," with a quotation from A.R. Burn, a passage which was discussed in Topography 4.176—178. This is an old saw. Herodotos (7.176) says that to the west of Thermopylai rises a

high mountain and to the east of the road is the sea. Barbié de Bocage, Holland, and the great traveler Dodwell show the same disorientation. P. Pais, in his monograph on his excavations at Elateia, shifted the points of the compass by ninety degrees in his maps and text (Topography 3.227). Grundy (GPW 277) explains the error as natural for one coming from Lamia, whereas I believe that it would be equally natural for one coming from the south as the coastline bends inland. In any case, this error does not outweigh the fact that Herodotos gives more topographical checkpoints for Thermopylai than we have for any other ancient battle; and we have candidates for most. The problem of the error is discussed below in section 7. 7. Herodotos 8.22. The only place where I find that S. West scores against Herodotos is her study of the Greek inscriptions 126A circular issued by the Center of the Study of Architecture, with office at Bryn Mawr College, dated May 1992, carries the announcement that H.

Eiteljorg, Director, has used single-photo photogrammetry to examine blocks of the Old Propylon. Eiteljorg has earlier published an article in AAA 8 (1975) 94-95, on the Old Propylon at the time of the Persian invasion.

Tessa Dinsmoor's work on the Propylaia of Mnesikles, presumably incorporating the work of her father-in-law and her husband, has been announced for publication by the American School. I wish to thank Mrs. Binder heartily, and T. Tanoulas indirectly, for providing detailed information with Tanoulas’ map of the west front and permission to photograph; but publication of such material lies outside of my competence.

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in 8.22 (pp. 285-286). Themistokles, forming the rearguard of the retirement from Artemision, is said to have visited various watering-places (τὰ

πότιμα

ὕδατα) on the Euboian coast and

to have affıxed there a quasi-manifesto to the Ionian Greeks in the Persian fleet, calling upon them to abstain from attacking their fellow-countrymen. His object was, says Herodotos, either to detach the Ionians from their allegiance to Xerxes, or to make the king suspicious of their loyalty. Thus far, historians such as Grundy (GPW 339) have accepted the Herodotean record. If Herodotos had said that the message was simply written or painted, the text would provoke no controversy. But Herodotos says it was cut on the rocks (ἐντάμνων ἐν τοῖσι λίθοισι γράμματα) and no commentator to my knowledge has

defended the word ἐντάμνων. This, as well as most of the objections made by 5. West, may be found in Macan. The Persians crossed to Histiaia, where the coastline is low. Herodotos’ severe critic, Macan, writes, “Is the anecdote an Attic invention? The appeal reads in any case more like a letter or an oral address than like a hastily cut inscription, and that in duplicate. There was no need to cut these inscriptions; they might as well have been simply written or painted up.” An acceptable interpretation is found in Justin 2.12.3: Being unable to find any opportunity to speak with them, he caused placards to be displayed (symbolos proponi) and attached to the rocks. J.S. Watson translates, "He caused placards to be fixed, and inscriptions to be written, on the rocks where they were to land." Ignore the phrase "cut in the rocks," and no objections need be raised. 8. Herodotos 7.228. After discussing the theories of WadeGery and Page about the three epigrams Herodotos quoted at Thermopylai—a discussion which focuses on the first one, the two preserved lines of which refer only to those who fought, not to the slain—, West concludes (pp. 288—289):

3. S. WEST S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES Herodotus does not say that self. Jacoby was confident that there were strong grounds for not in fact visited Thermopylae, with Page that he owed

161

he has seen these epigrams himhe had, Page firmly sceptical. If suspecting that Herodotus had we should be bound to conclude

his knowledge

of the epigrams

to

hearsay. Notoriously he is ninety degrees out in his orientation, being clearly under the impression that the coast road ran through the pass from north to south; this mistake certainly implies that, if he had visited the area at all before he wrote about it, he did not spend long there, and whether he would have been likely to spend such time as was allowed to him on that historic field in copying down inscriptions can hardly be settled a priori. But personally I find most probable Pages’s view that the epigrams were an integral part of the oral tradition about the battle.

The matter of the orientation is an old saw, trotted out by any who want to impeach Herodotos without facing the fact, as I believe, that he is completely accurate in giving more than a score of topographical checkpoints. In War 4.168—173, I exam-

ined Page’s treatment, maintaining that the first epigram was not for a war-memorial, but for an epitaph on the field of battle, as Herodotos says, and following what I took to be a suggestion of E. Powell, argued that the epigram was incomplete, noting that many epitaphs are quoted in abbreviated form.!27 In any case, Herodotos (7.228) tells us that it was the Amphiktyons, not the Lakedaimonians, who set up the inscription and the stele. Moreover, I believe that the three epitaphs were among the five reported by Strabo (9.4.2.425, 9.4.16.429, quoting one of the inscriptions). In contrast with inland sites, Stra-

bo's account of the coastline is accurate, and cannot be dismissed from consideration. Finally, I do not believe that 127For some, the stele at the base of the Marathon Soros may be a reminder that text and barrow are not always in accord. Diodoros (11.33.2)

says the epigram was κοινῇ ἅπασι.

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Herodotos would have attempted to deceive his audience about monuments at such a national shrine. Moreover, we would have to believe that Lykourgos was also in error, for in Leok. 109 he quotes one of the epigrams with the statement, “And so over their graves a testimony to their courage can be seen, faithfully engraved for every Greek to read” (Loeb). Pausanias (3.14.1) tells us that there was a Thermopylai Memorial at Sparta, near the (much later) theater, with the names of the

dead, and a statue of Leonidas. It was here that the British excavators found the head and torso of an early fifth-century statue of a warrior, now at Athens, which many conjecture to be the Leonidas. 9. Herodotos 5.59-61. The "Kadmean" dedications at Thebes are discussed by West on her pages 291-294. She writes, There are other passages where it is very hard to accept that he could have seen what he says he saw. ... I do not wish to suggest that there is little to choose between Herodotus and Baron Munchausen; no doubt he sincerely believed that these Sehenswürdigkeiten were there to be seen, and we perhaps do him an injustice by taking at face-value a use of the first person which may have been understood by his original audience as a literary convention without any necessary connection with the author's autobiography (as in a modern novel). But certainly the attempt to maintain the literal truth of his words here seems to entail the sacrifice of his common sense.

The difficulties which Fehling and West find with these dedications, arising from a lack of consideration of the nature of dedications which filled Greek temples, were examined above (Fehling, No. 32), focusing on the solution of Sir John Fors-

dyke and others, ignored by these two authors. 10. Herodotos 7.30.2: "They came to a city called Kydrara where there was a stone set up by Kroisos, having an inscrip-

3. S. WEST S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES

tion on it, showing the boundaries West's comment is:

163

of the two countries."

Lydian, however, was written alphabetically, its script being, indeed, perhaps derived from an East Greek alphabet, and though more than half the characters would have been unfamiliar to a Greek, we may surmise that many Greeks could have made out proper names in a Lydian text—at all events, if they had a rough idea what to expect —much as we decipher proper names in the Cyrillic alphabet. We shall therefore feel little surprise that a Lydian text in which the essential elements are ‘Phrygia’,

‘Lydia’

and

‘Croesus’

enjoys the rare distinction

among Herodotus' Oriental inscriptions of raising no doubts or problems. This is Croesus' boundary-marker at the LydianPhrygian border (7.30.2): ἐκ δὲ KoAocoé ov ὁ στρατὸς ὁρμώμενος ἐπὶ τοὺς οὔρους τῶν

Φρυγῶν καὶ Λυδῶν ἀπίκετο ἐς Κύδραρα πόλιν, ἔνθα στήλη καταπεπηγνυῖα, σταθεῖσα δὲ ὑπὸ Κροίσου, καταμηνύει

διὰ γραμ-

μάτων τοὺς οὔρους.

The stone is of little intrinsic interest, and Herodotus presumably decided to mention it because of its connection with the king whose downfall embodies so many themes of fundamental importance for the work as a whole.

Leaving aside West's insight into Herodotos' alleged purpose for mentioning a boundary pillar, we reproduce the comment on the passage in How and Wells: Kv8papav: identified by Radet (Lydie, p. 324 f.) with the Ca-

raura of Strabo (578), on the boundary of Phrygia and Caria, but the name is interchangeable with Hydrela (Liv. xxxvii.56),

the variation of p and X being common. If so, it lay north of the Lycus, and southeast of the Maeander near Hierapolis (Steph.

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Byz.). A position in the valley of the Lycus, just before it joins the Maeander, suits H.'s narrative

(Ramsay, C. and B. 85, 172-5).

In his Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, W.M. Ramsay defends the record, stating that Herodotos had an excellent authority.128 The city of Hydrela struck coins. The reference in Herodotos is to a city which Xerxes passed by on his march from Kolossai by a road to Sardis,!29 and it was only natural to note the pillar. It seems strange that West did not investigate the topography of the passage. Any problem is of West's imagination. There is no question here of veracity. 11. Herodotos 1.93 (the tomb of Alyattes, tr. Powell): There is in it «Lydia» the tomb of Alyattes the father of Croesus, the foundation whereof is of great stones and the rest of the tomb an heap of earth. This was wrought by the tradesmen and the craftsmen and the harlots. And upon the tomb there were landmarks even unto my day, five in number, with writings

graven on them declaring what portions each of them had wrought; and when they were measured, it appeared that the share of the harlots was the greatest. For all the daughters of the common people of the Lydians play the harlot to collect their dowries, and so continue till they are married; and they choose their own husbands. Now the circuit of the tomb is six stades and two plethra, and the breadth thirteen plethra; and adjoining the tomb is a great lake, wherein the Lydians say there is a perpetual spring.

25" But in older times Kydrara was the chief city. Xerxes passed by it on his march from Colossai by the direct road to Sardis. At Kydrara (i.e. in its territory) an inscribed pillar marked the bounds of Lydia and Phrygia. Here the road towards Caria went off to the left (crossing the Lycos, and passing by the temple of Men Karou and the hot springs of Karoura), while that towards Sardis crossed the Maeander and passed by Tripolis and Kallatebos." 29For the accuracy of Herodotos in describing another route to Sardis, that used in 499 B.c., see C. Foss, CSCA 11 (1978) 21—60.

3. S. WEST’S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES

165

West limits her indictment of Herodotos to the following (pp.

295-296) Herodotus’ other contribution to Lydian epigraphy surely reflects a wild Greek surmise. Alyattes’ tomb, he reports, bore pillars recording the contributions of the various groups who joined to construct the king's huge barrow (1.93.3):

οὖροι δὲ πέντε ἐόντες ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ ἦσαν ἐπὶ τοῦ σήματος ἄνω, καί σοι γράμματα ἐνεκεκόλαπτο τὰ ἕκαστοι ἐξεργάσαντο. καὶ ἐφαίνετο μετρεόμενον τὸ τῶν παιδισκέων ἔργον ἐὸν μέγιστον.

This detail allows Herodotus to underline the strange Lydian custom of making girls collect their dowries by prostitution. Call-girls are again linked with splendid tombs in his account of the pyramids (2.126, 134); in this rather curious association of

ideas we may discern the expression of that sturdy determination not to be overawed by the pomp and circumstance of an Oriental monarchy which meets us, in a rather more elevated form, in the story of Solon and Croesus (1.29 ff.).

Of the five οὖροι, which Powell translates as "landmarks," Russin and Hanfmann in G. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman

Times (Princeton 1983) 56, write:

Of the five central markers on top of the mound mentioned by Herodotus, only the broken remains of the largest one survived. It is made of hard karstic limestone and was still in fairly good condition in Spiegelthal's time, after which it was buried. The stone was noted by Hanfmann

in 1952 and 1957, but no

trench was dug or exact measurements taken until 1962 when it was found dynamited into four pieces by treasure-hunters. Spiegeltha! renders the shape as globular, but the preserved curvature suggests a budlike rise; the slope does not suggest a

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phallus as do some other Lydian markers. As indicated by the worked upper surface of the base, the top may have been attached separately, while the base itself was perhaps fastened to a platform: such a platform was recorded by both Spiegelthal and Hamilton; only a few scattered tiles were found by the Harvard-Cornell archaeologists.

Earlier, Paton in JHS 29 (1900) 68, wrote: I have used the word terminus rather than the word phallus; for Herodotus styles the objects on the Sardis tombs οὖροι and they were not phalli, but rather stone balls like those formerly used for the decoration of park-gates in Great Britain (see von Olfers, Abh. der pr. Akad. 1858, p. 546, whose illustration of one is here reproduced, Fig. 7).

referring on the following page to another Lydian οὖρος, “This was broken into several pieces by the villagers with the hope of finding gold in it some years ago." The preserved part of our οὖρος

was uninscribed.'3° In a note (p. 232 n. 6), Hanfmann

refers to his unpublished paper on the "Central Marker," a reference to the οὖρος. It is to be noted that Hanfmann did not question that there were five markers, as Herodotos says. Of Herodotos' measurement of the tomb, Spiegelthal (in von Olfers, p. 545) wrote, "Dieses angenommen,

finden

die

Angaben des Herodot ihre volle Bestátigung, indem sie innerhalb der ehen angegebenen Messungen fallen." The dimensions of the tomb are given as: diameter 355.2 m., circumference 1115.32 m., height 61.46 m. By trenching the slumped earth at

the foot of the mound, Spiegelthal is reported by von Olfer to have found a section of a krepis built of limestone blocks, which was the basis of the dimensions given by Herodotos (1.93). The

figures for the circumference match within a couple of meters. 13°See Spiegelthal in the reference to von Olfers.

3. 8. WEST’S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES

167

The surface of the marker is much damaged by water action and spalling; any inscription may have worn away, or possibly been attached to the marker or a base. A photograph of the marker after cleaning is published by Greenewalt in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Suppl. 24 (1986) 20. A second marker seen by Spiegelthal has disappeared. As to the matter of the "call-girls," which West regards as a “wild Greek surmise,” she provides no bibliography, although a number of ancient authors reproached the Lydians with irregular sexual behavior.'3! Athenaios (12.515D-F) writes: The Lydians went so far in wanton luxury that they were the

first to sterilize women, as recorded by Xanthus of Lydia, ... Xanthus says in the second book of his Lydian History that Adramytes, the king of Lydia, was the first to spay women and employ them in the place of male eunuchs. And Clearchus in the fourth book of his Lives says: "The Lydians in their luxury laid out parks, making them like gardens, and so lived in the shade, because they thought it more luxurious not to have the rays of the sun fall upon them at all. And proceeding further in their insolence they would gather the wives and maiden daughters of other men into the place called, because of this action, the Place of Chastity, and there outrage them. And finally, after becoming thoroughly effeminate in their souls, they adopted women's ways of living, whence this way of life earned for them a woman tyrant, one of those who had been outraged, named

Omphalé; she was the first to begin that punishment of the Lydians which they deserved. For the fact that they were ruled with outrage by a woman is a proof of their own violence. Being, then, herself a woman of unbridled passions, and avenging herOf the three classes which Herodotos names as contributing to the barrow, Hanfmann (p. 80) writes of one, "At Sardis, this was a legally defined class, known as 'People of the Market (agoraios),' liable to work and

probably to pay for royal enterprises."

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self for the outrages previously done to her, she gave in marriage to the slaves of the city the maiden daughters of the slave-masters, in the very place in which she had been outraged by them; into this place, then, she forcibly collected the women, and made the matrons lie with their slaves. Hence the Lydians, glossing over the malignity of the deed by a euphemism, call the place Sweet Embrace.

For

the

Klearchos

passage,

see

Wehrli,

frg.

43a.

On

the

Athenaios passage, J.G. Pedley, Ancient Literary Sources on Sardis (Cambridge, Mass. 1972) 43, comments: This passage gives some idea of the depths to which some of their neighbors thought the Sardians sank. For the influence of Sardis on Colophon cf. Athenaeus 12.526a-b, where Athenaeus draws

on

Xenophanes,

and

13.598b

(the love story of Anti-

machus and Lyde). For Sardian influence on Polycrates and the Samians, see 12.540f where Clearchus is the source. On Lydian depravity cf. Athenaeus 14.638e—f.132

Strabo writes (11.14.16.533) with regard to the Armenians (Loeb tr.): The most illustrious men of the tribe actually consecrate to her their daughters while maidens; and it is the custom for these first to be prostituted in the temple of the goddess for a long time and after this to be given in marriage; and no one disdains to live in wedlock with such a woman. Something of this kind is told also by Herodotus in his account of the Lydian women, who, one and all, he says, prostitute themselves.

In the second century A.c., prostitution in Lydia had a religious significance, for in an inscription from Tralles a woman 32 Add Kratinos, frg. 256 (Edmonds).

3. S. WEST S EPIGRAPHICAL EXAMPLES

169

of good family makes her prostitution at the oracle the subject of a public dedicatory inscription: W.M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia1 (Oxford 1895) pp. 94 and 115. A.W.

Lawrence, on our passage, writes: "Herodotus must surely have had grounds for his assumption that the Lydians attached no religious association to prostitution, for he knew its place in Semitic cults (1.199). In Lydia it might conceivably have survived from some ancient time when religion demanded its practice by the whole nation." Simon Pembroke, "The Ancient Idea of Matriarchy," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967) 1-35, studies our passage along with four-

teen in Herodotos having to do with prostitution and concubinage, maintaining that Herodotos shows a constant tendency to exaggerate the subjection of women. George Devereux, “Xanthos and the Problem of Female Eunuchs in Lydia,” RM 124 (1981) 102-107, argues that at the time of Xanthos the Lydi-

ans had originated clitoridectomy, or a cauterization ternal genitalia.¥33 In short, we have supportive evidence that leads us Herodotos’ account of the tomb, its dimensions, and on the tomb, things that were in existence in his day. ventional date for the death of Alyattes is 560 B.c.;

of the exto accept the pillars The contherefore,

Herodotos reliedon some source, whether oral or Xanthos,!34

for the explanation of the pillars, erected some one hundred years before his floruit. No true student of historiography would offer a legend about an event of 560 B.c., in a period which precedes what Herodotos calls ἴῃς ἀνθρωπηίη γενεή,.35 as a crucial test of Herodotos’ veracity. At the least, the story 1330, Mokhtar, in the Unesco General History of Africa (Berkeley 1981) 37, writes, “As with many peoples in black Africa, Egyptian women underwent excision of the clitoris." Cf. Strabo 17.2.5.824. See also the section on "Sex and

the Position of Women" by Hanfmann on pages 86—87. 134Of the four books in the Lydiaka, Xanthos devoted the better part of book three to the Mermnadai before Kroisos: Zeigler, RE s.v. Xanthos der

Lyder (1983) 1357.

35See Nos. 11-12 in the preceding section.

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seems to reflect the position of women in Lydia at the time. I find nothing in the writings of the liar school which suggest that they knew the true explanation for the pillars.'36 12. Herodotos 1.187. The tomb of the Babylonian queen Nitokris. Herodotos writes (tr. Powell): And this same queen also prepared a certain trick, in this wise. Over those gates of the town where most people passed she prepared a tomb for herself, on the top of the very gates; and she graved on the tomb writing, which spake thus: Let any of the kings of Babylon that shall be after me, if he want for money, open my tomb and take as much money as he will. Howbeit, except he want, let him not open it; for it were better not so. This tomb was untouched till the kingdom fell to Darius. But Darius thought it ill not to use these gates, and when money lay there and the writing itself invited him, not to take it. (Now he used

not these gates for this reason, that the corpse would have been over

his head

as he rode

through

them.)

But

when

he

had

opened the tomb, he found no money, but the corpse and writing which spake thus: If thou wert not insatiate of money and a lover of filthy lucre, thou wouldest not open the sepulchres of the dead. Such a woman this queen is said to have been.

After dismissing the inscriptions on Alyattes' tomb as reflecting “a wild Greek surmise," West continues (p. 296): Even more unlikely are the inscriptions from the tomb of the (fabulous) Babylonian queen Nitocris, which rebuked Darius

336As to Fehling's listing of the tomb being beside a great lake with a perpetual spring as fictive (p. 145), see fig. 2 in G. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman

Times (Princeton 1983). For the lake, see his figs. 11 and

12. On p. 15, Hanfmann writes, "Numerous settlements occupied the fertile lands around the Gygean Lake, where fish and waterfowl as well as an abundant supply of fresh water were available."

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for his greed (1.187); these are simply part of the legend of Darius' avarice (3.89.3), and need not detain us.

The classical bibliography is given by W. Baumgartner, “Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten," Archiv Orientalni 18/1 (1950) 96—97. Some have taken Nitokris' tomb

to be confused with that of Bel which was explored by Xerxes. The "tomb of Bel" is now regarded as the ziqqurat of Babylon. Oppenheim, in Cambridge History of Iran 2 (1985) 565, writes: Several Greek historians, especially Ctesias, provide us with stories about Xerxes entering "the tomb of Belitanes" in Babylon and committing some sacrilege; about a rebellion in which Zopyrus, the satrap, was killed; also about a punitive expedition under Megabyzus, who conquered the city, destroyed its walls and its sanctuaries, especially the famous temple tower, and took away the gold statue of Bel.

Strabo (16.1.5.738) relates (Loeb): Here too is the tomb of Belus, now in ruins, having been demolished by Xerxes, as it is said. It was a quadrangular pyramid of baked brick, not only being a stadium in height, but also having sides a stadium in length. Alexander intended to repair this pyramid; but it would have been a large task and would have required a long time (for merely the clearing away of the mound was a task for ten thousand men for two months), so that he could not finish what he had attempted.

Aelian (VH 13.3) reports that Xerxes excavated "the tomb of

Bel" and found a body preserved in oil. Alexander's effort to repair the temple of Bel, destroyed by Xerxes, is narrated in Arrian 3.16.4 and 7.17. Ktesias 52 (21) (ed. Gilmore p. 153) associates Xerxes with the tomb of Bel: Πρότερον δὲ eis Βαβυλῶνα

ἀφίκετο, καὶ ἰδεῖν ἐπεθύμησε τὸν Βελιτανᾶ τάφον, kai εἶδε διὰ

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Μαρδονίου, kat τὴν πύελον ἐλαίου οὐκΐσχυσεν,

ὥσπερ καὶ

ἐγέγραπτο, πληρῶσαι.

However, in accord with Plutarch Mor. 1738 and Stobaeus 10.53, the tomb of Nitokris is now generally identified with that of Semiramis, which was at the Semiramis gate (Herodotos 3.156). D.J. Wiseman, Nebuchadrezzar

and

Babylon

(Oxford

1985) 114, writes that the royal necropolis has not been found: “If it lay in the West Wall near a gate it could have given rise to the strange legend of the tomb of Nitocris recounted by Herodotus (1.187).” The aged queen-mother of Nabonidus, given a funeral of unusual elaboration in 547 B.c., is thought to have been the same as Nitokris. The gate near which she was buried was kept closed except at the time of festival; see E. Unger, Babylon, die heilige Stadt (1931) 161. There are different threads to the legend, which has been studied by Aly, Unger, Lehmann-Haupt, and others, as noted in the commentaries. In any case, there is no reason to dismiss the legend as a Greek surmise or the invention of Herodotos, as West and Fehling (p.

134) do without bibliography. The queen-mother died at the age of 104 and was buried with royal honors: see C.J. Gadd, "The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus," Anatolian Studies 8 (1958) 46—57. After the death of Nabonidus, the pro-Persians

of Babylon, anxious to please Kyros, their new sovereign, did everything to sully his memory. In a libel known as "The Verse Account of Nabonidus," they accused him of being a heretic and a madman: S. Smith, Babylonian Historical Texts (London 1924) 27-97; J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Relating to the Old Testament? (Princeton

Eastern Texts 1955) 312-315.

Through a confusion of names, their accusations gave birth to the story of Nebuchadrezzar's madness as told in the Book of Daniel (4.28-33) and found an echo in the Dead Sea Scrolls: J.T. Milik, “Priere de Nabonide," Revue Biblique 63 (1956) 408.

Stories were rife about Nabonidus. Perhaps Herodotos was told a tale about the queen-mother. Oppenheim, CHI 2 (1985) 559, reports that we have little evidence from Mesopotamia about

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the reign of Dareios. Recently, J. Macginnis (BICS 33 [1986] 70) has written: The Gate of Semiramis of i.187 is of special interest. In the course of the story of the tomb which it contains, Herodotus says that it (a) was ‘leophoron’ and (b) bore an inscription. It has been suggested already by Koldewey (1918, 53; followed by

Baumgartner) that 'leophoron'—which he translated ‘lOwentragend’ (bearing lions)—must refer to the enamelled brick decoration of the gate. Unfortunately, this theory must be discounted as the true etymology of ‘leophoron’ is ‘people (not lion)-bearing’ as its usage elsewhere (right up to modern times) shows (Powell, 1938, s.v.), though of course this does not mean

that Herodotus' gate cannot still be the Ishtar Gate. On the other hand it is certainly possible that the inscription mentioned by Herodotus may be the very one found by the excavations and restored prominently high up on the gate (Koldewey, 1918, 39—41 and Abb.1). It is strange only that this has

not been suggested before.

Parenthetically, in Rosén's recent Teubner (1987) edition of Herodotos he reads λαοφόρων, but notes that the major manuscripts (DTRMSV) read Aeo$ópov. If Herodotos wrote λεωνφόρων the corruption would be easy, as Koldewey has it. 13. Herodotos 3.88.3. An equestrian statue of Dareios. Ac-

cording to Herodotos 3.84-88, when the seven conspirators, after slaying Smerdis, had decided on the continuance of monarchy, they agreed to ride forth together at sunrise, and to acknowledge as king any one of their number whose horse should be the first to neigh. Oibares, the groom of Dareios, by a stratagem, caused the horse of Dareios to neigh before the rest, and this, combined with a sign from heaven, secured the throne for his master. Herodotos continues by saying that Dareios "made and set up a monument of stone whereon was

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the figure of a horseman, and inscribed thereon writing,” the text of which included the names of Dareios, the horse, and Oibares. Herodotos does not say that he saw the inscription nor does he tell where it was set up.157 West comments (p. 297): We are given no indication of the location of this monument. Nor is Herodotus' interpretation credible: if Darius had circumvented the arrangements whereby the choice of ruler was to be left to heaven, he would

not have broadcast his skullduggery;

but his whole account of the conspiracy which brought Darius to power bristles with so many blatant improbabilities that this conclusion will surprise no-one. It looks as if the story of Darius’ ruse (together, no doubt, with much of the immediately preceding narrative) represents a Greek fantasy woven around a conspicuous monument without regard to its real purport; ... it would be rash to treat Herodotus' description as reliable evidence for Achaemenid art-history.

J.M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London 1983) 18-19, writes

of the revolt, the conspiracy of the Seven Persians, and the trick by which Dareios obtained the kingship as recorded in Herodotos 3.61-88, as follows: Here we at last have a countercheck on Herodotus. In his Behistun inscription Darius gives his account of the sequence of events before coming on to the rebellions he had to crush after his accession. The central claim is the same in both: Cambyses had had his brother killed and it was a pretender that the Seven conspired to assassinate. There are sorne minor discrepancies; for instance, Herodotus did not know that the 'Magi' were on summer vacation up in Media at the time, and he has the name 137 Herodotos uses the imperfect tense (ἐνῆν), rather than the customary present, which suggests that he never saw it. On the Behistun monument, Dareios had himself portrayed with a bow.

3. S. WEST S EPIGRAPHICAL

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EXAMPLES

of one of the Seven different. But the real difference is one of view-point. Herodotus names Otanes as the discoverer of the fraud and originator of the plot, Darius being the last to be brought into it, whereas Darius claims the initiative as his own. And Herodotus' account makes it absolutely clear that Darius

had no better claim to the throne than the others—a question that Darius evades by concentrating on the first person singular and not mentioning his fellow-conspirators until 300 lines later. Darius not only had

his huge inscription—his

'Res Ges-

tae'—carved on the rock in Elamite, Akkadian, and Old Persian but he tells us it was circulated to all the provinces in the appropriate languages; and parts of copies have been found in Akkadian at Babylon and in Aramaic in Egypt. Dandamayev has claimed that it must therefore have been translated into Greek also. But no Greek writer ever showed the slightest acquaintance with it; and it is certain that Herodotus did not know of it. The one mistake that Herodotus made in the names of the Seven is illuminating. In place of Ardumanish (or whatever name is to be read at Behistun

for the son of Wahauka)

he gives As-

pathines. Now Aspathines is shown by his seal to be the son of Prexaspes, who in the story was Cambyses' right-hand man and did the killing of the true Smerdis; so though he was not one of the Seven, Aspathines could have been the key witness to what his father had done or said, and he became Darius' bow-case and battle-axe bearer. His testimony was even more important to the Seven if it was in fact not a pretender that they killed. The naming of Aspathines as one of the Seven was surely not an error of misreading but a lapse of memory on the part of someone who knew of the events from the inside. Herodotus has precise information about the fight in the palace chambers and the deliberations of the Seven before and after the coup. It is clear that somehow he heard an account of the events that had originally been transmitted orally from one of the Seven; it is equally clear that that one was not Darius.

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Cook returned to the trick by which Dareios obtained the kingship on pp. 54-55: Herodotus has the seven paladins display the heads of the "Magi' publicly, and then five days later, when the uproar had subsided, discuss the future form of government. As we can see, the fate of the Persian nobility was at stake. Otanes, the initiator of the plot, favoured putting the power directly in the hands of the Persian people. Megabyxos was for setting up an aristocratic council. Darius, however, urged the advantages of monarchy and persuaded the uncommitted ones to agree with him. Otanes then withdrew on condition that he and his descendants should not be subject to any man; this was accepted, and special rights were accorded to all the Seven. The remaining six rode out at dawn on the understanding that whoever's horse was the first to whinny after sunrise should become King; and Darius' groom saw to the outcome. The story is a classic of one-upmanship. But scholars are inclined to believe in the compact itself. In Mesopotamian terms the Kingship had re-ascended into heaven, and, as von Osten maintained, a sign was needed from the god to assure the Persians of his will. Widengren sees it as an omen given by the Sun-god through the animal appropriate to him, and Dandamayev as hippomancy, while Gnoli seeks parallels in India. Thus Darius became King about 5 October 522.138

In similar vein, T.C. Young, Jr. in the CAH? 4 (1988) 53,

writes of Herodotos' sources for Dareios' rise to power: At first glance we apparently have two detailed descriptions of these events: Darius’ own story, as told at Bisitun, and Herodotus 111.67-80. Yet our problems begin even with this

138 References to the four scholars, none of whom is noted by West, are given in Cook's note 20.

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simple and often accepted observation. In fact, are the Bisitun inscription and the story of Darius’ rise to kingship, as told in Herodotus, independent sources? Possibly not, for it is entirely reasonable to assume that the account of these events in Herodotus is based on the Greek historian's own knowledge of the res gestae of Darius—not as we have it at Bisitun, but as the subjects of the king had it from the copies of the inscription which Darius tells us he ordered circulated throughout the empire (DB para. 70). Two fragments of such documents have been found in Babylon, and we know Jewish mercenaries serving the Great King at Elephantine also had their copy. There may have been a version available in Halicarnassus, the birthplace of Herodotus.

Commenting on "neighing at sunrise," A.W. Lawrence, in his commentary, writes: A confusion between the Sun and Mithra occurs early both

in Persia and Greece (1.131, nn. 6, 9). The god appears to have been regarded as the patron and ancestor of the Achemenians, who placed his image over the royal tent (Q. Curtius, 3.3.8). While the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes call only upon Ahuramazda (except in a Babylonian version which speaks of «Ahuramazda with the gods»), Artaxerxes II appeals to three gods, Ahuramazda, Mithra and Anahita, and Artaxerxes III to the first two alone. An appeal to the judgment of the Sun would naturally be made at the normal time of worshipping him, at his rising; a thousand years later it was still «the custom among

the Persians to prostrate themselves before the rising sun each day» (Procopius, Bell.Pers. 1.3.20). Horses appear frequently in connection with Persian religion, usually as sacred to Ahuramazda or Mithra (i.189; vii.40, note 2, 115; viii.115), and were espe-

cially suitable to express the will of Mithra. A close parallel is found among the Germans of the first century, who found portents in the neighing of their sacred white horses: «the priest and

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The story of the trick is given by both Justin (1.10) and Kte-

sias (15, p. 68). The name Oibares occurs in Nikolaos Dam. frg. 66 (Müller, FHG 3 p. 400). For the sign from heaven, see Nikolaos in Müller 3 p. 40s. Xenophon

Kyr. 8.8.2 closes his

work with the revolt, but does not discuss Dareios' rise to power. Without investigating Persian history or religion, a twentieth-century rationalist has charged Herodotos with

"skullduggery," "blatant improbabilities," and creating a "Greek fantasy," although she goes not tell us what is Greek about hippomancy or sun-worship. Quite possibly, she took her cue from Fehling, p. 134. As to West's comment about a horseman in Achaemenid arthistory, the horse and rider theme is well attested in seals. M.C. Root, “The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art,” Acta Iranica 19 (1979), discusses our passage on pages 129—130 in the

context of a fifth-century letter mentioning equestrian statues to be copied. Plutarch (Alexander 37.3) says that a great statue

of Xerxes was overturned by Alexander's soldiers. Although referring to a later period in Iranian history, D. Shepherd, in CHI 3.2 (1983) 1082, writes, "The Bisutun relief is the symbolic

representation of apotheosis through victory, a symbolism already explicit in Annubanini's relief at Sar-i Pul. Surely this is what we are meant to see at Naqsh-i Rustam in Ardash's equestrian relief and, as we will see, in the many equestrian

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‘investiture’ and victory scenes on the reliefs of his successors."

Several sources including Herodotos and Q. Curtius, who calls a horse "the steed of the sun," refer to the horse as "sacred" among a people who believed in hippomancy.'39 Xenophon (Anab. 1.2.27) says that the gift which was most esteemed at the

Persian court was a horse with a gold-mounted bridle. When Herodotos writes τύπον

ποιησάμενος

λίθινον

ἔστησε, the

use of the word ἔστησε indicates that it was not ἃ rupestral bas-relief.14° Regardless of the text of the inscription, which was certainly not in Greek, it is not incongruous with the historical element of the story if Herodotos believed that Dareios erected a statue of himself with the appropriate animal, or, indeed, that Dareios actually erected such a statue. When West writes that her conclusion “will surprise no-one,” it is surprising that a scholar would present such material without any reference to Persian authorities. As a matter of bibliography, we note that C.F. LehmannHaupt devoted a special article to the story, "Dareios und sein Ross," Klio18 (1922/3) 59-64. Briefly summarized, he would

trace the legend to "a sculpture of cast bronze, which repre-

sented king Ursa with his two horses and his charioteer," a work engraved with the words, "With my two horses and my charioteer did my hands conquer the kingdom of Urartu," which Sargon in 714 brought back from the captured city of

Musasir. He suggests that the story of the sculptured horse has been transferred from the forgotten king to Dareios. 14. Herodotos 4.87.1. Stele erected by Dareios at Bosporos. This stele was discussed above under West no. 3. There is du-

plication since Herodotos says that one pillar was in Greek, the other in "Assyrian characters.” Herodotos means the cuneiform script. In Asia, Persian official inscriptions were is139Cf. Justin 1.10.5, and Baynes CR 26 (1912) 50.

140Cf. Legrand, "Des lors que ce n'était pas un bas-relief rupestre, on pouvait dire qu'on l'«érigait» (ἔστησε)."

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sued with cuneiform texts in three languages, Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. 15. Herodotos 4.91. Dareios' stele at the river Tearos. J.M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London 1983) 63, writes:

“Herodotus goes on to quote another stele of Darius at the sources of the Tearos; General Jochmus sought for it in eastern Thrace in 1847 and believed it to have then been recently extant," with the note, “JRGS XXIV (1854) 43-4.” His host at

Pinarhisar seems to have agreed that there had been a stone with letters "like nails', but leading questions had evidently been put to him first. E. Unger has identified the springs (AA 1915, 3-17, with details of the bedding of the stele).141 Here, West (p.

296) is aware of the bibliography, but cautions that ^we should not overrate its significance," and concludes that the inscription "is merely guesswork by someone who seems to have had some idea of the formulae of Persian royal titulature." The inscription was doubtless engraved in cuneiform. Since Dareios set up stelai at the Suez canal and at the Bosporos, as well as commemorated his conquests on stone in his native land, we have presumptive evidence that Dareios was celebrating his deeds with stone monuments. J.M. Cook, The Persian

Empire (London 1983) 66, notes that the verb "grab" was a favorite one in Dareios' inscriptions.!4?

M!Lawrence comments that as to the Turkish residents who said that the “letters resembled nails," it should be remembered that to those acquainted with only the Arabic alphabet, any straighter script might resemble nails. 142 The "Sesostris pillars” which Herodotos saw in Thrake are doubtless those of Dareios; see Asheri, Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) 151-152

with bibliography in n. 24. Herodotos states, "For in their country the pillars he erected are visible, while beyond them they are no longer found" (2.103.1). As attested by the twelve pillars at the Red Sea canal and the pillar at the Tearos, Dareios sprinkled the landscape with marks of his conquest. Asheri states, "It is easy to realize that when he writes about Sesostris he is

really thinking of Darius."

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16 and 17. Herodotos

2.102 and 2.106.1. The

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stelai of

Sesostris. West (pp. 298—300) adds her voice to the unanimous

chorus that the legend of Sesostris is unhistorical. We quoted above (Fehling no. 30; cf. below pp. 248-250) from the 1990

pronouncements of Asteri and Lloyd about the legend. Lloyd (2 p. 17) enunciates the general principle that Herodotos identified Hittite and Near Eastern monuments as records of Sesostris' conquests, and in 1.104 shows that propaganda was a genre well known in Egypt. Manetho (frg. 35; Loeb p. 71) repeats the story of the sexual symbols on the pillars of Sesostris. Thus, despite severe criticisms of Herodotos, this learned High Priest of Heliopolis accepts as completely historical a popular tradition found in Herodotos.'43 Diodoros (1.48.2) reproduces

the belief in a different

form.

Indeed,

Diodoros (1.55) carries his conquests into India, bettering Alexander, and has him return across the Skythian Steppe. 143As Anne Burton (Diodoros Book 1 (Leiden 1972]) has emphasized, for

example p. 172, "One cannot but feel that it is improbable that Manetho, who had little respect for Herodotus, should have made use of him at all. It is far more likely that he came to his own conclusion." We may be reminded that the Egyptians had developed little in the way of an idea of history; see L. Bull's chapter on Egypt in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East (New Haven 1955, ed. R.C. Dentan). There were lists of kings, or ge-

nealogies, which included the reigns of gods going back well into the second millennium B.c., records which included rites associated with the accession of new kings, the census of cattle, various dedications to the gods, records of the taking of prisoners, in short records which preserved matters of personal history which would reflect credit, but the only historical work of any importance was that of Manetho, who lived in the time of Ptolemy II (3rd century). "The ancient Egyptians cannot have had an ‘idea of history’ in any sense resembling what the phrase means to thinkers of the present age or perhaps of the last 2,400 years. They do not seem to have developed a philosophy of history" (p. 32). It would be a misconception to think that Herodotos could have turned to any source in Egypt for anything resembling the modern concept of Egyptian history. In any case before we impeach Herodotos, we need to have a better understanding of the Manetho

passage, not mentioned by West. Some common legend must lie behind the two accounts, separated by over 150 years. We know from Josephus Ap. 1.73 that Manetho did convict Herodotos of error, but his work is lost.

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(16.4.4.769) extends his conquests into the south in

Africa, where “there is a pillar of Sesostris the Egyptian, which tells in hieroglyphics of his passage across the gulf.” Lawrence, like others, traces this tradition to inflated claims of past Egyptian glory which rested on the documentary basis of the lists of tributary peoples and other compositions inscribed on old monuments. After campaigns in Syria, Amen says to Thothmes III: “I have called thee to smite the lands of the west; Keftiu (? Krete) and Asi (? Kilikia) are in fear." Thothmes I,

after erecting boundary tablets on the Euphrates and at the First Cataract, declared, "I made the boundary of Egypt as far as the circuit of the sun ... I made Egypt to become the sovereign and every other land her serfs." Lawrence notes other wide conquests claimed by several monarchs. For the epigraphical propaganda of the kings dating back to the fourteenth century B.c., see below (248-250). If Herodotos had

not mentioned Sesostris, it might be used as an argument that he had not visited Egypt, not the reverse. 18, 19, and 20. Herodotos

2.125.6

(Pyramid

of Cheops),

2.136.4 (Pyramid of Asychis), and 2.141.6 (statue of Sesthos with

rat), listed in the table at the beginning of West's article, are enumerated

in her note 109 as documentation

for the state-

ment, “We feel no surprise that Egyptian guides were ready with ingenious renderings of hieroglyphic inscriptions from Egyptian monuments." However, in the case of the statue of Sesthos, West later found a surprise, devoting CQ 81 (1987) 267—271 to this monument. Her treatment, along with that of

Fehling, was discussed above in the previous section No. 31. The Cheops pyramid at Giza contained an inscription which was taken to be a ration-list for the workers on the pyramid. Speculation is to the effect that the inscriptions were an offering-list (Spiegelberg) or a list of payments to the workgangs; see A.B. Lloyd, Herodotus Book II, vol. 3 (1988) 69-70.

No one questions the folk-elements. The Asychis inscription

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tells us that the pyramid was built in bricks. Several brick pyramids exist in Egypt, but it is impossible to tell which one is meant because Asychis has not been securely identified. The survival of any inscription or inscribed object which Herodotos reported is one of our best tests of his veracity. S. West mentions the two of the Athenian victory over Chalkis and the serpent column at Delphi; both, we maintain, confirm the Herodotean record. Such documents are a great rarity, particularly in a country where thousands of stones have doubtless been consigned to the lime-kilns over the centuries extending down to modern times, or smashed to discover gold. We note, therefore, that West's list is by no means complete. Two have been known for more than one hundred years. They were not noted by Macan, from whom West seems to take her cue. Among the votive offerings lavished by Kroisos on Greek temples, Herodotos says (1.92): ἐν δὲ Ἐφέσῳ at τε βόες αἱ χρύσεαι καὶ τῶν κιόνων αἱ πολλαί. Five fragments of mouldings belonging to three column-bases and containing the inscriptions of dedication by Kroisos were found in the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, and are now in the British Museum; see Tod, GHI 1 no. 6, and Gisela Richter, Kouroi? (Glasgow 1970)

94. In 7.170, Herodotos reports on the dedications of Mikythos at Olympia: é€kteowv ἐκ ‘Pnytou kai Τεγέην τὴν ᾿Αρκάδων οἰκήσας ἀνέθηκε ἐν ᾿Ολυμπίῃ τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀνδριάντας. The same dedications were later attested by Pausanias (5.26.2-5), who refers to Herodotos.!4 The inscriptions are published by Dittenberger and Purgold, Die Inschriften von Olympia (Berlin 1896) nos. 267-269.

It is noteworthy that they contain

the

phrase Foıklwv ἐν Teyen, as Herodotos has it. See also Becher,

144For Mikythos, who changed his residence from Rhegion to Tegea, see Diodoros 11.48.2, 11.66.3. Pausanias reports that some of the statues had been

carried off by Nero, and that the remaining ones, which he saw himself, were disposed in three groups.

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RE s.v. Mikythos 1562-1563; I.M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley 1941) 2-3.

We long thought that we had the original inscription (Tod, GHI no. 3; Jeffery, LSAG p. 168 no. 4) which underlies the famous story of Kleobis and Biton placed by Herodotos in the mouth of Solon; but new readings of the difficult text seem to invalidate this; see SEG 32.549; 35.479. We have nothing like a corpus of inscriptions relating directly to the Herodotean record. A.R. Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece (London 1960) 134-135, notes the partial confirmation of the account in 2.161—169, 4.159 of the Egyptian rebellion

against Apries, referring to H.A. Hall in CAH 3.303: In 567-566 (Amasis's third year), however, Apries fled secretly

from his palace, summoned the mercenaries to his aid, and a battle ensued at Momemphis, in which he was defeated. According to the official inscription of Amasis recording the event, he was afterwards slain by his own men when he was sleeping in the cabin of his dahabiyah. He was then buried with full regal pomp by Amasis, ‘that the enmity of the gods might be removed from him.’

