Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus 9780199693979, 0199693978

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus’ Histories
Part I: From Myth to Historical Method
1. Myth and Legend in Herodotus’ First Book
2. Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War
3. Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry and Storytelling
4. The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint
5. ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus
6. Herodotus on Melampus
Part II: Myth and History
7. Herodotus and the Heroic Age: The Case of Minos
8. Myth and Truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus Logos
9. Herodotus and Eastern Myths and Logoi: Deioces the Mede and Pythius the Lydian
10. The Mythical Origins of the Medes and the Persians
11. Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes
12. Returning to Troy: Herodotus and the Mythic Discourse of his own Time
References
Index Locorum
A
B
C
D
E
F
H
I
J
L
N
O
P
Q
S
T
X
General Index
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B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
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P
Q
R
S
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Citation preview

MYTH, TRUTH, AND NARRATIVE IN HERODOTUS

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Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus

Edited by EMILY BARAGWANATH AND MATHIEU DE BAKKER

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom 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. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Oxford University Press 2012 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 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, by licence 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 work in any other form 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 Data available ISBN 978–0–19–969397–9 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

Preface and Acknowledgements In this volume we take as our point of departure the one element on which all those who seek to define the meaning of ‘myth’ in Herodotus agree: its narrative character, which it shares with all works of the ancient historiographical tradition. Our present era has witnessed a kind of rebirth of the appreciation of narrative in historiography. This may be attested by the work of such writers as Simon Schama, Niall Ferguson, and Tom Holland, who present their investigations into the past through an engaging, fluent narrative that appeals to a wider audience. But the blurring of boundaries between ‘story’ and ‘history’ is visible in other genres too. A. S. Byatt in her Booker Prize winning novel Possession (1990) employed a historical Victorian setting as a stage for fictional characters, while the acknowledgements to academic and scientific institutions in Dan Brown’s mystic detective novels buttress the authority of an otherwise entirely fictional narrative. Herodotus himself can be considered the father of narrative historiography. To communicate his story of the past he made use of literary elements, often through patterns that were associated with tales known from the Greek legendary heritage. The aim of this volume is to study such elements in an attempt to contribute to the ongoing reconciliation of Herodotus the purveyor of fictional tales and employer of ‘mythic’ paradigms with the historian of the Persian Wars. In September 2007 we invited an international group of scholars who were working in the fields of Greek historiography and mythology to Christ Church, Oxford, for a conference on Herodotus and Myth. The atmosphere of the conference was congenial and stimulating, and fresh approaches were measured up against the merits of more traditional ones. This volume brings together the papers of eleven of its participants, along with two further contributions solicited in a bid to enrich further the whole. Together, the papers bring out a variety of ways in which one can deal with the ‘mythical’ material of Herodotus’ Histories, and we hope that they open up ample possibilities for future theoretical, historical, and philological debate. Although the editors and contributors have tried to keep the

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contents of the volume up to date, it should be noted that it was first submitted to the publisher for consideration in 2009. The conference would not have taken place, and the volume that grew from it would not have appeared, were it not for the generous intellectual, financial, and organizational support of many. First we would like to thank the participants of the conference for their numerous observations on individual papers. In particular, we thank the panel presiders Roger Brock and Robert Fowler, and Christopher Pelling, Thomas Harrison, and Tom Holland, for livening up the event with their contributions to the programme. Deborah Boedeker, Angus Bowie, and John Marincola provided us with sage early advice and with support in raising funds. Christ Church we thank for being such a gracious host of the conference. Audiences at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania helped us in sharpening our thoughts about the introduction, as did valuable observations made by members of the Amsterdam Hellenist Society, and by Sean Braswell, who read several versions of it. At various stages we received administrative and other support from Philippa Duffin, Eleni Kechagia, John Esposito, Saskia Willigers, and John Beeby. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of the OUP book proposal for their careful reading of the manuscript and useful observations, Hilary O’Shea and the rest of her superb team at OUP, our splendid copy-editor Hilary Walford, and our proofreader James Eaton. The department of Classics at UNC-Chapel Hill and its gracious Chair Cecil Wooten provided invaluable assistance with the final preparations for publication. Finally, we owe acknowledgement to the generous sponsors of our conference: the British Academy, the John Fell OUP Fund, the Christopher Tower Fund, the University of Oxford Classics Faculty Board, the Craven Committee, the Hellenic Society, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the Institute of Culture and History of the University of Amsterdam. We should like to note that the order of our surnames as it appears on the volume’s title page and introduction was chosen for euphonic reasons and does not reflect an uneven workload. E.B. and M. de B. June 2012

Contents List of Contributors

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Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus’ Histories Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker

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Part I: From Myth to Historical Method 1. Myth and Legend in Herodotus’ First Book Carolyn Dewald

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2. Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War Suzanne Saïd

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3. Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry and Storytelling Mathieu de Bakker 4. The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint Irene de Jong 5. ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus Elizabeth Vandiver 6. Herodotus on Melampus Vivienne J. Gray

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Part II: Myth and History 7. Herodotus and the Heroic Age: The Case of Minos Rosaria Vignolo Munson

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8. Myth and Truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus Logos Charles C. Chiasson

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9. Herodotus and Eastern Myths and Logoi: Deioces the Mede and Pythius the Lydian Rosalind Thomas

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10. The Mythical Origins of the Medes and the Persians Pietro Vannicelli

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11. Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes Angus M. Bowie

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12. Returning to Troy: Herodotus and the Mythic Discourse of his own Time Emily Baragwanath

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References Index Locorum General Index

313 343 357

List of Contributors Mathieu de Bakker is University Lecturer of Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam. His research concentrates on Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Greek orators. Emily Baragwanath is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. She is the author of Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus (Oxford University Press, 2008), which won Oxford’s Conington Prize and the CAMWS Outstanding Publication Award. Angus M. Bowie is Lobel Praelector in Classics at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. He was editor of the Journal of Hellenic Studies until 2011, and is now Chairman of the Faculty Board of Classics. He has published widely on the Greek historians, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and Virgil. In 2007 his commentary on Herodotus Book Eight appeared with Cambridge University Press, and he is soon to publish another on Odyssey 13–14. Charles C. Chiasson is Associate Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Philosophy and Humanities Department at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he directs the Classical Studies programme. His research focuses on archaic and classical Greek literature, and he has published important articles on the relationship between lyric and tragic poetry and Herodotus’ Histories. Carolyn Dewald is Professor of Classical and Historical Studies at Bard College, where she directs the Classical Studies programme. She has published extensively on the Greek historians and is currently working on a Cambridge Commentary to Herodotus Book One together with Rosaria Munson. In 2005 her book Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study appeared with the University of California Press. Vivienne J. Gray is Professor of Classics at the University of Auckland. Her main areas of interest are Herodotus and Xenophon. She recently edited the Xenophon volume in the Oxford Readings in

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Classical Studies series (2010) and is the author of Xenophon’s Mirror of Princes: Reading the Reflections (Oxford University Press, 2011). Irene de Jong is Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam. She has published extensively on Greek narrative, in particular Homer, tragedy, and the Greek historians. She is editor of the Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative series. In 2011 her commentary on Homer’s Iliad 22 appeared with Cambridge University Press. Rosaria Vignolo Munson is Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department of Classics at Swarthmore College. She is the author of numerous articles and books on Herodotus, among them Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus (University of Michigan Press, 2001) and Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of the Barbarians (Center for Hellenic Studies, 2005). She is currently working on a Cambridge Commentary to Herodotus Book One, together with Carolyn Dewald. Suzanne Saïd is Emeritus Professor of Greek at Columbia University. She has worked on Greek tragedy and comedy, Greek historiography, and the Greek novel. She is co-author of the Short History of Greek Literature (Routledge, 1999) and Greeks on Greekness: Viewing the Greek Past under the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and in 2011 her Homer and the Odyssey appeared with Oxford University Press. Rosalind Thomas is Dyson–Macgregor Fellow and Jowett Lecturer in Ancient History at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Her research interests concern Greek history, literacy, and historiography of the archaic and classical age, and she has published extensively across these areas. In 2000 her seminal Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion appeared with Cambridge University Press. Elizabeth Vandiver is Clement Biddle Penrose Associate Professor of Latin and Classics and Chair of the Department of Classics at Whitman College. She has worked on Herodotus, mythology, and the reception of classics. In 1991 she published Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction of Myth and History, and in 2010 her Stand in the Trench, Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War appeared with Oxford University Press.

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Pietro Vannicelli is Associate Professor of Greek History at Sapienza Università di Roma. He is the author of Erodoto e la storia dell’ alto e medio arcaismo (Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale 1993) as well as various articles on Greek history and historiography and is currently working on a commentary on Herodotus Book Seven.

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Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus’ Histories Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker

The contributions to this volume take as their point of departure the various ways in which Herodotus dealt with, reflected upon, and was influenced by the traditional stories that are nowadays collectively known as myths. The concept of myth, however, is wide-ranging, and has accumulated various shades of meaning in the course of time. Herodotus himself uses muthos only twice (2.23; 45.1), to reject the historiographical value of a story. Those who studied his work after him, on the other hand, found the term ‘myth’ useful in contemplating his methodology, principles of selection, and narrative organization, and thus it found its way into Herodotean scholarship. For this reason the term merits a discussion that evaluates its meanings and opens up ways that it might be applied. Moreover, even if ‘myth’ is anachronistic, it is heuristically valuable as a concept, and can help us describe a distinction that may indeed be present in Herodotus’ text. Such a discussion ushers in questions of verifiability, and the equally contestable concept of truth. It would appear from the Histories that Herodotus believed in the possibility of attaining a truthful reconstruction of past events, and yet we also find traces of the Protean struggle he undertook to capture an often elusive past: a past that presented itself in different forms and versions, and through alternating channels. We must also reflect upon Herodotus’ methods of presenting his material and exploiting his storytelling capacities in tying together a string of gripping narratives according to thematic and chronological principles. Our introduction focuses on myth and its multiple relationships with the concepts of truth and narrative, both within the Histories

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itself and between the work and its context. To begin with, we discuss the problematic reception in modern history of the material deemed mythical in Herodotus’ work (}1), and offer some suggestions towards a definition that makes myth a workable concept specifically in relation to the Histories (}2). Next, we focus in on the vexed question of time and knowledge and review the discussion of whether Herodotus conceived of a spatium mythicum opposed to, or rather continuing into, a spatium historicum (}3). Debating this question raises issues of authority and demands reflection upon Herodotus’ historiographical aspirations in recounting or adapting material deemed mythical (}4). We also consider the historical context of myth, and probe its particular capacity to exercise a powerful influence upon the events that Herodotus narrates (}5). Finally, we pay attention to the literary tradition that schooled and inspired Herodotus, as it presented itself in the shape of epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry as well as orally transmitted stories (}6). But we shall begin with the Histories itself.

1. THE HERODOTEAN ‘PARADOX’ In the opening words of the Histories, Herodotus set out to eternalize erga megala te kai thōmasta (‘great and marvellous deeds’) in the footsteps of his epic predecessors, but broke with their tradition of ascribing authority to the Muses, instead to take personal responsibility for a narrative founded upon historical research.1 His credibility, no longer sanctioned by a divine institution, depended and still today depends upon the willingness of his audience to believe in his sincerity in presenting the records of his enquiries.2 At the same time, 1 For a comparison of the Homeric and Herodotean narrators, see de Jong (1999; 2004b: 101–7). For the proem’s Homeric reminiscences, see inter alia the works of Krischer (1965) and Erbse (1992: 123–5). E. J. Bakker’s thought-provoking study (2002) re-establishes the meaning of historiēs apodexis as ‘enactment’ of an enquiry rather than ‘publication’; his ideas have been further developed by Węcowski (2004). 2 This question was the focus of the heated debate between the so-called Liarschool and Herodotus’ apologists, their key proponents Fehling (1989) and Pritchett (1993) respectively. For a critical view on the debate, see Packman (1991: 400–2) and Kurke (2000: 134), who describes it as ‘sterile’ and observes that ‘both sides apply to Herodotos an anachronistic standard of accuracy or truth. We must accept the fact that we simply cannot reconstruct in detail exactly where Herodotos travelled from his text.’

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his work contains logoi and legomena that fall beyond the reach of such enquiry, stemming from eras or places too distant to allow personal observation, rational analysis, and the cross-questioning of informants,3 and this has impeded a straightforward appreciation of Herodotus’ self-proclaimed methods. We are confronted, then, with the paradox that Herodotus at times claims to rely on material verified by research, and yet the ‘unverifiable’ figures prominently in his work, especially in the form of stories that are told but cannot be confirmed. We will provisionally class this material as ‘mythical’. Herodotus’ successor Thucydides took a different approach and described the character of his own work as ‘not fabulous’ (mē muthōdes). Thus he sacrificed entertainment to ‘clarity’ (to saphes, Thuc. 1.22.4), and, in the view of such scholars as Gomme, Lesky, and Evans,4 he took distance from his predecessor’s storytelling liberties.5 Cicero later formulated the Herodotean paradox more explicitly in his On Laws, where he admits that, while history aims at the truth, innumerable fabulae are to be found in the work of the ‘father of history’ (Cic. Leg. 1.5).6 These are associated with entertainment (delectatio), a function that Cicero’s speaker regards as belonging to poetry rather than historiography. With the rise of Altertumswissenschaft (‘the scholarship of Antiquity’) in nineteenth-century Germany, the Herodotean paradox became a popular subject of scholarly debate, but it was reformulated in a 3 Cf. Herodotus’ research principles of opsis, gnomē, and historiē (as identified at 2.99.1). For a detailed treatment of these issues, see Verdin (1971), Schepens (1980), and Marincola (1987). 4 Gomme (1945: ad loc.), Lesky (19632: 518), and Evans (1968: 12–13), following the scholia on Thuc. 1.22.4. Their views were elaborated by Lendle (1990), who read Thucydides’ entire proem as an uncompromising polemic against Herodotus. Cf. Flory (1990: 201), relating muthōdes to patriotic stories that seek to aggrandize the events of, e.g., the Persian Wars. 5 Not all share this belief that Thucydides targeted Herodotus. Thus Wardman (1960: 404–6) holds that his remarks have been misunderstood and Herodotus’ own critical views on myths overlooked (see below, pp. 13–14; cf. n. 45. In R. L. Fowler’s view (1996: 76–7), Thucydides is targeting contemporary (local) historians and mythographers other than Herodotus. Cf. Scanlon (1994: 165). That Thucydides’ general attitude to his predecessor is more complex and certainly not condescending is clearly brought out by Rood (1999). See also Hornblower (1992), Rogkotis (2006), and now Foster and Lateiner (2012), the introduction of which (pp. 1–9) summarizes ancient and modern scholarly responses to the relationship of Herodotus and Thucydides. 6 Cicero names Theopompus too. Cf. de Divinatione 2.115–16, where he disputes the historicity of the oracle to Croesus about the invasion of Persia (Hdt 1.53).

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more scientifically charged fashion. It was felt that Herodotus had not merely juxtaposed the results of his research with the unverifiable, but, by sacrificing the former to the latter, had considerally weakened, even undermined, his historiographical enterprise. ‘Although sober historical accounts are not altogether absent, they pale into insignificance beside the lively elaborated mythical and novelistic stories so characteristic of his work. For their sake he has frequently brushed completely aside the historical data.’7 This scholarly Zeitgeist expressed itself, in relation to Herodotus, in three interdependent ways. First, there was a strong historicist tendency that sought to ascribe every piece of information found in the Histories to a particular source. It was above all in Quellenforschung (‘the study of sources’) that modern scholarship distinguished itself from its ancient counterpart, and found in Herodotus’ Histories—with its many source references—a welcome object of study. To identify Herodotus’ sources— to reconstruct, as it were, the iceberg below the visible tip—scholars paradoxically envisaged a historian who collected his data in a modern, empiricist fashion, and presented it to his audience directly and uncritically. Even Jacoby, the father of modern Herodotean scholarship, could not free himself from this incongruous conception, as he argued that Herodotus knew only how to string together particulars, without having a ‘proper understanding’ of, indeed even a ‘proper interest’ in, their causal coherence.8 Second, a strong analytic tradition tended to classify some of Herodotus’ logoi as ‘novellae’ or, more ideologically, ‘Volksmärchen’ (‘folktales’).9 In the wake of the Grimm brothers’ collections of German fairy tales, and the growing interest in folkloric heritage, such

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E. Meyer (1892–9: 233). This and subsequent German quotations are translated from the original by the editors. Cf. Jacoby (1913: 478), who suggested that Herodotus’ historical methods were still in their infancy. Pohlenz (19612: 216) later qualified this view, arguing that Herodotus’ investigative faculties matched his abilities as a teller of stories. 8 Jacoby (1913: 483). Cf., in this respect, E. Meyer (1892–9: 209). 9 The concept of the ‘Ionian Novella’ was invented by Erdmannsdörffer (1870); its most important advocate was Aly (19692). Within Herodotean scholarship, the term is also employed by Schmid and Stählin (1934: 604–10, 640–1), L. Solmsen (1944: 241), Trenkner (1958), Regenbogen (1961), Lang (1968: 32), Stahl (1968), K. H. Waters (1970: 504–5), Cobet (1971), Chapman (1972: 559), Cooper (1974: 41), Oliva (1975: 175), Erbse (1981, 1991, 1992), and Nielsen (1997: 59). Some scholars have used the term ‘novella’ in purely formal ways and thus sought to lessen its association with fiction. See, e.g., Reinhardt (1982: 326).

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scholars as Aly analysed the Histories and divided it into thin slices of fictional, ‘novelistic’, or ‘folktale’ material, on the one hand, and ‘truthful history’, on the other. In the ‘historical’ parts, Herodotus was believed to have relied on a wide variety of sources, many trustworthy.10 The ‘novelistic material’, by contrast, was claimed to originate from ‘novellae’: short, folktale narratives with an underlying historical kernel that were orally delivered in the Ionian world and had served Herodotus as a literary model.11 Stories such as those of the youth of Cyrus (1.107–22) and Xerxes and the wife of Masistes (9.108–13) were regarded as typical Herodotean novellae.12 Third, in the discussion of Herodotus’ position in relation to fifthcentury intellectual and sophistic developments, various scholars based their arguments on similarities between (the fragments of ) the works of the sophists and the Histories. These similarities then served as a point of departure for drafting Herodotus’ intellectual biography. Thus Maass used the Constitutional Debate (3.80–2) to illustrate the relationship between Herodotus and the sophists,13 whereas Meyer compared him to Sophocles and made the two of them representatives of archaic religious views, as opposed to those of closer contemporaries.14 Still others pointed to the heterogeneous nature of the Histories’ source material and denied Herodotus a

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The locus classicus here is Jacoby’s lengthy book-by-book discussion (1913: 392–467) of Herodotus’ sources. For a more recent approach based on comparative anthropological research, see Murray (2001a). 11 Oriental influence was assumed by others; cf. E. Meyer (1892–9: 237). 12 These were considered historically less significant, and so they received less attention in the commentaries of Stein (1881–1901) and How and Wells (1928). For the preconceived idea of the ‘Ionian Novella’, see de Jong’s convincing discussion (2002: 257–8). Kurke (2011) has recently revived the idea that Ionian storytelling, and Aesopic fable in particular, is an important background to Herodotean narrative (chs. 10–11, noting her debt to Aly at 361 n. 2 and 368–9). 13 Maass (1887: 581–5). The origins of the Constitutional Debate have remained disputed in subsequent scholarship. Following Maass, the debate is often read as a reflection of sophistic theories. See Pohlenz (19612: 107, 185–6), Hornblower (1987: 16), and Lachenaud (2003: 230–1, though cf. 333–4). Protagoras is frequently referred to as the key influence: see Kleber (1890: 4), Nestle (1940: 292–5, cf. 509–10), Morrison (1941: 12–13), Ryffel (1949: 64–73), Stroheker (1953: 385–9), Sinclair (19592: 36–9), Dihle (1962), Kennedy (1963: 45), von Fritz (1967: 316–18), Lasserre (1976: 69), Evans (1981: 83–4), and Thomas (2000: 18, 266). Other sophists mentioned in this connection are Gorgias (Dihle 1962), Hippias (Podlecki 1966: 369–71), and Antiphon (Aly 19692: 107). 14 Regenbogen (1961: 96) compared Herodotus’ religious views to those of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

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fixed Weltanschauung (‘world view, outlook’) altogether: ‘In fact, he has neither political understanding nor historical sense nor a solid and proper Weltanschauung, but rather oscillates between rationalism and superstition. The Ionian science is entirely alien to him.’15 In the decades that followed, scholars such as Jacoby, Aly, Pohlenz, and Regenbogen qualified this view in Herodotus’ defence.16 And yet their solution to the Herodotean paradox was equally paradoxical. For them, Herodotus was inspired by Ionian empiricist trends that explained the references in his work to sophistic and scientific developments, but he had not internalized them sufficiently and had not taken enough distance from the more archaic world view that underlay his work. Aly spoke of ‘drops of oil’ that did not mix with the surrounding liquid.17 In a more historicist vein, Pohlenz surmised that Herodotus was a Dorian who, despite his empiricism, lacked the sensitivities an Ionian would have had in the wake of new intellectual developments.18 This conception of Herodotus as a transitional, Janus-faced historian gained much influence, for it tied in so well with Nestle’s ‘rise of the rational’ at the expense of ‘the mythical’,19 the overarching thesis of his Vom Mythos zum Logos (1940). In his brief chapter on Herodotus, he repeats the assumption of his predecessors: ‘Herodotus learned and borrowed much material from the sophists and, at times, also from the Ionian philosophers, but their thoughts and knowledge remain merely ornaments to his work, and he does not incorporate them into his personal outlook on life.’20 In post-war scholarship, the approach to Herodotus and the problem of reconciling the Histories’ ‘mythical’ and ‘historical’ material started to change. Important in this process were the views of scholars such as Momigliano and Immerwahr, who each in their own way sought to re-evaluate the position of Herodotus in the development of the historiographical genre. Rejecting the usual, often negative, 15 Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1905: 56). Cf. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (19123: 97). 16 Jacoby (1913: 481). A generally more positive verdict was reached by Regenbogen (1961: 100), who saw in the Histories a combination of modern empiricist trends in Ionia and more traditional Athenian religious views. Cf. Pohlenz (19612: 185). 17 Aly (19692: 292). 18 Pohlenz (19612: 182). 19 The formulation of Buxton (1999: 1), on which see below pp. 9–10. 20 Nestle (1940: 513).

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comparison with his successor Thucydides, they promoted a more nuanced picture of two complementary historians who, as formidable representatives of an intellectual community, tried to solve the problems they encountered in assembling their data and organizing their logoi in their own, specific ways.21 This shift in attitude had repercussions for the evaluation of Herodotus. Instead of historicism—with the iceberg reconstructed by gazing into the murky depths below the surface—the tip itself became the subject of scrutiny. Thus attention shifted from author to narrator, from history to presentation, and from progenesis to end product.22 In tandem with this development, a fierce debate erupted about the reliability of Herodotus’ source references. Not only were unverifiable elements questioned, but so too was information that Herodotus seemed to verify so scrupulously.23 Likewise, the ‘novellae’ theory was queried.24 Although the analytic approach of distinguishing between ‘novelistic’ and ‘historical’ parts had the advantage of laying bare aspects of Herodotus’ narrative artistry,25 the underlying assumption remained unproven. No defining sample of the ‘Ionian Novella’ was ever identified, and more importantly, scholars began to realize that the distinction itself seemed unfamiliar to Herodotus, who used different, more subtle

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Momigliano (1958) pointed out that Thucydides, in imposing a strict methodology on his material, set a standard for later historians and so made Herodotus a vulnerable target for criticism—criticism that often overlooked the difficulties he faced in shaping his work. Cf. Immerwahr (1966: 12): ‘When Herodotus constructed the first complex prose work in Greek literature—a work rivaling the Iliad in scope— he had to invent a system that would be intelligible without the help of a strongly developed tradition.’ Meanwhile, Thucydides’ narrative was subjected to more intense scrutiny, with the integrity of his claims re-evaluated in the light of a growing perception of the literary shape of his work. On this see, e.g., Rood (1998a) and Dewald (2005). 22 As a starting point in this discussion, note von Fritz (1967: 213): ‘Whatever material Herodotus had at his disposal for his history, there can be no doubt that it was Herodotus himself who gave it the shape in which we read it’. Cf. Lesky (1977: 230). For the role of the Herodotean narrator, see Dewald (1987, 2002), Marincola (1987), and de Jong (1999, 2004b). Formal aspects of the Histories’ presentation are discussed inter alia by Beck (1971), Cobet (1971, 2002), Lang (1984), and Long (1987). 23 A discussion championed by Fehling (1989). See above, n. 2. 24 Pohlenz (19612: 188–9) had already observed that the analytic approach failed to take on board the wider context, and that individual logoi lost their significance when studied in isolation. 25 e.g. Stahl (1968) in his analysis of the ‘novella’ of Gyges and Candaules, which, as he concluded, contained a programmatic message. Cf. Erbse (1981).

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methods to indicate his opinion about the historicity of the material he presented, making use, for example, of source references and comparative research.26 Scholars meanwhile sought other ways of explaining the presence and value in the text of Herodotus’ ‘short stories’—for instance, by arguing for their thematic or even symbolic relevance to the work as a whole.27 This increasingly prevalent unitarian view went hand in hand with attempts to contextualize the Histories in its own right. Its quality and innovation were no longer judged in light of the works of earlier and contemporary Greek intellectuals.28 Some of these approaches were empiricist/philological, such as Thomas’ convincing thesis about the Histories’ affinities with the Hippocratics,29 or Moles’ acknowledgement that the work was written with an eye especially to contemporary political developments of the later fifth century.30 Others were more theoretical—for example, Hartog’s structuralist enterprise to determine the value of Herodotean ethnography31 or the linguists’ soundings of language and style that placed the Histories on the cusp between oral and written grammar.32 In current scholarship the picture has thus emerged of a historian who developed his work under the influence of contemporary genres and intellectual developments, but remained fully in charge of his material and made conscious choices to exploit all his narrative talents in telling his stories.33 Rather than accidental drops of oil that have not mixed with the surrounding liquid, sophistic elements, for instance, can be considered spices deliberately added with a view to making the text

26 Much good work in this area has been done by Lateiner (1989: 55–75), Packman (1991), and Shrimpton (1997). Cf. Groten (1963). 27 e.g. de Jong (2002) in her analysis of the structure of the fifth book of the Histories, challenging others to explain the function of the story of the Gephyrean clan (5.57–61). Pelling (2007b) and Munson (2007) rise to this challenge. Cf. the approach of Munson (2001). Gray (2002) surveys Herodotus’ short stories and the shifting scholarly approaches to them. 28 Momigliano (1958), on which see above, n. 21. 29 Thomas (2000). See also Raaflaub (2002) and Romm (2006), Scullion (2006), and Thomas (2006). 30 Moles (1996, 2002), whose ideas have recently been developed further by Fearn (2007) and E. Irwin (2007b, 2011). 31 Hartog (1980). 32 Slings (2002); Bakker (2006). 33 Herodotus’ use of various poetic models in shaping his narrative is discussed below, pp. 47–53.

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respond to and engage with aspects of contemporary rhetoric in the Greek world.34 These tendencies in recent scholarship have reshaped the Herodotean paradox. Whereas the unverifiable, ‘mythical’ material in the Histories was previously deemed an almost accidental remnant of an archaic mode of storytelling that undermined the work’s historical value, one is now more inclined to assume that Herodotus either did not himself experience its presence as paradoxical,35 or, conversely, consciously employed it with a view to enriching his work. As Griffiths expressed it in the late 1990s in his essay ‘Euenius the Negligent Nightwatchman’: ‘Herodotus not only rides the two Phaedrian horses muthos and logos with ease, but he knows it, delights in it, and consciously exploits it. And the listeners collude in the enterprise.’36 Griffiths was here contributing to Buxton’s edited volume From Myth to Reason? (1999), which critically re-evaluated the ‘Rise of the Rational’ theory that had been at the centre of Nestle’s Vom Mythos zum Logos.37 The theory, nicely summed up by the editor as the ‘from . . . to’ thesis, was deconstructed from several directions by contributors who mostly favoured an explanatory or philosophical model38 in which the ‘mythical’ and ‘the rational’ coexisted, reinforced, or eliminated one another, depending on author, genre, philosophical school, city, time, and place.39 Whereas 34

Thomas (2000: 122–34, 249–69) offers suggestions in this direction. So, e.g., Vandiver (1991: 9): ‘Most scholars have failed fully to realize that there is a question about why and how Herodotus used the mythical as opposed to the historical type of explanation; they have simply assumed that Herodotus did, or did not, differentiate between myth and history, and have based their readings of the Histories on their assumptions.’ 36 Griffiths (1999: 180). Griffiths exploits this idea further in Griffiths (2006), highlighting especially Herodotus’ artful arrangement of his material. 37 Nestle’s influence could be seen in seminal works like Snell’s Die Entdeckung des Geistes (its first edition appearing in 1946), and in the works of the French structuralists like Vernant (1962), who argued that, together with and owing to the rise of the polis and the abolishment of monarchy, a new, ‘philosophical’ way of thinking evolved in Greece that in different ways sought to replace a ‘mythical’ mode of thought. 38 Gould (1999), for instance, pointed out that the mythical discourse of Greek tragedy provided a multivalent explanatory model that could equally well be called logos; Most, in his essay provocatively titled ‘From Logos to Muthos’ (1999), showed how the debate about the significance of Greek myths to the contemporary world gained impetus in eighteenth-century philosophers’ circles, whereas classicists in general were content to study them within their historical context. For a recent evaluation of the muthos/logos polarity see R. L. Fowler (2011). 39 Kirk (1974: 276–303) had undertaken an earlier valuable re-evaluation of the muthos/logos polarity. Despite his adherence to a more complicated version of the 35

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Nestle had awarded him only a brief chapter at the end of his book, Herodotus now made a comeback, for it was acknowledged that his position in any debate about the viability of the muthos/logos polarity was pivotal—comparable indeed to that of Parmenides and Plato.40 Thanks in large part to Buxton’s volume, the Herodotean paradox became a ‘paradox’, as what had seemed paradoxical to many of his students may well have been a self-evident characteristic of the genre that Herodotus had in mind. Despite this acknowledgement, nowadays shared by many in the field of Herodotean studies, the question of how to explain the unverifiable, ‘mythical’ material in the Histories remains important. Beyond the findings that continue to surface from the debate about the context of the Histories, this question retains its relevance primarily as a result of continuing developments in academic thinking— from antiquity through to more recent times—about the definition, status, role, and function of ‘myth’ and ‘the mythical’. If such a disputed and broadly interpreted concept is to serve as a heuristic tool, we must begin by setting out an acceptable working definition that can be applied to Herodotus’ text.

2. THE PARAMETERS OF MYTH IN HERODOTUS: TOWARDS A WORKING DEFINITION The title of this volume presupposes a belief in the effectiveness of terms such as ‘myth’, ‘muthos’, and ‘mythology’ in studying and contextualizing Herodotus’ work. At the same time, they bring with them a long-standing record of scholarly debate about their definitions and relationships to one another. Thinkers such as Detienne and Calame go so far as to question the validity and ultimately the legitimacy of these terms as criteria for the analysis of data from the ‘from . . . to’ thesis, he deconstructed the term ‘mythical thinking’ in opposition to ‘logical, philosophical, systematic reasoning’. He argued that it was the ‘nature and generality’ of the early Presocratics’ object of study that distinguished them from authors like Hesiod, but avoided an explanation in terms of ‘a new mode of thinking’. The Presocratics adopted a genetic model (perhaps derived from myth), whereas authors like Homer and Hesiod used systematic models to classify their myths (pp. 295–7, 300–1). 40 Buxton (1999: 18–19).

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ancient world.41 Moreover, in the case of ‘myth’ we are confronted with definitions that range from denoting anything non-historical42 to, more specifically, traditional tales about the influence of the divine upon (human) nature and culture.43 It is not our intention to review exhaustively the backgrounds of these discussions (that would require an entire book, or several44), or to seek wholly new parameters within which these terms can be employed. Neither do we wish to impose upon our contributors a model of muthos and logos in any particular relationship to one another, for the simple reason that a formal restriction of two terms with such a wide range of meanings, both in- and interdependently, would impede rather than stimulate creative thought and interpretation. We do, however, wish to consider what aspects of the wideranging semantics of these terms may be meaningfully employed as a heuristic tool in studying the Histories, and to suggest some parameters within which they might function. Our search for parameters should begin with the question of how Herodotus himself used the term muthos, and whether he conceived of an opposition between muthos and logos that can be useful for our purpose. This is not an easy enterprise, for Herodotus uses the word muthos only twice.45 Thin evidence, then—which does not allow us to

41

See the opening chapter of Calame (1996); cf. Calame (1999), and see also Detienne (1981, 2000), who claimed that ‘myth’ is essentially an eighteenth-century construct. Edmunds (1990a) countered Detienne’s radical view and argued convincingly that the Greeks did in fact have a category of traditional tales that corresponds to our notion of ‘myth’. 42 This definition surfaces from the treatment of myth of McNeill (1986a), who argues that, since the ultimate truth will never be attained, ‘mythistory’ is the best compromise any historian can come up with: ‘what seems true to one historian will seem false to another, so one’s historian’s truth becomes another’s myth, even at the moment of utterance’ (p. 3). For a different understanding of ‘mythistorical’ narration, see Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8. 43 German scholarship in particular sought to differentiate ‘myths’ from ‘folktales’, assigning to the former category tales in which the divine played an important role. Seminal in this has been Jolles’ Einfache Formen (19684: esp. 91–125). Cf. Radermacher (1938: 64), who adds a formal criterion to ‘myth’ by implying its ‘poetic’ character: ‘ein ahnendes, dichterisch in Rede gekleidetes Begreifen des Göttlichen und der Welt’ (‘a foreboding understanding of the divine and the world, clothed poetically in speech’). 44 For recent discussions that include an overview of different approaches to Greek myths, see the useful studies of Hübner (1985), Edmunds (1990b), and Dowden (1992). 45 As pointed out by Vandiver (1991: 7), criticizing Wardman (1960) for his assumption that Herodotus used muthos as a fixed term in opposition to historiē.

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reach firm conclusions, though it should be observed that he both times explicitly rejects the content of the muthos. The first instance concerns the muthos of the river Ocean, which Herodotus mentions in the course of discussing the unusual timing of the inundation of the Nile (2.20–7). In this polemical section of the Egypt book, he rejects three theories of some Greeks who ‘wish to distinguish themselves in the field of wisdom’ (episēmoi boulomenoi genesthai sophiēn, 2.20.1). The second theory explains the behaviour of the Nile as a consequence of its connection to Ocean, which flows around the world: The second theory is even more ignorant [anepistēmonesterē] than the one I have just mentioned, though it is more striking in expression; it claims that it is because the Nile flows from the Ocean that it manages to do what it does, and that the Ocean surrounds the whole world. (2.21)46

Hecataeus is known to have adopted this Homeric view (FGrH 1, F. 302),47 and it may well be that he was the target of Herodotus’ polemic.48 Herodotus considers his the least credible theory of the three on the basis of the criterion of ‘knowledgeability’. Although LSJ and Powell’s Lexicon distinguish between anepistēmōn as it appears here, ‘unintelligent’ (LSJ), and as it appears later in the narrative of the battle of Plataea, where it refers to the ‘lack of skill’ of the Persian infantry (9.62), this second meaning certainly applies to this passage as well. The inventor of the Ocean theory lacked the skilful methodology on which Herodotus prided himself. Herodotus returns to this subject in the ensuing discussion: It is impossible to argue against the person who spoke about the Ocean, because the tale [muthos] is based on something that cannot be refuted [ouk ekhei elegkhon]. I do not know of the existence of any River Ocean, and I think that Homer or one of the poets from past times invented the name and introduced it into his poetry. (2.23)

46 The translations in the Introduction are either taken from Waterfield (1998) (with some modification) or the editors’ own. 47 Il. 18.607–8, 21.195–7, and cf. Hesiod Theogony 338. 48 So A. B. Lloyd (2007: ad loc.). Cf. Corcella (1993: ad 4.36.2). Nickau (1990: 84–7) points to the presence of the article (ton muthon, 2.23), which implies that Herodotus refers to a muthos that is known to his audience. He claims that Herodotus in both instances referred to muthoi in which Hecataeus believed, arguing that gelō (‘I laugh’, 4.36.2) should be seen as an allusion to Hecataeus’ first fragment: hoi gar Hellēnōn logoi polloi te kai geloioi (‘for the logoi of the Greeks are many and laughable’, FGrH 1, F. 1).

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Apparently what disturbs Herodotus most is not the content of the theory, but that it is no theory at all, in that it cannot be refuted (ouk ekhei elegkhon). How could anyone seeking authority seriously put forward such an argument? Later on in his Scythian logos he repeats this objection explicitly, arguing that those who believe that Ocean streams around the world ‘fail to produce evidence’ (ergōi . . . ouk apodeiknusi, 4.8.2), and even admits to laughing at these and similar theories that are exposed as being ‘without intelligence’ (oudena noon ekhontōs, 4.36.2). The second instance of muthos appears a little later in the Egypt book, and again its connection with the criterion of knowledgeability is made explicit: The Greek account of Heracles’ birth is far from being the only thoughtless [anepiskeptōs] thing they say. Here is another silly [euēthēs] tale [muthos] of theirs about Heracles. They say that when he came to Egypt, the Egyptians crowned him with garlands and led him in a procession with the intention of sacrificing him to Zeus. He did nothing for a while, and began to resist only when they were consecrating him at the altar, at which point he massacred them all. Now, in my opinion, this Greek story displays complete ignorance [apeirōs ekhein] of the Egyptian character and customs. For it is against their religion for Egyptians to sacrifice animals (except for sheep, ritually pure bulls and male calves, and geese), so how could they sacrifice human beings? (2.45.1–2)

It appears, then, that Herodotus uses muthos to describe a story that cannot be accounted for, and can moreover be rejected on other grounds such as its degree of wondrousness (2.21) or its incompatibility with the customs of the people that it describes (2.45). For Herodotus, it seems that muthos is semantically more restricted than logos or legomenon, which can be applied to any story whatsoever and require explicit qualification if they are to indicate the historian’s disbelief.49 In Thucydides we find this same connection between muthos (although the word itself does not occur in Thucydides’ History) 49 Incredible logoi: 7.214.2, 8.119; legomena: 7.209.5. Cf. the expression ou pista legein: 1.182.1, 2.73.3, 4.5.1, 4.25.1, 4.42.4, 5.86.3, 8.120. Cf., too, Hecataeus’ first fragment, above, n. 48. Aside from explicit indications, Herodotus can use indirect speech to indicate that he does not grant full credibility to a certain tradition, though indirect speech (contrary to what is commonly assumed) need not always imply scepticism: see T. Harrison (2000a: 248–50), de Bakker (2007: 160–78), and, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, pp. 124–5, and de Jong, Ch. 4, pp. 131–2.

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and a lack of elegchos. In his methodological chapter he takes distance from the methods of the logographoi, since they compose stories for the purpose of pleasure and thus succumb to ‘the fabulous’ (to muthōdes): ‘Their accounts cannot be tested [anexelegkta] . . . and most of the facts in the lapse of time have passed into the region of the fabulous [to muthōdes]’ (1.21.1, trans. Jowett, adapted). Although many assume that Thucydides is here targeting his predecessor Herodotus (see above, n. 5), it may well be that both historians’ understanding of muthos is conditioned by the same epistemological criterion.50 Following this line of reasoning, we could argue that a logos ou pistos that defies any kind of examination is for Herodotus a muthos that should be rejected from a historiographical work. For him, muthos was not then an antonym, but a species, of logos.51 But such incidental use of the term makes it unsuitable as a point of departure for a heuristic model: it cannot be proven with certainty that Herodotus used the word in any terminological opposition.52 Moreover, any model that conceives of a meaning of muthos in Herodotus that is akin to our modern concept of ‘myth’ ushers in the problem of how to judge those passages in the Histories that are not in any way qualified, and yet contain unverifiable elements and (as we saw above) have so often frustrated those who looked for truth in a Rankean manner. Adopting such a model would oblige us to accuse Herodotus of disingenuousness whenever he makes use of narrative artistry or presents his material in a form that resembles narratives used to present Greek mythology (on which see below, }6). Herodotus’ understanding of muthos, we can conclude, does not take us any further. A more fruitful approach might then be to take into account modern, less restrictive meanings of ‘myth’. Kirk defended such an approach, pointing out that ‘“Myth” is such a general term, and its On knowledge as a key criterion for distinguishing ‘myth’ from ‘history’ in Herodotus, see }3 below. 51 In fact, before Plato’s Protagoras 320c (on which see below, p. 49), no clear traces of such a theoretical contrast have been found in Greek literature; cf. Buxton (1994: 12–13). Edmunds (1990a: 2–8), however, points to a passage in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1174–80), where a distinction is made between logoi and muthoi, the latter clearly meaning fantasy stories. Nickau (1990: 88–90) uses the same passage to argue that the antithesis between logos and muthos was already implicit in Thucydides and could be ascribed to sophists such as Prodicus and Protagoras. 52 Nor is the case for a very specific reading of muthos strengthened by its neutral meaning ‘utterance’ in epic and archaic poetry; cf. below, n. 63. 50

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etymology and early applications are so unspecific, that one is compelled to take some notice of contemporary usage’.53 And yet this approach has its pitfalls, too. In the first place, it was in the nineteenth century that the term ‘myth’ came to be connected to stories about the divine as a causative factor, as opposed to such terms as ‘legend’ (a story about humans that supposedly has some historical kernel), ‘saga’ (applied to tales about heroes), and ‘folktale’ (specifically associated with the stories of ‘the ordinary people’ as opposed to those that circulated among the elites).54 The shortcomings of these distinctions are immediately apparent when one tries to apply them to a work like the Iliad, with its complex layers of human and divine causation and its humanized heroes set against the backdrop of a contested historical setting in Troy.55 Applying such terminological distinctions would lead to a hairsplitting analysis of the Homeric narrative—is it a legend, a saga, or a myth after all?—and the needless imposition of a model that seems entirely unfamiliar to it. In the case of Herodotus, such an analysis would be even more problematic, in view of the various literary models that inform his text, each of them employing mythical subject matter in its own particular way.56 The strong connection of ‘myth’ with the divine led to an approach that was based on anthropological studies and sought to explain ‘myth’ as a product that emerged from and should be considered in connection with ritual. This so-called Cambridge school of myth 53 Kirk (1974: 25). Cf. von Reden (1999: 69), arguing that mythology is a category largely created by Western thought and anthropological scholarship. 54 See, e.g., Aly (19692: 7–10, 238–9): ‘Das Märchen wird zum Mythos, wenn Götter seine Personen, kosmisches Geschehen sein Inhalt wird.’ (‘A fairytale becomes a myth when gods become its characters and cosmic events its content’). Cf. Jolles (19684) for the general distinctions between the different categories. ‘Legend’ as a term goes back to legenda, which was first used in the thirteenth century to refer to stories about saints. ‘Saga’ was introduced in nineteenth-century scholarship to describe specific Icelandic traditions about local clans and kings. ‘Folktale’ is a translation of German Märchen. Recent scholarship generally acknowledges the anachronistic character and limited usefulness of these distinctions; e.g. Day (1984: 17–20), Bremmer (1987: 1–9), Dowden (1992: 6–7), and Buxton (1994: 13 n. 19). 55 For the uniquely realistic presentation of the heroes in Homeric epic, in particular the Iliad, in comparison with the Epic Cycle, see Griffin (1977), with many references to earlier scholarship. For the vexed question of the historicity of the Trojan War and its relationship to the Homeric epics, witness the fierce debate between believers like Latacz (2004) and sceptics like Kolb (2010: ch. 1). For a summary of the debate, and a balanced view that tends towards that of the sceptics, see Grethlein (2010a). 56 On this, see below, }6.

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and ritual57 became highly influential over the course of the twentieth century, with repercussions also for studies of Herodotus’ Histories. It was established, for instance, that mythical narratives often reflected a Rite de Passage58 and that elements that seemed unintelligible at first glance could be accounted for once they were placed in the context of ritual. In this way, stories such as that of Lycophron and Periander (3.50–3) could be explained as being based upon or informed by patterns related to initiation rituals.59 Be that as it may, the Histories’ content is again too diverse for a purely ritualistic definition to work. In a story like that of Cleobis and Biton (1.31) the ritualistic context cannot be overlooked;60 but how is one to reconcile this type of story with the fantastic, ‘mythical’ stories about the inhabitants of the fringes of the known world, such as the Ethiopians and the Hyperboreans? Once again, the wide variety of Herodotus’ material defies too restrictive a concept.61 Nor does it much help to reason the other way around and—by deconstructing wholesale the myth/history opposition—admit that any narrative can be classed as ‘myth’.62 To do so would be to render ‘myth’ virtually equivalent to its ancient Homeric meaning of muthos in the sense of ‘speech’,63 ‘utterance’; and we could no longer employ the term as a heuristic tool, for it would imply the study of each individual story along with the Histories’ entire narrative, and would lead to further terminological confusion among classical scholars. In seeking a means of demarcating the boundaries of our terrain, it is probably wisest to look to adjacent scholarly traditions. Our 57

Important representatives of this school include J. E. Harrison (1912), Hooke (1935, 1958), and Burkert (1966, 1972, 1983). The latter recognized ‘programs of action’ that were grounded in human biology and found a dramatized continuity in ritual, which was in turn reflected and paralleled in mythology. See the discussion in Edmunds (1990b: 25–90). 58 Van Gennep (1908). 59 As exemplified by Sourvinou-Inwood’s suggestion (1988) that one read this story as a reflection of a failed ephebeia, a coming-of-age initiation ritual; cf. below, p. 55, with n. 226. 60 As Chiasson (2005) has recently argued. 61 Cf. Kirk (1974: 25–6) and Burkert (1999), who point out that a significant number of the stories that we tend to consider ‘myths’ have nothing to do with the sacred, and even fewer myths concern the divine as a creative force. 62 See McNeill (1986a), cp. n. 42 above. 63 The basic meaning as given in the Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos under muthos, whereas Kirk (1974: 22–3) translates it as ‘utterance’. For a detailed study of the semantics of muthos in the Homeric epics, see Martin (1989).

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understanding of myth will then take its point of departure from the work of Kirk and Buxton, who have sought to restrict the meaning of ‘myth’ so as to make it a useful tool in analysing a text like the Histories. They deemed this a necessary step in part because the body of narratives that encompasses ‘Greek mythology’64 was simply too diverse to allow for a distinction between a ‘divine myth’ and a ‘heroic tale’65 (Kirk indeed suggested avoiding altogether the singular ‘myth’ as a definable category66). Kirk and Buxton considered such restriction valuable also because they preferred (in contrast to the French structuralists) to study Greek mythology in its own right, taking into account its particular characteristics—for instance, the prominent role of humanized heroes in comparison to other mythological traditions, and the features that were typical of time, place, and genre.67 They identified the following three defining elements in their description of ‘myth’: 1. The subjects of myths, regardless of the narrative form in which they appear, are gods and heroes. The first to employ this criterion were collectors from later antiquity such as Pausanias and Apollodorus, but the forms and functions of stories of gods and heroes in earlier genres (often in the shape of ainos/praise parables68) are discernible enough for it to be applied to them, too. 2. Myths are ‘traditional’, in that they may appear across different works or genres, and cannot be attributed to a particular inventing author. Notwithstanding the variations that individual authors could introduce in employing myths, they were always to some extent bound by traditions that determined the skeleton of the narrative and the limits within which motifs could shift. Thus one could tell the story of Troy in endless ways, but it was not possible to ignore the presence of Priam or the sack and fall

64 Itself an ambiguous expression, as it can imply the entire collection of mythical stories as well as the study of those stories. See Kirk (1974: 21–2) and Buxton (1994: 12). 65 Thus Kirk (1974: 26–9) resists a distinction between ‘divine myth’ and ‘heroic saga’, since the latter implies a historical kernel, which many Greek hero-tales lack. 66 Kirk (1974: 18–19). 67 e.g. the transition from an oral to a literate society and the influence of historical events such as the victory over the Persians. See Buxton (1994: 14). 68 Cf. the role of myth as ainos in Pindar, tragedy, elegies such as Simonides’ on Plataea, and funeral orations such as Lysias 2. Cf. Nagy’s argument (1990) in relation to Herodotus.

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Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker of Troy itself. To alter these traditional elements would generate parody. 3. Myths had ‘collective significance to a particular social group or groups’69 in that they were not uniquely connected to a single individual, but part of a larger network of stories that could, for example, shape Greek consciousness of their history and of the relationships between various groups. One can think of the foundation stories of colonies and the tales of mythical ancestors of royal genealogies, or myths connected to polis hero-cult that could be used by citizens in constructing their identity vis-à-vis other Greeks.

An important advantage of a discussion of myth based upon the above three parameters is that it allows for a variety of approaches. It can, for example, sidestep difficult questions of belief and historicity and focus entirely on the presentation of the material, as do several of the contributions of Part I of our volume (‘From Myth to Historical Method’). A related question is that of how historians such as Herodotus reconciled the content of myths with the epistemological criteria they imposed upon themselves (a problem we return to below, }}3–4). For Herodotus, in whose Histories heroes played a larger part than in Thucydides’ contemporary historiography, stories had to conform to a certain extent to the principle of plausibility or probability, to oikos.70 Thus his rationalized versions of the Trojan War story (1.1–5 and 2.112–20)71 avoid the miraculous and omit any reference to the opposing divine powers that control the battlefield in Homer’s Iliad.72 One can also explore the function of mythical material within the wider narrative in which it is embedded. To 69

Kirk (1974: 28–9), Burkert (1979: 1–5), and Buxton (1994: 15–16). Buxton, however, takes distance from Kirk’s distinction (1970: 31–41; 1974: 30–7)—which is followed by Lowry (1982: 14–15)—between ‘myth’ and ‘folktale’, on the basis of the former’s concern with the aristocracy and the latter’s with ordinary people, rightly noting that the concept of ‘folk’/ordinary people as opposed to aristocracy dates back only to the eighteenth century. 70 For detailed discussion of the epistemological criteria that Herodotus imposed on his material and used to determine its truth value, see D. Müller (1981) and Thomas (2000: 168–212), and below, pp. 22–3 and n. 85, for Herodotus’ use of the argument from probability. 71 See Asheri (2007: ad 1.1–5), A. B. Lloyd (2007: ad 2.112–20). 72 On the proem’s rationalized accounts, see below, p. 27, and, further in this volume, Dewald, Ch. 1, }1, Vandiver, Ch. 5, pp. 151–2 and Munson, Ch. 7, pp. 198–200.

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what extent do mythical references supply meaningful backdrops against which more recent events are staged? Alternatively, one may analyse the material from a more historical angle, as do several of the contributions of Part II (‘Myth and History’), and ask how and in what guise mythical material found its way into the Histories. We might even speculate about what its presence tells us of Herodotus’ own beliefs.73 Herodotus chose to ‘demythologize’ the mythical tales that he incorporated, apparently in accordance with his epistemological criteria.74 But he did not omit them completely. This brings us to the complex issue of whether and in what ways Herodotus conceived of material we label ‘myth’ or ‘legend’ as belonging to a different category from that of recent history, and the related question of where it then stands in terms of the historian’s primary objective of truthfully memorializing actual past events (ta genomena ex anthrōpōn). Did Herodotus conceive of a separate spatium mythicum or assume (some form of) continuity over the course of time?

3. TIME AND KNOWLEDGE Time is the most obvious criterion that distinguishes ‘myth’ from ‘history’ in the Histories. Ancient history, myth, legend—all are encompassed by to palaion and its cognate expressions, which denote events of long ago, in contrast with those of more recent times. As Herodotus frequently emphasizes, the passing of time produces change. In his preface he declares he will cover small and large human settlements alike, since of those that long ago [to palai] were great, the majority have become small, and those which were great in my own time were small in times past. Knowing, then, that human prosperity never resides in the same place [oudama en tōutōi menousan], I will make mention [epimnēsomai] of both alike. (1.5.4)

73

Cf. Veyne’s disputed theories (1983) on the different mode of belief the Greeks attached to their myths; cf. below, n. 156 with text. 74 On demythologization, or rationalization, in the Histories, see Stern (1989), S. West (2002), and below, pp. 26–7; also in this volume, see Gray, Ch. 6, pp. 176–8, on Herodotus’ demythologizing of Melampus, and Saïd, Ch. 2, }2, for more general discussion of Herodotus’ process of rationalization.

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The potential for change is one of the few constants of the historical process, and an important part of what impels Herodotus to memorialize the past. This principle of change infuses the entire Histories. It is encapsulated by Solon’s wisdom on the human condition—‘look to the end, to see how it will turn out’—and is implied by the historian’s search for causes and origins (announced already in his proem: di’ hēn aitiēn . . . ).75 Change is particularly likely to have occurred through the longue durée that separates the present time of the historian from ancient times, and, for this reason, continuity across time may not be taken for granted, whether in customs, identities, or character—and perhaps even in the very nature of individuals.76 Herodotus models this important point in his proem (1.1–5), where Io, Europa, and Medea, each the king’s daughter in her natal country, ‘become cultural icons of the countries of their eventual appropriation’ and are thus ‘metaphors for and embodiments of the potential instability of race and culture’, as Dewald has expressed it.77 Medea reappears as metaphor for ongoing cultural change in the catalogue of Xerxes’ forces at Doriscus, when Herodotus reports the Medes’ account that long ago (palai) they were called Arians, ‘but when Colchian Medea came from Athens to these Arians they, too, changed their name’ (7.62.1), in parallel to the Persians, who at some point adopted their present name from Perses, the son of Andromeda (7.61.3).78 This catalogue may indeed be read as a study of discontinuities over time, and the fluidity of identities. It demonstrates that apparently clear signs of a people’s history—the signs of origins and identity embodied for example in names—may only obliquely reflect what was in reality a more complex historical development. Truth may be appreciable only after deeper investigation. This tentative approach allows no room for the manuvre of a Thucydides, whose bold assumption of broad diachronic continuities—of to anthrōpinon (human nature/culture) ‘remaining the same or similar’ across time (1.22.4)—could justify his construction of a detailed history of sea power in early Greece purely on the basis of 75 On the Histories’ principle of change, see van der Veen (1996). Thomas (2000: ch. 4) exposes Herodotus’ emphasis on the mutability of ethnic character and changing nomoi, bringing out the stress in his explanatory scheme on operative factors that are ‘transient, flexible and mutable’ (p. 123); cf. Thomas (2001a). 76 See below, pp. 22–3, and Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, on Minos. 77 Dewald (1990: 220). 78 On this passage, see also Vannicelli, this volume, Ch. 10, pp. 263–8.

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present-day realities. As Munson observes, it is unlikely that Herodotus would have approved of Thucydides’ Archaeology, ‘as brilliantly rational as it appears now to us’.79 As well as effecting societal change, the passage of time is responsible for wearing away human memories. It renders human events exitēla, ‘effaced’—like a monument whose inscriptions have worn away over time and thus become difficult to read, as in the metaphor Herodotus evokes in his opening sentence.80 The evanescence of oral and material sources of information means that early events may lie wholly beyond the reach of human knowledge. Herodotus frequently reminds his readers of this state of affairs—for example, with his characteristic qualifier of superlative claims, tōn hēmeis idmen (‘of which we know’—that is, have direct historical knowledge about81). Herodotus distinguishes carefully between what can be known with certainty through historical enquiry, what tradition holds but historical enquiry cannot verify,82 and what is wholly unknown. Material concerning early history (where it is available), whether preserved in the oral traditions of local communities, transmitted by the poets, or evoked by fragmentary material remains,83 is frequently unverifiable (see above, }1).84 The situation is further complicated by the way that skeletal information attracts elaboration over time, whether partisan or imaginative. The fact of the missing hands of the female statues associated with Mycerinus (the third Egyptian king after Proteus) has, for example, drawn some (tines) to conclude that they represent maidservants punished for allowing him to rape his daughter—a foolish tale (phluēreontes, ‘they talk nonsense’), Herodotus observes, 79

Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, p. 198. Cf. Hunter (1982: 105–7). On the inscriptional nature of the Histories’ opening sentence, see Svenbro (1993: 149–50), Moles (1999), and Bakker (2002: 29–32). 81 Shimron (1973); cf. Lateiner (1989: 118): ‘the modification reminds the reader of the author’s great separation from his data, the increasing inadequacy of sources as inquiry is pushed back to the limits of known time,’ and Rood (2010: 53). 82 Cf. 7.20, where he contrasts military campaigns ‘of which we know’ (tōn hēmeis idmen) with others including the Trojan expedition that ‘according to tradition’ (kata ta legomena) have occurred. See Moles (1993: 97) on this passage (which suggests an attitude to Homer that is ‘critical in both senses, depreciatory and discriminating’), and also Bowie, this volume, Ch. 11, pp. 272–3. 83 See just below for Herodotus’ sceptical treatment of current interpretations of certain fragmentary Egyptian statues. 84 Rood (2010: 65–6) highlights Herodotus’ recognition that the possibility of attaining accurate knowledge about the past depends on the type of knowledge concerned. 80

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since the hands have clearly fallen off over the course of time (hupo khronou), and in fact they are still there visible on the ground (2.131). Here, the physical ravages wrought by the passage of time have combined with careless human interpretation to generate dubious verification. In this instance, as elsewhere, Herodotus stages the problems and limitations even of material evidence as a witness to the early or ‘mythical’ past. Occasionally, however, Herodotus must sacrifice the principle of change that underlies his work: for his project frequently entails assuming continuity and resemblance, in dealing with early times as with other elusive matters (such as distant terrains, the divine, and hidden human motivations). By analogizing from the known to the unknown, and by employing the criterion of probability,85 the historian can broaden and enrich his account, and make it more convincing and accessible to his readers. Several modern studies thus address assumptions of continuity between past and present in the Histories, investigating how Herodotus uses myth to contextualize the Persian Wars in the wider complex of the known past and to provide chronological reference points, and in other ways employs myth to help readers understand current phenomena.86 An assumption of continuity in human psychology across time, is, for example, implied by Herodotus’ conjecture that Priam would have given Helen back had she really been in Troy—a conjecture which adds to the cumulative argument that Helen never was in Troy at all. Likewise his refutation of the Greeks’ foolish (euēthēs) story that the Egyptians tried to sacrifice Heracles, and he then massacred them—how could men for whom it is impious to sacrifice most animals ever sacrifice human beings?87—assumes stability in Egyptian national character 85 For Herodotus’ connections with the sophists and use of ‘sophistic’ techniques such as these, see Thomas (2000); for his use of the probability argument in particular, see A. B. Lloyd (1975: 162–3), D. Müller (1981: 307–11), Romm (1989) (on probability arguments regarding distance places), and Thomas (2000: 168–90). See below, p. 35, for an example of Herodotus constructing arguments about early history from probability. 86 See inter alia Vandiver (1991: passim, e.g. 233), Calame (1999: 135) and, in this volume, esp. Dewald, Ch. 1, Saïd, Ch. 2, Vandiver, Ch. 5, Munson, Ch. 7, Chiasson, Ch. 8, and Bowie, Ch. 11. 87 The passage is quoted above, at p. 13. Cf. Munson (2001: 142): here as elsewhere, Greek inexperience with Egyptian national character contrasts with Herodotus’ experience of it. Piérart (1983) observes that Herodotus, along with all ancient authors, works on the assumption that the past is qualitatively similar.

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across time. Deduction from generalization is a vital tool in historical interpretation, even as it stands in tension with Herodotus’ emphasis elsewhere (noted above) on the mutability of national character and identity. Something important is at stake here, which trumps the impulse for consistency: for the logic helps debunk a Greek misconception about foreigners. The reasoning underpinning Herodotus’ second rhetorical question (how could Heracles—a single human being—have had the ability (phusis) to slay a multitude?) assumes that the phusis of a human individual has not changed over time.88 Yet notwithstanding the desire in certain contexts to work out knowns from unknowns, the way Herodotus highlights the epistemological criterion—the unverifiable nature of myth—issues a tacit challenge to assumptions of qualitative continuity. And at one point his text may be read as articulating explicitly the possibility that more radical qualitative discontinuity separates the world as we know it from the mythical age. Taking the opportunity to underline Polycrates’ historical significance, as he rounds out the account of Oroetes’ plot against his life, Herodotus declares: Polycrates is the first of the Greeks whom we know to have set his mind on ruling the sea, excluding Minos of Knossos and if indeed someone else before him ruled the sea; but of the geneē called human [geneēs anthrōpēiēs legomenēs], Polycrates was the first. (3.122.2)

This locus classicus in discussions of whether Herodotus conceives of a ‘mythological’ period separate from the ‘historical’ attracts translations that press in two different directions. The term geneē may be construed exclusively temporally, as ‘era’ or ‘period of time’89 (or, in close connection with that, as the ‘generation’ in which the gods were still involved with humans90), in keeping with many uses in the Histories. Alternatively, as occasionally in Herodotus and very commonly in Homer, it may be construed as ‘race’ or ‘nationality’.91 On either reading the qualifying participle legomenēs allows 88

Piérart (1983: 48) observes these two varieties of argumentation from plausibility. 89 Cf. Powell (19602): s.v. ª 1: ‘generation, as chronological unit’; 6: ‘era’ (and here Powell locates only 3.122). Liddell and Scott: ª. IŁæøÅÅ the historical, opp. to the mythical, age, Hdt. 3.122. 90 Most (1997: 112–13). 91 Cf. Powell (19602): s.v. ª 5: ‘nationality’, and Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, n. 4 with text and n. 6.

