Herodotus and His World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest [online ed.] 0199253749, 9780199253746

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Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Herodotus and his World (p.iii) Herodotus and his World

(p.iv) Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai  Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States

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Title Pages by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2003 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Herodotus and his world : essays from a conference in memory of George Forrest / edited by Peter Derow and Robert Parker. p. cm. 1. Herodotus. History–Congresses. 2. History, Ancient– Historiography–Congresses. 3. Historiography–Greece–Congresses. I. Derow, Peter. II. Parker, Robert. D56.52.H45 H48 2003 930–dc21 2002033696 ISBN 0–19–925374–9 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, Guildford & King’s Lynn

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Title Pages

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Dedication

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Dedication (p.ii)

George Forrest drawing by Michael Gabriel

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Dedication

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Preface

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.v) Preface This volume derives from a conference in memory of George Forrest, held over four days in July 2000. The conference took place in Wadham College, Oxford, where George Forrest was Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History from 1951 to 1977 before he moved to New College and the Wykeham Professorship of Ancient History, the post he held until his retirement in 1992. For financial support which made that conference possible we are very grateful to Wadham College, to New College, to the Faculty of Literae Humaniores in Oxford, and to the British Academy. For their assistance with the present volume we warmly thank Hilary O’Shea, Enid Barker, Tom Chandler, Lavinia Porter, Lucy Qureshi, Mary Lale, and especially Graham Shipley, a pupil of George Forrest, who was unable to participate in the conference but nobly volunteered to compile the index.1 We are also very grateful to Michael Gabriel, artist and longstanding friend of the Forrests, who drew the frontispiece. In planning a conference and a volume in memory of George Forrest, we were acting, as a Greek author might have said, ‘partly because our own spirits so moved us’, partly also because Angelos Matthaiou, in a touching letter to one of us, suggested such a tribute to a scholar much loved in many countries. We chose a subject central to George Forrest’s interests, and we were encouraged rather than deterred by the knowledge that Herodotean studies were in a particularly lively phase, with several important monographs and collections about to appear or in preparation. We aimed for a conference and a volume thoroughly diverse in topics, themes, approaches, and interests. Thanks to the participants, each of whom chose her or his own path, we were able to achieve this diversity, and for that reason we make no attempt to offer a summary of the papers by way of introduction. To those curious to know what the various contributors argue, an easy remedy is available. Lector, lege: laetaberis!

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Preface That many talented pupils of George Forrest, and many leading (p.vi) Herodoteans, could not be included in this tribute scarcely needs to be said. The absence of current members of the Oxford sub-faculties of Ancient History and Greek and Latin Languages and Literature from the list of contributors is due not to any lack of affection on their part (or ours), but to the opposite: to include papers by all the colleagues devoted to Forrest’s memory would have swamped both conference and volume, and we resolved to exclude this whole class in limine. Two participants, Kweku Garbrah and Sir John Boardman, have not published their papers here but join in paying tribute to the honorand’s memory. Simon Hornblower observes in his paper that qualities detected by John Gould in Herodotus were also characteristic of Forrest. As it happens, John Gould and George Forrest met at school and remained throughout their lives good friends with many shared interests in Greece and its history. Gould, though gravely ill, was still able to attend the conference and give the elegant paper which appears here; he died in the autumn of 2001. The peroration to Gould’s book on Herodotus (‘Gould 1989’ in the brutalist notation adopted, alas, in this volume) sums up the qualities that drew them both to this author: The most lasting of all impressions that one takes away from a reading of his narrative is exhilaration. It comes from the sense one has of Herodotus’ inexhaustible curiosity and vitality. He responds with ever-present delight and admiration to the ‘astonishing’ variety of human achievement and invention in a world which he acknowledges as tragic; he makes you laugh, not by presenting experience as comic, but by showing it as constantly surprising and stimulating; he makes you glad to have read him by showing men responding to suffering and disaster with energy and ingenuity, resilient and undefeated. The honorand of this volume and the author of that description were, like Herodotus, men of ‘inexhaustible curiosity and vitality’, and, like his Greeks, ‘resilient and undefeated’. PSD RCTP

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Dedication

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Dedication (p.vii) We sat there and thought— (We sat there, we two)— Of George; how we wished There was something to do … And then came a sign, From a gift-bearing Greek: ‘A conference, with papers, And lasting a week, And a book, full of pictures And words that won’t bore us— THAT’S how to honour The memory of Forrest!’ So gaude, dear lector, Lege: laetaberis! We hope you will find this A tribute as fair as Page 1 of 2

 

Dedication Any you’ve seen. And now— Put on your specs: Look at what can be done with Herodotus’ text! Put them on now, dear reader, Your best pair of spectacles: Look at what can be done with Hermotimos’ testicles! (p.viii)

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List of Figures

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.xi) List of Figures Chapter 3 Fig. 1. Chios and the western seaboard of Asia Minor. 42 Chapter 10 Fig. 1. Kalos-inscription with name Deiogenes on sculpture from the N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. 173 Fig. 2. Kalos-inscription, sketch of sculpture panel to show position of the inscription. 173 Fig. 3. Sketch of Hittite rock sculpture at Karabel near Izmir, to show Egyptian-style dress and stance. 175 Fig. 4. Sketch of Hittite hieroglyphs with name of Tudhaliya IV to show winged disk, body-part signs, and ankh-sign. 177 Fig. 5. Drawing of sculpture of Assurbanipal from the N. Palace at Nineveh showing palace garden built by Sennacherib and aqueduct as described by later Greek writers. 180 Fig. 6. Wall decoration from throne room of Nebuchadnezzar II at Babylon. 184 Fig. 7. Stone sculpture from N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, showing beardless figure spearing lion. 185 Fig. 8. Stone sculpture from N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh showing Elamite archers. 186 Fig. 9. Stone sculpture from Persepolis showing Indian tribute-bearer. 186 Chapter 11 Fig. 1. The Southern Part of the Plain of Marathon. 191

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List of Figures Chapter 12 Fig. 1. Map of the central Haliacmon Valley. 217

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List of Contributors

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.xii) List of Contributors José-Miguel Alonso-Núñez is Professor of Theory of History at the University of Madrid and also teaches Ancient History at the University of Konstanz. Deborah Boedeker is Professor of Classics at Brown University, Rhode Island. Hugh Bowden is Lecturer in Classics at King’s College, London. Roger Brock is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Leeds. Stephanie Dalley is Shillito Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. John Davies is Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. Robert Fowler is H. O. Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol. Dwora Gilula is Professor of Classics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. John Gould was formerly H. O. Wills Professor of Greek at the University of Bristol. Thomas Harrison is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. Miltiades Hatzopoulos is Director of the Research Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. Simon Hornblower is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at University College, London. Eugenia C. Kiesling is Professor of Military History at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Irad Malkin is Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University. (p.xiii)

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List of Contributors Angelos Matthaiou is one of the editors of the forthcoming third edition of the post-Euclidean Attic inscriptions; he is also editor of Horos. Marcel Piérart is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Fribourg. P. J. Rhodes is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Durham. John Salmon is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Nottingham. Graham Shipley is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leicester. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood was until 1998 Reader in Classics at the University of Reading. (p.xiv)

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Table of Contents Part I: Narrative 1:Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus, Roger Brock 2:Pedestrian Fatalities: the Prosaics of Death in Herodotus, Deborah Boedeker 3:Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa, Simon Hornblower 4:Herodotean Chronology, Peter Rhodes 5:Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Tombs? (Hdt 9.85.1)?: Textual and Historical Problems, Dwora Gilula 6:The Oldest 'New' Military Historians: Herodotus, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War, Eugenia C. Kiesling Part II: Peoples and Places 7:Herodotus (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity, Christiane SourvinouInwood 8:Herodotus' Conception of Historical Space, Jose-Miguel Alonso-Nunez 9:'Tradition' in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene, Irad Malkin 10:Why Did Herodotus Not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?, Stephanie Dalley 11:Athenaiosi tetagmenoisi en temenei Herakleos (Hdt 6.108.1), Angelos Matthaiou 12:Herodotus (8.137-8), the Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography fo the Middle Haliakmon Valley, Militiades Hatzopoulos 13:Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth, John Salmon Part III: Religion 14:'Prophecy in Reverse'? Herodotus and the Origins of History, Thomas Harrison 15:Oracles for Sale, Hugh Bowden 16:The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6.19 and 77), Marcel Pierart 17:Herodotus and the 'Resurrection', John Gould Part IV: Herodotus and Athens 18:Herodotus and Athens, Robert Fowler 19:Democracy without Theory, John Davies Bibliography General Index Select Index of Literary Sources Select Epigraphic Index

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus Roger Brock (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords Herodotus exhibits a distinctive authorial persona: stylistic features such as prospective sentences, anticipatory constructions, and ring-composition advance the narrative and mark its progress, while signposting and transitional markers lead the audience through it. He alludes to the progress of the narrative, provides cross-references, and asides which serve as explanatory footnotes; engages with the audience in rhetorical questions and second-person addresses, and in other ways reveals his thinking. This is not a product of naïve oral style: he is capable of sophisticated periodic prose, and the work is artfully structured; rather it is a deliberate response to his complex and multifarious material and its broad time-frame and large cast, designed to reassure and guide his audience and to establish his authority. Keywords:   Herodotus, authorial persona, periodic prose

Herodotus’ authorial persona has attracted considerable scholarly attention in the last couple of decades, with valuable results.1 On the whole, though, these studies have focused on his personality as a historian (using the term loosely), and have dealt with the articulation of methodology and the construction of authority. Of the four postures of Herodotus’ authorial persona—what she calls the histor—which Dewald identifies, the last is ‘the writer’, but even there the main focus of attention is Herodotus’ grappling with his material to bring it into order and under control.2 What I want to consider here is a further aspect of Herodotus the author, namely the voice that tells the story and that we hear Page 1 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus speaking to us. This is to a considerable extent constructed from features of the text over which we often skate in the search for information or opinion, and although a number of them have attracted attention in the past, they have mostly been approached from a formal or stylistic perspective. In this discussion I shall try to pull together and selectively illustrate a number of aspects of Herodotean style and organisation and to argue that (p.4) behind them we can see a substantial and coherent author–audience relation. The first group of features have in common a concern with the organisation of the narrative in such a way as to maintain its forward flow, a feature rightly emphasised by Mabel Lang (1984: 1–17). To begin at the level of style, Herodotus’ language is rich in anticipatory constructions. One type, the use of prospective sentences, has been recently discussed by Rosaria Munson (1993), who examines them from the perspective of speech-act theory. Seen in this way, they draw attention to the process of narration, but they also serve to draw the audience onward into the story, either by simply ‘teeing up’, as it were, the next event, or by creating a sense of expectation or curiosity. Perhaps the most characteristic type of the former involves the use of 3

kind’): the phoenix is

(‘of the following

(‘of the following size and nature’:

2. 73. 2); trouble was bound to come to Scyles, and it came (‘from the following cause’: 4. 79. 1); Xerxes’ affair with Artaynte came to light (‘in the following manner’: 9. 109.1). When he wants actively to draw the audience on, Herodotus frequently uses the carrot of an evaluative adjective or phrase: Megacles and Peisistratus (‘devised the silliest scheme’: 1. 60. 3); Panionios made his living atrocious deeds’: 8. 105. 1); the seer Hegesistratos

(‘from the most

(‘performed an act beyond description … he contrived the most courageous act we know of’: 9. 3 7. 2). Other features of style also serve subtly to underline the progress of the narrative. Among these, the use of repetition has received most attention, chiefly as an aspect of prose style.4 One characteristic form in Herodotus is the recapitulation of a finite verb in the succeeding clause or sentence in participial form—for example, Candaules (‘fell in love with his own wife, and having fallen in love …’: 1. 8. 1). This sort of progressive repetition makes one aware at a very basic level of the parallel progression of the narrative. There are other figures which (p.5) have a similar effect: one is the anticipatory use of

-clauses ahead of the matter which they

explain, as at 6. 102 (‘and, since Marathon was the most suitable place in Attica for horse-riding and closest to Page 2 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus Eretria, it was here that Hippias son of Peisistratus led them [the Persians]’).5 Another, which does not seem to have excited much comment, is Herodotus’ progressive use of temporal expression.6 Typically, this takes the form of an antithetical construction of the form ‘as long as such and such was the case … but when this changed, (‘thereupon’) or (‘at that point’) or (‘thereafter’) a significant development took place’. Thus, after the principal Ionian tyrants had been arrested,

Aristagoras revolted openly

(5. 37. 1); when Darius made the third attack on Babylon, Zopyrus revealed his cunning plan in full (3. 158. 1); as long as another general was in command, Miltiades delayed engaging at Marathon, but when the command came round to him,

the Athenians drew up in battle order (6. 109)—

compare the use of at 6. 13. 1 to mark the precise moment at which the Samians, presumably on their own account, resolved to abandon the Ionians at Lade, and in 6. 14. 1 to refer to the point shortly thereafter at which Herodotus becomes unable to determine who did what. Similar constructions with for example at 9. 6 and 63; compare also that’) in 5.55 and 87. 2.

(‘for as long as … but when’) appear (‘when … after (‘when … at that point’) at 8.

Other types of anticipatory construction in Herodotus involve the use of demonstratives. He is fond, for example, of introducing characters with a (‘well now, this man’) or sentence followed by a colon and then something of the sort (1. 34. 2, 75. 1, 3. 21. 1, 4. 144. 3, 6. 104. 1). Also worthy of note are the practice of placing the object before the verb, followed by a comma and a pronoun (2. 108. 2, 3. 75. 2), his anticipatory use of

(‘this

person’: 2. 95. 1, 3. 120. 1, 8.134. 2) and (‘like this’: 2. 65. 3, 4. 86. 1, 7. 218. 1), and the way in which he frequently refers to motive with (‘for this/these (p.6) reason(s)’), sometimes followed by a colon, and then the explanation (1. 80. 4, 2. 108. 4, 3. 43. 2, 5. 91. 3, 8. 76. 2, 9. 99. 3).7 One stylistic feature which is regarded as particularly characteristic of Herodotus’ style is ring-composition. I can deal with this briefly, since it has received so much previous attention.8 Like Lang, I prefer to apply the concept to both verbal and thematic correspondences, and to emphasise the way in which Herodotus uses rings in such a way as to move forward (Lang 1984: 5–12). Some rings are very brief, like the repetition of (‘subjected’) in 1. 28 which frames a five-line listing of Croesus’ Asiatic subjects. Other purely verbal rings can be of considerable size: the repetition of the fact that the forces which Cambyses led against Egypt included the Ionians and Aeolians closes a ring from 2. 1. 1 to 3. 1. 1 round the Egyptian excursus. There are also instances of thematic rings: it is intriguing that, having moved from the account of the Page 3 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus Persian satrapies and their revenues in 3. 89–97, via the description of the various kinds of gold collection in chapters 98 to 105, to a general meditation on the relation between environment and natural resources and the contemplation of the edges of the earth in 106–16, Herodotus closes with a description of the Chorasmian plain and its water supply which combines the topics of resources and the revenues of the Persian king, and thus returns the audience via the theme with which we entered this long digression to the narrative of Darius’ reign. This sort of move is, I suggest, characteristic of his concern not to leave his audience behind at any point.9 This kind of organisational feature brings me on to my second main heading, Herodotus’ use of signposting. Immerwahr (1966: 46–67) gives a substantial and valuable discussion of various aspects of this practice, but in the end his interest in these features is principally as indicators of the planes of cleavage to which his chisel can be applied to split apart the various component logoi of the work. (p.7) Their original function, however, is of course to advise the reader of the progress of the narrative: the well-known antitheses mark transitions from one actor or group of actors to another, or from one thread of the narrative, or sometimes theme, to another.10 It is equally possible to view them not as gaps, but rather as connections, hence the fact that we find them so often crossing chapter divisions positioned on a thematic basis. Indeed, the number of overt breaks in the flow of the narrative is strikingly small, and Lang is again right to stress the element of continuity.11 Another sort of signposting, often is the use of summary phrases, combined with which highlights the element of transition. As an example of a number of these features, one might cite the transition from 4–205 to 5. 1. 1.:

[division between books] (‘Such and so great, then, was the vengeance of Pheretime daughter of Battus upon the Barcaeans. As for the Persians left behind in Europe …’). The most striking signposts are the ones which highlight major, thematic stages in the grand narrative: the enslavement of Lydia to Persia (1. 94. 7), the second enslavement of the Ionians (1. 196. 2), the first Persians to reach Greece (3. 138. 4), the Athenian acceptance of hostilities with Persia and the sending of ships in support of the Ionian Revolt as an (‘beginning of troubles’: 5. 96. 2, 97. 3) and so on. It is evident, incidentally, that Herodotus is not simply concerned with firsts, or stages in a single linear process: the last of such markers is the second Ionian revolt from Persian domination (9. 104).12 (p.8) Herodotus thus leads his audience through the narrative both at a local level, by the use of anticipatory constructions which direct them gently forward to the next event and through structural devices like ring-composition which maintain the forward flow of the narrative, and by overt signposting both of Page 4 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus narrative transitions and on the largest scale of successive stages in the grand narrative. Somewhere between these two facets of narrative management falls one aspect of the Herodotean ‘I’, namely his allusions to the progress of the logos. The work is rich in marker phrases such as I have said before’: 1. 130. 1, 2. 61. 1, 4. 156.3 [aorist] cp. 1. 18. 2

(‘as

‘has previously been shown’), reminders that he has mentioned or listed people or things

‘I say’: 7. 96. 2, 184. 5, 8. 2. 1;

‘I have recounted’: 7. no, 115. 2, 8. 73. 3; ‘have been named’ 9. 32. 1), remarks that he has said a lot about something (2. 155. 1), and observations that he has said or is saying what he thinks (2. 17. 1, 49. 2, 120. 5). He also uses verbs of saying for formulas equivalent to ‘that’s enough about X.’: 3. 113. 1, 4. 12.3, 15. 4, 36. 1, 45. 5, 199. 2, 6. 55, 7. 100. 1, 153. 1; compare 2. (‘so then, I have finished concerning

135.6

Rhodope’). There are also prospective phrases such as 1. 192. 1, 4. 36. 2),

(‘I shall say’: 2. 14. 1, 147. 1, 155. 3, 156. 6, 8. 54 cp.

5. 65. 5 ‘I shall say first’), 1, 6. 109. 4),

(‘I shall show’:

(‘I am going to say’: 1. 194. 1, 3. 6. (‘I am going to tell’: 2. 40. 1, 99. 1), and

(‘I shall make mention’: 2. 102. 1).13 At 2. 35. 1 he warns that (‘I am going to extend my account of Egypt’), and gives his reasons, and he also notes when he must ‘say’ an alternative version (1. 179. 1, 3. 9. 2, 5–67. 3). He regularly marks his return to the central narrative after a digression, as at 1. 140. 3 (‘I shall return to my previous account’ cp. 4. 82, 5. 62. 1, 7. 137. 3, 239. 1). Occasionally, the logos is personified as pursuing an enquiry (1. 95.1) or as admitting digressions (4. 30. 1), but of course it is the author who informs us of this; compare 4. 16. 1, where the logos is the subject of the sentence but, since the verb is in the passive, the object of narration. Like the various anticipatory constructions, (p.9) these expressions advise us of the status and movement of the narrative, but they do so in a manner which, though low-key, is continuous and overt, reassuring us that there is someone in charge who knows what he is doing. By contrast, Thucydides’ authorial interventions are sparing, and thus striking when they occur, as David Gribble (1998) has recently shown. Herodotus’ attention to the status of the narrative and its content takes a stronger form in his promises to discuss matters in future. The disproportionate attention which has attached to the three cases in which he fails to fulfil such promises (1.106. 2, 184, 7. 213. 3) tends to distract attention from the more frequent successes, for example concerning Cyrus and Astyages (1. 75. 1, fulfilled at 1. 108f.); the nature of the Apis bull (2. 38. 2–3. 28); the lake of Moeris (2. 101. 2 ~ 2. 149); Apries’ Cyrene expedition (a brief account at 2. 161. 3, with the promised fuller version at 4. 159); the origins of the Macedonian

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Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus royal house (5. 22. 1 ~ 8. 137–9); the death of Cimon (6. 39. 1 ~ 6. 103) and Cilician arms (7.77 ~ 7. 91). Promises of this kind are a form of cross-reference, though given the strong forward motion in the narrative for which I have argued, it might be sensible to reserve the latter term for backward references to material already covered. Both have received scholarly attention, though arguably of a somewhat misconceived nature: for Enoch Powell (1939b: esp. 1–3), Herodotus’ crossreferences were the key which would enable him to decode the sequence of composition of the Histories. For Herodotus, however, their purpose was surely to ensure that readers had the information which he felt they needed to understand the unfolding narrative (or at any rate understand it fully). Often, the range involved in such references is quite short: Herodotus’ reference in connection with the Araxes to the river Gyndes in 1. 202. 3 looks back only to 1.189, and the reminders of Histiaeus’ use of deception to induce Darius to release him in 6. 1. 1 and 2. 1 to 5. 106–108. 1. Others cover a longer range: the retaliatory motivation cited at 4. 1. 1 for Darius’ Scythian expedition, to take revenge for the Scythian occupation of Media, looks back to 1.103, and the mention of the Scythian Enarees in 4. 67. 2 to 1. 105, while the allusion to the death of Anaxandridas at 5.39.1 signals the resumption of the account of Spartan history broken off at 1. 68. 6. Often, of course, references take the form of allusions to the narrative: ‘as I’ve said before’ (2. 145, 4. 1. 2, 129. 2, 7. 108. 1, 8. 119, 9. 32. 2), ‘whom I mentioned’ (1. 85. 1, 3. 61. 2), ‘who/which I’ve (p. 10) just mentioned’ (4. 16. 1, 79. 2, 81. 2, 7. 113. 1, 239. 1, 8. 95. 1), ‘as I said in the beginning’ (3. 159. 2) or ‘as I showed first of my tales’: 5. 36. 4) or my narrative’: 7. 93).

(‘in the (‘in the first part of

In the same way, he frequently reminds readers about people or places, or in other ways verbally nudges them to emphasise a point. Often this is done with variants of the expression (‘this/these/that [one]’ 1. 18. 2, 23, 43. 2, 45. 3, 103. 2, 124. 1, 3. 107. 2, 4. 165. 2); the reference to Cyrus as (‘the one called the cowherd’s son’: 1. 114. 1; Denniston 1954: 209) combines a reminder with an emphatic nudge. He is fond of reminding us in what context we know people: thus Periander is ‘the one who told Thrasybulus about the oracle’ (1. 23), and the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes is ‘the one who established the tribes and the democracy for the Athenians’ (6. 131. 1, referring back to 5. 69). He does this with striking frequency for members of the Seven Persians (who overthrew the usurping Magi with Darius): Intaphernes is so identified at 3. 118.1, Otanes at 3. 141, Megabyzus at 3. 153. 1, and Gobryas at 4. 132. 2. With these reminders concerning important non-Greek individuals we may compare the credit for Otanes’ daughter (3. 88. 3), the reminder about Cambyses’ murder of Prexaspes’ son at 3. 74. 1, and the double reminder about the past of Harpagus at 1. 129. 1 Page 6 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus and 162. 1; worth remarking, too, are the reminders of Cyrus’ treatment of the river Gyndes at 1. 202 and 5.52 and of the ruse which captured Babylon at 3. 152. Among verbal nudges we may note the way he points up the success of the Milesians’ clever ruse with

(‘which is just what happened’) at

1. 22. 2, and the regular use of (‘other[s] … and [especially]’) to spotlight individuals (Powell 1938 s.v. A6). Ring composition may likewise be employed for emphasis, as it is to frame the oracle of Bacis at 8. 77 and Xerxes’ dictum on the reversal of gender roles at 8. 88. 3. Herodotus also provides assistance to his audience by what one might call explanatory asides, footnotes, as it were, run into the text with brief explanations. In one sense these could be regarded as a very brief sort of digression, but they are not elaborated, and serve simply to illuminate some passing point. The range of topics glossed includes ethnography, geography, natural history, and fine art. One characteristic type which may stand as an example is the linguistic note, giving the correct term in a non-Greek language: he does this (p.11) particularly with the names of gods (2. 137. 5, 144. 2, 156. 5, 3. 8. 3, 4. 59. 2), but also with Persian names (1. no. 1–2, 6. 98. 3) and terms such as 3) and

(the Persian sword: 7. 54. 2), (‘benefactors’: 8. 85. (‘complete’, referring to a banquet: 9. no. 2); there are also

linguistic comments for Egypt (2. 143. 2 ‘a gentleman’) and Scythia (4. 14 no. 1). Whether monoglot or polyglot, he clearly prides himself on his expertise in this area, hence the observation that Archandros is not an Egyptian name (2. 98. 2) and the excursus on the name of Battus (4. 155). On this topic, the regular observation that his treatment of the Spartan kings (6. 51–60) has something of an ethnographic character might be supplemented by the point that the Spartans are the only Greeks (I think) to receive linguistic comment—on agathoergoi at 1. 67. 5, and on their calling foreigners xenoi at 9. 11. 2.15 I come now to the final aspect of Herodotus’ narrative management, overt interaction with the audience. It is here that one’s sense that he is aware of an audience, and is in some sense playing to it, is strongest. It is not simply that he occasionally reflects past audience reaction, as in his hurt reaction to sceptical views of the authenticity of the Persian Debate (3.80.1, with the slightly sulky [‘but they were said’] and 6.43.3; n.b. the prospective ‘I shall relate the greatest wonder’ [cp. 4. 129. 1]; Evans 1991: 100–2); we also see in his use of rhetorical questions a willingness to engage with the contemporary audience, or with real or imagined critics before it. The rhetorical questions cluster in the treatment of Egypt in Book 2 and the beginning of Book 3, where he is at his most combative, and his second person addresses are also concentrated here.16 One might also note in this context the purported objection, introduced by (‘but perhaps someone will say’) to be demolished, in his defence of the Alcmaeonidae at 6. 124. 1. This sort of self-revelation is exemplified by other features. Herodotus lets us catch his Page 7 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus tone of voice, especially the scepticism or (p.12) irony revealed by 17

the Peisistratids treated Miltiades well

(‘as though they were not complicit in his father’s death’: 6. 39. 1), Themistocles passed on a part-bribe to Eurybiades (‘as though he was giving it from his own money’: 8. 5. 1), and Mardonius led the Persians against the Greeks at Plataea (‘supposing that they would run away’: 9. 59. 1); he deliberately varies his register, introducing the odd colloquial phrase like

(‘whatever it was’; ‘some … or other’; 3. 45. 1,

6. 62. 2, 134. 2) and (as a variant narrative marker), (‘come, let 18 me say’: 2. 105. 1). He also lets us know how he feels: we are familiar with the picture of Herodotus as critic of sources—an important aspect of the Herodotean ‘I’19—but do not so often recall the terms in which he sometimes expresses his critical opinion; the Greek version of Psammetichos’ experiment is ‘silly’ 2. 2. 5), likewise their account of Helen at Troy (2. 118. 1 cp. 3. 56. 2, on Polycrates), and their story of Heracles and Busiris ‘naive’ (2. 45. 1), while cartographers simply make him laugh (4. 26. 2). When he introduces the story of Phye there is a sense almost of pain—certainly of frustration—at the allegedly intelligent Athenians being taken in by (‘by far the silliest scheme, in my judgement’ 1. 60. 3). Many of the features of Herodotus’ narrative presentation to which I have drawn attention appear oral in nature, and most readers have a sense of his voice behind the page, but that is not to say that his narratorial personality is a feature of oral style, an unmediated consequence of the character of his material, still less that it is something ‘archaic’ (Johnson 1994: 253), any more than this is true of his presentation as a whole.20 Stylistically, although he typically writes in he is perfectly capable of writing in a fully periodic manner when he chooses, and his ‘simple’ prose style is itself vastly (p. 13) more sophisticated than that of his Ionian predecessors.21 Nor is the manner of his presentation necessarily constrained by his subject-matter: Munson (1993: 35–7) observes that the episodes of Gyges and Candaules and of Atys and Adrastus are presented in the tragic mode despite their quintessentially oral character. Likewise, the structure of his work is of a complexity which goes far beyond simple story-telling, and the elaborate system of cross-referencing which spans the whole work, like the less overt pattern of thematic correspondences, must be part of the work’s design in its final, written form (so Johnson 1994: 248–9). Nor is his conception of it simply and exclusively oral: although he uses

(‘tale/story/report’) for the work and its component

parts (Powell 1938: s.v. 4e), he regularly uses (‘write’) for his compositional activity (1.95.1, 2. 70. 1, 123. 1, 3, 4. 195. 2, 6. 53. 1, 7. 214. 3; also

in 3. 103 and 6. 14. 1). The scale, complexity and coherence of

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Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus the work as we have it also tell against any suggestion that Herodotus’ narrative manner is simply carried over from the public presentations of parts of it which he is reputed to have given at an earlier stage in its development, since so much of it is a response to precisely those problems of effective communication and audience comprehension created by ‘publication’ on a scale far greater than an hour or two’s talk.22 In any case, Rosalind Thomas’s recent demonstration of striking similarities in presentational style between Herodotus and contemporary scientific writers23 has raised the possibility that his approach in such performances may have been considerably more combative and challenging than is commonly assumed. We should surely conclude that the form which Herodotus’ narratorial personality takes was a deliberate choice, going hand in hand with his choice of style. This personality—what Munson (1993: 33) calls ‘the teller of the story’—is, as I have argued, a pronounced but underappreciated aspect of the work, and the wide range of (p.14) phenomena noted above bear witness to his concern to maintain constant contact with his audience and to ensure that they follow him with full comprehension every step of the way. The case can perhaps be reinforced by drawing attention to some passages in which we can see several of these features working together. Thus, at 3. 6. 2 he follows a rhetorical question with a narrative marker: ‘Where, then, someone might say, are these consumed? I will relate this too.’ The digression on the wonders of Samos is framed by a ring-composition of narrative markers: (‘I have gone on … for these reasons I have gone on at somewhat greater length about Samos’: 3. 60). Another example is the emphatic highlighting, by means of a temporal marker, the deictic and a nudging authorial reminder, of the death of Atys and the irony surrounding the agent:

(‘at that moment the foreigner, the very one who had been purified of murder and was named Adrastos, threw his spear at the boar, but missed it, and hit Croesus’ son’: 1. 43. 2). Finally, at the programmatic close of the proem (1. 5. 3) we find:

‘I am not going to say about these things that they happened in this way or some other way, but rather, the man who I myself know first began unjust acts against the Greeks, him I shall point out and then move forward in my narrative …’

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Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus Once we are aware of Herodotus’ pervasive narrative management, we can also become alert to interesting variations within it. Sometimes this is a matter of divergence from his regular practice: for example, he tends to remind the audience of the content of dreams and oracles, but in a fairly succinct manner, so that the twofold recapitulation at Cambyses’ death of his dream about Smerdis (3. 64. 1, 65.2 from 3. 30. 2) seems unusually emphatic, and suggests that the episode might repay closer attention than it has generally received. In other cases, it is a matter of apparent development in the course of the work. The density of many of the signposting features thins out in the later books as the narrative line becomes more straightforward and robust, but there are corresponding novelties, such as the two dozen or so ‘flash-forwards’ to a time 24 after the close (p.15) of the main narrative (usually with and the appearance of more regular temporal markers, with sequences from day to day noted at Marathon, Artemisium, and Plataea, and even the movement of time of day at Salamis and Plataea (8. 56, 64. 1, 70. 1, 76. 1, 83. 1, 107–8, 9. 44. 1, 47, 52, 56. 1), while the work closes with the annalistic

(‘and in this year 25

nothing further to these events took place’: 9. 121).

Annalistic division worked perfectly well for Thucydides, writing nearcontemporary history, but Herodotus had set himself a much more difficult task, involving far more complex and multifarious material, a time-frame of a couple of centuries and a huge cast of characters. To cope with this, I suggest, he deliberately adopted an audible, accessible, ever-present authorial presence, reassuringly guiding the audience along the route of the narrative. The Homeric precedent is obvious, but the Herodotean narrator is not just a narrator, but a strongly characterised narrative personality. This has many advantages: engaging with this appealing personality draws the audience on to respond positively to other, more substantial aspects of the authorial ‘I’ which dramatise his concern with issues of methodology, and to grapple with the challenges of interpretation with which the authorial voice presents them. His persona is flexible enough to accommodate variation in tone between solemn professions of faith, such as his controversial declaration that the Athenians saved Greece (7. 139), and flippant throw-away remarks like ‘So much for Homer and the Cypria’ (2. 117), yet consistent enough through all its modulations to remain audible amid all the other voices in the text. Like modern readers, ancient critics tended to respond positively: Quintilian found him charming and clear (Inst. 10. 1. 73), while Longinus enthuses about the way in which his direct addresses make things vivid (Subl. 26. 2); even Plutarch acknowledges the attraction of his manner, while contriving to turn it to his disadvantage by denouncing it as deceitful misrepresentation (de Malignitate 854E, 874B) on the assumption that the style is the (p.16) man. Modern critics have often run the risk of falling into the opposite error and underrating him as an author because of his accessibility, particularly in contrast to the uncompromising challenge posed by Thucydides. Page 10 of 13

 

Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus But to equate difficulty with substance is a fallacy: the conversational voice has always been an effective means of conveying serious and important ideas.26 My ideas about the personality which Herodotus reveals in his work ultimately go back to George Forrest’s undergraduate lectures on Herodotus, in which he was characterised as a congenial companion, and have developed in my own lectures to students at Leeds; the kind invitation from Robert Parker and Peter Derow to participate in the conference in George’s memory provided the opportunity to gather them into some sort of order. I am grateful to the audience on that occasion for helpful observations, and indebted to Carolyn Dewald for numerous suggestions for improvement at a later stage, and for a text of what is now Dewald (2002). Notes:

(1) Dewald (1987), Marincola (1987); also Darbo-Peschanski (1987: 107–12, 164– 89) and some brief but suggestive remarks in Lateiner (1989: 30–4). (2) Dewald (1987: 164–8); in Dewald (2002) she distinguishes two voices, the narrator and histor, within the ‘authorial “I”’. can be used retrospectively, but this is very rare in Herodotus: Powell (3) (1938) cites only seven examples. (4) e.g. Denniston (1952: 92–8, esp. 95); Müller (1980: 61–3); Dover (1997: 134– 5). (5) cp. Powell (1938: s.v. 4); Denniston (1954: 68–73). (6) An exception is Müller (1980: 46–7, 58). (7) On all this n.b. Müller (1980: 69–70). Compare also 6. 133. 2, where the substance of the Parians’ plans is given by hyperbaton before the verbs of thinking, for emphasis. (8) e.g. Immerwahr (1966: 12, 54–8 with references, and passim); Beck (1971). (9) Compare 6.75.3 and 84, in which the madness of Cleomenes forms a double ring, first explained by impiety and so framing the story of his dealings with Argos, then by alcoholism, the Spartan explanation, and finally, after the verbal closing of this episode ‘but the Spartans themselves say … that, then, is what the Spartans say about the matter of Cleomenes’) by revenge/reciprocity for his treatment of Demaratus, Herodotus’ own preferred explanation.

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Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus (10) Immerwahr (1966: 58). antitheses are of course endemic in Greek, but this progressive use is distinctive, particularly which occurs 314 times in Herodotus (Powell 1938 s.v. νυν 1) but never in Thucydides or Xenophon; for progressive in all the historians see Denniston (1954: 258, 472), and for co-ordination of this sort in Herodotus, Müller (1980: 76–80). (11) Lang (1984: 1–17). Such judgements are somewhat subjective, but there appear to me, for example, to be overt breaks (i.e. not smoothed by coordinating particles, summary phrase, connective repetition, use of demonstrative or linking temporal expression) in Book 1 only at 5–6, 45–6 and 130–1. The absence of links of this kind would seem to be more characteristic of the ethnographic sections than of narrative (e.g. 2. 65. 1–2, 67–8, 71–2, 72–3, 73–4, 74–5; 4.43–4, 44–5, 66–7, 69–70, 70–1, 75–6); perhaps the weaker sense of forward movement, combined with the nature of the material, encouraged a choppier paratactic style of presentation. Sometimes one might suspect that smooth transition is actually being avoided for emphasis: e.g. 6. 120–1, 7. 171–2, 8. 64–6, 76–8. (12) Asheri (in Asheri and Medaglia 1990) on 3. 56. 6–7 notes similar enumeration of the conquests of Ionia (1. 92.1, 169, 6. 32) and Babylon (1. 191. 6, 3. 159. 1). (13) Compare uses of the future of (1. 185. 1, 4. 145. 1) and (3. 106, 5. 54. 1; 4. 99. 2—the periphrastic constructions with tend to highlight the idea of movement in the narrative) and note also (‘will all be told’: 4. 16. 2) and (‘I have still to list’: 7. 185. 1). (14) T. Harrison (1998) is a sceptical recent discussion. (15) cp. the ethnographic tone of 4. 146. 2, on their nocturnal executions. (16) On Herodotean polemic see Lateiner (1989: 91–108), and for its particular prominence in Book 2, Fornara (1971: 19) and Marincola (1987: esp. 123–6, 130–1). Second person addresses: note also 3. 12. 1, still on Egypt, 1. 139, concerning Persian names ending in ‘s’, where Herodotus is also being polemical, and 1. 199. 4, where the topic is ethnographic. On Herodotus’ rhetorical questions n.b. Lang (1984: 37–51). (17) Denniston (1954: 229–35, 264–6); cp. 7. 211. 3, 9. 66. 3 (18) Compare ‘to cut a long story short’ (1. 61. 4, 2. 24. 2: 2. 25. 1 introduces the longer version), ‘to sum it up’ (2. 91. 1) and ‘so to speak’ (2. 53. 1, 8. 115. 1).

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Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus (19) e.g. Dewald (1987: 159–63), Lateiner (1989: 55–108). Both note how he demonstrates his control of his material by stating that he is selecting, or leaving something out (e.g. 1. 14. 4, 95. 1, 3. 103 8. 85. 2); at times in Book 2 he seems to tantalise his audience, almost to tease it, when he reports that he knows a story to explain some point, but will not tell it (2. 47. 1, 171. 1–2 cp. 170. 1), or simply alludes to such a ‘holy story’ (2. 62. 2, 81. 2; compare 2. 3. 2 ‘I’m not keen to relate’ and 2. 46. 2 ‘I prefer not to say’). (20) For suggestions of this kind see (e.g.) Evans (1991: 94–104); Stadter (1997). (21) For a full analysis of Herodotus’ prose style see Müller (1980), esp. 4–11 on he perceives a gradual increase in Herodotus’ use of the latter through the course of the work (22, 102–3). On the novelty and flexibility of Herodotus’ style, see ibid. 104–5 and Denniston (1952: 5–8), and on its radical departure from his Ionian predecessors, Dover (1997: 57–78, esp. 69–75). (22) Johnson (1994) is sceptical about recitation, though n.b. contra Thomas (2000: 257); Flory (1980) emphasises the monumental scale of the work and consequent problems of ‘performance’. (23) Thomas (2000: esp. 213–69). (24) 6. 73.1, 91.1 (bis), 98, 105. 3, in. 2,118. 3; 7. 7, 62. 2,106–7, 137, 151, 170. 3, 212. 2–3, 233. 2; 8. 3. 2, 75. 1, 82. 1, 109. 5 ( ‘which is just what happened’), 9. 35. 2, 37. 4–38. 1, 64. 2, 73. 3, 75, 83, 105; cp. 7. 33 (alluding to 9. 116 f.), 80 (anticipating 9. 102. 4) and 231 (~ 9. 71). (25) The other such instance is 6. 42. 1, perhaps suggesting an annalistically organised source for the Ionian Revolt. (26) For the contrast with Thucydides and on the latter as a difficult classic, n.b. Woodman (1988: 40–7); on the problem of how to read Herodotus, Gould (1989: 110–34); cp. Lateiner (1989: 25): ‘the mode … is conversational, but the purpose is serious.’

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Deborah Boedeker

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Many warriors die in both Herodotus' Histories and the Iliad, but their deaths are treated very differently, even when the mode of death is the same (as with Ilioneus in Il. 14.489-502 and Masistios in Hist. 9.22, both killed by a spear to the eye). Homeric epic typically highlights the pathetic and subjective experience of an individual's death, and thus the fragility of human life, whereas Herodotus' narrative is more interested in the strategy behind the killing and an external, civic-oriented evaluation of the dead. These narrative differences point to a contrast between the more monologic perspective in the Iliad, with its commitment to heroic honor, and the profound heteroglossia, or multiplicity of voices that characterizes the Histories. In Mikhail Bakhtin's terms, this contrast results from an ideological distinction between ‘poetic’ or ‘closed’ vs. ‘prosaic’ or ‘open-ended’ texts. Keywords:   Mikhail Bakhtin, death, heteroglossia, Ilioneus, Masistios, prosaics

Both the Histories and the Iliad have as their subject a panhellenic war. The fatalities that occur in those conflicts, however, are reported in strikingly different ways: the Iliad typically spotlights the moment of death with compelling details, whereas the Histories merely mentions that casualties occurred.1 These variations, I will argue, point to differences between the two works, not only in how they construct the significance of martial combat and death, but also in their attitudes toward subject matter and audience at the broadest level. Page 1 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Deaths of warriors are central to the Iliad; part of the singer’s virtue is to make each death memorable, as for example when Boeotian Peneleos kills the Trojan Ilioneus: … He stabbed Ilioneus the son of Phorbas rich in flocks, whom Hermes loved best of all the Trojans, and blessed with possessions, and to whom Ilioneus’ mother bore their only child. Peneleos stabbed him then underneath the eyebrow, at the base of the eye, and pushed the eyeball out; the spear went through his eye and the tendon in his neck. He was forced down backwards, stretching out both his hands, but Peneleos drew his sharp sword and struck the middle of his neck, dashing to the ground (p.18)

head and helmet together, while the mighty spear-tip still held the eyeball. Holding it up like the head of a poppy, he showed it to the Trojans and spoke a boastful word: ‘Tell haughty Ilioneus’ dear father for me, Trojans, and his mother, to weep for him in their halls … ’ (Iliad 14. 489–502; all translations are mine) The narrator portrays the doomed Ilioneus, who exists in the Iliad only here, with a vivid palette. We meet the wealthy and blessed father whose only son is being stabbed. We follow Peneleos’ fatal strike and learn its results, not least the spontaneous reaction of Ilioneus, stretching out his hands as he falls. These intimate glimpses lend bitter pathos to the killer’s taunt, directed at the parents of the victim, who are as yet unaware of their son’s fate. The death of Ilioneus includes events unusual in the Iliad, such as decapitation, and Peneleos’ display of the disembodied eyeball is unique—yet the structure of the passage is typical.2 Over a hundred times, the Iliad conjures up warriors who take shape as individuals only to disappear in a gripping description of how they suffered their death. Although some characters in the Iliad are killed summarily, with no glimpse into their lives, in many passages the moment of death is described even more poignantly than it is for Ilioneus, as when darkness covers a victim’s eyes,

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus a plea for mercy is rejected, or the psyche of a slain warrior descends grudgingly to Hades, ‘leaving youth and manhood behind’ (as of Hector, 22. 362–3).3 (p.19) While not as conspicuous as in the Iliad, deaths in combat are also well represented in the Histories. They occur, often prominently, in all books except the second (unless we count the deaths of Priam’s sons at Troy, mentioned in passing at 2.120), and involve a variety of characters—Greeks, Persians, and others, famous and obscure. Despite its well-known affinities to Homeric narrative,4 the Histories tends to treat deaths in combat much more summarily, as the following examples will illustrate: The Persians slaughtered many men, some of them famous, especially Eualkides the commander of the Eretrians, who had won prizes in the great athletic contests, and was often praised in song by Simonides of Ceos. (Hdt. 5–102. 3) As the army was routed, many men fell, in particular Onesilos the son of Chersis, who had instigated the Cyprians’ revolt, and the king of the Soli, Aristokypros the son of Philokypros—the Philokypros whom Solon the Athenian, when he came to Cyprus, praised above all other tyrants in a poem. (Hdt. 5. 113. 2) When the Megarians and Phleiasians came near the enemy, the Theban cavalry, led by Asopodoros the son of Timander, saw that they were rushing against them in disorder, so they charged on their horses. Falling upon them, they cut down six hundred and chased the rest back to Cithaeron. These men indeed perished with no fame. (Hdt. 9. 69. 2) Herodotus seldom mentions the specific circumstances of a death in battle, such as what kind of weapon was used or what part of the body it struck, unless these details are remarkable in some way. One such noteworthy death is that of Kynegeiros, during the battle of Marathon:5 In the midst of this struggle the war archon Callimachus perished, having proved to be a brave man, and one of the commanders also died, Stesilaos the son of Thrasylaos. In addition, Kynegeiros the son of Euphorion fell at that time, when his hand was chopped off by an axe while he was trying to get hold of the stern of a ship. Many other famous Athenians fell as well. (Hdt. 6. 114) Although the circumstances are briefly mentioned, Kynegeiros’ heroic death is described with far less detail than are those of Ilioneus and many others in the Iliad. We learn the name of the victim’s (p.20) father, but only to identify him as coming from a notable family; we hear nothing else about his background (not even that the poet Aeschylus was his brother), his other deeds or words, or the name of the Persian who killed him. Nor does the narrative spotlight fall on Page 3 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Kynegeiros alone; rather, his fate is mentioned in a short list of elite Athenians who died during the battle. Herodotus reports that one hundred and ninety two Athenians died in the battle (6. 117. 1); of the other one hundred and eighty nine we learn not even the names.6 A more elaborate Herodotean story tells how the Persian commander Artybios was killed by the Cypriote rebel prince Onesilos. Before the battle, Onesilos informed his Carian squire that Artybios’ horse was trained to rear up and kill men with its hoofs, and asked him to choose whether to fight with man or beast. The squire declared that he would gladly face either one, but recommended that Onesilos, as king and commander, should take on the opposing commander; he himself, a mere servant, would take care of the horse. And so, when Artybios charged them on his mount, ‘as the horse was bringing its hoofs down on Onesilos’ shield, the Carian attacked with a sickle and struck off the horse’s feet. So both Artybios, the Persian commander, and his horse fell right there’ (5. 111– 12). The narrator of this logos is interested in good planning and bravery—and in preserving the social hierarchy—but not in the experience of death from Artybios’ point of view. Significantly, in contrast to the remarkable details of this confrontation, when Onesilos himself falls later in the same battle, we hear only that he was among those killed on the Greek side (5. 113, quoted above). The lack of attention to his death is especially striking since Onesilos soon again becomes prominent in the narrative, when an omen and an oracle guarantee that he will receive hero cult from the hostile city that desecrated his body (5. 114). Even for such a hero, however, Herodotus passes over the moment of death. The killing of the Persian cavalry commander Masistios at Plataea is described at somewhat greater length than Artybios’ demise: As the cavalry was attacking regiment by regiment, Masistios’ horse, going out in front of the others, was struck in the side by an arrow; in pain it reared up and threw Masistios. As soon as he fell, the Athenians charged; they took his horse, and Masistios himself they killed, though he defended himself. But at first they could not kill him because of the way he was equipped: underneath (p.21) he wore a breastplate of gold scales, and over the breastplate he had put on a scarlet tunic. They kept smiting his breastplate but achieved nothing, until someone realized what was going on and struck him in the eye. In that way he fell and died. (Hdt. 9. 22. 1b– 2) The similarity between the manner of Masistios’ death and that of Ilioneus in the Iliad7 —a Greek kills an enemy warrior after striking him in the eye—makes the differences between them all the clearer. Though the Masistios passage is among the Histories’ most detailed descriptions of a death in war, here again the successful attacker is not named and no personal information is provided. The conflict up to the point of Page 4 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Masistios’ death, moreover, is focalized through the Athenian perspective on the events, rather than through the Persian leader himself.8

Why does Herodotus consistently avoid detailed, emotional, or subjective treatment of combatants’ deaths, especially when this approach is so well modeled in the Iliad? It is not because the Histories avoids subjective narrative altogether,9 or avoids describing matters whose accuracy cannot be checked; as is well known, the narrator frequently reports characters’ motives, dreams, and private conversations. Nor is it because Herodotus rejects all description of physical brutality. He recounts, for example, how Xerxes’ jealous wife Amestris dismembered her sister-in-law by cutting off the innocent woman’s breasts, nose, ears, lips, and tongue (9. 112). He highlights as the ‘most trustworthy’ account of Cyrus’ end the story in which Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae, dunked the head of her bloodthirsty enemy into a wineskin of blood (1. 214. 4); in contrast to this post-mortem punishment, Cyrus’ actual death in battle receives only bare mention: ‘Much of the Persian army perished then and there, and in particular Cyrus himself met his end, having been king for thirty full years minus one’ (1. 214. 3). (p.22) Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, in a stimulating overview of the functions of death in the Histories, notes that in general Herodotus tends to avoid reporting the moment or process of death (le mourir), and especially avoids a subjective account from the victim’s perspective.10 To explain why dying is ‘unspeakable’ (indicible) for Herodotus, she argues that in the Histories death is used to mark boundaries: between cultures (differences in mortuary customs), between kingships or dynasties (one ruler is replaced by another), as well as between life and non-life. Death changes the order of things: it can destroy, create, or restore the dynamic balance (dike or tisis) that is central to Herodotus’ concerns. Darbo-Peschanski concludes that because Herodotus emphasizes this active role—what death does in effecting changes—he omits almost completely the subjective or passive aspect of dying, in which death is something experienced by an individual.11 Herodotean deaths do mark boundaries, but does this explain why the moment of death is avoided in the narrative? Throughout the Histories, Herodotus describes transgressions of boundaries, often elaborately.12 In the most memorable example, Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont, Herodotus lavishes attention on both the king’s hybristic insults (7. 35) and the huge army’s sevenday crossing (7. 54–6). Although the Histories uses death to mark important points of transition or transgression, this fact alone does not account for its tendency to omit the moment of dying. In addition, Darbo-Peschanski’s astute observation of how Herodotus uses death as an ‘action’ does not to my mind explain the converse, why he avoids the subjective aspect of death in his narrative. The matter is complex and doubtless has no single explanation, but

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus comparing the Histories’ relative silence about the deaths of warriors with the Iliad’s attention to them will suggest other reasons for the difference. Herodotus’ reticence concerning typical deaths in battle contrasts with his more extended treatment of other kinds of deaths.13 Several (p.23) of these are the suicides of non-Greeks, related with the obvious approval of the narrator. The Persian Prexaspes, for example, leaps from a tower to his death after proclaiming that Magian conspirators were ruling in the place of a legitimate Achaemenid (3. 75). The Cimmerian royal family divide into two groups that fight each other to the death, rather than allowing themselves to come under Scythian rule (4. 11). Boges, the appointed Persian ruler of Eion, conspicuously kills himself as well as all his household, although he could have made terms for his own safety with the Athenians besieging the city (7. 107). These suicides exemplify not only courage but political virtues as well: Boges’ loyalty (to Xerxes) and steadfastness; the Cimmerians’ love of freedom; Prexaspes’ opposition to an illegitimate and oppressive regime. In particular, the prominence of the victims, and the fact that they freely chose the time and nature of their deaths—none of them had to die when they did—make these individual actions especially memorable. Those who stand in the battle line may have similar motives (e.g. loyalty to Leonidas at Thermopylae: 7. 221–2; the Perinthians’ love of freedom: 5. 2), but their deaths are the ‘normal’ result of political and strategic decisions, rather than the remarkable decisions of notable individuals. Herodotus’ most gripping descriptions of the moment and manner of death, however, do not occur in the midst of political or military hostilities, as do the suicides of Boges, Prexaspes, and the Cimmerians. Particularly susceptible to detailed treatment are deaths that suggest divine justice in operation.14 Cruel Pheretime, who had brutally avenged herself and her son on the families of their political enemies, later ‘seethed with worms while still alive, as if overly severe acts of revenge by human beings are hated by the gods’ (4. 205). Cambyses, at the moment when he realizes that the brother he had assassinated had been innocent of plotting against him, inadvertently wounds himself in the thigh, ‘in the same place where he himself had previously struck the Egyptians’ [calf-]god Apis’; Cambyses dies several weeks later (3. 64–6), implicitly paying for his crimes of fratricide and deicide (or at least wanton disregard for Egyptian nomoi). Equally striking is the story of the Spartan king Cleomenes’ madness and death by self-mutilation, which is explicitly attributed by Herodotus (and by most Greeks, he says) to Cleomenes’ unjust treatment of his fellow-king Demaratus (6. 75, 84)—a very different kind of suicide from those which the narrator approves. (p.24) Most subjectively and elaborately of all, Herodotus describes how the illstarred Adrastos, who had been kindly received and purified by Croesus when

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus he came to Sardis as an exiled fratricide, slays himself on the tomb of Croesus’ son Atys, whose death he had inadvertently caused:15 Adrastos the son of Gordias son of Midas, the one who became the murderer of his own brother, and murderer of the one who had purified him, when the people had gone and it grew quiet around the grave [of Atys], realizing that he was the most ill-fated of anyone he knew, slaughtered himself on the tomb. (Hdt. 1. 45. 3). Compared to such extraordinary deaths, which illustrate cosmic workings of tisis or fate, the fall of a warrior in battle might well seem ordinary, not one of the ‘great and marvelous deeds’ that Herodotus’ proem puts forward as worthy of preservation. And yet, the sense that to die in combat is ‘normal’ rather than exceptional is itself largely the result of the way such deaths are presented in the Histories; the Iliad provides an obvious contrast. The narrator who takes us into the mind of Adrastos, or the bedroom of Atossa and Darius (Hdt. 3. 133–4), could have provided a more elaborate and subjective account of the death, for example, of Kynegeiros (6. 114, quoted above), had it suited his purpose. Herodotus’ lack of focus on deaths in battle is especially perplexing since such a death is valorized in the Histories as the most fortunate end of a human life, by no less an authority than Solon. In his famous if historically implausible conversation with Croesus, Solon is confronted with the wealthy king’s leading question: who is the most olbios, ‘happy’ or ‘successful’ of men? The Athenian sage disappoints Croesus by responding with the story of Tellos, an Athenian citizen who was blessed with a flourishing city, sufficient wealth, fine sons and grandsons. In addition to all this prosperity, Tellos experienced the ‘most glorious end of life’ according to Solon. He died while routing the enemy in a victorious battle at Eleusis; he was awarded burial at public expense right where he fell, and was greatly honored by his city (1. 30. 2–5). And yet, as usual with such deaths in Herodotus, no details are given about how Tellos died; what matters is that he was cut down while fighting well, and was awarded public honor thereafter. (p.25) When pressed by Croesus to award a second prize for olbos, Solon chooses the young Argives Cleobis and Biton. That noble pair performed to great acclaim a work of outstanding strength and piety. They drew their mother in a chariot all the way to the festival at Argive Hera’s temple, and then—in answer to their mother’s prayer that they receive whatever is best for human beings— they fell asleep in the temple and never woke up. After dying in the prime of life and glory, they too were publicly honored, Solon reports, and their images were set up in Delphi.

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus The non-military deaths of Cleobis and Biton are subject to some narrative elaboration; the miraculous manner in which they died points to Hera’s favor, as well as to the gloomy wisdom that not to be born is best, and an early death is better than old age.16 For Tellos, however, the exact circumstances of his death are not recounted. His end is glorious 1. 30. 5) not because it is miraculous or paradoxical, but rather because it is, in a sense, routine, true to the citizen warrior’s duty. Irritated at Solon’s assessment of men he thinks far less fortunate than himself, Croesus asks why he, with all his wealth and power, does not rank at the top of the olbios list. Solon now switches his approach, answering not with another story but with a calculation.17 A long life of seventy years has 25,200 days, and adding in the intercalary months makes 26,250—no two of them alike (1. 32. 2– 4). Solon spells it out for Croesus: it is necessary to wait until the end of a life before saying how olbios it really was; at any point before death, happiness is subject to reversal (1. 32. 5). Though his point is clear—one must look to the end of life before calling anyone happy—Solon’s arithmetic nevertheless comes as a jolt after the little vignettes of Tellos and the Argive brothers; it abruptly changes the tone of the passage, shifting from laudatory narrative to the language of the accounting office. Solon’s abrupt shift in discourse marks a dialogism, or use of multiple ‘languages’, that is typical of Herodotus as well, and as such will figure prominently in my overall argument.18 For now, it forcefully reminds us that Solon is not only (p.26) reporting but evaluating the lives and deaths of others, applying standards that exist apart from the specific narrative situation. The process of evaluation by outsiders receives further emphasis when Croesus disagrees with Solon’s assessments of who is most olbios (1. 32. 1), as well as with his ‘look to the end’ philosophy (1. 33).19 In fact, Tellos’ death was also evaluated even before Solon and Croesus (and Herodotus!) by the Athenians who granted him public burial and honors. This chain of judgments, all focussed on one otherwise unknown Athenian citizen, can provide insight into the Histories’ non-Iliadic way of reporting deaths in combat. The perspective attributed to Solon here prevails in other parts of the Histories as well. Herodotus follows several survivors of the Persian Wars to their deaths in later battles: Sophanes of Decelea, judged the bravest Athenian at Plataea, survived that battle to die heroically at Datos some years later (9. 75). Another Athenian, Hermolykos, as well as the Spartan Arimnestos (the man who killed Mardonios), likewise survived the Persian Wars but died in later battles (9. 105, 9. 64. 2). Like his Solon, the primary narrator ‘looks to the end’ in order to show that these Greeks were brave and successful at the end of their lives. For one of Herodotus’ Greek survivors, the situation is more complicated. Aristodamos was the sole Spartan to return home after Thermopylae: off-duty during the battle because of an eye ailment, he stayed away from the final Page 8 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus struggle rather than going bravely and blindly to fight and die, as did his more right-thinking comrade Eurytos (7. 229). Aristodamos was rejected as a coward and shunned by all when he returned alive to Sparta, but at the battle of Plataea, the narrator comments, ‘he removed the whole charge made against him’ (7. 231). In that battle, the year after Thermopylae, the scorned survivor tried to redeem himself for his cowardice. Herodotus at least thinks that he succeeded: ‘Aristodamos, in our opinion, was by far the best (aristos)’ of those who fought at Plataea. Because he fought like a madman (lyssōnta), however, his fellowSpartans, discussing the matter post eventum, awarded the prize of valor to others (9. 71. 2); they blamed Aristodamos for ‘leaving the ranks to display great deeds’ in an obvious desire for death, to compensate for his behavior at Thermopylae (9. 71. 3). By describing the Spartans’ process of deliberation, Herodotus makes it clear that the decision about (p.27) Aristodamos’ valor was made by human judgment. Particular nomoi were involved in the evaluation of Aristodamos; the narrator even indicates that the Spartan decision was not the one he himself, or perhaps the reader, would have made. Such prosaic post-mortem judgments are far removed from the way the Iliad deals with analogous deaths.20 When the Iliad portrays a warrior who survived one encounter with danger but was killed in a later incident, the tone is starkly pathetic and the focus is on the moment of death. Priam’s young son Lykaon escaped death at the hands of Achilles once, when he was captured and sold into slavery, but not a second time. When caught again, Lykaon supplicates Achilles at length (Il. 21. 34–135), but is answered with a chilling speech on the necessity for all to die, followed by the pitiless death-stroke: Achilles’ wrath at the death of Patroclus drives him to kill all Trojans mercilessly. Lykaon’s reluctance to die and the bitter pathos of his death contrast greatly with the attitude of the Histories, where death while fighting bravely in a later battle satisfactorily concludes the lives of Sophanes, Hermolykos, and Arimnestos—and where, needless to say, no details are given of the manner of their deaths. In the Iliad, by contrast, the poet makes starkly present for his audience the circumstances of a character’s death. The moment of confronting mortality is supremely interesting to the narrator, presumably to the external audience, and to the internal audience of gods as well, as many critics have shown.21 Zeus especially is engaged in the death of warriors—sometimes specifically, as when he ponders how Patroclus should die, who has just killed Zeus’ son Sarpedon (Il. 16. 644–51), and sometimes more generally, as in the proem where the death of myriad Achaeans elicits the comment, ‘But the will of Zeus was being fulfilled’ (Il. 1. 5).22 Sheila Murnaghan has shown that in the Iliad as elsewhere in the mythological tradition, Zeus consistently promotes human mortality as a way to guarantee the contrasting immortality of the gods.23 This view contrasts in part with Wolfgang Kullmann’s argument that the Iliad has a uniquely strong focus on heroic mortality, to the extent that it presents as fully mortal several

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus heroes, including Achilles himself, who in other epic (p.28) traditions (e.g. as reflected in the Aithiopis) were made immortal after they met death in battle.24 Whether or not they would agree that the Iliad is unique in its emphasis on mortality, critics agree that underlying the epic is a heroic code that requires a warrior to risk death in battle as the price of his status during life and as the condition for any glory he may attain thereafter.25 As Carl Rubino has put it, ‘[T]he logic of heroism demands the rejection of human life: the hero dies in order to live forever in glory; he loses his life in order to save it.’26 The heroes of Troy paradoxically must die if they are to become deathless, through the fame (kleos) that epic offers or, perhaps, through the continual honors of hero cult, to which the Iliad may (rarely) allude.27 From either perspective, the hero’s death in combat is the point of his passage into the ‘immortality’ of commemoration;28 as such it receives emphatic attention in the narrative. Hence it is not surprising that the moment of death is elaborately integrated into the oral-formulaic system.29 Is the Iliadic hero’s death then idealized? J.-P. Vernant considers that the dead hero can present a fine picture: the young beautiful warrior, fallen at the height of his powers to remain perpetually in memory, godlike in his unaging bravery.30 That beauty is sometimes invoked in the Iliad (e.g. Il. 22. 71–3, of Hector31), but the descriptions of death in epic are more often striking and detailed enough to evoke pathos, even horror, rather than admiration.32 Self-respect and a sense of duty (aidōs) to his community may require a Homeric warrior to fight,33 but death in battle is not graciously accepted in the Iliad. As Sarpedon puts it so clearly in his (p.29) famous speech to Glaucus (12. 310– 28), fighting in the front ranks is not a desirable goal in itself, but is necessary to maintain one’s privileged status in life; if one must die in any case, it makes sense to risk death and glory as a warrior.34 Some of the Iliad’s greatest heroes, Hector above all, are explicitly motivated to fight by a sense of duty to their community (cf. Hector’s rebuke to the seer Polydamas: ‘one bird-omen is best, to fight for the fatherland’, 12. 243). But as he faces his own death, even Hector has nothing to say about Troy, but reverts to the idea that it is best to die, if he must, while trying to accomplish a great thing—that is, killing his enemy (Il. 22. 303–5). This kind of ‘heroic’ motivation stands in contrast to the Histories, where political, civic and strategic values regularly motivate, and in turn are used to evaluate, those who risk death in battle. With the final motive expressed by Hector, contrast Herodotus’ report of the Spartan Kallikrates, who died from an arrow wound before he could engage in battle at Plataea: ‘He said … he did not regret that he was dying for Hellas, but only that he had not been able to use his strength, and that he had performed no deed worthy of himself and his eagerness to perform’ (Hdt. 9. 72. 2). Like Hector, Kallikrates is ‘heroically’ Page 10 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus concerned about how his actions will appear; but first of all, he has no regrets about dying for his cause. In summarizing the question of how Herodotean deaths in battle differ from their Iliadic predecessors, I take a cue from a ‘new’ piece of evidence: an elegiac inscription in sixty lines, recently discovered in Herodotus’ home town of Halicarnassus and dated to the second century BCE. The verses list the city’s many sources of pride.35 First come several boasts about mythological events (including the claim that baby Zeus’ life was saved by earth-born Halicarnassians: lines 5–14). Next, there follows an honor roll of Halicarnassian literary figures, beginning with the most famous: ‘[Halicarnassus] brought forth Herodotus, the pedestrian (i.e. prose36) Homer of historiography’ line 43)—a description that succinctly allows for similarities between Herodotus (p.30) and Homer in scope and subject matter, together with differences in mode of expression. It is precisely the ‘pedestrian’ nature of Herodotus’ work that concerns me here. The differences observed between Homeric and Herodotean accounts of death in battle, I wish to argue, accord in significant ways with distinctions drawn by Mikhail Bakhtin and some of his followers between ‘poetic’ and ‘prosaic’ narratives.37 These designations are not co-terminous with ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’, though there is a high degree of correlation. Rather, ‘poetics’ and ‘prosaics’ are concepts used to distinguish different relationships between authors and their texts, as well as to denote different ways of analyzing literary works. A ‘poetic’ narrative is highly unified and implicitly authoritative, forming a kind of closed system, replete with images and tropes that bespeak its special character. Though a poetic text may represent different voices or perspectives within its compass, and may have an intertextual or allusive relationship with other poems, it is ‘monologic’ in the sense that it allows for no other, truly competing levels of discourse: the poet speaks directly, there appears to be no distance between the speaker and his/her words, no sense that the poet is using but one of a number of possible ‘languages’.38 Epic poetry, in addition, according to Bakhtin deals with a remote or ‘absolute’ past, hierarchically valorized, intrinsically superior to the present.39 ‘Prosaic’ or ‘dialogic’ texts (which in Bakhtin’s writings are primarily novels, ancient and modern), on the other hand, are set in the same kind of world the reader inhabits, in a time similar to, even continuous with, the here and now of narrator and audience.40 Such continuity is clearly assumed by Herodotus; to cite an obvious example, the narrator not infrequently refers to historical practices or objects that continue to exist in his own time (e.g. 1. 167. 2, 5. 115. 1), later than events covered in the narrative. Moreover, prosaic works are openended or ‘unfinalizable’ rather than closed, finished (p.31) texts; Carolyn Page 11 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Dewald has shown in detail how this is true of the Histories.41 Most of all, prosaic texts include a play of discourses that involve greater and lesser distances between the author and his/her words—they may at times be ‘poetic’ in their directness and earnestness, but often they deploy competing perspectives and other registers of diction or style. Prosaic texts can thus even incorporate poetic discourse.42 In short, prosaic texts are irreducibly dialogic. A profusion of discourses, too, is profoundly Herodotean;43 consider not only the varied registers used by Solon in speaking with Croesus about olbos (discussed above), but the self-conscious variety of attitudes expressed toward his logoi by the narrator, not to mention his sources.44 Bakhtin and his followers view the differences between poetic and prosaic texts not only as literary or formal ones. A prosaic way of organizing (or analyzing) a narrative differs from a poetic in ideology; it assumes and reflects a world that is de-centered, in progress, heteroglossic. Bakhtin asserts (though surely too emphatically for most Homerists) that traditional poetic narrative flourishes in societies that are ‘deaf’ to other cultures and ‘semi-patriarchal’ in their orientation to the authority of the past. Prose emerges, he asserts, when those cultures begin to interact with others, when author and audience lose their sense of being at the center, and become aware of other languages around them.45 This scenario, I note, is strikingly reminiscent of Christian Meier’s compelling thesis that Herodotus reflects a worldview which is multi-subjective, more political and more democratic than, for example, a god-centered or kingcentered way of understanding or recording the past.46 Now whatever its exact position on the prosaic/poetic axis, Homeric epic is clearly not a purely ‘poetic’ narrative in the sense described—Bakhtin himself was the first to say that there is no (p.32) purely ‘poetic’ text47—but includes dialogic elements. Several recent critics of the Iliad, for example, point to ways in which the narrator betrays an awareness that competing versions of ‘his’ plot exist, or at least that the story might be told differently.48 James Morrison, for example, has shown that the narrator at times almost undercuts the central plot of the Iliad, rescuing it only with what Morrison calls a ‘reversal passage’: X (the unexpected variant) would have happened, if Y had not intervened.49 The possibility that Zeus’ plan, announced in the proem, might not be fulfilled makes the epic somewhat more open-ended than Bakhtin’s definition would allow, by potentially compromising the authority of the narrator (and the gods for whom he speaks). Another kind of heteroglossia arises from the fact that over half the Iliad is attributed to the speech of characters, and they regularly display perspectives different from that of the primary narrator. Homeric characters are not omniscient, for example, and they use emotional terms of address such as far more often than the primary narrator.50 The Iliad is in

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus important ways a polyphonic poem, as Irene de Jong has shown in detail; varying personal perspectives are an inextricable part of its texture.51 Nevertheless, when it comes to death, the perspectives largely converge in the shared ideology of a heroic code predicated on mortality. Achilles may complain that the war is not worth his life (Il. 9. 401–9), and bitterly point out the inequitable workings of a system that is supposed to grant honor and prizes as compensation for risking one’s life (Il. 9. 318–20); Sarpedon may plainly state that if he could be immortal he would not fight to gain glory (Il. 12. 322–8). Yet, in the end, there is no way for Iliadic heroes to opt out of their (p.33) situation.52 If they do not accept the heroic code, they must cease to be characters in the epic, as Achilles’ choice of fates—early death with glory or long life in obscurity (Il. 9. 411–16)—makes clear. Without ignoring the variety of voices the epic incorporates, it can be argued that the Iliad is highly monologic in its assumption of the heroic value system. Though individuals or groups in the Iliad naturally respond in different ways to the death of a particular hero,53 in the view of the Iliadic narrator (and the gods), death is an equalizer of sorts.54 Achilles himself may be the strongest exponent of this view, which he expresses bitterly to the Embassy (‘They both still die, the man who does nothing, and the one who does much’: 9. 320); chillingly to Lykaon, telling him not to plead for life, since better men than he are also subject to death—including Patroclus and Achilles himself (21. 106– 12);55 and more sympathetically to Priam, as he recognizes the parallels of Priam’s and Peleus’ fates in losing their brave sons (24. 534–51). In the Histories, by contrast, deaths in combat have extraordinarily varied meanings to the narrator and to other evaluators whose voices can be heard along with his. We have already noted the several assessments of Tellos of Athens (Hdt. 1. 30–3): for his peers, he fought bravely at Eleusis and deserved public honors; in Solon’s broader view, he experienced the most fortunate life and glorious death available to a human being; for Croesus, however, he fell far short of the greatest happiness; finally, the narrator implies through Croesus’ later change of heart that Solon’s perspective on Tellos (‘look to the end’) was right after all (1. 86). In the case of Aristodamos too, as we have seen, the same death is subject to multiple interpretations:56 the narrator believes that Aristodamos fought most bravely by far at Plataea, but ‘allows’ the Spartans to voice their different opinion about how he met his death (7. 231, 9. 71). (p.34) Herodotus himself does not necessarily offer a positive evaluation of the war dead, even of Greeks who fought against the Persians. Of the Megarians and Phleiasians who were killed in disarray at Plataea, he says flatly, ‘These men indeed perished with no fame’ (9. 69.2, quoted above). On the other hand, he records that some who fell in battle came to be honored by their own enemies. We saw this paradoxical valorizing in the case of Onesilos and the Amathusians Page 13 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus who at first dishonored his corpse, but later—after an omen and on the instructions of the god of Delphi—began to honor him with annual sacrifices as a hero.57 Occasionally the Histories appropriates the more monologic, heroic poetics of the Iliad, focused on the glorious death of an individual. Leonidas is perhaps the best example. Herodotus presents his genealogy all the way back to Herakles (7. 204, cf. also 7. 208), a trope that both shows the king’s innate nobility and implies his resemblance to Homeric characters who are also ultimately descended from gods. Here is aristocratic pride and heroic nobility—a traditional, highly poetic maneuver in Bakhtin’s sense.58 More poetic unity and authority comes from an oracle (in hexameters!) that, according to Herodotus’ expressed opinion, motivated Leonidas to fight to the death at Thermopylae: according to it, the prosperity of Sparta depended on the death of a king (7. 220). Further—though I note that no details are given of his death—the battle of Thermopylae culminates in a mighty struggle for Leonidas’ body (7. 225. 1), an unmistakable reference to such battles, especially the struggle for Patroclus, in the Iliad. At last, Xerxes searches for the corpse of the king in order to cut off and display his head (7. 238. 1)—another Iliadic gesture, as we have seen in Peneleos’ vaunt over of Ilioneus. But instead of letting the mēnis of Xerxes speak for itself, the narrator intervenes: ‘Along with many other pieces of evidence, this makes it (p.35) clear that during his life Leonidas was the most bothersome individual who made King Xerxes angriest of all’ (7. 238. 2). This comment aggrandizes Leonidas, but also intersects the narrative with a different kind of discourse, evaluative, self-conscious (note the allusion to assembling and comparing evidence), and highly prosaic. Deaths in Herodotus sometimes share in the laudatory language of exhortatory military songs and Athenian funeral orations (delivered in prose, to be sure, but highly ‘poetic’ and monologic in Bakhtin’s sense)—genres that idealize citizens who die for their fatherland. In particular, the honorific phrase ‘having become an excellent/good man’ is applied by the narrator to a number of warriors who have done their task bravely, and (usually) died while doing it (e.g. 1. 169. 1, 5. 2. 1, 6. 114). This is a familiar formula of praise, rooted in the language of polis-oriented military elegies (Tyrtaeus 12. 10, 20 West) and common in Athenian funeral speeches.59 The Athenian orations, like the Spartan elegies of Tyrtaeus, praise the war dead anonymously, with minimal attention to the context in which they died, and certainly do not admit competing points of view about the value of their deaths. Herodotus, however, typically names the noble dead and provides a battle narrative before he applies the honorific formula; he even uses it of non-Greeks (1. 95. 2, of Medes). In general, this method gives the impression that Herodotus awards the traditional praise formula more selectively than Tyrtaeus or

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus especially the funeral orators, who would award it to any fellow-citizen who died in battle. The Histories then does not wholly lack ‘poetic’ passages involving deaths in combat; Herodotus is sometimes interested in evoking a traditional heroic character, as with Leonidas, and sometimes intent on praising brave and steadfast freedom-fighters. But instead of becoming the dominant mode of talking about the dead, these passages are part of a dialogic, almost kaleidoscopic, range of responses to deaths in battle. More often, Herodotus seems interested in the various motives, strategies, and behaviors of characters who might have chosen not to fight—witness the frequent debates and hair’sbreadth decisions he reports among Greeks deciding whether or not they should make a stand against the Persians. (p.36) In the Histories, then, it is more important that a battle and its ensuing deaths happened, and why, than exactly how they happened. The case of Callimachus, the Athenian war archon who died at Marathon, provides a fine example. Through Herodotus’ report of the patriotic speech of Miltiades that finally won him over (6. 109), we learn why Callimachus broke the impasse of the ten Athenian generals by casting his tie-breaking vote to fight the Persians.60 In short, we know what goals and ideals Callimachus died for, but no details about how he died—except that he did so honorably 6. 114, quoted above). To conclude: in the Iliad, the deaths of heroes provide moments of pathos, which display the simultaneous vitality and fragility of the human condition, and likewise the hero’s passage into kleos, exemplifying the Iliadic paradox that to lose one’s life bravely is to gain it. In the Histories, however, deaths in combat are complex, contingent human events, erga anthrōpōn, that are subject to evaluation by observers both contemporary and subsequent. Even at his most Homeric (as in the Thermopylae narrative), Herodotus does not vividly or ‘poetically’ recreate those deaths in battle. His attention is fixed more on the reasons for the combat, its success or failure (which may well be measured by different standards), than on that momentary glimpse into human mortality—and what there may be of immortality—that emanates from Homeric descriptions of the death of the warrior. For Herodotus, the fatalities themselves are treated as ‘pedestrian’ events, worthy of mention but not elaboration. What counts, most often, is why they were risked, and what they achieved, especially in political terms. But in the Histories, even that is subject to discussion: no single personal voice, political perspective, or kind of discourse has authority to fix their meaning. I am grateful to Carolyn Dewald for generous suggestions to improve this paper, to Kurt Raaflaub for advice and support, and to the editors for their tact and patience. Page 15 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus Notes:

(1) The differences are most succinctly summarized by Romm (1998: 192–3): ‘Herodotus prefers to keep things clean.’ In his brief discussion, however, Romm overemphasizes the extent to which Herodotus avoids mentioning the miseries of warfare. (2) For more Homeric taunts to absent relatives, see Griffin (1980: 122–3). Decapitation occurs in several other contexts, including Il. 16. 339–41 (again by Peneleos), and is threatened by Hector in 18. 176–8; cf. Vernant (1982: 68). Other victims’ eyes are knocked out in Il. 13. 616–17 and 16.741–2. See Mueller (1984: 77–107) for an instructive breakdown of the details of Iliadic fighting. (3) For examples of briefly-described deaths, see Marg (1976) and Griffin (1980: 104). E.g. at Il. 13. 185–7, Hector kills Amphimachos, about whom no ‘background information’ is given beyond his patronymic; in 16. 784–5, just before his own death, Patroclus charges the Trojans three times, killing nine wholly anonymous men each time. More typical is the sequence in Il. 5. 35–83, where six Greek heroes each kill a man, in each case with a brief ‘biography’ and a description of the fatal wound. Mueller (1984: 82, 90) counts about 220 deaths of named warriors in the Iliad, of which 140 (almost all of them Trojans) occur not simply in lists, but are described in some detail. Griffin (1980: 91–2) surveys the varied descriptions of death in the Iliad, and shows that ancient readers found even the short ‘obituaries’ emotionally moving (1980: 140–3). Only a handful of warriors killed in the Iliad play a significant role prior to their death in the epic, esp. the sequence Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector; cf. Mueller (1984: 89), and Fenik’s (1968) important study of type-scenes of battle in the Iliad. (4) For an overview of Herodotus’ relationship to Homeric epic, see Boedeker (2002). (5) Herodotus’ source for this detail may have been the Marathon painting on the Stoa Poikile, in which Kynegeiros was depicted (Plin. HN 35. 57, Ael. NA 7. 38). (6) But see Hdt. 6. 117. 3 for the remarkable death of an anonymous Athenian. (7) Masaracchia (1978: 162) comments, ‘Tutto l’episodio presenta forte somiglianze con i libri XVI–XVII dell’ Iliade.’ (8) See Dewald (1999) and de Jong (1999) on the use of secondary focalizers and narrators in the Histories. It could be argued that Herodotus describes the Masistios passage from an Athenian point of view because his sources for the story were Athenian. That is likely enough, but after describing Masistios’ death, Herodotus immediately switches to a Persian perspective to describe the consequences—suggesting that he is not bound to the point of view of his Page 16 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus (probable) informants. On the Masistios passage in comparison with Homeric narrative see also Aly (1921: 162–3, 274–5). (9) On the contrary, de Jong (1999:225) points out that Herodotus, like Homer and Thucydides, frequently attributes ‘psychological’ motives to his characters through secondary focalization. (10) Darbo-Peschanski (1988). (11) Darbo-Peschanski (1988: 41–2, 50–1); she allows only the deaths of the calfgod Apis (Hdt. 3.29) and his murderer Cambyses (Hdt. 4. 66) as examples of a prolonged, subjective description of death (1988: 41 n. 1). (12) Immerwahr (1966: 293–4 and passim, esp. on crossing rivers), Lateiner (1989: 126–44). On transgression of cultural boundaries, see e.g. Hdt. 4. 76–80. (13) See also Darbo-Peschanski (1988: 47–8) on factors that make deaths worthy of mention in the Histories; these include trickery, motifs of hybris and divine retribution, and female perpetrators. (14) Similarly Darbo-Peschanski (1988: 50). (15) On the Adrastos story see further de Jong (1999: 247–51). (16) Cf. Thgn. 425–8, Bacchyl. 5. 160–2, Soph. OC 1224–8. (17) Doubtless the shift in discourse occurs for pedagogical reasons: if Croesus does not understand the stories, maybe he will understand the numbers. Konstan (1987) contrasts quantitative Persian vs. qualitative Greek systems of values. A similar contrast underlies the Croesus–Solon conversation. (18) See below, at nn. 36 ff. (19) Later, Croesus’ own change of fortune will cause him to conclude that Solon was right after all: Hdt. 1. 86. (20) See below at nn. 37–46 for the contrast between ‘prosaic’ and ‘poetic’ discourse. (21) e.g. Marg (1976), Rubino (1979), Griffin (1980: 87, 90–1, 140, and passim), Murnaghan (1997). (22) Marks (2001: ch. 1) has a rich discussion of this passage. (23) Murnaghan (1997). (24) Kullmann (1985: 15–16); similarly, von der Mühll (1930: 40–2). But see Nagy (1979: 175) for a different interpretation of Achilles’ immortality in the Aithiopis.

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus (25) So Redfield (1975: 99–103), Vernant (1979: 1366–8), Nagy (1979: 184–5), Schein (1984: 68, 71–2), Murnaghan (1997: 29), etc. (26) Rubino (1979: 13). (27) Nagy (1979: 340–3; 1983), Schein (1984: 48–9). Saïd (1998: 12–6) argues for the standard view that hero cult is absent from Homeric epic, although she points out that ancestral tombs are important focal points for Homeric communities. (28) Bouvier (1999) shows conversely that a society like the Lotus-eaters’, lacking violence, social distinction, and heroic honors, also lacks memory. (29) See Mueller (1984: 86–9) on the formulaically varied phrases ‘by which the poet confirms the death of the victim’, e.g.

‘he fell with a thud’.

(30) Vernant (1979: 1365–8). (31) Discussed by Vernant (1979: 1365). (32) On pathos in the Iliad’s brief ‘obituaries’, see Griffin (1980: 140–3, cf. n. 3 above). (33) Edwards (1987: 153); Redfield (1975: 99–101). (34) Cf. Griffin (1980: 92), Edwards (1987: 156–7). (35) Cf. Isager’s editio princeps (1999), followed by Lloyd-Jones’s further comments (1999); also available in Merkelbach and Stauber (1998: text 01/12/02). (36) becomes a standard way to refer to prose in Hellenistic and later criticism. ‘Longinus’ Subl. 13. 3 also compares Herodotus to Homer, as does Dion. Hal. Pomp. 3. See Lloyd-Jones (1999: 10–11). (37) Bakhtin himself did not use the term ‘prosaics’, though it has been adopted as a convenient way to denote the set of properties he opposes to ‘poetics’. According to Morson and Emerson (1990: 12 and 474 n. 1), ‘prosaics’ first appeared in two books written independently of each other, Kittay and Godzich (1987) and Morson (1987). (38) Bakhtin (1981: 285–8). Analogously, the term ‘poetics’ applies to critical constructs that privilege textual unity and cohesion. See Morson and Emerson (1990: 319–25) for a good discussion of this point. (39) Bakhtin (1981: 13–17). (40) Bakhtin (1981: 11, 20–1, and passim). Page 18 of 20

 

Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus (41) See Dewald (1997) on the open-endedness of the Histories. Nimis (1994, 1999) provides a good introduction to textual open-endedness (applied to the ancient novel), and of the ‘prosaic’ critical approach that seeks to discover and describe it. (42) Bakhtin is especially interested in prosaic parody and stylization of traditional and ‘poetic’ genres (1981: 43–4, 51–6). See Nagy (1987) on how Herodotus ‘subsumes’ the subject matter and in some ways the authority of Homeric epic. In Boedeker (2001: 121–4 and 2002) I discuss some Herodotean uses of poetic language and motifs. (43) On dialogism in Herodotus, see also Dewald (1999: esp. p. 247). (44) See Dewald (1987), Boedeker (2000). (45) Bakhtin (1981: 11–12). (46) Summarized in Meier (1987). (47) Bakhtin (1981: 286–7, esp. n. 12). As Todorov (1984: 62–4) points out, Bakhtin sometimes recognizes a dialogic or intertextual dimension even in ‘monologic’ texts, including poetry. Todorov is generally critical of Bakhtin’s distinction between dialogic and monologic discourse, and between prose and poetry; in general, the concepts of ‘poetics’ and ‘prosaics’ are more fruitfully developed by Morson and Emerson (1990) and by Kittay and Godzich (1987), as well as Nimis (1994). (48) Esp. Morrison (1992), now developed by Marks (2001: ch. 4). (49) Morrison (1992). For a general study of this trope in ancient epic see Nesselrath (1992). (50) Here I follow closely de Jong (1997: 312–13). (51) De Jong (1987, 1997). The existence of different ‘voices’ in the poem does not necessarily compromise its monologism in Bakhtin’s ideological sense (see above at n. 47), but the fact that those voices are so prominent might nevertheless have the effect of softening the authority of the dominant ideology. (52) So too Rubino (1979: 14), Schein (1984: 71). (53) Obvious examples include Achilles vs. Hector reacting to the death of Patroclus, and the Trojan vs. the Achaean response to the death of Hector. (54) Cf. the discussion among Apollo, Hera, and Zeus at Il. 24. 31–76, centering on whether even Hector, most hated by Hera, should be accorded the honor of suitable burial.

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Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus (55) Edwards (1987: 140) notes that the usual trope is ‘even Herakles died’ (as at Il. 18. 117–19). (56) Alternative interpretations of an event are a standard feature in Herodotus; see Lateiner (1989: 76–90) with bibliog., and now de Jong (1999: 270–1). (57) The Phocaean prisoners of war who were killed by their captors reportedly experienced a similar fate (Hdt. 1. 167). Cf. also the Olympic victor Philippos of Kroton (Hdt. 5.47), who was killed in battle in a failed attempt to colonize Sicily, but honored by his enemies with hero cult because of his extraordinary beauty. (58) Even such a glorious genealogy, however, may be challenged by the voice of the prosaic reporter. At 9.64, Herodotus recounts the genealogy of Leonidas’ nephew Pausanias in a prosaically abbreviated, cross-referenced form: ‘The names of his [Pausanias’] earlier ancestors have already been mentioned for Leonidas, for they happen to be the same’. This finessed listing of ancestors may even reflect back on the genealogy of Leonidas, by suggesting that genealogies of Spartan kings are part of a certain honorific ‘language’ that the narrator may or may not decide to use. (59) Cf. Loraux (1986: 99–101 and passim). No extant funeral speeches can be dated before the Histories, but what remains of the genre appears highly stable, making it reasonable to assume that such a common phrase was traditional. (60) ‘Why’, that is, in Herodotus’ view, for Miltiades’ speech is certainly anachronistic. See Raaflaub (1987: 238).

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6)

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) Simon Hornblower (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter focuses on one of the grimmer stories in Herodotus, and its grimness may explain its neglect in most modern books about him. The context of the story in Book 8 (104-6) is the defeated Xerxes' decision in 480 bc to send his children ahead of him to Ephesus. They are to be accompanied there by Artemisia Queen of Halikarnassos, but guarded by Hermotimos of Pedasa, second to none among the king's eunuchs. It is argued that this story is not literally true. It conforms to a story pattern of a biblical type, the story in two halves of Joseph the Jew who became Joseph the Egyptian. Hermotimos is a Karian who is physically maltreated by castration and sold into Persia by a man from Chios called Panionios, who bears a unique personal name suggesting the Ionian festival and religious centre called respectively the Panionia and the Panionion. This half of the story stands for the combined process by which colonizing Greeks on the one hand subjugated the indigenous inhabitants of the East Aegean region, while on the other hand asserted their own superior and exclusivist identity by forming groupings such as the Panionion. Keywords:   Herodotus, Xerxes, Joseph the Jew, Greeks

My subject is one of the grimmer stories in Herodotus, and its grimness may explain its neglect in most modern books about him.1 John Gould, in a wonderful book first published twelve years ago, endorsed the picture of Herodotus as a figure associated with laughter and exhilaration.2 Herodotus thus (we may say) becomes the laughing historian, just as Democritus was the laughing Page 1 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) philosopher. This will mean that the historiographic counterpart of the weeping philosopher Heraclitus is Thucydides. It is entirely appropriate that a book in memory of George Forrest should occupy itself with Herodotus, not just for the obvious reason that he did so much important work on Herodotus, but because concentration on the laughing historian is the right way to remember our friend, who got so much fun out of the study of the ancient world and injected so much fun into it. When I think of George it is laughter that I think of above all, laughter of the life-affirming Herodotean sort, not the unpleasant sort which the weeping historian goes in for on the few occasions that he mentions laughter.3 Finally, my paper has much to say about Chios, and this (p.38) too is right for George who did so much to illuminate Chian history and epigraphy. The laughter is there in Herodotus all right, but the simultaneous existence of a grimmer Herodotus is something Peter Derow has reminded us of in sharp and convincing style. He did so, in friendly dialogue with Gould, in an interesting paper about the crucifixion episode involving Artayktes near the end of Book 9, which balances the stoning of the family of the Athenian Lykides at the beginning of the book.4 There is not much laughter there. I propose to move back one book from there, to Book 8 (104–6). The context of the story is the defeated Xerxes’ decision in 480 BC to send his children ahead of him to Ephesus. They are to be accompanied there by Artemisia Queen of Halikarnassos, but guarded by Hermotimos of Pedasa, second to none among the king’s eunuchs. Then follows the digression. It begins by virtually repeating, from near the beginning of the History (1. 175), the main curiosity about Hermotimos’ home town, Lelegian Pedasa, in Karia above Halikarnassos. The curiosity was its priestess who grew a long beard when something unfortunate, threatened Pedasa’s neighbours, a solemn word elsewhere used by Herodotus only about Delphi. The term ‘Lelegian’, which I used above, deserves a word. The indigenous Lelegians, so we are told by the Hellenistic historian Philip of Karian Theangela, were used as serfs by the Karians in his own time, which puts them right at the bottom of the heap; Herodotus however equates Karians and Lelegians and says that they once occupied the islands (1. 171).5 Hermotimos, so Herodotus continues, extracted the ‘greatest requital’, the of anyone we know of. There follows the story of his capture by enemies, his castration by Panionios of Chios, and his sale at Sardis as a eunuch: such people, Herodotus says in an aside, are, because of their complete trustworthiness, more valued by barbarians than men who have their testicles,

. Panionios made his living in this ‘impious’ way (the word is an extremely strong one): he sold castrated boys at Sardis and Page 2 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) Ephesus. But Hermotimos was not unfortunate in every respect, because at Susa he rose to a position of honour under Xerxes. At first we are tempted to take this comment seriously but Hermotimos’ (p.39) later outburst shows that that would be a mistake—we are not really supposed to believe that worldly success was compensation or consolation for the loss of manhood. At the time of Xerxes’ outward journey, when the king is at Sardis, Hermotimos comes down to Mysian Atarneus on the mainland

the right verb for a journey towards the

sea). There he finds Panionios again (by chance,

where

means that Herodotus cannot or will not specify further, that is, it was a chance meeting6) and gets Panionios into his power together with his children and wife. The word for the whole family is an interesting word which I shall return to. Hermotimos does the luring by pretending to want to share with Panionios his good fortune and by inviting him to bring his household to Atarneus. Then he rounds on him as an (that superlative adjective again) and asks what harm he had ever done Panionios that he should make him a nothing instead of a man; so much for the good fortune of trusty eunuch of his sons who are status. Then he forces Panionios to then forced to do the same to him. The Greek I have left untranslated is usually rendered ‘castrate’, but I shall be disputing this. The ring of the story closes with a second use of

and the main narrative continues.

This is a rich story indeed, as well as a dreadful one. I have found very little written about it. There is nothing in Gould despite his stress on reciprocity; nothing in Fehling’s book on Herodotus’ sources, though there are features which might have been expected to appeal to him. Nothing in Rosalind Thomas’s recent book about Herodotus’ intellectual milieu. Nothing, despite Panionios, in the excellent 1986 collection of essays about Chios edited by John Boardman and Jenny Vaphopoulou-Richardson; in that volume this story, together with the other interesting and plentiful Herodotean material about Chios in the Ionian Revolt and the Persian Wars, falls down a gap between Roebuck on Chios in the sixth century and Barron on Chios in the Athenian empire.7 Panionios does by contrast regularly feature in books and source-books on ancient slavery, where the story is treated as straightforward evidence for human traffic, something of a Chian speciality.8 Since ‘reciprocity’ is such a fashionable concept in (p.40) Greek social and religious studies these days, it would be surprising to find nothing about it in any of the relevant books, and there are indeed a couple of lively pages on Panionios and Hermotimos by David Braund in a recent edited collection of essays on reciprocity in ancient Greece. And the story features more than once in Thomas Harrison’s monograph on religion in Herodotus.9 But there is much more to be said, and I believe that Braund in particular is mistaken on one crucial point.