In her note 8, West says that she omits the statue of Aristeas at Metaponton (4.15). Herodotos speaks as an eyewitness. The

omission is unwarranted, since, unknown to West, Theopompos (115 frg. 248) refers to a bronze bay tree which apparently stood beside the statue. Also omitted is any consideration of the two inscriptions reported by Cyriacus of Anacona as being seen at Delphi, noted recently in SEG 39, Varia No. 1789: Herodotus. Inscriptions in Herodotus. B. Hemmerdinger, Les manuscrits d’Hérodote et la critique verbale (Genova

1981)

180-182, discusses two Dephic oracles transmitted in epigraphical form by Cyriacus of Ancona (CIG 1724 = F.Delphes III 6 144; P. Foucart, BCH 5, 1881, 434/435; both stones are lost; cf. E.W.

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Bodnar, Cyriacus of Ancona and Athens, Collection Latomus 43, Bruxelles 1960, 157/158) which can also be found in Herodotus in

slightly different versions (1.47.3; 1.65.3). He concludes that the

inscriptions give the authentic wording and that Herodotus’ texts are due to later manuscript variants. Contra A. Colonna, Paideia 43 (1988) 190/191, who argues that several versions of the

oracles existed in antiquity from which Herodotus selected the most poetical ones.

In her note 13, West refers to the Canal Stelai of Dareios.!45

Although Herodotos does not mention the inscriptions, the five granite stelai, which have been discovered out of a dozen, erected along the right bank of the ancient Suez Canal to commemorate the completion of that project by Dareios, confirm the account in Herodotos 2.158. In widespread fashion,

Dareios recorded his achievements on stone, and it is not improbable that the stelai which Herodotos attributed to Sesostris in Thrake were those of Dareios.!4$ A recent study, with extensive bibliography, of the Canal Stelai, is published by M.C. Root in Acta Iranica 19 (1979) 61-68. Hinz, "Darius und der Suezkanal,” Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 8 (1975 new series) 115—121, holds that the construction of the canal, 45 m.

wide and requiring four days to get from Bubastis to the Red Sea, was not completed

until 498 B.c. It established a route

from Egypt to India. In the context of West's epigraphical examples and Fehling's source theory, it may be noted that the two do not make any145Literary references to the canal and/or its predecessors (Sesostris) or successors include Herodotos 2.108, 2.158-159, 4.39, 4.42; Aristotle Meteor.

1.14.352b; Agatharchides in Diodoros 1.33.7-12; Strabo 17.1.25-26; Pliny NH 6.33.165-166; and Claudius Ptolemy 4.5. Cf. Posener, Chron. d'Ég. 13 (1938) 259—273. For a recent study, see C. Tuplin, Achaemenid History 6 (1991) 237-

283. The region has been explored by the Wadi Tumilat Project: J.S. Holladay, Jr., Cities of the Delta Part III (Malibu 1982) 2-3. 146See, most recently, Asheri in Fondation Hardt.,Entretiens 35 (1990) 151-152.

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thing of the well-known inscription cited by Plutarch (Mor. 870E) in his attack on Herodotos. The historian reports (8.94)

that the Athenians told him a story that the Korinthians did not participate in the battle of Salamis, a story, he says, denied by the Korinthians. "And the rest of Greece bears witness in their favor": μαρτυρέει δέ σφι kai ἡ ἄλλη EAAds. Herodotos, the Korinthians, and the rest of Greece were correct. The in-

scription, which proves that the Korinthians fought at Salamis, has been found and studied by A. Boegehold, GRBS 6 (1965) 179-186. The inscription was erected on the island of Salamis.

Herodotos did not visit of Athena Skiras stood, sion which his Athenian rinthians version which

the promontory on which the temple but recorded an anti-Korinthian verinformants told him. For the anti-Koprevailed at Athens, see A.R. Burn,

Persia and the Greeks? (Stanford 1984) 445. Herodotos checked

the Athenian version and found it false. The Athenian story

probably belongs to the period of the deadly enmity with Korinth (τὸ σφοδρὸν picos, Thucydides 1.103.4) which followed the Athenian alliance with Megara about twenty years later. According to his announced principles (quoted on pp. 248-250), Herodotos records a version which he did not accept.47 S. West concludes her article with the statement (p. 304): It is diffiailt altogether to escape the impression of something disingenuous in Herodotus' use of inscriptions, and though his preference for colourful and persuasive presentation over objective and critical enquiry may stand out with unusual clarity in relation to this severely technical branch of scholarship, I do not

47 Oddly, H.R. Immerwahr, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature 1 (1985) 439, cites this case as an example of Herodotos lying. His other

examples, all taken from Fehling, have been discussed above, and are equally mistaken. When a close student of Herodotos such as Immerwahr accepts part of Fehling's thesis, we see what a stumbling-block for an understanding of Herodotos Fehling's book has becorne.

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believe, nor would it be a priori probable, that his handling of inscriptions is somehow typical of his methods in general.

Starting with the first inscription she treats, that of the Delphic tripod, West develops the thesis that Herodotos was describing the monuments from hearsay, from oral tradition, even in cities and sanctuaries where most scholars, with the exception of Armayor and Fehling, believe he visited, thus explaining the alleged errors she manufactures. Granted that he was dependent upon oral interpretations for monuments not inscribed in Greek and repeated what we know are major errors, the only cited Greek example which would support this theory is that of the alleged carving of the Themistoklean messages on Euboia, which is part of Herodotos' historical section describing events after the sea-fight at Artemision, the chronology of which remains much debated The important fact remains, as Momigliano has stressed, that, although Herodotos depended on oral tradition for most of his evidence, he preferred what he could see to what he heard.!4 In JHS 111 (1991) 144-160, Stephanie West, “Herodotus’

Por-

trait of Hecataeus," focuses on the passage (2.143-144.1) in which Herodotos has the priests at Thebes remember Hekataios' boast about his ancestry many years earlier when confronted by the wooden statues:'49 "And when Hecataeus the 148 Cf, 2 147.5 3.115; etc. 149As noted by Lawrence, "A pit at Karnak contained a heap of these wooden statues mixed with furniture, all rotten with damp." See, also, Lloyd, vol. 3 p. 109. According to C. Sourdille, La durée et l'étendue du voyage d'Hérodote en Egypte (Paris 1910) 195-201, one temple at Thebes contained

$72 statues. Amid such a wealth of Theban statuary, the priests may have pointed to a collection of such statues as proof of their number. In all the preserved literary canons of Egyptian kings with diverse origins, including Herodotos, Manetho, the Old Egyptian Chronicle, Diodoros, Syncellus, and Eusebius, many generations of dynasties are at some point lumped together without names. The canons are conveniently collected in I.P. Cory, Ancient Fragments of the Phoenician, Chaldaean,

... and Other Writers? (London

1832). It is noteworthy that Diodoros, who

had visited Egypt in the first

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writer of histories was formerly in Thebes, and rehearsed his genealogy and traced his paternal line to a god in the sixteenth generation, the priests of Zeus did with him what they did with me also, albeit I rehearsed not my genealogy” (tr. Powell).*5° I focus on two passages which, I believe, go to the heart of her criticisms: By the time Herodotus might have been moved to undertake a journey to Egypt many years must have elapsed since Hecataeus could have been there, and we shall hardly imagine an elderly Egyptian spontaneously recalling for the benefit of an apparently unremarkable Greek tourist a casual encounter which he happened to have observed as a boy; a fortiori we shall reject the notion that Hecataeus' gaffe had made such an impression on the native clergy that it was still being retailed even after those directly involved had ended their working lives From the Egyptian point of view Hecataeus was a figure of no importance. ... While we may easily enough accept that one visitor was misled on this point by an irresponsible informant, or simply misunderstood what he was told, it is too much to believe that this improbable demonstration was offered independently half a century or more later. Those who would defend Herodotus' good faith here must invoke a very large element of confusion, inaccurate recollection, and questions so obviously leading as to amount to a caricature of proper enquiry.

century B.c. (1.44.1) and described at first hand a riot over the killing of a cat

(1.83.8), lumps together even larger numbers than Herodotos the records of the priests. 150]n Plato's Timaios (218-228), Solon is said to have visited have recited the pedigree of the descendants of Deukalion and priests in Sais. The priests were amused, exclaiming that the mere infants.

in recording Egypt and to Pyrrha to the Greeks were

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According to the article in Der kleine Pauly, Hekataios may have lived until the end of the Persian Wars, and Herodotos is thought to have visited Egypt in the 440's; so there is a gap of a generation. Hekataios began his Genealogies with the arrogant statement, "What I write here is what I consider true," which is hardly a self-effacing claim.!» It is not incongruous to assume that Hekataios, in his writing or in conversation, was given to καυχήματα. I know of no Aigyptiaka written in the period between Hekataios and Herodotos; that of Hellanikos is thought to be later. West's word "tourist" is a loaded one, possibly con-

juring up to the modern mind Swan's Tours and the like.52 Hekataios and Herodotos were unique travelers, asking questions and presumably making notes of a type foreign to Greek mercenaries and the like.!5 Incidents about Lord Byron and I1 Cf. Jacoby on this fragment: “Die selbstvorstellung des authors im prooimion blieb stilgesetz der historie." 152 Passages informative for the subject of Greeks in Egypt before Herodotos (mercenaries, traders, and tourists) are 2.154, 178—179, and 3.139.1;

see Lloyd on the first two. In general, under the Egyptian kings, Greeks were confined to the Delta. Under Kambyses, Greeks were allowed to view the land as tourists. Plato (Laws 12.9538) tells us that the Egyptians drove out

strangers by their strange foods and sacrifices. 153Hekataios and Herodotos, however, did not fall into the category of distinguished foreigners for whom arrangements were requested in advance, as illustrated by a third-century Zenon papyrus published by H.I.

Bell, "Greek Sightseers in the Fayum in the Third Century B.c.,” SO 5 (1927) 32-37. A letter of Apollonios tells Zenon to get ready for two distinguished parties of foreigners, one the θεωροί of Argos, the other an embassy from the King of the Bosporos. They were to be shown the sights of the Arsinoite nome (κατὰ θέαν τῶν κατὰ τὸν ᾿Αρσινοίτην), and riding-vehicles and pack-

mules were to be provided. We are also reminded of the story of Poseidonios (Jacoby, FGrHist 87 frg. 28, section 10), as found in Strabo 2.3.4.98—99, about

the famous Eudoxos of Kyzikos, a Columbus of antiquity and merchantexplorer, who visited Egypt in the second century B.c. When the geographer Strabo and the Emperor Tiberius' adoptive son Germanicus were separately traveling in Egypt, local priests told them stories similar to those of Herodotos: Strabo 17.1.816ff.; Tacitus Ann. 2.60-61. Herodotos presented the semi-mythical Egyptian King Sesostris as superior to Dareios the Persian (2.110); but it was left to Hekataios of Abdera—a Greek writing in Egypt

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others were recalled long after they were dead. To draw on my own experience, I traveled with Eugene Vanderpool in the

fifties, when his questions about sherds and the like brought forth voluntary comments from peasants about similar queries from Blegen a generation earlier. When I recently visited Nezero on Mount Olympos with John Camp, the forest Ranger recalled my visit with E. Vanderpool twenty-five years earlier, calling me the archaeologist with a pipe, although I am no archaeologist, and specifically referred to my questions about what I took to be stepping-stones for elephants. When John Camp and I made inquiries in 1990 during a study of Demos-

thenes’ campaign in Amphilochia, natives volunteered that Hammond had visited the region: Topography 8 (1992) ı and 34. Hammond’s

article was published in 1936/7. For West’s

phrases *unremarkable Greek tourist" and "casual encounter," I find no justification.!54 At the conclusion of his paragraph on the kings of Egypt, Herodotos states that the priests told him that each figure was a priomis (rmt), which he equated with καλὸς κἀγαθός. S. Morenz,

Egyptian

Religion (Ithaca 1970) 49, notes that this

“may reflect a revival of the old specific sense of the term rmt, i.e. one particular select human being rather than ‘man’ as

about 300 B.c.—to elevate Sesostris to a universal ruler. In Hekataios' ac-

count, which we have in Diodoros’ summary, Sesostris proved to be the model emperor of the world (Jacoby, FGrHist 264 frg. 25 p. 37). 154We are not concerned with West's theory that Hekataios got his information at Miletos without extensive travels ("Miletus, with its extensive colonial network and overseas trade, would have been an ideal locale for accumulating topographical information"), or with her repetitious endorsements of Fehling and Armayor. Heidel was one of the severest critics of Herodotos, and, hence, is frequently cited by the "liar" school. Heidel developed the thesis that Hekataios was a wit who liked to tell preposterous stories and pretend that they were told in earnest by Egyptian priests, with whom he had not conversed, and that “our sober-sides," as Heidel calls Herodotos, was not intelligent enough to see that Hekataios was playing the fool. See L. Pearson, Early lonian Historians (Oxford 1939) 81-82, for a critique of Heidel.

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such.” See also Lloyd 3.110. This is not the sort of information which could be traced to Miletos. 4. HARTOG

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Probably the most potent presentation of Herodotos as a liar (the term is his) comes in a detailed analysis of the Skythian lo-

gos as compared with the narrative of the Persian Wars by F.

Hartog, Professor of History at Metz, in The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (Berkeley 1988), 386 pages. He concludes

(p. 364),

“The father of history is not a historian,” but a rhapsodist in prose. The Skythian logos is to be read as a “discourse on the imaginary world of Scythians,” constructed by the rhetoric of otherness. The “mirror” is one in reverse held up to the gaze of the addressees, the Greeks of Herodotos’ audience, in which the image of the barbarian, or the “other,” is the polar antithesis of the Greek. But the Persian War is not history either. “Ctesias, for obvious reasons,” he states (p. 371), “sets out to denounce the lies that are the most ‘malicious’ and most serious; in other words, those that, most of all, concern the Greeks

themselves." To bring out the contrast, the Greek section of the history is as much rhapsodic and suspect as the "other." For Hartog, rhetoric has shaped the Skythian logos. Truth and lies are not at odds with each other, they are but two aspects of rhetoric.!55 The final article of the series on Herodotos in the SStor. 7

(1985) is a critique of the position of Hartog by C.-O. Carbonell (pp. 164—167), who writes, ^F. Hartog ne cherche pas à valider ou à invalider 'le récit par la fouille', le logos scythe par les ré-

sultats auxquels sont arrivés les archéologues; pas davantage à comparer, à la facon d'un Dumézil, les récits hérodotéens aux

155Dumezil,

Romans de Scythie et d'alentour (Paris 1978) 327-328, had

earlier ridiculed Herodotos' treatment of Dareios' expedition. He suggests that Herodotos incorporated themes belonging to Skythian epic.

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légendes des Ossétes.”156 In the CAH? 3.2 (1991) 553, Sulimirski

and Taylor devote one note to Hartog: Hartog (D 61) has characterized Herodotus' Scythians as ‘imaginary’ in his exegesis of Herodotus’ guiding ideology. The view that Herodotus principally used objective information (albeit for a purpose) is not given much consideration; Hartog’s

understanding of what little relevant archaeological data he cites appears limited. For a defence of Herodotus’ account in the light of archaeology, see D 106. An attempt at reconstructing aspects of indigenous Scythian ideology (or Weltanschauung) is made in D 165.

D 165 is a reference to a book by D.S. Raevsky in Russian (1985,

non vidi). D 106 is a reference to an article by Bruce Lincoln in S.N. Skomal (ed.), Proto-Indo-European, Studies in Honor of Marija

Gimbutas (Washington 1987) 267-285. Lincoln begins

his article with the following statement: In a recent article with the provocative title “Les scythes imaginaires,” Francois Hartog set forth a major challenge to traditional interpretations of the locus classicus for matters Scythian: Book Four of Herodotos’s Histories (Hartog 1979). His

position is as brilliant as it is bold, forcefully arguing that Herodotos tells us less about the Scyths than about the Greeks for whom he wrote, from whom he gathered the bulk of his information, and among whom he must himself be numbered. Essentially, Hartog maintains that it was the freedom of the nomadic Scyths, along with their constant motion, that so fascinated the polis-dwellers. Nor were the Greeks in this simply indulging a taste for things exotic or alien, but their fascination with the Scyths had its sources in the military exigencies and

156See also the appraisal of Hartog's book by C. Dewald in Arethusa 20 (1987) 23-25, and Flory in AHR 95 (1990) 460-461.

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tactics of Athens during the Persian Wars (490 and 480 B.C.).

... Yet there is a danger in carrying the basic principle of his article too far. For if texts are best read for what they tell us about their author and primary audience—not for what they say about their purported subject matter—then Hartog’s article itself tells us less about Greeks of the fifth century (les grecs imaginaires), than it does about modern French scholars and readers of the Annales. ... Applying this hermeneutical principle, we rapidly move further and further from our initial object of study, fleeing the Scythians as much as they— supposedly—once fled Darius's troops. Is this inevitable? Or is there some way to halt the fuga perpetua? In truth, I believe there is, and in the case at hand, ar-

chaeology comes to our rescue, for by considering material remains, we break the infinite chain of literary mediations and

come as close as possible to the Dingen an sich of Scythian culture. One must, of course, grant that one never actually reaches die Dingen an sich. Even material remains are mediated by the sensory apparatus and receiving intelligence of the archaeologist who studies them, both of which have been culturally conditioned from his/her birth.

Lincoln proceeds to deduce archaeological evidence from Russian literature which confirms the Herodotean record at critical points.

For the Skythian logos, we do not have the written documents, such as have come to us from Egypt and the Near East, to control the historical portions of Herodotos. He speaks (4.76.6) of conversing with Tymnes, to judge by the name a Karian, an agent of king Ariapeithes./ He claims (4.81) to have visited Exampaios, a place between the Borysthenes (Dnieper) and Hypanis (Bug) rivers, and somewhere by the river Tyras was shown a footprint of Herakles. More importantly, he 157For Tymnes, see Gardiner-Garden, Klio 68 (1987) 348—349.

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explicitly tells us in 4.24 that Skythian and Greek traders from the Black Sea are his sources.15® For the fifth century cult of Apollo Delphinios at Olbia, founded from Miletos, see R. Sherk, ZPE 93 (1992) 235-236. This god had a sanctuary and

later a temple at Olbia. For other sixth- and fifth-century Greek cults at Olbia, including Zeus, Athena, and the New Moon, see F. Graf, MH 31 (1974) 209-215. The writings of these

two scholars contain bibliography testifying to the presence of thriving Greek colonies at Olbia and other sites in the region in the time of Herodotos. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (1976) makes a valuable contribution in devoting some forty-nine entries to summaries of Russian excavations in the northern part of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, extending as far north as the mouth of the Don. The sites are indicated on maps 4 and 5 and listed on page 1011. The majority of the sites attest to Greek infiltration

as early as the sixth century.

The

excavators

have

discovered semisubterranean dwellings, winemaking establishments, cisterns for wine production, potters' kilns, twostory storage rooms, much bronze work and many coins.

In Sovetskaia Arkheologia 3o (1991) fasc. 4.36—52, V.D. Kurz-

netsov reports that at Kepoi on the eastern bank of the Taman Gulf hundreds of sherds of Ionian painted pottery of the sixth century have been found. On

p. 249 of fasc. 3 is a report of

fifth-century Greek sherds from the shores of the Sea of Azov. M.J. Treister and T.V. Shelov-Kovedyayev, Hesperia 58 (1989)

289-296, with map, publish a grafhito on a clay object from 158 Polybios had contempt for traders, not finding them worthy of belief. In 4.39.11, he contrasts scientific accuracy with merchants’ yarns—é umoρικὰ δηγήματα----οΥ, as he elsewhere writes, “the falsehoods and sensational tales of merchants" (τῆς τῶν πλοϊζομένων ψευδολογίας xai τερατείας).

See Walbank, Class. & Med. 9 (1948) 161. For the mixed nature of the population at Olbia, see A.J. Graham, CAH? 3.3 (1982) 127-128.

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Hermonassa on the Taman peninsula, east of the Crimea, dated in the sixth century and written in a Kretan script, evidence that Kretan craftsmen were involved in early settlements on the northern shores of the Black Sea. It is not surprising that traders’ tales about the Skythians were current in Greece by the early fifth century. Pindar frg. 105b, Aischylos Prometheus 707711, Hippokrates Aér. 18, as well as Herodotos 4.46, all refer to the same feature of their wandering life, their use of wagons, confirmed by Minns and others. When Herodotos (4.103) tells

a story about the head-hunting Taurians, it is generally held that a similar account in Euripides /T is a mirror of Herodotos. This is possible, but it is also possible that such stories circulated in Athens early from traders in the Crimea. In any case, Greek traders are the ultimate source. Hesiod, Aischylos, Pindar, Herodotos did not "invent" the "barbarian" and the "noble savage;" they codified stories current in Greece familiar to, and believed by, their audience. Of the main commercial route that connected Olbia with the hinterland, Sulimirski, CAH? 3.2 (1991) 583, writes: It ran northwards from Olbia into the centre of the Tiasmin group; then, after crossing the Dnieper, it turned eastwards and followed the age-old gold trade route to the Urals and even the Altai mountains in eastern Kazakhstan. 'Some Scythians frequently go there,’ wrote Herodotus (IV.24), ‘and the Scythians who go to them transact business by means of seven interpreters and seven languages. It is evident that Olbia was a most important commercial and cultural centre in the north Pontic area for at least two centuries and maintained very friendly

relations with the surrounding peoples.

Fehling (100 and 226) regards the account as fictive and the numeral "seven" in 4.24 formulaic, adding, "The number cannot be reconciled with the rest of Herodotus' account."

Sulimirski (p. 552) notes the numerous ethnonyms applied to

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groups living in Skythia in Near Eastern texts and Greek literature, referring to various articles in the RE by Kretschmer. The latter indicates that Skythian and Sarmatian were Iranian dialects. There was Baktrian and Zend in the east and Old Persian in the west. Fehling offers no linguistic authority and no information about the languages and dialects spoken in this vast territory, particularly in a locality where gold must have attracted traders from many nations. The observation that Herodotos chose to contrast the customs of the “barbarians,” “other” in general, with those of the Greeks is a commonplace. It was made by Legrand in the first volume of the Bude series and by How-Wells in their introductory section. Writing of the Libyan logos, A.B. Lloyd, Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) 241, states, “Most of what

Herodotus chooses to describe is spectacularly at variance with Greek custom,” and p. 252, “I am sure that one of the things that particularly fascinated Herodotus about the Libyans was precisely the fact that they were, like Randvölker in general, quintessentially βάρβαροι i.e. they were, in so many respects, different from Greeks."159 Observations about cultural contrasts are true of tourists the world over from early times until today. As J. Redfield,

“Herodotus

the Tourist,”

CP 80 (1985) 97,

wrote, "Herodotus notes points which distinguish this people from others, and especially points which a Greek finds odd, and therefore repellently interesting. Oddity is an ethnocentric principle." D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto 1989) 155, has given us the following summary: Herodotus enlarges his account of the Scyths because they are very different both from the Greeks and from the Egyptians and

from almost all other peoples as well. Although they share with the Egyptians an aversion to foreign customs (4.76.1, 80.5), in

159Gardiner-Garden, JHS 109 (1989) 39, suggests that Theopompos made

the Skythians the antithesis of the Makedonians.

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most other respects they present a diametrically opposed geography and organization of their people (4.29, 59.2, etc): they inhabit the cold and barren North; they call themselves the youngest of earth’s peoples; they have no images of their gods and in fact do not generally distinguish among them; they are always in motion and even convert what is usually stationary—the community—into a transitory mode; they are nomadic pastoralists (φερέοικοι) who have no monuments, no

cities, no walls or temples, few gods, no wise men, no wonders. In short, these barbarians have no history, no record of their

past for Herodotus to report, except when other men's policies or « travels have impinged on them. Other than the rivers, there are no wonders, θωμάσια (4.82), natural or man-made. Their very

unremarkableness is remarkable. They provide a set of opposites for other communities, especially the Greek polis, in their locale, diet, sex habits, burial customs, and so on.

Itinerant merchants or settlers to the north brought stories early to the Greeks about the Skythians. Homer (Iliad 13.1215)

gives a grand poetic picture of Zeus gazing northward to the vast sweep of the Balkan and Caspian area, his cosmic eye roving from Thrake to Turkestan

(Abioi). He characterizes the

Skythians as people who "drink the milk of mares," and “horsemen that fight in close combat," and then makes a value judgment, "the most righteous of men." Similarly, Hesiod documents the presence of these northern people, noting that their founder discovered how to smelt bronze (frg. 282, Merkelbach and West) and that the people themselves were milk drinkers (frg. 150 line 15; Eratosthenes in Strabo 7.3.7.300).

Aischylos referred to the Skythians as "law-abiding, eaters of cheese, and drinkers of mare's milk" (frg. 198 of the Prom. Unbound, Radt; cf. frg. 196). In chapters 17-22 of the Aer.,

Hippokrates discusses the climate and customs of the Skythians, but was chiefly concerned with how the climate and nomadic life affected the body. By the time of Herodotos, the

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Greeks had accumulated a number of traditions about the Skythians. In antiquity and continuing down to Rousseau and the nineteenth century, the Skythians typified the “Noble Savage," and A.O. Lovejoy and G. Boas in their monumental Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity 1 (Baltimore 1935) have collected the extensive testimonia on pages 315-344, in-

cluding Ovid's account of his ten years of exile in the cold climate, which he hated. As to Hartog's theory of likeness or otherness dictating the narrative, much of such considerations is in the mind of the investigator. In his chapter of the "Hunter Hunted," Hartog maintains that the Persians are treated as Greeks to convey the ““otherness’ of the Scythian strategy." Much is made of Scythian tactics, but Herodotos tells us nothing unexceptional in warfare. In 4.102, we learn that the Skythians did not have the manpower to meet Dareios army in a pitched battle (ἰθυμαχίῃ); so they sent to the kings of eight of their neighbors for assistance. Unable to get the necessary aid (4.103-119), they

made the decision to avoid defeat and resolved in 4.120 not to meet the enemy

in open

battle (ἐκ τοὺ ἐμφανέος),

but to

adopt a scorched earth policy, combined with cavalry hit-andrun tactics, withdrawing towards countries which refused their alliance. Practical necessities dictated the strategy.!6° When the armies reversed their courses, Herodotos tells us (4.140) that

“It would have been possible for the Skythians to find the Persians easily, if only they had not destroyed all the grazing land of the country, and choked up all the wells." The best 160When Arrian was governor of Kappadokia under Hadrian, the Asiatic Alani, who are placed by Ptolemy in the north of Skythia, attacked his province and were repelled. He subsequently wrote a work on the tactics to be

employed against the Alani (ἔκταξις κατ᾽ ᾿Αλανῶν), of which some fragments are preserved (Jacoby, FGrHist 156 frgs. 12-13). Both the Skythians and their horses are described as being γυμνοί. Arrian Tact. 16.6, ascribes to

the Skythians attack in wedge-shaped (ἐμβολοειδέσι) formations. Asklepiodotos (7.3) says the wedge formation of the cavalry was invented by the Skythians and later adopted by the Makedonians.

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study of the Skythian strategy and the scorched earth policy is that of Victor Hanson,. Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Pisa 1983) 98-100.16:

The

French

structuralists have

created a problem where none exists. Hartog makes much of his postulate that Dareios would have invaded a nomadic country primarily with mounted troops instead of what he calls a quasi-hoplite force.!6? Thucydides states in 2.97.6 that the Skythians were the most numerous

people in the world, and, if united, they could vanquish any other nation. There is no reason to believe that Dareios knew that they would not unite. There has been no campaign in history where the strategy has not called forth much secondguessing. Actually, Dareios’ most effective troops proved to be the donkeys, whose braying kept the horses of enemy raiding parties at a distance. In the Kyropaideia, Xenophon tells us that at the outset Kyros’ Persians were not mounted and so he had to train his own cavalry. Whether the crossing of the Bosporos, or considerations of logistics, presented problems to a large 161 E H. Minns, who knew the country, writes (J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion

and

Ethics vol. 11 (1921] 277):

"Their

warlike

tactics

are

proverbial—retiring before an invader, wasting the country, cutting off his supplies, harassing his rear, enticing him by feigned flight, and gradually exhausting him, while the nomads carry their supplies with them and are perfectly mobile. When they attack other countries, they leave no forces to guard their own, being quite independent of their base and so able to concentrate all their strength upon one point." 162 Any consideration of Dareios' strategy and the nature of his army must take into account the fact that Dareios first invaded Thrake. In what

appears to this writer as a very important paper, based on autopsy, Hammond, "The Extent of Persian Occupation in Thrace," Chiron 10 (1980) 53-

61, postulates that Dareios reached the Danube by the "great valley route of the Hebrus,” then into the "great plain of Marica,” where his cavalry could take control. During the march of some 300 kilometers, Dareios was claiming as his the land which he had conquered. This was the point of setting up pillars and cairns. Meanwhile, Dareios ordered his fleet to sail directly from the Bosporos to the mouth of the Danube and await him two days' journey up the river (near Cernavoda?), where a bridge was to be prepared (4.89.1-2).

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cavalry force, we can only guess. How-Wells (1 p. 429) rightly strike the note of the obvious parallels between the campaigns of Dareios and Xerxes; similar warnings are given, similar preparations are made; similar disasters are incurred, and the military forces are similar. The second-guesser could say that Xerxes should have equipped and trained his forces with heavy armor. A more appropriate parallel is that between the Skythian campaigns of Dareios and Alexander. Alexander encountered the same well-known Skythian tactics of withdrawal and encircling while firing arrows, which resulted in some cases in heavy losses; see, for example, N.G.L. Hammond, Alexander the Great (1980) 191-192. In writing of the year 329 B.c., Ham-

mond

states, "The next thing was to foil the well-known

Scythian tactics of withdrawing-and-circling while arrows at their pursuers—tactics encountered by Alexander in their Danubian campaigns." Because archers on horseback, the Skyths were prepared to

firing their Philip and of superior face Philip

and Alexander, although the Makedonians had seasoned cavalry. No one would accuse the Alexander historians of inventing the Skythian tactics, which were adapted to their coun-

try.!63 The tactics of the Skythians were afterwards adopted by the Parthians. The early horseback-riding nomadic people of Inner Asia conducted warfare in similar fashion to that attributed by Herodotos to the Skythians: J. Masson, TLS Feb. 5, 1993 p. 15. The problem of historical accuracy precedes that of

literary artistry. M.A. Dandamaev

and V.G. Lukonian,

The Culture and

Social Institutions of Ancient Iran (Cambridge 1989) 222-237,

offer a detailed study of the Achaemenid army, emphasizing 1630. Szemerenyi, Scripta Minoa 4 (Innsbruck 1991) 2065-2067, gives the

etymology of Σκύθαι as "archer, shooter," comparing Saxon, "sword, knife." He notes that cuneiform records of the sixth century B.c. list Kimmerian (= Skythian) arrows and arrow-heads. The Skythian was a superb archer. Szemerenyi corroborates Herodotos' called all Skythians Saka (p. 2062).

statement

(7.64) that the Persians

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the Persian use of Sakai cavalry. The Persians never created heavy-armed infantry, but hired Greek hoplites. They relied heavily on bowmen to throw the ranks of the opponent into disarray and after this the cavalry, which was recruited from the nobility, would annihilate them. Their main weapon was the bow. According to Herodotos (1.73), King Kyaxares handed over his own children to Skythian nomads to learn archery. The authors give a survey of “Skythian” bronze and iron arrowheads found as early as the seventh and sixth centuries s.c. For the Skythian logos, Herodotos (4.87) gives only the conventional figure of 700,000 including cavalry. Unfortunately, he does not give the ratio of infantry to cavalry, which would tell us a great deal about Dareios' strategy. A factor in judging size is that Dareios regularly left behind military colonies. In all of this there is nothing to support the claim that Dareios used Greek tactics. One feature of the ways of the Skythians in warfare has been confirmed, Herodotos' story in 4.65 that the Skythians were

headhunters and used the skulls as drinking cups. O.H. Frey in The Celts, ed. S. Moscati (New York 1991) 136, illustrates a belt

from a grave in the Caucasus depicting a horseman riding with a head hanging from

the reins of his horse. E.H. Minns,

Scythians and Greeks (1913) p. 83 and fig. 26, illustrates a skull

with the top pierced with holes.!64 In addition to passages confirmed by Bruce Lincoln in Proto-Indo-European, we discussed above Herodotos' statement (4.91) that Dareios set up a stele at the sources of the Tearos, a tributary of the Hebros, the principal river of southern Thrake. General Jochmus (JRGS 24 [1854] 43-44), familiar

to topographers from his autopsy of the Peloponnesos, hunted for the stele and reported that his host at Pinarhisar informed him that there had been a stone there with "letters described as

164Pliny (NH 7.2.12) says the Anthropophagoi drank out of human skulls. See also Livy 23.24; Silius Italicus 13.482; and Aulus Gellius frg. 26.

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resembling ‘nails’” in a language taken to be Syrian or Assyrian.165 Subsequently, E. Unger (AA 30 [1915] 3-17, “Die Dariusstele am Tearos") identified the springs and gave photographs and details of what he claimed was the bedding of the stele inscribed in cuneiform.’ We note that Herodotos confirmed his information about the bridge of ships over the Bosporos from a painting in the Samian Heraion (4.88),!67 which the architect of the bridge,

Mandrokles, caused to be painted. We shall return to this point in the final section. Fehling (184 n. 2) regards this as one of Herodotos’ inventions, “evidence for the view that Herodotus also filled Greek temples with fictive proofs.” H. von Brunn, Geschichte der griechischen Künstler 2 (Stuttgart 1889) 369, calls

it “das älteste namhafte Gemälde, von dem wir wissen”; but the picture by Kalliphon of Samos in the Ephesian Artemision, depicting the Homeric battle at the ships (Pausanias 5.19.1) may be of equal antiquity. Strabo (14.1.14.637) says that the Heraion at Samos housed a pinakotheke, one of the famous “Museums” of the ancient world. Samos had a flourishing school of painting.!6® Polybios (4.43.2) says that Dareios’ bridge of ships was at

Hermaion, giving the width as five stades, as does Strabo (7.6.1.319). Herodotos gives the width as four stades, as does Strabo in 2.5.23.125. Other relevant passages are collected by F.W. Walbank, “Polybius on the Pontus and the Bosphorus,”

165Jochmus provided a map purporting to be that of Dareios’ route. He suggested (p. 47) that “the immense pile of stones” commemorating Dareios’ march (4.92) was to be sought near Dolet, where six tumuli and many stones were to be seen.

166For the identification of the Tearos, which Herodotos says had 38 springs, see Danoff, Der kleine Pauly s (1975) 551-552. Jochmus says he con-

firmed the number.

167 The epigram on the painting is repeated in AP 6.341. Cf. Page FGE 193194. 168Cf, M. Swindler, Ancient Painting (New Haven 1929) 137. Lawrence compares the painting to the Arkesilaos vase and to vase-paintings in Pfuhl with men walking across a row of ships.

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D.M. Robinson Studies ı (Saint Louis 1951) 469—479, with additional comments in HCP 1.495-496.169 As quoted by Strabo (7.3.9.303), Ephoros (FGrHist 70 frg. 42) cited a work by the

fifth-century Samian poet, Choirilos, ""The Crossing of the Pontoon-Bridge' which was constructed by Dareios." We note what seems to be strong confirmation of Herodotos' description of the resistance of the Thrakian people known as the Getai in 4.93. The Bucharest archaeologist,

Maria Coja,

"Greek Colonists and Native Populations in Dobruja," in Greek Colonists and Native Populations ed. J.-P. Descoeudres (Oxford 1990) 162, writes: At Istrus there is evidence of a major disturbance occurring towards the end of the 6th century Bc. In zone X, for instance, occupation appears to have been interrupted by a violent fire. The time corresponds

with Darius'

expedition

in 514/13 Bc

against the Scythians who were moving towards the south of the mouths of the Danube. As Herodotus relates, the Getae tried to hold their own against the great Darius, but were before long defeated. The charred level found in Istrus' zone X might well be related to this event. It is covered by deposits of the Classical period. Similarly, the temple of Zeus Polieus in the sacred area was reconstructed in the sth century sc, but the most telling evidence comes from the Archaic city wall. It was destroyed at the same time, as is clearly shown by the mass of mud bricks below the Classical levels. Only in one segment, which might correspond to a possible South Gate, does the wall appear to have been reconstructed. Towards 480 Bc., a new defence system was built. It was made of stone and cut with its main, western, side across the

area that had been protected in the Archaic period. All these observations suggest that the city suffered widespread destruction at the time of the Persian expedition. This raises the question as

169Sources for the bridge are collected in H. Merle, Die Geschichte der Stádte Byzantion und Kalchedon (1916) 10.

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to where the Getae, who felt strong enough to offer resistance to the Great King, had their main tribal centre. Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that it must have been situated in the northern part of Dobruja. Etc.!7?

One striking feature of the Skythian logos (4.1-142),!7! as

with the other logoi, is that so little space is devoted to the military portion of Dareios' campaign, which is the focus of Har-

tog's sharpest critique. Herodotos opens the logos with two sentences: "After the taking of Babylon, Dareios himself led an expedition into Skythia. Asia abounding in men, and vast sums flowing into the treasury, the desire seized him to exact vengeance from the Skyths, who had once in days gone by invaded Media, defeated those who met them in the field, and so begun the quarrel." He repeats this sentiment in 4.4; but the

military campaign is not mentioned until 4.83. We have been given 82 chapters which are entirely ethnographical and geographical. Even when Herodotos turns to Dareios, it is to tell us about the bridge over the Thrakian Bosporos. He interrupts this excursus to give an enumeration of the expedition in 4.87:

“Now his army was drawn from all the nations under his sway;

and the whole amount, without reckoning the naval forces, was seven hundred thousand men, consisted of six hundred ships." the Bosporos bridge, he states passed over the Bosporos and

including cavalry. The fleet After completing the story of in one sentence that Dareios journeyed through Thrake to

reach the Tearos. This river holds his attention until 4.92.1,

where we are told that Dareios marched to the Arteskos. He then devotes 4.92-96 to the ways of the Getai, including their worship of Zalmoxis. In 4.97, Dareios reaches the Ister, where

Herodotos' attention is focused on the Danube bridge. Sections V?See also Danoff, Der kleine Pauly 2 (1967) 787-789.

Although we have many works on the “Form” of the History, F. Jacoby's tabulation of the structure in RE Suppl. 2 (1913) 283-326, remains a

basic analysis

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99-101 are given over to the shape of Skythia. In 102, he reports

that the Skythians sent envoys to neighboring natives for assistance; so sections 103-119 are devoted to these neighbors with

stories of were-wolves, the androphagoi, cannibalism, lice-eating, fauna, Amazons, the Sauromatai and their women, and Skythian kings. Not until 4.120 does he return to the campaign proper, and this is filled with anecdotes about Skythian gifts, the kingdom of Miltiades, and the like. Thus, History proper plays a relatively small part in the logos. References to the Skythians are of course not restricted to Book 4. They are mentioned in historical contexts in Books ı, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. They play an important role as masters of "Upper Asia” for 28 years (1.130.1; 4.1). Harmatta, in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) 123, writes: Historical research recognized long ago that Herodotus’ comments on the Scythian rule over ‘Upper Asia’ and the operations

of the

Scythians

in Transcaucasia

and

Northern

Mesopotamia as well as on their raid into Palestine and Egypt are based on reliable sources and can be confirmed by other evidences.

A striking feature of Herodotos is his attempt to combine all knowledge, as he understood it and could attain it, into one work. Geography much larger part; an innovator. We the later sophists, agoras of various

and what we now call anthropology fill a in this respect he is not judged to have been presume that, like other logographers and he had recited his logoi in the town-halls and cities and at festivals.17?2 His ethnographical

172 Admittedly, the evidence is not solid nor accepted by all. For a tradition of public lectures by Herodotos and Hippias of Elis, see Lucian Herodotos, who has Herodotos recite his history to admiring crowds at an Olympic festival, Plutarch Mor. 862B, and Plato Hippias Maior 285p. We are told that Apollonios of Rhodes while still a youth composed and recited in public his Argonautica, and that the poem was condemned, in consequence of which he

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material must reflect the taste of his age. For modern scholarship this seems fortunate, for Herodotos inspired more excaretired to Rhodes; see Seaton’s Introduction to the Loeb. Xenophon

(Mem.

2.1.21) has Sokrates say that Prodikos recited to “throngs of listeners” (Loeb, πλείστοις ἐπιδείκννται),

ῥήματα (2.1.34). Xenophon

adorning his discourses with

μεγαλειότερα

(Symp. 3.6) says that Nikias’ son Nikeratos

listened nearly every day to the recitations of the rhapsodoi on Homer, as well as others, including Stesimbrotos, whose works were partly biographical or historical (Jacoby no. 107). Plutarch quotes the Athenian Diyllos (Jacoby, FGrHist 73 frg. 3) as saying that Herodotos received a gift of ten talents from Athens. The Souda (s.v. Θουκυδίδης)

recounts a story that

Thucydides heard one of Herodotos' recitations. Of the late sources, Diyllos, who lived in the late fourth century and was a reputable historian, is the most reliable, although the sum of ten talents is impossible. Numerals are always suspect. For examples of cities awarding emoluments, see Herodotos 3.131. Isokrates (15 Antidosis 166) says that Athens gave Pindar 10,000 drachmai. C.O. Pavese, "Il prezzo dell' epinicio." Omaggio a Piero Treves (Padova 1983) 295-299, in commenting on the scholion to Pindar Nem. 5.1 to the

effect that Pindar asked 3,000 drachmai for an ode celebrating Pytheas' victory, collects evidence for sums paid to musicians in the fourth century. He notes Pindar's praise of liberality. The History itself was much too long for recitation, but the logoi would have had popular appeal. Gibbon happily observed that Herodotos "sometimes writes for children and sometimes for philosophers." The material that he collected could be shaped to appeal to a wide audience. In the Hippias passage, Plato has Hippias say of his audience at Sparta: "They are very fond of hearing about the genealogies of heroes and men, Socrates, and the foundations of cities in ancient times and, in short, about antiquity in general, so that for their sake I have been obliged to learn all that sort of thing by heart and practise it thoroughly." This is just what the books of Herodotos contained. The public at Sparta, and doubtless Argos, Thebes, etc., were responsive to lectures on ἀρχαιολογία. Otherwise, the books of the logographers would not have been written. Lucian ( Hist. Conscr. 28-41) recounts amusingly the flood of histories recited at Korinth describing the campaigns of Avidius Cassius in A.D. 165 during the Parthian War, including one tract that was so compendious that the title was almost longer than the text. Lucian's essay Herodotos is pointless unless there was at least a tradition that Herodotos recited his works. As an exile and extensive traveler, Herodotos must have required some means of livelihood. The article of A. Momigliano, "The Historians of the Classical World and their Audiences," ASNP Ser. 3, vol. 8 (1978) 59-75, assembles the evi-

dence for public readings of historical works. See also my Dionysius of Halicarnassus: On Thucydides (Berkeley 1975) p. xxviii n. 4.

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vations and archaeological surveys outside of Greece than any other author in history, not omitting an expedition to Egypt sponsored by Napoleon and others by the Czars of Russia. The result seems to be an increasingly high rating for his ethnographical excursuses; and to ignore the mass of this material is to apply a false principle of criticism. Herodotos clearly has not produced a fancy narrative which has no relation to the facts. Taking our cue from Carbonell in his review of Hartog, we note that a recent survey of archaeological activity in Skythia has been published by Renate Rolle and translated into English, The World of the Scythians (Berkeley 1989). From a review by Andrew Sherratt in TLS January 26, 1990, p. 95, I quote the

following: The only evidence of their society and culture, besides Greek accounts like that of Herodotus, is archaeology. There is no Scythian script, and the mythological dimension—the missing link between surviving Celtic legends and the Sanskrit scriptures—has entirely gone in the change from European to Asiatic cultures in the first millennium Ap. But the archaeology is magnificent; and it demonstrates moreover that Herodotus, far from exaggerating, told only the half of it. ... The horse remained the supreme icon of Scythian culture, as indicated by the twenty-two slaughtered steeds arrayed around the burialchamber of the Kostromskaya tumulus in the Kuban, or the hundreds of slaughtered horses tethered to posts underneath the Ul'ski Aul burial mound, also in the northern Caucasus. These archaeological discoveries testify to the essential accuracy of Herodotus' account of Scythian royal funerary rites. ... While Herodotus may have selected themes with an allegorical significance or political interest for the Greeks' own recent history, the

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soundness of his ethnography is being increasingly revealed by excavation.!73

For one custom, we have varying interpretations by Skythian authorities. Rolle (p. 93) interprets Herodotos' story (4.75) of a

vapor-bath as confusion with the practice of intoxication from hemp vapor: In his dictionary written in the fifth century AD

the Greek

grammarian Hesychios of Alexandria gives the word 'hemp' a synonym which translates as 'Scythian incense'. The author is referring here to a well-known episode from Herodotus. After his impressive account of a Scythian royal burial, Herodotus describes an activity which he assumes to be a particularly effective kind of vapour bath (Book IV, 73 [sic]): the

Scythians crawl into little felt tents, in the middle of which are red-hot stones. On to these they throw hemp seeds, which they cultivate themselves, and inhale the smoke.