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Herodotus a measure of distance from the distinction, presenting it as one that is either accepted by tradition, or (a possibility Irwin raises92) employed ‘by Herodotus’ more sophisticated contemporaries’. Especially striking is the dismissive tone in which Herodotus here leaves aside Minos in favour of Polycrates93—or rather, perhaps, leaves aside any tradition that would like to put Minos on a par with Polycrates, without realizing that he belongs to a completely different era. The divergent translations of geneē encapsulate the long-debated question of whether the Histories presents a spatium mythicum distinct from a spatium historicum—or, in the celebrated formulation of Vidal-Naquet, a ‘temps des dieux’ separate from a ‘temps des hommes’.94 The debate on this question—for which evidence may be adduced in arguing on either side, as Boedeker has observed—has been fruitful, attuning us further to Herodotus’ methods and to his sensitivity to this issue.95 And yet ultimately the binary framework of

92

E. Irwin (2007a: 214). Cf. E. Irwin (2007a: 213–14): ‘not only are æ ø and the implication in ‘human’ dismissive, but Herodotus does further injury to any model that privileges the Cretan king by granting the possibility that some nameless Ø might possibly have a claim to priority.’ See Munson, this volume, Ch. 7. 94 Vidal-Naquet (1960). 95 Boedeker (2002: 110). On the debate as to whether Herodotus conceives of a spatium mythicum separate from a spatium historicum, see, inter alia, answering in the affirmative: Jacoby (1909: 99), Shimron (1973), Finley (1975a), Erbse (1979b: 83), Fornara (1983: 6–8) (separation of the two spatia from Hecataeus onwards), DarboPeschanski (1987: 25–38) (with the qualification that Herodotus avoids dwelling upon the distinction, e.g. refusing to supply a genealogy himself at 2.143, and remaining evasive on the question of how humans came to appear; genealogical notices serve as chronological markers, no more), Nickau (1990), and Canfora (1991: 5–6); answering in the negative: Hunter (1982: 93–115) (since Herodotus, like Thucydides, ‘consider[s] the mythological period a temps des hommes, a time of real, historical personages’ (p. 103)), Raubitschek (1989), T. Harrison (2000a: 203–7), Murray (2001a: 20), and Cobet (2002: 405–11). Hunter (1982: 93–115) suggests that these terms are misapplied to the Histories; there is no spatium mythicum in Egypt (since the priests preserved accurate memory), and Herodotus ‘reject[s] . . . the entire temps des dieux in Greece as a creation of the poets’ (p. 87). R. L. Fowler (2010: 327) proposes the existence rather of a spatium divinum in Herodotus (‘draw[ing] the line between the two qualitatively different spatia not between us and the heroes, but between heroes and gods’ produces a ‘tolerably consistent’ result). Lateiner (1989: 123–4) observes a threefold distinction between epochs. Williams (2002: 178) deems Vidal-Naquet’s formulation (1960) misleading in that it conceptualizes the distinction too much in terms of eras and implies that the worlds of gods and humans are separate. Feeney (2007a: 69–86) finds a sensible middle ground: ‘the activity of demarcating between myth and history mattered in the ancient historiographical tradition, though not necessarily in ways that might correspond closely to any of our current modern divisions between myth and history’ (p. 69), 93

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the discussion is too reductive to do justice to the breadth and complexity of Herodotus’ vision.96 It may be expressive that the ambiguity reflected in translations of 3.122 mirrors the broader ambiguity about the status of mythological material that suffuses the Histories: elsewhere too Herodotus’ presentation sensitizes readers to the difficult question of whether the difference between mythical figures and individuals of recent history—between Minos and Polycrates—is purely temporal, or whether it runs deeper than that;97 or, indeed, whether we simply cannot know. Ambivalence in Herodotus’ linguistic choices can be expressive: at the level of syntax and semantics he invites readers to wrestle with problems and tensions, just as he does on broader levels of theme and story.98 Herodotus’ subtle and deliberate exposure of the ‘problem with Minos’ (to borrow Williams’ phrase99)—the problem of whether our ignorance or his status is at issue—would be in keeping with Herodotus’ more general staging of uncertainty about the terrain of myth. As Darbo-Peschanski has remarked in relation to Herodotus’ treatment of mythical genealogies: ‘Toutes les Histoires sont placées sous le signe de ce balancement entre le refus de s’aventurer dans le récit des vies divines ou héroïques du premier temps et la reconnaissance de leur and highlights the chronological dimension of the distinction. See also Rood (2010: 65–7) and Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, pp. 88–90. 96 Cf. E. Irwin (2007a: 214), observing the damaging consequences in the case of 3.122 of interpreting the passage solely in terms of a myth/history distinction (with perceptive discussion of 3.122 at 213–15). Feeney (2007a: 72–6) likewise emphasizes the need for recognition of Herodotus’ sophistication on this score. 97 In Minos’ case, E. Irwin (2007a) offers a fresh focus on the adjective ‘human’, suggesting that it is precisely this that Polycrates represents in Herodotus’ narrative (exemplifying the typically human change of fortune). Cf. Vandiver (1991: 150): Herodotus could both distinguish between heroes and the heroic age, and consider heroes as real historical personages. Herington (1985: 59) draws attention to the ‘delicate balance between imaginative acceptance and hard-headed realism which is so characteristic of the ancient Greeks’ attitude to their divine and mythical world’. See also Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, passim. 98 On how patterns on the level of sentence in Herodotus are replicated on the highest level, see Immerwahr (1966: 47). Expressive syntactic ambiguity in Herodotus: e.g. 8.3.1–2, on the Athenians’ attitude towards their allies, yielding leadership to Sparta mekhri hosou karta edeonto autōn (‘for as long as the allies had great need of the Athenians’, or ‘for as long as the Athenians had great need of the allies’): Baragwanath (2008: 199–200, with further examples discussed at 168, 209–10, 262); cf. 5.97.3, arkhē kakōn (‘beginning/empire of evils’): Irwin and Greenwood (2007: 10 n. 20, with text). 99 We borrow from the title of ch. 3 of Williams (2002)—a nuanced and illuminating analysis, though to our mind not persuasive in its conclusions.

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antériorité, donc leur existence.’100 Brillante has observed more generally that the complexity of functions projected by the Greeks onto the heroic world does not allow for simplifications and univocal interpretations, or for drawing sharp oppositions between human and heroic worlds.101 The deliberate and thoroughgoing way in which Herodotus displays his awareness of historical time suggests that the ‘indeterminacy about the past’ that his text displays102 is studied. It challenges Williams’ suggestion that Herodotus was only beginning to be anxious about these questions, whereas Thucydides first engaged with them rigorously, ‘inventing historical time’ and ‘discovering’ objectivity as a stance.103 In fact, Herodotus continually reminds us of the methodological and epistemological barriers that stand in the historian’s way as he seeks to access accurate knowledge about the distant past. As Irwin insists, his sceptical stance in relation to Minos is an attitude that permeates the Histories.104 Indeed, the most striking feature of Herodotus’ Histories is its concern with the veracity question, with the problem of sources: as Fowler has reminded us, it is in its critical approach to the past, acknowledging (rather than eliding) the distance that separates past from present, that historiē is most markedly different from its poetic and prose predecessors.105 At the very outset of the work Herodotus stages a refusal to settle for a rationalized version of the events that tradition has preserved, where further verification is not possible. Rather as he takes a

100 ‘The entire Histories is located under the sign of this balancing act between the refusal to venture into reciting the lives of divine or heroic figures of earliest times, and the recognition of their anteriority, and therefore their existence’ (Darbo-Peschanski 1987: 33). 101 Brillante (1990: 117). 102 Williams’ characterization (2002: 175) of Herodotus’ outlook. 103 Williams argues that Thucydides ‘invented historical time’ by applying to early material the same standards of truth and falsity as to recent history (see, e.g., 2002: 162), cf. Saïd (2010: 167–9). Von Leyden (1949/50) and Vandiver (1991: 237) likewise recognize Herodotus’ steps forward in acknowledging the methodological difficulties in dealing with early material, but regard Thucydides as responsible for the true advance. 104 E. Irwin (2007a: 212). Feeney (2007a: 243–4 n. 34) likewise notes that Williams does not fully appreciate Herodotus’ achievement in this respect. Cf. Griffiths (1999: 180) on the sceptical add-on to the tale of Euenius, which serves to distance the author from the improbable material he has been narrating. For Herodotus as ‘Vater des Empirismus’ (‘father of empiricism’) see D. Müller (1981). 105 See R. L. Fowler (1996, 2001: 113, 2006).

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distanced stance vis-à-vis Minos, so he caps his account of Phoenician and Persian versions of how the Trojan War came about by taking distance—‘I am not going to say that this happened in this way or some other’—and turning instead to Croesus, a figure of the sixthcentury BCE ‘whom I myself know [ton de oida autos] first began to commit injustices against the Greeks’ (1.5.3). Verification is, of course, doubly unattainable so far as the gods are concerned, and in the proem Herodotus has also taken the ‘deliberate and amazing step’ of writing them wholly out of the traditional story.106 Whereas Hecataeus settled on a principle of rationalization in accordance with probability—reducing the daughters of Danaus down from fifty to a more plausible twenty (even as his proem’s criticism of the plurality and ridiculousness of the Greeks’ stories implies an awareness of the existence of a more intractable problem than this method could unravel107)—Herodotus’ epistemological awareness reaches a more sophisticated level in his insistence that we simply cannot know. He may transmit rationalized but unverified accounts, like those of the proem, or the most plausible account of several available, as in the story of Cyrus’ death (where the logos he selects is ho pithanōtatos); and these may play a valuable role in inviting readers to consider a wider sweep of history and different perspectives, or in encapsulating broader themes. But, in the absence of the opportunity for proper historiē, Herodotus avoids claiming as truthful what he transmits, or vouching for it in his own voice.108 As he reminds readers at 7.152.3, ‘I report what is said, but I am not obliged to believe it: and that applies to the whole of my logos’ (cf. 2.123). In Egypt the priests’ records, in the context of the heightened sensitivity to the past of the Egyptians in general and Egypt as locus of tekmēria (‘signs, proofs’),109 cause human time to stretch so far 106

R. L. Fowler (2010: 327 n. 22), and see Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, pp. 90–1. Fr. 1, R. L. Fowler (2001: 101). 108 Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, addresses Herodotus’ nuanced presentation of different levels of truth in his presentation of Cyrus. 109 Cf. Herodotus on Heracles, 2.43: many tekmēria were available to Herodotus in support of the idea that the name of the Greek Heracles came from Egypt to Hellas (and to the Greeks who then gave the name to Amphitryon’s son), including the fact that Amphitryon and Alcmene were of Egyptian descent; and Herodotus’ own enquiries in Egypt (2.44) corroborate this by proving the existence of two separate Heracles. The account demonstrates that (a) Egypt is a locus where you can do historiē in relation to myth; and (b) even in the early history of Egypt one may discern chronological layers: it is not a ‘timeless’ realm like the mythic realm in Greece. 107

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back that even events contemporary with the Trojan War may belong in the realm of verifiable history. It is for this reason that in Egypt Herodotus’ methods of enquiry into the distant past most closely resemble those he employs in dealing with the recent past.110 Egypt thus plays a crucial role in the investigation of Herodotus’ approach to myth. Herodotus’ personal receptivity to foreign expertise, and admiration in particular for the Egyptian historical awareness, may well help explain his sophistication in grappling with this complex issue. Moyer suggests that the Late Period Egyptian traditions about the past gave Herodotus a framework on which he could compare traditions about specific events, thus extending human time back and historicizing aspects of Greek collective memory, but also a field in which to compare on a theoretical level ‘approaches and relations to the past’.111 Where Thucydides adopted the perhaps already conventional practice of giving exact dates to mythical events—the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese ‘in the eightieth year’ after the Trojan War (1.12.3)—Herodotus stuck with dating by generations, ‘for the sake of honest indefiniteness when the exact time-interval was unknown’.112 Again, by contrast with Thucydides and other Greek and Roman successors, who tended to organize their accounts of history in terms of clear temporal divisions (such as Varro’s adēlon—‘unclear’, muthikon—‘mythical’, and historikon—‘historical’) connected to key events such as the Trojan War or the founding of the Olympic Games, Herodotus’ notion of chronological demarcation is fluid.113 It is not that as an ‘outrider of the song culture’114 he is oblivious to linear 110

See, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4. Shimron (1973) observes that the two counter-examples to his interpretation of idmen in the Histories (as referring to events that occurred ‘within the period of the two or three generations from Croesus’ time to [Herodotus’] own’, p. 48) refer to Egyptian history: p. 49. See Hunter (1982: ch. 2) (on Herodotus’ display of how the reliability and longevity of tradition in Egypt allows him to discover objective truth spanning back more than 10,000 years) and the important discussion of Vannicelli (2001). Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, p. 210, compares the Cretans’ long historical memory, which likewise renders their heroic age accessible to historiē. 111 Moyer (2002: 87). 112 Mitchel (1956: 53–4, 57), bringing out well how dating by generations could also have greater literary appropriateness. See also Lateiner (1989: 114–25). 113 These traditional demarcations are discussed by Piérart (1983: 49–51) and Feeney (2007a: esp. 77–86), who highlights the more fluid temporal demarcations in Herodotus. Varro’s divisions are transmitted by Censorinus, De die natali 21.1. 114 Cf. Herington (1985: 62). Herodotus does nonetheless share close affinities with the poets: see below, }6.

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chronological distinctions. Rather, with the scope of his enquiries stretching beyond the limits of Greece, and attuned as he is to all varieties of cultural difference, Herodotus is mindful of the fact that different communities have different relationships to their respective pasts; and he is mindful too of the profound ramifications this has for his task as enquirer after historical knowledge. The way the epistemological criterion—the fact that information of different quality is available in different contexts of early history—intersects with the temporal criterion implies a flexible notion of the extent of the spatium historicum. Herodotus’ deliberate memorializing of recent history—of the Persian Wars—lest it, likewise, become effaced over the course of time also implies the fluidity of boundaries in terms of the epistemological criterion between known and unknown: without being recorded in history, more recent events, too, may one day be unknown.

4. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AUTHORITY IN RECOUNTING MYTH Discussing time and knowledge in the Histories raises issues of historiographical authority. As Herodotus’ presentation underscores, the reach of human time depends in any instance on the community—and particularly on that community’s wise men (logiōtatoi)— responsible for transmitting the information.115 How then did Herodotus position himself vis-à-vis the heritage of traditional, mythical material? In Greece—as opposed to Egypt—knowledge about the mythical or early past was transmitted by poetic and prose traditions far less concerned with history’s objective of recounting accurately ta genomena. According to Herodotus, Homer deliberately rejected the truthful logos of Paris’ and Helen’s delay in Egypt on their way to Troy because it was not so ‘appropriate to epic’ (es tēn epopoiiēn 115 Cf. Cobet (2002: 391): ‘Herodotus’ narrative reflects the different ‘historical times’ inherent in the various cultural traditions he draws on’; Cobet brings out well the different statuses of time across the Histories’ various collectivities (ethnē, poleis, empires, etc.). Historical knowledge depends also on the type of item or source material: Lateiner (1989: 115–16), Pelling (1999: 333 n. 30).

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euprepēs) as the version he chose (2.116.1).116 Poets more generally make exaggerated claims: ‘not even Aristeas, in his poetry, claims to have gone northwards of the land of the Issedones’ (oude gar oude Aristeēs, . . . , oude houtos prosōterō Issēdonōn en autoisi toisi epesi poieōn ephēse apikesthai, 4.16): if such an exaggerated claim is to be expected of anyone, it is to be expected of a poet.117 The same point comes out in Herodotus’ adoption of a narrator persona with limited access, rejecting the omniscient and omnipresent vantage point of the Homeric primary narrator (who claims reliance on the perfect knowledge of the Muses).118 Thus, besides the criteria we considered above of memory and knowledge, Herodotus highlights the fact that one’s disposition towards the material affects its ultimate expression.119 But it is the Greek oral culture generally, not only the poets,120 that Herodotus presents as insensitive to or unconcerned with history’s objectives: Herodotus uses Egypt as the backdrop for staging the ridiculousness of the claims of his prose predecessor Hecataeus— claims that reflect wider Greek traditions and assumptions—that he is merely sixteen generations removed in descent from the gods. Again, whereas Athenian funeral orations and public architectural sculpture, and Greek epinician poetry, could present mythic events alongside recent ones without marking any difference, Herodotus invites 116 On Herodotus’ attitude to Homer (and 2.116.1 in particular), see de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, n. 44 with text. 117 See further S. West (2004) and Chiasson (forthcoming: ch. 1) on Herodotus’ attitude to Aristeas’ hexameter poem Arimaspeia and use of it as a source. Before Herodotus, there existed no firm notion that poetry was not a suitable medium for recounting early or recent history, as Simonides’ Plataea Elegy, for example, bears witness: Boedeker (2001a); E. L. Bowie (2001); cf. below, pp. 47–53. 118 For Herodotus’ adoption of a human narrator persona closer to Odysseus’ than Homer’s, see de Jong (1999: 220–3), Marincola (2007a: esp. 13–15, 35–7, 61–5), and Baragwanath (2008: ch. 2); cf. above, n. 1. 119 In other contexts besides that of poetry Herodotus likewise exposes the fact that sources for early or mythical history, just like those for recent history, do not always record information transparently. Transmitters of information may, for example, be implicated emotionally: the Egyptians ‘out of hatred’ are loath to name Cheops and Chephren (2.128), with the result that the pyramids built by those kings are inaccurately named after the shepherd Philitis. Propaganda—a stronger form of this phenomenon—is addressed below, p. 41, and esp. in Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, n. 26 with text. 120 Stadter (1997) reminds us of the close intertwining in Ancient Greek oral culture of poetic and prose media and traditions (noting, e.g., the intrusion of song into Herodotus’ prose text). Nagy (1990: chs. 8–11) views Herodotus as part of the poetic tradition. Thucydides, however, lays out an interesting distinction between prose and poetic genres, in contrasting poiētai with logographoi (1.21.1).

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readers to contemplate possible divergence.121 We may wonder whether his emphasis on potential obstacles to analogizing between present and remoter events is partly a reaction against the increasing tendency in the period after the Persian Wars to see the present as analogous to the past.122 Herodotus builds up his own narrator persona against the foil of other purveyors of mythical material—poets, mythographers, geographers, orators, artists—as one who is methodologically cautious in dealing with myth, and yet attentive to the cultural significance of people’s mythological traditions, and the role of such traditions in shaping history. Just as in his treatment of religious experience his presentation succeeds in conveying people’s strong belief in epiphanies123 and in the efficacy of sacrificial ritual and oracles, while nonetheless framing the material in such a way as to avoid verifying in his own person what historiē is unable to verify, so too with his treatment of myth. Herodotus commonly describes myths in great detail, conveying communities’ commitment to them as aetiologies, and their role in the present in informing identities and motivating (and justifying) action. His meticulous treatment, frequent inclusion of variant versions of a particular myth, and generally respectful tone where myths are espoused by particular communities or individuals,124 convey a sense of the narrator’s modesty in dealing with this material that parallels his position on ta theia: ‘everyone knows equally about these things’ (2.3.2).125 At the same time his framing techniques (notably the use of indirect discourse, and the juxtaposition of different versions of mythical accounts) signal that mythical narratives are not to be taken as historically verified. A fascinating example is Herodotus’ presentation of three accounts of the origins of Scythia, which also suggests the degree of 121 Grethlein (2010b: chs. 7–8) argues that Herodotus and Thucydides define the new genre that they developed both explicitly and implicitly against other commemorative genres such as epideictic oratory. 122 Boedeker (1998a: 189) observes that the way of seeing the present as analogous to the past was heightened by the experience of the Persian Wars. 123 Cf. the epiphany to Pan (7.189), with Hornblower (2001: 143–5). 124 There is the occasional exception—e.g. Herodotus’ treatment of Hecataeus, 2.143 (where mild polemic is in order, to challenge this mistaken rival view). 125 pantas anthrōpous ison peri autōn (in reference to ta theia, ‘divine things’, or perhaps ta ounomata, ‘(divine) names’) epistasthai: see Darbo-Peschanski (1987: 35–7) for possible interpretations of this passage, which either refers to equal positive knowledge or suggests that everyone knows equally little.

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corroboration needed for him to accept traditions about early history as potentially truthful. In the first account, the Scythians themselves tell how Targitaus—offspring of Zeus and a daughter of River Borysthenes—appeared in the then empty land and fathered three sons, the youngest of whom took possession of golden objects that fell from the sky and with them, the kingship (4.5–7). In the second account, the Greeks of Pontus say that the youngest of the three sons of Heracles and the snake woman claimed the kingship by carrying out Heracles’ tasks (4.8–10). In the third version, ‘Greeks and foreigners’ claim that the Massagetae pressed the nomadic Scythians into the land of the Cimmerians, who—threatened by the Scythians’ advance—debated what course of action to take. The kings desired to stay and fight, but the people to flee, with the upshot that one group fought each other to the death, while the other departed, and the Scythians took over their land (4.11–12). Each of these accounts can be considered mythical in referring to ancient history and in the involvement of superhuman beings. In the case of the first version, Herodotus does not accept the account as true (he explicitly rejects the divine aetiology),126 and yet supplies detail that conveys the Scythians’ commitment to the information they give: Thus then the Scythians say they came to be; the whole amount of years since they came to be, from the first king Targitaus to the crossing of Darius against them, they say is a thousand, not more but exactly this many [ou pleō alla tosauta]. (4.7.1)

While not affirming the account of the origins of the gold, Herodotus points to the strength of the Scythians’ belief in the story by highlighting the role of the gold in their present-day rituals: This sacred gold the kings guard as much as possible [es ta malista], and every year [ana pan etos] they placate it by propitiating it with great sacrifices [thusiēisi megalēisi]. The Scythians say that anyone who has the sacred gold and falls asleep out in the open during the festival will die within a year, and that is why [dia touto] they give him as much land as he can ride around on horseback in a day. (4.7.1–2)

‘This Targitaus’ parents, they say—I don’t believe it, but it’s the story they tell [emoi men ou pista legontes, legousi d’ ōn]—were Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes’ (4.5.1). 126

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The sacred character of the gold in the present is thus affirmed (with its description several times as ‘sacred’ and the sketch of the community’s regard for its power), even as Herodotus takes distance from the Scythians’ aetiology (that is, as fallen from the sky, presumably as a gift from Zeus). Similarly, elsewhere in the Histories, Herodotus offers a detailed account of the contemporary festival of Rhampsinitus but explicitly refuses to affirm the mythical aetiology the priests supply for the festival’s origins: the story that Rhampsinitus played dice in Hades (2.122.2). Herodotus thus includes this myth in his account— for it is a story that is important in terms of Egyptian beliefs and identity, the Egyptian imaginaire—even as he explicitly and emphatically refuses to confirm its historicity (as event and as origin of the festival) (‘I cannot, however, say whether it is actually because of this that they celebrate’: ou mentoi ei ge dia tauta hortazousi ekhō legein).127 After next recounting the more fabulous story of Heracles’ affair with the Scythian snake-woman (which Herodotus finds the most amusing, even as he will not vouch for it), it is the third account of Scythian origins (of the nomadic Scythians, pressed by the Massagetae, gaining Scythia through conquest) that he inclines towards (tōi malista legomenōi autos proskeimai). This is evidently because of the confirmation given by visible material remains,128 the corroboration of sources (Greek and foreign), and the less fantastical nature of this account: it is plausible on the human level,129 and actually encapsulates important truths about human behaviour that mirror behaviour and choices elsewhere in the Histories.130 But, though he frames the case for this third explanation quite emphatically,131 Herodotus 127 Cf. Haziza (2009: 137–46) on Rhampsinitus in the context of a discussion about the Egyptian imaginaire. 128 ‘And the kings’ burial place is still evident. And to this day there are in Scythia Cimmerian walls, and a Cimmerian ferry’, etc. (4.11.4–12.1). 129 It accords with how people might be expected to act under such circumstances: ‘(they say that) the Cimmerians—when the Scythians were attacking [epiontos]— planned on the grounds that a great army was attacking [hōs stratou epiontos megalou]’ (4.11.2). 130 e.g. the choice of dying honourably or escaping and surviving; the difficulty of persuading others: the people fail to persuade the kings, and vice versa; human intransigence; irreconcilable objectives. Cf. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, pp. 91–2, on the factors that for Herodotus confirm the historicity of the Egyptian priests’ account of the Trojan War (2.112–20). 131 ‘And now there is . . . and there is . . . and there is . . . and the Cimmerians clearly [phainontai] in fleeing the Scythians into Asia founded also the Chersonese,

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nonetheless presents it in terms of his inclination rather than firm knowledge, and he retains the use of indirect discourse. Likewise in presenting his enquiries into the origins of the oracle of Zeus at Dodona and of Zeus Ammon in Libya, Herodotus lays out alternative accounts (2.54–5), flagging the fact that the veracity question remains key (though it may not be resolvable) even in approaching such early material, while conveying the commitment of his informants to their respective versions. The priests of Egyptian Thebes relate that Phoenicians abducted two priestesses, selling one to Greece and one to Libya; and the enslaved women then founded the oracles in each of those two countries. The account is reported in indirect discourse, and in wrapping it up Herodotus highlights the issue of verifiability by staging his own scepticism about the possibility of knowing such information: he describes himself interrogating the priests on this very issue (eiromenou de meu hokothen houtō atrekeōs epistamenoi legousi, ephasan . . . : ‘when I questioned them as to whence they knew so accurately, they said . . . ’, 2.54.2). In the absence of an authorial evaluative gloss, readers are left to weigh for themselves the credibility of the priests’ explanation. Next Herodotus recounts the Dodona priestesses’ version, that black doves flew from Egypt to Libya and Dodona and instructed that these oracles be established. He wraps up this version with the observation that the three priestesses of Dodona (each of whom he names) say this, ‘and the other Dodonians connected with the shrine agree with them’— thus affirming the absolute agreement of all those connected with the sanctuary. Detlev Fehling concluded that Herodotus thus ‘provid[ed] the miraculous story at Dodona . . . with an enhanced Confirmation’, ‘giv[ing] the names of three priestesses as witnesses and add[ing] that the people living round about likewise confirm the story’.132 But Herodotus does not verify the story himself, and his hard-nosed scepticism at the far less fantastical earlier account of the priests in which now the Greek city Sinope is founded. And evident also [phaneroi de . . . kai] are the Scythians, that they pursued them and invaded the Median land, missing the path . . . And this other account, which is told in common by Greeks and by foreigners, I have now told’ (4.12.1–3). This also seems to dovetail with Herodotus’ own previous firm knowledge (which he reports directly): ‘For the Cimmerians fled always by the coast, but the Scythians—keeping the Caucasus on the right—were fleeing to the point where they invaded the Median land, turning in their route inland’ (4.12.3). 132 Fehling (1989: 69).

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suggests rather that this tale is so improbable as to require no refutation at all133—but equally that Herodotus is respectful in shrinking from outright disagreement with the priestesses, and leaves possibilities open in the case of such unverifiable matters.134 The detailing of the names of the individual priestesses and the mention of the collective Dodonians puts a more personal face to those who are committed to this story and transmit it—which in itself brings out further its worthiness for inclusion in the Histories. At the same time, Herodotus’ warnings elsewhere of the partial and partisan nature of storytelling135 might well induce a glimmer of recognition in the reader that this account serves the interests of the priestesses and Dodonians who recount it: divinely sent dove founders heighten the charisma of the shrine in a way that slave-girl founders might not. Herodotus’ recording of these two accounts then—so far from representing a strategy of evoking dovetailing sources that instils audience persuasion, ‘maintaining the veracity of these two reports’ and producing a ‘perfect harmony between the two accounts and their sources’136—serves rather as a reminder of the variation in traditions, and the difficulty in ascertaining the truth. The difficulty is accentuated by the possibility in this instance of divine intervention, about which humans cannot have secure knowledge. Finally Herodotus borrows from both accounts in constructing himself, in accordance with principles of likelihood, a possible account: I [egō de] hold about these things the following opinion [gnōmēn tēnde]: if truly [ei alētheōs] the Phoenicians carried away the sacred women and sold one of them in Libya and the other in Greece, it seems to me [dokeei emoi] that this woman [the one sold in Thesprotia in Greece] . . . while working as a slave established in that place a temple of Zeus under an oak tree which was growing there, for it was likely [hōsper ēn oikos] that she—after serving the shrine of Zeus in Thebes—would remember it in the land where she arrived; and that she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians by whom she too had been sold. (2.56, excerpts) 133 Moreover, Herodotus goes on to model the use of the probability criterion in his ensuing hypothesis about the matter (cf. below, hōsper ēn oikos). 134 He does not shrink from exposing corruption scandals surrounding the Pythian prophetess, as at 5.63 (bribery by Alcmaeonids) and 6.66 (by Cleomenes)— but these are a matter of recent events about which the sordid truth has surfaced. 135 Dewald (1999); cf. below, nn. 157 and 158. 136 So Fehling (1989: 65–70; quotations at pp. 66, 70, respectively).

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With alētheōs we are reminded that the truth criterion remains a concern for the historian even in dealing with this early mythical material (a higher goal than the ‘agreement’ that the priestesses and neighbours reach in the second version). Herodotus’ account is emphatically speculative: it stems from a hypothetical condition (‘If the Phoenicians did in truth . . . ’), and is the product of his own personal judgement (egō d’ ekhō . . . gnōmēn tēnde; dokeei emoi). Herodotus thus reminds us that he is exercising his historical imagination, and the results are not to be taken as verified and true. And yet, even as he situates the account firmly in the realm of the speculative, he constructs a pièce de résistance in his vivid, detailed, and persuasive narrative of a possible way in which the oracles’ establishment might have occurred, which is a narrative that is no less comprehensive and lucid—with no less impact on the reader—than equivalent accounts of more recent history. Herodotus goes on to offer a rationalizing explanation likewise for the story of doves (peleiades de moi dokeousi klēthēnai . . . , 2.57), proposing that the name—and the story told by the Dodonians— arose from the women’s unintelligible speech. As Pelling has observed, this is ‘a story about how a story could develop, it explains away a legend’—and is thus to be contrasted with the sort of rationalization Thucydides engages in in his Archaeology (Thuc. 1.1–19),137 where he is content (in less rigorous manner than Herodotus: cf. above, pp. 20–21) to rationalize the mythical account by taking it literally. Herodotus’ story exposes ‘the mythopoetic power of names’: how the process of transmission has turned the woman into a literal dove.138 The influence of Herodotus’ model is evident four centuries later, when a similarly careful balancing strategy in the treatment of religion and myth surfaces in the Roman historian Livy. In narrating divine action, Livy’s careful use of indirect discourse allows him to avoid making direct claims of historical verification; and yet at the same time he persuasively conveys the possibility of divine 137

Pelling (2002a: 174). Munson (2005: 69, with discussion of this narrative at pp. 67–9). In the story of the handless statues (above, p. 21) we encountered another instance of Herodotus modelling the way in which stories develop over time, and thus staging a warning of the care needed in approaching mythical material. On Herodotus’ account of the foundation of the oracles at Dodona, see also S. West (2002: 39–46) and Gray, this volume, Ch. 6, p. 184. 138

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involvement, and its significant role in the unfolding of history.139 Equally in recounting mythical material, Livy remains distanced and sardonic yet ‘contrives to let the glamour and power of the myths leak into his narrative’ (as Feeney remarks of his account of the foundation of Rome).140 Praef. 6–9 displays his sensitivity to generic distinctions—which are related to the epistemological concerns that Herodotus underscores (see below, pp. 50–1)—while defending the inclusion of mythical elements.141 Livy’s observation that if it belongs to any nation to claim divine ancestry, then the claim of the warlike Romans to Mars as their founder will be tolerated (praef. 7), corresponds to Herodotus’ occasional acceptance of myths on the grounds of their appropriateness and plausibility, regardless of the possibility of proving their literal truth. Thus in Herodotus’ judgement the miraculous nature of Cyrus’ survival implies that there must have been a measure of divine involvement in it:142 to this extent he allows credence to the (otherwise overblown) legends that circulate about Cyrus’ birth. Perhaps his refraining from refuting the story of the black doves in part represents a similar allowance to its manifest appropriateness as an explanation for such austere and significant shrines.

5. THE TRUTH OF MYTH: ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE HISTORIES The stories that we collectively refer to as mythology had an enormous impact upon the world that Herodotus described. This went beyond the realm of literature and poetry—in fact myths sprang forth from this world, as it were, for they were intimately connected to the landscape that the Greeks saw around them. They accounted for all kinds of natural phenomena, but were also tied to cultic sites where 139 See Levene (1993) on indirect discourse as a framing device. Feldherr (1998: 51–81) brings out Livy’s use of authority figures (esp. representing their firm belief) to strengthen his accounts. Feeney (2007b: 185–6) highlights the influence of Herodotus’ example. 140 Feeney (2007b: 186). 141 He initially appears to be upholding the generic distinctions that ought to exclude such legends from a history, but ultimately differentiates his work from traditional models and justifies its inclusion of myth: Feldherr (1998: 75–6). 142 See Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 218–19.

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communities would gather to participate in shared rituals and confirm their identity vis-à-vis one another, their ancestors, and the outside world. In places such as Eleusis and the Acropolis of Athens, these rituals took place upon the remains of Bronze Age settlements that had been abandoned at the end of the second millennium BCE, but nonetheless kept an aura of past glory.143 Clearly the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical Age sought to connect themselves, through cults, genealogies, and the reconstruction of their remote past, to the heroes who were felt to belong to these ancient settlements, and whose tales they had inherited.144 The fact that these tales portrayed a world that was not geographically or culturally dissimilar to their own facilitated identification and stimulated the Greeks to use them in explaining events or legitimizing actions in their contemporary world.145 Thus their prominence guaranteed them a place among the genomena that were the subject of the Histories. We may take as a salient example the anti-Argive politics of Cleisthenes of Sicyon. Cleisthenes first banned the performance of the Homeric epics on the grounds that they exalted heroes associated with Argos. Subsequently—foiled by the Delphic oracle in his attempt to get rid of the cult of the Argive hero Adrastus—he introduced from Thebes the cult of Adrastus’ most hated adversary, the hero Melanippus, and transferred to him the offerings and rituals normally due to Adrastus (5.67). The myths of the Theban and Trojan cycle were apparently meaningful enough to be put to use for propagandistic purposes. Not simply entertaining stories from the past, they had such relevance that they continued to influence and give shape to political affairs in Herodotus’ world, not only directly—supporting Cleisthenes the tyrant in his political reforms—but also indirectly: Cleisthenes’ reforms inspired his Athenian namesake two generations later and led to a reorganization of the tribal landscape in Athens whose consequences were felt down to

143

Cf. Grethlein (2010a: 132). The Homeric epics played an important role in this as well. Grethlein (2010a: 130–1) summarizes the debate and himself assigns multiple functions to the Iliad in the Archaic Age: the poem provided ‘a basis of aristocratic self-assertion’, but also played a complex, symbolic role in the subtle negotiations between various parties within the emerging polis communities. 145 Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 70–1, considers the resonance of mythic elements connected to local geography in the context of Hdt. Book One. See further below, p. 43 on Herodotus’ portrayal of the role of myth in the contemporary world. 144

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Herodotus’ own time (5.69).146 Stories such as these are in keeping with references to Greek mythical heroes that surface in speeches147 and with traditions surrounding their mysterious roles during the Persian Wars.148 Herodotus displayed notable sensitivity to this material, for he was aware of its influence, even though it belonged to a domain that could not be subjected to his methodological standards. It was the ongoing presence and pervasiveness of myth in Herodotus’ world that ensured its prominence in a work that sought to memorialize the past.149 And yet, as a historian, Herodotus can question the status of mythical stories. ‘Enough about deeds of long ago’, he has the Athenian spokesman at Plataea declare in countering the Tegeans’ evocation of their legendary exploits in a dispute about the prestigious position on the left wing (9.27.5). This passage echoes Herodotus’ own approach in the Histories’ opening chapters, where he rejects the traditional tales of the Persian logioi about the rapes and counterrapes of women, and chooses (as we saw above) to start with Croesus (1.5.3).150 But Herodotus did not ban these unverifiable stories entirely from his work. Instead, he presented a version of the events leading up to the Trojan War that allowed him to introduce themes of great relevance for his entire work, such as reciprocity, the role of women, and the escalation of conflict over time.151 In the same way, the Athenian spokesman at Plataea objects to his opponent’s recourse to mythical exploits only after listing Athenian counter-examples that were as heroic as they were legendary.152

146 Cf. the story of the bones of Orestes in relation to Sparta’s power (1.65–8), on which see Boedeker’s classic essay (1993). 147 e.g. in the Gelon episode (7.157–62), discussed in this volume by Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 94, and Bowie, Ch. 11, pp. 281–2. 148 e.g. the story of Phylacus and Autonous (8.39). 149 For a parallel instance, see E. Irwin’s discussion (2011: 397–414) of the Aeacid heroes of Aegina during the battle of Salamis, who play a role, she argues, in the Aeginetans’ heroic self-fashioning. 150 Masaracchia (1978: ad loc.), Flower and Marincola (2002: ad loc.), and Lachenaud (2003: 241). 151 Cf. Dewald’s narratological study (1999) of Herodotus’ proem, which argues that the shifting focalizations of Herodotus’ preface expose the partial and partisan nature of storytelling. On Herodotus’ proem, see also, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2. 152 9.26–7 with Baragwanath (2012: 40–43), and, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 95, and Bowie, Ch. 11, }2.2.

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Despite his reluctance to embrace mythological aitiai as truth, myth—in a more general sense—wins an important place in Herodotus’ narrative in part because of its capacity to exercise a powerful influence on events. Cyrus’ belief in his ‘superhuman’ birth is part of what motivates his final campaign into the territory of the Massagetae (1.204.2).153 Elsewhere the same myth exerts its effect through its rhetorical function: Cyrus invokes the tale of the divine favour that attended his birth in persuading the Persians to revolt from the Medes (‘I think that I myself was born by divine chance to take in hand this task’, 1.126.6). Individuals and communities are motivated by their knowledge or understanding of mythical episodes, in carrying out contemporary rituals (as in the Scythians’ case: 4.7), in claims to territory (as in the dispute of Athenians and Mytileneans over Achilleum: 5.94.2), and in justifications for war (including in Xerxes’ and Mardonius’ interpretation of the war against Greece as justice for Troy).154 Yet, as Herodotus’ careful framing devices remind us, myth is not to be received by his readers in the same way as more recent history can be, as approaching an accurate and literal truth.155 This is not a matter of there being different epistemological categories for myth versus history, different ways of believing (as Veyne conceived of the ancient Greek approach to myth156): rather, there is a spectrum of certainty in terms of the clarity and reliability of available evidence. Whereas the processes of historiē can produce a reasonable convergence of evidence in constructing a narrative of recent history—as 153 On this passage, see Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 74, and, for a detailed discussion of the story of Cyrus’ death in the war against the Massagetae, see Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 227–32. 154 For the role of myth in contemporary political and colonizing discourse, see esp. Malkin (1994); cf. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, }3. See also, in this volume, Baragwanath, Ch. 12, on Xerxes’ and Mardonius’ use of myth, and Dewald, Ch. 1, Bowie, Ch. 11, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12, on Herodotus’ awareness of the power of myth to shape behaviour. 155 Myths in the context of Egypt present something of an exception: see above, pp. 27–8. 156 Veyne (1988), on whom see esp. Brillante (1990: 116–17). R. L. Fowler (2000) observes that, while a category of tales we call ‘myth’ was recognized (p. xxviii, cp. n. 41 above), the mythographers did not necessarily confine themselves to it: ‘in particular, the authors of local and regional history started in the mythical period and carried on into the historical without any thought that they were crossing generic boundaries’ (p. xxix). The practice of the Atthidographers of roaming between mythical and fifth-century material suggests that they were not working with such an epistemological distinction (nor was Plutarch in his use of this material and material of the first century BCE: Pelling (2002b: 188)).

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in the account of Thermopylae, where Herodotus stages the divergence of sources (of Spartan and Thessalian traditions157) and yet achieves a largely coherent and unitary account—alternative accounts of the same mythical episode are frequently incommensurable, as in the case of those of Scythian origins (discussed above, pp. 31–4). The contested and rhetorical nature of myth contributes to the elusive character of its historicity. For, while Herodotus’ treatment of myth emphasizes the epistemological issues, as we have seen—its distance in time from the present, and the consequent difficulty for the historian in affirming or refuting it—he also underlines this rhetorical function.158 Myths are an especially contested category of logoi. The poets and orators relished displaying dexterity in exploiting and reshaping traditional stories to suit the particular argument and occasion.159 Herodotus reveals this situation, highlighting what modern scholarship has underscored: that myth is never neutral. Myths have an argumentative function and serve a purpose. Like oral tradition more generally, they exist in their particular form because they meet the needs of an individual or community in a specific context in the present. Thus, in his treatment of the mythical origins of Medes and Persians, discussed by Vannicelli in this volume (Ch. 10), Herodotus includes both eponyms (Perses/Perseus and Achaemenes: each of which derives from a separate strand of oral tradition), rather than being content to transmit just the (Spartan) propaganda against Argos in the wake of the Persian Wars that exploited the Perseus eponym to associate Argives with Persians. Here as elsewhere the Histories bears witness to Herodotus’ commitment to seeking out alternative sources that promote contrasting views, avoiding relying on a single, potentially propagandistic account.160 Hence the ‘flagrant incompatibility’ scholars have come up against in seeking to reconcile the Histories’

157

Vannicelli (2007). As Rood (2010: 67) observes: ‘The Histories as a whole are shaped by an awareness of the manipulation of the past.’ See Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, on the problematic qualities of Mardonius’ use of myth, and Dewald (1999 and this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 61–7) on Herodotus’ staging of contested versions of myth in his proem; cf. Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, pp. 198–9. 159 See Griffith (1990) on the poets. 160 As Thomas (1989: 280) observes in a related context: ‘Far from parroting the family tradition, Herodotus was able to pick up . . . [alternative] traditions and treat them with considerable independence of mind.’ 158

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diverse genealogies: Herodotus’ desire to preserve variant accounts and to draw attention to the sources that transmit them here outstrips his desire for system.161 Herodotus brings out how individuals’ and communities’ commitment to mythical accounts shapes identities and influences action—for which reason myth plays an important role in the record of genomena ex anthrōpōn (cf. proem)—even as he refrains from making truth claims about the content of unverifiable stories. The truthfulness of myth in the Histories can be akin, then, to that of archaic poetry, ‘a-lētheia’ as ‘not-forgotten’—as remembered and transmitted across time—rather than alētheia in its alternative (and generally later) sense of a firmer, more absolute truth (that stands in starker opposition to competing claims).162 Assertions of such an absolute truth (or opinion that comes as close as possible to truth) occur quite frequently in the Histories,163 in the context of more readily grasped knowledge relating to recent events or scientific phenomena. In the case of myth, on the other hand, what is significant may not be its literal truth, but that it is said and believed (as in the example of the Dodonian priestesses’ story, 2.55)—or at least effective in inducing persuasion. Thus in the case of myth we may more readily take at face value Herodotus’ claim ‘to say what is said’ (legein ta legomena, 7.152.3), which is manifestly not the whole story when it comes to his treatment of recent history.164 In this tension in approach we see reflected the double character of Herodotus (a doubleness invoked below by Dewald165), as well as the transitional nature of his project. For in certain respects Herodotus presents himself as an Archaic Age storyteller, preserving traditions and

161 See esp. Mitchel (1956). ‘Flagrante incompatibilité’: Darbo-Peschanski (1987: 31; cf. 29–32) (underlining the lack of system, while observing that it none the less furnishes the Histories with a broad chronological framework). A. B. Lloyd (1975: 171–94) attempts to reconcile the chronology of the Histories’ most prominent heroic genealogies. More generally, see Cobet (2002) and (with a focus on Egypt) Vannicelli (2001). 162 Detienne (1996) discusses archaic truth in terms of the semantic field of a-lētheia. See Veyne (1988) for myth as believed in differently from history, and above, n. 156 with text. 163 See T. Harrison (2004) on the nature of truth in the Histories, and Baragwanath (2008: 19) for Herodotus’ striving towards opinion that is as close as possible to truth. 164 In the case of recent history, we may not take this claim entirely at face value, for Herodotus aspires to more than this. See inter alia Lateiner (1989: 79, 82–3), Moles (1993: 95–6), and Thomas (2000: 188 n. 47 with text). 165 Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 78–82.

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sustaining memory; in others, he seems more akin to a (late-)fifthcentury, sophist-like seeker after truth.166 Herodotus is acutely aware of deliberate processes of memory: of the human inclination to shape stories in a bid to shape reality—for example, when Egyptians knowingly fabricate a connection with Cyrus to bolster their pedigree (3.1).167 Thus he is alert to the significance of myth as ‘intentional history’ (intentionale Geschichte), serving to bolster claims and cement identities.168 Indeed, as Bowie observes, in the Histories ‘we see . . . how stories are not innocent tradition, but weapons in the selective creation of an identity, the claiming of a privilege, or the justification of an act’.169 Throughout the work Herodotus stages people’s conscious use of the mythic past in the present, and in particular the role of mythic discourse in persuasive rhetoric that can shape events. Dionysius in urging the Ionians to train seriously enlarges his rhetoric and highlights the urgency of the situation by employing the Homeric expression ‘on razor’s edge’ (6.11.2). Leonidas’ expressly heroic choices and action at Thermopylae aim to secure the kleos of the Spartans and inspire other Greeks. Mardonius’ and Xerxes’ mythic discourse seeks to justify and heroize the campaign in a way that will rally Persians as well as Greek communities to the cause.170 Such use of myth by characters in the Histories comes as no surprise: mythic exempla were a stable ingredient of argumentation, from Homer through the archaic poets down to the fifth-century tragedians and fourth-century orators. Myth remained an important ingredient in contemporary sophistic epideixeis (display performances): Prodicus, for example, employed the myth of the choice

166

Cf. Thomas (2000: 267–9) on his combining of Homeric and sophistic aspects, Baragwanath (2008: ch. 3) for the doubleness of his narrator persona, and Kurke (2011: chs. 10–11), who reads this doubleness in terms of a clash of (high) Homeric and (low) Aesopic narrative modes. Grethlein (2010b: ch. 7) offers an assessment of the tension between tradition and innovation in Herodotus’ work in relation to other genres of memory. 167 The conscious aspect of such a process is highlighted at 2.77, where Herodotus observes that the Egyptians of the cultivated country ‘most of all men toil at preserving [epaskeontes] memory [mnēmēn]’. 168 Cf. Gehrke (1994, 2001: esp. 297–8). 169 Bowie, this volume, Ch. 11, p. 286. 170 See Boedeker (2002: 100–1) and Pelling (2006a: 80–1) for ‘on razor’s edge’, and, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 95–6, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12, on Xerxes’ and Mardonius’ use of Greek myth.

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of Heracles.171 This persuasive function of myth should prompt us to consider whether the historian, too, employs it in this way: does Herodotus, like the characters in his text, use myth to buttress his own authority, to make his story more persuasive, and to support particular ideologies? Mythic material that evokes the epic tradition certainly assists in elevating his new prose project and establishing its authority. Homeric resonances heighten the tone and enlarge the significance of the events recounted, as when the twenty Athenian ships lending support to the Ionian revolt are described as ‘the beginning of evils’ (5.97.3; cf. Iliad 5.62–3).172 So too does the aetiology for the place name ‘Aphetae’ that Herodotus includes in his account of Xerxes’ fleet dropping anchor there on the way to Greece (7.193): here Heracles was left behind by the Argonauts on their voyage to Aea to fetch the fleece, after he went for water to stock up before they steered for the open sea. The detail sets Xerxes’ more recent expedition westwards in line of the mythical voyage east.173 The effect is stronger still when mythical figures such as Protesilaus step into the pages of Herodotus’ text and exert an influence on events.174 The model of mythical episodes thus lends stature—and perhaps also credence175—to aspects of Herodotus’ own account of the Persian Wars.176 Herodotus’ text borrows also (particularly via his informants) from the authority and majesty of traditional stories and story patterns, with their close associations with the heroic world. The favourable augury before Mycale, presided over by Deiophonus, issues in the story of the seer Euenius (Deiophonus’ alleged father), which, with its elements of divine involvement, its mythemes177 reminiscent of tragedy, and its 171

Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.21–34. See Irwin and Greenwood (2007: index s.v.) for the epic overtones and ambiguity of arkhē kakōn; cf. above, n. 98, and, in this volume, Vandiver, Ch. 5, and Bowie, Ch. 11 (e.g. pp. 271–8: Iliadic resonances in the account of Xerxes’ march give a sense of the significance of the conflict). 173 See Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 70–2, on the resonance in the Histories of mythic names. 174 9.116, 120 with Boedeker (1988). 175 Pelling (1999: 344) (on Herodotus’ borrowings from Homer): ‘the story is simply more believable if it corresponds to the audience’s expectations, more or less conscious, of how stories work’. Cf. below, n. 228 with text. 176 Thucydides’ account likewise derives authority by evoking Homer’s war, but with a view to presenting his own as surpassing it—even though he explicitly rejects the fabulous element; cf. above, n. 4 with text. 177 See below, pp. 53–5, for the term. 172

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foundation on the oracular authorities of Dodona and Delphi, elevates the end of the Mycale narrative and elicits heightened emotional engagement in readers (9.92–5).178 In this case myth serves as a mode of explanation and interpretation in the narration of recent history, in parallel to the analytical or ‘historical’ mode that marks the preceding Mycale narrative.179 The world of myth in a certain sense supplies ‘a realm of heightened, “truer” reality’ (as Chiasson expresses it180)—a reality that is different from, but certainly no less valuable than, run-of-the-mill actuality.181 In these ways myth certainly has a rhetorical and persuasive function in the historian’s text. But, at the same time, Herodotus’ care to keep readers alert to its unverifiable and contested nature—keeping various possibilities in play rather than emphasizing one in particular—works against the idea that he uses it to press a distinct ideology above all others (unless we are to regard such general promotion of dialogism as an ideology). Herodotus’ practice in the Histories of selecting traditions demonstrates a general concern to promote additional and less obvious viewpoints, problematizing the communis opinio, as Munson brings out.182 More important to Herodotus’ own narrative than the rhetorical function of myth is the role it plays in explaining history and rendering it intelligible to readers (as several contributions to this volume illustrate). References to mythical paradigms promote intelligibility by enabling readers to contextualize recent history against the background of what is already familiar. Xerxes’ dream, for example, becomes more understandable and plausible for an audience who is reminded of Homer’s account of Agamemnon’s, and can consequently contextualize the new material within an existing frame of reference. As Vandiver has observed, myth frequently serves as a tool to make foreign peoples intelligible in Greek terms.183 Then again, it is also available for modelling in a more theoretical way historiographical truths—such as the presence 178

On the Euenius story, see Griffiths (1999) and further above, p. 9. Cf. Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 61–5, on the combination in Herodotus’ opening sentence of both mythic and realistic resonances, and Griffiths (quoted below at p. 48) on the ‘change of gear’ between the Mycale and Euenius narratives. 180 Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, p. 226. 181 Cf. Finley (1975a). 182 Munson, this volume, Ch. 7. See also Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, pp. 289–93, on Herodotus’ use of the Theseus myth at 9.73. 183 Vandiver (1991: 81); cf. Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 216–17. 179

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of barriers to intelligibility across cultures.184 At times the mythical element may proliferate explanatory possibilities in a more associative way. Thus the account of Euenius just mentioned contributes to and enriches the texture of historical explanation by suggesting the possibility of divine involvement equally in the recent Greek victory.185 Dionysius of Halicarnassus observed that the histories written before Thucydides’, including that of Herodotus, are interspersed with to muthōdes (‘the fabulous’), like the tales of female monsters, unions of mortals and divine beings—‘histories that seem to us nowadays unbelievable [apistous] and quite senseless [polu to anoēton ekhein]’ (Th. 6). Herodotus’ Histories certainly contains a good measure of incredible material: Herodotus draws into his work such items of cultural significance as genealogies leading back to encounters with heroes and gods, aetiologies for festivals and rituals, speaking doves, and so forth. But, aside from its inherent cultural noteworthiness, such mythical material—as the contributions to this volume bring out— helps to contextualize the historical narrative and convey its importance and meaning to readers. Thus it serves the historian’s key objective of preserving the past from becoming effaced by time (cf. proem). Besides using myth to enlarge recent events, to grid them onto the wider sweep of human experience, and to promote intelligibility, in Herodotus’ hands it becomes a tool to engage readers in thinking more deeply and reflectively—about past history but also the present.186 In the fifth century, the Trojan War, for example, was frequently used for thinking about acquisitive imperialism. In the Histories it serves repeatedly as an analogy for the Persian Wars, and one that Herodotus puts to use also in promoting his readers’ reflection on contemporary international relations, and particularly the Peloponnesian War.187 But all the while, Herodotus takes great care to signal that mythical, early events are beyond the bounds of verification by historiē; and indeed he even uses mythological 184

See Thomas, this volume, Ch. 9. Cf. the ‘leaking in’ of heightened elements in Livy: Feeney (2007b: 186), and above, n. 140 with text. 186 Cf. Lachenaud (1978: 641) on myth serving to ‘agir sur les contemporains’ (‘to act on contemporaries’). 187 Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, pp. 289–93 considers Herodotus’ use of the myth of Theseus’ abduction of Helen in this way; it may even (so Biraschi 1989) supply a stimulus to collaborative Greek action. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, }4, discusses the Trojan War as a paradigm that deepens the understanding of recent historical events. 185

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examples to make points about historical processes and historiographical methodology.188 For him at least as much as for Thucydides, then (to borrow Dionysius’ expression: Th. 8), ‘history is the high priestess of Truth’.

6. MYTH AND HERODOTUS’ NARRATIVE: MODES, GENRES, AUDIENCES Underlying the disputed status of the mythical material in Herodotus’ work is the question of the extent to which he himself as a narrator was influenced by the models handed down to him by predecessors and contemporaries who derived their subject matter from the mythical past. In his choice of topic and his aetiological approach (Croesus as ‘the first’ to commit unjust deeds), for instance, Herodotus followed a pattern familiar from Homer, who sang about klea andrōn that were the consequence of a conflict that found its origin in the rape of a slave-girl by the Greek commander-in-chief.189 Furthermore, as de Jong has shown, Herodotus found an important model in the voice of the omniscient Homeric narrator and—though ultimately rejecting the latter’s omniscient and omnipresent vantage point—used it in much of his narrative without accounting for his omniscience.190 Nor did epic alone supply an important model. The emphasis in the Histories’ proem on preserving human deeds from oblivion also recalls epinician poetry,191 which frequently drew from the stores of traditional myth, and in its structure it follows that of the poetic priamel.192 Indeed, there are points of contact in particular with the famous priamel of Sappho Fragment 16,193 where she deploys the mythical exemplum of Helen’s departure for Troy. 188

The Helen logos is a case in point (2.112–20). See Grethlein (2010b: 151–8), and, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4. 189 Węcowski (2004: 154); cf. Dewald (1999: 151). 190 See above, nn. 1, 116, and 172 with text, and below, n. 211. 191 Cf. Nagy (1990: 221–5, 329), Chiasson (2012). Nagy (1990: ch. 10), Crane (1996), and Kurke (1999: ch. 4) consider points of contact and divergence between Herodotus and epinician poetry in their treatment of Croesus. See more broadly Nagy (1990: chs. 9–11) for comparison of Herodotus and Pindar. 192 On the classical priamel, see Race (1982). 193 Race (1982: 111), Pelliccia (1992) (preferring the term ‘false-start recusatio’ for the device in Herodotus’ proem), and Chiasson (2012: 129–37).

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Herodotus quotes another lyric poet, Simonides, for his epigrams commemorating the fallen at Thermopylae (7.228), and appears to have been influenced by aspects of his Plataea Elegy, including his depiction of the agency of gods and heroes, in crafting his own account of the battle.194 In drawing a parallel between the Persian Wars and the Trojan War, Simonides is a forerunner for Herodotus (if one among others, which included Athenian monumental sculpture). Important points of contact surface also with tragedy, which almost always took mythological themes as its subject.195 A key issue to bear in mind in considering the effect of the Histories’ mythical elements on Herodotus’ original audience are the distinctions between myth as general cultural referent, more specific (storytelling/epic/tragic/lyric) emplotments of mythic material, and occasional allusions to particular texts or enactments. The level of detail and choice of vocabulary give some sense of which of these may be at issue, even as the diverse nature of the original audience makes it likely that their response will have been anything but monolithic: what one listener takes as a traditional element might in another listener activate a specific allusion.196 Griffiths has remarked upon the striking ‘change of gear’ between ‘historical’ and ‘mythic’ modes in the account of Mycale (mentioned above) and also elsewhere in the Histories.197 Certainly, beyond its mythic exempla and paradigms, we may regard the Histories as infused with the mode associated with myth—a timeless, generalizing mode, or in Griffiths’ formulation ‘a discourse whose construction is dominated by traditional components, and whose expression and final shape are thus to a large extent predictable’, which presents a contrast with a discourse ‘in which elements are individually selected and disposed in a compositional process which is not fundamentally determined by inherited routines’.198 (Again, from the point of view 194

Boedeker (2001a), E. L. Bowie (2001, 2010), and Hornblower (2001) discuss the influence on Herodotus of Simonides’ Plataea Elegy; cf. also below, n. 209 with text. 195 On Herodotus and his poetic heritage, see Herington (1991a), Calame (1995: ch. 3), and, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, Vandiver, Ch. 5, Gray, Ch. 6, Munson, Ch. 7, Chiasson, Ch. 8, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12; and see below, pp. 50–3, for the importance of epic and tragedy as sources and models. 196 Cf. Pelling (2006a: 80 n. 17 with text). 197 Cf. Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 221, 223 on such changing of gears in the story of Cyrus. 198 Griffiths (1999: 169 n. 2). On the timeless, generalizing mode of myth, see Finley (1975a).

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of the present, the distant past, in the absence of more detailed knowledge, does have a timeless aspect.) The mythic mode was a valuable tool in the historian’s hands, structuring oral material in a way that listeners could more readily grasp it, and underscoring the universal significance of particular occurrences.199 Recent events and personalities could be more clearly and memorably portrayed on the model of the already-familiar patterns of thought and action that this mode evoked.200 Then again, the mythic mode could in certain contexts convey significant messages more charmingly and obliquely. It was regarded by ancient thinkers as connected with pleasure. Herodotus’ contemporary Protagoras offered the choice to his listeners of framing his account in a muthos or a logos, with the stories in mythical mode making the same point as the hypothetical logos but in a more pleasurable way (as Protagoras says: dokei . . . moi . . . khariesteron einai muthon humin legein, Plato, Protagoras 320c).201 Thucydides famously observed that the absence of to muthōdes (‘the fabulous’, whether to be understood in terms of content or mode) risks diminishing the pleasurable quality of his narrative but allows a stricter focus on the truth. But pleasure was by no means inevitably felt to compromise truth; Thucydides (as so often) is something of the odd man out. In the Histories, Solon’s use of both more and less analytical modes in advising Croesus stages the way a more pleasing mode might further in this case the adviser’s didactic objectives, aiding him in conveying an important truth. The timeless aspect and distant location (in Greece) of the examples of Tellus and Cleobis and Biton allow them to hover between the specific/historical and universal/mythic,202 heightening their instructive function (and conveying to readers a sense of universal significance), as well as allowing the encapsulated wisdom to reach the Lydian king more indirectly and agreeably. It is 199

Cf. Wesselmann (2007). See Wesselmann (2007: 33), pointing, for example, to how the mythical model of Oedipus informs Herodotus’ characterization of Demaratus, and E. Irwin (2011) for the way in which the Aeacidae are used to reflect upon the role played by the Aeginetans in the battle of Salamis. 201 ‘It seems to me that it is more agreeable to tell you a muthos.’ For a different interpretation of Solon’s mode of argumentation, as less diplomatic, see Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 79. 202 Tellus is connected with a historical incident (a war between Athens and Eleusis), but one that is only vaguely placed in time (as occurring at some point in a generalized past). As Rood (2007: 130) observes, the story is a ‘timeless paradigm’. 200

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Croesus’ incomprehension that prompts Solon to adopt the more direct and specific mode of arithmetic calculations to convey the same message, which spells out explicitly the implications for the ruler— and provokes his anger. The charming, proverb-style mode of communication employed by Croesus’ earlier advisers likewise challenges the idea that the presence in the Histories of a non-analytical mode could compromise its seriousness in striving after historical truth. The proverbial wisdom uttered by Bias (or Pittacus: 1.27) and other wise advisers matches that of Aesop’s fables, which extremely effectively (and charmingly) encapsulate universal moral truths in fictional tales about the animal world.203 Besides general ‘mythic modes’, particular poetic genres or models204 may be at issue as we address the Histories’ mythic material. Feeney frames the discussion in terms of literary genre, and emphasizes the deliberate manner in which Herodotus exploits the dialectic of mythic/poetic versus historical models.205 The Histories thus ‘skirmishes’ with the epic and tragic genres associated with mythical material206—for example, in appropriating poetic vocabulary that comes ready laden with wider intertextual associations. In view of the way in which Herodotus signals the distance between the objectives of the historian, on the one hand, and of poets (and other purveyors of ta palaia), on the other, such a move might once again draw to the attention of engaged readers the problem of historicity. The historian’s sensibility about genre (which we have already

203 Cf. Kurke (2011: passim) on Herodotus’ connection with Aesop, and (at pp. 131–4) the pleasurable character of indirect fable narrative. More generally, too, as Kowalzig (2007: 2) observes, ‘myth’s entertainment value may complement rather than contradict its serious content. Is it not precisely the excitement of myth that makes religion accessible to the Greeks themselves and so omnipresent in their society? . . . it is myth that makes ritual interesting, and perhaps meaningful.’ 204 Rosenmeyer (1985: 81) observes that ancient writers practised model criticism rather than genre criticism; Pelling (1999: 331) agrees in the case of Greek historians down at least to Xenophon, and highlights the undetermined and provisional nature of reader expectations in approaching Herodotus’ text. But, even as particular models (Homer, Hecataeus, etc.) are certainly important, and notwithstanding the fact that the term historia meaning ‘history’ occurs first in Aristotle (Hornblower 1987: 9–11), Herodotus sets up the poets collectively as a foil for his own practice (cf. below, p. 51). 205 Feeney (2007b: 177–82). 206 Cf. Feeney’s observation (2007b: 185) that Livy ‘follow(s) Herodotus and Thucydides in setting up a strategy of skirmishing with opposing genres’. See Chiasson (1982, 2003), Avery’s discussion (1979) focusing on Herodotus’ use of the tragic term epairō, and, in this volume, Chiasson, Ch. 8, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12.

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encountered above, in Livy, p. 37) is indeed closely bound up with— and perhaps stems from, in its Herodotean origins—the epistemological concern: the awareness of the limits to human understanding of certain aspects of history, and the consequent need to take an approach that differs sharply from the poets’.207 Herodotus supposes that the poiēsis (‘fabrication’: creation, poetic composition) of Homer and Hesiod was responsible for teaching Greeks their genealogies of the gods, and the divine epithets, attributes, and forms.208 The historian’s claimed authority derives not from the Muses but from the more limited powers of human observation and judgement, and thus in historical works, by contrast with poetry, gods and heroes are by and large not directly depicted in a ‘characterful narration of divine action’.209 And yet—even as Herodotus calls attention to the fact that poetry must be used with great caution as historical source— poetic material and vocabulary are pervasive in the Histories, as are direct hexametric quotations of Delphic oracles and lines from Homer. The historian is occasionally even caught shaping his narrative in distinctly poetic form.210 Of the different poetic sources and models available to Herodotus as he set about framing his narrative, Homer—his main narrative model, and the celebrated heritage of all the Greeks—was certainly the most important and evocative.211 With Homer Herodotus could 207 As Feeney (2007b: 179) remarks: ‘The question of what can be known and what cannot be known readily spills over into the question of what can be narrated and what cannot be narrated.’ 208 Cf. Histories 2.23, on which see above, p. 12. Mythological stories thus test the limits of human knowledge of far-flung places (Ocean was believed to flow around the edge of the earth) as well as distant times. 209 Feeney (1991: 261) (in reference to epic poetry); cf. Feeney (2007b: 182, 197: ‘the strongest line of demarcation between formal history and other literary forms is that history does not introduce gods as characters into the narrative, while a strong but less watertight demarcation is to be found in historiography’s regular distancing of other “fabulous” or “mythical” material’). For Herodotus’ awareness of (and selfproduction of) budding generic criteria see further Baragwanath, Ch. 12 in this volume, n. 24 with text, and Marincola (1999) on the need for a dynamic concept of genre in approaching ancient historiography. 210 The epiphany of Pan in particular ‘looks like a poetic epiphany’, and is perhaps ‘a deliberate and daring [generic] crossover, a real epic feature in a real historian’ (Hornblower 2001: 144); yet even here Herodotus presents the information as the account of Philippides, rather than narrating it directly: cf. Feeney (2007b: 179). See above, n. 195, for Herodotus and his poetic heritage. 211 On the importance of Homer to the ‘most Homeric’ author Herodotus (as Longinus 13.3 describes him), see inter alia Huber (1965), Strasburger (1972), de Jong

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assume an intimate familiarity on the part of his audience. Even subtle allusions will have been discernible by many.212 But Attic tragedy—the true inheritor of epic—was also important, and a rich source of mythological material for Herodotus.213 Though Attic in dialect and style, and close enough to contemporary speech to be easily accessible, the plays were at the same time ‘identifiable, through their manifold links with epic and lyric poetry, as part of a large, rich, and extremely self-conscious tradition with a strong Panhellenic pedigree’.214 In its broad pan-Hellenic familiarity, but equally its democratic qualities, it probably appealed to Herodotus as he set about creating his inclusive and dialogic text. Aeschylus is among the very few authors that Herodotus mentions by name (2.156). Herodotus knew and used Persians (which is an important intertext for the account of Salamis) and doubtless other plays, as well, by the famous dramatist and Marathon man.215 Likewise he will certainly have known the work of his own contemporaries Sophocles and Euripides. The Histories has affinities with tragic poetry, as in its ‘themes of horror’, depiction of fearful and inescapable moral decisions, and use of ironic discourse. And at times it expressly evokes tragedy.216 (1999), and Boedeker (2002: 97–109). See, in this volume, esp. de Jong, Ch. 4, and Vandiver, Ch. 5, for Herodotus’ engagement with and reworking of Homeric material. 212 Cf. Grethlein (2006a) on Herodotus’ subtle use at 7.153–63 of the Iliadic embassy scene. Boedeker (2002: 97–109) and Pelling (2006a) bring out the complexity of the question of Homeric citations/intertextuality. 213 Easterling (1997: 25) describes tragedy as the inheritor of epic; see Herington (1985) for tragedy as the culmination of the earlier song culture/Greek poetic art; cf. Nagy (1990). See Raubitschek (1993: 143) for Herodotus’ knowledge of mythological material from tragedy, but his suggestion that myth was best known to Herodotus through this material overstates the matter; there were ‘forests of myth’ available to Herodotus in various forms, through literary and oral transmission but also visual: see above, pp. 37–8, with Herington (1985: ch. 3). 214 Easterling (1997: 25), with the further suggestion that ‘when allied and foreign ambassadors, businessmen, and visitors saw performances at the City Dionysia they may have been implicitly encouraged to view the plays as the modern equivalent of the greatest literature of the past and therefore of great interest and importance to the whole Greek-speaking world’. 215 The Oresteia as a possible intertext for Herodotus is considered by Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, pp. 304–8. 216 Affinities with tragedy: Laurot (1995), S. West (1999), Saïd (2002), and Griffin (2006: 48–54, ‘themes of horror’ at 48). Among other examples, Griffin singles out the story of Xerxes: ‘The whole story of the expedition of Xerxes itself is, in one vital aspect, the story of divine temptation, superhuman presumption and aspiration, and eventual defeat and despair (7.17; 8.109.3). That is very Aeschylean’ (pp. 49–50).