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) My own thesis will run as follows: for clarity’s sake I summarize and simplify for the moment and will elaborate the details later and give proper references. This story is not literally true. It conforms to a story pattern of a biblical type, the story in two halves of Joseph the Jew who became Joseph the Egyptian. Hermotimos is a Karian who is physically maltreated by castration and sold into Persia by a man from Chios called Panionios, who bears a unique personal name suggesting the Ionian festival and religious centre called respectively the Panionia and the Panionion. This half of the story stands for the combined process by which colonizing Greeks on the one hand subjugated the indigenous inhabitants of the East Aegean region, while on the other hand asserted their own superior and exclusivist identity by forming groupings such as the Panionion. I shall invoke the evidence of the fragmentary fifth-century writer Ion of Chios for a corresponding myth which has the early Chians, under their mythical king Hektor, simultaneously subduing the original Karian inhabitants of the island, and annexing the island to the Panionion. In the second half of the Herodotus story, the half located at Atarneus, Hermotimos has made the transition to Persian status; in reprisal he wipes out all the males in the Chian family of Panionios. This recalls and is, in a modern term, a ‘signifier’ for the catastrophe which befell Chios in 494 BC when as reprisal for the Ionian Revolt the Persians castrated the Chian boys and deported the girls. They did this to two other islands as well, but Herodotus singles out the fate of Chios because he has just reported not one but two portents which presaged disaster to the Chians alone. Both involved the mass deaths of groups of Chian children. I shall argue that Atarneus, a place on the Asiatic mainland but Chian, i.e. island territory, and the location of the revenge of (p.41) Hermotimos, is extremely important in the story: for its position see the map at Fig. 1, p. 42. It can be located from Herodotus’ narrative of Xerxes’ itinerary, and the remains are those at modern Kale Agili (Hdt. 7. 42. 1; Debord (1999: 267 n. 26) gives ancient and modern references). Atarneus is regularly associated in Herodotus with pollution and death, and its in-between status expresses both this polluted condition, and also the sexual and ethnic ambivalence of the two protagonists. Finally, I hold that this story of requital is not just itself a story with an internal hinge: it is itself placed at a crucial hinge in the whole nine-book narrative. Xerxes has just been defeated and this defeat can be seen as requital for the Persian savagery of 494 which was in turn requital for the Ionian Revolt itself. But before I get on to the substance, I ought to say a few words about vocabulary and structure. I have already noted amphikty-ones;10 I think the religious solemnity is meant to alert us to something important—that is, if the Pedasa sentence is to be retained at all, a point I return to shortly. Then there is ‘with all his family’, a word with sinister associations in Herodotus, although literally neutral and innocuous. This is the central one of three occurrences in Books 7, 8 and 9.11 In the present case there is an extra resonance, in that the word picks up part of the sound and meaning of the Page 4 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) personal name Panionios, a name to which (again) I shall return. Then there is the delay in the divulging of the sex of Panionios’ children; at first they are just and by what has been called an ‘archaic’ narrative delay,12 they called are not disclosed as masculine until the very end of the story, in fact at just the moment when they lose their masculinity. A final and important linguistic point: the verb

(‘cut out’) is used in 105 and that is indeed the regular word

for ‘castrate’. But the revenge at the end of 106 is described as (‘cut (§4, OCT line 1) and though all translations, and now David off’) Braund and Thomas Harrison, repeat or in effect repeat the English word ‘castrate’ from the previous chapter, I claim that this is wrong. I suggest that the longer expression implies a more radical and comprehensive amputation of the whole genital area,

. Enoch Powell gets halfway (p.42)

(p.43) there in his school commentary on Book 8, when he says that is used ‘here of the testicles only; elsewhere the penis is included’.13 If I am right, this will not be qualitative reciprocity but dramatic escalation. (It is certainly not quantitative tit-for-tat reciprocity because there are five victims not one, so there is escalation at that level too.) My rendering gives, so I claim, better sense to the very strong introductory remark (see above p. 38) about Hermotimos’ revenge being the ‘greatest requital’ we know of. At the end of Book 4 Herodotus, talking about the revenge taken by Pheretime, Queen of Kyrene, had said that the gods do not like excessive revenges;14 but perhaps that is only when they are carried out by women. (That is, real women like Pheretime rather than half-women like Hermotimos.) If I am right about what

Fig. 1. Chios and the western seaboard of Asia Minor.

means, I do not think such an amputation could be long survived, because of blood loss; certainly not for long or with strength enough to carry out a similar operation on someone else. Which should, I suggest, make us doubt the literal truth of the whole story. (See further below p. 55.)

I now return to the detail of the story. First the Pedasa material at the beginning. It is omitted by one manuscript tradition, square-bracketed in the Oxford Classical Text, and scorned by most modern commentators. But I am reluctant to Page 5 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) get rid of it, because of its structural and symmetrical appropriateness: the Pedasan priestess acquires a gender-specific attribute, a long beard. Conversely, that other Pedasan, Hermotimos, loses his essential sexual attribute by castration. In this connection we should not forget that Hermotimos’ role as guardian of Xerxes’ bastard, that is, ambiguous or marginal children is performed alongside Artemisia, about whom the king, in the course of the battle of Salamis, famously said a few chapters earlier that she was a woman who had become a man (8. 88. 3). In this respect she resembles the priestess but is unlike the eunuch—a man become a woman. We shall see that the bearded priestess is not the only reminiscence of this part of Book 1 in the Hermotimos episode. On the priestess, Mary Douglas points out to me that other comparable anthropological stories suggest that the woman is protected from violation by growing a beard, so the priestess is warning the town of danger or is being prepared to protect it. In this way feminine gender and masculinity are put together, masculinity denoting strength. (p.44) Still sticking with places, great interest attaches to Atarneus. I start from Braund’s remark that Panionios ‘makes the mistake of many others in Herodotus. … when he crosses from his own sphere into that of another (his enemy) … While Panionios was on Khian territory he was safe, but he strayed to Sardis’ (Braund 1998a: 167). That would be interesting if it were right, but in fact ‘Sardis’ is a crucial mistake by Braund for ‘Atarneus’: Hermotimos encourages Panionios to settle his household ‘in that place’, (OCT line 15; cf. LSJ for this use) and this clearly refers not to Sardis but to Atarneus. So, rightly, Stein (1893: 83), How and Wells (1912: 270), Powell (1939a: 131), and Waterfield (1998: 523). In any case, we can press Herodotus harder. Braund’s phrase ‘Khian territory’ is too simple. Atarneus, where both the meeting and the revenge occurred, both was and was not ‘Khian territory’. It belonged to that interesting category of territory, namely peraiai, mainland possessions opposite, an island.15 Sometimes these might exceed in extent and importance the island itself; the most celebrated such peraia is the Hellenistic Rhodian. So the in-between status of Atarneus, both an island and not an island, and according to Stephanus of Byzantium (entry ‘Atarna’) on the border of Lydia and Mysia, as well as on the cultural frontier between Greece and Persia, nicely reflects the sexual ambivalence of some of the main players in this tale. But let us recall the specific circumstances in which Chios acquired its peraia of Atarneus, which geographically is a good deal closer to Lesbos than it is to Chios. I conjecture that Chios could not expand due east because of the blocking presence of Erythrai. Atarneus was in fact the shameful price for which the mid-sixth-century Chians had surrendered the Lydian suppliant Paktyes. As a result of this act, Herodotus told us in Book 1, no barley from Atarneus was used in religious offerings, but everything from there was kept away from all sacrificial (p.45) rituals.16 As Robert Parker once nicely put it, the Chians treated as defiled the land they received as reward.17 In Herodotean terms this was seven books ago, Page 6 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) but if we have good memories we will surely feel that Atarneus is a sinister place, especially when we recall that Histiaios of Miletos, the instigator of the Ionian Revolt, was finally captured there while reaping the harvest to feed his hungry army (with, that is to say, polluted grain).18 His plans for revolt were moreover betrayed by his messenger Hermippos of, precisely, Atarneus. That was twenty chapters earlier (6. 4). The army was destroyed. But the Book 1 passage is the really explicit indication that Atarneus is a bad place. (It eventually became malarial, after a plague of mosquitoes, Paus. 7. 2. 11. But I must not over-egg the pudding. I hope I have made the point that Atarneus was not a very nice place.) So here too, as with Pedasa, the Hermotimos story contains a reminiscence of Book 1 and indeed of the same general section of that book. Finally, on the subject of Atarneus, let me jump on to the fourth century BC, as structuralism generously allows me to do, and note that one of the most famous classical Greek eunuchs was also associated with Atarneus and also bore a theophoric name formed from Hermes (unless Hermotimos, as I think likelier, derives from the Hermos river).19 I refer to Hermias, ruler of Atarneus, the friend and pupil of Aristotle who met a miserable end tortured by the then Persian king Artaxerxes III.20 To return to the name of Hermotimos himself, Carolyn Dewald, in her notes to the recent World’s Classics translation of Herodotus,21 remarks that it looks suspiciously like ‘honour of the herm’ and she points out that herms are statues with genitals prominently displayed. This nice observation makes me all the sorrier that she follows those who delete the Pedasa material. Her point fails if Hermotimos, which unlike Panionios is not a particularly rare name, is after all a Flussname or ‘potamonym’ derived from (p. 46) the Hermos river. Hermippos, the Atarnean betrayer (above), may suggest that at least Hermias and Hermippos are Hermos-derivatives. Hermotimos is a Pedasan not an Atarnean, but the name might make one speculate about family links with Atarneus. The essential point is that Atarneus’ links are with the Hermos river, not with the river Kaikos to the north, opposite Lesbos. Dewald regrettably says nothing about the name Panionios. It is time to look at the Hermotimos–Panionios story as a whole. It is not easy to find a parallel in Herodotus. But we may have better luck if, in accordance with one prevailing trend in our subject, we look towards the Near East and the Bible.22 The biblical career I invite you to consider and compare with Hermotimos is that of Joseph, which started life in the book of Genesis23 and was then so memorably novelized in the twentieth century by Thomas Mann in his four-volume book Joseph and his Brothers. In both stories the hero is initially subjected to physical maltreatment, castrated in the one case, thrown into a pit by his brothers in the other. Both heroes are then sold abroad into slavery, Hermotimos to Sardis, Joseph to Egypt. Both heroes make, from the worldly point of view, spectacular careers in their new homelands, both rising high in royal favour. Both heroes then, by a trick, get their one-time tormentors into their power. (Joseph does this by the ruse of the precious cup secreted in his Page 7 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) brother Benjamin’s luggage, after which the brothers are arrested for theft and brought back.) Having achieved complete mastery and reversal, both heroes then reveal themselves; and both then assert that it is not they but a divine hand that has brought this turn of events about. But then the stories diverge sharply in their interpretation of the meaning of the divine intervention. Hermotimos, using the adjective anosia, wicked or impious, for the third time in this short story, says to Panionios: ‘you thought to escape the notice of the gods when you contrived what you did against me; but they are just, and they have delivered you, the perpetrator of things anosia, into my hands’. Similarly—but also differently—Joseph says ‘I am Joseph your brother whom ye sold into Egypt … God sent me before you to (p.47) preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. It was not you that sent me hither but God.’ The god of the Hebrews has brought things about so that a posterity shall be preserved for Jacob, i.e. Israel under his other name; the Olympian gods have brought it about that Panionios and his posterity shall be annihilated root and branch, panoikie. I do not want to lose sight of Joseph and the tribal eponyms altogether, but equally I do not want to go further down this entertaining path of the biblical story-pattern. (In particular I leave aside questions of Near-Eastern influence on Herodotus; I confine myself to structural similarities.) Instead I shall talk about two features of the Herodotus story which might seem at first sight, but in fact wrongly, to root it in real space and time: first the eunuch aspect, which affects Hermotimos only if what was done to Panionios was more extreme than castration; and second Panionios and his interesting name. But in fact I shall argue that so far from constituting circumstantial details, these are give-away features indicating folk-tale and myth respectively. First, eunuch status. This is an obvious difference between Joseph and Hermotimos. Joseph’s success in Egypt owes nothing to his lack of physical manliness; on the contrary, normal sexual attractiveness and capacity (‘goodly and well-favoured’ in the language of the King James version of the Bible)24 is indicated by the trouble he got into with Potiphar’s wife, a story comparable to Greek myths like Bellerophon, Hippolytus or Peleus. But how are we to assess Herodotus’ generalizations about barbarians and their liking for eunuchs? If we ask what was so anosion about what Panionios did, one obvious answer would be that he was a Greek who castrated Greeks, whereas castration was a barbarian phenomenon. Hermotimos is certainly a Greek name, but Pedasa like Halikarnassos had some non-Greek features and was not properly integrated into the Hellenized urban network of Karia until the time of the satrap Mausolus in the fourth century. (Kallisthenes, a good and contemporary authority, says that Mausolus synoikized Pedasa, among other places, into Halikarnassos: FGrHist 124 F25.) We should not then assume Hermotimos to be more than partGreek. There is however no doubt about the Greekness of Panionios. But Panionios was not the only Greek in Herodotus to be associated with castration; Page 8 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) (p.48) there is Periander of Corinth who sent 300 Kerkyraian boys to the Lydian king Alyattes to become eunuchs (but was thwarted). So does Periander prove that we were after all wrong to think that the reason Panionios was anosios was because he was a Greek castrating Greeks? I think not. The Periander–Panionios parallel is not quite exact, for three reasons. First because Panionios is himself the castrator: what is despicable is that he seems to do the job himself. Second, because Periander is a tyrant and thus a rule-breaker, and thus a deviant, transgressive sort of Greek. Third, because Christiane SourvinouInwood has argued ingeniously and attractively25 that the Periander story does not ‘reflect historical reality’ but that we are dealing with a symbolic and initiatory loss of manhood. She treats ‘castration in Lydia’ as a significant variant of the usual initiatory pattern but not as one which establishes historicity: the youths have to go somewhere else to be symbolically punished, and the identity of the ‘somewhere else’ was, she suggests, determined by Greek knowledge of the real practice of castration in the kingdoms of the East. If there is symbolism in the Panionios story it is, I shall argue, of a different sort. But provisionally I do think Greekness is crucial to the Hermotimos–Panionios story. Liminal Atarneus is exactly the right place for the cultural confrontation to take place. Here it is time to turn to the real-life phenomenon of the eunuch in the Persian empire, a phenomenon which Sourvinou-Inwood does accept as historical. The latest (1996) edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary distinguishes between religious and secular eunuchs and assigns the two types to different contributors; we are dealing with the secular sort of eunuch.26 Were eunuchs of this sort really as widespread and as crucial to oriental government as ancient Greek historians and many modern ones liked and like to think? There are two linguistic problems. One is a matter of Greek translation: eunouchos is a euphemism, ‘he who keeps the bed’, the word is formed analogously to klerouchos or ‘cleruch’, literally an allotment-holder. Sometimes the ‘eunuchs’ we find in the sources may be better translated ‘chamberlains’, who might or might not be anatomical eunuchs. For instance, there are eunouchoi in Herodotus’ story of (p.49) Darius’ accession, but they may just be guardians of the royal bedchamber; they carry messages in to the king (3. 77. 2). There is a second linguistic ambiguity. Pierre Briant, in his recent history of the Persian empire, has a good section on eunuchs.27 He cuts back the phenomenon considerably; Ktesias predictably is a chief culprit, also Xenophon in the Cyropaedia (7. 5. 58ff.), who seems to be applying to human eunuchs insights derived from his knowledge of gelded dogs and horses. For Briant, ‘eunuch’ may often just be a ‘titre aulique’—this is like the point I made above. He ingeniously suggests (p. 288) that copyists sometimes confused

cup-bearer, and

as in the case of Nehemiah, the king’s cup-bearer and certainly not a technical eunuch, contrary to some influential modern works. This is clever, Page 9 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) though it would work better if the Hebrew word also used the three consonants N, KH, S which as far as I can see it does not (the word is saris). Briant is however certainly right about Nehemiah, who along with Hermotimos is regularly cited as a high-grade eunuch in the Persian empire: some of the manuscripts of the Septuagint have but the latter is certainly correct because it translates a Hebrew word mashkeh, cup-bearer. Then there is an a priori point: Mary Douglas points out to me that Nehemiah cannot be a eunuch because of the prohibition in Deuteronomy on men with crushed testicles entering the Assembly of the Lord.28 We can agree with Briant that much of the evidence for eunuchs, right down to the famous Bagoas at the time of Alexander, is anecdotal, novelistic, and bad. In fact, since Hermias of Atarneus is a different sort of case, Hermotimos turns out to be the best attested named historical eunuch employed in a high capacity in the Persian empire, if indeed his story is historical. For Persian eunuchs Sourvinou-Inwood cites a passage from Book 3 of Herodotus (3. 77), but these are the eunuchs in the Darius accession story and they are dubious, as I have suggested. A better passage for her purposes occurs later in the same book (3. 92) where eunouchos is not used, but Herodotus says the tribute from Babylon and Assyria (p.50) includes boys for castration.29 Here the word is which is anatomically explicit. Better still is Herodotus’ account of the reprisals for the Ionian Revolt (6.31–2), an important passage for my thesis. We are here told that the reprisals included the ‘netting’ of Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos and, in accordance with an earlier threat, the castrating of the most beautiful boys and the deportation of the girls; the boys are made ‘eunuchs instead of having their testicles’, —again explicit. The narrative concerns all three islands, but Herodotus is specially interested in Chios, which he lists in first place: I say this not just because of the order of the naming but above all because he precedes the account of the reprisals by not one but two stories (6. 27) about portents of disaster to Chios alone, both involving the mass deaths of children.30 One group went as a chorus to Delphi but most of them died of plague; the other group was killed in a disaster to a school when the roof fell in. Clearly, the loss of children by these misfortunes is both a disaster in itself and a warning of a still worse disaster, the loss of further children not by misfortune but by deliberate mass castration and deportation just four chapters later. Demographically, this was a bad time for Chios. But to come back to eunuchs in general, Briant is right to be sceptical and I conclude that eunuchs, so far from settling Hermotimos’ historicity, merely involve us in deeper and muddier problems. What we ought to do, I suggest, is to distinguish between the practice of castration in the Persian empire (in fact, presumably for low-grade sex purposes), and the alleged phenomenon of the trusted very-high-level court eunuch (largely novelistic fantasy). In any case, as Braund shrewdly observes (see above, n. 9), Hermotimos’ trick on Panionios goes some way towards subverting the ‘trusty eunuch’ stereotype (though see above, n. 26).

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) Next Panionios.31 In the year 2000, after the publication since 19 8 7 of four volumes of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN), (p.51) no study of a Greek individual mentioned by a Greek historian can neglect the onomastic evidence for the name borne by that individual. A check on published volumes of LGPN showed that Panionios was a very rare name because I could find only Herodotus’ man and a quotation by Athenaeus of the Herodotus story. Both are of course in volume 1, Islands and Cyrenaica. Then a check which Elaine Matthews kindly did for me on unpublished LGPN files, including Asia Minor, confirmed that it is in fact unique: there is no other bearer of the name known to literature, epigraphy, or numismatics until a possible but not certain third- or fourth-century AD Palestinian. As a sort of adjective the word is a title of the emperor Hadrian. Robert Parker warns me not to over-interpret the significance of the apparent uniqueness of the name. In his own witty formulation: ‘as Aristotle might have said, nothing is commoner than uncommon names. You will, I think, find hapaxes on almost any page of LGPN’. I take this point, but nevertheless a meaningful and regularly formed Greek name which occurs in Herodotus, and is then (in effect) attested nowhere else at all, seems to me to be of considerable interest, and its possible implications worth pursuing. Let us first ask, what sort of name is Panionios and is it a plausible sort of name? Macan, whose Herodotus commentary may sometimes be wayward but often picks up aspects other commentators miss, suggested that the name was a defiant political statement of pan-Ionianism. As I say, Macan deserves credit for saying something about the name. More obviously plausible is Bechtel’s view that Panionios belongs to a small but definitely attested category of Festnamen, that is, names derived from religious festivals. (Such names could also be derived from month-names but there is no month Panionios that I have been able to discover.) The festival in question is the Panionia, the ‘festival of all the Ionians’, whose cult centre the Panionion is described by Herodotus in the context of the Persian conquest of Ionia in 546.31 If that is right, the name Panionios becomes, I would observe, one of the earliest hard bits of evidence for the Panionion and the Panionia. That is, our man must have been given his name in, say, 520 BC. Of course that is later than 546, but some scholars, such as John Cook, have wondered just how far back the Panionion’s existence can be pushed. There is no archaeological evidence from the Archaic period, and the sceptic might want to argue that Herodotus, in talking about 546, might have retrojected the Classical institution, as might his contemporary Ion of Chios who, as we shall see, talks about the semi-mythical (p.52) phase of the Panionion. But against that sceptical possibility, the name Panionios is decisive. The name has, however, been routinely ignored in discussions of the problems of the early history of the Ionian league and the Panionia, e.g. by Wilamowitz, Wade-Gery, the German excavators in their 1967 Panionion und Melie; as by Nilsson—and everyone else.32

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) Why was the name not used again? Perhaps, like Adolf, it went out of fashion because its bearer was not an attractive role model. (But that would mean the story was current independently of Herodotus, otherwise we need to explain why there are no other Panionioi between 520 and Herodotus’ time.) Or perhaps the existence of the Panionia was problematic in the classical period; indeed it was, and I argued twenty years ago that the Ephesia of Thucydides (3. 104) was none other than the old Panionia on a new site.33 But the move hardly happened before, say, 440, because Herodotus uses the present tense about the Panionion without awareness of the move away to Ephesus. So we still need to explain the absence of Panionios 520–440. There was nothing wrong with names formed from Ion; after all the unadjusted name Ion was famously borne by a Chian compatriot of Panionios. The fact remains, Panionios is never found again. Let us try a different approach. I have suggested elsewhere34 that personal names are one control on the accuracy of the Greek historians; thus, epichoric Thessalian names in a Thessalian context reassure us that the historian mentioning them had done his research properly. The converse I now suggest is also true: an unattested name like Panionios may show the bearer to be unhistorical. What else might the name Panionios be doing? Might he in some sense represent and personify Ionianism? (So that in a way Macan would be right after all, though the Festname explanation is also true as I shall argue.) In favour of this idea there is one detail of the Herodotus story which I have held back until now, just as Herodotus holds it back—the number of Panionios’ sons. Herodotus specifies that there were four of them. Now the bearer of another strongly Ionian name also famously had four sons, none other than Ion himself as recorded by Herodotus and repeated by Euripides in the Ion.35 (p.53) Those sons gave their names to the four old Ionian tribes, i.e. the civic subdivisions into which the Athenians were organized before Kleisthenes made Athens a ten-tribe state for political purposes at the end of the sixth century. So my case for seeing Panionios as representative of Ionianism rests on two arguments: (1) the singularity of the name, and (2) the curious specification that, like Ion, he had four sons. I come back to Joseph: the sons of Jacob or Israel, that is Joseph and his brothers, were eponyms for the twelve tribes of Israel, a grouping which modern biblical scholars call an amphictiony, just like the twelve members of the Panionion. The sons of Ion were eponyms for the Ionian tribes Aigikoreis, Hopletes, Geleontes, and Argadeis: they were civically important at Athens until Kleisthenes. Even in the fifth century the old tribes survived religiously at Athens and they continued in use as the names of civic subdivisions in transAegean Ionia. It may be objected: if I am right, why did Herodotus not simply use the name Ion? That would have been difficult, because Ion had a definite mythology of his own. Another answer is that Ion was not a rare personal name —there are several in Attica and the islands (including Ion of Chios and a wellknown elegist from Samos) and even the Peloponnese. If Herodotus wanted to conjure up Ionianism, the unique name Panionios was a much more arresting Page 12 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) way of doing so. If Hermotimos is Joseph, Panionios will be the eleven brothers who sold him; but I do not want to force every detail. So what is Herodotus doing here? I invite you to go back a long way in time, or rather into the world of colonial myth. The local fifth-century historian Ion of Chios, quoted by Pausanias, tells us that Hektor, the early or more likely mythical king of Chios, fought and killed or drove out the early Karian inhabitants of the island; we recall that Herodotus said the Karians or Lelegians occupied the islands in early times.36 Then, Ion continues, Hektor made Chios a (p.54) member of the Panionion. Here then we have, I suggest, an act of primeval violence which functions as a mythical archetype for Panionios’ castration of the Karian from Pedasa, and we see that Panionios is indeed a Festname of a sort. What I am arguing is that the ‘Hektor of Chios’ myth is a typically violent colonization myth37 which held that Chios and the Panionion came together in the context of a savage war against precisely Karians; correspondingly, the Panionios–Hermotimos story stands at one level for this early conflict, just as the story of Joseph and his brothers is thought to symbolize internecine tribal conflict but also the hope of reconciliation. Panionios in this first half of the story carries the full weight of his Festname: he is a ‘signifier’ for the archetypal colonizing Chians who subjugated the indigenous Karians and Lelegians and as part of the same mythistorical process annexed the island to the Panionion. Hermotimos the Karian was captured by unspecified enemies in the story; surely none other than the Chians themselves under king Hektor. But then comes the revenge. In the Herodotus story the mutilated Karian from Lelegian Pedasa becomes a Persian high official, just as the ambivalent Karian Queen Artemisia rose high under Persian rule. It is important for my theory that Hermotimos should be a Karian in the first half of the story but a sort of Persian in the second half—just as Joseph the Jew becomes a sort of Egyptian; and this transition to Persian status is indeed exactly what happens to Hermotimos. The sinister in-between territory of Atarneus, island and not island, and frontier, i.e. liminal or marginal town, underlines the transition or ambiguity. Atarneus is, I argue, doubly polluted, first because of the betrayed suppliant Paktyes, and second because of its in-between, uncategorizable status; this is a notion familiar to anthropologists interested in concepts of pollution. So I would add to Parker’s comment about Atarneus in Miasma (above p. 45) the idea of peraia as pollution. Let us now turn to the second half of the story, the revenge of Hermotimos the Persian as he now is. To this correspond, (p.55) I suggest, the terrible Persian reprisals of 494 against islands of which Chios is given far the greatest prominence both in prospect (the children portents) and in the event (the island is named first). That is, in 494 BC, the Persians, a category to which Hermotimos now in a real sense belongs, castrate the boys of Chios en masse. The plague, the collapsed roof and the Persian reprisals must have wiped out Chios demographically, panoikie we may say, just as in our story. Disaster was predicted for Pedasa in Book 1 (the bearded priestess), and for Chios in Book 6 Page 13 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) (the portents about the children). We can add that the fatal, treacherous, and polluting character of Atarneus is prepared for in Book 1 (Paktyes), recurs in Book 6 (Hermippos the betrayer, and the story about the army of Histiaios), and reaches its climax in Book 8 (our passage). In the second half of the story then, Panionios and his sons stand both for Ionia as a whole, defeated in the Ionian Revolt, and also and especially for Chios in particular, the fate of whose children so preoccupied Herodotus. We should not forget the Chian girls completely; the boys were castrated and the girls deported, and this corresponds I suggest to amputation which is worse than castration. The troubles of Chios begin with treachery to a suppliant Paktyes and run right through Herodotus’ entire work. Even after the Panionios passage we hear, very late in Book 8, of an abortive conspiracy against the tyrant Strattis of Chios. The conspiracy curiously enough involves seven conspirators, which, as Macan long ago and now Fehling note, is the same number as the Persian conspirators of Book 3; as with Panionios and the Persian employee Hermotimos, Chian and Persian events exhibit a nice symmetry.38 Where did Herodotus get all this from? Aly in 1921 thought the story (or Novelle as he called it) belonged to the category of ‘Milesian Tales’, but these are usually lewd or erotic, which is not quite right for our story; and it is anyway far from clear that this literary genre existed at so early a date.39 Jacoby, in the long ‘Quellen’ section of his great Pauly article on Herodotus, simply jumps over 8. 104–6, as we have seen (n. 1). But we can offer some ideas. Pedasa was not far from Herodotus’ birthplace, Halikarnassos, so local Pedasan informants are an obvious possibility (Aly suggested this too). But for the Chian and Panionian aspect, we might think of Ion of Chios himself. (p.56) There is another, better and more immediate source. Only one of the seven Chian conspirators against Strattis is named, Herodotus son of Basileides, the only Herodotus in Herodotus other than himself. Hera-derivatives (like Hero-dotos) are not rare in Chios;40 but this is an intriguing name less for itself than because of the patronymic Basileides. It suggests to me the Basilidai, the primeval kingly or priestly families of northern Ionia, that is, the Chios region. But who better placed than this priestly aristocrat to provide Herodotus with information not only on the failed coup against Strattis but on the Panionion, the Panionia—and Panionios? A penultimate question: why is the episode placed just here? I have already remarked (p. 55) that Chios and Atarneus run right through the History; but the placing of this particular item is dead central. This is the hinge of Xerxes’ expedition; he has just lost the battle of Salamis and decided (8. 103) to withdraw from Europe to Asia, following Artemisia’s advice; he actually does so in 107. The Panionios–Hermotimos narrative, 104–6, fills the critical pause between decision to withdraw and actual withdrawal. It does so (if I am right about the name Panionios) by reminding us that adika erga, unjust acts, between Europe and Asia go back far in time, and it does so by resuming momentarily not only as Braund rightly says the theme of East–West or Greek–Persian requital, Page 14 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) but also that of male–female reciprocity, with both of which the whole work began. The savage mass castrations of 494 were requital for the act of revolt in 500; the Persian failure at Salamis in 480 is requital for the savagery of 494. There is symmetry in that we are specifically told that it was on Xerxes’ outward journey that Hermotimos destroyed the children of Panionios when the king was at Sardis, but now on Xerxes’ return journey he guards the king’s children at Ephesus. Sardis and Ephesus were, we recall, the two places where Panionios plied his impious trade. The final question is: how seriously am I suggesting all this? What, it may be asked, has happened to the Hermotimos who simply looked after Xerxes’ children in 480 BC? The best way to answer is by examining the Joseph analogy. Stories can work and be true at more than one level. For Thomas Mann, Joseph and his brothers simply provided the plot for a great sprawling tetralogy of a novel, underpinned by no discernible symbolism. Historians of early Israel see the Joseph (p.57) narrrative differently, in terms of internecine strife; for theologians it expresses God’s care for his chosen people the children of Israel; students of narrative see it differently again; and economic historians can note the timeless and authentic role of Egypt as corn-provider from the Pharaohs to the Ptolemies.41 Similarly the Panionios–Hermotimos story is at one level just an illustration of the mechanics of the ancient slave trade; at another it offers an effective narrative pause; at another it is a warning that the gods may permit and arrange spectacular revenges. But at yet another—and this has been the main message of my paper—it may say something timeless and structurally significant about relations and uneasy interaction in the east Aegean between three groups. These are first, religiously-bonded early Greek settlers; second, local non-Greeks like Karians and Lelegians whose early subjection was asserted and sealed by exclusive Greek groupings like the Panionion; and third, the eventual Persian masters and employers or slave-trading partners of both of them. After I had delivered this paper in Oxford, one or two members of the audience wrote to me to ask if I thought Herodotus invented the entire story himself or got it from someone else, and they complained that I had not come quite clean on this point. The answer is that I have no idea, but that if a gun were put to my head I should prefer to say that he reported an amazing story he had been told and which he had not forgotten—who could? On the other hand I agree with Alan Griffiths that ‘Herodotus knows very well what he is about’ and that ‘he is aware how much suggestive depth can be added to a narrative by the selective inclusion of stories with an aura of the irrational’.42 That is, he used and transformed a macabre story which he had been told, and which he may well have realized was not literally true. I have tried to suggest that he exploited and transformed it in two ways: first, by deliberately placing it at a crucial hinge in

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) his narrative, and second, by making it a signifier for some very large issues to do with the relations between Greeks and other ethnic groups. I thank Mary Douglas for reading and improving a draft of this paper in advance of the Oxford colloquium at which it was read; in particular for her insistence that I set out the thesis of the paper clearly and early rather than (as in the first draft) disclosing it gradually and aiming for surprise. I am also grateful for comments from members of the Oxford audience, and to the organizers and editors for further suggestions for improvement. Lindsay Allen of University College London made further helpful points. Notes:

(1) For instance, F. Jacoby, in his classic section-by-section account of Herodotus’ sources, jumps over 8. 104–6 completely: Jacoby (1956: 134–5, W RE supp. ii cols. 460–1). For general scholarly neglect of the story of Hermotimos and Panionios see further below p. 39 f. but see now Gray (2002), cited below n. 9. (2) Gould (1989), esp. 134 on ‘exhilaration’. A corrected reprint of this book is forthcoming from Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth. (3) Lateiner (1977). (4) Artayktes: Hdt. 9. 120; Lykides’ family: Hdt. 9. 5. Derow (1995). (5) Philip of Theangela on Lelegians: FGrHist 741 F2. (6) For

see Denniston (1951: 212).

(7) Fehling (1989); Thomas (2000). On Chios, see Boardman and VaphopoulouRichardson (1986); the chapters I refer to are Roebuck (1986) and Barron (1986). (8) For instance Wiedemann (1981: 107, cf. 84ft.) includes a long Athenaeus extract on Chians and slavery, including the Panionios story. (9) Braund (1998a: 166f.); T. Harrison (2000a); note esp. his p. 58 and n. 69 for the awfulness of inflicting total loss of children, as happens to Panionios. The Hermotimos–Panionios episode is also briefly discussed by Aly (1921: 184, 187); cf. also Lateiner (1989: 143); Immerwahr (1966: 284f.); Gray (2002: 308ff.). in the general sense of ‘near neighbours’, LSJ cites, apart (10) For from Hdt. 8. 104, only Pi. P. 4. 66 and 10. 8, N. 6. 39, but two of these refer to Delphi and the other to the Isthmian games. So the word seems to have a religious flavour. (11)

Hdt. 7. 13 (Pythios the Lydian); 9. 109.2 (Artaynte).

(12) For archaic narrative delay see Fraenkel (1950: 805). Page 16 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) (13) Braund (1998a: 166); T. Harrison (2000a: 58); Powell (1939a: 132). (14) Hdt. 4. 205. (15) For peraiai generally see Reger (1997: 466f.), Debord (1999: 264–272) and Horden and Purcell (2000: 133). For Atarneus and Chios in particular see Debord (1999: 26 7). Note that the two places are still mentioned together in 409 BC, see Diod. 13. 65. 4 for Chian exiles making a nuisance of themselves at Atarneus (but the place is evidently no longer securely Chian by this time, cf. the history of Samos and Anaia); and cf., a few years later, the similar events at Xen. Hell. 3.2. 11 (plentiful corn then too, but again a trouble-spot). See also FGrHist 115 F291 (cf. below n. 18) for continuing Chian territorial interests in the Atarneus region, with R. Lane Fox (1986: III n. 51). For Chios’ difficulty in acquiring the obvious peraia due east for the reason suggested in the text (Erythrai), we may compare Kos, which never had a peraia because (presumably) of the close proximity of Halikarnassos. (16) Hdt. 1.160. (17) Atarneus treated by the Chians as ‘defiled’ after its shameful acquisition: Parker (1983: 185); cf. Macan (1908: i. 2, 522) on Atarneus as a ‘field of blood’, and Gould (2001: 40), who remarks (at n. 53) that ‘the commentators cite the obvious Biblical parallel, Matt. 27: 6’ (‘field of blood’ is at verse 8). (18) Hdt. 6. 28. (19) For the name Hermotimos—derived from Hermes the god or from the Hermos river?—see Sittig (1912: 113f., 130), leaving the point undecided. (20) For Hermias of Atarneus see Tod (1948: no. 165) and Wormell (1935). Hermias as eunuch: FGrHist 115 Theopompos F 291. (21) Dewald (1998: 717). Cf. FGrHist 566 Timaios F102, linking Hermokrates of Syracuse and the herms. (22) For the general trend see Burkert (1992) and West (1997). For biblical parallels with Herodotus in particular see Griffiths (1987: 41 and n. 7), citing Redford 1970. (Griffiths places Hdt. and the Joseph–Potiphar story side by side, although the Herodotean story he selects for comparison is not that of Hermotimos but that of the doctor Demokedes, the subject of his brilliant article); see also, for Kleomenes of Sparta, Griffiths (1989: 74 n. 17 and 76 n. 39). Cf. also n. 17 above. (23) For the story of Joseph see Genesis chs. 37–45 (24) Joseph ‘goodly and well-favoured’: Genesis 39. 6. Page 17 of 19

 

Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6) (25) Periander and castration (Hdt. 3. 48): Sourvinou-Inwood (1988: 171 and 180) (26) See OCD3 under ‘eunuchs’ (R. L. G[ordon] for religious and E. D. H[unt] for secular); for a probably neutral adjectival sense of see Sophocles F 789 Radt. On castration and eunuchs see now Taylor (2000), who notes (36) that Hermotimos is faithful to his master, his rage focuses safely on someone else. (27) Briant (1996: 279–88, with nn. at 944f.: section called ‘les eunuches’). (28) Nehemiah was not a eunuch, despite e.g. Hall (1989: 157), Lewis (1977: appears in some mss of the Septuagint (e.g. Codex 20). The reading Vaticanus) but the other transmitted reading, is the right translation of Hebrew ‘mashkeh’, which means ‘cup-bearer’, lit. ‘one giving drink’: Brown, Driver and Briggs (1972: 1052 col. 2, lines 14–16 up). Ban on eunuchs entering the ‘assembly of the Lord’: Deut. 23. 1. Lewis compares Nehemiah to Ktesias’ Artoxares the Paphlagonian. sent as tribute by Babylon and Assyria: Hdt. 3. 92; for the (29) ‘netting’ (the verb is cf. 3. 149: Samos, with Ceccarelli (1993: 43–5)) of Chios Lesbos and Tenedos, and the mass castration of the best-looking boys and deportation of the prettiest girls see Hdt. 6. 31–2 (for the threat to do this see 6. 9). (30) Nagy (1990: 407–408) has an ingenious treatment of these portents. (31) On the name see Macan (1908: 521) and Bechtel (1917: 525), who compares the first (possible but not certain) Panionios after Herodotus is from Beth Shearim, 3rd–4th cent. AD, see LGPN vol. v, forthcoming. ‘Panionios’ as cult title of Apollo: IG II2 4995; of Hadrian: I. Eph. 1501 line 4. In Hdt. the MS variant (an attested name) is rejected by edd. and LGPN. (32) The Panionion: Hdt. 1.148; Cook (1982: 217); Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1937); Nilsson (1906: 74–9); Wade-Gery (1952); Kleiner, Hommel, and MüllerWiener (1967). (33) Hornblower (1982). (34) Hornblower (2000). (35) The four sons of Ion: Hdt. 5. 66.2, Eur. Ion 1575–81. (36) Ion of Chios on King Hector of Chios: Paus. 7. 4. 8–10 (= FGrHist 392 F1):

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Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa (Hdt. 8. 104–6)

(‘Ion the tragic poet wrote as follows in his History [of Chios]. While Oinopion was king, Karians came to the island, and Euboians from Abai. After Oinopion and his sons, Amphiklos reigned; he came from Histiaia in Euboia because of an oracle from Delphi. His great-grandson Hektor, who was also king, fought a war against the Karians and people from Abai on the island, killed some of them in his battles, and forced the rest to leave Chios under a truce. When the war in Chios was over it occurred to Hektor that the Chians ought to join the Ionians and sacrifice at the Panionion. Ion says Hektor was given a tripod as a prize for manly courage by the koinon of the Ionians. This is what I find Ion has written about Chios: he does not say how Chios came to belong to Ionia’.) (37) Violent colonization myths: Dougherty 1993a and 1993b. (38) Plot against Strattis of Chios: Hdt. 8. 132, mentioning Herodotos son of Basileides. See Macan (1908: 564) and Fehling (1989: 225–6). (39) See Trenkner (1958), E. L. Bowie ‘Aristides (2)’ in OCD 3, and S. Harrison (1998) for Milesian Tales, about which much is obscure. (40) For Hera-derived names on Chios see Parker (2000: 72). Basileides is missing from LGPN 1 by what Elaine Matthews confirms is oversight. (41) Shear (1978) for a massive Ptolemaic hand-out of corn. (42) Griffiths (2000: 182). I am grateful to Alan Griffiths for help with correcting the proofs of this paper, and for valuable last-minute improvements.

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotean Chronology Revisited P. J. Rhodes (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter studies the kinds of chronological information given in Herodotus' history, arguing that there is a Persian-based series of dates for the Ionian Revolt and the Persian Wars, 500-480 (and reviving the suggestion of W. G. Forrest that a notorious problem can be solved if we believe that Darius' heralds to Greece were sent before Mardonius' campaign of 492 rather than before Datis' and Artaphernes' campaign of 490); before that he has no systematic chronology but regnal years and similar data which have come to him with his various stories, but if we try to combine his data as he himself did not we find that they are more often compatible than problematic. Keywords:   Herodotus, chronology, Ionian Revolt, Persian Wars, W. G. Forrest

This is not the kind of Herodotean enquiry which has been fashionable in recent years, but it is an enquiry which would have interested George Forrest, and indeed I hope to give publicity to a suggestion of his which was attached to a discussion of something else and has not been much noticed. Readers will be relieved to learn that I do not intend to dazzle them with fancy arithmetic. Thucydides was to date the beginning of the Peloponnesian War solemnly, by priestess of Hera at Argos and ephor at Sparta and archon at Athens: in Athenian terms he dated it to the month, but unfortunately the scribes have probably garbled his figures.1 Herodotus has one Greek date, which he uses appropriately, assigning Xerxes’ arrival in Athens to the Athenian archon-year 480/79.2 That year—or, perhaps better, a year which contains the whole of what we should call the summer of 480—is indeed the climactic year of Herodotus’ Page 1 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited history; but I agree with den Boer and Lloyd against Strasburger that it is not meant to be the linchpin of a great chronological scheme.3 Herodotus like Thucydides reckons not only years (p.59) but also months: ‘From the crossing of the Hellespont the barbarians delayed one month in which they were crossing into Europe, and in three further months they reached Attica.’ The actual crossing of the Hellespont took seven days and seven nights, so the first month perhaps runs from the beginning of the crossing to the departure from Doriscus.4 Within the three months, Herodotus is frustratingly silent where we should like to know more: we can probably date Salamis to late September, shortly before the eclipse of 2 October,5 but how much earlier were Thermopylae and Artemisium? It was because the Carnea and the Olympic festival were due that Sparta did not send a full force to Thermopylae immediately,6 but when were they? Most people put them in the second half of August, just over a month before Salamis, but July and September have both had their champions.7 What Herodotus does give for 480 is a diary of Persian movements, from leaving Therma to arriving in Attica on the twenty-ninth day, a diary presumably based on dispatches sent back to Persia by Xerxes.8 For 479 he has a diary of the Plataea campaign: it begins not with the armies’ first facing each other to the east of Plataea, but with their move to their second position, after which both sides sacrificed on the second day;9 it ends with the capitulation of Thebes to its besiegers on the twentieth day, probably the twentieth day not from the beginning of the diary but from the battle.10 It looks as if this second diary comes from Greek sources, though it includes some happenings on the Persian side.11 Mardonius’ occupation of Athens is dated to the tenth month from Xerxes’ occupation,12 (p.60) and that is presumably from an Athenian source. At the end of the narrative, the siege of Sestos lasts into the winter of 479/8, after which no more happens in ‘this year’:13 that too could be an Athenian year. So for the great war we have Athenian dates for the two occupations of Athens, and perhaps for the final campaign in the Hellespont; a Greek diary for the Plataea campaign; a Persian diary for the Persian advance in 480. Before 480 Herodotus has a Persian-based series of dates which runs back for about twenty years.14 Although I do not agree with every detail of Hammond’s reconstruction, I think he succeeded in showing that the series works best in terms of years which begin in the summer, which he took to be Athenian years, rather than years which begin in the spring, whether we regard them as Babylonian/Persian years or ‘natural’ years. However, since it is a series which regularly concerns the Persians but only occasionally concerns the Athenians, I agree with Strasburger that it is hard to see why such a series should have been worked out in terms of Athenian years.15 But somebody somewhere has worked out this series of Persian dates in terms not of the years which we should expect

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited but of years beginning in the summer: might this be somebody in Greek Asia Minor? It is in connection with this series that we have the suggestion by Forrest which I should like to revive. Datis and Artaphernes will have set out against Greece in 491/0, and Hammond has to accuse Herodotus of ‘over-reaching himself’ in putting that ‘in the year after’ the order to Darius’ subjects to prepare horse transports and Mardonius’ disaster off Athos.16 Earlier in the narrative the order to prepare is combined with the sending of heralds to demand the submission of the Greeks; that is placed ‘after’ the ultimatum to Thasos;17 and that is placed ‘in the second [i.e. next] year’ after Mardonius’ campaign, Mardonius having gone to the Aegean in the spring of what ought to be 493/2.18 Hammond’s solution is to put the Athos disaster into 492/1; after which the ultimatum to Thasos, (p.61) the sending of heralds and the order to prepare move into 491/ 0; and, notoriously, Hammond then has about twelve months into which to squeeze the complicated series of events which begins with Aegina’s reception of the Persian heralds and ends after the death of Cleomenes of Sparta with two naval battles between Athens and Aegina19—but he romps through with three months to spare.20 Now I firmly believe that Hammond was right to put the whole of that Aeginetan sequence before Marathon, as Herodotus does, though many scholars before him had put it after Marathon; but I also believe that for ordinary mortals the time which he allows is not enough. How can we find more? We might assume that Herodotus over-reached himself but not in Hammond’s way: Mardonius’ campaign began in 493/2; it did indeed run on into 492/1; but Herodotus does not mark a new year in his narrative of the campaign; the ultimatum to Thasos ‘in the second year’, and the heralds to Greece and the orders for preparation, may therefore belong not to 491/0 but to 492/1; and the year in which Datis and Artaphernes set out, 491/0, will then be both the year after the Athos disaster and the year after the orders for preparation. That would allow some more time for the Aeginetan sequence, but Forrest with a very attractive argument managed to find more still.21 After finishing the Thasos episode Herodotus says: (after this) Darius decided to make trial of the Greeks’ intentions; he sent his heralds to the Greeks and he ordered his subjects to make preparations.22 Herodotus uses imperfects and aorists, not pluperfects; but of course Greek frequently does that in contexts where the pluperfect is logically more appropriate, so in spite of the it is possible that the new topic begins at an earlier point than the end of the old topic, and indeed, if we think Darius already had Greece in mind when he sent out Mardonius, that the heralds to Greece were sent not after Mardonius’ campaign but before it, in (p.62) 493/2. Forrest suggested this as a parallel for what he thinks Herodotus did in the story of the Alcmaeonids and the temple at Delphi: at face value the narrative states both that the Alcmaeonids obtained the Page 3 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited contract after the episode at Lipsydrium which followed the killing of Hipparchus and that because they had done a more expensive job than they had contracted to do they were able to persuade Delphi to incite the Spartans to expel Hippias.23 Again we need more time; there is good reason to think that work on the temple started long before Lipsydrium; all we have to do is assume that Herodotus has backtracked without using a pluperfect to signal the fact. And nowadays there is suitably up-to-date language in which we can express this: he ‘is, in fact, merely solving a problem of linearization. … He has to decide how best to present a set of jumbled events as if they were a line.’24 Herodotus’ twenty-year sequence takes us back to the formal beginning of the Ionian Revolt, in 499/8,25 and since the siege of Naxos was abandoned in the fifth month26 we can probably put the beginning of that in 500/499. But before that life becomes a great deal less certain. If we follow Herodotus’ narrative thread backwards, we have Otanes in the Hellespont; before him Megabazus in Thrace; and before that the Scythian expedition27—for which we can work out an approximate date but there is no sign that Herodotus had a date for it. Events in Greece are placed in digressions. In Book 6, attached to Darius’ heralds to Greece and the ongoing war between Athens and Aegina, we have the replacement of Demaratus by Leotychidas in Sparta and the downfall of Cleomenes,28 and in a digression within the digression we have the earlier victory over Argos which (p.63) Cleomenes failed to follow up.29 In Book 5, Aristagoras’ visit to Sparta and Athens in 499/8 provides the opportunity for an account of the current state of Sparta and Athens: in Sparta, the birth of Cleomenes and Dorieus, the succession of Cleomenes and the removal of Dorieus on colonising expeditions; and the story of Athens, and of Spartan involvement with Athens, from the killing of Hipparchus to Hippias’ joining the Persians after the collapse of Sparta’s plan to reinstate him.30 Similarly, in Book 1 Croesus’ search for Greek allies provides the opportunity for an account of the state of Sparta and Athens half a century before: Athens under the tyranny of Pisistratus; Sparta at last successful against Tegea and the Peloponnese;31 and again there is a digression within the digression, on the reforms of Lycurgus in Sparta.32 In connection with Athens there is a sign of dates, though we cannot get from Herodotus’ information to years BC without help from Thucydides. Herodotus knows that the Athenian tyranny was ended after thirty-six years, that Hipparchus was killed at the Panathenaea and that after that the tyranny continued for four years.33 Thucydides has Hipparchus killed more specifically at the Great Panathenaea, Hippias expelled in the fourth year after that, the battle of Marathon in the twentieth year after the expulsion and the establishment of the Four Hundred, in 412/11, ‘about the hundredth year’ after the expulsion.34 The Great Panathenaea and the other links allow us to put Hipparchus’ death in 514/3 and Hippias’ expulsion in 511/10; ironically, Thucydides’ link to Marathon, Page 4 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited though not qualified, is approximate, but his link to the Four Hundred, though qualified, is precise.35 I have not changed my mind about Herodotus and Ath. Pol. on the chronology of the tyranny: I do not intend to refight that battle here.36 What matters for our present purposes is that Herodotus had access to some Athenian dates for the tyranny but not necessarily to (p.64) a complete set for all Pisistratus’ ins and outs. But that is as far back as his Athenian chronology goes. When we try to disentangle his earlier Athenian episodes we have problems: if we accept the later texts’ date for Solon, his visit to Croesus is chronologically almost impossible if not quite, and we are surely right to regard it as altogether too appropriate and reject it as fictitious; his visit to Philocyprus does appear to be authentic, though without confirmation from a fragment from one of his poems we should have labelled that chronologically almost impossible too.37 If there is any truth in the story that an Alcmaeonid enriched himself at Croesus’ court, the man in question ought to be not Solon’s contemporary Alcmaeon but his son Megacles; it seems to be chronologically acceptable that Megacles and Hippoclides should have been suitors for Agariste of Sicyon, and that she should have borne the Athenian Cleisthenes to Megacles.38 Fortunately the would-betyrant Cylon is mentioned only in a digression to explain the Alcmaeonid curse, where he is safely said to be ‘earlier than the time of Pisistratus’.39 What else does Herodotus offer us before c.500? For the Near-Eastern world he has, as we should expect, some lists of kings with regnal years.40 For the Persians he has regnal years which match our other evidence, beginning with the accession of Cyrus in 559; but it must be stressed that he does not have dates for the major events which he places within the different kings’ reigns: he does not have Persian dates for Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt, or for Cyrus’ conquests of Media, Lydia or Babylon41 (though Strasburger conjured up a single Median–Persian list in which Cyrus’ first year followed Astyages’ last42). The other dynasties are more difficult. For the Medes, Herodotus has four kings, and twenty-eight years of Scythian rule either between the second reign and the third or during the third; his four reigns add up to 150 years but he himself gives a total of 128. (p.65) Cyaxares and Astyages, the last two, are genuine kings, and if we put the end of Astyages’ reign in 550 their lengths of reign are acceptable, but it seems impossible to match the first two kings and the Scythian interlude to what we know from other sources.43 For the Mermnads of Lydia Herodotus has five kings from Gyges to Croesus, spanning 170 years: although people continue to argue over the date of the fall of Sardis, the traditional 546 cannot be far out; but that would make Gyges’ thirty-eight years c. 714–6 78, whereas our other evidence would put his reign about the second quarter of the seventh century.44 An attempt has been made to save Herodotus’ figures by suggesting that there were periods when father and son ruled jointly and Herodotus has counted those periods twice, and this I think is a serious Page 5 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited possibility.45 We have a couple of exceptions to the rule that dates within reigns are not given: Croesus mourned the death of his son for two years; a twelve-year war against Miletus is assigned to the last six years of Sadyattes and the first six of Alyattes.46 Before Gyges Herodotus has a dynasty running from Agron to Candaules; Agron was a great-great-grandson of Heracles; from Agron to Candaules were twenty-two generations, covering 505 years.47 The Assyrians are given 520 years before the Medes and their other subjects revolted:48 we do not know what the basis of that is or where the 520 years should be deemed to end. Babylon Herodotus regards as a continuation of the Assyrian kingdom, having moved from Nineveh to Babylon (which S. Dalley in her chapter encourages us to believe),49 and he does not seem to have a chronology for the Babylonians. In Egypt Herodotus has regnal years for the XXVIth dynasty, from the accession of Psammetichus I to the conquest of Psammetichus III (p.66) by Cambyses: other evidence suggests that he is near enough right except that he assigns too many years to Apries.50 Before the XXVIth dynasty Herodotus has Egypt partitioned among twelve kings, and before them a series of priest–kings, covering 341 generations: it is in connection with this that he states that three generations make a century, and gives a total of 11,340 years (rather than 11,366⅔).51 Overall, for the recent past but not for the more distant past Herodotus seems to have reasonably reliable lists of kings, but even where his lists are reliable he does not have events dated to years within reigns, and he does not have a conversion table which allows year A in the reign of X in one line to be identified with year B in the reign of Y in another. Normally his synchronisms simply link king X with king Y: Cyrus conquered Croesus, Cambyses conquered Psammetichus. And for the Greek world … Herodotus is not writing a systematic history of Greece or of any Greek state, and he does not have a systematic chronology. Within states, if they are monarchic, events can be assigned to particular reigns, as they are in the Near East. In the episodes which we noticed above: when Aristagoras of Miletus goes to Sparta, he goes in the reign of, and tries to win the support of, king Cleomenes; when Croesus asks about Sparta he learns that the Spartans had been unsuccessful against Tegea under kings Leon and Agasicles but had become successful under Anaxandridas and (p.67) Ariston; in the digression within the digression Lycurgus is made guardian of king Leobotas52—and that, of course, was judged too early by those who subsequently did work out a systematic chronology, and they found a later point to which to attach Lycurgus, though we should still say that is not late enough for the institutions which are attributed to Lycurgus. We have seen that for the Athenian tyranny Herodotus did have some dates; but Athens is not a special case. Those dates are analogous to regnal years, and in general his treatment of Page 6 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited Athens is similar to his treatment of Sparta: Aristagoras found that Athens had been liberated from the tyranny of Hippias; Croesus found that after a period of division Athens was under the tyranny of Pisistratus; and elsewhere the kings are used for events in Athens’ legendary past.53 For Sparta as for the Near East Herodotus has lists of kings, or rather genealogies of the kings who were ruling in 480: Leonidas in the Agid line and Leotychidas in the Eurypontid. He traces each of these lines back to Heracles, and we can see (but he does not spell out) that Leonidas and Leotychidas are each in the twenty-first generation.54 Elsewhere he shows that he has some notion of intervals of time—in contrasting Greek antiquity with Egyptian antiquity he puts Dionysus 1,600 years in the past, Heracles 900, and Pan 800, adding that this makes Pan more recent than the Trojan War; Homer and Hesiod were not more than 400 years before Herodotus.55 Generations can be used, whether attached to the names of king or not: to pick two examples out of many, Miletus became prosperous at the end of the sixth century after two generations of stasis; and, in the distant past, the Trojan War was in the third generation after the death of Minos.56 But, as Mitchel and den Boer have said, the generations simply (p.68) come with the story, and Herodotus himself did not have a ‘standard generation’.57 By the time Herodotus wrote, the process of systematising the chronology of early Greece and its stories had begun—Herodotus’ Eurypontid genealogy for Sparta already includes the suspicious names Prytanis and Eunomus, who look as if they have been invented to make the Eurypontid line as long as the Agid58—but it had not yet gone very far, and I agree with those who insist that it was not a process in which Herodotus himself was interested as later chronographers were.59 He reports the generational data which he has obtained, but he does not try to exploit them; and, while sometimes we find that what is said in one place is chronologically compatible with what is said in another, sometimes we do not. The periods of time which he allows in Lydia for the Mermnad dynasty (wrongly) and the preceding Heraclid dynasty (implausibly) are compatible with the statement in Book 2 that Heracles lived 900 years ago.60 On the other hand, whereas his one explicit statement about the length of a generation reckons three generations to a century, twenty-two generations of Heraclids in 505 years in Lydia imply twenty-three years to a generation; but if twenty-one generations in Sparta span about 850 years that implies about forty years to a generation.61 The abduction of Helen was ‘in the second [i.e. next] generation’ after the abduction of Medea, but Helen’s brothers were among the Argonauts;62 the Trojan War was ‘in the third generation’ after the death of Minos, but Sarpedon, who fought in the war, was a brother of Minos (later Greeks noticed this discrepancy, and made Sarpedon live for three generations, or else distinguished two Sarpedons, grandfather and grandson).63

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited (p.69) In the semi-historical period, as in the legendary, often one story intersects with another, when a person from one place interacts with another, and we are given a synchronism. Usually they are acceptable, i.e. they are compatible with other statements by Herodotus and/or with our other evidence, but sometimes they are not. We have already considered the synchronisms involving Solon.64 The synchronisms of Thrasybulus of Miletus with Alyattes of Lydia and with Periander of Corinth are compatible, and the traditional dating of the Cypselid tyranny in Corinth is supported by the epigraphic evidence for a Cypselus as Athenian archon in 597/6.65 That Alcmaeon’s son Megacles and the Hippoclides who was Athenian archon in 566/5 should be suitors for Agariste, the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, is acceptable; that another of the suitors should be the son of the famous Pheidon of Argos is not directly inconsistent with anything else that Herodotus says, but it implies a much later date for Pheidon than is implied by our later texts, and it implies a powerful Argos at a time when that is hard to credit.66 Herodotus has a clear context for Polycrates of Samos, whose reign ended in the late 520s, but Polycrates is credited (more by later writers than by Herodotus himself) with achievements which do not fit easily into that context.67 Frequently Herodotus’ manner of mentioning episodes in digressions enables him to avoid offering hostages to chronology: we have seen that Cylon of Athens was merely ‘earlier than the time of Pisistratus’;68 the war between Athens and Aegina at the end of the sixth century and the beginning of the fifth leads Herodotus to mention their ‘ancient enmity’ and the episode which gave rise to it, but he gives no indication of how ancient this was, and scholars continue to look for the best context.69 Later writers worked out the systematic chronology which Herodotus lacks;70 from time to time modern scholars suggest that a (p.70) major adjustment of their scheme will lead to more satisfactory results;71 but on the whole I think we should be encouraged. R. Osborne (1996) has stressed that what our sources give us is not Archaic Greece just as it was but what it suited people of later generations to write about Archaic Greece.72 But the fact that Herodotus, writing before much had been done to systematise early Greek chronology, and certainly not attempting to systematise it himself, gives us a wide-ranging account which presents remarkably few serious problems of compatibility, suggests that, however dark the glass through which we see, however much distortion and selection may already have been perpetrated by his time, there are real people and real events behind his stories, and most of the intersections between his stories are intersections which could actually have occurred. As Shimron showed in his study of (‘the first X that we know’), Herodotus divided the prehistoric period from the historical about the middle of the sixth century, as far back as the oldest people he met will have remembered.73 Vannicelli, building on an observation of Musti, has noted that Herodotus’ core narrative runs from Croesus (at the beginning of Book 1) and Page 8 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited his contemporaries to 479 (in Book 9); within that period both the main thread and the Spartan and Athenian material attached to it aim, he believes, to be complete; but episodes before and after that period are mentioned only selectively, and in digressions from the core narrative.74 That Herodotus’ core narrative runs from Croesus to 479 is certainly correct; but I think Vannicelli exaggerates the completeness and the systematicness of the narrative from Croesus to 500, and for chronological matters, as Lateiner saw, it is at 500 that the line should be drawn.75 From 500 to 480 events concerning the Persians are assigned to years, and Herodotus has his Persian diary for 480 and his Greek diary for 479; but before 500, both for the Near-Eastern world and for the Greek, he has regnal years and generations, and does not have a year-by-year chronology. The further back (p.71) from 500 we go, the more likely we are to encounter problems, and Herodotus himself has not attempted the kind of coordination which would expose the problems in what he reports; but for those of us who do not want to abandon the study of Archaic Greece as impossible it is encouraging that the problems are comparatively few and that, although our jigsaw puzzle is far from complete, the pieces that do join look like pieces of a comprehensible picture—and that conclusion, at any rate, would have pleased George Forrest. (p.72) HERODOTUS’ DATES, 500–480 500/499

5.34.2–3

Siege of Naxos begun: continued 4 months, 〈abandoned 5th〉

499/8

5.37.1

Ionian Revolt formally begins: cf. below, fall of Miletus

499/8?

5.38–98

Aristagoras to Sparta and Athens

499/8?

5.99

Sardis campaign

496/5

5.124–6

with Thuc. 4.102.2–3, schol. Aesch. 2. Embassy 31 Aristagoras at Myrcinus

495/4

6.16

Battle of Lade: Ephesian Thesmophoria autumn?

494/3

6.18

‘6th year from beginning of revolt’: fall of Miletus

494/3

6.25.2

‘Immediately’: reduction of Caria

493/2

6.42.1

‘This year’: no more fighting but Artaphernes’ settlement

493/2

6.43.1

‘Spring’: Mardonius’ settlement and campaign

492/1

not stated Mardonius’ campaign continues to autumn: cf. below, here Datis & Artaphernes cross Aegean

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited

492/1? 491/0?

6.46.1

‘Second year’: Darius’ ultimatum to Thasos

6.48.1

‘After this’: Darius’ heralds to Greece: heralds actually sent before Mardonius’ campaign?

6.94

Mardonius dismissed, Datis & Artaphernes appointed

491/0

6.95.2

Year after Athos: Datis & Artaphernes cross Aegean

490/89

6.106.3

Battle of Marathon: Spartan delay for Carnea?

490/89– 488/7

7.1.2

‘For three years’: Asia shaken

487/6

7.1.3

‘Fourth year’: Egypt revolts: not later than June 486

486/5

7.4

‘Next year’: Darius dies after reigning 36 years: November 486

485/4

7.7.1

‘Second [i.e. next] year’: Egypt recovered by Xerxes: not later than January 484

7.20.1

Xerxes begins preparations for invasion of Greece: ‘for four full years’: cf. below, Xerxes sets out

484/3?

7.22.1

Athos canal begun: prepared for three years

481/0

7.20.1

‘Fifth year from recovery of Egypt’: Xerxes sets out…

7.37.1

…from Sardis, ‘spring’—but eclipse of 7. 37. ii 10 April 481? = when he set out from Susa?76

My thanks to the organisers/editors, for inviting me to contribute to this conference/volume in memory of an inspiring tutor; and to all who discussed this paper and made suggestions for its improvement: in particular to Dr P. Vannicelli, for the gift and stimulus of Vannicelli (1993), (2001a) and 2001b), and for his helpful comments on a draft; and to Dr A. Moeller, who was not present at the conference but who subsequently read a draft of this paper and made helpful comments on it. Nobody other than myself is to be blamed for my opinions. Notes:

(1) Thuc. 2. 2. 1. (2) Hdt. 8. 51. 1. (3) Den Boer (1967: 32–3), Lloyd (1975–88: i. 183–5), against Strasburger (1962: 687–8 = 1965: 698–9)—but they do not do justice to Strasburger’s qualification that it is the year rather than the Athenian designation of it that is fundamental.

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited I still think, however, that the year is better seen as the climax of Herodotus’ history than as the linchpin of his chronology. (4) Crossing Hdt. 7. 53–6; departure from Doriscus 7. 105. Thus, e.g., Burn (1962: 433). For another calculation of months see below with n. 12. (5) Hdt. 9. 10. 3. Notice, however, the sceptical remarks of Mosshammer (1981: 152). (6) Hdt. 7. 206 cf. 8. 72. (7) August: e.g. Burn (1962: 362, without argument), Hignett (1963: 448–53), Miller (1975: esp. 227–9). July: Labarbe, (1954), (1959); cf. Pritchett (1958: 203). September: Sacks (1976); cf. Hammond (1988: 548–9, 588–9). (8) Leaving Therma Hdt. 7. 183. 2; arriving in Attica 8. 66. 1. For discussion of the diary, see, e.g., Burn (1962: 395–7), Hignett (1963: 379–85); dispatches to Persia, Burn (1962: 435), cf. 8. 54, 98. 1. (9) Hdt. 9. 33. 1. (10) Hdt. 9. 87. 1 with Macan (1908: ii. 1. 773–4 ad loc.): accepted by Burn (1962: 546), Barron (1988: 611); contr. Hignett (1963: 342), who counts from the beginning of this diary. (11) Hdt. 9. 38. 2–43. (12) Hdt. 9. 3. 2. (13) Hdt. 9. 117; 121. (14) See table, pp. 71–2. (15) Hammond (1955: 385–9 cf. 381–5 = 1993: 369–73 cf. 365–9); contr. Strasburger (1962: 687 n. 31 = 1965: 698 n. 31), thinking the series is based on ‘natural’ years. (16) Hdt. 6. 95, with Hammond (1955: 388 = 1993: 372). (17) Hdt. 6. 48. (18) Hdt. 6. 43. 1. (19) Hdt. 6. 49–93. (20) Hammond (1955: 387–8 = 1993: 371–2) cf. (Aegina) (1955: 406–11 = 1993: 390–5). (21) Forrest (1969: 285). Page 11 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited (22) Hdt. 6. 48. If pressed on I should say that 48, though followed immediately by a digression, is the beginning of an episode—the invasion of 490 —whose main part does indeed follow the episode of Thasos. Similarly the episode cited in the next note is focused on events later than the killing of Hipparchus and does not indicate that the work on the temple at Delphi was earlier. It is because these instances of backtracking are not clearly indicated that they have not previously been identified as such. (23) Hdt. 5. 62–3. (24) Hornblower (1991–: ii. 238), on Thucydides’ allusions to the north-eastern campaign of Brasidas before beginning the main narrative of it; cf. Hornblower (1994: 142–3). (25) Hdt. 5. 37. 1 with 6. 18. (26) Hdt. 5. 34. (27) Otanes Hdt. 5. 25–7; Megabazus 4. 143–4, 5. 1–24; Scythian expedition 4. 1– 142. (28) Hdt. 6. 49–93. Musti (1979: xvii) and Vannicelli (1993: 15, cf. e.g. 60, 89, 95–6) note that Herodotus organises his main narrative in three generations, marked by approximate synchronisms: Croesus–Cyrus (with Cambyses)– Anaxandridas and Ariston–Pisistratus; Aristagoras–Darius–Cleomenes, Dorieus and Leotychidas–end of Athenian tyranny; Xerxes. On this basis Vannicelli considers Herodotus’ chronology from Croesus etc. onwards to be more systematic than I do (cf. p. 70 with n. 74, below). (29) Hdt. 6. 75. 3–83. (30) Sparta Hdt. 5. 39–48; Athens 5. 55–96. (31) Athens Hdt. 1. 59–64; Sparta 1. 65–8. (32) Hdt. 1. 65. 2–66. 1. (33) Thirty-six years Hdt. 5. 65. 3; Panathenaea 5. 56; four years 5. 55. (34) Great Panathenaea Thuc. 6. 56. 2; fourth year 6. 59. 4; Marathon 6. 59. 4; Four Hundred 8. 68. 4. (35) Hammond (1955: 381–5 = 1993: 365–9) argued that Thucydides used his own seasonal years before the Peloponnesian War as he did during it. I find that most unlikely: cf. Gomme in Gomme et al. (1945–81: i. 392–3, iii. 713). (36) See Rhodes (1976), summarised in Rhodes (1981: 191–9).

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited (37) Solon and Croesus Hdt. 1. 29–33; Solon and Philocyprus Sol. fr. 19 West: Hdt. 5. 113. 2, Plut. Sol. 26. 2–4. (38) Alcmaeon and Croesus Hdt. 6. 125; Megacles, Hippoclides and Agariste 6. 126–31. But 6. 126. 1 emphatically puts the search for a husband for Agariste ‘in the second [i.e. next] generation’ after Alcmaeon’s visit to Croesus. (39) Hdt. 5. 71. (40) Emphasised by Burkert (1995: esp. 140). (41) Stressed by Asheri (1988b: xli–xlii). On the conquest of Egypt Lloyd (1975– 88: i. 190–1), rightly, contr. Strasburger (1962: 690–1 = 1965: 701–2). (42) Strasburger (1962: 685–94 = 1965: 696–705); cf. Drews (1969: 5–6), misunderstanding in Hdt. 1. 214. 3. (43) Hdt. 1. 95. 2–130: Deioces 53 years, Phraortes 22 years, Scythians 28 years, Cyaxares 40 years, Astyages 35 years, but total 128 years without Scythians. See Young (1988): 16–20. (44) Hdt. 1. 6–25, 86. 1: Gyges 38 years, Ardys 49 years, Sadyattes 12 years, Alyattes 57 years, Croesus 14 years. See Mellink (1991), and the studies of Lydian chronology by Kaletsch (1958); Spalinger (1978). (45) Parker (19933: 389–97). (46) Two years’ mourning Hdt. 1. 46. 1; war of 6 + 6 years 1. 18–19. 1. (47) Hdt. 1. 7. (48) Hdt. 1. 95. 2. The Lydian list was constructed with reference to the Assyrian: Burkert (1995: 144–5), cf. Vannicelli (2001a). 520 + 150 years for Assyrians + Medes approximate to 505 + 170 years for two dynasties in Lydia, and Ninus and Bel (Hdt. 1. 7. 2) make sense in the Assyrian context as they do not as forebears of a Lydian dynasty. (49) Hdt. 1. 178. 1. Cf. S. Dalley, (1994) and pp. 178–82 below. (50) Hdt. 2.151–3.15: Psammetichus 1 54 years, Necho 16 years, Psammetichus II 6 years, Apries 25 years, Amasis 44 years, Psammetichus III 6 months (confused because Apries remained alive after the crucial battle by which he lost the throne; Herodotus cannot be reconciled with the other evidence on what happened afterwards, but that is irrelevant to the chronological issue). See Lloyd (1975–88: iii. 169–70, 178–80). (51) Twelve kings Hdt. 2. 147–52; 341 generations 2. 100 with 142: Mitchel (1956: 63–4) shows how Herodotus’ figure may have been arrived at. Page 13 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited Vannicelli (2001b) suggests that Herodotus divided Egypt’s history into three eras, progressively better known, the priest–kings from Min to Moeris (2. 99– 101), the eleven kings from Sesostris to Sethos (2. 102–41) and the XXVIth dynasty; Sesostris was synchronised with Heracles (implied by 2. 13. 1 with 145.4), so too long a period had to be allowed for the eleven kings; similarly Herodotus had three Lydian eras, Lydians, Heraclids and Mermnads (1. 7), and for the sake of Heracles too short a time had to be allowed for the twenty-two Heraclid kings; as Herodotus used the generation of Croesus to mark the beginning of the truly historical era, he used the generation of Heracles to mark the beginning of the preceding, Archaic period: thus within the whole spatium historicum ‘Herodotus tries to document a temporal partition originating from Greek culture’ (2001b: 240). Heracles may indeed be the answer to the long period for the eleven Egyptian kings and the short period for the twenty-two Lydian kings, but Vannicelli goes further than I am happy to do towards making Herodotus the constructor of an overarching chronological scheme. (52) Aristagoras Hdt. 5. 39–51 (NB 39. 1); Croesus 1. 65. 1, 67. 1; Lycurgus 1. 65. 4. (53) Aristagoras Hdt. 5. 55; Croesus 1. 59. 1; legendary past e.g. 8. 44. 2. (54) Leonidas Hdt. 7. 204; Leotychidas Hdt. 8. 131. 2–3 (discrepancy between Herodotus and Paus. 3. 7. 5–7 best dealt with by Beloch (1900: 254–9), West (1992)); descent of the two lines from Heracles cf. 6. 51–2. (55) Dionysus, Heracles and Pan Hdt. 2. 145. 4 (but as the grandson of Cadmus Dionysus should be only two generations before Heracles: many have followed Wilamowitz (1905: 142), in emending 1,600 to 1,000); Homer and Hesiod 2. 53. 2. If what Herodotus means in 145 is that the Trojan War was 800 years ago and Pan was more recent than that, then presumably in 53 he is deliberately placing Homer and Hesiod halfway between the Trojan War and his own time: Sayce (1883: 157 n. 5), a reference which I owe to Dr B. Graziosi. (56) Miletus Hdt. 5. 28; Trojan War 7. 171. 1. (57) Generations come with the story: Mitchel (1956: 61); den Boer (1967: 38). (58) Hdt. 8. 131. 2: e.g. Huxley (1962: 19–20). (59) ‘There is a feeling of time, but no scheme’ (Lattimore, 1958: 18). ‘He inherited from his informants a wide diversity of information. … System in an abstract modern sense there is not, but history and historical chronology are abundantly present in a well-wrought narrative’ (Mosshammer, 1979: 108). Cf. Lateiner (1989: 117–20). Even Lloyd, I think, goes too far, claiming that

Page 14 of 16

 

Herodotean Chronology Revisited Herodotus ‘had displayed a coherent and systematic scheme’ (1975–88: i. 171), though he adds that ‘his role in making it is almost certainly secondary’ (i. 193). (60) Cf. pp. 65 (Lydian dynasties), 67 (Heracles). See Burkert (1995: 142). (61) Cf. p. 67. Herodotus himself did not have a standard generation: e.g. Mitchel (1956: passim); den Boer (1967: 35–40); Lloyd (1975–88: i. 177). Burkert (1995) suggests, plausibly, that the Spartan list was stretched to fit dates originally derived from Near-Eastern king lists. (62) Second generation Hdt. 1. 3. 1; Helen’s brothers 4. 145. 4. (63) Third generation Hdt. 7. 171. 1 (probably on the basis of Hom. Il. 13. 449– 53: Moeller [2001]: 247 n. 27); Sarpedon brother of Minos; 1. 173. 1; lived three generations Apollod. 3. 1. 2; two Sarpedons Diod. Sic. 5. 79. 3. (64) Cf. p. 64. (65) Thrasybulus and Alyattes Hdt. 1. 20–2; and Periander 1. 23, v. 92. ζ–η.1; Cypselus archon of Athens M–L 6 = IG i3 1031 trans. Fornara 23. (66) Suitors for Agariste Hdt. 6. 127; Hippoclides’ archonship Pherec. FGrH 3 F 2 with Eusebius; later texts on Pheidon e.g. Marm. Par FGrH 239 A 45, Str. 358 / 8. 3. 33, Paus. 6. 22. 2 (Herodotus’ implied date for Pheidon has been championed by Kelly (1970), (1976: 94–111). (67) Hdt. 3. 39. 3–4, cf. 122. 3, 125. 2. (68) Cf. p. 64. (69) Hdt. 5. 81. 2 with 82–8. (70) Thuc. 1. 12–14 presupposes a rudimentary framework. (71) e.g. a century ago K. J. Beloch; recently V. Parker (1997), and articles, e.g. (1993b) (Cypselids of Corinth), (1991), (1993a) (Sparta). In the discussion of this paper another major campaign of chronological revision was announced by P.-J. Shaw; cf. Shaw (1999), (forthcoming). (72) Osborne (1996: 4–15 and passim). (73) Shimron (1973). (74) Musti (1979: xvi–xxi); Vannicelli (1993: 13–19 and passim). (75) Lateiner (1989: 117–18).

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Herodotean Chronology Revisited (76) But Mosshammer (1981: 152–3) suggests, more sceptically, that a more visible eclipse of 1 September 488 or of 17 February 478 has been wrongly assimilated to Xerxes’ setting out.

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems Dwora Gilula

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Rosén's is the last major edition of Herodotus' text, but it has not as yet replaced that of Hude as the preferred text used by students of Herodotus. This chapter discusses several examples that illustrate the various non-linguistic considerations that led editors and scholars to emend the text and change its meaning, even against the consensus of all the MSS. All the examples are from Books 8 and 9 of Herodotus, emendations that passed from generation to generation, from one edition of the text to another, gaining honour, acceptance, and permanence with the passage of time. Keywords:   Herodotus, Hude, non-linguistic considerations

In Memory of David Asheri, a hypercritical historian and a very conservative text critic. In his comments on the text of Herodotus, Book 1 (published 1988), which he edited for Fondazione Valla, David Asheri expressed the view that one of the most urgent desiderata of classical philology is a new edition of the text of Herodotus, since the editions of Hude (19273) and Legrand (1932–54) depend directly on the edition of Stein from 1869–71 (reprinted 1884) and represent the nineteenth-century ideology of text editing: excessive emendations and conjectures, and a tendency to unify the language of Herodotus both phonetically and morphologically. Though the first volume of Rosén’s Herodotus Page 1 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems appeared in 1987 and Asheri was just able to consult it, he based his text on the edition of Hude, doing away with a great number of unnecessary emendations, relegating them to the apparatus criticus. He describes his text as ‘più “conservativo”, in altri termini un testo più rigorosamente documentato, meno corretto, non uniformato in un senso o nell’altro, più fedele insomma ad uno stadio attestato della paradosis.’1 He felt that a new edition of the text of Herodotus is most urgently needed, since few today read the text with the app. crit. and more and more read it only in translations based on the abovementioned unsatisfactory editions. (p.74) Rosén’s monumental edition (1987– 97), a work of many years, fulfilled the desideratum only partially. A critical edition of Herodotus’ text calls for a multidisciplinary approach, linguistic–philological but also historical–anthropological. It is clear that such a combination of skills is more than one scholar can hope to acquire in a lifetime, especially when dealing with a book of such length. Each critical edition therefore is a result of a selection of interests. Linguists focus on linguistic problems, historians on issues of historical interest. Rosén was a linguist and his chief interest was Herodotus’ language. What occupied him was the question whether it is possible to establish with certainty the of Herodotus’ language, his special personal blend of dialects. He cleansed the text of unnecessary Ionian and hyperionian emendations and as a policy kept the MSS versions whenever possible in an attempt to arrive at the earliest attainable text; not the Ur-Text—the dream of 19th-century scholars— but the text of the Hellenistic–Roman period, before the tradition split into families. But Rosén was not a historian and was not interested in readings that have historical significance. In his text he left emendations introduced by previous scholars and editors that change the text and its meaning even against the consensus of all the MSS. It is true that these emendations are not linguistic, but surely not only the language but also the content of what Herodotus wrote has some importance.2 Rosén’s is the last major edition of Herodotus’ text, but it has not as yet replaced that of Hude as the preferred text used by students of Herodotus. I have selected for discussion several examples that illustrate the various non-linguistic considerations that led editors and scholars to emend the text and change its meaning, even against the consensus of all the MSS. All the examples are from Books 8 and 9 of Herodotus, emendations that passed from generation to generation, from one edition of the text to another, gaining honour, acceptance, and permanence with the passage of time. (p.75) (a) How to move a temple half a mile without exerting yourself too much

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems

The bibliography on this passage is immense and I limit myself to a discussion of just one textual emendation that corrects the text in order to adapt the distances to a modern topographical hypothesis. Herodotus strives to specify the location of the Spartan army by all possible means and in very precise topographical terms, because this is the site of the final battle of Plataea (9.62.1). The place called Argiopion is about ten stadia distant from the river Asopus and the fountain Gargaphia, not far away from the ‘island’, the place to which the Spartan army retreated (9.51.1), on hilly ground at the foothills of mount Cithaeron (9.56.2). In our passage we hear that it is located near the river Moloeis and the temple of Demeter. Moloeis and Argiopion, referred to only in this passage, are impossible to locate. The temple of Demeter, which figures several times in the narrative, as Burn puts it, ‘seems to have vanished, stone by stone, into the buildings of modern Kriekouki, where two inscriptions, probably from it, have been found’.3 Various attempts have been made to locate and identify the temple.

the reading of all the codices, is a distance of about 1,800 m. According to the transmitted text this is the distance of the temple of Demeter from Gargaphia. Upon this text the translation of Rawlinson (1942) is based: ‘the army was waiting for them at a distance of about a mile, having halted upon the river Moloeis at a place called Argiopius, where stands a temple dedicated to Eleusinian Demeter’. Hude’s text has the correction (approximately 720 m.) proposed by Pingel, a Danish scholar, the author of a collection of discussions of textual problems in the three last books of Herodotus.4 The translation of Sélincourt, recently updated by (p.76) Marincola (1996), is based on this correction: ‘the rest of the Spartan troops, who halted about half a mile off to wait for him, near the river Molois and a place called Argiopium, where there is a temple dedicated to Demeter of Eleusis’. Pingel’s correction is based on the supposition that the text is a result of a contamination of two systems of numbering, alphabetical, according to which δ equals 4, and acrophonic, according to which δ stands for According to Pingel, the tradition of Herodotus’ MSS depends on an Athenian manuscript. The Athenian scribe who copied the text from an Ionian manuscript converted the Ionian numbers to Attic numbers, but in our passage he either forgot or omitted to do so. In the Ionian system the letter δ stands for four; in the Athenian system it is an abbreviation of 5

Legrand rejected the correction (see his comment ad loc.); Rosén adopted it. Why was Pingel’s emendation necessary and why did Hude insert it into his text? Because Grundy identified the site of the temple of Demeter with that of the modern church of Agios Demetrios which is Page 3 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems about 4 stadia distant from Gargaphia (see How ad loc.).6 Hude accepted the identification and changed the text accordingly. To sum up: a topographical identification of a site led to an emendation of the text, disregarding the consensus of all the codices, an emendation that changes the location of an important battle. Since we are dealing with the battle of Plataea I would like to add another textual problem connected with it. (b) Who remained and would not retreat The Greeks decided to retreat from their camping place near the fountain Gargaphia, which the Persians blocked, to a more advantageous location, the ‘island’, near Argiopion, the place discussed above.

(p.77)

While the Spartans were engaged in these efforts to turn Amompharetus, the only man unwilling to retreat either in their own army or in that of the Tegeans, the Athenians on their side did as follows.7 the preferred There are two possibilities: the reading version of Stein, Hude, Legrand and Rosén, and a combination of the variants of the manuscripts B and D (see the app. crit.) According to the version which is to be preferred,8 only the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans remained behind. Reading with Stein, Hude, Legrand, and Rosén means that only Amompharetus (with his Pitanates) from among the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans remained behind, while all the others retreated, which contradicts what is said below (56. 1). For while it is true that only Amompharetus refused to budge, claiming that retreat would bring disgrace on the Spartans, for the time being the rest of the Lacedaemonians also remained in their old position, their leaders quarrelling and trying to persuade him to join them in retreat.

(c) How to change a man of normal height into a giant

Also, the skeleton of a man not less than eight feet in height. The body of Mardonius disappeared the day after the battle; but who it was that stole it away I cannot say with certainty. I have heard tell of a number of persons, and those too of many different nations, who are said to have given him burial; and I know that many have Page 4 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems received large sums on this score from Artontes the son of Mardonius. (p.78) Hude marked the words as suspect in deference to the hypothesis of Stein, but the meaning of the passage is clear: ‘In what way the body of Mardonius disappeared I cannot say.’ It seems that Herodotus and his local informants were convinced that the body of Mardonius disappeared suddenly after the battle and was buried somewhere by someone unknown.9 The hypothesis that the skeleton of a giant man found by the Plataeans many years after the battle was the skeleton of Mardonius led Stein to ‘correct’ the text accordingly to an emendation that links the beginning of 84.1 directly with the last phrase of 83.2. Thus by a mere conjunction was Mardonius, with no additional effort, changed from a man of normal height into a giant.

(d) How to change a watchword without fear of interception Leotychidas in his address to the Ionians urges them to remember liberty and the watchword Hebe. Editors and scholars did not like Hebe.

When we join battle with them, before aught else, remember Freedom—and next, recollect our watchword, which is Hera (trans. Rawlinson, adapted). is the unanimous reading of all the MSS, is an unnecessary emendation of Roscher, justified by Stein (and How ad loc.: ‘an almost certain conjecture’), adopted by Hude and Rosén. The emendation rests on the assumption that Hera must have been the watchword in the battle of Mykale, since the Heraion at Samos was the starting point of the Greek fleet (96.1). Not a sufficient reason for emending the text. The name of Hebe is very apt to serve as a watchword, perhaps even more than that of Hera. Hebe is the wife of Heracles, young and beautiful, and Leotychidas traces his genealogy back to Heracles. There is a specially close rapport between Hebe and (p.79) the myths about the origin of the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, with which Evenius, the father of the official prophet of the Greek fleet, had special ties.10 She is also the goddess of liberty referred to by Leotychidas just before mention of the watchword. Moreover, Hebe is the goddess of victory, in iconography assimilated with Nike, and a symbol of athletic and military youth, especially in Sparta—a very appropriate goddess to serve as a watchword on the occasion of the battle of Mykale.

(e) How to deprive five kings of their kingship

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems

This Leotychidas, who was both general and admiral, was the son of Menares, the son of Agesilaus, the son of Hippocratides, the son of Leotychidas, the son of Anaxilaus, the son of Archidamus, the son of Anaxandrides, the son of Theopompus, the son of Nicander, the son of Charillus, the son of Eunomus, the son of Polydectes, the son of Prytanis, the son of Euryphon, the son of Procles, the son of Aristodemus, the son of Aristomachus, the son of Cleodaeus, the son of Hyllus, the son of Heracles. He belonged to the younger branch of the royal house. All his ancestors except the seven next in the above list to himself, had been kings of Sparta. Here Herodotus inserts the genealogy of the Eurypontids as a digression when discussing the supreme command of Leotychidas. In like manner he inserts the genealogy of the Agiads when discussing the supreme command of Leonidas at Thermopylae (7. 204). Both genealogies list twenty generations starting from Heracles, not including the reigning king. The bibliography on the passage is extensive and I limit discussion only to the emendation of Palmerius.

according to the transmitted text the two immediate ancestors of Leotychidas in the list of the Eurypontids, that is Menares and Agesilaus, were not kings. In emphasizing that all the ancestors of Leotychidas, apart from his father and (p.80) grandfather, were kings, the list confers great prestige upon him, in addition to the prestige of tracing his genealogy back to Heracles. Precisely because not all the names in the list are kings, it should be regarded as a genealogy and not as a list of the Eurypontid kings. Three hundred years ago Palmerius, on the basis of the list of Pausanias (3. 7. 5–6), proposed to 11 instead of The emendation accepted by all the read editors, among them Stein, Hude, Legrand, Masaracchia and Rosén, deprives Leotychidas of his prestige and renders the insertion of the list at this point partly aimless. To emend the text of Herodotus using as evidence a text written about six hundred years later is methodologically wrong. Instead of underlining the difference between the two traditions, the emendation sets out to unify them. The last kings in the line of the Eurypontids before Leotychidas are Agesicles (1. 65. 1), Ariston and his son Demaratus (1. 67. 1; 5. 75. 1). Leotychidas became king after the deposition of Demaratus in 491 BC (7.

65–71).12 Page 6 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems (f) How to deprive a ruler of one country and give him another

By his conduct here Xenagoras gained the favour, not of Masistes only, but likewise of Xerxes himself, whose brother he had preserved from death; and the king rewarded his action by setting him over the whole land of Cilicia.

Xerxes, grateful for the saving of his brother’s life, rewarded Xenagoras, a Hellenized Carian from Halicarnassus, by giving him all of Cilicia to rule. (p.81)

—the emendation of Krueger to relegated to the app. crit. is preferred by How to the transmitted text. It rests on the baseless assumption that Cilicia ‘though called a satrapy (3. 90) remained till at least 400 BC under the rule of its native princes’ (How ad loc.), and the Persian king could not have appointed a satrap or a king who is not a Cilician to rule the country. This view rests on two passages of Xenophon, who writes that Cyrus did not nominate a Persian satrap to rule Cilicia, Cyprus, and Paphlagonia, but was always satisfied with the rule of local (Cyrop. 7. 4. 2; 8. 68). That Cilicia was kings semi-autonomous at the time of Cyrus, as may be gleaned from Xenophon, does not mean that it had such status also in an earlier period, at the time of Xerxes. Moreover Xenagoras was not a Persian. He was appointed to rule Cilicia thanks to a special privilege bestowed on him by Xerxes: he

It seems that the ‘law’ of Cyrus did

not bind Xerxes, who nominated nonrulers to govern Cilicia at his convenience and who could solve its dynastic problems with no legal impediment, like the problems of any other province of his empire. Persian Cilicia till the end of the fifth century was a vassal kingdom from the internal point of view and a satrapy among others from an administrative-imperial point of view. The rulers of Cilicia were not Persians and not necessarily Cilician.13 If Syennesis, son of Oromedon, commander of the Cilician fleet under Xerxes (7. 98) is the Syennesis mentioned by Aeschylus who died at Salamis (Pers. 326–7), then the throne of Cilicia had remained vacant since 480 BC. After a year the Great King conferred it on Xenagoras, perhaps appointing him to rule during an interregnum. (g) How to empty a grave of its sacred bodies and fill it with others

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems

The Lacedaemonians made three graves; in one they buried their youths, among whom were Posidonius, Amompharetus, Philocyon, and Callicrates; in another, the rest of the Spartans; and in the third, the Helots. (p.82) After the battle of Plataea the Lacedaemonians made three graves for their dead. The disputed issue is who was singled out to be buried in the first, most prestigious grave. The rest of the Spartans were buried in the second grave, and in the third, the Helots. According to the reading of all the MSS in the first grave the Spartans buried their priests. All the editors, however, prefer to read ‘young men’, instead. Should the reading of all the MSS be retained or the conjecture accepted? The problem attracted much comment and was described by one scholar as ‘surely the deepest pitfall in the Book [9]’.14 The method of dealing with it is twofold: (a) is the emendation methodologically justified and (b) if it is not, what is the meaning of the transmitted text? In other words, the transmitted text need not be justified, just explained. It is the emendation that takes its stand in the court of justice and has to be vindicated. The emendation

hesitantly proposed by Valckenaer (who in the end

settled on reading was accepted with certainty by Wesseling and subsequent editors, among them Stein, Hude, Massarachia, and recently also Rosén.15 The reason Valckenaer gives for suspecting the transmitted text is that nowhere in Greek history is there a mention of Spartan priests participating in battle. He proposes to do away with the difficulty by solving another difficulty. in the alphabetical list of the is on a word not found in The glossa the traditional text of Herodotus, and Valckenaer ‘discovered’ that the only possible place for it is the beginning of 9. 85.16 In comparison to the short glossae in both lists, the glossa on the alphabetical list:

is extraordinarily long, the longest in

Eiren: among the Lakedaemonians, in the first year the boy is called ‘rhobidas’, in the second ‘prokomizomenos’, in the third ‘mikizomenos’, and in the fourth ‘propais’, in the fifth ‘pais’, in the sixth ‘melleiren’. Among them the boy is an ephebe from fourteen years right up to twenty.17 Several scholars, following Valckenaer, supposed that certain codices (p.83) of Herodotus that are now lost had the word originally attached to it.

and that the above glossa was

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems The above emendation of the text is based on this hypothesis which, apart from pointing to the existence of a glossa on

has nothing else to recommend it.

As is known, there are two lists of one arranged according to the order of the books and chapters of Herodotus and the other alphabetical. The unusually long glossa does not appear in the list of glossae arranged according to the order of the books and chapters of Herodotus. As a matter of fact this list does not contain a single glossa pertaining to Book 9 and attached to it. Therefore it is not possible to decide which passage in Herodotus the glossa wanted to interpret in the first place and it is not admissible to use it for tampering with the text of our passage. Second, the same glossa in a slightly different form is found in the oldest codex of Strabo, there too without correspondence with the text of Strabo.18 It is clear that these are two versions of the same glossa, one arbitrarily inserted into the text of Strabo, the other, so it seems, arbitrarily inserted into the alphabetical Herodotean

It was

observed long ago that in the there are words not found in the text of Herodotus as we now have it (Stein had already made a list of such words interpreted in the that do not appear in Herodotus, including a number of glossae that interpret Sophocles’ Electra 685–73 5). Thus, the existence of a glossa in the alphabetical list does not prove anything, least of all that it was a glossa attached to our passage, 9. 85. 1–2. It is methodologically wrong to ignore the consensus of the MSS and to prefer a glossa on a word that does not exist in the text of Herodotus. Moreover, in addition to the methodological weakness of the above textual considerations, the emendation raises problems of meaning that cannot be resolved. The glossa itself does not mention nor does it define the term It deals with the other classes of Spartan boys according to their age groups. It is as ‘a youth of twenty years, [who] Plutarch who defines the term commands his subordinates in their mimic battles and indoors makes them serve him at meals’ (Lyc. 17. 2).19 It is impossible to maintain that all the Spartans who distinguished themselves in the battle of Plataea were It is (p.84) clear that the four Spartans buried in the first, most honourable tomb at Plataea, whose names Herodotus mentions, were not They were experienced hoplites with full rights, hence more than 30 years old. Callicrates was a full hoplite,

(72. 1), and if we follow Xenophon, who does not

include the among the (Lac. Resp. 2, 11), are terms that designate two different ages (Lac. Resp. 2, 11). Amompharetos commanded a (53. 2, 55. 2) and was a member with voting rights in the consilium of the Spartan commanders. It has been pointed out that Amompharetos arguing with Pausanias and refusing to obey his orders is hardly the behaviour of an

Attempts to solve the difficulty by another hypothesis

that extends the age of an to 30 years are, to say the least, not a convincing measure in finding a remedy to the difficulty created by the Page 9 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems emendation. As it is well to be reminded: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Occam’s razor).20 The rejection of the emendation brings us back to or original reading of the MSS, the transmitted text which is in no need of

the

justification.21 I disagree with the view that ‘there is some, very questionable, evidence that Spartan priests received unusual honours in death’.22 Since the text is sound, the evidence is not questionable at all, but we, if we find it difficult, have to explain it. According to the transmitted text we have to assume that among the Spartans who died in the battle were priests, that priests were buried separately and their names inscribed on the gravestone, and that the four whose names are specified by Herodotus were priests. Graves of Spartans who died in battle were usually communal and anonymous (for example, the grave of the fallen at Thermopylae). Here, however, we have evidence that it was not always so. It has even been suggested that this is a case —Herodotus actually saw the grave, read the names, remembered of and recorded them. (p.85) The difficulty that troubles scholars today is what troubled Valckenaer, that we have no additional evidence that the four Spartans whose names are specified were priests and that Spartans buried priests who died in battle separately. An effort has been made by the defenders of the transmitted text to adduce additional evidence to support the reading of the MSS, namely the problematic passage of Plutarch on the ban on inscribing names on gravestones (Lyc. 27). It has been claimed that priests were exempt from the ban and that inscribing a name on a grave was a special privilege of the priests in Sparta.23 To sum up: finding the defence, or the explanation, of the transmitted text unsatisfactory is not a good enough reason for emending it. If no explanation that does away with the difficulty pleases us, we should admit our shortcoming and leave something for future generations of scholars to excel in. (h) I would like to conclude my paper with a slightly different example, one that raises the question whether it is right to correct a text even in instances when we are absolutely sure that it is erroneous

It was by you that this war kindled at the first among us—our wishes were in no way considered; the contest began for your territory.