Presumably the

heat inside the little tents caused the participants to sweat, which Herodotus (or his informant) found particularly noteworthy. This account reveals that the ‘Father of History’ had never smoked pot himself: his interpretation of events would otherwise have seemed less naive. The fact that the Scythians ‘howled with pleasure’ would not have been attributed by him to their enjoyment of the ‘vapour-bath’; he would have realized

that they were simply high.

Another explanation of the vapor-bath has been put forth by Meuli, Hermes 70 (1935) 122ff., and is endorsed by F. Thor173 By contrast, in the annual review of books on Herodotos by S. West in Classical Review, she concludes her appraisal of Harmatta's section on Skythian in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) with the statement (CR 106 [1992] 279), "Scrutiny of the facts revealed by archaeology does not advance

our understanding of Herodotus' principles and methodology as much as it might once have seemed reasonable to hope."

4. HARTOG

darson, “The

AND

SKYTHIA

Scythian Funeral Customs,”

209

Acta

Iranica 28

(1988) 545. We have to do with a shamanistic seance where the

participants in the funeral intoxicate themselves. Merry feasts as a part of funeral ceremonies are a widespread phenomenon, and seem to symbolize the victory of life over death. Intoxicants were natural requisites on such occasions. It is reported that the Ossetic funeral ritual was accompanied by grandiose drinking-bouts. Actually, Herodotos' description as a vaporbath may be correct, for, as Cook notes ( The Cambridge History of Iran 2 [1985] 119), "the vapours took the place of bathing, for

the Scyths never washed their bodies with water." E.H. Minns (in J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 11 p. 278) combines the customs: "In iv.73-75 Herodotus seems to

describe three separate customs under one —a ceremonial purification from the taint of a corpse, the usual vapour-bath still popular in Russia, and a custom of intoxication with the vapour of hemp; he adds that the women whitened their skin with a paste of pounded cypress, cedar, and frankincense, which suggests considerable luxury and wide commercial connexions."

The burial practices of the Skythians (4.71) have been confirmed in almost every detail, square burial pits, embalmed corpses with stitches closing the body clearly visible, wooden lining of the grave pit. In one tomb were found the skeletons of 360 horses. There is much material in S.I. Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia (Berkeley 1970). In this work first published in Russian in 1953, Rudenko writes (p. xxv): The majority of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars were prejudiced against Herodotus, in spite of numerous archaeological discoveries showing that as a witness he was conscientious and trustworthy. It is therefore the more interesting and noteworthy that

a number of his statements about the life

and customs of the steppe tribes of eastern Europe and Asia have

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been unexpectedly borne out by the results of the Altai excavations.

Apart from the way of life, occupation, dress, weapons and other aspects of material culture, such customs as embalmment of corpses of the Scythian chieftains, burial with a concubine, purifying after burial, scalping of slain enemies, and much else, are confirmed, which could not have been established by excavation in the Black Sea Scythian area. The Altai finds therefore not only confirm the reliability of Herodotus' description of the steppe tribes of his time, but reveal in an unexpectedly clear light the ancient cultural ties between the western and eastern pastoral tribes.

M.W.

Thompson

in his "Translator's Preface" to Rudenko

writes (p. xxx): Although much more distant, the Classical Greek sources are in many ways more interesting because Herodotus, who is

virtually a contemporary writer, went to Scythia and gathered a great deal of first-hand information about the Scythians. The excavations of the barrows in the Black Sea area in the second half of the last century and the beginning of this one did much to confirm the accounts of Herodotus and, of course, added much new information. Some of the discoveries at Pazyryk, the

censers for burning hemp, the shaven heads, the scalping, the joint burial of man and woman and so on, are further vindica-

tion of Herodotus' authority. The student of this period is indeed lucky to have this description to assist him.

In Topography 4.253, we collected from Rudenko's publication a list of a dozen passages which had been confirmed by archaeology. K.S. Rubinson, "Herodotus and the Scythians," Expedition 17 (1975) 4.16-25, summarizes the evidence of the archaeolo-

gists. She claims that when Herodotos is dealing with people

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whom the Greeks contacted, he is fairly accurate, but when he discusses people far to the east, such as the “bald” Mongolians in the Altai Mountains (4.23), he is less accurate. The position

of the most recent student of Skythian funeral rites, F. Thordarson,'74 is that Herodotos has intertwined the customs of the Northwest Caucasian people with those of the Gerrhoi (pp.

542-543): Herodotus’ description of the Scythian burial rites has been confirmed in all essentials by archaeological excavations in the Pontic and North West Caucasian area, in so far as such evidence is relevant. The insight gained through archaeology is supplemented by ethnographic research. In this connection the burial customs of the Ossetes, the modern descendants of the ancient Iranians of South Russia, and their neighbours in the North Caucasus are particularly interesting. The archaic char-

acter of the Ossetic language testifies to historical continuity and cultural traditionalism; this picture is corroborated by the Ossetic folklore and popular beliefs. ... Human sacrifices were common. ... The funeral rituals ... “must have been famous among

all Scyths for [their] cruel extravagance,

and

[their]

fame undoubtedly reached Olbia where [they] impressed Herodotus during his stay in that city in the mid-sth century B.C." (Sulimirski o.c., 170). He must, indeed, have felt fascinated

by these terrible customs as he has chosen them as representatives of the Scythian burial ceremonies. Herodotus' fancy for the macabre, which he shares with the contemporary Attic tragedians, is fairly well attested elsewhere in his Histories.!75

174°The Scythian Funeral Customs. Some Notes on Herodotus IV, 71-75,” Acta Iranica 28 (1988) 539-548.

1751: is not without interest that C.T. Newton in his chapter on “Greek Art in the Kimmerian Bosporos," Essays on Art (London 1880) 373-399, summarized reports of excavations of rich tumuli, starting as early as 1831,

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Sulimirski, CHI 2 (1985) 170, writes of Herodotos 4.71-72: A special feature of the northwest Caucasian princely barrow graves were hecatombs of horses: 16 or 24 horse skeletons were

found in some of them, but in this respect the Ulski barrow exceeded them all. It was of the early period, measured 15 m in height, and contained skeletons of over 400 ho

rses. The layout of

its sepulchral construction and of its contents corresponds almost exactly with the description by Herodotus (1v.71, 72) of the

funeral of a Scythian king; one year after the funeral 50 Scythian youths were killed and their bodies impaled and mounted on bodies of slaughtered horses around the top of the mound. The funeral must have been famous among all Scyths

for its cruel extravagance, and its fame undoubtedly reached Olbia where it impressed Herodotus during his stay in that city in the mid-sth century a.c.

The cemeteries and barrow-graves are also studied by the same author in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 568—572.

B. Lincoln, “On the Scythian Royal Burials," Proto-Indo-

European: Studies in Honor of Marija Gimbutas (Washington 1987) 267—285, taking issue with Hartog on his opening page, offers material confirmation of the funerary rituals described in 4.17. In 4.127,

the

Skythian

king

Idanthyrsos

responds

to

Dareios' demand that the Skythians stand and fight by saying that if the Persians reach the tombs of his ancestral fathers (taphoi patroioi) the Skythians will give battle for these graves. Lincoln suggests that the place was the deep concentration of royal tombs at the lower bend of the Dnieper. Herodotos, he says, was "extremely well-informed regarding the funerary practices of the Royal Scyths."

which later students have taken as confirming Herodotos' account of funeral rites.

4. HARTOG AND SKYTHIA Herodotos

relates

213

(4.5) that at the establishment

of the

Skythian kingship, a plow, a yoke, a mace, and a cup, all of gold, fell from heaven. Curtius (7.8.17) explains that on the submission of the Skythians to Alexander, their ambassador gave the conqueror a yoke of oxen, a plow, an arrow and spear, and a goblet. M.L. Carter, Acta Iranica ı (1974) 171-202, studies

these objects in connection with a New Year formula uniting the functions of kingship and hero-god. The ceremony of the sacred oath given in 4.70 has been confirmed by M. Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia (Oxford 1922)

106, with several representations.!7$ These strong archaeological confirmations of Herodotos’ account of Skythian customs underscore the fact that “otherness” is not a criterion for testing the historian's veracity. Consistent with traditions about the Skythians found in earlier writers, Herodotos has filled out the picture with details, many of which have been authenticated. J.M. Cook,

The Persian Empire (London

1983) 59-64, has

given us a summary of Dareios' Skythian campaign in the light of Persian documents and the Herodotean record. We append comments on the geography of a region of which we have no personal knowledge. Scholars who ridicule the Herodotean geography of Skythia, what Hartog calls "l'imaginaire géographique," would do well to read A. Brunt's appendices (XII, "Caspian, Caucasus, Tanais; and XXVI, “Mesopotamian Rivers”) in the Loeb Arrian on the misconceptions of geography by Alexander and his historians. Alexander thought that the Caspian was a gulf of the Ocean. "At one time Alexander thought that the Indus was the Nile in its upper course (vi.1)." "Arrian was wrong in making the Jaxartes rise in the Hindu-Kush, and not 700 miles 176As to economic activity, Rostovtzeff writes, "We must note also that in almost all the richer graves scores of Greek wine-jars were found, evidence of a large import of Greek wine into Scythia." He reviews many of the finds on pp. 35ff. and pp. 83ff.

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north-west in the modern Kirgiz.” “Having identified the Hindu-Kush with the Caucasus, the Alexander-historians then supposed that the Iaxartes, which in their view rose in that mountain and had its outlet in a lake connected perhaps with the Sea of Azov, must be the Tanais." "It is clear that Alexander thought it possible for a people to be not far from both Bactria and the Black Sea." The domicile of the Amazons (Arrian 4.15; 7.13) was placed along the Thermodon. Inconsistencies about

measurements given in stades are as troublesome as those in Herodotos; see Brunt, 2 pp. 524—525. The accounts of the lower courses of the rivers that flow into the Persian Gulf are confused

and

contradictory.

Arrian

reports that Herakles

and

Dionysos had invaded India and that at Aornus Alexander had set out to rival Herakles. Alexander believed that the Indians "remembered" Dionysos. Euripides (Bacchai 13, quoted by Strabo 15.1.7) had already represented Dionysos as coming west from Bactria. Brunt (2 p. 459) writes of the battle at the Hy-

daspes, "Modern reconstructions of the battle usually start from Arrian, but as his description is sometimes careless, sometimes ambiguous, they often end in fantasies like Tarn's, in which more or less coherent fictions are invested with the habiliments of historical truth." A.B. Bosworth, A Historical Commentary on Arrian's History of Alexander 1 (Oxford 1980) 10, writes of Arrian, “There is also ignorance of the most elementary facts of Armenian geography, which is astounding in a man who had worked and fought in Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia." Long ago, T.R. Glover, Herodotus (Berkeley 1924) 174, ob-

served, “His chief triumph in Scythian geography is that he is right against Strabo and other later geographers, who thought that the Caspian was a gulf of the Northern Sea." Critics of Herodotean geography of Skythia overlook the fact that in the second century A.D., the highly respected Ptolemy did little better. E.H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography? 2 (London 1883) 597 writes:

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Eastward of the Rha (Volga), which he regarded as the limit between Asiatic Sarmatia and Skythia, and north of the Iaxartes, which he describes like all previous writers as falling into the Kaspian—he had, properly speaking, no geographical knowledge whatever. Nothing had reached him beyond the names of tribes reported at second-hand, and frequently derived from different authorities, who would apply different appellations to the same tribe, or extend the same name to one or more of the wandering hordes, who were thinly dispersed over this vast extent of territory. Among the names thus accumulated, a compilation that is probably as worthless as that of Pliny, notwithstanding its greater pretensions to geographical accuracy, we find some that undoubtedly represent populations really existing in Ptolemy's time, such as the Alani, the Aorsi, &c., associated with others that were merely poetical or traditional, such as the Abii, Galaktophagi and Hippophagi; while the Issédones, who were placed by Herodotos immediately east of the Tanais, are strangely transferred by Ptolemy to the

far East, on the very borders of Serika; ... In one essential point, as has been already pointed out, Ptolemy's conception of Skythia differed from that of all preceding geographers, that instead of regarding it as bounded on the north and east by the sea, and consequently of comparatively limited extent, he considered it as extending without limit in both directions, and bounded only by 'the unknown land,’ or, in other words, limited

only by his own knowledge.

Cf. J.W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy (Calcutta 1885) 296-297.

Stanley Casson, in a neglected article, "Herodotus and the Caspian," BSA 23 (1918/9) 175-193 with pl. xvi, confirming the

account in 1.203 and attributing the report of square-faced animals in 4.109 to the seals of the northern end of the Caspian,

concluded his article with the statement:

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The value of the travelers’ and traders’ tales used by Herodotus increases as a result of these points and the only weakness in what is otherwise a remarkably accurate account of the Caspian region, is seen to be the inability to interpret and

correlate all the isolated scraps of evidence the historian had collected. In view of the accuracy of Herodotus it is all the more remarkable that little more than a century later his information was disregarded. Alexander, ignorant of or distrusting the evidence of the historian, sent an expedition to ascertain whether the Caspian joined the Euxine. The great general's ignorance of geography is not surprising when we find him later confusing the Indus with the Nile. The study of geography which had started so well in the fifth century had become sadly neglected in the fourth.

In Topography 4.234-240, we compared Herodotos' measurements of the Black Sea with those of other ancient writers. One

understands the difficulty of reconstructing the geography of a foreign land by one who had no idea of lines of latitude and longitude. About one topographical detail, Sulimirski, CHI 2 (1985) 188, writes as follows: According to Herodotus (iv. 22) "to the north", which by his orientation should mean to the east, of the territory of the Bu-

dini "there is a desert of seven days' journey across, and beyond the desert, if one turns somewhat to the east, dwell the Thyssagetae, a numerous and distinct race", who live by hunting. The "desert" mentioned by Herodotus was very likely the strip of land, up to 200 km wide, between the sources of the Donets and its tributaries and the Don, almost entirely devoid of settlements. It extended partly over the forest-steppe zone, but mostly over the steppe. At its narrowed end towards the east, measuring

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217

about 75 km in width, extended the region of the Voronezh

group of Scythian culture.

Herodotos’ Gerrhos river has presented a puzzle to modern scholars. F. Thordarson, Acta Iranica 28 (1988) 542, writes, “It

is, indeed, difficult to fit this river into the Ukraine or South Russia.” Herodotos (4.56) says it is a branch of the Borysthenes

(= Dnieper) "at the point where the course of that stream first begins to be known." The importance of an identification is brought out by the fact that in 4.71-74 Herodotos describes the royal burial customs of the Gerrhoi, and archaeologists have uncovered the burial places of the Skythian kings, where human and horse sacrifices were common, agreeing fairly well with Herodotos' account in the area of Nikopol, on the western bank of the lower Dnieper southwest of its great bend.'77 No candidate for this river is shown on modern maps; but James Rennell,75* who explored the region in the eighteenth century, publishing a lengthy volume, The Geographical System of Herodotus (London 1800), noted (pp. 67-71) that in its 1,000

mile course the Dnieper, after leaving the cataracts, flows through deep alluvial country formed by its own deposits, suggesting that great changes had taken place in the country between the Dnieper and the sea and adding that several beds of rivers are found in a position where the Gerrhos might be

looked for. J.T. Wheeler, The Geography of Herodotus (London 1854), likewise explored the country and in a long note (p. 149) 177Sulimirski (CHI 2 [1985] 181-182) notes difficulties in identifying the

country of the Gerrhoi in which the Skythian kings were buried at the time of Herodotos (4.71). The sumptuously furnished Skythian tombs which have been excavated in the area enclosed by the bend of the Dnieper are of the Late Skythian period (fourth century), and the Early Skythian barrowgraves are to the north in an area regarded as that of Herodotos' "Skythian husbandmen." 178For a biography of this famous British geographer, see the Ency. Britannica nth edition.

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confirmed the deep alluviation and suggested that a small river called the Tastchenik might accord with Herodotos’ Gerrhos.79 These studies were not known to Kiessling, RE s.v. Gerrhos (1910) 1273-1275. Both Pliny (4.84) and Ptolemy (3.5.4) knew the Gerrhos, and Stephanos writes, τόπος καὶ ποταμὸς προσεχὴς τῷ Bopvoßeveı. It is important to note that what Herodotos, as other Greek authors, calls a ποταμός

may be today only a streambed, as at Plataiai and Thermopylai; see Topography 1.67. The term by no means requires a river commensurate in size with the Dnieper. Without knowledge of future excavations which would pinpoint the territory of the Gerrhoi, the position of Rennell and Wheeler would place the river in a region which accords with the Herodotean account.

We have affirmed elsewhere, with the endorsement of three geologists, that what Pausanias calls the Alpheios once flowed around the walls of Tegea.!2° However, we note that Sulimirski in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 577, offers the solution

that the lower

Dnieper, as distinct from the upper, was the Gerrhos: His mistake is to regard a large section of the lower Dnieper (Borysthenes) from the beginning of its bend in the north to the junction of the Ingulets ('Hypacyris') in the south as a distinct river, to which he gives the name of ‘the Gerrhus'. His assertion (1v.56) that the supposed Gerrhus, 'flowing towards the sea divides the territory of the Nomadic and the Royal Scythians and discharges itself into the Hypacyris'; clearly indicates that ‘the

179G. Mihailov in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 595, attests that the river Noés of 4.49 has since dried out. 180 Sven Hedin, Across the Gobi Desert (New York 1932) 378, writes that the

Tarim river altered its course in A.D. 330 and did not return to its ancient bed

until 1921. There are some grounds for believing that the Oxus has changed its course from time to time; see Lawrence on Herodotos 3.117. The Euphrates altered its course, resulting in the decline of the city of Ur; M.A. Dandamaev, The Culture and Social History of Ancient Iran (Cambridge 1989) 211. The bed of the Hermos river has changed dramatically since 1886: Cook, BSA 53/54

(1958/9) 6.

4. HARTOG

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219

Gerrhus’ was only a name given to a section of the Dnieper-Borysthenes, and that no such distinct river existed.

We present divergent views of those familiar with the terrain. In any case, we consider it premature to follow Hartog in leaping to the facile hypothesis that Herodotos created an imaginary river in a fantasy land. Dareios' Skythian expedition has been the subject of a complete reappraisal, of which I give only a very brief and superficial summary. The basis of the reappraisal derives from topography. Stanley Casson, who served on the General Staff of

British Forces in the region of Salonika in the First World War and explored in the Caspian region, developed the thesis that the Caspian and Aral Seas, today separated by marshes and lakes, were united, confirming this from early descriptions: "Herodotus

and the Caspian,"

BSA 23 (1918/9) 175-193 with

plate 16.18! As Casson observed, this determination had earlier been made by Prince Kropotkin, Ency. Britannica uth edition (1910) s.v. Aral. Casson noted that Herodotos' description of

some of the tribes and their land accorded with the Caspian area. Building on Casson, G.F. Hudson "The Land of the Budini—A

Problem

in Ancient Geography,"

CR 38 (1924) 158-

162, noted that the geography in 4.21-27 of the Trans-Tanais

region derived from information along a trade-route, and deducing the evidence of Ktesias!?? and the Behistun inscrip181Farlier, Tarn, JHS 21 (1901) 10, rejected this idea. Even earlier, Ellsworth Huntington,

Pulse of Asia (Boston

1907) 329—334,

had

adduced

ancient

evidence which favored the theory.

182Ktesias says Dareios advanced for fifteen days from the Danube. He ascribes Dareios' decision to retire to a discovery that the Skythian bow was stronger than the Persian. Ktesias also gives the Persian losses as 80,000

dead out of a force of 800,000 (ed. Gilmore, p. 151). Representations of Skythians shooting bows from horseback are illustrated on objects from Skythian tombs. The greater curvature of the Skythian bow is said to have given it a longer range than the Persian one. The position of the Persians would have become difficult when they were outranged.

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tion, invoked an hypothesis that Herodotos had confused two separate invasions.!94 This thesis has now been developed at great length by J.R. Gardiner-Garden, "Ktesias on Early Central Asian History and Ethnography," Papers on Inner Asia 6 (Indiana University 1987), and Klio 69 (1987) 326—350, with a

review of the texts of the Behistun inscription and the Tabula Capitolina, including extensive bibliography, largely Russian. Gardiner-Garden's conclusion is: Herodotos' account of Dareios' pursuit of the Scythians includes only two main theaters of activity. One is the Danube (IV.97-98, 140-141) and the other is the land of the Boudinoi where

the Persians

(IV.125):

'found

themselves

before

the

wooden-walled town; the Budini had deserted it and left nothing therein, the Persians burnt the town' and beyond which Dareios (IV.124): ‘halted in his race and encamped on the river Oarus,

where he built eight great forts, all at an equal distance of about sixty furlongs from each other, the ruins of which were standing even in my lifetime'. It is virtually possible to cut Herodotos' narrative in half. His narrative would seem to contain two stories. On[e] centred on the Danube and one centred on the Boudinoi. It is possible that Herodotos, in his attempt to reconcile the stories he'd heard on his travels to the Black Sea and Persia and to produce a full and continuous narrative of Darius' Scythian campaigns, had inadvertantly (sic]

linked

together

accounts

of

two

separate

Persian

expeditions against Scythians. This interpretation of Herodotos' narrative was first suggested in 1924 by Hudson and does indeed explain why Herodotos account of Persian activities on and just

183 Part of the problem is the identification of the Saka of the Behistun inscription: Balcer, HSCP 76 (1972) 99-132; Cameron, Acta Iranica (1975) 77-

88; and Harmatta, Antiqua Antiqua 24 (1976) 15-24, the last being followed

by Gardiner-Garden as requiring a campaign of Dareios against Saka tribes in Central Asia in 519 B.c.

184Cf. the same author's Europe and China (London 1931) 32.

4. HARTOG

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beyond the Danube and in the far away land of the Boudinoi is so detail[ed] while his account of Persian activity between these

two theatres is so thin: ... Although Herodotos’ Book IV is usually seen as evidencing a Persian expedition from the Danube to beyond the Don, it probably evidences two Persian expeditions. One was led by Dareios himself across the Danube to a region just short of the Dniestr some time between 514 and $12, possibly with the primary aim of securing the new acquisitions in Thrace. The other was directed against tribes just north of the Caucasus some time between 520 and 514 B.c.,

possibly with the aim of strengthening the Empire's Caucasian frontier, and was possibly led by a Cappadocian satrap.

The upshot of the Casson, Hudson, and Gardiner-Garden hypothesis, as well as that of Kulinka, cited in Russian, is to account for the trade-route, most of the ethnographical material, and part of the geographical, and seems to be required by the Persian evidence, as presented.!55 Herodotos is convicted of one

major error, but acquitted of others. À recent study of the various Skythian peoples is that of the late T. Sulimirski in CHI 2 (1985) 149ff. We extract an opening paragraph and a sample of his comments on three of the "tribes," the Androphagoi, the Melanchlainoi, and the Gelonoi: P.149: The most important work relating to the ancient Scyths is the Histories of Herodotus. His descriptions, in the light of the results of archaeological research, are on the whole correct. However, the eastern part of Scythia seems to have been little known to him. He often generalizes from exceptional occurrences and seems to have telescoped some events which took place in about the same region but at different periods. 155 Dareios' Skythian campaign in the light of the Behistun inscription is also discussed by R.N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich 1991) 103. A. Fol and N.G.L. Hammond also reconstruct the campaign in CAH? 4 (1988) 234-246.

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These, and some other inconsistencies and gaps in his reports will here be corrected and supplemented by taking into account the evidence offered by the results of archaeological and linguistic research. Pp. 185-186: The Sula people may safely be identified with the Androphagi, the “Man-Eaters”, who “wear Scythian dress; they speak a peculiar language; and of all these nations they are the only people that eat human flesh" (Her. IV. 106). The “peculiar language" may have been an early Iranian (Srub?) dialect that differed from the speech of the "Royal Scyths". For not only the Sula, but also the Vorskla and Donets groups, extended over the area of Iranian toponymy and hydronymy. The last sentence of the above quotation is the most important for the identification of the country of the Androphagi on the strength of archaeological remains. Human bones were found in the kitchen refuse mixed with cut and broken animals bones in at least seven earthworks investigated within the area of the Sula group and its neighbours. ... The unbroken human bones found in the earthworks above suggest that the cannibalism of the Androphagi was ritual, similar to that reported about the Sacian Massagetae and the Issedones (Her. I. 216; IV . 26), east of the Urals. Similar practices have also been ascertained among the Sauromatians, in their barrow-graves in the Southern Urals near Orsk, and on the lower Volga. ... It seems that the customs and beliefs connected with cannibalism were quite common among the early Iranians in the Kazakhstan steppe, who were descended form the people of the Andronovo culture of the Bronze Age. They might have been brought into the North Pontic area by those Iranians who had some Andronovo ancestry. The unfavourable opinion expressed by Herodotus of the lawlessness and injustice of the Androphagi (IV. 106) probably reflects the strained relations of Olbian Greek traders with that

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4. HARTOG AND SKYTHIA people, across whose territory passed the important Olbian trade route linking the city with the Urals and possibly with other

gold-bearing countries further to the east. Pp. 186-187: Closely related most probably to the Sula people were the bearers of the culture of the Donets group. The relevant group of archaeological remains may be attributed to the Melanchlaeni, whose country according to Herodotus (IV. 20, 107) lay north of the "Royal Scyths". The country extended over the basin of the upper Donets within the forest-steppe zone; the steppe zone, abode of the "Royal Scyths", bordered on it to the south. Herodotus says about the Melanchlaeni that they were "a distinct race, and not Scythian" and that they "all wear black garments, from which they take their name; they follow Scythian usages". The substratum of both the Sula and the Donets groups contained a strong Srub component, but there were some differences between them. By the end of the 4th century B.c., the bulk of the Melan-

chlaeni seem to have migrated southwards, settling subsequently in the vicinity of Olbia. This is suggested by the inscription in Olbia of the 3rd century s.c. in honour of Protogenes, in which a people is mentioned, called the "Savdarati", living then in the vicinity of the city. This name lends itself to an Iranian interpretation as meaning "those who wear black garments"; it seers very likely that these were identical with the “blackcloaked" Melanchlaeni, who arrived there from the north. A black-coated tribe still living in the vicinity of Olbia was mentioned in the ist century a.c. P.187: The settlements of the third group of the area, the Vorskla group, were mostly "open"; the few recorded earthworks lay in its northern periphery. The largest of these was the earthwork at Belsk which, in fact, consisted of three earthworks forming a single defensive system encircled by common

ram-

parts, enclosing an area of 4,400 hectares. The site represents a

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considerable trade century B.c.; it was B.C. Of importance by B. A. Shramko,

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and industrial centre built in the mid—eth in existence until the end of the 4th century is the fact, revealed by excavation of the site that two of the earthworks were built simul-

taneously at a date earlier than the third. The structure and the

archaeological material from the two earlier earthworks were not alike and evidently must have belonged to different peoples. Shramko conclusively argues that this must have been the wooden

city of Gelonus,

mentioned

by Herodotus

(IV. 123),

which the Persian army of Darius set on fire during its pursuit of the Scyths.

The existence of the Melanchlainoi is confirmed by Dio Chrysostomus, who in his 36th Discourse describes them from

first-hand knowledge (7). Some commentators say that the color resulted from the coarse dark wool of the Steppe sheep. As to the Androphagoi, Diodoros (5.32.3) imputes cannibalism

to northern Gauls on the borders of Skythia, as well as to Britons of Iris (Ireland). Both Hellanikos and Ptolemy (3.5.10)

refer to a Skythian people 'Auá8okot, “Raw-meat-eaters.” See Tomaschek, RE s.v. (1894). As we shall note in a following sec-

tion, Marco Polo, Mandeville, and other travelers of medieval times tell stories of androphagoi. How-Wells (1.433) write of the Skythian campaign: To sum up: The whole narrative illustrates H.'s dependence on his sources The events were removed from his own day by the same interval as the fall of the Pisistratidae. But the latter event happened in Greece proper, where evidence was abundant, and could be tested by comparison. The Scythian expedition had taken place far away to the north, and its scene was as unfamiliar as the evidence for it was scanty.

Taking our cue from Carbonell's review of Hartog in SStor. 7 (1985) 164—167, we have undertaken a survey of the opinions of

4. HARTOG

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225

archaeologists and those familiar with the region in regard to customs, warfare, rivers, history, and tribal affiliations to supply the gap which Carbonell suggested existed in Hartog's work. More importantly, granted that oddity is an ethnocentric principle, we believe it proper to sound a word of caution to the numerous students of rhetoric who advance theories that literary artistry has prevailed over historical accuracy. Within the framework of the oikoumene which prevailed in his time, Herodotos has given us a picture of the Skythians which accords with what might be expected from his sources at Olbia and the surrounding region. We conclude this section on the Skythian logos by quoting T. Sulimirski and T. Taylor in CAH? 3.2 (1991) 555, "Recent

scepticism concerning the value of Herodotus' account for understanding the Scythian world has been archaeologically and anthropologically ill-informed," adding in their footnote, "Hartog's understanding of what little relevant archaeological data he cites appears limited.":*6 Rather than endorsing a theory that Herodotos has created a fantasy land, archaeologists have worked from a diametrically opposed premise,

namely that the historian was basing his account on elements of geographical and anthropological truth, resulting in a rich array of scholarship far more plausible than Hartog's facile literary theory.

186[n a colloquium on "Herodotos and Non-Greek Peoples," J. Harmatta (Entretiens 35 [1990] 121), in accordance with his view that Herodotos was

presenting a great research work on cultural anthropology, writes, “Although the greater part of Book IV of the Histories deals with the origin of the Scythians, their land, religion and burial customs, neighbours and neighbouring cultures, and with their struggle against the Persians as well as with their relations to the neighbouring peoples and the Ionians, one cannot speak of an independent and coherent treatment of the Scythians either. However rich and valuable the information and evidence collected by Herodotus by his researches concerning Scythian culture and history may be, they are subordinated to his comprehensive world-concept and the general history of the οἰκουμένη.

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Addenda: A massive, well-illustrated volume, Gold der Steppe. Archäologie der Ukraine, edited by Renata Rolle et al. (Schleswig 1991), came to my attention too late to be incorpo-

rated into this section. The Herodotean scholar will find a great deal of indispensable material. —— Like Fehling, Hartog (Diacritics 22 [1992] 84) is not one who refrains from endorsing

the originality of his own literary approach: "Today, books and articles devoted to Herodotus are appearing every year at a steady rate. Why? Is it simply out of the inertia of a classical tradition that, like an ocean liner, keeps plowing along the same track?" He answers his rhetorical question with the statement, "The entire body of Arnaldo Momigliano's work should be cited here." The simile of the ocean liner might be applied to Hartog's treatment of the Proem in the article cited. 5. OPINIONS

OF SPECIALISTS

ON

INDIVIDUAL

LOGOI

Although Herodotos' history is based predominantly on oral traditions, it might appear that the first test of his veracity by the careful scholar would be based on reports of excavations and explorations in places which he claimed he visited. A.D. Momigliano, Studies in Historiography (London 1966) 141, wrote, "The stupendous developments of the study of Greek and Oriental history in the last three centuries would never have happened without Herodotus. Trust in Herodotus has been the first condition for the fruitful exploration of our re mote past. The people who went to excavate Egypt and Mesopotamia had primarily Herodotus as their guide." Scholars attempt to write a history of the Persian Wars and their antecedents from the purely historical sections of the History; but Herodotos' travels were so extensive that we have nothing approaching a commentary on the customs and religious beliefs (including legends) of the people he visited. For example, in the Libyan logos, he records a custom which to the rationalist might seem utterly absurd and a fabrication, combining divination and the macabre, namely the method used

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women

ON

INDIVIDUAL

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of obtaining prophetic dreams by

sleeping on the sepulchers of their ancestors (4.172.3). Yet the

practice was recorded as being in existence by travelers in the middle of the nineteenth century, and has been documented by subsequent investigators. F. Rennell Rodd, in his massive study of the Tuareg tribes of Libya, People of the Veil (London 1926) 281, writes: Another form of divination is resorted to by women who desire to obtain news of their absent husbands or lovers; they sleep on certain well-known tombs, and thus are favoured with a vision of their desire. The women of Ghadames and of the Azger Tuareg do the same. The practice appears to be identical with that described by Herodotus as current among the Nasamonians. It is also reported by Mela of the people of Augila.

Rennell Rodd also confirms (p. 208)

Herodotos'

statement

(4.183) that the Garamantes harnessed oxen to carts, that the Libyans sacrificed to the sun and moon (2.18 4.186); (p. 369) that there was a place named Augila and (p. 457) traces the perpetuation of the name

(p. 295) and 47; (4.172); Maxyes

(4.191). One who wishes to test any given passage in the logoi must turn to specialists in a particular field; and the bibliography on Babylonia, Lydia, Libya, Egypt, Skythia, Thrake, and Persia is beyond the mastery of any one individual and constantly growing.!57 On the one hand, one must explore the reports of 187In an Editorial Foreword to the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 72 (1986), the new editor observed, "It is becoming increasingly difficult for the

most diligent full-time researcher in the best equipped library to keep abreast of the flood of literature published by a growing number of Egyptologists in an expanding number of periodicals." There are today at least eight

periodicals devoted exclusively to Egyptology. In the Preface to his The Culture and Social Institutions of Ancient Iran (Cambridge 1989), M.A. Dandamaev, after referring to Olmstead’s History of the Persian Empire, published posthumously in 1948, states, "Thousands of written sources have

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travelers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who described customs which are replicas of those found in Herodotos. On the other hand, archaeologists are active in all the Mediterranean and Near Eastern countries, and new discoveries constantly require a reassessment of Herodotean passages. For example, in Historia 41 (1992) 14-39 (R. Drews), we

have an untimely and labored article which purports to condemn Herodotos for the story of the famine and migration of the Lydians to Etruria (1.94),:38 a problem which has been put into an entirely new light by the fact that the excavators at Sardis have discovered that Lydia was blanketed by volcanic tephra from the explosion of Thera/Santorini,!89 a fact not recognized by the author.!9° Since Herodotos' travels took him to many countries, any student of Herodotos is dependent on specialists in each country, who include archaeologists supervising continuing been brought into scholarly circulation since Olmstead's book first appeared. Many of these texts from Iran, Babylonia, Egypt and other provinces of the Persian Empire, remain incompletely studied and published, and they are treated only in the most general terms in other existing works on the early history of Iran. Our sources for ancient Iran are also continuously augmented by the intensive archaeological excavations being conducted in many regions of the country. The results of this work have been reported in hundreds of publications scattered through many journals." 188Cf, Fehling, p. 193: “The whole story can be seen as a conversion of ethnographic lore into historical action, combined in this case with a typical story of national origins. This easily analysed combination of two elements does not need to be traced to any earlier source." 189 The first of three deposits from lakes in western Turkey was published by D.G.

Sullivan, Nature 333, No. 6173 (9 June 1988) 552-554. I thank

Crawford Greenewalt for the information. 199), Whatmough,

in the 1973 edition of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica

(Chicago) vol. 8 p. 798 (s.v. Etruscan Language), favors the Lydian origin. Cf. R.D. Barnett in CAH? 2.2 (1975) 367. In A.D. 26, the people of Sardis laid

claim to Roman favor by quoting a decree of their kindred country of Etruria: Tacitus An. 4.55; see E. Koestermann's commentary on the passage. For Xanthos' version, see L. Pearson, EIH 121; Chrimes, JHS so (1930) 92.

Lawrence believes that Dionysios Hal. (AR 1.28) was using an abridged edition and that Xanthos did not contradict Herodotos.

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excavations. No one can claim to have mastered the bibliography on Herodotos. We stress that there are on-going excavations in virtually every country that Herodotos visited. In the 1986 volume of JEA (72), J. Malek (p. 111) writes with respect to Herodotos 2.153 and Diodoros 1.67: Herodotus says that it was Psammetichus I who ‘made the southern outer court of Hephaestus’ temple at Memphis, and built over against this a court for Apis, where Apis is kept and fed whenever he appears'. Diodorus differs; according to him Psammetichus 1 ‘built for the god in Memphis the east propylon and the enclosure about the temple, supporting it with colossi twelve cubits high in place of pillars'. For neither of these statements is there, as yet, clearly dated archaeological evidence, but a structure associated with the Apis-bull or his cult has been . located near the south-western corner of the Ptah enclosure. It seems, however, that it is considerably later than the Twentysixth Dynasty and thus not connected with Psammetichus I. ...

The probable presence of statues dated to the reign of Psammetichus I suggests that the statement by Herodotus concerning the contribution of this king to the architecture of the southern part of the Ptah enclosure at Memphis will eventually be shown to be essentially correct.

As an example of recent excavations confirming certain details in Herodotos, we may cite the statue of Dareios found at Susa in December 1972. The inscriptions and the petrological examination of the stone are said to indicate that it was made in Egypt and apparently was originally intended to have been placed in an Egyptian temple. One of the reasons for carving the statue was to show that "The Persian man has conquered Egypt." The subject nations number twenty-four and are represented by peoples in distinctive costume and headgear. The representations are not of satrapies or provinces, but of subject peoples. In his detailed, illustrated study of the peoples repre-

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sented, M. Roaf, “The Subject Peoples on the Base of the Statue of Darius," Cahiers de la Délégation Archéologique Frangaise en Iran 4 (1974) 73-160, correlates his identifications of the peoples with several passages in Herodotos relating to dress. We extract from the writings of scholars, chiefly archaeologists, general statements about the veracity of Herodotos in areas of which they are specialists. We include the Cambridge

History of Iran 2 (1985); the on-going Proceedings of the Groningen Achaemenid History Workshop, as published in Achaemenid History starting with volume 1 (Leiden 1987); and the special number of the Storia della Storiografia 7 (1985) devoted to Herodotos; as well as A.B. Lloyd on Egypt. The Skythian logos has been discussed above. We offer appraisals by specialists on five regions in the order, Media, Babylonia, Egypt, Libya, and Persia.!?! Our collection is offered only as a supplement to the appraisals of Herodotos given in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990), "Hérodote et les peuples non grecs": Burkert (Religion), Dihle (Arabia and India), Briant (Persian Society), Harmatta (Cimmerians and Skythians), Ash-

eri (Thrake), Lombardo

(Lydia), Lloyd (Egypt and Libya),

Bondi (Phoinikians), Nenci (West). We offer divergent opin-

ions. An effort has been made to find appraisals of Herodotos’ logoi in authorities who have been selected to write chapters in 191W. Vogelsang, "The Achaemenids and India," Achaemenid History4 (1990) 93-110, studies Herodotean passages having to do with India, based, directly or indirectly, on Achaemenid sources. He finds genuine pieces of information about Indian fighting dogs (Herodotos 1.192; 7.187), the role of the Indians in the army of Xerxes (7.197; 8.113; 9.31), the use of chariots, the cotton material of their dress, the voyage down the Indus by Skylax (4.44).

He observes, with reference to Herodotos' gold collecting "great ants," that gold dust is still collected in large quantities in the rivers of northern Pakistan, and discusses the “Asiatic Ethiopians,” whom he would locate in the south of modern Pakistan. "His work is, in my opinion, very reliable (his sources are of course another matter); and in addition, Herodotus sheds some light on the early phases of the Achaemenid empire, the period in which the Achaemenid relationship with the Indians first took shape" (p. 94).

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reference works because of their acquaintance countries. We include a few recent appraisals sages which have come to our attention. The Herodotos is now beyond the mastery of any The Herodot-Bibliographie 1980-1988

Frank Bubel runs herodoteennes de

with particular of isolated pasbibliography on one individual.

(Hildesheim

1991) by

to 63 pages. The article “Les études l’avant-guerre ἃ nos jours,” by Guy

Lachenaud in SStor. 7 (1985) 6-27, lists works according to se-

lected subjects. However, as with L'année philologique, these two compilations often do not refer to historical, archaeological, and topographical studies which contain key appraisals of

Herodotos without giving the name of the historian in their titles. 1. MEDIA. When we turn to the historical portion of the Medikos Logos (1.95-106), centering on the alleged reigns of Deiokes, his son Phraortes, Kyaxares, and his son Astyages, we find that authorities are of differing opinions. In the Proceedings of the Groningen Achaemenid History Workshop, conducted over a period of years and published under the title Achaemenid History 1-3 (Leiden 1987-1988), S.C. Brown, “The

Medikos Logos of Herodotus," writes in his concluding paragraph (AH 3.86): While the actual course of events was undoubtedly much more complex than this bare outline, it can be seen that no sound reasons emerge from Helm's arguments to lead us to doubt the essentials of the Médikos Logos or its basic chronology

with the exception of the nature and duration of the Scythian episode. This is not to suggest that we should treat the Herodotean account of Median history with anything but caution. It was written down some two centuries after the events it

purports to describe by one with no first-hand knowledge of the real geopolitical and cultural situation and Helm is undoubtedly correct in his suggestion that it includes many folkloristic

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details. However, the oral testimony of refugee Persians in Greece apparently supplied Herodotus with accurate information about the reign dates and some of the accomplishments of Cyaxares and Astyages. If, at a remove of some two centuries, they were correct in those details about the last two kings of Media, it is a reasonable working assumption that their oral tradi-

tion may also have preserved some reliable information about the first two kings of Media. The difficulties encountered by scholars in their appraisal of the historicity of the Médikos Logos have been generated by the unexamined assumption that the

Neo-Assyrians and Herodotus were dealing with the same group of Medes and by the grafting onto the Persian tradition of an overarching and inappropriate Greek chronological framework.

In the concluding paper of the series, "Was There Ever a Median Empire?," H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, as the title suggests, takes issue: (AH 3.199) "To put it bluntly, if it were not for Herodotus and his successors, the very existence of a Me-

dian state would be unknown to us." Pp. 211-212: A Median oral tradition as a source for Herodotus III (sic) 95-106 is a hypothesis that solves some problems, but has oth-

erwise little to recommend it. ... It contains remarkably few features that are found to be characteristic for oral traditions. This is, however, not true for the last part, the fall of Astyages. One of the latest arguments that has been brought forward by Brown (this vol., p. 86) in favour of the orality of the story, the fact that it presents a plausible reconstruction, does not on the contrary plead for an oral provenience. It should rather arouse our suspicion. Plausibility might be more easily expected in a written reconstruction in Babylonian or Greek surroundings than from real ‘tellers of tales’. This means that not even in Herodotus' Median history a rea] empire is safely attested. In Assyrian and Babylonian

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records and in the archeological evidence no vestiges of an imperial structure can be found. The very existence of a Median empire, with the emphasis on empire, is thus questionable.!9?

In turn, R.N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich 1991) 84, has written of this same period: It is much better to follow contemporary Akkadian sources, sparse though they may be, than the embellished tales of Herodotus, Ctesias and their successors, who collected their sto-

ries from various sources, including tellers of tales. Their general accounts, however, do not contradict the cuneiform sources and this much we accept.

In The Cambridge History of Iran 2 (1985), Herodotos'

ac-

count of the Medes receives a relatively high rating. Diakonoff translates the long passage of Herodotos (1.95-97) on the tra-

dition of the state of the Medes, following the period of Assyrian devastations, continuing (pp. 89—90): It has often been pointed out that we have here a complicated and prolonged process compressed in naive form within the field of activity and the lifetime of one single person, but nevertheless a true picture of a society on the eve of the institution of the state: independent townships (the term kome evidently denotes here not a village in the modern sense, but a township lacking political organization), economic stratification, the free for all struggle of each against everyone, the plundering of property, public servants as yet elected but aiming at royal power, a popular assembly etc. Moreover Herodotus' description makes sense both typologically and chronologically: it not only conforms to a certain type of social condition, but also fits into a definite period of Median history.