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We might expect that myth inflected through the genre of tragedy would be highly emotionally and cognitively engaging, and powerful in its effect on an audience steeped in the genre.217 And there is no reason to imagine that such an audience was confined to Athens. In the latter half of the fifth-century non-Athenians could see Attic tragedy—new works as well as Aeschylus in re-performance—when they visited Athens, but also closer to home, thanks to the spread of dramatic performance to other regions of the Greek world.218 Celebrated scenes might be familiar even to audience members who had not seen them directly.219 Finally we turn from addressing such deliberate use of myth and the mythic mode to glance briefly at the problem of Herodotus’ unconscious or reflexive employment of the mythical paradigms of Griffin acknowledges the ‘cultural and rational approach’ the historian brings to such stories (referring here to that of Cambyses’ death), which ‘marks his treatment off from the normal style of tragic poetry’ (p. 52); cf. esp. Chiasson (2003) on how the historian makes use of ‘tragic’ material but stamps it as history. Herodotus’ presentation of Xerxes glances at ‘tragedy’ in the ‘one vital aspect’ Griffin observes, though it contains quite un-tragic elements too, to be contrasted with Aeschylus’ presentation of Xerxes in Persians: see Romm (2006), Scullion (2006), and Baragwanath (2008: ch. 8). Cf. R. Rutherford (2007), pointing to affinities with tragedy even as the effect of a historical work is finally quite different from that of a tragic drama. Herodotus’ use of ironic discourse as related to the conventions of tragedy: Schellenberg (2009). It remains more difficult to establish the extent of Herodotus’ affinities with historical narrative in elegiac poetry of the Archaic Age. For an overview and some suggestions, see E. L. Bowie (2009). 217 Cf. Chiasson (2003: 19). See, in this volume, Chiasson, Ch. 8, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12, }4, for the tragic emplotment of myth in Herodotus and its possible effect on his audience. 218 The expectation of re-performance in Aeschylus’ time (or at least in Herodotus’: cf. Taplin 1999: 37) is evident from its being forbidden in the case of Phrynichus’ Capture of Miletus (Hdt. 6.21). On re-performance at Athens and beyond already in the fifth century, see Dearden (1999), Taplin (1999, cf. p. 37: ‘Once good quality productions with quasi-professional performers are going round the Attic demes, we have a plausible scenario for a rapid and easy spread to other parts of the Greek world’, 2007: 6–7), Csapo (2004: 66–7), laying out evidence that the process of the expansion of the theatre beyond Attica began already in the mid-fifth century. The classic Attic tragedians were frequently restaged in the fifth century in western Greece in particular (to which Herodotus moved himself in 443 BCE, if we accept as historical his involvement in the foundation of Thurii); cf. Stella (1994: 16–17). Among the literate classes in and outside of Athens we may think also in terms of the circulation of texts, and the closer familiarity that facilitated; see further Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, n. 61. 219 e.g. from oral accounts or vase depictions. Cf. how a twenty-first-century individual can build up a good idea of a famous movie scene—from, say, Casablanca or Spartacus—even without having seen it.

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oral tradition. For the Histories’ mythic past is infused with paradigms and patterns that reflect wider patterns of Greek (and nonGreek) thought, patterns that have infused and shaped the oral and poetic traditions that underlie the Histories. Motifs such as that of blindness followed by wisdom in Herodotus’ story of Euenius, or the ‘bargain’ in the story of Tisamenus,220 surface across much extant Greek literature. Structuralist scholarship has coined the term ‘mytheme’ to denote the irreducible, unchanging kernel elements that are found across various myths.221 Such mythemes, or mythic schemata, are a function and reflection of wider cultural realities and thought-patterns, and inevitably find reflection in the Histories, though in any instance there is considerable uncertainty as to how far Herodotus himself is responsible for shaping the material he transmits, and how far the ‘deformation’ of oral tradition.222 Structuralist diachronic analysis of patterns common to Herodotus and other Greek texts and performance illuminates ways in which they reflect wider societal and ritual patterns, and thus bear an oblique relationship to reality.223 Again, several of the Histories’ mythemes have broader, or crosscultural parallels, such as that of the miraculously saved child, in Herodotus’ stories of Cyrus and Cypselus and elsewhere in the stories of Romulus, Moses, and others. Comparative studies have brought out ways in which various paradigms and motifs in Greek literature including the Histories also surface in eastern contexts, and has raised

220

See, in this volume, Gray, Ch. 6, on Tisamenus, and Dewald, Ch. 1, more generally on the presence of traditional plots in Book One. 221 On Lévi-Strauss and the structuralist approach to myth, see Csapo (2005: ch. 5, esp. 217–26, with mythemes discussed at pp. 220–3). 222 For example in the case of the shaping of the Thermopylae account on the pattern of the duel to turn it into a story of moral victory: Dillery (1996). On Herodotus and oral tradition, see the classic article by Murray (including the term ‘deformation’) (2001a), his reconsideration of the topic (2001b), and Thomas (1989: esp. 247–51, 264–81). 223 For a recent overview of the relationship of myth and ritual, with further references, see Kowalzig (2007: 13–23). Scarpi (2009) considers the salient differences between mythic account and ritual (and their respective relationships to historical reality), each of which operates on a different plane and should by no means necessarily be brought into direct association with the other. Buxton (1994: 5) addresses the ‘distance and interplay between the imaginary world of the stories and the (real?) world of the tellers’. See above, pp. 15–16, for ritual-centred definitions of myth and their influence on Herodotean scholarship.

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the possibility of shared Indo-European origins.224 These mythical paradigms thus represent a most complicated facet of the problem of the historicity of Herodotus’ narrative. To borrow Dougherty’s helpful formulation of this problem of historicity, in a different but related context: Greek colonial legends (many of which are found in the Histories) ‘are not clear, untroubled reflections of some historical truth but rather are literary representations of that truth, they stand in a complicated relationship to the events they relate’. That relationship, Boedeker observes, ‘must be analysed for each case, bringing to bear all the kinds of evidence that exist’.225 Sourvinou-Inwood has explored the possibility that certain events in the Histories usually dubbed ‘historical’ may have mythical schemata beneath, and no ‘historical core’ whatsoever— such as Lycophron’s expulsion to Corcyra (3.50–3, mentioned above, p. 16). The story pattern in this instance, she suggests, displays the father–son hostility schema (cf. Theseus–Hippolytus) familiar elsewhere in initiatory paradigms widely reflected in Greek texts.226 But the question remains as to whether tradition has fashioned the episode in accordance with the familiar pattern, or whether the episode actually occurred in accordance with the mythic schema and is intelligible in terms of ritualized behaviour. Certain paradigms or schemata may be so deep-rooted that they not only influence the exposition and reception of the past, but also shape how it is actually lived—a phenomenon that may help explain how recent history may play out on the model of mythic events. In the fascinating case of the literary representation of the Greek seer, we must recognize a combination of factors: on the one hand, the historian’s shaping of his portrait on traditional, Homeric models, but, on the other hand, the seer’s modelling of his own conduct on that of the eminent seers of tradition.227 A related modern phenomenon to which Pelling draws e.g. M. L. West (2007). For ‘international’ or ‘migratory’ story types/motifs, see Calame (1990, 1996) and, with a survey of the modern scholarship, Hansen (2002: 1–31). For eastern parallels for specific Herodotean story patterns, see inter alia S. West (2007) on Rhampsinitus, and, in this volume, Thomas, Ch. 9. 225 Dougherty (1993: 3), Boedeker (2002: 114, with helpful discussion at 111–14). 226 Sourvinou-Inwood (1991: 244–84), cf. above, n. 59. 227 See Flower (2008: 19–20). In this volume, Gray, Ch. 6, and Bowie, Ch. 11, }2.3, discuss Greek seers in Herodotus. Cf. Thomas’ observation, this volume, Ch. 9, p. 237, that one must consider the possible impact of Greek storytelling on ritual actions (like the one she considers, of cutting a victim in half and marching an army between the halves). 224

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attention is the way juries tend to find more plausible those patterns of behaviour that conform to models familiar to them from television and popular culture: which is not so unreasonable, since art can shape life, and people do imitate art all the time.228 Again, modern sociology has demonstrated how people live within particular structures and reproduce them, and how everyday habits may become the very fabric of society itself.229 At the same time we must not lose sight of the fact that certain mythical patterns are also a historical phenomenon, as Dewald reminds us: the ‘thoughtless ruler’ motif, for instance, reflects a reality of human history.230 Thus Herodotus responded on a conscious and unconscious level to mythical material that presented itself in diverse guises, ranging from well-known traditional tales to more general underlying truths about human behaviour. As such, myth found its place in all kinds of forms in his vast and varied narrative and will continue to challenge his readers in current and future generations. *** Our introduction has scratched the surface of the challenging and still-relevant issues that swirl about the subject of Herodotus and myth. The chapters that follow explore in more detail the role of ‘mythical’ elements in Herodotus’ narrative, exposing further the complexity and nuance of his treatment of myth, across a range of studies, some with a literary/narratological focus on the presentation of the text (Part I), others taking a more historicist perspective that addresses the question of the source materials Herodotus had to hand, and his attitude to truth (Part II). Our aim is thus to elucidate further the relationship of ‘mythical’ and ‘historical’ elements in this first work of history, and the question of whether and in what ways Herodotus displays awareness of such a distinction. In different ways all contributions bring out further how, far from being unrelated to or removed from the ‘historical’ aspects of Herodotus’ text, the ‘mythic’ elements are vital to Herodotus’ presentation of history. 228

Pelling (1999: 344), cf. Dershowitz (1996). See Giddens (1984) for the concept of ‘structuration’ and Bourdieu (1984) for the way the habitus (a system of dispositions) reproduces social structures and stratifications. 230 Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1. 229

Part I From Myth to Historical Method The chapters that follow address Herodotus’ application of historical method to the form and content supplied by the traditional legendary heritage. A first chapter examines the dense legendary and mythic framework Herodotus has constructed and woven into the fabric of the human events that he seeks to preserve through historiē (Carolyn Dewald). Three chapters then investigate his application of historical method to his Homeric heritage—Herodotus’ most important source of myth—addressing his strategies of demythologizing and rationalizing agenda (Suzanne Saïd) and his reshaping of the heroes and narratives of epic to fit his historiographical narrative and bolster his authority as historian (Mathieu de Bakker, Irene de Jong). A fifth chapter considers his use of the Homeric concept of xeinia in constructing his historical narrative (Elizabeth Vandiver). A final chapter examines how he applies another significant heritage, that of traditional storytelling (Vivienne Gray). In situating Herodotus (with his mixed literary and scientific heritage of enquiry, poetry, and storytelling) as a transitional figure between the world of myth and a world of proofs and rationalization of the fifth century BCE, this chapter supplies a bridge to the second part of the volume.

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1 Myth and Legend in Herodotus’ First Book Carolyn Dewald

In regards to divine doings [ta theia], apart from their names alone I am not eager to relate what sorts of narrative I heard, considering that everyone knows equally about them. If I do recall such matters, it will be because my account leaves me no choice. (2.3) There were a number of significant factors tempting and inducing [Cyrus] to undertake this campaign [against the Massagetae]: first, his birth, the fact that he seemed to be something greater than human, and second, the good fortune that attended him in war, in the sense that any people which Cyrus sent his troops after found it impossible to escape. (1.204)

*** Herodotus is called the first historian. If any Greeks before him set out to tell a monumentally inclusive and realistic version of the recent past, one shaped as an account of human decisions and actions, neither we nor Dionysius of Halicarnassus know who they were.1

This chapter has profited greatly from the editorial acuity of Nancy Felson, Rachel Kitzinger, Rosaria Munson, and the two editors of this volume, for which I thank them all. 1 D.H. Th. 5. For recent discussions of Herodotus’ relation to other early prose writers, see R. L. Fowler (1996, 2001, 2006) and Schepens (2007: 39–47). Marincola (1999: 283–8, 291–301) usefully critiques Jacoby’s pioneering work (1913). The translations of Herodotus used here are my own or those of Waterfield (1998), somewhat modified.

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Some uncertainty, however, always attends a prōtos heuretēs or ‘first inventor’. Unlike his near-contemporary Thucydides, Herodotus saturates his work with story elements that do not seem to us, strictly speaking, historical, but rather to have sprung from the world of earlier Greek mythic thinking. ‘Mythic thinking’, however, is an exceedingly polyvalent concept. If we were to accept the most precise and limited definition of myth, as the stories about gods and how the world and its primal inhabitants came to be, this chapter would be a very short one, since Herodotus explicitly does not intend to treat such subjects at all.2 As he says in the first of the quotations above (Hdt. 2.3), he thinks that no human being knows more than another about ta theia, divine matters, and so he will bring them up only when the human story requires him to do so. But when does his account, in his words, ‘leave him no choice’? In Book One, this seems to happen principally for two reasons: when legendary material imbued with what we at least consider mythic echoes is in Herodotus’ judgement an integral part of the oral logoi about the human past that he thinks it his obligation to set down; or when the mythic backdrop or resonances of some important event, person, or fact mentioned in the Histories will help his fifth-century Greek readers understand its larger cultural relevance—in effect, grid it in the larger Greek imaginaire. The dense web of material Herodotus makes use of that we might call mythic includes, most prominently, genealogies, picturesque background details, and even religious miracles and traditional story elements; it pervades and thematically shapes Herodotus’ first set of narratives, the expansive accounts of Croesus the Lydian and Cyrus the Persian that we have called Book One. These are usefully surveyed, I think, because it is in these first narratives that Herodotus signals to us as readers much of what he wanted his massive book to be and how he wanted it to be read. If I have erred here, it is on the side of inclusiveness, since I think these somewhat heterogeneous elements in Herodotus’ text are thematically tightly interconnected. 2 For myth as a system of thought and its connection to oral culture, see Finley (1975a) and Vernant (1990: 203–60). Dowden (1992: 8) gives a working definition: ‘Greek Mythology is a shared fund of motifs and ideas ordered into a shared repertoire of stories.’ See also Csapo (2005: 1–9) for categories used to analyse myth, in particular, myth as a function of social ideology; see Saïd (2007) for a valuable overview of ‘myth’ and muthos in the Greek historians. Worth remembering is Calame (1999: 122): ‘Clearly, in spite of its Hellenic name, myth is not an indigenous category.’

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I will argue here that Herodotus uses various kinds of mythic and legendary material in order to weave new and exotic material that might otherwise not have been accessible to Greek understanding into the fabric of traditional Greek ways of looking at the past. In particular, the mythic narrative patterns and thematic resonances that support and give continuity to the accounts of Croesus the Lydian and Cyrus the Persian enable his Greek readers to begin to make sense of autocratic rulers of large eastern kingdoms; they also set in play ideas about the nature of politics and the importance of the political choices that human beings make—ideas that will have real explanatory power as events come to a climax much later in the Histories, in the narrative of the great war of 481–479 BCE.3 There are three sections to this survey of myth and legend in Book One. The first considers the very odd and ambiguous approach to the distant past Herodotus displays in his proem, and the second explores his use of mythic genealogies and background information. The third and final section explores a more diffuse and interesting issue: mythic thinking as it shapes ideology and ideological assumptions, both those of Herodotus himself and those of the characters in the Histories. Religious signs and portents and motifs drawn from myth, legend, and folklore are aspects of Herodotus’ narrative that he took very seriously as part of the record of events but that by our twentyfirst-century standards certainly seem mythic. Although we would not today expect to encounter them as central elements in a historical account, thematically they link up with the more obviously mythic and legendary material considered in Section 2, and together with that material become part of the causal and explanatory framework that makes the Histories as a whole hang together as a text.

1. HERODOTUS’ FIRST SENTENCE AND PROEM (1.1–5) At the Histories’ very beginning, the mythic and legendary Greek past is pointedly introduced, but in a very peculiar way. The interpretative 3

Cf. the approach to Herodotus’ eastern material of Chiasson (on the Cyrus logos) and Thomas (on the Pythius and Deioces logoi) in this volume, Ch. 8 and Ch. 9 respectively.

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ambivalence of this first passage (1.1–5) points to one of Herodotus’ central beliefs: that we can neither completely trust stories that claim to be authoritative accounts of the distant past nor do entirely without them in making sense of our collective human heritage. The first sentence of the Histories reads as follows: This is the display of the investigation of Herodotus the Halicarnassian, so that the things done by human beings [ta genomena ex anthrōpōn] should not become worn away [exitēla] by time, and so that the great and remarkable deeds [erga megala te kai thōmasta] displayed by both Greeks and barbarians should not become unsung, both other aspects and the cause [tēn aitiēn] through which they went to war with each other.

Here the ambiguities of Herodotus’ relation to the world of the Greek mythic and legendary past already confront us as readers, head-on. The two purpose clauses highlight two very general neuter nouns—genomena and erga—as the focus of his promised historiē, or investigation. Although the two purpose clauses are grammatically parallel, they use different interpretative registers. Both of them direct Herodotus’ and our attention to a human past that he believes needs to be preserved, but they suggest different stances towards that past, especially in their implicit connections to the world of earlier myth and legend. When Herodotus begins by declaring that ta genomena ex anthrōpōn should not become exitēla, worn away, he seems tacitly to eschew an interest in the themes of traditional myth and legend, in particular, the deeds of gods and superhuman heroes.4 At the outset of his massive narrative, he declares that he intends to investigate the accomplishment of humans in the ordinary human world, and he pointedly does not include any appeal to the muses or other divine facilitators of story. Indeed, the genomena ex anthrōpōn of this first purpose clause are not explicitly connected to story at all. Expressions reflecting Herodotus’ determination to investigate human beings and their (real) achievements are scattered throughout the Histories; in general, he goes to considerable lengths to retell the version of past events most likely to be true: most plausible, or vouched for by credible witnesses, or testified to by material remains

4 See Thomas (2000: 4–27, 164, 2006: 60–75) for Herodotus’ fifth-century intellectual and cultural milieu, and the rationalizing and scientific impulses that might underlie the phrase genomena ex anthrōpōn. For the genealogical use of exitēlos in inscriptions, see Moles (1999: n. 39), and the Introduction to this volume, p. 21.

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left behind to support it.5 For evidence of Herodotus’ interest in being seen as a critical and discriminating author interested in Realien, one need only think of 1.95, where he wryly comments that he knows three other versions of the story of Cyrus, but has chosen here to tell the one reported to him by Persians who want to tell ton eonta logon, the ‘real’ logos. In many other logoi too, he takes seriously the requirements of to oikos (the likely), to prepon (the appropriate), and arguments from tekmēria (evidence).6 He does not believe that human women co-inhabit temples and sleep with gods, whether in Egyptian Thebes, Chaldaean Babylon, or Lycian Patara (1.182); he does not believe that the Neuri, neighbours of the Scythians, are werewolves (4.105), or that in the Persian War of 481–479 BCE Scyllias the swimmer swam more than 8 miles underwater (8.8–9). Sometimes Herodotus’ own rational and prudential attitudes as a judge of human genomena are echoed by people within his account. For instance, 6.68–70 recounts the Spartan King Demaratus’ response to his mother’s very odd version of his own conception. When she declares that the guardian hero of the family must have impregnated her, taking on the likeness of her husband, Demaratus without comment hastily makes the necessary arrangements and flees the country. Apparently he considers her mythic, even pseudo-Heraclean, story unlikely to convince his enemies in Sparta; Herodotus, the narrator of the story, is clearly unconvinced by it.7 Throughout the later books of the Histories, Herodotus’ intent is to set down what really happened, especially in the Greco-barbarian wars of his father’s and grandfather’s generation, so that their details do not become ‘worn away’, whether by being forgotten or by being changed so that they no longer reflect reality, as in Demaratus’ mother’s imaginative version of his conception. In modern scholarship, this is the Herodotus—argumentative, 5 See L. Pearson (1983a) and Lateiner (1989: 61–108). Pritchett (1993) provides an extreme defence of Herodotus’ reportorial skills, but makes for very entertaining reading. 6 For the Cyrus logos and its relation to truth, see Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8. More generally, see Darbo-Peschanski (1987: 127–89), Lateiner (1989: 98, 137, 140–42, 279 n. 11), Thomas (2000: 173–212), Raaflaub (2002: 157–86), and Dewald (2006: 169–70, 174–7). 7 She may have been hoping to conjure with the Spartan royal Heraclid ancestry (6.51–2 and Boedeker 2002: 111). The controversy over Demaratus’ paternity is narrated in 6.61–3; for the importance of the Heraclids to Herodotus, see below, nn. 18–20. Herodotus reports other moments of cynical attempts to generate or influence religious belief: 1.59–60, 6.66, 7.6.

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learned, fastidious about expressing scepticism towards peculiar logoi from the past—that many historiographers now privilege; we are comfortable in calling him Thucydides’ almost-contemporary and the echte father of history. In the second purpose clause of the Histories’ first sentence, however, the language changes; Herodotus abandons his investigatory spelunker’s hat and assayer’s tools and dons bardic, even Homeric, robes instead.8 He now turns to the language of story, promising to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary aspects of the human record—to seek out great and remarkable erga, achievements, in language that suggestively resonates with that of Greek legend and myth. The erga megala of this part of the sentence—especially if they are thōmasta—bear a disconcerting resemblance to the material that the first purpose clause has tacitly eschewed, since one very common way things become thōmasta is by being, in effect, out of the ordinary human realm. Here, in his second purpose clause, he does not expect to renounce but rather to celebrate strange and wondrous achievements, precisely to keep them from being aklea, ‘unsung, unfamous’. Many logoi in the Histories fulfil this second purpose by including material we would call mythic—which is perhaps why Thucydides sourly commented on the absence of to muthōdes in his own work, and why Cicero goes on to speak of the presence of ‘legends’ in the work of the father of history.9 Gyges and Candaules’ queen, Arion and the dolphin, Thrasybulus and his Milesian banquet, Cyrus’ remarkable rescue as a child: some of the best-loved stories in the Histories, stories apparently too good to be true, seem to us to have become exitēloi, so to speak, by the leaching-out of whatever historical details they possessed, so that they have come at length to resemble traditional myths, legends, and folktales. For Herodotus’ fifth-century Greek audience the problem of a tension between the ‘realistic’ and ‘mythic’ resonances of the first sentence probably seemed much less pronounced than it does to us, but the contrast is there if we look for it, and Thucydides’ implied criticism of to 8 See esp. Nagy (1987) and Bakker (2002) for analysis of Homeric vocabulary found in Herodotus’ first sentence. Boedeker (2002) and Marincola (2006, 2007a) give an overview of Herodotus’ larger connection to epic and mythic patterns; see further below, nn. 42 and 49. 9 Thuc. 1.21–22; Cicero Leg. 1.5, on which see the Introduction to this volume, p. 3. Not all ‘remarkable’ material Herodotus wants to report is mythic, however; see, e.g., Munson (2001) for his interest in the exotica of ethnography.

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muthōdes and his own very different narrative choices provide some evidence that even in the fifth century BCE the issue was for thoughtful people a real one.10 A hint that Herodotus gives us that he too has thought about or cares about the distinction between what we modern readers would call myth and what we would call history is contained in the odd series of demythologized logoi that follow immediately on his first sentence. Ostensibly pursuing his proemial promise to seek out the aitiē, cause (and responsibility to be assigned) for the commencement of hostilities between Greeks and barbarians, Herodotus begins the narrative proper with a feint, a ‘Persian version’ of the mythic rapes of Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen. The resonances here are superficially those of a Hecataean rationalism, since what the Persian logioi and then the Phoenician addendum provide is not the heroic, mythic, and epic versions of the four abduction stories familiar to Greeks, but rather a banal sequence of stories about trade and marital commerce.11 In it, Helen (to the earlier Greeks, the most beautiful woman in the world and herself perhaps a faded goddess12) has become a commercialized counter in the wife-swapping that is the dominant theme of the story. The basic plotline involves a succession of enterprising barbarian and Greek men, each of whom gets himself a foreign woman on the cheap. The final player in the series, Paris, figures he can get himself a Greek wife without paying for her, because, after all, the Greeks have got away with both Europa and Medea, without having to pay compensation for their acquisitions.13 It is hard not to see Herodotus as amusing himself here, perhaps startling his Greek audiences with a clever, supposedly Persian, version of long-known Greek mythic tales. But it is also hard to know the larger implications, or precisely at whose expense the humour comes. When Herodotus abruptly abandons these deflated versions of mythic and

10 See, most generally, Veyne (1988), Buxton (1994), and Calame (1999). For the historians in particular, see Finley (1975a: 29–33) and Vernant (1990: 203–11). 11 Asheri (2007: 74) thinks the passage a narrative invention of Herodotus or his source. 12 She continued to receive cult in Sparta: M. L. West (1975). For recent bibliography on Helen and discussion of her possibly Indo-European roots, see Suzuki (1989) and Edmunds (2007). De Bakker, de Jong, and Vandiver, this volume, Chs. 3, 4, and 5, discuss aspects of the story of Helen in Egypt. 13 Kurke (1999) emphasizes the role of commercial exchange and coinage imagery in Herodotus.

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legendary stories (two of them in their earlier Greek versions involving not entrepreneurial wife-getters but powerful and amorous Greek gods), he does so with an absolute, dismissive praeteritio: This now is what the Persians and the Phoenicians say. For my own part, about these matters I am not going to say that thus or otherwise they somehow happened, but I will point out the man I know first began unjust deeds against the Greeks, and I will proceed to the rest of the logos . . . (1.5.3)

Certainly Herodotus has here avoided retelling some famous abduction stories from the Greek legendary past in their mythic form, but he has also made the rationalized versions of the Persians and Phoenicians appear ridiculous. We readers are not told why he changes the subject so pointedly, but plunges instead with assurance into the almost equally peculiar story of Croesus’ fifth-generation ancestor Gyges—this time presenting strange and vivid stories from the past that he does expect us to believe, some of it at least apparently vouched for by Delphi.14 Perhaps, as von Leyden has suggested, by retelling and then dismissing the demythologized stories of the Persian logioi and the Phoenicians, Herodotus is tacitly separating a ‘temps des dieux’ from the ‘spatium historicum’ he wants to privilege henceforth in the narrative.15 In von Leyden’s reading, the praeteritio in 1.5 signals Herodotus’ belief that myth cannot be cleaned up and rationalized to become part of the record of human doings; the abduction accounts, though interesting, have truly become exitēloi and their initially historical kernel unrecoverable. In this reading, Herodotus retells the four abduction accounts to suggest to the alert reader that a Hecataean rationalizing of myth and legend no longer adequately accounts for the human past, even if foreign so-called experts do it. This may be so. However, there is also a simpler and more overtly political and methodological purpose on Herodotus’ part for including these odd, demythologized logoi. After all, the tacked-on Phoenician variant of the Io abduction at the end of the Persian version makes it clear that both of the sober, cleaned-up accounts of Greek 14

Asheri (2007: 81–6) collects the historical information about Gyges and his connections to Delphi. 15 Von Leyden (1949/50: 94–5). Cf. Vidal-Naquet (1986: 39–60, esp. 45), for the basic distinction between the ‘temps des dieux’ and the ‘temps des hommes’, and the Introduction to this volume, pp. 24–29. See Boedeker (2002: 110 n. 43) for further bibliography.

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myth provided by Persians and Phoenicians are also deeply selfserving in their apparent rationality. The pedestrian wife-swapping stories have a political purpose: easterners (the men who began the great war of Herodotus’ father’s generation) are using these stories to cast blame on the Greeks for beginning the enmity separating Greeks from Asiatic peoples.16 Herodotus abandons these accounts once they have served the purpose of showing that even stories from long ago contain overtly partisan implications in the present that leach them of their usefulness as real reports from the human past as effectively as the appearances of gods and magical journeys would have done.17 Whichever interpretation of the bold praeteritio of 1.5 we adopt, the bottom line is that in the passage we are discussing, three pages into the Oxford text, Herodotus has avoided specifying what kind of past he intends to explore. In particular, he does not make clear what relation he wants to establish between the world of ancient story— heroic myth and legend—and ta genomena ex anthrōpōn, the ordinary human world of politics, sociology, and anthropology that since Thucydides we have called the terrain of history. But, whatever the larger methodological implications we read into this odd beginning, Herodotus has clearly warned us, his readers, to be suspicious of logoi purporting to come from the past of myth and legend, even if they are told by foreign experts and have been stripped of their gods and more romantic story elements.

2. GENEALOGIES AND AETIOLOGICAL MYTHS In the ongoing narrative of Book One, material that we call mythic and legendary does appear and functions as a valid part of the story. 16

I owe to Rosaria Munson the observation that this is, incidentally, an aitiē for east–west conflict that the Croesus account that follows calls into question, since barbarian and Asiatic Croesus will cheerfully consult Greek oracles, have a half-Ionian half-sibling, and entertain Greeks at his court. See further Munson (2001: 100–7). 17 Vansina (1985: 114–23) comments on homeostatic tendencies in oral cultures: ‘the historical consciousness expressed in [the Malagasy] body of tradition corresponded completely with the present-day concerns of the time when they were recorded’ (p. 120); see also below, n. 31. For the function of 1.1–5 in setting up the issue of authorial judgement exercised over Herodotus’ largely oral sources of information, see Dewald (2002: 269–70); for some of its broader rhetorical implications, see Dewald (1999: 224–8) and Goldhill (2002: 10–15).

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Its first and in some ways most obvious presence is traditional: Herodotus uses genealogies that stretch back to legendary times to introduce and order both personal and ethnic lineages and to integrate them with genealogies already familiar to Greek audiences. As Vannicelli has recently explored, throughout the Histories Herodotus relies especially on the genealogy of Heracles and his family (we note that this is the human Heracles of 2.43–5, not the much older divine one).18 Launching into his first serious narrative, in 1.7, Herodotus introduces the Heraclidae. Their first appearance in the Histories is as the royal family of Lydia, the dynasty that Croesus’ Mermnad dynasty supplanted in the early seventh century BCE. Herodotus gives the specific genealogy of Candaules, the last Heraclid, as a descendant of Heracles, Alcaeus, Belus, Ninus, and Agron. How and Wells succinctly comment: ‘the (otherwise unknown . . . ) son of a Greek hero is father of a Babylonian god and grandfather of the eponymous hero of Nineveh.’19 However improbably mythic their origins, the Heraclidae will appear again in all but two of the Histories’ subsequent books, and will be featured especially in Books Seven through Nine (7.208, 8.114, 9.26–7) as the family of the Spartan king Leonidas, who fights at Thermopylae and whose death will require compensation from Xerxes in Thessaly. The early Greek Heraclidae will also figure in Book Nine in the stories from the mythic past told by the Tegeans and Athenians, as they argue for their right to a place of honour in the battle line at Plataea. At the very beginning of Book One, however, Heraclids figure instead as early Lydians. We note that neither Gyges, Candaules’ Mermnad usurper, nor Candaules’ formidable but anonymous wife is given a mythic genealogy— Herodotus presents Gyges simply as Candaules’ favourite spear-carrier, and his role as illegitimate usurper is emphasized by the mention of Candaules’ mythic Heraclid antecedents.20 18

See Vannicelli (2001: 211–40, esp. 223–5, 232, and 234 n. 40), for Heracles as a vital key to Herodotus’ larger project of establishing a universal chronology for the more distant human past, and cf. Vandiver (1991: 167–89). 19 How and Wells (1928: 57). 20 If one applies the language of 1.5.4 to the story of Heracles’ descendants in the Histories, in this instance big becomes small but also, finally, big again. In winning the Persian Wars, the Heraclids Leonidas and Pausanias (7.204, 9.64) help restore the glory of their family that had been diminished when Gyges killed the last Heraclid of Lydia; see Boedeker (1988) and Dewald (1997) for other, more prominent, closural narratives. See Asheri (2007: 80) for the possibility that ‘Mermnadae’ meant ‘dynasty of hawks’.

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Mythic genealogies for important easterners do not only link them to Greek myths; sometimes purely eastern mythic connections are in play, and these are often eponymous.21 A Lydian royal genealogy even earlier than that of the Heraclids is given, both in 1.7 and in 1.92–3, having to do with Atys and his sons Lydus and Tyrrhenus, from whom will come the Lydians and Etruscans. (This lineage, incidentally, reappears in 4.45 as a possible source for the name ‘Asia’, from Asiēs, a cousin of Lydus and the eponymous founder of a tribe at Sardis. Lydus and another brother, Mysus, reappear also in 1.171, as putative brothers of the eponymous Car, therefore explaining why Lydians and Mysians are allowed to use the sanctuary of Carian Zeus at Mylasa.) Other eastern mythic genealogies, some of them also with a connection to Greek legendary figures, involve the Lycians, descended from Glaucus son of Hippolochus, familiar from the Iliad (2.876), and the Caucones, who came to Asia originally from Pylos via Athens, since they are descended from the Neleid Codrus son of Melanthus (1.147). The Neleids will appear again in Books Five and Nine (5.65, 76, 9.97).22 Other large organizing genealogies appear in Book One, especially in the discussion of ethnic identities. Deucalion and Dorus are mentioned in 1.56, where Croesus is investigating the background of the Spartans—here the descendants of Cadmus the Phoenician also are mentioned, as the people who evicted Dorus son of Hellen from the north. Cadmus and the Cadmaeans will appear many times, although not elsewhere in Book One, unless we include Europa, Cadmus’ sister, who is part of the demythologized abduction story of the proem (1.2), and perhaps Thales named as a ‘Phoenician’ 1.171, as an oblique reference to a mythic Milesian connection to Cadmus. The lineages of the Ionian coast are more complex than this, however, and involve the fusion of a number of mythic founders’ lines. Discussing the ethnic background of Lycia, in 1.173 Herodotus starts with Minos and Sarpedon as Cretans, sons of Europa the Phoenician. Sarpedon came to what in Herodotus’ day is called Lycia. There he was supplanted by Lycus, son of Pandion, banished from Athens by Theseus’

21 See Dowden (1992: 74–92): ‘an eponym supplies a personal version of a more abstract entity’ (p. 75). 22 Vannicelli, this volume, Ch. 10, pp. 263–8 discusses the coexistence in the Histories of alternative genealogical myths of Persian origins (which lead back to the eponymous heroes Perses/Perseus and Achaemenes respectively).

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father, Aegeus. The point of all this is to establish that the Lycians’ ethnic habits are a mixture of Cretan and Ionian/Carian traits. So, even though Herodotus later dismisses Minos’ naval empire,23 in Book One Minos has appeared as a legitimate actor, mentioned for his Cretan family connections. By creating a dense web of mythological genealogies for peoples and individuals, Herodotus has helped locate exotic material in a traditional Greek framework, and he also has provided a rudimentary chronology for foundation stories of various families and ethnic groups. The second way that conventional mythic and legendary material comes into Book One of the Histories is more complex. Even mentioned in passing, mythic names can add informative background detail to an ongoing narrative that suggests to the Greek reader cultural connections of significance. This background can occur as part of the description of a place or object occurring in the narrative, as an incidental aspect of the story itself, or as a motivating detail or even an aetiology, explaining why someone behaves in a particular way or encounters certain experiences. When a local context is in question, it is often unclear whether the named mythic elements resonate as more than familiar cultural markers.24 The ‘Midas’ whom Herodotus names as the first barbarian king to donate objects at Delphi (1.14) may in fact have been understood by Herodotus and his fifth-century audience to be a historical Midas who ruled Phrygia in the late eighth century BCE—but Herodotus uses the same name in Book Eight to refer to the legendary Midas in whose garden Silenus was captured (8.138).25 A central element in the story of the remarkable Spartan victory over Tegea in the mid-sixth century is the discovery of bones that turn out, apparently, to be those of Orestes son of Agamemnon, found at a forge in Tegea (1.67–8). For all we know, there may have been a real discovery of the bones of some prehistoric animal, and their identification as the bones of the son of Agamemnon might not have 23

See, in this volume, Munson, Ch. 7, and Introduction, n. 92 with text. The same is certainly true today; inhabitants of Los Angeles, for instance, rarely think of the mother of St Augustine when they refer to Santa Monica. But the deliberate mention of mythic and legendary information had also been a part of the Ionian periplous, or sixth-century geographical writing. L. Pearson (1983b: 30) writes: ‘[Hecataeus] liked to explain how a particular place got its name, especially if it had any associations with a heroic figure of mythology.’ 25 For the three Midases in Herodotus, see Asheri (2007: 85–6). 24

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seemed mythic at all to the Spartans, but merely a reasonable way to account for their antiquity and their remarkable size.26 Many geographical locations were intimately linked to, even identified by, the stories that traditionally adhered to them, but we are not always sure what the mythic resonances would have been for Herodotus’ audiences. Herodotus calls a mountain in Lydia the source of the Hermus River and the home of ‘mother Dindymene’ (1.80); presumably many fifth-century Greeks knew this cult name for Cybele, and even knew stories about her worship on Mount Dindymon. The account Herodotus gives of the capture of Croesus’ Sardis in 546 BCE includes the story of an early Lydian king, Melas, whose concubine gave birth to a lion who was then carried around the perimeter to make it impregnable (1.84); the motif is the widespread one of the fatal vulnerability of magic circles at a particular point.27 Two semimythic queens of Babylon, Semiramis and Nitocris, are linked to the remarkable waterworks and fortifications that surround the city (1.184); the waterworks were real, and Herodotus was dealing with real Assyrian material and perhaps even echoes of real queens, but both Semiramis and Nitocris per se are legendary heroines, Semiramis later made famous by Ctesias, Nitocris perhaps emerging by confusion with the Egyptian Nitocris of Book Two (2.100.2), perhaps by confusion with Nebuchadnezzar (who was responsible for great building projects in Babylon).28 Sometimes the mythic background is not directly connected to place, but rather emerges incidentally as part of one of Herodotus’ logoi. The name of Midas, the ambiguous figure in the context of the throne donated at Delphi, appears again as that of the grandfather of the unfortunate Adrastus in 1.35, where other names too in the story of Croesus’ son’s death have disconcertingly mythic resonances.29 26 Mayor (2000). See below, n. 32, and also, more generally, the authors cited above, n. 10. As we shall see below, it is the oracle and Lichas’ interpretation of the meaning of the bones’ identification that gives them a mythic importance. 27 Asheri (2007: 140) cites McCartney (1944) for anthropological analogies of vulnerable points in ‘magic circles’. 28 See Kuhrt (2002: 496) and Asheri (2007: 203–4), especially for the two queens’ connection with the (non-existent but promised) ‘Assyrian logoi’ also mentioned in 1.184. 29 For Midas, see n. 25. Graf (19962: 135 n. 11) cites Burkert (1985) for the role of Croesus in the Greek imaginaire; see also Hartog (1999). On the Atys/Adrastus story, see Asheri (2007: 104): ‘It seems likely that the story has its origin in a local aetiological saga’ (of the temple of Nemesis of the Mysian city Adrasteia).

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Such figures were undoubtedly part of the oral account Herodotus heard and recorded, and many of them were taken for granted by fifth-century Greeks as part of a real prehistory, even if in actuality they were imaginative reconstructions pointing to an otherwise vanished past. The Pelasgians and the Leleges are peoples mentioned as part of background narratives in Book One who have both mythic and historical resonances: the Pelasgians in 1.56–8 and 146 as part of the story of the Athenian and Ionian past, the Leleges in 1.171 as the name of the original island-dwelling Carians.30 The Phocaeans’ painful departure from their homeland in Ionia included the mention, in passing, of ‘Cadmaean victories’ (1.166). This story shows Greeks themselves as confused over the ambiguities inherent in mythic geographical resonances: according to a clever Posidonian man, the Phocaeans ran into great difficulties attempting to settle in Cyrnus or Corsica, because they forgot or did not know about an obscure hero, Cyrnus, bearing the same name as the island (1.167). Delphi had apparently meant the Phocaeans to honour the hero, not the island, which was what made their first attempts at founding a city on the island Cyrnus so disastrous. A particularly suggestive category involves the myths and legends that are advanced in the text as part of the logos, to explain later people’s behaviour and actions. This raises a question that we will consider more extensively in Section 3: the extent to which the world of Herodotus and his audiences was an oral one. In an oral world, legendary material was seen by almost everyone as historical (that is, conveying a real past), and both Greeks and non-Greeks had no difficulty in thinking of mythic material as giving legitimate aetiologies for current conditions, or even explanations for things happening in their own lives, as part of their Foucauldian epistēmē, so to speak.31 Returning to the story of the bones of Orestes found in Tegea (1.67–8), we see that the bones and the mythic story attached to 30 See Dowden (1992: 74–92, esp. 80–1) on ‘pre-peoples’; for their relevance to fifth-century discussions of Athenian autochthony myths, see Thomas (2000: 119–21). For Herodotean ethnography in general, see Munson (2001), SourvinouInwood (2003), and Rood (2006). 31 For Herodotus as an active participant in an oral culture, the classic treatment remains Murray (2001a), supplemented by Murray (2001b); Stadter (2004) makes this point forcefully, examining Herodotus’ use of Helen and the Croesus story. For Herodotus’ use of oral narrative strategies, see Immerwahr (1966), Slings (2002), and Griffiths (2006).

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them play an essential part of the plot Herodotus narrates. Their discovery motivates action on the part of Lichas the crafty Spartan agathoergos, ‘benefactor’, because it is Lichas who links the bones to an oracle predicting Spartan victory upon possession of Orestes’ bones. Thereupon, according to Herodotus, Lichas concocts an elaborate story to get control of the smithy and the bones; in consequence, he provides the Spartans by 650 BCE the means to dominate Tegea and obtain hegemony in the Peloponnese—because they have the bones of Orestes in their possession.32 The mythic material in this case has led to an important historical event, because the Spartans took the oracle and Lichas’ deeds so seriously. Mythic stories can explain more generally why some cultural practices have emerged to be as they are in the present. In 1.82 a long-ago Homeric-style duel turned bad between Sparta and Argos is advanced as the explanation of the different hairstyles worn in present-day Sparta and Argos. In 1.105 the hermaphroditism of contemporary Scythians is explained as a punishment for their long-ago sacking of the Ascalon temple of Heavenly Aphrodite (this episode comes up again as we consider religious aetiologies, below, Section 3). In 1.146 there is an odd and oddly poignant parenthetical observation explaining why Ionian women do not stay seated with their men: they are remembering their long-ago Carian husbands, sons, and brothers whom the Ionians slew.33 The agonies of the Phocaeans in discerning the correct meaning of ‘the Cyrnus with which they are to found a city’ are relevant here too (1.165–7). Their need to honour Cyrnus, the hero, rather than to travel to Cyrnus the place, has retrospectively provided an explanation for why their attempts to found a colony proved so disastrous. All such accounts in Herodotus—and there are many, throughout the Histories—testify to the power that ancient legends have, as background that either motivates action and/or retroactively plays an explanatory role in events that Herodotus regards as real. 32

See Boedeker (1993) for the significance of this passage in establishing Sparta’s cultural identity, both more generally and specifically within Herodotus’ text. Gray, this volume, Ch. 6, analyses the traditional patterns in the story and compares it with the accounts of Tisamenus and Melampus in Book Nine. 33 Asheri (2007: 177): ‘Herodotus gives a rational aetiology for the widespread custom of sex-segregation at meals; cf. the Cretan and Spartan sussitia, the Greek symposia in general, and the banquets of the Macedonians (5.18.3) and the Persians; the Caunians are an exception ([1.]172.1).’

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The most striking testimony of Herodotus’ awareness of the power of stories from the past to shape the behaviour of people in the narrative, however, does not come in the context of an ancient myth or legend, but rather from a legend created within the real time of the narrative. It is quoted at the head of this chapter. Herodotus tells us in 1.204 that many factors stirred Cyrus on to fight the Massagetae, a decision that ultimately cost him his life. Among these, Herodotus says, the first and foremost was his belief in his own miraculous birth, and the second, his remarkable fortune in war. Even though Herodotus does not indulge here in an elaborate gloss, he makes it clear that Cyrus’ life had in effect become mythic for him—to the point where it had constructed in Cyrus’ own mind a myth of invincibility.34 This is part of a more general belief implicitly found throughout the Histories: logoi about and from the past, whether they are accurate accounts of what happened or not, create assumptions that have great power to shape decisions leading to action in the present. This plays a great part in Herodotus’ decisions about when and how to include stories from the past in his narrative, and we shall return to it at the end of the chapter.

3. THE INFLUENCE OF THE MYTHIC ON THE NARRATIVE OF BOOK ONE So far we have considered myth and legend when it is connected to genealogy or provides narrative background: attached to place, relevant as story-setting, or motivating and/or explaining conditions and actions in the narrative present. The pervasiveness of this material already makes it clear how much myth is woven into the fabric of the genomena ex anthrōpōn that Herodotus wants to preserve through his historiē. Perhaps if I were prudent, I would stop here. But I want instead to plunge ahead into deeper waters and consider as well two other fundamental ways in which myth emerges in the narratives of Book One—both of which gain much of their convincing power

34 For a detailed discussion of the story of Cyrus’ death in the war against the Massagetae, see Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 227–32.

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from being connected ideologically to the mythic material so far described.35 Herodotus’ belief in what we would call miraculous occurrences constitutes one of the most difficult aspects of the Histories for us as moderns to take seriously.36 For Herodotus and most of his contemporaries, oracles, dreams, and portents foreshadowing outcomes of events would not have seemed mythic; they rather emerged on important occasions from the ordinary sphere of Greek religion. Oracles, after all, were real phenomena that really played a part in decision-making processes, both public and private, and oracular centres dotted the real Greek landscape.37 However, in our own twenty-first-century understanding of Herodotus as a reporter and analyst of human history, and in our secular and academic understanding of what constitutes genomena ex anthrōpōn, religious thōmata like those Herodotus often reports are matters for the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids but should not figure in serious historical accounts. They are ‘mythic’ in the dismissive modern sense of the word, simply unreal fantasy. Or, if they do intrude in history, religious thōmata are seen as instances of mass hysteria and cynical human opportunism, like the appearance of the angels at Mons in the First World War that putatively were seen by a large number of British troops, or the images of Mary, mother of Jesus, that appear periodically on the walls of modern subway stations and other public places. Whether Herodotus believed in the Greek gods per se, he clearly believed that forces greater than human shaped the direction events would take and occasionally communicated that they were doing so through obscure means such as dreams, portents, oracles. Supernatural powers revealing themselves in various ways were for Herodotus not mythic, or at least, not entirely mythic; their help in determining the outcome of the Great War of 481–479 is one of the remarkable aspects of the historical account that Herodotus sets out

35 See Csapo (2005: 262–315) for the connection between myth and ideology. See also, more generally, the works cited above, n. 10. 36 See the Introduction to this volume, }1. 37 For oracles’ role in the politics of Greek states, see Parker (1985), and for Delphi’s role in Athenian political decision-making, see Bowden (2005). See Antonaccio (1993) and Buxton (1994: 80–113) for the larger mythical resonances of the Greek landscape.

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to record for posterity.38 Their powers are pervasive already in Book One, especially in the Croesus story. Oracles and divination are deeply embedded in the basic plot line of Book One. The most powerful and frequently appearing oracle is that of Apollo at Delphi, whose control over the five-generation Mermnad line shapes the narrative of the first half of Book One. In 1.13, the oracle at Delphi confirms Gyges in his kingship but indicates trouble to come in the fifth generation; in 1.19, Delphi informs Alyattes that he will not be cured of illness until he has rebuilt the temple of Athena he had burnt in Assesus; in 1.46, Delphi is listed among the oracles that Croesus used; in 1.47–8, Croesus boils the tortoise shell, testing the god at Delphi; in 1.55, Delphi predicts the portent of the mule that will be explained in 1.91; in 1.66, Delphi points to the necessity for Sparta to find the bones of Orestes; in 1.85, Delphi predicts that Croesus will rue the day that his mute son speaks; in 1.91, Delphi explains to Croesus the errors in his thinking, undertaking to conquer Cyrus and then blaming Delphi for his decision. Delphi’s predictive and explanatory powers occasionally reappear in the later parts of Book One: in 1.165, Apollo at Delphi explains to the Phocaeans the mysteries of Cyrnus, in 1.167, he tells the Agyllans that they have to propitiate the Phocaeans they had killed, and in 1.174 he explains to the Cnidians why they are unable to dig a trench separating their peninsula from the mainland. Other famous oracle locations too are mentioned in Book One, some of them reappearing later: Abae in Phocis (1.46), Dodona (1.46), Amphiaraus’ oracle near Thebes (1.46, 49, 52, 92), Trophonius’ at Lebadeia (1.46), the Milesian oracle at Branchidae (1.46, 92, 157–9), Ismenian Apollo’s oracle in Boeotia (1.52, 92), the oracle of Zeus Ammon at Siwa in Egypt (1.46), the oracles of Telmessus (1.78) and Patara (1.182) in Anatolia.39 38 Mikalson (2003: 194) comments: ‘we modern scholars cannot have, and can never remotely approximate, the breadth of experience Herodotus had as a participant in and observer of the religion of early classical Greece.’ See also Gould (1989: 67–80, 1994), T. Harrison (2000a), Mikalson (2002), and Scullion (2006). Hartog (1999) points to the congruence of sēmainein and historeein in the Croesus episode. Lachenaud (1978) most fully develops the ties between Herodotus’ religious views and his work as a historian; see also T. Harrison (2003). Romm (2006) gives a nuanced view of Herodotus’ mixture of scientific and religious explanation for what we would call natural phenomena. 39 Most of these, however, do not appear because of specific oracular responses attached to them but rather as part of a descriptive background, or because Croesus was said to have consulted them as well as Delphi (1.46). Most remarkable is the story

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Other manifestations of divine intent appear as well; the sheer bulk of them is impressive. In 1.19, Alyattes is struck by a sickness from the god, an omen that Delphi helpfully decodes; in 1.31, the mother of Cleobis and Biton prays for the greatest good to befall her pious sons, and they die in the temple itself; in 1.34, Croesus’ ominous dream foretells the death of his son, Atys; in 1.62, Amphilytus of Acarnania uses a theiē pompē to deliver a riddling oracle to Pisistratus, who then decodes it to gain a surprise military victory; in 1.78, the horses of Sardis eat a mysterious infestation of snakes, an omen that local diviners interpret too late to benefit Croesus; in 1.87, Croesus prays, and rain puts out his funeral pyre; in 1.105, as we have already noticed, the Scythians are struck with hermaphroditism after plundering the most venerable temple of Heavenly Aphrodite; in 1.107–8, Astyages has two dreams about his daughter Mandane that foretell the power of her unborn son. A relatively long interlude without many religious thōmata occurs in the first part of the Cyrus narrative, as he begins to conquer much of western Asia, but in 1.157–60 we find the episode of Pactyas, and the response of the oracle at Branchidae, that Apollo has given faulty advice in order that the Cymaeans would be destroyed in consequence; in 1.160 we are told that the Chians never again use grain for sacrificial purposes that comes from Atarneus, the territory Chios has gained for betraying Pactyas; in 1.168, Timesius is made a hero by the Teans; in 1.175, Herodotus first mentions the priestess of Pedasa who grows a beard in times of stress and has done so three times.40 Unpacking all the narrative implications of these oracles and portents would take us far afield from Herodotus’ use of myth in Book One. But we are obliged to note a crucial, if obvious, thread connecting them to Herodotus’ larger historiographical purposes: gods, especially the god at Delphi, may repeatedly interfere to complicate human actions and choices, but, in the many passages listed above, it is the human circumstances and consequences connected to the oracular or portentous intervention that interest Herodotus, and the pattern to which the oracles point is not one the humans themselves generally see until they look back, with the advantage of of Apollo’s oracle at Ptoüm, north of Thebes (8.135), and the amazement of Mardonius’ emissary, a Carian, when the oracle started speaking Carian to him. 40 Hornblower (2003: 38, 43) discusses the repetition of this detail in 8.104–6, where she has grown her beard only twice.

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hindsight. The etymology Herodotus gives for theoi in 2.52, that they ‘set’ the world in order (using thentes, the aorist participle of tithēmi), means that for him the divine, to theion, has an explanatory role in history roughly comparable to the role played in our modern sensibility by climate change, the stock market, or the progress of infectious diseases—forces that are very important, but hard to discern at the time of their working. Thōmata as presented in the Histories denote an aspect of the natural order in which human beings live but also mark the limits of human understanding of that order. When they play a part in the narrative, religious thōmata not only connect thematically to the world of ancient myth and legend discussed above, in Section 2; they also articulate a deep-seated explanatory framework within which the human decisions and actions of the narrated present occur, for Herodotus and undoubtedly for most of his contemporaries.41 It is Herodotus’ historiē that allows him, following the recipe laid out by Solon in 1.32.9, looking back after events, to see the aitiai, the causal patterns, that the signs from the gods had apparently hinted at beforehand. The final way that myth plays a role is more diffuse, since it has to do not with gods, whose powers inhere in thōmata and also pervade the world of myth and legend, but rather with the purely narrative aspects of traditional Greek mythic material. In Book One Herodotus presents individual actors thinking and speaking to others in ways echoing those of earlier folklore; moreover, the major plot lines of the narrative also contain patterns, traditional tropes, that any modern reader acquainted with the literature and thinking of archaic Greece finds deeply familiar.42 To those of us who want to emphasize Herodotus’ basic trustworthiness as a historian of ta genomena ex anthrōpōn, this is perhaps even more disconcerting an aspect of his narrative than is the pervasive appearance of religious thōmata. In the realm of speech and thought, a number of actors in Book One deliver themselves of gnomic mots, little sayings, improving speeches, and even parables similar to those found in wisdom literature— for instance, in the paroemiography that clusters around the seven sages (all but one of whom, incidentally, are mentioned in the 41 Thucydides is the interesting exception here. To the scholarship cited above, n. 38, add Fisher (2002); see also Gould (1999) on the importance of mythic storylines in Athenian tragedy. 42 See Gray (2002), Stadter (2004), and Griffiths (2006).

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narrative of Book One).43 In 1.27, Bias or Pittacus delivers advice that Croesus can hear, about the islanders buying horses, because it is delivered tactfully and obliquely, rather like the advice implicit in an Aesopean ainos (‘fable’). In 1.30–2, however, Solon is not similarly oblique and tactful. Although as a guest he is expected at least to begin with flattery of his host, he more or less harangues Croesus with several long stories and a free demonstration of his prowess in handling large numbers. (Perhaps one aspect of the Solon story is ironic: is Herodotus as a cultivated East Greek slyly mocking the customary but somewhat ponderous fifth-century Athenian deliberative mode of decision-making?) In making his long-winded, ungracious, and pedantic speech, Solon offends Croesus’ royal sense of propriety, but he also embodies one of the most famous traditional literary tropes in Herodotus, the warner whose excellent advice goes unheeded.44 In 1.59 Chilon (who, like Pittacus and Bias, is one of the traditional seven sages) forcefully tells the father-to-be of Pisistratus not to have a child—we may call this the ‘Laius motif’. In 1.71 Sandanis tries to remind Croesus of an already traditional motif, that of the savage outsider who conquers partly in order to get the goods of the insiders who live in luxury—a contrast between the overcivilized haves and the undercivilized have-nots that comes up in many other parts of the Histories as well.45 Cyrus, as befits his founding-father status among the Persians, is the author of a number of gnomic declarations and actions following from gnomic wisdom. In 1.125–6, he forces the Persians in effect to perform an ainos, experiencing a day of hard toil and then a day of pleasant feasting and, at the end, asking which they would choose; in 1.127, he tells Croesus a classic warrior’s warning, that he will appear before Croesus expects him; in 1.141, he tells the Ionians an entirely Aesopean fish story; in 1.153, he affects to despise people who have an agora in which they trade and lie to each other; and in 1.155–6, following Croesus’ advice, he unmans the Lydians by forcing them 43

For the importance of the ainos in early Greek thought, see Kurke (2011); for the close connection between myth and the ainos, see Gould (1999: 114–15) and discussion of Nagy’s argument (1990) by Hartog (1999: 186). See also below, n. 49. 44 For the tragic warner or wise adviser, see Bischoff (1932), Lattimore (1939), Saïd (2002: 122–3), and Gray (2002: 299–302). For the echoes of the historical Solon’s own advice found in Herodotus’ Solon, see Chiasson (1986). 45 Munson (2001: 49 n. 15) cites Hellmann (1934: 77–98), Cobet (1971: 172–6), and Flory (1987: 81–118).

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to embrace music and the arts (another instance of the overcivilized/ undercivilized trope). Others who speak and act in terms familiar from traditional legend and ainos are Nitocris, the queen of 1.187 who lectures Darius on his greed, choosing to open her tomb, and Tomyris the Massagetan queen in 1.212, who swears to drown Cyrus’ bloody-minded head in blood and then carries out her pledge. In 1.86–9, Croesus belatedly realizes the value of the traditional, gnomic advice Solon had given him, and tries, successfully at least for the moment, to hand it on to Cyrus. Here, however, we should observe an odd note that comes up repeatedly in the Croesus story: Croesus, once he has been removed from the pyre through the intervention of the god, also advises Cyrus to stop his soldiers’ looting by speciously professing an interest in pious religious donation (1.89). This reminds us of his (very unGreek) testing of the oracles earlier, and his (calculating and therefore less than heroic) advice to Cyrus later, to fight on the territory of the Massagetae rather than his own, since it would be more prudent— ‘the first thing you should appreciate is that human affairs are on a wheel, and that as the wheel turns around it does not permit the same people always to prosper’ (1.207). As the saying goes, as Cyrus’ adviser at this point, he’s got the words, but not the melody, of Solon’s earlier advice. Croesus also advises tricking the Massagetae with food and wine (mentioning in passing the overcivilized/undercivilized motif again, 1.207.6–7; cf. Cyaxares’ behaviour in 1.106). Cambyses in Book Three is right to be somewhat suspicious of the overall quality of Croesus’ thinking (3.36). Croesus is one of a number of individuals in Book One who also act, at least occasionally, as tricksters—in the Amerindian tradition, the ‘Coyote’ motif.46 Connected to Croesus’ gnomic speech is his largely unsuccessful but crafty behaviour, manipulating others’ cultural assumptions and religious sensibility (1.89, 207, 211). Most poignantly (and again, unheroically), he unmans his own people, the Lydians, in 1.155, by advising Cyrus to make them surrender their arms and become instead overfond of fine clothing, music, and retail trade. In all these passages, like Wile E. Coyote himself, Croesus

46 See, e.g., Hyde (1998), but perhaps Coyote’s many appearances on an Internet search engine best illustrates the polymorphous nature of his exploits.