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems The envoys from Sparta, in their effort to dissuade the Athenians from making peace with the Persians according to the terms offered by a messanger of Mardonius, allude to Athenian support of the Ionian Revolt as the cause of the war.

is the reading of all the codices (see the app. crit). (p.86) The meaning is: ‘the war began for the sake of/because of your empire’ (or hegemony). In the choice of the word

there is perhaps an implied allusion

to ‘the origin of the calamities’, the fatal decision of the Athenians to send twenty ships to aid the Ionians (5. 97. 3), which the Greeks and the Persians saw as the origin of the calamities (see also 8. 22. 2, Themistocles to the Ionians: remember that the beginning of the hatred of us by the barbarians was because of you). From the point of view of the Spartans (and perhaps of Herodotus himself), the support of the Ionian Revolt by the Athenians was a result of imperialistic aspirations. Perhaps there is a certain anachronism in the word in which an allusion to the accusations of the Spartans against Athenian imperialism at the time of the Peloponnesian war can be perceived. focuses on the reception of Herodotus’ Such viewing of the anachronism of description of past events by his contemporary audiences, an angle of research advocated by Reception theory. Stadter, for example, suggests that Herodotus’ narrative be read ‘as an effort to remove the extraordinary ignorance of a present audience concerning the true nature of the events of the past and thus reveal the importance of these events for understanding the present situation’. More specifically, when focusing on the growth of Persian power and ambitions, he writes: ‘The force of this theme of expansion and subjection provoked the contemporary listener to compare his own experience and knowledge of empire. What kind of signals does Herodotus provide which would help his listener recognize analogies with the Athenian archē? How might the listener perceive past history of his own world, and interpret his own world through the past?’24 In 1912, when the commentary of How and Wells was published, theories of textual exegesis were different. On the transmitted text How writes: ‘Such a reference to the Athenian Empire is too naive an anachronism […] Hence must be read.’ Of course in the years 480/79 the Athenian empire did not yet exist. But is the anachronism indeed so naive and, even if it is, does it justify a correction of the text? The correction ‘from the beginning’, accepted by Hude against the consensus omnium codicum, eliminates the anachronism, but it also eliminates the polemic spirit of the passage, which is of great interest for understanding the actuality of the (p.87) later mid-fifthcentury debates pertaining to the events of the Persian Wars.25 Again the translations of both Rawlinson and Sélincourt are based on the corrected text. Rawlinson: ‘the contest began for your territory’ Sélincourt: ‘It began by being a war for your territories only.’

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems Readers, whether entirely Greekless or with little Greek and less (not Latin but) effort, using these translations read a text which reflects attitudes of past generations, particularly nineteenth-century scholarship. The same may be said about students of Herodotus who use the text of Hude, the text preferred by most scholars, and rely on it because they accept the authority of the editor and the prestige of Oxford University Press, and are usually not too keen to pry into and question each and every emendation.

To sum up: I have tried to illustrate various reasons that have led scholars to emend the text, sometimes even against the consensus of all the codices. At least some of these reasons, so I hope, seem methodologically unjustified today. If the policy of cleansing the text of Herodotus from unnecessary emendations is to be consistently followed, if the versions of the MSS are to be preferred to versions of secondary or oblique sources, such a policy should apply to all types of emendations, linguistic and non-linguistic. This desideratum has yet to be fulfilled. I have benefited from the commentaries of David Asheri on Books 8–9 of Herodotus, which are to be published by Fondazione Lorenzo Valla in the near future. I am grateful to Robert Parker for his suggestions, which have improved this paper. Notes:

(1) Asheri (1988b: c xv). (2) Alan Lloyd, Silvio M. Medaglia and Giuseppe Nenci who edited the text of Books 2–7 for Fondazione Valla did not use the text of Rosén, but based their texts on Hude. For a bibliography of the criticism of Rosén’s edition, see Nenci (1998: 7). (3) Burn (1962: 535–6). (4) Pingel (1874). On the application of this assumption to a passage of Thucydides, see McNeal (1970: 306–25); McNeal writes that ‘Anyone who for historical reasons would like another number is quite at liberty to ignore Thucydides’ (p. 324) and cites Lang (1967: 269 n. 3): ‘When you change a number you lose a possible link with Thucydides and gain only your own say-so; you have not won Thucydides’ support for your theory!’ The same can be said about Pingel’s emendation. See also, for another emendation, Pritchett (1985a: 116). (5) On the two systems of numeration, see Pattenden (1987: 173, and n. 24): ‘The acrophonic system was in use at Athens from the mid-fifth cent., the alphabetic system is first found in Athens in the third quarter of the fifth century.’

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems (6) Grundy (1901: 495): ‘I venture to think that the ruins of the church of St. Demetrion are probably on or near the site of that temple’; for an identification of the site of Demeter’s temple see also Pritchett (1957: 9–28); id. (1985a: 105 ff., 116; 1992: xiii); Hignett (1963: 322–8); Schachter (1981: 152–4, 158–9); Lazenby (1993: 239–40); Munro (1904: 144–65); Wallace (1982: 183–92); id. (1985: 97–100); Woodhouse (1898: 33–59). (7) All translations of Herodotus’ passages, unless otherwise stated, are by Rawlinson (1942). (8) Powell (1935: 153): ‘It is obvious that the Lacedaemonians and Tegeates have not moved a step.’ B–D are considered inferior MS, but Housman’s guidance (in the preface to his edition of Juvenal) should help here (1931: xiv): ‘the goodness of a MS consists simply and solely in the goodness of the readings which it proffers; and our belief in its goodness, that is to say in the goodness of its readings, reposes simply and solely upon our judgement.’ Such judgement is not difficult to come by, according to Housman (1931: xi): ‘Three minutes’ thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.’ (9) Herodotus is sceptical in regard to the various stories pertaining to the location of the grave of Mardonius; see Pausanias 9.2.2, who saw a grave said to be of Mardonius to the right of the way from Eleutherae to Plataea; the rest of Pausanias’ passage seems to paraphrase Herodotus. A modern local tradition associates ‘the tomb of Mardonius [at Plataea] with a foundation of large blocks to the southeast of the city walls’, Pritchett (1985b: 174–5), id. (1957: 14–15). (10) See Parke (1967: 66–7). On Hebe see Laurens (1988: 458–64). (11) Paulmier (Palmerius) (1668: 39). Three hundred years ago Palmerius proposed to read the text as follows: that is neither the first Heraclids were kings of Sparta nor the seven men last in the list before Leotychidas, because their names did not appear in the later list of Pausanias (3. 7. 5–6–he is wrong, Archidamus does appear in Pausanias). (12) See Huxley (1962: 117–18); Carlier (1984: 317, n. 471); Fehling (1985: 129– 30 n. 298); Vannicelli (1993: 36 n. 36); Musti and Torelli (1991: 180–1); Hemmerdinger (1981: 168–9); Harvey writes (1967: 64): ‘With this emendation Leotychidas I ceases to be king’, whose existence, as Harvey argues, is confirmed by POxy 2390. (13) Asheri (1991: 35–65, esp. 45–8). (14) Burn (1980: 138); see also, id. (1979: 142).

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Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems (15) Valckenaer’s conjecture was supported by Wesseling (1758), and included in his edition of Herodotus (1763). (16) The correction supposes—another hypothesis—that is an Ionian see Boer (1954: 288–300); and most recently Toher Herodotean form of (1999: 118–26). (17) See for the Rosén, ii. 433; Asheri (1988: 253), with bibliog. The translation is that of MacDowell (1986: 161); for the relevant sources see MacDowell (1986: 159–67). (18) Diller (1941: 499–501). Diller discovered the glossa in the oldest manuscript of Strabo’s Geography, Paris 1397 of the 10th cent., written by a later hand (of 14th or 15th cent.) in the margins of the manuscript, among a quantity of extraneous material, much of it lexicographical, and was first to publish it; see also Diller (1975: 50–1). (19) Translation of Perrin in the Loeb series. (20) For other emendations see Diels (1913: 313–14):

a supposed Doric

Willetts (1980: 272–7) suggests found in a series of form of inscriptions of the Roman period, a term which he considers post-ephebic. The emendation does not resolve the problem of the age, because the Spartan ephebia ended at twenty years. For the terminology of Spartan year-classes see Tazelaar (1967: 127–53, esp.157–63); MacDowell (1986: 159–67); Pettersson (1992: 78–90); Kennell (1995: 28–48). (21) Burn (1980: 137–8) pointed out that: ‘the word appears twice, giving the square of the probability that the manuscript tradition is sound’. (22) Parker (1989: 144); I disagree with Parker that the text is defensible only if the reference to the four bravest Spartiates is deleted (1989: 163 n. 4.); see also Kelly (1981: 33) who argues that the four were not the only occupants of the grave. (23) It has been claimed, on the basis of Plut. Lyc. 27, that there was a ban on inscribing names of the dead on gravestones, with the exception of priests (or women who died in childbirth). The text of Plutarch is not without difficulties and several emendations are proposed, see den Boer (1954: 288–300); Toher (1991: 169–73); Michell (1964: 172); Pettersson (1992: 78–90); Wallace (1970: 99 n. 11); Willetts (1980: 272–7); and most recently Toher (1999: 122–6) and Hodkinson (2000: 249–62). The same methodological problem pertains to the insertion of the name of a river into a text that does not specify the river’s name (9. 93. 1) on the basis of a glossa of Theognostus (a grammarian from the 9th does not cent.). The value of the glossa is disputed and the inserted word appear in the transmitted text of Herodotus. Page 14 of 15

 

Who Was Actually Buried in the First of the Three Spartan Graves (Hdt. 9. 85. 1)? Textual and Historical Problems (24) Stadter (1992: 782, 784–5). (25) See Kamerbeek (1958: 252–3); Crahay (1956: 316–17); Carrière (1988: 274– 5 n. 100); Payen (1995: 323–4 n. 75).

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War Eugenia C. Kiesling

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords Although neither Herodotus nor George W. G. Forrest is a military historian, both offer valuable models for that discipline. This chapter surveys key moments in the historiography of war, explaining why early military historians tended to misuse Herodotus and later ones to ignore him. Three trends in late 20thcentury military history — the ‘new military history’, John Keegan's battle history, and the Thucydides revival in professional military education — would have benefited from consideration of Herodotus' work. On reflection, Herodotus turns out to have been a better military historian than generally acknowledged, while Thucydides, as Forrest himself pointed out in a little-known paper, has been overrated. Both were ahead of their peers in humanizing military history, and it is no accident that so many ancient military historians were students of Forrest. Keywords:   military, historiography, war, Thucydides, John Keegan

I agreed to contribute this paper1 in order to honour a teacher and friend and because, although it would be hubris for me to pretend to expound on Herodotos’ world, there is perhaps something useful to be said about Herodotos’ role in my own—that of the modern military historian. What began as a duty to George became a crusade after I mentioned the project to another old teacher of

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War mine and received the scornful rejoinder, ‘Don’t waste your time; write about Thucydides.’ His contempt had the opposite of the desired effect. It drove me to ask why a specialist in German military history should be so certain that Thucydides was an important military historian and Herodotos not. I am myself, in spite of George Forrest’s best efforts, far more familiar with Thucydides than with Herodotos, and I began to wonder why that too should be so. In short, I set out to reflect upon why Herodotos has not received his due in military historiography. Further, if Herodotos has been short-changed in this area, so too I would argue, has George Forrest. Hence I offer the following thoughts in an effort to capture (or at least borrow) for my own discipline the works of two very special Greek historians. With the publication of Herodotos’ Inquiries into the Persian War, all history was military history. He broached the issues that would be central to the discipline. What do people fight about? How do different cultures make war? How did two particular peoples, the (p.89) Persians and the Greeks, go about making war against one another? Herodotos does not use modern jargon, but his account of the campaign of 480 is a perfectly good tool for exploring fundamental military concepts: alliances, combined (international) operations, joint (land and naval) operations, logistics, morale, leadership, and, of course, homosexuality in war. Moreover, military history has always tended to be more narrative than analysis, and Herodotos is a consummate storyteller. In spite of his having written the first great war narrative, Herodotos’ reputation as a military historian survived only until Thucydides denied the double vote of the Spartan kings and the existence of the Pitanate lochos.2 While medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Europeans paid considerable attention to the military classics, their preferred texts were Roman. Apparently there was more to be learned from Aelian’s accounts of Trajan’s campaigns and Vegetius’ fantasies about the perfect Roman army than from Herodotos’ narrative of the Persian Wars. Contemporary tastes preferred the demonstrably superior Roman military system, while Herodotos offered nothing about such vital early modern concerns as recruiting, drill, discipline, and infantry formations. The nineteenth century, the great age of classical scholarship, could have been Herodotos’ second coming. During this golden age of classical philology and ancient history, military history, driven partially by the excitements of the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars, also flourished. Classics and military history dovetailed in the English public schools, which taught ancient languages, praised the virtues of antiquity, and romanticized the wars that had led to the triumph of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The resulting books, volumes like Sir

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War Edward S. Creasy’s 1851 bestseller, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World From Marathon to Waterloo, were hugely popular in their day. Nineteenth-century military historians borrowed from the classics eagerly but indiscriminately. Works intended either to celebrate great generals or to illustrate immutable principles of war paid little attention to historiography and less to principles of academic citation. The campaigns of Miltiades, Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar served to exemplify important themes, and no one bothered too much about what actually happened. Providing such studies with (p.90) their major source for the Persian Wars did nothing good for Herodotos’ scholarly reputation. For this style of history, tellingly dismissed by John Keegan as ‘the Whig interpretation of history written in blood’,3 was of little intellectual interest. Military historians of the next century would find it embarrassing and would dismiss Herodotos as if he had been its perpetrator rather than its victim. To the injury of ‘decisive battle’ history, the nineteenth century added insult by the great military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who denied the utility of any study of ancient history: Unfortunately, writers have always had a pronounced tendency to refer to events in ancient history. How much of this is due to vanity and quackery can remain unanswered; but one rarely finds any honesty of purpose, any earnest attempt to instruct or convince. Such allusions must therefore be looked upon as sheer decoration, designed to cover gaps and blemishes.4 The century, which began with this categorical rejection of ancient history, ended with a point-blank assault on the historian of the Persian Wars. In 1900, Hans Delbrück, Germany’s most significant civilian military theorist, published his monumental History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History.5 The four-volume opus influenced the writing of military history for the next century, doing serious damage to Herodotos’ reputation in the process. Using his signature method of Sachkritik—the ‘scientific’ appraisal of historical claims, Delbrück shredded Herodotos’ narrative. In some instances, Delbrück’s conclusions brook little argument. No one would defend Herodotos’ calculations of the size of Xerxes’ army in 480 BC. On the other hand, Delbrück’s dismissal of the entire Herodotean narrative of Marathon is breathtaking in its self-confidence. Apparently, the careful historian requires only knowledge of the topography and the application of common sense to deduce that the Athenian hoplites outnumbered the Persians at the battle and that it was the Persians who attacked the Greeks rather than the other way around. The Greeks advanced towards the Persians at a run, but only from a distance of 100 or 150 paces. Finally, the battle took place not on the beach at Marathon but in the Vrana Valley.6 In short, the battle of Marathon was a contest between a large mob of unfit Athenian civilians and the skilled but hopelessly outnumbered (p.91) Persian professionals. Although few students of the classics would prefer Delbrück’s perverse reconstruction to Herodotos’ version, the German’s criticism discouraged military historians from even reading him. ‘Why bother?’ a professor at the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College asked me. ‘He didn’t get his numbers right.’ Page 3 of 12

 

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War To find hints of the existence of Herodotos in twentieth-century military history, one has to look in obscure places. A 1934 book called Democracy and Military Power published by Professor Silas Bent McKinley of Vanderbilt University contains a chapter called ‘Demos as Hoplite’, which borrows shamelessly from Herodotos’ treatment of Marathon as ‘a victory of shock against firepower, of infantry against bowman, of democracy against despotism’.7 McKinley properly analyzes the Persian war as a conflict between two cultural and political systems. His argument about the military component of the polis’ evolution from aristocracy through tyranny to democracy reminds us of another historian who would offer a much more sophisticated treatment of the same themes about thirty years later. More typical than McKinley’s book and a stunning demonstration of contemporary attitudes towards Herodotos is a study of ancient military writers by Colonel Oliver Lyman Spaulding of the United States Army Field Artillery. Published in 1937, Pen and Sword in Greece and Rome skips directly from Tyrtaeus to Thucydides. Major General J. F. C. Fuller’s Military History of the Western World is unusual in devoting fifty pages to the Persian Wars. He relies heavily on the Cambridge Ancient History, using Herodotos to provide decorative quotations and as a target for such cheap shots as ‘devoid of any clear strategical idea’.8 Herodotos himself is of no interest to Fuller, but then neither is Thucydides; Xenophon is the only Greek honoured by inclusion in Fuller’s index. Fuller at least mentioned Herodotos. His rival, B. H. Liddell Hart, managed to publish a collection of seventy-six ‘selections from the world’s greatest military writings’ which omitted Herodotos altogether in favour of such military experts as Marcel Proust.9 More recent writers about war offer only passing disparagement of Herodotos’ numerical gaffes.10 (p.92) And so things remain to the present day, in spite of certain historiographical events that might have rekindled interest in the first military historian. In the 1970s, military history took some remarkable directions. Actually, one ought to begin this story in the year 1966, with the publication of a little book called The Emergence of Greek Democracy, but the significance of that event lies later in this essay. Three things happened to military history in the 1970s. First, students of war and of international relations, especially within the armed forces of the United States of America, discovered Thucydides. Second, John Keegan, then of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, published The Face of Battle. Finally, a movement called the ‘new’ military history began to challenge the traditional ‘drums and trumpets’ approach to the discipline.11 Aside from happening more or less at the same time, what these three things have in common is that they all happened without anyone mentioning Herodotos. I will look at them briefly in reverse order.

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War ‘New’ military history sought the scholarly rehabilitation of a genre tainted by too many generals’ memoirs, compilations of ‘world’s greatest battles’, encyclopedias of military uniforms (hence ‘button-collecting’), hagiographic biographies, and generally, in Keegan’s phrase, the ‘pornography of violence’. Too much blood, too few footnotes, far too many books extracting military ‘lessons of history’ with little regard for niceties of historiography. Most military historians, insisted critics from within our own ranks, were not scholars but ‘“war buff[s,]” antiquarians and policy-oriented “servants of power” who regard as their mission the reconstruction of tactical, strategic, or leadership “lessons of the past” for training military leaders of tomorrow’.12 Peter Paret captures the discipline’s utilitarian bent with the observation that ‘few historians would teach a course or write a book on the French Revolution, for example, or on McKinley’s presidential campaign, and conclude with a list of lessons learned’.13 Even more condescending towards his colleagues was Paret’s 1971 dismissal of most military history written in America with the question ‘why bother?’14 These exercises in self-criticism from within the discipline coincided with an external attack from an academic establishment that rejected military history— this in the last years of the Vietnam (p.93) War—as intellectually shallow, politically reactionary, and commercially profitable. In response, military historians turned over a new leaf and proclaimed the dawn of the ‘new military history’. Armed with the tools of social science and committed to the study not merely of war but of the complex place of military organizations within human societies, ‘new military historians’ could sell themselves as experts on issues of race, gender, the history of technology, imperialism, economic history, military law, civil–military relations, etc. In short, they could sometimes get academic jobs. What they did not do, generally, was talk about war as a matter of killing people.15 Investigation of the reality of battle ‘at the sharp end’ was, on the other hand, what John Keegan’s 1976 Face of Battle challenged military history to do. Keegan astutely observed that, although military history focuses excessively on battles, it has largely ignored combat. Battle histories move units on maps while ignoring the bloody realities of the actual collision between soldiers on the ground. Because ‘the history of warfare has been the history of generals, not of soldiers’,16 it has largely failed to show what battle is like and to explain how the aggregate actions of individual soldiers produce victory or defeat. Herodotos enters Keegan’s theory as the author of the first ‘battle piece’, military history’s traditional, and unsatisfactory, product and receives no further notice. It was Thucydides, Keegan argues, who raised military history ‘to a scientific and artistic level which European historians would not have regained until two hundred years ago’.17 Even battle pieces are not so bad if written by Page 5 of 12

 

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War Thucydides. Keegan describes the latter’s account of Mantinea as an example of superior battle narrative, explicitly preferring it to anything written by Julius Caesar and, implicitly, to the primitive efforts of Herodotos. But how carefully had Keegan read Herodotos? Does he really offer nothing other than second-rate battle narrative? The conversation between Demaratus and Xerxes during the Great King’s review of the Persian forces tackles one of Keegan’s key questions about battle—what motivates men to fight rather than to run away? Thucydides describes Mantinea only at the generals’ level, but, thanks to Herodotos, we can feel the suppressed tension of the outnumbered Greeks as they wrestled, combed their hair, and told jokes in camp at (p.94) Thermopylae. Herodotos may give fewer details about hoplite tactics than one would like, but we can envision the Persian arrows blunted by bronze cuirasses, the feigned Spartan retreats and disciplined counter-attacks, and even the courage of the Persian hordes. Keegan complains that battle narratives uniformly fail to describe the actual collision of hostile forces—what it is that happens on those rare occasions when neither side yields to the overpowering temptation to turn and run. Herodotos says that the Greeks advanced against the Persians, fighting first with spears, then with swords, and, eventually, with their fists and teeth.18 This is not a perfectly satisfactory account by modern standards. The true Keegan acolyte would demand details about Greek dentition, but it is not bad for a first effort. Keegan ought to be impressed by the narrative of the fighting at the Temple of Demeter at Plataea. Here Herodotos comments usefully on the qualities of the Persian troops and offers a thoughtful analysis of why the engagement played out as it did.19 Thucydides sometime gets very close to the ‘face of battle’. The closing passages of Book 7, for example, have few rivals in portraying the behavior of an army in defeat. On the other hand, while he describes the deaths of Nicias and Demosthenes, his ‘generals’ history’ condemns the rest of Athenian army anonymously to the horrors of the quarries.20 Athenian numbers precluded an actual casualty list, but one doubts that Thucydides would have bothered to learn the names even of the 300 Spartans.21 Herodotos’ battle stories, though not rigorously analytical, strive to understand the actions of men engaged in an activity that defies systematic description. Had Keegan looked at them carefully, he would have seen that they bring us closer to the Spartan hoplite at Thermopylae than we ever come to his Thucydidean counterpart. But Keegan paid no attention to Herodotos because 2,400 years of tradition sneered, ‘Why bother?’ While military historians were either renewing themselves as pseudo-social historians or making Keeganesque efforts to discover what battle looks, sounds, Page 6 of 12

 

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War feels, and smells like, high-level professional military education in the United States was moving in a different direction. In an unusual turn of events, classicists began to influence—and even to infiltrate—the war colleges. Beginning with the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, under the direction (p.95) of Admiral Stansfield Turner, the war colleges suddenly embraced the work of Thucydides. Professor Alvin Bernstein moved from a Roman History chair at Cornell University to head the Strategy Department at the Naval War College. Ancient historians became regular guest lecturers at most of the institutions of professional military education in the United States.22 The Peloponnesian War is, course, far too long and complex for rapid comprehension as part of larger courses in strategy and policy.23 The solution has been to distill its central lessons—history through aphorism. At the Naval War College the key lesson was the significance of ‘seapower’, but instructors everywhere adopted Thucydides to illustrate the nature of alliance politics, the behavior of superpowers, and the origins of war. More important, however, they sought in Thucydides validation of the school of international relations known as Realism, which argues that polities live in a Hobbesian state of nature, a condition of international anarchy in which individual states act only to further their own interests.24 No passage in The Peloponnesian War is more often quoted, though not necessarily understood, than 5. 89. 4, ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’. From there, it is a short step to Machiavelli’s utilitarian politics, Hobbes’s vision of man’s natural state, and Clausewitz’s cold-blooded treatment of war as an extension of policy. Indeed, this one Thucydidean passage does much to explain the entire excursus into classical history by United States strategists.25 As the United States pursued its embarrassing disengagement from the war in South-East Asia, military leaders found in the ‘realist’ theorists an intellectual framework to explain what had gone wrong in Vietnam and how best to avoid such imbroglios in the future. Classicists and political scientists have welcomed the new interest in Thucydides as an invitation to participate in teaching soldiers and in making policy. They publish pieces in journals of political science (p.96) and international relations explaining Thucydides’ value for understanding international conflict. One of the most ambitious—and well-financed—attempts to harness Thucydides for political science was a five-day conference held at Lake Como, Italy, in June 1988 at which thirteen scholars sought similarities between the Peloponnesian War and the Cold War through such political science concepts as international polarity, power transition, and realism.26 The Lake Como conference opened with an address by a certain Professor William George Forrest, then of New College, Oxford. Forrest was apparently invited to discuss (perhaps even to resolve?) the theoretical tensions between Page 7 of 12

 

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War historians and political scientists. The resulting lecture, called ‘Theory and Practice’, is pure Forrest and not terribly encouraging for those seeking eternal truths in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, according to Forrest, provides a good demonstration that ancient writers were capable of promulgating the most egregiously misleading theories.27 Forrest’s major discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of ancient historians draws on Polybios, but he praises Herodotos for reminding us that ‘sensitive perceptions, economic, social, political, psychological, are possible without the benefits of a “science”’.28 Which finally brings us to the point of this discussion, which is not to complain about American soldiers reading the classics or even about political scientists imposing modern political theory on an innocent Greek. But why overlook, nay dismiss, Herodotos while embracing Thucydides as the greatest prophet of the messiah von Clausewitz? Does the fact that he indubitably ‘gets his numbers wrong’ outweigh those ‘sensitive perceptions, economic, social, political, psychological’ ascribed to him by more perceptive scholars? It is true that Herodotos wrote at a considerable distance from the events he described, but that complaint holds for many classical historians. Ancient historians have to take what they can get, but Herodotos seems better value than Vegetius. The irony of excluding Herodotos is even greater when we remember the coincidence of the Thucydides boom with ‘new’ military history, a movement that rejected operational history for a combination of social history, sociology, anthropology, and other ‘scientific’ (p.97) disciplines. Actually, ‘new’ military historians tend to pay homage to Thucydides, presumably because his references to Pericles bestow intellectual sophistication even on a book replete with battles. But Thucydides, fine historian though he is, is ‘old’ military history, narrating the Peloponnesian War as a series of military campaigns motivated by political events. Why did the ‘new’ military historians not instead find their obvious patron? Why not rediscover The Histories, that quaint artifact read only by classicists? Obviously, no one was looking. The more interesting issue is what they would have found had they defied two thousand years of neglect. Thucydides produces a striking but reductionist depiction of human nature. Herodotos the anthropologist sympathetically explores differences in human cultures. However odd some of his observations, the result is the open-minded, sensitive appreciation even of the enemies of Greece that earned him the epithet ‘philobarbaros’.29 That Herodotos is doing ‘new’ military history is implied in his opening promise to present ‘the great and astonishing deeds of both the Greeks and the barbaroi’.30 Thus Herodotos presents the Persian Wars not as a clash of arms but as a confrontation between two distinct and equally interesting

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War cultures. His narrative consistently reflects the broad curiosity of the ‘new’ military historian. The recruitment, training, and discipline of citizen soldiers are favorite topics of the ‘new’ military history and are of obvious interest to Herodotos. Thucydides has nothing on these matters to rival episodes like the training of the Ionian navy before the battle of Lade and Demaratus’ lecture to Xerxes about Spartan motivation.31 Modern historians who scoff at Herodotos’ interest in prophecy might be less supercilious if they thought about oracles in the context of psychological factors in warfare. Herodotos also deals with psychology in describing Xerxes’ decision to allow enemy spies to return to Greece with intelligence about the size of his force.32 He demonstrates that the Greeks, too, understood psychological warfare. During the retreat from Artemisium, Themistocles left messages carved into rocks inviting the Ionians to desert the Great King, not caring whether the messages convinced the Ionians or merely led Xerxes to doubt the loyalty of his troops.33 ‘Old’ and ‘new’ military history differ most strikingly in their (p.98) approach to gender. For the former, war is an indisputably male enterprise in which gender issues do not arise. ‘New’ military history, on the other hand, has discovered women’s roles within an allegedly male preserve, whispered of the unspoken connection between war and sex, and studied relationships between military service and male identity.34 Herodotos is clearly in the latter camp. His history begins with a discussion of the role of rape and abduction of women in causing the enmity between Greek and Persian. It continues with the repercussions for Lydia of King Candaules’ obsession with his wife’s beauty. Two famous passages hint at the connection between warfare and masculinity. At Thermopylae, Xerxes disparages the masculinity of his unsuccessful soldiers with the observation that he has ‘many anthropoi but few andres’. Similarly, Queen Artemisia’s exemplary prowess at Salamis convinced Xerxes that ‘my men have become women and my women men’.35 The argument that Herodotos prefigures the ‘new’ military history carries little weight if he was merely a fantasist or Plutarch’s ‘father of lies’. While no one would defend everything in the Histories, the harsher critiques of Herodotos have not stood the test of time. The harm done Herodotos’ reputation by Delbrück was surely unjustified. His account of the Greek strategy in the Persian War remains inadequate, but it survived its most serious challenge when the ‘Themistocles Decree’ published by Michael Jameson turned out to be a fourthcentury forgery.36 Other historians are allowed the occasional mistake and ambiguity. Thucydides’ fine narrative of the Peloponnesian War has fueled generations of scholarly confusion about the nature of the ‘Periclean strategy’, Spartan war aims in Attica, Athenian intentions in Sicily, and a host of other Page 9 of 12

 

The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War matters. At Lake Como, Forrest summed up Thucydides’ strategic understanding by describing the frequent references to tyche during the Pylos campaign of 425 as ‘Thucydides’ way of saying “I have not got the faintest idea”’.37 That Herodotos is a poor source for numbers of soldiers and details about the behaviour of African animals is a point that has received disproportionate attention. (p.99) It is possible, barely, to write Greek political history, even Spartan history, without professing any interest in warfare. The works of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix come to mind, and George Forrest, though he wrote A History of Sparta, would not have called himself a military historian. Far from it. Still, he understood the role of warfare in history better than most. When I used to remind him in tutorials that I, as a military historian and rowing Blue, could hardly be expected to comprehend the finer points of Greek language and culture, he would shrug dismissively. I bristled then at his apparent disdain for military history; now I understand that what he rejected was my naive assumption that one could meaningfully separate war from culture. Only later, when rereading The Emergence of Greek Democracy with my own undergraduates, did I finally recognize that George had achieved what the ‘new’ military history aspired to do, seamlessly weaving politics, economics, technology, culture, and war into a coherent narrative, giving war its due, but not more, as a shaper of political and social structures. I also came to realize that George’s great success in training the next generation of ancient military historians was no accident. They are good military historians because they put war in context. The original title of this paper was ‘Herodotos: Humanist Military Historian’ because another thing that Herodotos and Forrest have in common is the ability to make history out of the stories of individuals. In Herodotos’ history even the Great King is a human being, and the sufferings of lesser mortals are palpable. Since Forrest could not populate The Emergence of Greek Democracy with named citizens, he substituted very human characters from the comedies of Aristophanes. In a different technique for making real the experience of Greek political life, he speaks of the well-off Athenian enjoying a ‘happy evening on his juror’s fee’ and of the human price of economic improvisation in seventh-century Korinth—‘if there was a time-lag between demand and supply, that was too bad— some Korinthians went hungry’.38 Happy hoplites and hungry Korinthians were worth George Forrest’s time. George Forrest was not a military historian, but he showed us how military history ought to be done. This paper is an apology to my late tutor for chafing at being forced to ‘waste’ on Herodotos time I would have spent rereading Thucydides. As for the verdict between the ‘old’ (p.100) and ‘new’ military history, the true contest has always been between good historians and bad ones.

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War In Herodotos of Halikarnassos and William George Forrest, we salute two of the best. Notes:

(1) I would like to thank the editors and my United States Military Academy colleagues Cliff Rogers, Greta Bucher, and Iris Cowher for advice on this paper. (2) Thuc. 1.20 surely refers to Hdt. 6.57 and 9.53. (3) Keegan (1976: 58). (4) Clausewitz (1976: 174). On War was originally published in 1832. (5) For Delbrück’s significance, see Craig (1986: 326–53). (6) Delbrück (1975: 72–81). (7) McKinley (1934: 56). (8) Fuller (1954:20). (9) Liddell Hart (1976). (10) Gabriel (1990: 73, 77); O’Connell (1989: 58). (11) Keegan (1976). (12) Karsten (1972: 88). (13) Paret (1991: 12). (14) Paret (1971: 394). (15) For a discussion of the ‘new military history,’ see Higginbotham (1992). (16) Graves (1992: 46). (17) Keegan (1976: 66). (18) Hdt. 7. 224–55. (19) Hdt. 9. 62–3. (20) Thuc. 7. 85–7. (21) Hdt. 7. 227. (22) Today, mid-career officers studying at the US Marine Corps’ Command and Staff College hear three lectures on Thucydides.

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The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotos, W. G. Forrest, and the Historiography of War (23) Professor Martin Cook’s course ‘Classical Military Strategy: Reading in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War’ at the Army War College is exceptional in devoting nine weeks to Thucydides’ text. (24) For distinctions among different schools of realism, see Doyle (1988). (25) To be fair, one must acknowledge the seductiveness of Cold War– Peloponnesian War analogies involving rival ‘superpowers’, competing alliance systems, and asymmetric military systems. (26) See Lebow and Strauss (1991). The ancient historians present were W. G. Forrest, W. R. Connor, M. Sordi, B. S. Strauss, J. Ober, and S. Perlman. (27) Forrest (1991). (28) Forrest (1991: 23). (29) Plutarch, de malignitate Herodoti 12 (= Moralia 857 A). (30) Hdt. 1. 1. 1. (31) Hdt. 6. 11–16. 7. 101–2. (32) Hdt. 7. 146. (33) Hdt. 7. 23. 3. (34) Much of the work in this area has been done by feminist historians and then drawn on by the ‘new’ military history. Sample studies by military historians include Linderman (1987), McCoy (1999), and Hoganson (1980). (35) 7. 210.2; 7. 88. 3. (36) For arguments on both sides, see Murray (1993: 295–9). (37) Forrest (1988: 29). (38) Forrest (1966: 31, 71).

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores the Greek construction of the Pelasgians. It focuses on the perceptions of the Pelasgians, not their historical reality, if any. In the past some scholars tried to reconstruct the Pelasgians' history, sometimes separating the ‘real Pelasgians’ from the theoretical Pelasgians. But such attempts are methodologically flawed, for what we have about the Pelasgians is myths; and even when material reflecting historical reality did go into the making of myths, it was radically reshaped and restructured, again and again, to serve the changing and multiform needs of the mythological discourses. If we knew whether the Pelasgians had existed, and what their history had been, we could have compared those realities to the Greek representations, and seen how the two related. But as we do not, speculating about possibilities simply produces circular arguments and invites by default the free deployment of modern culturally determined assumptions and judgements — instead of an attempt to block them as much as possible, and confine them to the irreducible minimum that should be our methodological ideal. For the only Pelasgians accessible to us are those in the mythological discourse; the Pelasgians are the constructions of the Pelasgians in the Greek (and eventually some Italic) imaginaire over many centuries. These constructions are closely connected with the definition of Greek ethnic identity. The chapter illustrates this connection by quoting a modern view on Herodotus' representation of the Athenians. Keywords:   Pelasgians, myth, ethnic identity, Athenians

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity 1. PELASGIANS IN GREECE: THE PROBLEMATIK In this paper I will be exploring the Greek construction of the Pelasgians.1 It is the perceptions of the Pelasgians that concern me, not their historical reality, if any; I will not be asking whether there had been a people called Pelasgians, and if there had, when and where they lived, whether they were Greek, a vast ethnos, or a small group. In the past some scholars tried to reconstruct the Pelasgians’ history, sometimes separating the ‘real Pelasgians’ from the theoretical Pelasgians.2 But such attempts are methodologically flawed, for what we have about the Pelasgians is myths; and even when material reflecting historical reality did go into the making of myths, it was radically reshaped and restructured, again and again, to serve (p.104) the changing and multiform needs of the mythological discourses. If we knew whether the Pelasgians had existed, and what their history had been, we could have compared those realities to the Greek representations, and seen how the two related. But as we do not, speculating about possibilities simply produces circular arguments and invites by default the free deployment of modern culturally determined assumptions and judgements—instead of an attempt to block them as much as possible, and confine them to the irreducible minimum that should be our methodological ideal. For the only Pelasgians accessible to us are those in the mythological discourse; the Pelasgians are the constructions of the Pelasgians in the Greek (and eventually some Italic) imaginaire over many centuries. These constructions are closely connected with the definition of Greek ethnic identity; I will illustrate this connection by quoting a modern view on Herodotos’ representation of the Athenians. According to Georges, ‘The closer we look at Herodotus’ Athenians, the less absolutely Hellenic they appear.’3 Herodotos argues, in 1. 56–8 and elsewhere, that the Ionians and other non-Dorians had begun life as Pelasgians; but does this really mean that Herodotos presented the Athenians as less Greek? Georges acknowledges4 that ‘Herodotos, like other Greeks, instinctively imagined the non-Dorian inhabitants of “ancient” Greece, Achaeans, Argives, Danaans, Ionians, Pelasgians, Cadmeans, Lapiths, and all the rest of the races of myth and epic, to be essentially “Greek” and ancestral to themselves …’; he also acknowledges5 that not everything in Herodotos fits his reading; so he accuses Herodotos of neglect: ‘Herodotos betrays every sign of having neglected to work through the implications of his own ideas, a neglect which implies that he deployed this distinction between Dorians and Ionians, aboriginal Greeks versus aboriginal barbarians, without serious examination for a programmatic and polemical purpose.’ Once he had made that point, ‘he left it aside, inoperative in the prehistory of the Hellenes’. I will be arguing that far from suggesting that the Athenians were of dubious Greekness, the Herodotean representations suggest that it is some modern perceptions of Greekness that are dubious.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity A different, albeit not wholly remote, criticism of Herodotos on the Pelasgians is that set out by Jacoby6 in connection with the story in (p.105) Herodotos 6. 137–40, in which the Pelasgians came to Attica, built a wall, were expelled, according to the Athenians because they had misbehaved, and then, in revenge, abducted Athenian women celebrating a festival of Artemis at Brauron, and made them their concubines. The story goes on, and culminates in the capture of Lemnos by the Athenians under Miltiades. Jacoby thought that this Herodotean myth is in conflict with Herodotos’ theory of the Pelasgian origin of the Athenians. He says: ‘It is hardly credible that the contradictions between that story and the theory of the Pelasgian nationality should have escaped him: how could ‘the Pelasgians’ have built the city wall for the Athenians if the Athenians were Pelasgians themselves?’7 Herodotos, Jacoby thought, deliberately obscured the problem, or at least avoided mentioning it.8 Jacoby’s explanation is that in this myth Herodotos combined two different elements, Hekataios’ Pelasgians who built the wall, and the Athenian story about their flight to Lemnos and rape, which justified the conquest of Lemnos.9 Herodotos, according to Jacoby, knew very well that the consequence of his identification of the wall-building Pelasgians with the ravishers from Lemnos was inevitably the rejection of the theory that the Athenians had been Pelasgians, but did not venture to draw those consequences.10 McNeal11 also thinks that Herodotos is inconsistent about the Athenians’ Pelasgian background and is probably reflecting different traditions without reconciling them. Thomas, too, thinks that what Herodotos says in 1. 56–8 is ‘strictly incompatible with the remarks about them elsewhere’, namely, the passage she refers to, the myth of their stay in Athens, expulsion, and rape.12 So, was Herodotos really negligent, or intellectually dishonest? Obviously, we are now aware that his intentions are neither graspable nor relevant. What can, up to a point, be grasped and anchored are the parameters within which Herodotos’ Greek audiences and readers who shared (at least an irreducible minimum of) his cultural assumptions had made sense of his representations of the Pelasgians. Before considering the Greek representations of ‘the Pelasgians’, I should make the scope of the problem clear by stressing that it is not only in Herodotos that we find apparent dissonances concerning the Pelasgians; there seems to be a dissonance even in Thucydides. In (p.106) 1. 3. Thucydides does not present the Pelasgians as radically different from the other ethne, who were Greek; but in 4. 109, while discussing the ethnic composition of the cities in Akte, which is part of the Chalcidice, he mentions Pelasgians descended from the Tyrrhenians who were once settled in Lemnos and Athens in a context that makes it clear that they were barbarians. Let me clarify some further parameters. Greek perceptions of other ethnic groups were, of course, constructed with the help of raw material reflecting the reality of those groups.13 In the case of the Pelasgians there was hardly any Page 3 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity reality to provide raw material—though certain peoples were believed by the Greeks to be Pelasgians, descendants of the ancient Pelasgians who had lived in Greece, and these were sometimes explicitly used as the basis for reconstructions pertaining to the ancient Pelasgians. But the relationship between the latter and their alleged descendants is itself a mythological construct: the notion that the Pelasgians went to particular places, and that certain people in the present are Pelasgians, their descendants, depends on a set of myths, in the most important of which the Pelasgians were identified with the Tyrrhenians.14 In some representations Pelasgians had lived in Lemnos, Pelasgians had settled in Etruria, and the Pelasgians were identified with the Tyrrhenians (Etruscans) of Lemnos. Two late archaic inscriptions from Lemnos in a native language which has affinities with Etruscan show that there (p.107) had indeed been some connection between the non-Greek peoples of Lemnos and the Etruscans.15 But this tells us nothing about ‘the Pelasgians’; all it shows is that reflections of historical reality, of the fact that there had been some connection between the non-Greek peoples of Lemnos and the Etruscans, had gone into the making of the myths about the Pelasgians. Such reflections of historical reality were deployed, reshaped and restructured, as mythological elements governed by the mythopoeic process and the representations that articulated it. Some modern scholars have tried to identify the Pelasgians with the Illyrians, because Pelasgian terms, it has been claimed, belong to, or at least appear to be very closely related to, the Illyrian language; it is only later confusions, it is claimed, that brought in the Tyrrhenians.16 But the notion of ‘confusion’ is meaningless; if the Greeks believed the Pelasgians to be Tyrrhenians, this is what they were in the Greek representations. For ‘the Pelasgians’ were a nexus of mythological representations, and among the raw material that had gone into the making of the Greek representations ‘Pelasgians’ were included Illyrian names, and the perception of a connection between the non-Greek population of Lemnos and the Etruscans/Tyrrhenians.

2. GREEK REPRESENTATIONS OF THE PELASGIANS ‘The Pelasgians’ were not a fixed essence in the Greek representations; they were a fluid set of concepts, which included several categories of perceptions. First, certain non-Greeks in certain places in the present were Pelasgians. Second, certain places and things in Greece were called ‘Pelasgian’. This category of perceptions is intertwined with a third important category, or, rather, two categories, often difficult to disentangle. One consists of representations in which the Pelasgians were (p.108) a pre-Greek people who had occupied all, or parts, of Greece in the past, and then migrated elsewhere, in most versions because they were forcibly expelled by the Greeks. The other articulates a spectrum of perceptions, in which the Pelasgians were not always radically differentiated from the Greeks, and at one end of which was the notion that the Pelasgians were the ancestors of some present-day Greeks.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity The Homeric poems articulated representations of ethnicity which included crystallizations of traditional material structured through the perceptual filters of late eighth-century Ionia; these representations had helped shape subsequent Greek representations and perceptions even more strongly in cases such as that of the Pelasgians, in which there was hardly any real life raw material input in the construct. The most dominant representation of the Pelasgians in Homer is that the Pelasgians, who lived in Larissa, were allies of the Trojans.17 Where Homer and his audience imagined this Larissa to be does not concern us.18 Whether or not Homer and his audience had identified it with a particular locality, ‘Larissa of the Pelasgians’ was a construct: in the Greek representations the name Larissa was connected with the Pelasgians,19 so the constructed Pelasgians in the catalogue of Trojan allies were coupled with a place called Larissa. The fact that the Pelasgians were in that Catalogue shows that they were perceived as non-Greeks. For, I argue elsewhere,20 contrary to fashionable opinion, a close reading of the Iliad from its opening lines forwards makes it clear that the Trojans and their allies are constructed and represented as ‘other’, in opposition to a category called ‘Greeks’. This Catalogue is constructed with building blocks that deployed reflections of peoples perceived to have been non-Greeks, and included those non-Greeks who were (in various ways) significant in the Greek representations, such as Karians, Phrygians, Lycians, Mysians.21 The inclusion of the Pelasgians, then, does not necessarily entail that there had been a perception that Pelasgians had lived somewhere in the vicinity of Troy; it may, but it need not (p.109) have; it is possible that the association of Pelasgians with that area in later perceptions may have been generated as a result of this Homeric representation. Clearly, then, the most dominant representation of the Pelasgians in Homer is that they are non-Greeks located somewhere where other non-Greeks live. Second, in the Iliad, the name ‘Pelasgian’ characterizes some places and things in Greece. Thus, Achilles’ domain includes Pelasgian Argos, and Achilles’ prayer calls upon Zeus addressed as Dodonean and Pelasgian.22 We do not know either how these names came about, or what ‘Homer’’s contemporary audiences had understood them to imply—two things that are not, of course, necessarily the same. Later Greeks also associated Dodona with the Pelasgians. In some representations the oracle was a Pelasgian foundation.23 This perception is correlative with the perception that it was the most ancient Greek oracle.24 The notion that the Epirotes were Pelasgians was correlative with this association.25 An alternative is mentioned by Strabo,26 who cites the claim by Souidas, the author of Thessalika,27 that the Dodona temple was transferred from Thessaly, from the part of Pelasgia which is about Skotoussa, which belongs to Thessalia Pelasgiotis, and that most of the women whose descendants are the prophetesses of today went along at the same time; and it is from this fact that Zeus was also called Pelasgian.28 Thus, the Homeric reference to Dodonean Zeus Pelasgian may be a reflection of an earlier association in the Greek Page 5 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity representations between Dodona and the Pelasgians; but we cannot exclude the possibility that the extensive connections in the later perceptions had been generated as a result of a particular reading of (p.110) these Homeric epithets —whatever the actual cultic reality behind them may have been. The presence of the name ‘Pelasgian’ in various parts of Greece in later representations is correlative with the perception that the Pelasgians had lived in Greece in ancient times; this was one of the two (often seen as complementary) explanations of the presence of this name, the other being that it was derived from a hero called Pelasgos. We do not know whether Homer’s audiences would have perceived the name to have indicated that Pelasgians had lived in those places, or what they would have perceived the ethnicity of the Pelasgians associated with these references to have been. We do not know through what assumptions they had made sense of those references. But the fact that the Pelasgians were allies of the Trojans in Book 2, which was reinforced by their fighting against Greeks elsewhere in the poem, would have coloured the audience’s perceptions of them in subsequent refererences as non-Greek— unless indications were given to the contrary, which was not the case.29 Finally, according to a passage in the Odyssey, Pelasgians had lived in Crete; they were one of the ethnic elements mentioned, the others being Achaeans, Eteocretans, Kydonians, and Dorians.30 This may, but need not, reflect an actual collective representation that Pelasgians lived in Crete. For it cannot be excluded that this passage may be a construct made up of some material reflecting historical reality and some ‘padding’, with the Eteocretans, the original non-Greek inhabitants of Crete,31 attracting another, better known, ‘original inhabitants’ ethnos, the Pelasgians. Equally, it may reflect (p.111) a myth, of which there were later versions, according to which Pelasgians, Dorians, and Achaeans had gone to Crete together. According to Andron32 Dorians, Achaeans, and the Pelasgians (some of those who did not sail off to Tyrrhenia), came to Crete from Thessaly, the area now called Hestiaiotis, which was then called Doris, under the leadership of Tektaphos, son of Doros, the son of Hellen. Here, then, a distinction is made between Pelasgians who went to Tyrrhenia and Pelasgians who went to Crete, an event that happened at the time of Hellen’s grandson, and in which Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians had operated together. This may be a later version of a myth underlying the Homeric passage, or it may be Andron’s (or a predecessor’s) interpretation of, or rather construction out of, the Homeric passage. A story similar to Andron’s is also told in one of two accounts in Diodoros:33 in this version, Tektamos, the son of Doros, sailed to Crete with Aeolians and Pelasgians and became king of the island; he was the father of Asterios who married Europa and bequeathed his throne to Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. The association in Andron of the Pelasgians who went to Tyrrhenia with those who went to Crete would suggest

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity that in the assumptions shaping this myth, the Pelasgians had been perceived as barbarians.34 According to Diodoros’ other account,35 Crete had first been inhabited by the autochthonous Eteocretans; then, many generations later, the Pelasgians settled in a part of Crete, followed by the Dorians, led by Tektamos, son of Doros, who also took Achaeans with him; then a heterogeneous group of barbarians arrived, and became mixed with the Cretans, eventually adopting the language of the local Greeks. Minos and Rhadamanthys followed after these events, so here also the Pelasgians’ arrival had preceded the floruit of the Cretan heroic age; after the return of the Heraklids, Argives and Lakedaimonians took over Crete.36 The implication of what is said (p.112) about the arrival of the barbarians may be that the others, including the Pelasgians, and perhaps even including the Eteocretans, were perceived to have been Greek-speakers in this version, in which the non-Greek-speakers came late and became assimilated. Diodoros’ account at 5. 80 can be seen as a transformation through decomposition of Andron’s account (to which Diodoros’ account at 4. 60. 1 is close). In Andron’s account Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians arrived in Crete together, with the Dorians the dominant group. Of these, the Dorians and Achaeans were unambiguously Greeks, while the Pelasgians had a barbarian persona. In Diodoros 5. 80 the ‘Dorians, Achaeans and Pelasgians’ nucleus is split into two, along precisely those lines: the Pelasgians were separated from the unambiguously Greek Dorians and Achaeans. On the other hand, it is conceivable that in this account they had been presented as (perhaps ambiguously) Greek. If this is right, and if it is right that in Andron’s version the Pelasgians had a barbarian persona, then the ‘barbarian Pelasgians’ of the Andron-type account would correspond to two different elements in the other, two groups whose arrivals frame the arrival of the combined Dorians and Achaeans: the ambiguously Greek Pelasgians, and the heterogeneous group of barbarians. Thus, it is possible that the account in Diodoros 5. 80 was generated through the decomposition of the ‘barbarian Pelasgians’ into two, first, Pelasgians of unclear ethnicity, or rather, ambiguous Greekness, and second, nameless and heterogeneous barbarians, a generic, colourless embodiment of the notion ‘barbarians’, to whom has drifted the representation ‘non-Greekspeakers in Crete’ and who would eventually be assimilated and Hellenized. If it is right that the narratives in which the Pelasgians of Crete were Greek were transformations of narratives in which they were non-Greek37 it would follow that interpretations of, and constructions out of, the Homeric passage that speaks of Pelasgians in Crete in which these Pelasgians were non-Greeks were earlier than those in which they were Greek. This, obviously, cannot prove, but it is consistent with, the view that all the Pelasgians reflected in the Homeric poems were perceived to have been non-Greeks.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity In these circumstances, I conclude that the different sets of evidence indicate independently that the persona of the Pelasgians in (p.113) the Homeric epics was non-Greek, and was perceived to have been non-Greek by later Greek audiences and readers. The Homeric representation ‘Pelasgians as non-Greek Trojan allies’ is comparable to the later representations in which those Pelasgians were nonGreeks who had lived in Greece in ancient times, and now live elsewhere.38 That the Pelasgians had lived in Greece in ancient times was the most important perception in the Greek representations.39 Exactly when, and where, and what happened to them, and how they related to the Greeks of today varies in the different versions. A common version is that they had lived in Greece before the Greeks, and were especially associated with certain areas (above all Thessaly) whence they were expelled.40 This strand became even more complex when the Etruscans came into play, with the identification of the Pelasgians with the Tyrrhenians, attested in Hellanikos, and probably as early as Hekataios, and the creation of traditions that the ancestors of various Italic groups were Pelasgians who had come from Greece. The representation that the Pelasgians were a preGreek population in Greece, who were replaced and expelled by the Greeks, has a correlative myth in which the Pelasgians had had the same role in Asia Minor, in Ionia and the Aeolis.41 The perception that the Pelasgians had lived in Greece in ancient times is correlative with the presence of the name ‘Pelasgian’ in various parts of the Greek world, above all, Argos and Thessaly.42 (p.114) Strabo43 mentions two explanations of this appearance. First, the Pelasgians had ruled the lands called ‘Pelasgian’—to which he adds that according to Ephoros44 the Pelasgians were originally Arcadian, and had lived a military life, and that, in converting many people to their way of life, they gave their name to those people and acquired fame among Greeks and others. Then he gives a complementary explanation, that, because many heroes were called Pelasgos, the people of later times applied the name ‘Pelasgian’ to many ethne. Of the accounts in which the Pelasgians were expelled from Greece, some articulate a general expulsion,45 others focus on localized expulsions, from particular places by particular peoples.46 The myths cited above mention Tyrrhenia and Kyzikos as two of the places where the Pelasgians had ended up when they left Greece. Herodotos47 mentions Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont as two places where the Pelasgians who had been in Attica had gone; according to Hekataios, Skylake is near Kyzikos.48 Some of the myths that speak of the Pelasgians’ forced departure from Athens say that they went to Lemnos, and several authors speak of the Pelasgians going to Lemnos, or Lemnos and Imbros, and Etruria.49 According to Herodotos, at some point the Pelasgians who had lived with the Athenians for a time had inhabited Samothrace—though the implication is clear that they do not now.50 Other places are also mentioned as Page 8 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity being inhabited by Pelasgians in the present, in the Troad and the Chalcidice.51 Many myths connect the Pelasgians with the (p.115) Etruscans and other Italic peoples. In the early versions of these representations of the Pelasgians as people who inhabit certain areas in the present, these peoples were nonGreeks.52 There are some en passant statements about the Pelasgians’ ethnicity in which they are explicitly referred to as barbarians.53 Sometimes a distinction is made between the barbarian ethnos and people called Pelasgians after Pelasgos, their eponymous king. A scholion, commenting on the use of the name ‘land of the Pelasgians’ for Thessaly, says that the Thessalians were referred to as Pelasgians, after Pelasgos, son of Inachos, or after the Pelasgians, a barbarian ethnos who had inhabited Thessaly and Argos and many other places.54 Some of the myths in which the Pelasgians were ancient inhabitants of Greece articulate an ethnic persona that is not, or not unambiguously, ‘non-Greek’. For the basic representation that the Pelasgians had been in possession of the whole, or part, of Greece in ancient times could be, and was, interpreted in different ways, and thus articulated different mythological versions. In one set of representations the Pelasgians are identified as Greeks. These representations, in which ‘Pelasgians’ was a name for certain Greeks of the heroic age, are to a significant extent associated with the figure of Pelasgos. There were many different versions of the myth of Pelasgos, or, to put it differently, more than one Pelasgos figure, and in at least some of these Pelasgos was a culture hero.55 In one variant Pelasgos was an autochthon,56 in another, to which belong most versions of the myth, he was not, but was given different sets of parents and localizations, in Argos, Arcadia, or Thessaly. The association of the Pelasgians with Thessaly is strong, but it seems that most genealogical mythopoeia was focused on Argos. According to Akousilaos,57 Pelasgos was the son of Niobe and Zeus, and brother of Argos, and the inhabitants of the Peloponnese were called Pelasgians after him. According to Hellanikos, Pelasgos was the son of the Argive (p.116) Phoroneus.58 (Elsewhere in Hellanikos59 another Pelasgos belongs in Thessaly, whence the Pelasgians were expelled by the Greeks and went to Italy.) In another version, Inachos, an autochthon, was the first king of Argos, Pelasgos was the second, and Danaos the third.60 A scholion61 tells us that Thessaly was called land of the Pelasgians after Pelasgos the son of Inachos. This, then, was one of the myths in which an Argive Pelasgos went to Thessaly. The scholion then mentions another version, according to which62 it was Pelasgos the son of Poseidon and Larissa that gave Thessaly his name, a statement followed by a quotation from Staphylos of Naukratis,63 according to whom Pelasgos was an Argive who moved to Thessaly, and Thessaly came to be called Pelasgia after him, a version that accommodates both the Argive and the Thessalian associations of Pelasgos. In other myths Pelasgos’ connection with Thessaly is more significant.64 This ‘Argive genealogy + Page 9 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity movement to Thessaly’ schema was the one chosen by Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who calls the Pelasgians Greeks.65 They eventually went to Thessaly under the leadership of Achaios, Phthios, and (another) Pelasgos, the sons of Poseidon and Larissa, expelled the barbarians who lived there and each named a part of the country after himself, Phthiotis, Achaia and Pelasgiotis. They stayed there for five generations, and then they were expelled, after which they dispersed and went to different places, including some to Crete, some to the Hestiaiotis, some to the Hellespont and eventually most ended up in Italy.66 As we saw, in Hellanikos the Pelasgians, who were the same as the Tyrrhenians, were expelled (p.117) from Thessaly by the Greeks and went to Italy.67 Pelasgos was also genealogically connected with Arcadia. In this version Lykaon was the son of Pelasgos.68 In some texts, as in Ephoros,69 the Pelasgians as a whole are described as being originally Arcadian. The two are, of course, equated, as is illustrated in Strabo’s statement70 that Ephoros’ authority that the Pelasgians were originally Arcadian was Hesiod, according to whom Lykaon was the son of Pelasgos. In some myths Arcadia was originally called Pelasgia until it was named Arcadia after Arkas the son of Kallisto, and its inhabitants Arcadians instead of Pelasgians.71 So here the Pelasgians are the same people as the Arcadians, the heroic-age Greeks and the ancestors of the present-day Greeks. As was the case with Thessaly, there is a variant which connects an Arcadian Pelasgos with Argos. According to one version of his myth,72 Pelasgos was an Argive who migrated to, and became king of, the land then called Pelasgia after him, and subsequently called Arcadia. There are many instances in which the Argives are called Pelasgians and are clearly perceived to be Greeks. In Aeschylus’ Suppliants Pelasgos was the king of Argos when Danaos and the Danaids arrived,73 and the name ‘Pelasgians’ in this tragedy denotes the heroic-age inhabitants of Argos,74 who, it is unambiguously clear, were perceived to be Greeks.75 The combination of the kingship of Pelasgos and the use of the name ‘Pelasgians’ here shows that the use of the latter name is not an empty rhetorical flourish, but a refraction of a perception that the Pelasgians are the same people as the heroic age Greeks in the Peloponnese. ‘Pelasgian’ is also used to refer to heroic-age Argives, and heroic age Argos, in many other tragic passages.76 The notion that Pelasgos was king of Argos when Danaos arrived, and that the Argives, who were Greeks, were then (p.118) called Pelasgians, clearly also underlies the myth in Euripides’ Archelaos,77 according to which when Danaos came to Argos he laid down a law all over Greece that those previously called Pelasgians were to be called Danaans. Danaos, though ultimately of Argive descent, was, of course, Egyptian, so the concept of ethnicity involved here was complex. I shall return to these complexities at the end of this paper. What concerns us here is that ‘Pelasgians’ was a name used for certain people in the heroic age who were unequivocally perceived to be Greeks.78

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity In a fragment from Sophocles’ Inachos, a satyr play, cited by Dionysios of Halikarnassos79 as evidence for the notion that the Pelasgians were also called Tyrrhenians and vice versa, the chorus speaks of Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi at Argos.80 This expression suggests that the Pelasgians at Argos were Tyrrhenians, therefore non-Greeks; to be more precise, that those particular Pelasgians in Inachos’ ‘primeval’ time were Tyrrhenian non-Greeks.81 It is not impossible that this had been a representation similar to, or a reflection of,82 Herodotos’ interpretation of the representation that the heroic-age Argives were Pelasgians, that they had been barbarians who became Greeks; if so, the designation Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi would be reflecting (p.119) the antiquity of the times in which the play’s events are taking place. The fact that we only have fragments of the play makes it impossible for us to go further than say that it is very much more likely than not that the Pelasgian Argives referred to as Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi in Sophocles’ Inachos were perceived to be non-Greeks, or, at most, ambiguously Greek, perhaps in a mythological schema in which some Pelasgians had eventually become Greeks. Thus, Athenian audiences regularly heard the name ‘Pelasgians’ used for the Argive Greeks of the heroic age, but they also saw, at the very least in this Sophoclean play, the Pelasgians of Argos being represented as barbarians. Most importantly, in the Attic myths about the Pelasgians’ expulsion and the rape at Brauron the Pelasgians were non-Greek others, who had come from the outside and were eventually thrown out. The latter was the dominant Athenian perception of the Pelasgians, but for the tragic audiences who heard ‘Pelasgian’ referred to heroic-age Argives it would have become narcotized, they would not have tried to place the tragedy’s Pelasgians in one conceptual map that would also have made sense of the barbarian Pelasgians of local myth. Another myth articulates religious continuity between the Pelasgians and the present, and presents the Pelasgians in Thessaly, ruled by a king called Pelasgos, as heroic-age Greeks. It is told by Baton of Sinope,83 cited by Athenaeus,84 who says that Baton of Sinope ‘clearly indicates’ the festival of the Saturnalia to have been most Greek (hellenikotaten), saying that it is called Peloria by the Thessalians and telling the story of how it was instituted in Thessaly at the time of king Pelasgos. The formulation makes clear that these Pelasgians were perceived to have been Greeks; and that at least in the case of the Peloria, the cult practices of today are linked to those of the heroic-age ‘Pelasgian’ Greeks. To sum up. There is a spectrum of views concerning the ethnicity of the heroicage Pelasgians. In some representations they are Greek; in others their ethnicity was ambiguous; in another set, that includes the early representations which articulate their expulsion by the Greeks, and departure for Italy and other places, they were non-Greek. In Hellanikos’ account85 there was a king Pelasgos, but the Pelasgians were Tyrrhenians, whom the Greeks had expelled from (p. 120) Greece. The Greek ethnicity alternative had partially crystallized around the figure of Pelasgos, so that descent from, and being named after, Pelasgos Page 11 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (had probably been constructed as and) was often a Greek ethnicity alternative to the Pelasgians being, and things called Pelasgian being called after, a barbarian ethnos, exactly as we saw in the scholion mentioned; but this did not entail that the name of Pelasgos occurred exclusively in contexts in which the Pelasgians were represented as Greeks. Nor was the perception that the Pelasgians were Greeks limited to such contexts: for example, another myth that connects the heroic-age Greeks with the Pelasgians, told by Pausanias,86 says that Messenian Pylos had been founded by Pylos, who had brought from the Megarid the Leleges who had then occupied it, but was then driven out by Neleus and the Pelasgians of Iolkos. Thus, in this myth, the heroic-age Pylians were originally Pelasgians. The representations in which ‘Pelasgians’ was a name used for certain Greeks of the heroic age are absent from the Homeric epics, and would appear, at least to our culturally determined eyes, to be dissonant with the visible perceptions of the Pelasgians and of the Greeks in those epics. They are certainly dissonant with the schema ‘the Pelasgians were perceived to have been a pre-Greek nonGreek people that were expelled from Greece by the Greeks and went to live elsewhere’, a dominant schema in the Greek representations, which is not dissonant with the representations that are visible to us in the Homeric poems; it is correlative with ‘the Pelasgians as non-Greeks elsewhere’, the dominant representation of the Pelasgians in Homer, and it is not dissonant with the other two Homeric representations, ‘Pelasgians in Crete’ and ‘Pelasgian was a name occasionally associated with Greece proper’. We cannot be totally certain what the perceptions were of which the Homeric representations ‘Pelasgians in Crete’ and ‘Pelasgian was a name occasionally associated with Greece proper’ were reflections, but we found good reasons for associating them with a non-Greek persona. The arguments set out above, the fact that no Greeks are referred to as ‘Pelasgians’ in the Homeric poems, and the fact that by far the most dominant representation of Pelasgians in those poems is as non-Greeks who lived outside Greece in the present, suggest that the Homeric Pelasgians were non-Greeks. If this is right, the myths and representations of the (p.121) Pelasgians as Greeks are later constructs, perhaps of archaic genealogical poetry,87 in which the nonGreek Pelasgians became appropriated by Greek mythopoeia, through the creation, or appropriation, of a figure, or rather, figures, Pelasgos, who was given a place in the Greek genealogies.88

3. HERODOTEAN CONSTRUCTIONS: DORIANS, IONIANS, PELASGIANS I will now focus on Herodotos. Herodotos claims, in various statements, that all Greeks except the Dorians were originally Pelasgians. In 1.56–8 he characterizes the Ionians as Pelasgians, whom he represents as non-Greeks who became Hellenized. Elsewhere he says that the Aeolians and the Arcadians were Pelasgian,89 and also90 that, while the Pelasgians ruled what is now called Hellas, the Athenians were Pelasgians, called Kranaoi;91 then, under Kekrops, they were called Kekropidai; they became Athenians under Erechtheus, and Page 12 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity when Ion, the son of Xouthos, became their military leader, they were called Ionians. Kranaos was an autochthon, the king of Athens at the time of Deukalion; he had a hero cult.92 The association between the name of Athens and the Athenians and the names Kranaa, Kranaos, and Kranaoi is widespread.93 Herodotos, (p.122) then, inserted his Pelasgian theory into the schemata of Athenian mythology. His statement would have been understood to be saying that the Pelasgians had ruled Greece at the time of Deukalion. I will now consider Herodotos 1. 56–8.94 56. … [2] He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric stock [geneos], and the Athenians among those of Ionic. These two were the most eminent genea, and in ancient times the first had been a Pelasgian ethnos the second a Hellenic one. The Pelasgian ethnos has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. [3] For in the days of king Deukalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympos, in the time of Doros son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Kadmeans, it settled about Pindos in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian. 57. What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot say exactly. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who live above the Tyrrheni in the city of Kreston—who were once neighbours of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessaliotis—[2] and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Plakia and Skylake on the Hellespont, who came to live among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name, if one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek. [3] If, then, all the Pelasgians spoke so, then the Attic ethnos, being Pelasgian, must have changed its language too at the time when it became part of the Hellenes. For the people of Kreston and Plakia have a language of their own in common, which is not the language of their neighbours; and it is plain that they still preserve the manner of speech which they brought with them in their migration into the places where they live. 58. But the Hellenic ethnos, it seems clear to me, has always had the same language since its beginning; yet being, when separated from the Pelasgians, few in number, they have grown from a small beginning to comprise a multitude of nations (ethnea), chiefly because the Pelasgians and many other barbarian ethnea united themselves with them. Before that, I think, the Pelasgian ethnos nowhere increased much in number while it was barbarian. (Herodotos 1. 56–8)95

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity In 1. 56 Herodotos structures the representations of the Ionians and the Dorians through a series of antitheses, but then he qualifies and partly deconstructs those antitheses. The Ionians were (p.123) Pelasgians, the Dorians were a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home. The Hellenic has wandered often and far, though all the wanderings mentioned are within the perceived Greek world. Then, in 1. 5 7 Herodotos contradicts the statement in 56 that the Pelasgian race has never yet left its home, by speaking of Pelasgians who now live elsewhere, but used to live in Thessaly, and also of those who now inhabit the Hellespont who had been synoikoi of the Athenians. One way of reconciling the two is to assume that when he says ‘has never yet left its home’ he means the particular Pelasgians he is focusing on in 1. 56, the Ionians; but even if the statement in 1. 56 is interpreted in this way, first, it means that he uses ‘Pelasgian’ to mean different things in two consecutive passages, and second, the notion that the Ionian Pelasgians did not leave their home is contradicted by the Greeks’ knowledge of Ionian Asia Minor, and also by Herodotos’ own statements elsewhere about the Ionian Pelasgians in Asia Minor. It is the Athenians who had not moved. Thus, Herodotos set up those simple oppositions, which he then qualified, and partly deconstructed (directly, or through inviting the deployment of the readers’ knowledge), as a modality of expressing what he may have perceived as the ‘deeper reality’, that the Athenians, whom he characterized as the most important among the Ionians, had not moved from their original homeland, while the others had, thus destabilizing the antitheses he set up between the Ionians and the Dorians, all the Ionians on the one hand and all the Dorians on the other.96 One of the tools, then, deployed in this strategy of schematizing and then deconstructing the constructed schemata in order to articulate complexities is the use of the same term to denote different things. Herodotos also uses the term Pelasgian to denote different things in the opposite way: in contrast to his use of the term when he claims that the Pelasgians had not wandered, as the Dorians had (a use in which he ascribes to the Pelasgikon a trait that characteristized one part of the ethnos that, according to him, was descended from the Pelasgikon, the Ionians), in 1. 57 he uses the term ‘Pelasgian’ for the ‘real’ Pelasgians, those of today, who, on his schema, were the Pelasgians who did not become Greek. For in 1. 5 7, in the middle of his argument about the language of the Pelasgians, which (p.124) he then connects to his perceptions that the Ionians had been Pelasgians, he also distinguishes the Pelasgians from the Athenians, and he speaks of the Pelasgians who had beeen synoikoi of the Athenians, and who now live in Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont, as those that still remain of the Pelasgians. We should keep in mind these Herodotean strategies when trying to make sense of something that to our eyes may appear problematic.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity Herodotos also uses the term Hellenikon and Hellenes to denote different things in different places, as part of this strategy. In 1. 58 to Hellenikon means the Hellenikon ethnos, the early Dorians, who were already Greek when the early Ionians were Pelasgian; for the section begins with the statement that the Hellenikon has always had the same language since its beginning—following the argument that the Pelasgians had not originally spoken Greek.97 In 1. 56 Hellenikon (p.125) ethnos refers to the Dorians, in opposition to the Ionians, but the main meaning of Hellenikon here is to characterize the early Dorians, as an epithet, in opposition to ‘Pelasgian’: the early Dorians were a Greek ethnos, as opposed to being a Pelasgian ethnos. Related to this is the usage in 1. 57, where, speaking of the Pelasgian Attic ethnos becoming Greek, Herodotos uses the formulation tei metabolei tei es Hellenas, in which Hellenes means ‘Greek’ in the sense that ‘Greek’ was understood in contemporary Greece. Obviously, this double use allows him to define the Dorians as the most Greek Greeks, to bring out his belief that only the Dorians had spoken Greek from the beginning. The formulation in 1. 58 that says that to Hellenikon has always had the same language since its beginning suggests that he defines the Dorians as Hellenikon ethnos because in his model the Dorians had spoken Greek from the beginning, while the Ionians, on his reconstruction, had originally spoken the non-Greek Pelasgian language. Or rather, there was a core Hellenikon ethnos who spoke Greek, but the Dorians of today are themselves, like all the Greeks, descendants of a mixture of this small core Hellenikon ethnos and Pelasgians and other barbarians.98 Thus, presumably, in this schema, the difference between the Dorians and the Ionians was that the Dorians were descended from a few original Greek-speakers mixed with a lot of Hellenized barbarians, of which the Pelasgians were one, while the Ionians did not even have this core, they had all been originally barbarians who became Greek. Hardly a discourse of Dorian racial (p.126) purity then. On the contrary, having set up the antithesis between the early Dorians, who were a Greek ethnos, and the Ionians, who were a Pelasgian ethnos, a barbarian, non-Greek-speaking Pelasgian ethnos, Herodotos then deconstructed it, by stating that the early Dorians had got together with Pelasgians and other barbarians, and that the Dorians are descended from this mixture—like the Pelasgians who had not increased much in numbers while they were barbarians, but, the implication is, they did once they became Greek. The notion in 1. 58 that to Hellenikon (here meaning the Hellenikon ethnos, the early Dorians, as opposed to the Pelasgikon ethnos) had been ‘separated from the Pelasgians’ is difficult to understand, since it implies that the Hellenikon and the Pelasgian ethnos had before that been together. The one rough equivalence to the implied notion that the two had somehow been together is Herodotos’ statement in 1. 57 that the ancestors of some present-day Pelasgians who now live in Italy had been homouroi, neighbours, of the people now called Dorians and had inhabited the land now called Thessaliotis. Whether or not this is the Page 15 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity separation that 1. 58 refers to, it is certainly the case that this segment of Herodotos’ discourse, in which the Pelasgian Ionians are contrasted to the Hellenic Dorians, also makes mention of adjacency and of separation between them. The adjacency is located in the Thessaliotis. There are representations connecting the Pelasgians and the early Dorians in Thessaly, reflected, we saw, in Andron’s99 story that the Dorians, Achaeans, and Pelasgians (some of those who did not sail off to Tyrrhenia), went to Crete from Thessaly, the area now called Hestiaiotis, which was then called Doris, under the leadership of Tektaphos, son of Doros, the son of Hellen.100 Since we do not know whether this representation was earlier than Herodotos, we cannot exclude that Andron (or a predecessor) had simply created a construct out of the Homeric passage in interaction with the Herodotean one. But it is also possible that the Homeric passage itself may have been reflecting a myth according to which Pelasgians, Dorians, and Achaeans had been in Thessaly, and gone to Crete, together. Certainly, the Pelasgians had a special connection in the early period with areas associated with the early usage, or perceived origin, of the name Hellas and Hellenes: in the Iliad, Achilles’ kingdom, where Pelasgikon Argos is situated, is the one area with which the (p.127) terms Hellenes and Hellas are associated; Dodona, the seat of Pelasgian Zeus in Achilles’ prayer, is elsewhere also associated with the name Hellas.101 The kingdom of Achilles was sometimes perceived to have included Thessaly. Apollodoros understands Homer’s Pelasgikon Argos to be referring to Thessaly.102 In Herodotos the Dorians had lived in Phthia, Achilles’ kingdom, and later in Thessaly, then in the Doris, then in Dryopia, and then in the Peloponnese where they came to be called Dorians; the Pelasgians had certainly been associated with Thessaly before Herodotos, since, according to Hekataios, Thessaly was called Pelasgia from its king Pelasgos.103 The geographical details may vary, but there is enough evidence to show that there had been a clear connection in the Greek representations between early Dorians/Hellenes, Thessaly and the Pelasgians, though this may have taken different forms in the different articulations. It is possible that representations of this association may have appeared early, in versions involving close co-operation comparable to that in Andron; if so, when deployed in the reading of these Herodotean passages (which they would have been, since such knowledge would have been activated through the juxtaposition of Pelasgians and Hellenes as early Dorians), they could potentially destabilize the differences between (i.e. the separateness and antithetical definitions of) the Pelasgians/Ionians on the one hand and the Hellenes/early Dorians on the other, which Herodotos stresses. The setting out of the association in terms of their being neighbours, and the stressing of their separation through the term aposchisthen, gives a circumscribed form to this connection. Of course, its very mention helps deconstruct the separateness somewhat. As we saw, the differences and the separateness between the Pelasgians/Ionians and the Hellenes/early Dorians set out by Herodotos are further deconstructed by his Page 16 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity statement that both ethne mixed with other non-Greeks, and became what they are today. In 2. 171. 3 Herodotos constructs a different kind of alignment between the Pelasgians and the Ionians and other non-Dorians on (p.128) the one hand and the Dorians and the Greeks on the other: he says that the Danaids had taught the Thesmophoria, which they had brought from Egypt, to the Pelasgian women, and afterwards, when the people of the Peloponnese were driven out by the Dorians, the rite was lost, except in so far as it was preserved by the Arcadians, who had stayed in their homeland. This myth, then, is about the expulsion of the Pelasgian Greeks by Dorians, here presented as a doublet (in which only the Peloponnese is involved) of the replacement of the pre-Greek Pelasgians by the Greeks; non-Dorian Greeks play the role that the Pelasgians play in other myths, while the Dorians play the role played by the Greeks. This is, of course, correlative with the Herodotean notion that of the present-day Greeks all except the Dorians had been Pelasgians; thus, in this version, the story ‘the Greeks replaced the Pelasgians’ is replaced by the story ‘the “true Greek” Dorians replaced the heroic-age Pelasgian Greeks’. The relationship between heroic-age and historical Peloponnese constructed here is structured through a perception of the Dorian invasion that involved rupture and ethnic replacement. This myth goes against the grain of Greek discourses about the past, which privilege continuity between the heroic age and the present; it fractures that continuity specifically with regard to cult, in which, in everyday life, in the Peloponnese, as elsewhere, that continuity was important, because the connection with the heroic age helped anchor and validate the polis religious discourses. Myths that ascribe the foundation of a cult to a heroic-age figure anchor that cult symbolically, for in the heroic age mankind had a closer connection with the divine, and heroic-age figures were often descended from gods; the founders’ greater proximity to the divine gave them some kind of authority and sometimes even divine sanction for the foundations. Thus, the dominant modality of relating to the heroic age in the Greek representations is in terms of continuity. This tendency may have helped problematize Herodotos’ story of radical rupture; certainly, in my view, the knowledge that the Thesmophoria were celebrated all over the Greek world, including Dorian Peloponnese,104 would have led Herodotos’ Greek readers to construct such problematization—even though a perception that the Arcadians had spread the Thesmophoria again to the rest of the Peloponnese could potentially have been constructed as a reconciling (p.129) representation. In any case, this myth tells a different story from that in 8.73,105 where Herodotos says that there were seven ethne in the Peloponnese, of which the Dorians, the Dryopians, the Aetolians, and the Lemnians had come from the outside, while the Arcadians, the Kynourians, and the Achaeans had not, and of these the Arcadians and the Kynourians were autochthonous; the Kynourians being autochthonous, Herodotos continues, appear to be Ionians, and the only ones left in the Peloponnese, but their Argive Page 17 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity masters Dorianized them. The Achaeans had moved within the Peloponnese, so Herodotos does not consider them autochthonous; in other respects they were no different from the Arcadians and Kynourians, and, being heroic-age Greeks, in a conceptual system in which the Peloponnesian heroic-age Greeks were Pelasgians, the Achaeans would also have been perceived as Pelasgians. In this representation, then, there were three Peloponnesian ethne in the historical period descended from heroic-age Peloponnesians, and not only the Arcadians. Only one is said to be Ionian, but we would have expected them all to have been perceived as Pelasgians and elsewhere Herodotos considers the Arcadians to be Pelasgians.106 But Herodotos does not call any of these three ethne Pelasgians here. Here his focus is on small-scale ethnicity, and the diversity that goes with it —not the large-scale ethnicity structuring the passage in which he says that ‘the Dorians’ replaced all the peoples of the Peloponnese except the Arcadians, with the clear implication that those peoples had been Pelasgians.107 Correlatively with this focus on smaller-scale ethnicity, several ethne are said in this passage to have come from the outside and stayed in the Peloponnese, while in the other passage the Dorians replace everyone that was there before except for the Arcadians. The differences between the two passages are correlative with their context. In 2. 171. 3 the Peloponnese is viewed from afar, as it were, from the viewpoint of Egypt, and it is not the Peloponnese of the present that is presented, but that of the heroic past; Herodotos’ conceptual camera is pulled back, and what is shown is a basic schema of ethnic replacement. By contrast, in 8. 73 the viewpoint and focus is the Isthmus and the Peloponnese of today (the today of the day before the battle of Salamis), and the focus is sharp on the Peloponnesians of the here and now, some of whom, whom Herodotos names, had gone to the Isthmus, while the rest had not cared to (p.130) oppose the Persians. It is immediately after that that he enumerates the seven Peloponnesian ethne, ending chapter 8. 73 with the comment that of those ethne all the cities except those he had named in 8. 72 had sat apart from the war, in effect medized. His sharper focus on small-scale ethnicity helped evoke, in interaction with the readers’ knowledge, the particular people who were not mentioned as having participated, and whom Herodotos considered medizers, without explicitly naming them. Through this enumeration it also becomes clear that the behaviour of the people he considers Pelasgians differs widely: while all the Arcadians had been there to fight the Persians, none of the Achaians were. But why does the myth in 2. 171. 3 speak of a simple replacement, of the Pelasgians by the Dorians? That Herodotos opposes the Pelasgians to the Dorians has, of course, been noted.108 But I would go further: in my view, Herodotos had constructed the notion that all Greeks except the Dorians had been Pelasgians as part of his construction of the Dorians as one ethnic group, opposed to, and correlative with, all other Greek ethnic groups taken together. The contrast between Dorians and Ionians, which he presents as correlative with Page 18 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity the opposition between Greeks and Pelasgians,109 is one of the modalities of contrast implicating, and thus also helping define, the Dorians. The other opposes the Dorians to all the other Greeks, and is constructed through the characterization of the non-Dorians as originally Pelasgians, and with the help of a construction of a Dorian invasion that polarizes the past, and as a result also the ethne of the present, into pre- and post-Dorian, non-Dorian and Dorian, a polarization that is at the other end of the spectrum of the ‘return of the Heraklids’ tradition, which privileges continuity. The Dorian invasion is, of course, a construct; if any historical material had gone into its making, as I believe it had—but that is another story110—it had (p.131) been radically reshaped, as such material always is in mythological discourses; the unified Dorian invasion is the product of constructions of discourses of Dorian ethnicity. Herodotos’ accounts of the early history of the Dorians, and of the Dorian invasion as displacing a Pelasgian population, are part of his construction of Dorian ethnicity. It is because he constructed the Pelasgians as one large-scale ethnic group that he can present the Dorians as another. His construction of the Pelasgians as one large-scale ethnic group is a tool in his construction of the Dorians as a large-scale ethnic group apart from, and on its own correlative with, all the other Greeks. The fact that Herodotos is giving different stories in different places does not invalidate the ‘truth’ of these stories.111 The story that focuses on small-scale ethne gives a record of what Herodotos perceived to be the historical reality, while the story that the Dorians had thrown the Pelasgians, with the exception of the Arcadians, out of the Peloponnese, and that this brought important changes, would have been understood to be telling what may be seen as a deeper truth, an ideological construct, that articulates the notion that the arrival of the Dorians created a new era in the Peloponnese, and that the major and significant ethnic divide was between Dorians and non-Dorians. On the other hand, knowledge of Herodotos’ theories expounded in 1. 56–8, in which the Dorians, like the Pelasgians, had been mixed with barbarian ethne, would partially deconstruct this construction of the Dorians in which they are radically opposed to the other Greeks.

(p.132) 4. PELASGIANS AND ATHENIANS I now turn to the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Athens.112 Herodotos, we saw, believed that the Athenians had originally been Pelasgians, but he also told a myth in which the Pelasgians in Attica were different from the Athenians, latecomers, who stayed for a certain time, built the Pelargikon wall, and then were expelled and went to Lemnos; in revenge, they abducted the Athenian women celebrating a festival of Artemis at Brauron. The story goes on, and culminates in the capture of Lemnos by the Athenians under Miltiades, but I cannot discuss it here.113 The myth is also found in other authors.114 Herodotos cites two versions as to why the Athenians had expelled the Pelasgians; one he attributes to Hekataios, the other to the Athenians.115 In the latter it was Page 19 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity because the Pelasgians had misbehaved, in Hekataios because the Athenians had coveted the previously worthless land which they had given to the Pelasgians as a reward for building the wall, which the Pelasgians had improved by superior cultivation. Elsewhere, for example in Philochoros,116 the abductors are referred to as Tyrrhenians, as well as Pelasgians, but not in Herodotos. Philochoros also identifies the Pelasgians with the Sinties.117 The Pelasgians were expelled from Athens in the later part (p.133) of the heroic age, for they drove the descendants of the Argonauts out of Lemnos.118 It is the relationship between the Athenians and the Pelasgians that concerns me here. Jacoby had distinguished the Attic Pelasgians from the ‘primeval Pelasgians’.119 In reality it is only in Herodotos that this distinction between two types of Pelasgians can be made; the collective Greek representations string out the Pelasgians along a spectrum, at one end of which are the most chronologically primeval Pelasgians, and at the other the Pelasgians who had lived with the Athenians, but also others, who were also not chronologically primeval. Herodotos’ Pelasgians (other than those who came to Attica and then left) were by necessity primeval, since on his schema in the heroic age proper the Pelasgians had become Greeks, and those who were still Pelasgians did not live in Greece. The Attic Pelasgians were, by necessity, an exception, since, in order to include both Athenians and Pelasgians (as the myth that Herodotos was manipulating demanded), they had to be located at a time when the Athenians were (on his schema) no longer Pelasgians. That is why in Herodotos the representations of Pelasgians have drifted to two poles, while in the rest of the Greek representations the Attic Pelasgians do not stand out, but were one among many groups of Pelasgians at different points of the chronological spectrum. For, it will now become clear, in other myths also, the Pelasgians are not always chronologically primeval, and their chronology varied in the different versions. Let us look at a few of the myths of the Pelasgians’ expulsion from Thessaly. In Andron,120 the Pelasgians had left Thessaly, for Tyrrhenia and Crete, in the very early heroic age; in Diodoros the Pelasgians fled from Thessaly to escape Deucalion’s flood,121 which places them at the very beginning of the heroic age. In the myths involving Kyzikos122 the Pelasgians had been thrown out of Thessaly later in the heroic age, not long before (p.134) the Argonauts’ expedition. This would be placing the expulsion at roughly the same time as the story123 according to which Neleus and the Pelasgians of Iolkos went to Pylos. According to Hieronymos of Kardia,124 the plain of Thessaly and Magnetis had been inhabited by Pelasgians, who were driven out by the Lapiths and went to Italy.125 It is not clear when the Greeks had imagined this expulsion to have taken place, but I suggest that it would be somewhere in the earlier part of the heroic age. Finally, a myth in Apollodoros126 places the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Thessaly after the Trojan War. According to this myth, after the Trojan War, a Greek leader, Antiphos, son of Thessalos, took possession of Page 20 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity Thessaly, which had until then been in the control of the Pelasgians. Clearly, then, the Pelasgians in general, not only those involved with the Athenians, are not always chronologically ‘primeval’. I will now argue that in other respects also, the Pelasgians of the Athenian myth, in Herodotos’ version or in any other, are not much different from the Pelasgians in the other Greek representations of Pelasgians. First, the Attic myth is simply one among a set of myths involving the Pelasgians’ expulsion from specific places, at least one of which, the myth of Kyzikos, had also included the element ‘revenge of the Pelasgians’. In this myth,127 Kyzikos was a non-Greek, whose ethnicity varied in the different versions. In one version128 he was the king of the Doliones, a Thracian tribe,129 who had been friendly and helpful to the Argonauts, but was killed by them by mistake together with many of his people, after the Doliones had mistaken the Argonauts for a Pelasgian army. In another version,130 Kyzikos had been the king of the Pelasgians who had lived in Thessaly before they were expelled by the Aeolians. After that expulsion, Kyzikos founded Kyzikos, to which he gave his name, and which prospered. When the Argonauts arrived at Kyzikos the Pelasgians, angry because of that expulsion, attacked them. In the first version the role of the Pelasgians (p.135) was very marginal, in the second they fill the role of native inhabitants, though they are themselves incomers. Ephoros can be seen as combining the two, for he identifies the Doliones with the Pelasgians, and says that they were hostile to the inhabitants of Thessaly and Magnesia because they had expelled them from those areas, and that was why they attacked the Argonauts.131 Both the Kyzikos and the Athenian myths articulate a localized expulsion of Pelasgians, who go and live elsewhere and then take revenge for their expulsion. While not chronologically primeval, the Pelasgians who had lived with the Athenians, like the Pelasgians in other myths, had some traits that characterized them as conceptually primeval. In the Attic myth they have ‘culture-hero-like people’ traits, superior building skills, and in Hekataios also superior agricultural skills; but they are also, in Herodotos’ ‘Athenian version’, rapists. In other words, they had ambivalent traits. As we shall see, the Pelasgians were also characterized by ambivalence elsewhere. This is because they were conceptually associated with primeval times, and the Greeks associated primeval times with ambivalence, often characterizing the pre- (main) heroic-age past as (to a greater or lesser extent) ambivalent.132 The culture-hero people aspect characterizes the Pelasgians also in other myths,133 and is correlative with Pelasgos’ persona as a culture hero.134 As for their ambivalent character elsewhere, in the Kyzikos myth, for example, on the one hand they had prospered, and they also had a good king, and on the other they were negatively coloured because they attacked the Argonauts.135 A myth in Plutarch136 associates the Pelasgians’ arrival with both war and positive innovations: the descendants of the Tyrrhenians who had raped the Athenian girls went to Page 21 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity Laconia after they had been thrown out of Lemnos and Imbros, and there they married Laconian women; but they had to leave and they went to Crete, where they fought the locals, and their (p.136) leader Pollis137 set in place certain institutions concerning religious personnel and those who buried the dead. Most importantly, the Pelasgians are associated with extreme sexual misbehaviour (in combination with revenge) in the myth of the eponymous heroine of Phryconian Larisa. Strabo says that the inhabitants of that city honoured Piasos who, according to the ancient accounts, had been a king of the Pelasgians; he had raped his daughter Larisa, and she killed him.138 While Herodotos’ Athenian version represents the Pelasgians as ambivalent, in harmony with their ambivalent nature in other myths of other Pelasgians, Hekataios’ version139 represents them as unambivalently positive; this was a rationalizing version by a rationalizing author, in which the ‘culture-hero-like people’ aspect of the Pelasgians was further developed, and correlatively, following a rationalizing logic that has difficulties with the ambiguities and ambivalences of mythopoeia, their negative behaviour aspect was eliminated. This interpretation gains support from the fact that both the ‘bad’, and the ‘culture-hero-like people’ aspect of the Pelasgians were further developed in other versions of the myth of the rape. Thus, Philochoros says that the Pelasgians were called Sinties because they raped the Athenian girls, for sinesthai means to harm.140 According to Eratosthenes, the Sinties/Pelasgians were goetes who invented deleteria pharmaka;141 Hellanikos said that the Lemnians were called Sinties because they first invented weapons for war,142 and Porphyrios that they were called Sinties because they first invented weapons for war, which harm people.143 Finally, the Attic Pelasgians were also comparable to the primeval Pelasgians in respect of the fact that they are represented as having lived in Attica at a time when things were not as they are now. The one explicit thing mentioned in the Herodotean version is that the Greeks did not then have servants. The fact that the Athenian version constructs the Pelasgians’ ambivalent nature in its two parts is also an argument against Jacoby’s thesis that Herodotos’ Athenian version had been created by (p.137) Herodotos, who had put together two previously separate Athenian stories, the myth about the Pelargikon wall and what Jacoby calls the Athenian justification for the conquest of Lemnos; and that it was Herodotos who first identified the Pelasgian builders of the wall with the predatory inhabitants of Lemnos, thus assigning to them a character foreign to them in Herodotos and elsewhere.144 As we saw, far from Herodotos assigning to the Pelasgians a character foreign to them, he assigns them the ambivalence which characterizes them in other myths. Another argument against Jacoby’s thesis is the fact that, we saw, the myth of the Pelasgians’ expulsion from Athens is simply one version (accessible to us in more detail, and in more than one variant, because it was articulated by Herodotos, the Atthidographers, and others) of a set of myths involving the expulsion of Pelasgians, at least one of Page 22 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity which also includes the element ‘revenge of the Pelasgians’, in a different form. So Herodotos had not cobbled together a myth of good Pelasgians with a rape myth, giving the latter a character foreign to them.145 This is a local variant of a Pelasgians’ expulsion myth; the main difference is that the Pelasgians expelled here were newcomers, correlatively with the Athenians’ claim to autochthony.146 It has been claimed that the myth of the Pelasgians in Attica was generated as a result, as an aition, of the name Pelargikon/Pelasgikon that designated a part of the Acropolis wall.147 Whether or not this is right, since the Athenians were autochthonous, given the explanatory modalities and schemata available in Greek mythology, a Pelasgian presence in Attica could be explained in one of two ways: they had come to Athens from the outside, were received by the Athenians, and had stayed on—or alternatively left again; or, the Athenians had themselves been Pelasgians. Both explanations had been articulated, the first in myths just mentioned, the second in Herodotos.148 A partly comparable situation obtained with regard (p.138) to the Arcadians, who were also believed to be autochthonous, but the ‘arrival from the outside and brief sojourn model’ does not appear to have been articulated in mythopoeia concerning Arcadia. Instead, the representation that the Arcadians were Pelasgians was generated, as a result of the interaction between the representation that the Pelasgians had been in control of the Peloponnese, with the perception that there had been no change in the population of Arcadia; since the Arcadians were Greeks, then those Pelasgians were Greeks. Hence the strong connection between the Arcadians, the Pelasgians, Pelasgos, especially an autochthonous Pelasgos, and the Greek genealogy that presents the Pelasgians as Greeks.149 Herodotos constructed a different alternative: the Arcadians were non-Greek Pelasgians who, like the Ionians and Aeolians, became Greek. In Athens the ‘arrival from the outside and brief sojourn model’ was dominant. It was articulated in a myth that expressed a violent de-Pelasgianization of Attica. Herodotos’ account of the Pelasgians’ expulsion from Attica does not mention the Pelasgian origins of the Athenians. Athenian readers,150 or at least most of them, would have made sense of those Pelasgians as barbarian incomers who left, eliding Herodotos’ Pelasgian theory. Non-Athenian Greek readers, or some of them, may also have elided that theory, and made sense of the Pelasgians through their ordinary assumptions, in which Pelasgians were an early people, sometimes Greek and sometimes non-Greek, and also a non-Greek people elsewhere; since the myth represents these Pelasgians as being expelled and going to places like Lemnos, they would have perceived these Pelasgians as nonGreek. But what of attentive readers of Herodotos, Athenian or otherwise? How can the Attic Pelasgians fit Herodotos’ Pelasgian theory? In other words, what of Jacoby’s criticism that this myth is in conflict with, and leads to the rejection of, Herodotos’ theory that the non-Dorian Greeks had been Pelasgians?