192 Brown's response is found in Achaemenid History 4 (1990) 63-76.

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Again, on the organization of Asiatic armies by Kyaxares (Herodotos 1.104), Diakonoff writes (p. 121): Cyaxares, after throwing off Scythian hegemony, was prepared to take part in the war against Assyria, a war of great import. Herodotus (1.103) says: "He, as they say ... was the first to divide the people of Asia into companies, and first established a battle order: spearmen, archers and horsemen to be separate; until then they had all been mixed together in disorder." As often happens with Herodotus, his very failure to understand the essence of the matter proves the genuineness of information which he could never have deliberately invented. It is evident that formerly the Medes went to war as a tribal militia, divided into kinship groups in which each warrior was armed with whatever weapon he wielded best. Cyaxares, however, taking example from his neighbours, the Urartians (Sarduri II’s reform of about 760—750), and the Assyrians (Tiglathpileser III's reform after 745) introduced the system of a regular army fully

equipped by the state and divided into strictly determined strategic and tactical units according to kinds of weapons. Already XSa@rita had had a siege force. By now the Median army ceded nothing to the armies of the great powers in matters of organization.

In GRBS 6 (1965) 201-206, George Huxley republished Oxy. Pap. 2506 frg. 98, a commentary on a poem of Alkaios which mentions a war between Astyages and Alyattes, kings of Media and Lydia. J.M. Cook, The Persian Empire (London 1983) 1-8,

evaluates Herodotos' account of the emergence of the Medes, finding that they are mentioned almost constantly in the annals

of Assyrian

kings

down

to Ashurbanipal

(668—627),

adding, “The only consecutive sketch of Median history that we have is that in Herodotus (I 95-130), which

shows

every

sign of having stemmed, whether directly or indirectly, from a

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Median oral source in the fifth century.” He concludes that Kyros took over a ready-made empire from the Medes. 2. BABYLONIA. One of the most analytical appraisals of any section of Herodotos, the twenty-three chapters of 1.178-200, is the illustrated book by O.E. Ravn, excavator and Assyriologist, Herodotus’ Description of Babylon (Copenhagen 1942).!93 Herodotos’ section is limited, and the excavations extensive with written evidence. As to the topography, Ravn, who cannot be called an apologist, concludes (p. 86): It seems to us that all these descriptions of Babylon in the first book of the History agree so well with results of excavations and with data from the Esagil Tablet and a literary text, that they must form the basis of our valuation of the account—in other words, we believe that in the final instance the account is based upon personal observations and upon information 193In 1.178, Herodotos admiringly writes of Babylon, “It surpasses in splendor any city of the known world." R. Koldewey and his co-workers excavated at Babylon between 1899 and 1917 on behalf of the Deutsche Orient

Gesellschaft. Detailed results have been published in the Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung der Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft vols. 32 (1918) 47, 48, 54, 55,

59 (1938). The temple of Marduk (Zeus), supreme deity of the Babylonian pantheon, was buried under sixty feet of earth and sand, and at great cost the Germans were able to unearth the main sanctuary. All the kings of Babylon

bestowed their favors on this greatest of sanctuaries, and Herodotos' account of the gold objects (1.183) accords well with epigraphical evidence: S. Langdon, Die neubabylonsichen Küniginschriften (Leipzig 1912) 125-127. The record in 1.182-183, as told to Herodotos by Chaldean priests, is said to have

combined two traditions: the occasional descent of the god from heaven using the shrine (vnós, sahuru)

as a resting-place and

the Sacred

Marriage

ceremony celebrated in the huge ziqqurat ("Temple of Babel"). The festivals are studied by A. Falkensteinin Festschrift Johannes Friedrich (Heidelberg 1959) 147-182. Herodotos evidently did not obtain permission to visit the

Palace, or he would have described the Hanging Gardens of Nebuchadrezzar, which may be identical with an extant building containing rows of arched vaulted chambers. Strabo's account of the city is given in 16.1.56.738-739. Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (London 1964) chap. 24 pp. 325-338,

has summarized the archaeological reports.

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gained by the author on the spot. ... The errors are great but few; they are errors in measurements only.

Herodotos gives the circumference of the great wall as 480 stades (about 95 kilometers), whereas

Ravn

says the actual

figure is 15 kilometers. Ravn did not note that Curtius (5.1.26),

at the time of Alexander's visit, gives 365 stades, or about 68

kilometers. It seems probable that the Greeks took the embankments

(1.185) as part of the fortification,

as

indeed

Herodotos says they were intended. The walls of Babylon are studied in detail by F. Wetzel, “Babylon zur Zeit Herodots,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 48 (1944) 45-68, who gives plans on

facing pages of the walls at the time of Nebuchadrezzar and of Herodotos. Marco Polo, who had unusual opportunities of obtaining information, accepted a five-fold exaggeration of the size of the Chinese capital. As to the historical record, Ravn (p. 92) writes, "In the his-

torical account, the reference to Semiramis, and his (?) constellation, L(N)abynetos-Cyrus,

alone, are substantiated." As to

customs, crops, religious prostitution, transportation, etc., the record is judged by Ravn to be fairly accurate, but very incomplete. The use of the swipe for irrigation (Herodotos 1.193), well attested for Egypt, is represented in Assyrian reliefs: see Meissner in Max Ebert’s Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte 1 (1924) p. 15

and pl. 4a. Cf. L.W. King, History of Babylon (New York 1915) 172. Herodotos, always interested in rivers and means of transportation,

devotes

1.194 to the boat traffic of Babylon.

The

round coracle, called in Arabic quffa, is represented in ancient reliefs: King, History of Babylon fig. 12, and was still in use in this century. In 1.197, Herodotos refers to the treatment of ill-

ness as one of the wisest no physicians, but when and the passers-by come his disease themselves or

of Babylonian institutions: “They have a man is ill, they lay him in the square, up to him, and if they have ever had have known any one who has suffered

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from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking what his ailment is." The Code of Hammurabi, of about 1950 B.c., contains regulations about medical and surgical cases, and the description of Nebuchadrezzar's illness in Daniel 4 and items in the Babylonian Chronicle are said to attest considerable medical knowledge. A.L. Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Medicine," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 36 (1962) 97-108, argues that medicine had in Herodotos’ time

dropped out of the curriculum and was based solely on experience and oral training. D.J. Wiseman, Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon (Oxford 1985) 106, however, dissents from

Oppen-

heim's supposition: "There is no evidence that the Babylonians were treated in public." W.R. Dawson, "Herodotus as a Medical Writer," BICS 33 (1986) 90 n. 15, writes, "We should not speak

of Hdt.'s 'error' (Branderburg 26); it is more likely that Babylonian medicine had declined by the fifth century (Majno, 678)." The passage is also mentioned by G.E.R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom (Berkeley 1987) 56.

The picture which emerges of this traveler in a distant land who did not speak the language is of one with powers of keen observation, but coupled with a credulity and willingness to believe exaggerated figures and reports concerning bizarre features about the mode of life. Ravn noted that his conclusions about Babylon were similar to those reached about Egypt by W. Spiegelberg, Die

Glaubwürdigkeit von Herodots Bericht über Ágypten im Lichte der ägyptischen Denkmäler (Heidelberg 1926). In this Babylo-

nian context, we comment on a recent study by one of Herodotos' detractors. R.A. McNeal, "The Brides of Babylon: Herodotus 1.196," Historia 37 (1988) 54-71, believes that he has

found serious falsifiation in Herodotos, stating that the marriage rites in Mesopotamia prove that Herodotos' account is wrong and claiming that Herodotos has substituted "a garbled

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account of marriage rites among the Greeks.” O.E. Ravn, Herodotus’s

Description

of Babylon (1942) 89, was careful to

note that the described rites did not accord with the Code of Hammurabi, where Babylonian matrimony was regulated by law with contract and witnesses, but that such arrangements were “abandoned after the fall of Babylon when everyone was poor.” Young women came to earn their living by prostitution. In 1.196, Herodotos in judging customs for the practical intelligence they embody; cf. H.R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought (1966) 320. The

“cleverest” Babylonian

nomos

was one by

which marriageable girls were auctioned off, with the proceeds of the handsome going as dowries for the ugly, a custom which no longer obtained: οὐ μέντοι νῦν ye διατελέει ἐών. He explains that after the Persian conquest, the people were afflicted and poor, and so resorted to prostitution. Herodotos

knew nothing of the Code of Hammurabi, and was dependent upon his contacts for customs which might have prevailed some

seventy years earlier. Oppenheim,

in CHI 2 (1985) 559,

states that we have very little evidence for Babylon during the reign of Dareios. The story may be rooted in anti-Dareios propaganda. It is clear that he is not recording a custom he had observed. The attempt to attribute the custom to Herodotos' garbled understanding of Greek law is a will-o’-the-wisp. Strabo (16.1.20.745) writes, Now in general their customs are like those of the Persians, but it is a custom peculiar to them to appoint three wise men as rulers of each

tribe, who

present

in public the marriageable

girls, and sell them by auction to the bridegrooms, always selling first those who are the more highly prized. Thus marriages are contracted.

Aelian (VH4.1) attributes the custom to the Assyrians: ᾿Ασσύριοι τὰς ὡραίας γάμον παρθένους ἀθροίσαντες és τινα πόλιν ἀγορὰν αὐτῶν προκηρύττουσι καὶ ἕκαστος ἣν ἂν πρίη-

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The Alexander historian Aristoboulos

(Jacoby, FGrHist 139 frg. 42) found the same custom among

the poor at Taxila in India. Lawrence observes about one detail of the Herodotean account, “The detail that a herald conduct the auction agrees with Assyrian legal procedure, whereby any public announcement of sale required a herald.”194 Curtius (5.1.36-39) gives a graphic picture of the 34 days the army of

Alexander spent in the city, paying a price for the daughters and wives of fathers and husbands. Koschaker in M. Ebert’s Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte 3 (1925) s.v. Ehe, 25-28, examines

the Babylonian practice in detail (with bibliography).!95 Marriage by purchase was recognized when Babylonia belonged to the Assyrian empire. Lehmann-Haupt in the Festschrift für H. Kiepert (Berlin 1898) 309, would attribute the Herodotean

account to Hekataios, although no fragment belonging to Babylonia is preserved. We may add that J.A. Brinkman, CAH? 3.1 (1982) 282-312, observes that there are periods in the first

millennium s.c. when we know nothing about social customs in Babylonia. As for religious prostitution at Babylon, which Herodotos records in 1.199, a chapter which Lawrence says "has

been as much a subject for dispute as any in Herodotus, "196 194The Herodotean passages on Babylonian women are discussed by A. Kuhrt, "Non-Royal Women in the Earliest Records (Atlanta 1989 ed. B.S. 195Cf. Wiseman in CAR? 2.2 (1975) 196G.R. Driver and J.C. Miles, The

Late Babylonian Period," Women's Lesko) 223, 235,237, 238. 476. Assyrian Laws (Oxford 1935) 129, write:

“It is strange that, whereas in the Babylonian code there appears a great variety of harlots and hierodules, each described by a different technical term, this and apparently also the mutilated $ 49 are the only sections of the Assyrian laws in which there is any reference to them. Yet prostitution must have been as common

in Assyria as in Babylonia; and in both countries it

probably flourished chiefly in connexion with the temples." On p. 142, the authors explain that "among the Babylonians marriage is a marriage by purchase." In The Babylonian Laws: (Oxford 1952) 360, the same authors

write, "There can be little doubt that sacral prostitution existed in connection with the temples." There is much information about hi-

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D.J. Wiseman, Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon (Oxford 1985) 106, writes, Herodotus seems to have confused

Babylonian and Assyrian

customs in telling of a woman having to offer herself publicly for some form of temple prostitution on behalf of Aphrodite ‘the goddess called Mylitta by the Assyrians' (L199). Release was only after submission to any stranger who

threw her a silver

coin to follow him. At Assur lead discs with pornographic scenes on them were discovered in the precincts of the temple of Ishtar. These may have been connected with some similar custom

in Babylon

since

Mylitta

may

be a rendering

of

Mulissu, the Neo-Assyrian form of the Akkadian name of the goddess Ninlil (Old Babylonian Mulliltum).

M.A. Dandamaev, in his massive volume Slavery in Babylonia (tr. V.A. Powell, Illinois 1984) 132, informs us: In the Old Babylonian period prostitution was still widespread among free women within the confines of a cult ... Temple prostitution in Babylonia from the fifth century and later is attested in the reports of Herodotus [1.199] and Strabo

[XV1.1.20], according to whom all Babylonian women formed liaisons with foreigners and received money which they gave to the temple of the goddess of love, Aphrodite (IShtar). It is clear that both Classical authors mistakenly attributed to all Babylonian

women

the obligation

characteristic

of a hierodule

[Baumgartner 1950: &if.; cf. Cardascia 1959a: 91].

The references are to Baumgartner, Archiv Orientalni18 (1950) 69—106, and Cardacsia, Société Jean Bodin pour l'histoire comparative des institutions (Brussels) 11 (1959) 79-94. Dan-

erodouloi in the ancient world in the article by Hogarth and Barton in J. Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

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damaev devotes almost ninety pages to the subject of temple slavery, for which there seems to be vast archival material (pp.

469-557). M.A. Dandamayev, “Herodotus’ Information on Persia and the Latest Discoveries of Cuneiform Texts,” includes a summary on Babylon.'97 He writes (SStor.7 [1985] 92-93): Herodotus visited Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia and some other Near Eastern countries described by him. He knew no languages, except his native, and during his travels had to rely on what his informants told him through the medium of interpreters. Therefore he is often inaccurate transcribing foreign words and names. He had visited Babylon and described the city from what he saw with his own eyes. This description has been carefully checked against archaeological evidence and proved faithful. However, his knowledge of Babylonian history of the 7th and 6th centuries B.c. (not to mention earlier periods) is

lamentable. He heard nothing even about the famous Nebuchadnezzar 11 (605—562 B.c.). Herodotus could find in Babylon

many cuneiform texts, including historical chronicles and lists of kings. But he failed to find scribes who would be able to read these records to him, and his informants seem to have been some Greek inhabitants at Babylon with a very limited knowl-

edge.198

Dandamayev then examines the road system from Sardis to Susa with 111 stations (Herodotos 5.52—54; 8.98), the system of taxation in the Persian empire (3.89, 97, etc.), the lack of Per-

sian market-places

(1.153), the pouring of molten precious

197For extensive bibliography on Babylon, with about 150 entries, see A. Kuhrt, “Achaemenid Babylon," Achaemenid History 4 (1990) 177-195, who

comments on the Herodotean record on p. 184.

198 For a similar evaluation, see M.A. Dandamaev (same author with a different spelling), The Culture and Social Institutions of Iran (Cambridge

1989) 389.

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metal into earthenware (3.96), the so-called “benefactors of the

king” (8.85, 90, etc.), the honoring of large families (1.136), the tribe Maraphii (1.125), the sacrifices of the Magians (7.54, 113),

the offidal mourning for the wife of Kyros (2.1), and the marriage of Artystone (3.88; 7.69, 72).

One item of a historical nature in the Babylonian logos seems to have been confirmed. G.G. Cameron, Acta Iranica ı (1974) 45-48, analyses Herodotos’ account in 1.189 to the effect that

Kyros, before the fall of Babylon, spent the spring and summer in diverting the waters of the river Gyndes (the modern Diyaler). He associates the passage with one in the “NabonidusCyrus Chronicle," suggesting that in 539 B.c. "the sovereign was already putting into effect measures which would lead to greater fertility in this area, applying to the task his army and the army's corps of engineers: in other words, a substantial irrigation project had been initiated." Fehling (p. 232) does not seem to recognize the content of the passage and claims that the divisions of the river are “obviously fabulous.” David Oates, Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq (London 1968)

9, endorses Herodotos' statement that Babylonia was the richest of the Persian provinces. J. MacGinnis, “Herodotus’ Description of Babylon," BICS 33 (1986) 67-86, also offers an up-to-date appraisal with much bibliography. He examines thirty-three passages in the Babylonian logos, finding that Herodotos descriptions are correct in twenty cases, wrong in five (including history), and uncertain in eight. For "Palm fertilization," considered wrong, compare Theophrastos HP 3.8.4. Whereas MacGinnis is uncertain about

the staircase of the ziqqurat, D.J. Wiseman's reconstruction (Nebuchadrezzar

and Babylon [Oxford 1985] 70) shows it on

the outside, as Herodotos has it.!99 199Fehling charges Herodotos with falsification about the sacred marriage (pp. 143-144), the gold statue of Marduck reported by the Chaldaeans (pp. 146 and 158, but cf. MacGinnis, pp. 73-74), and the New Year Festival of 539 B.C. (pp. 143-144, but cf. Xenophon Kyr. 7.5.15, Daniel s, the Babylonian

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3. EGYPT. One of the early reports of autopsy in Egypt is that summarized by J.T. Wheeler, The Geography of Herodotus (London

1854) 380, with reference to Herodotos 2.158: “The

precise line of this extraordinary canal was ascertained by the French survey, made in 1799, and fully confirms the truth of

Herodotus's description." That the canal was dug by Dareios is confirmed epigraphically. J.D. Ray (CAH?4 [1988] 263) writes, “It can be estimated that twelve million cubic metres of earth were excavated in order to construct it. It was lined with at least a dozen stelae, over three metres high, inscribed in three cuneiform languages and hieroglyphs, complete with lists of the satrapies of the empire. According to the best preserved examples, a flotilla of twenty-four ships, laden with Egyptian produce, was sent to Persia by Darius in person, who had traveled to Egypt for the opening of the great canal." One of the stelai is translated by G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (New York 1959) 275, "I, the Persian, from Persia

have conquered Egypt, I have given orders for the building of

this canal from the river called the Nile which runs through Egypt, as far as the sea which flows from Persia." It is typical

that Fehling, who must know of the topographical confirmation of 2.158, in his entire book does not mention the fact, but

singles out only one sentence in this long chapter to impugn Herodotos, that giving the figure (120,000) for the men lost in building (p. 232). The loss of life may have been exaggerated,

but, as Lloyd (3 p. 107) notes, Muhammad Ali's construction of the Mahmudieh canal cost over 20,000 lives in six months out of a work force of 250,000. Surely, for one evaluating Herodotos' veracity, the accuracy of the topography and the recovery of five inscriptions carries far more weight than a figure given about an event in the past.

Chronicle [MacGinnis p. 79], and G. Roux, Ancient Iraq 331—335). To the vast

literature on Babylon, Fehling gives no reference.

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Another confirmation of Herodotus proved by excavation, where Fehling selects one element of the record, was made by the Harvard Expedition to Egypt under G.A. Reisner, Mycerinus, the Temples of the Third Pyramid at Giza (Cambridge 1931). Reisner proves that Mycerinus was the builder of the Third Pyramid (Herodotos 2.134; Diodoros 1.64.7),

confirms

that the Third Pyramid was cased with Assuan

granite (= “Ethiopian marble,” 2.134) for twenty-four courses

from the bottom, and states that the ration list of the pyramid of Cheops refers to a stata set up against the east face of the Pyramid

in the

innermost

room

of the temple.

Whereas

Fehling writes (p. 243), Perhaps the most glaring example (of lying) is his statement that there is a small pyramid 'in the middle of the three pyramids, in front of the Great Pyramid’ (2.126.2). Herodotus thus

imagines the three big pyramids as forming a triangle with a small pyramid roughly in the middle but closer to the Great Pyramid. ... Could anyone who had ever seen the Pyramids get it all so wrong?

Reisner discovered buried in the deep sand three small pyramids, erected by Cheops for his queens, while three more, next the Third Pyramid, were built by Mycerinus for his queens. One wonders about Fehling's implied claim to have seen the pyramids. Who is "lying"? A third confirmation of the Herodotean record concerns Lake Moeris (2.148-150.1), the criticism of which by the three chief advocates of a "new approach" to Herodotos' trustworthiness makes very depressing, if salutary, reading. O.K. Armayor's Herodotus’ Autopsy of the Fayoum (Amsterdam 1985) was demolished by J.A.S. Evans in AHR 92 (1987) 638-639.200

200Evans summarizes the evidence in Herodotus, Explorer of the Past (Princeton 1991) 138-139.

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Meanwhile, S. West reviewed Armayor's book in CR 101 (1987) 6—7, writing that it was "established that Herodotus could not have found there the great high-level lake which he describes, and that Lake Moeris could not, at any historical period, have discharged into the Nile, or functioned as a regulated reservoir," etc. More recently, Fehling (p. 242 n. 5) refers

to Armayor's "extraordinarily impressive demonstration that there is absolutely no hope of finding any information about matters Egyptian in statements about the Egyptian Labyrinth and Lake Moeris in Herodotus (2.148-150) or for that matter in Strabo or Diodorus," etc.? Summarizing the various reports of the extensive survey work by many teams brought in before the building of the Aswan dam, with radiocarbon dating and modern techniques for studying water levels,2°2 Evans (ΑΗΒ 5.3 [1991] 66-74) has

shown that in Herodotos' time there was a lake which rose to about 18 meters above sea-level with a perimeter of about 270 kilometers, large to be sure but short of the exaggerated con-

201On p. 246, Fehling writes: "Already in the German edition of 1971 I was able to cite Oertel as an exception to the general euphoria; and there were others, too, even then. Now the whole situation has been transformed by the contributions of Armayor, who has re-exposed numerous contradictions between Herodotus' statements and archaeological facts accessible to us today. While in the first edition I confined myself to a cautious summing-up in which I said that the question must be treated as a much more open one than the secondary literature would lead us to believe, I am now prepared to go further and to say that it is perfectly clear that Herodotus makes statements about many things he has absolutely no knowledge of." 202 Although only of antiquarian interest, as set forth by E.A.W. Budge, The Egyptian Sudan 1 (Philadelphia 1907) 551—552, the Herodotean record was

defended in the nineteenth century by Linant and the two greatest Egyptologists of the time, Lepsius and Brugsch Pasha, on the basis of level marks on the rocks, but rejected by an irrigation engineer, Major R.H. Brown, who was judged to be a scientific expert, and was followed by Budge, Maspero, and later scholars.

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ceptual figure which Herodotos gives. The two pyramids mentioned by Herodotos were apparently two colossal statues of the king on pedestals 21 feet high in a walled courtyard on the eastern shore. It is not without interest that in one of the detailed reports (AJA 79 [1975] 223-269), B. Bell (p. 251 n. 37)

wrote of the passage in 2.150.1, "On behalf of the accuracy of Herodotus and the reality of his visit to the site it is worth recalling that he mentioned an underground passage into the Hawara Pyramid in the corner of the Labyrinth adjacent to the Pyramid; attention to this claim would have saved nineteenth century excavators of this Pyramid much labor." She favors Petrie's theory that sections 124-136 be placed before 100-123.

We recognize that Evans' summary was not available to the three Herodotean critics, but the archaeological reports in his n. 16 (p. 71), as well as Bell's massive bibliography in AJA 79 (1975) 266-269,

were.

W.C.

Hayes

in CAH? 1.2 (1971) p. 511

confirms the record of 2.149 with additional bibliography in note 4, adding, "Just outside the embankment, north of Biyahmu, are the bases of two colossal quartzite statues of the king, which, at the time of Herodotus, were still surrounded by the waters of the lake." As for Armayor's treatment of the labyrinth (Herodotos 2.148), which is endorsed by Fehling (242 n. 5), the structure

was constructed by Amenhotep III. Referring to the study by L. Habachi, ASAE 40 (1941), A.P. Kozloff and B.M. Bryan, in

their history of Amenhotep III, Egypt's Dazzling Sun (Cleveland 1992) 114 n. 68, write,

"Herodotus'

description

of the

labyrinth is that of courts with statue booths. This will be the subject of a future study." They explain on page 93 that excavations are still continuing. The "Labyrinth" is also described by Diodoros 1.66.1—6, Strabo 17.1.37, Pliny NH 36.13, and Mela 1.9.

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Archaeology and topography are terra incognita to Armayor, West, and Fehling.2% A.B. Lloyd, summarizing many years of work on the Egyptian logos, has now given us a lengthy appraisal of the historical parts, concluding (Historia 37 [1988] 52-53): The framework of the narrative is provided by a series of kings whose names are given according to precisely the principles we should expect of Late Period priests, and they are rendered in Herodotus with surprising accuracy. ... When we turn to the narrative of events with which this skeleton is fleshed out, we are confronted with a disconcerting, if fascinating, phenomenon. A compound of many heterogeneous elements, only one of which is historical fact, it presents a view of Egypt's past which shows no genuine understanding of Egyptian history. Everything has been uncompromisingly customized for Greek consumption and cast unequivocally into a Greek mould. It is likely that this process was well under way before Herodotus appeared, and that he is both recording its results and carrying it further. ... The main value of II, 99-142, is

not as history but as a record of the traditions on the distant past which were generally current in Egypt during the fifth century BC. The judgement on the historicity of II, 147-82, can, however,

be more positive: while suffering from many of the deficiencies of the earlier section, it is till our most important extant source on Saite history and the earliest consecutive account which we

have. Even so, it should not be forgotten that at one important point, i.e. the conflict of Apries and Amasis, where we are able to check the narrative in detail against an Egyptian text, it can be shown to be badly in error. This is not likely to be Herodotus’ fault. Indisputably, he derived the material from an Egyptian 203The interpretation of these monuments by Armayor, West, and Fehling is also endorsed by D. Lewis in his Postscript in A.R. Burn, Persia and the Greek? (London 1984) 597, who otherwise gives an interesting appraisal (pp. 588-602) of Herodotos' Persian sources.

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source, but this example provides a disturbing demonstration of the fact that he, like ancient historians in general, simply did not possess the techniques of scholarship to test satisfactorily what he was told and was, therefore, in normal circumstances entirely at the mercy of his informants.?04

Diogenes L. in his Proem (1.2) writes (Loeb tr.): If we may believe the Egyptians, Hephaestus was the son of the Nile, and with him philosophy began, priests and prophets being its chief exponents. Hephaestus lived 48,863 years before Alexander of Macedon, and in the interval there occurred 373

solar and 832 lunar eclipses.

Diodoros mentions Hekataios of Abdera as a Greek who went to Thebes in the reign of Ptolemy Soter to compile an Egyptian history: 1.46.8; Jacoby, FGrHist 264 Test. 4. Even with a royal

patron, Hekataios did no better than Herodotos about the conquests of Sesostris, including the erection of stelai in Thrake (1.55.6), if we may judge from Diodoros. For the lack of any authentic Egyptian history, see p. 78 and note 143.

In the context of the nature of Egyptian nationalistic propaganda, we repeat the quotation from Kozloff and Bryan (Egypt's Dazzling Sun [Cleveland 1992]) given on p. ooo above about the claims of Amenhotep

III (c. 1391-1353), which has

generally been neglected by classical historians, although the monument was published by E. Edel in 1966 in Bonner Biblische Beitrüge:

204On the Apries' story, J.D. Ray (CAH? 4 [1988] 261) writes, "More

revealing is the rather grotesque story that Cambyses was really the son of Apries’ daughter (Hdt. III.2), which may have been used as Persian propaganda to discredit Amasis, but which looks more like a very Egyptian attempt to integrate Cambyses into their own culture, a foreshadowing of what was to be done to Alexander in later legend. Certainly, Herodotos makes it clear that this is an Egyptian version."

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According to official ideology, the pharaoh was master of the world. Just as in the writings of the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus the conquests of the legendary king Sesostris were reported to have eclipsed those of Darius and Alexander the Great, so even Amenhotep III claimed sovereignty over Troy and Mycenae, Assyria, and Babylon. Rows of bound captives, foreigners, and hundreds of exotic peoples and places appear on the bases of statues, on column drums, and beneath the pharaoh's throne, pictured as "name-rings." The latter are the names of foreign peoples and places enclosed within ovals representing the crenelated walls of fortresses, surmounted by busts of foreigners, their arms tied behind their backs. In this guise the Aegean place-names, Amnesos, Phaistos, Kydonia, Mycenae, Messenia, Nauplia, Kythera, Ilios (Troy?), Knossos, and Lyktos, make their first appearances in hieroglyphs, on the base of a statue at Amenhotep III's mortuary temple (Figure II.13).

The Pharaohs named Senwosret/Sesostris are judged to have been earlier (see A.B. Lloyd, "Nationalist Propaganda in Ptolemaic Egypt," Historia 31 [1982] 32-55, with bibliography on Sesostris, p. 37 n. 11); but D. Asheri (Fondation Hardt. Entretiens 35 [1990] 151) finds that his conquests were deemed

to have taken place in the fourteenth century, which corresponds with Amenhotep III. In any case we have concrete evidence of the nature of a familiar Egyptian genre, well studied by Lloyd.295

205In one of her numerous reviews of books on Herodotos in Classical Review, this time on a work dealing with Sesostris, S. West (104 [1990] 475)

writes, "It is not clear how much of Herodotus' account represents authentic Egyptian tradition and how much is to be attributed to a Greek mind

(perhaps Herodotus' own), though clearly the specific mention of Scythia and Thrace among Sesostris’ conquests (2.103.1, 110.2) did not come from an

Egyptian source ... nor, I think, will this monograph lead to any widespread revision of the generally unfavourable estimate of the level of historical

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The unveiling of new evidence affords the opportunity to turn back the clock. Lloyd and Asheri have understood the pervasiveness of Egyptian propaganda; others have failed dismally. To Sesostris was attributed the legendary conquests of many Pharaohs, and in the history of Egypt he is comparable to Ninus in the history of Assyria and to Alexander in the history of Greece. Egyptian authorities have told us that Egypt did not develop a true historiography of its own; see p. 78 and note 143. Diodoros assures us that he visited Egypt, and that at

a time when Greek had been the official language of the land for nearly three hundred years, and hence he was not in danger of being imposed upon as was Herodotos. His account of the exploits of Sesostris exceed the Herodotean record (1.5358). Although some scholars would trace various details to lit-

erary sources such as Hekataios of Abdera and Agatharchides of Knidos as well as Herodotos, Diodoros himself repeatedly mentions what he was told by the priests of Egypt and natives of Ethiopia (1.15.2; 1.21; 1.24.5; etc., 3.6.1; 3.9.1). In 1.96.2, he

relates that the priests recounted stories from their records, which seems to be a contamination of Greek and Egyptian traditions. 1.69.7 reads, "We shall set forth only what appears in the written records of the priests of Egypt and has passed our careful scrutiny" (Loeb). The major content of what Diodoros was told in Egypt differs only in degree from what Herodotos was told. A commentator on Diodoros in Egypt writes (T.W. Africa, JNES 22 [1963] 254) that his account of Egyptian society

^was a blend of Ptolemaic reality and sacerdotal wishful imagery." Although the bibliography has not escaped the net of Lloyd, we note that there are specific passages in the Egyptian logos which Egyptologists have endorsed. The account in 2.78 of a coffin at the banquet, to which Lucian alludes (De luctu 21,

knowledge commonly to be found among the Egyptian clergy in the fifth century." The extent of Egyptian propaganda has escaped S. West.

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“The Egyptian, I speak as eye-witness, dries his dead and makes him a companion at his dinner”; cf. Plutarch Mor. 357 and Protagorides in Athenaios 4.1500), is endorsed by S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithaca 1970) 195 and 329 n. 58. Various

details about the processes of embalmment (2.86-89), of which a more detailed account is given by Diodoros (1.91), are endorsed by A.R. David, The Ancient Egyptians (London 1982) 67f£ Writing of Herodotos' division of the Egyptians into seven classes (2.164), D. O'Connor in The Cambridge History of Africa 1 (1982) 838-839, makes record of 1143 B.c.:

the following

comparison

with

a

The persistence and nature of the chief activities of the population can be appreciated by comparing those listed in a rental record of 1143 Bc (the Wilbour Papyrus) with those enumerated by the historian Herodotus some 700 years later. The earlier document reveals a typical cross-section of contemporary society, a small group of high-ranking and wealthy officials and a much larger group of scribes (i.e. bureaucrats), priests, soldiers

(military colonists), stable-masters (concerned with chariotry horses), 'citizenesses', cultivators and herdsmen. Artisans were another important group, not frequent in this particular document because their income came not directly from land but as payment for their products or as government rations. Later, Herodotus (II. 164) describes the principal occupations as those of 'priests, warriors, cowherds,

swineherds,

preters and pilots; the obvious 'cultivators'.

omission

tradesmen,

inter-

here is that of

In the context of a lengthy treatment of the unpopularity of Persian rule in Egypt, R.C.C. Law, in The Cambridge History of Africa 2 (1978) 103, makes the following observation to which

critics of Herodotean omissions might be referred:

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Not the least valuable section of Herodotus's account of Egypt is that recording the traditions about Egypt's past which he was able to collect, from both Egyptians and locally resident Greeks, upon which any account of the Saite and Persian periods must

lean heavily. Interestingly, the memories of his Egyptian informants exhibited the same selectivity as had directed Egyptian tastes in art since Saite times. They had a great deal to say about

the Memphite pyramid-builders of the Old Kingdom, and next to nothing about the Theban kings of the New Kingdom.

Thus, Law explains (p. 97) that the Egyptians looked back upon Amasis (Ahmose) as a time of unparalleled prosperity when the river was generous to the land and the land to the people (Herodotos 2.177). This prosperity was in contrast to the period of subjection to foreign rule which followed after his death. Again, Law (pp. 90—91) writes of the account of the acquisition of power by Psammetikos (= Psamtek) in 2.151152: Egyptian traditions reported by the Greek historian Herodotus, which patriotically fail to recall the circumstance of conquest by the Assyrians, assert that Egypt was divided between twelve ‘kings’, among whom was Psamtek, and that Psamtek by force overthrew the other eleven and seized sole power for himself. However fanciful the details, this story no doubt preserves an authentic tradition of fighting against the rival nome-chiefs of the Delta.

The same author accepts the figure of 700 talents of silver which Herodotos (3.91) says that Egypt under Dareios paid as tribute besides revenues traditionally due to the Pharaohs such as the profits of the fisheries of the Fayum and the burden of supplying grain for the garrison of the White Fort. Turning to Herodotos’ account of what is now northern Sudan, sometimes known as Kush, P.L. Shinnie, in CHA 2 (1978) 222-223, gives the following evaluation:

$. SPECIALISTS ON INDIVIDUAL LOGOI The earliest foreign description of Meroe, that writer Herodotus, dates from this time. Herodotus in about 450 Bc, and therefore perhaps during Malewiebamani. He did not go further south than

253

of the Greek was in Egypt the reign of Elephantine

(Aswan), but he presumably met Meroites there and gathered

his information from them. His descriptions are rather diffuse, and some of the geographical information cannot easily be reconciled with the facts, but there is no doubt that he had some first-hand informants, and it is of importance that he knew of Meroe, and that it lay upstream of the Fourth Cataract, whilst Napata is not mentioned. He knew of Psamtek’s campaign, and describes how some of the Egyptian troops had deserted and had settled south of Meroe. It is not clear how much credence can be given to this story, which may be entirely fanciful, but it has been suggested by Wainwright that it is substantially correct, and that the deserters sailed up the White Nile and settled in southern Kordofan. There is no archaeological evidence for such a settlement, but the region is virtually unexamined.

The reference to G.A. Wainwright is "Some ancient records of Kordofan,"

Sudan Notes and Records 28 (1947) 11-24. Fehling

(100 and 241) denounces the 2.29 record as a lie. Actually, there is more evidence assembled by Lloyd than given by Shinnie in support of Herodotos' account. For the "Table of the Sun" at Meroe (Herodotos 3.18—19), the site has been found according to Lloyd 2.124. Fehling (p. 111) writes of 3.18,

“The

whole

passage is clearly fiction," but obviously knows nothing of the archaeological evidence adduced by Lloyd. Lawrence notes that vases showing animals feeding from altar-like tables have been found in Nubia, citing Woolley and Maclver, Karanog (1910) 56. Confirming one detail about the Ethiopians (Herodotos 7.69), R. Mauny in CHA 2 (1978) 326, observes: Herodotus indicates that the Ethiopian soldiers in Xerxes's army (480 Bc) were the only ones who still had stone rather

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than iron arrowheads. Indeed it was only in the time of Harsiotef, c. 400 Bc, that stone, bronze and copper were finally supplanted at Kush by iron. B.C. Trigger notes that no iron whatever was found in any of the well-dated tombs that were constructed at Nuri after reign 7 or before reign 13 (c. 538-520 BC), and there are only a few isolated occurrences of iron in [Kush]

prior to reign 23 (Harsiotef) ... Iron working was not established yet in the Sudan.

4. LIBYA. As noted by the editors in The Cambridge History of Africa, 2 (1978) 694, for the history of the Libyans, the indi-

genous peoples of northern Africa west of Egypt, there is little historical evidence in our period. Cf. p. 711. The Libyans themselves were illiterate, and Greek literature is not generous with information about them. The main source in this period is Herodotos. The earlier account of Hekataios is lost. Archaeological evidence for the ancient Libyans, apart from rock-art, is exiguous. ὁ As to the Libyan logos of 4.169—199, the record is not histor-

ical, but geographical and ethnographical, for which the basic study is S. Gsell, Hérodote. Textes relatifs à l'Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris 1916), now supplemented by the anthropologist Gabriel Camps, "Pour une lecture naive d'Hérodote,"

Storia della Storiographia 7 (1985) 38-59

(with

bibliography).2°6 Recent archaeological discoveries help to explain how Herodotos referred to oxen as ὀπισθονόμοι (4.183), the use in war of chariots drawn by four horses, the use

of a peculiar type of plow, his cultural demarcation line between nomads and growers, as established by pottery in graves, and other customs, formerly regarded as "fable," which have remained unchanged. She concludes her article with the

following summary: 206A. Berthelot, L'Afrique Saharienne et Soudanaise (Paris 1927) devotes pages 144-180 to a passage-by-passage commentary on 4.169-199. The commentary of A.W. Lawrence is particularly strong on Libya.

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The section of the λιβυκοὶ λόγοι constituted by the chapters 168-199 of the ivth book of Herodotus’ Stories (already the sub-

ject of comprehensive analysis in the classic works of $. Gsell) can, in part, be reinterpreted in the light of recent archeological discoveries and the results of ethnographic comparison. The frescoes of Jabbaren

(Tassili n’Ajjer) and of the Oued

Der-

baouen may even be able to explain—apart from the «imaginary»—how Herodotus came by the news (1v 183) of the oxen ὀπισθονόμοι; likewise, the representations of the Fezzan and the Tassili n’Ajjer (and of other areas of the Sahara Atlas) seem to confirm the cultural tradition relative to the use by the Garamants, in war situations, of chariots drawn by four horses.

Although he is obviously more familiar with the East Libyan peoples close to Cyrene and with Egypt rather than with the Punic-Berber world of the Maghreb and Eastern Tunisia, Herodotus was not unaware of the presence of growers in Western Libya, beyond the land of the nomads whose border (and his exactitude here is confirmed by archeology and ethnography) was Lake Tritonis (Small Syrtis). Herodotus' data are confirmed by the persistence, up to the present day, of a tradition, peculiar to the Berberophone peoples of Morocco and Algeria, involving

the use of a type of plough which is foreign to the Phoenician and Roman tradition. Moreover, the cultural demarcation line between nomads and growers, established by Herodotus is confirmed by the presence, in the graves of the latter, of domestic pottery which is completely absent in Saharan and pre-Saharan tombs. Other habits and customs noted by Herodotus—often relegated to the level of «fable»—seem to have remained unchanged up to the present day, confirming Herodotus' data and witnessing an outstanding capacity for cultural tenacity. Examining things from the point of view of ethnographic comparison, we should have another look, for example, at the chapters concerning Libyan nomad dwellings (1v 190) or those concerning the ritual battles of the virgins of the Machlui and the Ausi (1v 180)

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or, again, Nasamons

the

practices

of incubation

attributed

to the

(Iv 172).

Rock-carvings have been discovered in the Garama district of Libya. G. Camps in The Cambridge History of Africa 1 (1982) 619, notes that they confirm the record of Herodotos 2.183: Almost all the Saharan chariots are two-wheeled and drawn by two horses but Herodotus states that the Garamantes had four-wheeled chariots and that it was from the Libyans that the Greeks learned to harness these four-horse chariots and, indeed,

in the Fezzan, the country of the Garamantes, engravings have been found at Wadi Zigzaou depicting four-horse chariots (Graziosi 1942).

The reference is to P. Graziosi, L'arte rupestre della Libia (Naples 1942).297 R.C.C. Law in CHA 2 (1978) 145-146, endorses the Herodotean record (4.172) of the Libyan cult of the dead and

their preference for zoomorphic deities. The same author (pp. 141-142) discusses Herodotos’ catalogue of the Libyan tribes.

The account of the “silent barter of ans, described in 4.196, is discussed 137-138, and by N. Levtzion on pp. ume. Our commentaries offer many

trade” by the Carthaginiat length by Law on pages 646-647 of the same volparallels, including Pliny

NH 6.24.88.

There is little chronology in the Libyan logos; it is almost entirely ethnography and geography. A.B. Lloyd, who has studied this logos in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) reports

(237-238): The quality of this ethnographical information is less easy to evaluate than that on Egypt since contemporary evidence is in-

207 See also R.C.C. Law in CHA 2 (1978) 144.

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finitely less plentiful. For all that, Herodotus' claims stand up well to scrutiny. The tribal distribution is generally compatible with information in other classical sources, and even the more improbable statements in his description of customs can usually be supported by archaeological or anthropological evidence either from North Africa or elsewhere. E.g. the burial practices of the Nasamonians can be paralleled (St. Gsell, op.cit., 181 f£), and the claim that houses of the inhabitants of the far west of Libya could be built of salt blocks, though not strictly true, does have some basis in fact (ibid., 180). Nevertheless, it must be

admitted that exaggeration and oversimplification are clearly in evidence at some points.

But A.W. Lawrence on 4.185 reports about the salt-houses as follows: Buildings in the Saharan oases are still constructed of rock salt in many

localities, while

in others

(including

Siwa)

the

villagers make bricks of salt mud, which hardens like cement. In either case the cheapness of the material outweighs the disadvantage that it melts in rain, which seldom falls more than once in five years—and not always in sufficient quantities to cause serious trouble; but in 1922 a storm dissolved the entire settle-

ment of Tamanraset, even to the fort. The colours of the rock salt vary more than Herodotus was aware; in accordance with the small range of colour-names usual among uncivilised peoples, the Libyans doubtless recognised only two colours in their salt, and by 1500 the number had not risen above three, «white, red and ashen» (Leo Africanus, p. 299B).

One of the more interesting articles, which has escaped the Libyan authorities that I have consulted, is a zoological commentary reporting on osseous remains and archeozoological research: Z. Kadar, "Some Problems concerning the Scientific Authenticity of Classical Authors on Libyan Fauna," Acta

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Classica Univ. Scient. Debrecen. 8 (1972) 11-316. He identifies the

creature of 4.183 as the aurock, an identification supported by rock-paintings. He discusses the more than a score of creatures in the two "Fauna Catalogues" of 4.191-192. Some such as the

“horned asses" fell victim to desiccation, but are attested in

rock-drawings. Others have been killed off He concludes: The "Fauna catalogue" of Herodotus, which enumerates the one-time fauna of the surroundings of the Atlas mountains is, despite its lesser and greater distortions, substantially correct and is therefore an irreplaceable source for reconstructing the one-time faunal map of this territory which has changed since that time completely. ... Herodotus has enumerated both the Afro-eremic desert fauna of the western Paleartic from the regions of the nomadic Libyans, and the fauna of the Mediterranean forest and savanna regions from the land of the agrarian Libyans. This latter presents the fauna living in wood lands and savanna region of Mediterranean territory, in what was called the Mauretanian secondary centre, and which became extinct as a

result of desiccation. All this indicates that—considering his possibilities— Herodotus knew the fauna of North Africa well, and made «not» only excellent zoological observations connected with the fauna of Africa—as has been pointed out recently by Vogel— but may even «be» regarded as the pioneer of African fauna research. So we may call him not only the "father of history" but also the "father of zoogeography and faunistics."