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is good on figuring out short-term benefits but not sometimes the long-term consequences of his advice and actions.47 A number of individuals use tricks, the staple of oral folktale, very successfully. In 1.19–21, Periander and Thrasybulus trick Alyattes the Lydian by giving Miletus the appearance of prosperity under a lengthy siege; in 1.59–60, Pisistratus foists on the Athenians a couple of tricks, first pretending to be wounded and so receiving bodyguards with clubs, and then, after successfully decoding the meaning of Amphilytus’ oracle, perpetrating the trick with the tall woman Phya. We have already noticed the actions of Lichas the crafty Spartan, tricking the Tegeans into giving up the bones of Orestes (1.67–8). In 1.123, Harpagus uses a hare, apparently killed in hunting, to send a message to Cyrus; in 1.106, Cyaxares successfully uses on the Scythians the trick that will backfire when Cyrus and Croesus use it, of getting his undercivilized opponent drunk on good wine and food.48 In the more distant past of the early parts of Book One, many stories that have legendary or mythic overtones appear; one has only to read a survey of Herodotus’ use of Greek literary and especially tragic motifs to see how many traditional plot lines emerge as parts of his narrative.49 The account of Candaules’ formidable wife starts a theme that continues later in the Histories, that may go back ultimately to the Semitic mother goddess dimly visible behind the Ionian Greek versions of Heavenly Aphrodite, Artemis, and Athena—the goddess whose love can kill, as it did Adonis and many others, or whose epiphany can terrify, as it did poor Anchises. Arion’s miraculous rescue by the dolphin might have appeared originally as part of a dithyramb sung by Arion himself, but not necessarily about himself,50 47

For Croesus’ larger thought patterns, see Christ (1994) and Pelling (2006b). In the context of all this clever behaviour, it is hard not to read as Coyote-like trickery as well more prosaic clever actions, like that of Thales, in 1.74 predicting the eclipse, and in 1.75 getting Croesus’ army over the Halys by diverting the river. On the other hand, since this cleverness was very deeply embedded in Greek culture (Detienne and Vernant 1978), who is to say that real tricks did not often occur and were admired, and that their presence in, say, the Odysseus legend merely reinforced their very real cultural presence? 49 See above, nn. 42–4, and Boedeker (2002), Saïd (2002), Marincola (2006), and Griffin (2006), with their ample bibliographies. See Boedeker (2000) for discussion of Herodotus’ use of multiple genres in fashioning his own distinctive form of writing. 50 Harvey (2004: 299–300); the article contains as well a number of amusing and convincing dolphin riders, ancient and modern—sometimes myth is real. 48

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and in any case it recalls innumerable stories of righteous human beings saved from death by animals (we may think of Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6:19–23) or Aesop’s Androcles). Croesus as the ruler warned by a mysterious foreigner from Athens in 1.29–33 gains added piquancy for Herodotus’ Greek audience from the fact that the foreigner is himself Greek and declaiming traditional Greek wisdom, much of it familiar from the historical Solon’s poetry. The royal father’s attempt to avert a fated doom for his child creates the Atys/Adrastus story, with names in it that certainly resonate with those of the Atthis myth.51 As the narrative moves further east, Deioces’ seven coloured walls bear an astrological or folktale resonance, but no archaeological trace of them has been found in Hamadan (1.98);52 his gaining the Median throne through the pretence of fair-mindedness forms part of the tricky-tyrant motif also noted above for Pisistratus. Two Medes, Cyaxares (1.73) and Harpagus (1.119), are treated by their enemies to a Thyestian banquet. One could add many other themes, some of them historical with a mythic overlay, like the story (echoes of which are found also in the Bible (Dan. 5:30)), of Babylon as a city so large and magnificent that the royal feasting is still continuing as the city is suddenly taken over, by Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel but, more accurately, by Cyrus in Herodotus (1.191). Cyrus’ narrative is rich in mythic motifs, as is treated in detail by Chiasson;53 I will mention here only his miraculously saved infancy and the revelation of his ancestral heritage (like those of baby Krishna, Moses, or Harry Potter), as well as the motif of the daughter whose child, like Perseus in the Danae story, will harm the powerful evildoer when he grows up. Most importantly, both the story of Croesus and the story of Cyrus, as Herodotus constructs them, rely implicitly on the ‘thoughtless ruler’ theme developed at length in Books One and Nine of the Iliad: the carelessness with which King Agamemnon, trusting in the power of his status, uses bad judgement, thereby endangering his whole expedition to Troy.54

51

See above, n. 29. See Asheri (2007: 150). See Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8. 54 See also Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5, on the transgressive overconfidence shared by Paris and Croesus (who are forerunners to Xerxes). 52 53

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4. CONCLUSION What has this survey told us, then, about Herodotus’ use of mythic and legendary materials in Book One? Three areas of conclusion seem especially obvious at this point. First, Herodotus makes it clear that he constructs his narrative out of logoi he has gathered from many sources. Logoi, especially logoi from the distant past, make possible the narrative of Book One by giving explanatory background that makes sense to his Greek audiences. They organize family connections between Greeks and barbarians, and between barbarians and other barbarians, going many generations back. They adhere as part of the setting for many stories and their locations. Most importantly, they are used by the actors inside the narrative to explain things to others and to motivate their own actions. The fact that many of these logoi used by individuals in the narrative are in our terms from a past of myth and legend does not in itself vitiate their power or their reality as an important part of ta genomena ex anthrōpōn. Real people use logoi—mythic and otherwise—to understand their situations and then to act on their understanding, and Herodotus shows them doing so. Reflecting the fact that mythic logoi are deeply implicated in the Greeks’ sense of their own and others’ cultural identity, Herodotus has constructed a dense legendary and mythic framework comprised of the genealogies, the various forms of mythic background, and the religious thōmata, on which the main narrative itself floats. One of the functions of the Histories’ first book is to act as a methodological mise en abyme, in which the mythic logoi within the narrative allow Herodotus as narrator tacitly to reflect upon the power of traditional stories and mythic beliefs to shape actions taken by historical actors in the nearer past of concern to him, the world of the Persian Wars fought in his father’s generation. Secondly, the religious thōmata that pervade Book One establish from the very beginning of the narrative, in the mid-sixth century BCE, that the story of Persian aggression coming in Books Seven through Nine is itself part of a much larger moral and ideological, and in this sense mythic, pattern. By anchoring the very beginning of the story of Persian imperialism (Cyrus’ connection with Croesus the Lydian) in a Delphic explanatory structure, Herodotus foreshadows a narrative role for divine communication for the whole narrative that will manage to encompass a wide variety of subordinate plot lines but also stay focused on the articulation of a religious truth: unjustified

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aggression tends to lead, both in supernatural and entirely human terms, to catastrophic results.55 This leads, finally, into the third and most important point I want to make, again having to do with the connection of myth to ideology. By inserting the stories of Croesus the Lydian and Cyrus the Persian, two foreigners, in a dense web of Greek mythic and legendary motifs and patterns, Herodotus both provides an explanatory model for the collapse of Persian power in Greece three generations later (what I have called the ‘thoughtless ruler’ theme just above), and he allows each ruler, in his own relation to mythic/ideological thinking, to exemplify the power that narratives from the past, including mythic ones, have in creating such thoughtlessness. In different ways, both Croesus and Cyrus act out their own participation in this very old mythic pattern—I have referred above to Agamemnon of Mycenae but I could just as easily have referred back to Candaules at the beginning of Book One, to Ravana in the Ramayana, Tarquinius Superbus in Rome, King John in the Robin Hood saga, or, most recently, the forty-third American president, George W. Bush, performing on the US and international political scene. Belatedly, as Croesus starts to roast on his pyre (1.86), he realizes that he is in a story that Solon the Athenian once told; he now sees that the stories of Tellus and Cleobis and Biton he had earlier dismissed have a direct relevance to his own understanding of himself. When Croesus tells Solon’s logos to Cyrus, he seems thereby for the moment (though, as we have seen, not later) to release them both from the power of imperialist fantasies of omnipotence. The end of Croesus’ story is not a glorious one; we last see him as an ineffectual courtier dancing attendance on a mad king (3.36). Cyrus’ version of the ‘thoughtless-ruler’ theme is darker still: he is brilliantly successful for many years but then, as Herodotus says, whether because of the apparently miraculous nature of his birth or his remarkably good fortune in war (1.204), he buys into his own myth of invincibility, and takes on the hardy, uncivilized Massagetae and Tomyris the terrible, ending with his head stuffed in a bag filled with blood (1.214). Herodotus does not directly address the underlying question of whether a sovereign and imperial nation can learn, by thinking historically, to resist its infatuated leaders and their fantasies of 55 See Moles (2002) and Raaflaub (2002: 164–86) for Herodotus’ relevance to the problems of the Athenian empire.

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glamorous invincibility; Thucydides showed that this terrible myth continued to be operative in the Peloponnesian War and was responsible for many of the Athenians’ more imprudent decisions.56 It is not only a problem for ancient Greeks; a superficial perusal of any newspaper reminds us that it also remains in play for us, in the here and now. I think Herodotus would not in principle be sanguine. In the last book of the Histories, he makes an anonymous Persian before the Battle of Plataea, in tears, opine: An event which has been decreed by the god cannot be averted by man, for no one is willing to believe even those who tell the truth. A great many Persians are well aware of what I’ve just said, but we follow our leaders because we have no choice. There’s no more terrible pain a man can endure than to see clearly and be able to do nothing. (9.16)

This points to the true and truly terrible power of mythic thinking: as human beings acting out our erga and thus creating genomena ex anthrōpōn, we do not generally see our own myths for what they are until, like Croesus, we look back from an already burning pyre. 56

Rood (1998a: 246–8, 286–93).

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2 Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War Suzanne Saïd

The neat progression in Greek thinking from myth to reason assessed by Wilhelm Nestle in his influential book Vom Mythos zum Logos (1940) no longer represents the consensus, as the title of Richard Buxton’s edited volume of essays From Myth to Reason? (1999) demonstrates. There has consequently been a renewal of interest in the status of myth in ancient historiography1 and especially in Herodotus’ Histories.2 I will focus in this chapter on the allusions in the Histories to what we nowadays call the ‘myth’ of the Trojan War. First—engaging with questions that are at issue throughout this volume—I will attempt to define its status: where should it be placed on Herodotus’ scale of credibility, with muthoi undeserving of belief on the one end, and plain historical facts on the other? And does Herodotus, in this respect, differentiate between a spatium mythicum and a spatium historicum? Next, I will explore Herodotus’ strategies in demythologizing the stories of the Trojan War and offer a suggestion about the deeper purpose behind his rationalizing agenda. From there I will move to the role that excerpts of the Trojan War myth play in the rhetoric ascribed to his characters, especially in the context of 1

Wardman (1960), Piérart (1983), Saïd (2007). For the twenty-first century I mention Boedeker (2002), S. West (2002), Stadter (2004), Pallantza (2005: 124–74), Marincola (2006), Montanari (2006), and, more indirectly, Pelling (2006a) and Haubold (2007). Going back to the previous century, it is especially worth quoting Neville (1977), Nickau (1990), Vandiver (1991), and Nesselrath (1996). On Nestle (1940) and Buxton (1999), see also the Introduction, pp. 6–10. 2

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individual and collective propaganda. Finally, I will investigate Herodotus’ own rhetorical use of these mythical stories as an exemplum in a work that, in Herington’s words, ‘stands exactly at the frontier where two great literary eras meet: the era . . . [of] poetry and legend . . . and the era of prose, of history’.3 For, as in archaic poetry or Attic tragedy, the myth of Troy reverberates throughout the work and helps us to understand the more recent past (the Persian Wars) as well as the present (the Peloponnesian War).

1. THE HISTORICAL STATUS OF THE TROJAN WAR MYTH In the Histories, the stories of the Trojan Cycle are never qualified as muthoi.4 In fact, Herodotus never explicitly questions their historicity,5 as demonstrated, for instance, by his inclusion of the Trojan War in the comparison of Xerxes’ campaign with previous expeditions (7.20),6 the allusions to what happened after the fall of Troy (5.122.2, 7.91), and the visit paid by Xerxes to the site (7.43). Nor does he locate the Trojan events in a spatium mythicum that is essentially different from the spatium historicum. In this respect, I follow Cobet’s claim that, in the Histories, ‘[both] have been amalgamated into one continuous history’.7 For Herodotus, contrary to what has often been said,8 does not overtly separate the world of men from the world of heroes. When he calls Polycrates, as opposed to Minos, ‘the first within the so-called human generation’ (tēs de anthrōpēiēs legomenēs geneēs, 3.122.2), he carefully puts the expression ‘human generation’, which occurs only once in the Histories, into the equivalent of 3

Herington (1991a: 14). On Herodotus’ use of this term, see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 11–14. 5 Pohlenz (19612: 7 n. 2), Strasburger (1972: 16). 6 On this passage, see Bowie’s observation (this volume, Ch. 11, pp. 272–3) that the comparison points up the magnitude of Xerxes’ expedition, but also looks forward to its demise as most of these previous campaigns failed. 7 Cobet (2002: 390). 8 Most famously by Vidal-Naquet in his paper ‘Temps des dieux et temps des hommes’ (1960); see also Finley (1975a: 27), Hunter (1982: 86–7), Nesselrath (1996: 276–7), Montanari (2006: 40). For further discussion of the question of whether Herodotus distinguishes a spatium mythicum from a spatium historicum, see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 24–9. 4

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inverted commas (legomenēs), thus implying that he refuses to believe that such a generation should be distinguished from other ones.9 Herodotus does, however, distinguish the ancient past from more recent history. Although he considers the past in its entirety a continuum that stretches from the beginning of the conflict between Persia and Greece with Io, many generations before Heracles,10 to the capture of Sestos by the Athenians after the Persian defeat, what matters to him is the part about which accurate knowledge can be obtained, whether through reliable sources or through his own investigation11. Thus Herodotus decides that more recent history starts with Croesus, ‘the first of the barbarians we know of ’ (1.6.2)12 to have wronged and subjected the Greeks, and Polycrates, who was ‘the first of the Greeks we know of who planned to rule over the sea’ (3.122.2). These giants left their footprints in a past that preceded Herodotus by five generations, products of their reign were visible in Delphi and Samos, and their biographies were still vivid in the memories of Herodotus’ contemporaries. In the case of earlier events, however, it was much harder to find out how things really happened. For Herodotus as for Varro, in the words of von Leyden in the mid-twentieth century, ‘it is only the criterium of knowledge that determines a distinction between various periods’.13 Lack of accurate knowledge is the reason why Herodotus leaves aside the introductory tales of the rapes and counter-rapes by saying: ‘I’ll not go on to say that this happened thus or another way, for these stories cannot be verified’ (1.5.2). The same rationale explains why many allusions to the Trojan War story in his narrative are presented in oratio obliqua,14 like Helen’s abduction in the proem (1.3), or are otherwise qualified as belonging to the realm of ‘what is said’ rather than ‘what is known’. Thus he refers to the Trojan expedition as part of ta legomena (7.20.2), in contrast to the expedition of Darius against

9 See Nickau (1990: 96), E. Irwin (2007a: 214), and the Introduction to this volume, pp. 23–4. 10 Raubitschek (1989: 43). 11 Cf., in this volume, the Introduction, pp. 19–24, and, more extensively, Munson, Ch. 7, pp. 195–201. 12 The Greek says prōtos tōn hēmeis idmen (1.6.2). On the meaning of this expression, see Shimron (1973: passim). 13 Von Leyden (1949/50: 95). 14 For the more problematic example of the Helen in Egypt story as it is told in Herodotus’ second book, see, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4.

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the Scythians and the Scythian invasion of the land of the Medes that are mentioned in the same paragraph. Likewise, Herodotus is careful enough to cite a source when he alludes to the wrath of Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius (7.137.1), the Cretan help to Menelaus during the war (7.170), and the first kidnapping of Helen by Theseus (9.73.1).15 In spite of these distancing techniques in his presentation of events of the deep past, Herodotus does not shrink from using the Trojan War as a chronological landmark and dating it precisely. The invasion of Europe by the Mysians and the Teucrians happened ‘before the Trojan War’ (7.20), which took place two generations after Minos’ death (7.171). Herodotus is also able to locate the generation of the Trojan War ‘about eight hundred years before [his] time’ (2.145.4) and, once on firm ground thanks to the authority of his sources, is prepared to place it ‘in historical times vouched for by the record and memory of the Egyptian priests’16 and insert it in the sequence of Egyptian kings, after Pheros son of Sesotris and before Rhampsinitus, under the rule of ‘a man of Memphis whose name in Greek is Proteus’ (2.112.1). We conclude, then, that, for Herodotus, the stories of the Trojan Cycle were a firm part of the spatium historicum, though clearly belonging to a deep past of which accurate knowledge was often difficult to obtain.

2. HERODOTUS’ PROCESS OF RATIONALIZING In the light of their historical status, it is no surprise that Herodotus presents the stories of the Trojan War in a way that makes them credible. He thereby ‘draws’ these myths ‘into history’, as Stadter has nicely formulated it.17 He was neither the first historian to adopt this procedure nor would he be the last. One of the fragments of his predecessor Hecataeus demythologizes Cerberus, putting the mythical dog of Hades on a par with a poisonous snake.18 Similarly, his successor Ctesias changed the mythical Ethiopian king Memnon, son

15

For a complete list of Herodotus’ source-quotations, see Shrimpton (1997). Stadter (2004: 33). See also, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4. Stadter (2004: 33). 18 FGrH 1, F. 27. On the rationalism of Hecataeus, see Momigliano (1966a), Drews (1973: 16–17), Corcella (1984: 93), and S. West (2002: 4–8). 16 17

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of Eos and Tithonus, into a man (he is the son of Tithonus only), and presented him as a general dispatched by the Assyrian king to help Priam.19 Together with the Persian logioi and the Egyptian priests who regard as ‘silly’ the Greek version of the Trojan War (1.1; 2.118.1), Herodotus deletes the gods and the supernatural from the stories of the Trojan Cycle. His Helen, like most of the mythical heroes of the Histories,20 is no longer the daughter of a god, but of Tyndareus, a human father (2.112.2). His Alexander does not judge in a contest of beauty between three goddesses and is not swayed by Aphrodite’s promise of a marriage with Helen; he decides to get a wife from Greece ‘by kidnapping’ (1.3.1), because he has heard about the previous unpunished kidnappings of Io (1.1.4), Europa (1.2.1), and Medea (1.2.2). His Proteus is no longer a shape-changing god, but ‘a man from Memphis’ (2.112.1) who inherits the kingship of Egypt after Pheros.21 At Troy, Helen is not replaced by an eidōlon, as in the Palinode of Stesichorus. She simply was not there, and the Trojans told the truth to the Greek embassy that called for the return of Helen and the goods that were stolen from Menelaus’ palace (1.118.3). Similarly the names of fabulous leaders vanish from the story. Idomeneus and Meriones are replaced by the help of high quality given to Menelaus by anonymous Cretans (7.171.2).22 However, apart from treading in Hecataeus’ footsteps in ‘humanizing’ mythical heroes, Herodotus also used a second technique of rationalizing. This entailed subjecting the stories of the deep past to his critical arbitration (gnōmē) in arguing for his version of their historical reconstruction. Here, Herodotus seems to have been the first, and to have advanced beyond his predecessor’s framework. Doubtless the best example is his discussion of the Trojan War in the Egypt book (2.112–20). Although this passage has received ample 19

FGrH 1, F. 1b22. Sarpedon and Minos are ‘sons of Europa’ (1.173.2), Perseus is usually ‘son of Danae’ (2.91.2, 6.53.1–2), and Heracles ‘son of Alcmene’ (2.145.3) or ‘son of Amphitryon’ (2.43.2, 44.4, 146.1) or both (2.145.3). The only exception is 7.61, where Perseus is called ‘the son of Zeus and Danae’, but this occurs in a passage in which the name ‘Persian’ is derived from Perses, son of Perseus and Andromeda, and which presents the Persian view of their origin. Herodotus’ treatment of the Persians’ mythical origins is discussed by Vannicelli, this volume, Ch. 10. 21 See de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3. 22 7.171.2. In the proem (1.2.1), the Argonauts are in the same way replaced by anonymous Greeks. 20

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attention elsewhere,23 it is worth listing Herodotus’ methods of strengthening the historicity of his reconstruction: 1. He emphasizes the authority of his source. The Egyptian priests had first-hand information because they had asked Menelaus himself (2.118.1), an eyewitness of the war who ‘told the truth [tēn alētheiēn] of the matter’ (2.119.1). 2. He corroborates one source with another. The version of the Egyptian priests is strengthened by the testimony of Homer’s Iliad,24 from which, according to Herodotus’ far-fetched interpretation, we can derive the fact that Alexander on his journey from Sparta to Troy landed in Egypt (2.116). 3. He provides results of his personal observation in Egypt to corroborate the story that he has heard from the priests. Thus he points out a monument that figures in it, the sanctuary of Heracles at the Canobic Mouth of the Nile, which still in his own day functions as an asylum (2.113.2), and furthermore he refers to the precinct in Memphis of Proteus, the protagonist of the historical reconstruction that the priests offer him (2.112.1). 4. He combines this personal observation with deduction: because he has heard that Helen was staying with Proteus and does not know of any other sanctuary dedicated to the foreign Aphrodite in Egypt, he ‘conjectures’ (2.112.2, sumballomai) that this sanctuary must be consecrated to the Spartan woman. 5. He relies on the argument of verisimilitude, based on his experience of human nature and common-sense considerations: ‘If Helen had been in Ilium, she would have been returned to the Greeks with or without Alexander’s consent. For Priam and the rest of his family could not have been so insane [phrenoblabēs] as to choose to put themselves, their children and their city in danger just so that Alexander could live with Helen’ (2.120.2).

23

See Kannicht (1969: i. 41–8), A. B. Lloyd (1988b), Fehling (1989: 59–65), Pritchett (1993: 63–71), Graziosi (2002: 113–18), S. West (2002: 31–9), Stadter (2004: 33–5), Pallantza (2005: 152–9), Marincola (2006: 21–2), Pelling (2006a: 83), W. Allan (2008: 22–4), Grethlein (2010b: 151–8), and, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4. 24 Hom. Il. 6.289–92.

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3. THE STORIES OF TROY IN THE MOUTHS OF HERODOTUS’ CHARACTERS After demonstrating how the Trojan Cycle stories are presented by Herodotus not only as a part of the past, but also as a means of corroborating his authority as a historian, I now turn to the function they play in the rhetoric of his characters. Like historical events, myths were used as arguments by individuals or nations in order to strengthen territorial claims, hegemonic ambitions, or alliances.25 This practice is attested among orators already from the archaic period. Aristotle reminds us in his Rhetoric (1.15.13/ 1375b) that the Athenians relied on Homer to support their claim on Salamis. Plutarch in his Life of Solon (Sol.10)26 tells us how, during the Spartan arbitration, Solon read two lines from the Catalogue of Ships (2.557–8) about Ajax leading twelve ships from Salamis and stationing them where the Athenian forces were based, thus using Homer as a witness to the fact that the island had belonged to the Athenians from the beginning. But Plutarch also accuses the Athenian leader of interpolating the second—and decisive—line (an accusation echoed by the Homeric scholia27). When Herodotus ascribes to his characters arguments related to stories from the Trojan War—whether or not supported by paraphrases from Homer—they are always qualified by their context and never explicitly validated by Herodotus. The earliest instance in the Histories is ascribed to the Athenians. When the Athenians refuse to return Sigeum to the Mytileneans, they rely on their participation in the Trojan War and argue ‘that Aeolians had no more right to the land of Ilium than themselves or any other Greeks who had helped Menelaus avenge the abduction of Helen’ (5.94.2).28 The mere rhetorical force of this argument is highlighted by the subsequent narrative about Pisistratus, who took the place ‘by force of arms’ (5.95).

25

See Gehrke (1994: 255–6), Nicolai (2003: 82–3), Gotteland (2001: 299–350), and Bowie, this volume, Ch. 11, pp. 278–86, who distinguishes between a ‘protreptic’ and an ‘eristic’ use of mythical stories to persuade. 26 See also Str. 9.1.10, D.L. 1.48, and Schol. ad Il. 2.557–8. 27 Noussia (2006: 135). 28 See also Biraschi (1989: 25–42) and Pallantza (2005: 165–6).

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The Trojan War stories also play a significant role in the rhetoric of the Greek cities that compete for leadership during the Persian invasion. In these speeches, they are, in Pelling’s formulation, ‘annexed for local civic pride’.29 When the Greeks send an embassy to Syracuse to enlist the assistance of Gelon, and he promises to lend spectacular aid on the sole condition that he be made the supreme commander of the Greek forces against Persia, Spartans and Athenians cite their participation in the Trojan War to endorse their respective rights to leadership (7.157–163).30 In order to dismiss Gelon’s request, the Spartan Syagrus opens his response in Homeric phrasing:31 ‘Surely, Agamemnon, descendant of Pelops, would groan aloud [ē ke meg’ oimōxeie]’, he said, ‘if he heard that Spartiates had been robbed of their leadership by Gelon and the Syracusans’ (7.159), thus reminding his interlocutors that the Spartans, who have most of the Peloponnese under their control and have adopted Agamemnon and his son as their local heroes32, have been entitled to lead the Greek forces ever since the time of the Trojan expedition led by the ‘descendant of Pelops’. When Gelon lowers his tone and proposes that he command the fleet only, the Athenian ambassador rebukes him, using at the end of his speech Homer’s testimony to the ability of the Athenian commander Menestheus: ‘Even the epic poet Homer declared that at Ilium there was no one better at deploying and arraying troops than an Athenian’ (7.161.3). Once more, Athenian argumentation relies on the Catalogue of Ships.33 It is preceded, however, by a more realistic explanation (the Athenians have the largest fleet), and by an assertion of the Athenians’ pre-eminent status as ‘the most ancient race, the only ones among Greeks to have never emigrated’ (7.161.3). It should nonetheless be noted that the Athenians manipulate the meaning of the Homeric text, as they tactfully omit a reference to Nestor, who is named in the Catalogue as the only one who could challenge Menestheus in arranging the troops, since he was by far the older (Il. 2.555).

29

Pelling (2006a: 91 n. 42). See Pallantza (2005: 160–3) and Grethlein (2006), and cf. Bowie’s views on this passage, this volume, Ch. 11, pp. 281–2. 31 See Pelling (2006a: 90). 32 Griffiths (1976: 23–4). 33 Cf. Aeschin. 3.183–5 and Plut. Cim. 7.4–6. See also Biraschi (1989: 61). 30

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The Athenians again mention their role in the Trojan War in their dispute with the Tegeans over the leadership of the left wing at the battle of Plataea (9.26–27).34 In this debate, both sides ‘produced their achievements in the recent and the distant past’ (9.26.1) to support their case. Here as well, the Athenian allusion to their contribution to the Trojan War comes last (9.27.4), after references to the support given to the Heraclidae who marched against Thebes, to the recovery of the bodies of the Seven who marched against Thebes, and to the campaign against the Amazons (9.27.2–4). This time, however, these mythical tales of exploits are triggered by the Tegean appeal to their king’s successes in killing the leader of the Heraclidae (9.27.1). The Athenians themselves consider these arguments perfunctory. In the conclusion to their speech, after pointing to their recent victory at Marathon, they explicitly diminish the argumentative value of the deep past in a typically Herodotean manner: ‘But what is the point in mentioning these episodes? The same men who were brave in those days might be relatively useless now and those who were then worthless may be good at present. So that’s enough ancient history’ (9.27.4). The echo between this conclusion and the famous sentence at the end of Herodotus’ proem—‘For what was before big has mostly become small, and what was big in my time was earlier small’ (1.5.4)35—is unmistakable. The Persians, too, use the Trojan War stories for propagandistic purposes.36 In this case, however, Herodotus responds more explicitly himself. In the proem the logioi of the Persians—‘the Persians most familiar with their own history and traditions’, in S. West’s formulation37—argue that the Trojan War has made the Greeks ‘greatly responsible’ for the hostilities between Greeks and barbarians, so turning the Greeks into the first aggressors (1.4.1–3). This intrusion into what the Persians consider their own realm (1.4.4) validates Xerxes’ invasion and the Persians’ transgression of the limit separating Asia from Europe. 34

Pallantza (2005: 152, 168–9). See Corcella (1984: 191–3), Lachenaud (2003: 241), Masaracchia (1978: ad loc.), Flower and Marincola (2002: ad loc), and Bowie’s observations in this volume, Ch. 11, pp. 282–4. 36 See Bornitz (1968: 164–92), Corcella (1984: 109 n. 170), Georges (1994: 60–2), S. West (2002: 9–11), Pallantza (2005: 151), and Haubold (2007). 37 S. West (2002: 9). For the proem of the Histories, see also Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, }1. 35

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In the same way, Xerxes’ visit to the site of Troy, where he sacrificed a thousand cattle to Athena of Ilium and the Magi poured libations to the dead heroes (7.43) can, in Haubold’s words, be seen as ‘a carefully planned piece of propaganda designed to cast the king as the champion of Troy’ and the avenger of Priam.38 Finally, an analogous distortion of the beginning of the Trojan War surfaces at the end of the Histories, when Herodotus relates the fate of the Persian governor Artayctes, who wanted to plunder the sanctuary of Protesilaus, the first Achaean to die in the Trojan War, and deceived Xerxes by describing the sanctuary as ‘the house of a Greek man who attacked [Xerxes’] territory and got his just reward by dying there’ (9.116.3). Here as well, Persian plunder is justified as retaliation for an alleged wrong against Asia, which, according to the Persians, ‘belongs to them and to whoever is their king at the time’ (9.116.3). Whereas Herodotus is usually silent himself when Greeks use the Trojan stories for propagandistic purposes, he raises a critical voice when the Persians do so. Thus he refuses to side with the version put forward by the Persian logioi or its correction by the Phoenicians: ‘I am not going to come down in favour of this or that account of events’ (1.5.3), and later on, in concurring with the version of the Egyptian priests in Book Two, he accepts the guilt of the Trojans (2.113.3, 114.1–3, 115.4–5, 120.5), thereby rejecting from hindsight the version of the Persian logioi that he presented in the proem. Finally, in Book Seven, in assessing the magnitude of Xerxes’ army in comparison with former expeditions, Herodotus asserts that the people of Asia and not the Greeks were the first to transgress the natural boundary between Europe and Asia. Again opposing the claim of the Persian logioi, who held the Greek expedition against Troy to be the first transgression (1.4.1), he writes that, ‘before the Trojan War, the army the Mysians and the Teucrians raised, with which they crossed the Bosporus, invaded Europe, conquered the whole of Thrace, reached the coast of the Ionian Sea, and marched as far south as the River Peneius’ (7.20).39

38

Haubold (2007: 55); cf. Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, n. 26 with text. Cf. Munson’s discussion, Ch. 7, pp. 208–11, of the way in which the Cretans, at least according to Herodotus, refer to an oracle about their mythic past, the death of Minos, and their participation in the Trojan War, to legitimize their absence from the war against Xerxes. 39

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4. THE TROJAN WAR AS PARADIGM Herodotus’ corrections to the rhetoric of his characters, as well as his turning to the more recent past to account for historical events, may give the impression that he wanted to discard from his explanatory model altogether the remote Trojan War. But this is not the case. On the contrary, he employs the story, in a fashion typical of contemporary Greek art and literature, as a means of deepening his audience’s understanding of the more contemporary events that are the subject of the Histories.40 As Immerwahr said, in Herodotus’ time myths were seen as ‘symbols expressing certain truths’,41 which thus contributed to the understanding of the present. Fifth-century tragedy was conventionally set in mythical times, and Pindar’s victory songs closely linked contemporary achievements to the most ancient past. The epigrams on the three Herms dedicated by Cimon after defeating the Persians at Eion42 mentioned, in the context of Athenian victory, the mythical Menestheus who led the Athenian troops at Troy. Simonides’ Plataea Elegy opened with an evocation of Achilles and linked the Greek victory over the Persians with the fall of Troy.43 And, thanks to Pausanias’ description of the Stoa Poikilē,44 we know that its paintings represented contemporary and mythical battles side by side: on the one hand, the Athenians who fought at Marathon against the Persians and at Oenoe against the Lacedaemonians, on the other, an Amazonomachy and the sack of Troy. It was for an audience trained to recognize mythical exempla and to look for parallels between these and modern experience that Herodotus wrote his work.45 To quote

40

See also, in this volume, Gray’s analysis (Ch. 6) of the Melampus story and Baragwanath’s (Ch. 12) of the Trojan and Theseus myths in Book Nine, where myth is used in a similar way to deepen and even complicate the understanding of recent events. 41 Immerwahr (1956: 242). 42 Aeschin. 3.183–5 and Plut. Cim. 7.4–6. See Biraschi (1989: 61). 43 See Boedeker (1998b) and E. L. Bowie (2001: 54–8). 44 Paus. 1.15.1–4. 45 Ancient critics already emphasized the similarities between Herodotus and Homer (see Boedeker 2002: 97–8) and modern scholars, from Strasburger (1972) to Pelling (2006a: 77 n. 5), have followed their lead. Herington (1991a: 11) has also drawn attention to ‘the profound similarity’ between Pindar and Herodotus and ‘the attitude they share toward the stories handed down from a distant past and their application to the interpretation of the present’.

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Stadter: ‘[Herodotus’] stories of the past resemble the myths of the tragedians. Both were meant to provoke thinking about current circumstances.’46 At various points in the Histories we find reverberations of the stories of the Trojan Cycle, and each time they add meaning to the historical events. In the history of Sparta that is part of Book Six, Helen is indirectly involved in a series of events that obey a pattern that resembles her own mythical fate: a kidnapping followed by a fight, ultimately ending in punishment.47 In her sanctuary of Therapnae, Helen changed an ugly child into the most beautiful woman in Sparta (6.61.3). Like Helen, this woman, once married, inspired the love (erōs, 6.62.1) of someone else, the king of Sparta, Ariston, who was the best friend of her husband (6.62.1). This king, like Alexander, managed to gain what did not belong to him by a trick. In the next generation, the son born from this marriage, Demaratus, deliberately robbed Leotychides of his marriage by ‘kidnapping’ (harpasas, 6.65.2) the woman to whom he was betrothed and making her his wife instead. As a result Leotychides became the bitter enemy of Demaratus, and, together with Cleomenes, plotted his downfall and exile. Ultimately, however, Leotychides paid for what he did to Demaratus (tisin toiēnde tina Dēmarētōi exeteise, 6.72.1). Thus, thanks to his allusion to Helen, Herodotus sets another sample of a ‘kidnapping’ story against the backdrop of a mythical counterpart and thus allows us to recognize a universal pattern in human behaviour. Two allusions to the Trojan War in the course of Book Seven function in a similar way. The story of the wrath of Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius (7.133–137)48 links a minor character of the Trojan War myth to both the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars. Owing to the brutal murder of Darius’ heralds, the wrath of Talthybius fell upon the Spartans, who could not receive favourable omens from any of their sacrifices (7.134.3). Thanks to the Spartan duo Sperthias and Boulis, who volunteered to offer their lives to Xerxes in atonement for Darius’ envoys, the curse was dormant for some time. But ‘it awoke much later . . . many years after Xerxes’ expedition’ (7.137.1–3) and 46

Stadter (1992: 783). See Boedeker (1987: 188–90), Vandiver (1991: 102–7), and Pallantza (2005: 171–2). 48 See Cobet (1971: 72–4), Biraschi (1989: 119–20), and Boedeker (2002: 114–15). 47

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fell upon their sons in the early years of the Peloponnesian War, ‘a clear case of divinity in action’ (7.137.1; cf. 137.2) according to Herodotus himself. Second, Herodotus describes how the wrath of Minos prevented the Cretans from joining the league against Persia (7.169–170).49 Two generations before the Trojan War, the Cretans fail to retaliate the murder of Minos in Sicily (after launching a major military strike against Sicily ‘at the god’s urging’ and besieging the city of Camicus during five years, the Cretans had to set off back home). This failure is contrasted with the highly effective help they gave later to Menelaus’ revenge (7.171.1). When they returned from Troy, however, they themselves and their domestic animals were stricken with starvation and disease, a consequence of Minos’ anger at their participation in the Trojan War and the help given to those who did not join them in avenging his own death, as the Pythia would reveal (7.169.2). Here, then, a reverberation in the recent past of an element from the Trojan War myth shows the operation of a universal law of justice according to which one must pay back the debt that is due. In Book Nine, the kidnapping of Helen by Theseus becomes again the cause of a war that, in the long run, reverberates into later events. The whole story is a typical digression, loosely attached to the narrative of the battle of Plataea, because the Athenian who was particularly noted for his courage was from the deme of Decelea (9.73.1). Because the people of Decelea (or their eponymous hero Decelus) showed the Spartan heroes Castor and Pollux the way to Aphidna, where their sister Helen had been hidden by Theseus, they were granted by the Spartans ateleiē (exemption of taxes) and proedriē (seats of honour), a reward that remains in existence to the time of Herodotus (9.73.3), and they were excluded, later on, from the annual Spartan ravaging of Attica during the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.50 So, this prospective allusion connects the most ancient past not only to the Persian Wars, but also to the contemporary war, demonstrating the law of reciprocal action and illustrating the longterm fulfilment of a debt of gratitude. The story of Artayctes, the Persian governor of Sestos, can serve as a last example. In spite of his attempt to offer ample compensation for 49

See Cobet (1971: 50–6) and Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, pp. 208–11. See Biraschi (1989: 43–85), Vandiver (1991: 68–73), and Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, pp. 289–93. 50

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his crimes, Artyactes was nailed alive to a plank of wood ‘because he had women brought to him in the sanctuary of Protesilaus in Elaeus, on the northern shore of the Hellespont, and committed sacrilege with them’ (7.33).51 This story is reminiscent of the Trojan War verbally as well as thematically. Protesilaus ‘was killed by a Trojan, as he jumped from his ship, by far the first of the Achaeans’ (Hom. Il. 2.701–2). This allusion enables us to interpret the adjacent description of the siege of Sestos against the backdrop of the Achaean siege of Troy, as Boedeker has argued.52 Furthermore, in a geographical sense, the town of Sestos exactly frames the invasion of Xerxes. It is mentioned at 7.33 in connection with the building of the bridges, and it is besieged and taken after Xerxes’ defeat (9.116–120), before the departure of the Athenians to Greece with ‘the cables from the bridges, which they intended to dedicate in their sanctuaries’ (9.121). As Artayctes himself interprets it, his punishment is the rightful revenge of Protesilaus upon the man who plundered and polluted his ‘house’ (9.166.3), a violation that reproduced on a small scale the crimes of Xerxes, who ‘burnt the houses and the statues of the gods and the heroes’ (8.143.2). As Herodotus says, ‘though dead and mummified, he [Protesilaus] was granted by the gods the power to punish a criminal’ (9.120.2). As Boedeker observes, the retaliation also ‘suggests a broader justice directed against the entire armada, which, like Artayctes, has entered into forbidden territory’.53 Are we supposed, with Gray, to justify the Greek refusal of the large reimbursement offered by Artayctes by the fact that some crimes do not allow compensation?54 In this respect, she compares the frightful punishment of the Persian governor with the fall of Troy, as Herodotus explains it at the end of the Helen story in Book Two: this was because the gods were arranging things so that in their annihilation the Trojans might make it completely clear to others that the severity of a crime is matched by the severity of the ensuing punishment at the gods’ hands. (2.120.5)

51

For Protesilaus and the closure of the Histories, see Boedeker (1988), Herington (1991b), Dewald (1997), and, in this volume, Munson, Ch. 7, pp. 199–200, and Bowie, Ch. 11, pp. 273–4. 52 See Boedeker (1988: 34). 53 Boedeker (1988: 45). 54 Gray (2002: 313).

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I prefer the views however, of Moles and Pelling,55 who are struck by the barbarous character of the punishment of Artayctes and his son (who was stoned to death before his father’s eyes: 9.120.4), and conclude that the wheel is now turning. The Histories does not, then, end with a perfect closure, but with the beginning of a new cycle of transgression, this time initiated by the Athenians. Once more the Helen story in Book Two provides an interesting parallel. Although the Egyptians had looked after Menelaus magnificently, and returned Helen to him unhurt along with all the stolen property, upon his departure he treated them unjustly (egeneto Meneleōs anēr adikos es Aiguptious, 2.119.2), slaughtering two children in an attempt to pacify the winds, and thus resorting to the solution that had worked so well at Aulis: human sacrifice (an obvious departure from Book Four of the Odyssey, which alludes only to ‘perfect hecatombs’56). This barbarous behaviour57 sets in motion a new process of retaliation. The narrative of the Egyptian priests ends with Menelaus ‘fleeing to Libya with his ships, hated and pursued by the Egyptians’ (2.119.3), in contrast to the Odyssey, where Menelaus was able to ‘put an end to the anger of the gods who gave him a fair wind and sent him swiftly [ōka] back to his native land’ (4.585–6). In respect to this unhappy conclusion, I would suggest that the process of guilt and counter-guilt did not end with the defeat of Xerxes and the fall of Sestos, but continued with the Athenian imperialist initiatives in 479 BCE, which could be seen as the first stage of new aggression against Asia. In the light of the above four stories, each of which is in a certain way connected to, and enlightened by, events in the context of the Trojan War, it is worth taking a second, closer look at the introductory stories of rapes and counter-rapes that Herodotus seemed to dismiss on the grounds of absence of accurate knowledge. As opposed to those who consider these chapters ‘sophistische Spielerei’,58 ‘a false start’,59 ‘a parody of previous treatments of the causes of the Persian Wars’60 or, more precisely, ‘a parody of the type of history purveyed 55

Moles (1996: 276–7) and Pelling (2006a: 98–100). Hom. Od. 4.352, 478, 582. 57 In the Histories, human sacrifice is ascribed to the Taurians (4.103) and the Persians (1.119, 7.33, 114, 180). 58 Dornseiff (1933: 87). 59 Lateiner (1989: 38), Pellicia (1992: 76). 60 Drews (1973: 89). 56

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by Hecataeus’,61 a ‘divertimento’ and a ‘criticism of pseudo-epic causality’,62 I agree with Moles and Cobet, who conclude, respectively, that ‘this section has serious undertones’63 and that it ‘represents in principle for Herodotus an acceptable approach to discourse about causation in war’.64 The connected stories about the rapes and counter-rapes of women illustrate violations of the fundamental rule ‘to each his own’ (cf. 1.8.4, skopeein tina ta heōuto) and highlight the principle of reciprocity.65 As such, they introduce three major themes of the Histories: 1. harpagē, which means ‘kidnapping’, but also ‘theft’ and ‘plunder’;66 2. women who ‘play a salient role in the historical world as Herodotus portrays it’,67 especially as objects of lust, as demonstrated by the two stories that frame the entire narrative, the erōs of Candaules for his wife at the beginning (1.8.1) and the erōs of Xerxes, first for the wife (9.108.1) and next for the daughter of his brother Masistes (9.108.2) at the end;68 3. transgression of natural boundaries; in the Histories, the crossing of the Hellespont, the boundary of Europe and Asia, will be a major indicator of aggression.69 Furthermore, Herodotus creates a meaningful pattern of retaliation by combining these four legendary kidnappings to illustrate a process of reciprocal transgressions and revenges, one that reappears in the short historical abstract of 7.20. For the purpose of the survey of former wars is not only to emphasize the magnitude of Xerxes’ expedition, which was ‘by far the largest of all we know’ (7.20.2). Like the proem (1.1–5), it is also used to show the alternation of reciprocal transgressions from Asia to Europe and vice versa from the recent to the most ancient past, and to illustrate a pattern of revenge. The first pair reproduces the pattern Io/Europa that goes from Europe to Asia and back, with Darius’ expedition against the Scythians 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Thomas (2000: 268). Węcowski (2004: 151–2). Moles (1993: 96). Cobet (1986: 4). S. West (2002: 11). See Powell’s Lexicon (19602) and de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 133–4. Lateiner (1985: 93); cf. Blok (2002: 225). Erbse (1956a: 220), Wolff (1964), Immerwahr (1966: 43), and Lateiner (1985: 97). Lateiner (1985: 91, 1989: 126–44), Stadter (1992: 785–95).

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serving as vengeance for the Scythian invasion of the land of the Medes. The second pair duplicates the first with the Trojan War and the army the Mysians and the Teucrians (that is, Trojans) previously raised to cross the Bosporus and invade Europe, conquering the whole of Thrace and marching as far as the river Peneius (7.20.2). It also corrects the proem by demonstrating that the Trojan War was the sequel to a former expedition launched by the people of Asia against Europe. Let us now go back to the prologue and take a closer look at its four mythical stories. They reveal a ‘rudimentary evolution’, a point that (to the best of my knowledge) has been made only by Cobet.70 If one leaves aside all the picturesque details, the succession between the first and second kidnapping is purely mechanical: an unjust abduction from Europe of a ‘king’s daughter’, Io, by Phoenicians who became ‘guilty’ (aitious, 1.1.1) disrupts a balance and is repaid by the abduction by the Greeks of another ‘king’s daughter’, Europa, this time from Asia. Thus the balance is restored, ‘equal for equal’ (1.2.1). The second series moves in the opposite direction. This time, the Greeks are the first to become ‘guilty’ (aitious, 1.2.1) by abducting another ‘king’s daughter’, Medea, from Asia to Europe. But this abduction is not immediately followed by another abduction. It becomes the beginning of a legal process: the king of Colchis sends a herald to Greece asking for a just punishment for the abduction and reclaiming his daughter (1.2.3). The Greeks refuse by stressing that ‘they [the Asians] did not justly compensate for the abduction of Io either’ (1.2.3). Thus the past is not only a cause, it becomes a justification a posteriori. With the last abduction of Helen, it becomes a motivation: if Paris wants to fetch a Greek wife ‘by abduction’ (1.3.1), it is because he has heard what happened in the past and knows for sure that he will not have to pay for it (1.3.1). Initially he seems to be right: the Greeks react like the king of Colchis and decide first to send messengers, asking for compensation and reclaiming Helen (1.3.2). The answer they receive, which points out the contradictions of such behaviour (1.3.2), duplicates word for word the one given earlier by the Greeks to the king of Colchis.

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Cobet (1986: 5–6).

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As Herodotus makes his Persian logioi point out, ‘until this moment there were only abductions’ (1.4.1). Next, the violence rises to a new level and the Greeks become highly guilty by retaliating no longer with abduction, but with a military expedition. But between the two there is only a change of scale (in Greek both are called harpagē).71 Moreover, the verb oikēiountai used by the Persians to support the claims they lay on Asia and its people (tēn gar Asiēn kai ta enoikeonta ethnea barbara oikēiountai hoi Persai, 1.4.4) metaphorically assimilates this land to a ‘house’ (oikos) and is elsewhere72 used for claiming kinship. It reinforces the suggestion that ‘empire will be for the nation what rape is to the individual, the lust that leads to violence’.73 The introductory chapters in this sense form a nice backdrop to the introduction of the first man whom Herodotus claims he knows has wronged the Greeks, Croesus, who was the first to subject and reduce to tributary status the Ionians (1.6.2). This permanent and regulated plundering represents the last stage of the evolution leading from individual kidnapping to pillage and imperialism. For this first fullyfledged empire is to be followed by others that attempted more or less successfully to ‘subjugate’ other peoples.74 Before leaving the proem, I would like to point out one more link between the mythical stories and the historical events reported by Herodotus. Criticizing the Greeks, who waged a war for the sake of a woman, the Persians claim ‘that it is stupid to make a fuss and to seek revenge for women who have been abducted’; the sensible course, they say, is to pay no attention to it, because it is obvious that the women must have agreed, or else it could never have happened (dēla gar dē hoti, ei mē autai eboulonto, ouk an hērpazonto, 1.4.2). This last sentence is generally interpreted as a kind of aside and an echo of typical Greek negative assumptions about women. As a matter of fact, its truth is immediately demonstrated by the Phoenician version of 71 Cf. 1.6.3: the expedition of the Cimmerians against Ionia, which is mentioned immediately after, is ‘plunder following a raid’ (ex epidromēs harpagē). 72 3.2.1, 4.148.1. 73 Ayo (1984: 36). 74 katastrephesthai: Persians (1.73, 75, 130, 141, 171, 174, 3.88, 97, 4.18, 144, 5.2, 6.6, 44, 7.7, 8, 9, 51, 209, 8.102.2, 9.2.1, 3), Egyptians (2.102.2, 103.1, 107.1, 108.1, 110.2, 182.2), Scythians (7.20.2), Mysians and Teucrians (7.20.2), Pelops the Phrygian (7.11.4), Greeks such as Minos (1.171.2), Pisistratus (1.64.2), the Spartans (1.68.6), the Athenians (5.89.2) and the Thessalians (1.176.4).

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the story of Io, who is said to have eloped ‘willingly’ (ethelontēn, 1.5.2). But it may also imply that ‘aggression and domination depend in a fundamental way upon the attitude and resolution of the oppressed’,75 which, as Stadter has demonstrated, runs as ‘a leitmotif . . . through the work’,76 particularly in relation to the Ionians, who had no desire to be free (3.143.2). To support this interpretation, one may rely on passages that assimilate men lacking in courage to women, such as the advice given by Croesus to Cyrus (1.155.4), the commentary of Xerxes after the feat of Artemisia (8.88.3), and the description of the monument erected by Sesostris to celebrate his campaigns on the Red Sea coast (2.102.5). Whereas the brave who forcefully fought for freedom were inscribed with their name, the Pharaoh added to the name of those who surrendered easily without a struggle a picture of women’s genitals, to indicate that these men lacked courage.

5. CONCLUSION Although a lack of accurate knowledge dissuaded Herodotus from incorporating the ‘myth’ of the Trojan War into his explanatory model of the Greco-Persian Wars, he used it as an argument in the speeches of his characters and awarded it a paradigmatic position in his own narrative, where it serves as a backdrop to deepen the understanding of the cycle of history and to highlight universal laws. This complex role of Greece’s most crucial myth anchors the ‘most Homeric’77 historian somewhere between epic tradition and fifth-century rationalism. 75

Stadter (1992: 806).

76

Stadter (1992: 803).

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Longin. 13.2.

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3 Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry, and Storytelling Mathieu de Bakker

1. INTRODUCTION Herodotus’ story of the Egyptian kings has aroused frustration among recent students of Histories Book Two, which has often culminated in negative verdicts on its historical value. Consider, for instance, that expressed by Waters: ‘Herodotos’ account of Egyptian history is partial, chronologically preposterous and of little value, save for the most recent period.’1 Certainly, for any researcher keen on reproducing the historical DNA of Egypt’s earlier dynasties, the source material presents tantalizing problems. These arise mostly from the absence of a continuous chronological narrative, especially when Herodotus deals with the early kings.2 Is scholarly venom justified, however, and does their so-called anecdotal nature make these royal biographies ‘of little value’? Aside from their possible historical value, I doubt we would like to miss out on these stories as stories. Nitocris’ revenge upon the killers I thank Emily Baragwanath for significant improvements to the English of an earlier version of this chapter and adding numerous valuable observations on its content, from which it has benefited greatly. 1 K. H. Waters (1985: 52). In particular, the chapters that precede the Saite dynasty (2.99–142) are heavily criticized as historically inaccurate. See Drews (1973: 56, with helpful references to earlier, mostly German, scholarship, and 170 n. 28). 2 For a nuanced, thorough, and well-documented discussion of the historical value of these chapters, see A. B. Lloyd (1988b: ad 2.99–192 and ad 2.99–142).

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of her brother by diverting the Nile through an underground ballroom (2.100.2–3), Rhampsinitus’ fruitless attempts to catch the thief of his treasury (2.121), Mycerinus’ volunteering for nights without sleep so as to make his life twice as long (2.133), the oracle given to Pheros that he could cure his blindness by applying the urine of a woman faithful to her husband, and his subsequent discovery of large-scale adultery, perpetrated even by his own wife (2.111): Herodotus displays his narrative artistry and provides exciting scripts, leaving them behind for producers to turn into tragic or comic screenplays. But the stories of the Egyptian kings are not there only for entertainment’s sake. They contain themes and motifs that we find throughout the Histories, such as revenge, divination, medicine, sophistry, royal inquisitiveness, and arrogance, each of them treated with an Egyptian twist, but nonetheless an essential part of Herodotus’ master plan to broaden the horizon of his Greek audience by anchoring the events of their past in a wider historical and geographical context.3 In this chapter I hope to qualify Waters’ searing judgement and argue for a better understanding of the problems Herodotus encountered in his Egypt book, and the methods and originality by which he solved them. I will focus upon the biography of King Proteus, the fifth Egyptian king that Herodotus includes in his account (2.112–20).4 This passage is part of Herodotus’ master plan in that it contains a moral lesson, but we can also interpret it as an enactment of an enquiry that serves as a methodological exemplum, bolstered rather than weakened by its setting in the Greek mythical past, which was well equipped to supply a powerful meta-historical image in the figure of Proteus.

3

Thus aiming, of course, to generate greater understanding and respect of Greek values as well. In this context it is worth quoting A. B. Lloyd (2002: 426): ‘Thus it is that, underpinning the account of Egyptian history and explaining it, we find a Greek moral universe. Egyptian history is used to illustrate and confirm fundamental Greek perceptions of the way the world works . . . ’. Cf. Haziza (2009), who has studied the stories in the Egypt book in the context of the different Greek and non-Greek mentalities that account for them. 4 See below, n. 46, for an overview of the kings mentioned in 2.99–142.

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2. PROTEUS REVISED Herodotus’ chapters on Proteus are most famous for their inclusion of an alternative version of the Helen myth, in which the abducted queen stays in Egypt with Proteus without sailing to Troy with Alexander, not even as a phantom.5 Herodotus thus positions himself in an ongoing debate about the responsibility of Helen and her whereabouts during the Trojan War. Accordingly, most scholarship on this passage deals with the relationship of his version to the Iliad and Odyssey, the fragments of the Cypria, the Palinode of Stesichorus, Hecataeus’ fragments, Euripides’ tragedies, and Gorgias’ Apology.6 It is probably the attractiveness of the Helen figure that has diverted attention from other aspects of this passage. In this volume de Jong pays attention instead to Herodotus’ narrative, revealing that it is full of his fingerprints and so serves to authenticate his version of the course of events in the Trojan War. In focusing upon Proteus, the protagonist of Herodotus’ version,7 my contribution moves even further away from Helen and the scholarly convention. From Homer’s Odyssey, we know Proteus as ‘the Old Man of the Sea’, endowed with immortality and prophetic gifts, able to change 5 For the story of Helen in Egypt, see also, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, de Jong, Ch. 4, and Vandiver, Ch. 5. 6 Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1913: 241 n. 1) has already pointed out the speculative nature of this debate, referring to Diels (1887), who hints at Hecataeus as the most likely source for Herodotus. He was followed by Dornseiff (1933: 86–7), Erbse (1955: 113), and Kaiser (1967: 95 n. 8, 115–16). The debate was given new impetus in 1963, when Page published an anonymous commentary on Greek lyric poets that was found on papyrus (P. Oxy. 2506). It contained a note (fr. 26.1) that shed new light on Stesichorus’ Palinode, informing us that his Helen did in fact travel to Egypt. The fragment of the poem had previously been thought to suggest that Stesichorus’ Helen stayed in Sparta (see, e.g., Erbse 1955: 114 n. 48, Ghali-Kahil 1955: 288–9, Herter 1957: 951–3, but also von Fritz 1967: 165, who apparently overlooked Page’s work). Most scholars have since assumed that Stesichorus was Herodotus’ ultimate source for Helen’s stay in Egypt (Dale 1967: p. xix, Kannicht 1969: 41, and M. L. West 1975: 4 n. 2, Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth 1988: ad 4.228, and Burian 2007: 7); though Page himself (1962: ad loc.) warns against this argument from silence, observing that Herodotus does not mention Stesichorus’ poem, which would have provided him with a powerful argument in favour of his own version. Strong doubts about the content of the papyrus itself have been raised by Austin (1994: passim), and Grethlein (2010b: 153) observes that Herodotus does not engage in polemic with Stesichorus, but with Homer, whom he ‘considers . . . a testimony worth engaging with’. For the ongoing debate about Helen as a mythological figure, see Suzuki (1989) and Maguire (2009). 7 As rightly noted by Burian (2007: 8 n. 17).

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into every possible shape, and living on the island Pharos off the Egyptian coast.8 In Herodotus’ account, he figures as a demythologized king of Egypt without divinity or powers of divination,9 and lives in a palace in Memphis. In this position of authority, he forces Alexander to leave the country within three days after handing over Helen and Menelaus’ possessions so that he can restore them to their rightful owner. In his endeavour to historicize characters known from the Greek myths, Herodotus generally avoids endowing them with supernatural traits.10 No character, however, is so far removed from his mythological counterpart as Proteus, whose mortality Herodotus emphasizes by introducing him as an andra Memphitēn, a ‘man from Memphis’ (2.112.1). Furthermore, in the case of most other individuals that belong to mythological heritage, Herodotus mentions them in the context of an era so long ago that it defies historical enquiry,11 and they exert only oblique influence through oracles or curses12 or their use as tropes in speeches.13 Proteus, on the other hand, plays an active part in the narrative. We listen to his voice and discover his rigour. And he owes his appearance in the Histories to Herodotus’ research in Egypt, if we are willing to believe the sincerity of the historian’s claims.

8

See Hom. Od. 4.351–570. The Homeric Proteus may have been a remodelling too. Originally, it seems that Proteus was a purely Greek god, associated with the Northern Aegean. When the Greeks of the early archaic age took an interest in Egypt, Proteus might have moved with them. See Herter (1957: 946–7), with ample references to passages in ancient texts and to relevant scholarship, Froidefond (1971: 39–40), and Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988: ad 4.384 ff.). O’Nolan (1960) has formulated a counterview, locating the Proteus legend in the south-easterly part of the Mediterranean and linking it to the biblical record of the Red Sea disaster. 9 In this sense, Herodotus’ Proteus is consistent with his Egyptian ethnography. According to the Egyptians, only gods possessed mantic powers (2.83). 10 See Veyne (1988) in general on the way in which Greek thinking in relation to their myths changed, and the Introduction to this volume, pp. 26–7. 11 For the question of whether Herodotus made a firm distinction between a spatium mythicum and spatium historicum, see, in this volume, the Introduction, pp. 24–9, and Saïd, Ch. 2, }1. 12 Thus, e.g., Amphiaraus, one of the heroes against Thebes, exerted influence through his oracle of Trophonius by excluding the Thebans from consultation (8.134.2), and the curse of Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius fell upon the Spartans in retaliation for the killing of Darius’ messengers (7.134.1). 13 Most notably the debate between the Tegeans and Athenians about the position on the left wing in the battle of Plataea (9.26–27); cf. the rhetoric of the Spartans at Gelon’s court (7.159).

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The radical revision of Proteus has been explained in various ways. Did Herodotus base his account on an alternative Proteus myth? In his Helen Euripides mentions Proteus as king of Egypt, but he is living on the island of Pharos, married to Psamathe, the daughter of the sea, and father of a daughter Theonoe, who is endowed with prophetic gifts. As such, Euripides’ Egyptian royalty seems more akin to its Homeric counterpart. There are some revisions, most importantly in the position of Proteus as Egypt’s king, but the colour of the story is mythological, and thoroughly different from the account of Herodotus, whose version has left no traces in other contemporary or earlier sources. Possibly the reasons behind Herodotus’ revision lie in his research in Egypt, and historians have indeed speculated about specific origins. Thus How and Wells, followed by many, suggest that Herodotus confused an Egyptian title, ‘Proutî’, with the Proteus familiar from Greek mythology.14 It has been suggested furthermore that Herodotus may have mistaken for Proteus a depiction or statue of a Phoenician or Egyptian river god in what he believed was Proteus’ sanctuary at Memphis.15 That discovery, together with the stories of the Egyptian priests, would then have led him to reconstruct the Proteus myth in this particular way. Neither suggestion can, however, be fully reconciled with Herodotus’ presentation of his Egyptian material. Proteus, to begin with, is the only Egyptian king introduced by his Greek name (kata tēn Hellēnōn glōssan, 2.112.1), whereas his Egyptian name is left unmentioned,16 and Herodotus hints at a Greek etymology through wordplay, changing, as Powell observes, his usual expression to refer to a story told earlier, logos proteros, to logos prōtos:17 ‘As they only then 14 Cf. Legrand (1944: 41), Erbse (1955: 113 n. 46), Herter (1957: 951–3), Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988: ad 4.384 ff.). Von Fritz (1967: 165) argues that Herodotus derived the name from Homer’s Proteus and the Egyptian royal title ‘Phe-raa’ (cf. ‘Pharaoh’), which can also be spotted in the name of King Pheros. The two names differ too much however to allow a common origin. See also the discussion in A. B. Lloyd (1988a: 32–3, 45, 52, 2002: 422 n. 16). 15 A suggestion of Spiegelberg (1930), followed by A. B. Lloyd (1988b: ad 2.112). 16 The reasons for this are unclear, but the use of Greek instead of Egyptian names is also found elsewhere in the Egypt book—for instance, when Herodotus talks about the underworld (2.122.1). See Munson (2005: 33 n. 17) for other examples in the Histories. 17 Powell (1937: 104). Homer may have had in mind a similar pun in Od. 4.452; cf. Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth (1988: ad 4.384 ff.).

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believed the first story [logos prōtos], the Greeks sent Menelaus in his own person to Proteus [Prōteus]’ (2.118.4). The picture that Herodotus had allegedly seen of Proteus as a river god also proves problematic,18 as the idea of Herodotus identifying a religious statue or picture of Proteus would undermine his own theories about Egyptian religion, in which only gods are the objects of worship,19 and mortals, like Herodotus’ man of Memphis, do not qualify.20 A more plausible scenario may be that Herodotus elaborated or modified a tradition he heard during his travels in Egypt and used it to demonstrate the success of his method, as empirical research into Egypt’s impressive historical records allowed him to unearth the legendary past of the Greeks and to contextualize the stories that the Greeks had so far only inherited in mythological form. Following this approach he suggested a date for the Trojan War (2.145.4) and claimed to have solved the mystery of Helen’s whereabouts.21 Unfortunately, the absence of extra-textual evidence precludes us from explaining Proteus’ revision from a historical angle.22 All we can do is analyse the biography within the context of the Egypt

18 Depictions of Proteus from antiquity are rare. According to Pausanias (3.18.16), he was depicted on the throne of Amyclae together with Menelaus. Of his Homeric avatar Halios Geron two depictions are known with certainty. Both date back to the second quarter of the sixth century BCE, one on an Attic Oenochoe from Vulci (now in Berlin, Staatl. Mus. F 1732), the other on a bronze shield-band relief in Olympia (Mus. 1881). 19 For this reason I follow Legrand (1944: ad 2.112) in believing that Herodotus, when mentioning Proteus’ sanctuary at the beginning of his biography (2.112.1), refers to the Memphite king as founder or builder of the sanctuary, and not as the one who is actually worshipped. This building activity typifies the Egyptian kings in Herodotus’ account, as exemplified by Min’s foundation of the Hephaestus sanctuary (2.99.4) and its subsequent extension under Moiris (2.101.2) and Sesostris (2.108.2, 110.1). 20 According to Herodotus, not even heroes do (2.50.3). Although Herodotus may not be altogether consistent in referring to divine entities like gods, daemons, and heroes in the Histories as a whole (T. Harrison (2000a: 158 ff.)), I believe that, in the case of the Egyptians, he is careful enough to maintain a consistent picture throughout. He is after all engaged in polemic. 21 On the complex, but coherent chronology in the Histories with respect to the legendary past, see A. B. Lloyd (1975: 171–94). 22 Some modern Egyptologists believe that Proteus’ kingship of Egypt was a Herodotean invention that had nothing to do with Egyptian history. See Froidefond (1971: 38). As Emily Baragwanath pointed out to me, this view cannot be reconciled with the polemical tone of the Egypt book, and it seems unlikely that Herodotus would have used a made-up figure in a passage in which he shows himself so keen on establishing his authority and authenticating his narrative. See further below, n. 36.

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book. This approach has the advantage, however, that it reveals Herodotus’ historiographical methods and his way of reflecting upon them.

3. PROTEUS AS AN EDUCATOR One of the most distinctive features of the Egypt book is the polemical tone that Herodotus uses against the Greeks. Repeatedly, he blames them for telling ‘silly’ (mataios), ‘inconsidered’ (anepiskeptos, anepistēmōn), ‘naive’ (euēthēs), and ‘mistaken’ (epseusmenos) stories.23 As Rosaria Munson points out in Telling Wonders, this polemical approach typifies Herodotus’ descriptions of foreign cultures, and indicates that he wishes to correct prejudices of the Greeks against their non-Greek fellow human beings. To counter, for instance, Greek beliefs about Egyptians as killers of foreigners, Herodotus rejects the Greek Busiris myth about the Egyptian attempt to sacrifice Heracles (2.45) and presents in Proteus a king of impeccable hospitality, who observes the sacred laws of guest-friendship, xeinia.24 Menelaus, on the other hand, is said to have violated these xeinia laws as he sacrifices two Egyptian children so as to ensure his departure from Egypt: Upon receiving them, however, Menelaus turned into a wrongdoer (anēr adikos) against the Egyptians, for when he was ready to set sail, he was held back by the winds. And when this situation lasted for a long time, he contrived an unholy crime (prēgma ouk hosion), seizing two children of local inhabitants and sacrificing them. (2.119.2–3)

These passages thus contain a reversal of roles in a common motif in Greek myth, the sacrifice of Greek wandering heroes at the hand of foreigners. This time, the foreigners are the victims and the Greeks 23 mataios: 2.2.5, 118.1; anepiskeptos/anepistēmōn: 2.21, 45.1; euēthēs: 2.45.1; epseusmenos 2.22.1. 24 Munson (2001: 141–4). A similar observation was made by Froidefond (1971: 179–82). See also the way in which Cartledge and Greenwood (2002: 365–71), in the footsteps of Pelling (1997b), explore the idea of polarity in the Histories, concluding that Herodotus was a keen critic of (stereo)typical thinking in oppositions of Greeks versus barbarians, and therefore showed that the Greek themselves behaved awfully at times as well. The role of xeinia in this story is the subject of Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5.

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themselves the perpetrators of human sacrifice.25 In fact, Menelaus’ behaviour in Egypt gains credibility when we consider the mythic precedent of Iphigeneia’s sacrifice in Aulis by his brother Agamemnon. Related to Herodotus’ polemical tone is the emphasis on aspects of culture and religion of which the Egyptians claim to be the inventors and which other peoples, the Greeks in particular, have learnt from them.26 The Egyptians, for instance, say they are ‘the first’ to have invented the names and cults of the gods: They [the priests] said that they were the first [prōtous] to use the names of the gods, and that the Greeks took the practice over [analabein] from them, and that they were the first [prōtous] to dedicate altars and statues and temples to gods and to engrave their images in stone. (2.4.2)

Similarly, Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians were the first to invent ritual processions and festivals (2.58), that they instituted religious commands prohibiting sexual intercourse in temples and requiring the congregators to be clean (2.64), that they invented the song of Linus (2.79), the rituals of Orpheus and Bacchus (2.81), the Thesmophoria (2.171), and the concept of the immortality of the soul (2.123). In most of these religious matters, the Egyptians are named as prōtoi and the Greeks are staged as their students, literally learning, manthanein or ekmanthanein, religious customs from them.27 25

Rawlinson (1862: ad 2.113), A. C. Pearson (1903: p. xiv), Legrand (1944: 32–3), Ghali-Kahil (1955: 294–5), Dale (1967: p. xix), von Fritz (1967: 165–7), Kannicht (1969: 44–5), and Lindsay (1974: 137–8) assume that this revised story originates from the Egyptian priests, who sought to counter Greek prejudice against them. Cf. Rebuffat (1966), who assumes a Phoenician origin, and, on a more general level, Jacoby (1913: 427), Drews (1973: 80–1, 183 n. 131), A. B. Lloyd (1975: 109), and Pritchett (1993: 63–71). The revision may also, however, result from Herodotus’ own polemical agenda. For further arguments, see Austin (1994: 125) and de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4. 26 In A. B. Lloyd’s formulation (2002: 435): ‘there is a profound willingness to tie Egyptian history into that of Greece to the extent that the Egyptians are claimed to be the ancestors of the Kings of the Dorians and much that is fundamental to Greek culture is alleged to have been imported from Egypt,’ and, recently, Gray (2007: 212): ‘The idea that Greeks were civilized by borrowing barbarian inventions is of course part and parcel of Herodotus’ view of their development, as he shows in recounting their numerous borrowings from the highly civilized Egyptians.’ 27 According to Herodotus, the only institution that the Egyptians took over from the Greeks was the games in honour of Perseus at the temple of Chemmis (2.91.4–5), which seemed to him to be organized in an entirely Greek fashion. See A. B. Lloyd (1988b: ad loc.) for a plausible explanation of what looks like a misunderstanding of Greek religion on Herodotus’ part. Aside from this, Herodotus mentions the city Archandroupolis, which he conjectured derived its name from a Greek hero, Archandrus (2.98.2).