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (p.139) Let us look at another passage in which the Pelasgians are separate and different from the Athenians, 2.51, where Herodotos claims that the Athenians had taken over from the Pelasgians the ithyphallic images of Hermes, and handed them over to other Greeks, and then continues: ‘for the Athenians by that time were reckoned among the Greeks, when the Pelasgians came to live with them and thereby began to be considered as Greeks.’151 Just before this,152 he had claimed that almost all the names of Greek gods came from the barbarians, mostly from Egypt, and those whose names the Egyptians did not know were named by the Pelasgians, except Poseidon, of whom they learned from the Libyans. The statement that those whose names the Egyptians did not know were named by the Pelasgians is partly deconstructed by his subsequent claim, on the authority of Dodona,153 that the Pelasgians had originally no names for the gods, whom they had called theous—he gives a Greek etymology for this word, though in his schema these would have been the barbarian Pelasgians; they later learned the names of the gods from Egypt, and adopted them on the advice of the Dodona oracle,154 which they had consulted as to whether they ought to adopt the names that came ‘from the barbarians’—a formulation which, together with the etymology, creates a certain ambiguity as to, or at least blurring in, these primeval Pelasgians’ barbarian ethnicity. In 1. 56–8 Herodotos presented the Pelasgians as barbarians; in 2. 52 this barbarian ethnicity is somewhat destabilized. This is correlative with their double ethnicity in that first Herodotean account and elsewhere in Herodotos, whereby first they were barbarian, then they became Greek. It can also be seen as correlative with the ambivalence of the Pelasgians’ ethnicity in the other Greek representations, in which they are sometimes Greek and sometimes not. Though there is no explicit mention of Herodotos’ theory that the Athenians had been Pelasgians, the theory would have been evoked (p.140) by the statement that the Athenians were already reckoned among the Greeks, which suggests that they had not always been Greeks. This passage, then, helps us make sense of Herodotos’ two types of Pelasgians. The Athenians had been Pelasgians in the past, but then they became Greeks; not all Pelasgians had become Greeks, and of those people who continued to be Pelasgians, a segment came to live in Athens; the Pelasgians who came to live in Athens were distinct from the Athenians, who were now Greek. Clearly, then, there is no conflict between Herodotos’ Pelasgian theory and his mention of the Pelasgians who were expelled from Attica. So why have modern scholars thought that there was a problem? I suggest that there were two reasons. First, because not enough attention had been paid to Herodotos’ textual strategies, such as the fact that he uses the term ‘Pelasgian’ to denote different things as part of his wider strategy to compare and distance, oppose and point up similarities. Second, and most importantly, because of the implicit deployment of inappropriate assumptions pertaining to ethnicity.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity 5. CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE PELASGIANS: HERODOTOS AND OTHERS I will now summarize the conclusions about Greek perceptions of ethnicity that I reached in the forthcoming book mentioned above.155 Greek ethnic identity is not a set, definable essence; ‘Greekness’ was an extremely complex and fluid construction, or rather system of constructions, and included multivocalities and ambiguities; attempts to make it fit a defining, logical, schema distort its complexities and produce a deceptive image—which appears satisfactory to modern eyes precisely because it is the product of modern perceptual filters and ideological hierarchies. On my reading, the people who shared in the Greek ethnic identity were the people who perceived themselves to be Greeks, and whose self-perception was shared by those who had the dominant role in ‘controlling’ the boundaries of Greekness, such as, in the fifth century, the Hellanodikai who controlled participation in the Olympic Games. These people who perceived themselves to be Greeks were members of a group which defined itself as Greek through a cluster of cultural (p.141) traits, a system of interacting traits, that in Greek perceptions made up Greek identity, pertaining, above all, to perceived ancestry, language and religious practices; material culture is not a strongly defining trait, since it was also adopted by non-Greeks; but it should be included in a peripheral position, since it also reflected, and was perceived to reflect, that Greek identity. Mythologically constructed ancestry is the most effective argument for convincing those who have the dominant role in ‘controlling’ the boundaries of Greekness of one’s Greekness; in general, different traits are privileged in different contexts. But the effectiveness of mythologically constructed ancestry in such circumstances does not entail that it was the defining criterion of ethnicity—as has recently been suggested by J. M. Hall.156 I submit that, if we deploy this complex definition of ethnicity in our attempt to make sense of Herodotos’ representations of the Pelasgians, the problems concerning his Pelasgian theory, and the deployment of his two types of relationships between Athenians and Pelasgians, disappear.157 Since ancestry was not the defining criterion of ethnicity, once the originally Pelasgian Athenians had become Greeks, they were no longer Pelasgians, they were totally different from the Pelasgians, and this is why it was possible to have them building the wall for the Athenians and all the rest. The Herodotean representation ‘the Pelasgians were barbarians and eventually became Greeks’ is not in conflict with the common representation ‘the Pelasgians were heroic age Greeks’—though this is not how most Greeks would have interpreted that representation. To put it differently, the notion that the Pelasgians had been barbarians and eventually became Greeks is Herodotos’ interpretation of the representation ‘the Pelasgians were the heroic-age Greeks —at least in some places’. It is a construction that could be seen as reconciling, in that it could account for, both variant representations of the Pelasgians, that they were barbarian early inhabitants of Greece who left, and that they were the Page 25 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity heroic-age Greeks in some places: they had been barbarians, and some did leave, but the others (p.142) became Hellenized, and are the ancestors of all but the Dorian Greeks. What of the apparent discrepancy in the two Thucydidean passages? That the Pelasgians who had lived in Athens had been barbarians was part of the established Athenian assumptions, and the fact that at 4. 109. 4 Thucydides mentions Pelasgians descended from the Tyrrhenians who were once settled in Lemnos and Athens in a context that makes clear that they were barbarians unproblematically reflects that. But in his account in 1. 3 Thucydides does not present the Pelasgians as being radically different from the other ethne, who were Greek,158 so that, at the very least, there is some ambiguity as to whether they were to be thought of as barbarians, and, again at the very least, the Pelasgians may have been understood by some readers to have been presented as Greeks.159 First, as Hornblower noted, Thucydides begins the relevant sentence with the ‘unconfident and subjective’ expression dokei moi.160 Then, here he is dealing with a period, and with issues, with regard to which he does not have control of the data. The two, I suggest, are correlative: because he is dealing with such a period, and issues, Thucydides here allows a certain ambiguity and uncertainty, which he signals with the use of dokei moi.161 His choices here, the Pelasgians’ non-radical differentiation from the Greek ethne, when juxtaposed to the unambiguous barbarians in 4. 109, reflect, I suggest, the multivocality of the Greek discourse about the Pelasgians. I argued that in the early Greek representations the Pelasgians were non-Greeks who lived elsewhere, after they had been expelled (p.143) from Greece, a perception reinforced by the reality of the non-Greekness of those perceived to be present-day Pelasgians; the representation ‘the Pelasgians were heroic-age Greeks’, was generated in the archaic period. The two sets of representations are discordant with each other, indeed to us they appear importantly conflicting variants. This can be accounted for in one way through the fact that, in certain circumstances, Greek mythological discourses tolerate certain types of ‘inconsistencies’, alternatives, and competing versions.162 In this case multivocality did not create a problem, precisely because, on the definition of ethnicity set out here, whatever these ancient Pelasgians may have been, ‘we today’ are Greeks, while the present-day Pelasgians, and their predecessors who went to Attica, are barbarians. But inconsistencies and multivocalities are not meaningless: they are part of wider complex schemata, and they can be seen as correlative with Greek perceptions concerning the issues articulated in those discourses; and I suggest that the definition of ethnicity set out above can make sense of the coexistence of perceptions in which the Pelasgians are barbarians and perceptions in which they were Greeks. For if it is right, the difference was less significant than may appear to us, and, most importantly, this coexistence itself created significant meanings, as I will now argue briefly.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity Greek mythological discourses, which include all collective representations through which the Greeks articulated their perceptions of the world, identity, and ethnicity, expressed very much more complex images and perceptions than is often acknowledged; and one major modality for articulating complexities involved setting up sets of oppositions, and then subverting them, deconstructing them, so that multivocality was created, and subordinate discourses were constructed side by side with the dominant discourses, so that the interaction between them constructed complexities and ambiguities. In the discourses that concern us here, besides myths of Greek ancestors, there were also myths about barbarian kings, for example Pelops and Danaos, in the heroic age, and barbarian peoples who had lived in Greece—a fact commented upon, for example, by Hekataios and Strabo.163 The kings were absorbed in mainstream Greek descent groups, which therefore include some barbarian ancestors. What of the barbarian peoples who had inhabited Greece before the Greeks? There were two alternatives: they had left, or they (p.144) had stayed on, and so made up part of the present Greeks’ ancestors.164 Myths about the Pelasgians articulate both alternatives. Because blood ancestry was not the criterion for Greek ethnicity, barbarians could become Greeks, but at the same time, because ancestry was important, the notion of these barbarians becoming Greek to some extent helped blur the notion of what it is to be Greek. More specifically, it helped deconstruct the dichotomy ‘barbarian versus Greek’; it did not invalidate it, but it destabilized it somewhat, thus helping construct the subordinate discourse, in which the dichotomy was qualified—helping articulate the barbarian as both other and significantly comparable to the self. The Pelasgians were tools in these ethnicity discourses—as they were tools in Herodotos’ constructions of the Dorians. Notes:

(1) On the Pelasgians see: Meyer (1892: 1–124); Myres (1907: 170–225); Lochner-Hüttenbach (1960); How and Wells (1928: i. 79–80 ad 1. 57, 442–6 (Appendix XV)); Laird (1933) 97–119; Munro (1934: 109–28); Briquel (1984), who discussed in great detail the myths associating the Pelasgians with various places in Italy (see xv–xix for a brief summary of earlier discussions of the Pelasgians); McNeal (1985: 11–21); De Simone (1996: 39–84); Bonfante (1999: 565–6). See also Jacoby FGrH I, 432–4 ad Hellanikos 4 F 4; Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 405–21 ad Philochoros F 99–101. (2) Some modern historians have attempted to disentangle a coherent picture and reconstruct an underlying historical reality. The distinction between ‘the actual’ or ‘real’ Pelasgians and the ‘theoretical’ ones, the theoretical extension of the name to denote a stage of Greek civilization (Myres (1907: 170–225); Meyer (1892: 1–124); How and Wells (1928: 442–5)) depends on the assumption that there had been ‘real Pelasgians’ and that their historical realities can be reconstructed; both assumptions are invalidated by the fact that any historical Page 27 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity raw material that goes into mythopoeia is radically reshaped to serve mythopoeic concerns. Herodotos is accused of confusing the ‘theoretical Pelasgians’ with ‘the real Pelasgians’ when he argues that all Pelasgians were barbarians because those at the Hellespont spoke a non-Greek language (How and Wells (1928: 444). (3) Georges (1994: 131). See also pp. 131–3. (4) Georges (1994: 134). (5) Georges (1994: 133). (6) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 415–18. (7) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 416. (8) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 417. (9) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 417–18 cf. 410. (10) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 417–18. (11) McNeal (1985: 17). (12) Thomas (2000: 117). (13) For example, I argued in a forthcoming book (Hylas, the Nymphs, Dionysos and others. Myth, ritual, ethnicity, ch. VI. 3), that the representations of the Karians in the foundation myths of Miletos had been constructed with the help of material reflecting aspects of the Karians’ reality, which had been deployed to construct mythological constructs that articulated certain ideologically important perceptions, pertaining to the Karians but also to the Greeks and the foundation of the city. (14) See e.g. Thuc. 4. 109. 4; Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4; Myrsilos FGrH 477 F 9 (see also F 8); in Philochoros FGrH 328 FF 100–1 the Pelasgians were identical with the Tyrrhenians and Sintians (on the Sintians in Lemnos see De Simone (1996: 43–4, 73–4); the Sintians inhabit Lemnos in Hom. Il. 1. 594; Od. 8. 294). Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who set out a long account of the history of the Pelasgians, with special emphasis on their history in Italy (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 17–30), argued that the Pelasgians were not the same as the Tyrrhenians (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 29–30). According to Briquel (1984: esp. 18, 20, 22 n. 100, 52–3, 58, 132–40, 141), the notion of the Pelasgian origin of the Etruscans was already in Hekataios (on the 6th- cent. date of the identification see Briquel (1984:110–11, 221)); Hellanikos followed him. On the identification of the Pelasgians with the Tyrrhenians see also De Simone (1996: 51–65; 77–8, cf. 79– 83; 88–9 and passim). On the ways in which the relationships between Greeks Page 28 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity and Etruscans affected and helped shape the myths concerning the Pelasgian origin of the Etruscans see Briquel (1984: 51–3, 77–81, 196–201, 563–8). On Herodotos rejecting the Pelasgian origin of the Etruscans, see Briquel (1984: 128, 132–3, 134, 136, 288). (15) For the first, see Hornblower (1996: 348, with bibliog.; cf. 36). For both see De Simone (1996: 7–38, 85–7). (16) Cf. most recently Bonfante (1999: 565–6), who argues that the Pelasgians were Illyrians, and that in later texts the Pelasgians were ‘hopelessly confused’ with the Tyrrhenians (p. 566). See also Lochner-Hüttenbach (1960: passim, see e.g. 103–4). (17) Horn. II. 2.840–3; 17.288, 301; 10.429. See Kirk (1985: 256–7). (18) See Kirk (1985: 257 ad loc.); Bean (1976: 174); Munro (1934: 110–12); see Strabo 13. 3. 2. On the various cities called Larissa see Strabo 9. 5. 19; cf. Der Neue Pauly 6 (1999) 1151–5 (various authors). (19) In a variety of ways: see e.g. Pherekydes FGrH 3 F 12; Larissa Pelasgia (Strabo 9. 5. 19); Thessalian Larissa in the Pelasgian Plain: Strabo, 9. 5. 22. Cf. also Strabo, 9. 5. 5. There was also a genealogical connection: in one version of the myth (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 580) Larissa was the mother of Pelasgos from Poseidon (see also Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 17. 3); in another version Larissa was the daughter of Pelasgos (Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 91; cf. also Hyg. 145. 2). Cf. also Strabo 13. 3. 4, on Pelasgian Phryconian Larissa and its eponym (on whom see below). (20) In the forthcoming book mentioned above (n. 13). (21) The Leleges are not mentioned here, but they are mentioned in the battle order at Il. 10. 429 (see Hainsworth (1993: 195–6 ad 428–31))—as well as at 20. 96. (22) Pelasgian Argos in Achilles’ domain: Il. 2. 681. Zeus Dodonean Pelasgian: Il. 16.233. Georges (1994: 163–5, cf. 20) assumes that the fact that Pelasgikon Argos was in Achilles’ kingdom makes the Pelasgian Greeks. On Pelasgikon Argos and Achilles’ kingdom in later Greek perceptions see e.g. Apollodoros FGrH 244 FF 154, 200; Strabo 8. 6. 5–6. (23) Ephoros FGrH 70 F 119, F 142; Hes. fr. 319 M–W; cf. Strabo, 9. 2. 4. On the relationship between Dodona and the Pelasgians, Dodona and Thessaly and Dodona and the Pelasgians’ migration to Italy see also Briquel (1984: 427–38). (24) Hdt. 2. 52.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (25) Cf. Strabo 5.2.4; see also Kineas FGrH 603 F 1; Plut., Pyrrh. 1. See also Briquel (1984: 73–81, 427–36 passim, 510–13). (26) Strabo 7. 7. 12. (27) Souidas FGrH 602 F 11. Cf. also Kineas FGrH 603 F 2. (28) Apollodoros (FGrH 244 F 88) etymologized Zeus’ epithets Dodonaean and Pelasgian, the first as deriving from the fact that he gives us ta agatha, the second because he is near the earth. (29) Some later Greeks understood the Homeric Selloi of Dodona (Il. 16. 234–5; cf. Janko (1992: 349–50 ad loc.)) to have been barbarians (see schol. Il. ad loc.; cf. Andron of Halikarnassos FGrH 10 F 4); they are sometimes Tyrrhenians/ Pelasgians: see Jacoby FGrH 1a. 481 ad FGrH 10 F 4. Callim. Hymn 4. 284–6 suggests that the Selloi were identified as Pelasgians, for he speaks of the Pelasgians of Dodona as religious personnel who were gelechees, which means the same thing as the word chamaieunai that characterized the Selloi in Il. 16. 235. The possibility cannot be totally excluded that earlier Greeks may have shared such perceptions; if so this would have reinforced the non-Greekness of the Pelasgians. Myres (1907: 182–3) thinks that in Homer ‘Pelasgian’ stood for ‘uncivilized’ in contrast to ‘Greek’, so that ‘uncouth ritual survivals’ were described as ‘Pelasgian’, ‘without intending to convey any suggestion as to the ethnological status of the originators’ (Myres, 1907: 183). (30) Hom. Od. 19, 175–7; cf. Strabo 10. 4. 6. See on this passage Russo, Fernandez-Galiano, Heubeck (1992: 83–4 ad 19. 172–9); cf. also Willetts (1965: 25–35); Myres (1907: 176–8). This is the only mention of Dorians in Homer. (31) On non Greek-speakers in Crete see Whitley (1998: 27–39). See also Chaniotis (2000). (32) Andron of Halikarnassos FGrH 10 F 16. (33) Diod. Sic. 4. 60. 1. (34) Some late commentators may have seen the joint expedition to Crete by Pelasgians, Achaeans and Dorians as suggestive of a Greek ethnicity for the Pelasgians (see Etym. Magn. 768. 24; Et.gen. p. 286 M). But these commentators’ conclusion that the Pelasgians of Crete were Greek was more likely to have been based on a different version, that in Diodoros’ account at 5. 80 (see below). (35) Diod. Sic. 5. 80.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (36) Diodoros stresses here that there is much disagreement among those who wrote on the history of Crete, adding that he followed those who offered the most credible account and are the most trustworthy, relying for some things on Epimenides, for others on Dosiades, Sosikrates and Laosthenidas. (37) Though, of course, we cannot be certain that this had been the case with all such narratives. (38) Or, in a few cases, in a more or less marginal place in the Greek world, for they were believed to have inhabited some places in the Greek world also in the historical period; cf. e.g. Diod. Sic. 11. 60. 2 on Skyros. See also Thuc. 4. 109. 4. (39) According to Strabo (Strabo 5.2. 4.), ‘almost all agree’ that the Pelasgians were an ancient people, that spread throughout Greece, especially among the Aeolians in Thessaly. (See also the statement in Strabo 7. 7. 10, that the Pelasgians were the most ancient among the people who held dominion over Greece.) (40) See e.g. Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4; Hekataios FGrH 1 F 119; Hieronymos of Kardia FGrH 154 F 17; Ephoros FGrH 70 F61, F 113, F 119, F 142; Strabo 5. 2. 4, 7. 7. 10; Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41), F 3; Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 580. Cf. also Diod. Sic. 14. 113. 2, according to whom the Pelasgians fled from Thessaly to escape Deukalion’s flood. Some ancient authors, most strikingly Dionysios of Halikarnassos (Ant. Rom. 1. 17–30), tried to create a coherent narrative that accounted for the association of the Pelasgians with different places and different times. (41) Strabo (13. 3. 3) cites Menekrates of Elaea for the notion that the whole of the Ionian coast, and the neighbouring islands, were in earlier times inhabited by Pelasgians. See also Strabo 13. 3. 3, according to whom the Chians say that the Pelasgians from Thessaly were their founders. On Aeolis see Strabo 13. 3. 3 (Pelasgian Larisa captured by the Greeks who then founded Kyme); Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 92; cf. also Strabo 13. 3. 3. Strabo 14. 2. 27 aligns the Pelasgians with the Karians and the Leleges. (42) Thessaly: see e.g. Strabo 9. 5. 5; 9. 5. 15; cf. 5. 2. 4. According to Hekataios FGrH 1 F 14, Thessaly was called Pelasgia after king Pelasgos. Cf. also op. cit. F 133. See also Theopompos FGrH 115 F 80. Ephoros FGrH 70 F 113 says the Peloponnese was called Pelasgia; see also Eur. Supp. 367, and cf. Collard (1975: 204 ad loc.); elsewhere Euripides equates Pelasgia with Argos (cf. below n. 76). See also Apollod. 2. 4. 4. For others it is Arcadia which is called Pelasgia: cf. e.g. Charax FGrH 103 F 15. (43) Strabo 5. 2. 4. (44) Ephoros FGrH 70 F 113. Page 31 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (45) See e.g. Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4. (46) See e.g. Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41); Hieronymos of Kardia FGrH 154 F 17. (47) Hdt. 1. 57. (48) Hekataios FGrH 1 F 218. (49) See Hdt. 5. 26. 1; see also 4. 145. 2; 6. 136. 2; 6. 137. 1; 6. 138. 1–2; Philochoros FGrH 328 F 99; Paus. 7. 2. 2. According to Antikleides FGrH 140 F 21, the Pelasgians were the first to settle the regions around Lemnos and Imbros, and some of them sailed to Italy with Tyrrhenos. (50) According to Herodotos (2. 51), the Pelasgians taught the Samothracians the orgia of the Kabeiroi; cf. Myres (1907: 193). (51) See Hdt. 7. 42. 1 (Antandros in the Troad); Strabo 7. 35 (the Athos peninsula). Cf. Thuc. 4. 109.4. (52) This changes later; thus Dionysios of Halikarnassos calls the Pelasgians Greeks (Ant. R. 1. 17.2–3). (53) Cf. e.g. Strabo 9. 2. 25. (54) Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 580. (55) Cf. e.g. Paus. 8. 1. 4–6; Schol. Eur. Or. 932, 1646. (56) Hes. fr. 160; Apollod 2. 1. 2; 3. 8. 1; Asios F 8 Davies. (57) Akousilaos FGrH 2 F 25; cf. Apollod. 2. 1. 1. See also Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 17. 2–3. (58) Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 36; cf. also Jacoby FGrH 1a Kommentar 448 ad Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 36. (59) Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4; cf. also Jacoby FGrH Ia Kommentar 432–4 ad Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4. (60) Schol. Eur. Or. 932. See also Lochner-Hüttenbach (1960: 15–6). On the genealogies involving Pelasgos see also J. M. Hall (1997: 80, 82–3, 87). (61) Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 580. (62) Cf. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 580. (63) Staphylos of Naukratis FGrH 269 F 10.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (64) See Hekataios FGrH 1 F 14. See also Rhianos FGrH 265 F 30, according to whom Pelasgos was the grandfather of Thessalos. (65) Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 1. 17. 2–3. (66) Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom. 1. 17. 3–18. 3. Dionysios of Halikarnassos set out a long account of the history of the Pelasgians with special emphasis on their history in Italy (1. 17–30). The myths associating the Pelasgians with various places in Italy have been discussed by Briquel (1984). On the myths in which the Pelasgians went to Thessaly first, whence they were expelled by the Greeks, and then went to Italy see e.g. Briquel (1984: 582–3, and passim). On the other versions of the place of departure of the Pelasgians who went to Italy see Briquel (1984: 60–70 and passim). (67) Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4. (68) Hes. fr. 161; Pherekydes FGrH 3 F 156; Apollod. 3. 8. 1; Paus. 8. 1. 4–6, 8. 2. 1. See also Briquel (1984: 63–9). (69) Ephoros FGrH 70 F 113; cf. also Strabo 8. 3. 17. (70) Strabo 5. 2. 4. (71) Paus. 8.4. 1. (72) Charax FGrH 103 F 15; Schol. Eur. Or. 1646. (73) Aesch. Supp. 251, 1010. (74) Aesch. Supp. 328, 349, 616, 624, 912, 967, 1023; cf. 253: genos Pelasgon; cf. also: Pelasgian land = Argos in v. 634. (75) See e.g. Aesch. Supp. 912–4. (76) See e.g. Eur. Or. 857, see 692 (Pelasgon Argos), 1247, 1296, 1601; Heracl. 316; HF 464 (Pelasgia); Phoen. 107. (77) Eur. Archelaos fr. 228 N = 1A Harder. cited in Strabo 8.6.9, and also in 5. 2. 4. (78) Herodotos’ story (7. 94. 1) that the Ionians of Asia Minor, when they were in the Peloponnese, had lived in Achaia, and that before Danaos and Xouthos came they were called Aegialian Pelasgians, and then were named Ionians after Xouthos’ son Ion, is clearly structured through the same conceptual schema as the Pelasgos myths: before, the Argives were called Pelasgians and the Achaian Ionians Aegialian Pelasgians, when Danaos and Xouthos came, the former came to be called Danaans and the latter Ionians. It is because Herodotos signposts, or constructs, this conceptual schema that Danaos is mentioned here, a mention Page 33 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity that has been considered puzzling: How and Wells (1928: ii. 162 ad 7. 94) comment ‘Why Danaus, who settled in Argos, is here mentioned in connection with Xuthus, and the Ionians is obscure …’. (79) Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 25. 2. (80) Sophocles TGF 4 F 270. De Simone (1996: 56) accepts the older view (references op. cit.) that Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi here is comparable to Herodotos’ Arkades Pelasgoi and Pelasgoi Aigialees, more the Tyrrhenians being part of the Pelasgians than an identification of the two. Lloyd-Jones (1996: 127) correctly translates ‘… the Pelasgians who are Etruscans’. (81) The possibility cannot be totally excluded that, if in Sophocles’ audience’s assumptions the Pelasgians at Argos were Greeks, this expression would have been perceived as a rhetorical trope for referring to the Greek Pelasgians, putting together the notion ‘the heroic age inhabitants of Argos were called Pelasgians’, and ‘the Pelasgians were Tyrrhenians’. But even in that (less likely) case, this designation would inevitably have introduced some ambiguity in the perceived Greekness of these ancient Argive Pelasgians. (82) We do not know the date of Sophocles’ Inachos, other than it was probably earlier than 425 (cf. TGF 4 p. 248). (83) Baton of Sinope FGrH 268 F 5. (84) Ath. 14.639D. (85) Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 4. (86) Paus. 4. 36. 1. (87) Cf. Jacoby FGrH IIIb.2, 306 n. 6: ‘genealogical epic poetry seems to have regarded its Pelasgians as Greeks, or at least it put no further questions as to their nationality …’. (88) It is not inconceivable that one of the parameters that shaped (or was at least a facilitating factor for) this choice, may have been the fact that the places that are especially connected with the Pelasgians through the name ‘Pelasgikos’ in the Homeric epics, [Pelasgikon Argos in] Achilles’ kingdom, and Dodona, are also places which are closely associated with the early usage, or perceived origin, of the name Hellas. Hellenes in Achilles’ kingdom: Il. 2. 684; Hellas: Il. 2. 683; 9. 395 and cf. 9. 447 [see on these passages Hainsworth (1993: 115 ad 395, 121–22 ad 447–8)], 16. 595. On the association of Dodona with the name Hellas see Arist. Mete. 1. 14 (352A); cf. How and Wells (1928: i. 76 ad 1. 56). The general tendency towards incorporating non-Greeks in Greek genealogies, by giving Greek ancestors to foreign people (cf. e.g. E. Hall (1989: 13, 36)), though

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity a different kind of appropriation, may conceivably also have been a factor facilitating that choice. (89) Ionians and Aeolians: Hdt. 7. 95. 1; Arcadians: 1. 146. 1. (90) At 8. 44. 2. (91) Hdt. 8.44. 2. (92) Apollod. 3. 14. 5; Marmor Parium FGrH 239 A 4; Paus. 1. 31. 3; Kearns (1989: 179). (93) See e.g. Aesch. Eum. 1011: paides Kranaou; Kranaa used for Athens: Aesch. TGF 3 F 371 (p. 427); Soph. TGF 4 F 883 (p. 570); cf. Ar. Av. 123: Kranaon polis. (94) On Hdt. 1. 56–8 see Briquel (1984: 101–40 passim with bibliog. (on the Kreston question in 1. 57 see op. cit. 101–28)); McNeal (1985: 11–21 with bibliog.); Thomas (2000: 119–22). (95) This is basically Godley’s translation in the Loeb edn., with some alterations. (96) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.2, 316–17 n. 41 comments on the inconsistency and tries to make logical sense. (97) It has been argued that Hdt. 1. 58 is about the Athenians rather than the Dorians. This argument was first set out by Laird (1933: 109–14), who argued that aposchisthen refers to a split of the Attic race from the Pelasgians. This hypothesis is based to a large extent on his argument (109–10) that the Attic Pelasgians had not come from the outside, but were indigenous, some of the original inhabitants that lived there at a time when the Athenians had become Greeks. However, leaving aside the details (which problems of space prevent me from arguing against here), the fact is that later Greeks, Strabo and the people he reflects, understood the Attic Pelasgians to have come from somewhere else. Another argument on which is based the notion that aposchisthen refers to a split of the Attic race from the Pelasgians is a culturally determined judgement: it is (111) that, unless it did, Herodotos would be presenting the Hellenes as one remove from the Pelasgians, and if that had been so, the original distinction between Athenians and Lakedaimonians would have been blurred; and though, Laird says, it would not be improbable for Herodotos to contradict himself in different places, he would not have done so within a few lines. This takes no account of Herodotos’ subtle play of deconstructions in this set of passages, which in some of its aspects is virtually explicit. Laird’s view about 1. 58 is shared by McNeal (1985: 17–18), who believes that to Hellenikon which was aposchisthen means the Greek-speaking Athenians; that the Athenian population had consisted of an aboriginal part, which spoke Pelasgian, and an intrusive Greek-speaking part. With the departure of at least some of the Pelasgians, the Page 35 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity population as a whole came to speak and to be Greek. He thinks that 1. 58 is concerned with the Athenian part of the introductory antithesis. ‘There is no question here of a discussion of the Dorians or of their (his italics) supposed origin from a Pelasgian people.’ In my view, this is another culturally determined attempt to make sense of what appears illogical to the modern eye; but the text cannot be forced into this reading; for, whatever … aposchisthen mentoi apo tou Pelasgikou may mean, there can be no doubt that to Hellenikon here means to Hellenikon ethnos, ancestors of the Dorians, as opposed to the Pelasgikon, since the section begins with the statement that the Hellenikon has always had the same language since its beginning—following the argument that the Pelasgians had not originally spoken Greek. Therefore, the subject of aposchisthen can only have been the same ancestors of the Dorians, and the notion that the readers would have somehow understood, guessed, that to Hellenikon really referred to ‘the Greek part’ of the Athenians, without this being indicated, or indeed without there have been any reason to think that there had been, in Herodotos’ representations, any such thing as ‘the Greek part’ of the Athenians is clearly untenable. (98) J. M. Hall (1997: 36) first says that in this passage Herodotos used genos and ethnos as synonyms, then, simply on the basis of reading this passage in a certain way, he claims that ‘while ethnos can be substituted frequently for genos, it is the latter term which has the more specialised meaning, with its focus on the notion (however fictive) of shared descent’. However, the fact that, on this schema, the Dorikon genos is the same as the Hellenikon ethnos who had lived around Olympos (1. 56), and who had become mixed with Pelasgians and other barbarians (1. 58), entails that, on this schema, the Dorikon genos does not have shared descent, however fictitious; and that therefore the distinction is mistaken, a culturally determined attempt to tidy up the complex Herodotean picture, and structure it so as fit into a logical schema. In fact, I am arguing, Herodotos deploys fluidity and ambiguity as part of his strategy of construction of a complex and often multivocal discourse. See, for example, an instance in which Herodotos stretches the term ethnos so that it acquires a metaphorical meaning: in 1. 60. 2 he says of the Hellenikon ethnos that it ek palaiterou apekrithe ek tou barbarou ethneos in being more intelligent, and the Athenians are said to be the cleverest among the Greeks. Here he constructs a barbarian ethnos as a way of contrasting all Greeks to all barbarians. (99) Andron of Halikarnassos FGrH 10 F 16. (100) See also Diod. Sic. 4. 60. 1. (101) Hellenes in Achilles’ kingdom: Hom. Il. 2. 684; Hellas: Il. 2. 683; 9. 395 and cf. 9. 447 (see on these passages Hainsworth, 1993: 115 ad 395; 121–2 ad 447–

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity 8), 16. 595. On the association of Dodona with the name Hellas see Arist. Mete. 1. 14 (352A); cf. How and Wells (1928: i. 76 ad 1.56) on Selloi and Hellas. (102) Apollodoros FGrH 244 FF 154, 200; see also Strabo 8. 6. 5–6. (103) Hekataios FGrH 1 F 14. On the connection between Pelasgians and Thessaly being an early part of the tradition see Briquel (1984: 115–16); on the Dorian presence in Thessaly: op. cit. 116, 119–22, 625. (104) See Nilsson (1906: 313–16). (105) Cf. How and Wells (1928: ii. 259–60 ad 8. 73). (106) See 1. 146. 1. (107) The Pelasgian women to whom the Danaids had taught the Thesmophoria were not just the women of Argos, since afterwards the rite was lost, except in Arcadia. Clearly, here the heroic-age Peloponnesians were perceived to be Pelasgians. (108) See e.g. Briquel (1984: 121). (109) Cf. op. cit. On the notion of Herodotos’ hostility towards the Ionians see most recently: Moscati Castelnuovo (1999: 67–85). (110) I argued that the Dorian invasion is a construct, and that some historical material had gone into its making, in an unpublished paper delivered to the Third International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory, held in Sheffield in April 1973, the Proceedings of which were never published; I argued that the socalled Barbarian Ware was an index of the presence of people from the northwest fringes of the Mycenaean world, Epirus, and that some other Dark Age hand made pottery in the Peloponnese was also intrusive, and suggested the presence of people from the area I call Early Iron Age Macedonian koine that included eastern Epirus and Macedonia (see Sourvinou-Inwood, 1975: 168 (cf. 169–72 passim)); and that this state of affairs suggested that small-scale population movements had taken place into the Peloponnese over centuries, and these movements had been eventually mythologized into the unified Dorian invasion in the construction of a discourse of Dorian ethnicity. To this extent my position has not really changed, but I now realize the radical nature of the reshaping of any historical raw material that goes into the making of mythological discourses. (I have argued for this position in my forthcoming book (n. 13), Part VI.) On the myths of the return of the Heraklidai and of the Dorian invasion see most recently J. M. Hall (1997: 56–65, 114–28, 184–5); see also R. Osborne (1996: 33–7). (111) See Pelling (2000: 82–6) for the ‘dialogic’ nature of Herodotos’ text, in which multiple viewpoints and interpretations coexist. Page 37 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (112) Hdt. 6.137–40. (113) I discuss this myth in a separate paper, entitled ‘Reading a myth, reconstructing its constructions’, delivered at the Second International Symposium on Myth and Symbol, at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 21–24 September 2000, which will be published in its Proceedings. (114) On this myth see Hdt. 6. 137. 1–138. 4; see also 4. 145; Philochoros FGrH 328 FF 99–101; Hekataios FGrH 1 F 127; Plut. Mor. 247D–E, 296B; Charax FGrH 103 F 18; see also Kleidemos FGrH 323 F 16; Strabo 5.2.4; 9. 1. 18; 9. 2. 3; Paus. 1. 28. 3. See Jacoby FGrH Illb.1, 405–21. Euripides’ Hypsipyle, and Aristophanes’ Lemniai had probably mentioned this story, for Harpokration s.v. arkteusai cites them for the fact that the arkteuomenai parthenoi were called arktoi, and the point of convergence between Lemnian women and Brauron is this myth (I discuss this issue in the paper mentioned in n. 113). There were different versions of where the Pelasgians came from. In one tradition they had come from Boeotia (Strabo 9. 2. 3); in another (Strabo 5.2.8) from Italy. Briquel (1984: 288) believes that Strabo, in setting out the story that they had come from Regisvilla, follows an ancient Attic tradition that the Pelasgians of Athens were Tyrrhenians who came from the west. On the tradition of Pelasgians moving from Italy to Athens see Briquel (1984: 292–3; cf. also 293–5). On the other traditions, that say that they went to Athens from elsewhere, see Briquel (1984: 289–90). (115) Hdt. 6. 137. 1; Hekataios FGrH 1 F 127. (116) Philochoros FGrH 328 F 100. (117) Philochoros FGrH 328 F 101. (118) Hdt. 4. 145. 2–4. See also Paus. 7. 2. 2. On the myth of their subsequent adventures see Calame (1996: 129–30). Jacoby (FGrH IIIb.1, 405) placed Philochoros’ Pelasgians under Kekrops because F 94 shows that Kekrops founded the polis. But it does not follow from this that the Pelasgians had built the Pelargikon under Kekrops. (119) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 406. He thought that the tradition about the Attic Pelasgians was of purely Athenian origin, independent of the general tradition, while the tradition about the ‘primeval Pelasgians’ belongs to the realm of Great Historiography. (120) Andron FGrH 10 F 16. (121) Diod. Sic. 14.113.2. On this version see Briquel (1984: 55–6, 72–3). (122) See Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41); Ephoros FGrH 70 F 61.

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (123) In Paus. 4. 36. 1. (124) Hieronymos of Kardia FGrH 154 F 17. (125) On this myth see Briquel (1984: 70–2). (126) Apollod. Epit. 6, 15. (127) See Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41); Ephoros FGrH 70 F 61. (128) In Apoll. Rhod. Arg. 1. 947–1077. Cf. also Apollod. 1. 9. 18; Hyg. Fab. 16. (129) Cf. Strabo 12. 4. 4, cf. also 14. 5. 23; Hekataios FGrH 1 F 219. (130) Other versions of the myth are attested in short references by various historians, and in a more extensive form in Konon: Ephoros FGrH 70 F 61; Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41); Kallisthenes FGrH 124 F 6; Dei[l]ochos of Kyzikos FGrH 471 FF 7–8. (131) Ephoros FGrH 70 F 61. (132) On the ambivalence of the remote past associated with the age of Kronos see Sourvinou-Inwood (1997: 1–2 with bibliog.) (133) See below; also, according to Hdt. 2. 49–50 they had taught the Greeks religious knowledge; in one myth (as we saw in n. 23), the Dodona oracle was a Pelasgian foundation; see also the Pelasgika grammata in Dionysios Skytobrachion FGrH 32 F8 (Diod. Sic. 3. 67). (134) See above and n. 55. (135) See Konon FGrH 26 F 1 (41). (136) Plut. Mor. 296B; see also Mor. 247A–E, where the Pelasgians who went to Crete had three leaders, said to be Lacedaemonians. (137) This is a Spartan name; the other leader was called Delphos. (138) Strabo 13. 3. 4; see Larson (1995: 137). (139) For Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 408 Hekataios FGrH 1 F 127 was an Athenian story. (140) Philochoros FGrH 328 F 101. (141) Eratosthenes FGrH 241 F 41. (142) See Hellanikos FGrH 4 F 71. (143) Schol BT Hom. Il. 1. 594 (cited in Philochoros FGrH 328 F 101). Page 39 of 41

 

Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (144) Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 410 (see also 411); cf. also Jacoby FGrH IIIb.2, 311 n. 24. (145) I argue in detail against this view, and the notion that the Pelasgian rape myth was created in order to justify the Athenian conquest of Lemnos, in the paper mentioned in n. 113. (146) On Athenian autochthony see Loraux (1981); Parker (1996: 138–9). The fact that in Hom. Il. 2. 547–8 Erechtheus is born of the Earth suggests that the autochthony myth was early, and that what happened in the Classical period is particular ideological constructs out, and deployments, of this autochthony. (147) On Pelas/rgikon see e.g. Hdt. 5. 64; Thuc. 2. 17. 1. On the claim see Jacoby FGrH IIIb.1, 407–9. (148) On Herodotos’ treatment of the Athenian claim to autochthony see now Thomas (2000: 117–22), who comments, on the notion of the Athenians being Pelasgians, that (op. cit. 120) Herodotos seems to be taking the autochthony myth literally and rationalizing it into current ethnic definitions. If they had always lived in Attica they were Pelasgians earlier (120–1). (149) See above and nn. 5 6 ff. (150) When I say Athenian (or indeed Greek) readers I do not deny that texts were read in different ways by different readers; but I am trying to reconstruct the basic parameters shaping the creation of such meanings, which were themselves shaped by the Greek cultural assumptions that we do not share and have to reconstruct. (151) Restrictions of space prevent me from discussing the problems associated with the last part of the sentence, but I believe that it says that when the Pelasgians came to live with the Athenians they began to be considered as Greeks. Laird (1933: 107–8) argues that the subject of Hellenes erxanto nomisthenai is not the Pelasgians, but the Athenians (cf. also Myres (1907: 201)). This is not totally impossible, but (though it seems logical) it is, I believe, unlikely. It does not affect my argument since the Pelasgians’ barbarian ethnicity is in any case destabilized in these passages. (152) In 2. 49–50. (153) Hdt. 2. 52. 1–3 (154) See also 2. 54–6 on Dodona and Egypt in Herodotos’ thinking; the implication is that this happened when what is now called Hellas was called Pelasgia (cf. 2. 56).

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Herodotos (and others) on Pelasgians: Some Perceptions of Ethnicity (155) Cf. above n. 13; I discuss ethnicity in ch. 1.2. See also Sourvinou-Inwood (2002: 173–203). (156) J.M. Hall (1997). (157) Thomas (2000: 122) acknowledges with regard to Herodotos himself that ‘what Herodotos says in his own person implies that the boundaries between Greek and barbarian are permeable, and Greekness can be acquired’, but she still sees his remarks in 1. 56–8 as incompatible with the myth of the Pelasgians’ stay in Athens, expulsion and rape (2000: 119 and n. 34). (158) To avoid getting entagled in meaningless debate, I shall say that, even if we take the most stringent position possible as to what being Greek at that time was perceived to have entailed for Thucydides and his readers, at the very least those who lived at Phthia were perceived to have been Greeks, and the Pelasgians are not radically differentiated from them. (159) Briquel (1984: 122) takes the view that for Thucydides in 1. 3 the Greeks before Hellen had been Pelasgians. (160) Hornblower (1991: 16 ad 1.3.2). (161) Pelling (2000: 82–94) contrasted the ‘dialogic’ nature of Herodotos’ text, in which multiple viewpoints and interpretations coexist, and in which the relation between the different strands is shifting and indecisive, and explanations cumulative rather than competing, to that of Thucydides, who tends to close questions down, to impose a single monologic view. This does not affect the argument here, because here Thucydides is dealing with a period, and with issues, in which he does not have control of the data, and for this reason allows ambiguity and uncertainty where in other circumstances he would not have done. (I am grateful to Dr Chris Pelling for discussing this question with me.) (162) I discussed this in Sourvinou-Inwood (1997: 1–21). (163) Hekataios FGrH 1 F 119; Strabo 7. 7. 1. (164) Another early barbarian people believed to have preceded the Greeks are the Leleges, who, unlike the Pelasgians, are never, to my knowledge, said to be Greek—though their barbarian ethnicity sometimes needs to be argued about (cf. Strabo 7. 7. 2). Some Leleges are said to have stayed on, and some Greeks, esp. the Locrians, are said to be descended from them. (Cf. Hes. fr. 234 M–W; Arist. fr. 473R; Strabo 7. 7. 2; Dion. Hal. Ant. R. 1. 17. 3; cf. also on Lelex: Paus. 1. 39. 6; 3. 1. 1.)

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Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History Josémiguel Alonso-núñez

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter deals with the first category in the work of Herodotus, i.e., space. Space must be understood in an empirical sense, not in a theoretical one. As part of his task of travel and enquiry, Herodotus visited the Persian empire. After referring to the geographic ideas and conceptions of the world that Herodotus found, the chapter shows how he contributed to and unconsciously helped historiography to evolve, thanks to his travels and observations. In this way, he laid down the foundations of universal historiography, which were afterwards developed by Polybius when he tried to explain the rise of Rome to world power. Keywords:   Herodotus, space, Persian empire, universal historiography, Polybius

Space and time are the fundamental categories of history to which mankind reacts.1 In this paper I am going to deal with the first category in the work of Herodotus, i.e. space. Space must be understood in an empirical sense, not in a theoretical one. As part of his task of travel and enquiry, Herodotus visited the Persian empire.2 The aim of this paper is thus, after referring to the geographic ideas and conceptions of the world that Herodotus found,3 to show how he contributed to and unconsciously helped historiography to evolve, thanks to his travels and observations. In this way, he laid down the foundations of universal historiography, which were afterwards developed by Polybius when he tried to explain the rise of Rome to world power.

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Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History In Herodotus’ work we must distinguish three levels of information: autopsy or personal investigation, hearsay or what he heard himself, to be distinguished from oral tradition, what came down the (p.146) generations to him, and previous written sources or archaeological remains including inscriptions.4 Using these sources he constructed his geographic ideas and conception of space. His geographic ideas must not be separated from his ethnographic information, since they are closely related in his work.5 I start with the geographic background of Herodotus and his image of the world. First of all, it must be said that he had an important predecessor, Hecataeus.6 Hecataeus in his Periēgēsis saw the earth as surrounded by the Ocean and divided into two continents, Europe and Asia, which included Libya. He located peoples and places, as well as rivers, mountains, and interior seas. The eastern extremity was according to him the Caspian Sea and the western one the Pillars of Heracles. Here there is a precedent for the idea of space in Herodotus, who followed the same geographical scheme, but completed it with more peoples and more places than Hecataeus. Herodotus also mentions Scylax of Caryanda (4. 44), who is very important for the development of the idea of space in Herodotus.7 It must be said that when the ‘father of history’ began to produce his work there was already a tradition of writing on peoples and genealogies represented by the logographers. Since the majority of these logographers came, like Herodotus, from Ionian cities, there is a certain continuity between Herodotus and the previous logographers, the main one being (again) Hecataeus of Miletus (2. 143; 5. 36; 5. 125; 5. 126; 6. 137). In his Genealogies Hecataeus approached the origins of different families from a rationalistic point of view. This is a precedent for the idea of time in Herodotus, who was also interested in genealogies, for instance that of the Spartan Leotychides (8. 131. 2–3). So, Herodotus must not be considered as an isolated figure, but as somebody who followed a tradition of enquiring into (p.147) foreign peoples and research on genealogical matters concerning the Greek peoples and their neighbours. However, Herodotus took a decisive step: to investigate Persia and the inhabitants of this empire which tried to subdue Greece. Persia must be understood not only in a geographical and political sense, but also in its impact on the psychology of the age, owing to its impressive power as the greatest empire in Herodotus’s time.8 Persia was the last Oriental empire and, at the same time, the last of a series of world empires which goes back to that of Sargon of Akkad in the third millennium BC, yet of which only three were known to Herodotus: the Assyrian, the Median, and the Persian (1. 95 and 1. 130). Herodotus is the unconscious founder of the theory of the succession of world empires, which has been used as a basis until modern times for interpreting world history from a political standpoint.9 The idea of opposition between Asia and Europe, i.e., Persians and Greeks, is fundamental to the historical thought of Page 2 of 8

 

Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History Herodotus, as already appears in the introduction (chs. 1–5) of the Histories, which places the origin of their rivalry in mythical times.10 For Herodotus, Delphi is not the centre of the world as it was for Hecataeus. Delphi was a Panhellenic sanctuary with the oracle of Apollo and home of the Pythian games. Moreover, it is the geographic centre of Greece, which explains why it was considered the navel of the world by the Greeks. However, Herodotus tried to integrate all the peoples known to him in his historical narrative, which thus adopts a universalising perspective in ethnography. A long section (4. 36– 45) offers a description of the world in which the centre is Persia instead of Delphi.11 He did not describe the geography of Greece because it was something known to his audience. He thought that the earth was flat, but surrounded by sea (2. 23). On the shield of Achilles made by Hephaistos in Homer (Il 18. 468– 89), the world is already seen as surrounded by sea. Maps of this sort had existed in Oriental cultures. Anaximander12 (p.148) was the first Greek to trace a map of the world (c. 550 BC) for which we have parallels in Babylon at about the same time (sixth century BC). They go back at least to the time of Sargon II, king of Assyria (721–705 BC); Babylon is the centre of the world, which appears surrounded by sea.13 The map of Anaximander was known to Hecataeus. Herodotus knew the map Aristagoras of Miletus (5. 49. l):

of

(‘a bronze tablet on which the circuit of the whole earth was engraved, and all the sea and all the rivers’). Herodotus divides the world between Greeks and barbarians, who were those who did not speak Greek.14 It was language, not race, which introduced the division; lack of ‘civilisation’ is expressed by ignorance of Greek. Spartans called the Persians

(‘strangers’) (9. 11. 2–3) whereas the rest of the Greeks called

(‘barbarians’). When the Greeks refer to non-Greek people them under the Hellenic sphere of influence, these people are not called barbarians, but

Barbarians are people who lived in the Persian empire.

The descriptions in Herodotus’ historical work reached the remotest places known in his days: India (3. 106), when he refers to the desert of Thar, located to the east of the river Indus, which was the Oriental limit of the world in the time of Herodotus. The most southern point was Arabia (3. 107. 1), and, according to Herodotus (3. 114), Ethiopia is the remotest of the inhabited southern countries. Having as a source Aristeas of Proconnesus,15 he also mentions tin and amber coming from northern Europe (3. 115–16). People who were connected with this trade activity were the Celts and the Cynesians (2. 33 and 4. 49). However, Herodotus is not sure about the western limits of Europe. In any case, there are limits related to the prehistoric trade routes of tin (3. 115), found in Cornwall (Britain), and of amber (3. 115) from the Baltic, connected with the existence of Page 3 of 8

 

Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History gold and fantastic animals (3.116), features which show from how far these reports came. Herodotus was aware of the existence (p.149) of Tartessos, rich in gold, with which the Greeks of Phocaea traded (1. 163; 4. 152; 4. 192). He also mentions the Hyperboreans (4. 13; 4. 32–6), inhabitants of the North.16 All the above-mentioned people and regions are connected with the four cardinal points. These points show how wide Herodotus’ geographical horizon was. Herodotus knows but attacks a division of the world into three continents: Europe, Asia, and Libya (4. 42. 1; cf. 2. 16). He writes:

(‘I wonder, then, at those who have mapped out and divided the world into Libya, Asia, and Europe; for the difference between them is great, seeing that in length Europe stretches along both the others together, and it appears to me to be beyond all comparison broader.’) Whom precisely he is attacking is uncertain: perhaps older Ionian geographers such as Hecataeus, perhaps contemporary theorizing as seen in the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places.17 With regard to the idea of space, the mention of the circumnavigation of Africa (4. 42. 2–43. 6) should not be forgotten, though it was reported by Herodotus with a certain scepticism. It happened in the time of Pharaoh Necho (610–595 BC), who ordered a voyage to go from the mouth of the Nile to the Gulf of Arabia. The voyage was carried out by the Phoenicians. The first attempt failed in the Strait of Gibraltar, but the second, following the opposite direction, reached its goal. The expedition of Scylax of Caryanda in the sixth century BC, who, by order of Darius I, sailed down the Indus to its mouth and reached the Isthmus of Suez (c. 518 BC), must also be remembered (4. 44). The mention of these trips instigated by the Persians shows how large Darius’ empire was and how Herodotus reflected it in his work. (p.150) Probably the Persian empire greatly influenced his universalising view of events. Three sections prove the interest of Herodotus in human geography as well as in administration: the full list of the tribal contingents composing the army and fleet of Xerxes with their commanders (7. 61–99) provides information about the peoples of the Persian empire. The list of the tribute-paying tribes of the Persian empire finds parallels in the inscriptions of Behistun, Persepolis, and Naqsh-iRustam.18 No doubt there were Persian official documents providing such information, as the evidence of the Aramaic version of the Behistun inscription suggests. Such information could also have been contained in Greek intelligence reports, prepared in anticipation of the Persian invasion, concerning the basis of which we can only speculate. This information must be completed with the list of satrapies (3. 89–96) and with the description of the royal road (5. 52–54). To Page 4 of 8

 

Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History travel on the royal road, a permit from a satrap was needed.19 There are official Persian documents supporting this information, which proves the accuracy of Herodotus and his knowledge of the infrastructure of the Persian empire. He also has a good knowledge of how the mail system functioned in the Persian empire (8. 98). It must be stressed that Herodotus was the first to offer an ethnography of the non-Greek world. One should also remember that the peoples to whom he devotes particular attention are the Egyptians in the south and the Scythians in the north. So two ways of life are contrasted: the sedentary life of the Egyptians and the nomadic of the Scythians.20 The contrast between Egyptians and Scythians must be emphasised and, on the other hand, the differences between Persians and Greeks in Ionia. This gives ‘peoples in space’ (i.e. ethnography and geography combined). The Persian wars or Persian attempts at conquest of Greece unite east and west, because there is contrast and conflict between these cardinal points, as there is between the other two cardinal points, north and south. In the last chapter of his work (9. 122), Herodotus offers as explanation of Persian imperialism that it was generated by frugal living in spite of the advantages of agriculture (p.151) if they wanted to become rulers.21 This idea shows the roots of expansion towards the west by the Persians. Herodotus’ travels and inquiries allow the geographical landscape to be populated with ‘real people’. So, the space becomes unified. His ethnography is related to his geographic conception and they cannot be disassociated. Herodotus wrote the most accurate ethnography of his epoch. This was a consequence of Herodotus’ curiosity during his travels. Herodotus is also the ‘father of ethnography’ setting the basis for its study.22 Diodorus of Sicily considered Herodotus the first universal historian (11. 37. 6). However, in the preface to his work, Herodotus expounds what is the fundamental subject of his Histories: the Persian Wars. It is not a world history strictly speaking, but a chapter of it with which Herodotus deals. To be considered a true, universal historian, an author should have a universal conception in respect of space and of time. Herodotus does not offer universal history in the strict sense, but the elements of it. The war of the Greeks with the Persian empire is crucial for the beginnings of universal history, because of the meeting of two civilizations: the Oriental peoples and the Greeks. The task that Herodotus imposed upon himself was enormous, and it must be emphasised: to visit the Persian empire. In Herodotus’ work his ethnographic knowledge leads him to put peoples in space. His idea of space is related to his ethnography, whereas for his idea of time, he has drawn on different chronological sources, which explains the contradictions in chronological matters. But for him it is clear that there was a succession of events as it is expounded in his notion of world empires, which shows the succession Assyria–Media–Persia, the world empire against which the Greeks defended themselves. Herodotus used the different chronologies (Olympiads, years of the reigns of kings, archon years, generations) Page 5 of 8

 

Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History available to him. For Herodotus the continuity of events was clear in spite of the fact of overlaps in the chronology. Political activity and wars unify space. Therefore unified space is an element of universal history. The idea of succession of events and of empires stands for Herodotus above single chronological details, and universalises the different chronological systems. Thus, the attempt by (p.152) Herodotus to present a chronological framework must be emphasised. An all-embracing conception of time is another element of universal history. However, Polybius23 recognised only Ephorus as his predecessor in writing universal history (5. 33. 2). From a chronological standpoint Polybius thought in terms of contemporary history, whereas from the point of view of space he referred to the the inhabited world, which was for him mainly the orbis Romanus. Polybius was interested in Rome, whereas Herodotus was interested in the world, much of which was ruled by the Persian empire. However, Herodotus tried to describe the world known to him and to go as far back as possible, inquiring into all aspects of the past that were relevant to his purpose. We notice that geography and ethnography are closely related in the work of Herodotus. For him, these and other disciplines are parts of knowledge because the Greeks did not think in terms of compartmentalised disciplines, but of a general and all-embracing

In this way, Herodotus, through his

contributed to universal history. This paper is intended as a tribute to George Forrest, who very kindly introduced me to the study of Greek history, to Herodotus, and to much else besides. I am most indebted for help and advice to Noel Worswick, Lincoln College, Oxford, and to Professor A. D. H. Bivar, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I am also very grateful to Professor Robert Parker, New College, Oxford, and to Dr Peter Derow, Wadham College, Oxford, for their kind invitation to this conference and revision of this text. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to William Clennell of the Bodleian Library, who has word-processed the text. Notes:

(1) For the importance of space and time see Clarke (1999); for mankind and deity in Herodotus see Harrison (2000a). Related to the idea of space and time in Herodotus are the articles by Lachenaud (1980), Schnaebelé (1987), Carbonell (1985), and Payen (1995). (2) For this question see Redfield (1985). (3) See Zimmermann (1997), and Nesselrath (1995). (4) See Murray (1987). For oral tradition and literary sources in Herodotus see Thomas (1988). Fehling (1989) and Kimball Armayor (1985) are hypercritical in relation to the problem of Herodotus’ sources; contrast Pritchett (1993).

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Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History (5) As far as chronology is concerned, Herodotus drew on the different sources available to him, which explains some contradictions. Nevertheless, he often had a very clear idea of the sequence of events. In any case, and in spite of the different chronological sources, it must not be forgotten that the fall of Sardis in 546/5 BC (CAH, 2nd edn., III.3. 1982, p. 446, though in recent years this date has been questioned) is a point of reference (1. 5) to distinguish between the history of the archaic period and the history known to him and to the generation of his parents. Before that date everything was oral tradition and hearsay. For the chronology of Herodotus consult Strasburger (1956), den Boer (1967) and P. J. Rhodes in this volume. (6) FGrH 1. For this author consult Diels (1887), and S. West (1991). (7) GGM 1, 15–96 and FGrH 709. (8) For Persia see Gershevitch (1985), and Briant (1996). (9) For Herodotus in general see Myres (1953) and Gould (1989). J. L. Myres, the first holder of the Wykeham Professorship of Ancient History in the University of Oxford and attached to New College, is the founder of modern Bristish scholarship on Herodotus. (10) See Diller (1961). (11) For Greeks working in the administration of the Persian empire see Lewis (1985). Kimball Armayor (1978: 8) thinks of Greek literary tradition as a source for Herodotus. (12) Consult M. West (1971: 76–110). For his map see FVS 12 A 6, for the improvements by Hecataeus of Miletus see FGrHist 1 T 12; cf. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield (1983), p. 104, frs. 98–9. According to Myres (1896), Herodotus has used two maps, one Ionian and one Persian (pp. 609 and 623) and a variety of smaller maps (p. 613), to which belong a Samian map and this of Hecataeus (p. 630). (13) Dalley (1998: 177). (14) For this point see Levy (1984), and for the dichotomy Greek–barbarian Lateiner (1989: 152). See also Dihle (1994: 38–46). (15) Bolton (1962). (16) He also alludes to other peoples of the North: Neuri 102. 2; 4. 105), Androphagi Q Man-eaters 106), Melanchlaeni = Blackcloaks 107), Thyssagetae Argippaeans

(4. 17. 2; 4. (4. 18. 3; 4. 100. 2; 4. (4. 20. 3; 4. 100. 2; 4. 101. 2; 4.

(4. 22. 1; 4. 123. 3), Iyrkae (4. 22. 2) and (4. 23. 5). Other peoples located in the North-East

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Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space and the Beginnings of Universal History appear: Issedones (4. 13; 4. 16; 4. 26; 4. 32), Arimaspians (3. 116; 4. 13; 4. 14; 4. 27). Scythians and Cimmerians are also mentioned in this context (4. 3). At the beginning of this chapter Herodotus claims that he has employed as a source Aristeas of Proconneus, who travelled to these regions in the sixth century BC. (17) On the division in continents see also Thomas (2000: 75–100, esp. pp. 76, 80–6 for Herodotus’s relation to the Hippocratic treatise, and for Hecataeus pp. 76 and 80). (18) See Schmitt (2000); Greenfield and Porten (1982). (19) On the conditions of travelling in the Persian empire see Hallock (1969) for travelling as reflected in treasury documents in Elamite written in cuneiform, and Driver (1965) for the letters sent by Prince Arsama to his officers in Egypt in the late 5th cent. BC. Calder (1925) is also still valuable. (20) See Hartog (1988: 193–206) for nomadism. (21) Krischer (1974), for another view. See also Pelling (1996) for the important passage 1. 107–8 near the beginning of the work. (22) For Herodotus as ethnographer consult Trüdinger (1918: 14–37), Müller (1972: 101–31), Erbse (1992: 157–79), Bichler (2000), and Dorati (2000). (23) Cf. Derow (1994), esp. 73–4.

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene Irad Malkin

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines Herodotus' treatment of Cyrene. It considers the following questions: How much trust can we place in what Herodotus tells us about Cyrene's foundation? How useful is the very concept of ‘tradition’ when applied to his reports? It argues that major historical outline becomes part of the collective memory, applicable to various genres of social and religious behavior. Its framework-elements are not flexible and fluid. It is not useful to stuff too much in the porous basket of ‘tradition’, which is not an undifferentiated concept. Nor is it helpful to regard tradition as completely fluctuating with changing political circumstances, such as a ‘pro- or anti-Battiad mood’ in Cyrene at any given time. ‘The last person’ speaking to Herodotus was probably constrained by a collective memory that depends on constants outside the frame of oral narrative. An approach which sees no difference between narrative patterns of telling history and the framework constants around which and within which such patterns evolve throws out the proverbial baby with the bath water. It remains to judge, in each individual case, what is to be included in these framework constants and what chance these had of surviving. A more nuanced approach to the concept of tradition in Herodotus is presented. Keywords:   Herodotus, Cyrene, collective memory, tradition

The narration of the foundation of Cyrene by Herodotus occupies a prominent place in George Forrest’s seminal article on ‘colonization and the rise of Delphi’: colonization had done more for the rise of Delphi than the other way around, Page 1 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene claimed Forrest.1 This reversal of a thought-pattern that saw colonization as something derivative and secondary has been very influential since. Greek colonization is increasingly being recognized as a major, formative aspect of Greek history in general. I know of no modern historian who has expressed satisfaction with the term ‘colonization’. Nor is anyone happy with the state of the literary evidence; much effort has been invested in order to sift through the sources, assess accretions, legendary motifs, authenticity of foundation oracles, and so on. But now there is a new claim: the entire discourse is superfluous and ‘chapters on Greek colonization should be eradicated from textbooks’, as a prominent British historian, Robin Osborne, says. He also argues against the category of ‘foundation’, seeing the concepts of ‘mother-city’ and ‘founder’ as based on a fifth-century, ‘Classical model’ of colonial practices, that our sources projected onto the early days of the eighth and seventh centuries. Since much of what we know of Archaic colonization is based on ‘traditions’ reported by Classical sources their value needs to be assessed. But are they invalid for historical reconstruction? In particular, Herodotus’ story of Cyrene’s foundation is represented as a test case for the validity of ‘traditions’, not only for the history of early colonization, but also for Archaic Greek history in general.2 (p.154) Echoing Braudel’s distaste for histoire événementielle, this approach sees ‘colonization’ as a process, not an ‘event’, involving a multicultural mixed bag of people who later invented for themselves mother cities, foundation-dates, foundation oracles, and names of founders. Therefore, there is no real point in discussing the ‘causes’ that affected mother cities or their ‘motives’. The literary evidence is merely traditional, the archaeological explained differently. Territorial (town and countryside) planning, which for most people implies a collective grasp of a foundational situation with religious and social elements needing concrete and simultaneous expression on the terrain—that too is serialized and fragmented.3 Historians have always been attracted by the Herakleitean paradox. If all is flux, if any situation is illusory, if ‘events’ are nothing but an infinite series of elements the unity of which is subjectively perceived, how is it possible to determine anything? Add to this the postmodern frame of mind, denying validity to the idea of the ‘subject’, and it becomes easy to comprehend the degree of mental conformity to a current mindset of those denying the idea of ‘foundation’. For what is foundation? ‘To think of foundation’, says Marcel Detienne, ‘is for us to think of the singularity of one space in comparison with an entire space, through the name, the specific characteristics, the borders which one assigns to it; it is also to think of the beginning in the invocation of an event which is initial, isolated, recognized; finally, it is to think of a subject, individual or collective, in connection with an act, an intervention.’4 Most of the key words here send Page 2 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene shudders through post-colonial and post-modern spines. ‘Beginning?’ ‘Singularity?’ ‘Borders?’ Of course, fifth-century Greeks, positivistically minded as they were, thought in such categories; the modern historian, by contrast, may point out their error and study such conceptions as the histoire de mentalité of the Classical period—not as evidence for what may have actually happened in the Archaic period. (p.155) I too have expressed uneasiness with some accepted categories: the fallacy of center–periphery implied in ‘Greece’ and ‘colonies’ and illustrated by many of our teaching maps which differentiate between ‘Ancient Greece’ (the Aegean circle) and ‘settlements overseas’, as if Greece was an ever viable historical category of place in antiquity. I have questioned the automatic priority assigned to the idea of the polis (colonization did as much for the rise of the polis as vice versa), and I have been pushing for a more pan-Mediterranean network approach. I am truly troubled by the questions now posed and welcome the opportunity to rethink some basic categories.5 Osborne’s analytical regard is sharp and thought-provoking. It is in all seriousness that I turn to his ideas, with full respect for this historian who does not hesitate to question accepted categories of approach. I offer the following observations as a preliminary response to one of his two claims, partially to refute it, partially to learn and build on it, inviting further discussion from scholars in the field, particularly of the usefulness of the concepts ‘tradition’ and ‘foundation’. How much trust can we place in what Herodotus tells us about Cyrene’s foundation? How useful is the very concept of ‘tradition’ when applied to his reports? The answer may be relativistic and skeptical: ‘Tradition is of its essence selective. Stories are handed down because the teller thinks they are worth telling, and they remain worth telling as long as they can make some impact on the understanding of the present. Present conditions determine what is remembered of the past, and how much is remembered. The shape of the past, as handed down, changes as the shape of the present changes.’6 ‘The value of tradition, therefore, is as good as “the last person” speaking to Herodotus and there is very little one can do to use it as a basis for historical reconstruction.’7 I find this a very ‘narrative oriented’ view of tradition. On a theoretical level, this approach is in fact very similar to a theory of collective memory articulated by Maurice Halbwachs in his La Mémoire collective of 1950.8 Personal and social memory, he claims, are interdependent (Halbwachs was arguing against Henri Bergson) and social memory, being always concerned with the present and its structures, is malleable and fluctuating. Halbwachs distinguishes (p.156) both personal and social memory from the ‘historian’s memory’, which aims to isolate objective truths.

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene There is a major flaw in this approach9 since Halbwachs never confronted the issue of ‘finished creations’: once a story, whether poetical or historical, had been told and accepted, some of its components are considered essential and the entire framework solidifies and is transmitted. Beyond this point, one also needs to take into account non-narrative, social and religious modalities of collective memory. At ancient Cyrene, these might have been king lists, various nomima, sacred laws, the Karneia festival, and the founder’s cult. In short, I shall be claiming that the major historical outline becomes part of the collective memory, applicable to various genres of social and religious behavior. Its frameworkelements are not flexible and fluid. It is not useful, I think, to stuff too much in the porous basket of ‘tradition’, which is not an undifferentiated concept. Nor is it helpful to regard tradition as completely fluctuating with changing political circumstances, such as a ‘pro- or anti-Battiad mood’ in Cyrene at any given time. ‘The last person’ speaking to Herodotus was probably constrained by a collective memory that depends on constants outside the frame of oral narrative. An approach which sees no difference between narrative patterns of telling history and the framework constants around which and within which such patterns evolve throws out the proverbial baby with the bath water. It remains to judge, in each individual case, what is to be included in these framework constants and what chance these had of surviving. I am convinced by some of Osborne’s contentions, in particular with regard to the anecdotal biography of Battos; incidentally, we will see that Herodotus too was suspicious of this. But I do not think we should apply Livy’s approach to early Rome to Herodotus’ treatment of Cyrene and I wish to present here a more nuanced approach to the concept of tradition in Herodotus.

1. THE LIBYAN AND CYRENIAN LOGOS When discussing the Libyan ‘traditions’ Herodotus had heard, selected, and reported, we must remind ourselves that his intention was not to write a discrete ktisis (foundation story) of Cyrene, even (p.157) though too often scholars, myself included, have treated selected passages as such. Nor do we need to include here, under ‘tradition’, the Libyan myths of Athena, the Argonauts, Menelaos, and the Nymph Cyrene, all of which Herodotus knew as well.10 Cyrene is part of the Libyan logos, from chapter 145 to the end of Book 4 at 205; and the scope, studied especially by Stephan Gsell, is amazing, panning from dynastic gossip to a complex and varied Libyan ethnography.11 The structure of the Libyan–Cyrenian logos is intricate: beginning with a story of a stasis in Sparta which involves Minyans on the one hand, and a dissatisfied regent, Theras, on the other, Herodotus proceeds to the Lakedaimonian foundation of Thera and then to tell of how Thera founded Cyrene. He throws in a Samian anecdote about the voyager Kolaios, a story that becomes relevant much later in Herodotus’ story when hostages from Cyrenaica find shelter in Samos. Herodotus then treats the subsequent history of Cyrene and its own Page 4 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene colonization in Libya, describes the reforms of Demonax in the mid-sixth century, the reaction to them by Arkesilas and his murder in Barke; before narrating the terrible revenge of his mother Pheretime on that city—a story that reconnects to the major theme of Persian involvement in Libya and that closes Book 4—he digresses at length to tell of Libya in general. Herodotus probably did more than speak to some Battiads at Delphi; he actually visited Cyrene. The Libyan detail is so wide-ranging and specific that nothing less than a personal visit to Cyrene—although not necessarily a trip throughout Libya—can account for this. He must have had numerous informants to cover such a vast field and there must have been plenty of tedious overlapping and repetition, which he excised out of his final narrative. Was he influenced by an either ‘pro- or anti-Battiad’ mood at Cyrene? In view of the ground he covered, I find it difficult to restrict our appreciation of Herodotus’ account to narrow political or dynastic terms. But even supposing that the kingship in Cyrene had become unpopular this does not imply that people began despising their founder and first king. The main outlines of ‘tradition’ do not fluctuate erratically, especially when collective interest in beginnings as defining identity cut across social classes. On a recent visit to Egypt I heard people nostalgic for king Farouk, in southern Greece one finds royalist peasants, Communist Russia was proud of Ivan the Terrible (p.158) and some very Republican French will defend the memory of Louis XIV. So why not pride in Battos? Regardless of the regime which Herodotus met in Cyrene, Cyrenians were proud of the exploits of the first settlers and first founder and king. The popularity of collective, heroic, and symbolic figures is interconnected with the political present in more ways than one. Part of the problem lies in identifying precisely where the Cyrenian and the Theran versions begin and end in Herodotus’ account. Lack of such clarity might lead to misguided claims that the two versions are contradictory or even directly ‘in conflict’. The difference exists in what Herodotus chooses to tell us, because he had noticed it, as he says. Herodotus selects mostly what is missing in the Theran version, either in narrative or emphasis, and that really amounts to the biography of Battos. In fact, the so-called Cyrenian version is surprisingly short. Let us look at the text. In chapter 150 Herodotus begins, explicitly, the Theran version: ‘from here on we have only the word of the Therans’, he says, having just departed from the common Lakedaimonian and Theran story of Thera’s own foundation. In chapter 154 Herodotus begins, somewhat awkwardly: ‘this is what the Therans say; and now begins the part in which the Theran and Cyrenian stories agree, but not till now, for the Cyrenians tell a wholly different story of Battos which is this’. In other words, once Herodotus has finished with the personal legend of Battos, a combined Theran–Cyrenian story will resume.

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene As A. J. Graham observed in his seminal article of 1960 on the ‘Agreement of the Founders’,12 the Theran version ends where Herodotus himself paraphrases the original Oath (he uses the accusative and infinitive construction to report it). I quote Herodotus: ‘The Therans resolve to send out men from their seven regions, taking by lot one of every pair of brothers, and making Battos leader and king for all.’ The quotation ends here. Herodotus then switches to simple narrative mode: ‘then they manned two fifty-oared ships and sent them to Plataia’. Herodotus then proceeds to tell what the Cyrenians say of Battos, with all the legendary aspects often attached to the story of great leaders who supposedly begin as socially and physically challenged. This occupies chapters 154 and the very beginning of 155. But (p.159) Herodotus is critical, denying that Battos was the original name since it signifies a ‘king’ in Libyan. Never mind that Herodotus was probably wrong;13 what matters is that he had just abandoned the Cyrenian version. In chapter 155 he is already stating his own case, arguing against the combined version of what ‘the Therans and Cyrenians say’. Herodotus resumes the chapter by joining the main lines of the former, so-called Theran version, and in chapter 156 he picks up precisely the same words which he used to close the Theran version ‘then the Therans sent Battos with two fiftyoared ships’.14 Thus the ‘Cyrenian version’ is a rather short story and not focused on the entire foundation process so much as on providing a founder’s biography with plenty of folk elements. Not much conflicts with the Theran version, but there are plenty of additions and a significant shift of focus. I agree, and have said so myself elsewhere, that the emphasis on the founder rather than on the mother-city may be explained by the need of the colony to underline its autonomous being, its independent identity. All colonies found themselves in that tension: to some extent their identity depended on how they came into being, and hence the need for a clear idea of a mother-city, a date of foundation, and a heroic founder. It was the founder who embodied the transition to an independent existence. In order not to appear as a mere extension of the mother-city but as a sovereign political community, shifting more emphasis to the founder also relegates the mother city to a secondary role in the constitutive history of the creation of the colony.15 Leaders are given similar attributes in other cultures: if Battos’s mother had a trial by water, baby Moses was sent floating on the Nile; if Battos was a bastard, Moses was an adopted prince; both were reluctant to accept the god’s command to become leaders of an exodus or colonization, and both had voice problems: Moses was Kvad Peh, ‘heavy mouthed’ or a stammerer according to the Talmud; Battos stammered and enquired at Delphi about his voice.16

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene I do not think there is any direct connection here between the Hebrew and the Greek myths; it is simply that the main attributes and responses to colonial leaders can be similar and hence the folkloric (p.160) elements—like an adapted joke—could easily attach themselves to this or that person. So I fully agree that there is plenty of folkloric and unhistorical tradition concocted around the founder. I just do not think this is sufficient cause to throw away other genres of traditions that Herodotus reports as the main outline of the combined Theran–Cyrenian versions. Of course, colonial traditions, while retaining the general outline and constitutive facts, could also be quite slanted in their perspective. In the combined version the original Cyrenian community was rather humble in the first sixty years of its existence. These humble beginnings were probably a point of pride when Herodotus visited Cyrene: the present prosperity could be appreciated accordingly.17 The Theran–Cyrenian version also insists that the original colonists came only from Thera and that for the first sixty years the population of Cyrene remained the same. A literal reading of Herodotus might even suggest that the size of the colonial population was the same as what the two original pentekonters could hold. Only then, encouraged by the Delphic oracle, a new wave of settlers came for a new division of the land, ges anadasmos. It is ‘Libya’, not Cyrene, that is the object of this new division. This ambitious idea of ‘Libya’ is compatible with the general picture of Cyrene’s colonies in Cyrenaica and with the Delphic colonial charter, cited by both Pindar and Herodotus, that gave Battos all of Libya—not just Cyrene—to settle. The fact that Cyrene never asked for a foundation oracle for its numerous colonies in Libya, in spite of its excellent, continuing relations with Delphi, seems to corroborate that this was her outlook.18 This stands in direct contrast both to the archaeological picture and to some non-Herodotean traditions that mention a much wider circle of colonial participation. In fact, it looks as if Apollonia, Taucheira, and possibly even Euhesperides all already display settlement activity in the last third of the seventh century—in other words, within the first generation of Cyrene’s own foundation.19 Pausanias had read somewhere that a prominent Spartan, the Olympic victor Chionis, a contemporary of Battos, was involved as a colonial expert: ‘They say Chionis took part in the expedition with (p.161) Battos of Thera and helped him found Cyrene and subdue the neighbouring Libyans.’ Did Lakonians participate? Did Sparta send a founder just as Corinth sent one to join Corcyra’s foundation of Epidamnus, according to the nomos that the grandmother-city would send a co-founder? I think this is probable, but many, accustomed to the anachronistic land-locked image of Sparta, might disagree. In any case, even without Chionis, Page 7 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene Lakonian presence may be supported by the relatively high proportion of inferior Lakonian pottery, obviously not export material, within the deposits of the first generation at Taucheira.20 What probably happened was a common phenomenon in many colonial enterprises: a mother-city would send an oikist with a nucleus of citizens to whom others joined on an individual basis, co-opting into the cohesive identity which the oikist and the first generation forged in the colony. Without additional settlers, cities such as Chalkis or Miletus could not have founded so many colonies. Nicholas Purcell and Maurizio Giangiulio have forcefully underlined the availability of individual men in the Archaic period,21 and we should remember that people like Archilochus, a contemporary of Battos, could move about, visiting Italian Siris, and colonizing at Thasos.22 The conflicting archaeological picture can be easily reconciled if we assume that many non-Therans had been settling since the last third of the seventh century, possibly with an additional boost from Delphi around 570, perhaps also following the victory against Egypt at the battle of Irasa also around 570. Although they integrated with the nucleus their numbers were sufficiently significant for their origins to be remembered. Their identity is revealed by the sixth-century reforms of Demonax who divided the Cyrenians into three: the ‘Therans and dispossessed Libyans’; ‘the Cretans’; and the ‘other islanders’. By the time of Herodotus’ visit pride in their origins probably acquired some peculiar characteristics in the Theran–Cyrenian ktisis: somehow all settlers of the first two generations (640–570 BC) have become ‘Theran’. This emphasis on Theran origins is common to (p.162) both the Theran and the Cyrenian versions, a point sometimes overlooked. By claiming that the ges anadasmos of Libya took place not immediately, but much later, the purified tradition probably followed a pattern of the ktisis-motif of difficult beginnings compared with present prosperity. While there are probably echoes of what must have been a reaction of the descendants of the Therans against those perceived as nouveaux venus, by the fifth century these were probably happy to be ‘Theran’ too (the distinction no longer signified any real difference). This, I think, was because Cyrene had to confront not only itself, but also the growing importance of the other ‘Cyrenian colonies’ in Libya. With regard to those the image of a cohesive society of settlers would have stressed Cyrene’s primacy. The original two Theran pentekonters under Battos, obviously conceived as a bridgehead of a war party, probably became as symbolic as the Mayflower did in the USA. The beginning, as often, came to stand for the whole. We see, therefore, that tradition can focus, emphasize, censor, shrink or extend, and play with its own inner tensions. In other words, one is right to be suspicious of tradition, but this ought to be a sophisticated suspicion, with attention to what tradition omits and to what it contains. With the passage of Page 8 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene time, the growing independence of the other Greek cities in Cyrenaica, and external pressures (Egypt, Persia), the non-Theran origins of many of the descendants would matter less in view of the growing cohesiveness of Cyrene’s collective identity. It probably became important to many Cyrenians to reassert the purely Theran aspect of the original colonial endeavor: as if many more belonged to the communal ‘aristocracy’ of first settlers. In the Hellenistic period the poet Callimachus was proud to be a ‘Battiad’; one suspects he was not unique in his aspiration to be associated with the early generations of settlers.23 This is probably the source of the narrow ‘Theran’ focus in Herodotus and his postponement of the arrival of the other settlers to some sixty years after the foundation. But being narrow is not being untrue: the framework remains Theran and Battos the king and archegetes. Archaeology does not always conflict with what Herodotus says. First, the account in Herodotus (or the ‘tradition’), of the short time spent in Aziris before reaching the final destination in Cyrene seems (p.163) to be corroborated.24 Second, the heroic tomb of Battos in the agora, celebrated by Pindar and the focus of Cyrene’s founder’s cult, has been sufficiently excavated for us to state beyond a reasonable doubt that it had been there since around 600.25 The founder’s cult, celebrated annually, was another vehicle of colonial traditions, repeating the major outlines of Battos’ achievement. Does any of this mean that we must give up on the constitutive facts of Cyrene’s colonial history? On the very idea of a mother-city, a founder, a notion of a precise time of foundation? I think not. The focus in Herodotus is indeed narrowly Theran and his delay of the arrival of the other settlers probably mistaken on an objective scale. For here we are faced not with archaeological, but with historical truths. It is what people believed in, right from the start that mattered. With such self-centered magnification of the generation of first settlers, with a colonial emphasis on a narrative of departure, consultation at Delphi, and acts of settlement and conquest, men of the first few generations had a keen awareness of their city’s youthful origins and exploits. The story they would tell themselves was often exaggerated, but—contrary to the common fallacy—their myths did contain significant kernels of truth. What they spoke about was history. What Herodotus reports is historically factual not only because the basic outlines of the events described were generally recognized as true down to the Roman period, but—and here is the crux—because a small group of Therans headed by someone called Battos probably did land in Libya and succeeded, immediately, in attributing the concept of a foundation (a ‘Theran’ foundation), to what they did—in spite of the fact that many more settlers came and joined in, and that more points of settlement were created alongside Cyrene. There is no point in a modern historian getting excited about the probable heterogeneous composition of the settlers, or in an archaeologist pondering the historical significance of the variety of cups they used. Every foundation is symbolic, as anyone present at a modern ritual of cutting a ribbon Page 9 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene can testify. In other words, the archaeological truth of presence of many other settlers matters little for the historical truth that these others did not matter. (p.164) While agreeing that the nature of tradition is to be slanted, I insist also on regarding it as embodying a historical truth. This is ‘truth’ both in the sense that ‘Battos and some Theran settlers came to Libya around 640 and settled Cyrene by 631’ (to which we add: there were many other settlers; Apollonia and Taucheira too were settled by 600, etc.) and in the sense of ‘imagined community’:26 ‘most of our ancestors came with Battos and founded Cyrene etc.’ This ‘foundational’ significance was attached to these factors in antiquity, and it endured for centuries both in story and ritual, at least from the time of the burial of Battos the First around 600, a death which probably signified the end of the process of ‘foundation’. Nomima

What Herodotus said did not depend merely on the last person he spoke to, since that person, or more probably persons, spoke within well-known frameworks which were not all dependent on oral traditions. We need to look at such non-oral lieux de mémoire, limiting and fossilizing the elements of tradition. We have just noted the arrival in Cyrenaica of the significant wave of settlers. What would happen when such a mixed group needed to live together? This issue lies at the basis of the colonial experience. Colonists did not come alone; the gods were around too with their sacred days, cults, and threats of pollution. According to the innocent, multicultural picture sometimes drawn,27 Greek settlers needed neither nomima, nor rituals, nor social and judicial arbitration. But who would provide for these and how? The question is simply bypassed by the anti-foundationalists.28 Nomima is a subject sadly neglected in the study of Greek colonization.29 Nomima, to remind ourselves, were the identifying features of a Greek polis: the sacred calendar, the names of magistracies and institutions, the division into tribes, and so on. An oikist must have made active, deliberate choices, mediating a social and religious order for the new collective, an order without which people simply could not live together for very long without incurring the anger of the gods or losing even the semblance of social cohesion. Nomima (p.165) were something worth commenting on, reflecting or even serving to define a collective identity, and serving as another vehicle of colonial traditions. Thucydides, for example, considered nomima a salient feature of a colony’s identity. The nomima of Gela were Dorian, a comprehensive term referring to the Rhodian and Cretan origins of the colonists. Later, when Gela founded Akragas, it ‘gave it the nomima of Gela’.30 Now he has become specific: not the generalized ‘Dorian’, but specifically the nomima of the mother-city, Gela.

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene An even more explicit example is Himera. It was founded by Zankle and settled by many Chalkidians; but there joined too the exiled Myletidai from Syracuse, a Dorian city. The language of Himera resulted in a mixture of ‘Doric and Chalkidic’, says Thucydides, but the nomima that prevailed were just Chalkidian.31 These two kinds of social mediation, the linguistic and the customary-formal, are important: the colonial situation produced a linguistic mixture because language was neutral, not an object of a priori decision (unlike certain cases of modern nationalism); by contrast, since having nomima was a necessity right from the start because people needed to live according to a common sacred calendar and within some social division, no one could afford to wait for an evolutionist mixture to emerge; rather, deliberate selection and exclusion were necessary. That too is part and parcel of the notion of ‘foundation’: express decisions, arbitrating and mediating the social and religious order, had to be made and newcomers needed to co-opt to this formative middle ground, a pattern which also finds many parallels in modern colonial societies. In our case the facts that Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene had kings and ephors,32 or that in all three the cult of Apollo Karneios was particularly prominent, are independent of any oral tradition. Rather, precisely because of their neutral value, these nomima appear to corroborate the colonial chain Sparta–Thera– Cyrene Herodotus is describing; also, they illuminate the archaeological evidence that implies the presence of Lakonians at Taucheira; finally, they explain the chain of cult-transfers of Apollo Karneios emphasized by Pindar and later by Callimachus.33 We simply cannot allow ourselves to sweep away all early colonial history merely because an oral ‘tradition’ is involved in the telling. (p.166) We are warned, correctly, that it is dangerous to use non-traditional elements, such as archaeology, to ‘fill in’ the gaps in tradition in order to arrive at a cohesive picture. This is true, but what if we were to turn the tables? Take again Apollo Karneios and the festival of the Karneia: we are told by the poets of a chain of cult-transfers; that too, of course, is a ‘tradition’, but of a very different kind and purpose. But we can also observe in the cult itself impressive similarities of detail and social function, peculiar to all three cities, Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene.34 Rather than use the cult to flesh out the tradition we need the tradition to explain the cult. Thus we may arrive at a fuller and more sophisticated picture, joining archaeological, epigraphical, and poetic evidence to the historiography. This is not arguing in a circle, but rather in a spiral, and it is the spiral, rather than the circular approach, for which I am arguing here in our appreciation of Herodotus. We return to the question: ‘can we reconstruct the rudiments of an historical narrative for early Cyrene?’ Having mounted the spiral by external means, returning to the point of departure but from a different and richer perspective, I would give as answer a cautious yes. I certainly do not

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene conclude that we should eradicate chapters on early colonial history from our textbooks.

2. THE AGREEMENT OF THE FOUNDERS The account in Herodotus has often been compared to the text of the fourthcentury inscription that quotes the original Agreement of the Founders. It has already been shown, on philological grounds, that the two documents draw their information independently; in other words, even if one assumes a fourth-century forgery, the forger did not base his text on Herodotus.35 The skeptical or even cynical evaluation of the ‘Agreement of the Founders’, restated and taken further by Osborne, rests on the assumption of a relatively obscure memory of Theran origins, revived in the fourth century when the law was passed granting citizenship to Theran arrivals. But I doubt the Theran memory was really obscure. People retained memories of their origins, as in the case, reported by Thucydides, of exiles from Epidamnus coming to Corcyra and pointing out the graves of their (p.167) ancestors.36 The Epidamnians themselves turned to Corinth, and reminded the Corinthians that a Corinthian founder formed part of the original foundation. The Corinthians themselves were angry with Corcyra, Epidamnus’ mother-city, because—contrary to common custom—they did not give them first access to sacrifices and other honours. These details illustrate other modalities for keeping the memory of the mother-city alive: not only the annual ritual for the founder at the colony itself, but a revitalization of the colonial origins each time visitors arrived from the mother-city. Again, an aidemémoire—external to strict oral traditions. Can we find anything similar in the history of Cyrene with regard to Thera? Is there any point between the foundation in 631 and the fourth century, when Therans were accorded citizenship in Cyrene, which connects the two? The answer is yes, but only if we read the whole of the Libyan logos in Herodotus, not just the foundation excerpt. When, around 520 BC, Arkesilas III avenged himself on his opponents in Cyrene, he sent them ‘to Cyprus to be killed. These were carried out of their course to Knidos, where the Knidians saved them and sent them to Thera’.37 Thera, therefore, was regarded as the natural home for exiled Cyrenians more than one hundred years after Cyrene’s foundation. Moreover, an item in the Agreement of the Founders says that Cyrenians have a Right of Return to their motherland Thera: if ‘they suffer inescapable troubles, after five years, let them return from that land without fear to Thera, to their possessions and be citizens’.38 This was probably meant for the time of settlement, but it could have been used in other circumstances, such as this one. All this clearly signifies that not only could Therans use the Agreement of the Founders in the fourth century to claim a part in Cyrene, but that already in the sixth century Cyrenians were doing precisely the same thing when receiving asylum in their mother-city. For the political interpreter looking for a context for the inscription to be forged, the later sixth century is therefore just as good as the mid-fourth. As it happens, I do not believe it was forged at all—but I am Page 12 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene pointing this option to illustrate that the narrow political interpretation of cui bono is really arbitrary and overlooks the ongoing connections between Thera and Cyrene. Seeking the factors that shape stories, scholars wish to understand why Cyrenians in the fourth century accepted the so-called Theran (p.168) version of Cyrene’s foundation. First, as noted, most of what we call the ‘Theran version’ is really a combined Theran–Cyrenian one. However, it has been claimed that major elements in the inscription must be anachronistic. Among others, these include the existence of an ‘assembly’ at Thera; Apollo prophesying spontaneously; the name ‘Cyrene;’ and the concept of ‘fair and equal terms’. Without entering the debate one might mention that Apollo is often represented as so prophesying, whether in fictitious or authentic consultations;39 that paraphrases/variations are common in ancient citations (note too the dialect, which is obviously late and Cyrenian); that ‘fair and equal terms’ are remarkably prominent on the ground in the egalitarian land-division at Megara Hyblaia, a whole century earlier; and that collective decisions in the seventh century are not necessarily anachronistic (note Homer’s assemblies or the ‘polis’ in the seventh-century Dreros inscription).40 What I find particularly surprising is the claim that the inscription ‘contains nothing which does not directly support the case that the Therans are making in the fourth century’. In fact, except for a single sentence, there is nothing, which is directly relevant to that claim in the entire inscription. The emphasis on Battos, claims Robin Osborne, had become an ‘embarrassment after the fall of the Battiads. Hence the Cyrenians were happy to accept the Theran version of things, where Thera itself plays a more prominent role in the foundation’. This assertion is incompatible with the text, considering how much emphasis is actually placed on Battos both in the fourth-century preamble and in the quoted Agreement of the Founders. In the preamble we are told, explicitly, that Apollo gave ‘Battos and the Therans future happiness should they abide by the Agreement when they set out under the leadership of Apollo Archegetes’, and in the quoted document it is said that since Apollo ‘has given a spontaneous prophesy to Battos and the Therans ordering them to colonize Cyrene, the Therans resolve that Battos be sent to Libya as leader and king’. These mentions lend authority to all that follows: Battos is to be founder both on the authority of Delphi and on that of the Therans themselves, and he is to be king on the authority of the Therans alone. If the dynasty of the Battiads has become such an embarrassment, why emphasize its legitimacy—its Theran legitimacy— precisely in such a document? (p.169) There is another fourth-century text, a sacred law in an inscription from Cyrene, that I think is relevant. It lists purity regulations about how to live in Libya; its framework is traditional and its purpose seems to be to collect and

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene regulate what might have been unconnected before. The inscription proudly opens with the words: Apollo decreed that (the Therans or Cyrenians) should live in Libya [? for ever] observing purifications and … (Lines 1–3. Trans. R. Parker)41 This is an obvious reference to Apollo’s colonization-prophesy. Later (lines 21–25) the sacred law reaffirms Battos as Archegetes, implying also the existence of an oracle at his tomb.42

So we see that Battos really did not become such an embarrassment in democratic, fourth-century Cyrene. Politics is not everything; people walked around the founder’s tomb, celebrated and dedicated, consulted it as an oracle, and may have addressed prayers to Battos who was remembered each time a sacred festival procession took place along the road Battos had laid out.43 The founder’s cult was probably popular: to return to Gela, a cheap fifth-century dedication, an Attic kylix, bears the inscription ‘Mnasithales dedicated me to Antiphemos’. This piece of evidence pertains to common cult, not to oral narrative tradition or foundation folklore, and authenticates the memory of Gela’s founder.44 People lived a varied, not merely political life; religion too constituted a major framework of memory and behavior, including laws of purity and a symbolic frame of reference for their identity, concentrated on the foundation. ‘Tradition’, therefore, shaped as it might be by present concern, is also limited by the kind of frameworks of collective memory I have been discussing. These are determined not just by unstable politics, but also by religious and social aidemémoires. There is also a limit to the malleability of oral ‘tradition’.45 In poetry and other forms of mythic traditions, with all their variability, there are ‘framework constants’: it is Troy, not Mycenae, that gets destroyed; it is Odysseus, not Hektor, who returns to Ithaca; it is Oedipus who kills Laios and not vice versa. In other words, even in ‘narrative’ oral (p.170) tradition the framework constants persevere. Therefore, there is a grave danger in lumping together everything—‘neutral’ nomima, founder cults, religious and social frameworks, and narrative outlines—within the notion of ‘tradition’. The concept of ‘tradition’ is rather unhelpful if not qualified and categorized. A Battos scared of a lion and losing his stammer, is one kind of tradition, Battos as leader and king is another. By analogy to ancient rhetorical mnemonics, we need to separate loci from imagines. We need to look at neutral frameworks and distinguish at least between, on the one hand, an ‘annalistic’ kind of traditional details, such as a date of foundation, a name of founder, the place of origins, and, on the other, ‘narrative tradition’, that is far more flexible and easily adapted to a changing concern or a spectrum of expectations. Herodotus too, it seems, knew the difference.