It is a guess that the wild beasts of 4.174 are gorillas.2°® Herodotos states (4.192) that his description of the fauna in the 208 For the domestic animals of North Africa, see also S. Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord 1 (Paris 1914) 216-234. Discussing the fauna

and flora of Egypt, J. Yoyotte in G. Posener, Dictionary

of Egyptian

Civilization (New York 1959) 87—89, notes that many creatures and plants

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country of the nomads was the result of independent inquiry: ὅσον ἡμεῖς ἱστορέοντες ἐπὶ μακρότατον οἷοί TE ἐγενόμεθα ἐξικέσθαι.

5. PERSIA.2°9 Although Herodotos did not write a Persika, he tells us much about Persian society and history. On the purely historical side, the most detailed recent appraisal of the veracity of Herodotos is that by J.M. Cook, former Director of the British School in Athens and excavator of sites in Asia Minor, in the Cambridge

History of Iran 2 (1985) 201-205, which is

worthy of reproduction at length: He had inside knowledge of two councils of war that Xerxes held in Greece in 480 B.c.; and while we cannot treat the speeches that he retails as though they were verbatim transcripts, we can hazard a guess that he had a genuine source of information. For Artemisia, who had been present at both the councils and treated with signal honour, was the despot of his own native city, and in his pages we can detect the echo of the returning heroine's tale of personal success and the disparaging rumours

circulated by the political opposition (to which the historian's family belonged). Herodotus also lived on the island of Samos in his youth and had information from there; some detailed knowledge could have been acquired by hearsay from the dependants of Syloson, who is said to have been to the Persian court and obtained support from Darius I for his restoration to the island. A lengthy story set at the Persian court concerns the escape of Darius’ Greek doctor Democedes; this has been impugned on the ground that Herodotus could not have known

have disappeared since antiquity, "There is no more papyrus, and hardly any lotus; in fact there is very little of that primeval world which was venerated and exploited by the ancestors of modern Egypt." 2090. Murray's chapter in CAH? 4 (1988) on the Ionian Revolt (pp. 461490), for which Herodotos is our only surviving literary source, is, in effect, an evaluation of the credibility of Herodotos. See also his article, "Herodotus and Oral History," in Achaemenid History 2 (Leiden 1987) 93-115.

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what passed between the King and his wife Atossa in bed, but in fact the King's doctor must have known enough of harem routine to understand where the conversation would naturally take place and Herodotus probably heard the whole story from Democedes' descendants in southern Italy. Herodotus knows in detail of Xerxes' activities in the Troad and at the Hellespont, as well as of the sneezing fit that put an end to Hippias' hopes at Marathon; this information could well have been acquired at the Pisistratid refuge at Sigeum, and there are other items of information from the Persian side which were evidently gathered at the exiled Spartan king Damaratus' fief on the Caicus in western Asia Minor. Herodotus' good faith and reliance on sources rather than invention is illustrated by his account of Xerxes' march westward. The detailed narrative only begins at the point where Xerxes is approaching the metropolis of the Eastern Greek world at Sardis. Before that Herodotus knows nothing of the march, and he frankly admits that he cannot say who won the prizes at the general inspection of the assembled army in Cappadocia because he had found nobody who could inform him. From the Persian side the information is often detailed and precise, as for instance that concerning the noble families, and

not least the six wives and twelve sons of Darius. More particularly, there are two long and circumstantial bodies of narrative fitted into Herodotus' history of the Medes and the Persians. The first carries us from the foundation of Agbatana and the Median kingdom under Deioces at the end of the 8th century through the capture of Nineveh to the origins of Cyrus the Great and his rebellion against Astyages; and though detached from it in Herodotus' systematic arrangement, the war between the Medes

and the Lydians under Alyattes is evidently part of the same continuous story. There are recurring elements of folklore in this narrative; but it has an impressive continuity, and several details receive confirmation from cuneiform tablets, while the tale of Deioces appears to have been given a Zoroastrian flavour.

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It seems clear that Herodotus had a Median source here; and in fact the prominence given to the renegade Mede Harpagus in the Cyrus story, both here and in the account of the capture of Sardis and reduction of Ionia and Lycia, has led some scholars to assume that Herodotus may have been acquainted with his family in Asia Minor. The second of the stories referred to begins with King Cambyses in Egypt and the secret murder of his brother Smerdis (the Bardiya of the Behistun inscription), which was carried out at Cambyses’ command by his principal adviser Prexaspes. It continues with the seizure of the throne by the two Magi and the fatal accident and confession of Cambyses, and leads on to the conspiracy of the Seven which resulted in the assassination of the usurpers. Herodotus here gives a remarkably detailed and consistent account which

contrasts

sharply with his ignorance of Darius' immediately ensuing struggles to retain power; and the inside information about the fight in the royal apartments and the secret deliberations of the Seven is so precise that the story can only be imagined as having been transmitted through one of the Seven. In one matter of detail the accuracy of this account can be checked; for in the

Behistun text Darius also names his six fellow conspirators, and he would hardly have falsified a matter of such public knowledge. In Herodotus' account the names of five of these paladins agree with Darius (Otanes, Intaphernes, Gobryas, Megabyzus, Hydarnes), though one father's name is different. But the sixth is erroneous (Aspathines instead of what has been

read at Ardumani*). Now Aspathines (Aspatana) is later found as the bow-bearer of Darius (Naqsh-i Rustam); and a son of Aspathines called Prexaspes is named by Herodotus as one of Xerxes’ admirals in 480 B.c., while the father's name on the seal

of Aspathines, who is found authorising payments at Persepolis to some hundreds of workmen and "cultivators" in Xerxes' third year (483 B.c.) is read by Cameron

as Parraka¥pi

(i.e.,

perhaps Prexaspes). It is an easy conjecture that Aspathines was

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the son of the Prexaspes who in Herodotus’ account was brought to confess to the killing of the true Smerdis and then leapt to his death from a tower; and this Aspathines could thus have been a key witness to the seven conspirators’ claim that the Smerdis whom they killed was a pretender. Aspathines will no doubt have been very closely associated with the Seven after the coup d'état. ... At one point Herodotus' information goes beyond the oral. This is in his survey of the administrative divisions of the Persian

empire.

The

names

of the

twenty

satrapies

that

he

attributes to Darius' re-organization would not perhaps have been difficult to obtain by casual enquiry. But Herodotus distributes some seventy names of peoples and communities among them and adds precise figures of the tribute and gifts due from each satrapy. So, unless with Altheim and Olsner we charge him with deliberate forgery, this list presupposes some sort of document to which an informant of his had had access. Herodotus refers his list to the time of Darius. It is possible, as scholars used to argue, that he took it without acknowledgement from an earlier Greek writer, and this might perhaps affect our estimate of his conscience as a historian; but the information contained in it would not be any the less reliable if it did in fact date nearer to the time alleged. More probably, however, Herodotus is using information from a list that was current in his own tirne and adjusting it according to his knowledge of the changes since Darius' reign (to which the strict chronological arrangement of his Persian narrative compelled him to assign it). In sum, Herodotus provides us with a wealth of information.

Much of it has been obtained by hearsay, and his longer narratives present some which border on the mythical. But there does seem to be a firm substratum of genuine historical knowledge, much of which has been obtained from Persian and Median sources.

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Commenting on the tribute imposed by the Persians on the satrapy Babylonia (Herodotos 3.92), Oppenheim, in CHI 2 (1985) 532, states: Apart from the tribute payable in silver, Herodotus tells us that 500 boys had to be delivered to the Persian authorities for castration. This is quite atypical both for the general tenor of the tribute list and for the situation of Babylonia proper where human castration was practised neither for specific purposes nor as a punishment. I would suggest that here Herodotus attributes to the time of Darius I a situation which developed only later in his own time. The importance of the harem of the later Achaemenian kings for court and world politics is well known— Ctesias is our main source in this respect ——and one may safely

assume that eunuchs were in great demand not only in the royal entourage but also in that of princes, high Persian officials, etc. Boys may have been castrated and sent to court from Babylonia, but hardly as early as Herodotus wants us to believe, and not by way of regular tribute. Herodotus has two more references to fiscal obligations imposed on Babylonia: first, that the satrap Tritantaechmes was to receive an artabe-measure of silver every day from that satrapy and, second, that the dogs of the royal (Persian) hunt had to be maintained by four villages in Babylonia. Both may in some way reflect actual situations.

M.A.

Dandamayev

(or Dandamaev)

has given two recent

appraisals of the Herodotean record. In The Culture and Social Institutions

of Ancient

Iran

(Cambridge

1989),

he devotes

pages 388—391 to Herodotos in the context of other classical sources on Persia. In Storia della Storiografia 7 (1985) 92-100, "Herodotus' [Information on Persia and the Latest Discoveries

of Cuneiform Texts," he focuses on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, written in Elamite in 509-494 B.c., providing much information on economic matters, the state mail, and the road

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system (Herodotos 5.52-54; 8.98). He finds that Herodotos was

wrong in writing that each post horse ran for a whole day; horses were changed at supply stations located roughly at a distance of thirty kilometers. Dandamayev stresses that Herodotos never visited Persepolis, but based his information

on oral informants. He finds him wrong on several details,21° but concludes, "generally he provides an honest account of the institutions of the Persian empire." After completing his commentary on Herodotos, J. Wells (CR 39 [1925] 80) wrote: There is certainly a real need for a new Life of Herodotus; Rawlinson is out of date and is always dull; Jacoby (in a supplemental volume of Pauly-Wissowa) is equally dull, and, though very learned, is too full of his own theories to do his subject justice. What is wanted must be the work of someone who will give us a picture of the world of Herodotus as it really was and of the world as we have it described by him, and tell us what we know of him, and still more what is conjectured about him, in this frame-work.

But the world of Herodotos extended from Olbia in the north to the first cataract of the Nile in the south, from Thourioi to Babylon; and we are dependent on specialists who distinguish logos from logos to appraise the various civilizations in the Herodotean bazaar. For pure History, he ranks high for Persia but low for early Babylonia. Archaeology has revolutionized our appraisal of the Skythian logos. For the numerous anthropological features of his own day, his stock is steadily on the rise. We may poke fun at his geography and his concept of 71? Dandamayev's statement (p. 99) that the Babylonians knew neither

the fig nor the vine (Herodotos 1.193) is contradicted by Lawrence, who says that only the olive in Herodotos' list is unknown in the district. ?! Fehling's conclusion on p. 243 is “the extreme possibility that he never left his native Greece."

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the oikoumene, until we read the Alexandrian historians, Eratosthenes, and Strabo. His vast repertoire of legends and stories of origins, which is the chief target of the liar school, simply reflects the interest of his times, as evidenced by the works of the epic, the drama, and the logographers, emphasized by M. Finley in the quotation given above. We have noted that they were accepted by Thucydides as historical. Of all ancient writers, Herodotos is one who cannot be studied in isolation. He stands at the frontier where two literary eras meet: the era in which poetry and legend were the prime media for the interpretation of the world, and the era of prose and history proper.?? His work is a study in the history of civilization and a lesson in the unity of history, though Herodotos did not himself specifically formulate the idea. In the preceding sections of this study, we have focussed on individual passages where Herodotos has been charged with lack of veracity. In this section, we have selected general appraisals primarily by different specialists in the several fields included in Herodotos' remarkably broad range of coverage who have been recognized for their expertise by being selected to write sections in highly regarded publications. Most have spent years in detailed research on the history, archaeology, and monuments of their regions. Their assessments of Herodotos cannot be dismissed as the work of apologists.243 Their measured judgments contrast sharply with the sometimes glib pro212Cf, J. Herington, Arion, Third Series, 1 (1991) 5-15.

2130n page 241, Fehling categorizes “apologists” as follows: “Their basic mistake lies in their general practice of considering each of the author's false statements in isolation and asking whether there is any possibility of explaining it as an innocent misapprehension; and what with the variety of theoretical possibilities of misapprehension and scholars' own inexhaustible powers of imagination some possibility or other can practically always be dreamt up. But that only means that being able to point to sorne possibility or other proves very little. ... What we must constantly keep in mind is the total picture." The last sentence is the only one in Fehling's book which we would endorse, one which he has singularly failed to observe.

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nouncements them.

of the liar school,

6. GENRE

OP

HERODOTOS

who

almost

never

mention

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In War 3.1-3, I referred to the scholarly controversy involv-

ing Wilamowitz, Delbrück, and Kromayer, in which Delbrück singled out for severe criticism Wilamowitz’s treatment of religion in Greek warfare. Wilamowitz’s thesis was “Die Götter sind da,” and he reproached scholars who minimized the reli-

gious factor in Greek warfare. Few would doubt today that portents, epiphanies, and oracles were part of the life of Greek people. Not only were the gods there, but legends, myths, and cults were there. Very little can be learned about Herodotos by the reader who approaches the logoi sections in the same spirit as that in which he would approach a modern historical work. Herodotos was conforming to the customs of his day, and he can scarcely be blamed for doing so. The Ionian logographers confounded mythology with history; such was the bitter complaint of Thucydides. The dependence of historical writing on Homer was insisted upon in Alexandrian times and later. It is not without significance that it is an Homeric scholiast (Il. 3.6) who

preserves Hekataios’ description of the Ethiopian pygmies and their method of fighting the cranes. Strabo's persistence in citing the authority of Homer gives some idea of how strong the Homeric tradition must have been for the Ionian logographers.

This does not mean that Herodotos was a historical novelist. Dionysios is our authority for many early works relating to the story of a city's colonization, like the κτίσις Μιλήτον of Kadmos and the Χίου κτίσις of Ion of Chios. In the sixth century, Xenophanes wrote two epic poems on quasi-historical

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subjects, the Origin of his native home Kolophon and the Colonization of his adoptive home Elea, but no traces of these works have survived. Others treated a particular nation, Περσικά,

Σκυθικά, etc. The Periegesis, or Περίοδος

Γῆς, was

developed in the early fifth century. Pherecydes of Leros, who lived at Athens in the first half of the fifth century B.c., composed a long prose work of Greek myth and legend, sometimes called ἱστορίαι, sometimes ᾿Αρχαιολογίαι. The fragments of these handbooks of geography and ethnography afford a clue to Herodotos' milieu. All of this literary activity must reflect the interest of the early Greek in genealogies, in what we regard as legends and folk-tales about origins. Indeed, a reader of L. Pearson, Early Ionian Historians, and the subsequent literature, will know that a parallel of some Herodotean stories may be found in these logographers. It is plausible to postulate that when Herodotos visited Olbia, for example, the Greeks of that region would have developed a legend about the origins of the people with whom they traded, and had ascertained, in turn, the legends of these people about their origins. How the legends were shaped was an artistic matter. Speaking properly, Herodotos' interest was in legends and folk-tales, not myths. He was not concerned to answer the larger questions which many people have attempted to answer

by myths concerning the origin of the world and of man, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the seasons, rain, the phenomena of thunder and lightning, and the mystery of death, subjects about which man in a more advanced stage of knowledge seeks satisfaction in philosophy and science. Herodotos' atti-

tude toward mythology is set forth in 2.50—53, a famous passage which formed the basis for Linforth's important paper, "Herodotus' Avowal of Silence,” UCPCP 7 (1924) 269-292. His inter-

est was in traditions, whether oral or written, which relate the

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fortunes of people in the past, or describe events, not necessarily human, that are said to have occurred at real places. Such legends contain a mixture of truth and falsehood; for were they wholly true, they would not be legends, but histories. The proportion of truth and falsehood varies, but generally falsehood predominates, and the element of the miraculous largely enters into them.2!4 Folk tales, on the other hand, are generally understood as narratives handed down at first by word of mouth from generation to generation, narratives which, though they describe actual occurrences, are in fact purely imaginary. Although we may disagree with Rhys Carpenter (Folk Tale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics |Berkeley 1946]) about the origin of particular stories, he has shown

the probability that such folk tales as Zalmoxis, Rhampsinitos, Helen, etc., in Herodotos were passed down from remote times, just as the Brothers Grimm pointed out how in making their collection they found persons who could recite and repeat verbatim an unbelievable assortment without any written source. Oral literature flourished before the introduction of letters.255 The ancient world displayed an extreme

credibility toward the Homeric narrative, even to the extent of 24F, Jacoby, Atthis (Oxford 1949) 218, wrote in part about the legends of Herodotos: “The legends almost exclusively consist of detached stories of a prevailingly aitiological nature, attached to all kinds of monuments from the wall and the sanctuaries on the Akropolis of Kekrops and Erechtheus (who become former kings of the country) down to a private house in the city called in popular language παρ᾽ ἵππον xai κόρης. Moreover, there are legends explaining popular or profane institutions, or singular customs (particularly, but not exclusively, in cults). These stories, the antiquity of which it is quite impossible to determine, may contain a true remembrance of facts, although the facts may be even more distorted than in the myths of

epic poetry."

215). Fontenrose's book Python (Berkeley 1959) develops the thesis that the combat myth, evidenced in Greek by Apollo's slaying of Python, had originated in Mesopotamia, and had spread in very early times to Egypt, India, and other places. This sort of approach to myths is not uncommon among many students of mythology.

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accepting a single verse from the Iliad as crucial in a boundary dispute.26 The Greeks believed that Homer's account was a record of actual events in which the heroic past of their own tribes and towns was narrated. By contrast, ever-growing skepticism culminated in the nineteenth century in complete disbelief in Troy and all things Trojan or Achaian, until archaeology established that there were such places as Troy and Mykenai with palaces rich in gold, and an Age of Aristocratic Heroes. The skeptics of Herodotos maintain today that he invented the legends and folk tales and that he should have excluded them

from 'loropía. This alleged Herodotean incredulity stems from a failure on the part of some modern scholars to understand the fifth-century concept of historia and its subject matter. I have suggested in Topography 4 (University of California Publications: Classical Studies vol. 28 [1982]) 283ff. that criti-

cisms of the tempered if voyages and known seas.

logoi sections of Herodotos would be considerably we examined him in the context of the genre, i.e. explorations into little known regions and unIn the genre of travelers, we may list Megasthenes,

who was sent by Seleukos Nikator about 303 B.c. to serve as am-

bassador to the most powerful of the Indian kings on the Ganges.27 His treatise survives in Diodoros, Strabo, Pliny, Arrian, Aelian, and others (Jacoby, FGrHist 715 frgs. 1-34, with the

additions of P.A. Brunt, Loeb Arrian vol. 2, p. 447). "Megasthenes gives for the first time comprehensive statements about the geography of India, about its inhabitants, its social and political institutions, its natural products, its history and mythology. Although this report was unsurpassed in reliability and abundance of material for centuries to come, Megasthenes relates in it the stories of Indian marvels, of fabulous races and

216 For Polybios' acceptance of the historicity of Homer, see M. Vercruysse, Ancient Society 21 (1990) 293-309. The acceptance of Pausanias is well known. 217See O. Stein, RE s.v. (1931) 231-232.

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animals."2:5 We hear of people who have no nostrils, with the upper part of their mouth protruding over the lower lip, and others who have dog's ears and a single eye in their forehead.219 He knows of people whose heels are in front while the instep and toes are turned backwards, of the wild men without mouths who live on the smell of roasted flesh and the perfumes of fruit and flowers.2° The Hyperboreans live a thousand years. He tells of serpents with wings like bats, of winged scorpions of extraordinary size. Wittkower lists other fabulous races and animals, often tracing them to folklore adaptations of early myths in India. In Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 1151-1152

J.D.M.

Derrett writes, "M.

(Strab.

15,711).

Diskrepanzen

verwendet zwischen

(with bibliography),

ind. Informationen M.

und

dem

ind.

Mythos sind falscher Übersetzung u. Missverstándnissen zuzuschreiben." A century earlier, in W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography and Mythology 2.1008, we read, "Although his work contained many fabulous stories, similar to those which we find in the Indica of Ctesias, yet these tales appear not to have been fabrications of Megasthenes, but accounts which he received from the natives, frequently containing, as modern writers have shown, real truth, though disguised by popular legends and fancy. There is every reason for

believing that Megasthenes gave a faithful account of every thing that fell under his own observation." Again, P.A. Brunt, in the Loeb Arrian 2 (1983) 448—449, writes, "Much of what

Meg. reported clearly came from what Indians told him (App. XVI 2; cf. Ind. 9,2; 15,7; S. xv 1,59; perhaps D. ii 37,5f.; 38,2f.), 218R, Wittkower, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942) 162.

219To have only one eye seems to have been the symbol of the barbarian. The race is mentioned in the Mahabharata and other Indian epics. Z9 According to H. Hosten, "The Mouthless Indians," Journal and Proceedings As. Soc. of Bengal 8 (1912) 291f£, the people without mouths who live on smell are Himalayan tribesmen who used strong smelling fruits and vegetables as remedy against elevation-sickness.

6. GENRE

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including the stories of marvels (O. Stein, op.cit. 236-45; 301ff )

that E. adduced to prove his mendacity; doubtless, like Onesicritus (S. xv 1,64), he found it hard to ascertain through interpreters what his informants really meant." Megasthenes himself said that he owed his knowledge of some of the marvels to the Brahmans, and he had, of course, no reason to distrust the reports of this highly esteemed caste of philosophers. In the Indian epics, particularly the Mahabharata, races such as the Karnaprivarana, i.e. people who cover themselves with their ears, are recorded; other races are called the “camel-eared,” others "people having hands for ears," others again "people having ears close to their lips."22: Just as folk tales about people such as the "pygmies" got into Homer (1l. 3.6), so tales about various deformed people appear in early Indian epics, and were picked up by the Brahmans. We emphasize that intelligent people such as Herodotos and Megasthenes accepted fabulous folk-tales as true. Like the folk-tales of Herodotos, the stories of Megasthenes are not literary devices created by the author to amuse his audience, but tales adapted from Indian folklore. More than a century earlier, Ktesias, a doctor from Knidos who served as personal physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon, wrote an Indika, the contents of which are preserved by Photius in the ninth century A.D.2?? This work of Ktesias also provides us with examples of fabulous people and animals, for which students of folklore find parallels in various parts of the oikoumene and cannot be traced to Herodotos or to any single source.223

221See Wittkower, p. 164. In Hindu myth, Kabandha is a headless creature with a mouth in the middle of his belly and a lone eye in his chest. In the American press, there have been reports of people claiming to have seen

extraterrestrial beings who were mouthless. 222See Bigwood, Phoenix 43 (1989) 302-316, who provides a large bibliography.

23C. Malamoud, in his preface to the recent edition of Ktesias by J. Auberger (Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1991), writes (p. xii), "Ctésias, s'il n'a pas

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Ktesias populated India with the pygmies who fight with the cranes, a famous story which appeared first in Homer Iliad 3.6, being also represented on the foot of the Attic black-figure Francois vase painted about 570 B.c. Herodotos (2.32) places the Pygmies in upper Egypt, and Aristotle (HA 8.597a6) says they

lived in caves near the source of the Nile. Megasthenes, as well as Ktesias, located them in India, stimulated perhaps by the Indian myth of the war of Visna's bird, Garuda, against the dwarfs. A.W. Lawrence refers to a similar story among American Indians. Ktesias also peopled India with the Kynokephaloi, men with dogs' heads "who do not use articulate speech but bark like dogs." R. Wittkower, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942) 163, writes: The belief in the existence of dog-headed creatures is known to us in all parts of Asia, in China as well as in Java and Siberia, in Egypt as well as in America and Europe. Cf. the material collected by Henri Cordier, Les monstres dans la légende et dans la

nature, Paris 1890, with further references; idem, Les voyages en Asie au XIVe siécle du Frere Odoric de Pordenone, Paris 1891, pp. 206—17; idem, Ser Marco Polo. Addenda, London 1920, p. 109f.; W. Klinger, “Hundsköpfige Gestalten in der antiken und

neuzeitlichend Überlieferung,” Bull. international de l'Acad. Polonaise des sciences ... Cl. d'hist. et de phil. 1936, pp. 119

...

Klinger, op.cit., has shown that the cynocephali were originally probably chtonic demons, traces of which have been preserved in folklore adaptations of the early myth. There was similar diffusion of folk-tales about the existence

of one-eyed races. Wittkower (p. 163) writes:

visité l'Inde, a dà connaltre des Indiens qui venaient nombreux à la cour achéménide au moins pour y apporter leurs tributs" etc.

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273

races, familiar to the Greeks as the Cyclopes, are

mentioned in the Mahabharata and in other Indian-epics, cf. Schwanbeck, op.cit., p. 70 and McCrindle, Megasthenes, op.cit., p. 77. To have only one eye seems to have been in India the symbol of the barbarian. As late as the 15th century an Italian traveller, Nicoló Conti, reported, that the Indians say "that they them-

selves have two eyes and that we have but one, because they consider that they excel all others in prudence." (Mario Longhena, Viaggi in Persia, India e Giava di N. de' C., Milan 1929, p. 179). In this detached symbolical form the device occurs

also in English literature, cf. Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing, 1661, p. 129: "We judge truth to be circumscrib'd by the confines of our belief ... and ... repute all the rest of the world Monoculous." ... About the diffusion of the myth of oneeyed creatures cf. Pauly's Real-Encycl. XXII, c. 2346 with further references.

The last reference is to Eitrem's article on the "Kyklopen" in the RE s.v. (1922). See also Hiller's article on the "Kyklopen" in Der kleine Pauly 3 (1969) 393-394. A.B. Cook, Zeus 1 (1914) 302—330, also collects much testimonia on the dispersion of sto-

ries about the one-eyed race.224 Of fabulous animals, Ktesias describes the martikhoras (from Persian mard = man and khora = eater, or ἀνθρωποφάγος)

with a man's face, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, the unicorn, and the griffins which guard the gold, Indian cocks, goats, and sheep of prodigious size. Aristotle, in his treatment of animals with teeth (HA 2.1.501a), included the martichoras, adding ei δεῖ πιστεῦσαι Krnoíq. Both Pausanias (9.21.4) and Aelian (NA 4.21) describe the martikhoras,

and some editors trace the description to the tiger. It has been established that Ktesias’ and Megasthenes's unicorn is the In-

224 David G. White has given us a monograph on the subject Myths of the Dog-man (Chicago 1991).

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dian rhinoceros; for in India and China people still attribute the power of protection against poison to the horn of this animal—the same power which Ktesias reported about the unicorn; see Steier in RE s.v. Nashorn (1935) 1780ff. The unicorn

occurs frequently on seals from India. The griffin is attested in many cultures, Egypt, Mycenaean, Babylon, Assyrian, Persian, etc.; see the monograph-length article of Ziegler and Prinz in RE s.v. Gryps (1912) 1902-1929. About Ktesias’ griffins which

guard the gold, J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ptolemy (London 1885) 338, observes: Professor Ball in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 2nd Ser., Vol. II. No. 6, pp. 312-13 (Pol. Lit. and Antiq.) says: "In the account which Photios gives of the Griffins, if we exclude from it the word birds, and for feathers read hair, we have a tolerably accurate description of the hairy

black-and-tan coloured Thibetan mastif&, which are now, as they were doubtless formerly, the custodians of the dwellings of

the Thibetans, those of gold-miners, as well as of others. They attracted the special attention of Marco Polo, as well as of many other travellers in Thibet, and for a recent account of them reference may be made to Capt. Gill's ‘River of Golden Sand.”

In the Naturalis historia, Pliny records many records of peoples to whom marked physical abnormalities are attributed. A list is presented by E.S. McCartney in CP 36 (1941) 390-394.

Pliny accepted all the fables and marvels, as did Solinus, writing in the third century a.c. Stranger powers and characteristics have always been attributed to unexplored regions on the planet and have been credited by learned men. It was not until the world was thoroughly explored that science banished monstrous races to the realm of fancy. The species homo monstrosus, thought to inhabit distant and unexplored regions, did not die out as a scientific concept until Europeans became ac-

6. GENRE OF TRAVELERS

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quainted with the entire planet in the nineteenth century; cf. W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth (Oxford 1979) 33.

We are not concerned with the rationalization of the folktakes and sagas, but with their wide dispersement and in particular with their currency and acceptance. The immediate source for some folk-tales may have been of literary origin; others were disseminated orally, as those of the Brahmans to Megasthenes. We suspect that the former category is overestimated. The fact that a folk-tale appears in one author (for example Herodotos) does not mean that a later author (for ex-

ample Megasthenes) did not have an independent source. Since fabulous men and animals did not parade on the streets of Athens, Korinth, and other Greek cities, folk-tales about such creatures were relegated to the outer edges of the oikoumene.225 Beyond the limits of the known world men with dogs’ heads were credible; in the earliest times gods walked on earth. The Hyperboreans, belonging to the oldest mythological conceptions of the Greeks, were generally located in the farthest north. Their opposite number in Sanskrit literature, the Uttarakurus, also inhabited the northern regions.226 25 After mentioning the race of the one-eye, Herodotos (3.117) states, "Nevertheless it seems to be true that the extreme regions of the earth, which surround and shut up within themselves all other countries, produce the things were are the rarest, and which men reckon the most beautiful." Pliny (NH 7.2.21) observed, "India and parts of Ethiopia especially teem with marvels.” Modern man, as exemplified by the TV, finds his race of marvelous men in outer space. 226 Medieval man found marvelous creatures not in the streets of Venice, Florence, and Rome, but in India and Ethiopia. J.K. Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades (New York 1925) 274, writes:

"But India was above all else a land of marvels (Fig. 8). Here were pygmies who fight with storks and giants who combat with griffons; here were "gymnosophists" who contemplate the sun all day, standing in the hot rays first on one leg and then on the other; here were men with feet turned backward and eight toes on each foot; cynocephali, or men with dogs' heads and claws, who bark and snarl; people whose women give birth to but one child and that one with white hair; races whose hair is white in youth but turns dark with age; one-eyed men; people who shade themselves from the sun by

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Chapter 8 ofthe ı6th book of Saint Augustine’s City of God is entitled, “Whether certain monstrous races of men spring from the seed of Adam or the sons of Noah” (Loeb tr.). Augustine begins, “Another moot question is whether we are to believe that certain monstrous races of men described in pagan history were descended from the sons of Noah, or rather from that one man from whom they themselves sprang. Among such cases are certain men said to have one eye in the middle of their foreheads, others with the soles of their feet turned backwards behind their legs, others who are bisexual by nature, ... pygmies ... skiopods ... Cynocephali ...” etc. He reported that

he had seen at Hippo Zaritus “a man with feet that are roughly crescent-shaped, with only two toes on each, and his hands are like his feet." He concedes that all the stories about fabulous races may not be true, but just as there exist monstrous births in individual races, so in the whole race there may exist monsters. All the monstrous races must trace their pedigree to the first father of all. Man has no right to make a judgment about these races. God knows where and when each thing ought to be or to have been created. He concludes that God may have created fabulous races so that we might not think that the monstrous births which appear among ourselves are the failures of His wisdom. Writing in the 1250's, Albertus Magnus (Lib. 22.120) accepted the martiporas. Roger Bacon, in the geological section of his Opus Majus (1267), accepted the Hyperboreans, the Amazons,

and the Indian people who live a hundred years, as well as other geographical myths. The article of Rudolf Wittkower in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942) 159-197 is a masterpiece lying on their backs and holding up a single huge foot (skiapodes); persons who live on the smell of food alone; headless men with eyes in their stomachs; forest peoples with hairy bodies, dogs’ teeth, and terrific voices; and a variety of horrible non-human monsters combining the parts of several animals."

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and may be recommended reading for all who question the credibility of man’s belief over the ages in tales of wonders and monstrosities. He titles the article, “Marvels of the East,” but it is really a study of marvels on the edge of the oikoumene. He observes that the Middle Ages pleaded in a broadminded spirit for the monsters as belonging to God’s inexplicable plan of the world, while the “enlightened” period of humanism returned to Varro’s “contra naturam” and regarded them as creations of God’s wrath to foreshadow extraordinary events. There was of course opposition against credibility in marvels; see, for example, Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vols. New York 1923-1948) passim and esp. 3.457. Not

all of the marvels of Marco Polo were believed. There were doubters in all periods. Writing about a.p. 170, Aulus Gellius (NA 9.4) says for a cheap price he bought the books of Aristeas,

Isigonus, Ktesias, Onesikritos, Philostephanos, and Hegesias, treating the remote regions of Skythia and India, and found them "worthless writings, which contribute nothing to the enrichment or profit of life." Other critical authors are listed by M.R. James, Marvels of the East (Oxford 1929) 36.

J.K. Wright, Librarian of the American Geographical Society, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades (New York 1925) 303-304, writes: In fact, all remote parts of the world were made the habitats of marvels in the Middle Ages, and few parts of the known world were more remote than Ethiopia. In addition, the intimate connection between India and Ethiopia, which had persisted in the minds of men throughout so many ages, seems to have brought about a transference thither of many of those marvels and monsters that originally had been placed in the Far East. A most entertaining example of the peopling of Ethiopia by monstrous creatures is provided by the Psalter map and by the Ebstorf map of a period later than ours. On these the entire shore of the equatorial ocean along the southern border of the known world

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is lined with men that are tongueless, earless, noseless, or men that have four eyes or mouths and eyes on their breasts, and with cannibals, cynocephali, snake-eating troglodytes, and the like.

Reminiscent of the Rukh, Benjamin of Tudela recorded a story about a sea in the uttermost East (Wright, p. 272): Ships carried into this sea by the winds stick fast there; their supplies of food give out, and the crews often die of starvation. In order to avoid this fate, some of the men, armed

with knives,

throw themselves into the sea and are carried to shore in the talons of an enormous bird, the griffon. By slaying the griffon with their knives they are able to escape.

The pattern is well documented. Travelers to far places, whose journeys are authenticated, brought back stories of marvels which they believed. However the psychologist or anthropologist may account for man's gullibility, the phenomenon is there.227 Where science does not control our reasoning, certain habits of thought have been typical of man's fantasies. Marco Polo, along with Friar Odoric and others of the later Middle Ages, made possible the great sea voyages of the Renaissance, but his unhappy reversion to the fancy of a circular disc results in a very inaccurate idea of Asia.?29 The Travels of Sir 227A President of the United States believed in uros to the extent of setting up a commission to study their sightings.

228In the Annual Italian Lecture of the British Academy (Proceedings 20 [1934]), Sir E.D. Ross stated (p. 194), “It may be safely asserted that every new discovery goes to emphasize and confirm the amazing reliability of Marco Polo's narrative." We referred above (Fehling no. 10) to the story of the roc, or rukh, Polo did not visit Madagascar, but wrote from hearsay, possibly

from

Arab seafarers.

However,

according

to

one

Venetian

manuscript, Polo states that a wing feather of the rukh was brought to the Great Khan and he measured it and found it ninety handbreadths long and two of his palms in circumference. What the object was has not been identi-

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John Mandeville, for almost five hundred years a “best seller" second only to the Bible, purporting to be a guide book for travelers to Jerusalem, has tales of dog-headed men, basiliskeyed women, the griffin and the hippocentaur, the cyclopes, sciapodes, monoscelides, anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders, the weeping crocodile and other monstrous inhabitants of the Great Ocean Sea. This book has been reckoned the biggest literary hoax in history, or a deep and mocking satire, or an arch-heretical diatribe against the Pope; but the latest editor known to me, M.C. Seymour (Oxford 1967), regards it as an epitome of the times, accurately incorporating much of medieval understanding of the world, noting that when the Santa Cruz landed in America on October 12 1492, a copy of Mandeville lay beside Polo's book in Columbus’ day-cabin. The author rightly claimed, “men seyn alleweys that newe thinges and newe tydynges ben plesant to here." The discovery of the New World, leading to voyages and explorations into many unknown seas, together with the search for the Northwest Passage, made the sixteenth century memorable for the exploits of British seamen. A vast literature of seavoyages arose; but the greatest compiler of all these adventures fied: Henry H. Hart, Marco Polo. Venetian Adventurer (Oklahoma 1967) 153. While a prisoner of war in Genoa, Polo's material was drawn up in writing or dictated, and then translated into French, but there are different drafts. None of the six-score existing manuscripts is identical. When Christopher Columbus sailed out from Palos in August 1492, he carried with him a copy of Polo's book in Latin. That copy, containing over seventy marginal notes, is still preserved in the Columbian Library at Seville, Spain. Hart (p. 258) writes: "Messer Marco Polo's reputation for veracity as an author suffered greatly during his lifetime, for his contemporaries (with very few exceptions) could not and did not accept his book seriously. Their ignorance and bigotry, their belief in and dependence on the ecclesiastical pseudogeography of the day, their pre-conceived ideas of the unvisited parts of the earth, as well as the inherited legends and utter nonsense to which the medieval mind clung with a blind persistence that is incomprehensible to modern man—all these factors combined to make it impossible to perceive or accept the truths contained in Marco's writings."

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of original materials was Richard Hakluyt. He tells us that his inspiration came to him as a schoolboy when he read from the 107th Psalm “they which go down to the sea in ships and occupy the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep." In Topography 4.281—285, I extracted from the accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh ethnological tales which Raleigh believed when he visited Bogota and the region between the Orinoco and the Amazon in search of gold, tales which bore imaginative fruit in Shakespeare and have almost exact counterparts in Herodotos' Skythian logos. We may rationalize these stories; Herodotos' account of the Argippaeans (4.25) who have feet like goats, which the historian reported without believing, is taken to be a reference to mountain climbers in the snow and an allusion to some form of climbing-shoe, like a ski. Strabo (11.5.6.506) says that in the Caucasus the mountaineers wore

spiked tambourine-like objects of raw oxhide. The Budé editor of Strabo refers to the Zreyavómo8es of Alkman (frg. 148 Page). Hekataios ( FGrHist 1 frg. 327) refers to the Σκιάποδες (“umbrella-feet”) and attributes them to the Ethiopians,

whereas Archippos

(frg. 53) gives a Libyan origin; cf. Aris-

tophanes Aves 1553. Ktesias (FGrHist 688 frg. 60) explains that

the feet of the Skiapodes protect them from the sun. Fehling's comment (p. 122) on 4.25, "I consider the story to be a Herodotean invention," is far wide of the mark. Tales of people with various physical deformities, particularly with one eye in the forehead or eyes in the chest, are too numerous to assemble with any claim of completeness. Herodotos writes in 4.27: "The regions beyond are known only from the accounts of the Issedons, by whom the stories are told of the one-eyed race of men and the gold-guarding griffins. These stories are received from the Skythians from the Issedons, and by them passed on to us Greeks; whence it arises that we give the one-eyed race the Skythian name of Arimaspoi."

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In Fehling's treatment of the dolphin story (no. 3A), we noted above that he postulated a theory that "Stories exist primarily in the heads of individuals, not in the collective consciousness of social groups ... the story can have only one place

of origin," and for Fehling that place of origin is a written

source. If we follow Fehling's practice throughout, he is attributing to the invention of Herodotos all stories which appear in the History for the first time in Greek literature. This will not work for the Arimaspoi, since we know, not only from Pausanias, but from other fragments, including Herodotos 4.13.1, that Aristeas, in his seventh-century B.c.

hexameter

poem the Arimaspeia, mentioned the one-eyed Arimaspoi.229 They are also named by Aischylos (Prom. 805) as being ἱπποβάμονες. Hence, Fehling can only rebuke Herodotos for taking the story, as he believes, from Aristeas (p. 99): In this example the fiction is quite obvious, since Herodotus himself says in 4.16.1 that this lore comes from Aristeas; and his formulation in 4.27 does not really clash with that, since it purports to explain not how the information came to him personally but rather how it came to the Greeks; and in reality that can only mean how it came to Aristeas. Up to now scholars have missed this point. ... Herodotus is perfectly well aware that Aristeas never visited the Issedones, as is shown by ποιέων, "composing a poem" in 4.13.1 and 4.16.1, but that does not stop him drawing on it.

Fehling is wrong on several counts. Herodotos expressly says that Aristeas visited the Issedones (ἀπικέσθαι ἐς ' loon8óvas). Aristeas came from Prokonnesos, modern Marmora, which

received a Milesian colony early. The Issedones are mentioned by Alkman (frg. 156 Page), by Hekataios (Steph. Byz.), and by

229 Cf. J.D.P. Bolton, Aristeas of Proconnesus (Oxford 1962) 62-67.

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(FGrHist 5 frg. 1),

M.L. West

OF

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a contemporary of Herodotos.23°

(CQ 59 [1965] 193)

debates whether

Alkman

or

Aristeas came first, opting for the latter; but we have no reason to doubt that the story was wide-spread, told by Skythians to traders on the Black Sea, shedding no light on the relative chronology of Alkman and Aristeas. The period was one of tranquillity in Central Asia. It would be folly, for example, to stipulate that if we did not have the Elizabethan seamen, Shakespeare invented "men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders." The idea that the “place of origin" is the first written source is absurd. Fehling would attribute this legend of the Arimaspoi to literary confusion (p. 97). "The Arimaspoi themselves are very likely to be no more than an interpretation of the epic phrase εἰν

᾿Αρίμοισιν (above)," and on pp. 45-46 refers to "... the

name of the Arimaspians described by Aristeas and Hesiod's location

of Echidna

εἰν ᾿Αρίμοισιν,

‘among

the Arimoi',

at

Theogony 304, which was no longer intelligible in Herodotus’ day." But the Arimoi are known from Homer (Iliad 2.783) and other sources (Hirschfeld, RE s.v. Arima [1895] 825), inhabit-

ing a volcanic region in Syria, or Kilikia, since Aram is said to be the native name of Syria; cf. G. Kirk on the Homeric line. As to the name Arimaspoi, there are several explanations in the literature. Latham in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography 1.213, identified them as a tribe whose native name is “Mari=men,” known to their neighbors as Tsheremis, whose locality was on the left bank of the Middle Volga, near the gold districts of the Uralian Range, "fulfilling the conditions of the Herodotean

account."

Other

commentators

on 4.27 take the

word as an Iranian version of a Mongolian aram-dark, meaning “one-eyed,” citing Laufer, T'oung Pao, 2.ix.1908.452 (non vidi). Another suggests that the name incorporates the Iranian

230Treidler in Der kleine Pauly 2 (1967) devotes a column (1473-1474) to the Issedones.

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root, airama, “oneness, alone.” The scholiast of Aischylos Prom. 804 and Eustathios on Dionysios Perieg. 31 break the word into ari and maspos: dpi μὲν γὰρ τὸ ἕν Σκυθιστί, μασπὸς δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός. Aischylos referred to the Κυνοκέφαλοι, Μονόμματοι, and Στερνόφθαλμοι (frgs. 431, 4348, and 441, Radt),

but there is no context, although Radt gives extensive bibliography. In the Prom. 804-805, Aischylos writes, τόν τε μουνῶπα στρατὸν ᾿Αριμασπόν. Ktesias (FGrHist 688 T 11b [6-9] and frg. 45b-c)

describes men

with dogs’ heads, and

Megasthenes (715) men without mouths (frg. 30), men without noses (frg. 29), and men with one eye and others who sleep in their ears (frg. 27b). Pausanias (1.24.6) writes, “Aristeas says

that these griffins fight over the gold with the Arimaspoi, who live beyond the Issedonians. The earth yields gold, which the griffins guard. The Arimaspoi are men, all of them one-eyed from birth, the griffins are animals like lions, but with wings and an eagle's beak.”23! Diodoros mentions the Arimaspoi as a Skythian tribe (2.43.5) saving the army of Kyros the Great (c.

$30 B.C.?) and again as welcoming the army of Alexander (17.81-82) in eastern Persia. The latter reading must be

emended to Ariaspai, "having excellent horses"; cf. Treidler, Der kleine Pauly 1 (1964) 540, and Francfort, CAH 4? (1988)

.170. The idea of confusion with Homeric Arimoi is extremely far-fetched. Apparently there are representations on Greek vases of what was taken to be the Arimaspoi, since in the LIMC the reader is referred under the entries Arimaspoi and Grypi to "LIMC Suppl."; but the Lexicon at the time of writing has reached only the letter H. Wainwright, JHS 51 (1931) 10, refers to human 431For additional bibliography on the one-eyed, Wernicke,

see Frazer's note.

RE s.v. Arimaspoi (1895) 826-827, devotes two columns to the

subject. We may note that some have rationalized the myth, which appears also among the Chinese, to derive from a people's contempt for stupidity or clumsiness, being used metaphorically; the Chinese had two eyes, the Europeans one, and the rest of mankind none.