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Herodotus also credits the individual tutors of the Greeks and prevents their names from fading away (exitēla). In the case of the Thesmophoria, he mentions the daughters of Danaus, who came from Egypt and ‘taught’ (didaxasai), these rituals to Pelasgian women (2.171.3). In the same vein, Herodotus names Melampus and his descendants as the ones who ‘explained’ (exēgēsamenos, 2.49.1), ‘pointed out’ (ephēne, 2.49.1), and ‘revealed’ (exephēnan, 2.49.1) the cult of Dionysus to the Greeks.28 Proteus’ verdict on Alexander’s behaviour is likewise introduced as a revelation: Finally Proteus reveals [ekphainei] the following verdict to them, saying: ‘If I did not deem it very important to abstain from killing any foreigner [mēdena xeinōn kteinein] that has been driven off course and arrived in my country, I would have taken revenge upon you on behalf of the Greek against whom you, most evil of men, despite his hospitality [xeiniōn tukhōn] have committed a most unholy crime [ergon anosiōtaton]: you made advances on the wife of your own host [tou seōutou xeinou], and this was not enough for you, but you also seduced her and left with her. And those crimes alone weren’t enough for you, but you also plundered your guest’s house [ta oikia tou xeinou keraisas]. Now then, since I consider it of the utmost importance not to kill any foreigner [mē xeinoktoneein] . . . ’ (2.115.4–6)

Usually, speeches introduced by exēgeisthai, phainein, and ekphainein contain information that Herodotus does not contest. Thus Alexander’s slaves ‘explain’ (exēgeumenoi, 2.115.3) the entire story of Alexander’s crime to Proteus. Elsewhere in the Histories, Mitradates ‘pointed out’ to Astyages the story of Cyrus as it was (ephaine tēn eonta logon, 1.116.5) and is afterwards credited for ‘revealing the truth’ (tēn alētheiēn ekphēnantos, 1.117.1). In the same way, Prexaspes ‘revealed the truth’ (exephaine tēn alētheiēn, 3.75.2) about the Magi when he addressed the Persians before his suicide. In Proteus’ case, the truth of his castigating words resides in the fact that they are based upon the sacred laws of xeinia (hospitality, guest-friendship). Although Herodotus does not mention the inventor of these laws, Proteus’ biography demonstrates that, as an Egyptian king, he is superior to his Trojan and Greek royal counterparts in his sensitivity to the requirements of xeinia, and he becomes, in effect,

28

On Melampus, see Gray, this volume, Ch. 6.

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a prōtos (‘first man’) too.29 Proteus is staged as an educator, a didaskalos, who reminds his audience of these principles, simultaneously passes judgement on Alexander’s behaviour as a xeinos at the court of Menelaus, and emphasizes that wandering xeinoi should not be killed. Thus the content of his speech reflects general Egyptian wisdom and restraint in matters of religion.30 But why did Herodotus need this particular wisdom in relation to xeinia? And why has he chosen to elaborate this particular piece of learning into a narrative, making Proteus into a castigating educator who utters his verdict in direct speech? In this volume Vandiver analyses the xeinia concept in this passage as a conscious allusion to Homer’s epics that enables Herodotus to illustrate—in advance of his presentation of the failed Persian expeditions—his beliefs in divine retribution, as he explains the fall of Troy by stating that great wrongs like Alexander’s breach of xeinia are greatly punished by the gods (2.120.5).31 But wrongs like these are not confined to foreigners alone, as Menelaus’ violation of xeinia in the same passage shows. Elsewhere in the Histories we find other examples of Greeks who violate xeinia. Thus Etearchus, king of the Cretan town of Oaxus, uses bonds of hospitality to force his guest Themison to kill his daughter (4.154), Cleomenes seduces the wife of his guest-friend Isagoras (5.70.1), and Leotychides uses the tale of Glaucus’ intended betrayal of his Milesian guest-friends as a warning reminder to his Athenian audience (6.86). Had Herodotus come to the conclusion that the Greeks, in respect to the observance of xeinia, had turned out to be bad students? If so, pressure on xeinia, a moral concept associated with the heroic age, in the fifth-century world of warring poleis may have encouraged Herodotus to give it prominence in his narrative, putting wise words in the mouth of Proteus, rather than 29 See also Vandiver, who points out that xeinia terms cluster together more thickly in this passage than anywhere else in the Histories (this volume, Ch. 5, pp. 148–9). 30 Froidefond likewise finds these moral capacities in Herodotus’ Proteus. According to him, Herodotus endowed the Egyptian king with qualities that were also admired in Greek sages like Solon or Thales: ‘Dans ce domaine, le produit le plus caractéristique de la stylisation opérée par Hérodote et ses informateurs, c’est Protée . . . Réduit à sa fonction de juge, ce roi qui respecte inconditionellement les étrangers, qui distribue ses trésors à ses hôtes, et que ne trouble pas la présence de la plus belle femme du monde, a le charme d’une création romanesque . . . En lui s’unissent la majesté des potentats d’Orient et le bon sens des sages de la Grèce’ (1971: 187–8). 31 See Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5, pp. 146–55.

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moralizing in his own voice, much as he did in the case of Solon, whose homiletic speech targeted an Athenian audience, as Moles points out.32 It seems as if Herodotus is holding Proteus up as an educator of a valuable aspect of religious observance that he considers originally Egyptian, and as a model of good behaviour to his contemporary audience. A comparable example of an educative narrative in which foreigners teach Greeks is the story of the wrath of Talthybius (7.133–7). This is centred around the sacrosanct status of messengers, which the Spartans—along with the Athenians—have violated by killing Darius’ heralds. Although the Spartans Sperthias and Boulis, sent to Xerxes to be killed and erase the wrath, are praised for their defence of liberty vis-à-vis Hydarnes and Xerxes, it should be noted that the former provides them with a meal according to the rules of xeinia (spheas xeinia prothemenos histia, 7.135.1) and that the latter is given a speech in which he refuses to lower himself to the standards of the Spartans and to ‘confound the conventions of all men by killing heralds’ (sugkheai ta pantōn anthrōpōn nomima apokteinantas kērukas, 7.136.2). However ironic this may sound in the light of Xerxes’ behaviour elsewhere—he violates xeinia himself when he kills the son of his host Pythius (7.39)33—this particular story contains a parallel to the Proteus biography in that Greeks are reminded by foreigners of the importance of the appropriate observance of religious principles. Again, the reason for the narrative elaboration of this remarkable educative encounter may lie in Herodotus’ own time. At the end of the passage Herodotus mentions the recent killings of the Spartan messengers Nikolas and Aneristos, Boulis and Sperthias’ sons, at the hands of the Athenians (7.137.2–3). Possibly the willingness of some of his contemporaries to violate their sacrosanctity moved Herodotus to set out a model of good behaviour, though this time with an ironic and potentially painful twist, as he makes Xerxes play the Proteus role.34 32 Moles (1996). For a different qualification of Solon’s words, see Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 79. 33 Though the circumstances are different here, and Pythius cannot be fully exonerated, on which see Baragwanath (2008: 269–78). See Thomas, this volume, Ch. 9, }1, for a possible reconstruction of the historical reality that lies behind the Pythius tradition. 34 Both stories provide a parallel too, in that the third party involved in the violation escapes unpunished. In the Proteus biography, Menelaus left Egypt and, if we follow Greek mythic tradition, managed to bring Helen back home unharmed. In

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However different the Proteus figure in the Histories may appear from his Homeric predecessor, the presence of the enigmatic figure of Thonis at the beginning of the biography reveals the allusion Herodotus wants to make to the Homeric version of Menelaus’ visit to Egypt, in which Helen mentions Thon as Egyptian king. In Herodotus’ version, Thonis is staged as phulax (guard) of the Canobic Mouth of the Nile and plays a minor role as the person responsible for bringing Alexander’s case to the attention of Proteus. To explain Thonis’ role in this episode, we must start with the key similarity between the Homeric portrayal of Proteus and that of Herodotus. In both cases Proteus is staged in the context of an enquiry aimed at finding answers to a tantalizing problem. In Book Four of the Odyssey, Homer recounts, as extradiegetic narrator, Telemachus’ enquiry into the whereabouts of his father. For this purpose, he makes a trip from Ithaca to visit his father’s friends from the Trojan War. In Sparta, Menelaus tells him of his meeting at Pharos with the shape-changing Proteus, whom he had to catch first before gaining access to his knowledge. Once caught, Proteus told him about the fate of his brother Agamemnon and about Odysseus, whom he had seen (idein) on the island Ogygia with the nymph Calypso, ‘shedding many tears’ (Od. 4.556). Herodotus, as intradiegetic narrator, is involved in an enquiry too, one of whose aims is to discover more about the legendary past of Greeks and non-Greeks. To find out answers he describes how he made a trip to Egypt, where he talked to those whom he believed to be the most authoritative informants on this subject, the priests of the local temples. He presents that conversation with them about the Trojan War as follows: When I asked the priests whether or not the Greeks speak in a foolish way [mataion logon] about the events of the Trojan War,35 they responded by

the story about the wrath of Talthybius, Herodotus does not know whether any kind of retribution struck the Athenians and disagrees with those who point to the destruction of their land and city by the Persians (7.133.2). 35 For the interpretation of the Greek, see Abicht (18763) and Stein (19025: ad loc.). Abicht takes ºª as an internal accusative and reads it, together with  ÆØ, adverbially: ‘whether the Greeks speak foolishly’; Stein proposes adding ºªıØ

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claiming that they knew it by enquiry [historiēisi phamenoi eidenai] from Menelaus himself. (2.118.1)

The priests apparently claim that their predecessors have spoken to Menelaus himself as an eyewitness of the war. Like Telemachus in the Odyssey, Herodotus believes that he is addressing an informant with ultimate recourse to information acquired on the basis of visible evidence. Thus the narrator in each Proteus story (notwithstanding their different positions in the narrative) describes a similar enquiry, in which the person who enquires is able to find visible (idein, eidenai) evidence from an eyewitness, whose account is delivered through an intermediary. This process is summarized in the following scheme: Narrator: Enquiring character: Intermediary: Eyewitness:

Homer (extradiegetic) Telemachus Menelaus Proteus

Herodotus (intradiegetic) Herodotus Priests Menelaus

In Herodotus’ Egypt book, enquiring activities—historiē—play a vital role, and are identified as an essential criterion for determining the truth-value of historical information.36 This idea is most clearly formulated at the beginning of the story of the Egyptian kings, where Herodotus makes a distinction between the ethnography of Egypt, which he claims is based on his own personal observation,

before ªŁÆØ, a solution that does not convince me, as it would imply reading  as a relative, whereas it is regularly used as an article together with æd to describe ‘the events related to x’. 36 I refrain from speculation about the relationship between the way in which Herodotus’ enquiry in Egypt took place and its presentation in his work. For Herodotus, enquiry was a valid way of attaining authoritative knowledge (cf. D. Müller 1981: 306–11 and Hunter 1982: 60–1), and it was to advance his credibility that he underscores it, especially in this part of the Histories; cf. Cartledge and Greenwood (2002: 355): ‘it gives the impression of a circumspect inquiry whose truths are conditioned by shades of uncertainty and whose mythical elements are analysed to yield an explanation for the processes which went into their making.’ Cf. the observations, in this volume, of de Jong, Ch. 4, p. 137, and Gray, Ch. 6, p. 186, on similar chains of information that grant authority to Herodotus’ narrative and research. Speculation about the historical enquiry that lies behind Herodotus’ presentation may preclude an appropriate judgement, since modern standards of historical research inevitably come into play. Such a positivist undertone is found in Erbse’s treatment (1955: 116) of this passage, which argues that Herodotus took over everything that the priests told him, but failed to fill in the lapses of time that passed between the early kings and the Saite dynasty, owing, among other things, to the short duration of his stay in Egypt.

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reasoning, and enquiry, and the story of the Egyptian kings, which he claims is based mostly on what he has heard: Up to this point my personal observation [opsis], reasoning [gnōmē], and enquiry [historiē] are responsible for these words, but from now on I am going to tell the Egyptian stories according to what I have heard [kata ta ēkouon]. Some results of my personal observation [tēs emēs opsios] will be added to them as well. (2.99.1)

It is in the Proteus biography more than anywhere else that Herodotus presents his own enquiring activities (2.113.1, see also 2.118.1, cited above, pp. 118–19), and he also draws attention to the similarities between his own methodology and that of the priests, which he describes in the same terms (2.119.3):37 When I enquired [historeonti] of the priests, they told me that this was the story of Helen. (2.113.1) The priests told me that they had learned some of this information by enquiry [historiēisi ephasan epistasthai] but that they spoke with exact knowledge [atrekeōs epistamenoi] of what had happened in their own country. (2.119.3).

It appears that Herodotus wants to advertise the view that enquiry, through which one ultimately digs up the accounts of eyewitnesses, is a legitimate method in the search for exact knowledge about the legendary past. When we return to Herodotus’ characterization of Proteus, it can be observed that he makes him use a similar methodology and rely on enquiry and personal observation, too. It is at this point that his faithful guard Thonis enters. Although he has already condemned Alexander’s action as an ergon anosion (‘unholy deed’) in his message to Proteus (2.114.2), the king refuses to convict Alexander from a distance by dispatching a messenger to tell Thonis what he should do with Helen. Instead, he insists on a meeting in person, so that he can check the situation with his own eyes and base his judgement upon visible evidence.38 It looks as if Herodotus uses the minor character Thonis as an anchor to which he can attach the enquiring methods of 37 Munson (2001: 144 n. 24). For further discussion of the role of the priests, see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, esp. pp. 128–32, 137. 38 Cf. Periander’s interrogation of the Corinthian sailors over the Arion incident (1.24.7). See de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, p. 136, for further discussion of the parallel, including references to scholarship.

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Proteus, which he highlights for their thoroughness and rigour. The same meticulousness appears in the detailed account of the way in which Proteus performs his enquiry when Alexander is present, by measuring his explanations against those of his slaves: When all had been brought in, Proteus asked Alexander who he was and from where he had sailed. Alexander summed up his lineage and the name of his country, and also explained about the voyage and where he had sailed from. Next, Proteus asked him from where he had taken Helen. When Alexander was evasive in his response and did not tell the truth, the suppliants refuted [ēlegkhon] him by relating the whole story about the crime [panta logon tou adikēmatos]. (2.115.2–3)

Christ observed that Herodotus ascribes enquiring methods similar to his own to the kings, and has revealed this motif as a defining element in his characterization of kings and tyrants. Herodotus uses the same technique in the portrayal of the Egyptian kings—for instance, in the story of Psammetichus’ enquiry into the question of the oldest people on earth. The king tries to find an answer by confining two infants in isolation and waiting until they utter their first words,39 at which point he insists on witnessing the outcome himself: ‘he [the caretaking shepherd] at last reported to his master and brought the infants into his presence as was ordered [keleusantos es opsin tēn ekeinou]. And when Psammetichus had listened to them himself, he enquired . . . ’ (2.2.4). Christ focuses on those kings who, in their research and enquiring activities, infringe sacred customs, break the laws, or indulge in other inhuman behaviour—for instance, by placing human beings as research objects into confinement, as Psammetichus does with the infants. Proteus’ case, however, is different. Alexander is judged on the basis of personal observation by a king who abides by the sacred laws of xeinia and refuses to take revenge or make Alexander his prisoner.40 He is one of the most righteous of Herodotus’ enquiring kings, and ranks alongside other sages of the Histories, like Solon and Amasis.41 The reason for Herodotus’ staging of Proteus as a righteous and respectful performer of enquiries lies in the polemical content of this particular passage. Invested with the persona of a researcher,

39 40 41

Christ (1994: 185–6). On this, see Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5, pp. 146–55. See above, n. 30, on Froidefond (1971).

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Herodotus claims that he derives his authority on the subject of Helen’s whereabouts from an enquiry that led him ultimately to the eyewitnesses of the events, the priests’ predecessors in Egypt and Menelaus in Troy. To show how valuable his enquiring methods are, he weaves them into the story of a king who displays a similar empirical method. The staging of Proteus as an exemplary enquirer strengthens the persuasive power of Herodotus’ own enquiry: both base their verdict on the events upon evidence that is brought within their view.

5. PROTEUS AS AN EMBLEM So far we can say that Herodotus stages Proteus as a man of moral rightness to educate his Greek audience and presents him as an exemplary enquirer to bolster his own authority, without losing sight of the Homeric version of Proteus: the Old Man of the Sea able to change into every possible shape, who needs to be overcome by a struggle before he is willing to share his precious information. At this point a reference should be made to Dewald, who compares Herodotus to Menelaus in his victorious struggle with a ‘polymorphously fearsome oddity’, consisting of ‘the logos, or collection or logoi, that comprise the narrative of the Histories’, and who considers the Histories a ‘record of his heroic encounter: his exploits in capturing the logoi and his struggles to pin them down and make them speak to him the truths that they contain’.42 In a response to Dewald, Szegedy-Maszak points out that the Proteus image can also be applied to Herodotus himself: ‘polyvalent, unstable, fragmentary, readerly, Herodotus’, he argues, ‘begins to look less like Menelaus and more like Proteus’.43 We can take this image one step further and connect it to the Proteus biography itself, arguing that the mythical picture of Proteus as sea god lurks behind Herodotus’ demythologized king, and functions as an emblem in relation to the creative role that Herodotus allowed himself when he elaborated the results of his enquiry into a story. 42 43

Dewald (1987: 147). I thank Deborah Boedeker for alerting me to this passage. Szegedy-Maszak (1987: 174).

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In this respect, it is instructive to look at the way in which Herodotus describes the creative activity of his predecessor Homer in the discussion of Helen’s whereabouts. He uses the term epopoiiē to exonerate Homer from following a different version of the Helen myth in his epics: In my opinion, Homer was informed about this story as well [the story about Helen’s sojourn in Egypt], but he rejected it on the grounds that it was not equally suitable for the making of the epics [es tēn epopoiiēn euprepēs] as the other one which he used . . . (2.116.1)

As the above passage makes clear, Herodotus accepts that, as a poet, Homer took the liberty of choosing a suitable version from the many variants of mythological stories.44 They even have the freedom of invention, provided that it serves their poetry, as witness the discussion about Ocean: ‘For I know that no such thing as Ocean exists, and I think that Homer or one of the poets that lived before him invented the name [tounoma heuronta] and introduced it into poetry [es poiēsin eseneikasthai]’ (2.23). The liberty that Herodotus seems to accept in the case of his epic predecessors makes it tempting to speculate about the liberties that he allowed himself when he invented his genre. What kind of creative freedom did he allow himself when he drafted a narrative about a disputed subject like that of Helen’s whereabouts? As de Jong brings out in this volume, the story of Proteus, Helen, and Alexander contains all kinds of elements that turn it into a

44

Perhaps Verdin (1977: 60) is too strong in his assumption that Herodotus in this passage has an ‘attitude critique vis-à-vis de la poésie’. Cf. Austin’s even stronger formulation (1994: 123): ‘Homer is relegated to being no more than a poet who would sacrifice historical truth to romantic fancy.’ Herodotus displays a more understanding attitude towards Homer, even hinting in 2.116.1 at enquiring activities similar to the ones he undertook himself, as Hunter (1982: 54) has observed. At most the historian suggests that we should be careful when using Homer as a source, and even seems to admire him for his oblique references to the alternative version of the Helen story (2.116.3–5), on which see also Grethlein (2010b: 154–5). In this context it is instructive to refer to Ligota’s statement (1982: 11) that ‘Herodotus is much more determined about the demarcations between different realms of existence—the divine, the epicheroic, the human-historical—i.e. more aware of the demarcations between various ways of what I have called dressing the facts, than of the line between truth and falsehood in his own chosen realm. What he does in his critique of Homer in relation to Helen is to show not so much that Homer’s version is not true, as that it is out of place in a rationalist historical discourse’; cf. Thomas (2000: 271). See also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 29–30, 47, 50–2.

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typically Herodotean short story that reads like an eyewitness account: the use of direct speeches, historic presents, minor characters, and repetition of key concepts.45 In this sense, the Proteus biography is unique in comparison with the other royal biographies that surround it. The next instance of direct speech, for example, is not found until the end of the Egypt book (2.173). The Proteus passage is also different in its presentation. The most distinctive presentational aspect of the stories of Egypt’s earlier kings (2.99.1–141) is the extensive use of indirect speech, which is continued throughout the biographies down to the priest of Hephaestus, at which point Herodotus moves to more recent times.46 Remarkably, the Proteus biography is the only one in which the sequence of indirect speech is interrupted. Given the fact that the subsequent biography of Rhampsinitus contains the longest uninterrupted series of clauses embedded in indirect speech of all the accounts of the Egyptian kings,47 it is unlikely that Herodotus applied the construction loosely and ‘slipped down’ into straightforward, unmediated narrative unwittingly.48 This use of indirect speech is not so much a means by which Herodotus seeks to distance himself from the information, or to present it in an unfavourable light, as has traditionally been believed. Instead, it enables him to make clear to his audience that he has acquired information aurally, as opposed to information that he has been able to check by applying personal observation, reasoning, and enquiry (see 2.99, quoted above, p. 120). In other words, embedding a story in indirect speech allows Herodotus to tell his audience that the information is derived from an informant, but that it is not backed up by visible evidence and therefore not authoritative enough to present 45

See de Jong, Ch. 4, esp. pp. 131–2 and 134 (on repetition). This is the most extended stretch of indirect speech (twenty-eight pages in Hude’s OCT) in the Histories, interrupted several times by the narrator—for instance, with descriptions of the pyramids. It presents the biographies of the following thirteen Egyptian kings: 2.99.2 (Min), 100 (Nitocris), 101.1 (Moeris), 102.2 (Sesostris), 111.1 (Pheros), 112.1 (Proteus), 121.1 (Rhampsinitus), 124.1 (Cheops), 127.1 (Chephren), 129 (Mycerinus), 136.1 (Asychis), 137.1 (Anysis/Ethiopian king), 141.1 (priest of Hephaestus). 47 On this passage, see Bakker (1991), who discusses its grammatical form, and Munson (1993: 37–41), who describes its internal structure. 48 For the term ‘downslip’, see the oral grammar theory developed by Slings (2002), which he does not apply to the indirect speech in this passage, and de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, p. 131. 46

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in his own voice.49 This is confirmed by a methodological statement in the Egypt book, where Herodotus claims that he presents the Egyptian stories as he heard them and leaves it to his audience to judge their credibility: Let those who find such things trustworthy [pithana] make use of the stories that are told by the Egyptians. I, however, stick to the principle, in relation to the entire story [para panta [ton] logon], that I write down what is said by each party according to what I hear (akoēi). (2.123.1)

If we accept that indirect speech is a means by which Herodotus indicates that he presents akoē-based information, the absence of indirect speech in much of the Proteus biography can be taken as a sign that Herodotus wishes to present himself as authoritatively as possible on a subject that he believes he has elucidated by his research in Egypt. As opposed to the information about other kings, which he has derived aurally from his Egyptian informants and presents through indirect speech, Herodotus in this case describes the diligent enquiry that he has performed on his source material. The results of this methodology give him enough confidence to offer his story in an authoritative way, using straightforward narrative rather than indirect speech to come across as persuasively as possible. This explanation has serious repercussions for how we should judge the narrative artistry in this passage as it surfaces, for instance, in the speeches ascribed to Thonis and Proteus. It appears that these literary elements do not undermine Herodotus’ attempt to write seriously about history, but instead endorse him as a historian in his narrating activities, and bolster his authority and the credibility of the version he presents. Just as the writer of an epic had the liberty to choose from various versions the one that was most suitable, so Herodotus took the liberty to employ narrative artistry—nowadays associated with fiction—to support his authority. The literary elements in the story, both indicative of and resulting from this artistry, enabled Herodotus, first, to stage Proteus, Helen, and Menelaus in the version that he preferred on the basis of his research, and, secondly, to narrate a story that contained an important lesson for the Greeks.

49

See de Bakker (2007: 160–78).

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It is in this creative process that Proteus, known from the epics as a mythical figure who struggled with Menelaus and changed himself into various forms, serves as an emblem. Herodotus presents a mortal Proteus against the backdrop of his mythical counterpart as a symbol of the struggle he has to undergo himself in this process, the search for the truth, and the presentation of it by means of a convincing story. Just as Proteus is able to change into various forms, so the stories from the past may reach us in various versions. Just as a struggle is needed to pin down Proteus to gain access to knowledge about the past, present, and future, so the historian must struggle to find the correct version, but, once he has succeeded, can rely on authoritative knowledge about the past and can present it convincingly by telling a good story.

6. PROTEUS CAPTURED? This analysis has shed a different light on Herodotus’ stories of the early kings from Waters’ verdict on his account of the early Egyptian kings. Herodotus reconstructs the figure of Proteus and stages him within a historical setting, while subtly keeping the mythological picture in the background. Thus he is able to present Proteus as an educator of Greek religious principles, as an example of how an enquiry should take place, and as an emblem of the difficult struggle a historian faces in the process of making a multi-layered work of art.

4 The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint Irene de Jong

1. INTRODUCTION Herodotus’ passage on Helen and the Trojan War in the second book of the Histories (2.112–20) offers an intriguing test case for the subject of this volume, Herodotus and myth. Herodotus gets to know from Egyptian priests an alternative version of the Trojan War, which for various reasons he accepts as more trustworthy than the canonical version of Homer. Very briefly, the story runs as follows: on their way to Troy Helen and Paris (consistently referred to by his alternative name Alexander) land in Egypt. King Proteus, after a confrontation with Alexander, banishes him from his country and keeps Helen. Alexander returns to Troy. The Greeks ask for the return of Helen, but the Trojans keep saying that Helen is in Egypt. The Greeks do not believe them and eventually capture the city, only to find out that the Trojans had spoken the truth. On his way back, Menelaus collects Helen from Egypt. This passage shows us the historian at work, for once investigating not the recent past but a more remote, mythical past. His activity here has been aptly called ‘historicizing myth’1: he uses his well-known

I wish to thank members of the audience at the Herodotus and Myth conference, Prof. Paul Demont, and the editors of this volume for their suggestions, and Mrs M. Stevens for correcting my English. 1 Finley (1978a: 3).

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instruments of akoē, opsis, and gnōmē to prove the historicity of the Trojan War and to choose between alternative versions.2 What has made this passage so attractive to many scholars is the fact that for once we have ourselves the sources on which Herodotus may have based his account: not only Homer, whom he mentions, but also Hesiod, Hecataeus, Hellanicus, and Stesichorus, all of whom he does not mention but will probably have used all the same. The abundant scholarship on this passage is therefore almost without exception of a diachronical nature: it discusses how Herodotus’ version relates to the earlier Greek ones.3 Then there is the closely related question of Herodotus’ Egyptian source, the one he so emphatically brings up and ‘plugs’ in his own text, as having given him what he believes to be the true story about Troy and Helen. Does this alternative story really derive from Egyptian priests?4 The position of scholars in this debate ranges from the one extreme of belief to the other extreme of disbelief, with some finding insufficient evidence either way: 1. Belief: jeder Satz der Geschichte zeugt davon, dass es eine genuine ägyptische, wenn auch aus griechischen Elementen zugestellten Geschichte ist.5

2. Disbelief: The idea that a story originated in Greece and was then twisted round by Egyptians for purposes of their own is intrinsically absurd . . . Greeks might have been regularly turning up in Egypt and making a general nuisance of themselves with their anti-Egyptian stories, so 2

For discussions of this aspect of the passage, see Fornara (1971: 19–20), Neville (1977) (e.g. 9: ‘we have . . . all the elements of embryonic, “scientific” research under difficult circumstances’), Hunter (1982: 52–61), Nesselrath (1996: 288–91), Munson (2001: 142–4) and de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, pp. 118–22. For the ubiquity of alternative versions in Herodotus, see Lateiner (1989: 76–90). 3 For detailed discussions, see inter alia Ghali-Kahil (1955: 15–44, 123–53, 285–301), Kannicht (1969: 21–47) (who also discusses older literature on this much-debated question), A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 46–8), and Austin (1994: 118–36). It should be noted that not all Greek sources are accepted; Hesiod and Hecataeus are the most hotly debated. See also de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, n. 6, for a summary of the debate. 4 It should be noted that, even in the case of derivation from an Egyptian source, scholars assume that the Egyptians based their accounts on one or more of the Greek versions; see, e.g., A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 64). 5 Von Fritz (1967: 166) (‘Every sentence of the story shows that it is a genuinely Egyptian story which is, however, assembled from Greek elements’). Cf. Ghali-Kahil (1955: 294), Kannicht (1969: 43), and Nesselrath (1996: 288–91).

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that finally when Herodotus struck up a conversation with them the long-suffering Egyptians got in first with their counter-version . . . There is nothing for it but to accept that the whole story comes from Herodotus himself.6

3. Insufficient evidence: By the time Herodotus had his turn with the story it had transpired, whether to him, to a predecessor, or to his alleged Egyptian informants, that a successful revision required both Helen and her phantom to be removed . . .7 This diachronical interest in Herodotus’ sources has somewhat distracted attention from the story itself. What I therefore propose to do in this chapter is to undertake a synchronical, narratological, and intratextual close reading of the text. By synchronical I mean that I will analyse and interpret the story as we find it in Herodotus’ text, considering it a short story or logos, of which there are so many in the Histories.8 By narratological I mean that I will pay special attention to the presentation of the story. By intra-textual, finally, I mean that I will look for themes and story patterns that also occur elsewhere in Herodotus.9 My main object is to analyse this fascinating piece of mythical storytelling itself, but a not unimportant byproduct might be an assessment of the extent to which it reveals Herodotus’ fingerprint. Determining this may ultimately be a more viable activity than pronouncing a Solomon’s judgement on whether or not the story really derives from Egyptian spokesmen.10

2. A CLOSE READING OF 2.112–20 The logos of Helen in Egypt forms part of the history of Egypt told to Herodotus by Egyptian priests (2.99–141). In 2.112.1 their history has 6

Fehling (1989: 63–4). Austin (1994: 136); see also Fornara (1971: 20), Neville (1977: 4), Vandiver (1991: 124), and Burian (2007: 7–8). 8 Cf. ‘logos’ at 2.112.2, 116.1, and 120.1. For discussion of short stories in Herodotus, see, e.g., Long (1987), Erbse (1992), and Gray (2002). 9 For discussion of themes and story patterns in Herodotus, see, e.g., Immerwahr (1966), Flory (1987), and Dillery (1996). 10 I owe this suggestion to Rosalind Thomas, who made it during discussion at the ‘Herodotus and Myth’ conference. 7

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reached King Proteus: toutou de ekdexasthai tēn basilēiēn elegon andra Memphitēn . . . Prōtea . . . Usually, following the pattern set out by Herodotus himself in his proem, the priests present the deeds and building activities of every king.11 Here their story of Proteus’ deeds is interrupted immediately by Herodotus, who inserts a piece of opsis (‘personal observation’) in the present tense concerning a monument:12 ‘to this day there is in Memphis . . . a beautiful temenos of Proteus . . . ’. He next accomplishes gnōmē, ‘reasoning’, when he hypothesizes, sumballomai, that the temple of ‘the foreign Aphrodite’ in this temenos is in fact a temple of Helen, among other reasons because he has heard ‘the story of Helen staying with Proteus’ (ton logon . . . hōs diaitēthē Helenē para Prōteï). When he returns to the priests’ account in 2.113.1, their subject is no longer the reign of Proteus in general but this story of Helen’s stay with him (ta peri Helenēn). As it turns out, Helen’s stay with Proteus is the one event ‘worth telling’ of this king’s reign, since, after the conclusion of the Helen logos, the priests in 2.121 turn to his successor Rhampsinitus. This focus in the priests’ history of Egypt on what in fact must have been a minor incident in the life of this pharaoh already betrays Herodotus’ hand. The (first part of the) Helen logos is marked off by ring composition in the usual Herodotean manner: elegon de moi hoi hirees historeonti ta peri Helenēn genesthai hōde (2.113.1)  Helenēs men tautēn apixin para Prōtea elegon hoi hirees genesthai (2.116.1). It starts in medias res, with Alexander sailing home with Helen on board, and ends even more abruptly, with the speech of Proteus in which he summons Alexander to leave Egypt and announces that he will keep Helen in Egypt until Menelaus comes to collect her. This abrupt ending leaves the listener in suspense as to how things proceeded: how did Alexander react, did Menelaus indeed come to collect Helen? It is hardly imaginable that in reality the priests told the story in this way. Rather we may detect the hand of the primary narrator Herodotus, who, as will appear in 2.118, has a second instalment of the Helen logos in store for us. Thus it is clear that, though ostensibly handing over the storytelling to reported

11 Cf., e.g., King Pheros, who became blind but recovered his sight and who dedicated a number of obelisks (2.111). 12 Just as he had announced he would do in 2.99.1: ‘from now on I will be relating Egyptian acounts, from time to time supplemented by my opsis.’

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narrators,13 the Egyptian priests, he actually stays largely in charge himself. The close collaboration between the primary narrator Herodotus and the Egyptian reported narrators also becomes clear from the prompt abandonment of the dependent indirect speech construction. In 2.113.1 we start with the accusative and infinitive construction Alexandron . . . apopleein, but soon we change to the indicative ekballousi, and the indicatives remain until the end of this first instalment of the Helen logos.14 There are two possible ways of explaining this change in construction.15 (1) By dropping the indirect speech construction, which would imply that he takes distance from what is told or at least cannot vouch for its truth, and adopting an independent construction, Herodotus underscores the fact that he believes the Egyptian variant of the Helen story. Or (2) we might be dealing with an instance of the ‘downslip’ principle, which is one of the oral characteristics of Herodotus’ text: it refers to speakers starting sentences of a relatively complex structure but in the course of speaking shifting to more simple constructions, ‘from indirect to direct speech, from infinitive to finite verb, from subordinate clause to main clause’.16 In my view, this second explanation does not apply, since the Egyptian history logos provides ample examples of sustained indirect speech (notably the story of Rhampsinitus and the thief), which show that Herodotus, had he wanted to, could have continued in indirect speech. The first explanation is attractive for my thesis yet it starts from the wrong point of departure as regards the role of the Egyptian informants, which I shall address in my conclusion.17 For the moment it suffices to note that the shift in construction—besides 13 Reported narrators are narrators whose narratives are quoted in indirect speech by the primary narrator Herodotus, while secondary narrators are narrators who narrate in direct speech. See de Jong (2004b: 107–10). 14 In the second instalment the change takes place somewhat later: 2.118.4. 15 Abicht (18763: ad 2.113.1) merely notes ‘beachte den Wechsel der Redeweise’ (‘observe the change in the manner of speaking’) without explaining what it signifies. 16 See Slings (2002: 53–4). 17 The most complete recent discussion of the use of indirect speech in Herodotus is de Bakker (2007: 160–78). He rightly shows that the presentation of stories in indirect speech need not automatically imply that Herodotus does not believe them. On pp. 170–1 he discusses the Egyptian history logos of 2.99–141, and suggests that the use of the indirect-speech construction here indicates a ‘non-committal’ attitude of Herodotus, a view with which I disagree. On that same page, n. 18, he rightly draws attention to the story of Helen, which breaks the usual pattern and is presented in an ‘unmediated’ way.

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resulting in a more engaging narrative style—is one more indication of the primary narrator’s control over the story he reports. Imperceptibly he has taken over the narration from his Egyptian spokesmen. He will go so far as to take the floor completely in 2.113.2, where, exactly as in 2.112, he breaks into the priests’ story to add a description of the temple of Heracles and the law granting suppliants’ immunity. The to kai nun esti (‘which still exists now’) and especially to mekhri emeu (‘which (existed) up to my time’), found throughout the Histories, make it clear that the information derives from Herodotus rather than the priests.18 The present indicative ekballousi in 2.113.1 is also worthy of attention. The Helen logos, in both instalments, contains quite a few historic presents (nine in total). Linguists agree that the historic present may create the impression of an eyewitness report.19 Applying this idea to the Helen logos leads to another insight into Herodotus’ shrewd narrative strategy: the repeated historic presents give the Helen logos the air of an eyewitness report. Indeed, the second instalment, deriving as it does from Menelaus himself (par’ autou Meneleō, 2.118.1) is an eyewitness report, and later on the Egyptian priests will explicitly say that they can vouch for the truth of their story because it took place ‘in their own country’ (par’ heōutoisi, 2.119.3). Eyewitness reports being (until Plato) the height of reliability in Greek storytelling about the past,20 Herodotus in this way subtly underscores the truth of the Helen logos. Finally I would like to draw attention to the two opening words Alexandron harpasanta (2.113.1). In the first place the name Alexander. While Homer has two names for Paris, Alexander (forty-five times) and Paris (nineteen times), the Histories has only Alexander. I once argued that the two names in Homer are not interchangeable, Paris being his local Trojan name, Alexander his international name.21 Lloyd has opposed this claim, and also discusses the use of 18 The past tense in this context (ēn de epi tēs ēionos . . . Hērakleos hiron) is remarkable, especially since the narrator continues to say that the temple still exists. My suggestion would be to take the imperfect as a sign that the temple is focalized by the Trojans arriving there; see Kühner and Gerth (1898: 145–6). 19 Cf. Rijksbaron (20023: 22) and R. J. Allan (2009). 20 Cf., e.g., D. Müller (1981: 303): ‘Die Wahrnehmung durch das Auge steht in Herodots Katalog der Erkenntnismöglichkeiten auf dem vordesten Platz’ (‘Perception by the eye ranks first in Herodotus’ catalogue of possible ways to gain knowledge’). 21 De Jong (1987).

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the names in drama, concluding that neither in Homer nor in drama is a difference in meaning observable.22 The idea that Alexander is Paris’ international name is still tenable in the present case, since it is, after all, the Egyptian priests who are talking about the Trojan prince here.23 But a more matter-of-fact reason for the use of this name may be to corroborate Herodotus’ later point that Homer too knew about the Egyptian version of the Helen legend (2.116–17). For the name found in (one of) Herodotus’ Homeric quotations is Alexander: erga gunaikōn.., tas autos Alexandros . . . ēgage (2.116.3). By making the Egyptians use this name, Herodotus corroborates the link between the Homeric and their version.24 Turning to harpasanta, we may note that this is, of course, the quintessential Herodotean word for abducting women. Thus the root harpag- is found no less than fourteen times in the famous introductory section on female abductions (including that of Helen) at 1.1–5.25 This word, which clearly has negative connotations, immediately sets the tone for the entire Helen logos that follows, which will paint in shrill colours the criminal behaviour of Paris. In Homer Paris’ act of taking Helen with him is described in much more neutral terms—for example, with the help of the verb anagō, ‘bring home’. The one time we find the root harpag-, it is used by Paris himself, and the connotation seems to be of swiftness and perhaps secrecy rather 22

M. Lloyd (1989). A parallel might be the name of Proteus, which Herodotus suggests is the Greek name for ‘a man from Memphis’, who in Egyptian may have had a different name (2.112.1). 24 In my view the whole discussion of Homer in chapters 2.116–17 is aimed not so much at showing the unreliability of the epic poet (Neville 1977: 7, Lateiner 1989: 99, Austin 1994: 118–22) as at enlisting him as much as possible in the historiographical camp. With much ingenuity and special pleading, Herodotus points out traces of the Egyptian Helen story in Homer’s text (Verdin 1977, Grethlein 2010b: 151–8). 25 It is a well-known crux that in 1.3 Herodotus makes the Trojans, when asked to give back Helen, plead the case of Medea (and not the absence of Helen). It could be argued that in Book One Herodotus is representing the stories of the Persians and Phoenicians, who apparently never were informed of the ‘true’ state of affairs concerning Helen (as he is). His interests there are also very different from those here. It remains strange to our taste, however, that he does not insert any explicit cross-reference to, or comment on, the conflicting versions. But Herodotus’ cross-referencing is notoriously unsystematic (de Jong 2004b: 103). A possible implicit cross-reference, consisting of a verbal echo (much in the style of Homeric cross-referencing), is pempein aggelous . . . apaiteein Helenēn . . . dikas aiteein (2.118.2–3)  pempsantas aggelous apaiteein te Helenēn kai dikas . . . aiteein (1.3.2). On harpagē in the proem, also in connection with the role of women, see Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, pp. 102–5. 23

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than violence: oud’ hote se prōton Lakedaimonos ex erateinēs/epleon harpaxas en pontoporoisi neessi (‘[I have never desired you so much as now,] not even when I abducted you from lovely Sparta and sailed off with you on my seafaring ships’, Il. 3.443–4). Another way in which Herodotus blackens Paris—or rather makes the Egyptian reported narrators blacken Paris—is through the handling of rhythm. Rhythm is the narratological term for the amount of time or space devoted to the narration of an event. A narrator may rush through events or even skip them or he may slow down and tell everything at great leisure. In the first instalment of the Helen logos Herodotus chooses a slow manner of narration, employing a great deal of repetition. Let us follow the thread of the story:  In 2.113.3 we hear how Alexander’s own servants made an









accusation against their master (katēgoreon) before the priests of the temple of Heracles and the Egyptian local magistrate Thonis, ‘telling the whole story as it was about Helen and the injustice [adikiēn] done to Menelaus’. (Note the repetition in katēgoreon . . . tauta, ‘that was the accusation they made’). Then, in 2.114.2 we have Thonis’ report on Alexander to Proteus: ‘a Teucrian stranger has arrived, who has committed an unholy deed [ergon . . . anosion]: he has cheated on his own host [xeinou . . . tou heōutou] with his wife and now has arrived with her and very many possessions’. In 2.114.3 we get to hear Proteus’ first reaction: ‘arrest that man, whoever he is that has committed unholy deeds [anosia] against his own host [xeinon ton heōutou]’. In 2.115.3 we hear how Paris’ servants, when Paris himself refused to tell the truth, ‘refuted him, telling the whole story of his deed of injustice [tou adikēmatos]’.26 And finally, in 2.115.4–5, we get the fullest version, effectively in the mouth of the ‘judge’ Proteus: ‘I would have punished you, who, having received the gift of hospitality [xeiniōn], has committed a most unholy deed [ergon anosiōtaton]. You made advances on the wife of your own host [tou seōutou xeinou]. As if that were not enough, you gave her wings and went away

26 Note the verbatim repetition exēgeumenoi panta logon (2.115.3)  panta logon exēgeumenoi (2.113.3).

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with her. But you didn’t even leave it at that: you even came here after plundering the house of your host [tou xeinou].’ This circumstantial, repetitious way of storytelling results in Paris’ crime being mentioned no less than five times, in increasingly negative terms: anosion becomes anosia and eventually anosiōtaton. Instead of the name Menelaus we find the much more telling (and implicitly incriminatory) periphrastic denomination ‘host’ (xeinos) five times.27 In a similar way, the term adik-,‘injustice’, is sounded twice, a term that at the very end of the logos will turn out to be of central importance (see below). This type of slow storytelling with ample repetition of keywords is a hallmark of Herodotus. The Atys/ Adrastus story in 1.34–45, with its repeated emphasis on the root sumphor-, springs to mind.28 There is one last detail at the opening of the story that reveals the sure hand of the narrator Herodotus. In 2.113.1 we hear how Alexander arrived in Egypt because of adverse winds. I would propose considering this a seed, a detail whose relevance only later becomes clear. The—apparently minor—detail of the wind having driven Alexander to Egypt recurs twice (2.114.2, 115.4), which suggests that Herodotus wants us to keep it in mind. Why he should want this becomes clear at the very end of the Helen logos: there he suggests that the fall of Troy was the gods’ punishment of Paris. Is it too farfetched to think that we are to understand the winds to have been sent by the gods, who thereby brought Helen to Egypt and hence robbed the Trojans of their one chance of salvation?29 I proceed to what in my view is the central part of the first instalment of the Helen story: chapter 2.115.2–3. Having been informed by Thonis 27

For periphrastic denomination in Greek narrative, see de Jong (1993). For an analysis, see de Jong (2005); in general on repetition in Herodotean logoi, see Long (1987). 29 I see my suggestion corroborated by T. Harrison’s discussion (2000a: 92–100) of divine intervention through miracles; on p. 100 he includes the winds that sent Paris to Troy and notes: ‘The winds in such episodes are certainly not central characters as in the disaster at Athos, but bit-players who all contribute to a loosely destined end. Like the divine chances discussed above, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about the appearance of such winds; the judgement that they were divine, in so far as it is ever expressed, is one that is arrived at in retrospect in the light of their disproportionate consequences.’ For another interpretation of the mention of the winds, see Rebuffat (1966), who thinks that they are part of an official legal formulation that was attached to strangers who were driven off course. The repetition of this detail would then emphasize Proteus’ correctness in treating Alexander the way he does. 28

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about the arrival of a stranger who has committed a crime, Proteus commands him to send the stranger to him ‘in order to know what he will say’. When Alexander has arrived, Proteus first asks him the routine questions ‘who he was and where he came from’, which Alexander duly answers. Proteus next asks whence he has taken Helen. Now Alexander prevaricates and does not tell the truth. It is his servants30 who unmask his deed and tell the truth. What we are dealing with here is the typically Herodotean story pattern of a king carrying out enquiries, here testing a story by interrogating its participants.31 A particularly striking parallel is provided by the story of Arion in Book One (1.23–4).32 Periander is told by Arion that he had been forced to jump overboard by Corinthian sailors but had been saved by a dolphin. Periander does not believe this tale, and, hiding Arion, he interrogates the sailors. They say that Arion is safe and that they left him in Tarentum. At this point Arion enters, and the sailors, cross-examined, cannot but tell the truth. The similarities between the two passages are considerable, pertaining even to the verbal level: apēgeesthai pan to gegonos (1.24.6)  exēgeumenoi panta logon (2.115.3); historeesthai (1.24.7)  eirōta (2.115.2, 3); ei ti legoien peri Arionos (1.24.7)  ti kote kai lexei (2.114.3); elegkhomenous (1.24.7)  ēlegkhon (2.115.3). The occurrence of the story pattern of the ‘enquiring king’ in the (Egyptian) Helen logos clearly reveals the hand of Herodotus again. Indeed, asking questions can be said to be something of a leitmotif in the whole Helen logos. We started with Herodotus himself enquiring about (historeonti, 2.113.1) the story of Helen’s stay with Proteus. Then we had King Proteus interrogating Alexander (eirōta, 2.115.2, 3). In the second instalment (2.118.1–119.3), to which I will now turn, the motif is continued. This second instalment begins, as did the first, with Herodotus asking his Egyptian informants a question (eiromenou, 2.118.1) and the priests answering, adding that they (in fact, their predecessors) knew these things through enquiry (historiēisi, 2.118.1) from Menelaus himself. The same claim will be repeated emphatically at the end of the second instalment, which, like the first instalment, is marked off by ring composition: ‘[the priests] 30

Note how their crucial presence at the scene of interrogation has been carefully prepared for at 2.115.1: ‘he brought back Alexander, and Helen and the possessions, and the suppliants as well. The suppliants (hileetas) are Alexander’s servants (cf. 2.113.3)’. 31 See discussions by Christ (1994), Gray (2001), and Demont (2002). 32 This parallel has been noted by A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 50).

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said that they knew some of these things from enquiry [historiēisi] and could tell other things from sure knowledge because they took place in their own country’ (2.119.3). The question that Herodotus asks the Egyptian priests at 2.118.1 runs: ‘whether the Greeks tell a silly story about what has happened at Troy’, in other words, whether, given that Helen has never been in Troy, the Trojan War really took place. The Egyptians then recount what happened at Troy, confirming that the war took place. Indeed, we hear how Menelaus, arriving at Proteus’ palace to collect Helen, ‘gave a truthful account of matters (at Troy)’ (eipas tēn alētheiēn tōn prēgmatōn, 2.119.1). This detail may have been inserted by way of contrast with Alexander, who when with Proteus ‘did not tell the truth’ (ou legontos tēn alētheiēn, 2.115.3). But at the same time the primary narrator Herodotus here shrewdly builds into the Egyptian story itself an explicit confirmation of the Trojan War by making one of the protagonists vouch for its truth. Combining every clue that Herodotus provides us with in the entire Helen logos, we may arrive at the following impressive chain of information, which connects Herodotus in the present with the mythological events of the past: Herodotus!Egyptian priests now Egyptian priests in the past Menelaus.33 Making the Egyptian priests use his own instrument of historiē characterizes them as his stand-ins and allows Herodotus to investigate the mythical past, just as he investigates more recent history. The Egyptian priests start the second instalment at exactly the same point as the first: meta tēn Helenēs harpagēn, ‘after the abduction of Helen’ (2.118.2)  Alexandron harpasanta Helenēn (2.113.1). Instead of following in the footsteps of Alexander, they now pursue the events from the Greek perspective: a Greek army comes to Troy, 33 Plato will imitate Herodotus’ strategy in his Critias, when he creates the following chain of information concerning the story of Atlantis: Critias his grandfather Solon Egyptian priests (113a–b). This parallel was pointed out to me by Rosalind Thomas. Cf. also Dio’s Trojan Discourse (xi), where, in unmistakable imitation of Herodotus, he claims to have heard the truth about the Trojan War from an Egyptian priest, who based his account on written records, which went back to Menelaus, who had come to Egypt and had told everything (chs. 37–8). The editors of this volume also pointed out to me 2.32–33.1, where we find a similar chain of information, there connecting Herodotus with something removed from him not so much in time as in space—namely, the course of the Nile. In this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, p. 119, observes a parallel chain of information in the case of the Homeric Menelaus and Proteus story, and Gray, Ch. 6, p. 186, observes a similar strategy in the case of Melampus’ borrowing of the rites of Dionysus (2.49).

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sets up camp, and sends messengers to Troy, ‘and along with them came Menelaus himself’ (this detail, with auton Meneleōn echoing par’ autou Meneleō of 2.118.1, underscores Menelaus’ role as a witness and hence reliable informant). The Greeks ask for Helen back, and demand reparation for ‘the deeds of injustice’ (tōn . . . adikēmatōn, 2.118.3). The Trojans say they cannot give back Helen, because she is in Egypt. The Greeks think that the Trojans are deceiving them and continue the siege. After taking Troy, they hear exactly the same story about Helen as before, and, not finding her, they now believe it. What we see is that, unlike Proteus, or Periander in Arion’s story, the Greeks do not investigate the Trojans’ story about Helen (which is, in fact, the very story we, the readers/narratees, have just heard, in the first instalment), and do not enquire after its truth. Only afterwards do they believe it and find it confirmed after Menelaus has gone to Egypt. This motif of incredulity is again a quintessentially Herodotean one.34 Indeed, this motif takes the place (as an explanation for the protracted Trojan War) of Helen’s phantom, which at least from Stesichorus onwards had formed part of the Helen logos (and in Euripides’ Helen would do so again). The end of the Egyptian Helen logos is for various reasons problematic or intriguing. For one thing, after a tale centring around the ‘unjust’ and ‘unholy’ deed of Alexander against ‘his host’ Menelaus, we now hear about Menelaus becoming an ‘unjust’ man (anēr adikos) and committing an ‘unholy deed’ (prēgma ouk hosion) against his host Proteus (xeiniōn ēntēse megalōn, 2.119.1) by slaughtering two Egyptians (2.119.2–3). Much ink has been spilled on this event, which all of a sudden aligns a Greek with the bad Trojan Alexander, and opposes both these baddies to the Egyptian goodie Proteus, who is an impeccable host and explicitly says to refrain from ‘killing strangers’ (mēdena xeinōn kteinein, 2.115.4; mē xeinoktoneein, 2.115.6). Some scholars have suggested that this section proves the Egyptian origin of the Helen logos, since they would tell the story as an antidote to the Greek story about the Egyptians trying to sacrifice Heracles (2.45.1–3) and the Busiris legend, which is not found in Herodotus 34

Cf. Packman (1991), who does not discuss the Helen logos. Since it is the Trojans rather than the Greeks who suffer as a result of the disbelief of the Greeks (as the narrator himself explains at 2.120.5), the Helen logos confirms Packman’s conclusion (1991: 405): ‘Individuals may be put to some trouble to collect the information that sets them right, but there is no pattern of suffering or punishment for wrongheaded incredulity.’

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but is omnipresent in other Greek texts.35 However, as Munson has pointed out, it is Herodotus himself who criticizes the Greek story about Heracles’ ‘sacrifice’ and who thus may very well also have devised a Helen logos with a conspicuously good host Proteus as ‘an implicit reversal’ of the Greek misconception of Egyptian xenophobia.36 The final words of the Egyptian reported narrators invite comment: ‘and where Menelaus next (after Libya) went to the Egyptians could not tell.’ This ending is a masterful stroke of narrative genius: as Herodotus stresses the limitations of the perspective of his Egyptian informants, by indicating what they could not tell, he underscores the reliability of what they do tell (cf. ta de par’ heōutoisi genomena atrekeōs epistamenoi legein, ‘they spoke with accurate knowledge about what had happened in their own country’, 2.119.3). Their method here resembles that of Herodotus himself, who occasionally claims that he can not tell something atrekeōs (e.g., 1.160.2; 6.14.1), where, as Flory has suggested, ‘Herodotus’ hesitancy about one detail lends greater credibility to other details that go unquestioned’.37 Of course, Herodotus and his Greek readers know perfectly well what happened to Menelaus afterwards, and the story therefore can stop here, just as it could start in the middle of things.38 But, if the Egyptian Helen logos has come to an end, Herodotus’ Helen logos has not. He adds an epilogue, as he himself calls it (tade epilegomenos, 2.120.1), which consists of an extended passage of gnōmē, reasoning, in which he backs up the Egyptian tale (2.120). Interestingly enough, what Herodotus is doing here is implicitly discussing Homer, whereas earlier, in a similar passage of gnōmē after the first instalment (2.116–17), he did this explicitly. His reasoning runs as follows: (the Egyptian tale must be true, since) it was insane for Priam to put the Trojans and Troy at risk for Helen, and after the first casualties he would certainly have given her up, and, having taken over royal power from Priam, Hector would not have 35 See, e.g., Stein (19025: ad loc.), How and Wells (1928: ad loc.), von Fritz (1967: 175), and A. B. Lloyd (1988b: ad 2.119.1). 36 Munson (2001: 142–4). For Menelaus’ role in the Proteus story, see, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, pp. 113–14, and Vandiver, Ch. 5, pp. 152–4. 37 Flory (1987: 74), and see Gray, this volume, Ch. 6, for more parallels. 38 I disagree with Neville’s suggestion (1977: 5): ‘they [the Greeks] disappear from the narrative, provoking the question whether they managed to get home safely or whether they too suffered complete destruction to prove that great crimes . . . incur great punishments from the gods.’ See also the next note.

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continued to fight for Alexander’s cause. All these points run counter to what we observe in the Iliad: there the Trojan elders say that, in view of Helen’s beauty, ‘the Trojans and Greeks are not to blame for suffering agonies for long years over a woman like this’ (3.156–7); there Priam, when Paris refuses to heed the Trojan elder Antenor’s advice to give up Helen and the possessions, accepts his son’s decision without any comment (7.372–4); and there Hector criticizes Alexander’s slackness in fighting but does not urge him to give back Helen (6.326–31). Herodotus’ exercise also allows him one last time to stress the truth of the Egyptian variant of the Helen story: . . . oude legousi autoisi tēn alētheiēn episteuon hoi Hellēnes (‘nor did the Greeks believe them, though they were telling the truth’, 2.120.5). At the very end of this chapter Herodotus, in the true manner of an epilogue, also draws his conclusion. In his view, the Helen logos is an illustration of the general truth that ‘the severity of deeds of injustice [adikēmatōn, 2.120.5] is matched by the severity of the punishment at the hands of the gods’. Having first made the Egyptians lay the groundwork of the facts, Herodotus himself now gives the punchline. Taking over their earlier assessment of Alexander’s act of abducting Helen as a form of adikiē (adikeonti, 2.120.4) he interprets the Trojan War as a story of crime and (divine) punishment. It is this conclusion that the entire Helen logos has been leading up to and that again clearly reveals Herodotus’ fingerprint. As many scholars have argued, Herodotus believed in the principle—though not iron law—of divine retribution, and the Histories abounds in examples.39 Indeed, casting the Trojan War into a moral model is an(other) revision of the Homeric version:40 in Homer, timē (honour) rather than dikē (justice) is the central notion, and the gods act out of personal whims and feelings of maiestas laesa rather than ethical principles.41 A probable reason why Herodotus gives it this slant is because, in this way, he can 39

See, e.g., Gould (1989: 67–82), T. Harrison (2000a: 102–21), and Munson (2001: 183–94). It has been suggested, e.g., by Neville (1977: 5, 6–7), that Herodotus implies that this dictum also applies to the Greek victors of Troy themselves. I find this unconvincing, for one thing because Herodotus’ audience knew that the Greek culprit of the Helen logos, Menelaus, who sacrifices Egyptians, returns home safely and lives happily (?) ever after with Helen. 40 Here I part company from, e.g., K. H. Waters (1985: 101) (quoted approvingly by Vandiver 1991: 130), who considers 2.120 a return to ‘the orthodox, Homeric view of the Trojan War’. Cf. Vandiver’s analysis, this volume, Ch. 5, pp. 150–1. 41 See Yamagata (1994) and van Erp Taalman Kip (2000). Allan (2006) has recently advocated a moralistic reading of the Iliad.

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turn the Trojan War into a prefigurement of the Persian Wars, especially the part with Xerxes.42

3. CONCLUSION Now that I have arrived at the end of my close reading of the Helen logos, it is time to draw my conclusions. The Helen logos, said to derive from Egyptian priests, upon closer inspection reveals the hand of Herodotus everywhere. The story pattern of the enquiring king, the motif of incredulity, and the principle of divine retribution all occur elsewhere in his work. The story, though presented in two instalments, is in fact a close-knit whole. The handling of rhythm and the repetition of keywords are also typical Herodotean narrative strategies. The whole make-up of the story is therefore Herodotean, yet Herodotus presents it emphatically and repeatedly as the tale of Egyptian priests. Why? The answer might be that he really heard it from Egyptians. We will probably never be able to prove or refute this idea. But, even if Herodotus spoke with Egyptians about this topic, I would hazard a guess that he at most heard that Helen had stayed with Proteus in Egypt. The entire story built on the basis of this kernel (which was already known from Greek sources too) is his own. He puts it in the mouths of Egyptian priests in order to promote it to his Greek readers. As Herodotus himself makes clear, the historiographical sophistication of the Egyptians is great, with their written records (2.100.1) and genealogies that go back for 345 generations (2.142–3).43 In the specific case of the Helen logos, his Egyptian informants provide Herodotus with an unbroken chain of information linking the present to the past, ending with the eyewitness Menelaus himself. This allows him to present a mythological story as an eyewitness report, which he underscores by his repeated use of the historic present. Just as Homer exploits the Muses, eyewitnesses of history (Il. 2.485), to pass off his Iliad as the one and only true story of the Trojan War, Herodotus uses the Egyptian spokesmen/eyewitnesses to 42

Cf., e.g., Immerwahr (1966: 234 n. 133) and Vandiver (1991: 223–9), and see Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2. 43 See, e.g., Lateiner (1989: 150), and the Introduction to this volume, n. 109.

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authorize his particular version of the Helen logos.44 The idea that Helen was in Egypt during the Trojan War had been voiced before, but the particular slant that Herodotus gives it is entirely his own: the Trojan War is not fought because of a beautiful woman (Homer) or a phantom (Stesichorus) but because people fail to check a story. Lloyd’s remark is in this respect surprising: ‘Its [the Helen logos’] creator cannot be H[erodotus]: otherwise he could not possibly have treated it so seriously.’45 Quite the reverse: throughout antiquity the serious re-creation of the past was an accepted way of writing historiography. What Herodotus is doing in the Helen logos (and elsewhere in his Histories) is following what Fornara called the ‘established principle that the bare historical facts required both supplementation and deductive interconnection in order to provide a narrative that was at once intellectually and artistically satisfying’.46 Returning to the central issue of this volume, Herodotus and myth, my close reading of the Helen logos has shown that, though for Herodotus ‘myth’ or the time of the heroes may be distinct from ‘what is called the human age’, tēs . . . anthrōpēiēs legomenēs geneēs (3.122), it is not a completely separate category:47 it is, at least in this case, open to historiographical enquiry and connected with the present via a chain of information, and displays the same patterns and motifs as elsewhere in the Histories.

44 Cf. Burian (2007: 7–8): ‘It is also entirely conceivable that the “priestly tale” is more or less a convenient fiction. It is at any rate characteristically Herodotean, not least in the very favourable light in which it presents Proteus and the Egyptians in comparison to the Trojan Paris and the Greek Menelaus.’ 45 A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 46). 46 Fornara (1983: 134). 47 See Cobet (2002: 405–11) for a synoptic discussion of the spatium mythicum in Herodotus. He likewise argues that the boundaries between the spatium mythicum and spatium historicum are fluid. See also Vandiver (1991) and the Introduction to this volume, pp. 24–9.

5 ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus Elizabeth Vandiver

In order to understand Herodotus we must cease to regard him as a historian, and see him as a narrator, whose narrative art is related to that of his sources. Herodotus should be accepted as the creator of a new generic form which only later became identified as history. (Oswyn Murray)1

Herodotus’ approach to narrating the past provided a crucial foundation on which later historians could build their discipline, but he himself was a transitional figure, for whose ‘new generic form’ we do not even now have an adequate term. To view Herodotus in the way Murray suggests, as a narrator and a master of his art, allows an appreciation of precisely those elements that are most problematic when Herodotus is judged purely as a historian.2 Luraghi reminds us that, when authors no longer claimed inspiration by the Muse, ‘establishing a new way of dealing with the past implied the creation of a new kind of authority’.3 Herodotus’ ‘creation of authority’ was complex and multifaceted, but one element in it was his use of concepts familiar from epic, oral tradition, and the rich background of traditional tales (‘what is commonly meant, in ordinary usage, by

1

Murray (2001b: 322). See also Boedeker (2000: esp. 113–14). See Calame (1995: 76–91) and also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 2–10, on the Herodotean ‘paradox’. 3 Luraghi (2006: 86–7). 2

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both “myth” or “legend” ’, to use Finley’s formulation4) to endow particularly important scenes or characters with an aura that would recall the tone, assumptions, and authority of epic. To understand Herodotus on his own terms, we should consider his use of narrative patterns and concepts inherited from epic and from the oral traditions about gods and heroes not as blemishes on his historiography or as evidence of his bad faith as a historian, but rather for what they accomplish in his own form of narrative. This chapter examines Herodotus’ use, in two key passages, of one such traditional concept, xenia, usually translated into English with the rather cumbersome terms ‘guest-friendship’ or ‘guest–host relationship’.5 The reception and proper treatment of guests, their reciprocal treatment of their hosts, and the hereditary obligations incurred by the establishment of xenia between two men (and hence two families) are prominent topics in many traditional narratives about gods and heroes and are especially important in the Homeric epics. Particularly in the Odyssey, xenia ranks among the moral imperatives that humans cannot violate without bringing down divine vengeance upon themselves; as Nausicaa and Eumaeus both put it, ‘all strangers are from Zeus’ (6.207–8 = 14.57–8).6 The concept of xenia is, of course, by no means limited to traditional tales nor to the Homeric epics. Herman has shown that xenia was a powerful social concept and a method of forming extra-familial alliances in the fifth-century polis; it included formal political bonds between one polis and another or between monarchs as well as the relationship 4

Finley (1975a: 13). For an overview of some of the problems inherent in assuming that Greek thought moved from ‘myth’ to ‘reason’, and that ‘myth’ corresponds to a recognizable ancient category of thought, see the introduction of Buxton (1999). Herodotus himself uses the word muthos only twice: see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 11–13. In both instances he clearly considers the story in question to be inaccurate, but it is far from clear that he intended any sharp differentiation in kind between stories that he identified as muthos and other forms of narrative; see Vandiver (1991: 7–8). 5 The words xenia and xenos appear in several different dialect forms in our extant sources. For the sake of familiarity, I use the Attic forms in this essay, even though Herodotus himself used the Ionic xeinos and xeiniē. 6 See Reece’s cogent discussion (1993: 182) of Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors, which he correctly reads not as purely personal vengeance but rather as an indication of Odysseus’ ‘role as a guardian of society and an instrument of divine justice dispensing . . . punishment on those who have subverted the basic institutions that define civilization: marriage, inheritance, property rights, the agora, sacrifice, suppliancy, and, most pertinent here, xenia’.