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene Notes:

(1) Forrest 1957. (2) For these views see Osborne (1998). The main arguments concerning Cyrene are discussed in Osborne (1996: 8–15). My purpose here is not to discuss Cyrene’s foundation as such, but to concentrate more on assessing tradition in relation to Herodotus. Thus I do not discuss Pindar, Callimachus, and other sources, nor do I assess here poetic and mythic values of Cyrenian traditions. Cf. Dougherty (1993a), Malkin (1994: chs. 5 and 7), and Calame (1996). (3) Cf. Braund (1998b), 287–96. See Malkin (2002), where I address, among others, Robin Osborne’s interpretation of Megara Hyblaia’s spatial division and multicultural aspects (Osborne, 1998). (4) Detienne (2000), 46. (5) Malkin (1994b); (1997); (forthcoming). (6) Osborne (1996: 5). (7) Osborne (1996: 7). (8) Halbwachs (1950: 35–79). (9) Funkenstein (1989: 10). (10) Vannicelli (1993: 135–7). (11) Gsell (1915). (12) Graham (1960). (13) Masson (1976). (14) Graham (1960: 96f.); Vannicelli (1993, 133). (15) Malkin (1987: 3–13; 260). (16) Murray (1993: 149–50); Giangiulio (1981); Malkin (1994: 100); cf. Weinfeld (1993). (17) Cf. Bartlett (1993: 85). (18) Malkin (1994: 169–74). (19) Boardman (1994: 143).

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‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene (20) Paus. 3. 14. 3. For one set of his victory dates see 4. 23. 4; 6. 13. 2; 3. 14. 3; cf. 4. 23. 4; 6. 13. 2; for dates earlier by one Olympiad see RE s.v. Chionis 2286 (Niese). For the pottery see Schaus (1985a: 401); (1985b: 100–1). (21) Purcell (1990); Giangiulio (1996). (22) Archilochus 18 (Tarditi) with Graham (1978: 70–86). (23) Pfeiffer (1949–53, testimonia 1, 4, 6, 87); Williams (1978: 65; 67); Fraser (1972: ii. 919 n. 308, 787; cf. RE Suppl. V 439 (Herter). (24) Hdt. 4. 169; cf. 2. 119. See Boardman (1966: 150–1) with Stucchi (1975: 4); Laronde (1987: 223); Haider (1988: 132); Chamoux (1989: 66). (25) 600 BC is the likely date of Battos’ death, since Herodotus claims he ruled forty years. If we count these forty years not from the textbook date of 631 but from the beginning of the foundation process—two years at Platea, seven at Aziris, and finally Cyrene itself around 631—we reach this figure. For the tomb see Büsing (1978). (26) Anderson (1983). (27) Osborne (1998). (28) To which add, with regard to Megara Hyblaia, de Polignac (1999). (29) An exemplary study, regarding Megara and her colonies, is Hanell (1920). Cf. Jones (1987); Loukopoulou (1989). (30) Thuc. 6.4.4. (31) Thuc. 6. 5. 1 (32) Chamoux (1953: 214–6). (33) Malkin (1994: chs. 3, 5, 6) (34) Malkin (1994: ch. 5); cf. Krummen (1990). (35) Graham (1960). (36) Thuc. 1. 26. (37) Hdt. 4. 164. 2. (38) M-L 5 34–7, trans. by Graham (1983: 225); cf. Malkin (1994: 5). (39) Parke (1962). (40) M–L 2. Page 16 of 17

 

‘Tradition’ in Herodotus: The Foundation of Cyrene (41) Parker (1983: 333). (42) Malkin (1987: 206); for a different view about the oracle, but not about the status of Battos, see Parker (1983: 336). (43) With Pindar Pyth. 5. 85–95; cf. Pyth. 4. 4–8; 59–63. (44) Malkin (1987: frontispiece and 194, 259). (45) A topic often discussed. See e.g. Henige (1984); Vansina (1985); Goody (1987); Davies (1992).

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Stephanie Dalley

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords In 1883, early in the days of deciphering cuneiform inscriptions, Archibald Sayce published a commentary on Herodotus' History Books 1-3, entitled The Ancient Empires of the East. He quoted authorities of his own time who questioned the reliability of Herodotus. Ctesias was reckoned a more trustworthy informant who ‘had good reason for accusing Herodotus of errors in his Assyrian history’. After all, Ctesias lived at the Persian court, and so he was supposed to have drunk from more direct sources of knowledge about the ancient Near East than Herodotus could have done. One hundred and twenty years after Sayce published his work, Assyriologists are in a better position to comment on Babylonian and Assyrian matters, thanks to the perseverance and brilliance of several generations of scholars. This chapter does not attempt to verify Herodotus on every point; rather it looks at certain items of information in the light of recent solid progress in ancient Near Eastern studies. It aims to try and find out why certain details appear to be incorrect, and to show how over-eager corrections, made from a poor base of evidence, are occasionally wrong. Keywords:   Assyriology, Archibald Sayce, Ctesias

In 1883, early in the days of deciphering cuneiform inscriptions, Archibald Sayce published a commentary on Herodotus’ History Books 1–3, entitled The Ancient Empires of the East. He quoted authorities of his own time who questioned the reliability of Herodotus. Ctesias was reckoned a more trustworthy informant who ‘had good reason for accusing Herodotus of errors in his Assyrian history’. Page 1 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? After all, Ctesias lived at the Persian court, and so he was supposed to have drunk from more direct sources of knowledge about the ancient Near East than Herodotus could have done (Sayce, 1883: xxiv–xxxii). One hundred and twenty years after Sayce published his work, Assyriologists are in a better position to comment on Babylonian and Assyrian matters, thanks to the perseverance and brilliance of several generations of scholars. It is not my intention to strain at verifying Herodotus on every point; rather, to look at certain items of information in the light of recent solid progress in ancient Near Eastern studies. My aim is to try and find out why certain details appear to be incorrect, and to show how over-eager corrections, made from a poor base of evidence, are occasionally wrong. Sayce did not ask the question whether Herodotus or Ctesias was able to converse in Aramaic, for he thought Persian was ‘the English of the day’ (1883: xx), followed among others by Momigliano (1966: 129); but we now know that Aramaic, not Persian, was the lingua franca throughout the Achaemenid empire. Nor did he ask why Herodotus did not mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He concluded that Herodotus could not have visited Mesopotamia because his description of the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa was ‘wrong’, for the supposed route, which crossed the river Halys, was much (p.172) longer than Herodotus allowed. However, David French (1998) has pointed out that one cannot travel from Sardis eastwards and cross the Halys river only once—one must cross it twice. He shows how the Royal Road ran south of the Halys, passing alongside the river without crossing it, at a mountain pass, the Gates of the Halys mentioned by Herodotus. By this route the mileage given by Herodotus is correct. French has thus shown that modern scholars, not Herodotus, were wrong, and this demolishes one of Sayce’s grounds for denying Herodotus’ veracity. Sayce further maintained that Herodotus could not have seen the temple and statue of Bel in Babylon because they had been destroyed by Xerxes, so Herodotus must have based his description on an older account now lost. Historians deduced that this act brought the cult of Bel to an end, and thought it significant that Xerxes stopped taking the title ‘king of Babylon’ which was supposedly linked to his participation in the New Year festival. The cult, the festival and the royal title, they supposed, all died together. Susan SherwinWhite and Amélie Kuhrt have shown that the whole temple was certainly not demolished by Xerxes, who only destroyed one of several statues, and that he continued to use, rather occasionally, the title ‘king of Babylon’ (1987: 69–78; Stolper, 1989: 294–5). Moreover, they showed that it was not necessary for the Persian king to take part in the New Year festival in order to claim that title. In subsequent years, they proved, the cult of Bel-Marduk in Babylon continued in the traditional way without interruption. Their careful study, using information

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? from recently published cuneiform texts, allows us to rehabilitate Herodotus’ account in this respect also. Sayce further said that ‘Nineveh was an uninhabited ruin in the time of Herodotus, so there could have been no dragoman there to fill his notebooks with folklore’. Recent research, however, has shown that this was not so; a Greek inscription (c. first century AD?) found very recently on an Assyrian sculpture in the palace of Assurbanipal (Figs. 1–2; Reade, 2000: 12), a fine statue of Herakles Epitrapezios in the palace of Sennacherib, and a well-carved Parthian lintel from inside the same building (Dalley, 1993: 139, figs. 1–2), suggest that parts at least of the great palaces were in use and presumably tourguides readily available for adventurous Greek travellers. In his commentary on Herodotus 1–3 Sayce belittled Herodotus for saying that the Assyrians called the goddess Aphrodite Mylitta. At that time the Assyrian reading of the name written d NIN.LÍL had not (p.173)

Fig. 1. Kalos-inscription with name Deiogenes on sculpture from the N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh. Photograph Copyright British Museum.

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? (p.174) been established. Now we have found out that it was read Mullissu in Assyrian (Dalley, 1979; Parpola, 1980: 174), Herodotus’ Mylitta can be accepted as a genuine piece of information.

Sayce did not, however, condemn Herodotus wholesale. He pointed out that Herodotus was right, and Ctesias wrong, perhaps surprisingly, about whether the Magian usurpation took place before or after the death of Cambyses. By 1888, several years after he had published his commentary, Sayce realised that the information which Herodotus gave about Sesostris’ empire in Asia was due to the misinterpretation of Hittite rock

Fig. 2. Kalos-inscription, sketch of sculpture panel to show position of the inscription. Detail from Fig. 1.

sculpture by Greeks (and others) in the fifth–fourth century: the figure of the king of Mira at Karabel near Smyrna, with its hieroglyphs in what we now call hieroglyphic Hittite (Fig. 3; Hawkins 1998), was universally thought to represent an Egyptian, because knowledge of the Hittites had died out by Herodotus’ time. The short kilt, the high crown which resembles the white crown of Egyptian kingship, the striding stance with left leg forward, and the hieroglyphs, are all comparable with Egyptian artistic conventions. Sayce (1925: facing p. 88) called the Karabel figure ‘Pseudo-Sesostris’.1 This understanding was followed by Garstang (1910: 171–2) and continued to be favoured (e.g. Bean, 1979: 33–5). Although details in Herodotus’ account were rightly shown to be at fault (e.g. S. West 1985 and 1992), the discrepancies had long been noted, and were taken only as evidence that ‘Herodotus had not seen the figures himself and had not clearly understood the information he was given’ (Bean, 1979: 34). How or where Herodotus obtained his information about the Karabel rock sculptures is unknown, but a possible line of transmission may be suggested. A fine cult of Sesostris and his son Amenemhat (III) flourished in the Fayum during the Graeco-Roman period, on the site of a temple built during the Middle Kingdom, and incorporating the remains of the original construction as a sign of continuity. Amenemhat is identified with Moeris/Manres/Marres/Menes, named in these ways by several Greek writers on Egypt and now recognised as forms of Maâ-Rê, a name for Amenemhat (Vanderlip, 1972: 67; Bresciani 1986; Widmer, forthcoming). Four Greek inscriptions were placed on a building around 88 BC, Page 4 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? all claiming to be the work of Isidorus, but the fourth is composed in such a different style that rewriting of an older work seems very likely; and since it does not mention or (p.175) refer to Ptolemy II, it may go back to before his time. The latter text claims that the Pharaoh’s maternal grandfather was Ammon ‘who is Zeus of Hellas and Asia’, and that Amenemhat son of Sesostris was king of all the world; moreover, Isidorus claims, ‘Reliably learning these facts from men who study history, I myself have set them all up on inscribed pillars and translated (into Greek) for Greeks the power of a prince who was a god, power such as no other mortal has possessed.’

This cult, though much later than Herodotus, suggests the kind of way in which Herodotus might have obtained his information, ostensibly from a reliable source in the Fayum (which he definitely visited) written or recounted perhaps in Aramaic. Herodotus did not need to know Egyptian Fig. 3. Sketch of Hittite rock sculpture at hieroglyphs or to speak the Karabel near Izmir, to show EgyptianEgyptian language to (p.176) style dress and stance. After Hawkins gather such information. Either 1998. Herodotus himself or his informants in the Fayum presumably justified their claims for Sesostris and Amenemhat by linking them with Hittite rock sculptures. This link was entirely plausible at that time because all knowledge of the Hittites and their history had vanished by then, and because so much Hittite royal iconography is derived from Egypt. Indeed, the only way in which visible Hittite remains could be included in current knowledge of ancient history was to interpret them as Egyptian. As for the confusion between Egyptian and Hittite hieroglyphs, Sayce and Garstang both found it credible. We now know that Hittite hieroglyphs were widely distributed on stone monuments; Marazzi (1986: tav.13) shows examples stretching from Ionia to Cilicia, throughout Syria and into Palestine towards Egypt, including the sites of Megiddo, Tel Aphek, and Tell Sharuen. On some of Page 5 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? them the writings of Hittite royal names appear within a cartouche which normally includes an Egyptian-derived winged disk, along with hieroglyphs. Several of the latter could easily be interpreted as the female genitalia mentioned by Herodotus (Fig. 4)—there is a choice for the imaginative voyeur. This interpretation is made less incongruous by the obvious presence among such hieroglyphs of other body parts—feet, hands, legs, heads etc. which are characteristic of several common Hittite hieroglyphs. This shows us not only how difficult it is to draw the right conclusions without good supporting evidence, but also how valuable it is to put ourselves in the shoes of people who travelled in the Near East in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and who tried to understand monuments already ancient, at a time when they lacked the knowledge that we have so painstakingly acquired during the past 150 years. Herodotus (1. 179) maintained that the Neo-Babylonian dynasty which includes Nebuchadnezzar II was simply a continuation of the Neo-Assyrian dynasty during which the capital shifted from Nineveh in the North to Babylon in the South when invasions caused destruction in the North. Early Assyriologists sharply divided Neo-Assyrian from Neo-Babylonian periods, registering them as entirely separate dynasties, a division which caused a general denial of Herodotus’ statement. But no Babylonian tradition separates the two dynasties (Brinkman, 1998), and there are various indications that modern scholars have unwittingly introduced a mistake. For Tadmor (1998) has shown that Nabopolassar, the first ruler of what we call the Neo-Babylonian (p.177)

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? dynasty, in fact associated himself with the Neo-Assyrian rulers by taking the Assyrian title ‘strong king’, šarru dannu. This suggests that we can take Berossus (Scurlock 1983)2 at face value in describing Nabopolassar as a general who served in the Assyrian army under Sin-šar-iškun before seizing the throne. As for Nabonidus, the last ruler of that so-called dynasty: his mother was almost certainly a daughter of Assurbanipal, directly linking the great Neo-Assyrian king Assurbanipal with the so-called Chaldaean king Nabonidus (Mayer, 1998). Indeed, her own inscription at Harran (Gadd, 1958) claims that a single dynastic line led from Assurbanipal (p.178) down to Nabonidus; written at her death by her son, the text presumably reflects the view of recent history taken by Nabonidus himself. An Assyrian usurper would thus be the first of our socalled Neo-Babylonian rulers; and the war which attended his succession a civil war (Dalley, forthcoming). There is no good reason, this point.

Fig. 4. Sketch of Hittite hieroglyphs with name of Tudhaliya IV to show winged disk, body-part signs, and ankh-sign. After Ugaritica III fig. 24.

therefore, for rejecting Herodotus’ narrative on

If we are to understand Herodotus with regard to Assyrian and Babylonian matters, we must look also at Ctesias. Widely believed to be reliable by his Greek contemporaries, Ctesias’ reporting of Assyrian history seems now, at first sight, to drive one to despair. The only historian to make some headway with his writings was König, (1972), whose fine edition of Urartian inscriptions (König 1957) gave him a particular knowledge of ninth to seventh century Assyrian history. This background allowed him to recognise genuine stuff in the garbled extracts of the Persica, and to pick it out in his notes. In particular, he recognised that the campaigns of Sargon II to Urartu essentially lay behind the deeds of Ninus in Armenia (Diod. Sic. 2. 1. 8–10), and that the campaigns of Sennacherib to southern Babylonia, for which Phoenician ships were built abroad (2. 16. 6), and subsequent campaigns of his son and grandson against Elam, were essentially behind the deeds of Semiramis against the ‘Indians’ in the war against Stabrobates. Since the campaign in Babylonia was closely linked to the subsequent expeditions to defeat Elamites, conflation is understandable. Page 7 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? The supposed confusion between Elamites and Indians is discussed below. König’s work has been largely ignored, partly because he was unable to show the reason why the narratives were so garbled. I think we now have new evidence to show how some of the garbling happened, and why Ctesias did not understand the process. It arises from my own research on problems associated with the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Dalley, 1992; Dalley, 2002). Why did Herodotus not mention the Hanging Gardens? Whenever I have put this question to colleagues, the same answer has come back: ‘Because Herodotus never went to Babylon.’ But this does not make sense. If the Hanging Gardens were so marvellous, so famous in Ctesias’ time, Herodotus did not need to go to Babylon in person to describe them. In collecting up material for that part of the narrative, he would not have overlooked the most famous monument in the whole of Mesopotamia. He could have described it at second hand. We shall try a different answer: he did not mention them because (p.179) the Hanging Gardens were not in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar. They were built by Sennacherib at Nineveh. Sennacherib recorded in a long inscription how he made a garden beside his palace at Nineveh, and this is matched with a landscape scene on a palace wall relief sculpture made by his grandson (Fig. 5). He invented a new machine for bringing continuous water to it, called it a Wonder for All Peoples, and dedicated a part of it to his beloved wife (Borger, 1988). These three points, if taken to refer to the palace and the gardens together, correspond to the description of the gardens given by Classical writers such as Strabo. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, however, whose building inscriptions are plentiful and complete, records no garden with his palace, no remarkable watering device, and never mentions his wife. Several pieces of evidence tend to confirm that Babylon and Nineveh were confused, and that Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib were also confused by later writers. We may note that Sayce believed Herodotus’ account of Babylonia’s remarkable fertility, and in describing the three great canals that connected the Euphrates with the Tigris, he paved the way for understanding why ancient and medieval travel writers such as John Eldred confused the two rivers. We begin with a medieval astronomical observation. Azarqiel of Toledo had access to invaluable records based on Mesopotamian astronomy which gave a usefully long period over which observations had been made consistently. Azarqiel wrote that they were made in ‘Old Babylon’. The latitude from which they were taken, however, is not that of the 33rd parallel, but near the 37th, that is, in the latitude of Nineveh. This is direct evidence that an Assyrian city, perhaps Nineveh, was known as Old Babylon, a name which harmonises with the idea that a single dynasty shifted its centre from Nineveh to Babylon late in the seventh century. The fact that a major area of Babylon proper was known as New Town would have helped to polarise ‘Old Babylon’ = Nineveh and ‘New Town’ = Babylon proper (George 1992: 24, fig. 4). We are not always as clear as Page 8 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? we would like about the extent of lower towns, as it is usually the citadel alone which has been surveyed, mapped and excavated. For instance, Sargon II’s capital Dur-Šarrukin at modern Khorsabad was built within the rebītu of Nineveh (Fuchs 1994: 3 8, Zylinder line 44), although we normally think of it as an entirely separate city. Studies on the topography of Babylon show that the course of the river as it flowed through Babylon changed either at the beginning of (p.180) (p.181) the Persian period or soon afterwards. The Hanging Gardens, had they been attached to Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, would have had to be watered from the river, so they would have been left high and dry when the old river bed dried out, before Herodotus’ day. There are no alternative watercourses in the vicinity. Sennacherib brought mountain water into his garden from 50 km. away, in a stupendous work of water engineering, from which parts of a great stone aqueduct and a dam with a sluice are still visible today.

Fig. 5. Drawing of sculpture of Assurbanipal from the N. Palace at Nineveh showing palace garden built by Sennacherib and aqueduct as described by later Greek writers.

The king who built the gardens is named as Nebuchadnezzar only by Josephus and Eusebius, both claiming to quote Berossus, but in such different forms that the text cannot be considered reliable. No other Greek source of information names the king, although Quintus Curtius Rufus says it was a king of Assyria who ruled in Babylon. This description would fit Sennacherib among other Assyrian kings. How could the story have shifted from Sennacherib at Nineveh to Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon? The main argument concerns the type of historical narrative that was current at the Persian court when Ctesias worked there. We now know that Ahiqar the Sage, whose tale is first attested in Aramaic at Elephantine, was a historical character; his friend Nabosumiskun is attested in the time of Sennacherib early in the seventh century BC (Parpola, 1980; Salvesen, 1998: 147). The Assyrian kings Sennacherib and Esarhaddon are both named during the course of the story. This is one of several court narratives which was presumably first written during the Late Assyrian period in Aramaic, not long after the events to which it alludes, giving those tricky Assyrian names in an ungarbled form. It has long been observed that the story of Ahiqar is the template for the story of Aesop, Page 9 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? whose narrative is set in the court of a Babylonian king (Perry, 1952: 6). A similar flexibility in historical background is apparent in different parts and versions of the biblical book of Esther, with variation from a Babylonian ruler to two different Persian kings. In other words, the so-called historical background shifts, even though the core narrative once had a genuinely historical basis. This can be understood as a characteristic of a certain type of wisdom literature. It was promoted by kings to show their courtiers, many of whom were deportees, how to cope with vicissitudes at court, to show that monarchy, for all its shortcomings, must be supported, since the alternative was chaos. Each ruler, each different dynasty, had a vested interest in taking up a historical event such as (p.182) the life of Ahiqar and altering the background, to use a traditional tale which was as valid in the contemporary scene as it had been in its original setting. The king is shown as a fallible character, sharing the weaknesses of lesser mortals, but his subjects always support him through his failures of judgement. Aramaic stories such as that of Ahiqar, originating from the court of Sennacherib in Nineveh, were transferred to the court of kings in Babylon, and some of them were then transferred to the courts of Achaemenid Persian kings. The phenomenon can be compared with that of other types of cuneiform Akkadian composition in which the name of the protagonist is given as ‘Anybody’ and the reader fills in the name that is appropriate for his particular occasion. In support of our claim that stories told in Aramaic were a source for Ctesias, we mention that the ship of Semiramis, transmitted by Pliny (NH 7.56) as sapanu, comes from an Aramaic word for a boat, used in late Assyrian texts as sapinatu (König, 1972: 39; Oppenheim et al., 1984: 164). Ctesias would have heard the latest version of such stories, and would have taken the historical background at face value. This explains why he and Josephus were wrong in naming Nebuchadnezzar as the builder of the Hanging Gardens. This explains why Assyriologists and archaeologists alike have found no trace of gardens, neither in Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions nor in the excavations around his palace. Herodotus too suffered from this confusion, for in attributing to Sennacherib an invasion of Egypt in 2. 141 he had switched the chronological setting from Esarhaddon or Assurbanipal, perhaps as a result of hearing a popular Aramaic story which conflated several campaigns to Egypt. In Ctesias’ day, therefore, there was a confusion between Old Babylon in the North, on the Tigris, where the great Assyrian palaces could still be seen, and New Babylon in the South, on a branch of the Euphrates; a confusion between kings of Assyria and kings of Babylon who ruled after them, and who were an extension of their dynasty. Some of these confusions arose from Aramaic stories in which the historical background had deliberately been shifted.

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? A little more information can be offered about the Aramaic stories based on events of late Assyrian history. Most of the evidence for them comes from Egypt (Dalley, 2001). It now appears almost certain that the Assyrians, who together with their client kings ruled much of Egypt for some 60 years, conducted their administration there in alphabetic Aramaic, not cuneiform Akkadian. The tomb (p.183) inscription in Aramaic of an Assyrian officer in particular indicates that this is so (Lemaire, 1995). There is another way in which we can pinpoint a confusion, by looking at how visitors to Nineveh, coming from Persepolis, interpreted scenes depicted on Assyrian palace sculpture. It is a remarkable fact about Assyrian artistic conventions that men and women are hard to tell apart. Neither in hairstyle, nor headdress, nor jewellery, nor clothing nor physical attributes are they differentiated. This problem is highlighted by the recent attempt to show that the queen of Assurbanipal, in the famous sculpture where the royal couple feasts in a garden beneath a vine, is actually a eunuch or beardless man (SchmidtColinet, 1997). Diodorus Siculus (2. 8. 6), using Ctesias as his source, described a sculpture at ‘Babylon’ in which Semiramis was on horseback spearing a lion. We know the decorative scheme of Nebuchadnezzar’s palaces at Babylon, and it does not include such images; static lions and dragons parade in lines; stylized trees and horizontal, patterned borders form repeated patterns (Fig. 6). Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, however, are full of scenes in which men actively hunt and wage war. Modern scholars mainly understand the beardless figures on Assyrian sculptures to be males, whether eunuchs or courtiers. People in the Persian period, for whom fighting men were normally bearded, may have thought all the beardless men on horseback or in chariots were female, especially as they often wore earrings and bracelets. Hence one of the beardless males could have been identified as Semiramis (Fig. 7). Another misunderstanding can be put right, one which turns out not to be ancient, but stems from a shortage of evidence for modern scholars. Semiramis was supposed to have fought the Indians, according to Diodorus Siculus, ostensibly an unhistorical story, since Assyrian power never extended nearly as far as the Indian subcontinent. As already mentioned, König (1972: 38) suggested that ‘Indians’ stood for Elamites in the Indian wars of Semiramis. On the sculptures at Nineveh, among the most frequently shown enemies are the Elamites, who were the most persistent enemies of Assyria in the seventh century (Fig. 8). They are dressed characteristically in short kilts, with bare feet, and thick, straight hair held in a band tied at the back of the head (Reade 1976). At Persepolis men identified as Indians are very similarly portrayed (Fig. 9). (p.184)

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Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? (p.185) (p.186)

Fig. 6. Wall decoration from throne room of Nebuchadnezzar II at Babylon. Staatliche Museen, Berlin (reconstruction).

Fig. 7. Stone sculpture from N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, showing Page 12 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? (p.187) It is unlikely to be mere coincidence that Elamites in the mid-seventh century BC looked almost identical to Indians in the fifth, in clothing and hairstyle. Recently two scholars have claimed, from separate work, that Elamite belongs to the Dravidian family of languages (McAlpin, 1981; Diakonov, 1985: 2–3), found now mainly in southern India. Tamil belongs to this group, Old Tamil being known between about 400 BC and 700 AD; and Brahui being now the westernmost branch, on the border between

beardless figure spearing lion. Copyright British Museum.

Fig. 8. Stone sculpture from N. Palace of Assurbanipal at Nineveh showing Elamite archers. Copyright British Museum.

modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Connections between Elamite and, on the one hand, Old Tamil (described by Lehmann, 1998) and, on the other, Brahui (described by Elfenbein, 1998), in phonology and a number of grammatical formations, especially postpositions, second person pronouns, and the noun declensions, are possible (McAlpin, 1981). The classification of Elamite as Dravidian is quoted with approval by Mallory (1989: 44– 5), and Diakonoff has been followed by Khačikjan (1998), though not by French and American scholars of Elamite language, nor by most experts in Dravidian such as Steever (1998: 37).3

Fig. 9. Stone sculpture from Persepolis showing Indian tribute-bearer. Photograph by courtesy of Michael Roaf.

The linguistic arguments on their own may be impossible to confirm, but here we have two more items of independent evidence. The Greeks Page 13 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? seem to have referred to Elamites as Indians; and Elamites at Nineveh are dressed in the same way as Indians at Persepolis. We can now pinpoint two entirely separate sources of information in Book 2 of Diodorus Siculus: Semiramis and the (Elamite) Indians led by Stabrobates have as their source Aramaic stories, derived from events of the seventh century BC (2. 16–19); whereas for the topography of India and the customs of its people, the source is Megasthenes’ Greek writings (2. 35–42), which reflect a fourthcentury background. A point at which Herodotus may have used ‘Indian’ to mean Elamite is in 1. 192, in which Assyria and Babylonia supply ‘Indian dogs’ to their Achaemenid overlords. In the Akkadian lexical list Hh XIV line 83 (Landsberger, 1962: 13) the ‘Elamite dog’ comes immediately after the main entries ‘dog’ and ‘puppy’. The only other ethnically labelled dog is the ‘Persian dog’ (Oppenheim et al. 1971: 71a, s.v. kalbu). Tour guides of the Persian period at Nineveh might have misled visitors into thinking beardless men were female warriors and (p.188) hunters, but in describing Elamites in the great battle scenes of Assurbanipal as Indians, they were speaking their version of the truth. In this way, I believe, we can at last understand what lies behind the information relayed by Diodorus Siculus, which is not so garbled as has been supposed. It does not mean that the Greeks thought Assyrian power reached the Indian subcontinent. We can connect the story of Semiramis the hunter and warrior in Diodorus Siculus to a story, which has come to light on a papyrus from Egypt (Hoffmann, 1995). The Tale of Egyptians and Amazons narrates how an unnamed Pharaoh travelled to Nineveh to visit the Assyrian Queen Sarpot, fell in love with her by enchantment, for she was a great sorceress, and helped her to defeat the Indians. The naming of Nineveh points to a seventh-century BC date, for the city was the main royal residence for less than a century. As factual historical events, one of Assurbanipal’s brothers-in-law was the ruler of a city in the Nile delta, and Egyptian troops almost certainly played a part in Assyrian battles against the Elamites. This is a very precious indication that Aramaic stories with, originally, an Assyrian background, are a missing link which connects actual history with later, legendary retellings. We have pointed to three main sources of confusion: the misinterpretation, whether by Greeks or by modern scholars, of Assyrian sculptures and their themes, already ancient in Herodotus’ day, whose original meaning was lost; our own ignorance of the affiliation of Elamites; and the naive acceptance by Ctesias and others of Aramaic stories which had shifted their historical setting. Herodotus probably heard Aramaic stories about the Assyrians when he was in Egypt. These observations in general give us a new understanding of difficulties Page 14 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? found in the writings of Greek historians on Assyrian history, and allow us to appreciate why Herodotus did not mention the Hanging Gardens of ‘Babylon’. Items for which veracity of Herodotus and Ctesias has been challenged, but subsequent work by Assyriologists has shown the challenge to be ill-informed and wrong. 1. Herodotus on sacred prostitution — G. Wilhelm, ‘Marginalien zu Herodot: Klio 199’, in Lingering over Words, Festschrift for W. Moran. Scholars Press, Atlanta 1990 = Harvard Semitic Studies 37 ed. T. Abusch et al., 505–24. 2. Herodotus on burial in oil — J. MacGinnis, ‘A neo-Assyrian Text Describing a Royal Funeral’, State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 1 (1987): 1–12. 3. Ctesias on the 30-star system (Diod. Sic. 2. 30–1)—J. Oelsner and W. Horowitz, ‘The 30-star catalogue HS 1897 and the Late Parallel BM 55502’, Archiv für Orientforschung 44–5 (1997/8): 184. 4. Herodotus on size of grain in Mesopotamia: 1. 193, ‘The blades of wheat and barley are at least three inches wide.’ Compare with Assurbanipal’s statement, ‘The grain grew 5 cubits tall in the stalk, the ear was ⅚ of a cubit long’ R. Borger, Beiträge zur Inschriftenwerke Assurbanipals (Wiesbaden, 1996), A i 46. 5. S. Zawadzki, ‘The Circumstances of Darius II’s Accession in the Light of BM 54557’, Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux 34 (1995–6): 45–9, showed that Ctesias’ account was based not on actual events but on an official version worked out at court by officials, toadies of Darius II. 6. Review article of R. Rollinger, Herodots babylonischer Logos, in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 91 (1996): 525–32, for various points including stories about ‘Nitocris’ and confusion between the Euphrates and the Tigris. 7. M. Liverani, ‘The Libyan Caravan Road in Herodotus IV 181–185’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43/4 (2000): 496–520, showed that a list of caravan stages had been transformed into a list of peoples. If turned back into an itinerary, the section gives accurate, useful information. 8. A good explanation in favour of the real existence of a Median empire is given by W. J. Vogelsang, The Rise and Organisation of the Achaemenid Empire (Brill: Leiden 1992), 173–9. Vogelsang disputes the negative view of Herodotus’ description of the Median empire which has proved so difficult to substantiate through texts and archaeology, and offers a specific alternative, positive view. Notes:

(1) Bernal takes Herodotus’ statement at face value and builds a false picture of an Egyptian empire in Anatolia from it. Page 15 of 16

 

Why Did Herodotus not Mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? (2) Scurlock gives the correct understanding of the variants for this passage of Berossus. (3) Krishnamurti’s dismissal, republished in 2001, comes from an unrevised work of 1969 and so did not take into account McAlpin 1981 or Diakonov’s work.

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1)

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) Angelos P. Matthaiou

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords This chapter re-examines the location of the Herakleion of Marathon on the basis of the find spot of two inscriptions related to the sanctuary, i.e., the regulations for the administration of the Herakleia contests (IG I3 3) and a dedication to Herakles (IG I3 1015bis). The nature of the monument bearing the epigrams of the Persian Wars (IG I3 503/4) and the original location of its erection are also discussed. The topography of the battle of Marathon is examined on the basis of the above mentioned epigraphical evidence. Keywords:   Marathon, sanctuary, Persian Wars, topography, epigraphical evidence

i From Herodotus (6. 108. 1) we know that the Athenian camp before the battle of Marathon was located at the sanctuary of Herakles:

Herodotus mentions the Herakleion again when referring to the hurried return of the Athenians to the city centre so as to confront the Persians should they land at Phaleron with a view to attacking Athens (6. 116. 1): (SC.

Page 1 of 14

 

(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) The find spots of two inscriptions related to Herakles have given since the 1970s strong evidence for the location of the Herakleion of Marathon, which constitutes a direct topographical indication of the battlefield. The first, IG i3 2/3, is opisthographic and records on one side the regulations for the administration of the Herakleia contests, a festival probably established after the battle of Marathon and honouring Herakles for his contribution to the deed. It is dated to the (p.191) decade 490–480 and was found1 in the early 1930s in a vineyard at Valaria just north of Brexiza, a small swamp located at the southern part of the Marathon plain, between Mt. Agrieliki and the sea. The second inscription, IG i3 1015 bis, is a dedication to Herakles and is inscribed on the front side of an architectural member of a monument2. The letter forms suggest a date in the third quarter of the fifth century BC. It was found3 in 1972, built into a late Roman building at Valaria to the north of Brexiza and to the south of the ruined chapel of Hagioi Theodoroi.

Fig. 1. The Southern Part of the Plain of Marathon. After AJA 70 (1966), 320.

Thus both inscriptions were found in the same place4 if not in the same field. In the IG i3 1015bis entry David Lewis summarized5 the (p. 192) dominant view in scholarship: ‘Longam de fani Herculis situ dissensionem hic titulus fortasse tandem dissolvit.’ While the find spot of the dedicatory inscription has been used as evidence for the topography of the battle, little attention has been paid to its content. Lewis adopts the following text and app. crit.:

I suppl. Lewis ap. Hansen, etiam Peek in commentario qui tamen in textu praefert ∥ 2 (Marinatos) an (Peek) non liquet; ea quae utrum suppl. Koumanoudes, quem sequitur Veer, recte rejecit Pritchett.

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) Almost the same transcription of the text is supplied by P. A. Hansen, CEG 318 (in l. 1 he has transcribed The entries produced by the two scholars leave a lot to be desired. This was acknowledged by Hansen in 1983.6 The name of the dedicator is uncertain. Even greater difficulty is presented at the beginning of the second line TOMΠΥΛIOIΣ. Following Marinatos,7 Lewis and Hansen transcribed They too, however, did not explain8 the dative S. N. Koumanoudes9 and W. Peek10 assumed, I believe rightly, that there is a crasis. Peek offered two restorations:

in commentario: He transcribed the crasis different interpretations:

and suggested two

1. The dedication was made to commemorate the Athenian victory at Pylos in 425 in which the dedicator Teles also participated. However, the battle involved Athenians and Lacedaemonians not Pylians. (p.193) Besides, in the historical period there was no city-state of Pylos in Messenia. There was one in Elis but no confrontation between Athenians and Lacedaemonians is attested there. It is also logical to assume that the dedicator would have good reason to mention the defeated Lacedaemonians. Thus, the absence of Pylians in Messenia undermines the hypothesis that

denotes a site used here instead of

as for example found in IG ii2 5221, an inscription recording the Athenians who fell in the Corinthian War. 2. According to the second interpretation, the dedicator thanks Herakles for some personal favour, which he received However, this interpetation too assumes the existence of Pylians in the Pylos area in the historical period. We thus have to reject both interpretations. Koumanoudes suggested the following transcription of line 2 of the epigram: 11

By attributing particular importance to the find spot of the inscription he offers two important interpretations: he recognizes in the partially preserved word (l. 2) the name of the festival contests in honour of Herakles in the Marathon area; these contents are known from Pindar (Ol. 9. 89; 13.no; Pyth. 8. 79) and from IG i3 2/3, which was found in the same place as the dedication.

Page 3 of 14

 

(Hdt. 6. 108. 1)

Koumanoudes understands TOMΠΥΛІΟІΣ as a crasis

and assumes

that it is a dative form of a second declension adjective linked to In other words, he supposes that the festival in honour of Herakles at Marathon bore the name

as for example In Thebes a is attested, IG vii 2465; the same epithet is

born by Artemis Arg. 902.12

Orph.

W. K. Pritchett13 accepted Koumanoudes’ interpretation but remarked that the latter did not explain exactly what crasis occurs and ruled out the forms of the definite article 14

proceeded

Lewis adopted (p.194) Pritchett’s remark and

to reject the interpretation of Koumanoudes.

Koumanoudes did not explain the crasis, because the inscription does not survive in full.15 For the crasis ο + ∈ can very well derive from the nominative, accusative or the genitive singular forms of the neuter definite article, or again from the dual

In support of his interpretation, Koumanoudes brought in the phrase found in the epigrams of the Persian Wars, IG i3 503/4, Lapis A II. According to his view, (i.e. in front of the Gates) does not have a metaphorical meaning as has been assumed so far, but a literal one;

(cf.

Hdt. 7.201; Pind. Ol. 9.86;

Xen. Ag. 2.17) was the name used for the narrow pass at the southernmost part of the Marathon plain defined by the foot of Mt. Agrieliki and the sea. The main road leading to Athens went through this pass. So Herakles was called the Marathon Gates.16

because his sanctuary was situated right at

According to Koumanoudes, the phrase indicates that during the initial stage of the battle the Athenians were positioned in front of the pass. The interpretation of this phrase is directly linked to the question of the attribution of the monument bearing the epigrams of the Persian Wars (IG i3

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) 503/4) to a specific battle, as well as with the question of the nature of the monument, i.e. whether it is honorary or funerary. (p.195) In my talk in July 1993 at the symposium in honour of D. M. Lewis I presented the monument of the Persian Wars after the discovery of the new stone block (Lapis C of IG i3 503/4). M. Korres and I reconstructed17 the plan of the original form of the monument. It was composed of at least four horizontal stone blocks which supported three stelae. As concerns its nature, I concluded by quoting Lewis from his IG i3 503/4 entry ‘Lapidis C inventio omnia etiam incertiora reddit, sed haec ad bellum Persicum spectare nemo negabit.’ The dominant view is that no reference to the deceased is made in the epigrams. Lewis states:18 ‘Ad cenotaphium rettulit Oliver, sed de mortuis nihil loquuntur epigrammata.’ However, careful examination of the monument undermines this hypothesis. As the monument is restored19 after the discovery of the new stone, it seems that it was composed of a base of at least five metres long which supported at least three large stelae. In other words, it had the form of funerary monuments recording casualty lists of a familiar type. I mention three: 1. The casualty lists of the Erechtheis and Aigeis tribes IG i3 114 7 and 1147bis. The monument was composed of ten separate stelae, one for each tribe, standing on a common base. 2. IG i3 1163. The base of this monument consists of three long adjoining stone blocks. 3. On a fragment of an Attic red figure loutrophoros (Amsterdam 2455) are preserved remains of the representation of five free standing stelae with headings of public funerary inscriptions. Two of them are readable: As Immerwahr20 has already noticed, both headings occur on the casualty list IG i3 1162. The representation on the fragment of this loutrophoros gives us a firm idea of the form of that monument. Examination of the extant traces on the new stone block, Lapis C of IG i3 503/4, showed21 that the rectangular cuttings which received the stelae measured, in their restored form, 0.70 by 0.20 m. (p.196) It thus follows that the long base bore stelae of a more or less similar size to that of a number of stelae of casualty lists.22 In the pentameter of line 2 the recovery of

of lapis C

is prominent and it is especially an olbos which is

(giver of all bloom); thus the men who are referred to by the article had lost

temporarily; this is implied indirectly by the verb

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) 23

Therefore I believe that death must have been the cause of this temporary loss. I think that this view is consistent with the belief in Greek thought of the fifth century BC, reflected prominently in Euripides, that the happiness mortals is mortal too. See for example:

It is only the dead and especially the pious for whom

of

is ever-blooming:

(Pind. Fr. Thren. (ed. H. Maehler, Leipzig 1989) vii = fr. 129. 131a. 130, 7/8) These lines are extant in [Plut.] Cons. ad Apoll. 35, Mor. 120 c:

(p.197) I thus find it very probable that the clause is an allusion to the dead. Accordingly it is possible to restore a text with reference to deaths, e.g. in the first hexameter of Lapis AI of IGP 503/4: 24

cf. IG ix I2 2, 408 (Stratus Acarnaniae, s. II a.):

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) ii In an unpublished decree25 from the Agora of Athens (Ag I 7529) dated to the archonship of Hippakos (176/5 BC), honouring ephebes, the following activity of the ephebes is mentioned (ll. 15–17):26 ‘the (ephebes) also visited Ma[ratho]n and (there) crowned [the p]olyandreion and performed a funeral contest, according to what is customarily done [in front] of the city polyandreion since they judged it a fine thing to pay [due] honour to those who fought most brilliantly for freedom.’ This testimony, confirming that the epitaphios agon (funeral contest) was also held at Marathon in the first quarter of the second century BC, is very important. We must accept that funeral contests were held both in the city and at Marathon, the former in front of the city polyandreion, as it was already known, and the latter in front of the Marathon polyandreion. Since those fallen in battle were buried in the polyandreion at Marathon (cf. Th. 2. 34. 5: it follows that its counterpart, the polyandreion of the city, was a cenotaph, erected in Athens in honour of the fallen at Marathon. From the unpublished Agora decree and also from the decrees of (p.198) the end of the second century BC in honour of the Athenian ephebes, which mention the funeral contests (cf. IG ii2 1006.22–3:

it becomes clear that the word in these inscriptions does not refer to the Demosion Sema in general, but to a specific monument,27 the cenotaph of Athens.

iii Until 1995 the find spot of the new stone block (lapis C of IG i3 503/4) was unknown. My student S. Alipheri, however, brought to my attention the report on the rescue excavation at a site by modern Plataion street where reference is made to the stone.28 Search in the archives of the Ephorate of Antiquites of Athens revealed that the stone was found in 1973, built in the retaining wall of the ancient road which led from the Kerameikos to the ancient This ancient road follows a course parallel to and in its greater part beneath modern Plataion street which begins more or less from the Dipylon and follows in the direction of Plato’s Academy. At fourteen different points of this road parts of the ancient road have been revealed. Moreover, one should keep in mind that

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) several monuments once belonging to the Demosion Sema have been found along Plataion street. I mention a few: 1. Between Plataion and Salaminos streets inscriptions were found in 1896 and 1922 from the sanctuary of Ariste and Kalliste mentioned by Pausanias (1.29.2).29 2. At Plataion, and possibly near its junction with Kerameikos street, was found in 1861 the crowning member of the monument for the hippeis who fell in the Corinthian War (IG ii2 5222). 3. On Plataion street the complete casualty list from the wars in Cherronesos in 447 B.C. (IG i3 1162) was found. Its find spot was unknown till 1995.30 (p.199)

4. At the junction of Kerameikos no. 93 and Plataion street a small fragment31 of a casualty list of the fifth century BC was found. From the three points I have discussed so far, a) the form of the monument of IG i3 503/4 and the indirect reference to the deceased, b) the holding of the funeral contests not only in the city but also in front of the Marathon polyandreion and c) the find spot of the new stone block, it follows that: 1. The monument as the Agora 32 ephebic inscription calls it) was a cenotaph, erected by the Athenians at the Demosion Sema in honor of the fallen at the battle of Marathon; it was the counterpart of the Marathon monument cf. IG ii2 1006.69) which stood above the burial of the dead at the battle. 2. The stelae that M. Korres and I restore in the plan of the monument bore the names of the deceased, as was the case with the monument at Marathon; Pausanias (1.32.3), referring to the monument of Marathon, speaks of stelae which had the names of the fallen Athenians inscribed on them under tribal headings. 3. The epigrams (16 elegiac distichs) that were inscribed on the long base of the monument should refer to the dead of the battle of Marathon. 4. As is now proved, Diodorus (11. 3 3. 3) is right in saying that the funeral contests were established after the battle of Plataia:

The funeral contests were held in front of the polyandreion in the city, that is, the cenotaph of Marathon, a (p.200) monument erected a few years after the battle. This is actually when the operation of the Demosion Sema begun.

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) Our conclusion that the monument was a cenotaph, the counterpart of that of Marathon, compels us to accept the interpretation of Koumanoudes. The phrase (IG i3 503/4, Lapis A II) has a clear topographical implication about the location where the Athenians were positioned in the first stage of the battle and it refers to the gates of Marathon. We now may add another piece of evidence; the word in the beginning 3 of the second hexameter of Lapis A of IG i 503/4 is generally transcribed and is connected to the word (i.e. Athens). Since Athens was not a city on the coast and the adjective normally defines islands or coastal cities, we should transcribe it as

and connect it with the word

It

follows that the adjective gives us a clear indication for the location of near the seashore. Furthermore, we can understand the phrase of Pindar which is an allusion to the location of the

(P 8. 79), Herakleion; by the word plain.

is meant the southernmost part of the Marathon

I believe that we can also detect one more topographical indication. Let us examine the inscription33 of Lapis C of IG i3 503/4:

In the missing portion of the first line, we should expect a verb belonging to a with its grammatical clause to which also belongs the participle components. To the subject of the verb and of the participle corresponds the takes a genitive.34 I suggest

of line 2. The preposition

linking it with the word which usually means ‘fence’, ‘enclosure’, or in metaphorical sense ‘defensive device’ (LSJ9 s.v.). Since no source35 mentions (p.201) a defence wall of any sort at Marathon, I believe is used in a different sense. I would attribute to the that here the word word the meaning of sacred enclosure of a sanctuary; see for example Hdt. 6. 134. 2:

This sanctuary should be that of Herakles.36 The Athenians before the battle made their camp at the sanctuary of that hero (Hdt. 6.108.1): At the beginning of the battle, according to the epigrams (IG i 503/4, Lapis A II), the Athenians stood in 3

front of the gates located

Since the sanctuary was that is, at the Gates, as is confirmed by the contests in honor

of Herakles which were called Herakleia

(IG i3 1015 bis), and is

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) further strengthened by the find spots of the two inscriptions related to Herakles, the two prepositional phrases are identical and they should denote the very same place. The allusion to the dead in the pentameter requires an explicit reference to death in the first hexameter, etc. It follows that the prepositional phrase e.g. a verb like implies that another stage of the battle, different from that before the battle, took place in front of a temenos of a sanctuary at Marathon and indicates also the spot in which the Athenians had great losses. Could there be another reference to this spot? Herodotus (6. 112. 3–113. 1) states that the Persians were winning in the centre, and, on breaking the line of the Athenians, they were beginning to pursue them towards the inland: (p.202)

Although they surely also had losses during the battle by the Persian ships (Herod. 6. 114), it is only logical to assume that many of the Athenian casualties happened when the Persians pursued them inland. This particular spot is 37 it was the precisely denoted by the prepositional phrase same spot where at the beginning of the battle the Athenians were aligned in

battle formation, (i.e. in front of the Gates), their objective being to protect the Gates, in other words, the pass through which the road led to Athens. I end as I started with Herodotus; his prepositional phrase mesÎgaian (towards the inland) must refer to the direction back towards Athens through the gates of Marathon, leading to Mesogeia, Pallene and the city.38 I express my warm thanks to the former Ephor of Antiquities, Dr Th. Karagiorga, for granting me permission to study and publish the Lapis C of IG i3 503/4, and to search in the Archive of the Third Ephorate, and the former Curator of Antiquities, Mrs M. Theochari, for facilitating my work. I also thank very much Profs. R. Stroud and R. Parker who kindly read my manuscript and made useful suggestions. Dr Nike Makres contributed to the translation of my paper from Greek, and I am grateful to her. Notes:

(1) Vanderpool (1942: 329 with n. 1). See also id. (1966: 322).

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) (2) I note here that the first editor Marinatos, Hansen, CEG 318 and IG i3 1015bis describe this inscription as a base. (3) Marinatos (1972: 6). See also Themelis (1974: 236). (4) Themelis (1974: 236), Vanderpool (1984: 296). (5) Cf. Lewis in Burn (1962/1984: 606–7). (6) Hansen (1983: 370, n. 34): ‘The restoration of this fragment published in 1974 can hardly be right as it stands, but it deserves attention as a point of departure, and now I feel that I have given it unduly short shrift in CEG.’ (7) Marinatos (1972: 6), cf. SEG 26. 51. (8) Themelis (1974: 236, n. 27) cf. SEG 26.51, was uncertain about whether to see in the dative an epithet of Herakles, or to associate it with the incident of Hades’ injury by Herakles in Pylos, cf. Hom. Il. 5. 395–7. (9) Koumanoudes (1978: 238), cf. SEG 28. 25. (10) Peek (1980, 34–5, n. 34), cf. SEG 30. 35. (11) As far as it concerns the metre the restoration is mistaken. (12) These two references are already cited by Koumanoudes (1978: 238); cf. also SIG 3 57.29–30 (s. Va.):

A. Th. 501–2:

(13) Pritchett (1985b: 167), cf. SEG 33. 29. (14) IG i3 1015 bis n.: ‘Ea quae supplevit Koumanoudes recte rejecit Pritchett.’ (15) I offer below two e.g. restorations of the epigram:

a. 1 nomen dedic. e.g. 78:

etc. 2

cf. Pi. Pyth. 8. b. 1

cf. AP

13, 19. 5–6. nomen patris, e.g. a, b. 2 crasis de dativo ludorum temporali sine praepositione cf. Pi. 1. 4.2,

N. 5.5,

Hansen, CEG 2. 814. 8,

(16) Koumanoudes’ interpretation was followed by Travlos (1988: 219), Van der Veer (1982: 315 and n. 96), and by Petrakos (1995: 50–1). Page 11 of 14

 

(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) (17) Matthaiou (1988: 118–22, cf. SEG 38. 29), esp. p. 120 and the reconstruction (p. 122; drawing by M. Korres). (18) IG i3 503/4, n. The same view was expressed in Meiggs–Lewis, SGHI 26, 57: ‘it is impossible to restore any reference to any deaths in the epigrams’. (19) See above n. 17. (20) Immerwahr (1990: 100, no. 674, fig. 130 (sketch)). (21) See Matthaiou (1988: 118–22), esp. p. 119 and the drawing of the new stone block by M. Korres (p. 121). (22) See e.g. the width of IG i3 1147 (0.63 m. infra); the width and thickness of the fragmentary IG i3 1147bis (width 0.594 infra), thickness 0.167), the thickness of IG i3 1153, fr. f (0.185 m.) etc. (23) The restoration is Lewis’s, who for the sense of the verb quotes Thgn. 648. Cf. also h. Hom. 27. 10. (24) In 1995 while I was examing fr. a (previously EM 6739, now Ag I 303 a) of Lapis A, I saw traces of the lower half of the letter exactly above N of line 2. They are also visible in the photograph of this fragment in Kirchner (1948: pl. 9.2). This reading rules out the generally accepted restoration (25) I saw a transcription of the text some years ago. (26) Cf. IG ii2 On the restoration see ibid. l. 69:

(27) Cf. also the word 207–223)1, ll. 33–4.

in IG ii2 1035 [republished by Culley (1975:

(28) Alexandri (1973–4: 91–2). (29) The inscriptions were republished by Papagiannopoulos-Palaios (1950: 87– 97, nos. 23–9). There were also found remains of walls belonging, according to the excavators, to the same sanctuary, but see Papagiannopoulos-Palaios (1950: 87). See also Travlos (1971: 301) and the related bibliog. (p. 302). (30) I owe this information to Mrs S. Alipheri; as she kindly informed me, the stele, according to the 19th-cent. Catalogue of Antiquities in the possession of the Archaiologike Hetaireia, was found in the foundations of a house adjacent to

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) Elaiotriveion St. That was the name of Plataion St. during the 19th cent. (for the street see Judeich (1931: Plan 1. Alt Athen, C 1, 2). (31) The fragment is unpublished. I noticed it in 1995, while I was compiling a checklist of the inscriptions, which are kept in the storerooms of the 3rd Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens. For a brief account of the excavation at that junction see Karagiorga–Stathakopoulou (1979: 22–3). (32) Oliver (1933: 487–8) was quite right, when publishing the fragment from the Agora (IG i3 503/4 A; Ag I 303 b) along with the old one (Ag I 303 a), to hold the view that the monument was a cenotaph with a stele carrying list of names of the fallen at Marathon. He depended mainly on the opening words of the fr. Ag I 303 b: (33) In the transcription of line 1 in IG i3 503/4 the estimation of the space is are not inscribed at the beginning of the pentameter; mistaken. The letters there is a space of two letters before them. (34) LSJ9 s.v.; by anastrophe cf. Hom. Il. 15. 66: 148:

Bacch. Epin. 5.

(35) The tractus arborum, mentioned only by Nepos (Milt. 5.3), through which the Athenians would prevent the Persian cavalry from surrounding them must not be taken into account, since as Herodotos explicitly tells us (6. 112. 1: the Athenians attacked the enemy and they did not stand protected by any wall. Besides, the problem of the presence of the Persian cavalry at the battle of Marathon has produced a lot of disagreement between scholars, because the evidence in ancient sources is very poor; for a discussion see Evans (1993: 293–9). (36) There is a possibility that it is of Athena, if the puzzling genitive Pallados of the pentameter is to be connected with the genitive Athena was one of the deities who were present at the battle and, according to Pausanias 1. 15.3, she at was depicted on the Stoa Poikile. There was also a cult of Marathon (Pind. Ol. 13. 40 with. Schol. (Drachmann) I, 367–9; Et. Magn. s.v. IG ii2 1358 col. II 35, 41). A boundary stone of a sanctuary of Athena was found by Soteriades (1933: 42, 44, cf. p. 34, and id. (1935: 90); Petrakos (1995: 67, 137, cf. IG i3 1082)) to the east of the church of Hagios Demetrios at Vrana at the foot of Mt. Agrieliki. I note here that the adjective

in Aristophanes Eq. 1172 in my opinion does not mean the one who fights at Pylos, as is generally accepted, but the one who fights at the Pylai (by the gates) and thus refers to the battle of Marathon.

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(Hdt. 6. 108. 1) (37) If the is not the temenos of Herakles, but that of Athena Hellotis, not the one at Vrana (see n. 36), then her temenos should be sought in the nearby area. (38) That Herodotus refers to this direction and that the road led to Pallene is supported by the fact that Peisistratos’ ancient march against Athens followed this route (cf. Hdt. 1. 62. 3), and that in the campaign of 490 Bc Hippias, son of Peisistratos, was leading the Persians. Some parts of this road, mainly from Pallene towards Marathon, have been recently excavated or traced, see Steinhauer (2001: 85–6).

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley Miltiades Hatzopoulos

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords The Macedonian logos of Herodotus has for generations delighted simple readers, while fascinating and at the same time embarrassing historians, geographers, and ethnologists, for it is the most ancient but also the most allusive account of the origins of the Macedonians and of the foundation of the Temenid kingdom. Is it just a piece of antique folklore or, conversely, of late propaganda without any historical value, or does it preserve, albeit in mythical form, a unique record of early Macedonian history? And, if we are to give it any credence, whence came the three brothers? Where was Lebaia? Where was the ‘other land of Macedonia’, ‘close to the gardens, as they are called, of Midas’? Where was ‘the rest of Macedonia’? Such are the issues which Herodotus leaves in suspense. This chapter attempts to address these issues, examining them in reverse order. Keywords:   Herodotus, Macedonian logos, Macedonian history, Temenid kingdom

1. HERODOTOS’ MACEDONIAN LOGOS ‘This Alexander was seventh in descent from Perdikkas who acquired the kingship of the Makedones in the following manner. Three exiles from Argos came to the Illyrians—three brothers they were of the line of Temenos, named Gauanes, Aeropos, and Perdikkas—and from the Illyrians they crossed over into Upper Macedonia and they came to a town Lebaia. There they served for wages as thralls in the king’s household, one tending horses, another oxen, and the Page 1 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley youngest of them, Perdikkas, the lesser stock. The king’s wife cooked their food herself; for in olden days the royal families among men and not the common people only were lacking in money. Whenever she baked bread, the loaf of the thrall Perdikkas rose to twice its size. Seeing that it always happened so, she told her husband; and as soon as he heard that, it struck him that it was a portent and signified something important. So he sent for the thralls and bade them leave his territory. But they said they had a right to be given their wages before they departed. When the king heard them speak of wages, as the sun was shining into the house through the smoke-vent, he said “That’s the wage you deserve and that’s what I give you”, indicating the sunlight; for he was crazed by a god. Gauanes and Aeropos, who were the older, stood horrified on hearing that; but the boy, happening to have a knife on him, said “We accept what you give, O king” and drew a line around the sunlight on the floor with his knife; which done, he gathered up the sunlight into the fold of his garment three times and went away, he and his companions. (p.204) ‘So they departed, but one of the king’s advisers explained what it was that the boy had done and how it was with intent that the youngest had accepted the proffered gift. On hearing this the king was enraged, and he sent some horsemen after them to kill them. Now there is a river in that land to which the descendants of these men from Argos make sacrifice as their deliverer. This river, when the Temenidai had crossed over, rose in such a spate that the horsemen could not cross through it. The brothers came to another land of Macedonia and lived close to the gardens, as they are called, of Midas, son of Gordios, in which roses grow of their own accord, each one with sixty petals, and they surpass all other roses in fragrance. In these gardens too the Silenos was caught, so it is said by the Makedones; above the gardens stands a mountain called Bermion, impassable in wintry weather. When they had acquired possession of this land, they issued forth from it and began to subdue the rest of Macedonia as well.’1 The Macedonian logos of Herodotos has for generations delighted simple readers, while fascinating and at the same time embarrassing historians, geographers, and ethnologists, for it is the most ancient but also the most allusive account of the origins of the Macedonians and of the foundation of the Temenid kingdom. Is it just a piece of antique folklore2 or, conversely, of late propaganda without any historical value,3 or does it preserve, albeit in mythical form, a unique record of early Macedonian history?4 And, if we are to give it any credence, whence came the three brothers? Where was Lebaia? Where was the ‘other land of Macedonia’, ‘close to the gardens, as they are called, of Midas’? Where was ‘the rest of Macedonia’? Such are the issues which Herodotos leaves in suspense and which I shall try to address, examining them in reverse order.5

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (p.205) 2. DISCOVERY OF AIGEAI

AND THE

The traditional and—I must admit—obvious answer to the last two questions used to be that ‘the rest of Macedonia’ referred to the later conquests of the Macedonians after the foundation of the kingdom of Aigeai and that ‘the other land of Macedonia’ close to the gardens of Midas was precisely Edessa and the region around it, where, as it was thought, Aigeai, the new capital, was established.6 Lyrical descriptions of the site usually accompanied the identification of Edessa with Aigeai.7 ‘Vodhená, in the grandeur of its situation, in the magnificence of the surrounding objects, and the extent of the rich prospect which it commands, is not inferior to any situation in Greece … There cannot be a doubt that this is the site of Aegae, or Edessa, the ancient capital of Macedonia …’ wrote W. M. Leake.8 Was it not, after all, ‘the most magnificent plateau ever to house a city’? Could one find anywhere else ‘waters more clear and more pure, air more wholesome in winter, fresher in summer’?9 Did not its gardens and orchards, full of flowers and trees, make it a real paradise, the place in all Macedonia that corresponded best to Herodotos’ description of the garden of Midas, with its roses growing of their own accord? Illyria, Upper Macedonia, Edessa (through Eordaia), Pella and finally Thessalonike, did they not perfectly trace in a straight line the spatial as well as the temporal evolution of the Macedonian people?10 One can understand the passionate reactions first to N. G. L. Hammond’s suggestion and then to M. Andronikos’s confirmation that the first Macedonian capital was not to be sought at or near Edessa but between the modern villages of Vergina and Palatitsia.11 But if the other land of Macedonia close to the gardens of Midas was not near Edessa, where was it and what did Herodotos mean by ‘the rest of Macedonia’? It was up to Hammond, who had caused the upheaval in the then small world of Macedonian scholars, to provide the answer. This he (p.206) did in several stages, initially in his communication to the first international symposium on Ancient Macedonia held in 1968, then in the two volumes of his History of Macedonia, published respectively in 1972 and 1979, still later in the second edition of the third volume of the Cambridge Ancient History, published in 1982, and finally in The Macedonian State in 1989. In a first approximation he located Lebaia and the Macedonian homeland in the mountains of Pieria.12 In the History of Macedonia volumes he reconstructed the movements of the Temenid brothers as follows: from the Makedonis, not far from Vergina, where Lebaia lay, the three brothers took refuge in the area around Naoussa, where were the gardens of Midas, returned thence to Lebaia to win the throne, fulfilling thus the portent of the breads and the sun, and advanced from there to conquer first ‘the area containing Midas’ garden’ and then the rest of Macedonia. The river to which the descendants of the three brothers still sacrificed in the time of Herodotos Hammond identified with Beres, which in his opinion is none other than the Tripotamos, the river of Beroia.13 In his contribution to the third volume Page 3 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley of the Cambridge Ancient History, Hammond defined more precisely the homeland of the Makedones as the region ‘bounded in the south by Kato Olympos, on the west by the Volustana Pass and the Haliacmon river, and on the north by the spur of Mt. Bermium which runs along the southern side of the great plain towards the mouth of the Haliacmon’, which he distinguished, as being less large, from Herodotos’ Makedonis. Rather incidentally he added that Lebaia was perhaps ‘similar to Palaiogratsiano, where much Grey Ware has been found’.14 Meanwhile M. Zahrnt, in a fundamental study on the evolution of the Macedonian kingdom up to the Persian Wars, proposed to locate the gardens of Midas in the eastern foothills of Mt. Bermion, to identify the unnamed river with the Haliakmon and, following a suggestion of K. Rosen,15 to place Herodotos’ Upper Macedonia not to the (p.207) west of Mt. Bermion but on the Pierian Mountains north of Mount Olympus.16 Thus ‘the other land of Macedonia’ would be the area between Mt. Bermion and the Haliakmon and ‘the rest of Macedonia’, the lands beyond. Zahrnt’s location of Upper Macedonia on the western slopes of the Pierian Mountains could find unambiguous confirmation in two other passages of Herodotos:17

[Xerxes] was minded to march by the upper road through the highland people of Macedonia to the country of the Perrhaebi and the town of Gonnus.

since they were informed [the Greeks] that there was another pass leading into Thessaly by the hill country of Macedonia through the country of the Perrhaebi, near the town of Gonnus; which indeed was the way whereby Xerxes’ army descended on Thessaly. These two passages leave no doubt that Herodotos considered the route opened by the Persians through the Petra pass over the Pierian mountains as cutting through Upper Macedonian territory.

3.

HERODOTOS’

AND EPIGRAPHIC

Previous speculation about the relationship between Makedonis and Upper Macedonia and the location of Lebaia became suddenly obsolete after the discovery of two manumission inscriptions from the sanctuary of the Autochthonous Mother of the Gods at Leukopetra mentioning a village Aleb(a)ia. Ph. Petsas rightly observed that, if this was, as he believed, the mythical Lebaia of Herodotos, we needed to reconsider the stages of the Temenid brothers’ Page 4 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley progression from Illyria to the gardens of Midas.18 Hammond, who so far is the only scholar to have taken into account this new development in his interpretation of Herodotos’ makedonikos logos,19 writes in his Macedonian (p. 208) State published in 1989, ten years after the second volume of his History of Macedonia: ‘Where was Lebaea? An answer was provided recently by the discovery of an inscription which recorded the dedication of a liberated slave to “the autochthonous Mother of the Gods at Alebea, a village attached to Elimea”, a city of which we know the location. If Lebaea and Alebea are the same place, which is probable, we can put Lebaea in the western part of Pieria. This is consistent with our knowledge that the early home of the Macedonians was around Pieria and Olympus …’20 Hammond’s location of Lebaia, although substantially correct, can be further qualified in the light of the complete Leukopetra corpus which is now available. The sanctuary of the Autochthonous Mother of the Gods was accidentally discovered in 1965 on the wooded slopes of Mt. Bermion overhanging Leukopetra, a village situated near the 13th kilometre of the national road leading from Beroia to Kozani through the pass of Kastania. From the site of the sanctuary there opens a magnificent vista towards the gorge of the Haliakmon and the Pierian Mountains, which rise abrupt and impassable on the opposite bank of the river. In fact, on both banks of the Haliakmon roads and shepherds’ paths wind up and down at a safe distance from the waters, which, before the creation of the artificial lake, could wax dangerously in time of flood. On one of those paths, frequented since time immemorial by transhumant shepherds who drove their flocks from the plains of Bottia and the uplands of Elemia and Eordaia to the summer pastures of Bermion early in May or returned to the plains in late October, there rose in the middle of the second century AD a small prostyle temple, a tangible and recent expression of an undoubtedly much older piety. A report on an unfinished and never properly published excavation mentions only architectural remains, inscriptions and coins. The beginning of the construction of the temple does not seem to have occurred much earlier than AD 171/2, but the oldest inscription is some thirty years older (AD 141/2). The coins extend from the reign of Antoninus Pius (AD 138–61) to that of Arcadius (AD 395–408). But we have no information whatsoever about pottery, the evidence of which would have particular weight, since shepherds generally have little to do with monumental writing and the monetary economy.21 What is certain is that on the slopes and the foothills of the Pierian Mountains, Mt. Bermion and Mt. Barnous, meeting place of shepherds and flocks, the Great Goddess of the mountains, (p.209) under her motherly or virginal aspect, as well as her male companion, received a cult probably dating from before the arrival of the Macedonians in these parts.22 The sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods has so far yielded nearly 200 inscriptions or fragments of inscriptions engraved on architectural members (columns, antae, epistylium, etc.), altars, tables, stelae, etc.23 They are mostly Page 5 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley manumissions by consecration-donation to the Mother of the Gods. These deeds always mention (1) the donor’s name and other information about him, (2) the name of the divinity, (3) the name of the person or persons offered to the Goddess along with other information about him or her, as well as, often, (4) the date and sometimes the place where the deed was enacted, (5) additional information concerning the persons implicated in the deed, (6) indications about the motives and the conditions of the deed, (7) details about the fate and the obligations of the persons donated, (8) clauses aiming at the protection of these persons, (9) details on the procedures and rules followed for the drawing of the deed, (10) sometimes, an invocation to Good Fortune and (11) very rarely, a salutation. It should be added that the inscribed texts are extracts or summaries of the official deeds written on perishable materials. Finally, the inscription sometimes reproduces a letter sent by the donor to the Goddess, which replaces the deed of donation.24 The inscriptions from the sanctuary of Leukopetra mention several place-names and ethnika, all of which, with one exception (Kyzikos), belong to Macedonia and in the first place to Beroia and its territory. The remainder, again with one exception (Pelegonike), concern, as is to be expected, communities in the vicinity of Beroia. The most distant one is Kyrrhos in northern Bottia. All the others bordered with the territory of Beroia.25 Should it come as a surprise that all the places implicated in the saga of the foundation of the Macedonian kingdom are mentioned? In March 225 a certain Ailia Ioulia Pataikia consecrated a slave whom she had raised from birth in the territory of Mieza.26 This city, between the modern villages of Leukadia and Kopanos, is situated in the area where some scholars now locate the gardens of Midas.27 In October 229 a certain Aurelia Lysimache consecrated a female slave whom she had bought from Attilios and (p.210) Kassandra from Aigeai.28 In July 253, again at Aigeai, Aurelios Poseidonios declared that he had taken the necessary steps for the manumission of two of his slaves.29 These two documents, which strengthened the evidence that the first Macedonian capital was located in the neighbourhood of Beroia and not in distant Edessa, bring us to the heart of Makedonis and to the ‘hearth’ of the Macedonian kingdom,30 the conquest of which, although omitted from the Herodotean logos, marked the beginning of Macedonian history.31 On the opposite (western) side of Mt. Bermion and the Pierian Mountains, in October 239, a certain Aurelia living in a village of Eordaia, the name of which is only partially preserved, consecrated two female slaves whom she had bought at their birth,32 while at an unknown date a certain Glauka daughter of Loukios, citizen of Eordaia, had to return to the Goddess a female slave whom she had bought with money borrowed from the sanctuary and which she was unable to reimburse.33 However, most of the donors not originating from Beroia or its territory come from Elemia. In 214/15 Aurelios Lysimachos and Aurelia Nikopolis living in the territory of the Elemiotai, in the village Douraioi, after suffering a thousand hardships at the hands of the Mother of the Gods, returned Page 6 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley to her a female slave.34 In October 244 Aurelios Kassandros living at Bistyrros (?) in Elemia offered to the sanctuary a female slave.35 And now what interests us more directly, in 252/3 a certain Aurelios Rouphos living at Alebia, a village of Elemia, donates to the Mother of the Gods a slave and her young daughter.36 This allows us to add to the dossier of Elemia a fourth donation, carried out probably in 171/2, by which a certain Phlabios Eutrapelos offered all his belongings situated in Alebaioi (topoi?) to the Mother of the Gods.37 There is no doubt that the preponderance of Elemiots among the non-Beroians at the sanctuary of Leukopetra is due to the fact that it was situated on the route which through the pass of Kastania joined the territory of Elemia to that of Beroia. What remains to be seen is where precisely Lebaia-Alebaia was located. The new epigraphic evidence definitely settles the matter in favour (p.211) of Zahrnt’s location of Lebaia, not in Makedonis, but in Upper Macedonia, which is in accordance with the testimony of Herodotos. Furthermore, the manumission inscriptions from Leukopetra specify that in Roman times Lebaia was a village of Elemia. The German scholar’s location of the kingdom of Lebaia in the hilly country north of Mt. Olympus38 as well as Hammond’s later contention that it should be put in the western part of Pieria,39 can be improved and gain in precision. To begin with, it should be made clear that there never was a city named Elemia. The Elemiotai formed an ethnos of Upper Macedonia, a civic unit equal in status with any of the cities of Lower Macedonia, and their ethnikon, unambiguously attested for the ethnos, cannot at the same time have been that of a city.40 Moreover, for obvious reasons, a town of Elemia cannot be situated in Pieria. The truth is that Elemia, like the former Ottoman kaza and the current nomos of Kozani, included part of the left bank of the Haliakmon up to the foothills of the Pierian Mountains and as far north as Daskion, where the nomos of Emathia begins. Thus Alebaia might have stood in the foothills of the Pierian Mountains though not in Pieria itself. The main archaeological site of this general area is Palaiokastron of Velvendos, which has been uninterruptedly inhabited from the late Bronze Age down to the Roman imperial period and which may or may not be identical with the Palaiogratsiano mentioned by Hammond.41 It is located on a multi-terraced hill, the natural defences of which have been strengthened by a circuit wall. Late Bronze Age kantharoi, Archaic figurines and Corinthian aryballoi, inscriptions and reliefs from the Hellenistic and Roman period with dedications to Zeus Hypsistos, Herakles Kynagidas, Hermes Agoraios, Apollo, etc. have been discovered at Palaiokastron itself or its satellite sites. However, the presence among its finds of the dedication of an agoranomos and of an imperial letter seems to indicate a city rather than a mere kome, such as Alebaia was in Roman times. For this reason, and in view of the site’s position relatively high on the western slopes of the Pierians, I have preferred tentatively to place there one of the inner Pierian cities of Balla or Phylakai42 and (p.212) to propose the Page 7 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley identification of Lebaia with the site at Bravas, down by the Haliakmon, from which have been also recovered early Iron Age hand-made pottery, Corinthian aryballoi and archaic amphoriskoi, iron weapons from the late Archaic and early Classical period and abundant Hellenistic and Roman pottery as well as a funerary inscription, a catalogue of names and two dedications to Artemis and to unnamed Epekooi Theoi respectively.43 I had also contemplated the possibility that the three brothers might have crossed the Haliakmon in a southward direction and that they had reached the Emathian plain not through the Kastania pass but along the road which from Velvendos leads to Vergina through Polyphyton, Daskion, Rhizomata and Sphekia, which, as Angeliki Kottaridou has shown, has been used by shepherds from time immemorial.44 If such were the case, the obvious ancient site for the location of Lebaia would have been at Polymylos, which recent excavations have revealed to be the most important centre of north-eastern Elemia.45 The discovery and publication in 1998 of an 46 inscription which named the western gate of Beroia left no doubt that the site at Polymylos should be identified with Euia,47 known from a passage of Diodoros48 and a letter of Philip V,49 and confirmed a contrario that Lebaia should be sought on the southern bank of the Haliakmon, probably at Bravas, unless the sites at Daskion, some five kilometres to the north-east, which Angeliki Kottaridou has been actively exploring during the last few years, should

eventually prove a more promising candidate.50 Now we can easily reconstruct the itinerary of the three Temenid brothers from Bravas (or Daskion) to Polyphyton, fording the Haliakmon near Polymylos and over Mt. Bermion through the Kastania pass and Leukopetra to the Gardens of Midas at or near Beroia.51 This was the ‘other land of Macedonia’ which they acquired and from which ‘they issued forth’ and ‘began to subdue the rest of Macedonia as well’. Although Herodotos does not choose to finish his story, there should be no doubt that the first step of the Temenid (p.213) expansion he had in mind was the foundation of the new dynastic seat at modern VerginaPalatitsia, to which Perdikkas and his followers gave the Greek name Aigeai and which became the cradle of the Macedonian kingdom. The fact that Herodotos attributes to Perdikkas the tending of sheep and goats certainly implies that he was aware of the legend according to which goats played a significant part in the foundation of Aigeai52 and perhaps also that he had heard the oracle of which Diodoros preserves a version: ‘The noble Temenidai have royal rule over a wealth-producing land; for it is the gift of aigis-bearing Zeus. But go in haste to the Botteid land, and wherever you see gleaming-horned snow-white goats sunk in sleep, sacrifice to the blessed gods and found the city of your state on the level ground of that land.’53

4. BEYOND LEBAIA The story which Herodotos heard at the Macedonian court was more than a simple narrative of early Macedonian history. It also served the obvious purpose of legitimising the rule of the royal family by establishing a distance and a Page 8 of 16

 

Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley hierarchy between the common Macedonian and a foreign dynasty of semidivine descent.54 Is there any historical truth behind this asserted duality of the Macedonian state? In recent scholarship Hammond has been a staunch supporter of the Argive claim of the Temenid dynasty,55 but most of his colleagues have rejected it.56 A rejection of the Argive ancestry, however, need not necessarily entail the rejection of an outside origin of the royal dynasty. The crucial question is who were the inhabitants of the Upper Macedonian kingdom of Lebaia, whom, as the legend implies, the new dynasty led to the conquest of Lower Macedonia. If we judge from conditions reigning in the foothills of Mt. Titarion until its liberation from the Turks less than a century ago, the main industry was transhumant breeding of sheep and goats.57 The shepherds moved thousands of stock in late April or May from the plains of (p.214) Lower Macedonia and Thessaly to the summer pastures of Upper Macedonia and drove them back to the plains in late October, sometimes covering scores of kilometres. For instance, the shepherds of Karitsa in Pieria had their summer pastures at Phteri on Mt. Titarion, those of Kokkinoplos, near ancient Pythion in Thessaly, at Kalyvia Kokkinoplou on Mt. Olympus, while those of Kalyvia Kokovas in Pieria had theirs at Polydendron in Emathia.58 The Vlachs of Livadi on Mt. Titarion spent the winter in the plains of Elassona, Katerini, and Servia, where some of them eventually settled.59 Perhaps it would not be too bold to suppose, as first Ivanka60 and then Hammond61 have suggested, that their predecessors of the Geometric and the early Archaic period did the same, moving back and forth between the mountain fastness of the Olympus and the Pierian massifs and the plains of Thessaly, Pieria, and Emathia, until, under a new dynasty, they took the decisive step of settling permanently on the edge of the great Macedonian plain. Concerning the ethnic affinities of these transhumant shepherds we possess the contemporary testimony of the Hesiodic Catalogue: ‘Deukalion’s daughter, Thyia, conceived and bore to Zeus, who rejoices in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and Makedon delighting in horses, and they had their dwellings around Pieria and Olympus.’62 Magnes was the mythical ancestor of the Magnetes, a preThessalian people originally speaking an Aiolic dialect whom the Homeric Catalogue of Ships locates round the river Peneios and Mt. Pelion.63 The same should also be true of the original Macedonians, since not only are their names formed from the same radical, but also Hesiod makes of Makedon the brother of Magnes and Hellanikos writes that Makedon was a son of Aiolos.64 It is perhaps possible to (p.215) link up this tradition with the one preserved by Herodotos, according to which the ancestors of the Dorians had lived under Mt. Ossa and Mt. Olympus,65 that is to say in the very same area as the primitive Makedones and Magnetes before they emigrated to Pindos, where they were called Makednoi. Now the ethnika regular feminine form ethnikon

as opposed to the and the Thessalian form of the masculine 67 present the distinctive voicing of the voiceless stops, 66

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley which is characteristic of the dialects of south-eastern Macedonia and northeastern Thessaly. In the latter area we encounter toponyms such as 68 69

, anthroponyms such as 70

etc. Finally, three out of the six known Perrhaibian months are also to be found in the Macedonian calendar.71 Could it be that the future Dorians came to be known as Makednoi because they lived along with the Makedones and the Magnetes ‘under Mt. Ossa and Mt. Olympus’? Be that as it may, the conclusion seems to be that the primitive Macedonians whom three brothers from Argos met at Lebaia were of the same stock as the neighbouring Perrhaibians and Magnetes. Concerning the three brothers themselves, already in Antiquity it had been thought that they had not had to come the whole way from (p.216) the Peloponnesian Argolid, but that they hailed from Argos in Orestis,72 hence the name Argeadai given to the clan under the leadership of which the conquest of Lower Macedonia was accomplished. This explanation has been adopted by most modern scholars with the notable exception of Hammond, who objected that Argeadai was not the name of the Heraklid dynasty, but of the ‘tribe’ over which they ruled.73 The publication of the great ‘stele of the Kytenians’ discovered at Xanthos, in which the latter appeal to the Xanthians for help in restoring the walls of their city, and remind them that in doing so they would be agreeable ‘to the Aitolians and all the other Dorians and particularly to King Ptolemy, who is (their) kinsman through the kings’, seems to refute that objection. For in the response of the Xanthians the allusion to the kings becomes explicit: ‘to the Aitolians and all the other Dorians and particularly to King Ptolemy who is related to the Dorians through the Argead kings hailing from Herakles’.74 The seizure of power at Lebaia and the conquest of Lower Macedonia were certainly not the feat of just three brothers. The new dynasty undoubtedly came to the foothills of Mt. Titarion along with numerous followers from Orestis.75 Now we know that the Orestans belonged to the Molossian group of peoples, who spoke a northwestern dialect.76 Such a fusion of the original Aiolic-speaking Makedones with the north-western newcomers would provide a (p.217)

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (p.218) satisfactory explanation for the mixed character of the historic Macedonian dialect and of the Macedonian calendar.77

Returning to the original question: is the foundation legend of the Macedonian dynasty and kingdom a piece of antique folklore or of late propaganda and if either of these statements be true, is it ‘geschichtlich wertlos’?78 My conclusion is that, although this legend obviously retains elements of ancient folklore and although it has probably served propaganda purposes—in my opinion principally aimed at the Macedonians themselves rather than the southern Greek cities– it preserves a unique record

Fig. 1. Map of the central Haliacmon Valley.

concerning the origins of the Macedonian people and kingdom as well as the first stages of their territorial expansion.79 Notes:

(1) Hdt. 8. 137–8, as translated in Hammond and Griffith (1979: 6–7), with minor modifications by the present writer. N.B. the following special abbreviations are used in this article: Leukopétra = Petsas, Ph., Hatzopoulos, M. B., Gounaropoulou, Lucrèce, and Paschidis, P., Inscriptions du sanctuaire de la Mère des Dieux Autochtone de Leukopétra (Macédoine), (= MEΛETHMATA, 28; Athens 2000); EAM = Th. Rizakis and J. Touratsoglou, (Athens 1985); EKM I = Lucretia Gounaropoulou and M.B. Hatzopoulos, (Athens 1998). (2) Cf. Geyer (1937); Kleinknecht (1966: 136). (3) Cf. Borza (1982: 7–13 (= 1995: 113–23); 1990: 80–4). (4) Cf. Kleinknecht (1966: 134–46). (5) Cf. Hammond and Griffith (1979: 7). (6) Cf. Abel (1847: 109); Daskalakis (1965: 99). (7) Cf. Abel (1847: 110–15); Daskalakis (1965: 99).

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (8) Leake (1835: 271–2). (9) Delacoulonche (1858: 9). (10) See Zahrnt (1984: 333) with references. Cf. the characteristic title of Petsas (1970: 203–27). (11) Cf. Petsas (1970: 204); or Andonevski (1979). (12) Hammond (1970: 63–4). (13) Hammond (1972: 433–6; 1979:6–8). (14) Hammond (1982: 281). Such a reconstruction raises several objections. The duplication of the three brothers’ movements between Lebaia and the gardens of Midas is difficult to justify. Moreover, Beres is not attested as a river. Apparently there is a confusion with Olganos, usually identified with the river Arapitsa by Naoussa (cf. Zahrnt (1984: 346, n. 67)). Finally, a further problem is created by Hammond’s location of Lebaia in Makedonis, whatever its exact situation (see the discussion by Zahrnt (1984: 352–5)), for, as Fanoula Papazoglou (1988: 133, n. 61) rightly remarks, Herodotos expressis verbis places Lebaia not in a region of such a name but in Upper Macedonia. (15) Rosen (1978: 12–13). (16) Zahrnt (1984: 346–7). (17) Cf. Zahrnt (1984: 353), with references. (18) Petsas (1984: 305; cf. 1983: 238). (19) Cf., however, Papazoglou (1988: 251). (20) Hammond (1989: 3). (21) Leukopétra 19–23. (22) Leukopétra 28–32. (23) Leukopétra 75–78. (24) Leukopétra 38–60. (25) Leukopétra 24–5. (26) Leukopétra 135–36, no. 71. (27) Cf. Rhomiopoulou (1997: 6).

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (28) Leukopétra 136–7, no. 73. (29) Leukopétra 163–4, no. 103. (30) Diod. Sic. 22. 12. (31) Cf. Leukopétra 20. (32) Leukopétra 155–6, no. 94. (33) Leukopétra 185, no. 134. (34) Leukopétra 130–1, no. 65. (35) Leukopétra 160–2, no. 100. (36) Leukopétra 166, no. 106. (37) Leukopétra 89–90, no. 12. (38) Zahrnt (1984: 347). (39) Hammond (1989: 3). (40) Hatzopoulos (1996:191). (41) Cf. Papazoglou (1988: 254–55). On the problem of the identification of Palaiogratsiano, see Karamitrou-Mentesidi (1999: 143 n. 439). (42) Leukopétra 21; cf. Hatzopoulos (1996: 109). (43) See Karamitrou-Mentesidi (1994a: 41–98; 1994b: 32–3). (44) Kottaridou and Brekoulaki (1999: 109–14). (45) Karamitrou-Mentesidi and Vatali (1999: 81–92). (46) EKM 1 41. (47) Karamitrou-Mentesidi (1999: 214). (48) Diod. Sic. 19. 11. 2. (49) EAM 87. (50) Kottaridou and Brekoulaki (1999: 110–11). (51) Cf. Strabo 7, fr. 25. (52) Hammond and Griffith (1979: 8).

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (53) Diod. Sic. 7. 16, trans. Hammond and Griffith (1979: 8), slightly modified. (54) This was the conclusion of Chevutschi (1992); cf. Malkin (1998: 134–55). (55) Cf. Hammond and Griffith (1979: 3–14; 22–31); Hammond (1989: 16–19). (56) Cf. Badian (1982: 34); Errington (1986: 12); Borza (1990: 80–4). (57) Hammond (1989: 1–4). (58) Information from G. Kontogonis map 1/200,000, Larissa sheet. (59) Cf. Wace and Thompson (1910: 210); Hammond (1976: 45). (60) Ivanka (1950: 349–51). (61) Hammond (1989: 1–4). (62) Hes. Eoeae, fr. 7, Hammond’s translation slightly modified (Hammond, 1989: 3). (63) Hom. Il. 2. 756–9. (64) Hellanic. FGrH 4 F 74. West (1985: 85), asserts that ‘When Magnes and Makedon are made the sons of a sister of Hellen (F 7), this is a declaration that the Magnetes and Macedonians to the north of Thessaly are not Hellenes.’ Debatable enough in itself, this statement in no way justifies the dissociation of the case of Makedon from that of Magnes contrived by Edith Hall (1989: 179– 80), repeated by Hall (1997: 64), and enthusiastically followed by Borza (1998: 21–2). One and a half centuries ago Abel had understood that ‘Aiolians’ was a composite category to which were ascribed all those who were neither Ionians nor Dorians (cf. Strabo 8. 1. 2; see also García-Ramon (1975: 13, 105–6). (65) Hdt. 1.56.3:

(‘For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then in the time of Dorus son of Hellen the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by the Cadmeans from the Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macedonian; thence again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took the name of Dorian.’) Cf. the similar migration of the Perrhaibians from Mt. Olympus and Mt. Ossa in the direction of the Pindus range (Str. 9.5.12 and 20). (66) Cf. M. J. Osborne (1996: 150–1)

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (67) Gallis (1977: 34, 1.9); cf. Hatzopoulos (1987: 407 n. 54). (68) For the location in the northern part of the Thessalian plain of this city and of the homonymous lake, see Helly (1995: 85–6). (69) Livy 44. 3. 1; cf. Hatzopoulos (1987: 408) (70) See Hatzopoulos (1999: 239; 2000: 113–116). (71) Cf. Trümpy (1997: 218–20 and 227–8), who, however, excludes these months from the Perrhaibian calendar, because of an erroneous conception of the Perrhaibian dialect. She rejects Xandikos, because she is not aware that the voicing of voiceless stops occurs also in Perrhaibia. As for Artemisios, as she herself admits, the assibilated forms (instead of Artemitios) may well be due to the koine influence, as is also the case with the Macedonian months Artemisios and Panemos (ibid., 262 n. 1077). (72) App. Syr. 63. (73) See nn. 58 and 59, above. (74) J. Bousquet (1988: 14–16, lines 37–42):

(‘Responding favourably to their request, we shall make ourselves agreeable not only to them, but also to the Aitolians and to all the other Dorians and, above all, to king Ptolemy, who is related to the Dorians through the Argead kings descending from Herakles; because king Ptolemy, who is a descendant of Herakles, traces his kingship to the kings descending from Herakles; to the kindred cities and to the kings Ptolemy and Antiochos, who descend from Herakles; to the Aitolians and all the other Dorians and, above all, to king Ptolemy, for he is related to us through the kings.’) (75) It is clear that the ‘family genealogy’ of the Heraklidai from Argos (Temenidai) also functioned as an ‘ethnic genealogy’ of the Macedonians. Tyrtaios (fr. 8 Prato; fr. 11 West) follows the same pattern when he calls the Spartans Herakleidai, although elsewhere he stresses their Dorian origin (see Malkin (1998: 141)). (76) Hecat. FGrH 1 F 107; cf. Hammond and Griffith (1979: 39–54); Hammond (1994).

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Herodotos (8. 137–8), The Manumissions from Leukopetra, and the Topography of the Middle Haliakmon Valley (77) Hatzopoulos (1999: 239; 2000a: 115–17); for the calendar in particular, see Trümpy (1997: 262–5). (78) Geyer (1937); cf. Errington (1986: 12): ‘Historisch geben diese Sage nicht viel her.’ (79) Cf. Kleinknecht (1966: 146, in fine).

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth John Salmon

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses what Cleisthenes' tribal system in Attica owed to Corinth. Stroud's hypothesis that the eight Corinthian tribes each had one component from the city, within and beyond the Isthmus, is extended and defended against other suggestions. Attic tribes, each with a trittys from city, coast, and inland, are very similar. Differences and similarities are explored to illuminate Cleisthenes' motives. The Corinthian pattern enabled him to separate Athenian aristocrats from their traditional support and yet to bring benefits to Alcmeonids; the deme, however, has central importance for Cleisthenes but no Corinthian counterpart. Cleisthenes cannot have made his trittyes equal: the 50 councilors from each tribe cannot come in equal numbers from three trittyes. Cleisthenes may have learned Corinthian details in the city itself, in exile on Cleomenes' instructions; but he did not understand the democratic potential, unrealised at Corinth, of what he borrowed. Keywords:   Cleisthenes, Corinth, Athens, Attica, tribes, trittys, trittyes, deme

I owe much of my professional life to George Forrest, who suggested many years ago that I think about Corinth; I am still—in many senses—enjoying the results. Even earlier, as an undergraduate, I considered Cleisthenes under his guidance; when I came later to the Corinthian tribal system, which looked similar to Cleisthenes’ arrangements, it was natural to seek Athenian help with Corinth (Salmon 1984: 207–9, 413–19). I now explore, however, what comparison with Corinth can tell us about Cleisthenes. At least in logic, that is the right way round: Corinth came first. If there is anything in the relationship, Cleisthenes

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth can be illuminated both by similarities to and by differences from the pattern which he followed. Discussion of the Corinthian tribes must start from just two lexicographical references.1 The are identified by Hesychius (s.v.) as a Corinthian (eight of tribe; and a notice in the Suda explains a proverb everything):

2

There has been much discussion of the Corinthian tribes since Stroud’s examination (1968) of inscriptions which reflect the eightfold division. A fourth century casualty list gives names under abbreviated headings: two letters followed by a dash and a third letter. The same or similar abbreviations appear in much shorter mid-fifth (p.220) century documents without separating dashes. A further text, found near the Gymnasium at Corinth and probably copied in the Roman period from an earlier original, appears to give another such abbreviation: ΦΛΗΣΥF.3

The identification by Jones of a decree of an unnamed city dated c.300 from Delos as Corinthian was a major advance: it offers not only a similar abbreviation, but unit names. Two Athenians are made citizens and enrolled in ‘hemiogdoon and triakas and tribe (phyle) and phatra’; allocation to the hemiogdoon is followed, after a space, by a two-letter abbrevation, a further space and a single-letter abbreviation; there follows allocation, in one line each, to ‘old’ tribe and to phatra:

4

The Corinthian origin of this decree was doubted by Stanton 1986, but has subsequently been characterised as certain;5 it is strongly supported by the term hemiogdoon. The word is otherwise unknown, but must mean ‘half-eighth’; so there were two in each of the eight tribes. The decree also suggests that there were two kinds of units: those which had abbreviations, to which the hemiogdoon and triakas belonged; and others, including the ‘old’ tribe Aoreis and the phatry.