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figures which he calls "Arimaspian" fighting griffins on ivories of Kypros about 1200 B.c. See also E. Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung 3 fig. 602. We conclude this discussion of the oneeyed Arimaspians with a quotation from E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951) 141, although omitting the full documentation given in his notes 34-39: Out of the North came Abaris, riding, it was said, upon an arrow, as souls, it appears, still do in Siberia. ... he banished pestilences, predicted earthquakes, composed religious poems, and taught the worship of his northern god, whom the Greeks called the Hyperborean Apollo. Into the North, at the bidding of the same Apollo, went Aristeas, a Greek from the Sea of Marmora, and returned to tell his strange experiences in a poem that may have been modelled on the psychic excursions of northern shamans. Whether Aristeas’ journey was made in the flesh or in the spirit is not altogether clear; but in any case, as Alfóldi has shown, his one-eyed Arimaspians and his treasureguarding griffons are genuine creatures of Central Asiatic folklore. Tradition further credited him with the shamanistic powers of trance and bilocation. His soul, in the form of a bird, could

leave his body at will; he died, or fell entranced, at home, yet was seen at Cyzicus; many years later he appeared again at Metapontum in the Far West. The same gift was possessed by another Asiatic Greek, Hermotimus of Clazomenae, whose soul travelled far and wide, observing events in distant places, while his body lay inanimate at home. Such tales of disappearing and reappearing shamans were sufficiently familiar at Athens for Sophocles to refer to them in the Electra without any need to mention names.

Shakespeare's reference to people with heads in their breasts we can trace to Raleigh, who clearly believed the story of the Ewaipanoma; see Topography 4.282-283. In Mandeville, there are numerous references. V. Stefansson, My Life with the

6. GENRE OF TRAVELERS

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Eskimo (New York 1913) 179, writes, “The white men are said to

have various physical deformities; they had heard that some of them had one eye in the middle of the forehead, but of this they are not sure, because stories that come from afar are always doubtful.” The Eskimo was sure, however, that far to the East lived the Netsilik Eskimo (King William Island) who have no chins. Consulting J.W. Bennett's The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (New York 1954), one may find from the period of

the travelers between Marco Polo and the Elizabethans parallels for almost any geographical marvel related by Herodotos. One half of the True Cross was at Constantinople, the other half at Paris. Two travelers of the same date, Mandeville and Symon Simeonis, reported a relic at the monastery near Mount Sinai, one saying that there was a bloody cloth in which St. Katherine's head was wrapped, the other that the head was preserved there. The hunting leopards, or cheetas, of Persia are called by Mandeville papiones (i.e. baboons). Marco Polo put cities on the wrong side of rivers and doubled various distances. Marignolli made one river out of four. Mandeville says the Greeks could not marry a second time, whereas that rule at the time applied to certain priests. He argues that the pyramids with their hollow interior were not tombs, but the granaries of Joseph. The Kypriots sit on the ground to eat and dangle their feet in pits dug for the purpose of "greater coolness." It seems the pits were for the purpose of the storage of wine. The mistake was.one of observation. Marco Polo says Cansay (Hangchow) is a hundred miles in compass, Mandeville says fifty-one miles. Men with the heads of dogs, men with tails, men without heads, are numerous. Herodotos laid down the principle in 7.152.3: ἐγὼ δὲ ὀφείλω λέγειν τὰ λεγόμενα, πείθεσθαί ye μὲν oU παντάπασι ὀφείλω,

καί μοι τοῦτο τὸ ἔπος ἐχέτω ἐς πάντα λόγον. ("And as for me, I am bound to tell what is told, but to believe it I am by no means bound; and let this saying extend to every part of my

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history” tr. Powell.) This is repeated in 2.123.1 in different words: τοῖσι μέν νυν um Αἰγυπτίων λεγομένοισι χράσθω ὅτεῳ τὰ τοιαῦτα πιθανά ἐστι. ἐμοὶ δὲ παρὰ πάντα τὸν λόγον

ὑπόκειται ὅτι τὰ λεγόμενα ὑπ᾽ ἑκάστων ἀκοῇ γράφω. (“Now he that findeth such things credible may believe that which is told by the Egyptians. But as for me, it is my principle throughout all this history to write that which each nation telleth, as I heard it” tr. Powell.)232 The failure to remember this principle has often misled scholars to charge Herodotos with credulity,

gullibility, etc. It seems odd that these two important statements are never mentioned by Fehling.233 Herodotos assumed the role of a social anthropologist as well as that of a pure historian. It is incumbent upon a modern scholar to place an

232As to the omissions in his historical sections, Herodotos, writing of the extension of Persian rule, wrote (1.177), "Of these conquests, I shall pass by the greater portion, and give an account of those only which gave him the most trouble, and are the worthiest of mention." There are other statements

of his principles of a different nature. He does not hesitate at times to offer an evaluation of his sources (7.139): "At this point, I am compelled to express an opinion which I know most people will dislike, but as I believe it to be true, I will not suppress it.” In 4.30, he made his famous statement, “It was ever the way of my history to seek after digressions." On the subject of Herodotos' geographical digressions, F.W. Walbank, Class & Med. 9 (1948) 156-157, has written: "In Herodotus the intermingling of geography and history is the natural result of a technique which proceeds by means of digressions, which rejoices in the elaboration of excursuses, sometimes set one inside another like a Chinese puzzle box. This is the method of the popular story-teller, developed into high art by the consummate skill of the historian. It established the digression, and especially the geographical digression, as a normal feature of historical writing, which subsequent historians turned to their own various purposes. ... What it did was to lay down a ‘style’ of treatment which historians found it difficult to evade: and Polybius' interest in geography and the various geographical excursuses in his

work must be considered partly from this formal aspect." 233).T. Hooker, in a penetrating article, has written (G&R 36 [1989] 146), “He is writing not merely a history of events, but a history of human

credulity."

6. GENRE OF TRAVELERS

287

ancient author in his milieu. The legends were there, and he recorded them.234 This brief survey of the lore recorded by medieval travelers serves to show that, just as the child accepts the fairy-tale,?55 peoples of earlier times have believed in legends and folk-tales similar to those recorded in Herodotos. Societies in generations much later than that of Herodotos and nearer in time to our own have believed in stories which seem to us incredibly fantastic. Various folk motifs have been taken over from oral tradition and contaminated with historical material. Acquaintance with such literature serves to warn us against a methodology which isolates such folk-tales and Monument-novelle in the History and attempts to present them as the creations of Herodotos. So many of Herodotos’ stories show precisely the characteristics we should expect if they were based on popular tradition. Whatever the period, marvelous folk-tales are told about people living on the edge of the oikoumene. In antiquity, Aristeas, Skylax, Ktesias, Strabo, Pliny, and others, all record examples of the genre in the lands of the Ethiopians, Hyperboreans, the Far East, etc. Such folk-tales were not literary devices, but stories told to those who traveled widely. The folk"Tales told to Sir Walter Raleigh in South America, to Mungo Park in southwestern Africa, and to Stefansson in Alaska, are of the same content, but dispersed over a huge area among races 2340ῃ the subject of myths and tales, one may recommend the article of

G.S. Kirk, "On

Defining

Myths,"

in Alan Dundes,

Sacred

Marriage

(Berkeley 1984) 53-61.

235In Current Anthropology 22 (1981) 79-80, two authors report from a survey of seventy-one physical anthropologists that a sizeable percentage

believe that the Loch Ness Monster and "Bigfoot" of northwestern America are "living animals still unknown to science." The extent of human credulity is well illustrated by the hold of astrology and of magical spells on

men's imaginations as fascinatingly revealed in F. Cumont's book, L'Égypte des Astrologues (Brussels 1937) and K. Preisendanz's Papyri Magicae Graecae (3 vols. Leipzig 1928, 1931, 1941).

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of very different speech. There are no unexplored “edges” to the planet today, so the “rationalist” of this latter part of the twentieth century turns to outer space and flying saucers. I was in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1936 on a Sunday afternoon when

the highways from New York to Philadelphia were choked with vehicles carrying people to see the "Men from Mars" who had landed a mile away according to an Orson Welles drama "War of the Worlds" on the radio. The extent of what man will believe is illustrated in the recent volume The Age of the Marvelous (ed. J. Kenseth, Hanover 1992),

focused

on

the sixteenth

century.

Holy

relics were

prized items in many museums: the veil of Saint Veronica and the shroud of Turin with the supernaturally imprinted images of Christ, the head of Saint Martina (p. 32). [n the cabinet of

the Reynst brothers was an ancient funerary chest said to contain the ashes of Aristotle (p. 93). Atlases were published with

geographical information. An atlas of Iceland included a fantastic collection of sea monsters (p. 106). The “monster” literature bulked large. A 1517 woodcut (p. 133) shows the dog-

headed people, the sciapods, and the acephaloids, which were thought to exist at the fringes of the inhabited world, in Ethiopia, in the Orient, and in the Hyperborean lands. The volume reflects the intellectual and cultural climate of the century, following the voyages of Columbus, Magellan, Vespucci, and other navigators, as well as commercial ventures to the Orient and Middle East. There was a wave of concern about the meaning of prodigies and extraordinary natural occurrences. In the clash between the Protestant Reformation and Catholicism, the latter sponsored the search for holy relics and the production of images to illustrate mysteries. In my judgment, the ablest essay ever written on the subject of the historiography of Herodotos is the immensely learned one of A.D. Momigliano, chap. 8, "The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography," Studies in Historiography

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(London 1966).23° The work is a commentary on the history of the sobriquet, “the father of lies.” When Herodotos worked in Greek history in the generation after the Persian war, he had very few documents to rely upon: Greek history was as yet mainly transmitted by oral tradition. When he travelled to the East, he found any amount of written evidence, but he had not been trained to read it. Herodotos fell into disfavor because of what Momigliano called “the paramouncy of contemporary history.” Defeated in antiquity, Herodotos triumphed in the sixteenth century, when explorers, missionaries, and quasihistorians traveled in foreign countries. “What matters to us is that they vindicated Herodotus, because they showed that one could travel abroad, tell strange stories, enquire into past events, without necessarily being a liar. One of the standard objections against Herodotus had been that his tales were incredible. But now the study of foreign countries and the discovery of America revealed customs even more extraordinary than those described by Herodotus. ... As I recently wrote in another context, one of the consequences of the discovery of the New World was to confirm classical scholars in their belief that the perfect ancient world had been perfectly described by perfect ancient authors. If Herodotus did not inspire the students of America, students of American and other foreign countries inspired the defenders of Herodotus. He regained his reputation during the sixteenth century" as a result of the new interest in ethnography. Momigliano concludes, "It is true that professional historians now mainly work on written evidence. But anthropologists, sociologists and students of folklore are doing on oral evidence what to all intents and purposes is historical work. The modern accounts of explorers, anthropologists and sociologists about primitive populations are ultimately an independent development of Herodotus' historia. Thus Herodotus is still with us with the full force of his meth236Reprinted from History 43 (1958) 1-13.

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od of studying not only evidence.” It would be a blessing the theory that regards fabrications and literary

SCHOOL

“History can best the light of fictive

HERODOTOS

the present, but also the past, on oral if we could put the kiss of death upon Herodotos’ folk-tales and legends as devices.237 7.

J. Wells, Studies

OF

TOPOGRAPHY

in Herodotus (Oxford 1923) 162, writes,

should be tested in every possible apply to Herodotus is to examine of Fehling's final judgment about Epic (“Herodotus’ idea was not

sian Wars;

he wanted

to recount

them

way; the test that we his topography.” In the History as a sort to research the Peras Homer

had

re- |

counted the Trojan War. For him it was a matter of staving off oblivion rather than increasing knowledge,"

p. 249),23®

one

might expect a consistent display of alleged fiction in the record of the Persian Wars. One does not change horses in midstream. Indeed, until the study of structuralist techniques became a predominant force in our discipline in recent years, the main thrust of Herodotean scholarship was concentrated on Books 5.25-9. Fehling (p. 213), ignoring scores of studies, endorses a 1923 article in Hermes to postulate that Herodotos

found a minimum skeleton on “Xerxes’ campaign as far as Thermopylae" and filled out the story "by the method we have

237 This is not to deny that folk-tales may be traced from Greek sources to Roman, medieval, and later ones. It is to assert that such stories were current from earliest times and circulated among the Greeks, including the Athenians. The pygmies who fight with storks are found in Homer, the half-dog-half-men in Hesiod, the umbrella-footed men in Alkman, the gold-guarding griffons and the one-eyed Arimaspians in the writings of Aristeas. Hekataios, Skylax, Aischylos, Ktesias, and Herodotos record many

of these folk-tales. Our concern is only with the credibility of Herodotos and the reality of the folklore. 233]n the second sentence, one wonders whether Fehling has not seen

himself in his Herodotos mirror.

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291

observed him using,” i.e. by fictionalizing. Over the years, we have devoted studies to segments of this campaign. In discrediting Tarn’s theory that Herodotos modelled his account of the movement of Xerxes’ fleet along the coast of Magnesia on a passage in Homer (Iliad 6.34), we could confirm the record (7.188) of the shipwreck of Xerxes' fleet at the Ipnoi ("Ovens")

by offering identifications of the three topographical checkpoints, Meliboia, Kasthanaie, and the Ipnoi: AJA 67 (1963) 1-6

with plates 1-2. Stamped tiles prove the identification of Meliboia; and the photograph (pl. 2, fig. 2) of caves with elliptical mouths in the shape of Greek peasant ovens might convince even the most skeptical.

Again, in attempting to recover a route which Herodotos (7.127128, 131, and 173.4) says all the army (ἅπασα

ἡ oTpatın)

of Xerxes used in going from Saloniki to Gonnos, we have urged that the route is accurately described in all particulars as being that over the Lower Olympos (Mount Metamorphosis) past the village of Nezero and descending on Gonnos at the western end of the Tempe Pass, a route used by a German battalion in 1941 in bypassing New Zealand troops at Platamon and Tempe: AJA 65 (1961) 369-375 with pls. 114-117, with additional

comments in Topography 3 (1980) 356—365 and 7 (1991) 129135.239 This route is the only feasible one which descends on the

ruins of Gonnos, since the gorge to the west of Gonnos prevents any descent.24°

239Cf. B. Helly, Gonnoi 1 (1973) 10. As noted above, Fehling's charge that Herodotos' record of Xerxes' voyage to inspect Tempe was fictional may result from his failure to recognize that Xerxes intended to follow this route. ?49'The strange popularity of the view that Xerxes divided his army and that part came by way of the difficult terrain of the upper Haliakmon can probably be attributed to the fact that in the frst half of this century such a route carried the only feasible carriage road between Athens and Saloniki. The road to Tempe was closed to automobiles with low carriage, and scholars visualized a route over the Olympos much more difficult than it now proves to be.

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Thirdly, D. Müller, Chiron 5 (1975) ı-ı2 with maps and pls.

1-10, has demonstrated the accuracy of the record in 7.121, in Xerxes' passage from Doriskos to Akanthos. Fourthly, the remains of the cut for Xerxes’ canal (7.21-24, 37, 117, 122) across the Athos peninsula is very convincing in the

southern sector and has been reported by many, including several of the travelers, and confirmed by my own autopsy. The canal was marked by a damp belt of grass and bushes, with pools. A. Struck, Makedonische Fahrten 1 (Vienna 1907) 67-70,

offered a detailed study and sketch with the promise, besonderen Untersuchung hoffe ich aber zeigen zu dass der Kanal nicht nur ausgeführt, sondern auch flotte durchfahren worden ist." So far as I am aware,

"In einer kónnen, von der the study

was never published. In BSA 86 (1991) 83-92, B.S.J. Isserlin has

returned to the subject, reproducing sketches of Spratt and Choiseul-Gouffer.241 Actually, the engineering feat was on a smaller scale than that of Dareios' Suez canal, attested in the literature and epigraphically.24 24![n the second century, Demetrios of Skepsis, as quoted by Strabo (7.331 frg. 35) said that the canal was not navigable. The reference to the canal by Thucydides (4.109), who knew the region, leaves no doubt about its

existence, in spite of the skepticism of Isserlin. We may be reminded that Aristotle (Met. 1.352b) claimed that Dareios' Suez canal was not completed,

although the epigraphical evidence is said to prove the contrary. Apparently, by his day it had filled up. Lieut. Wolfe, who gave a detailed study with measurements in the Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 3 (1833) 23, asserted that the central part was filled up to allow

ready passage on the peninsula. In their study of the Persian monetary system, M.A. Dandamaev and V.G. Lukonin, The Culture and Social Institutions

of Ancient Iran (Cambridge 1989) 196, write, "The terminus ante quem for the minting of Persian coins is provided by a buried treasure on the Athos canal, which was built by Xerxes in 480 B.c. during his Greek campaign. There were 300 darics stashed in the hoard along with archaic tetradrachmas of Athens." 242 Although not noted in our commentaries, another excavation reported by Herodotos seems to have been confirmed. In 1.174, Herodotos says that when Harpagos and the Persians were coming, the Knidians began to dig a trench to keep them out; but they got tired of the splinters of stone that cut

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293

Thus, we have four segments of the route which have been confirmed as far as topography can, where Fehling has charged that Herodotos ations”).

had

to fictionalize (“pseudo-historical

cre-

Much has been made by Armayor, $. West, and Fehling of the reference to roads from Ephesos to Phokaia and Sardis to Smyrna, with reliefs attributed to Sesostris (2.106); see above

Fehling no. 30. We can be certain from the evidence of Ramsey and Bean that the three scholars do not understand the structure of the roads. For the text on one relief, we are dependent upon two conflicting readings, both made from casts about 1875, one in Chicago and the other in Berlin. By one reading one route must have been described by Hipponax in the sixth century. J.M. Cook believes that he has sustained the Herodotean record. We might enter into this discussion the fact that C. Foss, "Explorations in Mount Tmolus," CSCA n (1979) 21-54, esp. 27-34, has discovered the road which the

Athenians used in (5.100). Herodotos in the region, a fact typoi, now eroded,

499 B.c. in going from Ephesos to Sardis was right about the three routes he names which limits the debate to the matter of the and correlation with the text of Hipponax.

If Herodotos were writing a prose epic imitating the Iliad which records four days of battle in the tenth year of warfare around a citadel which archaeologists have shown at the level of Troy VIIA was a poverty-stricken little place with no treasury, without any large buildings, and with nothing remotely resembling a palace, and if fiction predominates, we would expect battle accounts comparable to those in the /liad or in the

their eyes, and sent to Delphi; and the Pythoness answered that if Zeus had wanted an island, he would have made one himself. So they surrendered to the Persians. Freya Stark, The Lycian Shore (London 1956) 80, writes, "The

isthmus is declared to be a kilometre wide, though both D.B. and I thought it wider. Spratt in 1838 and Myres in 1893 found traces of the ancient cutting, and the Symiots, before 1912, were in the habit of hauling small boats across it." She then describes it in some detail.

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French Song of Roland, relating a great battle in a.p. 778 between the hosts of Charlemagne and the Saracens, which we now know from written records was a minor engagement in the Pyrenees between a small detachment of Charlemagne's army and some Basque raiders. By the same token, we who find nothing of substance in the presentations of the liar school, primarily because of their neglect of archaeology and lack of understanding of the prevalence of legends and folk-tales, should be able to accept the challenge to uphold the veracity of Herodotos in matters of topography in books neglected by them. Whereas Homer and archaeology part company, the reverse is the case with Herodotos. It is not unfair to say that Herodotos was not primarily either a military or a political historian. Although his battle accounts give greater space to stories about the participants and admit of the marvelous and miraculous, we believe that they give details of topography which allow us to offer reconstructions verifying the battle records. We select two major battles, previously studied, for which major errors have been claimed by a "liar school," in this case members of the Doris Survey team, Wallace for Plataiai, and Kase and Szemler for Thermopylai.

Removed from the area of the battlefield of Plataiai, although related to it, Herodotos names certain fixed points, Plataiai, Thebes, Tanagra, and Eleusis. No one of these is in doubt. The framework of the battlefield includes the three towns, Skolos, Erythrai, and Hysiai. Giving a catalogue of the pottery and describing the ring wall, Bólte long ago identified the site of Hysiai as being on the Pantanassa ridge east of the town of Kriekouki (renamed Erythrai). Using the criterion of sherds, which was unknown to Grundy, it has been possible to determine that there was no ancient village in the foothills between Plataiai and the Pantanassa ridge, but that east of Hysiai at the site of the abandoned Metochi of Hosios Meletios, there is ample sherd evidence for an ancient village, a logical candidate for

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Erythrai.?9 Due north of Erythrai on the opposite side of the Asopos near the village of Neochoraki is a wide concentration of sherds extending down into Roman times which must be Skolos.244 This agrees with Herodotos' statement that Skolos was in Theban territory. Thus, one can offer reasonable identifications for the sites of the towns named in the account of the battle. A sketch-map of the region was offered in AJP 100 (1979) facing p. 146, and Topography 3 (1980) 293.

While allowing for deforestation, erosion, and alluviation, the great natural features, mountains, plain, hills, and the course of rivers are still substantially the same, and the application of the names Kithairon, Asopos, and Oéroé is not in doubt. The κρήνη Gargaphia is mentioned five times and is a critical checkpoint. Early topographers, including Leake and Grundy, suggested that it was the most powerful spring in the plain, located astride a direct line which led from a pass of Kithairon, carrying routes from Villia and Aigosthena/Megara to the old Morea bridge over the Asopos and a road to Thebes. In 1951, the flow was controlled by two pipes, where the women of Kriekouki washed their clothes and bedding with a flow of water sufficient for an army.245 Indeed, Leake regarded the spring as one of the sources of the Asopos. We could offer as confirmation a drawing of the fountain made in 1817 by J. Spencer-Stanhope, which shows massive blocks with no mortar or tiles or bricks. Leake referred to the fountain as being "of ancient fabric." Herodotos says that Gargaphia was twenty stades (3.6 kilometers) from the Heraion at Plataiai, which ex-

actly fits.

243Topography s (1985) pl. 47. ?44See Topography 5.99-103, with references to photographs. 245As noted in Topography 1 (1965) 114, Colin Edmonson reported to me that he was at hand when new pipes were laid for the fountain called Apotrypi and that they lead to the northeast in the direction of our Gargaphia.

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Herodotos says that second position in the the foothills (ὑπωρέη) cavalry (9.56.2), where Demeter

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the Lakedaimonians retired Asopos plain near Gargaphia of Kithairon to escape from they took up a position near

(τῇ καὶ Δήμητρος

᾿Ελευσινίης

from their (9.25.2) to the Persian a temple of

ἱρὸν ἧσται, 9.57.2).

Plutarch, who tells the story for the glorification οὗ Aristeides, records a temple of Demeter near Hysiai at the foot of Kithairon (τῶν Ἡσιῶν πλησίον ὑπὸ τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα ναός ἐστιν ἀρχαῖος Δήμητρος

᾿Ελευσινίας, Aristeides 11.6). Before ἃ na-

tive of Kriekouki cleared his field of squared blocks and tiles from a temple brought up by a tractor plow, he allowed me to inspect and photograph the site.246 The painted antefixes from the roof were placed in the Museum of the American School in Athens. The site is at the base of the ridge west of Hysiai on the western side of the line of a kalderimi road which in the nineteenth century carried the Athens-Thebes carriage road leading past Eleutherai. At this site were found two heavy dedicatory inscriptions to Demeter. The evidence comes from Haussoullier (BCH 2 [1878] 589), Foucart (BCH 3 [1879] 134),

246See Topography 1 pls. 96a and b, 97a; 5 pls. 48 and 49. The destruction and removal of antiquities is an old story. We have seen it at Skotoussa, Pydna, Eutresis, Alpenoi, and other sites. John Young ( Hesperia 25 [1956] 138 n. 42) described a unique tower-complex he found in the region of Laurion,

concluding: "Both buildings were of good local (Agrileza) marble. Unhappily, my camera was out of film and I had no measuring equipment along that day. The next autumn, when I returned fully equipped to draw and photograph the complex, much to my astonishment it had disappeared. Wagon-tracks leading to a newly built lime kiln and from there to a new factory in the distance explained the tragedy." The painted antefixes from our temple were placed in the collection of the American School. I have subsequently visited the site with classes of the School, finding a steady diminution in the number of sherds. Amusingly, P.W. Wallace, a member of the Doris team, in a paper at one of the Boiotian congresses (La Béotie antique [Paris 1985] 97-100), writes that he could not find the site, pinpointed by

Foucart, Haussoullier, Leake, Grundy, and others, and charges me with inventing the evidence. I can return the allegation by noting that I have visited a rubble enclosure above Daphne both before and after Wallace reported a plethora of dateable sherds and found not a fragment.

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and Hunt (AJA 6 [1890] 472 n. 39). Their combined testimony

is to the effect that the stones were “ἃ gauche de la route d’Athenes à Thébes" at “an ancient well, now dry.”247 Colin Edmonson and I examined one of the stones in the Thebes Museum and confirmed that one of the dedicants was named [T ]Je.cauevós, the name of the well-known Elean mantis of the Lakedaimonians (9.33, 35, and 36). The evidence seems

overwhelming that we have the exact location of Herodotos' temple of Eleusinian Demeter, where the final battle took place. There is today no obvious physical feature which accords with Herodotos' description of the "island" between two forks of the Oeroe. In an earlier study, I tentatively adopted Grundy's candidate as a ridge with the church of the Analipsis, an opinion followed most recently by D. Müller (Topographischer Bildkommentar [1987] plate on pp. 582-583), but as

I stated then and have confirmed with others,?4® it is apparent that there is no way that the headwaters of any streambed on either side of the ridge could ever have met or that the Oeroe flowing out of the Pass of Three Heads could have flowed around this ridge.?49 From my experience with Thucydidean

battlefields, such as Olpai and Mantineia, where considerable deforestation and erosion have been established, my inspection of the terrain leads me to the conclusion that, allowing for heavy erosion from the waters descending through the deep and steep ravine, the topography permits a literal interpretation of the text: σχιζόμενος ὁ ποταμὸς ἄνωθεν ἐκ τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος ῥέει κάτω ἐς τὸ πεδίον, 9.51. As the pass broadens out, the waters captured by the deep ravine separated and flowed around an island, where there is bedrock and no underbrush today, rejoining in the plain. This is speculation; 247 Leake (NG 2.327) said the well was "of Hellenic construction."

243 The word “island” is sometimes used for a ridge between a river and a tributary, a "peninsula" (see Topography 6.32); but Herodotos' description precludes this interpretation here. 249 Topography 1.116118.

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but we note that high on the mountain southeast of Plataiai, Frazer (Pausanias 2 p. 7) in 1897 reported "a copious fountain called Vergoutiani, gushing from three mouths in an ancient wall," and that Thucydides (2.3-5) reported that the Asopos was so swollen that reinforcements from Thebes were unable to reach Plataiai in time to save their comrades, evidence for dramatic changes. There are other checkpoints, such as the position of the Persian camp which has left no remains, but the modern topographer can recover enough to confirm the Herodotean record in respect to the military actions at Plataiai. We offered a reconstruction, most recently in Topography 5. One must always note that large armies, which must have taken up considerable space, are moved by Herodotos from a spring to a temple, as if they were individuals, but this feature is characteristic of all Greek historians. Turning to Thermopylai as a second test of the veracity of Herodotos in regard to the topography of the great battles, we find that he mentions the following checkpoints: Alpenos, Phoinix, Anthela, Warm Spring, Oite, Altar of Herakles, Phokian Wall, Antikyra, Spercheios, Malis, Trachinian Rocks, Dyras, Melas, Trachis, dimensions of Trachinian plain, Asopos, Asopos Gorge, Temple of Demeter, Temple of Amphiktyon, Mount Anopaia, the paxıs of the mountain, Rock of BlackButtock, Lairs of the Kerkopes, Kolonos, Stone Lion, and three inscriptions over the tomb. He gives distances in plethra and stadia. A plethron equals only 100 feet. He is particularly concerned to identify the rivers and appends such qualifying clauses to the names of five that they can be pinpointed today, although some now carry only winter torrents. Even Macan, who is one of Herodotos' severest critics, writing at the beginning of the century, stated (vol. 2 p. 264): "But, except in this one respect, the description of Thermopylae could hardly be better, even had Herodotus himself traversed every inch of the ground. There is no other bit of topography

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in the whole work of Herodotus— not the battlefield of Plataia itself—more satisfactory to the travelling scholar of today." The “one respect" is the orientation of the road through the pass. We have seen above (West no. 6) that S. West, in discussing the dedicatory epigram near the Propylaia, supported her contention that Herodotos had erred about the location of the quadriga by referring to "other topographical inaccuracies in Herodotos,” citing only one example in her n. 31: "his mistake about the orientation of Thermopylae." Herodotos twice gives what we would call a directional or compass orientation at Thermopylai. In 7.201, he says with regard to the Persian camp that all that was north of Trachis belonged to Xerxes, all that lay to the south to the Greeks. This is literally true at that point. Earlier, in 7.176, he says that to the west of Thermopylai rises a spur of Mount Oita, and to the east of the road are marshes and the sea. Going northward from

the island of Atalanti, the coastline bends and runs roughly WNW-ESE until it hits the Asopos. The 7.176 passage begins τοῦτο μὲν TO ᾿Αρτεμίσιον and gives the relationship between Artemision and Thermopylai and is followed by an account of the battle of Artemision. Artemision was obviously east of Thermopylai. Strabo (1.2.28.34) explains that Ephoros divided regions into

north, south, east, and west according to the directions from which the winds blow, having earlier stated (1.2.21.29) that the wind from the direction of the summer sunrise (northeast) was different from that of the winter sunrise (southeast). East at the

time of the summer solstice, then, is quite different form that at the winter solstice. W.A. Heidel, The Frame of the Ancient Greek Maps 23 n. 53, debates the meaning of "true south" for Herodotos, who had no compass, explaining that in one case true south was southwest. We do not know the position of sunrise at the time of Herodotos' visit and how many degrees

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he was in error.25° Students of the Skythian logos tell us of similar disorientation. The scholar who deduces the Thermopylai passage as the prime example of Herodotos’ topographical errors is certainly hard put to it to find fault with the historian. The example has nothing to do with the topographical checkpoints, and should be examined only in the context of what other ancient geographers, as well as modern ones, did in giving "compass" directions.25! Since a Doris survey team, which has been active in the region for almost twenty years, has challenged the record of Herodotos on Thermopylai, we take up the sites relative to their charges in the following order:?5? 25°Cf. Rhys Carpenter, Beyond the Pillars of Heracles (1966) 119: ““West,’

therefore, since it could not be precise within fifty degrees, was obviously not an accurate indication of direction at all. When traveling, one went from landmark to landmark along a general course vaguely fixed in relation to the moving sun. On such a system, the direction in which one starts is apt to be mistaken for the direction in which one continues.” 451Centuries later, Polybios (3.37.2-8) was confused about compass di-

rections and was rightly criticized by Strabo (2.4.7.108); cf. Walbank, Class. & Med. 9 (1948) 167-168. Herodotos made errors; he tells us that the Megaris was the most westerly point of Europe reached by the Persians (9.14), who in

their expedition went to Delphi (8.35-37). He puts Sinope due south of the Danube mouths (2.34). For others, see Topography 4.241. Polybios regarded

geography as an essential part of the background of his history, but in his book devoted exclusively to geography (34), we find a number of errors. Neither Herodotos nor Polybios had before them the contours of 1:50,000 maps,—nor did their readers. Herodotos (4.36) says of early maps (Loeb tr.):

"And I laugh to see how many have ere now drawn maps of the world, not one of them showing the matter reasonably; for they draw the world as round as if fashioned by compasses, encircled by the river of Ocean, and

Asia and Europe of a like bigness." 252 We use the abbreviation GICR for The Great Isthmus Corridor Route 1 (Dubuque 1991) by E.W. Kase et alii. D. Rousset's impressive study of the "Géographie historique de la Doride," BCH 113 (1989) 199—237, supersedes

the topographical and historical discussion in GIRS, where the article is not mentioned. Rousset offrs a chronological table of the history of Doris. He adduces strong evidence that Kytinion is to be located near Palaiochorion,

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1. Alpenos 2. Kolonos Hill 3. Phokian Wall 4. Anthela

5. Asopos and Anopaia 6. Trachis

7. Road through the Thermopylai Pass 8. Geology

1. ALPENOS. There is a low spur projecting north into the sediment of the Spercheios about two kilometers east of the Thermopylai monument opposite the Kolonos hill. The highway has cut through the southern part of the spur. Since Herodotos, who calls Alpenos both a πόλις (7.216) and ἃ κώμη

not near Gravia, as the Doris team has it. The publication of three proxeny decrees of Kytinion, found at Palaiochorion (BCH 114.445-449), leaves little room for doubt. This suggests that Philip in 339/8 B.c. (Philochoros FGrHist

328 frg. 56) used the route of the kalderimi road through Nevropolis and Palaiochorion ( Topography 4 pls. 122-123), not that of the so-called corridor. Much of the epigraphical evidence seems to have escaped the Doris team. Unlike Fehling, S. West, and Armayor, the focus of the Doris survey team was not to prove Herodotos a liar, although the result would be more devastating, but to attempt to show that a route through the Dema Gap above Duo Vouna carried all the north-south traffic, and hence to deny that the Thermopylai road was in use in antiquity. To sustain this theory, the assistance of geologists was enlisted. Kase and Szemler wrote in Klio 64 (1982) 358—362, that according to geological evidence, "The Middle Gate

would have been closed to traffic, ... Thus, the Dhema Gap provided the only feasible and easily negotiable access for an all-season, well defined road system ... It is this passage and this passage alone that fits Herodotus' 'Pass through Trachis into Hellas'." We take up the geological report later. We note here that the concern of their geologists proved to rest solely with the problem of the passageway. They shed no light on the location of the polis of Thermopylai, its port, the sites of Nikaia and Skarpheia, or the contours of the mountain, all subjects which might be investigated by a less committed team of geologists. On the other hand, in their zeal to echo the conclusions of the historians of their team, they express firm opinions on the problem of the path of Ephialtes, which lie outside of their expertise, and is a matter of the interpretation of texts.

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(7.176),253 says that it was situated in Lokrian territory at the narrowest part of the road on the eastern end of the pass and marked the end of the Anopaia, the site has been identified as Alpenos by all. Oldfather’s 1937 sketch of the remains at the site

was published in Topography 5.186. The site is now planted in olive trees and has been cleared. A report of the pottery and tiles at the site, which had earlier been sherded by Hope Simpson and Lazenby, was published in Topography 8 (1992) 149—150. Since (1) our sherding of the site turned up only early pottery and (2) Aischines (2 Embassy 132) names Alpenos (Alponos) as one of the three χωρία κύρια controlling τῶν παρόδων τῶν εἰς Πύλας in 346 B.c., we suggested that the im-

pressive walled site (Topography 4 pls. 105 and 106), whether fort or town,254 three kilometers up the slopes due south of the Herodotean site,255 was Aischines’ Alpenos. That there was no coastal site between the polis of Thermopylai and the polis of Nikaia at the beginning of the third century s.c. is apparent from the papyrus cited in Topography 4.163. 2. KOLONOS. The Kolonos hill, today about 25 meters in height,256 was identified as the site of the last stand of Leonidas by Marinatos who, in digging trenches on the flanks, found a great number of arrowheads of different types corresponding to those in a fifth-century well of the Athenian agora and 253There is much discussion in the Homeric literature as to whether πόλις means “citadel” and dotv "the residential town"; see the entry for ἄστυ in Snell's Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos. Homer does not use κώμη. 254For the meaning of χωρίον, see L. Robert, Gnomon 42 (1970) 588-589,

and Topography 3.323. Because Vanderpool and I found a considerable number of sherds on the slopes north of the walls, many of which he dated to the fourth century, I have referred to the site as a town. It could equally as well have been a massive fortress. A sketch-map of the walls would be a noteworthy contribution. I found no evidence of structures within the walls, but the underbrush is heavy.

255The coastal site of Alpenos was presumably abandoned after the great earthquake of 426 B.c.; see Topography 8.149 n. 7.

256So Meyer, Ath. Mitt. 71 (1956) 103.

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assigned to the Persian invasion, as well as to types found in Persepolis, Assur, and Asia Minor sites. Herodotos recounts the story that a Trachinian told the Spartan Dienekes that the sunlight was obscured by the multitude of missiles (7.226.1). A square tower on the Phokian Wall hill, SW of the Kolonos, which had previously been associated with the grave of the Greeks, proved to be a Christian interment thought to have been used by shepherds. Martin Robertson, JHS 59 (1939) 200,

summarized the evidence: A neighbouring hill (II on the older plans) was excavated. The crest had plainly undergone many changes, from the earliest times down to the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, but excavations

on the sides were most illuminating. It battle by quantities of bronze and iron of fifth-century types, as is proved by from Marathon and from stratified

was proved the site of a missiles, all or almost all comparison with pieces wells in the Agora of

Athens. There can be no reasonable doubt that these missiles

belong to the battle of 480 8.c., and they confirm Herodotus's statement that the Persians katexwoav

βάλλοντες the Greeks.

It is also noteworthy that only one, probably Persian, spearhead was found, and one spear-butt, certainly Greek. A line of fortifications, embracing the east crest and extending down the sides in all directions, is Hellenistic, put up at various times, the eastern part in hewn porous blocks, the rest in unshaped hard stone.

I know of no one who has questioned the Kolonos hill as the site of the final battle, with the exception of the Doris team. Cf. E. Meyer, Der kleine Pauly 5 (1975) 743—746. In the separate ar-

ticles of Kase and Szemler, the word Kolonos is not found. In the index of their final publication, the three references to Kolonos are only to matters of orientation in the section by

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their geologist. Since by their theory as recently as 1989,257 no battle could have been fought at the site of Marinatos' excavations,?5* it is a serious omission that in no place do they explain how such artifacts were found. 3. PHOKIAN WALL. The site of Kolonos is tied by Marinatos to that of the Phokian Wall hill. We review the references to the wall in Herodotos.

In his description

of the pass

(7.176),

Herodotos mentions the θερμὰ λουτρά, continuing (Powell tr.), "And there was a wall built across this passage, and of old there were gates therein. Now the Phocians had built the wall ... And at that time they also made the hot waters to flow across the pass ... So the wall was built of old time, and the greater part thereof was already fallen with age; and it seemed to them good to raise it again, and here to beat off the barbarian from Greece." When Herodotos turns to the battle of Thermopylai after the record for Artemision, he writes (7.208), "The horsemen rode up to the camp, (for it was not possible to see such as were arrayed within the wall, which they had raised up and were guarding,) but he marked those without, whose station was before the wall. ... And he saw some of them exercising,

and others combing their hair." 7.223: "The Greeks with Leonidas issued forth into the wider part of the pass much farther than formerly. For throughout the former days they held the wall as a bulwark, and issued forth and fought before it; but now they joined battle without the narrow part." 7.225: "They went back into the narrow part of the road, and passed by the wall, and came and established themselves together, all except the Thebans, upon the hill in the pass, where the lion of stone now standeth over Leonidas. ... The barbarians that were in front rased the bulwark of the wall." The topographical sequence is clear from east to west; the Kolonos hill, the wall, the wider part of the pass and the hot springs. 257 Szemler, Klio 71 (1989) 211-215. 258 References to Marinatos are to his Thermopylae (Athens 1951).

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When Marinatos excavated at Thermopylai, he uncovered a wall on the hill west of the Kolonos hill (pp. 566): "The exca-

vation brought to light this wall, traces of which had been visible previously among thorn bushes and evergreen oaks. ... The Phocian wall ran parallel to the pass, that is from West to East. It consisted of a zigzag wall about 200 metres long. It faced towards the South, (to the mountains). No doubt below this wall ran the ancient road, which it thus protected at a weak spot. ... At least one gate was discovered in the fortification. On the extreme western end of this wall are the foundations of an almost square tower. ... The Phocian wall was built at different periods and bears traces of repairs and of varying styles of construction. Its core, however, is very archaic." R.L. Scranton (Walls 37-38) classified the masonry as of Lesbian style. Students of

fortifications apply the term “indented trace," which is attested early, as at Halai; see F.E. Winter, GF (1971) 103. A.W. Lawrence, Greek Aims in Fortifications (Oxford 1979) 167, studies

the wall in the context of "barrier-walls." E. Meyer,

in Ath.

Mitt. 71 (1956) Beilage 57, provided

a

sketch of the contours of the two hills. Of the ancient road, he wrote, "Die ant. Strasse führte über die Einsattelung und s. unter Hügel I und II hindurch.”259 Although not questioning that the hill carried the original Phokian wall, both Meyer, and I later (AJA 62 [1958] 211-213), stressed that the excavated wall

faced southeast and would have blocked passage from the east, not the west. Since the Middle gate was part of Trachinia, the explanation for the orientation of the excavated wall, we now suggest, may be found in Thucydides 3.92.6 (426 B.c.): "When they had established themselves they built a new wall about the city, which is now called Heracleia, and is about forty stadia distant from Thermopylae and twenty from the sea. They then proceeded to build dockyards, and in order that the place might be easy to guard fenced off the approach on the side 259 Der kleine Pauly 5 (1975) 744.

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toward Thermopylae by a wall across the pass itself," eip£av ... κατ᾽ αὐτὸ τὸ στενόν, Loeb tr. The stones from the Phokian wall, repaired by Leonidas, may have been turned to defend Trachinia/Herakleia from an invader from the east. On the other hand, Jones, Sackett, and Eliot, BSA 52 (1957) 183 note,

suggest the occasion for the southern orientation was when Philip occupied the pass in 346 B.c. When we turn to Szemler's lengthy treatment of the Phokian wall (GICR 106-108) we find that he uses a ploy. Citing differences about the date of the excavated wall, he tries to attribute confusion

to Herodotos.

First, he writes, "Because

Pritchett was unwilling to consider that Herodotus could have made a mistake, he said that the wall must be elsewhere, 'higher up the hill south of the excavated wall' where he spotted 'rocks which seem to be laid in a straight line’.” The word "elsewhere" is false. Lamenting the lack of any sherd evidence in the excavation report and noting that there were stones which seemed to be in a line with the western end of the wall, we queried whether a continuation of the excavations might be fruitful. When Szemler writes, "We cannot accept Pritchett's hypothesis

about the odd line of rocks on the side of a mountain that he spotted from the road (italics supplied)," he must be aware that he is distorting the record deliberately. As elsewhere, Szemler's references must not be relied on unless they are put in quotation marks: and then the context must be checked. Next, after having assured us in several publications with Kase and by himself that geological evidence proved that the pass was closed at the time of the battle and having in Klio in 1989 advocated

Anthele as the site of Leonidas’ camp, he now writes, "We should note, however, that by the time Herodotos visited the area, the access through Thermopylai was wider.”26° We shall return to this passage later, as well as to the accompanying 260 Although Szemler's theory rests on claims about the geological evidence, he adduces none to support his statement that the pass had widened between 480 and the time Herodotos visited the site.