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between two individuals (and by extension their families) so familiar from Homer.7 This extended range of xenia is evident in Herodotus’ work; most of his uses of xenia terminology either refer to a clearly political alliance between two poleis or rulers, or mean simply ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’ without any implication of a complicated, binding, and inheritable relationship of mutual trust and benefit.8 But there are also occasions when Herodotus portrays xenia as a relationship between two individuals, whose obligations to one another are conceptualized within a framework that would be recognizable to any reader of Homer. This chapter examines two key logoi where xenia between individuals figures prominently and colours the entire logos by giving it a recognizably ‘Homeric’ cast: Croesus’ acceptance of Adrastus as a xenos (1.35–45) and Proteus’ rebuke of Paris for wronging Menelaus (2.114–117).9 Scholars have long recognized Herodotus’ debt to Homeric epic. This debt should not surprise or disconcert us; it would be astonishing had Herodotus not conceptualized his work in broadly Homeric terms. To recognize epic’s pervasive influence on the Histories’ organization, themes, concepts, and even its influence on the lexical level is not to question Herodotus’ accuracy or his evidentiary value for events of the fifth century, but rather to recognize that (obviously) he wrote from within his own culture and that his work is, among other things, a ‘combination of the Homeric and the new’.10 Direct and oblique references to Homer allowed Herodotus to provide his narrative not only with an implied chronology (however broad or vague it might be) and with an authoritative voice,11 but also with recognized reference points and key concepts with which he could stress particularly important episodes or figures in his narrative. In the two logoi we shall consider here, Herodotus uses xenia between individuals in precisely this way, to highlight the passages’ significance by 7

Herman (1987). Herodotus uses xenia eleven times and xenos eighty-four times. There are also numerous occurrences of cognate words such as xenizō and xenikos. For a discussion of political xenia in Herodotus, especially between tyrants, see Fisher (2002: 209–14). 9 For an analysis of the Proteus figure, see de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3. On the Helen logos, see also de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4. 10 Thomas (2000: 268). For Herodotus’ reception of Homer, see inter alia Jacoby (1913: cols. 502–4), Huber (1965), Strasburger (1972), Erbse (1992), Boedeker (2002), Marincola (2006, with suggestions for further reading, and 2007a), and Pelling (2006a). Further bibliography is cited in the Introduction to this volume, n. 1. 11 De Jong (2004b). 8

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establishing a Homeric tone for them. The logoi about Croesus and Adrastus, and about Proteus and Paris, thus have important implications for our understanding both of Herodotus’ literary technique and of his conception of historiography. Both stories are far removed temporally from the Persian Wars that form the main subject of Herodotus’ work, and both feature recognizably Homeric xenia operating among non-Greeks (Lydians and Egyptians). I will discuss these two passages in reverse order, starting with Proteus, Helen, and Paris, since that logos directly reworks Homeric material.

1. PARIS, HELEN, PROTEUS, AND MENELAUS Herodotus introduces the Helen-in-Egypt logos (2.112–20) to explain a certain temple’s name. The temple in question is in honour of ‘Aphrodite the Guest (or Stranger, or Foreigner)’ in Egypt (xeinēs Aphroditēs).12 Herodotus conjectures that in fact this temple honours Helen, not Aphrodite herself, and grounds his conjecture in two pieces of evidence; first, he has heard that Helen spent some time in the court of the Egyptian king Proteus, and, second, no other temple gives Aphrodite the title xenē (2.112).13 The relationship of Herodotus’ logos about Helen in Egypt to Stesichorus’ ‘Palinode’, according to which the gods sent an image (eidōlon) of Helen to Troy while she herself remained elsewhere, is a vexed question, as is the possibility of other sources for Herodotus’ 12 Austin (1994: 122–3) makes a strong case for translating xeinēs here as ‘guest’ rather than ‘foreigner’. A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 45), with bibliography, identifies the temple as that of Astarte. 13 Austin (1994: 119) refers to the ‘suspicious speed’ with which Herodotus makes the identificatory leap to Helen of Sparta. Fehling (1989: 65) notes the oddity of the identification and comments that it gives us ‘a picture of the author hearing of the existence of a temple of Astarte in the Phoenician quarter, instantly divining a link with Helen, and hurrying off to secure confirmation in the form of a few uncomprehending nods to be extracted from guides devoid of any knowledge of Greek’. Even if one does not assume with Fehling that Herodotus’ Egyptian guides were ignorant of Greek, the rapidity of Herodotus’ identification of Helen remains a problem, probably best solved by assuming that he ‘has arrived in Memphis with this story already in hand . . . Whether following the trail of his predecessor Hekataios or in someone else’s footsteps, Herodotus knew what he expected to find when he walked into the sanctuary’ (Austin 1994: 122–3).

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Egyptian version of Helen’s story.14 In Herodotus’ version, whatever its sources may have been, Helen remains in Egypt because of the intervention of the good Egyptian king, Proteus. A storm drives Paris (whom Herodotus consistently calls Alexander) and Helen ashore in Egypt near a temple to Heracles that has a tradition of offering sanctuary to runaway slaves.15 Several of Paris’ slaves escape to the temple and tell its attendant, Thonis, about Paris’ abduction of Helen. What happens next establishes the importance of xenia in this logos: Thonis immediately sent a message to Proteus at Memphis, saying ‘a xenos, Trojan by birth, has come here after committing a sacrilegious deed [ergon . . . anosion16] in Greece. He seduced the wife of his own xenos and then carried her off along with a great deal of money, and now he has been forced by the winds to your land.’ (2.114)17

The messenger asks Proteus if Thonis should allow Paris to sail away again unharmed or if he should confiscate the goods with which Paris arrived (ta ekhōn ēlthe, presumably including Helen). In his response, Proteus too stresses xenia: ‘Seize this man, whoever he is who has committed sacrilegious acts against his own xenos [anosia exergasmenos xeinon ton heōutou], and bring him to me so I may see him and hear what he says’ (2.114). When he is brought before Proteus, Paris gives truthful answers to questions about who he is and where he is from, but when Proteus asks where he got Helen, Paris begins to circumvent the truth. The runaway slaves 14 See Vandiver (1991: 125 nn. 1–2) for partial bibliography, and, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, n. 6, and de Jong, Ch. 4, n. 3. A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 47) notes that one of the most striking elements that differentiates Herodotus’ account of Helen from the version of her story preserved in Stesichorus’ ‘Palinode’ is the ‘removal of the eidōlon’; he thinks that the version Herodotus recounts must have been developed by someone ‘active before H.’s dialogue with the priests and someone with a relatively sophisticated psychological awareness as well as a liberal dose of rationalism’, and comments that the ‘obvious candidate’ is Hecataeus. See also Austin (1994: 127–8, and his whole discussion of Helen in Egypt, 118–36). 15 On the possible significance of Herodotus’ use of the name Alexander, see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 132–3. For possible identifications of which Egyptian god is meant by ‘Heracles’ here, see A. B. Lloyd (2007: 323). For sanctuary in Egypt, see Lloyd (1988a: 48), who argues against assuming that this is a Greek element in the story; Fehling’s claim (1989: 64) that ‘all scholars agree’ that asylum ‘has no parallel in Egypt’ is greatly overstated. For the function of the temple as a Herodotean piece of opsis in the overall story, see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 130,132. 16 On anosion, A. B. Lloyd (2007: 323) comments: ‘it was worse than an ¼ØŒ; for he had committed an offence against Zeus Xenios.’ 17 Translations of Herodotus are my own.

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inform Proteus of the true events, and Proteus’ reaction continues the foregrounding of xenia that has run throughout the scene: ‘If I did not think it of the utmost importance to kill no xenos [mēdena xeinōn kteinein] of those who have been driven off course by the winds and have come to my country, I would take vengeance against you on behalf of the Greek, you most evil of men, who when you had met with hospitality [xeiniōn tukhōn] performed the most sacrilegious deed [ergon anosiōtaton]: you approached the wife of your own xenos [para tou seōutou xeinou tēn gunaika ēlthe] and even that wasn’t enough for you, but once you had stirred her up, you went off with her. And still you weren’t satisfied, but you also plundered the household of your xenos.’ (2.115.4–5)

Proteus repeats that, since he thinks it crucial not to kill a xenos (here using the compound verb xeinoktoneein), he will himself take charge of the woman and the money and will guard them for ‘the Greek xenos’ until he arrives to claim them. Paris and his companions, however, must sail away from Proteus’ land within three days or be treated as enemies (2.115).18 The frequency of the xenia terms indicates how central the concept is for this logos. There are nine uses of xenos, xenia, or a compound in rapid succession; nowhere else in the Histories do xenia-words cluster so thickly together. Proteus makes it clear that the main source of his outrage and horror at Paris’ actions is precisely the violation of xenia that those actions entail.19 Proteus does not merely express disgust at the thought of one man abducting (or seducing) another’s wife, nor at the thought of property theft per se; rather, he hammers home that Paris’ deeds are utterly beyond the pale because they were perpetrated against a xenos.20 This point is highlighted by the emphatic repetitions of the reflexive pronouns: xeinou gar tou heōutou (of his own xenos), xeinon ton heōutou (his own xenos), tou seōutou xeinou (of your own xenos). The text thus foregrounds the point that Paris’ crime goes beyond seduction and adultery to violate not only 18 On Proteus in this story as a foreign educator of the Greeks on the subject of xenia, see de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, pp. 113–17. 19 A. B. Lloyd (2007: 324): ‘Proteus’ respect for the obligations of  Æ is made to contrast forcefully with Alexander’s disregard for them.’ See also A. B. Lloyd (1988a: 45). 20 A. B. Lloyd (2007: 324) points out that the switch to oratio recta in Proteus’ denunciation of Paris ‘has the effect of throwing the dénouement into sharper and more dramatic relief ’. For alternative explanations of the switch, see, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, pp. 124–5, and de Jong, Ch. 4, pp. 131–2.

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marriage norms and sexual mores but the assumptions of xenia as well. Xenia functions in many ways as an institution that parallels marriage, and thus Paris has transgressed against both of the systems whereby extra-familial alliances are formed, so that his crime constitutes a double outrage against the structures of society.21 Proteus also claims a kind of proleptic xenia with Menelaus; when the ‘Greek xenos’ arrives, Proteus says, he will return Helen and the treasure to him. Xenos could here be read only with respect to Paris, in which case Proteus means ‘when the Greek man who is your xenos arrives’. However, the later segment of the logos in which Menelaus receives xenia from Proteus strongly suggests that Proteus’ words here form an anticipatory claim of xenia between himself and Menelaus as well, to imply ‘when my xenos arrives’ and thus already to cast himself in the role of one who must protect Menelaus’ interests. It is especially striking that, even so, Proteus considers himself bound not to harm Paris. However much Paris has shown himself to be utterly contemptuous of the obligations of xenia, Proteus cannot likewise disregard those obligations. Paris has arrived at Proteus’ shores as a xenos—here the word must mean ‘stranger’ first and foremost, since neither Proteus nor Paris has suggested any formal entry into ritualized friendship—and therefore must be hospitably received and protected.22 Proteus’ treatment of Paris (and later of Menelaus) is strikingly reminiscent of Alcinous’ treatment of Odysseus in the Odyssey; the wandering stranger accidentally driven ashore is automatically owed unconditional hospitality by his host, no matter what crimes he may have committed or who he may be.23 The underlying assumptions here are very much like those of the epic poet, for whom, as Herman says, it was ‘a part of the natural order of things’ that ‘the obligations of guest-friendship should be set above all other obligations’.24

21 On xenia and marriage as the foremost means for forming alliances with those outside one’s own community, see Herman (1987: 36). See also Finley’s statement (19783b: 99) about xenia in Homeric epic: ‘guest-friendship was a very serious institution, the alternative to marriage in forging bonds between rulers.’ 22 On formal ceremonies for beginning a xenia relationship, see Herman (1987: 44–54). 23 I owe this comparison to Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker. As we shall see below, the Croesus/Adrastus logos similarly foregrounds the host’s obligation to help his guest before knowing what has brought that guest to his country. 24 Herman (1987: 2).

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At the close of 2.120, the end of his account of Paris, Helen, Proteus, and Troy, Herodotus gives a statement of his own opinion about why the Greeks did not believe the Trojans’ assertions that Helen was not in Troy and why, more broadly, Troy fell. Herodotus is certain Homer knew the story that Helen was in Egypt, and he is also sure that it is the correct version, since it is unthinkable that Priam would not have given Helen back had she been there to give; no king would have countenanced the devastation of his city and the loss of his kingdom merely to let one son, and that one not even the eldest, live in adulterous bliss with someone else’s wife.25 But the Greeks did not believe the Trojans, because Troy had to fall; Herodotus says that, in his opinion, Troy’s destruction came about to make it evident to all that great wrongdoings receive great punishments from the gods: But they did not have Helen to give back, nor did the Greeks believe them when they told the truth, because—I reveal my own opinion here—the divine26 was contriving matters so that the Trojans, through their utter destruction [panōlethriēi], would make it absolutely clear among human beings that the punishments the gods impose on great wrongdoings [megalōn adikēmatōn] are also great. (2.120)

Herodotus does not, in this concluding paragraph, state what the great wrongdoing of the Trojans was, but the earlier part of the logos makes it clear that it was Paris’ violation of xenia, identified by Proteus as an ergon anosiōtaton (2.115.4). The prince’s individual wrongdoing implicates his whole society, and Herodotus here reiterates the idea that Aeschylus puts into the mouth of the chorus in Agamemnon (ll. 60–2), that Zeus in his role as Xenios, the god who oversees xenia, required the destruction of Troy.27 The significance of this passage for our understanding of Herodotus’ purpose and methodology can hardly be overstated.28 As

25 On Herodotus’ implicit criticism of Homer here, see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 139–40. 26 In translating tou daimoniou as ‘the divine’, I follow T. Harrison (2000a: 105). For a discussion of daimon’s range of meanings in the Histories, see T. Harrison (2000a: 164–9). 27 De Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 140–1, reaches a similar conclusion. 28 Aly (19692: 67) sees Herodotus’ concluding sentence with its claim of divine vengeance as evidence of his particular interest in this logos: ‘Es kommt hinzu, dass er sich für diesen Logos besonders interessiert, den er ausdrücklich für zutreffend erklärt und emphatisch mit dem allgemeinen Satze beschliesst’ (‘There is also the fact that he is particularly interested in this logos, which he expressly declares true and emphatically concludes with the general maxim’).

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Waters remarks, Herodotus’ stress on divine vengeance for the violation of xenia parallels ‘the orthodox Homeric view of the Trojan War’.29 While scholars have rightly noted the passage’s stress on the importance of argumentation from likelihood, it is no less noteworthy that Herodotus here combines that rational analysis of sources with the traditional moral framework reflected in Homeric epic. Furthermore, Herodotus shows not the faintest shadow of doubt that the Trojan War occurred and that Helen, Menelaus, Priam, Paris, and the rest were actual people whose actual deeds led to the war and its consequences. While in his argument from likelihood concerning Helen’s whereabouts Herodotus does indeed ‘come down on the side of pragmatism’,30 his conclusion that Helen could not have been in Troy is pressed into service to support the deeply traditional statement about divine vengeance; Helen’s absence from Troy was the means whereby the justice of the gods was worked out, to prove that great wrongdoings obtain great punishments. Herodotus’ stress on Paris’ violation of xenia throughout this logos and his explanation in 2.120 of the consequences of that violation for Troy form the strongest possible contrast with the rationalized version of the abductions of women that opens Book One, a version that Herodotus attributes to Persian logioi.31 The emphasis of 2.120, where Herodotus specifically says that he is revealing his own opinion (gnōmē), could scarcely be more different from the emphasis of 1.5. Wise men do not make a fuss about such abductions, say the Persian logioi; divinity decreed that Troy must fall to show that great wrongdoings encounter great punishments, says Herodotus speaking in propria persona.32 Far from being a merely sordid and trivial personal 29 K.H. Waters (1985: 101); see also Vandiver (1991:128–30). But see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 140–1, for an argument that Herodotus’ ‘moral model’ is a departure from the Homeric version. Austin (1994: 135) severely downplays the importance of the gods here: ‘With Helen securely hidden in Egypt . . . the whole Trojan War became then a human catastrophe’, although he does note that ‘Herodotus still interprets the Trojan War as the grand spectacle designed by those whom he designates in the traditional fashion as the gods’ (emphasis added). 30 Baragwanath (2008: 73). 31 The tone and significance of this ‘Persian version’ of Greek myths is hotly disputed; for brief discussion and bibliography, see Chiasson (2003: 17–18). Cf. also, in this volume, Dewald, Ch. 1, pp. 61–7, and Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 101–5. 32 See T. Harrison’s comment (2000a: 109–10): ‘The divine response to Alexander’s theft of Helen, the destruction of Troy, is (whatever we might think) envisaged apparently by Herodotus as a proportional response.’ Elsewhere Harrison is, I think, overly restrictive in contrasting Herodotus’ statement of divine retribution at 2.120

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matter, as the Persian logioi would have it, Paris’ theft of Helen is a wrong that engages divine vengeance and requires the destruction of an entire kingdom. In short, 2.120 provides very strong evidence that Herodotus does not endorse the rationalization of abduction myths that he attributes to the Persians and Phoenicians, and that the rationalized version does not represent his own view of those stories.33 The Proteus logos complicates its presentation of divine vengeance, however, by including a further violation of xenia, enacted not by Asian against Greek but by Greek against Egyptian, that surprisingly goes unpunished. When the Greeks took Troy and found that Helen was not there, they sent Menelaus to Proteus in Egypt. Menelaus, received as a guest just as Proteus had predicted he would be, engages in a crime even more horrifying than Paris’—he sacrifices two Egyptian children: When Menelaus arrived in Egypt, sailed up to Memphis, and told the truth about what had happened, he both received great hospitality [xeiniōn ēntēse megalōn] and got Helen back completely unharmed, as well as all of his goods. But even though he was treated so well, Menelaus became an unjust man [anēr adikos] to the Egyptians . . . He performed an unholy deed [prēgma ouk hosion]. Taking two children of local men, he made them sacrificial victims. (2.119)

only with Paris’ assumption in 1.5 that he would receive no punishment for abducting Helen (2000: 104–5). The portrayal of divine punishment in 2.120 contrasts with the assumptions of the Persian logioi in general that such abductions were trivial, not just with Paris’ false expectation for his own case. Pelliccia (1992: 82) surprisingly omits any mention of Herodotus’ statement about divine punishment from his discussion of Herodotus’ ‘good sophistic argument from probability’ that Helen could not have been in Troy. 33 Arieti (1995: 9–11) argues that Herodotus’ presentation of the accounts of the Persian logioi is intended as a negative characterization of the Persians, not as an indication of Herodotus’ own tendency to rationalize ‘myth’. I agree with this point and would add that Herodotus’ presentation shows us learned Persians who are contemptuous and dismissive of Greek mythic traditions, concerned to destroy the kleos of Greek accounts of events rather than to preserve it; thus, the Persians and the Greeks are in conflict even in their understanding of the most remote past and the views of the Persian logioi are in direct opposition to Herodotus’ stated purpose for writing ‘so that great and marvellous accomplishments would not lose their glory’ (mēte erga megala te kai thōmasta . . . aklea genētai, proem). See further Vandiver (1991: 114–24). For very different interpretations of the abduction narratives, see, e.g., Pelliccia (1992: 76–80) and Moles (1993: 95–6).

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The text here downplays Proteus’ role as Menelaus’ host and instead presents Menelaus as a xenos of the Egyptian people in general. In fact, Waterfield translates: ‘The Egyptians looked after him magnificently, returned Helen to him completely unhurt, and gave him back all his property as well.’34 The implication that Menelaus was effectively a xenos not just of Proteus but of the whole Egyptian people casts his sacrifice of the children as a violation of xenia. As Munson says: ‘Adapted to the xenie theme of the narrative, this reenactment of the sacrifice of the Greeks at Aulis produces a host-sacrifice that reverses the alleged guest-sacrifices of the Egyptian Busiris.’35 In this reading, Menelaus’ crime becomes that of xenoktoneein, the murder of a xenos, precisely the crime that Proteus has twice articulated as most to be avoided. Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis, a killing that has no direct bearing on xenia, is displaced onto Menelaus in Egypt, and both Trojan and Greek participants in the war are shown to be guilty of xenia-violations.36 Paris’ violation of xenia occurred before the war began and was in fact the cause of the war, which Herodotus portrays as a means of divine vengeance against Paris. Menelaus’ violation occurred as he journeyed home after a victory that, as the discovery of Helen in Egypt proved, was empty. Proteus, transformed from the Odyssean Old Man of the Sea into a wise and righteous king,37 provides the locus for these two violations of xenia to be juxtaposed with one another. As Munson 34

Waterfield (1998: 140). Munson (2001: 144). 36 Baragwanath (2008: 112) notes the parallel terminology of Paris’ anosion ergon (unholy deed) and Menelaus’ prēgma ouk hosion (an action not holy), although she does not comment on the role of xenia. On Menelaus’ sacrifice of Egyptian children, A. B. Lloyd (1988b: 51) comments that ‘whatever the origin of the tale . . . it should be noted that the act would be equally offensive to Gks. and Egs.—to the former as a violation of xenia, to the latter because of their repugnance for human sacrifice’. This overlooks the purely Greek view of xenia that Herodotus attributes to Proteus; whatever actual Egyptians’ primary reasons for horror at human sacrifice might have been, in the context of Herodotus’ logos the xenia violation surely looms as large for the ‘Egyptian’ characters (wholly Herodotean constructs in their language, viewpoints, and actions) as for the Greek ones. ‘The language and the social values are unequivocally Greek’ (A. B. Lloyd 2007: 323). On the Herodotean ‘fingerprint’ throughout the Helen logos, see de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4. 37 According to A. B. Lloyd (1988a: 32), the name Proteus ‘has no Egyptian ancestor [and] . . . is clearly that of the Homeric sea god’. This is the only name in Herodotus’ list of Egyptian kings that ‘has demonstrably been injected into the tradition from Greek sources’ (A. B. Lloyd 1988a: 33). On the transformation, see de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, pp. 109–13. 35

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observes: ‘Menelaus’ “impious” deed in Egypt, clearly evoking the human sacrifice at Aulis in one of the Greek traditions, gives a hint that not all may be morally right with the aggressor against Troy.’38 The account of Menelaus’ crime reminds the reader that the Achaeans were hardly blameless or wholly just in their conduct during the Trojan War and that their transgressions during the Sack of Troy led to misfortune for many of them on their journeys homeward, so that ultimately neither Trojan nor Greek avoided the retribution of the gods for their wrongdoings. But Herodotus does not mention any retribution that befell Menelaus himself after his sojourn in Egypt; this parallels Helen’s immunity from retribution in the Homeric presentation of the story.39 While Agamemnon dies and Odysseus wanders, Helen and Menelaus arrive home unharmed and, apparently, unscathed.40 Within the immediate context of the Egyptian logos, Herodotus’ crafting of the story stresses the opposition between the just Egyptian king Proteus and the barbaric, wandering foreigners, both Greek and Trojan; the Egyptian king’s moral superiority to either xenos is clear. Vasunia has argued that ‘Egypt occupies an interesting intermediate position between European Greece and barbarian Asia in Herodotus’ narrative’;41 here, Egypt under Proteus provides a template of true civilization against which the misdeeds and violations of both Trojan and Greek can be evaluated. Proteus and the Egyptians protect and obey the obligations of xenia, which is expanded from its essentially Greek status to appear as a moral value of the much older Egyptian civilization; Herodotus backreads Greek constructs into Egyptian culture in the case of xenia, much as he does in the case of religious beliefs and ceremonies.42 Within the Egyptian logos, then, the story of Proteus, Paris, Helen, and Menelaus emphasizes the position of Egyptian civilization as a source and guarantor of Greek values;43 the Egyptian Proteus (with

38

Munson (2001: 186). See also de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, pp. 136–40 and nn. 38–9; for a different view, see Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, p. 101. 40 It is worth noting that in the Odyssey it is Proteus (the Old Man of the Sea) who tells Menelaus that he will end his life in the Elysian fields. 41 Vasunia (2001: 125). 42 ‘Herodotus’ text both Hellenizes and mythologizes Egypt’ (Vasunia 2001: 125; see his whole discussion of Helen in Egypt, pp. 124–6). Cf. Haziza (2009). 43 De Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, pp. 113–22, reaches a similar conclusion and argues that Proteus is staged as a methodological example for Herodotus as well. 39

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his Greek name) understands and practises the values of Greek civilization when not only Trojan but even Greek violate them.44 In the wider context of Herodotus’ entire work, however, the story emphasizes Trojan culpability over Greek, as Herodotus’ final expression of his own gnōmē in 2.120 indicates. This sentence, with its assumption that Paris’ theft of Helen was a crime deserving of divine punishment, foregrounds Trojan wrongdoing over Greek, and especially foregrounds the tendency of eastern potentates—here, in the person of Paris—to grasp more than belongs to them. The reason for this is to be found, I think, not just in Herodotus’ view of the Trojan War but also in the overall construction of his entire narrative.45 Divine retribution for Greek misdeeds in and after the Trojan War was not his main topic, but a demonstration of the inevitability of divine retribution for the transgressions of non-Greek monarchs was. Thus, the text can allow Menelaus’ sacrifice of two Egyptian children to go unpunished, while Paris’ theft of Helen brings down divine wrath upon his city and leads to its total destruction.

2. CROESUS, ATYS, AND ADRASTUS The stress on Homeric xenia in the Proteus, Paris, and Helen logos could in part be due to that story’s clear relationship, in both subject matter and characters, to Homeric epic. But, in the second logos I want to consider, the story of the death of Croesus’ son Atys (1.34–45), the characters are far removed from Homer’s epics in both time and place, yet Homeric xenia plays a crucial role there as well, even to the extent of including verbal echoes of both epics.46 See Vasunia’s comment (2001: 188) that Herodotus ‘reverses the ethnic logic of the [Busiris] story, not only by repudiating the likelihood of human sacrifice in the socioreligious context of Egypt, but also by imputing to a Greek hero the very actions that the canonical narrative, despite his history, represents as characteristically Egyptian’. 45 See Cartledge and Greenwood’s statement (2002: 356) that, ‘by concluding the episode in this way, Herodotus appropriates oracular authority for himself ’. 46 Cf. also Dewald’s observation, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 71, that several names in this story have mythic resonances. For my purposes here, the question of how much of the Croesus logos was traditional is irrelevant; the crafting of the story and its emphases were Herodotus’ own. For an argument that the Atys/Adrastus story was traditional, see Miller (1963: 90–2); for a discussion of the difficulties involved in 44

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Indeed, Gomme calls this episode ‘the most moving and most Homeric story in Herodotos’.47 Herodotus begins his account of Croesus by marking the Lydian king out as a crucial figure who is, in some sense, the starting point for his enquiry into the causes of conflict between Greeks and Asians.48 The Croesus logos falls into several parts: background on Croesus’ ancestor Gyges; Croesus’ interaction with Solon; Croesus’ loss of his son Atys; his defeat by Cyrus and miraculous rescue from execution by Apollo; his later role as wise adviser to Cyrus and Cambyses. The segment of the story that concerns us here recounts the circumstances of the death of Atys. Herodotus’ narrative directly links the youth’s death to Croesus’ interaction with Solon and his inability to understand the point of Solon’s warning against assuming that one is truly fortunate: ‘After Solon left, great retribution [nemesis] from a god49 seized Croesus, very likely because he considered himself to be the most fortunate [olbiōtaton] of all human beings (1.34.1).’50 This divine nemesis consisted of the death of Atys, Croesus’ son and trying to determine what material in Herodotus’ unattributed logoi was traditional and what was his own invention, see de Jong (1999: 244–5). Concerning the Atys/ Adrastos logos, de Jong (1999: 245) says: ‘je pars de l’hypothèse que les narrataires ne connaissaient pas l’histoire et que le narrateur devait lui-même créer la tension’ (‘I start from the assumption that the narratees did not know the story and that the narrator had to create the suspense himself ’). 47 Gomme (1954: 80). 48 Herodotus’ introduction of Croesus as ton de oida autos prōton huparxanta adikōn ergōn es tous Hellēnas (‘the first whom I myself know began unjust actions against the Greeks’, 1.5.3) of course has complex chronological and historiographical implications; for recent discussions of Herodotus’ chronology, see Thomas (2001a), Vannicelli (2001: esp. 230–5), and Cobet (2002: 405–11). 49 This is Herodotus’ only use of the term nemesis: Asheri (2007: 105). Since Greek has no indefinite article, it is unclear whether ek theou means ‘from a god’ or ‘from god’ (presumably Apollo, here); I have chosen the more indefinite translation. 50 I take hōs eikasai as limiting the clause that follows it, not the entire sentence. Neither How and Wells (1928) nor Asheri (2007) comments on this use of the phrase. Barbour (1964: 226) identifies it as ‘limiting the following clause’; so also Rieks (1975: 38) and T. Harrison (2000a: 36). The translations by Godley (1981), Grene (1987), Blanco (1992), Waterfield (1998), and de Sélincourt (2003) all agree; e.g.: ‘But after Solon’s departure, the divine anger fell heavily on Croesus: as I guess, because he supposed himself to be blest beyond all other men’ (Godley 1981: i. 41). For readings that take hōs eikasai as limiting the first clause, see, e.g., Gould (1989: 79), and Fisher (2002: 218). However, Gould (1994: 95) appears to reverse his reading in his later article, when he refers to ‘the explicit admission that the identification of the motive for the (unidentified) god’s anger is a “guess” or probable inference’ (emphasis added). If it is correct to take hōs eikasai as limiting the second clause, then, although Herodotus asserts only likelihood for the reason for the nemesis, he does not question that what

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heir. Croesus was fated eventually to lose his kingdom (and thus to illustrate the truth of Solon’s teachings about human prosperity) as payment for the crime of his ancestor Gyges (see 1.91.1). Herodotus strongly implies, however, that the misfortune of Atys’ untimely death was not part of this moira-decreed punishment for Gyges’ wrongdoing but was instead direct divine retribution for Croesus’ own behaviour. Croesus dreamt that Atys would be killed by the iron point of a weapon.51 Alarmed by this dream, he forebade the youth to go on any expeditions or to be anywhere near weapons. Soon after Croesus had his dream, a Phrygian, Adrastus, came to Croesus’ court, begging to be cleansed of blood guilt because he had accidently killed his brother and had been driven away from his home. Croesus purified Adrastus and received him hospitably into his own court. Later, when Atys asked his father if he might participate in a boar-hunt, Croesus sent Adrastus along to protect the young man from robbers on the road. During the hunt, Adrastus threw a spear, which missed the boar, hit Atys, and killed him. Croesus thus lost his son, as the dream had foretold, and lost him to the very man whom he had received as a xenos.52 The similarities of the Croesus logos to tragedy have long been recognized.53 However, the logos also includes many echoes of Homeric epic, both conceptually and on the verbal level. The verbal similarities begin at the moment of Croesus’ and Adrastus’ meeting, when, after performing the needful purification ceremonies, the king questions the fugitive in words that recall the Homeric phrase tis pothen eis andrōn (‘who are you of men, and from where’, Od. 1.170).54

happened to Croesus was indeed nemesis ek theou. In other words, Herodotus allows for the possibility that he is mistaken in his identification of the cause of the divine retribution, but he does not doubt that nemesis ek theou is what these events in fact are. In this reading Herodotus as narrator agrees with the assessment of the events given by Croesus as character, when he says to Adrastus that the gods are responsible; see further below. 51 On premonitory dreams in Herodotus, see Lévy (1995). 52 For a discussion of the many folkloric motifs in the Atys–Adrastus logos, especially the boar-hunt, see Aly (19692: 38–40). 53 See, e.g., Rieks (1975), Laurot (1995), Saïd (2002: 132–7, with bibliography), and Chiasson (2003). 54 ‘Croesus first takes care of the stranger and then asks for his name—a Homeric form of courtesy’ (Asheri 2007: 105); Asheri does not note the Homeric phrasing of the questions. See also Barbour (1964: 227) and Arieti (1995: 57). Long (1987: 84) says

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Herodotus echoes this phrase in his introduction of Croesus’ questions and again, immediately, in Croesus’ own words: When Croesus had performed the customary purification rites, he asked where the man was from and who he might be [hokothen te kai tis eiē], saying the following: ‘Sir, who are you, and from what part of Phrygia have you come [tis te eōn kai kothen tēs Phrugiēs hēkōn], to arrive at my hearth?’ (1.35.2–3)55

This is the first of several Homeric echoes in the Adrastus story; Croesus’ conversation with Adrastus at 1.41–2 and especially his words at 1.45 also show strong parallels to scenes in Homer. At 1.41–2, Croesus asks Adrastus to go out to the hunt as a protector of Atys, and Adrastus reluctantly agrees.56 Croesus begins by reminding Adrastus that he has purified him of murder and received him into the royal household. Therefore, he says, Adrastus should reciprocate with deeds that will benefit Croesus, and should accede to Croesus’ specific request that he act as Atys’ guardian on the proposed boar hunt.57 In addition to Adrastus’ duty to return benefits for benefits, Croesus further says that it would also be appropriate for Adrastus to distinguish himself in his deeds (kai se toi khreon esti ienai entha apolampruneai toisi ergoisi, 1.41.3). Adrastus responds less than eagerly: Sire, otherwise I would not, for my part, go into this contest [allōs men egōge an ouk ēia es aethlon toionde]; it is not right that someone caught in such misfortune associate with his peers who are doing well, nor do I wish to do so . . . But as it is, since you are eager for this and it is necessary for me to please you (for I should recompense you by beneficial deeds), I am ready to do these things. (1.42)

that the scene is ‘conducted on the same terms as the conversations of the noble heroes before Troy in the Homeric epics’ but does not mention the specific verbal parallels. 55 Proteus asks similar questions of Paris, but these are reported only by the narrator and not in direct speech: eirōta ton Alexandron ho Prōteus tis eiē kai hokothen pleoi (‘Proteus asked Alexander who he was and where he had sailed from’, 2.115.2). 56 Pace Long (1987: 93), who says ‘Adrastus leaps at the opportunity’. 57 Gould (2001a: 287–8) discusses Croesus’ assumption that his good treatment of Adrastus requires good in exchange as an example of reciprocity in gift-giving, but does not locate the scene within the framework of xenia.

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Croesus’ request and Adrastus’ response recall the exchange between Laodamas and the disguised Odysseus on Scheria (Od. 8.145–57), as the emphasized words show:58 ‘Come you also now, father stranger [xeine pater], and try these contests [aethlōn], if you have skill in any. It beseems you to know athletics [aethlous], for there is no greater glory that can befall a man living than what he achieves by speed of his feet or strength of his hands . . . ’ Then resourceful Odysseus spoke in turn and answered him: ‘Laodamas, why do you all urge me on in mockery to do these things? Cares are more in my mind than games [aethloi] are, who before this have suffered much and had many hardships, and sit here now in the middle of your assembly, longing to go home, entreating your king for this, and all his people.’ (Od. 8.145–57)59

In both texts, a host or host’s son asks a xenos to take part in an aethlos, a show of strength and skill, stating that such participation is particularly fitting for the xenos. In both, the xenos cites his troubles as a reason for his reluctance to take part in aethloi and says that his misfortunes make him unfit for normal company, and in both cases the xenos is persuaded against his original inclination (Odysseus when he is taunted by Euryalus, and Adrastus by his sense of obligation to his xenos). So far in the Adrastus story, however, the specific vocabulary of xenia has been absent. When Croesus hears Adrastus’ account of his ‘misfortune’ in killing his brother, he responds: ‘You are from a family of friends and have come among friends’ (1.35.4), but the word he uses is philos, not xenos.60 But, as the story moves to its terrible

Rieks (1975: 31) notes the similarity: ‘Die Weigerung Adrasts, an der Jagd teilzunehmen, dürfte von der entsprechenden Odysseus-Szene beim Wettkampf der Phaiaken beeinflusst sein’ (‘Adrastus’ refusal to participate in the hunt may have been influenced by the corresponding scene of Odysseus at the contest of the Phaeacians’); see also p. 36 n. 60. Long (1987: 82) and de Jong (1999: 250) both note that aethlos is an unusual word to apply to a hunt, since it would normally be used of contests between human beings. Neither comments on the connection with Odysseus’ words to the Phaeacians. 59 Translations from Homer are Lattimore’s (1951, 1965). 60 Herman (1987: e.g. 106–8) repeatedly demonstrates that philia terminology could be used interchangeably with xenia terminology at times. 58

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conclusion, the importance of xenia is increasingly foregrounded.61 The shift in focus to xenia is directly signalled in the sentence that describes Adrastus’ slaying of Atys: ‘Then indeed the xenos, the same man, indeed, who had been purified for murder, the one named Adrastus, threw his javelin at the boar. He missed the beast, however, and instead hit Croesus’ son’ (1.43.2). This is the first use of the word xenos to describe Adrastus, and it could hardly be more emphatic or more horrifying in the context.62 For the second time, Adrastus (whose name means something like ‘he who cannot flee’ and is cognate with adrasteia, ‘necessity’, a title of the goddess Nemesis63) has inadvertently killed someone whom he was bound by all social codes to protect; already the murderer of his own brother, he is now guilty of xenoktonia—xenos-slaughter—as well.64 Indeed, Croesus’ entrusting of his son to Adrastus in the first place can be read as a reflection in miniature of the practice of sending children to a xenos for fostering; the idea that one’s xenos is the proper person to protect and guard one’s son is deeply embedded in the structure of the xenia relationship.65 The horror felt by both Croesus and Adrastus thus involves much more than a sense that it is particularly terrible for Adrastus to have killed the son of a man who had been his benefactor

61

Recent scholarship has tended to overlook xenia here and to stress instead the supplication and purification elements in the logos. For instance, Saïd (2002: 135) says that Croesus ‘had received [Adrastus] as a friend and ritually purified [him] of a murder’. T. Harrison (2000a: 41) similarly elides the xenia out of the scene by referring to Adrastus as ‘the suppliant whom Croesus had received into his house’. Chiasson (2003: 9) says that ‘the arrival of Adrastus, with his request for ritual purification, sets into motion the common tragic motif of supplication’. Adrastus was, of course, a suppliant in need of ritual purification, but he was also a xenos and was thus bound to Croesus by double ties of obligation, both of supplication and of xenia. Arieti (1995: 62) refers to the pre-existing xenia between the two royal families but not to Adrastus’ status as Croesus’ current xenos: ‘Having performed the ritual purification for Adrastus, which established a very close bond between them, Croesus has every reason to expect Atys [sic] to be a devoted servant. There is also the additional guest–friendship (xenia) enjoyed between the two families.’ 62 Long (1987: 95) does not comment on the word xenos in his otherwise close analysis of Herodotus’ vocabulary here. 63 How and Wells (1928: i. 71). Fisher (2002: 205) says that Adrasteia is ‘a Greek term for the personification of Fate’. 64 Herman (1987: 124) refers to ‘the horror inherent in xenoktonia—a loaded word, the connotations of which can never fully be rendered by the phrase “murder of a guest–friend” ’. 65 On foster-parenthood as an aspect of xenia, see Herman (1987: 22–6).

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and had purified him; the specific crime of xenoktonia must not be overlooked here. When Croesus hears the news of his son’s death, he calls on Zeus by three names: Katharsios (‘of purification’), Epistios (‘of the hearth’), and Hetairēios (‘of comradeship’). Croesus does not directly invoke Zeus Xenios, but the concept of xenia is kept in the foreground of the passage by the narrator’s repetition of the word xenos to describe Adrastus, as Croesus calls Zeus to witness what he has suffered:66 Croesus, greatly distressed [suntetaragmenos] by the death of his son, took it even harder [edeinologeeto] that the one who killed the youth was the man he himself had purified for murder. Chafing terribly under his misfortune he called upon Zeus of Purification, testifying to the things that he had suffered at the hands of his xenos. He invoked the same god as Zeus of the Hearth and Zeus of Comradeship: invoking Zeus of the Hearth, because when he received the xenos into his household he was nurturing the murderer of his son, although he did not know it; and he invoked Zeus of Comradeship, because the man he sent out as guardian of his son he found to be his most bitter enemy. (1.44)67

Adrastus enters at this point and begs Croesus to kill him, saying that life is not bearable to him now that he has slain his benefactor’s son. The drama culminates in Croesus’ final words to Adrastus. Despite his own misfortune, Croesus is moved to pity, addresses his son’s killer directly as his xenos, and absolves him of blame: ‘Xenos, I have full justice from you, since you sentence yourself to death. You are not blameworthy to me for this evil [eis de ou su moi toude tou kakou aitios], except in so far as you enacted it unwillingly, but some one of the gods is blameworthy [theōn . . . tis], who long ago foretold [proesēmaine] to me the things that were going to occur [ta mellonta].’ (1.45.2)

66 In fact, the stress on xenia is so powerful that de Sélincourt (2003: 19) translates ‘Zeus Hetairēios’ as ‘God of guest–friendship,’ as though Herodotus had indeed written Xenios. See also Long’s reference (1987: 97) to ‘Croesus’ complaint against Zeus as the god of hospitality’. Long (1987: 97) seems to conflate Epistios with Xenios, since he translates Hetairēios as ‘god of companionship’. 67 I assume, with the standard translations, that kaleō here means ‘invoke’. Powell (19602: 181) cites this passage as an instance of the meaning ‘invoke a god’ (s.v. ŒÆºø). Contra Long (1987: 75), who appears to read kaleō as meaning ‘summon to justice’, since he says that Croesus’ words are ‘a blasphemous imprecation against Zeus’. See also Immerwahr’s statement (1966: 70) that Croesus ‘accuses Zeus’.

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Croesus’ words here include one of the Histories’ most striking verbal echoes of Homer, since his second sentence is almost a quotation of Priam’s haunting words to Helen in the Iliad: ‘I am not blaming you: to me the gods are blameworthy [ou tu moi aitiē essi, theoi . . . moi aitioi eisin], who drove [ephōrmēsan] upon me this sorrowful war [polemon] against the Achaeans.’ (Il.3.164–5)

The verbal parallelism here is very marked. Both speakers, directly addressing another person, say ‘you are not aitios’ (blameworthy), using second-person singular forms of the verb ‘to be’; both attribute the blame to the gods (theoi); in both speeches the next clause is introduced by the nominative of the relative pronoun (hos and hoi, ‘who’) followed by the dative of the first-person singular pronoun (moi, ‘to me’). Furthermore, in each instance the next main element of the clause is a past-tense verb (proesēmaine, ‘foretold’; ephōrmēsan, ‘drove’) followed immediately by a substantive in the accusative case (ta mellonta, ‘the coming things’; polemon, ‘war’), even though this word order is by no means fixed in Greek.68 In short, there is a very strong echo here, in Croesus’ words, of one of the most memorable scenes in the Iliad; and in both cases, a powerful eastern monarch forgives a foreigner, whose acceptance into the monarch’s house has

68 Aly (19692: 267) identifies Croesus’ words as one of several ‘äusserlich nicht erkennbare Zitate an bemerkenswerter Stelle’ (‘not outwardly recognizable quotations in a remarkable place’). Huber (1965: 30–1) comments that Herodotus’ adaptation of Priam’s words foregrounds the role of fate, arguing that ‘Kroisos gegenüber Adrast die Worte des Priamos an Helena . . . nicht nur wiederholt, sondern die “Schuld” des Adrast durch den Zusatz N c ‹ IŒø KæªÆ differenziert und mit Iººa ŁH Œ Ø , ‹ Ø . . . æÆØ a ºº Æ ŁÆØ das Schicksalhafte noch stärker hervorhebt’ (‘Croesus not only repeats to Adrastus the words of Priam to Helen, but differentiates the “guilt” of Adrastus through the sentence “except in so far as you enacted it unwillingly”, and with “but some one of the gods is blameworthy, who long ago foretold to me the things that were going to occur” he emphasizes even more the role of fate’). Huber does not discuss the close formal parallelism between the second clauses of Croesus’ and Priam’s remarks. Long (1987: 100) thinks that Croesus’ words to Adrastus show a notably ‘natural’ tone; he further comments (1987: 103) that Croesus speaks ‘with a freedom and directness that we have otherwise heard from him only . . . with his own son. Herodotus allows the mask and tone of office to slip.’ This misses the fact that Croesus is here all but quoting Priam, the eastern monarch par excellence; these markedly Homeric words are unlikely to indicate that Croesus is stepping outside his royal role.

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caused disaster for that monarch.69 Earlier in the logos, Croesus has addressed Solon as ‘Athenian xenos’; it requires his interaction with two xenoi, one of whom warns him against overconfidence in his good fortune and the other of whom enacts the nemesis that punishes that overconfidence, for Croesus to be able to understand that his son’s terrible death is indeed ek theou.70 Croesus’ full realization of Solon’s wisdom will not come, of course, until he is on the funeral pyre set for him by Cyrus (1.86.3). Pelling notes that Croesus’ conversation with Cyrus at 1.87–8 echoes the scene between Achilles and Priam in Iliad 24 both thematically and verbally. He connects this scene with Croesus’ earlier words to Adrastus; ‘Croesus’ final pity for Adrastus . . . has something in common with Achilles’ for Priam . . . and if it is the killer in Homer and the bereaved father in Herodotus who pities, and the bereaved father in Homer and the killer in Herodotus who is so marked out by disaster, that reflects the unity of loss and suffering that both parties share.’71 Thus, at two key points in the Croesus logos, Herodotus uses echoes of Homer, and specifically of scenes featuring the Asian king Priam, to underscore the pathos and the inevitability of Croesus’ downfall. Pelling does not discuss the echo of Priam’s words to Helen, however, or the role of xenia in the Adrastus story. The text’s association of Croesus with Priam is even richer than Pelling’s analysis recognizes, since Herodotus’ description of Croesus’ pity for Adrastus and the words he puts into Croesus’ mouth simultaneously evoke Priam as ruler and host forgiving a foreign guest for bringing disaster upon him and Priam as suppliant and bereaved father, a guest in Achilles’ tent, begging for the dead body of his son.72

69 Although Croesus forgave Adrastus, Adrastus did not forgive himself; he committed suicide on Atys’ grave (1.45.3). 70 Obviously I disagree with Long’s interpretation (1987: 102) that xenos here is an ‘alienating’ term to be translated ‘stranger’, which ‘marks Adrastus as an outcast, once more an outsider, now certainly an intruder who was once tolerated in the palace but is henceforth denied purification, shelter, reception’. 71 Pelling (2006a: 86 n. 30); see also Pelling (2006b: 160). De Jong (1999: 250) identifies a Homeric echo in the description of Adrastus’ fatal javelin throw: ‘l’expression “il manque A, mais atteint B” est une réminiscence épique,’ citing Il. 4.491–2 as a comparandum. She does not mention the other Homeric echoes in the passage. 72 For further Homeric resonances and echoes in the end of the Croesus logos, especially concerning blame, see Huber (1965: 34–6). See also Chiasson (2003: 27 n. 78).

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In the two passages we have considered, as nowhere else in the Histories, Herodotus portrays a form of xenia that the characters of Homeric epic would recognize and understand. He uses this concept to ground his narrative in Homeric tradition and thus to stress the scenes’ importance and narrative authority. I have argued elsewhere that Herodotus uses the heroes of Greek tradition as one organizing principle of his work, as a way of pointing out the resonances and parallels between the Greek–Asian conflicts of old and those of his own time.73 Essentially the same methodology is at work in his incorporation of recognizably Homeric xenia into logoi focusing on earlier eastern transgressors who did unjust deeds (adika erga) against the Greeks. Croesus, as the ‘first foreigner Herodotus knows’ to have wronged the Greeks, is highlighted as especially significant by having his story cast in recognizably Homeric terms. In Book Two, the gravity of Paris’ wrongdoing is forcefully reiterated by terms that hark directly back to Homer. Paris in the remote past of legend and Croesus at the cusp of humanly verifiable memory both exhibit what Herodotus seems to consider a besetting fault of Asian monarchs—that of overstepping their bounds and assuming more than is their right—and thus they set up a pattern of wrongdoing committed by Asian royalty against Hellas and the Hellenes that will find its culmination in Xerxes. Paris’ abduction of Helen is the most concrete example; he assumes that, if he wants this particular woman, he may take her, no matter what societal or divine mores he has to violate to do so. Croesus’ transgression is less direct, since he is guilty not of active wrongdoing but of an attitude that predisposes an autocrat towards wrongdoing; he fails to remember that, as a human being, he is liable to reversals of fortune, to pain, and to loss, despite his vast riches and apparently secure kingdom—and so Herodotus says that he was struck by a ‘nemesis from a god’, because he considered himself the most fortunate of all men who had ever lived.74 73

Vandiver (1991: passim). For a discussion of whether Croesus’ assumption that he is ‘fortunate’ equals fully-fledged hubris, see Pelling (2006b: 150, with bibliography in nn. 34–6). Asheri (2007: 68) assumes that Croesus’ mental disposition is in fact equivalent to hubris: ‘the moral link between oæØ and ¼ Å connects the dialogue of Croesus and Solon to the drama of Atys and Adrastus, as well as to Croesus’ words on the pyre and afterwards.’ See also A. B. Lloyd (1988a: 28). For arguments that Croesus’ assumption does not constitute hubris, see, e.g., Gould (1989: 80–1) and Fisher (2002: 218). 74

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Pelling notes that ‘overconfidence about the future’ is dangerous because ‘like a tyrant’s transgressive behavior [it] lays claim to an immunity that no mortal can assume’.75 This is the key characteristic that Paris and Croesus share; the assumption of superiority to normal limitations leads to action in Paris’ case and not in Croesus’, but the underlying disposition is the same, and it is the disposition that will lead Xerxes to think that he, too, can claim ‘immunity’ to divine retribution.76 Thus Paris and Croesus function, in the Histories, as forerunners of Xerxes in their arrogance, their wrongdoings against Greece, and their violations of boundaries established by the gods. Paris, Croesus, and Xerxes epitomize Asian transgressions in, respectively, the heroic age, the remote-recent past, and the past of living memory. Each of these men overstepped his bounds and brought down upon himself, as Herodotus specifically says about Croesus, a great nemesis ek theou. From the earliest encounters of Greeks and Asians, the gods were concerned to make it clear that great transgressions on the barbarians’ parts would be punished. Throughout the Histories Herodotus uses shared concepts and patterns of activity to link the past with the present. In the logoi we have considered here, the remote past of Troy and the almostlegendary past of Croesus and Solon are made paradigmatic for the recent past of the Persian Wars through the traditional Homeric concept of xenia. Herodotus, of course, was not alone in this use of Homer as the comparandum par excellence, as a glance at the tragic stage will remind us. Aeschylus, we are told, referred to his own works as ‘crumbs from Homer’s table’.77 Herodotus too gathered many Homeric crumbs, but he seasoned those crumbs with a new and wholly 75

Pelling (2006b: 150). In Croesus’ famous misinterpretation of the oracle about destroying a great empire by attacking Persia (1.53.3), his assumptions about his own status as a fortunate king do in fact lead to an action, the campaign against Cyrus, that destroys the very fortune that tempted Croesus into misjudgement of the oracle in the first place. Here I disagree with Pelling’s assertion (2006b: 159 n. 66) that ‘the only reasonable interpretation of Delphi’s response was one of encouragement’. It seems to me, on the contrary, that any enquirer not blinded by the assumption of his own fortunate status would immediately have recognized the ambiguity of the Delphic response; on this point see Lévy (1997: 363). Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 75–80, 82 discusses the (Iliadic) ‘thoughtless ruler’ theme in the Croesus and Cyrus logoi. 77 temakhē . . . tōn Homērou megalōn deipnōn, literally, ‘slices from Homer’s great banquets’ (Athenaeus 8, 347E). 76

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individual salt. As he explores the patterns and causes of events, Herodotus uses traditional concepts, legends, and vocabulary to form a narrative and a style of explanation that are utterly his own, bringing heroic past and human present face to face and showing how the same narrative constructs could be used to discuss them both.

6 Herodotus on Melampus Vivienne J. Gray

Melampus was a healer-seer from Pylos who founded a dynasty of kings at Argos.1 His achievements made him the subject of widespread hero cult.2 They qualify as myth because of their setting in the distant past, their explanation of the origins of a political dynasty, and their heroic cult status.3 This chapter attempts to explain how Herodotus applies his mixed literary and scientific heritage of enquiry, poetry, and storytelling to his treatment of Melampus. Herodotus’ debt to earlier prose writers such as Hecataeus and the tradition of scientific enquiry from Greek Ionia is well documented.4 His debt to the poets has also been demonstrated: to Homer for his themes, his speeches, and narrative structures, for the duality of divine and human responsibility, even for the precedent for his assessment of

Thanks are due to the editors of the volume, whose comments helped me improve the original version of the paper delivered at the Herodotus and Myth conference. 1 See Flower (2008) on seers in general. J. Hall (1997: 67–107) indicates that Argos staked her identity on the line of Melampus and Bias. He counts him as a dynastic culture hero distinguishing him from the primeval culture hero such as Prometheus (J. Hall 1997: 87). 2 See Suarez de la Torre (1992: 19 n. 89) on his cults in the Peloponnese, Megara, and Arcadia, with evidence from Pausanias. For possible associations the Greeks had with the name Melampus ‘blackfoot’, see Buxton (2010: 39–41). 3 The conference took the view that ‘myth’ can be variously defined; but Melampus seems to be ‘mythic’ on these several counts. 4 For a recent account, see R. L. Fowler (2006).

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the best source in the eyes and ears credited to Democedes;5 and to lyric poets such as Simonides also.6 Traditional stories are the third part of his heritage and may be recognized by their patterned narratives. These stories characteristically assemble and develop unchanging elements, which may be called motifs, in order to produce stories infinitely varied. The motifs can include characters such as heroes and helpers and functions such as deceptions and bargains. There have been many demonstrations of this part of Herodotus’ art.7 The most complete account of Melampus’ achievements is in Apollodorus the mythographer (Bibl.1.9.11–13, 2.2.2).8 This has marked folkloric qualities. The first achievement is the story of how the seer gained his powers: he acquired the knowledge of the speech of animals from snakes, which cleaned out his ears while he was asleep, in gratitude for his nurture of them;9 he acquired besides the art of divination and soothsaying from Apollo by the Alpheus River.10 The second achievement is the hero’s quest. Apollodorus sends Melampus on a typical quest for cattle and the hand of a maiden:11 his aim is Phylacus’ cattle in Phylake, so that he could acquire for his brother Bias the hand of Pero, daughter of Neleus, ruler of Pylos, Melampus’ hometown. During this quest he suffered the imprisonment he had foretold for himself but escaped when he overheard woodworm telling each other that they would soon bring down the prison ceiling. His powers were recognized and valued, he prophesied 5 Marincola (2006: 24–8). See also Gray (2007: 207–9) on Herodotus’ use of Homeric death scenes with their pathos and ring composition. 6 E. L. Bowie (2001). See also Boedeker and Sider (2001) on the influence of the new Simonides on Herodotus’ battle of Plataea, particularly the papers by Boedeker (2001b) and Hornblower (2001). 7 See Aarne (1961) for a classification of motifs in folklore, many of them relevant to Herodotus, and Kazaziz (1978) for an analysis of Herodotean stories according to Proppian analysis. For a recent account of his storytelling, see Griffiths (2006), with full acknowledgement of Aly (19692). 8 Apollodorus is dated to the first or second centuries CE (OCD3). 9 Melampus has an interesting Nachleben among medical writers for his acuity of hearing. Athenaeus says that he was the first to mix wine and water (2.23d). 10 Herodotus’ account of how Euenius acquired his mantic powers (9.92–5) is comparable. 11 The quest is a common motif of legend/folklore: see Pausanias (4.36.3–5) on the ancient passion for cattle-rustling; cf. Heracles at Hdt. 4.8, driving away the cattle of Geryon and Hermes stealing the cattle of Apollo in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Vernant (2006: 362–3) defines the hero as one who suffers but transcends human limits; cf. Melampus’ suffering in his use of his divine powers to succeed in the quest.

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for Phylacus, and won the cattle and the hand of Pero for his brother. The third achievement is how Melampus as healer cured Proetus’ daughters, who were sent mad because they offended Hera by their boasting, or Dionysus by not accepting his rites.12 His reward was a share in the kingdom of Argos for himself and Bias.13 Apollodorus represents a late phase in the traditions about Melampus, but the poets before Herodotus described the last two achievements, developing them in ways more suited to their epic or other poetic contexts. They provide rich material for comparison with Herodotus (below). Herodotus himself describes only the curing of the women of Argos (9.34), but he introduces a new achievement in having Melampus import the rites of Dionysus from Egypt, and he acquires his art of divination from there too (2.49).14 This develops his status as a culture hero, founding common Greek practices. As we shall see, Herodotus’ historical enquiry is not on ‘display’ in the story of the curing of the women.15 It is on ‘display’ in the story of Melampus in Egypt, but it is not the kind of enquiry that rationalized traditional stories and made sense of their relations to one another;16 it is rather his own distinctive enquiry into customs: he adduces proofs that the rites of Dionysus were introduced from Egypt. Yet his storytelling heritage also emerges in that story, in the way he creates patterned stories to describe how Melampus introduced the rites. The end result is the creation of the new ‘myth’ of the cultural hero. What we see in his treatment of the curing of the women of Argos, on the other hand, is his mixed heritage of poetry and storytelling. He uses the poetic process of adapting the story to its context as an exemplum and tells the story itself in a new way through the development of traditional elements. To examine his treatment of Melampus is thus to examine, in a microcosm, his triple heritage at work. 12

Dowden (1989: 71–96, 97–115) discusses Melampus’ curing of the women. Pausanias confirms these achievements in 2.18.4, 5.5.10, 8.18.7 (purification of the madness of the women and acquisition of the kingdom), and 4.36.3 (cattle). 14 On Egypt as origin of all kinds of cultural and religious phenomena in the Greek world, see de Bakker, this volume, Ch. 3, with further references, pp. 114–15. 15 This is to use the famous term from his preface: apodexis. 16 This is the usual interpretation of Hecataeus’ statement that the stories of the Greeks are many and laughable: FGrH 1, F. 1. Berman (2004) concludes that logographers such as Pherecydes were first to confront this kind of problem. 13

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My first focus is on how Herodotus incorporated the story of Melampus’ curing of the women into his account of the battle of Plataea (9.34). The context is the magnitude of the crisis that hung over the Greeks at Plataea. Herodotus uses various narrative techniques to achieve this impression of magnitude, and they have general poetic ancestry. The poets were the existing masters of the narrative art, and Herodotus naturally drew on them, but did so in order to make a new style of narrative. His first technique is to describe the dispositions and numbers of the Greeks and Persians, which has poetic ancestry in Homer’s Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2 (9.28–32). This may be a required element of battle narrative, but it also shows that the Greeks were outnumbered 1:3. This is followed by an analepsis, another poetic technique,17 in the form of the story about Tisamenus (9.33). This enhances the magnitude of the crisis by showing how desperate the Spartans were to achieve a victory—so desperate that in the story they give their precious citizenship to Tisamenus and his brother in return for his prophecies of victory, because making this sacrifice was the only way they could secure victory. Such was its value that these two were the only ones to whom they gave their citizenship.18 The possession of Tisamenus’ prophecies gave them five great victories from Plataea onwards.19 The stories of Tisamenus and Melampus may be analysed as examples of the pattern of story in which the Hero needs assistance to carry out a Task he cannot do on his own, and bargains with a Helper in order to secure the assistance of his supernatural power. The Spartans take the role of Heroes in the story of Tisamenus, and their Task is to defeat the Persians. The seer takes the role of their Helper, and their bargain swaps his supernatural power for their citizenship. Herodotus plays with an element in which the Helper is unaware of the power that he commands; this is also manipulated in 17

See de Jong (2004b: 112–13) on analepsis in Herodotus. Herodotus in fact exaggerates the uniqueness of the grant. They earlier shared their citizenship with the Minyans (4.145–6), but context is king here. 19 Great success is something Herodotus could not attribute merely to human endeavour—but he also recognizes human valour: e.g. 9.62–3. 18

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other stories for various ends (see below). He places central importance on the bargaining in order to accentuate the crisis. The story begins when Tisamenus receives a prophecy from Delphi that he will win five great victories (9.33.2). He mistakes these for athletic victories and he trains hard, but misses by a single fall at the Olympic Games.20 The Spartans know that the reference is to military victories, and to secure his power they propose a bargain: that he become war-leader alongside their Heraclid kings for payment (9.33.3).21 But Tisamenus demands Spartan citizenship as his payment in the bargain, ‘giving him a share in all things’ (9.33.4). This seems to be the most valuable commodity he can imagine, and the Spartans endorse his high valuation of their citizenship by refusing to give it. But then comes the crisis of Plataea. Desperate, they offer to meet his original request. The problem is that now he asks for citizenship for his brother (9.33.5). This is the escalation of the demand. At this point, when the outcome is still in suspense, Herodotus adduces a further analepsis, which serves as an exemplum. He says that Tisamenus made his request for citizenship in imitation of Melampus, ‘to compare those who ask for citizenship with those who ask for kingship’ (9.34.1). Some believe that Herodotus said here that Tisamenus sought both kingship and citizenship, but the whole story of Tisamenus is about acquiring citizenship, and Melampus’ story is about acquiring kingship, and the comparison inherent in the exemplum is destroyed if Tisamenus and Melampus each sought both. Tisamenus’ acquisition of citizenship is the focus from the opening description: ‘Whom, though being Elean and of the clan of Iamides, the Spartans made their own citizen’ (9.33.1), where the hapax leōspheteron (‘fellow-citizen’), which might indeed be a specifically Spartan term, makes the concept forceful, down to the conclusion: ‘When the Spartiates agreed to this too, as seer, Tisamenus of

20 Munson (2001) finds it strange that Tisamenus misunderstands his prophecy, but imperfect knowledge marks most interpreters of oracles; see Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.33.2). 21 Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.33.3) establish that it is his role as seer that defines the leadership they promised him and this involves payment as a seer; the model is Calchas in Homer. Cf. Munson (2001: 62), who sees Tisamenus’ religious role as separate from his military one.

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Elis won five of the greatest victories for them, once he was a citizen. And alone of men did these become Spartan citizens’ (9.35.1).22 Herodotus structures the story effectively. Tisamenus’ story encloses Melampus’ story, thus delaying closure and whetting anticipation. This structuring is found in Arion’s story as well, which is embedded in the story of Alyattes’ illness and salvation (1.19–25). The latter’s dedication for his rescue is delayed until the completion of Arion’s dedication for salvation (1.24.8). The story of how Melampus acquired kingship of Argos (9.34) is an abbreviated form of the pattern established for Tisamenus. The Argives are the Heroes, and their Task is to cure the madness of their women. Melampus is the Helper, and his healing ability is the supernatural power they seek. They propose a bargain. His request is for a half share in their kingship. Their refusal follows, confirming the high value of this commodity, but their need escalates as more women go mad and they agree to his original request. Melampus now escalates his own request and asks for a share in the kingship for his brother Bias as well. So great is their need that the Argives agree.