The abbreviations must belong to the same system, in which two-letter examples precede those with one: the evidence provides six of the former (AΣ, KY, ΛE, ΣA, ΣI, ΣY) and three of the latter (E, F, Π). Stroud (1968) proposed a reconstruction (henceforth ‘the Stroud hypothesis’) which followed the old suggestion of Hiller von Gaertringen that KY abbreviates the only known Corinthian tribe name, the Page 2 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth (Hesych. s.v.). He identified the two-letter (p.221) abbreviations as standing for tribes, and argued that each tribe had three subdivisions, represented by single-letter abbreviations. He suggested a system very like that of Cleisthenes: the Corinthia was divided into three areas; each of the eight Corinthian tribes was made up of three subdivisions, one from each of the three areas. Strictly, the evidence does not require that the subdivisions came from three different areas, but only that each tribe had three subdivisions, however the latter were organised.6 The single-letter abbreviations, however, demonstrate that each tribe contained three units, and that each of those units had something (at least an abbreviation) in common with units in other tribes. If the units are not military (below, p. 224 with n. 19), geographical subdivisions are the most likely; no other possibility comes to mind.7 Stroud argued that one of the three areas, following the notice of the Suda, was the city;8 he conjectured, with his intimate knowledge of Corinthian territory, that the other two were divided at the Isthmus. I supported this view by reference to a passage in Thucydides (4.42.3): Corinthian troops who came from outside the Isthmus were separated, at short notice, from the rest. Thus the Isthmus could form a boundary between the areas from which Corinthian contingents came; the abbreviations of the documents can easily be made to fit: F can stand for

(City), E for

understand with the latter two

(Within) and Π for

(Beyond);

(the Isthmus) or something similar.9

Stanton (1986) accepted this pattern, but argued that the relationship between the Corinthian scheme and that of Cleisthenes was even closer: that the three areas into which Attica was divided were directly copied from Corinth, and that both territories had three areas, City, Coast and Inland. For the first two, the Attic name was the same as the Corinthian: the third Corinthian (p.222) abbreviation, however, was E, and cannot be the Attic he suggested some unknown word related to The parallel is not compelling. The abbreviation E demonstrates that Attica did not follow the Corinthian pattern precisely; more significantly, such a division flies in the face of Corinthian topography. Neither inland nor coast could be easily defined. The inland area would have consisted of two blocks, one on each side of the Isthmus, perhaps joined by a thin sliver of territory running through the middle of the Isthmus. The coast, again, would have consisted of two blocks, one along the coast of the Corinthian and the other on that of the Saronic Gulf. Nobody familiar with the Corinthia could have divided it in such a way. Very few inhabited parts of the territory can have seemed ‘inland’ to their inhabitants; almost throughout the Corinthia, even if the sea cannot be seen, its presence is felt. Stroud’s suggestion of a division into city, and land within and beyond the Isthmus, however, suits the territory admirably; the diolkos was a well defined border between the areas within and beyond the Isthmus.10 Page 3 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth The only difficulty for the Stroud hypothesis is that a hemiogdoon is surprising if each tribe had three parts: one from the city, one from within and one from beyond the Isthmus. We should have expected not a hemiogdoon, a half-eighth, but a tritogdoon, a third-eighth, just as in Attica the analogous units were trittyes, thirds. Closer inspection reveals, however, that a half-eighth suits Corinth admirably. The honorands were placed in a hemiogdoon with the 11 abbreviation F: that is, in the city subdivision the word should mean that the hemiogdoon made up roughly half the population of its tribe, and that is entirely appropriate. The heaviest concentration of population was in the city and the coastal plain, which was much the best land. Population density here was at its greatest; so the territory was divided into three areas of unequal population. The city and adjacent parts of the coastal plain provided half of each

tribe; the others, Within and Beyond, together provided the remainder.12 In each tribe (p.223) one hemiogdoon came from the City; the other from Within and Beyond areas together.13 Jones, however, still resists what approaches general agreement on the outlines. He greatly increased our evidence by correctly identifying the Delos decree as Corinthian (1980), but was forced to abandon the Stroud hypothesis, and the obvious interpretation that our texts include abbreviations for tribes, by his unnecessary insistence that AΣ F must refer to the hemiogdoon and the triakas. The text of the decree itself, if it is internally consistent, makes that improbable. The triakas, unlike hemiogdoon, tribe and phatry, is not specified by title in the allocation; if each unit is treated in the same way, there is no allocation to a triakas. Since membership of a triakas is part of the grant, its absence from the allocation is initially surprising; but it is easily explicable if it was redundant because every hemiogdoon had one, and only one, triakas:14 allocation to a hemiogdoon implied allocation to its triakas. The triakas will have been a restricted, and probably privileged, group within the hemiogdoon.15 The identification of F as the abbreviation for a triakas is both (p.224) unnecessary and inconsistent with the other allocations in the decree; it forced Jones into further improbabilities. If F is the triakas, AΣ is the hemiogdoon. Given the proverb, ‘eight of everything’, a ‘half-eighth’ must have been half of a tribe; Jones has to argue that half-tribes have abbreviations while tribes do not.16 That is unlikely in itself and it also falsifies the proverb in the very tribal context in which the Suda explains it: Jones requires sixteen two-letter abbreviations, which therefore did not come ‘in eights’. He also posits an improbable relationship between the components of his system. Hemiogdoa are ex hypothesi subdivisions of the eight tribes which gave rise to the proverb; yet he identifies the Aoreis as one of the eight.17 The Delos decree implies that it belonged to another system by defining it as an ‘old’ tribe.18 Jones identifies the triakas as a military unit. That suits the appearance of E, F and Π subdivisions in the casualty list well, and is compatible with the find-spots of all other abbreviation Page 4 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth inscriptions near the course of the city wall, but it is almost impossible that the Athenians honoured in the Delos decree were allocated to a Corinthian military unit; and the manpower of Corinth was at all periods much greater than could be accommodated in 3 × 16 groups of thirty, or anything like it.19 (p.225) Perhaps most significantly, Jones makes the order of allocation in the decree a string of improbabilities which amount to the impossible. First comes allocation to units in the current system: hemiogdoon and triakas, in descending order of size; we then reach the tribe, explicitly described as ‘old’, but it turns out to be the largest unit of the current system with which we began. We find too, since the hemiogdoon is a subdivision of the ‘old’ tribe, both that allocation to the ‘old’ tribe is redundant since it was already implicit in the hemiogdoon, and that we have followed neither ascending nor descending order of unit size, but started in the middle, descended to the smallest unit and then leaped back up to the largest. At the end of this roller-coaster, we reach a unit of a quite different kind: the phatra. By contrast, the decree progresses naturally under the Stroud hypothesis from units in the current tribal system, hemiogdoon and triakas, to ‘old’ tribe and phatra,20 components of a system which, though ‘old’, retained some significance we can no longer recognise.21 This Corinthian pattern had already existed for at least two generations, (p. 226) and probably many more,22 when Cleisthenes undertook his work. As far as we know there was not in fact, though there might well have been, an Athenian proverb ‘ten of everything’, which explained the frequency of the number 10 in Athenian institutions by the tribal arrangements of Cleisthenes, who divided the citizens into ten tribes and the city into ten parts. The organisation of citizens in new ways which replaced old structures was a common phenomenon in the late Archaic polis; in outline, Cleisthenes followed a general trend.23 In detail, however, the correspondence between his arrangements and the Corinthian scheme is close enough to make it unlikely, in the absence of anything comparable elsewhere, that he acted without any thought of Corinth; both similarities and differences are worth exploration.24 If Cleisthenes had a Corinthian model, he may have been unwilling to advertise the fact; that part of what I suggest will inevitably fall short of proof. I hope none the less that it will have some profit. It implies that the model Cleisthenes used was not that of his grandfather Cleisthenes, as Herodotus, with uncharacteristic superficiality, suggested;25 we know that already. The most obvious, but least significant, difference is that Cleisthenes established ten tribes, while there were only eight at Corinth. This may depend merely on the fact that Cleisthenes undertook to create ten new tribes at Athens at a very early stage. That is part of (p.227) what Herodotus reports at the beginning (5. 66. 2, 69. 2): Cleisthenes may already have felt committed to ten tribes by an early undertaking, made before he knew anything much of Corinth. If there was any purpose in the choice of ten, an obvious one is to demonstrate difference: it Page 5 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth might have been wise for Cleisthenes to guard against an accusation that he was foisting an alien system onto Attica,26 even if enmity between Corinth and Athens was a thing of the future; if anything, relations between them were, as Herodotus observed, broadly good.27 Despite the Corinthian proverb, one of the least important things about both systems was the number of tribes into which the citizens were divided. To ensure difference from Corinth in respect of the least significant feature of his system would allow Cleisthenes to retain what was a much more important feature for his purposes: the division into more units than the minimum of ten which ten territorial tribes required. He may, of course, have followed the Corinthian scheme for no better reason than that it already existed; and it obviated the need for thought. He could avoid accusations of importing alien institutions by creating ten tribes instead of eight, while in other respects, he reproduced what he found at Corinth in the different geographical context of Attica. That, however, is improbable. Not only were there differences of detail between the systems; the most important similarity between them brought major advantages to Cleisthenes: they both contained more units than were required for eight or ten tribes. Those numbers could have been secured by dividing the territories into as many units as there were tribes; but in both Attica and the Corinthia the number of units was tripled by dividing the territory into three areas, dividing each area into as many units as there were to be tribes, and giving each tribe one unit from each area: things were more complicated than they needed to be. It is precisely at this level that the Corinthian model enabled Cleisthenes to pursue important objectives. Whatever view we take of his purposes, the division of Attica into more territorial units than the minimum required for ten tribes must be satisfactorily explained: one of the most telling arguments against the interpretation of Siewert (1982) is that it attributes to Cleisthenes motives which (p.228) could be satisfied by simple division of the territory into ten. Much more plausibly, Lewis (1963) argued that the intention was to place aristocrats in different units from those to which much of their traditional support belonged, and the more units Attica was divided into, the more opportunities there were for such separation. Thirty units offered three times as many opportunities as ten. Indeed, thirty offered more than three times as many as ten: if tribes came from different parts of the territory by design, extra anomalies would be more easily accepted than if each tribe came from a single region. To some extent, topographical anomalies were part of the system, and for that reason, anomalies which were not part of the system could be more easily accommodated. The distribution of Alcmeonids among many of the ten tribes, no doubt intended to bring advantages to Cleisthenes himself,28 would have been almost impossible if each tribe had a single block of territory. Equally, division into only ten units could not so effectively encourage unity in an Attica that had suffered from disunity in the past.29 Page 6 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth Another similarity is that in both Corinth and Athens the old tribal units maintained themselves after the new had been created: phratries maintained a vigorous life in Athens (Lambert, 1993); and the Delos decree allocates the honorands not only to one of the eight Corinthian tribes but also to an ‘old’ tribe and a phatra. It is unclear whether the old units, either in Corinth or in Athens, continued by design. To suppress them might have been dangerous. Cleisthenes might have expected the old units to atrophy from disuse, but it is unsurprising that they did not do so in fact. Since Cleisthenes could observe that the ‘old’ Corinthian units remained, he should have known that a new system would not necessarily destroy the old. He might also, by the same token, have been able to confirm that continued existence of the old units was not necessarily a threat to what he hoped to achieve with the new—so long as he ensured that the new controlled what mattered. Regrettably, lack of evidence for the function(s) of Corinthian units prevents us from comparing them with the Athenian to identify what mattered by assessing the extent (p.229) to which Cleisthenes attempted either to preserve or to avoid any of the Corinthian functions in his own scheme.30 An important difference is that at Athens the smallest known unit, the deme, was central to Cleisthenes’ purpose. The demes had a lively existence for centuries afterwards, and it was probably this aspect which played a large part in attracting popular support for Cleisthenes: demes figure in Herodotus’ all too brief account (5.69.2). At Corinth, however, similar local units are almost entirely unknown: there is no evidence for any institutional function.31 Cleisthenes’ achievement with the demes owed nothing to Corinth, and was a major part of his work. An issue which has caused serious difficulty in the interpretation of the Cleisthenic system is whether his trittyes, the units which made up the tribes, were uniform. The comparable units in Corinth differed in size: city units were twice as large as the others. None the less, there was some uniformity: in each of the three areas of the Corinthia, the units were of similar size.32 In Attica, enormous ingenuity has been exercised in reconstructing trittyes which were equal in bouleutic representation, if perhaps not in population. The results have always, to a greater or lesser extent, defied topographical logic, but many have argued that equal trittyes can be traced in the system as it had developed by the fourth century. A (a third of the councillors from the tribe in prytany) was permanently present in the tholos (Ath. Pol. 44. 1), and bouleutic lists have been interpreted to yield trittyes which are mainly based in the same part of Attica, but which may include demes from elsewhere to secure the (p.230) numbers required for equality. There were fifty councillors in each tribe; since fifty cannot be divided by three, two of the three trittyes in each tribe under this scheme have seventeen members, while the third has sixteen.33

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth Many have presumed that this system of at least quasi-equality, if not equality, goes back to Cleisthenes, but simple mathematics makes that impossible as the number of councillors in each tribe cannot be divided by three. If equal trittyes had played any part in Cleisthenes’ design, he could easily have chosen a different size for his council: 600, 300, or even 450 councillors would have solved the problem. Nothing required a council of exactly 500. The fact that Cleisthenes chose that number demonstrates that he cannot have intended equal representation for his trittyes. What some have traced, if it existed at all, must have been a later development: as the functions of the Council increased, it might have become convenient to divide members from each tribe into three groups, and the older pattern might have undergone a complicated conversion which created trittyes which were as close to equal as mathematics allowed. The original Cleisthenic trittyes must, however, have been unequal. The argument does not depend on the Corinthian parallel, and we should no longer be tempted to argue that Cleisthenes achieved equality by forcing demes into trittys affiliations which defy both topography and sense. His trittyes should be reconstructed, as far as possible, as single blocks of territory. We should probably also cease to explore the quasi-equality of trittyes at any later period. Cleisthenes cannot have established trittys equality himself, and there is grave doubt whether it could bring enough advantage to justify the effort required to impose quasi-equality on originally unequal trittyes. The horrifying complexity of recent arguments about trittys affiliation is perhaps greater than what would have been required to change the system in the first place, but that task would not have been easy, and the most plausible reason for trittys equality is excluded by the demonstration that it cannot go back to Cleisthenes. The Athenian army fought in tribal contingents: Cleisthenes must have intended his tribes to have broadly equal population. One way of ensuring that was to construct tribes from trittyes which were broadly equal at least within each of the three areas of Attica, if not to all others—just as Corinthian tribes (p.231) were made up of units broadly equal to others in the same area of the Corinthia. Since Cleisthenes did not do that, some other explanation is required for the supposed change to quasi-equality; none presents itself.34 There is therefore much attraction in Stanton’s argument (1994) that such patterns as can be observed in bouleutic lists and other documents were not administratively but epigraphically driven; they were designed to improve the appearance of inscriptions, not the workings of institutions. The inequality of Cleisthenes’ trittyes, and the probability that they remained unequal, explains the somewhat surprising fact that they are very difficult to trace in Athenian institutions. There are occasional signs of them, but they never play a major role; if they were never equal in size, that is exactly as it should be in a democracy. Tribes were (at least broadly) equal; as democracy developed after Cleisthenes, responsibilities could be given to them, or to groups taken from them, without breaching the principle of equality. No functions, however, Page 8 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth could be given to trittyes without advantaging those who belonged to the smaller examples, even if the lot was used to determine which members enjoyed the responsibility. It is perhaps symptomatic that the only politically significant institution in which it may be possible to trace trittyes is the assembly—where equality between trittyes did not matter, because Athenians voted as individuals.35 In oligarchic Corinth, where equality mattered less, tribal subdivisions were not equal, but are much more prominent, despite our wretchedly limited evidence; indeed, the proverb is no doubt to be explained partly by the fact that subdivisions, as well as other things, came in eights. Every document with an abbreviation refers to a subdivision as well as to a tribe; and the army was deployed at least once in such a way that the subdivisions from one area were separated from the other members of their tribes (above, p. 221). All the significant differences between the Corinthian and the Attic systems can be explained by the importance of the deme in Attica. When Cleisthenes gave them institutional significance, most of them probably already had a life of their own as centres of habitation, however (p.232) small some of them may have been. Demes were the basic units of the system; but Cleisthenes had no control, or at least limited control, over their size: many, perhaps all, of them already existed, even if only informally. To force such demes into equal trittyes would have created problems, which could more easily be solved at the tribe level; he did exactly that. Finally, I consider how and when Cleisthenes exploited his Corinthian model. I take it that despite his archonship soon after the death of Peisistratus he joined the rest of his family in exile after the death of Hipparchus.36 He might have observed Corinthian realities at least then, if not earlier; but I doubt whether he returned to Athens on the fall of the tyranny already eager to apply any Corinthian lessons he had learned. He made his proposals, if we follow Herodotus’ narrative (5. 66. 2), only after being defeated by Isagoras. The historian probably gained much of his material from Alcmeonid informants; at least, that is where he heard the mendacious claim (6. 123. 1) that they had been in exile throughout the tyranny. Proposals for reform followed, and gained much popular support; but it is improbable that the support depended on anything but the proposal to make demes a feature of the new pattern, and perhaps a general promise that new tribes would be introduced to remove or neutralise the significance of the old. Details were probably not proposed so early; the exile into which Cleisthenes and 700 other families were soon forced by Cleomenes and his Spartan army (Hdt. 5. 72. 1) may have provided Cleisthenes with the opportunity to examine the Corinthian system for the first time.

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth It is likely enough that he gained his information about Corinthian tribes on the spot. One obvious refuge was Delphi, where Alcmeonids no doubt enjoyed much influence after their magnificent improvement on the temple contract (Davies, 2001b: 210–13); he might have discovered enough about Corinthian arrangements from Corinthians at Delphi. Corinth itself, however, was at least equally appropriate; perhaps more so. Cleisthenes had been exiled under Spartan threat, and Corinth was a Spartan ally; but Corinth had been much exercised in the recent past about excessive Spartan influence north of the Isthmus (Salmon, 1984: 247–50). Soon after Cleisthenes’ return to Athens, the Spartan invasion led by Cleomenes in Isagoras’ interest was thwarted at Eleusis, mainly because of (p.233) Corinthian action (Hdt. 5. 74–5). There is no evidence of collaboration between Cleisthenes and Corinth; but their interests were remarkably close, and would have been greatly enhanced by active cooperation. The withdrawal of Corinthian forces from Eleusis, which prevented the realisation of the serious Spartan threat to Cleisthenes’ new dispositions, might well have resulted from a working visit to Corinth during his exile; it may also have afforded him the opportunity to study the city’s tribal system at first hand and to recognise how suitable it was for his purposes. However that may be, Cleisthenes grasped the possibilities Corinth offered with both hands. No doubt the general idea of tribal reform was common contemporary currency. That and the demes, which were crucial in the new Attic system, may have been promised before he knew anything of Corinth; but he made excellent use of the Corinthian model when he became aware of it. The division of Attica into thirty trittyes gave him great benefits; but it was probably only when he began to consider detailed implementation of his proposals that he realised the advantages the Corinthian scheme could bring. I hope that George Forrest might have enjoyed at least this aspect of my case; I very much regret that I did not work it out in time to hear his reaction to it. In The Emergence of Greek Democracy, he argued that Cleisthenes gave Athenians the basis for their democracy, but that he was not quite bright enough to understand what he had given them. He was giving them greater independence than they had hitherto enjoyed; but he did so, as he thought, to enable them more easily to vote for him: ‘he was relying on the survival of an aristocratic mode of thought inside a democratic constitution’ (Forrest, 1966: 203). It was partly in respect of the details which he borrowed from Corinth that Cleisthenes’ understanding was defective. Release of members of the Athenian demos from aristocratic influence deployed through the old tribal system was partly achieved by using trittyes to separate aristocrats from their traditional support; they were also used to maximise the number of new tribes which Alcmeonids could influence. Both depended on the Corinthian model, but Corinthians themselves never realised its potential: their traditional deference remained strong well after Cleisthenes, despite the early establishment of a new tribal system, and democracy never took root in Corinth (Salmon, 1984: 397, Page 10 of 16

 

Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth 403–5). It was perhaps, at least in part, precisely because he found his model there that Cleisthenes did not understand the full potential of his changes: Corinthians did not (p.234) understand it either. In the absence of democratic reality to observe in Corinth, Cleisthenes was not aware of all that his changes might achieve. That was not only because he was out of sympathy with what the Athenians would make of what he gave them, but also because did not need to invent the details of the system himself. He stole them from that awful oligarchic Corinth.37 I am extremely grateful to Peter Rhodes and Ron Stroud for comments on an earlier draft of this paper: neither is responsible for the remaining errors. In particular, Stroud is not to be blamed for details I have added to what I call ‘the Stroud hypothesis’. Notes:

(1) Full treatment of the evidence is impossible in a discussion which essentially concerns Cleisthenes, but I hope that enough is given to establish the outlines. ‘When Aletes synoecised Corinth according to an oracle (2) Suda, s.v. he made the citizens into eight tribes and the city (polis) into eight parts.’ (3) Found after Stroud wrote?: Wiseman (1972: 33–8). (4) Robert (1948, 1960: lines 20–5); corrections by Stroud in Jones (1980: 165– 6): (with line ends and other potentially significant details) ‘and the | council shall allocate to I hemiogdoon and triakas | and tribe and phatry; they were allocated: hemiogdoon (space) AΣ (space) F | old (space) tribe (space) Aoreis | phatry (space) Omacchiadai.’ Jones’s ‘translation’ (1980: 175; 1998: 50) includes much which depends on his interpretation, and states more than is in the Greek. See rather Ruzé (1997: 298–9). (5) Tréheux (1989: 246); Hadzis (1997: 6–7); cf. Ruzé (1997: 298). (6) See, however, below, n. 13. (7) The single-letter abbreviations cannot represent settlements in the Corinthia such as demes or villages; they would then differ from one tribe to another. (8) Stroud (1968: 242): the Suda preserves ‘an echo of this division’. Jones objects (1998: 53) that if division of the polis in this way is in question, is a more appropriate term (see below, n. 13); that is true, but the Suda cannot be relied upon to reproduce accurately the words of its source. Jones, by arguing that the division of the city into eight parts refers to the division of the whole territory, reduces the notice to little more than tautology.

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth (9) Salmon (1984: 417); equally possible, however, are (cf. Thuc. 4. 42. 3) and which would give, respectively, Outside and Towards the Isthmus and exchange the locations of the two areas. (10) I owe to Stroud a reminder that if the tribal system was created by Cypselus (below, pp. 225–6), the boundary must in origin have been less well defined; the diolkos was built by Periander. (11) I thank Stroud for the suggestion that membership of the City hemiogdoon was appropriate for honorands: they would belong in the centre of political life. (12) Jones argues (1998: 54–5) against the Stroud hypothesis on the ground that there is no trace of anything like a trittys at Corinth; but trittyes were introduced only to illustrate the pattern: it does not demand trittyes. What is required is geographically defined units from different parts of the Corinthia which make up tribes: hemiogdoa provide them. (13) It cannot be determined whether this second hemiogdoon contained two (quarter-eighths), whether there were two (groups of fifteen) in its triakas, or indeed whether it contained a triakas at all. The singleletter abbreviations, however, demonstrate that for some purposes the hemiogdoon was divided: ΛE has both E and Π in the casualty list. Jones objects, reasonably, ‘why have two such regions if they are only to be recombined into a single larger unit?’ No answer is possible in the absence of evidence for the context in which the system was introduced; if there were any, intelligent conjecture could no doubt be attempted. Ruzé (1997: 300) observed that no more than two single-letter abbreviations are yet known for any one tribe, and proposed that each had two hemiogdoa, one from the city and one from either north or south. Since ΛE has E and П sudivisions preserved but not F, that can only be achieved if the city is designated by the abbreviation

which is much less suitable than and there would then be no reason to though of distinguish between E and F: that part of the Corinthia not in course all parts of the Corinthia were in the !—did not need to be divided, and could be designated by a single letter. Ruzé makes no attempt to explain the E and F abbreviations. (14) Strictly, perhaps, if every City hemiogdoon had one; see above, n. 13. (15) Cf. Ruzé (1997: 299). The evidence for the triakas gives only its name, so its nature is difficult to determine; but in oligarchic Corinth a privileged group of thirty (whether men or families) would be appropriate in a hemiogdoon, which made up a sixteenth of the citizen population: 16 × 30 gives 480 privileged citizens/families. It is not entirely inconceivable that the term was an approximation, that triakades contained not 30 but 32, and that each tribe

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth therefore contained 8 × 8 (64) and the city 8 × 8 × 8 (512) members of triakades: a striking example of the proverb! (16) Jones (1998: 54) divides the Gymnasium text and identifies as an abbreviation for the ‘old’ tribe Aoreis of the Delos decree: this would then be the only preserved double-letter abbreviation in Jones’s reconstruction to represent a tribe. Corinthians are unlikely to have confused themselves (and us!) by using double-letter abbreviations for two different but closely related components of their system—especially when the hemiogdooa required, ex hypothesi, sixteen different pairs, and presumably the tribes a further eight. Even the brighter Corinthians might have found that difficult to remember, and the more myopic would not easily have distinguished AΣ and AF. The last two letters are (marginally) larger and less deeply cut than the first five; but in a stone of this kind that is not enough to rule out the division an almost conclusive argument in its favour is that it follows the pattern of all other tribal documents. (17) Jones is inconsistent in this respect: he twice identifies it as one of the eight (1998: 50, 53), but later (56) accepts the Aoreis as a fourth, non-Dorian, tribe which stood originally alongside the Dorian Hylleis, Pamphyloi and Dymanes. If the Aoreis were not one of the eight, the natural conclusion that they were part of the ‘old’ (and different) system can stand. (18) Cf. Rhodes (1991: 73). Jones can only explain ‘old’ by guessing (1998: 50–1) that the eight tribes, including the Aoreis, existed long before they were divided into hemiogdoa; but the guess is contrary to the natural assumption that tribal subdivisions were contemporary with tribes, and in c.300 it was hardly appropriate to call a tribe ‘old’ merely because it was older than its subdivisions which had existed for at least a century and a half. Jones himself admits that they were not among the oldest known Corinthian tribes, for they were more recent than the three Dorian tribes (above, n.17). (19) Jones (1980: 180; 1998: 51) suggests, in part following Wallace, that is, hoplites, light-armed, and cavalry. The abbreviations prove that there was only one of each group in each hemiogdoon; if they were called triakades, they must have been introduced when Corinth had approximately 480 (16 × 30) hoplites, 480 light-armed, and 480 cavalry. There can never have been any such time. Moreover, there were no cavalry in 425 (Thuc. 4. 41. 1; Salmon, 1984: 418); it is hardly enough to reply ‘it is questionable whether that single datum can be generalized to embrace earlier and later periods’ (Jones, 1998: 51): that single datum is very close to the date of a text which has the F abbreviation (Stroud, 1968: 236). An abbreviation for cavalry is unlikely to survive a period without cavalry.

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth (20) Jones objects (1998: 53) that there is ‘no parallel for the simultaneous operation of two sets of phylai (or other units) in the same sphere of activity’ (his italics). The decree distinguishes explicitly between two types of unit by describing the Aoreis as ‘old’; that certainly allows, indeed it encourages or even demands, the conclusion that the two kinds of tribe operated precisely in different spheres of activity. Despite Jones (1998: 53–4), it is no argument against such a double allocation that there is no parallel for it: very few cities preserve ‘vestigial’ organisations (Jones, 1998: 53) alongside new ones; oligarchic (even, in many respects, old-fashioned: Salmon, 1984: 402–12) Corinth was highly appropriate for such a survival, which occurred even in democratic Athens. (21) It is difficult to see how Jones (1998: 53) can characterise this progression as ‘scarcely intelligible to Corinthians at Corinth’: Corinthians no doubt understood their own institutions. They were familiar with abbreviations which gave, often on stones with precious little else, two letters for a tribe and another for its subdivision the hemiogdoon: ‘hemiogdoon AΣ F’ gave all the information necessary for that system; ‘old’ alerted them to the fact that the next allocations belonged to the old. Contrary to what Jones supposes (1998: 53), the Stroud hypothesis assumes no relation between the current and ‘old’ systems: such a relation was introduced only by Jones’s false identification of the Aoreis as one of the eight tribes. (22) Nicolaus of Damascus (FGH 90 F 60.2) reports institutions immediately after the tyranny which presuppose the eight tribes, a fact taken by Rhodes (19 91: 7 3; cf. Ruzé, 1997: 300) to imply that ‘the creation of the new tribes followed the tyranny’. I have nothing to add here to the case that Cypselus created not only the tribes but institutions based on them which survived in Corinth when the tyranny fell (Salmon, 1984: 205–9; 1997–64–5); the logic of an important argument for Cypselus, that something was required to replace old institutions which fell with the Bacchiads, suggests a date not much later than 650. Cypselus might have created new institutions, and yet others followed the fall of the tyranny; but application of Occam’s razor will leave Cypselus as the most likely originator of the tribes and at least some of the related institutions. (23) Illuminated by, among others, Jones (1987). Cf. Meier (1999: 83, referring specifically to Corinth and Argos); Murray (1997). (24) It may seem dangerously circular to reconstruct the Corinthian system partly by reference to the Athenian, and then to argue that Cleisthenes copied Corinth. Athenian evidence, however, has not been used to support, but only to illustrate, the Stroud hypothesis, except that Athens provides a convenient parallel for the preservation of vestigial arrangements alongside new ones which the text of the Delos decree already demonstrates.

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth (25) 5. 67. 1, 69. 1. It is only a partial defence that Cleisthenes succeeded so well in depriving the old system of its force that even as acute an observer as Herodotus did not recognise it. (26) It should not be excluded that the Corinthian model could be exploited for positive purposes: doubts might have been silenced by an example which had worked well for at least two generations, and probably many more, in a friendly (below) city. (27) 6. 89; for discussion, Salmon (1984: 251–2). (28) Especially Forrest (1966: 199–200); pursued (among other advantages) by Stanton, esp. 1984. (29) Cf. Davies, below, p. 327. Corinth may already have provided an encouraging example of success in such an attempt: Salmon (1984: 208–9), but the fact that Cleisthenes followed a Corinthian model perhaps diminishes somewhat the force of the argument that one of his motives was to require different parts of Attica to work together. (30) Cf., however, Lambert (1993: 265). That the Delos decree is a citizenship grant is not enough to prove that issues of citizenship were crucial for Corinth, let alone for Cleisthenes. Any citizenship grant had to allocate to units within the citizen body, but those units had not necessarily been introduced because citizenship was at issue. Doubts remain about the reliability of Ath. Pol. (13. 5; 21. 2, 4) on the importance of citizenship from the rise of Peisistratus to Cleisthenes, even if Aristotle himself (Pol.1275b 34–9) presupposes a similar view. (31) A deme is referred to once in a Corinthian context: Herodotus (5. 92 β 1) reports that Aetion, the father of Cypselus, came from the deme Petra. The word is occasionally used in Corinthian contexts, but there is no evidence that it had any institutional significance; cf. Salmon (1984: 417 n. 18). (32) The names for the units, as revealed by the Delos decree, presume uniformity: each hemiogdoon made up roughly half its tribe, and each triakas contained thirty men/families. The Attic word is different. Etymologically, it should perhaps strictly refer to an entity which is divided into three parts, though that is not appropriate for the Cleisthenic subdivisions (Lambert 1993: 256 n. 50 with references); in other Attic contexts, it may refer to a group of three unequal parts: a threefold sacrifice of different victims (Liddell and Scott s.v.). (33) This is not the place for a history of the discussion, which can conveniently be traced in Stanton (1994).

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Cleisthenes (of Athens) and Corinth (34) Those who argue for quasi-equality believe that it was introduced by Cleisthenes, and thus do not attempt to explain the change. Minor administrative convenience is inadequate; to be persuasive, even that requires tasks performed by trittyes, and there is no evidence of anything significant. (35) For the (limited) evidence, see Bicknell and Stanton (1987); this and other cases in which trittyes appear may reflect mere convenience. (36) Archonship: Meiggs and Lewis 6; exile: Hdt. 5. 62. 2 (37) My last four words lack quotation marks: I hope none the less that others will share my confidence that I have heard them from George Forrest.

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History Thomas Harrison

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords This chapter does not aim to not to review (still less to seek to replace) earlier treatments of the ‘origins of history’. Rather, it suggests a different — broader — approach to such a question, and to offer another, complementary answer. In particular, the hypothesis will be advanced that the origins of history writing were (to a significant degree) theological. It argues that Herodotus' beliefs, convictions, and attitudes concerning the divine — far from consisting in a series of isolated and discrete passages — inform his Histories much more broadly. Herodotus' principles of selection, his organisation of his narrative, his presentation of causation, and finally (what we might term) his ‘aims and objectives’: all these can be seen to be underpinned by theological assumptions. Keywords:   Herodotus, history writing, origins of history, Histories

George Forrest never taught me formally. And only once, as part of a procedure to decide if I had a topic for a thesis, did he ever have to assess my work. On that occasion, he told me what he thought at a drinks party. He said—with a chopping movement with one hand—that what I had written was beautifully … but that he had to tell me—this accompanied by a frantic windscreen wiper gesture with both hands—that it was absolute rubbish, lies from start to finish. Curiously I left the party with the sense of having received an enormous boost. George never failed in his teasing kindness to me and to other Greek historians of my generation of graduates—I think in particular of my friends Nike Makres and Henri de Marcellus—and we for our part adored him. Here, in keeping with Page 1 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History this story, I offer George the greatest compliment I can muster: a paper that he would have hated. I say this with confidence because it builds upon, and pushes rather further, the conclusions I reached in the paper that evoked his response, and in the thesis that he allowed to be written. A number of explanations have been proposed for the origins of history writing in Greece: that it was the model of Homer, passion for Athens or Pericles, or the experience of the Persian Wars that impelled Herodotus to gather together the local traditions of the Greek poleis, and the ethnographic essays of his youth, into a single integrated narrative.1 All of these ideas have undergone a certain (p.238) refinement in recent years. Since Charles Fornara’s miniature masterpiece, Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay, attempts to pick over the evidence of the Histories for the order of its composition have given way to a more nuanced view of Herodotus’ intellectual formation. The work of Fornara, Deborah Boedeker, and others has revealed significant undercurrents in the Histories, the way for example in which Herodotus points an implicit comparison between the Athenian and Persian empires in the closing chapters of his work.2 (I for one am persuaded by this line of work that a Herodotus bedazzled by the bright lights of Periclean Athens is, at the very least, an oversimplification.3) Robert Fowler’s scrupulous work on Herodotus’ fragmentary contemporaries, as well as shedding rare light on the issue of veracity, has also taken us away from the realm of vague pronouncements and shown in detail both what Herodotus has in common with those writers in terms of methodology and those ways in which he differs from them.4 The purpose of this paper is not to review (still less to seek to replace) earlier treatments of the ‘origins of history’. It is rather to suggest a different—broader —approach to such a question, and to offer another, complementary answer. In particular, the hypothesis will be advanced that the origins of history-writing were (to a significant degree) theological. I should say first what I do not mean by this. I do not mean, first, that history is rooted in, or derives from, speculation about the nature of the gods. Herodotus’ repeated declaration that he means to exclude the divine (ta theia) from his narrative (2. 3. 2; 2. 65. 2) is often taken to refer to a much broader body of material than is justified. (I have argued elsewhere that he only means to exclude certain sacred stories in his account of Egypt.5) Herodotus does, in fact, engage in speculation on the nature of the gods, pre-eminently in the case of his digression on Heracles in Book 2 (2. 43–5). Nevertheless, a significant distinction can be drawn: while the influence of the divine on human affairs is for Herodotus patent (clear by many proofs, as he says at 9.100), the nature of divinity per se is rarely the object of his attention. It is significant that his digression on Heracles or his observation on the motivation of Demeter at Plataea (9.65.2)—that she (p.239) did not allow Persian corpses within her

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History shrine because the Persians had burnt her temple at Eleusis—are both accompanied by pious caveats.6 I also do not mean (perhaps unsurprisingly) that the origins of history lay in theology in so far as history was born from the ruins of myth, or in so far as it arose from the conscious rejection of a Homeric world-view in which gods intervene frequently and patently in human life.7 The expectation that Herodotus might have written history in the manner of Homer (implicit in comparisons between their presentations of the divine) is quite simply a false one, based on the failure properly to distinguish between Homeric and Herodotean contexts.8 In the real world (unlike the world of epic), gods do not generally make direct appearances; the conclusion that divine intervention has taken place is made on the basis of deduction from events: the miraculous distribution of the corpses at Plataea, for example. Herodotus is sceptical of certain instances, even classes, of divine intervention (perhaps most clearly, the divine parentage of mortals), but the mistake has too often been made of supposing that a single instance of scepticism is representative of Herodotus’ outlook in general. On the contrary, complete unquestioning credulity is impossible; limited scepticism is in fact necessary for belief to be maintained. As for Herodotus’ rejection of myth, it is often unclear what exactly Herodotus is supposed to be rejecting. The distinction of a chronologically demarcated spatium mythicum has at very least been gravely exaggerated (with every exception to this iron law being excused by a legalistic fall-back position9). If we take myths to be ‘traditional tales relevant to society’ (the roughly standard definition10), the Histories are arguably immediately awash with the things. If, on the other hand, we take myths to mean ‘stories in which the chief characters are gods’ (the formulation of Northrop Frye), what are we to make for example of Herodotus’ inquiry into the nature of Heracles in Book 2, a passage peppered with his most scientific vocabulary of proof and evidence?11 (Here I part company from Rosalind Thomas who has suggested that Herodotus’ vocabulary here reveals an awareness that his argument is tendentious.12) (p.240) Rather, it will be the argument of this paper that Herodotus’ beliefs, convictions, and attitudes concerning the divine, far from consisting in a series of isolated and discrete passages, inform his Histories much more broadly. Herodotus’ principles of selection, his organisation of his narrative, his presentation of causation, and finally (what we might term) his ‘aims and objectives’: all these can be seen to be underpinned by theological assumptions. Much emphasis in recent work on Herodotus has been laid on tracing motifs through his Histories: the motifs of the laughing tyrant or, of course, the wise adviser, the themes of give-and-take or rise-and-fall.13 It is important, however, not to see such motifs as too purely or self-consciously literary,14 as merely devices of organisation or dramatisation subordinate to history (thus leaving Page 3 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History that idea of history intact and unquestioned), but rather to understand them as forming part of Herodotus’ historical imagination. When we seek to describe causation in the Histories, consequently, we should not simply isolate Herodotus’ ex cathedra statements (most famously, his statement on Athens’ pivotal role in the Persian Wars at 7. 139) or his explicit statements on methodology (for example, his avowal that he is not obliged to believe every report alike, 7. 152. 3). Such a procedure would be almost guaranteed to exaggerate the similarities between Herodotus’ principles of history-writing and our own. Rather we should set such statements against the backdrop of his whole manner of presentation of causation—what we might call the landscape of causation in the Histories. One test case for this difference of approach—an example which on the face of it has nothing to do with theology—would be the role of the individual in the Histories. In a wonderful passage of his article ‘Motivation in Herodotus: the case of the Ionian Revolt’, George Forrest ascribed the importance of the individual in the Histories to two factors: first, Herodotus’ oral sources, and secondly the actual importance of individuals in Herodotus’ world:15 The British remember the austerity of Stafford Cripps, not the balance of payments (p.241) in the postwar years; and contemporaries will remember the character of Amin, or even Entebbe, long after the role of the Asian in the life of Uganda has been forgotten. Then, most important, Herodotus was writing of, if not in, a period when individuals did matter more than historians now think they matter or mattered at any time. A party leader today will impose some of his personal colour on the party and, conversely, an ancient politician could not altogether ignore the views of his hetairoi. But Dareios, Polykrates, Kypselos, and the rest meant more than Mr Trudeau or even President Carter. The implication of this is that, mutatis mutandis (taking into account, that is, the differences between ancient Greek and modern British worlds) Herodotus and Forrest are doing fundamentally the same thing, that Herodotus is a colleague. This is something that Forrest makes more explicit soon after:16 ‘In short, many a Herodotean story may seem inadequate. But before the historian condemns it, he must be sure that it is translated properly not only into his own language but also, if it makes him happier, into his own style.’ Arguably, however, there are other factors at work than merely the nature of Herodotus’ sources or the differences in ancient and modern conditions: differences, that is, in historical (or ‘metahistorical’) understanding or imagination. The world of Herodotus often appears to be a static one: the automatic fulfilment of customs would continue indefinitely were it not for the sudden, devilishly cunning intervention of a rare individual. (We may think, for Page 4 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History example, of Cyrus’ overnight conversion of the Lydians—acting on the advice of their former king Croesus—into a people of kithara-playing, slipper-wearing traders, 1. 155–6). It is not simply that in the kingdoms of the Near East a few individuals really did exercise a disproportionate degree of power; but rather that the importance of individuals—mixed, we may suspect, with an ethnocentric notion that barbarians move in packs, and with the sense that the differences between peoples are (save for a few interventions) somehow timeless—has led Herodotus to believe in the potential of rare individuals to affect their worlds disproportionately.17 This world of extremes—of acquiescence and of devilish ingenuity—brings to mind the pattern of causation described by Hayden White in his discussion of the medieval Annals of St Gall. ‘[What] (p.242) kind of notion of reality led [the annalist]’, White asks, ‘to represent in the annals form what … he took to be real events?’18 Everywhere it is the forces of disorder, natural and human, the forces of violence and destruction, that occupy the forefront of attention. The account deals in qualities rather than agents, figuring forth a world in which things happen to people rather than one in which people do things.19 The answer may not be the same (there is little of the turbulent backdrop of St. Gall in the much more ordered world of the Histories) but the same question, at least, can fairly and usefully be asked of Herodotus: what kind of notion of reality led him to represent events and peoples in the way he did, with the monotonous fulfilment of custom on the one hand, and its garish transgression on the other?

Underlying this pattern, I would suggest, is a set of conceptions concerning the role of the divine. Divinity does not only obtrude in human affairs through suspensions of ordinary expectations, through miracles or marvels, but also through the basic conditions of life. Both human customs and the natural order are, in Herodotus’ outlook, sanctioned by the divine. Human infringements of custom and of nature are regularly characterised as impious20 (we may think, for example, of Cambyses’ infringement of Egyptian custom in burning the body of Amasis, 3. 16. 2–4). Individual actions, on the other hand, are frequently portrayed as driven by a motivation that comes from outside: the desire for imperial expansion of the Persians, for example, said by Xerxes to be inspired by the god (7. 8. α), or the fateful passions (which provide a mirror to one another, as Alan Griffiths has taught us)21 of Candaules for his own wife and Xerxes for his brother’s (1. 8. 2, 9. 108. 1).22 Another fundamental pattern of the Histories is the pattern of rise and fall, a pattern that runs from the Odyssean allusion to the ‘cities of men’ (at 1. 5. 3) to the exchange of Cyrus and Artembares in the last chapter (9. 122).23 This is not the context in which to rehearse again the arguments for associating the mutability of fortune with the divine; the association is one which runs through a Page 5 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History huge body of Greek literature, and which can be seen in the Histories, for example, through the line addressed by Solon to Croesus: ‘you ask me, who understands that the divine is altogether jealous and prone to trouble (p.243) us, you ask me about human matters’ (1. 32. 1).24 What requires emphasis, first, is the pervasiveness of this model: the pattern of the rise and fall of individuals, cities, and peoples, of false expectations of success being dashed, and mad hopes realised, is one which—whether consciously developed or a matter of narrative reflex (and it is surely both)—runs throughout the Histories: a notice of good fortune is invariably a signal of impending reversal. It is not, however, simply a question of the quantity of material coloured by this conception. Herodotus’ strikingly Solonian statement near to the opening of his Histories (1. 5. 3) that he will take in both small and great cities of men, as he understands that good fortune does not long remain in the same place, also brings out a broader point: it is this fatalistic sense of the mutability of fortune which gives rise to the almost boundless remit of the Histories. The wideranging, Annales-style model of history that Herodotus instituted (and whose influence Oswyn Murray and now Katherine Clarke have trumpeted)25 is one, in other words, which is rooted in Herodotus’ conception of the divine. (Collingwood famously saw history as alien to the Greeks on the grounds that everything for them was transitory.26 Arguably, however, we might see this sense of the transitory as liberating.) This (theologically founded) idea of the mutability of fortune may also be seen to justify the inclusion in the Histories of the marvellous or the miraculous. Are the Sigynnai colonists of the Medes, Herodotus asks (5. 9. 3); he cannot tell for sure, except to say that ‘anything can happen given time’. Arguably it is this same sense—that anything can happen—which underlies his inclusion of such ‘extraordinary-but-true’ stories as the priestess of Pedasa who grew a beard whenever a misfortune was due to occur to the people of Pedasa or their neighbours (1. 175), or what Edward Hussey has termed in Oxford lectures ‘synchronous reversals’, for example his observation of the reversed climates of Scythia and Egypt (4. 28. 3). It is this also which lies behind Herodotus’ emphasis on superlatives, the loudest voice, the first to play draughts, or the ‘greatest vengeance of anyone who has been wronged’, that wrought by Hermotimus on Panionius (8. 105. 1).27 Herodotus is the witness (p.244) not only to (in our terms) the key events of history, but also—and equally—to the margins of human experience. Herodotus is also, as Jan van der Veen has observed in his (somewhat offputtingly titled) The Significant and the Insignificant, aware of the significance of the insignificant across time. One example of this (to which van der Veen dedicates a chapter) is the story of the Samian Syloson’s chance gift of a cloak to the future king Darius, then a humble soldier28 in Cambyses’ army in Egypt (3. 139–49). Much later, when Darius had come to the throne, Syloson called in his Page 6 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History accidental favour, put in his request for the island of Samos to be given to him, and so effected its destruction. (Samos was handed over to him, Herodotus notes dryly, but empty of men, 3. 149.) The gift was in no way premeditated—Syloson had no idea at the time that Darius would become king—and it seems that it is for that reason, on the grounds of its unforeseen and disproportionate consequences, that Herodotus remarks that he had given the cloak by a ‘divine chance’.29 (In other cases, Herodotus implicitly suggests that an omen would not be genuine had it been manufactured, 2. 151; 9. 91.30) This pattern has greater implications than has been realised. In the model of history of chapter 23 of Aristotle’s Poetics, the historian undiscriminatingly amasses (in the translation of Stephen Halliwell) ‘all the contingently connected events which happened to one or more persons in a particular period of time. For just as the battle of Salamis and the Sicilian battle against the Carthaginians occurred at the same time, but without contributing to a common end, so events can sometimes succeed one another in time without yielding any particular end.’ A historical fact—say, the battle of Salamis—is simply a fact, regardless of its position and function within a narrative. We all know now, of course, that the historian must handle his material selectively. It is arguable that in any historical narrative an event is inevitably selected and coloured in the light of its consequences, because of its position within a retrospective framework of explanation. (p.245) The model of small events with big consequences, it might be countered, is one that can still reasonably apply today: some British might flatter themselves that Mrs Thatcher’s stridency was the crucial factor in making a vacillating President Bush go to war in the Gulf—with what consequences? The story of Syloson arguably, however, reveals a more pronounced difference in historical mentality. It is not simply that Herodotus has undiscriminatingly amassed all the petty biographical details of Darius’ early career. Nor is it only that an otherwise insignificant and unpremeditated action is deemed important in the light of its consequences, indeed almost in proportion to its insignificance. Rather, the whole sequence of events is revealed in retrospect to be (in some sense) divinely ordered. The pattern of the divine chance of Syloson’s gift is replicated again and again through the Histories. So, for example, it was by a divine chance that Cypselus smiled at one of the team of his assassins and survived to be a scourge to the Corinthians: ‘for it was necessary for evils to shoot up for Corinth from the son of Eetion’ (5. 92. δ1). It was by a divine chance that Cyrus was born—despite some hurdles—with fateful consequences for the subsequent course of the Histories that do not need to be spelled out (1. 126. 6). The chance remark of the Spartan Ariston, that it was impossible for him to be the father of Demaratus, resulted in the deposition of Demaratus; ‘for it was necessary that these things should come to light and put an end to the kingship of Demaratus’ (6. 64). A whole series of winds, sometimes said to have been sent by the divine, again have disproportionate consequences: they send Paris to Egypt (2. 113. 1), Page 7 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History precipitating a completely futile Trojan War, Corobius to Platea (4. 151. 2), so resulting indirectly in the foundation of Cyrene, or Jason to Libya (4. 179), a journey which ends in the unfulfilled prophecy of the foundation of a hundred Greek cities on the shore of Lake Triton.31 There is a similar pattern of accidental remarks: one example from many is that of Xerxes, when Spartan ambassadors in obedience to an oracle demand justice for the death of Leonidas (8. 114. 2). His defiant response, that Mardonius, his hapless lieutenant standing alongside him, would ‘pay whatever price was fitting’ for the death of the Spartan king (8. 114. 2), is fulfilled long after by Mardonius’ death at Plataea: ‘so justice for the death of Leonidas was according to the oracle satisfied for the Spartans by Mardonius’ (9. 64. 1), Herodotus notes on that occasion.32 (p.246) This repeated pattern may fruitfully be compared with what Auerbach termed figural interpretation—a ‘conception of history’, it is important to note, which he himself thought ‘completely alien to classical antiquity’.33 As Auerbach paraphrases his own argument, figural interpretation: establishes a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfils the first … For example, if an occurrence like the sacrifice of Isaac is interpreted as prefiguring the sacrifice of Christ, so that in the former the latter is as it were announced and promised, and the latter ‘fulfils’ … the former, then a connection is established between two events which are linked neither temporally nor causally—a connection which it is impossible to establish by reason in the horizontal dimension … It can be established only if both occurrences are vertically linked to Divine Providence, which alone is able to devise such a plan of history and supply the key to its understanding. We must begin by noting a number of differences. Foremost among these perhaps is that Auerbach sees vertical and horizontal connection as sharply opposed: the connection between Isaac and Christ cuts directly across the normal time sequence, indeed passes it by completely, merging Isaac and Christ into one. In the case of Syloson, the gift of the cloak and the calling in of the favour are precisely contingently related.34 What we have is rather a kind of chronological telescoping or leapfrogging: part of the reason why Herodotus judges the initial chance ‘divine’—in addition to its disproportionate consequences—is apparently the delay between the two events. The similarity between the case of Syloson and the model of figural interpretation consists, however, in the fact that the first event in the series, the chance gift, only makes any sense in terms of its subsequent fulfilment. Secondly, though the destruction of Samos was no doubt a matter of concern for the Samians, the events prefigured in the Histories are rather less singular. A closer parallel perhaps to Auerbach’s figural interpretation would be—a related Page 8 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History phenomenon—the internal parallelisms that have been traced in the Histories by, amongst others, François Hartog: the implicit analogies drawn between the Scythian expedition of Darius and the expedition to Greece of Xerxes, of the Scythian response to Persian invasion and the Archidamian war (p.247) strategy of Pericles, or (to include Thucydides) of Xerxes’ invasion and the Sicilian expedition. We can add to this list the foreshadowings of the Peloponnesian War and Athenian imperialism highlighted by Fornara and others, or the backward glances to the Trojan War.35 In these cases, though there are sometimes connections on what Auerbach would term the horizontal plane—for example, in biographical connections that are the frequent clues to the parallelisms—in general time differences are collapsed. What we have is essentially a series of loose cycles (I do not want to put Herodotus down as an adherent to any theory of rigid circularity in history36). Unlike in Auerbach’s model, however, we are clearly not dealing here with such single looming facts as the crucifixion, or in later Christian historiography the second coming, events which dwarf—and at the same time ground—all previous history.37 Finally, the picture that Herodotus presents, as we have seen already, also provides a number of variants on the simple ‘chance occurrence leads to great consequence’, ‘little acorns into great oaks grow’, model. Divine chance can take other forms. In other cases, for instance, it is not the triggering event but the fulfilment that is revealed as divine. So, for example, in the case of the wrath of Talthybius for the Spartan murder of Persian heralds, the fact that the sons of the very same men who volunteered to die in expiation of the murder later died at the hands of the Athenians is ‘most divine’ according to Herodotus (7. 137. 1– 2). When Cambyses injures himself in the same spot as that in which he had injured the Apis calf, the same conclusion is implicit (3. 64. 3, 29. 1–2). Such divine coincidences can also occur across space as well as time: the fact that the battles of Plataea and Mycale both occurred on the same day and both alongside shrines of Demeter is evidence of the divine nature of human affairs (9.100). Neither battle presages the other. (How and why such imagined synchronisms arose is a fascinating question: it seems, contrary to Aristotle, that they arise from the sense of a common cause or a common enemy.38) Another pattern present in the Histories is that whereby a coincidence of misfortunes is seen as presaging further misfortunes (the (p.248) idea that fortunes are necessarily mixed seems to apply exclusively when fortunes are good).39 So, for example, the Chian suffering in the Ionian Revolt is indicated in advance by two great evils, the deaths of children from plague and from the collapse of a school, for ‘whenever great evils are about to occur to a city or a people, there tend to be signs in advance’ (6. 27). Similarly, of course, the unique event (for Herodotus) of the Delos earthquake makes sense to him in the light of the concentration of misfortunes that it heralded (6. 98). Thucydides too, we might note, was not immune to the same pattern of thought: he adduces the

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History concentration of omens in the course of the Peloponnesian War as evidence of the importance of his subject matter (1. 23).40 It is clear then that we are not talking here about any single rigid pattern into which Herodotus is cramming the events of his Histories. Rather, there are a whole number of ways in which the ordinary pragmatic sequence of history—‘the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary’, in Walter Benjamin’s phrase41—is distorted or ‘shot through’, all of them informed by Herodotus’ belief that prophetic signs, prefigurements, are potentially everywhere. Consequently, what appear at face value to be the most straightforward of chronological markers (perfectly equivalent to the chronological markers of modern historical narrative) may turn out to be anything but. As we have seen, for example, in the case of the wrath of Talthybius, or in the calling in of Syloson’s favour, a time delay emphasises the divine nature of the sequence of events. Similarly, when a prophecy has been delivered long before the moment at which it is fulfilled (e.g. 8. 96. 2), that serves as added proof of the prophetic (and therefore divinely inspired) nature of the oracle. Immediate fulfilment, on the other hand, is equally significant. After introducing the Lydian king Candaules, his excessive love for his wife and his trust in his lieutenant Gyges, Herodotus proceeds: ‘not much time passing, for it was necessary for Candaules to suffer misfortune, he said to Gyges the following words’ (1. 8. 2). How many of Herodotus’ other chronological markers, we might reasonably ask then, are similarly signposts on the road to the fulfilment of fate? The case of Syloson should also force us to question another apparently (p.249) ‘common-sense’ assumption: the distinction between divine and human action. In his marvellous introductory essay to Greek Historiography, Simon Hornblower distinguishes secular historiography as ‘contingency-oriented’.42 Human contingencies, however, are frequently the means through which divinity or fate are manifested. The necessity that ensured that Cypselus should grow up to be a scourge to Corinth was manifested initially through the divine chance of the baby Cypselus’ smile (5. 92. γ3), but necessity was worked out also through the reactions of the team of assassins: it had been agreed that the first man to take hold of Cypselus would dash him to the ground, but it was at just that moment that the infant prodigy happened to smile, and so he was passed along the chain of men, all equally unwilling (we can surmise) to do the deed themselves. A similar chain reaction can be seen in the escape to kingship of the baby Cyrus, again passed along a chain from Astyages to Harpagus to Mitradates until Mitradates’ wife came up with the expedient of substituting her own stillborn child for the boy born to be king (1. 107–22). ‘The concept of man as an independent moral agent’, we have been told by A. B. Lloyd, ‘is fundamental to Herodotus’ view of historical causation’.43 Did Mitradates and his wife have any choice, however? Any more than Gyges, when Candaules’ wife

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History offered him, on the one hand, the throne of Lydia and the most beautiful woman in the world (herself) and, on the other, his own death (1. 11. 2)?44 A similar pattern can be seen also on a much broader canvas in the movement towards war between Persia and Greece.45 Two main movements occur in the early books of the Histories. The first, clearly, is that of the gradual expansion of Persian power. The second is a growing flood of individual contacts between Greeks and Persians. Like the story of Syloson, all of these fit into the ‘little acorn’ mould; all of them have the effect of drawing East and West into ever closer conflict. The Persian Oroites, for example, brought the Samian tyrant Polycrates to his death, by luring him with the false promise of the wealth with which to realise his ambitions (3. 120–5)—all this because Polycrates snubbed his herald. Democedes, the Greek doctor discovered amongst the spoils of Polycrates and taken to the Persian (p.250) court, initiates a fact-finding mission to Greece, in preparation for later conquest—and all because of his desire to escape from the gilded cage of Susa to his home city of Croton (3. 129– 38). (‘These were the first Persians to come from Asia to Greece’, Herodotus observes, 3. 138. 4.) The forced transportation of the Paeonians from Europe to Asia was similarly the result of two Paeonian brothers’ eagerness for tyranny: Pigres and Mastyes impressed Darius with their hardworking sister, primed to lead a horse, turn a spindle and carry a jug on her head all at once (5. 12–14). Most fateful of all, however, in its consequences is the appeal to Aristagoras of Miletus by a group of Naxian exiles for support in their restoration (5. 30–6). Like the first falling domino, the Naxians’ appeal leads (seemingly inevitably) to Darius’ eventual launch of an expedition against Athens. Ambitious for power over Naxos but lacking in men and ships, Aristagoras, by dwelling on the island’s wealth, draws in his ‘friend’ Artaphernes. The failure of the expedition to Naxos then, together with its spiralling cost and a timely message from Histiaeus of Miletus (like Democedes, driven by the desire to return home from his gilded cage, 5. 106–7), combines to encourage Aristagoras to initiate the Ionian Revolt against Persian rule. The Ionian Revolt is then vital, of course, in bringing about the first hostile contact between the Persians and the Greeks of the mainland. The twenty ships sent by the Athenians (in response to Aristagoras’ tales of the fabulous wealth of Asia, 5. 97; cf. 5. 49) marked, in Herodotus’ judgement ‘the beginning of evils for both Greeks and Barbarians’ (5. 97. 3). Their part in the destruction of Sardis also served to inflame Darius: the constant injunctions of his servant to ‘remember Athens’ (the servant remembered to do as he was told: 5. 105, 6. 94), the encouragement of the Peisistratids, and the Athenians’ refusal to offer earth and water, all provoked Darius to order the enslavement of Athens. This piling on of causes might appear at first sight to be the very absence of serious historical explanation and analysis: rather than choosing between alternative causes for the wars, Herodotus, it might be said, has simply amassed them. Herodotean causation, Oswyn Murray has written, is apparently ‘limited Page 11 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History to two main areas, the explanation of events in terms of personalities, and belief in the inevitability of the rise and fall of states’.46 Such a verdict, however, (p. 251) arguably underestimates the meticulous care with which Herodotus keeps such personal causes ‘in play’, and with which he threads them together into a single narrative.47 It also misses the lesson of Syloson of Samos: that is, the significance of the apparently insignificant cause. Where, it might be asked, is the divine in any of these chains of human causation? It is, as with the escapes from death of Cyrus or Cypselus, in the coincidence of causes that gave Aristagoras no choice but to revolt, or in the similar multiple causes which— mixed with the national stereotype of ceaseless aggression in which the Persians are trapped—provoke Darius to take revenge against Athens. It is in the repeated emphasis on the trivial origins of great events, or in the stress laid on what we might term moments of ignition, the first points of contact between Greeks and barbarians.48 If divinity can manifest itself through such chains of human contingency, who can say where human history ends and divine history begins? Finally, I would like to go back to the question with which this paper began: why it was and how it was that Herodotus wrote the work he did. If asked the question of Herodotus’ aims in writing, our first instincts would probably be to point to the Proem of the Histories: to say that Herodotus intended to record the deeds of men for posterity, or (with John Gould) that he felt a duty to the past.49 This concentration on Herodotus’ explicit professions of his purpose can only ever be a small part of the story, however. Any view of Herodotus’ aims must also, and primarily, depend upon a reading of the Histories as a whole. On the basis of the arguments presented so far, the foundations of Herodotean historiography could only be said to be theological in a fairly weak sense: Herodotean narrative may be inflected by, Herodotean causation informed by, assumptions concerning the divine, but could not similar claims be made of other areas of his thought (his (p.252) taking for granted of certain social values, for example)? The stakes may, with confidence, be raised. Certainly, the Histories are pervaded by religious assumptions. At the same time, however, one of his primary aims in writing was an evangelising motive. Of course, as we are often told, proselytising was alien to Greek religion: I do not mean to suggest here that Herodotus wanted to convert the heathen (though foreign peoples in the Histories are differentiated in terms of religion to a much greater extent than is often thought).50 Nor do I want, with Charles Fornara,51 to see Herodotus as a conscious religious reactionary, providing implicit commentaries on the ideas of the sophists (though certainly he was aware of, and responded to, those developments). Rather Herodotus’ evangelising is part of an ongoing dialogue within Greek religion, a constant process of the regeneration and affirmation (and, doubtless, also modification) of shared religious values.52

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History Why does Herodotus include prophecies and omens in his Histories? In part because they are, as he sees it, sources of sure knowledge.53 Only rarely, however—for example, in the case of the Delos earthquake, fulfilled by three generations of misfortunes lasting up to Herodotus’ own day (6.98)54—do they refer to a period later than the end of the chronological range of the Histories. For this very prosaic reason it is not possible to see history according to Herodotus as a form of ‘prophecy in reverse’ (in the phrase of Karl Löwith in his discussion of Christian historiography), concerned to ‘[demonstrate] the past as a meaningful “preparation” for the future’;55 nor can the historical past, in Herodotus’ view, be the mere ‘shadow of the future’ (in Augustine’s expression).56 Herodotus writes largely from a chronological vantage point by which omens and prophecies have been fulfilled or (in the case of those which refer to the Peloponnesian War) are in the course of fulfilment.57 (p.253) Sometimes we may be able to argue that prophecies are included to make a narrow point, specific to their context in the narrative—although we can never be confident that this is their sole or exclusive function. The prophecies collected by Mardonius at the end of Book 8 almost persuade the Persians of the need to make an alliance with the Athenians; the Persians’ failure to heed these oracles (or the unfavourable omens at Plataea) are an underestimated factor in Herodotus’ explanation of the Persians’ defeat, one of a series of wrong turnings which allowed the Themistoclean strategy to succeed.58 But in other cases this kind of internal explanation of the relevance of prophecy is unavailable. When, for example, after Salamis, Herodotus includes the prophecy of Lysistratus (8. 96. 2), the prophecy, and Herodotus’ notice of its fulfilment, represent a narrative dead-end. The prophecy’s fulfilment, in other words, is worthy of inclusion in its own right; but the fulfilment of one prophecy stands also as proof of the potential for the fulfilment of prophecy in general. What Isaac Newton said of prophecy is also, I think, fundamentally true of Herodotus:59 The folly of interpreters hath been to foretell times and things by this prophecy [of St John], as if God designed to make them prophets … The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things; but that, after they were fulfilled, they might be interpreted by the event, and his own providence, not the interpreters’, be then manifested thereby to the world. Similarly, though not all of the events described in the Histories can be said to have been prophetically prefigured, so many events are indeed prefigured (and so many events integral to the causative skeleton of the Histories: the fall of Croesus, the repulse of the Persian invasions) that we may say that, for Herodotus, the unfolding of events is also the unfolding of a (loosely) predestined pattern. The fact that fulfilment usually occurs within the chronological scope of the narrative, or at the time of Herodotus’ own writing, Page 13 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History though it reduces the extent to which the Histories as a whole (that is, the work (p.254) itself) may be said to be prophetic of future events,60 only emphasises the prophetic quality of the material contained within the Histories. It also emphasises Herodotus’ status as a seemingly omniscient narrator, writing from a vantage point at which the pattern of history is (all but) complete. This can also be seen, at a lower level, in the ‘epic’ technique of ring composition, the anticipation of the end of a logos at its beginning, for example the logos of Candaules, destined to come to a bad end (1.8)—a narrative pattern that has been termed in another context the ‘plot of predestination’.61 Similar morals are implicit in other forms of divine intervention in the Histories. Every reversal of fortune in the Histories—of which the greatest, of course, is the repulse of Xerxes’ expedition, frequently termed impossible62—is an instance of the power of divinity to affect events. Miracles or instances of retribution also imply the moral that men should take notice of the gods. Why did the divine (daimonion) serve out destruction to the Trojans, except to make clear to men that great injustices meet with great vengeances from the gods (2. 120. 5)? In the case of the story of Artayctes and Protesilaus, with its moral that Protesilaus, though dead and dry, still has power from the gods to punish wrongdoers (9. 120. 2), the moral is amplified by the position of the story as the penultimate episode in the Histories: the lesson that vengeance can always come is a lesson of the Histories as a whole. Even to answer the question of how and why Herodotus wrote in these broader terms is still, however, perhaps too narrow. As well as asking why he wrote, we must also ask what allowed or enabled him to write. In what sense, for example, did the Persian Wars inspire Herodotus to write the Histories as they stand? A narrowly biographical explanation, anyway deeply speculative—that he heard his father’s or uncle’s reminiscences and thought ‘Gosh, there’s a book in that!’ may (just) be a plausible reconstruction. Clearly, however, it tells us little or nothing about the Histories. Rather, just as it has been argued that the development of the novel—with its simultaneous plot lines across an ‘imagined community’— depends upon (p.255) the development of a sense of nationhood,63 so we might say that history according to Herodotus depended upon the sense of a common Greek identity that was consolidated in the Persian Wars (and perhaps also in the light of the Peloponnesian War).64 This sense of common identity, together with the easy narrative framework of Persian invasion, defeat and flight, made it possible and meaningful (for example) to record the background history of different cities in the context of their response to Persian demands for submission, or to frame the traditions and marvels of the cities of Thrace and Thessaly within a narrative of Persian invasion (indeed sometimes even to present them in response to—to focalise them through—Xerxes’ admiring enquiries, 7. 128–30, 197).

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History Herodotus’ religious beliefs had a similarly enabling effect. The difference between a chronicle and a work of history, Hayden White has written, is that chronicles write their own endings; the historian, on the other hand, needs to find a way of ending his work.65 The secret ingredient for doing this is ‘moralism’—not as I take it a prescriptive moralism, but rather something akin to the ‘master-narrative’, an assumed pattern into which events can be moulded. Herodotus, of course, ends his Histories with the story of Artayctes and Protesilaus (9. 116–21), and then of Cyrus and Artembares (9. 122), referring forward ominously to the Athenian empire of Pericles (through the role of his father Xanthippus), and back to the Trojan War (through Protesilaus) and to the unspoilt origins of the Persian rule over Asia.66 I am pleased to end by reporting the following Hayden White shopping-list of master narratives (which for the convenience of a resounding ending I give to you in reverse order): Marxist utopianism, bourgeois progressivism, Christian redemptionism, and Greek fatalism.67 This paper has been enriched by the comments of audiences at Trinity College Dublin, St Andrews, and at the original conference on which this volume is based. It has also benefited from the comments and help of the editors, and of Michael Bentley, Christy Constantacopoulou, and Catherine Pickstock. My thanks to them all. Notes:

(1) For an excellent survey, see Hornblower (1994: 12, 15–16). (2) Fornara (1971), Boedeker (1988), Stadter (1996), Dewald (1997). (3) Contrast, however, Forrest (1984), e.g. p. 10 (‘Herodotos was enamoured of Athens; of course he was’); for a different view of Herodotus’ partisanship, see Harrison (2002). (4) Fowler (1996). (5) Harrison (2000a: 182–9). (6) Though contrast here Lateiner (1989: 67). (7) Harrison (2000a: 1–30, 196–207). (8) See e.g. Chantraine (1952). (9) See esp. Shimron (1973). (10) See e.g. Bremmer (1987) (11) Harrison (2000a: 195–6).

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History (12) Thomas (1997); Thomas appears to assume that Herodotus would take this stance simply on the basis of the divine subject matter, e.g. pp. 135–6 on 9.100.2, p. 146 on 2.43–5. See also now Thomas (2000: 192–3). (13) See e.g. Lattimore (1939), Lateiner (1977), Gould (1991). (14) As Feeney observes (1998: 41), ‘the challenge is to put the right word in front of the word “literary”, not “merely” but “distinctively”.’ (15) Forrest (1979: 313). (16) Forrest (1979: 313–14). (17) See, however, Thomas (2000: ch. 4) on the mutability of nomoi; see further Harrison (2003). (18) White (1987: 6). (19) White (1987: 10). (20) Harrison (2000a: 238–40). (21) Griffiths (1999). (22) See further Harrison (2003). (23) See also here Redfield (1985) for the parallel motif of hard and soft peoples. (24) See further e.g. Shapiro (1996), Harrison (2000a: ch. 2). (25) Murray (1972), Clarke (1999). (26) Collingwood (1946: 20–1). (27) See further Harrison (2000a: 75); for a list of superlatives, n. 33. For Hermotimus and Panionius, see now Simon Hornblower’s tour de force (in this volume). (28) Herodotus describes him as a doryphoros of Cambyses, 3. 139. 2, and as being of no great account (this despite Cyrus’ dream of Darius’ impending kingship, 1. 209); Darius’ ordinariness clearly emphasises the chance nature of Syloson’s encounter, and the un-premeditated quality of his gift. (29) Syloson: Harrison (2000a: 73–4), van der Veen (1996: ch. 4), Labarbe (1986). (30) Harrison (2000a: 128–9). (31) See further Harrison (2000a: 99–100). Page 16 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History (32) See here Asheri (1998). (33) Auerbach (1959), the argument paraphrased at (1953: 73–4). (34) Whether or not such a sharp distinction can be sustained in the context with which Auerbach is concerned (surely debatable?) is not at issue here. (35) See here e.g. Hartog (1988), Fornara (1971), Boedeker (1988), Harrison (2000b). (36) Contrast e.g. Löwith (1949: 6). (37) See here, in addition to Auerbach, Löwith (1949), Southern (1972). (38) See 7. 166, Diod. Sic. 11. 24. 1 with Dench (1995: 11, 51), Asheri (1988b: 78), Gauthier (1966), Harrison (2000b). (39) Cf. Nicias’ appeal for an upturn in fortune at the close of the Sicilian expedition (Thuc. 7. 77. 4). (40) See here Hornblower (1991–6: i. 62–3), describing the passage as ‘an embarrassment to his [Thucydides’] commentators’. (41) Benjamin (1970), XVIII.A. (42) Hornblower (1994: 13), in the context of the Old Testament; see also (more explicitly and extremely, if obscurely) Meier (1987: 45, 50, 56). (43) Lloyd (1975–89: iii. 3). (44) See further Harrison (2000a: 236–7). (45) See in more detail here Harrison (2002). (46) Murray (1988: 463–4); ‘it is hard to find fault’, he continues, ‘with [Herodotus’] general view that the only adequate explanation for the Persian Wars must be a complete account of relations between the two peoples since the conquest of the Ionian cities in 545 B.C.’. Contrast Rood (1998: 213). (47) Contrast Momigliano (1960: 15). Herodotus also is meticulous in his crossreferences, e.g. referring back to Book 1 by observing that Ionia was enslaved for the third time after Lade, 6.32—only to be liberated with the second Ionian Revolt at the battle of Mycale, 9. 104. (48) This last aspect is also a striking feature of Thucydides’ description of the movement to war in Book 1: e.g. in its relentless accumulation of the causes of war, and in the ‘slow-motion’ detail of the instant at which the Athenians at the battle of Sybota turn from the defensive to the offensive (Thuc. 1. 49).

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‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History (49) Gould (1989: 119–20). (50) Harrison (2000a: ch. 8). (51) Fornara (1990). (52) Harrison (2000a: 247), Parker (1996: 210). (53) See Harrison (2000a: 123, 194). (54) This passage may, however, in its reference to the three generations of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, imply that Herodotus was writing after the death of Artaxerxes in 424: see here Hornblower (1991–6: ii. 26). (55) Löwith (1949: 6). (56) City of God 17.1, quoted by Bloch (1961: i. 88–92): ‘the interpretation imposed by exegesis was that it represented not so much a picture of events comprehensible in themselves as a prefigurement of what was to come: “the shadow of the future”, as Augustine expressed it.’ (57) I presume a date of composition during the Peloponnesian war (and the possibility of extensive pre-publication): see now Hornblower (1991–6: ii. 24–38, 122–45). (58) See further Harrison (2002); contrast Balcer (1989). (59) Opera, ed. S. Horsley (London, 1779–85), v. 449, cited by Southern (1972: 178). (60) Reduces, but does not exclude altogether: the fulfilment of the Delos earthquake through the Peloponnesian War, and more broadly the loose pattern of cycles implicit e.g. in the story of Artayctes and Protesilaus, are clearly suggestive of the potential for further repetition. (61) The phrase of Todorov, quoted by Genette (1980: 67). (62) 7. 168. 2; 8. 10. 1, 24. 2, 140. α3; contrast 5. 124. 1, 6. 13. 1, 8. 12. 2. (63) The argument of Benedict Anderson (1991). (64) For the Persian Wars as defining Greek identity, see e.g. E. Hall (1989), J. M. Hall (1997: 47). (65) White (1987: 23); he notes, however, at the same time (in the context of the Cronica of Dino Compagni) that the moralistic ending keeps his account ‘from meeting the standard of a modern, “objective” historical account’. (66) See above, n. 3, for relevant references. Page 18 of 19

 

‘Prophecy in reverse’? Herodotus and the Origins of History (67) White (1987: 151), grandly proclaiming: ‘The master narratives from among which Western man may choose are …’.

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Oracles for Sale

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Oracles for Sale Hugh Bowden (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0015

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the role of chresmologoi (oracle interpreters) and written collections of oracles in the life of the Greek cities in the archaic and classical period. It demonstrates that the hostile picture of chresmologoi and manteis (seers) found in the works of Aristophanes and other writers is not accurate. Epigraphic and other evidence shows that religious experts like these were given honours by cities, and their advice was formally sought. Cities held collections of written oracles, guarding them carefully and consulting them on a range of issues. Keywords:   chresmologoi, oracles, manteis, Aristophanes

In this paper I am, to adapt the words of E. P. Thompson, seeking to rescue the chresmologoi of Archaic and Classical Greece from the enormous condescension of posterity, and to restore them to their rightful place as important and valued members of ancient society. While I am sure that George Forrest would have sympathised with Thompson’s aim of reassessing the historical role of the English working class, I cannot be so confident that he would have felt that chresmologoi deserved the same assistance.1 Nevertheless, chresmologoi were a feature both of the world Herodotus depicts in his History, and of the world in which he lived, and are worthy of further study. As we shall see, one of the most problematic questions we shall face is what a chresmologos actually is, but I will take the following account, from Nan

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Oracles for Sale Dunbar’s commentary on Aristophanes’ Birds, as representative of the general view: The second intruder who interrupts the sacrifice at 959, or professional oracle-monger (960 n.), reflects a feature of contemporary public life satirized by Ar. both before and after Birds—the professional purveyors of oracles and prophecies, not derived from official sources such as Delphi and Dodona but attributed to ancient prophets such as Bakis (962 n.). These were sold to enquirers persuaded that they could get a prophecy bearing upon their own affairs.2 (p.257) The reputation of chresmologoi has been ruined by association: more than one chresmologos is to be found in the company of the Peisistratid tyrants; and it has been harmed too by the way in which the comic thrusts of Aristophanes have coincided with modern suspicion of religious figures, especially itinerant ones.3 But hostility to chresmologoi is clearly an ancient phenomenon: itinerant purveyors of oracles are a target of Plato as well as Aristophanes, and Thucydides mentions chresmologoi in generally unsympathetic terms.4 Nevertheless, a fuller analysis of the ancient evidence about what chresmologoi actually were, and some discussion of diviners in general, will show that we would be wrong to accept these criticisms as telling us the whole truth about them.

CHRESMOLOGOI AND MANTEIS Since, as we will see, chresmologoi were a regular feature of Athenian life in the fifth century, I want to start by putting the word into a context by examining another word, mantis. Debate about whether the terms chresmologos and mantis refer to the same, or different, or overlapping groups of people is ongoing; but rather than looking for texts which spell out precise meanings, I want to examine the words as they are used in, mainly, the public discourse of classical Athens.5 The word mantis has quite a wide range of uses. At its most simple it is used, in tragedy and in Plato, to mean someone who can reveal the future, or things hidden from view. The chorus in Choephori suggest to the nurse that only a kakos mantis would divine that Orestes was dead, and Agamemnon in Hecuba, seeing Hecuba distraught but not explaining herself, exclaims and there are several other examples in Euripides and Sophocles. In Plato’s Meno Socrates suggests that Anytus must be a mantis, since he appears to know about Sophists, never having met one.7 The word is applied (p.258) frequently to Apollo in tragedy, and also in comedy, oratory and 6

philosophy, and to other gods and heroes associated with prophecy.8 It is also applied to the men and women who are inspired by these gods or others to make prophecies, such as Cassandra or the Pythia at Delphi: Plato tries at one point to establish a distinction between manteis, who speak when inspired, and prophetai, who interpret words and signs.9 The most common use of the term is to refer to a man with responsibility for interpreting omens on official occasions, and above all on military campaigns. A mantis in this sense had two primary Page 2 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale areas of skill, reading the entrails of sacrificial victims—this also involved setting up the sacrifice in the right way—and interpreting the flight of birds.10 Although we find other words to describe other aspects of divination, such as teratoskopoi who are able to interpret unsought omens, it is clear that the word mantis is also used in these contexts; for example it was manteis who advised Nicias to wait twenty-seven days after the eclipse in Sicily.11 Frequently this responsibility will be given to someone with a reputation for mantic skill, such as Calchas or Teiresias in tragedy.12 Thucydides refers to Theaenetus son of Tolmides, one of the organizers of the escape from Plataea in 428/7, as a mantis, and we find a Telenicus, who died in Egypt in 460, being so described on a funerary monument.13 Certain places, and certain gene within these places, appear to have supplied a large number of manteis, so that at the Battle of Plataea in 479 both sides had manteis from Elis: Mardonius had Hegesistratus, from the Telliadae, and the Greeks opposing him had Tisamenus, from the Iamidae (the Greeks fighting for Mardonius had their own mantis, Hippomachus of Leucas).14 Elean manteis are also found in the household of Polycrates of Samos, assisting the Crotoniats against the Sybarites and the Phocians against the Thessalians and, a century (p.259) later, advising Xenophon in Asia Minor.15 Arcadia also produces several manteis.16 Frequently manteis serve cities other than their own: as well as Tisamenus, who was given Spartan citizenship for his services to Sparta, Herodotus mentions Megistias of Acarnania as mantis on the Thermopylae campaign, and in the early fourth century the Athenians gave citizenship to Sthorys of Thasos for his services as mantis at the battle of Cnidus.17 It is clear from these examples that mantic ability was often seen as something innate, and which could be passed down through families. This notion is different from the idea that manteis might be suddenly inspired by a god, although both could be the case. However it is also clear that anyone could learn to be a mantis. Isocrates tells the story of Thrasyllus, who inherited books about mantike from Polemainetus the mantis, and having taught himself from them, was able to make a living as an itinerant mantis, and indeed to leave a litter of illegitimate children in his wake.18 Thrasyllus is obviously not a good role model, but Xenophon has Cambyses in the Cyropaedia advise the young Cyrus to learn the skills of a mantis so as not to be misled by others, and to able to operate without one.19 At one point in the Anabasis, when the soldiers are suspicious of his motives in forbidding them to move on, he invites them to attend the sacrifice, and in particular invites anyone who happens to be a mantis to observe the victims.20 The implication is that any soldier might have learned the skills of a mantis. Xenophon himself at one point mentions that, through constantly attending sacrifices, he had learned how to read the signs, and elsewhere describes a private sacrifice he made when he was offered command of the Ten Thousand, clearly implying that he knew how to interpret the entrails himself.21 It is worth noting here that the word can be used either to describe a specific role—Xenophon has just explained that Arexion of

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Oracles for Sale Parrhasia had acted as mantis after the defection of Silanus of Ambracia—or, as here, a skill that one may possess without always using it.22 In any of the range of meanings of mantis we can find negative as well as positive presentations. The reliability of manteis is an issue (p.260) that recurs frequently, perhaps unsurprisingly, since a pseudomantis threatens the whole relationship between gods and men. Orestes in the Iphigenia in Tauris accuses Apollo of being a lying mantis, and Achilles makes the same accusation against Calchas in the Iphigenia at Aulis.23 Xenophon, as we have seen, mentions a number of occasions where soldiers are suspicious of manteis, and Plato has Socrates suggest that sophrosune might distinguish true manteis from too prevalent charlatans.24 This survey of largely Athenian literature of the fifth and fourth centuries shows that the word mantis had a wide range of meanings. It is not the case that different authors tend to use the word in different ways: rather, it holds all, or at least many, of these meanings simultaneously: Plato in the Laws gives manteis an important role in the running of the city of Magnesia, and then presents manteis as a danger to the stability of the city; Cassandra describes Apollo and herself as manteis in consecutive words.25 We can also see writers playing with the different meanings of the word: Athenians will have been most familiar with the prophetic powers of Amphiaraus through his oracular sanctuary at Oropus, which operated through the incubation of dreams.26 In Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes Amphiaraus is described as a mantis: he appears to prophesy spontaneously, foretelling destruction and his own death, and these prophecies are also attributed to Apollo, indicating that Amphiaraus in the play is a mantis inspired by Apollo, as he is in the Odyssey.27 When Euripides deals with the same scene in his Phoenissae, Amphiaraus is a mantis who interprets entrails, even to the extent of carrying slaughtered sacrificial victims with him in his chariot.28 The word mantis not only allows, but encourages, these diverse interpretations, and this must have been the case almost whenever the word was used. If we turn to the word chresmologos we find again a range of applications.29 The earliest surviving use of it is in Herodotus’ History, (p.261) where it is generally and possibly only used as an adjective: Amphilytus of Acarnania and Lysistratus of Athens in Herodotus are each described as chresmologos aner, as indeed is Diopeithes in Xenophon’s Hellenica; Onomacritus of Athens is 30

The word has three distinct areas of meaning, all of which are to be found in Herodotus: it can refer to a ‘speaker of oracles’ such as Amphilytus, who produced a spontaneous hexameter prophecy for Peisistratus, and Lysistratus, who had prophesied that ‘the Colian women would cook with oars’; it can refer to a ‘collector of oracles’ such as Onomacritus, the ‘editor’ of the oracles of Musaeus; and it can refer to ‘interpreters of oracles’ such as the unnamed men Page 4 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale who disputed with Themistocles the meaning of the ‘wooden wall’ oracle.31 These last two meanings refer to overlapping groups, but are distinct: it seems certain that anyone who collected oracles would see it as their role to interpret them too, as Onomacritus does, but it does not follow that all those who interpreted oracles had their own collections: indeed, Aristotle describes Themistocles himself as chresmologos in the ‘wooden wall’ debate.32 For Herodotus, and probably for later writers in some circumstances, the word does not refer to a narrowly defined profession, but may be applied to anyone particularly associated with oracles. Can chresmologoi always be clearly distinguished from manteis? I have already suggested that there are problems with seeing either word as describing a clearly defined group of people, but I want to (p.262) consider this issue more closely. Is there any difference between andres chresmologoi like Amphilytus and Lysistratus on the one hand, and manteis like Cassandra on the other? It may be simply that the word chresmologos was not one favoured by tragedians in any circumstances. What then of the collectors and interpreters of oracles? Plato, who does not use the word chresmologos in any of his works, discusses itinerant religious figures in the Republic: agurtai and manteis who go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and enchantments that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these sayings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness of vice, quoting: Evil-doing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking; Smooth is the way and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter; But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first step, and a certain long and uphill road. [Hes. Op. 287–9] And others cite Homer as a witness to the beguiling of gods by men, since he too said:

The gods themselves are moved by prayers, And men by sacrifice and soothing vows, And incense and libation turn their wills Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression.

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Oracles for Sale [Hom. Il. 9. 497–501] And they produce a babble of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport for the living, and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.33

There is little or no difference between this kind of mantis and the chresmologos we find in Aristophanes’ Birds, and there is even more of a parallel with the scene in Aristophanes’ Peace, in which Hierocles quotes a variety of oracles to Trygaeus, who responds by quoting Homeric and pseudo-Homeric verses back at him; as in the Plato (p.263) passage, both scenes link chresmologoi with sacrifice.34 Indeed, given the interest in Aristophanes shown elsewhere in Plato’s works, one might imagine that he had those scenes in mind when composing this passage in the Republic. The scene in Aristophanes’ Peace is in fact a key text for those who want to draw clear distinctions. Trygaeus is about to carry on with his sacrifice when his slave exclaims,

to which Trygaeus replies, 35

This is taken to express a clear distinction: ‘Hierocles is not a mantis but a chresmologos.’ Given what we have seen about the range of meaning of both these words, I would suggest that this is not the only interpretation, nor even the most plausible. In the play Trygaeus has just set up his sacrifice, boasting that he has done so as well as any mantis could—‘mantis’ here meaning primarily one who has learned the mantic skill, but by implication one who can foretell the future. Just then someone arrives at a time when a mantis might be needed, dressed as a mantis should be with laurel crown: is he a mantis? That is, is he any good at doing what manteis do? No, because he is Hierocles—and so that the audience are in no doubt about which Hierocles is meant, Trygaeus explains that it is the man who is supposed to be good at interpreting oracles. Hierocles’ initial behaviour is entirely in character with his dress, in that he comments on what Trygaeus has done, and ought to do, with the victim.36 When Trygaeus doesn’t respond favourably Hierocles resorts to quoting oracles, but these are still related to the sacrifice.37 Thus Hierocles is acting like a mantis in the narrow sense of one who has learned the relevant skills—Trygaeus’ denial that he is a mantis must therefore arise from the fact that his intervention will in fact hinder the sacrifice rather than help it, which is what Hierocles does attempt to do.38 We will return to Hierocles. The overall conclusion must be that there is not a clear distinction between chresmologoi and manteis. In the broad sense of the word, all (p.264) chresmologoi are manteis; in a narrower sense manteis are responsible for Page 6 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale observing the entrails of sacrificial victims and the flight of birds, while chresmologoi are concerned with spoken or written texts, but neither term is an official designation. In the rest of this paper I am concerned with those people who collect or interpret oracles, primarily in public contexts, in Herodotus’ History and in his world.

COLLECTIONS OF ORACLES First we need to look at the regard in which collections of oracles were held. Herodotus names two individuals who are concerned with the interpretation of oracles, Onomacritus of Athens and Antichares of Eleon, each of whom is associated with a specific collection, Antichares with the ‘oracles of Laius’, about which nothing else appears to be known, and Onomacritus with those of Musaeus.39 Herodotus describes how Onomacritus was exiled from Athens because he was caught by Lasus of Hermione in the act of interpolating into the oracles of Musaeus a prophecy that the islands around Lemnos would sink under the sea. The usual interpretation of this episode is that Onomacritus’ offence was political, in somehow threatening a Peisistratid policy of Athenian involvement in the north-east Aegean.40 However, not only is it not clear why an oracle about the islands around Lemnos should be taken to concern Lemnos itself, still less Sigeum and the Chersonese, which is where Athenian interests seem to have been focused at this time, it is also far from clear that the religious significance of the oracles of Musaeus can be so easily dismissed.41 (p.265) Herodotus himself refers to oracles of Musaeus with evident approval, although he never actually quotes any.42 He is not otherwise referred to before the late fifth century, where a number of Athenian authors refer to him approvingly. The character of Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ Frogs mentions Musaeus as one of a quartet of major poets, along with Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer. Musaeus’ poems are said to be concerned with cures for disease and oracles.43 Musaeus is also linked to Orpheus by the Muse at the end of Euripides’ Rhesus, where he is described as of the Athenians, and the man trained more than any other by Apollo and the Muses.44 There are also a number of favourable references to Musaeus in Plato, again usually in association with Orpheus, and sometimes with Homer and Hesiod as well.45 The respect for Musaeus at this time coincides with what appears to be an increasing respect for Orpheus, and a tendency to associate him with the revelation to the Athenians of the Eleusinian Mysteries.46 I am not arguing here that any works attributed to Musaeus must have had a special status in Athens, but the evidence does suggest that a collection of the oracles of Musaeus might be considered of concern to the city as a whole, and thus the crime with which Onomacritus was accused does not need to be explained away. Herodotus refers to other collections of oracles in Athens and elsewhere, and he also quotes from the oracles of Bacis: Bacis is also the most common source of oracles referred to by characters in Aristophanes.47 Herodotus clearly considers his authority equal with that of Musaeus, but he does not appear in such august company as Page 7 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale Musaeus does in our surviving sources, in all probability because he was not an Athenian but a Boeotian. Although it might be tempting, given Aristophanes’ mockery, to assume that the oracles of Bacis were not taken seriously by educated Athenians, there is no sound reason for taking this view.