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statement, “Motivated by his Spartan sources and Leonidas’ heroic deed, he (Herodotos) concentrated entirely on the site

of Leonidas’ last stand; all other sites were peripheral to the heroic unity of his story.” If the battle was not fought at the Middle Gate, how could Herodotos “concentrate on the site of Leonidas’ last stand"? In any case, Szemler continues by claiming that Herodotos confused the wall at the Middle Gate with the position of the Phokians sent to guard the Anopaia, citing 7.215, a position which he claims was at the Dema gap above Duo Vouna. There is utter confusion here. The 7.215 passage is a reference to the Phokian wall at Thermopylai (τὴν ἐσβολήν), explaining that a pass with a wall can be by-passed. Moreover, in 7.217, it is clear that the Phokian position (no reference to a wall) was at the summit of the Anopaia on Kallidromos. Not only does Szemler belie his critics; he does not understand Greek. He does not realize the difference between ἀτραπός and

ἐσβολή. In all of this, Szemler writes as if the wall were mentioned in passing; rather, it is an integral part of the battle. In JRA 5 (1992) 261-264, W.J. Cherf reports on carbon-14 dates for mortar samples taken from various walls in the

Thermopylai region. One may issue one word of caution, since there were different building programs at the same location. Cherf finds that the long wall erected along the summit of the Great Ravine, usually identified as the Teichious of Polybios/Livy, is to be dated in the fifth century of our era. This date, as Cherf recognizes (p. 264), is to be applied only to a section with mortar, but there is a long stretch of masonry of a type generally identified as Makedonian. This wall is about two meters thick with towers which project five and a half meters from the core; see the photographs in Topography 1 pls. zıb-75. I wrote (p. 76), "The long southern stretch has been built over, and this is mortared." MacKay (AJA 67 [1963] 246) explained,

"The main body of the fortress is of classical masonry, but

along the ridge of the rock with connects this summit with the main mass of Liathitsa, there is a mortared wall ..." On his map

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(p- 263), Cherf puts this “Muntzmeno

Fort,” a term used by

Dodwell, east of the wall which Marinatos regarded as Byzantine? whereas it is to the west. The excavator Béquignon insisted that there was a sub-core of the Eastern Long Wall which was Roman.?® On the hill of Phylake, as I recall, there is a stretch of heavy masonry without mortar. Marinatos wrote, “The Phocian wall was built at different periods and bears traces of repairs and of varying styles of construction." Walls were repaired and possibly realigned. The existing remains and the reports of travelers and of the excavators Béquignon and Marinatos do serve as clues to possible locations of interest to classical topographers (191 B.c. and earlier) within this much fortified pass. In disallowing any connection of Justinian with the Kallidromos walls, one may note that Gibbon long ago suggested that the De Aedificiis of Prokopios, which is seasoned with flattery of the emperor, was written to gain his favor. 4. ANTHELA.

Herodotos

in 7.176 says that the πόλις of An-

thela was between the Phoinix and Thermopylai and duplicates the observation in 7.200, using the word κώμη.253 He states that

it contained two temples and the seats (ἔδραι) for the Amphictyons. The town was famous as the center of the Amphictyonic League, and one might expect considerable remains. However, the site, which a member of the Doris Team in Klio 71 (1989) 211-215 settled on as the candidate for the battle of

Thermopylai in accordance with the theory, based on alleged geological evidence to the effect that the pass was closed and Herodotos erred in his location of the battle, was not identified 261 This wall within the pass is marked as no. 4 on Pierre MacKay's endmap in AJA 67 (1963) fasc. 3. He tentatively suggested the name τὸ σκέλος, as attested in an eleventh-century context (p. 254).

262As to Antiochos'

wall of 191 B.c., Livy (36.16.2) says that it was

"constructed out of the great quantity of stones which were scattered all about" (Loeb), which sounds like a hasty construction.

263For Herodotos there seerns to have been little distinction between the two terms. Both Alpenos and Anthela are called polis and kome.

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until Bequignon (pp. 182-188) discovered the foundations of a stoa and the location of a stadium.26* He offered photographs of the stoa in pl. V.1 and of the stadium in pl. VI.1. Subsequently, Thalmann visited the site in 1974 and 1976, offering

what appears to be an aerial photograph in BCH 104 (1980) 759. À new paved road to Delphi has more recently been constructed, descending on the eastern side of the Damasta spur to join the National Highway just to the northwest of the site, which is completely overgrown. There has to my knowledge been no report of sherds. 5. ASOPOS AND ANOPAIA. In 7.199, Herodotos tells us that the

Asopos river issues through a cleft in the mountains south of Trachis and flows along the skirts (ὑπώρεα) of the mountain.

The identification of the river is pographer the most important 7.216, the record of the Anopaia, the Immortals to take Leonidas ἀπὸ τοῦ

᾿Ασωποῦ

ποταμοῦ

not in question; but to the toreference to the Ásopos is in the path used by the army of from the rear: ἄρχεται μὲν

ToU

διὰ

τῆς

διασφάγος

péov-

τος. The path ascended the mountain to the site of the modern village of Eleutherochori where it turned east κατὰ ῥάχιν τοῦ ὄρεος. After crossing the Asopos, the route passed the fourth-century fort of Chalkomata noted by Béquignon (see AJA 62 [1968] pl. 54 fig. 4), ascended along the line of a

kalderimi road ( Topography4 pls. 115-117) past the fortified hill of Phylake and ultimately reached the Phokian position near the summit of the pass at Nevropolis, where a cobbled road built over an earlier road (pls. 122-123), used for centuries to go from Phokis to Lamia, ascends from Palaiochorion. Parenthetically, this road, like other principal routes over Kallidromos, which carried the traffic from Phokis and Boiotia northwards, was completely unknown to the Doris team, who mistakenly

take traffic through the Dema gap. When C. Hignett (XIG 362) wrote of the Pausanias 10.22.8 passage, "This passage is unwor264References to Béquignon are to his La vallée du Spercheios (Paris 1937).

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THE

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thy of the attention lavished on it and has rightly been scouted by Burn (in Studies Presented to D.M.

Robinson, 1.487; Prit-

chett's endeavours to make something of it are wasted labour),” I offered a detailed study in Topography 4.201-210.265 Herodotos called both the path and the mountain ᾿Ανόπαια (7.216), clear indication that only one mountain is involved. My studies of the Anopaia were published in AJA 62 (1958) 203-213 with pls. 54-55; Topography 4.179-210 with pls. 115-123;

and Topography 6.119-120. Two positions are crucial. Herodotos’ path begins by crossing the Asopos, the Persian camp being to the north, and one does not assume a circuitous and rugged route of many miles when the immediate objective, the crest of the mountain, is in plain sight of the initial position. For any who wish to duplicate the Doris team’s candidate for the Anopaia through the Dema gap by autopsy, we suggest that they follow the dirt quarry road rising south of Duo

Vouna to the top of the ridge where the road bifurcates to go to Delphinion and Koumaritsion. They will be looking southwards to the imposing flat-top rock called Kastro Orias. Since we are not offered a description or photography of where the route crosses the Asopos, we are dependent on the sketch-map in AJA 84 (1980) ı8 to determine that the descent is to the

northwestern tip of the cliffs of the Kastro. Here, according to the railroad crew at the time of our autopsy, there are two ways

265]t is important to note that the Pausanias passage is not part of his periegesis. It is in an appendix to his description of the monuments at Delphi, part of an historical excursus, hence of the same value as other historical sections taken from various sources and sometimes erroneous, as Frazer, Stählin, and MacKay (AJA 67 [1963] 253) have suggested in this case. Ac-

tually, Pausanias gives two passages about encirclement. Scholarly opinion was collected in Topography 4.202 and n. 62. Our concern here is only to show that Herodotos' Anopaia is accurate and cannot be reconciled with the Doris team's interpretation. MacKay writes, "I am convinced that this part of Pausanias' account of Thermopylae is faulty, and rests on a specious comparison with the earlier battle against the Persians." Cf. W.W. Tarn, Antigonos Gonatas (Oxford 1913) 442.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

31

to ascend the western slope of Kallidromos, both much too steep to believe that an army used either at night. Indeed, one must get south of the ridge labeled

‘“PiCattavw (569 m.) on the

1:50,000 map to find ready ascent. How much the route has been disturbed in building the railroad, which uses a tunnel to go through the Kastro hill, we do not know. To discredit the veracity of Herodotos on the basis of such a difficult and circuitous route seems perverse. The Doris team in their latest publication (1991) repeatedly refer to a report of one of their members who claims he traced the Duo Vouna candidate for the Anopaia in AJA 84 (1980) 15-

23. One notes that the difficult part of the route is not characterized at all and no photographs or contour maps are offered. The article is premised on the usual refrain of this author, "Herodotus' account of Thermopylae does not show the historian at his best topographically" (p. 21). When I pointed out that his alleged time-schedule did not begin at the Asopos, as Herodotos has it, but at Vardates, the Doris team in the Journal of Reld Archaeology 14 (1987) 183, 193-194, responded that the

Persian camp was on the right bank of the Asopos at the northern exit from the gorge.?66 This position is physically impossible. More importantly, we noted (Topography 6.119) that Herodotos is very explicit about the camp (7.201): μέχρι Tenxivos. In the 1991 publication, no exegesis of the Herodotos passage is offered. Trachis is incorrectly located, but this only shifts their Persian camp farther away from the Asopos. The Phokian position, which Herodotos places at the summit of the Anopaia, is alleged to have been at the Dema gap, their catchall for all traffic. In any case, their route for the Anopaia makes a liar out of Herodotos.267 266]n so doing, they have disrupted the time-schedule. 267 The entire Herodotean story is jettisoned, for Ephialtes is said to have used an ἀτραπός, whereas the Doris team takes Xerxes for the first half of

the route by a way which they claim was a thoroughfare, the only access into Greece, and hence known to Xerxes before the battle. Moreover, the

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6. TRACHIS. Herodotos, in 7.198-199, locates Trachis in the

context of four rivers along the western edge of the Malian

Gulf. Going from north to south, he names the Spercheios, the Dyras twenty stades (3.6 kilometers) removed, and the Melas twenty stades from the Dyras. He then says that Trachis is five stades (891 m.) from the Melas. finally, he names the Asopos flowing through the gorge. Although the channels in the plain may have changed since antiquity, there is no doubt of the

Spercheios and the Asopos. The Dyras must be the Gorgopotamos. Equally certain is the source of the Melas. Marinatos noted that there are powerful springs at the base of the cliffs, which must be the source of this river, today called the Ξερόλακκας; see his fig. 9. Although the water-table has fallen markedly throughout Greece, we visited the spring and offered photographs in Topography s pls. 82-85; 6 pl. 195. Measuring 0.90 kilometers south from the springs, we came to the base of the ravine which on its upper southern slopes carries a long stretch of the walls of Herakleia,?®* illustrated in Topography 1 pl. 82, and in Y. Béquignon, La vallée du Spercheios (Paris 1937)

pl. 11. Thus, by Herodotos' testimony, Trachis was located at later Herakleia. In 3.92.6, Thucydides writes of the foundation of Herakleia

by the Lakedaimonians in 426 B.c.: καταστάντες Ἡράκλεια λιστα

δὲ

ἐτείχισαν

καλεῖται,

ἀπέχουσα

τεσσαράκοντα,

παρεσκενάζοντο ΄

τὸ τὸ στενόν,

τὴν

τῆς

δὲ

πόλιν

ἐκ

καινῆς,

Θερμοπυλῶν θαλάσσης

ἣ

νῦν

σταδίους

ud

εἴκοσι.

καὶ εἰρξαν τὸ κατὰ Θερμοπύλας [1

ὅπως

7

*

εὐφύλακτα

Li

αὐτοῖς

,

νεώριά

τε

war

au

L]

,

εἴη.

contours of Kallidromos require that the only descent for the large army of the Immortals was on the site of Alpenos, where they claim that any traffic to the west was blocked at the Middle Gate. 268 See Béquignon, pl. X.2 and fg. 4 facing p. 244.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

313

(Loeb tr.): When they had established themselves they built a new wall about the city, which is now called Heracleia, and is about forty

stadia distant from Thermopylae and twenty from the sea. They then proceeded to build dockyards, and in order that the place might be easy to guard fenced off the approach on the side toward Thermopylae by a wall across the pass itself.

The phrase ἐτείχισαν ... ἐκ καινῆς confirms the Herodotean site; a new wall replaced the old. The word νῦν implies that there was a former name; the Lakedaimonians renamed the city of Trachis. In 9.4.13 and 14.428, Strabo gives two locations for Trachis

which are contradictory. In the former [13] passage, he names φρούρια ἐντὸς τῶν στενῶν: Nikaia, above it Teichious, Herakleia and Old Trachis six stades removed, and finally Rhodountia. In the latter [14] passage, he gives the Herodotean

order: Dyras, Melas, Trachis five stades removed, and Asopos. We know from the account of the battle in 191 B.c. by Polybios/Livy (36.22) that Teichious and Rhodountia were forts on

Mount Kallidromos. Herakleia/Trachis cannot be between Teichious and Rhodountia, nor is it on Mount Kallidromos.269 269Szemler cites the 13 passage for his Trachis, but never mentions the 14. When Szemler (GICR 80) uses the Strabo 9.4.13 passage as evidence for his alleged Trachis site, his Herakleia is located in the plain. Elsewhere (e.g. p. 118), when he tries to dissociate Herakleia from a route along the Malian Gulf and have it instead control the Duo Vouna route, he restricts Herakleia to a "lofty perch" above the site: "Our discoveries show that Herakleia could not possibly control Thermopylai from its lofty perch on the precipitous left bank of the Asopos gorge." This latter statement is incorrect, as shown by the line of the city wall dominating the right bank of the ravine; see the photograph in Topography 1 pl. 82, and Béquignon, pls. X.2 and Xl.1, and his plan facing p. 244. In 191 B.c., Livy (36.22.5) distinguishes between a lower

urbs (ipsa in campo) and the upper arx. The siege of the city went on for twenty-four days. In 36.22.10, Livy reports that the land of Herakleia "abounded in tall trees." Thucydides says that the Lakedaimonians founded

314

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

The former [13] passage is not reliable, whereas the 9.4.14 pas-

sage confirms Herodotos, in particular the numeral five. When Béquignon (pp. 243-258) cleared several of the structures of Herakleia, he gave no report of sherd evidence. Marinatos reported landslides in the general region, and the area above has been disturbed in the building of the railroad. Today there is a large dump-heap of marble blocks near the spring. Béquignon was certain that the site was Trachis; and he was followed by Hope Simpson and Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford 1970) 128, who reported: This is the only place in the kingdom of Peleus and Achilles which can be identified with any certainty: it is presumably to be located at the site of the later Trachis (T.-Lamia 307E/426N),

which was supplanted in its turn by Herakleia, Spartans in 426 B.c. The strategic importance of vious, commanding as it does the Asopos gorge, to the pass of Thermopylae, and the largest area between the mountains and the sea.

founded by the the place is obthe approaches of farming land

In 1958 we found a few Mycenaean sherds on the lower slopes,

and Mycenaean occupation of the site is suggested by the existence of a smaller Mycenaean settlement about a kilometre and a half away, west-north-westwards along the foot of the cliff. So far there is no evidence for occupation between the Mycenaean period and classical times. Marinatos (p. 50), however,

reported one Mycenaean

tomb

to the north near Vardates, which he offered as the site of Trachis. In Antiquity 33 (1959) 103-104, Hope Simpson and

Lazenby wrote, “About 1% km. to the north-west, on similar terraces at the foot of the cliffs is a prehistoric settlement of Herakleia so that the fleet could attack Euboia and the place would be useful for expeditions along the coast towards Thrake. It is a climb for me of about 45 minutes to reach the summit. The crews from the ships did not run up to the summit every tirne they docked.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

moderate Mycenaean

size, which pottery

produced

(L.H.

315

Middle

III A-B).

The

Helladic and Late district

is named

Rakhita. To the north-west lies the village of Vardhates, near which the Late Mycenaean cist grave was found." This site is now proposed for Trachis by the Doris team, who must perforce move the Melas to the modern mountain torrent-bed Xerias, which on the 1:50,000 map (1971) is marked as flowing

north of Vardates. This will not work, for at the siege of Herakleia in 191 B.c., Livy says Appius Claudius was stationed with his battering-rams at the small river of the Melas (ab altero amniculo quem Melana vocant, 36.22.8). By no stretch of the imagination would one have battered the walls of Herakleia from north of Vardates. Thus, the evidence of Herodotos, Thucydides, Strabo, and Livy, combined with the position of the source of the Melas, establishes that Trachis was on the site of the later Herakleia. I may add that we do not know how quickly sherds from an early, deep settlement will work to the surface. Stählin (RE s.v. Trachis [1937] 1864) writes, “Noch Herodot.

VII 199 u.ö. kennt T. als den Hauptort der Malier." The polis of Trachis was an important city before the founding of Herakleia.2° At Rahkita, on the other hand, Hope Simpson and 27° Any polis of the fifth century must have had cults and sanctuaries. According to Greek mythology, Keyx (Krjo£) was lord of Trachis (Hesiod Sc. 353-354; Diodoros 4.57) and was connected by friendship with Herakles. He

was the father of Hippasos, who fell in battle fighting as the ally of Herakles. See, in particular, Apollodoros 2.7.6—7. According to another tradition, Keyx was a nephew of Herakles, who built for him the town of Trachis. For partial bibliography, see the notes of Frazer in the Loeb Apollodoros; Kroll, RE s.v. Keyx (1931) 372-374; Stáhlin, RE s.v. Trachis (1937) 1864. In Sophokles' play,

which is laid before the house of Deianeira in Trachis, Herakles was dwelling at Tiryns when he slew Iphitos; then with Deianeira and his children, he removed

from Tiryns to Trachis, and soon afterwards Zeus sent

him forth into servitude (Tr. 276). Keyx is not named in the play, but is referred to in line 40. The play is tentatively dated by Kamerbeek as among the early plays. The association of Trachis with the saga of Herakles may well

explain why the Lakedaimonians renamed the city after the legendary hero.

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THE

LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS

Lazenby, as we have seen, reported a small Mycenaean settlement. Turning to the reports of the Doris team, we find the following: on p. 48 of GICR, Wallace claims for Rakhita, “Middle Helladic, Late Helladic III A-B and III C, Geometric and Archaic” sherds; on pp. 67 and 69, Per Alin refers to “Middle Helladic" and "scattered Mycenaean finds”; and on p. 80, Szemler claims “Middle Helladic, Late Helladic, Geometric, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic sherds." A more detailed account of the pottery at Rakhita, although not quoted in GICR, seems to have been given by the "Loyola University Expedition" in ADelt. 33 (1985) B.1 p. 163: Rakhita (Bourso)

Surface sherding produced about 200 sherds, most of these from prehistoric times. Some may go back to Neolithic, the represented periods seem otherwise to be the Early Helladic, probably Middle Helladic, followed by some Late Helladic III, among them a kylix fragment; furthermore, the Classical and Hellenistic periods.

Of the two hundred sherds, very few can be contemporary with Herodotos. The knoll on which the sherds were found is illustrated in GICR pl. 1-4. In contrast with many insignificant sites, no sketch is offered. This little settlement, primarily prehistoric or Mycenaean, is not the site of the polis of Trachis, as Herodotos (7.199) terms it.

When Jason of Pherai marched northwards after Leuktra, he captured Hyampolis, invaded Lokris, and dismantled Herakleia: Xenophon Hell. 6.4.27; Diodoros 15.57.2.271 A year later, the men of Herakleia and the Malians accompanied the The-

27YTypically, Szemler (GICR 121-122) claims that Jason came northwards through the Dema Gap, which is absurd. Szemler's section, "fifth Century to Roman Epoch,” is a tour de force, distorting the ancient testimonia and the topography with claims that the "corridor" was used.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

317

bans on an expedition into the Peloponnesos: Xenophon Hell. 6.5.23.

A word is in order about the evidence of sherds. One might postulate that a plethora of early sherds must be a criterion for locating a site named in the Homeric catalogue. I have ascended from the highway to the arca, as Livy terms it, a number of times in the company of Vanderpool, Fracchia, Camp, and others. It is noteworthy that we found no identifiable sherds at all except at the arca, although we spread out over a considerable area, particularly below. Yet we know that Herakleia was densely populated, at least in 191 B.c. (Livy 36.22.7),

and that it experienced a long history of warfare, being taken in 395 by the Thebans under Ismenias, by Jason, later falling

into the hands of the Aitolians, and finally being besieged by the Roman consul Acilius Glabrio in 191 s.c. Herodotos (7.199)

tells us that the polis of Trachis was situated at the widest part of the plain between the sea and the cliffs (ἐκ τῶν ὀρέων ἐς θάλασσαν). In the Livy/Polybios record, the Romans required twenty-four days to take the city of Herakleia in the plain with siegecraft, when the Aitolians retired to the citadel. Yet one who inspects the lower area and the slopes today will find no convincing evidence of sherds for any period, Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenistic, or Roman. Thus, if we use the criterion of sherds, we would conclude that there was no TrachisHerakleia, which would be absurd. Marinatos tells us that there have been landslides, and there is little doubt but that the remains of the poleis of Trachis and Herakleia are buried under the alluvium. 7. THE ROAD THROUGH THE THERMOPYLAI PASS. Our concern here is with the veracity of Herodotos. Kase and Szemler in Klio 64 (1982) 353-366

put forth the thesis that "the only

passage that fits Herodotus’ “Pass through Trachis into Hellas" was that of the Dema Gap. They buttressed this with the claim

318

THE LIAR SCHOOL

OF HERODOTOS

that their geologists had determined that the Thermopylai pass could not have allowed the passage of an army in 480 B.c. The argument was advanced that when Herodotos used the phrase ἡ δὲ αὖ διὰ Τρηχῖνος ἔσοδος in 7.176, it applies to the Dema Gap.?7 While claiming that by this label Herodotos supported their theory that the Dema Gap route was the only passageway into Greece, they rejected the rest of the record in Book 7, although they offered no exegesis of the battle. In his riposte to my criticisms in Topography s chap. 7, Szemler (Klio 71 [1989] 211-215)

replied that Leonidas took up position at

Anthela after marching north through the Dema Gap. We take up the two parts separately, the Herodotean record and the geological evidence. A. After giving an account of the Greek preparations, Herodotos

in 7.175-176

describes

the relationship

between

Thermopylai and Artemision. That of Thermopylai, I give in W.G. Forrest's translation: 175. The Greeks, on their return to the Isthmus, took counsel

together, and considered where they should fix the war, and what places they should occupy. The opinion which prevailed

was, that they should guard the Thermopyle: pass of since it he

Τί

lian

defi

Lat

ti

.

Dearer to them. Of the pathway, by which the Greeks who fell at

?72Macan on 7.176 wrote, “By ‘the pass through Trachis' Hdt. is generally, and perhaps rightly, taken to mean Thermopylai; but could not the term as well or better suit that other pass, which led from Trachinia into Doris, a pass by which at least a column of the Persians afterwards marched? ... he may misapply here the term ἡ διὰ Τρηχῖνος ἔσοδος to Thermopylai." Whereas Macan took the phrase as possibly being a mistaken label by Herodotos for the Thermopylai pass, he accepted the veracity of Herodotos for the rest of the account of the battle. The Doris historians reversed the appraisal of the credibility of the record, accepting Macan's tentative interpretation of the label for the true pass used by the Greeks but rejecting the rest of the record in order to make it conform. In short, for Kase and Szemler the pass through Trachis, which the Greeks attempted to hold, was the Dema Gap; all the rest of the record was a piece of fiction by Herodotos.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

319

Thermopylz were intercepted, they had no knowledge, until, on their arrival at Thermopylz, it was discovered to them by the Trachinians. This pass then it was determined that they should guard, in order to prevent the barbarians from penetrating into

Greece through it; ... As for the entrance into Greece by Trachis, it is, at its narrowest point, about fifty feet wide. This however is not the place where the passage is most contracted; for it is still narrower a little above and a little below Thermopyla. At Alpeni, which is lower down than that place, it is only wide enough for a single carriage; and up above, at the river Phoenix, near the town called Anthela, it is the same. West of Thermopylz rises a lofty and precipitous hill, impossible to climb, which runs up into the chain of CEta; while to the east the road is shut in by the sea and by marshes. In this place are the warm springs, which the natives call "The Cauldrons"; and above them stands an altar sacred to Heracles. A wall had once been carried across the opening; and in this there had of old times been a gateway. These works were made by the Phocians.

When Herodotos turns to the battle of Thermopylai in 7.201,

he begins, "King Xerxes, then, lay encamped in that part of Malis which belongs to Trachis, and the Greeks in the midst of the pass (ἐν τῇ 81689): the place where they were is called by most of the Greeks Thermopylai, but by the people of the country and their neighbors, Pylai. In these places, then, they lay encamped, Xerxes being master of all that was north of Trachis ..." In the 7.175-176

passage, we have underlined

the phrases

which Kase and Szemler claim refer to the Dema Gap. The Greek text, the manuscript readings, a discussion of the genitive of comparison with superlatives, and exegesis of the passage were offered in Topography 5.193-199 and 7.194-203, and

are not repeated. The most debated phrase is succinctly explained by How-Wells on 1.176.2:

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THE

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SCHOOL

OF

HERODOTOS

τῆς ἄλλης. By an idiomatic compression the ‘narrowest part’ is included in the rest of the country with which it is really contrasted. Cf. Tac. Agr. 34 ‘ceterorum Britannorum fugacissimi’ and Milton’s ‘fairest of her daughters Eve’. ... Macan's suggestion that H. meant by ἡ διὰ Τρηχῖνος ἔσοδος the entirely different pass ... is impossible.273

Suffice it here to say that whereas it is quite clear that for Herodotos the battle was at the Middle Gate of Thermopylai, Kase and Szemler posit that the Dema Gap was "the only passage" and that it was "the key to resist the Persian invasion of the north," etc. In our riposte, we inferred from their article in Klio 64 (1982) 353-366 that Kase and Szemler would place the

battle at the Dema Gap,?74 since this was for them the only pass to be protected,

and

they had

brought

Leonidas

and

the

Greeks to the Malian Gulf by this route.?7 Herodotos of course would also.be wrong about the Anopaia. However, in Klio 7ı (1989) 211-215, we were informed that Leonidas’ camp was at

Anthela. Thus, the Greek leader has passed through the Dema gap, but without realizing its tactical value, has taken up position in a cul-de-sac from which there is no retreat. All of this distortion of the Herodotean record is offered ostensibly so that the Doris team can support their impossible position that the Dema Gap was part of a "corridor" carrying all the traffic into Greece.

273When Kase and Szemler offered an impossible Greek text for the first passage underlined above, Szemler responded to my criticisms with the statement, "Should one now change this odd reading according to alleged iron-clad rules of grammar

in order to fit preconceived notions about

Thermopylae?" This is tantamount to saying that Herodotos wrote barbarian Greek. See Topography 7.197. 274 There is no record in the classical literature of any attempt to defend or to assault this pass. 275In note 271, we observed that Szemler in 1991 would bring Jason from Lokris to Herakleia (Diodoros 15.57.2) by the “corridor.”

7. TOPOGRAPHY

321

Our discipline would have been better served if the Doris team, before claiming that the Duo Vouna route carried the commercial and military traffic into Greece, had heeded the appraisals of such experienced scholars as Hauvette, Stählin, and Béquignon about the insignificance of their region in ancient history, marked only by the small sites of Vounous and Kastro Orias (The size of the Catalan occupation at the Kastro is another matter. As A. Bon has shown in the Peloponnesos, the Europeans often built their chateaux on mountain retreats removed from population centers), sites for which no names and no prosopography are presented. Comparison with the Thermopylai routes would have demonstrated the futility of their thesis. Oldfather has shown that Skarpheia in Roman times was a port second only to Korinth, and was later the seat of a bishopric. When Marinatos excavated in the Middle gate, he found eighty coins (p. 67) and inferred that the place was the port of Thermopylai attested in literary sources. So far, the Doris team has reported no coins. Along the stretch of the Malian Gulf from Thronion westwards, we have four ports attested in the literature, clearly proving commercial activity.

Walls were built across the pass, and great armies fought within the gates. Chapter 10 of GICS is a tour de force, transfer much of the Thermopylai record to the We have three attested routes from Lamia Phokis and Boiotia, presented in what I judge to

a vain effort to Dema Gap. southwards to be the ascend-

ing order of their difficulty: 1. The Thermopylai pass, with the forts or towns of Nikaia,?76

Alpenos, Skarpheia, and Thronion to the east of the pass, and Herakleia to the west.

276 Whereas Nikaia is called a χωρίον κύριον by Aischines, it is a polis in the Didymos commentary on Demosthenes 11 (Topography 4.163). The importance of Nikaia, as attested in the literature, is well brought out by

G.T. Griffth in Hammond-Griffith, A History of Macedonia 2 (Oxford 1979) 543-544, 587—589.

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2. The Turkish kalderimi road, of which various traces remain, over the western end of Kallidromos past Nevropolis. 3. The Dema Gap route. This was used by Xerxes, when the people of Doris medized. Late in 339 B.c., Philip marched

to

Kytinion and Elateia while the Thebans were garrisoned in Nikaia

(Philochoros

FGrHist 328 frg. 56b). Since the last we

heard of the Malians and the Herakleiots, they were allied with the Thebans (Xenophon Hell. 6.5.23), it would seem that if this

was still the case, Philip used no. 3 rather than no. 2. But see above n. 252.

B. Geology. In their early publications, Kase and Szemler claimed that the geologists of their team had produced evidence that the Thermopylai pass was closed in Classical and Hellenistic times, and hence no battle could have been fought there and no traffic used it. As recently as 1987 in the Journal of Field Archaeology 14, one finds such statements as (p. 194),

"Geological evidence shows that the pass at Thermopylae should be eliminated as a major access route to southern Greece throughout the greater part of pre-Roman historic and prehistoric times," and (p. 195) "the pass was closed for great portions of the last 5000 years." In Topography 5.191193, I collected three pages of a list of passages on the use of Thermopylai, including battles and walls, and referred to the long history of the pass by Stáhlin, RE s.v. Thermopylen

(1934) 2418-2483,

comparing this evidence with the one attested use of the Dema Gap route.?7 In Topography 6.121, I stressed one passage of the collection, which I doubt that even the most ardent member of 277See Topography 4.211f£. The Doris team in GICR might confuse the uninformed reader by repeatedly using such terms as "the Dhema-Thermopylai defensive line," or "the Oite-Kallidromos massif," thereby presenting the illusion that where the references are clearly to Thermopylai or Hypata, they include the Dema gap. The illusion is compounded by an attempt to move Herakleia from a great seaport city on the Malian Gulf, where Thucydides places it and Béquignon has confirmed, to a position controlling the route through the Dema gap, at least five miles removed.

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question,

that of

Thucydides 3.92.6: When they had established themselves they built a new wall about the city, which is now called Heracleia, and is about forty stadia distant from Thermopylae and twenty from the sea. They then proceeded to build dockyards, and in order that the place might be easy to guard fenced off the approach on the side toward Thermopylae by a wall across the pass itself.

In 426 B.c., a wall was built at the pass which was then clearly open to traffic. Throughout all their studies, geological and other, I find no mention of this wall. For example, the only reference to 3.92.6 in GICR is not to the wall. Clearly, we have a

choice, to believe Herodotos and Thucydides or Kase and Szemler's presentation of the geological evidence. Turning to the work of the geologist in the opening chapter of GICS, we note that Kraft offers a sketch of Poqueville which shows water lapping at the feet of western Kallidromos.?78 Admittedly, the author offers it only as a romantic sketch, but it might leave the impression that at the Thermopylai pass the Kolonos and Phokian Wall hills were covered with water. Such is not the case. Rather, the author writes on p. 8 that he found a sandy beach arcing from the Kolonos hill “at 18-20 m. below the level of the travertine fan." It seems obvious that our chief concern is with the road, which Herodotos indicates ran through the pass. A geologist or classicist who attempts to prove that Herodotos was mistaken must demonstrate that this road was blocked by water. If one takes a position on the Kolonos hill, it might appear that the mystery to us today would be that the ancient road did not follow the modern one and on the eastern end run through

275As noted in Topography 6.119, E. Dodwell, using a camera obscura, had earlier made two drawings.

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the site of Alpenos. Possibly, a walled town blocked the way, and Herodotos takes his road to the north of the town. The masonry of Alpenos probably disappeared long ago in building the enormous wall extending about two kilometers southwards from near the site. On the western side of the pass,279 a road could easily have been built over the northeastern corner of the Damasta Spur.28° The labor involved would have been child's play in comparison with sections of the roads, for example, from Tegea to Hysiai by the Skala tou Bey or Argos to Sparta over Mount Zavitsa. Indeed, there are segments of the route through the Dema gap, which I have traversed many times, often with others, much rougher than the terrain of Thermopylai. Herodotos says that the width of the road at the narrowest was the breadth of a cart. In our study in Topography 3 of roads with wheel-ruts, we found that the width of a cart was regularly about 1.40 m., and that several lithostrotos roads are about 2.00 m. wide.2?! Such roads carried the traffic in ancient Greece. There were no autobahns, and that applies to any road going through the Dema Gap. 273 Szemler placed the Greek camp at Anthela; so for the Doris team the western gate was open.

280 Marinatos noted that there have been landslides within the pass. 281In the GICS, we find such phrases as “not broad enough for an army," without any documentation, illustrating their lack of familiarity with the large literature on ancient roads. Hammond's Road of the Towers, familiar to hikers in Attika, I have measured in several places as 1.80 m. wide. A road near Sellasia is 2.70

m. in width, whereas

the pavement

of Pausanias'

Anigraia, stretching for kilometers from the Lerna plain to Astros, is only 1.20-1.40 m. The pavement of the road from Thermopylai to Elateia through the Fontana pass, which I believe carried the main traffic from north to south, measures 2.00 m.; see Topography 5.172 and pls. 66 and 67. Roads often had lay-bys. The use of stream-beds by armies is well attested in the literature, and that of the Sarandopotamos was used to go from Sparta to Tegea. All of these routes were used by armies. If the road through the Dema Gap were such an easy route as portrayed, why did the Greeks or Turks, prior to the automobile road, build the well-attested road from Gravia to Lamia over Mount Kalidromos through Nevropolis? See Topography4 pls. 122 and 123.

7. TOPOGRAPHY

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Meyer believes that the ancient road ascended the Phokian Wall hill. Assuming this is correct, the task of a scholar who believes that Herodotos is mistaken is to show that a continuation of this road in either direction within the pass was blocked by water in 480 B.c. The fact that the ancient ground level in antiquity was many meters below that of today’s level proves nothing. Kraft may as well have sunk his cores in the Sahara Desert for all that it proves about the road. One would have to show that somewhere between present ground level and ancient ground level on what Kraft calls an alluvial fan the water has undercut the mountain beneath the present surface in such a way that a road 1.40 meters in width would have been blocked by water at the narrowest point. The claim that the ancient level, if accurate, was so far down only increases the possibilities for the course of a road along the shoulder of the mountain. All of this has been said before, and Kraft has not chosen to respond with a map showing the contours of the mountain as it descends beneath present levels. All major roads in Greece which I have inspected traverse at some stage much more difficult terrain than that at Thermopylai. If the lowest contours prevented a road, it would have been built higher to accommodate traffic between Naryka, Thronion, Skarpheia, Alpenos in the east and Trachis, Lamia, and other sites in the west; but the extravagant claims about the closure of Thermopylai and the diversion of all traffic to the Dema Gap route, made on the basis of Kraft's geology by the historians of the team, claims which change from article to article and page to page, have not been proved. The surprising features are that the Doris team would seek for a geologist to confirm their theories when the Duo Vouna route has barriers more formidable than any part of the route

at the Middle Gate, or that a geologist would not correlate his core evidence with the contours of a road. Marinatos found by sherd evidence, which is far more convincing than cores, that the Byzantine level was eight meters deep; but no one has de-

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duced that this measurement makes a liar of Herodotos about the road. Core-samples, if accurate, can only prove the waterlevel; they do not establish what was built above that level on the side of the land. We sum up our major differences with the Doris team: 1. Herodotos in 7.176 does not call the Dema Gap route the

“pass through Trachis.” 2. The geologist of the Doris team has not coordinated his water-level theory with the road through the Thermopylai pass. 3. It is a myth that the Dema Gap carried the commercial and military traffic into classical Greece. To the contrary, the abundant literary evidence proves that such traffic went through Thermopylai.282 282Experience has shown that the handbooks and accounts of early travelers before the days of the automobile often offer clues to the routes which might have been used in antiquity. For example, the British Admiralty's Handbook of Greece (London 1920), drafted during the First World War, charts as Route 43 (86 miles)

the recommended

way from

Naupaktos on the Korinthian Gulf to Lamia as a bridle-path through Lidoriki to Hypata and thence a carriage-road to Lamia. "The best route from the gulf of Corinth to Lidoriki is that from Vitrinitsa." The latter is described as a carriage-road begun years ago, but left unfinished. Four routes from the Gulf of Korinth northwards are charted, none leading through the Dema Gap. In the Handbook, the segment of "the only means of communication for wheeled traffic which traverses all eastern Greece N. of the Corinthian Gulf," one leading from Bralo to Lamia, was over the western part of Kallidromos, again not through the upper Kephissos valley. In J. Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Greece’ (London 1896), the route (no. 86, cols. 569-574) from Itea to Lamia was via Salona, Gravia, and the

Bridge of Alamanna, clearly not over Mount Oita by way of Duo Vouna. Incidentally, on p. 147 of GICR, Rosser writes, "The advantage of the Corridor was that it avoided the great road that ran through the Kephissos valley to Thebes, Megara, and on to the Isthmus of Corinth. That road passed through densely populated Byzantine settlements, which meant the

threat of armed resistance." Nor will one find their "corridor" road in the early Baedeker, the Guide Joanne (Route 15, Itea to Lamia), or in the nine-

teenth-century travelers. The upper Kephissos valley (the district of Phokis)

7. TOPOGRAPHY

327

4. The Doris team’s candidate for Trachis is incorrect.

5. The idea that the city of Herakleia was restricted to a lofty perch on Mount Oita, controlling the Dema Gap route, is false. The Thucydidean passage proves that in 426 B.c. military traffic was using the Thermopylai pass, not the Dema Gap. 6. The Doris team ignores the excavations of Marinatos, attesting the site of the last battle with its monuments. 7. The theory that the Anopaia circled the northeastern ridge of Oita and passed beneath the Kastro Orias cannot be reconciled with Herodotos or the reality of a path used at night by a large army. Finally, a point to which we shall turn in the next section, the audience for whom Herodotos was writing surely knew where the battle was fought and the monuments were placed, and if he had made errors of such magnitude as claimed, it is astonishing that such alleged blunders have left no trace in the subsequent record of such a critical and unforgiving people. Topographically speaking, we believe that the Herodotean record for Thermopylai is correct in every detail with the exception of a statement about direction, which is natural for a

traveler in going from point to point. Our effort has been to distill out of the various shifting claims of the Doris team those rock-bottom allegations which would indict the Herodotean record. We note that their geologist without a backward glance in their most recent publication under the caption for Fig. 1-10 of GICR writes, "We believe that the battle at Thermopylai in is a long and sometimes stony valley, running ESE with a gradual descent. To get from this valley to the Malian Gulf over Knemis and Kallidrornos, there are a number of passes, Atalante, Kleisoura, Phontana or Derveni, Basilika, as well as the carriage road from the area of Palaiochori over Kallidromos to Lamia. One may speak of a "corridor" from Lamia to Atalante, or better one from Lamia to Elateia through the Phontana pass at Naryka, which carried the principal traffic southwards from Lamia, just as one may speak of a "corridor" from Athens to Korinth. Topography would

be well served if the word were banned.

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480 B.c. was fought on this sandy travertine beach 18-20 m below the present level.” This sentence would seem to contradict the position taken by Kase and Szemler, not only in this same volume, but in several earlier articles, as well as the article signed by several geologists in the Journal of Field Archaeology. Perhaps, they will abandon the idea that their geological section has made any contribution to the study of the Herodotean battle and agree that the veracity of Herodotos, Thucydides, Philochoros, and other ancient authors has not been undermined. 8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

If we adopt the position of the liar school, Herodotos was contradicting history about matters in which he knew he would be found out. By the interpretation of S. West, the restored quadriga, originally dedicated after the victory of the Athenians over the Boeotians and Chalkidians, is assigned a position which any Athenian must have known was incorrect. The epigrams Herodotos transcribed as being erected on monuments at Thermopylai were simply part of an oral tradition; no such monuments would have been seen, our rationalist has

it, by anyone who traveled through this famous pass, constituting the main route between northern and southern Greece. Herodotos has lapsed into a "literary tradition," whatever that may mean, in claiming that there were inscriptions with Kadmean letters in the temple at Thebes. Any native of Thebes

would have known whether or not such inscribed tripods existed. Not only the Delphians, but every visitor to Delphi, would have known about the forged Spartan dedication of 1.51.3-4. According to Fehling, Mandrokles’ painting in the pinakotheke on Samos was a fiction of Herodotos. If so, this would have been known to any Samian or to any visitor to the great temple there. The numbers of the Athenian dead at Marathon and of the Spartan dead at Thermopylai are the historian's invention. Any visitor to the Soros would have

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE known

if Herodotos

lied. Pausanias

329

(3.14.1) relates that at

Sparta there was "a tablet with the names of the men who looked the Persians in the face at Thermopylae" (Frazer tr.). The Spartan story of the visit of Aristagoras with his map is a fabrication, although the event took place about 500 B.c., and so must have been alive in the memory of many Spartans. The Athenian custodians of the sanctuary of Pan on the north slope of the akropolis would have been cognizant of the foundation of the cult after the epiphany to Pheidippides. The towns of Miletos, Thera, and Kaunos, the peoples of Makedonia

and

Karia, the custodians of the oracle at Dodona, would have recognized false accounts of their origins. Various cults had been ordained for personages who Fehling charges are fictional. We ‘have noted that Pfister organized his study of sagas in connection with places of cult. Ancient, pre-scientific lore was expressed in ritual obligation. W. Burkert, in his section on Aristeas, Zalmoxis, Pythagoras, and Hyperborean Apollo in Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge Mass. 1972) comments

(p. 149), "The cult belongs with the legend." Reli-

gious traditions cling to holy places. Devotees of such cults would have known if Herodotos misrepresented their traditions. Cults do not exist in vacuo; the sagas were there. Plato explains in the Meno (81A) that priests and priestesses paid careful attention to being able to explain their ministry. The discrediting of a series of epiphanies would lead us to the assumption that the Greeks did not believe in such phenomena. Large Greek-speaking colonies such as that of Kyrene in Libya would have known if Herodotos lied about their origins, history, legends, and cults, as Fehling has it. Fehling (p. 90) postulates that Herodotos concocted a story about a locality that the natives knew would be untrue: “4.30.2: no mules are

born in Elis; and the Eleans themselves explain this by some curse or other. The very vagueness of the formulation suggests that Herodotus had absolutely no knowledge on the matter. In any case the Eleans must have known better than anyone else

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that the story was untrue.” Fehling does not tell the reader that the taboo still held in Pausanias’ day: 5.5.2 and 5.9.2, to which

Frazer devotes a lengthy note with parallels. Cf. Antigonus Carystius Mir. 13 (third century B.c.). Moreover, the fact that

mules were not bred in Elis is also vouched for by Plutarch (Mor. 3038) in Question 52 of the Quaestiones

Graecae and

explained as the curse of Oinomaos. W.R. Halliday, The Greek Questions of Plutarch (Oxford 1928) 200-202,

devotes three

pages to the question, showing that Plutarch did not derive his information from Herodotos. Not only Oinomaos' grave but his stables were shown at Olympia. Fehling's criterion collapses from lack of investigation. We find a fatal inconsistency in the arguments of Fehling, West, and other members of the liar school. On the one hand, they allege that Herodotos is purposely lying about people to whom his history is addressed—people who know that he is lying. On the other hand, they allege that by using such devices as citing various sources as his authority, his intent is to deceive these same people into believing that what he narrates is the truth. Such claims would be gratuitous. It would be a sham if, after telling a pack of needless lies, obvious to all, he pretended that he was speaking the truth. He is not writing in the manner of Lucian and Swift.2* If the battle of Thermopylai was not fought at the Kolonos Hill since there was no passage from Alpenoi westwards, as the Doris geomorphological team has it as recently as 1989 (Klio 71.211-215), every surviving veteran of the march northwards

would know that the stories of Ephialtes and his encirclement

descending on Alpenoi, of the sick being collected at Alpenoi whence Eurytos rushed into the press of battle but Aristodemos did not, of most of the Greeks leaving before the battle by 253 Herodotos matches the spirit of Jonathan Swift, but exhibits none of the keen satire or the angry hatred of humanity in Gulliver's Travels, The Battle of the Books, or The Journey to Stella, although the elements for political and social satire were numerous.