22 Rosén (1997) prints ‰ NŒÆØ, ÆغŠÅ  ŒÆd ºØ Å Å ÆN  , as do Flower and Marincola (2002): ‘Saying this, he imitated Melampus, so to guess, who asked for both kingship and citizenship’ (9.34.1). Stein (18824) emended to ÆN ı , and Hude (19273) followed, both without the comma. Macan (1908: ad loc.) accordingly translates: ‘if we may compare men [i.e. Tisamenus and Melampus] together who were demanding respectively kingdom and citizenship’. The first reading makes no sense of the story, since the focus is entirely on Tisamenus’ request for citizenship and he does not ask for kingship. Those who follow it have to make heavy weather of the interpretation. Vannicelli (2005: 276 n. 45) cites Masaracchia (1978: ad loc.), that Tisamenus in effect becomes king and does not need to ask for it expressly because of his citizenship and his role as war-leader alongside the Heraclids; Munson (2001: 60 n. 54) adopted the emendation, but still wanted the listener somehow to envision Tisamenus as asking for the kingship; Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.34.1) say that, in asking for citizenship, along with the leadership of a seer in war, Tisamenus was demanding the ‘functional equivalent of kingship’. Xenophon confirms that in comparisons  ŒÆ can mean ‘respectively’: ‘but it is not the same thing to manage a chorus and an army respectively’ (Mem. 3.4.2). Denniston (19542: 514–15) notes on the combination: ‘the thought implies a more elaborate relationship than that of mere addition . . . as I bound [him], so will I loose [him].’ On the meaning of the absolute infinitive NŒÆØ, the comparative context suggests it means ‘to compare’ rather than ‘to guess’. Herodotus uses the phrase in a non-comparative context at 9.32.2 to mean ‘guess’, but that is not the case here. ÆN  is the lectio facilior once you take NŒÆØ as ‘so to guess’, because there is then no role for the accusative, and that may be the source of the manuscript reading. I cannot make sense of Rosén’s note (1997) that follows on his acceptance of  ŒÆ as Beziehungsweise (‘respectively’).

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Herodotus then returns to the outcome of the escalated request of Tisamenus, which we expect will follow suit; it does. The Spartans were in such need that, like the Argives, they gave their seer what he wanted: citizenship for himself and his brother. The structure of the story may be represented as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

A has or acquires supernatural power. B has a need for the power. B proposes a bargain to get the power. A asks for a valued item/commodity as payment. B refuses to grant it. B has increased need. B offers to meet the original request. A escalates his request for more than the valued item/commodity asked for in (4). 9. The need is so great that B grants the escalated request.

Herodotus uses this same pattern of story in his account of the Spartans’ original conquest of the Peloponnese, which was also due to the acquisition of supernatural power—the bones of Orestes (1.67–9). Comparison shows how he manipulates the elements in the pattern to serve the different contexts. The crisis in this case is that the Spartans have been constantly defeated by the Tegeans. The power is in both cases acquired from foreigners, in this version from a Tegean, in Book Nine from the seers from Elis and Pylos. There are other similarities too. The person in possession of the power is the owner of a metal forge from Tegea, and he has uncovered the bones in his forge, but he has not recognized their power. In this he is like Tisamenus, who did not recognize the real power of his victories.23 But in the seer stories that precede the battle of Plataea there is no narrative of how the Spartans came to locate the power they wanted. In the case of the bones of Orestes, there is: the Spartans receive an oracle pointing them to the location of the bones; there is then an extensive narrative of how they discovered them. They do not divine the meaning of the oracle as a group either, nor do they bargain for the power as a group, as they do in the seer stories; Lichas deciphers 23 The recognition by one party of the meaning of what the other has uncomprehendingly seen or learned is a regular motif; cf. 5.92Z.3, where Periander divines the meaning of the performance of Thrasybulus, which the messenger had not recognized.

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the oracle alone, and he alone bargains with the Tegean, who possesses the power. His search and discovery are described at length and include an account of the original acquisition of the power by the Tegean (1.68.1–3). Lichas is in fact the chief Helper in the story, and he comes from the ranks of the Heroes rather than from outside; this role is reflected in the official position of ‘benefactor’ (agathoergos) he holds within Sparta, which Herodotus describes in detail (1.67.5).24 In the seer stories that precede the battle of Plataea, we do learn how Tisamenus originally acquired his power, as the Tegean acquired it too, but for Melampus we do not have even that; his story is reduced to the bare essential: the bargaining over the power he holds. If one had to guess why Lichas’ search for the bones figures so prominently in his version of the pattern, it is because Herodotus is devoting this section to the eunomia that the Spartans experienced after the reforms of Lycurgus, and Lichas’ civic service serves that theme. The focus on the bargaining marks the seer stories out from the version of the pattern in the story of the bones of Orestes. There is a latent bargain between Lichas and the owner of the forge that houses the power; this is why we find the owner ‘not giving it away’ and why Lichas has to persuade him to rent out the forge for payment, so that he can get the bones (1.68.5). But the bargain motif is not developed. This is the art of Herodotus’ patterning: the elements are accentuated or played down for the immediate purpose of the story. The development in the seer stories is the focus on the bargain itself, which has the effect of focusing on the high value of the commodities exchanged, and thus on the crisis that provokes the bargaining. The focus is obviously on the need for the power, in phrases such as: peri pollou poieumenos (9.33.4), deina epoieunto (9.33.5), deimatos megalou epikremamenou (9.33.5), tetrammenous (9.33.5), ouk anaskhomenōn (9.34.2), tetrammenous (9.34.2), apeilēthentes es steinon (9.34.2), edeonto . . . deinōs (9.35.1). There are other stories of those who rise through the acquisition of supernatural power that is not what it seems to the original possessor and where the bargain for payment is a feature. In the rise of Perdiccas (8.137), the bargain takes the form of the payment of a hired labourer (thēs) by his employer (8.137.2). The Macedonian King is thus employing Perdiccas. When he dismisses him for fear 24 See also Boedeker (1993) and, in this volume, Dewald’s observations on this story, Ch. 1, pp. 72–3.

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of an omen, and should pay him his due wages, he does not keep his bargain, contemptuously offering him the sunlight instead. He forgets for a moment that this sunlight represents his royal power and kingship; the rise of Perdiccas to kingship follows. The high value of this possession is the central point of the story, as in the seer stories, but it is revealed not through hard bargaining, but in the central scene (8.137.4–5), where Perdiccas recognizes the power and the king does not, until he receives advice and pursues Perdiccas to get it back (8.138). The story as a whole seeks to explain the power of the kings who were descended from Perdiccas. There are developments of the motif of the bargain outside the story of the rise to power that more simply accentuate the value of the commodity bargained for. A typical example is where A approaches B with the intention of securing from him a highly valued possession; an oath or its equivalent binds them to a bargain in which they will give each other the apparently equal and innocuous choice of any item in their possession. B has no idea that the other has designs on his prized item, so, when A makes an unforeseen request for it, B resists and offers anything else except this commodity (retreating from the bargain, as the Spartans and Argives do in the stories of Melampus and Tisamenus); but B must give according to the bargain: this pattern is exemplified in the story of Agetus, who is forced to hand over his wife to Agenor (6.62), and in the story of Xerxes and the wife of Masistes (9.108–113), when Xerxes has to hand over his cloak to his mistress (9.109), which reveals his adultery to his wife Amestris, who subsequently forces Xerxes to hand over his mistress’ mother (9.110).25 The bargaining that establishes the value of the item can be represented in various ways, too. Xerxes offers his mistress cities, gold, an army, revealing the higher value of the cloak (9.109.3), Agetus offers anything but his wife (6.62.2), but, whereas Herodotus chooses not to make these offers an escalating sequence in these instances, the escalation of the demand by the Helper and the ultimate surrender 25 Arend (1933: 122–3) identifies epic ‘oath scenes’, in which the elements are (1) the invitation or offer to swear an oath, (2) an invocation to guarantee it, (3) a verb of swearing, (4) the terms of the oath, and (5) the curse. See also Callaway (1993) and Fletcher (2008). The first two stages are found in Herodotus’ versions. Od. 19.395–6 refers to the man who employs ‘thievery and the oath’. There is no technical deception in Herodotus’ versions of such stories—only the element of surprise in what is requested by the bargain.

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of the Heroes in the stories of Melampus and Tisamenus very effectively demonstrate the value of the commodities they ask for. Apart from the heritage of storytelling in the construction of Herodotus’ version of Melampus’ curing of the women and its context, there is also his poetic heritage at work. Herodotus uses a poetic narrative device when he makes Melampus an analeptic exemplum that accentuates the crisis of Plataea. Comparison shows that Melampus was regularly treated as an exemplum in the poets before Herodotus, and that Herodotus operates like these poets in adapting the story to fit his needs. Against the backdrop of this poetic heritage, indeed, what emerges as distinctive about his treatment is that he writes in prose and gives us a demythologized Melampus that belongs to the world of story, a bargainer out for a good deal, not possessing the epic values of Homer or Hesiod or even the lyric values of Simonides or Pindar. I want to trace the poets’ presentation of Melampus in order to make this clear. Homer presents Melampus twice in his Odyssey and adapts his stories to the different contexts by selecting detail that is appropriate for each of them. The Odyssey 11.281–97 has Odysseus in the underworld see Pero’s mother Chloris, and in an embedded story describes Melampus’ quest for her hand in terms involving great suffering. Homer does not mention his name nor does he say that his brother was the intended groom. His suffering and his chains are described rather than the woodworm in the ceiling of the prison. The themes of this catalogue are variously interpreted, and one interpretation is that Odysseus enlarges his experience by recognizing the suffering caused by women. There is, of course, no need for such epic suffering in Herodotus.26 In his second appearance in the Odyssey (15.223–81), Melampus’ descendant Theoclymenus seeks protection with Telemachus. He is in flight from his homeland of Argos and pursued by avengers because he has killed a kinsman. Homer embeds the story of how his ancestor Melampus also fled his homeland of Pylos (15.225–55), and this serves to comment on the condition of both Theoclymenus and Telemachus as exiles. In this version Melampus is a rich man whose estates were confiscated by Neleus while he was on his quest. He returned to punish Neleus and then go to Argos, where he was 26 Heubeck and Hoekstra (1990: ad Hom. Od. 11.288–91) conclude that the reader is meant to know the outlines of the story of the quest already; so: it is an old myth.

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destined to be king (15.248–50). Homer thus combines the personal and the divine cause for Melampus’ shift to Argos, in a way that is typical of Herodotus too.27 Melampus cures no mad women in Homer’s version and makes no bargain with the Argives. It is the theme of unwilling exile from Pylos to Argos that is emphasized, through ring composition and selection of detail.28 Theoclymenus then explicitly compares himself with Telemachus in this point: they are both away from home (15.272). We might infer that they also flee unwillingly, persecuted by others, and reflect on the suffering of Odysseus too.29 Melampus’ story thus comments on the situation of Telemachus and Theoclymenus and perhaps Odysseus himself as an exemplum. Herodotus in contrast makes Melampus a very willing exile, actively bargaining for his kingship in Argos. He has no Odyssean themes to pursue. There is no sign of the Herodotean bargain in Homer or Pindar, or in other earlier poets, either.30 Pindar follows Homer in making Melampus an exemplum of unwilling exile (Paean 4 = fr. D 4).31 He uses the move to Argos to exemplify the theme that there is no place like home and hearth and family, and that it is folly to want what is far off, particularly in the form of foreign kingship, and that what is your own local pleasure or duty is preferable: all’ ho ge Melampos ouk ēthelen lipōn patrida monarkhein Argei themenos oiōnopolon geras (‘but Melampus left

27 For instance, the victory at Plataea was the result of the prophecy of victory that the seer Tisamenus brought with him, as well as the human factors on which Herodotus focuses. See also Marincola (2006). 28 Hom. Od. 15.224, 228, 238, 275, 277. 29 Cf. Danek (1998) and de Jong (2001: ad Hom. Od. 15.272–8) on the resonances of the story for other characters. 30 Fragments of Hesiod mention the story, but there is no sign of a bargain. His Melampodia and Catalogue of Women are likely sources of the main fragmentary mention of Melampus (fr. 37 MW). This succinctly describes his acceptance (‘excellent seer’) of the quest for the cattle on behalf of his brother, his imprisonment, the winning of the cattle and the maiden, the marriage of Pero and Bias, their child, how they then went to Proetus in Argos, who gave Bias and Melampus a share (of his kingdom?), because (?) Melampus cured with his prophetic gifts the madness (presumably of his daughters) sent by the angered Hera (?). Bacchylides 11 says that Proetus cured his own daughters of the madness (Burnett (1985: 100–13) states that Melampus is ignored to preserve the continuity of Proetus’ rule). Simonides’ poem about Plataea does not mention Melampus either, even though it may mention Tisamenus, if West’s restoration is accepted (l. 42:  Æ ø åÆØ  Ø I ØŁı). 31 I follow the text in I. Rutherford (2001). Pythian 4.146 also mentions Melampus joining his relatives on the Argo.

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his homeland unwilling to take up kingship in Argos, laying aside his prophetic gift’).32 Pindar’s second exemplum of the theme in the Paean is Euxaenetus, a local king of the Ceans who, going further than Melampus, did not leave home at all, even to take up an offer of a more prestigious kingship in Crete (the whole of it or a seventh part of it, sharing with the sons of Pasiphae); this was because he preferred his epikhōrion tethmon (‘local custom’).33 Herodotus is then operating just like the poets and using their content, their narrative process and their poetic licence, though characterizing Melampus’ behaviour in a way that befits a Herodotean logos rather than the epic or lyric. There is no ‘display’ of enquiry, and no sign of it behind the scenes either: the main lines of the poetic story are accepted. The reason for this might be that the powers of seers did not strain his credulity: he did not reject even a divine source for the prophetic powers of the seer Euenius (9.92–94.3). He may alternatively have been unwilling to criticize a story that simply served as an exemplum. But he does, of course, advance the poets’ representation in one significant way. He takes their theme of exile, making Melampus willing instead of unwilling to leave Pylos, and this is done in order to have him actively bargaining for his kingship in Argos, in order to accentuate the crisis. He makes Melampus an exemplum linked back to the later seer Tisamenus in a similar way to Homer, who links the story of Melampus to his descendant Theoclymenus. There may be an idea here of the ‘family of seers’ linked as others were by blood lineage. Herodotus’ deliberate comment on how Tisamenus’ request was an imitation of Melampus’ request also seems to advance the poets, by making explicit the imitation involved in the poetic exemplum. He says that, in making his request for citizenship, Tisamenus was imitating the earlier seer.34 Pindar might equally have said: ‘so to compare Melampus, a great man, with you current, rather less 32 themenos may mean he laid aside his prophetic gift or put it at the disposal of the Argives. monarkhein is also unclear—whether it was ‘sole rule’ without his brother that he was unwilling to take up, or kingship simple. 33 This sacred duty may parallel the geras (‘gift’) of prophecy in Argos, which Melampus also preferred to kingship abroad, and confirm that Melampus did ‘lay aside’ his seering for kingship. 34 It is unclear whether Herodotus credits Tisamenus with conscious imitation of his ancestor–seer or makes the equation himself. Flower (2008) has argued that seers in real life did imitate their predecessors in order to claim their credentials.

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important, citizens of Ceos, who nevertheless still seek to stay at home’. Implicit in Homer too is the comparison of Theoclymenus, a lesser man, with his great ancestor. Herodotus notes other imitations of a predecessor by his successor, and these regularly enhance our understanding of the general context. I have argued that the imitation of the Sicyonian Cleisthenes by his descendant from Athens enhances our understanding of the hatred of the Ionians that led Cleisthenes to make his reforms at Athens.35 Herodotus’ comment that the advice Leotychides gave the Ionians was the same as that given by Themistocles (9.98.4) highlights the wisdom of the advice—because this time the advice worked and Ionia rebelled against the Persians for a second time. Herodotus comments explicitly, too, on his equation in the case of Tisamenus and Melampus: hōs eikasai basilēiēn te kai politēiēn aiteomenous (9.34.1, translation above, p. 171). Such comparisons are found also in scientific writing and have the function of enhancing understanding, which might make one think of the enquirer in Herodotus. Rosalind Thomas, in her discussion of Herodotean analogy from the visible to the invisible, quotes a similar comment from medical science: ‘you will find on examination that everything is as I have said, so far as it is legitimate to compare the nature and growth of a bird to that of a man’ (On the Nature of the Child 29.2).36 This enhances the reader’s scientific understanding of the growth of the child, just as the poetic exemplum enhanced the understanding of less scientific ideas. Herodotus uses the equation to enhance the reader’s understanding in his scientific sections too. In 4.99.4–5 he adduces analogies from Attic and Italian geography to enhance the reader’s understanding of the territory of the Taurians: hōs einai tauta smikra megaloisi sumbalein (‘so far as it is possible to compare these small matters with large ones’).37 Yet the comparison is a general narrative device that just happens to be applicable to scientific discourse. Thucydides uses the formula ‘to compare small with great’ in a non-scientific passage to enhance understanding of the defeat of the Spartans on Sphacteria by comparing it to their defeat at Thermopylae (4.36.3). This again enhances 35

Gray (2007). Thomas (2000: 200–11, at p. 208). 37 Another scientific case is 2.10.1: hōs ge einai smikra tauta megaloisi sumbalein (‘to compare these small things with great’). 36

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understanding. The immediate similarity is that the Spartans were taken by a path from behind, but Simon Hornblower notes, following Connor,38 that there is also a difference: the Spartans fought to the death at Thermopylae, so that their surrender on Sphacteria amazed the Greek world (4.40). The greatness being enhanced there is typically negative and psychological. The equation sometimes explicitly compares the great and small, and this may be the case in the comparison of Tisamenus and Melampus.39 It is natural for Greeks to think of the past as great and the present as small. The equation might send a message that what was once great—namely, kingship—has become small, while what was small—namely, citizenship—has become great. This would be in keeping with Herodotus’ interest in change over time.40 The equation sounds apologetic, and this may be because it was natural to think the past was greater than the present and therefore not comparable; but the apology brings attention to the high value of both in the equation, and on this the assessment of the crisis depends. Some have seen sinister political thought at work in the comparison, aided by the textual difficulty. The conviction that kingship is elite and citizenship is democratic leads to a subtle devaluation of kingship: ‘By using Melampus to interpret Tisamenus the text emphasizes the invasive character of Tisamenus’ request and paradoxically transforms his achievement of citizenship into a metaphor for the acquisition of kingly power.’ His service alongside the Heraclid kings is said to compound this sinister impression.41 This sinister reading does not damage the story’s basic function. Herodotus would merely be saying that the crisis of Plataea was so

38

Hornblower (1996: ad loc.), following Connor (1984: 118 n. 19). Marincola (2006) finds that Herodotus redefines the poetic relation between the past and present as cause, and this is true in general, but Melampus’ exemplum has more force as an analogy for understanding than as a motivation for Tisamenus. 40 This was pointed out to me by Suzanne Saïd at the conference from which this volume arose. For Herodotus’ keen awareness of change over time, see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 19–21. 41 Munson (2001: 61). Asheri and Corcella (2006) thought that Herodotus’ apologetic equation actually addresses the perceived tension between kingship and membership of the polis. Munson (2001: 63) adds that Tisamenus may be placed among those private individuals who usurped royal power like Deioces and Pisistratus. Her reading of the comparison of the Athenian and Sicyonian Cleisthenes also hints at the sinister force of monarchy at work in the birth of an apparent democracy—the tyranny of the demos, if not Cleisthenes and his party (Munson 2001: 56). 39

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great that the Spartans sacrificed their ultimate commodity to a man who had sinister aspirations. The difficulty in such an interpretation is, nevertheless, that Tisamenus does not take advantage of his citizenship or turn it into kingship; rather, he allows his prophecies to bear fruit for the common good of the Spartans and then disappears without a sinister trace in his record. If the equation is dark, we have to go outside the context to develop it. Herodotus’ conception of his work as the struggle between enslaving tyranny and liberating republicanism does suggest a negative view of one-man rule, even though in the Constitutional Debate Darius wins the argument by contending that monarchy gave the Persians their freedom (3.82.5). Yet Thucydides differentiates ‘ancestral kingship with fixed privileges’ from tyranny because of its limited powers and sworn contract with the citizens (1.13).42 We do not know how Herodotus classified ancient Argive kingship, but in this story it is shared three ways rather than being a one-man rule, and may qualify for Thucydides’ designation. Herodotus is certainly able to admire Spartan kings, such as Leonidas. However, whether its positive value is accepted or not, there should be no debate about the high value that was placed on kingship or tyranny as a commodity. Herodotus endorses this high value when he adapts Pindar’s metaphor nomos ho pantōn basileus (‘custom is king of all’, F. 152 OCT; cf. Hdt. 3.38.4), pointing to the high value that he himself places on customs. The description of Spartan customs as ‘despotic’ gives them the same high value (7.104.4). There may be other political messages in the stories of Tisamenus and Melampus. The greater value of a share in the polis community over more personal and individual gains may be suggested by the change in the interpretation of Tisamenus’ victories from the athletic victories of one individual over another to victories by the whole community over other poleis. These are the victories that he ‘lifts up’ (sugkataireei, 9.35.1) once he has become a citizen of the polis. The superiority of community participation over individual gain is an unexceptional political message, but one that might be expected in Herodotus, whose other stories send such messages.43

42

Cf. Xenophon, Lac. 15, esp. 15.7. For instance, stories of tyrants that underline their oppression of their peoples: Gray (1997). See also Gray (1996) and Dewald (2003). 43

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It may be significant also that, whereas Tisamenus and Melampus choose political roles in the polis as their misthos (‘wage’), in the story that partners theirs, Hegesistratus chooses cash as misthos for his service as seer on the Persian side, driven by a desire for profit and by his hatred of the Spartans (9.38.1).44 In the preceding prolepsis (9.37.4), Herodotus says that the Spartans later killed him as an outlaw, perhaps suggesting that citizenship would have been better insurance.45 The story of Hegesistratus (9.37) focuses on his astonishingly brave escape from Spartan imprisonment by cutting off his foot—and his hatred of the Spartans, which led him to serve the Persians (along with his desire for profit). If we seek connections between the two stories, we must take account of these emphases. At present the only resonance I see is that Herodotus presents two different attitudes to the Spartans among the seers of the Peloponnesian allies, one of beneficial partnership as Helper, the other of hostility as Enemy. He may wish us to reflect on this—since one of the themes of the Plataea story is ultimately the growth of Spartan power in the Peloponnese. In the focus on the treatment of Melampus, however, the high value of kingship in his story is the essential function, which is to accentuate the crises in which the Spartans and Argives parted with their most valued commodity of their time—respectively, citizenship and kingship.

2. THE CULTURAL HERO We come next to Melampus the cultural hero (2.49). Herodotus has Melampus import from Egypt into Greece the rites of Dionysus and acquire from there also the art of divination (2.49).46 He is 44 We might then see here a clash of ‘democratic’ and ‘aristocratic’ values: Kurke (1999). Herodotus may suggest that there is more mileage in political shares than personal ambitions. 45 Munson (2001: 67–8) sees this story as a dramatization of the conflict between individual and polis, but makes Hegesistratus a lookalike for Demaratus or Cleomenes: ‘the idea emerges that the enemy of a city will also potentially try to become its ruler.’ 46 Significantly, his divination does not come from snakes or from Apollo. Herodotus says elsewhere that divination from sacrifice came to Greece from Egypt and

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the first source for this story, but it had a Nachleben in Diodorus Siculus.47 Herodotus presents Melampus’ importations within a ‘display’ of enquiry designed to prove the antiquity of Egypt and the borrowing of the Greeks from Egypt of some of their foundational customs.48 He finds parallels between the worship of Dionysius in Greece and Egypt, considers them to represent borrowings because they are too close to be accidental, and decides the Greeks did the borrowing because Egypt is the older civilization and must have had the rites first.49 His chronological research supports that. He accepted from the Egyptian priests the very early dating for Dionysus (as well as Heracles and Pan) in Egypt, and, calculating that their appearance in Greece was much later, concluded that the Greek Dionysus was not the original god, but the son of Semele and the grandson of Cadmus, whom Cadmus merely named after the original Egyptian god (2.145–6). Herodotus was inspired to recognize this borrowing by the account given him by the Egyptians of their own rites for Dionysus (2.47–8). Ian Moyer has most recently argued that the Egyptian priests who were Herodotus’ sources served their own agendas in their accounts of the past.50 This is very obvious in their report of Sesostris’ conquests, which rivalled those of Persian kings (2.102–6), and of the that there are similar divinatory practices at Dodona and Thebes (2.57; cf. 2.83). Herodotus’ language could imply that Melampus was the first to bring divination to Greece, or that he just acquired it from there. Melampus’ acquisition has at least become an achievement, as sustēsai (‘assembled it for himself’) seems to imply; cf. Hdt. 1.103.2, which uses the verb for the achievement of conquest. There are other explanations of the origins of divination, including Aeschylus’ Prometheus 484–506, which is a tour de force of mantic methods. 47 D.S. 1.22.7 mentions the importation of the rites from Egypt, in the long account of the Egyptian Osiris, who was equated with Dionysus; cf. D.S. 1.96.2, 1.97.4, which names Melampus as the agent—probably from Hecataeus of Abdera. Eusebius also comments on it (PE 10.8.6). 48 Hdt. 8.144.2 includes ‘sacrifices’ among the indicators of Panhellenic identity, which makes these rites culturally foundational; cf. J. Hall (1997: 188–94). The effect of borrowed identity is hard to fathom. My view is that Herodotus wants cultural borrowings for the same reason he wants dovetailed sources: that in his vision of the world he sees culture, like his sources, as a harmony in which similarities are never accidental. For another view, see Gomme (1913b: 245). 49 The same kind of argument recurs throughout—e.g. Hdt. 2.58: the proof that Greece learned processions from Egypt is that both have them and those in Egypt are older than those in Greece. 50 Moyer (2002).

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foundation of the oracle at Dodona through their priestess, the ‘black dove’, who was abducted by the Phoenicians and sold in Greece (2.54–7). Herodotus gives us glimpses of his dialogue with the Egyptians in the story about Dodona, for example, questioning them about their exact knowledge, and then reconciling their version with the account of the people of Dodona and their priestesses about the ‘black dove’ that instructed them to found the oracle.51 His role in determining the borrowing of the name and rites of Dionysus from Egypt is even more active. The Egyptians described their own rites, but Herodotus himself insisted on the similarities to the Greek rites, decided that they arose as a result of the borrowing from the Egyptians, and found their agent in Melampus. He refers to no Egyptian authority, nor to any local Greek tradition connecting Melampus with the borrowing. We notice, in other words, an increased reliance on his own opinion. Interestingly, the results of this scientific enquiry are presented in a pattern that is not previously attested: the importation of culture from abroad, which may be compared with other narratives of importation of culture within Herodotus. This may be a pattern that Herodotus invented, but the process of creation through the development of motifs is the same as in other more traditional patterned stories. Other examples of this pattern include Lycurgus’ importation of the eunomia of the Spartans from Crete or Delphi (1.65), and Cadmus’ importation of the art of writing into Greece (5.57–61). There is also the shorter account of how the Athenians imported the dress of Athena from Libya (4.89).52 The story of the foundation of the oracle at Dodona has some parts of the pattern, even if the abducted priestess is not a cultural hero on the same level as Melampus. The story of Lycurgus is a truncated version of the pattern, with an introductory prophecy of his achievement, an account of the importation, and then his heroization. The other examples bear closer comparison with the story of Melampus in Egypt. The comparison reveals the following structure: 1. The introduction/teaching from outside Greece of foundational customs, through immigration or importation. 51 On Herodotus’ account of the foundation of the oracle at Dodona, see also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 34–6. 52 See, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, pp. 113–17, and Vandiver, Ch. 5, pp. 148– 9, 154, for Herodotus’ presentation of Proteus as ‘educator’ of the Greeks.

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2. Slight changes in the custom as it is adapted to the Greek environment or because of other processes. 3. Proofs of the introduction resting on the absence of the custom previously and similarities between the customs in their place of origin and in the place of importation. Cadmus’ story (5.57–61) goes as follows: 1. Immigration to Thebes from Phoenicia of Cadmus and his Phoenicians, who teach letters to the Greeks among ‘many other lessons’; this is accompanied by the assertion that Greeks did not have letters before (5.58.1). 2. Gradual changes to the letters and their explanation: adaptation to Phoenician speech brings about changes, then after the adoption of these letters by Ionians there are more deliberate adaptations to Greek speech (5.58.2). 3. A series of proofs of the introduction;53 the Greeks called the letters Phoenician, there is a barbarian influence in how the Ionians refer to books as hides, and Herodotus has himself seen these letters on inscriptions (5.58.3–61). The importation of the dress of the goddess Athena (4.189) is a shorter version of the same assemblage: 1. Statement that the Greeks borrowed Athena’s aegis from Libya (4.189.1). 2. The similarities, with slight differences: the fabric used in Libya is leather and the tassels on the aegis are not snakes (4.189.1). 3. Proof of the borrowing in the name of the aegis: the Libyan women wear dyed goatskins with tassels; the term ‘aegis’ was coined from the name of these goatskins (4.189.2). Melampus’ introduction of the rites (2.48–9) has the same elements, but reordered with emphatic repetition: 1. The similarities of the rites in Greece and Egypt, with a focus on the difference. Egyptian processions have, instead of phalli, puppets with phalli, which are led by the flute in front of the

53 There was a need for proof: Hecataeus FGrH 1, F. 20, said that Danaus brought the alphabet to Greece—among a host of other bringers.

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women around the villages as they sing to Dionysus. These phalli nod up and down, and there is a sacred tradition as to why the phallus is the only moving part (2.48).54 2. Opinion (‘it seems to me’) that Melampus was familiar with the rites, assertion that he introduced them, and explanation of the difference: he did not grasp all the details of the ritual; later wise men revealed these; another assertion that he did introduce the phallus and the Greeks learned the rites from him; further assertion that he introduced the rites ‘among many other things’ from Egypt—with another assertion of the differences (2.49.1–2). 3a. Proof of the borrowing: the similarities cannot be accidental, because if they were home grown, they would be like those of other Greeks (homotropa, the word used by the Athenians of Greek customs at 8.144);55 Egypt cannot have borrowed from Greece, because the rites in Greece are ‘recent’ and in Egypt much older (2.49.2–3). 3b. Opinion about the source of Melampus’ knowledge—he learned the rites from Cadmus ‘as it seems to me’. This establishes a plausible source of information—Cadmus is from Tyre near to Egypt. It is part of Herodotus’ historical method to establish chains of information to validate the facts (2.49.3).56 Various other motifs recur. The transmission of names is a focus: the naming of the letters as ‘Phoenician’, the naming of the aegis, the naming of Dionysus. Herodotus says that Melampus introduced ‘many practices, among them the Dionysiac ones’ (2.49.2). Cadmus and his companions also introduced the alphabet ‘among many other lessons’ (5.58.1).57 Melampus introduced the rites ‘having changed a 54 Since the Egyptians identify Osiris with Dionysus (2.42), the phallus represents the genitals of Osiris, which survived his dismemberment and were worshipped in the traditional sacred story. See D.S., Book 1, passim. 55 Thomas (2000: 217) clarifies the argument of 2.49. 56 Cf. the chain of information for the source of the Nile: 2.32–3. Cf. also the chain of information that accounts for Herodotus’ version of the story of Helen’s sojourn in Egypt at Proteus’ court, as discussed, in this volume, by de Bakker, Ch. 3, p. 119, and de Jong, Ch. 4, p. 137. 57 This formula is also used to single out Solon among the many wise men who visited the court of Croesus before him. It is already found in Homer, e.g. Il.10.121, where Agamemnon singles out the present occasion as one exception among many others on which Menelaus has slept, to make his present haste emphatic.

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few things’: oliga autōn parallaxanta (2.49.2). The Ionians also made a ‘few changes’ to the alphabet they inherited from the Phoenicians: metarruthmisantes spheōn oliga (5.58.2). Herodotus uses a similar phrase of other borrowings too, when he claims the Phrygians wore armour ‘very close’ to that of the Paphlagonians, but ‘changing a few details’, oligon parallassontes (7.73). The displays of Herodotus’ opinion and assertion and proof are notable in the story of the introduction of the alphabet as well as the rites of Dionysus. These may suggest that these stories were boldly innovative, though the display of enquiry is generally prominent in the Egyptian logos. But what is most intriguing is how Herodotus focuses on the differences in the borrowed customs. This is explicable in terms of Herodotus’ general interests in cultural change. His interest in the idea of adaptation is revealed in other narratives in which foreigners move from one place to another and change their language and customs as they go.58 The human origin of Greek culture and the process of cultural change are essential to his interests as a historian of change. He makes connections between civilizations where he can, producing a global village, desiring the same interconnectedness as he desires in making his sources dovetail.59 Moreover, Herodotus explains the processes that give rise to the differences. There are two stages to the changes in the letters: unconscious change, when the Phoenician language changes in its new locality and the letters change to adapt to new sounds; and deliberate change, when the Ionian Greeks take over the letters and adapt them to their own speech. The process in the transmission of the aegis seems deliberate, since the Greeks actually named the aegis from the goatskins of the Libyan women. The story of the foundation of the oracle at Dodona shows this process in another guise; there is no alteration in the rites of Zeus, but the priestess gradually changes her language from Egyptian to Greek once she has settled in her new land. The change in the rites of Dionysus is the result of Melampus’ unconscious misinterpretation, where we are told that ‘he did not 58 Cf. Herodotus’ account of the change of language in the account of the emergence of Greekness (1.57–8), and changes of names and identities in the catalogue of troops (7.61–99). See also the Introduction to this volume, pp. 20–1. 59 R. L. Fowler (1996), explaining in this way the observations of Fehling (1989) about his source references.

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grasp the whole logos exactly, but later wise men revealed it more clearly’ (atrekeōs men ou panta sullabōn ton logon ephēnene, 2.49.1). This statement has been interpreted to suggest concealment of the logos by Melampus,60 on the grounds that the later reference to ‘making a few changes’ also sounds like deliberate concealment. However, sullabōn regularly refers to understanding rather than presentation of a logos,61 and ‘making a few changes’ might refer to Melampus’ reconstruction of the rites where he had imperfect knowledge. The reason for the changes in the rites takes the form of another motif. But this motif belongs, not to the world of storytelling, but to Herodotus’ own discourse of knowledge. He says that, though Melampus did not understand the rites completely, he definitely had knowledge of the phallic procession: ton d’ ōn phallon ton tōi Dionusōi pempomenon Melampous esti ho katēgēsamenos (2.49.1). Herodotus regularly says that he does not know something atrekeōs in order to enhance something he does know, or something that is said that he then supports with proofs, often introducing this second element by d’ ōn, as he does in the case of Melampus.62 The imperfect understanding in cases like this can be the result of confusion among the reports, or their bias, as well as geographic distance and the passage of time. Melampus might have had imperfect knowledge because the Egyptians were reluctant to give out details of a sacred mystery. Diodorus refers directly to this aspect of the rites, stating that the Egyptian priests of Osiris (the Egyptian Dionysus) had a sacred account of his death not to be divulged, but that ‘in time they revealed it to the many’ (1.21). Their gradual revelation echoes Herodotus’ remark that wise men after Melampus 60 The translation in Waterfield (1998) suggests that he deliberately changed details: ‘Strictly speaking he did not combine all the elements and reveal the whole story’, but de Sélincourt (2003) translates: ‘He did not however fully comprehend the doctrine, or communicate it in its entirety’; Rawlinson (1862) had the same understanding of the passage. 61 Cf. 1.63, 1.91, 2.56, 3.64, 4.114, 7.143. 62 See for other instances 1.57, 172, 2.103, 167, 3.115–16, 130, 4.25, 81.1, 187.2, 197, 5.86, 6.14, 7.54, 152, 8.8, 87, 9.18, 84, and de Jong, this volume, Ch. 4, p. 139 on 2.119.3 (Herodotus emphasizes the reliability of the Egyptian priests’ account by stressing the limitations of their perspective). Thomas (2000: 228–35) discusses the importance Herodotus places on accuracy, but this admission of ignorance is a disclaimer designed to persuade us of his accuracy. Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.81.2) note that the admission is regularly accompanied by an assertion of knowledge.

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revealed more of the story. The Egyptian reticence is like Herodotus’ own unwillingness to talk of the doings of gods.63 The formula ‘I do not know it exactly, but what I do know is . . . ’ operates within Herodotus’ knowledge discourse in much the same way as the formulaic elements of his storytelling heritage operate within his patterned narratives, as a building block of the new discourse of historical writing. I would liken it to his statement in the preface that he cannot comment on the stories told by the Persians, but will comment on what he knows (1.5.3), where the admission of the unknown guarantees the known. Herodotus may in fact be deconstructing the discourse of knowledge already present in Homer when he and his characters call for truth ‘exactly’ in the formulaic phrases mal’ atrekeōs katalexō (Il. 10.427), kai atrekeōs agoreueis (Il. 15.53), and kai atrekeōs katalexon (Il. 24.380, 656, Od. 1.169). Herodotus’ formulae renounce the omniscience of the poets to construct a more persuasive truth that admits to fractured and incomplete knowledge, as Marincola says, but this is done only to assert what he does know against what he does not.64 In crediting this formula to Melampus, Herodotus may simply be pointing to imperfect knowledge as just another process whereby customs are changed in the process of adaptation, but it is tempting to think that he is also giving Melampus authority for his knowledge of the main part of the rites by making him a mirror of his own fractured but authoritative enquiry, since he describes him as a ‘wise man’ and as one who ‘learned’ (2.49.2).65 As to the other ways in which Herodotus produces authority for his account, he proves well enough that the rites of Dionysus came from Egypt into Greece, but he merely opines and asserts that Melampus introduced them and that he learned them from Cadmus (cf. ‘it seems 63 Even during his earlier discussion of pig sacrifice, Herodotus says he considers it improper to mention stories about the activities of gods (2.47.2): ‘Why they abhor the sacrifice of pigs in the other feasts, but sacrifice them in this one, there is a tradition about this among the Egyptians, but for me, though I understand it, it is not very seemly to be spoken of.’ For similar restraint, see 2.65.2: ‘If I were to say why they are treated as sacred, I would descend into the doings of gods, which I flee far from mentioning. What I have said touching on them, I said under the constraint of necessity.’ 64 Marincola (2006: 24). Another example of cognitive patterning is his source referencing, which comes in persuasively dovetailed agreement. 65 This mirroring is quite common in Herodotus. Consider, for instance, Periander’s enquiry in the case of Arion (1.24.7–8).

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to me’ in 2.49.1 and 3). Cadmus could have equally introduced them, among those ‘many other lessons’ mentioned in his account of the introduction of the alphabet.66 Perhaps Melampus was named by those ‘later sophists’ who had fuller knowledge of the rites,67 or his responsibility was inferred from his curing of the women of Argos in the version in which they were sent mad because they resisted the rites of Dionysus. Herodotus goes on to say that he has ‘discovered’ that the names of most of the Greek gods came from Egypt, and he cites the Egyptians themselves as a source (2.50).68 It is, therefore, plausible that those who encouraged him to identify Melampus as the man who introduced ‘the name, the sacrifice, and the phallic procession’ were Egyptians; they are certainly the source for the account of their own Dionysiac rites (2.47.2). The priests of Heracles in Tyre in Phoenicia would have had a special interest in putting Cadmus into the story if they told it (2.44.2), and this might explain his designation ‘the Tyrian’ (2.49.3). But why these foreigners would involve Melampus is still unclear, and Herodotus’ insistence on his own opinion suggests they were not his source.

3. CONCLUSION Herodotus’ treatment of Melampus combines his three heritages. His critical enquiry proves the borrowing of the rites of Dionysus from Egypt, but there is no display of enquiry in the curing of the women of Argos. He draws on and develops the traditional stock of elements from the world of storytelling in the story of the women, and seems to create new elements, along the lines of the traditional ones, to produce a new version of the ‘myth’, which includes a pattern of the 66 Euripides’ Bacchae indicates that Dionysus introduced his own rites into Greece in Thebes, but the human agent was Cadmus. Cf. Clay (2004), who suggests that the Mnesiepes Inscription may have said that Archilochus introduced the phallic procession and the rites into Paros. Archilochus may act out the usual troubles associated with the introduction of the worship by being reviled and being driven out, whereupon the people were cursed until they recalled him. 67 Kerényi (1976: 59, 111–12, 123, 151, 177) discusses Melampus’ role in bringing the phallic procession to Greece, but not its provenance. 68 See, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, de Jong, Ch. 4, and Introduction, pp. 27–8, on the role of the Egyptians as an authoritative source.

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cultural hero’s importation of customs from abroad in the case of Melampus. As for his poetic heritage, he draws on both what the poets said about Melampus and how they said it in the curing of the women, thus using him as an example to deepen and complicate the role that Tisamenus played in Sparta and thereby emphasize the profound importance of the battle of Plataea for Spartan survival. In the story of the borrowing of the rites, imperfect knowledge emerges as a motif that may deconstruct the precise and total knowledge that is characteristic of early poets and their characters. In all cases we find that he constructs his narratives along the lines of traditional patterns, manipulating their similarities and their differences to serve the interests of his narrative.

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Part II Myth and History The chapters that follow explore the crucial issue (anticipated by Carolyn Dewald in Chapter 1 and Irene de Jong in Chapter 4) of the status of myth in relation to historical truth, as source for history and in historical explanation. Four chapters examine Herodotus’ nuanced demarcation of different levels of truth and his treatment of myth as historical source, for Greek history (Rosaria Munson) as well as Persian (Charles Chiasson, Rosalind Thomas, Pietro Vannicelli), employing Greek myth (Munson, Chiasson) as well as Persian stories (Thomas), or a combination of traditions (Vannicelli). Heroic myth may indeed have served Herodotus and his audience as a source and guarantee of the truth of his narrative, rather than as a sign of its falsehood (Chiasson). Subsequent chapters (anticipated by Dewald’s important observation in the opening chapter that Herodotus’ mythic thinking is in fact historical) explore the interplay in Herodotus’ presentation of myth with more recent events, about which he had more solid factual knowledge, in the accounts of Xerxes (Angus Bowie) and Mardonius (Emily Baragwanath).

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7 Herodotus and the Heroic Age: The Case of Minos Rosaria Vignolo Munson

I would like to consider the extent to which Herodotus attributes to myth a legitimate role in a work that memorializes the past. I will use the terms ‘myth’ and ‘mythical’ in a restricted sense, to denote Greek narratives about the heroic age from the beginning of time to the Trojan War.1 For the Greeks the heroic age was ancient history to the extent that they always regarded mythical narratives as having at least a kernel of truth.2 Thucydides extracts from these narratives a plausible account by turning heroes into human beings who respond to similar economic and political motives as contemporary men; he also attempts to combine the information he can reasonably extract from the poets with other available signs of the past. The resulting historiography is better than nothing but, as Thucydides himself 1 Herodotus would call these simply logoi. The Greek word muthos, like the modern ‘myth’, is capable of denoting a much broader range of narratives, and Herodotus uses it only at 2.23 and 2.45, both times in reference to invented tales (see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 11–13). But, in spite of the lack of a Greek term that denotes specifically heroic traditions, Greek thought often implies a separation between the age of heroes and the age of men. The return of the Heraclids to the Peloponnese marks the transition between the two, which is presumably why Ephorus, for example, begins his universal history from this point (FGrH 70, F. 8 = D.S. 4.1.2). See Vidal-Naquet (1960), Wardman (1960: 408), and Veyne (1988: 51), and also Drews (1973: 11). On the question of whether Herodotus differentiates between a spatium mythicum and a spatium historicum, see, in this volume, the Introduction, pp. 23–6, and Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 88–90. Other contributions to the volume employ broader definitions of ‘myth’ and ‘mythical’. 2 It was more likely that a thinker would express scepticism about the gods than about the historical existence of Agamemnon or Heracles: Veyne (1988: 40).

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comes close to acknowledging, not very satisfactory.3 It is a circular construct, based on the observation of the forces that shape more recent events. Conversely, it is also more useful for arguing a certain interpretation of the present than for truly learning something new about the remote past. Thucydides considers the entire past, heroic or not, difficult for us to negotiate for the subjective reason that we are badly informed about it. For Herodotus, on the other hand, the heroic age is a special sort of past that also objectively partakes of another level of reality. This is evident from a famous interpretative gloss, to which we will return several times, where Herodotus makes a distinction between the sixth-century tyrant of Samos Polycrates and the mythical Minos of Crete (3.122.2): Polycrates wanted to rule the sea [thalassokrateein] and was the first among the Greeks to do so, as far as we know [prōtos . . . tōn hēmeis idmen], aside from [parex] Minos of Cnossus or anyone who may have gained control of the sea earlier than Minos; but in the so-called human race [tēs . . . legomenēs anthrōpēiēs geneēs], Polycrates was the first, very much expecting to rule both Ionia and the islands. (3.122.2)

While Polycrates is part of ‘the so-called human race’, Minos and other sea-rulers who may have come before him were from an earlier time and belonged to a stock of beings that Herodotus cannot even name but that he appears to regard, here and in some other passages of the Histories, as in some ways qualitatively different.4 The most important difference must no doubt be that Herodotus assigns to the heroic age a category of true heroes, bigger in size—like Orestes, whose coffin measured seven cubits (1.68.3)—with special connections to the gods, even sometimes themselves called theoi, sometimes with temples and cults, and sometimes exercising supernatural powers after their death.5 Herodotus carefully avoids vouching for 3

Thucydides expresses reservations about our ability to reconstruct all but contemporary events (1.20); he does not explicitly recognize a separation between the heroic age and the historical past down to the Persian Wars (cf. above, n. 1). 4 For the translation of the phrase tēs . . . legomenēs anthrōpēiēs geneēs, see Williams (2001: 4). Cf. Lateiner (1989: 118) (‘ordinary human history’), and the Introduction to this volume, p. 23. This passage, as well as the sections in Herodotus Book One about Minos, have recently been analysed by E. Irwin (2007a) in an article with which I often find myself in agreement, as subsequent references will show. 5 Herodotus’ attitude towards heroes is, as we shall see, uneven, but with regard to Orestes and other Peloponnesian figures especially he appears to agree with public opinion in Sparta in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE; see Boedeker (1993: esp. 166).

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the divine parentage of heroes in explicit terms, but he does not deny it, either.6 In one instance (2.45) he even stops to apologize to gods and heroes, when his enquiry almost leads him to conclude that the Greek Heracles, the son of Alcmene and Amphitryon (2.43.2; cf. 6.53.2), was a distinct being from the Egyptian god Heracles and wholly a man. For Herodotus, however, these super-human beings, which at 3.122.2 he seems to discount as beyond history, are also important reference points for the human and properly historical past. More or less directly or intentionally they have helped to shape the world such as it is in Herodotus’ time, especially with regard to the origins and identity of peoples.7 In his ambivalence towards the heroic age, Herodotus bypasses Thucydides’ position at both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, unlike Thucydides, he represents the heroic age as something different from less remote periods. On the other hand, he also seems more confident than Thucydides that specific events from the heroic time, though not, as we shall see, a global picture, can be recovered accurately from local akoē, ‘hearsay’.8 Herodotus’ historical horizon, at any rate, is exceptionally broad, and he needs the heroic age more than Thucydides does. He goes

For heroes’ contacts with divinities, see, e.g., 4.179, where Herodotus reports a tradition that represents Jason in conversation with Triton. The Dioscuri are identified both as gods (2.43, 2.50) and as heroes (e.g., 4.145, 9.73). Helen is called a theos (6.61) and so is Protesilaus (9.120.3). On heroes in Herodotus, see Vandiver (1991). 6 On the indeterminacy of Herodotus’ outlook on the heroic past, see Williams (2001: 5–7), criticizing Vidal-Naquet (1960). Feeney (2007a: 73–6) provides an illuminating discussion of this complex issue. The fact that Herodotus assigns Minos at 3.122.2 to a race (geneē) different from the human is no doubt a reference to his being son of Zeus, but Herodotus does not mention this. In the case of Perseus, Herodotus implies, but declines to discuss his divine parentage at 6.53, although he explicitly mentions it at 7.61. 7 Cf. Dewald’s discussion, Ch. 1, }2, of the genealogical and aetiological mythic material in Book One. On other ways in which heroic myths reverberate into later events, see, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12. 8 It is only in a more global sense, then, that ‘Thucydides seems to handle mythic material with less scepticism than Herodotus usually does’ (Luraghi 2000: 234). For Herodotus, akoē is, of course, joined with historiē, ‘investigation’, and gnōmē, ‘judgement’: all three elements, explicitly invoked at 2.99.1, are operative, for example, in Herodotus’ reconstruction of the Trojan War scenario at 2.112–20 and many other times in the Histories. Here, however, I want especially to emphasize the confidence that Herodotus occasionally displays in the first of these: information obtained through oral report from especially qualified sources.

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back to it again and again in the course of his work, evaluating each time the quality of the available data and inviting us to do the same. Although Herodotus, as we often say, organizes experience by patterns, he is at the same time suspicious of them. The contradictory characteristics he attributes to the heroic age (different but real, of fundamental importance but difficult to know) cause him especially to dislike the fictitious sort of knowledge that derives from the practice of playing with myth to create conceptual constructs and patterns of a pseudo-historical sort. It is even doubtful, in fact, that he would have approved of Thucydides’ so-called Archaeology, as brilliantly rational as it appears now to us.9 Herodotus, in fact, critiques a cruder specimen of such constructs in the proem of the Histories (1.1–5). Here he reports that, according to those Persians who are logioi (competent, well educated), a series of abductions of heroic-age women (Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen) escalated into the Trojan War. This war represented the beginning and first cause of the centuries-old enmity between East and West that will culminate in the Persian Wars. According to the Persians, then, the East–West conflict was ultimately initiated by the Greeks for the frivolous reason of punishing Troy for the abduction of Helen.10 (With this also the Phoenicians agree, although they correct the part of the Persian story that indicts them: 1.5.1–2.) What is wrong with this Persian interpretation of the heroic age? The gods are gone, and heroic characters have become not merely fully human (as in Thucydides’ Archaeology), but downright ordinary. Herodotus’ Persian intellectuals do not just reinterpret causes, as Thucydides does in his Archaeology; they string together in a continuous causal chain heroic-age events that no one had ever before represented as factually connected. This is a parody of supersecularized, super-rationalized mythology.11 It does not constitute

9 On the intellectual appeal of Thucydides’ Archaeology, see esp. de Romilly (1956, 1966). 10 The analogy between the Trojan War and the Persian Wars has already emerged in Simonides’ historical elegy on the battle of Plataea (fr. 11 West), probably dating to 479 BCE. See Boedeker (2001). The notion of a causal relation between Trojan and Persian wars may be a natural outgrowth of the analogical argument, but it appears explicitly for the first time in Herodotus, as far as I know. 11 The parody could be only Herodotus’: see Drews (1973: 88–90). But Herodotus’ sophisticated Persian friends might be here having some fun with Greek myths as well, while at the same time driving their point home. For an excellent formulation of

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tradition or, much less, a work of historiē, but rather a mental game and a rhetorical feat. It is not just good clean fun, either, since the Persians (and the subsidiary Phoenicians) use it to score a political point: that the Greeks were the first aggressors against Asiatics, and not the other way around. From the point of view of the text, arguably one of the most important functions of Herodotus’ proem is to illustrate how easy it is to be clever with something as fluid as myth and use it as rhetoric.12 Herodotus disagrees with the method as much as he disagrees with the results. He takes distance from this way of explaining history, even at the cost of putting aside the idea that the Trojan War (or the violation against Helen that led to it) represented the true beginning of the East–West conflict or a legitimate starting point for his logos (1.5.3).13 Yet, Herodotus mentions the Trojan War several other times in the rest of his work, and it is clear that he considers it an important landmark. It is not merely that various parties, like his Persian sources in the proem, use it as a charter myth either to justify retaliation (the Persians) or to bolster leadership claims (the Greeks).14 Rather, the narrator himself brings it into his narrative of historical events. When he compares Xerxes’ army in 480 BCE to the Achaean army that marched against Troy (7.20), the Trojan War emerges as a metaphorical counterpart of the Persian Wars. At the end of the Histories that heroic-age event even becomes something similar to what Herodotus

the perspective from which we should look at Herodotus’ proem, see R. L. Fowler (1996: 82–6). See also Goldhill (2002: 13–15). 12 Cf. Dewald (1999: 233–7). 13 Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 102–5, argues that these introductory stories contain the seeds of motifs that become important in later episodes. Cf. also Dewald, Ch. 1, p. 62: they reveal Herodotus belief that ‘we can neither completely trust stories that claim to be authoritative accounts of the distant past nor do entirely without them in making sense of our collective human heritage.’ 14 On the Greek side, the Spartans and the Athenians at Syracuse base their claims to leadership of the Greeks on Homeric passages (7.59 and 161). The Athenians on the battlefield of Plataea justify their higher rank on the basis of the role they played in the Trojan War, though they reject this approach to the past halfway through their speech (9.27.4–5), along similar lines to Herodotus himself at the end of the proem (1.5.3–4), although far more dishonestly; the parallel has been noticed by Flower and Marincola (2002: 156). On the Persian side, Xerxes visits the plain of Troy on his way to Greece, as if his expedition were an act of retaliation for that heroic war (7.43), which is how the Persian Artayctes uses the Trojan War myth (9.116; see below). Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, considers Mardonius’ (and Xerxes’) appropriation of the Trojan War myth.

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had denied it was in the proem (1.1–5): if not to the ultimate historical cause of the Persians Wars themselves, at least an event that is causally related to their outcome. The causality Herodotus here establishes is, unlike that of the proem, entirely transcendent and mysterious. The link between the mythical and the historical past is the hero Protesilaus, who was killed at the beginning of the Trojan War. Just as the Persians conceive of the Achaeans’ attack against Troy as the beginning of the conflict that culminates in Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, so Xerxes’ governor Artayctes used it as a pretext for plundering Protesilaus’ shrine (9.116). But Artayctes, as it turns out, is the last Persian individual who dies in the Histories, and his death, underlined by an omen, is explicitly envisioned as bringing rightful vengeance for the first Greek who died at Troy (9.120).15 The Trojan War also turns up in a very different passage (2.112–21) where we find no trace either of the numinous aura that pervades the end of the Histories or of the scepticism with which Herodotus treats the Persian rationalization in the proem. Here Herodotus rather subjects the poetic tradition to meticulous enquiry and reasons over the myth on the basis of factual evidence.16 He shows that the event has something to teach us at the larger moral and, indeed, even theological levels (2.121).17 But that teaching is rational and becomes entirely clear only after one has found out what really happened back then (2.121). And the reason why Herodotus expresses confidence that he can uncover the remote mythical past, this time, is that he can rely on his own autopsy and that trustworthy (Egyptian) sources are on hand, more truly learned (that is, more logioi) than the Persians of the proem as well as far more objective.18 In the face of these uses of the Trojan War myth in the Histories, we are obliged to acknowledge, if not entirely reconcile, three different principles that inform Herodotus’ view of the heroic age. First, in the 15 On Protesilaus and the end of the Histories, see esp. Boedeker (1988), and, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 100, and Bowie, Ch. 11, pp. 273–4. For the Trojan War narratives as book ends to the work, see Ayo (1984). 16 See, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, }4, and de Jong, Ch. 4, p. 137. 17 As de Bakker, Ch. 3, }3, and Vandiver, Ch. 5, }1, point out in different ways in this volume. 18 For Herodotus’ autopsy of the temple of Foreign Aphrodite, which he interprets as a shrine to Helen, see 2.112.2. For the Egyptians as logioi, see 2.3.1, 2.77.1; cf. 1.1.1 of the Persians.

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heroic age, as in every age, one recovers factual truths only through historiē (as Herodotus does in Book Two). This is not always possible, however, because (and this is the second point) the heroic age is remote and people keep adjusting the record for purposes of their own.19 Third, the heroic age is also to a great extent unknowable because it is a mysterious time, subject to special rules: as such, it often lies beyond the competence of the histōr, who investigates and records ta genomena ex anthrōpōn, events of men. We can verify the complexity of this aspect of Herodotus’ thought if we examine his treatment of Minos, who is the heroic referent in the statement at 3.122 (quoted above, p. 196) that draws an explicit distinction between the human and not entirely human generations. In the Histories as a whole Minos plays a very small role and remains a rather colourless character. Even so, he manages to find his way into the logos in three different contexts—in Books One, Three, and Seven respectively. Herodotus, in other words, keeps going back to Minos, somewhat as he does to the much more important Trojan War. What makes Minos interesting, moreover, is that we know for a fact, and independently from Herodotus, that the Minos tradition had been shaped to reflect contemporary political realities. Minos is, therefore, a good illustration of the notion that myth, whether rationalized or not, could be used as a special language for the purposes of rhetoric and ideology. The Minos tradition in the fifth century follows two overlapping storylines, both connected with a hegemonic discourse about Athenian sea power.20 In one form of the myth, Minos is a character in the 19 This is true not only of politically motivated re-tellers of traditions, like Herodotus’ Persian sources in the proem or the parties mentioned above, n. 14, but also, for example, of Homer, who chooses a version of the Trojan War events on the grounds that it was ‘suitable to an epic poem’ (2.116). Neville (1977: 3) observes that Herodotus’ criticism of Homer on this occasion shows his awareness that historiography’s aims are different from those of poetry. See further the Introduction to this volume, pp. 29–31. For Herodotus’ presentation of the use of myth for rhetorical purposes by his characters, see, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, }3, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12. 20 For the Athenian discourse on sea power, see Momigliano (1944). The historicity of the myth of Minoan thalassocracy is examined by Starr (1954), who regards it purely as a product of Periclean thought, lacking any historical foundation; contra Cassola (1957b), who acknowledges the political uses of the tradition in the fifth century, but also argues that its nucleus preserves the memory of the dominance of pre-Greek Crete in the Middle Minoan period (2000–c.1600 BCE), before the Mycenaean conquest. For a more current state of the question, see Hägg and Marinatos (1984). For the purposes of this chapter, the historicity of the myth from a modern

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fabulous legend of Theseus, with the Minotaur, Daedalus, and other characters in supporting roles.21 Here he is the villain antagonist, defeated by the good hero Theseus, who, in the fifth-century Athenian tradition (though not elsewhere and definitely not in Herodotus),22 will become the proto-founder of the Athenian polis and the embodiment of its virtues. The first elaboration of this story appears in a dithyramb of Bacchylides (17), which glorifies Theseus at the expense of the arrogant and lecherous Minos.23 In the second, more prosaic, form of the fifth-century Minos tradition, there is no Theseus. Minos is more or less the sole protagonist as the archetypal ruler of the Aegean, less an opponent of fifth-century Athens than its implicit antecedent and analogue.24 A radical representative of this way of looking at Minos is Thucydides, who discusses both Minos and Theseus as

viewpoint does not matter. It seems clear, at any rate, that the myth originated earlier than, and independently from, the political purposes to which it was adapted. 21 The first reference to Minos’ wife bearing the Minotaur occurs in Hesiod’s Ehoiai (fr. 145 MW) and the first extant reference to Theseus’ killing of the monster is in Sappho (fr. 206 LP). Cf. also below, p. 208 and n. 39, for other elements in the Minos and Theseus saga. 22 The one time Theseus appears in Herodotus (9.73), he is the abductor of Helen who put Attica in danger: see, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 99, and Baragwanath, Ch. 12, }2. Herodotus does not guarantee this story, but he attributes it to an Athenian tradition. If this is accurate, the tradition must be older than the Theseus myth as refashioned at Athens in the fifth century. Walker (1995: 15) observes that, in the works of early archaic artists and writers, Theseus appears as ‘something of a bandit’. 23 Van Oeveren (1999) argues that Bacchylides 17 was designed for performance at the Delian Festival shortly after 478 BCE and amounts to a charter myth for the newly founded Delian League; cf. Giesekam (1976). On the contrast between the two protagonists of this ode and its political significance, see esp. Segal (1979). On Theseus versus Minos, there must have been other fifth-century texts now lost: in the pseudoPlatonic dialogue Minos (320e–321b) the Socrates character mentions a long Athenian tradition of tragedies that blackened the character of Minos (cf. Plutarch, Theseus 16.7–9); he claims that these negative portrayals are unfair, born of a popular desire to punish Minos for the tribute he imposed on Athens. Strabo 10.4.7/C476–7 discusses the ambivalence of the tradition about Minos (excellent legislator or tyrant). Other sources referring to the Minos–Theseus myth include Plato, Leg. 706 a–b; Apoll. Bibl. 3.15.7, Epit. 1.7–9; Plut. Thes. 15–22 gives several different versions. 24 Homer mentions Minos without referring to his mastery of the sea in the Iliad (14.321–22) and, as judge in the underworld, in the Odyssey (11.568–71), but Hesiod’s Ehoiai emphasizes his power (fr. 140 MW). References to Minos’ thalassocracy outside of Herodotus and Thucydides (in addition to those in the Theseus versions mentioned above) are all late: Aristotle, Pol. 2.7.2–4 = 1271b; Apoll. Bibl. 3.9, 210; D.S. 4.60.3; Strabo 1.3.2/C 48, 10.4.8/C 476; Paus. 1.27.9; Schol Flor. in Callim. fr. 4 Pf. 1.23–26 (p. 13).

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political archetypes, but (like Herodotus) does not relate them to each other.25 Thucydides’ Archaeology devotes to Minos two passages (1.4 and 1.8) that combined make the following points (I mostly paraphrase): (a) Minos is the ‘most ancient of those we know about through hearsay’ (palaiotatos hōn akoēi ismen) who acquired a fleet; he dominated the Hellenic sea and through his children ruled the Cyclades, founding colonies in most of them (1.4). (b) He did this after expelling the Carians (1.4), who, like the Phoenicians, were the early inhabitants of the islands and were given to piracy (1.8.1). (c) Proof of this fact (i.e., presumably only of Carian presence in the islands, and not also of their piratical activities, but Thucydides’ reasoning is not entirely clear; see below) is that half of the ancient tombs that the Athenians recently found in Delos are Carian. One can identify them as such from the equipment of weapons they contain and from comparison with modern Carian burials (1.8.1). (d) Minos did his best to free the sea of pirates, no doubt (hōs eikos) in order to be able to collect revenues (prosodous, 1.4). His expulsion of the ‘evildoers’ (kakourgoi) made communications easier and life more settled, so that the populations of the coast began to pursue the acquisition of wealth and some built walls. The love of gain allowed the stronger to conquer the weaker and persuaded the weaker to accept the domination of the stronger (1.8.2–3). This last, highly interpretative, passage reveals the political significance of the entire sequence. Thucydides’ Minos is a progressive force; as the early analogue of contemporary Athens, he justifies the very existence and mission of the Athenian Empire.26 25 For Theseus in Thucydides, see 2.15.1–6. In Herodotus, Theseus is a contemporary of Helen at 9.73 (cf. above, n. 22), while Minos dies three generations before the Trojan War (7.171.1); Herodotus does not even make the two overlap chronologically. In the light of the shared knowledge of the Minos–Theseus legend, however, Herodotus’ treatment of Theseus in this passage (including the Helen–Trojan War connection) would deserve further study. On the comparative analysis of the treatment of Minos in Herodotus and Thucydides, see most recently E. Irwin (2007a). 26 Cf. de Romilly (1966: esp. 163). On Minos in Thucydides, see also Kallet (2001: 25–6, 198–9). E. Irwin (2007a: 196–205) discusses in detail the political resonances of Thucydides’ Minos.