(p.266) FORMAL CONSULTATIONS OF ORACLE COLLECTIONS Now that we have seen that written collections of oracles might be taken very seriously in Athens, we need to see how they were used. In the ‘Chalcis decree’ there is an amendment moved by Anticles which, amongst other things, proposes that Hierocles, with three other men chosen by and from the Boule, should carry out the sacrifices and that the Generals should provide the money for this, and make sure that it is done as quickly as possible.48 The fact that this proposal was made in an amendment to the original decree might suggest that this was not standard practice at this time, but it is clear that it was a century later. The Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians refers to ten annually elected hieropoioi epi ta ekthumata, who are required to carry out that is, the sacrifices prescribed by the oracles; if it is necessary that they get favourable signs from the sacrifice, they are to sacrifice along with the manteis; somebody, and it would seem most probably the manteis, must have had responsibility for determining what sacrifices the oracles did indeed require.49 We should note that while the hieropoioi are appointed by lot, there is no suggestion here or anywhere else that manteis should be elected or appointed. The role of the hieropoioi here is the same as that of the three bouleutai in the ‘Chalcis’ decree, and that of the manteis is being done by Hierocles. Why then was Hierocles given this responsibility? As we have seen, Hierocles appears in Aristophanes’ Peace of early 421 BC where he is described as fragment of Eupolis from a play of the same year describes him as

50

A

51

Mattingly has suggested that the Chalcis decree should be dated to 423 BC, which would mean that his chresmological activity, and in particular his association with Euboea, indicated by his description as ‘from Oreus’, would be more or less contemporary with the plays.52 The proposal is of course controversial, but if the more usual date of 446/5 BC is maintained, we simply have to give Hierocles a longer period of fame. Both poets effectively accept (p.267) the notion of Hierocles as a chresmologos: Eupolis, by using the word chresmoidos, brings out, presumably as a joke, the meaning of chresmologos as a speaker of oracles, such as Amphilytus of Acarnania. This play on the meaning of the word by Eupolis should lead us to be a little more cautious than some scholars have been in interpreting the presentation of Hierocles in Peace.53 There is presumably humorous effect to be gained by presenting a leading Athenian as what Plato calls an agurtes, a wandering, begging priest, like Isocrates’ Thrasyllus: we cannot assume that this is even remotely true to life. As so often in Aristophanes, a single aspect of a real person is exaggerated until it produces a funny, but Page 8 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale totally distorted stage character.54 What is significant about Aristophanes’ Hierocles for our purposes is the context in which he appears. There are only two surviving plays of Aristophanes in which the hero attempts to perform a sacrifice, Peace and Birds: on both occasions, and nowhere else in Aristophanes, a chresmologos appears, with oracles purporting to be relevant to the situation, whether it be the founding of Cloudcuckooland or making peace with Sparta.55 There would appear to be a link between chresmologoi and state sacrifices.56 If we turn to Euripides’ Heraclidae, first performed in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, we find more evidence for the consultation of oracles leading to the performance of appropriate sacrifices.57 The situation portrayed in the play, with Athens meeting the threat of invasion by a Peloponnesian army, will have had resonances for its first audience, and it is the actions of the Athenian king, Demophon, that are important for our purposes. He describes how sacrifices have been prepared, with manteis to offer them, and says: 58

The oracles require the sacrifice of a human being, and one of Heracles’ daughters offers herself. This situation is found in a number of Euripides’ plays, and in each case the instruction to carry out the sacrifice results from a form of divination appropriate to the story: in (p.268) Iphigenia at Aulis the mantis Calchas announces that the sacrifice of Iphigenia is required, although he does not explain how he knows this; in Hecuba the ghost of Achilles appears to the whole Greek fleet demanding the death of Polyxena; in Phoenissae Teiresias announces that Menoeceus must die, presumably on the basis of his observation of birds.59 Mythical Athens did not have its own famous mantis, so instead we have a reference to contemporary Athenian practice.60 Hierocles is of course only one of a number of Athenians we know of who are particularly associated with religious matters: another is Diopeithes. Xenophon, telling the story of the dispute between Leotychides and Agesilaus over the Spartan kingship, mentions the intervention on behalf of Leotychides of a certain 61 Diopeithes, whom he calls The same story is told by Plutarch in his Lives of Lysander and Agesilaus, where Diopeithes is called

62

Diopeithes refers to an oracle of Apollo warning against a ‘lame kingship’. In response Lysander claims that the true meaning of the oracle is that Sparta should not have as one of its two kings a man who was not descended from Heracles, making a point of Leotychides’ doubtful parentage: Lysander’s interpretation carries the day, and Agesilaus succeeds. It has long been disputed whether this Diopeithes is the same as the man who is mentioned in three of Aristophanes’ plays, the man who proposed a decree about Methone, and the person who, according to Plutarch, introduced a proposal to impeach ‘those who Page 9 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale did not respect divine matters’.63 Although there is no possibility of certainty, I would suggest that a single Diopeithes is more likely: we have already seen that manteis and chresmologoi are quite commonly found working in cities other than their own, so there should be no great surprise in finding an elderly Athenian in Sparta, at a time when Athens and Sparta were on good terms; and on the other hand it seems unlikely that Plutarch would refer to two (p.269) different and roughly contemporary Diopeitheses, both of whom were concerned with religious matters, and not draw a distinction between them.64 Two of Aristophanes’ references to Diopeithes are vague, but in Birds he is put together with Lampon and the anonymous chresmologos as uninvited scavengers at sacrifices.65 Of the two decrees associated with Diopeithes, the one mentioned by Plutarch certainly makes sense for a man with particular interest in religious matters: even if Plutarch’s decree is merely a fiction, the best explanation for Plutarch’s story is that his sources associated Diopeithes with the public discussion of oracles and other such things.66 The Methone decree however is not particularly concerned with religion. The scholiasts on Aristophanes quote a number of other comedies in which Diopeithes is depicted as associated with religion, but they add a little other evidence: Diopeithes is described as a rhetor, an hetairos of Nicias, and they suggest, as Aristophanes does in Wasps, that he was a wild speaker.67 The evidence does not point clearly to Diopeithes as being thought of only, or indeed mainly as a religious zealot. Rather he might be seen as a speaker who has associated himself with oracles and other religious issues enough for this to be worth the occasional joke in comedy. Nicias, whom Thucydides famously describes as must surely have learned the skills of a mantis, and it might be more reasonable to apply Thucydides’ cautious assessment to his hetairos too, rather than referring to his ‘incontinent religiosity’, or describing him as ‘Diopeithes the seer’.68 If we examine the case of Lampon, mentioned in the same sentence as Diopeithes in Birds, we find someone whose religious understanding gave him a prominent and respected role in Athens in the second half of the fifth century. He was a friend of Pericles; he was involved in the founding of Thurii; he was involved in creating the festival of the First Fruits; and he was a signatory to the Peace of Nicias and the subsequent treaty with Sparta.69 This eminence did not of course (p.270) spare him any more than Diopeithes and Hierocles from attacks in comedy, but like Hierocles, he appears to have been given a grant of sitesis in recognition of his service to Athens.70 Lampon is not described as a chresmologos in any near-contemporary source, although he is in the scholia to Aristophanes.71 Equally though, it is clear that his expertise was not limited to the interpretation of entrails and the flight of birds. Could Lampon have made proposals about the Pelargicon on the side of the acropolis without being aware of the oracle that supposedly referred to it?72 Given that, as we will see, oracles were widely discussed at Athens at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, could Page 10 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale Lampon plausibly have claimed not to have examined them when it came to making peace? Rather than trying to maintain a rather forced distinction between respectable manteis and disreputable chresmologoi, and considering these people as ‘professional religious experts’, like the bishops in the House of Lords, it seems to me that we should instead recognize that a significant number of Athenian politicians might have occasion to refer to collected oracles such as those of Musaeus in their political activities.

ORACLES AND POLITICS So far we have found clear evidence of oracles being consulted by the city of Athens on formal occasions, but only apparently on the narrow question of forms of sacrifice. However, there is good reason to think that this was not their only purpose. Herodotus quotes two oracles of Bacis in the last two books of the History, and implies that those of Musaeus are similar, and these are close in form to the mock oracles declaimed in Aristophanes: they tend to be obscure narratives, or to have a ‘when … then …’ structure, and in all likelihood only a few of the available oracles will have actually given instructions about sacrifices.73 In fact there is good reason to suppose that oracles were regularly referred to at meetings of the Athenian Assembly in other contexts than the performance of appropriate sacrifices. (p.271) The period just before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War provides some evidence. Although Thucydides mentions that the Spartans consulted the Delphic oracle before their first invasion of Attica, he mentions no consultation by the Athenians.74 Although this has been taken as revealing a greater reliance on Delphi by Sparta than by Athens, we can also see that at this point it was the Spartans, not the Athenians, who were technically in danger of breaking a treaty, and therefore that they, not the Athenians, needed to make sure that they had divine approval. On the other hand, both sides would have been anxious to find out, by whatever means they could, what was likely to happen next. Thucydides mentions no fewer than three oracles that were widely discussed in Athens at the outbreak of the War: one relating to the occupation of the Pelargicon, one about the plague, and one prophesying that the war would last thrice nine years.75 Although Thucydides does not explicitly state that these oracles were discussed in the Assembly, that does seem the most obvious place. Thucydides mentions a number of religious issues that were brought up officially at this point as supposed ways of avoiding the war, such as the curses affecting Athens and Sparta and 76 oracles would not appear out of place in the company of these issues. Thucydides says that chresmologoi and manteis were responsible for encouraging the Sicilian expedition in 415, and Plutarch adds detail to this, saying amongst other things that Alcibiades found what was claimed to be an ancient oracle prophesying 77 There seems no reason to doubt that such oracles were discussed in Page 11 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale the Assembly: whatever Thucydides may have thought of it, we have seen that the terms chresmologos and mantis were used of respected individuals. In any case the alternative assumption, that men knowingly concealed oracles from the Athenian demos when it met to decide about the expedition, but discussed them elsewhere, would seem highly unlikely. The Demosthenic corpus contains two forensic speeches in which oracles are quoted in support of an argument, and it must have been the case that speakers in the assembly in the fifth century will have quoted relevant oracles known to them, (p.272) and expected this to make their case more convincing.78 The reliance on oracles in matters of sacrifice would guarantee their respectability in other contexts. The evidence of Aristophanes may be relevant here too. In Knights Paphlagon and the Sausageseller engage in a contest where each participant quotes from the oracles they themselves possess, and at the same time interpret their opponent’s oracles to suit their own purposes.79 Possibly speakers in meetings of the Athenian Assembly might do both on occasion, but, as we have seen, we should not try to push Aristophanic evidence too far.

THE ‘WOODEN WALL’ I cannot end this paper without some discussion of the most famous historical episode in which hoi chresmologoi appear, the debate about the ‘wooden wall’ oracle in Athens in 481 or 480 BC.80 The debate is different from much of what I have been discussing earlier, because it apparently involves an oracular response from Delphi rather than a pre-existing text. However, as we will see, this difference may be less significant than it might seem. I have to say that I have serious doubts about the historicity of this whole episode. Above all it seems to me inconceivable that the twenty-four hexameter lines quoted by Herodotus could really have been uttered by the Pythia, or that they would have been reported to the Athenian Assembly if they had not actually been uttered by her. I will be arguing this in detail elsewhere, but there are other problems too. There are inconsistencies in the story of the consultation and debate, and indeed in Herodotus’ whole account of the events in Athens that followed the decision to evacuate the city.81 The verse quite clearly instructs the Athenians to abandon the city and flee, making the interpretation of ‘wooden wall’ given by the older citizens, and indeed the somewhat different interpretation attributed to those who stayed behind on the Acropolis, unconvincing.82 Nor is it difficult to see how Herodotus’ version might have come rapidly to supplant the more mundane historical truth: he provides a patriotic (p.273) myth for the Athenians in which their selfless heroism saves Greece, and for this reason there is unlikely to have been much objection to his playing around with the truth. A modern parallel might be the influence of images from Eisenstein’s October on ‘memories’ and interpretations of the Russian Revolution.83

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Oracles for Sale Whether or not the story is true, it presents a picture, designed with an Athenian audience in mind, of how an oracle might be discussed in the Assembly. First of all the authenticity, and therefore the veracity, of the verses is accepted by all in the debate. As Herodotus presents it, there are two separate points of debate: first there is a debate about the phrase

(the wooden wall)

between some of the older citizens who believe that it refers to the acropolis, and others, who believe it refers to the fleet.84 Then there is the disagreement over the last two lines, and especially the (O divine Salamis), between those who were skilled in phrase interpreting oracles, hoi chresmologoi, on the one hand, who believe that it refers to a defeat at Salamis, and whose interpretation is accepted by nearly everyone, and Themistocles on the other, who claims that the words refer to a victory at Salamis.85 The chresmologoi advocate fleeing Athens altogether, presumably by sea: this suggests that they were not misinterpreting the reference to the ‘wooden wall’, but only the implications of the description of Salamis. It is the people as a whole who make the decision in the end, having listened to the debate. Herodotus suggests that they were swayed by Themistocles’ skill in finding a coherent interpretation of the oracle, and also by the defeatism of the chresmologoi: both factors, it would appear, played a part in the debate.86 There is a bit more to the episode than this of course. This is the moment in the narrative where Themistocles first appears: discussion of his earlier achievement in getting the Athenian fleet built is deliberately held back until after the description of the debate.87 The real contrast we are meant to see is between the old and the new, the past and the future. The older citizens base their interpretation of the ‘wooden wall’ on the ancient past: Herodotus explains that long ago there used to be a hedge around the acropolis. In contrast Themistocles, a new man

whose very

emphasises his newness, supports patronymic (p.274) the interpretation of the wooden wall as the fleet, and in doing so points clearly to Athens’ future glory, not only at Salamis but in the decades afterwards.88

CONCLUSIONS What can we draw from this discussion? The idea of a chresmologos as a professional oracle-monger is an Aristophanic fantasy, with little direct connection with real life. Rather, the interpretation of oracles was a skill required on regular occasions, at the very least when dealing with certain sacrifices, but most probably at meetings of the assembly as well. To have this skill, as Herodotus’ presentation of Themistocles and Athenian honours for Hierocles both suggest, was generally seen as a good thing, although, as with all manteis, there was always a fear that chresmologoi might be unreliable. To collect and take responsibility for oracles was clearly also an important task, as Page 13 of 19

 

Oracles for Sale the severe punishment of Onomacritus for failing in it makes clear. Finally, chresmologoi and the oracles they interpret become more important, not less, in the course of the fifth century: oracles are evidence that can be brought into debates to support arguments by reference to the foreseeable future and the will of the gods. It is not tyrants who need oracle-mongers, but politicians in a democracy. This paper has benefited greatly from the comments of participants at the conference at which it was first delivered, and above all from those of Robert Parker, on points where we disagree as well as those where we agree. Notes:

(1) Thompson (1968: 13). It must be admitted that the Scottish working class would certainly have been closer to George’s heart than the English. I record here my gratitude to George Forrest, who supervised my graduate work. From him I learned much, above all that history is, and should be, about the real lives of real people. (2) Dunbar (1998: 364–5). (3) Tyrants: cf. Shapiro (1990). The fullest discussion of chresmologoi in Aristophanes is Smith (1989). (4) Pl. R. 364b–c; Th. 2. 8. 2, 2. 21. 3, 8. 1. 1. (5) A small sample would include: advocating a clear distinction: Argyle (1970), Smith (1989: 142 n. 6), Olsen (1998: 269); suggesting they are indistinguishable: Oliver (1950: 6–11), Garland (1989: 82–5), Baumgarten (1998: 47). (6) A. Ch. 777; E. Hec. 743, ‘I am no mantis’. Cf. Heracl. 65, Hipp. 346, Med. 238–40, Rh. 65–7, S. Ant. 632, 1211–12, El. 1482, 1499. (7) Pl. Men. 92c. (8) Apollo: A. Ag. 1203, 1275, Ch. 559, Eu. 17–19, 170, 595, 614–615; E. Ion 387, IT 711, 1130; Ar. Pl. 8–14; D. 25. 34; Pl. Lg. 686a. Dionysus: E. Ba. 299, Hec. 1267. Glaucus: E. Or. 362–4. Cf. Amphiaraus: Hdt. 8.134.2. (9) Cassandra: A. Ag. 1275. Pythia: A. Eu. 29. Distinction: Pl. Ti. 721a–b. Cf. Ion 534c–d, Men. 99c–d. (10) Setting up sacrifice: Ar. Pax 1026. Entrails and birds: E. Supp. 211–13, S. Ant. 999–1011. Birds: A. Th. 24–29; X. An. 6.1.23; Pl. Phlb. 67b; Arist. EE 1236b. (11) Teratoskopoi: Pl. Lg. 933c–d. Nicias: Th. 7. 50. 4.

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Oracles for Sale (12) Calchas: A. Ag. 187, 202; E. IT 89, 956, 1262, IA 531; S. Aj. 760, 780, 801. Teiresias: E. Ph. 1011; S. Ant. 992, 1053, 1059, 1178, OT 298, 390, 526, 562, 705, 747. (13) Th. 3. 20. 2; IG i3 1147, ii, 129. (14) Hdt. 9.37. 1, 9. 33. 1, 9.38.2. (15) Hdt. 3. 132. 2, 5. 44. 2, 8. 27. 3; X. An. 7. 8. 10. (16) Hdt. 6. 83. 2 (Cleander of Phigalea); X. An. 6. 4. 13 (Arexion of Parrhasia), 7. 8. 1 (Euclides of Phlius). (17) Hdt. 5. 33, 7. 221. 1; IG ii217. (18) Isoc. 19. 5, 44–5. (19) X. Cyr. 1. 6. 2. (20) X. An. 6. 4. 14. (21) X. An. 5. 6. 29, 6. 1. 22–4. (22) X. An. 6. 4. 13. (23) E. IT 711, IA 956–8. (24) X. An. 6. 4. 14, Cyr. 1. 6. 2; Pl. Chrm. 173c. (25) Important: Pl. Lg. 828b, 871d. Danger: Pl. Lg. 885d, 908c–d, 913a–b ‘so-called manteis’). Cassandra: A. Ag. 1275. (26) Hdt. 8. 134. 1. Cf. Paus. 1. 34. 3. (27) Mantis: A. Th. 570, 588, 590, 609. Spontaneous prophecy: A. Th. 576–89. Apollo: A. Th. 618; Od. 15.244–6. (28) E. Ph. 174–175, 1109–12. (29) The word and its cognates are used in surviving texts of the 5th and 4th cents. only by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Aristotle. Schol. Ar. Ra. 1033 says that Sophocles said that Musaeus was a chresmologos, but it is not certain that he used that actual word (Ellendt 1872: 788). It is very rare in the epigraphic record: an altar of uncertain date was dedicated to Zeus of Labraunda by a man describing himself as ‘the chresmologos Bryon’ (Inscr. Myl. 311).

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Oracles for Sale (30) Amphiaraus: Hdt. 1. 62. 4; Lysistratus: Hdt. 8. 96. 2; Diopeithes: X. HG 3. 3. 3; Onomacritus: Hdt. 7. 6. 3, ‘an Athenian man, practised in oracle interpretation, and editor (diathetes) of the oracles of Musaeus’. It would be possible to analyse

in the Herodotus examples as a noun in

apposition but in Xenophon’s it must be adjectival, and this supports the analysis of the word in the other passages as adjectival. used three times by Herodotus in the ‘wooden wall’ Although debate (7. 142. 3–143. 3) is usually analysed as a plural noun referring to a distinct category, ‘the oracle-interpreters’, it can alternatively be analysed as a construction of definite article with plural adjective, referring to an indefinite group of people, ‘those who engaged in oracle interpretation’. The limited evidence does not allow for certainty. I am grateful to Dr Michael Trapp for discussion and advice on this point. (31) Hdt. 7. 143. 3. (32) Hdt. 7. 6. 4; Arist. Rh. 1376a. (33) Pl. R. 364b–e. (34) Ar. Av. 961–990, Pax 1052–119. (35) Ar. Pax 1046–7, ‘Look at this joker who has turned up: is he a mantis?’, ‘By Zeus no, it’s actually Hierocles, the man who interprets oracles (or ‘the chresmologos’), the one from Oreus.’ (36) Ar. Pax 1052–60. (37) Ar. Pax 1086, 1101. (38) The interpretation of the joke given in the scholia does not suggest that they recognise a deliberate contrast between chresmologos and mantis. (39) Onomacritus: Hdt. 7. 6. 3. Antichares: Hdt. 5. 43. 1. Pausanias 9. 26. 3 refers to Laius revealing to the Sphinx (in this version of the story his illegitimate daughter) an oracle given by Delphi to Cadmus, which was to be known only to the kings of Thebes. This oracle instructed Cadmus to follow a cow, and to found a city at the point where the cow lay down (Apollod. 3. 4. 1; Schol. E. Ph. 638; Schol. A. Th. 486). The parallel between this oracle and Antichares’ advice to Dorieus that he should found a city in Sicily because Heracles had once possessed the area, suggests the possibility that the ‘oracles of Laius’ might have been a collection of verses about the wanderings of heroes and the mythical foundation of cities. However, this can only be speculation. (40) Shapiro (1990: 336–7), following Nilsson (1951: 132 and 1953: 745).

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Oracles for Sale (41) Lemnos: Hdt. 6. 137–9. Sigeum: Hdt. 5. 94. 1. Chersonese: Hdt. 6. 39. Nilsson’s claim that, since all the oracles of Musaeus were ‘pseudepigrapha’ (1953: 745), the charge against Onomacritus does not make sense misses the point that Herodotus and his contemporaries clearly did accept the authenticity of the oracles of Musaeus. (42) Hdt. 8. 96. 2, 9.43. 2. (43) Ar. Ra. 1031–5. (44) E. Rh. 941–7, ‘revered fellow-citizen’. (45) Pl. Ap. 41a, Prt. 316d, R. 36 3a–c, Ion 536b. (46) E. Rh. 941–4, 962–6; D. 25. 11. Cf. Paus. 2. 30. 2, 3. 14. 5, 9. 30. 6; Graf (1974: 22–39). (47) Other collections: Hdt. 5. 90. 2, 5. 92β. 3. Bacis: Hdt. 8. 20. 1–2, 8. 77. 2, 9.43. 1; Ar. Av. 962, 970, Eq. 123–4, 1003–4, Pax 1070–1, 1119. (48) IG i340. 64–9, ‘from the oracles concerning Euboea’. (49) [Arist.] Ath. 54–6:

(50) Ar. Pax 1047, ‘the man who interprets oracles, the one from Oreus’. (51) Eupolis F 212 K, ‘Hierocles, high-king of the oracle-singers’. (52) Mattingly (1996: 53–67). (53) e.g. Shapiro (1990); Mattingly (1996: 186). (54) Halliwell (1993). (55) Ar. Pax 1043–119, Av. 959–91. (56) Another example of the consultation of written oracles in order to determine ritual action is the Roman use of the Sibylline Books, which appear only to have been consulted for this purpose: North (1990: 54–5); Parke (1988: 190–215). (57) For the date: Wilkins (1993: xxxiii–xxxv). (58) E. Heracl. 403–404, ‘Gathering all the singers of oracles into one place, I examined [prophecies] both known and concealed.’ (59) E. IA 89–92, Hec. 37–41, Ph. 911–14, 838–40.

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Oracles for Sale (60) Euripides has Teiresias himself acting as mantis for Athens in the war against Eleusis (E. Ph. 852–5). (61) X. HG 3. 3. 3, ‘a man well practised in oracle interpretation’. (62) Plut. Lys. 22.5–6, ‘a man well respected for oracle interpretation’; Ages. 3.3, ‘a man practised in oracle interpretation in Sparta, full of ancient oracles and seeming to be wise and experienced concerning divine matters’. These are the only uses of

and its cognates in Plutarch.

(63) Ar. Av. 988, Eq. 1085, V. 380. Methone: IG i361. 4–5. Decree: Plut. Per. 32. 1:

(64) Thus Krentz (1995: 177); contra Sommerstein (1987: 263). Neither argues the case. (65) Ar. Av. 983–8. (66) Dover (1988: 146–7). (67) Schol. Ar. Eq. 1085; schol. Ar. Av. 988; Ar. V. 380 and schol. (68) Th. 7. 50. 4, ‘rather too fond of divination and such things.’ Quotations: Dover (1988: 146), Connor (1963). (69) Pericles: Plut. Per. 6. 2–3; Arist. Rh. 1419”. Thurii: D.S. 12. 10. 3–4; Plut. Mor. 812d; Photius s.v. Thouriomanteis; Schol. Ar. Nub. 332; Schol. Ar. Av. 521; cf. Malkin (1987: 97–101). First Fruits: IG i378. 47, 60. Peace: Th. 5. 9, 5. 24. (70) Ar. Av. 521, 988; also Eupolis F 297 K; Cratinus F 62 K. Sitesis: Schol. Ar. Av. 521; Ar. Pax 1084–5. (71) In contemporary sources his name alone is usually enough to identify him, although he is once called an exegetes (interpreter): Eupolis F297 K. (72) IG i378. 54–9. Oracle: Th. 2. 17. 1. (73) Hdt. 8. 77. 1–2, 9.43. 2. (74) Th. 1.118. 3. (75) Th. 2. 17. 1, 2. 54. 2–4, 5. 26. 3–4. (76) Th. 1. 126. 1, ‘the curse of the goddess’; 1. 128. 1, ‘the curse from Taenarum’. (77) Th. 8. 1. 1; Plut. Nic. 13. 1, ‘there will be great fame for Athens from Sicily’; also Plut. Nic. 13 passim.

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Oracles for Sale (78) D. 21. 51–2, 43. 66; cf. Harrison (2000a: 244 n. 6). (79) Ar. Eq. 997–1111. (80) Hdt. 7. 139. 5–143. (81) Robertson (1987). (82) Hdt. 7. 142. 1, 8. 51. 2. (83) Figes (1996: 484, 739). (84) Hdt. 7. 142. 1–2. (85) Hdt. 7. 143. 1. (86) Hdt. 7. 143. 3. (87) Hdt. 7. 144. 1. (88) Hdt. 7. 143. 1, ‘who had recently come to the fore’, ‘he was called the son of Neocles (“new fame”)’.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77)

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) Marcel Piérart

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0016

Abstract and Keywords When Herodotus collected it, after 450, the common oracle was circulating in Greece in an environment hostile to Cleomenes, very likely at Argos itself. If, in conformity with Homeric usage, one sees in the ‘Argives’ the Greeks in general, this oracle, violently hostile to Miletus, would at an earlier time have been aimed only at the Milesians themselves, whose suicidal behaviour it stigmatizes. J. B. Bury dated it to the campaign of Aristagoras in Greece. If an oracle had been given at that time, it must have had a rather different form. The text that we know must be more recent. It can scarcely predate the defeat of the Greek fleet at Lade and probably follows rather than precedes the fall of Miletus. The strong emotion that accompanied that news in Greece and the growing menace that the Persians were going to bring down upon her in the following years served to create a climate propitious for the spread of oracles and prophecies that fuelled thoughts and comments. This chapter defends the hypothesis of a single oracle bearing upon a single theme. This is not without consequence for the factual history of Argos. The date of Cleomenes' attack, placed by Pausanias at the beginning of his reign, has been lowered to c.494 because of the synchronism imposed by the oracle. Wells has already shown that, apart from the common oracle, nothing in Herodotus' account tells against an earlier date. His arguments are not all of the same value, but certain amongst them continue to deserve the most serious attention. Keywords:   oracle, Herodotus, Argives, Milesians

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) THE FALL OF MILETUS AND THE CAPTURE OF ARGOS When the Argives were consulting the oracle at Delphi about the safety of their city, the Pythia is said to have given them ‘a common oracle which concerned them in part, but which contained also an addition aimed at the Milesians’.1 Herodotus reports the oracle on two occasions. He includes the first four lines, concerning the absent Milesians, in his account of the fall of Miletus.2 The other part of the oracle is reported in his account of the expedition of Cleomenes to Argos.3 When Cleomenes landed at Sepeia near Tiryns, the Argives offered battle. ‘They were not now afraid of a pitched battle, though a certain oracle had made them apprehensive of treachery. The oracle was the one which was pronounced by the Priestess for the joint benefit of the Argives and Milesians.’4 These nine lines are never cited together in any source. They are, moreover, to be found in only two traditions. The Palatine Anthology cites them as two separate oracles, in the order followed by Herodotus from whom they are clearly derived.5 Pausanias,6 followed by (p.276) the Suda,7 cites only the first three lines of the first section. He does this in connection with the legend of Telesilla. Evidently he knows the version of Herodotus, which he summarizes. He does not, however explain the oracle in the same way as Herodotus and connects it to the exploit of Telesilla, a story known in several forms.8

TELESILLA ON THE RAMPARTS Plutarch gives a detailed account of a remarkable deed of the women of Argos.9 He draws inspiration, on at least one point, from Argive sources.10 His text served as the model for Polyaenus.11 Several sayings of Cleomenes are connected to this tradition.12 This is the passage from the

13

Of all the deeds performed by women for the community none is more famous than the struggle against Cleomenes for Argos, which the women carried out at the instigation of Telesilla the poetess. She, as they say, was the daughter of a famous house but sickly in body, and so she sent to the god to ask about health; and when an oracle was given her to cultivate the Muses, she followed the god’s advice, and by devoting herself to poetry and music she was quickly relieved of her trouble, and was greatly admired by the women for her poetic art. But when Cleomenes king of the Spartans, having slain many Argives (but not by any means seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven, as some fabulous narratives have it) proceeded against the city, an impulsive daring, divinely inspired, came to the younger women to try, for their (p.277) country’s sake, to hold off the enemy. Under the lead of Telesilla they took up arms, and, taking their stand by the battlements, manned the walls all round, so that the enemy were amazed. The result was that Cleomenes they repulsed with great loss, and

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) the other king, Demaratus, who managed to get inside, as Socrates says [310 F 6 Jacoby], and gained possession of the Pamphyliacum, they drove out. In this way the city was saved. The women who fell in the battle they buried close by the Argive Road, and to the survivors they granted the privilege of erecting a statue of Enyalios as a memorial of their surpassing valour. Some say that the battle took place on the seventh day of the month which is known as the Fourth Month, but anciently was called Hermaeus among the Argives; others say that is was on the first day of that month, on the anniversary of which they celebrate even to this day the Hybristika, at which they clothe the women in men’s shirts and cloaks, and the men in women’s robes and veils. Plutarch’s account reveals the complexity of the tradition. He echoes several variants which he rejects. The first bears upon the number of Argives killed by Cleomenes: 7777. This number should be seen in relation to the expression, itself obscure, incidentally, of Aristotle: 14

If the

indicates a temporal specification, ‘those who died on phrase the seventh’, this number could be seen in relation to the seventh day of the month Hermaios, which was indeed, according to certain authors, the date of the battle of Sepeia.15 Other authors, however, located the battle which placed Cleomenes against Telesilla at the beginning of the month, to put it in harmony with the date of the Hybristika, fixed on the first day of the month Hermaios. The other variant claims to correct Herodotus on the tradition of the interregnum servile.16 Herodotus did not speak of the union between the women of Argos and slaves, but of the fact that the latter took over power. This variant of the tradition was already in circulation in the time of Aristotle.17 In the version reproduced by Plutarch it seeks to provide the aition for the wearing of the beard by young married women on their bridal night, a custom which certainly does not lack for parallels. (p.278) F. Graf has said the essential of what there is to say about the rites of inversion which the story of Telesilla was believed to establish.18 The account is the historicized Argive variant of the aetiological mytheme of a rite of inversion for which there are precise parallels at Tegea (the legend of Marpessa Choiro, explaining the foundation of the Gynaikothoinia) and at Sparta (the cult of Aphrodite Enoplios). At Argos these rites were probably being performed well before the events of Sepeia. As in other cases where historical events must have struck the imagination, the myths that had served to explain gave way to pseudo-historical accounts which appeared to provide a more appropriate context.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) Graf refuses to commit himself as to the name of the patron divinity of the festival of the Hybristika.19 Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge suggests the couple Aphrodite-Ares/Enyalios, although she does not commit herself as to the name of the divinity of warrior madness in the cult in which the women of Argos took part.20 Thanks to Telesilla’s exploit does not Ares count amongst the gods of the women of Argos,21 and was the stele representing the poetess not in the sanctuary of Aphrodite?22 The festival of the Hybristika was not the only result of the remarkable deed of Telesilla and her companions. Two ‘lieux de mémoire’ came to be connected to it. ‘On the route of the Argeia’—so outside the city, but in which direction?— people were shown the grave of the women who had died in combat. The survivors were able ‘to found the cult of Enyalios’. The expression, comparatively rare and strengthened by the use of the article, comes most likely from Plutarch’s source. The dedication was accordingly taken as having been made to Enyalios. It is known from inscriptions that the war god was worshipped at Argos under that name.23 In the tradition as Plutarch reports it, the exploit of Telesilla becomes the aition of rites and monuments. It is not explicitly connected with the oracle which perhaps gave rise to the story. The imaginary exploit of Telesilla was, moreover, not entirely lacking for (p.279) realistic parallels. On the shield of Achilles, the women, young children, and old men stood on the ramparts and defended them, whilst the men went off to fight outside the walls.24 Historical texts mention more than one fight undertaken from roof-tops by women who threw roof-tiles and stones down upon the attackers.25 The fact of their presence on the ramparts constitutes in itself less of an exploit than the fact of donning the armour of the men and taking their place after the annihilation of the Argive infantry. The notion of a pitched battle between the women of Argos and the Spartans lies behind the version of which Pausanias provides an echo.

TELESILLA OFFERS BATTLE The whole of the exposition devoted to the sanctuary of Aphrodite of the Prôn is devoted to the exploit of Telesilla.26 (8) Above the theatre is a sanctuary of Aphrodite, and before the image is a slab with a representation wrought on it in relief of Telesilla, the lyric poetess. Her books lie scattered at her feet, and she herself holds in her hand an helmet, which she is looking at and is about to place on her head. Telesilla was a distinguished woman who was especially renowned for her poetry. It happened that the Argives had suffered an awful defeat at the hands of Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandrides, and the Lacedaemonians. Some fell in the actual fighting; others, who had fled to the grove of Argos, also perished. At first they left the sanctuary under agreement, which was treacherously broken, and the survivors,

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) when they realized this, were burnt to death in the grove. So when Cleomenes led his troops to Argos there were no men to defend it. (9) But Telesilla mounted on the wall with all the slaves and such as were incapable of bearing arms through youth or old age, and she herself, collecting the arms in the sanctuaries and those that were left in the houses, armed the women of vigorous age, and then posted them where she knew the enemy would attack. When the Lacedaemonians came on, the women were not dismayed at their battle-cry, but stood their ground and fought valiantly. Then the Lacedaemonians, realizing that to destroy the women would be an invidious success while defeat would mean a shameful disaster, gave way before the women. (10) This fight had been foretold by the Pythian priestess in the oracle (p.280) quoted by Herodotus, who perhaps understood to what it referred and perhaps did not:— ‘But when the time shall come that the female conquers in battle, Driving away the male, and wins great glory in Argos, Many an Argive woman will tear both cheeks in her sorrow.’ Such are the words of the oracle referring to the exploit of the women. In this variant of the account, Telesilla has the old men and children go up on the rampart, arms and places in battle order the women of vigorous age. The exploit finds its place in the context of classic hoplite battles between opposing phalanxes, where the men place themselves in close order, charge, kill, and die. Telesilla placed her troops in battle order where the enemy would attack. It was to be expected that the women would disband at the enemy’s approach. But —‘contrary to their nature’, Thucydides would have said27—the women withstood the shouts of the enemy and readied themselves to receive the impact of the charge.28 At that moment the Spartans decided to withdraw. After impact it would have been too late. In contrast to Plutarch’s version, which praises the bravery of the women without making them act really out of character, that of Pausanias gives extraordinary dimensions to their exploit: they took the place of men to undertake men’s business against men. At the same time, the withdrawal of the Spartans, who behaved like sensible folk, keeps the account within the bounds of plausibility: Telesilla’s extraordinary gesture, which is accounted for by the despair and pain of the women after the massacre of the sacred grove of Argos, does not lead to the complete destruction of the city.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) The refusal of the Spartans to meet the women in battle allows one to locate the account also in the Herodotean tradition of Cleomenes’ withdrawal.29 Throughout his account, Pausanias has Herodotus in mind. He follows him for the three successive stages of the Sepeia affair: the battle, the stratagem to get the Argives out of the sacred grove, and finally the burning of it. For Cleomenes’ visit to the Heraion, which he passes over in silence, he substitutes the march against Argos and Telesilla’s resistance. This would seem to have provided him with a better explanation of the oracle, of which he (p.281) cites the first three lines, those which relate to the exploit of the women. The heroic deed of Telesilla and her companions turned them into new Danaids. The comparison was made by Clement of Alexandria in the Stromateis: we are indebted to him also for the only verses preserved of the Archaic poem that celebrated their deeds in song.30

They say that the women of Argos, under the leadership of the poetess Telesilla, by their simple appearance put to flight the Spartans, strong at war, and made themselves fearless in the face of death. The author of the Danais says the same of the daughters of Danaos: And it was then the daughters of Danaos quickly armed themselves There before the well-bedded river of Lord Nile. It could be that events of which we are unaware connected with the deed of the daughters of Danaos served as model for the exploit of Telesilla.

Wilamowitz and other historians have granted that the story of Telesilla contains a basic element of truth, but this idea has never achieved unanimous support.31 According to an unverifiable notice in Eusebius, the poetess had her floruit in 451/0, a date that would at least have the merit of explaining the silence of Herodotus.32 I imagine that Herodotus, who did not conceal his admiration for Artemisia, would have related the edifying tale of Telesilla if he had known it.33 Those who related the ‘common’ oracle to Herodotus did not connect it with this story, nor indeed with any proper attack against the city of Argos by Cleomenes, since he gave it up in the end. Many commentators see in the opening lines of the oracle the origin of the legend of Telesilla.34 I think so too. The episode of Telesilla is generally seen as the response which the Argives found to make (p.282) sense of the oracle. It Page 6 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) does indeed allow the victory of the female over the male to be accounted for, as Pausanias underlines explicitly.35 But this story cannot give more than an approximate and incomplete explanation of the oracle. There the mourning of the Argive women follows the victory, whereas in reality it precedes it. This is perhaps not an insuperable obstacle, given that the resistance of the women was decided upon in an emergency and the mourning lasted in fact for a generation. However, Pausanias offers no more explanation than does Herodotus of the two lines about the fearsome serpent; he does not even reproduce them.36 In any case the oracle does not explain everything. The great upheavals experienced by the Argives after the expedition of Cleomenes could have appeared to a religious spirit as a return to original chaos. The emotive charge held by these events made them a natural place to look for the origin of the rites of inversion which continued to be practised at Argos from the time of the democracy and which could find a satisfactory explanation only in extreme circumstances where sex roles (the Telesilla episode) and the roles of social classes (interregnum servile) were exchanged. The Argive pseudo-history, with its subtle variations on the real role of women or the true condition of inferiors, achieved its objective whilst respecting the logic of a twofold reading of ritual gestures. I shall try elsewhere to show that in connecting them with events which were reckoned to have transpired ‘in human time’,37 this pseudo-history remains part of a general picture: almost all analogous foundations have to do with customs of clothing, with practices of mourning, or with the erection of a temple, a statue, an altar.38 At all events, we find ourselves downstream from the Herodotean tradition, which Plutarch and Pausanias knew well, but which no one follows. Now Herodotus knew the early days of the Argive democracy and the way in which these events were being connected (p.283) to it only some decades after they had happened. So it would be timely to return to his text with an open mind, leaving aside the subsequent tradition.

THE PROVENANCE OF THE ORACLE Fontenrose39 thought that the oracle came from a collection of oracles by Bakis or from one of the collections of the same kind to which Herodotus more than once alludes.40 The historian considered Bakis to be an individual collector of oracles.41 He certainly did not attribute this oracle to him, as it is given expressly as Delphic. He attributes to Delphi, moreover, several oracles of the same type, given to various people.42 However, he never refers them to a Delphic collection. Nothing then requires the belief that the common oracle figured in a collection: it could have circulated orally, forming part of the logoi that the historian gathered. Herodotus clearly presents the oracle as the Pythia’s response to the Argives.43 He collected it, then, from people who maintained this point of view to him. Most have thought that it was at Sparta or at Argos.44 F. Jacoby, for his part, pronounced in favour of Delphi.45 All agree in excluding the city of Miletus, Page 7 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) repairing its ruined state after the battle of Mycale: not only is the oracle scarcely favourable to Miletus, but Herodotus’ insistence on the fact that the Milesians were not present when the Pythia gave the oracle proves that it was in Greece itself that he heard it for the first time.46 It is reasonable to suppose that Herodotus learned of the existence of this oracle in the course of the investigations he conducted about Cleomenes. No friend of Sparta could have compared Cleomenes’ victory over the Argives with the victory of the female over the male, and probably very few of her enemies could have done so. This (p.284) interpretation accordingly has its origin in a tradition hostile to Cleomenes. Everything points to Argos itself as the place of origin.47 Herodotus states clearly that the oracle was given at Delphi to the Argives who were consulting the god about the safety of their city.48 Still according to Herodotus, the Argives themselves tell of having consulted the oracle at Delphi on another occasion, when they learned of the preparations of the Persians.49 Then the god advised them to keep quiet. They, however, agreed nonetheless to discuss with the Spartans the conditions for their participation in the alliance: the conclusion of a thirty-years’ truce and sharing the command. This account perhaps contains a chronological indication. In 450 a truce of this duration was concluded between Sparta and Argos; this truce could have given rise to the claim that such a proposal had already been made before.50 Herodotus reports another story, this one unfavourable to the Argives. They are said to have received Persian advances in the name of the ties of kinship that bound them together.51 In corroboration of this claim there is mention of the presence at Susa of Argive ambassadors who met the Athenian embassy led by Callias, son of Hipponicus.52 Whether or not it had as its objective the conclusion of the famous peace, ignored by Thucydides and dated by Diodorus to 449/8, the Athenian embassy must have taken place around the middle of the century.53 Everything then points towards believing that all the accounts were collected by Herodotus after 450. Cleomenes had not contented himself with defeating the Argives in a pitched battle, he had massacred the survivors who had taken refuge in the sacred grove of Argos, an act which would later be judged as sacrilege.54 For people who knew this story, the first part of the common oracle could be understood as a prediction applying to Argos, whose fate was thus being offered as an example to Miletus. It (p.285) is probably in this form that it was reported and explained to Herodotus. The information was plausible: it did happen that the oracle gave advice on a theme other than that on which people came to inquire of it.55 For reasons of method, he severed into two parts this oracle which he knew to be a single whole and inserted the first part into the account of

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) Cleomenes’ expedition against Argos at the point that seemed to him the most plausible.

A SINGLE ORACLE Herodotus is actually very clear on the fact that there was only one oracle,56 delivered by Delphi to the Argives who had asked for it, which concerned the Milesians as well who had not asked for anything.57 So it is sound method to put it back together and treat it as a whole. This is the text that can be reestablished: Sources: Hdt. 6. 19. 12 (lines 6–9), 77. 2 (lines 1–5). Paus. 2. 20. 10 (lines 1–3). Anth. Pal. 14. 89 (lines 6–9), 90 (lines 1–5). Suda T 260 Adler. Tzetz. CM 7. 156. 995–8 (lines 6–9). Cf. PW 84. F Q 134.

But when the female subdues the male and drives him out, And wins thereby great glory amongst the Argives, Then shall she cause many Argive women to tear their cheeks; And thus shall they speak in the generations yet to come: ‘The fearful thrice-coiled snake was tamed by the spear and slain.’ (p.286)

Thou then, Miletus, contriver of wicked deeds, Shalt be a feast for many, and a splendid prize; Thy wives shall wash the feet of many a long-haired man, And others shall care for our shrine at Didyma. Commentary

Several oracles show the same structure. Herodotus cites three of them: 1. 1. 55. 2 (PW 54; F Q 101). The famous oracle given to Croesus. Page 9 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77)

2. 3. 57. 4 (PW 65; F Q 114). Warning to the people of Siphnos.

3. 8. 77 (Oracle of Bakis). Oracle announcing the victory at Salamis.

Other parallels are found in the Sibylline Oracles (4. 61, 86; 8. 214; 11. 72, 109, 261; 14. 298a, 348) and in examples with 70).

The forms 20. 495, etc.

collected by Fontenrose (1978: 168–

are Homeric. Cf. Il. 2. 767, 7. 315, 11. 681,

The formula is Homeric. Cf. Il. 14. 365 (see also Pind. Isthm. 1. 50, Nem. 9. 47). The combination in not in Homer, but there are many lines where occupies the same position, e.g., Il. 2. 274, 9. 647, 680, 19. 175, 23. 456 (=657 etc.), Od. 3. 379. The notion is allied to that of victory. Cf. Eust. Il 3. 662. 4–5:

The adjective is Homeric: Il. 2.700. There are no precise parallels for the construction with

Cf. Il 11. 392–3:

The hemistich P1 is Homeric: Il 4. 182, 6. 462, 7. 91. In any case it is followed by an enunciative phrase dependent upon I have found no precise parallel for a genitive depending upon (p. Worth mentioning, however, is an inscription on an Athenian herm 287) dedicated after the capture of Eion by Cimon (Aeschin. 3. 184, Plut. Cim. 7. 5):

The junctura is unique, but the word in the genitive plural, combined with an adjective and placed at the end of the line, is common. Page 10 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) The expression is Hesiodic (Theog. 299: Cat. 33a17, 204. 136). Cf. Ap. Rhod. Argon. 4. 1506 and Orph. Argon. 928, referring to the monster who guarded the golden fleece. In oracular literature, the expression will recur in the Orac. Sybill. 5. 29, 11, 41, 12. 81, 264. I have retained the reading of Hude and Legrand. Some manuscripts and the Anth. Pal. 14. 90 have a hapax, which is often preferred by commentators. Final resolution is impossible. The adjective is rare. It is found, referring to the Maeander, in Anth. Pal. 6. 110. 2: Nonnos used it often: Dion. 7. 128, 13. 372, 14, 363, 18. 148, 38. 175, 40. 376. The passage closest to our text is 9. 258:

‘Often, she would place on her filthy locks, in a circle, the snake which wound its triple rings round the three-footed prophetic chair.’ P. Chuvin (1985: 123), connects the line with the snake Python and comments: Nonnos ‘must not have been unaware, at least through texts, of the famous tripod of Plataea supported by a ‘three-headed snake [Hdt. 9. 81: to Constantinople by Constantine.’

(in fact three snakes) which had been transported

Il 6. 223, Od. 1. 413, 3. 87, 17. 253. The two words belong to the vocabulary of epic. The junctura appears only once, Il. 16. 816, whence it is taken up by the Homeric commentators (Eust. Il. 3. 934. 19). Compare the formulae (Il 5. 653, 11. 444), (16. 543). 821), and

(11. 749),

(11.

Common at the beginning of a line. is a hapax (Herodotus knows 1. 94. 3, 6. 91. 1), but one finds elsewhere the metrical structure Hes. Theog. 595. Cf. also Hom. Od. 21. 26:

All the words are Homeric (although I have not found the form but putting them all together is not. The vocabulary is Homeric. Strabo calls the sanctuary (14. 1. 15 [C 634]). Apart from in his paraphrase of the oracle, (p. (1. 46. 2, 92. 2, 157. 3, 159. 1; 2. 159. 3; 288) Herodotus always uses 5. 36. 3). The word appears to be feminine, but one has

at 1.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) 158. 1. The form is attested in inscriptions of Miletus from 450 on (Milet 1. 3. 133. 19, 26). The god is also called (IDidyma 424. 12). Cf. Fontenrose (1988: 114–15), Ehrhardt (1998: 15). The poem is mediocre in style, especially the second part. The first part is full of recherché and obscure images, expressed in a language abounding in Homeric and Hesiodic reminiscences. The mediocrity of the form of oracles was already a problem for the ancients.58 They belonged to popular literature and were the work of versifiers who had some literary knowledge but were far from mastering all the secrets of poetic composition. We are in the presence of an oracle of predictive character, of which there were probably many to be found in the collections to which Herodotus alludes more than once.59 Oracles of this type predict that when certain more or less plausible signs appear, then certain events will come to pass, or one should carry out this or that instruction. They often comprise a temporal subordinate clause placed at the beginning, introduced by principal clause, placed in apodosis, is introduced by the words

while the

From a structural point of view, the three first lines appear to form a complete whole, which is not without parallel but the sense of which remains rather vague: ‘The victory of the female over the male will lead to mourning and tears amongst the women of Argos.’ One might think that this is the primitive kernel onto which has been grafted the distich about the fearsome snake vanquished by the lance and the four lines about Miletus. About this, Fontenrose has noted: Here the main clause contains tote alone, but is not introduced by it. The more usual kai tote dê appear, however, at the beginning of the second section, addressed to Miletos […]. It is much as though the events in Argos will be the condition precedent to the events forecast for Miletos. […] It is furthermore unlikely that even in an unauthentic response the Pythia would be represented as addressing anyone but a consultant. What we appear to have in Q134 are two extracts from oracles of Bakis or some other collection.60 One will note, however, that the text of these oracles is on the longside (p.289) and their structure more or less complicated. So, for example, in the oracle of Bakis about Salamis cited above, the statement introduced by 61

foretells the victory, occupies only the last two lines. subordinate circumstantial clause

which

It is separated from the by three verbs

in the future tense upon which depend participles and an infinitive. The oracle describes the battle, understood as the

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) bloody confrontation between Justice and Excess. The statement introduced by declares the happy outcome of it all. It is thus possible that a part of the oracle was recovered from a more ancient prophecy, but this prehistory escapes us. Whatever the way in which the poet went about his work, the common oracle itself forms a single oracle, constructed on the circumstantial model. It foretells the misfortunes of Miletus which, introduced by constitute the real apodosis. The enigmatic victory of the female over the male and the saying about the snake are harbingers of this. But how to interpret them?

THE SENSE OF THE ORACLE Herodotus believes in oracles.62 He believes that the gods announced men’s destiny to them by all sorts of signs and that events were often no more than the realization of the signs. For him, the lucidity of an oracle comes less from the clarity of the words and the signs than from the possibility of applying each of its parts to the events it foretells.63 A similar view is found in Plutarch to back this up.64 He explains why the oracles which predict events are often transmitted to us in the context in which they were reckoned to have been fulfilled: ‘These prophecies describe events in a language that is as clear in its essentials as it is obscure in its form.’65 From this point of view, there is a great contrast between the first part of the common oracle, which abounds in obscure formulas, and the Milesian part, which sticks closely to the events. Herodotus paraphrases the Milesian part,66 but he gives no detailed explanation of (p.290) the Argive part. He contents himself with saying that because of the oracle the Argives were afraid of being caught out by a trick.67 Seen in this perspective, the victory of the female over the male would symbolize the victory of guile over the hoplite force of the male. The Argives were afraid of being caught out by a trick, and so they were—just as Cleomenes, believing he was deceiving the gods, was deceived by the oracle.68 Yet it must be recognized that in dealing with the Spartans, even when led by Cleomenes, the image of the female is not the first thing to spring to mind! Everything would thus seem to indicate that Herodotus is reproducing a text that no one was able to explain to him in detail. Would this not be because the explanation on offer in the environment in which he collected it was not the right one? A reader not influenced by Herodotus’ presentation of the oracle would naturally be led to look for the solution in the history of Miletus. The Ionian Revolt provides the first setting in which to seek to interpret the prophecy. The Argives

In the oracle of analogous structure, reproduced by Plutarch, which foretells the emergence of an island in the Bay of Thera, the Romans are termed

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) and the Carthaginians are Phoenicians.69 In our text, permeated by the language of epic, why should the Argives not be the Greeks in general rather than the inhabitants of Argos in particular?70 These lines remain unique in oracular literature.71 Yet the oracle is not the only one to play upon the multiple senses of this family of words. The oracle which deceived Cleomenes was based upon the ambiguity of the word Argos (city or sacred grove of the hero).72 Yet another oracle could be cited, itself pseudohistorical, where the ambiguity also resides in the possible double sense of the word Argos. (p.291) According to Appian, an oracle had foretold Seleucus’ death to him in these terms:

The monarch kept himself prudently far away from all the Greek cities which bore the name. However, on arriving in Europe at Lysimacheia, he noticed an altar which the inhabitants called Argos, because the Argonauts, or the Greeks with Agamemnon, had sacrificed there.73 The victory of the female over the male

It is in the same context that I would look to resolve the enigma of the victory of the female. The notion of the victory of the female over the male is an adynaton, of which there are many in oracular literature. It has to do with enigmas of which the interested parties do not understand the true sense until the last minute, often when it is too late. The most complicated hypotheses have been presented to explain how, before the invention of the story of Telesilla, the Argives could have understood this line.74 Perhaps it would have appeared clearer if the answer had been sought outside Argos. Shortly after the start of the Ionian Revolt, probably in autumn 499, Aristagoras took himself to Greece to beg for help. He went first to Sparta where he explained for what reasons it was advantageous to wage war against the Persians.75 They possessed fabulous riches and fought in silly outfits: These foreigners have little taste for war, and you are the finest soldiers in the world. The Persian weapons are bows and short spears; they fight in breeches and turbans—that will show you how easy they are to beat!76 Dismissed by Cleomenes, he went and gave the same speech at Athens77 and probably elsewhere: ‘they used neither shields nor spears and were easy to beat’.78 A people easy to conquer, but conquerors of the Greeks of Ionia, are not the Persians the female that defeated the male? By his own avowal, according to the Romans, Alexander fought against women: ‘cum feminis sibi bellum fuisse (p.292) dixisset.’79 The victory of the female over the male would be the victory of the Persians over the Greeks, elaborated Page 14 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) post eventum or prophesied, if one grants that the oracle preceded the Ionian debacle at Lade in 495 or 494, immediately followed by the siege of Miletus by land and by sea. The fearsome snake

Put together more or less happily from a collection of Homeric formulae, the distich about the fearsome snake is rightly reckoned one of the most obscure passages in oracular literature. Cited by Herodotus with the lines concerning Argos, scarcely any attempt to explain it has been made except with reference to Argos. Bury explained the snake by the name of the place of the defeat: Sepeia.80 Logic required that those who sought the solution of the enigma at Argos identify the serpent with Argos. S. Luria suggested seeing in the snake the personification of the city of Argos.81 P. Sauzeau, however, had no trouble in showing the weakness of his argument, without himself succeeding in replacing it with another more convincing. The search need not be limited to Argos. One might be tempted to look in two rather different directions. First, one might think of an event preceding the fall of Miletus. The formula does not fit very well with the victory of an army that did not know hoplite weapons.82 Or one might contemplate, for example, the combat in which Aristagoras perished in Thrace.83 Aristagoras was the soul of the revolt and could, amongst his detractors, have been reckoned a snake. His premature end could be seen as foreshadowing more serious disasters. In this case, the reasons for the association of the tyrant of Miletus with the fearsome snake are not available to us. The second interpretation turns towards the mythological. These lines could evoke one of the monsters vanquished by a god or a hero: the guardian of the spring Dirke at Thebes, vanquished by Kadmos, (p.293) or the guardian of the golden apples, vanquished by Heracles, or, better yet, the snake Python slain by Apollo.84 In this case, the distich could be proclaiming the superiority of the oracle of Delphi, founded by Apollo, whose clairvoyance would continue to be celebrated in future times, after the destruction of the sanctuary of Didyma. The rivalry between the two sanctuaries has, it seems, left traces in Herodotus.85 However, in all representations of the killing Apollo uses his arrows, so this hypothesis does not enable one to explain the expression It is probably pointless to want to speculate too much on this matter. Our inability to solve the problem is doubtless forgivable: it could be shown, I think, that Herodotus and the Greeks from whom he got the oracle had no better understanding of these lines themselves.86 Even if one sees in the snake the symbol of Argos, as do almost all commentators, the victory of the spear over the snake, which would be rather a victory of hoplite strength over guile, is not explicable in the context of Cleomenes’ action, as Herodotus says the Argives held it to be. The sense of these lines was lost when people saw in the first part of the oracle an allusion to the inhabitants of the Argolid.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) Miletus, contriver of wicked deeds

The tone of the oracle corresponds well enough with the judgment of the Ionian revolt that emerges from Herodotus: misfortunes for the Ionians, ruin of Miletus, destruction of Didyma, and responsibility of the Milesians. If the qualification applied to Miletus by the oracle is a hapax, the formula recalls the expressions used by Herodotus in the judgment he conveys on the heavy burden of responsibility borne by the city in the Ionian revolt.87 The oracle is particularly hostile to Miletus, and one could think that that was the primary intention of its author.

(p.294) THE SCOPE OF THE ORACLE J. B. Bury supposed that the common oracle had been given to the Argives when Aristagoras was looking for support in Greece, an interpretation that has enjoyed a certain success.88 Oswyn Murray does not think that Aristagoras sought the aid of Argos, but for him the oracle, ‘with its clear prophecy of doom for Miletus, can be seen as a clear warning to the rest of Greece not to become involved’.89 It cannot be excluded that an oracle was given at Delphi at the time when Aristagoras was seeking support in Greece, but it probably did not have the tortuous and complicated form in which it has come to us. Such exact prescience about events is scarcely imaginable before the battle of Lade and the time when Miletus was already under siege by land and by sea. At Lade in 494 the fleet of the eastern Greeks, 353 triremes in total, suffered a severe defeat, and half of its best contingent, that of Chios, was annihilated.90 In the course of the Ionian Revolt the Persians demonstrated their capacity for siege warfare, particularly at Miletus and on Cyprus.91 If the victory of the female over the male (and perhaps that of the spear over the snake) refers to the destruction of the Greek fleet at Lade, then it is indeed the events of 494 that presaged the coming fall of the proud Ionian city. The oracle confirmed the validity of the non-interventionist policy with regard to the Ionian Revolt, a policy that Cleomenes had maintained in person. Amongst the adventures related by Herodotus, few are as rich in oracles as those of the king of Sparta, whom R. Crahay characterizes as ‘a virtuoso of oracular politics, with all the nuances that that involves’.92 R. Crahay is perhaps not far from the truth when he writes: ‘The events of 494 saw the triumph of those who (p.295) had condemned this adventure and, at the top of the list, of Cleomenes, who was directing at the time the policy of the “most powerful of the Greeks” and who had placed himself at the head of the “non-interventionists”. Herodotus, out of personal hostility towards the Ionians, obligingly took over all the themes of this propaganda.’93 The oracle could have served to feed this propaganda. But is it really necessary to suppose that oracles are cynical fabrications aimed at manipulating opinion in favour of a policy, whatever that policy might be?94 The intentions of the authors of the oracles that have come down to us in the literature most often escape us: falsifiers or divinely inspired, they fade away Page 16 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) behind the divinity in whose name they were believed to speak. They would, however, have had no success if they had not met the concerns of the public who listened to them. The success of oracles comes from their strong emotive connotations: they counted amongst the signs sent by the gods to men. They were received with fear and respect; they were watched for in difficult times. Thucydides, in connection with the Peloponnesian War, provides a good example of the importance accorded to oracles at critical moments: ‘there were all kinds of prophecies and all kinds of oracular utterances being made both in the cities that were about to go to war and in other places as well.’95 The emotion elicited by the fall of Miletus was strong enough at Athens to provoke the Phrynichus episode.96 Pity gave way to other sentiments, such as fear of reprisals. In the presence of the growing Persian threat in the early decades of the fifth century, the fate of Miletus became exemplary. ‘No Greek could even hear the word Persian without terror,’ says Herodotus.97 The common oracle severely condemned the sacrilegious irresponsibility of Miletus, which brought along with its own fall the ruin of the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma. It could very well have first seen the light of day in this context.

(p.296) CONCLUSIONS When Herodotus collected it, after 450, the common oracle was circulating in Greece in an environment hostile to Cleomenes, very likely at Argos itself. At that time, before the creation of the legend of Telesilla’s heroic resistance, those who reported it to him were already taking the formulas at face value and recognizing in them a prediction of the misfortunes that befell the Argives at Sepeia and the Ionians at Miletus. They thought that the god had addressed himself to the Argives, but that he had spoken to them of others as well. That was not the original sense. If, in conformity with Homeric usage, one sees in the ‘Argives’ the Greeks in general, this oracle, violently hostile to Miletus, would at an earlier time have been aimed only at the Milesians themselves, whose suicidal behaviour it stigmatizes. J. B. Bury dated it to the campaign of Aristagoras in Greece. If an oracle had been given at that time, a question I prefer to leave open, it must have had a rather different form. The text that we know must be more recent. It can scarcely predate the defeat of the Greek fleet at Lade and probably follows rather than precedes the fall of Miletus. The strong emotion that accompanied that news in Greece and the growing menace that the Persians were going to bring down upon her in the following years served to create a climate propitious for the spread of oracles and prophecies that fuelled thoughts and comments. The hypothesis defended here of a single oracle bearing upon a single theme is not without consequence for the factual history of Argos. The date of Cleomenes’ attack, placed by Pausanias at the beginning of his reign, has been lowered to c. 494 because of the synchronism imposed by the oracle. Wells has already shown Page 17 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) that, apart from the common oracle, nothing in Herodotus’ account tells against an earlier date.98 His arguments are not all of the same value, but certain amongst them continue to deserve the most serious attention. I drew great profit from the remarks and criticisms offered to me when I presented, at Wadham College, the first version of this paper. Isabelle Tassignon has read over a French version of this text, and Peter Derow was kind enough to undertake the translation. I am very grateful to them. Abbreviations: PW: Parke and Wormell (1956: ii. The Oracular Responses); F: Fontenrose (1978: 240–416 ‘Catalogue of Delphic Responses’). Notes:

(1) Hdt. 6. 19. 1. (2) Hdt. 6. 19. (3) Hdt. 6. 76–83. (4) Hdt. 6. 77. 1–2. (5) Anth. Pal. 14. 89, 90. (6) Paus. 2. 20. 10. (7) Suda T 260 Adler. The relationship between the two texts is certain. Jacoby (1955: ii. 26 (n. 81 to commentary on FGrH 310 F 6)) suggests for the lexicon a source close to Pausanias but different (a collection of ‘Frauentaten’?). This hypothesis does not take account of the fact that the entry alludes to the stele seen by Pausanias in the sanctuary of Aphrodite. Cf. below, p. 279. (8) The history of the poetess Telesilla (PMG 717–28) has been obscured by legend to the point that even the time at which she lived remains uncertain (cf. below n. 32). Cf. Wilamowitz (1900: 76–80), Maas (1934). (9) Plut. De mul. Virt. 4 (Moralia 245C–F). Cf. Stadter (1965: 45–53). (10) Socr. FGrH 310 F 6. (11) Polyaen. Strat. 8. 33. (12) Plut. Ap. Lac. 4–5 (Moralia 223B–C). (13)

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) (14) Arist. Pol. 5. 1303a 6–8. (15) An apophthegm of Cleomenes alludes as well to a truce of seven days, which he concluded with the Argives and in the end broke (Plut. Ap. Lac. 3 (Moralia 223 B–C)). (16) Hdt. 6. 83. On the question of the slaves, cf. Piérart (1997: 328–9). (17) Arist. Pol. 5. 1303a 8: (18) Cf. Graf (1984), with previous bibliography. (19) Graf (1984: 249–50). (20) Pirenne-Delforge (1994: 154–60). (21) Cf. Lucian, Amor. 30. (22) Paus. 2. 20. 8. (23) Wilamowitz (1900: 79) and Vollgraff (1934: 151 n. 8) think of a temple; Graf (1984: 249) inclines towards a statue. The cult is attested from the Archaic period (SEG 11. 3 2 7); a temple of Enyalios, still in use at the time of Pyrrhus’ attack on Argos, has been found near Mycenae (SEG 23. 186, 187). (24) Hom. Il. 18. 514–15. (25) Cf. Hornblower (1991: 241–2), with bibliography. (26) Paus. 2. 20. 8–10; on the Prôn, see Croissant (1972). (27) Cf. Thuc. 3. 74. 1 (Corcyra). On the shouts uttered in honour of Enyalios, cf. Lonis (1979: 119–20), Pirenne-Delforge (1994: 159). (28) Cf. Hanson (1989: 96–106 = ch. VIII: ‘The Dread of Massed Attack’). (29) Hdt. 6. 82. 2: he would have been dissuaded by a presage from taking the city of Argos when he was sacrificing at the Heraion. (30) Clem. Al. Strom. 4. 19. 120. 3–4. (31) For historicity: Wilamowitz (1900: 80), Tomlinson (1972: 94), Hendricks (1982: 29–34). Against: Bury (1902: 20), Jacoby (1955: 45–7). Cf. Jacoby (1955: 46 n. 91 (ii. 28)), Wörrle (1964: 106 n. 20), Roobaert (1985: 43 n. 21). (32) Euseb. Chron. p. 112 Helm (451 BC). (33) Cf. Hdt. 7. 99, 8, 87–8, 93.1. (34) e.g. Jacoby (1955: i. 46), Stadter (1965: 48). Page 19 of 23

 

The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) (35) Paus. 2. 20. 10:

(36) Pausanias, followed by the Suda, quotes only the first three verses of the first section. But Pausanias knows Herodotos’ version, which he discusses in detail. I believe that his concluding sentence: ‘Such are the words of the oracle referring to the exploit of the women’ proves that he knows perfectly that he quotes only a part of it. He thinks certainly of the Milesian section but perhaps too of the two verses on the deinos ophis. I guess that he ignored deliberately the two verses speaking of the deinos ophis trieliktos because he could not explain them. (37) Cf. Hdt. 3. 122. 2: (38) Mourning and clothing customs: Hdt. 1. 82. 7; statue: Paus. 2. 20. 2; temple: Paus. 1. 13. 8, 2. 21. 4. (39) Fontenrose (1978: 169). (40) Hdt. 5. 43 (oracles of Laios), 7. 6 (Onomacritos, compiler of the oracles of Musaios), 9. 43 (oracles of Bakis and Musaios). (41) Cf. Prandi (1993: 54), Asheri (1993: 63–65). (42) e.g. 3. 57. 3 = PW 65, F Q114 (Siphnos); 7. 140.1 = PW 94, F Q146 (Athens), 141. 1 = PW 95, F Q 145 (Athens), 148. 2 = PW 92, F Q144 (Argos), 220. 3 = PW 100, F Q 152 (Sparta). (43) Hdt. 6. 19. 1: (44) Wilamowitz (1900: 76), Lenschau (1938: 412), Crahay (1956: 179). (45) Jacoby (1955: ii. 27–8 (n. 90 to commentary on FGrH 310 F 6)). (46) Cf. above, p. 276. (47) Herodotus makes explicit reference to the Argives on two occasions: 6. 75. 3, 84. 1. The use of Argive and Spartan sources together is acknowledged by several scholars: cf. Jacoby (1955: ii. 27–8 (n. 90 to commentary on FGrH 310 F 6)), Roobaert (1985: 42 n. 230). (48) Hdt. 6. 19. 1: (49) Hdt. 7. 148 (PW 100, F Q 144). Cf. Crahay (1956: 321–24). (50) Thuc. 5. 14. 4. Cf. Bengtson (1975: 46–7 n. 144).

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) (51) Hdt. 7. 150. In the oracle predicting the death of Leonidas the Persians are called

Hdt. 7. 220. 4 (PW 100, F Q 152), with a play on the words Cf. Aesch. Pers. 79–80:

(52) Hdt. 7. 150. 2. (53) Diod. Sic. 12. 4. 5. Cf. Bengtson (1975: 64–69 n. 152). (54) Hdt. 6. 75. (55) Cf. Crahay (1974: 214–15), Parker (1985: 318–19), Harrison (2000a: 125). (56) Hdt. 6. 19. 1:

6. 77. 2:

(57) Cf. above, p. 275 n. 2. (58) Cf. Plut. De def. or. 5 (Moralia 396 C–F). (59) Cf. above, p. 283 n. 40. (60) Fontenrose (1978: 169). (61) Cf. above, p. 286. (62) Cf. Crahay (1974), Harrison (2000a: 123–57). (63) Cf. Hdt. 8. 77:

Cf. Asheri (1993: 72–4).

(64) Plut. De def. or. 11 (Moralia 399B–C). (65) Crahay (1956: 338). The enigma reinforces the credibility of the oracle: Crahay (1974: 213–14), Parker (1985). (66) Hdt. 6. 19. 3. (67) Hdt. 6. 77. (68) Cf. below, n. 73. (69) Plut. De Pyth. or. 11 (Moralia 399c); cf. Strabo 1. 3. 16, Pliny NH 2. 202; 4. 70; Just. Epit. 30. 4. 1 (PW 357, F Q 238). (70) The usage is above all Homeric, but the context of the oracle, which evokes a battle between Greeks and men of Asia, could favour the suggestion. (71) The only explicit mention of Argives is in an often cited legend in oracular form (e.g., Anth. Pal. 14. 73, cf. PW 1, F Q 26):

(line 6).

(72) Cf. Hdt. 6. 76, 80 (PW 86, F Q 136). Cf. Crahay (1956: 169–71).

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) (73) App. Syr. 63. 332–4; cf. Fontenrose (1988: 216). (74) Cf. Sauzeau (1999). (75) Hdt. 5. 38, 49. (76) Hdt. 5. 49. 3. (77) Hdt. 5. 55, 97. (78) Hdt. 5. 97. 1. (79) Livy 9. 19. 10. Cf. Gell. 17. 21. 33. (80) Bury (1902: 19–20). (81) Luria (1933: 217), Sauzeau (1999: 138–43). (82) Cf. Aesch. Pers. 81–6, where the image is precisely inverted: Xerxes, compared to a deadly dragon, leads his army, compared to Ares of the triumphant bow, against men renowned for the spear. At Plataea his army perished under the Dorian spear (83) Hdt. 5. 126. 2; Thuc. 4. 102. 2. (84) Cf. Fontenrose (1959), Charrière (1974). (85) Parke and Wormell (1956: i. 132–3); Fontenrose (1988: 10). (86) Cf. above, n. 36. (87) 5 28: 1: Athens to intervene is also judged negatively (5. 97. 3).

Cf. 30. The decision of

(88) Bury (1902). In his view (1902: 16) the oracle for Argos is original and for Miletus a later addition (in a collection of Delphic authentic and the oracles?). Parke and Wormell (1956: i. 158) also considered the oracle as authentic. For Fontenrose (1978: 169, 313), it is not authentic. That cities consulted the oracle in circumstances analogous to those described by Herodotus is assured: e.g. Thuc. 1.25. 1(= PW 136, F H4 (Epidamnos), 118. 3; cf. 123. 1, 2. 54. 4 = PW 137, F H5 (Sparta on the breaking of the truce). Cf. Parker (1985). But it is to be doubted that the form of questions and answers was analogous. Even if there was an authentic oracle, it must have been rewritten. (89) Murray (1988: 482). Cf. Parker (1985: 317, 318 and n. 71). (90) Hdt. 6.8.2, 15–16.

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The Common Oracle of the Milesians and the Argives (Hdt. 6. 19 and 77) (91) Hdt. 5. 104; 6. 18. (92) Crahay (1956: 180). (93) Crahay (1956: 177). (94) Cf. Crahay (1956: 179). (95) Thuc. 2. 8. 2, 21. 3; cf. 8. 1. (96) Hdt. 6. 21. 2. (97) Hdt. 6. 112. 3, who sets the exceptional courage of the Athenians at Marathon against the general cowardliness. (98) Wells (1905).

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Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ John Gould

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0017

Abstract and Keywords In 1925, Aldous Huxley in his book Along the Road wrote an essay in the course of which he asserted that the ‘best picture’ in the world was Piero della Francesca's ‘Resurrection’, a mural which was in Piero's birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, and is still there. In 1944, as the Allies advanced northwards and the Germans retreated before them, the ‘Resurrection’ came perilously close to not surviving, within minutes indeed of destruction by British artillery. That it did survive is due to the fact that the commanding officer of the battery which had been ordered to shell the German troops still holding on to Borgo San Sepolcro had read Aldous Huxley's essay and remembered it as the order to open fire came through to him: the ‘best picture’ in the world was to be his target. He hesitated and did not give the order to open fire in the hope that the German troops might at the last moment resume their retreat and evacuate the town. This chapter considers what we are to make of the painting's survival. Keywords:   Aldous Huxley, Borgo San Sepolcro, Piero della Francesca, Resurrection

Back in 1925 Aldous Huxley in his book Along the Road wrote an essay in the course of which he asserted that the ‘best picture’ in the world was Piero della Francesca’s ‘Resurrection’,1 a mural which was in Piero’s birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, and is still there. In it the ‘muscular Redeemer’, as John PopeHennessy has described him,2 stands with one foot on the sill of the tomb, staring impassively and challengingly directly at the viewer, while a group of soldiers, two of them with their heads lolling back towards the tomb, sleepoblivious of the event behind them. I say ‘event’ but in the painting the

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Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ Resurrection is frozen: Christ is unmoving; he will be there in that same position so long as the painting survives. Enough of amateurish art-criticism. It is the survival of Piero’s painting that is the reaI subject of this brief essay. For in 1944, as the Allies advanced northwards and the Germans retreated before them, the ‘Resurrection’ came perilously close to not surviving, within minutes indeed of destruction by British artillery. That it did survive is due to the fact that the commanding officer of the battery which had been ordered to shell the German troops still holding on to Borgo San Sepolcro had read Aldous Huxley’s essay and remembered it as the order to open fire came through to him: the ‘best picture’ in the world was to be his target. He hesitated and did not give the order to open fire in the hope that the German troops might at the last moment resume their retreat and evacuate the town. I cannot tell you how many minutes he waited but at the end of those minutes the German army did evacuate the town and the shells were never fired (p.298) on San Sepolcro. (There is another, more circumstantial version of this story which I can tell you: the officer commanding the Royal Horse Artillery battery ordered to shell the town had already fired a ranging shot, which fell 200 metres short of the town centre; he was about to order his gunners to alter their range and resume shelling when he remembered the Huxley essay; so he ordered his battery to cease firing. In this version, when British troops entered San Sepolcro, they found that the Germans had never been in the town.) My source (oral) for this second version is Col. David Lloyd-Edwards. He says that he acquired the story from a written source, H. V. Morton’s A Traveller in Italy3 but this, of course, simply pushed the problem of the story’s source one step further back: where did Morton get the story from? I shall treat the story as a part of the collective memory of the British army, as preserved by Col. LloydEdwards, who lives only a few miles from San Sepolcro (the ‘nearest witness’, pace Detlef Fehling).4 Either way, Piero’s ‘Resurrection’ survived. I know it did because, like Herodotus, I went to see it and it is there still in the Museo Civico and, as Herodotus would have said, it is very much worth seeing. (I say Herodotus would have gone to see it because, like George Forrest, I believe that he did indeed go where he says he went.) I am not saying that the story of the painting’s survival is a ‘historical event’ but that that is how it is remembered. But my interest in this essay (as you may have guessed) is not primarily in the painting’s survival but in what we (you and I and George) are to make of that survival. Is there an ‘explanation’? If so, what? My guess is that most of us would say that it was an incredible piece of luck, plus the coincidence that the battery commander involved had read Huxley’s essay and remembered it when he received the order to shell San Sepolcro. Some (more ‘spiritual’?) might say that the painting was ‘fated’ to survive; some might even see the hand of God Page 2 of 6

 

Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ protecting his own. A larger number might say that there is no explanation and that it is silly to look for one: things just happen. (George would probably, maybe even certainly, have been in this last group.) But Herodotus would not. He would certainly have looked for and probably have found a supernatural explanation: perhaps in the protecting hand of the local hero; perhaps in that (p.299) of ‘a god’. Maybe he would have found a problem in the fact that the retreating Germans were not aware of anything other than human causation for their retreat: no unearthly voice for example, whether of god or hero. By and large that is not how things happen for Herodotus. Moreover the Germans were not punished for threatening the sacred (unless the humiliation of enforced retreat is to be seen as just such a punishment). This is surely because, for Herodotus, there is no such thing as ‘coincidence’ tout court. Indeed ‘coincidence’ can itself be the sign of supernatural intervention. For example, the two heralds sent to Xerxes specifically for execution were spared by him, even though they had been sent in recompense for the death of two Persian heralds sent to Sparta by Dareius to demand submission but thrown by the Spartans into a well to die. When the sons of these heralds were captured by the Athenians a generation later and executed by them, the coincidence is proof that their deaths were caused by the anger of the herald-hero Talthybius. The chance that those who died were the sons of those who should have died but did not is itself proof for Herodotus that the hand of a supernatural power was at work (7.133ff). Why then did Herodotus, if I am right, follow the line of thinking that I have outlined? To answer that question we have to take what may seem a detour and go back to the nature of Greek religion itself and to begin by distinguishing it from the beliefs, practices, and above all the institutions of Christianity. For the Christian, divinity is always present, always concerned, with humanity: God does not, as an ancient Greek god may be imagined as doing, turn his back on human beings, in frustration, anger or even boredom. Moreover no ‘men of religion’ exist with authority to define collectively the nature of the sacred and lay down ‘correct’ rules (‘correct’ by definition) for dealing with it. For the ancient Greek there are indeed ‘men of religion’, both priests and seers, but the former do not constitute an organised entity, a church: there is no such thing. And the latter, though almost invariably consulted in moments of crisis or before significant acts, offer interpretations of events that are everywhere assailable, open to doubt and rejection, or, in the case of the seers of myth, may put forward readings of human predicaments that are systematically ‘illegible’, that is, riddling and impenetrable. The consequence of all this is that Greek religion is ‘phenomenological’, to use Godfrey Lienhardt’s term, in his Divinity and (p.300) Experience.5 That is to say, the hand of a supernatural power at work can only be discerned by the close inspection of what happens, including storms, earthquakes, and the like as well Page 3 of 6

 

Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ as human behaviour. If that event or that behaviour is abnormal or irrational, then a supernatural power may be assumed to be active. There is still, of course, the problem of identifying the power and determining the action to be taken, which may in turn entail the discovery of an explanation for the power’s engagement with particular human events. To use an example that I have used elsewhere,6 the behaviour of Phaidra at the beginning of Euripides’ Hippolytus is so irrational, so out of character, that the chorus are drawn immediately to discern a god at work and have difficulties only in identifying that power (it is only as a last resort that they contemplate the possibility of a purely human explanation in the known liability of women to experience conditions that may lead to abnormal behaviour). In their attempts to identify the supernatural power they take the rambling, shifting utterances of Phaidra as their starting point, exactly as the observers of the irrational behaviour of Lienhardt’s Dinka ‘boy’, Azak, take the contents of his rambling speech and song as their starting point. What prompts the observers in both cases to look for a supernatural explanation is their discernment of something grossly abnormal, even uncanny, in what they are observing. Another example of such an uncanny event is the dream that Xerxes had, demanding that he reverse his decision not to invade Greece, a dream which his uncle, Artabanus, also had when he slept in Xerxes’ bed wearing Xerxes’ clothes. Neither man had any doubt that this was a divine dream because the coincidence was uncanny (7. 12–18). A further example is the dust storm on the Thriasian plain, a storm as of ‘thirty thousand men’ processing (that is, of course, by convention the entire population of Athens) witnessed only by Dikaios and Demaratos. When the dust veers away towards Salamis, Dikaios is sure that this is a supernatural event, portending the destruction of Xerxes’ fleet; and subsequent events prove him right (8. 65). Two last examples: one, the bizarre and horrifying suicide of the Spartan king, Kleomenes: in this case Kleomenes himself sees divinity in the coincidence that when he burns down a sacred grove, it (p.301) turns out to be the grove of the hero Argos; he infers from this that he will therefore never take the city of Argos as he had expected—the prophecy meant something other than he had assumed. In the case of Kleomenes’ suicide, Herodotus gives it as his own opinion that the anger of divinity was responsible (6. 84). In the other, the death of the Persian king, Kambyses, at Ekbatana in Syria and not the Persian capital, Ekbatana, where he had confidently assumed he would die in old age, in the light of an oracle he had received: this was another Ekbatana and another coincidence, which meant only one thing: that the god of prophecy had overseen his death and foreseen ‘what was to be’ for him. Moreover, the coincidence that the usurping Magus was, like Kambyses’ own brother, called Smerdis and the uncannyness of Kambyses’ leaping on his horse to ride to confront Smerdis and receiving a fatal wound from his own sword as he mounted, ‘in exactly the same Page 4 of 6

 

Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ spot as he had wounded the Egyptian god, Apis’, make the descrying of the hand of divinity at work the more easily intelligible (3. 61 ff.). We can now better see that what we call ‘coincidence’, above all if it concerns something of serious significance, is in itself one of those ‘uncanny’ occurrences that, in a religious system such as I have defined, will point unerringly to the action of a supernatural power. So it seems to me abundantly clear that the events at San Sepolcro in 1944 would have been read by Herodotus as such a supernatural occurrence. It is not that Herodotus would not or could not recognise the existence of ‘chance’ events. Indeed he attributes to Solon the assertion that ‘man is all chance’ (1. 32). But that is a generalization without explanatory force. Man is chance in the sense that he is not in the grip of ‘laws’ of inevitability. It is possible for Herodotus to say of this or that specific event that ‘it was not after all going to happen’ (5. 33), just as it is possible for Homer to have Achilles say the same of his failure to defend Patroklos (Il. 18. 98–9). But that is not so much an explanation as a rueful comment on the failure of human hopes and expectations. The survival of the ‘Resurrection’ is different. Because the work itself, even if we do not wish to call it, in what now seems a rather quaint phrase, the ‘best painting’ in the world, is nonetheless a great painting, its survival calls for something more than a shrug of the shoulders; for an explanation, indeed. And for Herodotus that explanation would inevitably have involved divinity. No doubt, like (p.302) Euripides’ chorus and the witnesses of Lienhardt’s ‘boy’ ’s unintelligible utterances, he would have had a problem in identifying the power involved and, like them, he would have had to cast about for clues in the contents and context of the event itself. But that is only to be able to know the proper human ritual response to a happening of such momentous consequence. Momentous, at least for me, who had never seen the painting before and would not now have seen it, but for what we might agree to call (metaphorically, of course) its miraculous survival. John Gould died leaving only a text as delivered at the conference; we have not attempted to revise it beyond the addition of references. Notes:

(1) Huxley (1925: 177–89). (2) Pope-Hennessy (1991: 60). (3) Morton (1964: 530–2). [Gould did not indicate his source for the ‘first version’.]

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Herodotus and the ‘Resurrection’ (4) See Fehling (1989: 275, index, s. v. source-citations, (iii) (1) ‘choice of the obvious source’). (5) Lienhardt (1961). (6) Gould (2001: 211–14).