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

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a passage eastwards, of the Phokian position on Kallidromos, and indeed of the entire topography, all were the fabrication of Herodotos. If Herodotos fabricated stories about Elis, Athens, Thebes, Korinth, Sparta and Samos, as Fehling and West postulate, that could be checked by his contemporary audience; any claims for authenticity by a literary device of referring to sources would be gratuitous and the object of ridicule. An author does not change genres from page to page, writing fiction

about one event and alleged history about another. D. Asheri, in the section on Thrake in Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (1990) 133—134, writes about Herodotos' audience from a differ-

ent viewpoint: "Herodotus could collect a great deal of information on Thrace even without leaving Athens, where a thriving Thracian community, with all its cults and traditional customs, was already established in his time ... Athenian ex-

servicemen and Greek-speaking resident Thracians could even attend Herodotus' famous lectures. He must have been rather circumspect concerning things known to many." The Greeks were deeply attached to their past; but it was the distant past, the age of heroes, which attracted them and which

they learned about from Homer and the tragic poets. For the rest, popular traditions served well enough—stories about Solon and the tyrants and other figures. These stories were not very accurate, but these half-truths gave the Greeks a feeling of continuity, and were the sources of religious and moral teaching. Neither of these purposes required precise chronology, accurate detail, or complete documentation. In his chapter 16, Grote observed: In common with the body of the Greeks, both Herodotos and Thucydides had imbibed that complete and unsuspecting belief in the general reality of mythical antiquity, which was interwoven with the religion and the patriotism, and all the public demonstrations of the Hellenic world. ... And we thus observe in them the constant struggle, as well as the resulting com-

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promise, between these two opposite tendencies; on one hand a firm belief in the reality of the mythical world, on the other hand an inability to accept the details which their only witnesses, the poets and logographers, told them respecting it.

The Archaic Age is usually made to end with the Persian Wars, and for the purpose of political history this is an obvious dividing line. But for the history of thought, the true cleavage falls later, at least in philosophical circles, with the rise of the Sophistic Movement. And even here the line of demarcation is ragged. For the Archaic Age, we turn to Pindar and to a greater extent to Herodotos. The logographers are a valuable source, but we are largely dependent on lexicographical entries.

Helen Bacon, Barbarians in Greek Tragedy (New Haven 1961), devotes a volume to a collection of passages in the tragedians referring to non-Greek peoples, which testify to the wide extent of geographical lore and folklore material circulating in Athens. She tells us that Aischylos in the PV “writes like a man with a map in front of him” (p. 46),284 making the interesting observation (p. 63): "It is difficult to maintain the Greekbarbarian antithesis when there is no ‘barbarian’ as such, but

instead many different and fascinating varieties of human beings." Not until Euripides does βάρβαρος become thematic and

symbolic (p. 169): As a therne, ... foreignness, the idea of what it means to be foreign, scarcely occurs in Aeschylus and is rare in Sophocles. The presence of foreign material in the plays of Aeschylus is not a sign of archaism or orientalizing. In Sophocles it is not a sign of imitating the older poet. Their intention seems to have been realistic. That is, they tried to make their foreign characters and scenes like real foreign characters and scenes, and did not intro-

duce them gratuitously for dramatic or decorative effect.

284 Cf. J.L. Myers, “The Wanderings of Io,” CR 60 (1946) 2-4.

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

333

Aischylos uses available knowledge realistically; there is no vagueness in the representation of foreigners, but the concrete individual detail. These details do not contradict those in Herodotos. Not until Euripides are specific details of nationality ignored, and a general concept of foreignness (barbarians) developed. Euripides used the term βάρβαρος much more frequently, and what interests him is the concept of foreigners in general, and the mood of romance it can be used to invoke. The sincerity of Pindar's mythical faith is illustrated when he notices a guilty incident with repugnance, but with an unwilling confession of its truth, as in the case of fratricide committed on Prokos by his half-brothers Peleus and Telamon (Nem. 5.12-16).285 The heroes of Troy and Thebes, the seamen of Jason and the ship Argo, the centaur Cheiron, the hundred-headed Typhos, the giant Alkyoneus, the Amazons and Bellerophon, all appear painted on the same canvas, and touched with the same colors as men of the immediate past. The heroic ancestors of the great families of Aigina, Thessaly, Thebes, Argos, etc., whose present members the poet celebrates for their agonistic victories, second the efforts of their descendants. The power and skill of the Argive Theairos and his relatives as wrestlers are ascribed to the fact that their ancestors had entertained Kastor and Pollux (Nem. 10.37-51). Myths and legends were not of the

nature of fiction, but a living reality, believed to have once happened.2®6

C.M.

Bowra,

Pindar

(Oxford

1964) 287-288,

writes of Pindar's audience: 285 He recounts such discreditable myths as the destruction by Apollo on the innocent neighbors of Koronis (Pyth. 3.36f£) and Hera's attempt to do away with the baby Herakles (Nem. 1.34f£). 236In his chapter on "The Legend in Greek Tragedy,” The Classical World, ed. D. Daiches, 1 (London 1972), Richmond Lattimore (p. 176) writes, "The

tradition was regarded as historical. For the Greeks, the sieges of Thebes and the Trojan war were not fictions, and Achilles, Odysseus, Heracles, and Oedipus were not fictitious characters. Fiction is recognized and identified early. Thus the Muses of Hesiod say (Theogony 27-8):

334

THE LIAR SCHOOL OF HERODOTOS Pindar relates a myth very much in his own way, partly because in most cases the main outline would be known to the audience, partly because it illustrates his main theme, partly because in the limited time at his disposal he cannot pursue the expansive methods of the epic. It is because his audience knows to sorne extent what he is telling that he may seem to us unduly allusive when he gives no name to the Libyan girl who is married to the ancestor of Telesicrates but refers to her simply as Λιβύσσας

ἀμφὶ

γυναικός (P. 9.105), or assumes that everyone

will know that the son of Clymenus is Erginus (O. 4.23), or fails to explain what it was that happened when Acastus plotted the death of Peleus τᾷ

Δαιδάλου

μαχαίρᾳ (N. 4.59), or what is the

actual connexion between the golden rain on Rhodes and the birth of Athene (O. 7.34 f£), or who is the fearful enemy whom

Heracles is destined to destroy (N. 1.64-66), if indeed it is any specific person and not a vague class which includes Busiris, Antaeus, and Nessus. ... Pindar takes advantage of his audience's acquaintance with myths to concentrate his effects and not to waste time on superfluous explanations.

In Olympian 7, although the arrival of Tlepolemos (27) may derive ultimately from Homer (Il. 2.653), the establishment of

rites to Athena on Mount Atabyrion (39) may well have been told by Rhodians to Pindar, while for the emergence of Rhodes from the sea he gives as his authority φαντὶ δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων taλαιαὶ potes (54-55), and both φαντὶ and ῥήσιες suggest or-

We know how to tell many lies that resemble the truth; and we also know how to tell the truth, when we wish to do so.

Fiction is thus recognized as a form of art, but identified with falsehood. See also Homer, Odyssey XIX, 203; Pindar, Nem. VII, 20-4; Olympian OdesI, 30—4." Add

Pindar O. 13.52, N. 1.18, frg. 205. Eratosthenes gave a key place in

his chronology to the Fall of Troy; see Jacoby, FGrHist II.D pp. 708-709. One

may be reminded that our remote forefathers fought a stubborn battle to preserve the historicity of Noah-and his ark.

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

335

al tradition and remind us of Herodotos.2*7 Indeed, Pindar suggests that the childhood of Achilleus is a matter of oral tradition, λεγόμενον δὲ τοῦτο προτέρων ἔπος ἔχω. Though the first myth in Pythian 9, about Apollo and Kyrene, may have roots in Hesiod, the second, about the Libyan bride, looks like a purely local legend. He makes a distinction between λόγιοι and ἀοιδοί (P. 1.94), and says that the doings of the past are brought to us by ἀοιδαὶ καὶ λόγοι (Nem. 6.30).288 Pindar's handling of the Hyperboreans (P. 10.31-44) is in a

spirit quite unlike that of Alkaios in the latter’s hymn to Apollo (frg. 307); various

legends

of the Hyperboreans

were

cur-

rent.289 Many Greeks believed in a range of mountains called the Rhipaian,29° which shut off the Hyperboreans in the north from the rest of the world, but Herodotos (4.32-35) ignores this theory. There was general agreement that the Hyperboreans were a peaceful, law-abiding race of vegetarians. G.F. Hudson, Europe and China (London 1931) 49, argues that Aristeas applied the name to the Chinese, cut-off by windswept mountains. Schróder, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 17 (1904) 69, suggests that the legend was based on a Thrakian belief in a mountain home of the dead, which was taken over by the Greeks. Pindar (Ol. 3.16) establishes his Hyperboreans on the

Danube.

The oldest reference is in the Homeric

Hymn

to

Dionysos (7.27). To the classical Greeks, Hyperborean meant “beyond the north wind," and A.B. Cook (Zeus 2.494-495),

with copious notes, argues that it means "above Bora," the highest mountain between the Haliakmon and Axios. Cf. Gárt-

257p. Von der Mühll, Ausgewählte kleine Schriften (Basel 1976) 205—212, however, argues that Pindar found the myths of Ol. 7 in unknown 'Pó8ov Kriois.

288For Pindar's adaptation (frg. 91) of an early Egyptian myth about Horus-Seth, see J.G. Griffiths, Hermes 88 (1960) 374-376. 289G. Méautis, RPh ser. 3, 30 (1956) 224-230, compares Pindar's treatment

of the legend of the Hyperboreans with that of Homer and Aischylos. 299See Lasserre, Der kleine Pauly 4 (1972) 1417-1419.

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ner, Der kleine Pauly 2 (1967) 1274. J. Romm, TAPA 119 (1989) 97-114, has given a full-scale treatment of the legend.

There was no canonical body of myths and legends handed down intact from the early archaic period until they fell partially victim to higher criticism, at least in philosophical circles, if not to the common man, in the time of the sophists; there was no sacrosanct tradition. Rather there were diverse versions of the same myths and legends. Herodotos did not invent the legends, instead he accepted parts which had currency in the various places he visited and embellished them in a simple style which has charmed his audience. Moreover, most of what are often called myths were folk-tales.29! Here it is necessary to realize that we are dealing with a culture, i.e. an audience, which believed that crops would not come up unless a certain ritual was performed and regarded the wind as a semi-mythical person who blows when he wishes. Lakedaimonian armies returned home when sacrifices at a river-crossing were unfavorable. Armies marched scores of miles only to retrace their steps because the liver of an animal lacked a lobe. On the occurrence of an eclipse, the mass of an Athenian army called upon its generals to cease their flight. The twentieth-century rationalist attempts to explain the reaction to such phenomena as the machinations of generals, although they are attested in all historians. One needs to be steeped in Greek religion before he characterizes Herodotos as a writer of fiction. Contrast Fehling's treatment of the story of Arion and the dolphin with Diez' study of the dolphin in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 3.667—682.

For the student of Greek historiography, the Periegesis of Pausanias offers many close parallels to the work of Herodotos. Although Pausanias was writing centuries later, his audience still believed in the same gods and myths. Pausanias was not a ?9!As an example of how rapidly an episode of recent history may be distorted into a picturesque legend, see A.R. Burn, The Lyric Age of Greece (London 1960) 322, on the slaying of Hipparchos at Athens.

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historian or ethnographer; but he wrote from personal observation, supplemented by wide reading. His guide-book is filled with religious and mythological digressions.??? In historical matters, Pausanias is greatly inferior to Herodotos, whom he names fourteen times; but his method of investigation is similar to that of Herodotos and might be regarded as typical for any Greek writer of antiquarian interests who traveled widely and relied on oral sources. Pausanias mentions only incidentally his travels outside of Greece; so we have no basis for a comparison with Herodotos' logoi. He visited Egypt (9.36.5; 1.42.5), traveling to the oasis of

Ammon, for he tells us that in his time the hymn which Pindar sent to Ammon was still to be seen there carved on a slab beside the altar: 9.16.1. The opening verse is preserved and demonstrates Pindar's identification of Ammon with Zeus. In Rome, he observed a tusk which the custodian assured him had belonged to the Kalydonian boar: 8.46.5. He saw an elephant's skull in the temple of Artemis near Capua: 5.12.3.293

The mark citing Greek sions"

thesis of Fehling's book is that the citation of sources is a of fictionalization. Reminiscent of Herodotos' method of multiple source-citations, Pausanias observed," The legends generally have for the most part different ver(9.16.7). "The legends of the Greeks generally have dift-

erent forms, and this is particularly true of genealogy" (8.53.5).

"The old legends, being unencumbered by genealogies, left free scope for fiction, especially in the pedigrees of heroes" (1.38.7). Pausanias, like Herodotos, records conflicting stories and ex292 Pausanias was chary of details about civic buildings, but was lavish in describing temples and sanctuaries with their images and relics of a mythical and legendary past. It seems apparent that, like Herodotos, he drew much of his information from places of cult. 293Drawing on the works of F. Pfister, "Der Reliquienkult im Altertum" ( Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 5 (1909]) and L. Friedländer, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms (Leipzig 1922), Lionel Casson,

Travels in the Ancient World (London

1974) 240-252,

lengthy catalogues of items exhibited in Greek temples.

presents

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plains his preference. The Euboians and the Messenians told him different stories about Homeric Oichalia; he explains that he preferred the Messenian version because the bones of its first king Eurytos were preserved in the Karnesian grove: 4.2.3. He

relates two stories told of the way in which the people of Tanagra had acquired the Triton which was the glory of the town. One story ran that the creature had been slain by Dionysos himself in single combat; according to the other, a mortal had found the Triton lying drunk on the beach and had chopped off the head with an axe. The latter version is described by Pausanias as "less dignified but more probable": 9.20.4. The

Spartan tradition as to the image of Brauronian Artemis is preferred by Pausanias to the Athenian, and that for a variety of reasons which he sets forth in detail: 3.16.7-10.

As to the citation of single sources, Pausanias rejects the tradition of the Megarians that Timalkos went to Aphidna with the Dioskouroi: 1.41.4; what the people of Las in Lakonia told

him about their founder and about Achilleus being a suitor of Helen: 3.24.10; what the people of Phleious claimed about the mysteries at Keleai near their city: 2.14.2; what the Argives claimed in asserting that the real tomb of Deianeira, daughter of Oineus, is in Argos: 2.23.5; what the people of Pheneus claimed about an image of Poseidon (8.14.7) and the people of Amphissa about an image of Athena (10.38.5). "That Korinthos was a son of Zeus has never yet, so far as I know, been asserted by anyone except by a majority of the Korinthians themselves": 2.1.1. We quoted above (p. 285-286) the two statements of Herodotos about his principles in recording stories, which have sometimes led to the charge of gullibility (7.152.3): "And as for

me, I am bound to tell what is told, but to believe it I am by no means bound; and let this saying extend to every part of my history”, and (2.123.1) “Now he that findeth such things cred-

ible may believe that which is told by the Egyptians. But as for me, it is my principle throughout all this history to write that

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which each nation telleth, as I heard it." Reminiscent of these principles, Pausanias strikes the same note (6.3.8), "I am bound to record the Greek traditions, but I am not bound to believe them all." Cf. 2.17.4: "This and similar stories of the gods I record, though I do not accept them"; 3.19.5: "The story of the

Zephyr wind, and how Hyacinth was unwittingly slain by Apollo, and the legend about the flower, may not be literally true, but let them pass." In response to the treatment by S. West of Herodotos' account of the inscribed tripods with Kadmean letters in the temple at Thebes, we assembled above a considerable body of evidence on objects which devout priests had passed off as historical dedications. We collect similar examples reported by Pausanias. In one of the temples at Sparta, Pausanias saw an egg suspended from the roof and tied to ribbons, which he as told was the famous egg which Leda brought forth and out of which Kastor and Pollux had been hatched: 3.16.2. Frazer notes that a great egg appears in various primitive cosmologies. In the temple of Athena Polias on the akropolis of Athens was a wooden Hermes dedicated by Kekrops and a folding chair made by Daidalos: 1.27.1.294 In the temple of Athena Poliatis at Tegea was a lock of Medusa's hair which Athena had given to the Argonaut Kepheus and which had been dedicated as a talisman, on the preservation of which the safety of the city was supposed to depend: 8.47.5. "In the temple of Apollo at Patara 294Pausanias reported what he saw, but at times expressed his skepticism. In 1.27.1, we read

(Loeb):

"In the temple

of Athena

Polias

is

a wooden

Hermes, said to have been dedicated by Cecrops, but not visible because of myrtle boughs. The votive offerings worth noting are, of the old ones, a folding chair made by Daedalus, Persian spoils, namely the breastplate of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Now Masistius I know was killed by the

Athenian cavalry. But Mardonius was opposed by the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan; so the Athenians could not have taken the scimitar to begin with, and furthermore the Lacedaemonians would scarcely have suffered them to carry it off."

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the Lycians show a bronze bowl, which they allege to be a votive offering of Telephus and a work of Hephaestus": 9.41.1. The so-

called necklace of Eriphyle, the wife of Amphiaraus, had been dedicated at Delphi, but carried off by the Phokian tyrants: 8.41.2. Since Aelian (NA 13.21) quotes Demostratos (or Damos-

tratos, RE no. 5) as saying that he had seen at Tanagra a pickled Triton (τάριχον Τρίτωνα), a sea-monster of human shape from head to waist, Pausanias' report (9.20.4) of a headless

Triton in the temple at Tanagra is taken to be a real sea-beast of some sort. "The fact that the creature was headless seems to show that it was a real marine animal which the priests palmed off upon the credulous as a Triton" (Frazer). The people of Tanagra were doubtless proud of their Triton, which probably drew sightseers from afar; so they put him on their coins as a badge of their city. In the temple of Athena at Pheneus in Arkadia Pausanias was shown a bronze statue of Poseidon which the natives said was dedicated by Odysseus: 8.14.5. The pedestal of the statue had an inscription, which purported to be an order by Odysseus to the herdsmen who herded the mares, a reminder of Herodotos' story about the Kadmean letters at Thebes.295 In 8.44.4, we are told that Odysseus 2950f analogous character is the so-called Decree of Themistokles (Meiggs-Lewis, GHI no. 23). It is overlooked that the stone, often designated as a stele, is not one that stood in an agora or akropolis, but a plaque, of relatively small dimensions (only 0.34 m. in width), to be displayed in some public building. Today, it is suspended on the wall of one of the rooms of the Epigraphical Museum in Athens. A.R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks? (Stanford 1984) 364, writes, "The monument was seen and described by Pausanias in the Antonine age (Paus. ii,31,7; above, p. 339)." Pausanias

relates that ev στοᾷ τῆς ἀγορᾶς at Troizen were stone εἰκόνες, not many, of the women who were evacuated from Athens before the Persian attack by land. Our plaque must have been displayed with the women in the same stoa and presents a third-century reconstruction, or fabrication, by Troizenians,

whose

legends and

mythology were

particularly bound

to

Athens; see Cristophani, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Ancient Sites 936. Two of the most important demes of Attika derived their names from the two sons of Troizen. The plaque, or small stele, was part of the statuary

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founded a sanctuary of Athena and Poseidon near Asea, but no dedications are mentioned. At Argos, Pausanias disavowed the Argive claim that they had the image of Athena which was carried away from Troy, and the loss of which caused that city to be taken: 2.23.5. At Amphissa in the temple of Athena, Pausanias was shown an image of the goddess which they said was brought by Thoas from Ilion and was part of the Trojan spoils: 10.38.5. The most revered of all the relics described by Pausanias

(9.40.11)

seems

to have been

the scepter which

Hephaistos was said to have made and Agamemnon to have wielded. It was kept and worshipped at Chaironeia. A priest who held office for a year guarded the precious relic in his house and offered sacrifices to it daily, while a table covered with flesh and cakes stood constantly beside it. In the temple of Athena at Tegea, Pausanias was shown the moldering hide of the Kalydonian boar (8.47.2), and in the sanctuary of Zeus at

Olympia was an old wooden pillar, held together by bands and protected from the weather by a shed, which had stood in the house of Oinomaos

(5.20.6). In the temple of Artemis at Aulis

were the remains of the plane tree under which the, Greeks had sacrificed before sailing for Troy, and near by the guides pointed out the bronze threshold of Agamemnon's hut (9.19.6—7). Pausanias (10.4.4) offers a quotation

that "people

who have not happened in the course of their own lives to see extraordinary sights are incredulous about marvels." Pausanias does not mention Herodotos' tripods with Kadmean letters at Thebes, but he does inform us that there was an group. An able discussion of this quasi-historical text is that by Burn, pp. 364-377. With respect to authenticity,

a major distinction must be made

between free-standing documents set up in agoras and akropolises and the often fabricated monuments in temples and stoas. The Troizenians were steeped in legends and myths. They claimed their temple of Artemis Soteira was built by Theseus, that of Artemis Lykeia by Hippolytos. Before the latter was the very stone upon which Orestes was purified from the stain of matricide. A temple of the Muses was made by the son of Hippolytos. There were several dedications of Pittheus. Pausanias' list goes on.

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ἄγαλμα of Athena which was said to have been dedicated by Kadmos

(9.12.2). The priests maintained the Kadmean

tion, although

tradi-

in the interim Thebes had been thrice de-

stroyed. Elsewhere he explains (8.46) that votive offerings of

the vanquished were regularly carried off by the victor, specifying that the tusks of the Kalydonian boar had been taken from Tegea to Rome, where they were on display, although minus one of the tusks. Left behind was the hide of the boar, “rotted by age and by now altogether without bristles.” Of the offerings sent by the Lydian kings, Pausanias found nothing remaining except the iron stand of the bowl of Alyattes (10.16.1). The silver bowl (Herodotos 1.25) had been melted down. Whereas the

fetters brought by the Lakedaimonians to bind the Tegeans, but in fact used on the Lakedaimonians, were said by Herodotos (1.66) to have been hung around (περί) the archaic temple, Pausanias saw them within the temple of his day, partly destroyed by rust (8.47.2). In 2.19.5, he tells us that the original ναός and ξόανον at Argos were dedicated by Danaos. In his travels, he was shown several works reputed to have been made by Hephaistos—a chest in Patrai and a bronze bowl at Patara,— but he states (9.41.1), "Of all the objects which poets have de-

clared and obsequious public opinion has believed to be the works of Hephaestus, none is genuine save the scepter of Agamemnon" (Frazer). The Pausanias text is sprinkled with works made by Daidalos (9.40.2; 1.27.1; etc.). Pausanias' concept

of the historicity of the past is revealed in his statement about the legendary expedition of the Seven Against Thebes (9.9.1): "This war between Argos and Thebes was, in my opinion, the most memorable of all those waged by Greeks against Greeks in what is called the heroic age." In 1.28.7, he rejects the Sophoklean version of the death of Oidipous because it conflicts with the Homeric. We noted above (p. 84) that Pausanias, whose interests were

mainly antiquarian and religious, duplicated Herodotos in his method of citing sources from different places about a myth or

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343

legend. We suggest, too, that in content Pausanias' Periegesis affords comparison for the beliefs of his audience, who related to him myths, legends, and folk-tales. In 1.39.5, Pausanias says

(tr. Frazer), "Such are, in my opinion, the most famous of the

Athenian traditions and sights: from the mass of materials I have aimed from the outset at selecting the really notable." At Sparta, he states (3.11.1), "From the outset I aimed at sifting the most valuable traditions from out of the mass of insignificant stories which are current among every people." He speaks of the unquestioning faith of the multitude in the stories they had heard from childhood: “Falsehood in general passes current among the multitude because they are ignorant of history and believe all that they have heard from childhood in choirs and tragedies":

1.3.3. As Pausanias went from

Megalopolis

to

Messene in a region rich in legends about Orestes, he was told a series of stories at the various sanctuaries he passed (8.34); how

the crazed Orestes, dogged by the Furies of his murdered mother, bit off one of his fingers, and how on his doing so, the aspect of the Furies at once changed from black to white, as if in token they accepted the sacrifice as an atonement. Pausanias gives three accounts of the birth and early childhood of Asklepios, explaining that he favors the one that has the god born at Epidauros: 2.26.4-8. One of the myths has the babe Asklepios exposed and then nurtured by a goat and guarded by the watch-dog of the herd (2.26.4). Frazer's note on the passage

gives many parallels about legends of persons suckled by animals. We noted above (pp. 2-4) that our rationalists of the liar School used a similar case as the prime example of Herodotos' "gullibility." "The Korinthians tell the following story ... The story is not peculiar to them, for the Athenians were the first to relate a similar tale": 2.1.6. "The Phleiasians say ... but the Thebans do not agree": 2.5.2. "I know that the accounts of the Phleiasians are mostly discrepant, but I will follow the one which is most generally accepted": 2.12.3. "Wishing to know

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particularly who the Satyrs are, I talked with many persons”: 1.23.5. One feature we find in Pausanias that closely parallels that in Herodotos, the solidarity of a tradition in the local community. The traditions of one city had no value outside its own borders, and indeed often encountered contrary traditions in a neighboring community. The traditions were not stereotyped into a common “Greek” mold. In the area of myths, legends, and folk-lore, each community had separate and different social memories enshrined in oral traditions and nurtured in places of cult. One may speak of a unity in Greek historiography, but there were wide divergencies in Greek cults. Moreover, the oral traditions that we find in Herodotos and Pausanias were credible to the common man. The intellectual cravings of the people among whom these various narratives circulated were satisfied by such traditions. Pausanias frequently notes, though like Herodotos he does not always believe, the local superstitions he met with, such as the belief that at the sacrifice to Zeus on Mount Lykaion a man was always turned into a wolf, but could regain his human shape if he abstained from preying on human flesh for nine years: 8.2.6. He believes the legend that Lykaion was turned into a wolf, but rejects the story of subsequent sacrifices. He disbelieves that within the precinct of the god on the same mountain

neither men

nor animals cast shadows: 8.38.6. He

rejects the story that whoever caught a fish in a sacred lake near Gytheion would be turned into a fish: 3.31.5.

Students of Greek religion do not dispute today that Pausanias saw the images or heard the legends that he reports. As Frazer (1 p. Ixviii) wrote, "These are the confessions of an honest man, inclined perhaps to credulity, but yet who will not deceive others by professing to have seen sights, whether marvellous or otherwise, which he had not seen." The mistake made by critics of Herodotos is the failure to place Herodotos in his milieu and hence to reject as false all declarations of his

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honesty in reporting his sources, which results in the antithesis of rational criticism.296 Herodotos gives us the names of only three of his informants, Archias the Spartan (3.55.2), Tymnes at Olbia (4.76.6), and Thersander of Orchomenos (9.16.1), and he seems to have

spoken to the three priestesses at Dodona (2.55.3). It is an easy guess that he got much of his information from the custodians of various cults in the places he visited.297 He must have developed some technique of interrogation, and legends centered around cults. The modern topographer in Greece is constantly confronted with the problem from whom will he seek information. Churches were frequently used by Leake and others as 296To take one example as a parallel, a reader of Ben Jonson's Volpone and The Alchemist cannot appreciate the cruel comic spirit and the author's

intellectual contempt for gulled human nature without understanding the earlier superstitions of Tudor times in England, chief among which were the beliefs that alchemists would find a way to turn base metals into gold and that an elixir could be found to give perpetual youth. Belief in prophecies and demons was prevalent; but the worst superstition of all, because the most cruel in its effects, was the belief in witches and witchcraft, shared by the learned as well as common people, for the doctrine of witches was thought to have Biblical authority. The persecutions and burnings of witches is known to all.—Again, Arthur fought in many battles as a chieftain of the Britons against the Saxon invaders, being killed in the battle of Camlan, assigned to the year 537. Apparently, the mystery of Arthur's grave gave rise to the Arthurian legend, which appears in later Welsh poems, that Arthur did not really fall, but lived on and will again return. Cf. Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867). Each author must be placed in the cultural environment of his times, and for Herodotos, we refer the reader to the quotation from Moses Finley given above (pp. 80-82). 297In 2.44, Herodotos makes it clear that he visited places of cult for

information. He went to Tyre, where there were two cults of Herakles, to get information. He continues by praising those Greek cities which have two cults of Herakles, one the immortal Herakles, the other the Olympian or heroic Herakles. Pausanias (2.10.1) reports that the Sikyonians worshipped Herakles both as a god and as a hero. Diodoros (4.39) says that the Thebans

honored Herakles as a hero, but the Athenians were the first to worship him as a god. There were different foundation myths about the same mythical figure, and Herodotos, as well as Pausanias, sought information at places of cult.

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landmarks. To follow in their footsteps, one soon learns that elderly women know the location of all old churches in the countryside. For wheel-ruts and traces of ancient roads, one turns to shepherds and goatherds who might seem to have tended their flocks on the mountainside for years, although this category is rapidly disappearing. Half the battle is won if one can find the right native. Later Greek authors relied on the discourse of local guides on matters of tradition and history. In antiquity as in present times, towns and sanctuaries of any note were infested by persons of this class who lay in wait and pounced on the stranger as their natural prey, pointing out the chief sites to him and pouring into his ears a stream of anecdotes and explanations until they pocketed their fee and took their leave.298 Strabo comments on his visit to Egypt (17.1.29.806, Loeb): In Heliupolis I also saw large houses in which the priests lived; for it is said that this place in particular was in ancient times a settlement of priests who studied philosophy and astronomy; but both this organisation and its pursuits have now disappeared. At Heliupolis, in fact, no one was pointed out to me as presiding over such pursuits, but only those who performed the sacrifices and explained to strangers what pertained to the sacred rites. When Aelius Gallus the praefect sailed up into Aegypt, he was accompanied by a certain man from Alexandria, Chaeremon by name, who pretended to some knowledge of this kind, but was generally ridiculed as a boaster and ignoramus.

298 A striking illustration of remarkable tales told by guides is found in the records of travelers to Jerusalem in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The city, sacred to three religions and the center for countless pilgrimages, swarmed with guides who had something to show to convince the visitor of the absolute truth of nearly every verse of sacred writings: H.H. Hart, Marco Polo (Oklahoma 1967) 75-78. The modern rationalist who ac-

cuses Herodotos of gullibility would do well to browse in this literature.

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

347

Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (London 1974) 259,

points out that in Roman times at Heliopolis, the priests "took pains to point out where Plato and Eudoxus, a well-known Greek astronomer, lived during their apocryphal thirteen-year stay with the priests to learn from them the secrets of the heavenly bodies." Plutarch's essay De Pythiae oraculis (Mor. 394ff.,

Loeb) recounts a dialogue of several visitors to Delphi: The guides were going through their prearranged programme, paying no heed to us who begged that they would cut short their harangues and their expounding of most of the inscriptions ... Following this a silence ensued, and again the guides began to deliver their harangues ... By this time we had proceeded until we were opposite the statue of Hiero the despot. The foreign visitor, by reason of his genial nature, made himself listen to the various tales, although he knew them all perfectly well; but when he was told that a bronze pillar of Hiero's standing above had fallen of itself during that day on which it happened that Hiero as coming to his end at Syracuse, he expressed his astonishment. Lucian, in the Amores, tells of a visitor to Rhodes: As I walked round the porticos in the temple of Dionysus, I examined each painting, not only delighting my eyes but also renewing my acquaintance with the tales of the heroes. For immediately two or three fellows rushed up to me, offering for a small fee to explain every story for me, though most of what they said I had already guessed for myself. ... In fact, if these fabulous tales should be taken away from Greece, there would be nothing to prevent the guides there from starving to death, as the foreigners would not care to hear the truth, even gratis! On the other hand, those who have no such motive and yet delight in lying may properly be thought utterly ridiculous.

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Pausanias picked up many traditions from the guides as he was led about to see the sights, argued with them about some, and posed questions which they could not answer among others. We extract a few (tr. Frazer): 1.35.8, “But when I gainsaid them

and showed that Geryon is at Cadiz, where, though he has no tomb, there is a tree that takes diverse forms, the Lydian guides let out the truth, to wit, that the skeleton was that of Hyllus”; 1.31.5, “On inquiry, I found that the guides knew nothing definite about these goddesses. My own conjecture on the subject is this ...”; 1.41.4, “Such is the tale they tell, But though I wish to conform to the Megarian tradition, I am unable to do so on all points”; 2.9.7, “This trunk lay in the sanctuary of the Wolfish God, but even the Sicyonian guides did not know what kind of tree it was”; 5.10.7, “The name of Pelops’ charioteer, ac-

cording to the Troezenians, is Sphaerus; but the guide at Olympia said it was Cillas”; 5.18.6, “Two explanations are given by the guides. ... The following conjecture suggested itself to me”; 9.3.3., “So the Plataeans hold the festival of the Daedala,

the local guide said, every sixth year, but really the celebrations take place at shorter intervals”; 5.21.9, “The Elean guides say

that it was in the hundred and seventh-eighth Olympiad that Eudelus accepted a bribe from Philostratus, and that this Philostratus was a Rhodian. I found that the Elean register of the Olympic victors was at variance with this statement”; 2.23.6, “The Argive guides themselves are aware that not all the stories they tell are true; yet they stick to them, for it is not easy to persuade the vulgar to change their opinions.” Polybios repeatedly makes a distinction between deliberate and involuntary falsehood on the part of an historian, notably in 12.7.6, but also, as Walbank noted, in 16.14.7-8, 20.8-9; 29.12.12. In 16.14.7-8, he writes (Loeb): "Surely the mistakes of

which we writers are guilty and which it is difficult for us, being but human, to avoid are quite sufficient; but if we make deliberate misstatements in the interest of our country or of friends or for favour, what difference is there between us and those

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who gain their living by their pens?” In the sense used by Frazer and Linforth, although the distinction has been lost, Herodotos was not interested in myths, but in legends, sagas, and folk-tales, and the stories he records are used by anthropologists for reconstructing the primitive history of mankind. Until the planet was mapped in the sixteenth century and stories could be checked, we have reason to believe from extant writings that the common man believed many folk-tales of marvelous creatures in unexplored regions similar to those recorded by Herodotos.299 Although Herodotos valued what he saw more than what he heard,3°° in the strict sense of "history" he was often dependent upon traditions, what in the world today is loosely denoted by the word propaganda. For example, for Athens he is often judged to have followed the traditions of the Alkmaionidai house against that of its great rival the Philaidai. In the U.S.A. today, the various arms of the media are divided between the "right" and the "left," and any visitor will soon recognize the differences in interpretations placed upon the same event or political speech. In traveling abroad, Herodotos was often dependent upon a single class of informants. For the two countries, Egypt and Babylon, where his "history" is judged to be the weakest, we have epigraphical evidence of early nationalistic propaganda, which serve as a reminder that he was limited to what he was told. The propaganda of Amenhotep III in 1350 B.c. exceeds in its claims anything that Herodotos was told about Sesostris. He was not in a position to judge between opposing authorities, but was himself conscious that his criteria of truth were deficient, laying down his principles in 2.123.1, 7.152.3, and other passages noted above, pp. 55-56. He disclaims responsibility for what he writes in 2.130, 146; 4.96.

239]n 3.116, Herodotos says, αἱ δ᾽ ἐσχατιαί κως τῆς οἰκουμένης rà κάλ“ λιστα ἔλαχον. 300 Cf. 2147.1; 3.115.

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OF

HERODOTOS

One of the better clues to the nature of a Greek audience is found in Plato’s Hippias Maior. To condense the account, Hippias says it is his habit in visiting several states including Sparta to praise men of olden time. Your phrases are as fine as your thoughts, rejoins Sokrates, and we must admit the progress of sophistry when we reflect on the great sums that Gorgias, Prodikos, and Protagoras have made by displaying their wisdom to the common man. Hippias replies that if you only knew how much money I have made, you would wonder still more. Sokrates inquires what sort of discourses are those for which they applaud you; are they about the heavenly phenomena, or geometry, or letters and harmonies? Hippias an-

swers all in the negative, and then explains (Loeb tr. 2850): “They are very fond of hearing about the genealogies of heroes and men, Socrates, and the foundations of cities in ancient times and, in short, about antiquity in general, so that for their sake I have been obliged to learn all that sort of thing by heart and practise it thoroughly." The word translated as antiquity is ἀρχαιολογία. Hippias then invites Sokrates to hear a lecture which he puts in the mouth of Nestor, advising Neoptolemos about his post-war career after the fall of Troy. Plato's statement attributed to Hippias illustrates the great interest of the Greeks in the foundation of each state or nation.3?! Hekataios apparently devoted much of his Genealogies to the subject. The entries for various cities in Stephanos frequently give their location followed by information about their foundation, as attested in early writers. Herodotos represents the oldest surviving example of the collection of 3°1Hellanikos had written a work called κτίσεις ἐθνῶν καὶ πόλεων, Hippias (FGrHist no. 6) ἐθνῶν ὀνομασίαι as well as a list of Olympic victors, and Damastes of Sigeion (FGrHist no. 5) a περὶ

γονέων

καὶ

mpoyó-

vov τῶν eis Ἴλιον στρατευσαμένων. The genealogies of heroes and the traditions on the foundations of cities and nations by the second half of the

fifth century B.c. were part of a genre which Plato calls ‘archaeology.’ E. Norden

(Agnostos

vented the term.

Theos [1913] 367) suggests that a sophist may have in-

8. HERODOTOS’ AUDIENCE

351

these traditions as a distinct historical genre, for at most places he visited he collected legends about origins. For the Skythians, he gave three versions, and modern students attempt to explain how these legends arose. For Tanagra, he records (5.57)

a Phoenician origin, and A.W. Lawrence comments, “Herodotus’ grounds for assuming a Phoenician element there are unknown.” But apparently the priests at the temple in Thebes, who displayed their tripods with Kadmean letters (5.59), are responsible for the legend. Our concern

is only to

establish a reasonable basis for veracity.3° What the modern scholar has to do is to estimate the likelihood of genuineness against a broad background of historical probability; not to argue invalidity on the basis of categories we ourselves have created. Detlev Fehling wishes to cut the Greeks of the archaic period free from a belief in folk-tales, legends, and sagas because this is the only way his arguments will work. He seems unaware of the cultural mix; foreign gods moved from Thrake and Asia Minor into Greece,3°4 and Greek gods into all parts of the Mediterranean world, taking their 3°2TJ. Dunbabin,

The Western Greeks (1950) 104-116, uses a mixture of

foundation legends and archaeology to establish the early history of western cities. 33We have a wealth of material about Egyptian folk-lore. G. Posener, Dictionary of Egyptian Civilization (New York 1959) 273, states, "Egyptian

folk-lore, like that of all other people, contains a wealth of popular stories. They were passed on by word of mouth and are lost to us except for those which were quoted in extant literary work—and we have only those which have survived. Chance and the choice of the scribes have played their part, and we must admit that we know only a small number of these tales, and even they are a selection adapted to the taste of an already sophisticated public." In Greece, sagas, legends, and myths resulted in the foundation of cults. Such material was a reality to the people themselves. Each cult had a tradition based on what we might term folk-lore. Herodotos represents the oldest surviving example of the collection of these traditions as a distinct literary genre. It is exemplary that F. Pfister in Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Giessen 1909) classified sagas in the context of the evidence for cults.

304 For example, J.G. Griffiths (Hermes 88 [1960] 374-376) maintains that

the Greeks took over the Egyptian Horus-Seth myth.

352

THE LIAR SCHOOL OP HERODOTOS

cults and myths with them. He interprets Herodotos’ sourcecitations as free creations of the historian, enunciating the principle that no such stories “can survive through generations in a local tradition ... Stories exist primarily in the heads of individuals, not in the collective consciousness of social groups ... The story can have only one place of origin" etc.3° He and Stephanie West in a rationalist frenzy treat Herodotos with the same kind of patronizing and dismissive contempt that Victorian missionaries reserved for Haitian voodoo. Professor H.J. Rose once wrote, “it is a property of your rationalist that he is unable to understand any type of mind other than his own, 3° an apothegm which comes to my mind while studying their version of history. To stigmatize Herodotos as a liar and his "apologists" as credulous is to throw away at the outset the key to the interpretation of what he writes, to falsify history through our own anachronisms, and to treat as negligible what may be the most valuable thing in the narrative before us—the disclosure of the age in which he lived. Herodotos was an observer of customs 35Fehling extends his theory to other authors. I focus on his statements on Pausanias. He writes (p. 157), "Pausanias is a close and also a crude imitator of Herodotos"; (p. 158) "The reversion by other authors (Pausanias

...) to fictive oral sources in the Herodotean manner has to be seen as an element of Atticist nostalgia in their work"; (pp. 1602161) "In Diodoros and

Pausanias, especially, we find source-citations, fictive inscriptions, and the like, especially in passages also drawing on him." In his index of passages, there is no reference to any in Pausanias. Fehling offers his sweeping generalizations without any documentation. Pausanias, a man made of common stuff and cast in a common mold, accepted the religion of his country, describing the religious traditions and ritual of the people and recounting popular tales, regarding Homer as an historical authority. No man in his sober senses ever did write for readers who were to be born eighteen hundred years after he was in his grave. He, like Herodotos, was duped by priestly trickery, but I know of no inscription in his work which could be called fictive in the sense used by Fehling. No one today seriously inquires

whether the temples and theaters, the monuments, statues, and paintings described by Pausanias ever existed or not. 306 Modern Methods in Classical Mythology (St. Andrews 1930) 20.

8. HERODOTOS' AUDIENCE

353

untrammeled by the desire to fit all that he had seen into a theory; a reporter of what he had seen even if he did not understand it, and of what he had heard, if it seemed for any reason worth reporting, without his necessarily believing it.

INDEX

BOOK

OF

HERODOTEAN

PASSAGES

I

55, 61, 63

43 36 292 286

62 59 136

135 16 21

235 235 235 235 236 170-173

342 135 127-128 165

134-135

177, 242 230 236, 264 236

144-146, 328

238

248

236

165

185

169, 239, 240 215 222

242 116

32 227 86 139

124, 253 96, 97, 99, 272 234 181, 234 2 242 205

153

300

38-76

5457

THE

LIAR

SCHOOL

OF

HERODOTOS

BOOK II 345 92 102

147.1

187, 349

148-150

149 151-152

244-246 246

27 27, 28 88 250 251

158-159

185

85 85, 247

159 161-169

184

153 154

164

246

176

76 181-182 149 109, 180, 249 1,12 16

189

158

75

185, 243

177 178-179 183

BOOK

252 116, 229

70 251 116 252 189 256

111

1, 106, 293 109, 181—182 185 116, 189

110, 249 70

64 66 70 68 23 55, 286, 349 246 182 165 106 244

165, 244

252

n6 182 70, 113, 116 182

263

116

187-190 247

242 52, 126, 241 90 96 12 28, 52

INDEX BOOK

OF

HERODOTEAN

PASSAGES

BOOK IV 44.1

HI

45 46 49 52 $6

357

97,99 37 195 218 1 217, 218

59.2

65 213 209, 217 212 217 211 209 208 196

193, 345 37 196 132-138, 193 1

81.2—6

197 204 1, 138

16.1

148, 201, 204

21-27

223 219 216 211

179 202 89.1-2

194, 195 280

92.1

222 280, 281, 282

197 6, 232

30.2 32-35

329 335 300

37-41

61

135 70, 101, 185

93, 230

93 94—96 97 97-98 99 99-101 102 103 103-119 106

149 199 180, 201 202 204 204 203 104 204 220 139 204-205 198, 205 195 198, 205 222

THE

LIAR

SCHOOL

OF HERODOTOS BOOK

351

198, 205

351 116, 162

38

147 152.4

59

108, 293

BOOK

VI

134 40

169-199 170 172 172.3 174 175 177

254-255 4 227, 257 227

178 178.3

259 94 so 40 88

180

256

181-185

99, 129-132

183

227, 254, 255, 258

184 185 186 188

so

190 191 1911 191-192 192

BOOK VII 20 21-24 30.2

257 227 40

37

256

59-99

40

54

227 39 258

195

94 94

196

200, 256

V

42

13.2

39

49.1

121

52-54

150-159

184

159 163

93

17

224 220 220 212 198 220

140-141

BOOK

V

223 215

241, 264

121 122 125.3 127-128

INDEX BOOK

OF

HERODOTEAN

VII

129 13 137 139 150

32, 33 291 159 8, 286

PASSAGES

BOOK VIII 22

359 159-160

35-37 38-39

300

65

105

60, 61

82.1

83

85 89.4

10 147-148 242

151 192

28ς, 349

170

183

90

242

173.4 175-176

291

94 98 113

185-186 241, 264

115

177

118

43

176 176.3 184.1 187 188 197 198-199

318—320

159, 299, 302,

304, 308, 318, 326 84

309, 315, 316 308

201

84, 299, 311, 319 304 307 301, 309, 310 307 304 304

215 216 217 223 225 226.1 228

230

87 230 291 230 312

199 200

208

83

303 160—162

300 345 296 230 297 297 297 297 296

296 147-148