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Herodotos and Athens

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Herodotos and Athens Robert Fowler

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0018

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the workings of oral history in Herodotus' text, and the implications for its interpretation as a document of the late 430s BC. Echoes of the contemporary political environment are explored particularly in the accounts of Hippokleides' unsuccessful suit, the expulsion of the Athenian tyrants, and the beginning of the Ionian Revolt. Although oral history effectively creates rather than mirrors the record of the past, thus preventing reconstruction of this past in traditional ways by modern historians, the loss is outweighed by better understanding of the text as an historical record of its own day, and by better methods of identifying received record and oral deformation. Keywords:   oral history, Athens, Hippokleides, Ionian Revolt, tyrants

This paper will not discuss precisely the subject usually designated by its title, that is, such things as whether Herodotos admired democratic Athens, was on good terms with the Alkmaionidai, or wrote his history as a covert warning to contemporary imperialists;1 rather it is about how the environment in which Herodotos lived and worked fundamentally shaped his view of the past. Still, as the contours of that environment were determined by the great city and its enemies, the familiar topics do come in indirectly, and as an homage to the honorand of this volume the liberty seemed justified.2 It is first necessary to state which Athens shaped Herodotos’ view of the past. Forrest took it for granted that Herodotos’ Athens was that of about 450 BC, basing his belief presumably on the biographical tradition that Herodotos left the city with the colonists for Thourioi in 444/3 BC.3 Perhaps he did, but we are Page 1 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens less trustful now of these traditions; in any case nothing precludes return visits to Athens. As is well known Herodotos alludes to events from the beginning of the Archidamian War, and his text or something like it was (p.306) known in Athens by 425.4 Given that a man of Herodotos’ extraordinary mental agility was unlikely to stay stuck in the mindcast of his youth, his text will have evolved continuously right up to the moment of ‘publication’, and should therefore reflect the conditions of the 440s and 430s. Many of us were raised to think of Herodotos as an Archaic writer, and Thucydides as Classical. Partly the judgement was literary, partly a pronouncement on world-views. But his style, though it may be, is an implement of great power; and though there may be much in his worldview that we might like to designate ‘Archaic’, we should recognize that such attitudes survived long into the fifth century (and beyond), and remember that the ‘Classical’ Thucydides did not achieve his final form until the century was nearly out. And if the ‘Archaic’ world-view is one that makes more room than Thucydides for oracles, curses, and suchlike phenomena, we must remember too that Herodotos’ grimly rational successor was not at all typical of his age. At the root of the old attitude perhaps lies a simple equation of writer and subject. Herodotos drew a line under his history after the battle of Mykale, and alludes overtly to the following decades in only a few places. His narrative is so skilful that it reads like the account of an eyewitness. Subconsciously we think of him as a man of that time (and, perhaps, of Thucydides as a man of 431). But a more attentive reading and probing beneath the surface of the narrative reveals the contemporary world in which the Histories were composed. Recent studies, above all Rosalind Thomas’s important new book,5 have sought to demonstrate how close are the links between Herodotos and the thinkers and writers of his era, and to see him as a man keenly and overtly involved in contemporary debates about every conceivable scientific, anthropological, and political topic. The difficulty of dating much of this material has also contributed to the sense of Herodotos floating indeterminately in the decades between 460 and 430, anchored in no particular context; yet it is a very odd state of affairs when a text is dated not by the latest events mentioned in it but by some a priori construction of its place in literary or cultural history. The parenthentical nature of Herodotos’ occasional (p.307) references to events later than his narrative has perhaps encouraged scholars to think they can be bracketed out, leaving the text from which one can more truly infer Herodotos’ mind-set, but the burden of proof lies with anyone who would claim that that mind-set was not contemporary with the actual date of the text, and representative of that era. It is still open to someone to claim that the text reveals a conservative point of view from that era,6 but not a kind of head-in-the-sand conservatism that does Herodotos’ intelligence little credit. Of the different ways in which Herodotos might connect with his immediate environment—political, philosophical, scientific, Page 2 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens historiographical, religious—it is the references to the fully developed Athenian empire, as revealed in numerous allusions oblique and direct, which are hardest to ignore. It is even harder to separate this type of reference from the others, since the cycle of fate is a theme common to all. This paper, starting from the conviction that Herodotos’ text is intimately connected with the world of the 430s, will seek to make further observations in support of this contention. At the heart of much recent work is the notion of ‘oral history’.7 As soon as one grasps the nature of oral tradition, one sees that Herodotos’ text has little choice but to reflect contemporary, not past reality. Oral traditions, as Vansina forcefully put the point, only survive if they serve an ongoing need.8 Without contemporary application and interest no one has a reason to repeat the tale and the tradition dies. This being the case, contemporary needs inevitably affect the actual content of the tradition itself, and the stories undergo constant modification. Oral history is apt to offer a particularly clear instance of the cliché that all history is present history. Yet this is oversimplified, even if you believe the cliché. Certainly there will be more seeing oneself in the mirror of the past under purely oral circumstances than when one has a plethora of written sources at one’s disposal to control the vagaries of memory, though some modern theorists would dispute that claim. But purely oral (p.308) circumstances hardly ever exist. Herodotos had plenty of written material to work with himself,9 and the oral memory of society at large was subject to controls of various kinds: public inscriptions, monuments, famous poets’ works learned in school, the association of certain events with the names of eponymous archons in a fixed list, and so on. Anyway purely oral traditions can be remarkably subtle and accurate, if the need exists for them to be subtle and accurate. A good example is the curse of the Alkmaionids, which was a live issue throughout the fifth century; as Perikles was an Alkmaionid,10 the recollection of the role played by this curse during the eviction of the tyrants eighty years before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War was particularly vivid (5. 71–2). So as always in these studies the simple dogma is untenable, and there will be plenty of occasions where Herodotos’ sources and methods have reliably preserved or recovered the factual record, often in impressive detail. And the broad outlines of the story, the major events, are not in question. Nonetheless there is a lot more ‘deformation’, as Oswyn Murray has dubbed it,11 going on in Herodotos than we used to think, and in any case there is much more to history than the factual record; as soon as one attempts the most elementary explanation of the facts, present concerns will make themselves felt. It is perhaps not really so controversial to say that Herodotos wears Greek, or even specifically Athenian spectacles when he surveys the past. Many points have always been obvious. At the very opening of the Histories Solon of Athens, great sage and non-partisan father of democracy, author of all Athenian laws, warns Kroisos, proto-Xerxes, about greed, empire, and fickle fortune; effectively Page 3 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens he encapsulates the whole narrative. The meeting is hardly historical in a factual sense, but profoundly historical in an Herodotean sense. Kroisos, soundly defeated, later says to Kyros that the god of the Greeks is to blame for encouraging him to attack the Mede (1. 90–1). So Delphi would have us believe, at any rate; it seems unlikely that this is what Kroisos really said to Kyros after the battle. Herodotos (p.309) himself anticipated a sceptical response to his account of the constitutional debate between Dareios, Otanes, and Megabyzos (3. 80–3). Though discussion continues as to what lay behind this curious passage, no one, I think, would regard it as a transcript of an actual conversation. It seems probable that, like much else in Herodotos, it is the creative expansion of a genuine report, or one Herodotos believed to be genuine; the speeches are what Herodotos believed would have been said on the occasion, and therefore reflect contemporary political thought about the merits of different constitutions.12 Athenians no doubt found it flattering to think that Dareios’ slave every day admonished him, ‘Master, remember the Athenians’, not once but three times as he sat down to dinner (5. 105), but we may take leave to doubt it. Herodotos’ account of Themistokles has long been recognized as affected consciously or unconsciously by his subsequent disgrace.13 These are obvious enough instances, but others have been flagged relatively recently, and might not be accepted by everyone either as allusions to the contemporary world, or instances of that world shaping the narrative of the past. When Kroisos investigates the balance of power in the Greek world (1.56 ff.), he finds Sparta and Athens equally pre-eminent, just as they were in the fifth century; he describes this power elsewhere in the Histories in terms clearly appropriate to his own day.14 Herodotos’ account of these cities’ ethnicity (Ionian and Dorian, the one originally Pelasgian and the other Hellenic; 1. 56–8), is given together with the report of Kroisos’ enquiries; this theory too reflects fifth-century concerns, and its dividing of the Hellenic world effectively into two camps, grossly reductive as an account of Greek ethnicity, simply reproduces contemporary political relations.15 It is interesting to note too how much (p. 310) and what kind of previous history Herodotos thinks it necessary to give us in order to explain the condition of the two cities as Kroisos found them. For volatile Athens the preceding twenty years suffice. The story is one of internal power struggles, warring families, a deceived populus, constant upheaval, and aristocratic key players; at stake is tyranny vs. democracy. For Sparta he must go back to Lykourgos (1. 65), and tell how after some initial difficulties the Spartans brought the greater part of the Peloponnese under their control; thereafter they settled down to good government, prosperity, and stability. An historian writing in Sparta or Athens c.550 might have had a different tale to tell. When Herodotos highlights the inability of the Persian empire to keep to itself and stop grasping for more, it is hard not to think of Athenian pleonexia and polypragmosyne, well known from Thucydides.16 The consequences of victory at Page 4 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens Marathon suggested to Kallimachos on the eve of a battle are clearly an ex post facto prediction.17 The argument at the beginning of Book 8 about who should command the fleet at Artemisium presupposes the later naval might of Athens. Xerxes is twice made to say that, should Athens and Sparta be subdued, no other power in the world will be able to resist the might of Persia; a jingoistic estimate of their own importance unlikely to have occurred to the hard-pressed Greek commanders at the time. Herodotos’ constant care to determine who was the first aggressor in altercations between states, beginning in the proem and continuing throughout the history, finds echoes in the speeches preceding the outbreak of hostilities in the first book of Thucydides, and seems to be a feature of international relations of the day.18 We do not know the age of Sparta’s reputation as principled deposers of tyrannies rather than individual tyrants whom they happened to dislike for strategic reasons,19 but one may suspect that it is not as old as Sosikles’ speech (5. 92); it may well have been a response to Athens’ claim to have liberated Greece, and would make better and better sense as Athens itself became a tyrannos.20 The tribute imposed (p.311) by the Lydians and Persians on their empires would have made Herodotos’ audience think of a more recent phoros.21 And so on. There are other examples, some trivial and others more far-reaching, but these will suffice to make the point. It is worth asking how these allusions to contemporary Athens, as they are often called, actually work. The normal view seems to be that in telling the story of the Persian Wars Herodotos was especially alert to details which would resonate in the ears of an audience attuned to present-day realities. So, for instance, Kurt Raaflaub, to whose important article I owe some of my examples, writes of Miltiades’ words to Kallimachos before Marathon, ‘Only from hindsight would it be obvious that this victory would result in Athens’ rise to greatest power. Such remarks seem to me to serve as “pointers” intended to make the audience aware of the connections between “ancient history” and the present.’22 Or again, after demonstrating in persuasive detail how many topical allusions lurk in Xerxes’ council and his conversation with Artabanos at Abydos, Raaflaub writes: ‘the historian wanted his audience to continue to think of the present while they were hearing of the past, from the confident beginnings of Xerxes’ campaign to its miserable failure.’23 Many scholars have spoken of warnings to Athens or of irony, for instance in connection with Sosikles’ speech—how ironic, in view of later events, that a Corinthian, of all people, prevented the Spartans, of all people, from installing a tyrant in Athens, of all places. I do not dispute the substance of these observations. It is certainly true that the audience is encouraged to keep its eyes on present and past together, that Athens gets warned, and that Sosikles’ speech is ironic (Hippias in Herodotos’ own text (5.93) provides warrant enough for that reading).24 But common to all three formulations is an assumption which I think does not accurately express what is going on in oral history. The assumption is that the record of the past is pre-established and given, and that the historian, Page 5 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens pondering the meaning of events both past and present, notices similarities and patterns, and then recounts the past in such a way as to highlight these uncovered similarities. These (p.312) narrative manoeuvres become ‘allusions’ which the cleverer among us will notice. But the point about oral history is that the present helps to create the record of the past in the first place. That being so, the origin of the similarities lies in the historian’s move from present to past, not the other way around. The standard model also tends to make the oral historian believe that the past is a foreign country, different from our own, in which only the most careful investigation reveals the similarities lurking below the surface. Rather, the oral historian assumes that the past worked more or less like the present. The process of recovering the past is much like that lying behind aetiological mythmaking: one reasons that for matters to be as they are now, they must have been thus and so then. The past is a retrojection of the present. Of course the process is conditioned, to repeat the point once more, by inherited data and other external controls. It is also true that the most rudimentary investigative history must have some sense of opposition over against the past, which is after all the ‘object’ of enquiry; this stage antedates Herodotos by half a century. And though Herodotos used oral sources, and was in some ways a purveyor of oral tradition himself, he also used written sources, his way of comparing and evaluating these sources is literate, and his written history was a revolution.25 Yet even admitting that the distancing required for irony is there in Herodotos, it does less than justice to the creativity of the logopoios to describe Sosikles’ speech in only these terms. For Sosikles’ speech is a creation, not a recollection; and its origin will lie in the mind of a man contemplating the story of an abortive attempt by the Spartans to reinstate a tyrant at Athens from the perspective of the years preceding the Peloponnesian War. Who talked the Peloponnesians out of invading? Who else but the Corinthians, more deadly haters of tyrants and more certain of their principles than even the Spartans. Even if the intervention of the Corinthians on this occasion is historically secure, the arguments Herodotos puts in Sosikles’ mouth are his free invention, or oral tradition; either way, they will be expressed in contemporary terms, not those of the late sixth century. Herodotos cannot use a word like ‘tyranny’ and expect his audience to suppress the contemporary associations of the word, cleaving to some philological sense of its sixth-century force—if (p.313) indeed either audience or performer was aware of the difference. The description of what the ancestors did cannot help but be a description of what the descendants might do, or are in fact doing in a different context. The texture of any such description is very thick, much more than the standard model imagines, for present and past are herein so perfectly symbiotic as to be inseparable. One might rather speak of knowingness and resignation than irony; if it is irony, it is the sustained irony of tragedy. And one should rather speak of a common language shared by spokesman and audience than of Page 6 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens allusions. This is the conversation of the logioi andres. We understand only one word in ten of this language, and when we pick up one of those words, it sounds to us like a dropped hint; to native speakers the dialogue is continuous and transparent.26 To take a different example, the Alkmaionids are stars in the famous story of Hippokleides (6. 126–30), a story overbrimming with folk-tale motifs; it is particularly in such material that the characteristics of oral tradition are apt to make themselves apparent. We have a rich and powerful father, a beautiful daughter, a band of suitors who assemble from all over Greece, each with his own special attribute, Argonaut-like, as Herodotos’ epic catalogue carefully details; the attributes come from a stock list of heroic and aristocratic traits— physical beauty, athletic prowess, notable deeds, and so on. The world in which these suitors move is anything but democratic; it is the exclusive club of blueblooded tyrants, a world of extravagant expenditure, private morality and disdain of the polis. Wonderfully, with all this talent to choose from, Kleisthenes favours the two Athenians, Megakles and even more Hippokleides, who however danced his wedding away. ‘Hippokleides doesn’t give a toss’ became proverbial. Stories attached to proverbs are a documented kind of oral tradition: the proverb acts as an aide-mémoire.27 But it has to have a reason to be remembered. This story would have gone down a storm in democratic Athens.28 Hippokleides, not Megakles who wins the bride, is the true hero of the story; the man who beats all those would-be tyrants at their own game, and then shows he doesn’t give a fig for the prize. He is the buffoon with whom the (p.314) audience identifies; positively Aristophanic he is, much like old Philokleon, who even quotes a similar proverb,29 as he dances merrily and his creditors go begging. The story is a knowing nudge and wink at the expense of the Alkmaionids, in particular Perikles, who was descended from boring old Megakles. Hippokleides no doubt was one of Agarista’s suitors, but the story has clearly been lovingly nurtured and elaborated. The historicity of the second Agarista’s dream (6. 131) seems much harder to defend. At the mention of the lion, the tone turns serious, and the joke becomes a meditation.30 Perikles was the leader of the radical democracy, yet the story calls his credentials into question by revealing his family’s problematic connections with a tyrant. This is not the only feature of Herodotos’ narrative which raises an eyebrow about the Alkmaionids. These things reveal serious anxiety about leadership in a democratic society. To an extent such anxiety was there from the start; the logical antithesis of giving everyone power is giving one person power, so obviously people in a democracy fear and despise tyranny. But in the earliest days of isonomie not everyone had power in the same way as they did in the 440s. As the radical democracy emerged and a radical ideology became more articulate, the anxiety about tyranny grew deeper. In reality an oligarchy was much more apt to replace the democracy, but the figure of the tyrant became the bugbear of the democratic Page 7 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens city. Aristophanes parodies this when he makes his characters accuse anyone who appears to be claiming too much or putting on airs of aiming at tyranny (often equated with Sparta-loving).31 Any democratic leader, standing out from the crowd as a matter of definition, was constantly under this suspicion. The relationship between mob and leader was a delicate, constantly negotiated one, apt to go wrong at any time.32 Anyone who has newly come forward as a leader will be the object of the most intense scrutiny; this is the point, I take it, of the phrase with which Herodotos introduces Themistokles,33 a leader for whom the relationship went very wrong indeed. Whatever the factual truth of the (p.315) timing as Herodotos reports it, he has got the symbolic truth right: subsequent events showed that this was a man to watch very, very closely. Tyranny and self-government are diametrically opposed in many passages of Herodotos’ Histories, most famously in the conclusion of his account of the expulsion of Athens’ own tyrants (5. 78).34 The word used there is isegorie, which implies a more radical form of democracy, and a more articulate ideology than isonomie.35 It is more likely to be a concept of the fully-developed democracy than that of Kleisthenes. This celebrated passage lies at the heart of the Histories in every way. It is placed very near the centre of the nine-book pedimental structure. As for its content, the expulsion of Athens’ tyrants resulted immediately in the foundation of the democracy; this is Athens’ internal version of the grander theme of the Histories, liberation from the threat of Persian tyranny. Quite apart from its function in the Histories, just within an Athenian context this moment was particularly apt to be the subject of mythmaking; all the more within the Histories must this be so, for the knowledge of what Athens did with that democracy and freedom can hardly be kept out of mind. Furthermore, Herodotos links the whole story with the start of the Ionian Revolt, the immediate catalyst of the wars. The collocation is remarkable. He could certainly have arranged the story otherwise, but he chose to make the arrival of Aristagoras appear all but contemporaneous with the expulsion of the tyrants. The reason, one suspects, is that in 431 this story involving Sparta, Athens, Corinth, tyranny, democracy, freedom and rebellion, Ionians, Dorians, and Persians, was the greatest of all stories to think with, the foundation-story of the contemporary world order, even more fundamental than Marathon itself, for Herodotos is quite clear that Athens had to win its own freedom before it could find the strength to resist the Persians. It is no accident that this whole section of the Histories resonates more deeply with the author’s own day than any other. But the truly remarkable thing is the subtlety. For once, we hear some of the echoes, catch the resonances. We sometimes think of Herodotos as an historian who imposes patterns on events and even (p.316) geography; he does this, to be sure, but that does not mean that his account of history is simplistic. Consider the nuances of this account of the tyrant’s demise. We have the very problematic king Kleomenes (Spartans do not escape the mirror either), for once occupying the high moral ground and not falling off (admittedly with the help of little Page 8 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens Gorgo). We have the Alkmaionidai, noble tyrant-haters, achieving the noble end of their expulsion by bribing the Pythia. We learn that the Spartans, famous tyrant-deposers, were reluctant to follow the Pythia’s command, for the Peisistratidai were their friends. We are told that Kleisthenes, renewer of democracy, took the people into his party only because he was losing to Isagoras in the power-struggle. As part of his reform-scheme he created new tribes, imitating his grandfather, says Herodotos, and out of contempt for the old Ionian tribes; remember that Aristagoras, narratologically if not chronologically speaking, is in the wings asking for help with the Ionian revolt. We learn here of the curse on the Alkmaionidai, acquired during an earlier eviction of a would-be tyrant. We have here the wonderful vignette of the Dorian Kleomenes denied entry to Athena’s temple on the acropolis.36 We are told, amazingly, that the Athenians approached the Persians for help; the ambassadors actually gave earth and water. This would not be the last time overtures were made. Kleomenes’ attempt to install Isagoras as tyrant, after the failed attempt to install him at the head of an oligarchy, was made, apparently, in a fit of pique. The Corinthians proved unwilling to be illegal aggressors (that concept again),37 and so withdrew from the invasion. Herodotos here tells us this was the fourth time the Spartans had invaded Attica. He does not say ‘there were four occasions of which we know’ or ‘this was the fourth and last invasion’ (as de Sélincourt translates); rather, the neutral wording leaves open the possibility that there were other invasions after the conclusion of the Histories.38 A digression at this point, surely not absent-minded, describes the origin of the hatred between Athens and Aigina, whose populace was expelled in 431. The Spartans next learn of the bribery of the oracle, and out of distress at having expelled their friends the tyrants, decide to put them back in again; they had come to realize, with remarkable foresight, that a free Athens would equal them in power. Their proposal meets with Sosikles’ eloquent response; one (p.317) has to grant only the minimum of historical truth to Thucydides’ account of the prelude to the war to accept that the Corinthian attitude in 433–431 is in the background here. Hippias’ response to Sosikles’ speech, emphatically reinforced by oracles and oaths, is the ominous and only-too-true warning (unheeded, as ever) that the Corinthians will one day miss the Peisistratids. Hippias repairs to Artaphernes, who sends word that if they value their safety, the Athenians will take Hippias back; they decline, even though they know that to do so means open hostility with Persia. This remark precedes the statement that the Athenians’ decision to send ships to Ionia was the arche kakon; this refusal to accept tyranny is technically the first cause of the war according to the narrative. So it might have seemed in 431, but they could hardly have guessed what was coming in 507. The Iliadic phrase, considered together with Hippias’ oaths and oracles (which make the outcome a matter of fate, as in retrospect terrible events are easily seen to be), renders the episode, and by implication the whole of the History, tragic, in a classically Greek way: this was a moment when there was no way out; either decision, to accept or reject the Persian-backed Page 9 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens tyrant, had dreadful consequences. In Achillean style, the Greeks chose the option that at least preserved the integrity of their ideals and earned the right to be immortalized by future recorders of great deeds. The other way lay anonymity and oblivion. The date of these events is deliberately fudged by Herodotos, who says that ‘at this moment’ Aristagoras arrived, and persuaded thirty thousand democrats where he had failed with one Spartan king. The fateful ships are despatched to Ionia, newly liberated, but not up to liberty: the great lost opportunity of the history, and all the more poignant in view of their later uneasy relation with the isonomie of another tyrant.39 The amazing detail of this account reflects its importance to subsequent generations. In an environment of oral history that is the only possible explanation. Simplification is the normal trend; had the whole matter not remained a subject of anxiety, we should know only that Harmodios and Aristogeiton deposed the tyrants (a version which served well enough in some contexts). Fuller, competing versions in Herodotos and Thucydides (1.20.2, 6.54) show that the matter was open for debate.40 Each version is its own deformation. Were our sources fuller, we would be able to detect a great deal more of this (p.318) going on in Herodotos and Thucydides than we can now. In principle one must always admit the possibility of deformation behind any report, a situation that fundamentally affects our ability to get at the history of the Archaic period. Indeed, one may go further: the events which loom large in our sense of Archaic Athenian history—the rise and fall of the tyrants, the founding of the democracy—do so precisely because these events were the most important in the consciousness of the fifth-century democracy. The literary tradition knows little else.41 But with loss on the one hand comes gain on the other, for we become much more sensitive to the nature and history of representations, which afford a subtler insight into the societies contemporary with those representations. Herodotos is a sounding-board for contemporary views, with a relationship rather like that of Pindar to his audience. The account of the tyrant’s demise, built on a few facts, gains its colour entirely from the environment in which the story was told. It is in fact a story about that environment, and shows us what was at stake in contemporary power-struggles. But Herodotos (like Pindar) is more than a passive spokesman; he develops and re-works his material, shaping his audience’s views in his turn, educating them.42 This is the account of a supremely intelligent observer. His palette contains colours of every hue; his canvas is anything but black and white. Beneath a broadly patterned surface irregularities abound. Chaos underpins order. The Histories, and the historical process, proceed on both macro- and micro-levels. In parallel with the operations of curses and the cycles of history, cities and individuals humble and mighty in all freedom make their unpredictable decisions for motives noble and base, pure and corrupt, tragical and comical, with far-reaching consequences.43 If the logopoios and the poietes are linked in essence as in name, this is a Page 10 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens creative representation of life as rich and inexhaustible as the greatest poetry.44 No facile assessment such as that Herodotos admired or hated Athens can possibly do it justice. Notes:

(1) For excellent orientation and bibliography on all aspects of this issue see Moles (2002). I have also found Fornara (1971), French (1972), Raaflaub (1987), Stadter (1992), Derow (1995), and Moles (1996) particularly useful and congenial. Pride of place in this general line of enquiry goes to Strasburger (1955). (2) George Forrest delivered a characteristically vigorous talk on the same subject in Toronto in 1981, when the present writer was fortunate enough to be in the audience (subsequently published as Forrest 1984). The honorand on that occasion was Mary White; the affectionate description of her at the outset of his paper can be applied with little change to George himself. (3) Forrest (1984: 2): ‘Herodotos, already an experienced politician himself, was in Athens between about 450 and, very probably, 444/3. We must judge his political outlook by his reaction to Athenian politicians and their policies in those years: not without hesitation earlier, not, certainly, later.’ (4) For the date and form of the publication of Herodotos’ text see Fornara (1981); Sansone (1985); Evans (1987); Johnson (1994); Hornblower (1996: 25– 8); Pelling (2000: 154–5); and further references cited by Moles (2002: n. 24). (5) Thomas (2000). (6) The supposed lack of sophistic influence on Herodotos gives some support for this view, but it is only the overblown rhetoric of sophism’s heyday which he barely lived to see (the stir caused by Gorgias in Athens in 427 gives the date); Herodotos’ interest in nomos/physis and in political theory shows him keenly engaged with the ideas of Protagoras’ generation (Thomas 2000: index s.v. ‘sophists’). (7) See e.g. French (1972: 20); Murray (1987); Raaflaub (1988); Thomas (1989); Evans (1991: ch. 3); Flower (1991); Ruschenbusch (1992); Stadter (1997); Luraghi (2001). (8) Vansina (1965: 13–14, 41–2, 79–83; 1985: 49ff”.). (9) See Lateiner (1989: ch. 4). (10) Forrest insisted in his lecture (Forrest 1984: 4) that Perikles was not an Alkmaionid, because his mother, not his father, belonged to the clan; a curiously blind spot, since it is plain from the story of his mother’s dream (Hdt. 6.131) what contemporary Athenians thought, and even plainer from the business of Page 11 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens the curse. Perikles’ own citizenship law established that descent was reckoned bilaterally for the most important of all purposes. But whatever his personal affiliation, Perikles could still have had nothing to do politically with the Alkmaionids (the point Forrest really wants to make). (11) Murray (1987: 102). Raaflaub (1988) has ‘Verformung’. (12) If one asks why it seemed so plausible to Herodotos that the debate took place, one might reasonably appeal to the overall subject of his narrative, the war between the Persian empire and the Greek poleis; he traces the story of all major actors from their arche forward, recording all critical junctures. The accession of Dareios is the last of these for the Persian empire, and Herodotos implies that there was a choice; the empire did not need to develop as it did. A remarkable implication, for most contemporaries would have believed in the inevitability of monarchy in a Persian context, as of liberty in a Greek context. Herodotos suggests otherwise for both. For discussion and bibliography on the constitutional debate see e.g. Gammie (1986: 173–4); Raaflaub (1989); Thomas (2000: 18), with references. (13) Complete bibliography in Moles (2002). (14) e.g. 5. 97. 1, 1. 68. 6; see French (1972: 19); Raaflaub (1987: 238). (15) For Herodotos and the Pelasgians see Fowler (forthcoming), and SourvinouInwood in this volume. (16) Raaflaub (1987: 227). (17) 6.109.6; Raaflaub (1987: 238). (18) The language of international law is underinvestigated in Herodotos’ text. See Adcock and Mosley (1975: ch. xvii); Bauslaugh (1991: 47–54); Sheets (1994); Bederman (2001: 31–41; index s.v. ‘Herodotus’). (19) As D. M. Lewis comments in CAH iv2. 301. (20) On the notion of the polis tyrannos see Raaflaub (1979; 1987: 224); Tuplin (1985), with further references at nn. 1, 4. On Sparta’s reputation as the archenemy of tyrants, see Hdt. 5. 92α1; Thuc. 1. 18. 1 with Hornblower; the culmination is the liberation of Greece from the greatest of the tyrants, the city of Athens (Thuc. 2. 8. 4). See further Tigerstedt (1965: 78); Jones (1967: 45–6); Forrest (1980: ch. 7). (21) Stadter (1992: 795); Derow (1995: 5). (22) Raaflaub (1989: 238). (23) Raaflaub (1989: 229). Page 12 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens (24) Węcowski (1996: 235); Moles (2002). (25) For the essential written-ness of Herodotos’ text see Flory (1980); Johnson (1994); Moles (1996: 278–9) anticipating Naiden (1999); Stadter (1997: at n. 9); Moles (1999); Fowler (2001). (26) Strasburger (1955: 1 = 1965: 575): ‘Nur muß man sich gewöhnen, den schmalen und gewundenen Urwaldpfaden des vorthukydideischen Geschichtsdenkens zu folgen, auf denen Herodot und seine Zeitgenossen sich noch so mühelos zurechtfanden, daß ihnen geheime Winke zur Verständigung genügten.’ (27) Murray (1987: 98) citing Lang (1984: 58–67). (28) Thomas (1989: 269). (29) Wasps 1411. (30) For the possible nuances of the lion image see e.g. Fornara (1971: 53–4); Thomas (1989: 270). A certain interpretation is impossible; that is part of the point. But certainly it is not complimentary in any uncomplicated way. (31) e.g. Wasps 417, 463–507, Lys. 614–30, fr. 110 K.–A.; see MacDowell on Wasps 345, Dunbar on Birds 1074–5. (32) See Ober (1989a). (33) ‘there was an Athenian recently come forward to join the ranks of the leaders [literally, ‘first men’]’. (34) See also 1. 62; 3. 80; 3. 142; 4. 137; 5. 37; 6. 5; 6. 43; 6. 123. Throughout the Histories the tyranny of the Persians threatens the freedom of Ionians, Athenians, all the Greeks. (35) Meier (1990: 29–52, 162); Raaflaub (1985); Woodhead (1967); Griffith (1966). Against this view Lewis argues that the concept was already Kleisthenic (Lewis 1971). (36) See Parker (1998). (37) See above, n. 18. (38)

(5. 76).

(39) Cf. Murray (1988: 474). (40) Thomas (1989: 237–61). (41) Cf. Raaflaub (1988: 211–14, 219). Page 13 of 14

 

Herodotos and Athens (42) Cf. Evans (1991: 128). (43) On the crucial importance of the choice in Herodotos see Kleinknecht (1940) and Solmsen (1974), building on Wolff’s classic study (Wolff, 1929). (44) Forrest (1984: 11) rightly refers to Herodotos’ creation as ‘the great poem that he wrote’. Similarly Pelling (1997: ad finem), who throughout his paper has much of interest to say about the subtlety of Herodotos’ treatment of key themes and contrasts. On Herodotos’ affinities with tragedy see e.g. Ostwald (1991: 144–8).

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Democracy without Theory

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

Democracy without Theory John K. Davies

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.003.0019

Abstract and Keywords This chapter on the emergence of democracy in Greek antiquity distinguishes five scholarly approaches to the topic: via factuality, mentalities, ideologies, history of philosophy, or its applicability to the present day. It argues that the system called ‘democracy’, far from being formulated as a desirable goal, emerged within societies already well furnished with institutions, doing so as an unplanned assemblage of responses to political crises. Responses were mostly directed towards preventing the recurrence of various system failures (e.g., tyranny and other usurpations of power, regionalism, embezzlement, bribery, and patronage) in ways which lacked any theoretical substrate but were embedded in long-standing social and legal habitus. Keywords:   bribery, democracy, embezzlement, habitus, institutions, patronage

This paper has three purposes. The first is to attempt to reflect and to sum up some of the concerns and conversations of the Oxford Colloquium. The second, in my not altogether welcome capacity as the most senior of George Forrest’s expupils present at it, is to acknowledge the energising effect of his teaching upon my formation (and that of many others) as a historian of antiquity, by demonstrating how sources, events, personalities, customs, processes, and landscapes can be read, with care and realism but also with zest and sympathetic understanding. The third is to recall and to take forward to a new readership1 his radically minimalist views on the emergence of Greek democracy, for those views, as expressed in his book of 1966, have long

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Democracy without Theory influenced me and have provided this paper with its title. Indeed, much of what follows comprises an extended cadenza on a theme of Forrest. He wrote: Second, while it is difficult enough for us to imagine a society in which politicians operated according to a theory which is quite different from our own (p.320) or for fifth-century theorists to imagine one different from theirs, it is still more difficult to come to grips with a society which existed without theory at all; yet this is what we have to try to do. Of course men were capable of basing political action on principle before 450 BC just as they were capable of clear thinking before the invention of formal logic or of measuring a field without the theorems of Pythagoras; but without any substantial body of comparative evidence, without any general theory of politics, without even the technical language that goes with it, it must have been impossible, except in the crudest way, either to produce a detailed analysis of existing society or to create in the imagination an ideal towards which existing society might be directed. (Forrest 1966: 103) However, though the theme is Forrest’s, the approach will diverge. In particular, and unlike many of the papers in this volume, it will not offer a ‘close reading’ of particular detailed facets of Herodotos’ work, though of course the constitutional debate in 3. 80–2 will be borne in mind. Rather, it will offer a ‘distant reading’, concerned more with Herodotos’ world or worlds (present and past, real, imagined, or recreated), with the Athens which he knew, and even more with the task of contextualising those worlds more broadly, and will attempt to do so via routes which are largely independent of Herodotos’ text. To some degree at least we now can and should be able to read the Archaic period independently of him, in ways in which we cannot read the Persian Wars without him.

CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP First and foremost, this paper is the product of deep and longstanding unease about current ways of approaching the phenomenon of the emergence, consolidation, and spread of Greek democracy. Those ways are legion, as we all know: the limited bibliography which accompanies this paper barely begins to scratch the surface of the explosive growth in publication on the subject since the 1960s. In one sense that has been a wholly understandable outgrowth of normal academic activity, focusing on what by universal consent is one of the most important political creations of the whole of Classical Antiquity. In another sense, though, such explosive growth reflects a proliferation of agendas which risks confusing rather than clarifying the issues and problems involved. The first part of this paper will (p.321) therefore try to disentangle those various agendas, as an essential preliminary before any alternative discourse can move forwards.

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Democracy without Theory In crude simplistic classificatory terms, five separate agendas, or focuses of attention, can be identified within this maelstrom of scholarly writing.2 First and easiest is the straight antiquarian approach, as represented in an older generation by the Griechische Staatskunde of Busolt-Swoboda and later by Hignett, nowadays by Rhodes (1972) or Bleicken (1994) or Hansen (1991 and 1999), which is concerned to construct a closely documented picture of laws and procedures and institutions, largely though not wholly3 in a synchronic mode. Second comes diachronic collective psycho-history, as represented in widely divergent ways by Meier (1980) and by Forrest (1966), namely an approach which attempts to create the history not only of events and of processes but also of mentalités, which Forrest was addressing long before the concept became fashionable. Third, and closely related to the second, is the approach characteristic of the cultural historian such as Morris (1996), concerned to analyse social and cultural processes in terms of the concepts and ideas (or ‘ideologies’) which are attested in (or appropriate for) that particular society.4 Fourth is the approach of the historian of philosophy, who is concerned (as in the title of Farrar (1988)) to trace the roots of democratic thinking and to locate it, such as it was, within the evolution of the mainstream tradition of Greek philosophy, if only as a praeparatio evangelica to Aristotle’s Politics. Fifth, last, and currently dominant, is an approach characteristic of that American scholarly tradition which is open both to the vocabulary and agenda of political theory and institutions as an academic discipline and (especially in some of its American versions) to the party-political need to legitimate this or that ideological stance by reference to the past. This approach, which essentially collapses the past into the present, can be very crude and cold-war-warriorish, but can also, more interestingly, exploit the notions of the educational and political relevance of (p. 322) classical texts and concepts. As Ober and Hedrick put it in their 1996 preface: The reader will we hope end up convinced of the value of learning more about the history of classical democracy. We express this hope in the conviction that the more one learns of that history, the more important it becomes as a resource for moral, ethical, and political reflection. (Ober and Hedrick 1996: 5)

DIFFICULTIES IN CURRENT SCHOLARSHIP Divergent though these approaches are, the two last share an assumption that the ideas, ideals, and theories of antiquity have contemporary resonances and relevances, while all of them (except perhaps the first, antiquarian approach) share the basic assumption that such ideas, ideals, and theories played a major part in the processes of social, political, and institutional change. I shall not address the first assumption here, but shall concentrate fire on the second, for I have acute difficulties with this whole body of scholarship, and not just because

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Democracy without Theory the various discourses overlap with each other and get in each others’ way (though they do). Three particular difficulties may be singled out. The first comprises the ambiguity of the word ‘theory’. It can denote: (a) the set of ideas which in the minds of contemporaries drove the constitutional and administrative developments of the sixth and fifth centuries BC: or (b) the ideas and arguments which extant texts offer as justifications and legitimations for democratic politics—such as, obviously, the prodemocracy component of the constitutional debate attributed by Herodotos to the Persian nobles in 522 (3. 80–2):5 or (c) the analytic language which modern scholars think is appropriate in order to model and explain the processes involved. These three sets of ideas may coincide, but need not do so. Indeed, they palpably do not, as revealed all too clearly at one extreme by the attributions in fourthcentury orators of motivations to Solon for instituting this or that practice or law —attributions which have no credible basis and are no more than anachronistic rationalisations: (p.323) and at the other extreme by statements such as Christian Meier’s claim that ‘what happened in ancient Greece was that the sphere of communal life was wrested from the control of self-motivating processes and made subject to political action’.6 Insofar as I understand that statement, which is couched in terms of theory in sense (c), it appears to be claiming that theory in sense (b) came to be identical with theory in sense (a). What follows below will comprise the beginnings of a rebuttal of that claim. The second difficulty, long seen and commented on, is that the justifications offered for democracy from within the society itself are prima facie so feeble. Partly, of course, that is because the formulations come via critics such as the Old Oligarch or Thucydides, but that merely serves to highlight the well-known problem, that most of the theoretical thinking about democracy (such as it is) which survives in Greek sources comes from its critics and its opponents: where are the gung-ho formulations that made it a system to die for? The third difficulty is that virtually all these discourses (again, except perhaps the antiquarian one) seem extraordinarily remote from the actual business of managing a polity on the ground, or from the sorts of preoccupation and language which one can see in the public documentation as it develops from the end of the sixth century onwards. All this suggests that much of the discussion is either misconceived or misdirected. What follows will attempt to sketch a case for thinking instead that the world of Herodotos was not being driven by a conscious outreach towards any identifiable ‘democratic’ goals or ideals; that the system which its inhabitants came to call demokratia was little more than a bodged-up set of Page 4 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory responses to particular situations and crises; and that insofar as it had any unifying principle at all, that principle derived not from any positive ideas or ideals but from the perceived need to prevent this or that unpleasant or undesirable development or practice from continuing or from gaining a foothold. Here, the echo of George Forrest’s idea of democracy as an accidental outgrowth of a theory-free world will be obvious enough. The novelty, if any, of what follows here will consist in relocating his (p.324) model within a more extended cultural and institutional environment.

STARTING AGAIN If then not with the theoretical discourses, where does a satisfactory account of the phenomena start? It is tempting to try to identify a chronological baseline, not least for the years around 550 BC which the Persian conquest of Lydia and Ionia made into a defining cultural and political horizon, alike for Xenophanes as a contemporary7 and for Herodotos as he planned his ‘Investigations’ over a century later. However, although of course many common features and processes can be discerned in that period,8 Herodotos’ own account in Book I reveals how divergent political experiences could then be, even within the limited range of polities which he depicts in detail, while, as will be argued below, so many of the necessary preconditions of ‘democracy’ were already in place by 550 that one would need to retreat significantly in time even from that date in order to reach any Ur-formative epoch: indeed, as the indications of significant continuities through the Dark Ages proliferate, it it will be wiser to abjure as chimerical the search for a single baseline in time. Instead, and at the cost of fragmenting cultures into their component parts, I shall revert to the antiquarian approach, and in particular to two components within it, the study of significant terms and the study of institutions. By ‘significant terms’ I do not mean words such as autonomia, isonomia, eleutheria, and so on, which have dominated the debate and are already abstract and semi-theoretical, but the more technical, chunky words whose roots lie deep in the patchwork of isolated, small-scale, agrarian Iron Age communities. The examples of Louis Gernet and Kurt Latte9 are still seminal in demonstrating that there is no better way of discovering how a society works than by mapping the uses of such terms. Some leading examples will be offered towards the end of this paper.

(p.325) THE STUDY OF INSTITUTIONS I begin with institutions. As two papers of Mogens Hansen have reminded us (Hansen 1989a and 1989b), however we classify a polity in terms of ‘monarchy’, tyranny’, ‘oligarchy’, ‘democracy’, etc., a polity is after all a set of institutions first, second, and last. What is crucial is that the Greek world which Herodotos describes as that of his own past and present shows, with striking uniformity, six basic institutions, and does so long before there was any talk of demokratia or of theory. Of these six, four were obvious and traditional: king or magistrate, Page 5 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory council, assembly, and a set of festivals and cultic practices. Two were of more recent growth, namely the codification of law, and the evolution or redefinition of tribes or ‘parts’ (mere, moirai, etc.) as segments of a polity. For present purposes the first four can be largely taken as read, though revaluations of their history are still possible: thus, for example, Carlier has recently argued with force10 that the importance of the Assembly in the Homeric poems (42 instances) was very considerable and must have reflected a deep-rooted reality. However, the two other institutional practices were of more recent growth. Codifications of law are visible enough across Greece from the start of the lawgiver tradition in the middle third of the seventh century, through Solon and the epigraphic documentation assembled by Van Effenterre and Ruzé (1994–5), to their astonishing efflorescence in that Early Iron Age time-warp which is fifthcentury Crete. Not only are they visible, they are central enough to form the kernel of ex-king Demaratos’ famous reply to Xerxes in 480: ‘for being free they [sc. the Lakedaimonioi] are not free in all respects: for over above them as lord is nomos, which they fear far more than your men do you’ (Hdt. 7. 104. 4). Less visible, but utterly fundamental for any assessment of pre-democratic polities, are the processes11 which in all sorts of uncoordinated ways turned human groups such as obai, phratries, thiasoi, tribes, etc., into segmental constituent parts of a single polity—processes which are dimly visible from other evidence in Sparta, post-tyrant Korinth and elsewhere, and are brought out into the open for us at Sikyon or Athens by Herodotos himself. (p.326) The purpose of highlighting these six basic institutions is to make a point which is elementary in itself but which is seriously undervalued in the approaches which are characteristic of political theorists or of historians of political thought, who ignore the antiquarian, and above all the epigraphical, evidence: i.e. that fifth-century democracy did not start from a nil base. On the contrary, sets of such institutions were firmly in place, even if overlaid by a tyrant regime;12 the practices of election and of voting, however small the initial electorate and whatever their origins in Amphiktyonies or elsewhere,13 were also in place, with all that that meant for the relocation of power ‘in the middle’, in Otanes’ phrase; and, visible at least in Athens, officials concerned with war and cult and law (archontes, thesmothetai, hieropoioi) were already being complemented by officials (with archaic titles too, as Rhodes (1981: 139) has noted) who were concerned with resource management.14 In sum, administrative systems appropriate for quite complex, functionally literate, coinage-wielding societies seem to have been in place quite widely throughout Greece by 500 if not well before. The emergence of such systems had been driven by the practical needs of running communities with growing populations, significant but unevenly distributed wealth, cult systems which might involve publicly-funded festivals (demoteleis heortai), and central places with urbanised or urbanising nuclei. In turn those nuclei had already begun to need infrastructure investment in walls, water supply, drains, and public spaces Page 6 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory (agorai), not to mention the sanctuaries and temples, whether rural or urban, whose construction had already forced the development of new systems of concentrating and managing resources.15

THE SEVEN DANGERS AND THEIR PREVENTION With that background in mind, I venture a rereading of the events and processes sketched for Athens in Forrest’s Emergence. This (p.327) section focuses not on narrative, but on the preconditions of that narrative, and specifically on what emerged as the main Athenian mechanisms of political articulation, participation, and control. They can usefully be seen as basically negative, i.e. they were designed to prevent, or to minimise the impact of, behaviour which is adjudged to be a danger to the community or to its polity. I shall pick out seven of these dangers, presenting them roughly in the chronological order of the epochs at which—though they are intrinsically perennial—they were perceived as being particularly acute. First comes the question which preoccupied Athenian politics from the postSolon period (if not before) for the rest of the sixth century: how to prevent regional links and loyalties from escalating into civil war. Peisistratos tried to solve it by the use of centralised military force, selective patronage, and the manipulation of cult, but such measures were not structural enough or impersonal enough to survive 510, and by 508 the chances were high that regional polarisation would again become civil war. It is enough to state the obvious, that the question was solved once and for all by Kleisthenes’ creation of ten new tribes, each composed of three groups of settlements, one from each major region of the civic territory: never again was regionalism a threat to the social or political fabric of Attika. To debate whether this innovation did or did not represent isonomia is to miss the point: what matters is that though creative political engineering, using but transforming the concept of a ‘tribe’, had in fact constructively devised a fundamental and long-lasting institution, the impulse had been primarily negative, viz. to avert the disaster of renewed spatial fission.16 Second comes the other spectre of the sixth century: how to prevent, or to control, or to prevent the re-emergence of, tyranny. To kill Kylon had had unpleasant side-effects: to trust the integrity of a Solon had in fact worked, but precariously and only in the short term: to trust the blocking power of alliances among aristocratic family groups had palpably been ineffective: to stick a knife into Hipparchos’ back had only made matters worse: and to get Delphi and Sparta to do the job had involved the unacceptable price of a serious threat to national independence. The first effective alternative expedient may have been ostracism, certainly created and in use by the 480s, or may have been the political trial such as that on the (p.328) charge of ‘deceit of the People’ which was levelled against the dying Miltiades in 489 (Hdt. 6. 136. 1). Later generations used eisangelia (‘impeachment’) and/or (by 415) the paranomon Page 7 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory graphe (‘writ of proposal contrary to existing law’), and subsequently strengthened the defences still further in ways which need not be traced in detail.17 Again, the shift is from informal action to specified formal institutions and procedures, whether in Assembly or law courts. A third fundamental danger surfaces in Eukrates’ law of 337/6: how to ensure that smaller corporate bodies within the polity, especially the Areiopagos or the Council of 500, do not usurp power to the point of overshadowing or even controlling the Assembly. The best illustration of the reality of that underlying fear is the law on the powers of the Council of Five Hundred (IG i3 105), for its provisions, specifying repeatedly how decisions about war and peace, sentences of death or large fines or atimia (‘loss of civic status’), or about aspects of public finance and foreign policy, cannot be taken by the Council on its own ‘without the people as a whole’,18 are again negative in form and intention, reflect what we may infer to have been a major preoccupation, and again amount to specified formal procedure. If David Lewis was right in dating the original formulation of the law to the Kleisthenic period or soon after,19 we can attribute that preoccupation, all too understandably, to the generation which had experienced the tyranny. It may be significant that the Councillors’ Oath (if that is not part of the same enactment) also formulates its provisions largely negatively, though one cannot be sure which of the provisions reported in the fourth-century sources were in truth part of the original formulation of 502/1.20 I place fourth in my list the danger of the arbitrary exercise of power by magistrates. Perhaps it should be placed earlier, since it too is perennial and since, as Forrest himself emphasised (1966: 144–5), accessible written law is one of the obvious ways of circumscribing it—which would take us back to Solon if not to Drakon. Indeed, if collegiality and one-year tenures are to be seen as two primary means (p.329) of curbing that power rather than as means of spreading that power, and the prestige of having held it, evenly throughout an upper class, then we might wish to trace the operation of this theme back to the institution of the annual archonship in 682/1. I hesitate to do so, partly because the alternative explanation is attractive, but mainly because it is hard to detect further action in this direction until well into the fifth century. Thereafter, however, techniques proliferate. Choice of office-holders by sortition rather than by election; lack of hierarchisation or of anything recognisable as a non-military career structure; dokimasia (‘scrutiny of acceptability’) before entering upon office: periodic scrutiny of some magistrates during their period of office; euthuna (‘rendering of account’) at the end of a period of office; rules against plurality or repetition of office; and, perhaps, most conspicuous of all, the vast expansion in the numbers of magistracies and other offices. Now it must be said that it is impossible to date the introduction of most of these techniques, and that some part of the expansion of office-holders must be ascribed not to distrust but to the sheer increase in public business after the Persian Wars and the acquisition of an empire. Yet it is hard to avoid the impression that the two major Page 8 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory flood tides which transformed the magisterial role occurred in the 480s and the 450s, and that each was a complex response to a breakdown of confidence in the existing structure of the then existing magistracies, in recruitment to them, and in public control of them. Certainly Thespieus’ decree of the 450s21 fits such an interpretation, with its creation of a new board of magistrates as a response to some (not very closely specified) administrative breakdown or financial malfeasance. So does the very format of some of the lawcode provisions as they emerged from the late fifth-century revision. The trierarchic law, of which part survives, the councillors’ laws, the law of the arbitrators, and the tax farmers’ laws22 all suggest that at least some statute law was formulated not in terms of this or that tort or procedure but in terms of a particular magistracy or function. That was the aspect of control which was felt to be needed. A fifth danger to the state can be simply stated in terms of that very lawcode: klope demosion chrematon (‘embezzlement of public monies’). Yet again the response was to devise procedures. Publicly displayed accounts of receipts and disbursements, drawn up by magisterial (p.330) boards (Hellenotamiai, epistatai from Eleusis or whoever) and cut in stone so that they could not be surreptitiously altered; boards of apodektai (‘receivers of public income’); boards of logistai (‘public accountants’); financial euthunai of all magistrates on demitting office; and, on at least one known occasion, the execution of all but one of an entire board of Hellenotamiai on an embezzlement charge which later turned out to be unfounded.23 This at least is a development which can be dated in part, in as much as accounts of their financial transactions begin to be set up by certain boards of city officials from c.460 onwards and are imitated at deme level soon after. Obviously it correlates directly with the qualitative leap in the scale of public monies in play from the mid-460s onwards, as well as with the distrust of magistrates already discussed; and again, it was constructive in effect, in that it generated procedures and bodies which came to be defining characteristics of democracy, but was primarily negative (or preventative) in purpose and focus. Sixth is a problem as old as Hesiod: how do we deal with untrustworthy judges (bribable, prejudiced, vindictive)? Again, of course, accessible written law provided one control, as perhaps also did ex post facto prosecutions of the kind that Ephialtes is said to have initiated against members of the Areiopagos,24 but once again we can see that such political means were rapidly superseded by formalised procedures. Ephesis (‘appeal’ or transfer’) from a magistrate’s jurisdiction to the Heliaia—the People sitting as a court—was one, already visible in the Phaselis decree of the 460s (ML 31) (the question of whether it was the same procedure as ‘appeal’ by a defendant against a verdict may here be left on one side). Large juries were another expedient, as were specific laws which restricted the sorts of cases which a single magistrate could hear or the sizes of penalties he could impose. So too, perhaps, were local justices (dikastai kata demous), though the impetus behind them may have been different; so too pay Page 9 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory for jurors; so too, eventually, the whole stupendously complicated procedure for allotting jurors to courts unpredictably each day, described in mind-boggling detail in the final chapters of Ath. Pol. If ever there was a paradigm case of a community having a long-term mindset that a major problem of public administration is to be handled by procedures, procedures, and yet more elaborate procedures, (p.331) this is it—and yet it has very little to do with ‘theory’ as commonly understood. Lastly, a problem which has only recently begun to attract the attention it deserves25 in an ancient Greek context: how does a community deal with the informal networks of influence, social control, and differential resource allocation which we normally group together under the loose title of ‘patronage’? Again, what is detectable is a gradual shift from political means to administrative-procedural means. Into the former category would come the ejection of Damasias in September 580, or of Hippias in 510, or perhaps even the ostracism of Kimon in 461. Into the latter comes a range of innovations so wide and far-reaching as nearly to define the democratic state. If we focus on the sixth century, it includes, for example, laws restricting display at funerals,26 or the creation and rapid development of the liturgical system for the purposes both of the navy (the trierarchy) and religious festivals (choregia, gymnasiarchy, etc.), which brilliantly incorporated the rationale and ideology of private patronage within a public regulatory framework.27 It includes, too, the Kleisthenic trittys system insofar as it broke up the influence of local cults, or the Kleisthenic deme system insofar as it came to offer an alternative to the deciding power of phratries over access to citizenship and to provide a direct route into the central decision-making process via rotating membership of the Council of 500.28 Analogous in effect were later developments such as public pay for public office, or the deliberate emphasis on the public financing and public administrative control of major building works (walls, temples, statues, etc.), even to the point, on one occasion in the 430s, of formally refusing an offer of private finance.29 And one could go on.

THREE KINDS OF STIMULUS What then lies behind so spectacular and rapid a development of a community and its polity, if (as I have implied) it owes virtually nothing to any concepts which the political theorists ancient or (p.332) modern would recognise? Three main contributory streams are detectable. As already made clear above, the first and the most important is simply the impact of crisis and breakdown. The pattern is well known. A single breakdown can be treated as a one-off, due to personal failure or the perversity of things or Act of God—so it is enough to punish the man or even to try the dagger in a court held on the seashore. Repeated breakdown indicates a systems failure, which needs different treatment.30 Either personal characters have to be altered, as Mao Tse Tung or Plato claimed was necessary, or the system has to be tightened. Formal systems have to replace informal understandings of the calibre of ‘trust Hagnotheos’ or Page 10 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory ‘trust the Areiopagos’, which might once have been adequate; procedures have to be spelled out in writing; checking systems have to be created, so that one part of the system is monitoring another; and so on. For many a reader, this will have a dismally familiar ring, but the similarity does not end there. From lengthy experience in university administration and academic auditing I can assure such a reader that organisations can and do go down such routes without the benefit of any theoretical substrate whatever. It is simply a matter of ‘How do we make sure that this does not happen again?’ and of ‘What is the minimum patch that we need to apply?’ It is impossible to overestimate either the intrinsic inertia of administrative systems, or the degree to which their operators think and act in totally pragmatic terms. The second contributory stream which I detect is law. That may seem surprising, when predicated of a culture which allegedly never developed a serious jurisprudence, but I am thinking of law as statute, written or unwritten (Gesetz or loi or legge), not of it as an abstract system (Recht or droit or diritto), and in particular of the law of procedure. One has only to look at the index of any textbook of Athenian law to be bemused by the proliferation of procedures. Anakrisis, antidosis, antigraphe, antitimesis, antomosia, apagoge, aphairesis, apocheirotonia, apographe, apophasis…: it would be tedious to go through the alphabet.31 More succinct and relevant are the comments made by scholars of Athenian law who note that success in an Athenian court could often depend on finding one’s way (p.333) through this forest of procedures and choosing the right one.32 Likewise, near-legal or administrative procedures such as dokimasia, diadikasia, diapsephismos, etc. (to choose another letter) came to be many, various, and adaptable. The point of importance is partly that such an array of procedures could be devised and could coexist, making Athenian administration and legal process one of the most complex and differentiated ever devised for so small a country and so relatively undeveloped an economy,33 but mainly that their detailed evolution took place surprisingly early. We do know of fourth-century developments, such as the paragraphe (‘writ in bar of action’),34 but my impression is that most of them were in place well before the middle of the fifth century. Indeed, a valuable survey of political and legal terms in Aischylos35 has brought out how much of the Classical vocabulary of procedures and relationships was already embedded in his idiolect: not just dike (‘justice’) or nomos (‘law’) or summachos (‘ally’), but, e.g., eggutata genous (‘closest in family relationship’), psephos (‘vote’), psephisma (‘decree’), hupeuthunos (‘subject to audit’), martus (‘witness’), zemia (‘punishment, fine’), anakrisis (‘preliminary hearing’), sundikos (‘advocate’), sunegoros (‘supporting advocate’), dikazo (‘I adjudicate’), or even (Agamemnon 534) the utterly prosaic ophlon gar harpages te kai klopes diken (‘for owing penalty in a suit of rape and theft’). The question is whether Aischylos was unusual in his generation is using law as a metaphor and as a paradigm for human relationships and dilemmas of

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Democracy without Theory situation. The question may not be entirely unanswerable in the light of Demaratos’ comments, cited above. The third stream which we need to isolate consists of the concepts which are embedded in the ordinary—including the official—language of social relationships. The language of law and of developed procedure is part of that vocabulary, but so also, and equally important for my purpose, are the older words which go back for centuries. There are two broad types, those which reflect relationships within or between households and those which reflect relationships between households and the broader community. Examples of the first type would include the various words for ‘pledge’ (enechuron, eggue, (p. 334) rhusion) or for ‘head of household’ (koiranos, kurios, perhaps etas) or for particular aspects of acceptable behaviour (charis, arete, time) or of unacceptable behaviour (hubris, sule). Examples of the second type would include agos, aisa, kleros, moira, oikos, telos, euthuna, and thoe, each of them being a complex and loaded word which continues to be central in the vocabulary of the Classical period in spite of the extra ideas and terms which were developed to supplement them. As perhaps the most productive of such terms I single out three: kleros (both as ‘lot of land’ and as the idea behind the verb kleroo ‘I assign [office, privilege, or responsibility] by lot’), euthuna as the word expressing the basic idea that those in power are accountable to their community for their acts while in office, and metechein tes poleos (‘to have a part of the city’) as a phrase, now at last properly studied in its own right in Walter (1994), which expresses the fundamental idea that a Greek polity was a community of shareholders, each of whom has a share of unlimited liability in the benefits, the responsibilities, and the evils which the ‘common thing’ (the koinon) may encounter in the course of time.

THE GENERATORS Here, then, is a reading (or a rereading) of Herodotos’ Athens, which revisits Forrest’s basic ideas and insights but extends them and reformulates them not least via the language of systems analysis, in ways of which he would undoubtedly have disapproved mightily. Plainly, I have not been trying to belittle the wholly legitimate and necessary scholarly task of identifying the ideas which underlay the Classical Athenian democracy. What I am saying is that the question ‘What do we need in order to build a model which generates the visible realities of that democracy?’ can be satisfactorily answered in terms of five components: 1. a sense of community, ordered via various interlocking networks of cult, locality, and kinship and embodying within it some rudimentary idea of equality36 among the free male members of the community; 2. a sense of justice and injustice, focused on those identifiable persons or families who wielded power at any one juncture; (p.335) Page 12 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory 3. a set of institutions strong enough to be able to hold and channel that sense of justice and injustice and to focus it effectively; 4. a succession of persons clever enough, ruthless enough, and creative enough to be able to turn that sense to some purpose in devising systems of government and law and administration; and 5. the active presence, somewhere within the community and its formal or informal institutions, of a body which represents collective memory and can reflect on past experience in such a way as to offer input into the subsequent pragmatic processes of that community.37 I do not deny for a moment that it is this fifth component, with the feedback loop (or, better, spiral) through time which it represents, which can in the right circumstances engender that more abstract mode of reflection which we have come to call political theory. Emphatically, however, we do not have to postulate its presence in that form in order to account for the development of Greek democracy: pragmatics, crisis management, and a set of simple ideas about justice and sharing are more than adequate.38 This paper is both a pièce d’occasion and the product of an embarrassingly long process of gestation. A first version of it was given to a sixth-form conference in London in 1989, a second version to a colloquium in Konstanz in 1993, and a third version to a seminar in Torino in 1994. Other urgent preoccupations, and the certainty that I had not yet got the arguments right, caused me to hold it back from what has become the published version of the Konstanz colloquium (Schuller, 1998), a constrained decision for which I renew here more publicly my regretful apologies to that volume’s editor and contributors. For helpful comments and suggestions I thank Miguel Alonso-Núñez, Giorgio Camassa, Silvio Cataldi, Martin Dreher, Robert Fowler, Robert Parker, Wolfgang Schuller, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, Christopher Tuplin, and other colleagues and students at the various venues. (p.336) Notes:

(1) Via explanations (which may seem heavy-handed to the expert), transliteration and/or translation I have sought to make this paper accessible to the Greekless and to those who are approaching the complexities of Athenian public life for the first time. (2) What follows in the text is at best a rough first shot, which is very far from having mapped the field satisfactorily. The topic will be addressed in much greater detail in Peter Rhodes’s forthcoming book Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology: I am most grateful to him for a synopsis. (3) Diachronic sketches in Hansen (1991: 27ff.) and Bleicken (1994: 17–46), and debate about the extent of the ‘steady state’ of the fourth century in Hansen (1991: 300–4) and Bleicken (1994: 403–10). Page 13 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory (4) e.g. Hansen (1991: 73–85 and 296–320); Bleicken (1994: 54–61, 265–86, and 287–314). (5) Cf. most recently Alonso-Núñez (1998: 19–29). (6) The text continues: ‘Today, by contrast, political action itself has become overlaid with processes by which we ourselves—and our identity—appear to be “motorized”’ (Meier 1990: 6). Original German: ‘Nachdem das Politische bei den Griechen den Bereich des bürgerlichen Zusammenlebens aus den prozessualen Handlungskonnexen herausgeschlagen und dem politischen Handeln unterworfen hatte, scheint dieses nun selbst von Prozessen überwuchert, die uns selbst samt unserer Identität “motorisiert” haben’ (Meier 1980: 20). (7) ‘How old were you when the Mede came?’ (Xenophanes, DK6 21 [11] B 22). (8) As for example by Murray (1993: 246–61), Morris (1996), or R. Osborne (1996: 318ff.). (9) Notably papers 1 and 18–20 in Latte (1968) and the papers collected in Gernet (1964) and (1968). (10) Carlier (1984: 183–4) and (1998: 8–13). (11) Detailed survey in Davies (1996). (12) Especially by those who ruled ‘more like a citizen than like a tyrant’ (politikos mallon e tyrannikos, Ath. Pol. 14. 3 and 16. 1, with Rhodes 1981: 203). (13) Cf. Larsen (1949) and Carlier (1998: 16), with other references in Carlier (1998: 1 n. 2). (14) Notably tamiai [initially ‘carvers’, ‘dispensers’, but used in Athens to denote ‘treasurers’ or ‘curators’] and kolakretai [initially ‘collectors of hams’, but used in Athens to denote ‘paying-out officials’]. (15) For a survey of the processes involved in temple finance, see Davies 2001a. (16) For the Korinthian precedent see Salmon (1984: 413–19, with references to earlier bibliog.). (17) Notably the law of Demophantos of 410 (And. 1.96–8) and the law of Eukrates of 337/6 (SEG xii 87 = Harding 101, etc, with Hansen (1991: 295). Sources for the paranomon graphe in Hansen (1991: 205 ff.). (18) aneu tou demou plethuontos, lines 34–5, 36, 37, 40–1, and 42, besides other uses of the phrase ‘the people (of Athenians) as a whole’ in lines 24–5, 43, and 45–6. Page 14 of 16

 

Democracy without Theory (19) See Lewis’s note ad loc. and Lewis (1967); Hansen (1991: 255 and 258–60) (SEG xxxix 14). (20) Ath. Pol. 22.2, with Rhodes (1972: 194–9) and Rhodes (1981: 263–4). (21) IG 13 32, with Davies (1993: 55–6). (22) Respectively IG i3 236a; IG i3 105, Dem. 24.20, and Philochoros, FGrH 328 F 140; Dem. 21.94 and IG ii2 179; Dem. 24.96 and 101. (23) Ath. Pol. 48.1–2 (apodektai); ML 39, 58, and 72 (logistai); Antiphon 5.69–71 (execution). In general Hansen (1991: 222ff.) and Davies (1994: 203ff.). (24) Ath. Pol. 25.2, with Rhodes (1981: 313f.). (25) Cf. esp. Millett (1989). (26) References and bibliog. in Sourvinou-Inwood (1995: 421 nn.13–15). (27) The subject is at last given proper study by Wilson (2000). (28) I skate here over several contentious issues, for which see Lewis (1963). (29) From ‘[Perikles, Par]alos, Xanthippos and the boys’, at some date in the 430s (IG i3 49, lines 13–16). (30) For the avoidance of doubt, it should be clear that this sentence is not to be taken as a claim that 5th-cent. Athenians would have known what to do with the phrase ‘systems failure’. (31) For translations and explanations of these terms, see Todd (1993: 359ff.). (32) Cf. especially Osborne (1985), using especially Dem. 22. 25ff. in order to delineate the ‘open texture’ of the Athenian legal system. (33) A point well made by Hansen (1989b: 109). (34) On which see Wolff (1966) and Isager and Hansen (1975: 123–31). (35) Turasiewicz (1981), with Robertson (1939). (36) On which imprimis Harvey (1965), but also Morris (1996). (37) This formulation deliberately envisages groups such as poets, priests, politicians, or the elderly, rather than ‘philosophers’ or theorists of any stripe. I gratefully acknowledge the influence of Robert Fowler and Christopher Tuplin in persuading me of the importance of this fifth component.

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Democracy without Theory (38) Cynical connoisseurs of the cyclical nature of the human condition may appreciate a modern instance, sketched by Peter Scott in his review in the Times Higher of M. Kogan and S. Hanney, Reforming Higher Education (pub. Jessica Kingsley, 1999); ‘The process of reforming H[igher] E[ducation] has been so muddled, inchoate and contingent that it is difficult to write a grand narrative to describe it. Robbins was perhaps its only totemic reformer. Because the expansion of HE is such a disappointing example of policy formation, it is difficult to accept that this expansion has nevertheless been an agent of profound social change. We are instinctively reluctant to ascribe grand outcomes to projects with petty motives.’ (My italics.) If for ‘Robbins’ we read ‘Ephialtes’, the similarity is uncomfortably close.

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Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.337) Bibliography Bibliography references: For abbreviations of periodicals in this bibliography see S. Hornblower and A. J. S. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn. (1996). Abel, O. (1847), Makedonien vor König Philipp (Leipzig). Adcock, F., and Mosley, D. J. (1975), Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (London). Alexandri, O. (1973–4) B1-Chron.: 91–2.

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Alonso-Núñez, J. M. (1998), ‘Die Verfassungsdebatte bei Herodot’, in Schuller (1998: 19–29). Aly, W. (1921), Volksmärchen, Sage und Novelle bei Herodot und seine Zeitgenossen (Göttingen). Anderson, B. (1983, rev. 1991), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London). Andonevski, H. (1979), ‘Rich Archaeological Discoveries in Vergina’, Macedonian Review 1: 109–12. Argyle, A.W. (1970), ‘Chresmologoi and manteis’, CR n.s. 20: 139. Asheri, D. (1988a), ‘Carthaginians and Greeks’, CAH iv2. 739–80. —— (1988b), Erodoto. Le Storie. Libro I. La Lidia e la Persia (Milan).

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Bibliography —— (1991), ‘Divagazioni erodotee sulla Cilicia persiana’, Quaderni Storici 76: 35–65. —— (1993), ‘Erodoto e Bacide. Considerazioni sulla fede di Erodoto negli oracoli (Hdt. VIII 77)’, in M. Sordi (ed.), La profezia nel mondo antico (Milan), 63–76. —— (1998), ‘Platea vendetta delle Termopili’, in M. Sordi (ed.), Responsibilità perdono e vendetta nel mondo antico (Milan), 65–86. —— and Medaglia, S. M. (eds.) (1990), Erodoto. Le Storie. Libro III. (Milan). Auerbach, E. (1953), Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton). —— (1959), ‘“Figura”’, in his Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York), 21–76. Badian, E. (1982), ‘Greeks and Macedonians’, in Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times (Washington, D.C.) Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin). (p.338) Bakker, E., de Jong, I., van Wees, H. (eds.) (2002), Brill’s Companion to Herodotos (Leiden). Balcer, J. M. (1989), ‘The Persian Wars against Greece: A Reassessment’, Historia 38: 127–43. Barron, J. (1986), ‘Chios in the Athenian Empire’, in Boardman and VaphopoulouRichardson (1986), 89–103. —— (1988), ‘The Liberation of Greece’, CAH iv2. 592–622. Bartlett, R. (1993), The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton). Baumgarten, R. (1998), Heiliges Wort und heilige Schrift bei den Griechen – Hieroi Logoi und verwandte Erscheinungen (Tübingen). Bauslaugh, R. (1991), The Concept of Neutrality in Classical Greece (Berkeley). Bean, G. E. (1966, 2nd edn. 1979), Aegean Turkey (Bath). —— (1976), ‘Buruncuk’, in R. Stillwell, W. L. MacDonald, and M. H. McAllister (eds.), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton), 174. Bechtel, F. (1917), Die historischen Personennamen des Griechischen (Halle).

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General Index

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.367) General Index abbreviations, of civic subdivisions, at Corinth 220–1, 222 bis, 223 n., 224 abnormality, sign of god at work 300 Acropolis, of Athens 137 Adrastos, death of 24 Aeschylus, procedural vocabulary in 333 Aesop, and Ahiqar 181 aetiology, in story of Telesilla 278 bis, 282 Africa, circumnavigation of 149 Agios Demetrios (Plataea) 76 ‘Agreement of Founders’ (of Cyrene) 166, 167 Ahiqar the Sage 181–2 41–3 Aigeai 210, 213; and Edessa 205 Aigina: and Athens 316; and chronology 61 Aleb(a)ia (see also Lebaia) 207, 210 Alkmaionidai (see also Hippokleides; Perikles): and Delphi 62; curse of 308, 316; resonance in later C5 316 ‘allusion’, in Hdt. 307, 310, 311, 313 ambiguity, in Hdt. 123–4, 125 n. ambivalence: of Pelasgians 135–6, 142, 143; of peraiai 44; of Themistokles 314–15 Amenemhat III, cult in Egypt 174–5 Amompharetos, at Plataea 77 analogies, in Hdt. 246–7 ancestry: and Greek identity 141, 144; mythological 141 Page 1 of 20

 

General Index ancient history, and modern military education 90, 94–5 Andron of Halikarnassos, on Pelasgians 111, 112 annalistic expressions, in Hdt. 15 Antichares of Eleon 264 anticipatory constructions, in Hdt. 4 antiquarian approach, to Greek democracy 321 antiquity, relevance of 322 anxieties: and oral history 317; in democracy 314, 317 Aphrodite Mylitta 172, 174 Apollo Karneios 165, 166 41, 43 Aramaic sources 175–6, 181–3, 187, 188 archaic style, of Hdt. 12; questioned 306 Argeadai, origin of name 216 Argiopion (near Plataea) 75, 76 Argives, another name for Greeks 290 (p.368) Argos (grove) 279, 280, 284, 290, 300–1; ambiguity of name 290–1 Argos (city) (see also Telesilla): ambiguity of name 290–1; and C5 Sparta 284; and Macedonian kings 213, 216; and Pelasgians 115–16, 117–18; date of Kleomenes’ attack raised 296; saved by women 276–7, 279–80, 281; source of Common Oracle 283–4 Aristagoras of Miletos 250; at Sparta 291; death 292 Aristodamos (Spartan) 26–7, 33 Aristophanes, on manteis and chresmologoi 263 Arkadians, as Pelasgians 138 Arkesilas III of Cyrene 167 Artybios, death of 20 Asheri, D., commemorated 73 asides, explanatory, in Hdt. 10 assembly, Athenian, discusses oracles 270–2, 273 Assurbanipal 177 Assyria: chronology 65; Ktesias as source 178; sculptures 183 Atarneus (see also Hermias) 40–1, 44–5, 54 Athenian empire, Hdt.’s ‘allusions’ to 307, 310 Athenians: and Pelasgians 119, 135; autochthony 123, 124 n., 137; discuss oracles 270–2; Page 2 of 20

 

General Index view of Alkmaionidai 313 Athens (see also Alkmaionidai; democracy; Hierokles; Hippokleides; Kallimachos; Kleisthenes; Lampon; Perikles; Themistokles; Tellos; tyrants): C6, Hdt.’s later C5 viewpoint 310–11, 312; C5 resonances of fall of tyrants 315–16; ‘allusions’ to, in Hdt. 307, 310, 311; ambitions in Ionian Revolt 85–7; and Aigina 316; and Corinth (C6) 312, 316; and Pelasgians 132–3, 134, 136–7, 138–40; chronology 63–4, 67; civic subdivisions 222, 227–32; Marathon cenotaph 197–8, 199; oracles 265; Pelasgian wall 137 Attica, subdivisions of 222, 227–32 audience, Hdt.’s interaction with 11, 14, 15 Auerbach, E. 246 authorial voice, in Hdt. 3, 15 Azarqiel of Toledo 179 Babylon: chronology 65; confused with Nineveh 179; Hdt. on 172; topography 179–81 backward references, in Hdt. 9–10 Bakhtin, M. 30, 31 Bakis, and oracles 265, 283, 289 barbarians: ethnicity 139; in Hdt. 148; Pelasgian 115, 139, 141 Basileides, father of a Herodotos 56 Basilidai, of Ionia 56 Battos: as founder 159, 168, 169; Cyrenians’ attitude 157–8, 162; tomb 163 Bel, temple of 172 Bermion (Mt.) 204, 208 Biton, and Cleobis 25 Borgo San Sepolcro 297–8 bouleutic oath 328 bouleutic quotas 229 boundaries, marked by deaths 22 Brauron, and Pelasgians 132 Bravas (Lebaia?) 212 breaks, in narrative 7 British Army, at San Sepolcro 297–8 C—: for names beginning with C, see also under K castration: in Hdt. 47–8, 50, 55; in Persian empire 48–50; Page 3 of 20

 

General Index (or worse) of Panionios 41–3 casualty list, from Marathon 195, 199 causation, in Hdt. 240, 241, 242, 250–1 cenotaph, for Marathon 197–8, 199 Chalkis Decree 266 chance: in Hdt. 299, 301; divine 244–5, 246, 247 change, result of individual acts 241, 242 Chionis of Sparta 160–1 Chios (see also Hektor; Panionios): and Panionion 54; ‘netting’ of 50; Persian reconquest 55 Chon (river) 85 n. chresmologoi (see also Bakis; Hierokles): and manteis 261–4; meanings in Hdt. 260–1; politicians as 270; stereotypes 256–7 Christianity, and Greek religion 299 chronology: pre-500 BC 64–6; of 490s 60–3, 71–2; (p.369) of 480s 71–2; of 480 BC 58–9; of 479 BC 59–60; accuracy of Hdt.’s 69–70; and digressions 62–3, 69; Athenian 63–4; generations 67–8, 70; Greek 66–7; Hdt.’s sources 59, 60; king-lists 66, 67; synchronisms 69 Cilicia, see Kilikia civic subdivisions: intrinsic to Greek polities 325; prevent Attic regionalism 327 civic values, and death 29, 35 civil war, prevention 327 Clausewitz, C. von 90 Clement of Alexandria, on Telesilla 281 Cleobis, and Biton 25 closed texts 30 codification, of law 325 coincidences: divine (see also chance, divine) 247; of misfortunes 247–8; suggest divine power 299, 300–1 colloquial phrases 12 colonies, see Cyrene; founders; nomima Page 4 of 20

 

General Index colonization, problematized 153–4, 155 combat, in military history 93–4 Common Oracle (to Miletos and Argos) 275, 280: and Argos 280, 284, 293; and Ionian Revolt 293; and Lade 292, 294; and Miletos 293, 295; epic language 286–7, 288; Hdt.’s use of 284–5; obscurity 289–90; snake in 292–3; text and commentary 285–8; unity 285, 288, 289 community: and deaths in Hdt. 29; and Homeric heroes 28–9; sense of 334 Como, Lake, conference at 96 ‘conservatism’, of Hdt. 307 constitutional debate (Persian) 309 continents 149 contingency, and human agents 249 contingently connected events 244 continuity, from heroic age 128 contradictions, in Hdt. 123 Corinth (see also Periander): and C6 Athens 312, 316; civic subdivisions 219–31; divisions of territory 221, 222–3; WGF on 234 councils, limiting powers of 328 Crete: in C5 325; Pelasgians in 110–12 crises, spur to Athenian democracy 332 Croesus, see Kroisos cross-references, in Hdt. 9–10; forwards 14–15 cultural-historical approach, to Greek democracy 321 curse, of Alkmaionidai 308 cycles of history (see also rise and fall) 247 Cyrene (see also Arkesilas; Battos); ‘Agreement of Founders’ 166, 67; and Laconians 160–1; and Thera 161–2, (in C6) 167; archaeology 161, 162–3; foundation 153, 155, 156–64, 165–9; Hdt. visits 157; ideology of own history 161–2; own foundation myth 158–9, 167–8; Page 5 of 20

 

General Index sacred law 169; settlers 160–1 Cyrus: and Kroisos 308; birth 249 Danaids, and Telesilla 281 danger, spur to political development 327–31 Darbo-Peschanski, C. 22 Darius I: and Syloson 244, 245, 246; chronology of expedition 60–2 39 death: and civic values, in Hdt. 29, 35; and divine justice 23; and focalization 21 & n.; and heroic code 27–8, 32–3; in battle 29, 35; in Homer 17–18, 27, 36; individual, in Hdt. 19–21, 24–5, 26–7, 29, 33, 34–5, 36; marking boundaries 22; postponed, in Homer 27; subjective aspect omitted by Hdt. 22; suicide 23; treated evaluatively by Hdt. 26, 27, 29, 33–5, 36 debate, on constitution (Persian) 309 deformation, of oral tradition 308, 317–18 Delbrück, H., on Marathon 90–1 Della Francesca, Piero 297 Delphi: and Alkmaionidai 62; geographical significance 147; WGF on 153 demes: and Kleisthenes’ reforms 231–2; unknown at Corinth 229 Demeter, temple of (Plataea) 75, 76 democracy: and theory, WGF on 319–20; and tyranny 315–16; anxieties of 314, 317; (p.370) created by responses, not theory 323, 327–31; no manifestos survive 323; no single start date 324; preconditions in place by mid-C6 324, 326; recent approaches 321–2; suspicious of leaders 314; underlying ideas 334–5 demonstratives, in Hdt. 5–6, 14 dialect, Macedonian 218 dialogic texts 30–1, 142 n. dialogism, in Solon-Kroisos story 25 digressions: and chronology 69; endings 8; Page 6 of 20

 

General Index and pre-490 chronology 62–3; very brief 10 Diodoros: on Hdt. 151; on Pelasgians 111–12 Diopeithes (Spartan chresmologos) 268–9 divine, the: areas of intervention (see also chance; divine justice) 242, 251; how far excluded by Hdt. 238–40; in Hdt.’s causation 251 divine chance, see chance divine justice, and death 23 Dodona, and Pelasgians 109 Dorians: and Ionians 310; and Makednoi 215; and non-Dorians 130, 131, 142; and Pelasgians 130; in Hdt. 121–2, 125–6, 128; invasion 128, 129 dreams 14; divine nature 300 Dunbar, N. 256 eclipses, and chronology 59, 72 Edessa, and Aigeai 205 education, military (modern), and ancient history 94–5 Egypt, chronology 65–6 ‘eights’, Corinth ordered by 219 eirenes (Spartan) 81–2; defined 82–4 41 Elamites 183, 187 bis, 188 elections, intrinsic to Greek polities 326 Elimea 210, 211 Elis, manteis from 258–9 embezzlement, prevention 329–30 Empylios, epithet of Herakles 194 Enyalios, cult at Argos 277, 278 (of sanctuary) 200–1 ethne (ethnea) (see also ethnic groups; Pelasgians): Hdt. on 122, 124–6, 129; of Peloponnese 129 ethnic groups, in Hdt. 121–31 ethnicity: and self-perception 140–1; barbarian 139; fluid 140–1, 143; Greek 140–1, 310; Greek, construction of 106, 107, 119–21; Greek, not defined by ancestry 141, 144; large-scale 131; Page 7 of 20

 

General Index small-scale 129, 130, 131 ethnography, in Hdt. 150–1 Etruria, see Tyrrhenia Etruscans, see Tyrrhenians Euia (Polymylos) 212 49 eunuchs 47, 48; in Persian empire 48–50; or chamberlains? 48–9; or wine-pourers? 49 Euripides, oracles in 267–8 Eurypontids, genealogy of 79–80 evaluative language, in Hdt. 4; applied to deaths 26, 27, 29, 33–5, 36 evangelizing motive, of Hdt. 252 expulsions, of Pelasgians: from Athens 132; from Greece 114; from Peloponnese 128 feminization, of Persians 291–2 Festnamen 51 figural interpretation 246 finances, control of 329–30 flashes-forward, in Hdt. 14–15 Flussnamen 45 focalization, and deaths 21 & n. foreshadowing (see also chance, divine) 247 Forrest, W. G.: as historian 99–100; as teacher 99, 219, 319; mentioned 58 & n., 88, 145, 298 bis; on Corinth 234; on Delphi 153; on democracy 319–20; on Hdt. 96, 305, 318 n.; on individuals in history 240–1; on Perikles 308 n.; on Thuc. 96; remembered 3 n., 37, 238, 256 & n., 305 n. fortune, mutability of 242–4 foundation, problematized 154, 163, 164 founders, of cities 159, 161 framework constants, in oral tradition 169–70 Fuller, J. F. C. 91 clauses 5 gardens, of Midas (Macedonia) 204 (p.371) Gargaphia (fountain) 75 gender: ambiguous, in Assyrian sculpture 183; and representation of Persians 291–2; and warfare 98; Page 8 of 20

 

General Index inversion, at Argos 277 bis, 278, 280 genealogy, of Leotychidas 79–80 generations, and chronology 67–8, 70 geography: of Hdt. 145, 147, 148–50; of Hekataios 146 gods: dates of 67; interventions in human affairs 238–9 used by Hdt. 13 grave, of Argive women 277, 278 gravestones, Spartan 84, 85 & n. Greek–Persian contact, in Hdt. 249–50 Greeks, see ethnicity; Hellenikon; identity Gyges, chronology of 65 Halikarnassos, new inscription 29 Hammond, N. G. L., on Temenid brothers 205–6 Hanging Gardens, at Nineveh not Babylon 178–9, 181 Hebe, as watchword 78–9 Hedrick, C. W. 322 Hekataios: geography 146; on Pelasgians 136 Hektor (king of Chios) 53 Hellenes, in Hdt. 124–5 Hellenikon, in Hdt. 124–5, 126 hemiogdoa (divisions of tribes) 220, 222–3, 224, 225 Herakles: dedication to 191–4; Marathon sanctuary 190, 194, 200–1, 202 (of sanctuary) 200–1 Hermias of Atarneus 45, 46 Hermippos 46 Hermos (river) 45–6 Hermotimos of Pedasa 38 bis, 39, 40; name 45 bis, 46; placing of story 56; significance 46, 54, 55, 57 Herodotos, son of Basileides 56 Herodotos of Halikarnassos: intellectual context: C5 viewpoint on earlier events 311; date of writing 252 n., 305–6; man of 430s 306, 307; Persian wars 254–5; Sophists 307 n.; sources 145–6, 150, (for Cyrene) 156–7, (Aramaic) 175–6, 181–3, 187, 188; universal history 151–2 qualities as historian: accuracy 69–70, 189; ‘allusion’ 307, 310, 311, 313; and modern military history 89–91; authorial voice 3–16; Page 9 of 20

 

General Index evaluates myths 239; ‘irony’ 311; ‘laughing historian’ 37; logopoios 312; military historian 88–9, 93–4, 97–8, 99; misled by informants 174, 183; not ‘archaic’ 306; not purely oral historian 307–8; prose author 29–31; ‘supremely intelligent observer’ 318; WGF’s views 96, 305 reception: 82–3; MS problems 73–4, 87; new inscription 29; unfounded emendations 75–87 subjects of his History: Athens 307, 308–9, 310, 311; Babylon 172; chronology 58–72; Common Oracle 283, 284–5, 289–90; death 19–27, 29, 33–6; ethne (ethnea) 122, 124–6, 129; ethnic groups 121–31; ethnography 150–1; eunuchs and castration 47–8, 50, 55; geography 145, 147, 148–50; Hermotimos and Panionios 38–40, 41–4, 46, 51–7; Macedonia 203–4; maps 147–8; Nineveh 172–4; not Hanging Gardens 171, 178–9; not Telesilla 281; oracles 289; Pelasgians 104–5, 114. 121–33 passim, 136–42 passim; religion (see also causation; chance; coincidences; divine, the; prophecies) 238–40, 251 bis, 252, 255; Royal Road 171–2 heroes: dates of 67; and community 28–9 heroic age: continuity with present 128; Pelasgians associated with 119, 120, 128, 141, 143 heroic code, and mortality 27–8, 32–3 heteroglossia: in Homer 32; in prose texts 31 hieroglyphs, Hittite 176 Hierokles (chresmologos) 263, 266–7 hieropoioi, at Athens 266 Hippias (tyrant), and Sosikles 317 Hippokleides (Alkmaionid) 313–14 (p.372) historical period, start of 70–1 Page 10 of 20

 

General Index history (see also oral history), universal, and Hdt.’s 151–2 Hittite art and texts, misread 174, 176 Homer: as poetic author 31–3; deaths in 17–18, 27, 36; dialogic nature 31–2; on Pelasgians 108–9, 110, 120–1 Homeric language, in Common Oracle 286–7 Housman, A. E., on manuscripts 77 n. human geography, of Hdt. 150 Huxley, A., on Della Francesca 297 Hybristika (festival) 277 bis, 278 identity: and ancestry 141, 144; fluid 143; Greek 140–1; Greek, and Persian wars 255 ideology, in prose texts 31 Ilioneus, death of 17–18 impiety, and individuals’ acts 242 Indians, synonym for Elamites 183, 187 bis, 188 individuals: in Greek history 240–1; in Hdt. 240, 241, 242; WGF on 240–1 infrastructure, already resourced in C6 polities 326 inscriptions (see also Select Epigraphic Index), about Marathon 190–7 insignificant, significant 244–5, 251 institutions: central to democracy 335; intrinsic to Greek polities 325 internal parallelisms, in Hdt. 246–7 international relations, and Thuc. 95 inversion (see also under gender), rites of 277, 278, 282 Ion (hero), sons of 52–3 Ion (of Chios) 40, 51, 53 Ionian Revolt 250; ‘start of evils’ 317; and Athenian hegemony 85–7; and Common Oracle 293 Ionians: and Dorians 310; in Hdt. 121–2, 125–6, 127 irony, in Hdt. 12; with regard to Athens 311 irrationality, betrays a god at work 300 isegorie 315 isonomie 315 Isthmus, as boundary 221, 222 Jones, N. F. 220, 223–5 Joseph, story of 40, 46–7, 56–7 justice: access to 330–1; Page 11 of 20

 

General Index divine, and deaths 23; sense of 334 Kallikrates (Spartan), death of 29 Kallimachos (Athenian), death of 36 Kambyses, death of 301 Karabel sculpture, misread 174, 176 Keegan, J. 92, 93 Kerkyraian boys 48 Kh—: for names beginning with Kh–, see Ch– Kilikia, or Lykia? 80–1 king-lists (Spartan) 79–80; and chronology 66, 67 kings, Macedonian, and Argos 213, 216 Kleisthenes of Athens: and demes 231–2; civic reforms 226–31; Corinthian precedents 221–2, 226–7, 232–4; curbs regionalism 327; motives suspect 316 Kleomenes I of Sparta: and Argos 276–7, 279, 281; and Aristagoras 291; and Ionian Revolt 295; chronology 296; resonance in later C5 316 bis; suicide 300–1 Koumanoudes, S. N. 192, 193, 194 Kroisos: and Cyrus 308; and Greece 309–10; and Solon 24–5, 26, 33, 308; chronology 64, 65 Ktesias: unreliability 171, 178, 182; accuracy 189 Kynegeiros, death of 19 Kypselos, smiles 245, 249 Kyros, see Cyrus Kyzikos (hero) 134 Kyzikos, Pelasgians at 114, 134–5 Laconians (see also Lakedaimonians; Sparta), and Libya 160–1, 165, 166 Lade, battle of 292, 294 Lake Como conference 96 Lakedaimonians (see also Laconians; Sparta), at Plataea 76–7 Lampon (chresmologos) 269–70 laws: codified from mid-C7 325; complexity of Athenian 333 leaders: central to democracy 335; democracy suspicious of 314–15 Lebaia (Bravas?) (see also Aleb(a)ia) 203, 208, 211, 212 Lelegians 38 Page 12 of 20

 

General Index Leonidas (Spartan), death of 34–5 (p.373) Leotychidas, genealogy of 79–80 lessons, in Hdt.’s narrative 254 Leukopetra, sanctuary of Mother of Gods 207, 208–9 Lewis, D. M. 191–2 relation to Hdt.’s text 82–3 Libya: Hdt. visits 157; Laconian involvement 160–1, 165; settlement of 160 Liddell Hart, B. L. 91 linearization 62 linguistic notes, in Hdt. 10–11 Lloyd-Edwards, D. 298 logographers 146–7 logopoios 312 Lydia, chronology of 65 Lykia, or rather Kilikia 80–1 Macedonia: fertility 205; monarchy 213, 216; origins 203–4, 213–18; ‘other land of’ and ‘rest of’ 204, 205, 207, 212; topography 205–7; Upper, location of 206–7, 211 Macedonian state, duality of 213 McKinley, S. B. 91 magistrates, checks upon 328–9 Magnes (hero) 214 Makednoi 215 manteis: and chresmologoi 261–4; false 259–60; in Chalkis Decree 266; multivalence 260; roles 257–9 manumissions, from Leukopetra 209 maps, and Hdt. 147–8 Marathon, battle of: Athenian camp 190; Delbrück on 90–1; ‘foreshadows’ Athens’ greatness 311; inscriptions 190–8; polyandreion 197–8, 199; topography 190, 194, 200–1, 202 Mardonios, not 8 ft tall 77–8 Masistios, death of 20–1 material culture, not central to Greekness 141 Medes, chronology 64–5 memory: central to democracy 335; collective 154–5 in Hdt. 7 Page 13 of 20

 

General Index 7 7 Midas, gardens of 204 Mieza (Macedonia) 209 Miletos (see also Aristagoras), and Common Oracle 293, 295 military history: and Hdt. 89–91; ‘new’ 92–3, 96–7, 98 misfortunes, coincident 247–8 monologic texts 30, 33, 34, 142 n. morals, in Hdt.’s narrative 254 mortality (see also deaths), and heroic code 27–8, 32–3 Mother of Gods, sanctuary at Leukopetra 207, 208–9 motifs, in Hdt. 240 Mousaios, oracles of 264, 265 Musaeus, see Mousaios Mykale (battle), watchword 78–9 Mylitta (goddess) 172, 174 mythical time (see also prehistory) 239 myths, defined 239 Nabonidus 177–8 Nabopolassar 176–7 names (personal), and rivers 45 narratorial personality, Hdt.’s 13–14, 15; omniscient 254 Naxos, and Ionian Revolt 250 Nebuchadnezzar: and Hanging Gardens 181, 182; confused with Sennacherib 179 Nehemiah, as eunuch (?) 49 Neo-Assyrian dynasty 176–8, 182 Neo-Babylonian dynasty 176–8, 182 ‘netting’, of Chios 50 ‘new’ military history 92–3, 96–7, 98 Newton, Isaac 253 Nineveh: confused with Babylon 179; Hdt. rehabilitated 172 nomima, of colonies 164–5 notes, linguistic, in Hdt. 10–11 nudges, in Hdt. 10 oath, bouleutic 328 Ober, J. 322 objections, purported, in Hdt. 11 officials, intrinsic to Greek polities 326 oikists 159, 161 49 196–7 Old Babylon (Nineveh?) 179, 182 Page 14 of 20

 

General Index omens, interpreted by manteis 258 Onesilos (Cypriote prince) 20 Onomakritos 264 open-ended texts 30 opinions, critical, voiced by Hdt. 12 oracles (see also Bakis; Common Oracle; Mousaios): about Salamis 289; (p.374) Athenian interest 265; collectors and interpreters 261; discussed in assembly 270–2, 273; in Chalkis Decree 266; in Eur. 267–8; in Hdt. 289; not cynical fabrications 295; to Telesilla 276 oral history 307–8, 317; and anxieties 317; assumes past like present 312; creates (not reads) past 311–12 oral style, in Hdt. 12 oral tradition (see also tradition), framework constants in 169–70 Orestis (Macedonia) 216 Osborne, R., on colonization 153, 155, 168 ostracism, prevents tyranny 327 Paktyes, betrayal of 44, 55 Palaiokastron, Velvendos 211 Panionia (festival) 51, 52 Panionion (cult place) 51, 52; and Chios 54 Panionios of Chios 38–9, 40; name 50–2; placing of story 56; significance 55, 57; sons 52, 53; unhistorical?52 39, 41, 47 parallelisms, internal, in Hdt. 246–7 past: created by oral history 311–12; assimilated to present 312 patronage, curbed in Athens 331 Pausanias, on Telesilla 279–80, 282 Pedasa (see also Hermotimos), priestess at 38, 43 Peisistratos, and regionalism 327 Pelargikon (wall) 137 Pelasgians: ancient views 105–8, 107–21; and Argos 115–16, 117–18; and Arkadians 138; Page 15 of 20

 

General Index and Athenians 132–3, 134, 136–7, 138–40; and Dorians 130; and Trojans 110; as barbarians 115, 139, 141; as Greeks (after Homer) 115, 119, 120–1, 138, 143; as non-Greeks 109, 113, 115, 119, 120–1, 138; as Tyrrhenians 117–18; at Brauron 105, 132; at Dodona 109; at Kyzikos 114, 134–5; Athenian perception 119, 135; chronological spectrum 133–4; expulsions 114, 128, 132; fluid meaning 123–4, 125 n.; Hdt. on 121–3; Hekataios on 136; Homer on 108–9, 110, 120–1; in Attica 105, 132; in Crete 110–12; in Greece 109, 110, 113–14; in Peloponnese 127, 129, 138; in Thessaly 116–17, 119, 126; in Tyrrhenia 114–15; modern notions 104–5, 107; multivalence 135–6, 142, 143; problems of identity 103–4; Sophokles on 118–19; Thuc. on 105–6, 142 Pelasgikon (wall) 137 Peloponnese: Dorian invasion 128, 129; Hdt.’s viewpoint 129–30; Pelasgians in 127, 129, 138; seven ethne 129; Thesmophoria in 128 peraiai, ambivalence of 44 Perdikkas (king of Macedonia) 203 Periander of Corinth 48 Perikles: and Alkmaionidai 308 n., 314 bis; WGF on 308 n. Persia: Athenian overtures 316; chronology 64; contact with Greece 249–50; impact on Hdt. 147 Persian wars: and composition of Hdt.’s work 254–5; and Greek identity 255; Athenian monuments 195–9; Hdt.’s later C5 viewpoint 311 Persians, feminized 291–2 personification, of logos 8 Page 16 of 20

 

General Index

used of Hdt. 29 phatrai, Corinthian 220, 225, 228 phenomenological nature of Greek religion 299–300 philosophical approach, to Greek democracy 321 phratries, see phatrai phylai, Corinthian 219–20, 225 Plataea (battle): chronology 59; Lakedaimonians and Tegeans at 76–7; Spartan graves 81–5; topography 75–6 Plato, on manteis 262 Plutarch, on Telesilla 276–7 poetic narratives, and prose 30–1 polis values, and death in battle 29, 35 political-theoretical approach, to Greek democracy 321–2 politicians, as chresmologoi 270 polities, Greek, centrality of institutions 325 polyandreion, commemorating Marathon 197–8, 199 Polybios, and universal history 152 Polymylos (Euia) 212 (p.375) potamonymy 45 pragmatism, and Athenian democracy 332 prefiguring, of events 253–4 prehistory (see also mythical time), end of 70–1 priests, Spartan, at Plataea 82, 84–5 procedures: complexity of Athenian 333; central to democracy 330–1, 332 bis, 333; don’t need theory 332 progress, in Hdt.’s narrative 8 promises, made by Hdt. 9, 14 prophecies, in Hdt., most already fulfilled 252–3 prose: description of Hdt.’s work 29; narratives, and poetic 30–1; style, in Hdt. 12–13 prospective phrases 8 psycho-historical approach, to Greek democracy 321 psychological factors, in war 97 purported objections, in Hdt. 11 Pylai, pass at Marathon 194, 200 realism (theory of international relations) 95 references back, in Hdt. 9–10 references forwards, in Hdt. 14–15 regionalism, in Attica 327 relationships, private and public, vocabulary of 333–4 religion: Greek, and Christian 299; Page 17 of 20

 

General Index Greek, ongoing dialogue in 252; Greek, phenomenological nature 299–300; in Hdt. (see also causation; chance; coincidences; divine, the; prophecies) 238–40, 251 bis, 252, 255 reminders, in Hdt. 10 repetition, in Hdt. 4 responses, and emergence of democracy 323, 327–31 Resurrection, by Della Francesca 297, 298, 301, 302 reversals of fortune 242–4, 254 rhetorical questions 11, 14 ring-composition 6, 14, 254 rings: thematic 6; verbal 6 rise and fall, pattern of 242–4 rites of inversion 277, 278, 282 rivers, and personal names 45 Royal Road 171–2 sacred law, Cyrenian 169 St Gall 241–2 San Sepolcro 297–8 satraps, of Kilikia 81 Scott, Peter 335 n. sculptures: Assyrian 183; Hittite 174 segmental parts, intrinsic to Greek polities 325 self-perception, and ethnicity 140–1 Sennacherib: builds Hanging Gardens 179, 181; confused with Nebuchadnezzar 179 Sepeia, date of battle 296 Sesostris: cult 174–5; in Hdt. 174 signposting, in Hdt. 6–7, 14 Skylax of Karyanda 146, 149 slaves, take over Argos 277, 282 snake, in Common Oracle 292–3 Sokles, see Sosikles Solon: and Kroisos 24–5, 26, 33, 308; date of visit to Kroisos 64 Sophists, and Hdt. 307 n. Sophokles, on Pelasgians 118–19 Sosikles, speech of 310, 311, 312, 316–17; not purely ironic 311, 312. 313 sources, Hdt.’s 145–6, 150; Aramaic 175–6, 181–3, 187, 188; chronological 59, 60; for Cyrene 156–7 Sparta (see also Aristodamos; Chionis; Diopeithes; Kallikrates; Kleomenes; Kleomenes; Leonidas; Leotychidas): in C6, Hdt.’s later C5 viewpoint on 310–11, 312; Page 18 of 20

 

General Index in C5, and Argos 284; and Libya 160–1, 165, 166; and Peisistratids 316 bis; antityrants (C5 invention) 310; chronology 66, 67 bis, 68; invades Attica 316; king-lists 79–80 Spaulding, Col. O. L. 91 Stadter, P. A. 86 Stanton, G. R. 221–2 style, of Hdt. 12–13 subdivisions, civic: at Athens 222, 227–2; at Corinth 219–21; intrinsic to Greek polities 325 suicides, of non-Greeks 23 superlatives, in Hdt. 243 supernatural explanations (see also divine, the) 298–9 Syloson, and Darius 244, 245, 246 synchronisms 69 (p.376) synchronous reversals 243 systems failures, spur to Athenian democracy 332 Tegeans, at Plataea 76–7 Telesilla 281; saves Argos 276–, 279–80, 281 Tellos (Athenian) 24, 25, 26, 33 Temenid brothers, travels of 203–4 212–13 temporal expressions, in Hdt. 5, 14, 15 thematic rings, in Hdt. 6 Themistokles: ambivalent figure 314–15; and ‘wooden wall’ 273–4 theory: alternative definitions 322; not central to Greek democracy 323, 331, 332, 335 Thera: C6 links with Cyrene 167; in Cyrenian ideology 161–2, 163; in foundation of Cyrene 163; their version of the foundation 158, 167–8 Thesmophoria, origins 128 bis Thessaliotis, and Pelasgians 126 Thessaly (see also Thessaliotis), and Pelasgians 116–17, 119 threats, spur to political development 327–31 Thucydides: and international relations 95; as military historian 93, 94, 97, 98; on Pelasgians 105–6, 142; WGF on 96 time-warp, in C5 Crete 325 Titarion (Mt.) 213–14, 216 ‘tradition’, problematized 154, 155, 162, 164, 169–70 tragic mode, in Hdt. 13 Page 19 of 20

 

General Index transhumance: in Mt. Bermion 208; in Mt. Titarion 213–14 transitions, narrative, in Hdt. 7 triakades (divisions of polis), Corinth 220, 223, 224, 225 trials, political, prevent tyranny 327–8 tribes: Corinthian 219–20, 225; survival of old, at Athens and Corinth 228 trittyes (Athenian) 222; not equal 229–31; role 231 tyranny: democratic fear of 314; meaning for C5 audience 312–13; prevention of 327–8 tyrants: Athenian, how used by Hdt. 315–16; Spartan opposition to 310 Tyrrhenians, and Pelasgians 114–15, 117–18 universal history: and Hdt. 151–2; and Polybios 152 Upper Macedonia, location 206–7, 211 ‘up-to-date’ language 62 Velvendos 211 verbal rings, in Hdt. 6 Vergína 213 visions, divine nature of 300 voice, authorial, in Hdt. 3, 15 voting, intrinsic to Greek polities 326 warfare: and gender 98; and psychology 97 watchword, at Mykale 78–9 wealth, power of, curbed in Athens 331 wisdom literature 181–2 women, Persians as 291–2 ‘wooden wall’, oracle about 272–4 word order, in Hdt. 5–6 ‘writing’, term in Hdt. 13 Xanthos, stele from 216 Xerxes: and Leonidas 34–5; chronology of expedition 58–60 years, dating by 70 youths, Spartan—or priests? 81–5 Zahrnt, M. 206–7

Page 20 of 20

 

Select Index of Literary Sources

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.377) Select Index of Literary Sources Andron of Halikarnassos, FGrH 10 F 16: 111, 112 Anth. Pal. 14. 89–90: 285–6 Ar. Av. 1046–7: 263 [Arist.] Ath. 54. 6: 266 Clem. Al. Strom. 4. 19. 120. 3–4: 281 Diod. Sic. 4. 60. 1: 111; 5. 80: 111–121; 11. 33. 3: 199; 11. 37. 6: 151 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 25. 2: 118 Hdt.: 1. 45.3: 24; 1. 56–8: 122–6 2. 171. 3: 127–8 4.154–6: 158–9 5. 78: 315; 5. 92: 310, 312–13; 5. 102. 3: 19; 5. 113. 2: 19 6. 19. 12: 285–6; 6. 77. 2: 285; 6. 108. 1: 190; 6. 112. 3–113. 1: 201–2; 6. 114: 19; 6. 116. 1: 190; 6. 126–30: 313–14; 6. 137–40: 132 7. 128. 1: 207; 7. 139. 5–143: 272–4; 7. 173.4: 207 8. 104–6: 38–9; Page 1 of 2

 

Select Index of Literary Sources 8. 131. 2–3: 79–80; 8. 137–8: 203–4; 8. 142. 2: 85–7 9. 22. Ib–2: 20–1; 9. 54. 1: 76–7; 9. 57. 2: 75–6; 9. 69. 2: 19; 9. 83. 2–84. 1: 77–8; 9. 85: 81–5; 9. 98. 3: 78–9; 9. 107. 3: 80–1 Hekataios, FGrH 1 F 127: 136 Hom. ll. 2. 681: 109; 2. 840–3: 108; 10. 429: 108; 14. 489–502: 17–18; 16. 233: 109; 17. 288, 301: 108; Od. 19. 175–7: 110 Hsch. s.v. Kynophaloi 219 Ion of Chios, FGrH 392 F 1: 53 n. Paus. 2. 20. 8–10: 279–80, 285; 7. 4. 8–10: 53 n. Pl. Rep. 364 b–e 262 Plut. De mul. virt. 4 (Mor. 223 b–c) 276–7; Lys. 22. 5–6: 268 Polyb. 5. 33. 2: 152 Soph. TGF 4 F 270: 118 Suda, T 260 Adler 285 Thuc. 1. 3, 4. 109: 105–6, 142; 2. 34. 5: 197 Tzetz. Chil. 7. 156 995–8: 285–6

Page 2 of 2

 

Select Epigraphic Index

Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest Peter Derow and Robert Parker

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199253746 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253746.001.0001

(p.378) Select Epigraphic Index IG i3 1015 bis 191–4 IG i3 2/3: 190–1 IG i3 503/4: 195–7, 198 ML 2: 167, 168 ML 26: 195–7, 198 ML 52: 266 REG 101 (1988), 14–16: 216 Robert Hellenica 5: 5–15 (11/12: 562–9): 220 ZPE 123 (1999), 1–23: 29

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