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At 1.4 (a), Thucydides’ unique use of the phrase palaiotatos hōn akoēi ismen establishes an implicit connection with Herodotus because it joins together (without reproducing exactly) expressions of Herodotus’ code of historiē. In particular, it echoes the prōtos tōn hēmeis idmen of Herodotus’ Minos–Polycrates statement at 3.122.2, where Herodotus says that Polycrates was the first ruler of the Aegean we know about, aside from Minos. It also echoes another phrase, which, as we shall soon see, Herodotus uses precisely in a passage of Book One that discusses the same topic as Thucydides does, Minos’ rule over the Carians (1.171.2). It is very tempting to surmise, as Hornblower does, that Thucydides is specifically reacting against Herodotus’ treatment of Minos.27 Thucydides disagrees with that treatment on two main points. The first is the idea that one should devalue the primacy of Minos’ thalassocracy in favour of that of Polycrates, as Herodotus does at 3.122.1. Second, Thucydides objects to the way in which Herodotus elsewhere describes the relationship of the Carians to Minos. Herodotus discusses the Carians and Minos in Book One, where he states, first of all, that the ancient Carians came to the region they now occupy in Asia Minor from the islands (1.171.2). So far Herodotus appears in line with the tradition followed by Thucydides, but he soon intervenes to veer in a different direction: For in ancient times, when they were called Leleges, they inhabited the islands as subjects of Minos. As far back as I am able to reach through hearsay [hoson kai egō dunatos eimi makrotaton exikesthai akoēi], they paid no tribute [phoron] to Minos; rather, they manned his ships when he needed them. (1.171.2)

The metanarrative intervention hoson kai egō dunatos eimi makrotaton exikesthai akoēi is what Thucydides appears to echo in (a) (1.4). But in Herodotus’ context it represents a more specific expression of the author’s research, indicating that this is one of those cases

27

See Hornblower (1991: ad 1.4 (pp. 19–20)) and E. Irwin (2007a: 205; cf. 190–4). Thucydides’ combination akoēi ismen (‘we know by hearsay’) is not Herodotean, as E. Irwin (2007a: 212) rightly shows. At the same time the individual components of the phrase signal Thucydides’ reference to Herodotus. Similarly eidōs . . . akoēi at 6.55.1, occurring as it does in reference to a non-contemporary event treated by Herodotus, may again constitute an allusion. Of course, we should also keep in mind that, as Luraghi (2000: 235) reminds us, much of the material Thucydides reflects or alludes to is lost to us.

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in which he is capable of applying historiē to events of the heroic past. It is hard to know what sort of akoē Thucydides is talking about when he speaks about the Carians, but Herodotus, at least, is clearly not relying on the generalized poetic tradition but on akoē derived from local sources. We soon learn (1.171.5) that these sources are Cretan. It is to their report that Herodotus gives greatest prominence and at 1.171.2 he implies that they are most credible, even though he will also caution us (at 1.171.6) that the Carians themselves adduce physical proof of their native Asiatic origin—a version that does not involve Minos at all.28 Herodotus’ strong marker of historiē, ‘as far back as I am able to reach through hearsay’, coupled with the negation (‘The Carians paid no tribute to Minos’), also seems to signal implicit polemic.29 But polemic against whom? If we believe that Thucydides’ Minos passage comes after Herodotus, and even perhaps responds to Herodotus, then Herodotus, for his part, is perhaps objecting to the sort of thing that Thucydides does especially well but that others had also done before him: the practice of embracing and enhancing the contemporary Minos tradition in order to legitimize Athenian sea power in opposition to its subjects or enemies.30 Herodotus refashions this discourse. The Carians were not evil pirates (lēistai, kakourgoi) whom Minos did well to expel for the sake of everyone’s security, as Thucydides says (1.8.2, point (d) above).31 They were, it is true, subjects of Minos: Herodotus’ representation leaves in place the tradition of a Minoan thalassocracy such as we find in Thucydides 28

On the discrepancy of the two traditions at 1.171.5–6, see below, n. 36. For the Cretan sources at 7.171.1, see below, p. 210. The Carian myth of autochthony is obviously more nationalistic, and the physical proof the Carians adduce in its support is the ancient sanctuary of Zeus at Mylasa (1.171.6); Herodotus here says that the Carians share this sanctuary with Mysians and Lydians on the basis of their alleged kinship with these two peoples, but exclude other ethnic groups, even if they speak their same language. Just below (1.172) Herodotus even more clearly casts doubt on a people’s version of its own origin in the case of the Caunians. 29 Giuffrida (1976: 137). 30 Luraghi’s argument (2000: 235) about the range of contemporary texts and discourses to which we no longer have access, especially as they relate to Thucydides’ Archaeology, is again relevant here; cf. above, n. 23 end. 31 For the possible equivalence of prosodoi and phoros, see E. Irwin (2007a: 198 and n. 3). Herodotus elsewhere talks about later Carians and Ionians sailing the seas kata lēiēn (2.152.4). Thucydides’ representation of the early Carians as Aegean pirates is echoed only by Philochorus FGrH 328, F. 94, who mentions a Carian raid to Attica in the time of Cecrops.

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and elsewhere. But, even if we accept the assumption (cf. hōs eikos in Thuc. 1.4) that Minos, like fifth-century Athens, had imperial revenues (Thucydides’ prosodous at 1.4) that included tribute (phoros), in Herodotus the Carians are rather comparable to the most privileged among the Ionian allies in the Athenian League, who provided ships rather than money (cf. Thuc. 1.96.1, 99.3).32 Herodotus’ Minos passage is part of his ethnographic insertion that describes Carians, Caunians, and Lycians. Minos is not the protagonist here and rather comes into the narrative for the greater glory of the Carians: ‘Since indeed Minos conquered much land and was successful in war, the Carians were by far the most famous people [logimōtaton ethnos] of all the peoples of that time’ (1.171.3). Minos’ empire provides the historical context in which the Carians distinguished themselves both in a military and in a cultural sense. As Herodotus interjects at this point, the Carians even invented items of military equipment that the Greeks adopted as their own (1.171.4).33 This view of Carian resourcefulness and of a debt of Greeks to nonGreeks34 does not, once again, seem to sit well with Thucydides. On the contrary, the archaeological proof he rather illogically deploys at 1.8.1 (point (c) summarized above) emphasizes precisely the armour as a major token of the past and present difference between Carians and Greeks.35 The next point of disagreement has to do with the time and circumstances of the Carians’ resettlement to Asia. For Thucydides it was Minos who expelled them from islands (1.8.1, point (b) above). For Herodotus they remained there until the arrival of Ionians and Dorians at the end of the heroic age (1.171.5).36 In 32 Or the equivalent of the original members of the Delian League, as E. Irwin (2007a: 206) suggests. 33 Strabo (14.2.27) confirms Herodotus, and cites verses of Alcaeus and Anacreon about Greek military equipment being called ‘Carian’ in the sixth century. Herodotus, for his part, confirms his own earlier account when he says (7.71) that the Carians of Xerxes’ army marching against Greece were equipped in the same way as the Greeks. 34 On Greek indebtedness to non-Greeks, especially Egyptians, see, in this volume, de Bakker, Ch. 3, Vandiver, Ch. 5, and Gray, Ch. 6. 35 On the logical inconsistency of this archaeological proof, see E. Irwin (2007a: 208–10). Its purely rhetorical value recalls Thucydides’ seeming evaluation of Greek troops that marched to Troy at 1.10.3–5 on the basis of a calculation that, if actually carried out, leads to opposite conclusions; see Luraghi (2000: 229–30). 36 For various traditions on the whereabouts of the Carians, see Cassola (1957a) and Giuffrida (1976: 140–5). Herodotus says that the Carians claim to be autochthonous while the Cretans say they are from the islands (1.171.5–6); on the discrepancy

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comparison to Thucydides’ schematic picture of the ancient Aegean, Herodotus displays a more specialized sort of knowledge. It was not the Carians, but the Lycians (then named Termilae) who moved from the islands to Asia at the time of Minos. They did so in the following of Minos’ brother Sarpedon, who had been expelled by Minos as the result of a dispute over the kingship (1.173.2). In so far as Herodotus is here talking about Cretan settlements abroad, he may reflect a tradition similar to that which motivates Thucydides’ statement that Minos through his children ruled the Cyclades, founding colonies in many of them (1.4, point (a)).37 But Thucydides’ Minos, once again, is in control on the model of Athens: ‘ruling through his children’ recalls the well-known practice of the Pisistratids of putting their family members in positions of power.38 For Herodotus, by contrast, Minos is merely an indirect cause of the Lycians’ resettlement. Other factors intervene to shape this people’s identity, as the cast of characters expands to include heroic age Athenians. The Termilae moved to Asia under the leadership of Sarpedon and changed their name to Lycians from the Athenian Lycus, who joined their colony after his brother, Aegeus, expelled him from Athens (1.173.3).

between the two traditions, see Cassola (1957a: 203). In the Iliad they are Trojan allies already living in Asia (2.867, 10.428). Thucydides (alone among ancient sources) has them settle there in the time of Minos. Isocrates (Panathenaicus 12.42.2–43) says that the Carians occupied the islands after Minos and held them until the Athenians and the Ionians (but not the Dorians) drove them out. Isocrates’ version represents a further re-elaboration, serving the purposes of a fourth-century ideological discourse about the Greek fight against barbarians. Diodorus places the Carians in Naxos before Theseus and Ariadne (5.51.3); like Isocrates, he talks about a thalassocracy of the Carians (5.84), who, after the Trojan War, appropriated the Cyclades having expelled the Cretans after the Cretan diaspora led by Rhadamanthus (brother of Minos); the Carians were in turn eventually expelled by the Hellenes. The notion of a Carian thalassocracy must not have originated until the fourth century. 37 Aristotle, Pol. 2.7.2–4 = 1271b agrees with Thucydides, but most other authors follow Herodotus in representing Minos’ relatives, rather than Minos himself, as colonists; we cannot know whether this was the original tradition, which Thucydides has transformed. In a passage that partially agrees with Herodotus, Strabo says that Sarpedon and the Cretans founded Miletus and settled the Termilae in the country now called Lycia (12.8.5). Besides Herodotus, Strabo’s source here appears to be Xanthus, FGrH 765, F. 15. Diodorus (5.64–80 and 84) assigns the role of colonists ‘in the islands facing Ionia and Caria’ to another brother of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and his sons (cf. above, n. 36). See also D.S. 4.79.1–2, Paus. 7.2.3 and 1.35.5. 38 Cf. Hornblower (1991: ad 1.4 (pp. 20–1)).

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Since Aegeus is famously Theseus’ father, here the Minos family brushes against the Theseus family.39 Herodotus has, however, no interest in linking the two and leaves them to act independently through parallel pairs of quarrelling brothers. His focus is firmly on the Lycians, as it was just above on the Carians. The age of Minos is first and foremost a crucial time when peoples, non-Greeks and Greeks, move about, mix together, and acquire certain cultural traits. If ideological bias is inevitable in anyone’s use of myth, two distinct Herodotean brands may be detected here. On the one hand, Herodotus uses the heroic age to discredit its exploitation by a political discourse of hegemony (Persian or Athenian, as the case may be). At the same time he evidently finds in myth facts that corroborate his own philobarbaros ideology or that help him to blur the distinction between Greeks and non-Greeks.40 In these chapters in Book One, Minos’ actions resemble those of a regular agent of human history, albeit from an ancient time (see to . . . palaion, 1.171.2). In Book Seven, however, Herodotus must confront a more baffling picture, where the Minos saga with its most complicated background even briefly meets the Trojan War saga. The passage is a small sampler of features whose diversity confirms both Herodotus’ caution in dealing with the heroic age and his continuing interest in it. Minos enters the main narrative of Book Seven in the words of a Delphic oracle that persuaded the Cretans to decline the invitation from the confederate Greeks that they join the resistance against Xerxes in 480 BCE. On that occasion, the Pythia warned the Cretans that, if they did help the Greeks, Minos (of all people) might be angry with them again, as he had been for their participation in the Trojan War (of all things):

39

Cf. above, p. 202. The tradition of Aegeus’ background and his connection to Minos is reported by Apollodorus, Bibl. 3.15.5–8. Pandion, son of Cecrops and his successor as king of Athens, was expelled by the sons of his brother Metion and went to Megara. After his death, his four sons (Aegeus, Pallas, Nisus, and Lycus) went back to Athens and reclaimed the power, which went to the oldest son, Aegeus, who eventually became the father of Theseus. Aegeus caused the death of Minos’ son Androgeus. As a consequence, Minos attacked Athens with his fleet and captured Megara. The Athenians agreed to give Minos satisfaction by sending fourteen children for the Minotaur. 40 On this aspect of Herodotus’ thought, see Pelling (1997b) and Munson (2001: 100–33). For Herodotus philobarbaros, see Plutarch, De malign. Herod. = Mor. 857A.

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‘Foolish men! You are not content with all the tears that Minos already sent you, when he was angry at you for helping Menelaus, because the Greeks did not help to avenge his own death at Camicus, while you Cretans helped them to avenge the abduction of a Spartan woman by a non-Greek?’ (7.169.2)

Some explanation for this strange oracle is clearly in order, and the narrator begins with the Pythia’s reference to Minos’ death in Sicily. By mentioning that he had allegedly gone there in pursuit of Daedalus, Herodotus potentially ties Minos to the Minotaur tradition, but (as at 1.173.3) he remains elliptical on this point and moves on.41 What really interests him is what happens to the Cretans. Urged by a god, they made an expedition en masse against Sicily to avenge Minos’ death, but, after failing to capture the Sicanian city of Camicus, they decided to abandon the enterprise. During their journey home, a storm drove them ashore in southern Italy, and there they settled permanently, ‘becoming Messapians of Iapygia instead of Cretans’ (7.170.1–2). At this point Herodotus follows up on the later history of these Messapians of Iapygia (7.170.3–4). He goes on so long on this topic that he ends up apologizing for the digression, which he calls a parenthēkē (7.171.1).42 Herodotus then returns to the consequences of Minos’ death on Crete, so severe and long lasting that they affected Cretan policy in the Persian Wars. The expedition the Cretans made to avenge the death of Minos, first of all, left the island almost empty of inhabitants. Other ethnic groups came to colonize it, especially Greeks, and two generations later the Cretans participated in the Trojan War. Angry at the Cretans’ readiness to support Menelaus and their corresponding failure to avenge his own death, Minos struck the island with starvation and disease, depopulating it for a second time. This calamity represents the ‘tears of Minos’ in the Pythia’s warning to the Cretans at the time of Xerxes’ invasion that they should not support the confederate Greeks (7.171.1–2; cf. 7.169).

41

7.169.2. Aristotle, Pol. 2.7.2–4 = 1271b simply says that Minos went to Sicily on a military expedition after gaining dominance of the seas. 42 Herodotus’ statement that by ‘becoming Messapians of Iapygia instead of Cretans’ colonists also became ‘mainlanders instead of islanders’ (7.170.2) is relevant in the context of an ideological discourse on thalassocracy. See Munson (2006: 265–7) on the meaning and purposes of this digression, which causes the narrative to reach forward to the year 473 BCE. A fascinating political explanation of a different sort is provided by E. Irwin (2007a: 220–1).

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It is hard to make sense of this sequence, both from the point of view of its narrative structure and from that of the mutual relations it establishes among different events. A great portion of the insertion (7.170.2–4) is about a new nation in the West (the Iapygians of Messapia): this is consistent with the interest in collectivities that Herodotus displays in the Minos chapters of Book One on the origins of Carians and Lycians. For at least certain Cretan facts Herodotus identifies his sources: they are the Praesians (7.171.1). These were, according to Herodotus, one of the only two groups who stayed behind at the time of the expedition to Sicily to avenge Minos (7.170.1), so that we may infer that they were Eteo-Cretans, belonging to the original non-Greek population of Crete. Since the Praesians have remained in Crete from the time of Minos through the entire history of their island, they would have been uniquely qualified to provide the akoē that allows Herodotus to ‘go as far back as possible’ in time, as he says in Book One (1.171.2). They are likely, in fact, to be those very same Cretans who there maintain that the Carians came from Crete, a version that Herodotus, as we have seen, prefers to that of the Carians about their own origin (1.171.5–6; above, p. 205). Somewhat as in the case of the Egyptian sources for the Trojan War, their long historical memory makes the heroic age accessible to Herodotus’ historiē. So far, so good. But what sort of information have these Cretans communicated to Herodotus? Perhaps the long parenthēkē about the Iapygians of Messapia, which could not derive from the reports of the Cretans back home, represents a narratological symptom of Herodotus’ discomfort with what he has learned from them concerning the Delphic oracle, Minos, the vicissitudes of their island, and the Cretan response to the Greeks seeking help. The Cretans’ story, in fact, collapses different chronological moments of the heroic period and spills into the present on the basis of a causality that defies rational enquiry—rational in either a factual or an ethical sense. It establishes an unprecedented relation between the death of Minos in Sicily and the Trojan War, somewhat as the Persians in the proem had connected the abductions of Io, Europa, and Medea to one another and to the Trojan War. This time, however, the connection—not only reported by sources that have almost the status of eyewitnesses, but also apparently validated by the Pythia—has the chance of being real. The disasters in Crete and the changes of population in the island are the results of the demands of a dead Minos, who bridges the heroic and

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the historical ages, competes with Menelaus in dragging communities into an aggressive war, keeps the Cretans of recent history tied to their barbarian past, and prevents them from participating in the Greek defensive war against the Persians. An account less compatible with Herodotus’ overarching view of the workings of history and the divine is hard to imagine. Are the Cretans liars? Is the disastrous Minos oracle not authentic? The syntax of the passage gives no indication of whether the oracle was merely reported by the Cretans or whether it constituted an actual event vouched for by the narrator Herodotus.43 If we are to believe that the Cretans really received such an oracle, could the Cretans not have circumvented it, as the Athenians did with similarly negative Delphic responses to the great benefit of Greece (7.139–43)? In the surrounding narratives in Book Seven Herodotus, after displaying the Athenian exemplum, proceeds to give his audiences a great deal of guidance on how to interpret the true motives behind the fictitious reasons—supported or not by oracular utterances, supported or not by appeals to the heroic age—which other medizing Greeks adduced in order to avoid joining the resistance against the Persians. But in the case of the Cretans he neither helps us understand their explanation nor does he give us permission to disbelieve it.44 Herodotus knows full well that political manipulations of the heroic age are common in foreign diplomacy, but he also knows that the heroic age is not exactly like the historical age. Minos, like Protesilaus, Orestes, and Talthybius, is not fully or simply a member of the human race. Historiē cannot in this case either avoid or solve the impasse of the entanglement of present and remote past. With the scandals of this narrative in mind, we can briefly return to the Minos statement at 3.122, with which we began. Here Herodotus flags a context where he regards the separation between the heroic and the historical age as not merely possible but mandatory: 43 Cf. Dewald, Ch. 1, pp. 76–8, on the role of oracles in Book One. Herodotus in general does not argue against their contents. 44 See Herodotus’ narrative of the responses of the Argives (7.148–152), Gelon (7.157–65), and the Corcyreans (7.168), the first two of which include diplomatic references to heroic age events (7.150 and 160–1). Vannicelli (2004: 202–3) agrees on independent grounds that the episode of the embassy to Crete is anomalous with respect to the remaining three. On Herodotus’ treatment of those controversial encounters, see Munson (2001: 217–30), Baragwanath (2008: 210–27), and Bowie, this volume, Ch. 11, }2.1.

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Polycrates wanted to rule the sea [thalassokrateein] and was the first among the Greeks to do so, as far as we know [prōtos . . . tōn hēmeis idmen], aside from [parex] Minos of Cnossus or anyone who may have gained control of the sea earlier than Minos; but of the so-called human race [tēs . . . legomenēs anthrōpēiēs geneēs] Polycrates was the first, having great hopes of ruling both Ionia and the islands. (3.122.2)

In his enquiry on the origins of peoples, as we have seen, Herodotus has never contested the notion of Minos’ thalassocracy.45 But, in the narrative of Polycrates, he chooses to introduce that information in passing only to set it aside, with a rhetorical move that communicates disapproval of the political uses of myth. It cannot be a coincidence that in one version of the Minos tradition (the one that notably appears in the already-mentioned dithyramb 17 of Bacchylides), the symbol of Minos’ rule is a ring in the sea, just as in Herodotus the good fortune of Polycrates is metonymically connected to a ring the tyrant throws into the sea.46 Herodotus, in other words, encourages the parallel between Minos and Polycrates, but he does so for the sake of substituting Polycrates for Minos in the implicit parallel involving the Athens of his times. What Herodotus is saying is this: we do not need the heroic age, in this case, either to do history or to talk politics. The recent and fully human tyrant of Samos, whose story comes complete with a rise and a much emphasized, heartbreaking, downfall (3.125), provides a more useful paradigm for present realities than Minos.47 Herodotus here follows very much the same principle that he goes out of his way to demonstrate in the proem of the Histories, when he points out that Croesus is a betterdocumented antecedent of recent events than the Trojan War. 45

See 1.171.2; above, pp. 204–6. A portion of the story of Theseus’ recovery of the ring of Minos was also represented in the painting by Mycon of the Athenian Theseion, according to Pausanias 1.17.2–3. See Castriota (1992: 58–63). 47 E. Irwin (2007a: 216–18), who arrives at more or less similar conclusions, argues that Thucydides, for his part, deliberately minimizes the role of Polycrates in his history of thalassocracies so as not to detract from the achievements of Minos/Athens. 46

8 Myth and Truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus Logos Charles C. Chiasson

As is well known, Herodotus is acutely aware that historical truth is a matter of dispute. From the earliest chapters of the Histories, Herodotus acknowledges variant versions of the narratives he reports, and in a famous passage he states that, while he is bound to transmit oral traditions, he is by no means bound to believe them—a principle he explicitly extends to his entire work (7.152.3). Thus, when Herodotus asserts in his own narrative voice that he is giving a true account, the occasion demands our close attention.1 In this chapter I explore the ostensible contradiction between Herodotus’ claim to tell the ‘real’ story of the Persian king Cyrus’ rise to power and the patently mythical cast of the logos itself, as noted in previous scholarship.2

I would like to thank above all Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker for organizing the Herodotus and Myth conference and for the improvements provoked by their insightful editorial comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Thanks as well to my fellow speakers and to all who attended the conference and made it such a memorable experience. Irene de Jong, Susan Shapiro, and Deborah Boedeker all provided valuable feedback at various stages in the gestation of this chapter; none of them can be blamed for the ungainliness of the offspring. Thanks finally to Christopher and Melissa Chiasson for their help in locating elusive bibliographical items. 1 For previous discussion of the terminology of ‘truth’ in Herodotus, see DarboPeschanski (1987: 165–84) and Marincola (2007a: 15–17), both of whom note that Herodotus rarely applies the term alētheiē to the results of his own research. For the implication of alētheiē in the ‘real’ story of Cyrus’ origins, however, see below, pp. 215–16. 2 See Reinhardt (1960: 143–51), Immerwahr (1966: 88–93, 161–7), Schwabl (1969: 268–70), Fehling (1989: 110–11), Erbse (1992: 31–44), Pelling (1996), and Saïd (2002:

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We shall see that Herodotus’ truth claim is focused on Cyrus’ defeat of his maternal grandfather, Astyages, and is elicited by other, false versions3 that exaggerate Cyrus’ status or achievements in various ways. By contrast with these aggrandizing falsehoods, Herodotus asserts the fundamental truth of the king’s ascent as neither the offspring nor the favourite of the gods, as neither a royal scion nor indeed the driving force behind the Persian rebellion; and he does so by means of narrative elements and patterns familiar from Greek myth, especially as inflected by Greek tragedy.4 More specifically, Herodotus employs myth as a means of familiarizing, explaining, and enhancing for a Greek audience the historical origins of the Persian empire and its founder.5 Moreover, Herodotus makes truth-telling a distinctive characteristic of the young Cyrus, which contributes to the effect of tragic reversal in his final defeat at the hands of the Massagetae—a story Herodotus no longer presents as the truth, but merely the most plausible among many versions of how Cyrus met his end. Thus different ‘mythical’ episodes in Herodotus’ life of Cyrus may have different degrees of historical accuracy, as the historian himself acknowledges.

1. THE ‘REAL’ STORY ABOUT THE BIRTH, YOUTH, AND GROWTH TO POWER OF CYRUS Our starting-point is the sentence that shifts the focus of Herodotus’ narrative in Book One from the defeated Lydian king Croesus to his

128–9); and the relevant notes in How and Wells (1928) and Asheri (1988), now updated in Asheri (2007). 3 For other ‘agonistic’ truth claims in Herodotus provoked by alternative traditions or the incredulity of his contemporary audience, cf. the insistence that the speeches in the Persian Constitutional Debate were actually delivered (elekhthēsan d’ ōn, 3.80.1; cf. 6.43.3), and that the Athenians were truly the saviours of Greece against Persia (tēi ge moi phainetai einai alēthes, ‘as seems to me at least to be true’, 7.139.1). 4 For the role played by Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus’ Oresteia, in Mardonius’ mythicizing conception of the second Persian capture of Athens, see Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, }4. 5 Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, analyses various ways in which Herodotus employs motifs from myth in his narrative of more contemporary events in Book One.

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Persian captor Cyrus. In a ‘metanarrative’6 introduction Herodotus indicates the new direction his logos is about to take: From this point our story next enquires into who Cyrus was—Cyrus, who toppled Croesus’ kingdom—and how the Persians came to rule Asia. And so just as some of the Persians say—the ones who do not wish to magnify [semnoun] events concerning Cyrus, but to tell the real story [ton eonta logon]—in accordance with these accounts I shall write, while possessing the knowledge to reveal three other paths of narrative [triphasias allas logōn hodous phēnai] as well concerning Cyrus. (1.95.1)7

Herodotus distinguishes between two types of Persian sources, those that ‘magnify’ or ‘exaggerate’ Cyrus’ deeds, on the one hand, and those that tell the real or actual story, ton eonta logon, on the other. Although the meaning of this phrase may seem transparent, its veridical implications for Herodotus are conveniently explicated in the episode that leads to the revelation of Cyrus’ true identity—a matter of great investigative interest for both Herodotus and the Median king Astyages, Cyrus’ grandfather.8 And Mitradates, while being led off to torture, began to reveal the real story [ton eonta logon] as follows. Starting from the beginning he went through it all, telling the truth [tēi alētheiēi khreōmenos], and concluded with entreaties and by urging Astyages to forgive him. (1.116.5)

When under threat of torture the herdsman Mitradates admits his role in raising Cyrus, the Herodotean narrator explicitly identifies the story that he tells, ton eonta logon, with the truth, tēi alētheiēi (cf. also 1.117.1). Moreover, when the king’s vizier Harpagus later gives an account that tallies with the herdsman’s truth, we are told that Harpagus ‘does not turn onto a path of falsehood’ (ou trepetai epi pseudea hodon, 1.117.2), but gives Astyages ‘the straight story’ (ton ithun . . . logon, 1.118.1), whose content is defined generically as ‘what happened’ (to gegonos, bis, 1.118.1) or ‘what was done’ (to prēgma, 1.118.1).9 6

For full discussion of this term, see Munson (2001: 20–4). I quote the Greek text of Asheri (1988). All translations of Herodotus are my own unless otherwise noted, and have accuracy rather than elegance as their primary aim. 8 For kings as conducting research (historiē) comparable to Herodotus’ own, see Christ (1994), who does not, however, include Astyages among the royal investigators he discusses. For a broader discussion of Herodotean characters (not merely kings) who conduct research, see Demont (2002). 9 These passages are discussed by Kahn (2003: 354–5). 7

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Thus for Herodotus the ‘story that is’ is one that tells the truth by giving a straightforward account of events that took place. (Speeches, as opposed to events, are conspicuously absent from this implicit definition of truth.10) Herodotus’ own access to any putatively truthful account concerning Cyrus cannot have been straightforward in the least, however. He admits—or fabricates, as Detlev Fehling would have it11—his fundamental dependence on a pre-existing Persian tradition that informs his own logos. Since Herodotus himself apparently did not speak Persian,12 his knowledge of Persian tradition must have been second hand, based on what David Asheri describes as stories ‘of Median or Persian origin, already elaborated and rationalized by previous Greeks’.13 In other words, the transmission of eastern traditions by Hellenic intermediaries to a Hellenic audience will have involved a filtering process that reproduced these foreign narratives in ways most readily comprehensible to a Greek listener.14 This process of assimilation will have continued as Herodotus himself reworked these stories for his own historical and artistic purposes: he promises not to reproduce exactly what the Persians say in his written account, but to write ‘in accordance with’ what they say (kata tauta, 1.95.1).15 From the outset, then, Herodotus’ seemingly simple 10 As noted above, n. 3, in response to disbelieving contemporaries Herodotus extraordinarily defends the historicity of the speeches he attributes to the Persian leaders involved in the Constitutional Debate (3.80.1; cf. 6.43). The modern scholarly audience, detecting strong echoes of Greek political thought in these speeches, remains generally sceptical: see Pelling (2002c: 127–9) and R. L. Fowler (2003: 308–9). 11 Fehling (1989: 110–11). For trenchant criticism of Fehling’s blanket dismissal of Herodotus’ source citations as fictitious, see Erbse (1991). 12 As T. Harrison (1998: }1) points out, Herodotus’ erroneous claim that all Persian names end in the letter sigma (1.139) reveals that he knew such names only in their Hellenized forms; cf. Flower (2006: 280). 13 Asheri (2007: ad 1.95.1). 14 For a closer look at the complex process whereby stories about the Persians and Medes are transformed by Greek storytellers and Herodotus in particular, see Thomas, this volume, Ch. 9. With specific reference to the topic at hand, she points out (p. 251) that, while Herodotus’ story of Cyrus’ birth looks very Greek, it also has a striking Assyrian parallel in the story of Sargon of Agade. The version of Cyrus’ birth preserved by Nicolaus of Damascus, which I discuss below, offers a closer parallel still to the Mesopotamian narrative; see Drews (1974) for details. 15 Immerwahr (1966: 6–7 n. 14) discerns a significant difference between what the Persians ‘say’ and what Herodotus promises to ‘write’, claiming that Herodotus emphasizes the exactitude of his own activity by describing it with the verb graphō. Scholars dispute the extent of Herodotus’ originality in producing an account allegedly based upon Persian tradition. Fehling (1989: 110–11) regards this purportedly pre-existing version as the product of Herodotean invention. Among less extreme

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pledge to transmit ‘the real story’ about Cyrus from Persian sources to a Greek audience is anything but simple.16 A second basic issue concerns the extent of the logos whose truth Herodotus asserts. Henry Immerwahr claimed that when Herodotus described his version of Cyrus’ death in battle against the Massagetae as ‘the most likely’ (ho pithanōtatos, 1.214.5) of many such accounts, he was repeating his initial claim to tell the true story of the king’s life.17 As I will argue below, however, there is good reason to differentiate between these standards of truth, on the one hand, and (mere) persuasiveness on the other. Moreover, the subject of Herodotus’ true logos is restricted specifically in 1.95.1 to who Cyrus, the conqueror of Croesus, was, and how the Persians came to dominate Asia under his leadership. Herodotus marks the end of this account at an obviously climactic point—Cyrus’ defeat of Astyages and accession to the throne—by means of emphatic ring composition: After being born and raised in this way Cyrus became king, and later he conquered [katestrepsato] Croesus, who was the aggressor in their conflict, as I have previously recounted. After conquering [katastrepsamenos] Croesus he thus ruled over all Asia. (1.130.3)

The description of Cyrus as ‘born and raised in this way’ answers in summary fashion Herodotus’ initial question about who Cyrus was; his defeat of Croesus is recalled by means of both a main verb (katestrepsato) and a resumptive participle (katastrepsamenos); and in its wake Cyrus is said to have ruled all of Asia. We have also seen that Herodotus uses the same phrase, ton eonta logon, to describe both the Persian source of his own account of Cyrus and the truth

positions, Reinhardt (1960) accentuates the Persian material and perspective that permeate Herodotus’ account; Erbse (1992) insists that Herodotus’ eōn logos is his own creation, based on a critical combination of the three versions he rejects for their exaggeration, but also incorporating much original material; Pelling (1996) detects the presence of both Persian and Hellenic elements, possibly already combined before Herodotus’ time, as well as characteristically Herodotean features. 16 Darbo-Peschanski (1987: 179 n. 357) denies the implication I discern in 1.95 that Herodotus through his research has established the ‘reality’ of Cyrus’ origins; she believes that it is merely the intention of the Persians to do so that is in play. And yet, when Herodotus signals the end of this part of his account by means of emphatic ring composition at 1.130.3, he summarizes the events of Cyrus’ birth and upbringing as matters of unqualified fact. He appears, in other words, to have produced his own ‘real’ (and therefore ‘true’) account on the basis of Persian sources he deemed reliable. 17 Immerwahr (1966: 165–6 n. 48).

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that Mitradates is forced to reveal about raising Cyrus as his foster son. I conclude that Herodotus’ promise to tell ‘the real story’ about Cyrus is focused closely on the nature and circumstances of his birth, with a distinctive emphasis (to be discussed below) on the role played by Harpagus in Cyrus’ survival, defeat of Astyages, and conquest of Asia. The paths of narrative pointedly not taken by Herodotus falsely ‘exaggerate’ or ‘magnify’ (semnoun, 1.95.118) events in Cyrus’ life. Since Herodotus describes Cyrus’ father Cambyses as belonging to a ‘good’ or ‘noble’ but apparently not royal Persian family (oikiēs . . . agathēs, 1.107.2), he presumably rejected any account of Cyrus’ origins that ‘exaggerated’ by making him the offspring of royalty. In fact Cyrus himself staked just such a claim in a royal inscription (the Cyrus Cylinder) that celebrated his conquest of Babylonia in 539 BCE, presenting himself as king of Anshan, son of Cambyses king of Anshan, whose father Cyrus and grandfather Teispes were kings of Anshan before him.19 Exaggerations concerning Cyrus apparently extended beyond the political status of his paternal lineage to his own ontological status. The one explicit example Herodotus cites of Persian traditions that falsely magnified the life of Cyrus is the fraudulent rumour that he was miraculously reared by a bitch, a sacred animal for the Persians.20 Cyrus’ birth parents spread this rumour, hoping the Persians might believe that he survived theioterōs (1.122.3), ‘in more divine fashion’ than Herodotus believes, as nurtured by a peasant woman conveniently named ‘Bitch’. Now the comparative degree of the adverb is telling, and suggests that 18 semnoō occurs elsewhere only at 3.16.7, describing the Egyptians’ false aggrandizement of the pharaoh Amasis. Cf. also semnunō (1.99.2, hapax), describing the Median king Deioces’ pretence that he was ‘different in kind’ from his peers—i.e., somehow superhuman (on heteroios, see Asheri (2007: ad 1.110.1)). 19 Line 21 of the Cyrus Cylinder, translated in Pritchard (1950: 315–16) and Brosius (2000: 10–11). This genealogy differs from that given by Herodotus for Xerxes and the family of Darius (7.11.2), and by Darius himself in the Behistun inscription. Recent discussions of the controversy with bibliography include M. Waters (2004) and Potts (2005). My thanks to Stephanie Dalley for guidance on this point. 20 So How and Wells (1928: ad 1.110); Asheri (2007: ad 1.110) claims the dog is sacred above all in the context of Mithraic cult, implicitly reflected in the name of Cyrus’ foster father Mitradates. Fehling (1989: 110) traces the story not to Persian tradition but to Herodotus himself, laying at his doorstep the Greek etymological wordplay (Kuros and kuōn, 1.122.3) that he considers the foundation of the story. See Pelling (1996: 74 n. 29) for the likelihood that the folktale of the exposure and salvation of a wonder-child has ‘an international and cross-cultural background’.

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Herodotus himself discerned some degree of divine involvement in Cyrus’ survival: he acknowledges this explicitly (if unemphatically) by describing the coincidental birth of Cyno’s stillborn child as occurring kōs kata daimona, ‘by a kind of providence’ (1.111.1), as rendered neatly by Waterfield .21 Nonetheless, Herodotus is not prepared to accept the view of Cyrus as divine nurseling, and may have felt the need to declare Cyrus’ human origins with special emphasis, since after his death the founding father of the Persian empire was worshipped with monthly sacrifices at the site of his tomb in Pasargadae (Arrian, Anabasis 6.29.4–7)—a striking parallel to the hero-cult bestowed by many Greek poleis upon their founders. Of course Cyrus’ relationship to the gods is much more than a matter of historical accuracy for Herodotus, since the disastrous end of rulers who flatter themselves as virtual deities is a recurrent theme in the Histories. In the wake of discovering his true identity, the Herodotean Cyrus is full of praise for his human nurse, his imagined mother, the herdsman’s wife Cyno (1.122.3). Later, in the prelude to the Persian revolt against the Medes, both Harpagus (1.124.1–2) and Cyrus (1.126.6) stress the role played by the gods in the latter’s survival; and, while Herodotus himself might have concurred with Cyrus’ proclamation that he was born by divine providence (theiēi tukhēi gegonōs, 1.126.6) to lead this insurrection, by the time of the fall of Sardis Cyrus seems to have taken a treacherous step on a slippery slope. At this point he appears to imagine himself more fully assimilated to deity, since it takes the sight of Croesus on the pyre to remind him of his own human vulnerability (1.86.6). And, of course, the insight proves a fleeting one: Herodotus identifies the king’s belief in his own superhuman birth and status as his primary motive for undertaking the final, fatal campaign against the Massagetae (1.204.2). Thus, although Herodotus acknowledges the miraculous nature of Cyrus’ survival, the king’s own essential humanity from cradle to grave is a truth of fundamental importance for the narrative.22 It is instructive to compare an alternative tradition of Cyrus’ origins, which places noticeably greater emphasis on divine concern 21 Waterfield (1998). T. Harrison (2000a: 236–7) emphasizes the ‘divine or fated nature of this chain of events’. My thanks to the editors for raising my consciousness in regard to the superhuman plane of causation in this episode. 22 So too Immerwahr (1966: 165–6).

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for Cyrus’ success and underscores the tragic emplotment of the king’s narrative in the Histories. This tradition is preserved in some detail in a fragment (FGrH 90, F. 66) of the universal history written by Nicolaus of Damascus, who draws upon the Persica of Ctesias, a Greek doctor at the court of Artaxerxes II.23 This version portrays Cyrus as unrelated to Astyages, the son of poor and indisputably human Persian parents but favoured nonetheless by the gods, whose support manifests itself in various ways at crucial stages of his life: in the dream of Cyrus’ mother (not of his grandfather Astyages, as in Herodotus) that her urine overflowed all of Asia, interpreted as an unambiguous sign of future benefit and honour; in Cyrus’ auspicious chance meeting with Oebares, destined to be his adviser and general; and, as a prelude to his final battle against Astyages at Pasargadae, in thunder, lightning, and birds of good omen that portend Persian victory.24 As Herodotus tells the story, by contrast, the gods play a less prominent role, and do not encourage the aspiring king Cyrus so much as they threaten the incumbent Astyages.25 His daughter Mandane’s dreams promise a longed-for male heir, but one who will supersede Astyages himself. Moreover, later in the narrative, when Astyages offers a military command to Harpagus after punishing him brutally for his failure to kill the infant Cyrus, Herodotus characterizes the oblivious king as theoblabēs, ‘robbed of his wits by the gods’ (1.127.2). The king’s dreams about Mandane’s offspring initiate a narrative pattern with striking parallels in Greek myth, despite the presence of apparently oriental material. While the imagery, for example, of the

23 For Nicolaus as directly dependent upon Ctesias, see Drews (1973: 101 n. 19, 104 n. 32). For comparison of Ctesias and Herodotus on Cyrus’ rise to power, see How and Wells (1928: i. 389–90) and Jacoby (1922: 256–8). More recent general assessments of Ctesias include Drews (1973: 103–16), Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1987), and Lenfant (2007: 202–5). 24 Nicolaus’ account of the Persian revolt against Astyages both begins (66.12) and ends (66.45) with explicit acknowledgement by the narrator of the gods’ involvement; this confirms the claims of divine support made in direct speech by Cyrus himself (66.33) and Oebares (66.45). 25 While the editors question (perhaps rightly) the distinction I draw here, I consider the difference of perspective a significant one, grounded in the Herodotean Solon’s paradigmatic characterization of the deity as phthoneron te kai tarakhōdes, ‘resentful and disruptive’ (1.32.1)—sc. of extraordinary human success (such as Astyages possesses until toppled by Cyrus, whose success is a mere by-product of divine ‘disruption’).

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king’s dreams seems to be Near Eastern26 the narrative deployment of these dreams has deep roots in traditional Hellenic storytelling. Hans Schwabl notes that Herodotus’ treatment of dynastic dreams generally reflects close contact with Greek myth, and in the present instance compares not only the Sophoclean Oedipus but also Perseus— like Cyrus, banished as a threat to his grandfather—as an especially relevant mythical model.27 The king’s response to these dreams has an especially tragic resonance in that it involves familial violence and ultimately achieves the very opposite of its intended purpose. Astyages orders his vizir and relative Harpagus to kill his grandson, and, when he learns that Cyrus has survived, the king punishes Harpagus in his turn by feeding him the flesh of his own son—an act of such atrocity that it motivates Harpagus to plot the king’s downfall. Christopher Pelling adds that, as the offspring of socially mismatched parents, the Median princess and the Persian of relatively low breeding, Cyrus calls to mind another mythical schema familiar from tragedy: as a threatening child, ‘at once central and marginal, inside and outside the royal house’, Cyrus keeps company with such tragic heroes as Oedipus, Orestes, Polynices, and Hippolytus.28 The intimations of myth and tragedy grow stronger still in the narrative of Cyrus’ exposure and its aftermath (1.114–19). First of all, the sentence introducing this stage of the story contains linguistic evidence that Herodotus is consciously evoking mythical associations: kai hote dē ēn dekaetēs ho pais, prēgma es auton toionde genomenon exephēne min, ‘And when indeed the boy was ten years old, some such event as follows happened to him and revealed his identity’ (1.114.1). In his analysis of the wondrous story of the prophet Euenius (9.92–6), Alan Griffiths argues that the deictic adjective toiosde often signals a shifting of gears in the Histories from the historical past to a remoter mythical past—a plane of action whose stories, with their ‘aura of the irrational’, add ‘suggestive depth’ to Herodotean narratives.29 The story that follows this evocative opening is 26

Pelling (1996: 69–73). Schwabl (1969: 268–70). 28 Pelling (1996: 76). 29 Griffiths (1999: 182). Other ‘mythicized’ narratives introduced by Herodotus with the same adjective include the story of Cleobis and Biton (1.31), who died an uncanny death in Hera’s Argive sanctuary, and the story of deadly familial conflict involving the Corinthian tyrant Periander and his estranged son Lycophron (3.50–3); for the former, see Chiasson (2005), for the latter, Sourvinou-Inwood (1991). It 27

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presented in remarkably dramatic fashion, as a series of dialogues in direct speech between Astyages and various interlocutors leads the king ever closer to discovering the truth; many have noted the parallel between his interrogation of Mitradates (1.116) and Oedipus’ interrogation of the Theban shepherd as dramatized in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus. The episode builds, then, to the discovery of Cyrus’ true identity—a recognition scene (anagnōrisis), a defining element of the complex tragic plot for Aristotle.30 Nonetheless, the emotional climax of the entire sequence lies less in this revelation (which has no immediate consequences for either the prince or the king) than in Astyages’ abominable punishment of Harpagus. It is widely acknowledged that this atrocity calls to mind the most infamous act of cannibalism in Greek mythology, and a staple of the tragic stage,31 the Atreusmahl: in bitter competition for the right to the throne of Mycenae, Atreus punished his brother Thyestes for seducing his wife by serving him the flesh of his own children. Indeed, as Walter Burkert has shown, the parallel between the two stories is reflected in numerous points of detail. Both meals are consumed at individual tables, in violation of Greek commensal custom; in both cases some of the entrails are boiled, some roasted; in both cases the head and feet of the victims (in Herodotus, the hands also) are kept intact to prompt the father’s terrible recognition.32 Whether Herodotus himself fabricated this incident or found it in a pre-existing Hellenized tradition, his attention to such details guarantees that his Greek audience will have recognized its mythical model, and will also have noted where the series of similarities ends: in the father’s immediate response to his unwitting cannibalism. For his part, Thyestes reacts with anger, overturning his table and cursing his brother’s household. Harpagus, by contrast, consciously quells his anger—a point emphasized by Herodotus (1.119.6)—and, when Astyages sadistically asks whether he recognizes the animal he has devoured, Harpagus responds that whatever the king does is to his liking. Now the similarities between the two accounts will appears that toiosde performs this ‘time-shifting’ function only in the specific narrative context of introducing a new story; otherwise, see Lang (1984: 133, 155 n. 2) for Herodotus’ use of the adjective (toiade) in speech introductions, and the possible implications of its ‘vagueness’ by comparison with the demonstrative pronoun (tade). 30 Cf. Poetics 1452a16–21, 1452a29–b8, 1454b19–55a21. 31 See Erbse (1992: 33). 32 Burkert (1983: 109).

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presumably have affected, and strongly, the Greek reception of this non-Greek narrative, intensifying the emotional impact of remote events by appeal to a well-known heroic paradigm of both cruelty and suffering beyond mere human capacity. Moreover, the fraternal violence of the myth will have reminded a Greek audience that the relationship between Astyages and Harpagus is not merely political (king and vizier) but also familial (they are oikēioi, 1.108.3). The difference in paternal reactions, by contrast, calls attention to issues of significant political and historical interest for Herodotus. Harpagus’ apparent (and apparently plausible) acquiescence in the king’s reprisal demonstrates the tyrannical abuse to which monarchy, the characteristic eastern mode of government in the Histories, is susceptible; and it does so the more effectively by exposing the utter disparity in power between the king and a high-ranking official in his own court. However, Harpagus’ acquiescence proves to be merely apparent, since he is motivated by Astyages’ cruelty to plot his overthrow with the collaboration of Cyrus, thus transferring imperial power from the Medes to the Persians. Here as elsewhere in Herodotus, at the human level of causation momentous historical events are triggered by strikingly personal motives. Finally, Harpagus’ calculated suppression of his true feelings reflects another characteristically Herodotean theme, the deceptive cleverness whereby ‘the otherwise defenceless individual outwits the powerful autocrat’.33 Harpagus’ pragmatic reticence, with an eye to future vengeance, may be taken to signal another shift of narrative gears and a return to a more prosaic/analytical mode of discourse.34 The sequel to this latter-day Atreusmahl underscores another way in which Herodotus’ true logos eschews false exaggeration of Cyrus’ accomplishment— namely, by portraying the bereaved Harpagus as the primary human motivator of the Persian rebellion. In chapter 1.123 we learn that Harpagus, desiring to punish Astyages (tisasthai Astuagea epithumeōn, 1.123.1), courted Cyrus as an ally and persuaded prominent Medes to accept Cyrus as their leader in a revolt against their own king’s oppressive rule. He then sent Cyrus a secret letter, urging him to incite his fellow Persians to march against Astyages, and promising aid from Median deserters. Appointed commander of 33

Lateiner (1990: 231). On deceptive cleverness as a motif that Herodotus derives from Greek myth, see Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 80–1. 34 Here I gladly adopt the suggestion and phrasing of the editors.

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the Median troops by the oblivious Astyages, Harpagus played no small part in the success of the Persian forces under Cyrus. Finally, Herodotus elaborates a remarkable coda for the logos (1.129) that once again underscores the crucial role played by Harpagus and the political ramifications of personal grievance. For, in the wake of Persian victory, Harpagus, recalling the unholy meal he had been served, sought out the captive Astyages and tauntingly asked what it was like for him to be a slave instead of a king. Conceding Harpagus’ claim that he was responsible for Cyrus’ victory because of the letter he sent, Astyages criticized him as the most unjust of men for enslaving the Medes to the Persians on account of the banquet, for which they were not responsible. Astyages’ resentful recognition that the Persians, once enslaved by the Medes, had now become their masters marks the end of his exchange with Harpagus, and the end of the logos. In the summary of Astyages’ reign that immediately follows, Herodotus observes that the Medes submitted to the Persians because of Astyages’ cruelty (dia tēn toutou pikrotēta, 1.130.1), and in this context the primary emphasis surely lies on the king’s personal cruelty towards Harpagus rather than his political repression of both his fellow Medians and the Persians.35 Thus the narrative that began with the dynastic dreams of Mandane, and assumed transparently mythical garb in describing the death of Harpagus’ son, leads to a coda focused on historical change and the new political reality of Persian rule over the Medes. Seeking to clarify the relationship between this coda and Athenian tragedy, Suzanne Saïd insists that this ending is not a tragic one for Astyages, at least, since he survives as a member of Cyrus’ court, in accordance with the usual oriental treatment of captive kings.36 Yet it seems scarcely less tragic that, in losing his kingship to Cyrus, Astyages (whether dead or alive) has not only suffered but indeed precipitated the fate that he sought to avoid. One common feature of tragic finales conspicuous in its absence is the motif of opsimathia or ‘late learning’—that is, the stricken hero’s recognition of his own ignorance (contrasted with divine knowledge) and indeed responsibility for

35 Astyages is also said to have been ‘bitter’ (pikrou, 1.123.2) towards his fellow Medes; for their part, the Persians long resented their subjection to Median rule (1.127.1). 36 Saïd (2002: 129).

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what has befallen him.37 Not only is this a characteristic feature of tragic heroes after the fall, but also of Herodotean heroes cast in stories with strong tragic affinities—for example, Croesus, who, after misinterpreting several oracles, finally concedes that he, not Delphic Apollo, is culpable for the fall of Sardis (1.91.6); and Cambyses, who shortly before his death also recognizes that he has failed to understand signs from the gods, and that humans are powerless to avert their destiny (3.65). By contrast with such metaphysical awareness of man’s place in a universe ruled by superhuman powers, the ‘wisdom’ that Astyages displays at the end of his royal career is purely human and political. As Karl Reinhardt has seen, if Herodotus intends the ‘moral’ of this finale to be a recognition of the folly of vengeance, this is a lesson that Astyages discerns in Harpagus’ behaviour but not his own.38 The ex-king’s final words reflect no self-knowledge in the tragic manner, but instead unenlightened resentment of the political reversal triggered by his own cruel vengeance against Harpagus. At the same time, this striking finale underscores what is for modern readers, at least, a powerful paradox: the fundamental causal importance in Herodotus’ ‘true’ account of a manifestly ‘mythicized’ episode. This is an appropriate point at which to consider the various effects of Herodotus’ ‘mythistorical’ technique,39 as manifested both in Cyrus’ defeat of Astyages and in Astyages’ punishment of Harpagus—with the necessary caveat that pre-Herodotean (Hellenic) sources may have already played a role in shaping the material, whether consciously or unconsciously, according to characteristically Greek patterns of thought and perception. First, by assimilating figures and events of foreign history to traditional story types, Herodotus makes them familiar and meaningful to a Hellenic audience— functions that Hayden White discerns in the work of all narrative historians, who build into their accounts ‘patterns of meaning similar to those more explicitly provided by the literary art of the cultures to which they belong’.40 Beyond this, however, in exploiting not merely generic plot structures but specifically mythical patterns, Herodotus evokes a heroic past traditionally perceived by the Greeks as more 37

For discussion of this theme in tragedy and Homeric epic, see R. Rutherford (1982: 147–50); in Herodotus’ Lydian logos, Pelling (2006b). 38 Reinhardt (1960: 151). 39 Insightful recent discussions of the topic include Brillante (1990), Boedeker (2002), Meier (2004), Stadter (2004), and Wesselmann (2007). 40 White (1978: 58).

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powerful and significant than the merely human era that succeeded it. The use of myths or mythical narrative patterns as templates for describing historical events thus has the added effect of exalting human deeds beyond the realm of the everyday and setting them apart as truly extraordinary.41 These events include not only the Persian Wars, the primary focus of the Histories, but also such important milestones as the rise and fall of major political dynasties. Book One alone traces two such trajectories by means of ‘mythistorical’ narration: the dramatic story of Gyges and Candaules marks the beginning of Mermnad rule in Asia, and the fall of Sardis under Croesus its end; so too the story of Deioces marks the beginning of the (historically dubious) Median empire, and Cyrus’ defeat of Astyages its end.42 Finally, in the specific instance of Cyrus’ birth and rise to power, which Herodotus insists is not merely an extraordinary story but a true one as well, the evocation of heroic myth may serve to anchor fleeting events of recent history in a realm of heightened, ‘truer’ reality—a realm regarded by an ancient Greek audience as a source and guaranty of the truth of Herodotus’ account, rather than a manifestation of its falsehood.43 Telling the truth is a matter of concern not only for the Herodotean narrator of the Cyrus story, but for the Herodotean Cyrus as well, whose commitment to truth-telling as a youth anticipates events to come in the account of his final military campaign. Cyrus manifests this commitment in the course of his interrogation by Astyages, and by comparison with the behaviour of Mitradates and Harpagus, who reveal the truth about their roles in the prince’s survival only under the threat of torture and the press of circumstance, respectively.44

41

This point is emphasized by Brillante (1990: 103–4), Meier (2004: 40–4), and Wesselmann (2007: 29–30). 42 For the mythical features of the Croesus logos, see Chiasson (2003) and Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5, on the particular aspects of xenia in its Atys and Adrastus episode. See Meier (2004) for Deioces as a mythical monarch; Kuhrt (1995: 652–6), Briant (2002: 23–7), and Rollinger (2003) for the controversy concerning the unified Median state assumed by Herodotus. 43 For the remote mythical past regarded during Herodotus’ era as something true, real, and more alive in men’s minds ‘than the recent centuries or generations’, see Finley (1975a: 13). 44 For Mitradates as telling the truth while being led off to torture, see 1.116.5, quoted above, p. 215; Harpagus subsequently told the truth when he saw Mitradates in the palace ‘so that he would not be caught lying under interrogation’ (hina mē elegkhomenos haliskētai, 1.117.2).

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In pointed contrast, when Astyages asks Cyrus if he dared, as a herdsman’s son, to mistreat the son of a high court official, Cyrus not only admits that he did so; he insists that he did so justly (sun dikēi, 1.115.2), and presents himself for such punishment as he may deserve. This emphasis on the youngster’s truth-telling assumes added significance in view of Persian educational practice as subsequently described by Herodotus, who observes that Persian fathers teach their sons three things only: to ride a horse, to use the bow and arrow, and to tell the truth (alēthizesthai, 1.136.2). Thus Cyrus’ interview with Astyages portrays him as a culture hero who at this early stage of his life embodies a fundamental Persian ideal (at least as understood by Herodotus45), even without the benefit of a Persian upbringing. As we are about to see, however, by the end of his kingship and life Cyrus has abandoned his commitment to the truth, as well as a principle of even greater consequence, the recognition of his own human vulnerability.

2. THE ‘MOST PLAUSIBLE’ STORY ABOUT CYRUS’ DEATH AGAINST THE MASSAGETAE While Herodotus himself presumably remains no less committed to the truth in portraying Cyrus’ campaign against the Massagetae (1.201–14), he no longer makes the confident truth claim that introduced his account of the king’s origins. One fundamental aspect of the truth of that earlier account, Cyrus’ fully human nature, retains central importance for the campaign logos. Otherwise, however, an apparent lack of reliable sources for this far-flung venture induces Herodotus to describe his own narrative as merely probable rather than true. The narrative of Cyrus’ defeat, due above all to the king’s deluded belief in his own superhuman origins, hews to a mythical pattern with a specifically tragic resonance, as underscored by 45

See Kuhrt (1995: 680–1) for the possibility that the Old Persian word for the opposite of falsehood, arta—which appears in only a single Old Persian text—might incorporate the concept of correct behaviour and acceptance of the imperial order. If so, Herodotus’ insistence on the role of truth-telling in Persian education would be more properly understood to express the importance of young Persians’ learning the obligation of complete devotion to king and country.

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Herodotus’ repeated use of an ominous verb—a verb that for him as well as for the tragedians anticipates the downfall of a ruler whose power and prosperity cause him to forget the inherent weakness of the human condition. Herodotus acknowledges the factual limitations of his account both implicitly at its outset and explicitly at its conclusion. In the geoethnographic prelude to the campaign narrative proper (1.201–3), the repetition of the verb forms legousi (‘they say’) and legetai (‘it is said’) and the use of indirect statement make it clear that Herodotus is transmitting what unidentified sources say about these remote regions and their inhabitants, with the implication that he does not or need not believe it all himself. The size of the islands in the Araxes river and the lifestyle of their inhabitants are described as reported by others; so too the extraordinary practices of the Caucasus tribes, including their coupling in the open, like herd animals. Such strange local customs evoke an exotic, savage world where much lies beyond belief. We are on the periphery of Herodotus’ world, where reliable knowledge is hard to come by. And, even so, we have not yet reached the land of the Massagetae, who live beyond the Araxes, in a plain that lies an ‘infinite distance’ (plēthos apeiron, 1.204.1) to the east of the Caspian Sea. Herodotus’ implied reservations about the factuality of his narrative become explicit in the metanarrative comment that marks the end of the campaign logos: ta men dē kata tēn Kurou teleutēn tou biou pollōn logōn legomenōn hode moi ho pithanōtatos eirētai, ‘As for the events concerning the end of Cyrus’ life, of the many accounts in circulation this is the most persuasive one told to me’ (1.214.5). Pace Immerwahr,46 Herodotus does not simply repeat here his introductory promise in 1.95.1 to tell the truth about Cyrus. First, the clausular metanarrative is explicitly restricted to the end of Cyrus’ life, while the introductory metanarrative covers the period from his birth to his establishing Persian rule over Asia. Second, in 1.95.1 Herodotus acknowledges precisely three competing versions of Cyrus’ origins, while in 1.214.1 the story he tells is one of an unspecified ‘many’ (suggesting that the lack of solid evidence for the final stage of Cyrus’ career lamented by modern scholars47 hindered ancient enquiry as 46

Immerwahr (1966: 165). Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1985) has argued persuasively that there is no such thing as a historically reliable account of Cyrus’ last days. For additional discussion and bibliography, see Kuhrt (1995: 660–1) and Asheri (2007: ad 214.5). 47

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well). Finally, while Herodotus promises to tell ‘the real story’ (ton eonta logon) of Cyrus’ rise to power, he claims under more trying investigative circumstances merely to have told ‘the most persuasive’ or ‘most plausible’ (ho pithanōtatos) version of Cyrus’ death.48 In other words, Herodotus stops short of declaring his account of Cyrus’ demise the objective truth and acknowledges the role played by his own subjective judgement in pronouncing this version the most persuasive he has heard. As previously in chapter 1.95, so too in 1.214 Herodotus discloses his reliance on a pre-existing tradition. Helene Sancisi-Weerdenburg concedes that Herodotus’ account of Cyrus’ final expedition may have some basis in Iranian oral tradition, but is otherwise a characteristically Herodotean composition with recurrent features also found in his portrayal of unsuccessful campaigns launched by subsequent Persian kings—by Cambyses against the Ethiopians, Darius against the Scythians, and Xerxes against the Greeks.49 Comparison with other extant accounts of Cyrus’ campaign by the Hellenistic historians Ctesias and Berossus reveals that, while all three authorities have the king dying on the north-eastern frontier of his empire, Herodotus takes Cyrus much farther to the north and east, across the Araxes River.50 And, although How and Wells decry this as a geographical error ‘in defiance of all probability’,51 this extreme choice of locale suits the familiar Herodotean pattern whereby Persian kings cross physical boundaries (most often rivers) to invade distant foreign territories, where they are defeated by peoples who are poorer and more primitive than their invaders. Herodotean invention is most manifest in the speeches that dramatize his narrative, especially Croesus’ lengthy speech to Cyrus (1.207), which not only outlines his deceptive strategy for fighting the Massagetae but also emphasizes the king’s human vulnerability (1.207.2)—a core truth in the Cyrus logos from its outset, as we have seen, and a key element as well in the tragic denouement of its final episode. That episode as fashioned by Herodotus tells the story of a powerful military leader who grows overconfident and suffers a self-inflicted

48 The same distinction informs the more pointed contrast Darius draws at 3.72.4 between persuasive liars and speakers of the truth. 49 Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1985: 464). 50 Cf. How and Wells (1928: i. 391–2) and Asheri (2007: 201–16, 214–15). 51 How and Wells (1928: i. 391).

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defeat despite counsel from human and superhuman sources. Cyrus is thus presented in the heroic mould of (for example) the Iliadic Hector, or Aeschylus’ dramatically heightened portrayal of Xerxes in the Persae. More specifically, the campaign narrative enacts a series of reversals that hark back to the beginning of the Cyrus logos and characterize Herodotus’ portrayal of the king’s life as a whole.52 The promise of Cyrus’ rule over Asia was foreshadowed by Astyages’ dream of a vine growing from his daughter’s genitals; against the Massagetae Cyrus secures an early victory by the treacherous use of wine, and Queen Tomyris ultimately avenges the death of her son by plunging Cyrus’ severed head into a wineskin filled with human blood. Cyrus’ resorting to trickery, first in his disingenuous proposal of marriage to the queen (dolōi, 1.205.2), then in his adoption of the duplicitous battle strategy suggested by Croesus, prompts an invidious comparison between the young herdsman’s son Cyrus, who spoke truth to power, and Cyrus the omnipotent king, who resorts to deceit against remote barbarians led by a woman—and is defeated nonetheless.53 The young Cyrus who could not stop praising his foster mother, the herdsman’s wife Spako, knew full well that he was fully human; in introducing the Massagetan campaign, Herodotus links Cyrus’ birth to his disastrous belief in his own superhuman status (1.204.2, quoted below). Finally, Cyrus’ early military victory over Astyages, a father (figure) alienated from his daughter, finds its antithesis in the king’s final defeat by Tomyris, a mother avenging the death of her son. Although the simple fact of human prosperity undone is by no means exclusive to Greek tragedy, in Saïd’s opinion the series of reversals just rehearsed traces a distinctively tragic pattern.54 Linguistic support for tragic colouring at least may be found in Herodotus’ repeated use of the verb epairō, ‘to incite, exhort’, in a manner that portends catastrophe. Harry Avery has argued persuasively that Herodotus borrowed this ominous use of the verb from contemporary Attic tragic diction, where it has a connotation that is virtually programmatic for its genre: ‘to raise one up to a very high state, but with the further implication that such an elevation is certain to be

52

Immerwahr (1966: 165–7), Saïd (2002: 129). Cf. 3.122.1 for a pointed contrast between alētheiē (‘truth’) and dolos (‘deceit’). Saïd (2002: 129). Marincola (2001: 71–2 with n. 51) considers such reversals evidence of tragic influence on Thucydides (but see also the reservations voiced by R. Rutherford 2007: 510). 53 54

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followed, indeed must be followed, by a precipitous and disastrous fall.’55 Herodotus has already used the verb on three different occasions in Book One to describe the encouragement Croesus seemingly received from Apollo’s Delphic oracle to march against Cyrus56— with disastrous results, of course, since Croesus misinterpreted the god’s cryptic messages, blinded by his own mistaken belief that he was the most fortunate of all human beings (1.34.1). It comes as no surprise, then, to find that epairō occupies a prominent position in Herodotus’ introduction to the Massagetan campaign narrative, which ranks the deluded belief in Cyrus’ superhuman stature as his foremost motive for military aggression: For there were many great motives encouraging [epaeironta] him and driving him on [epotrunonta]: first his birth [genesis], his belief 57 that he was something more than a human being [to dokeein pleon ti einai anthrōpou], and second the success [eutukhiē] that he enjoyed in wars—for wherever Cyrus aimed to wage war, it was impossible for that nation to escape. (1.204.2)

The verb reappears later in the narrative at a significant juncture, when Cyrus has grown more elated still, in the wake of his preliminary

55

Avery (1979: 2); cf. especially the paratragic use of the verb at Ar. Nub. 42, in a sentence where Dover (1968) detects ‘tragic colouring’ on other grounds. 56 eparas, 87.3; epartheis, 90.3; eparas, 90.4. For Herodotus’ engagement with tragedy in the Croesus logos, see Chiasson (2003). 57 Pelling (2006b: 164 n. 85) argues that the infinitive to dokeein is ambiguous, indicating a belief in Cyrus’ superhuman status entertained either by others or by himself. Can we determine whether Herodotus’ Cyrus in the final stage of his life entertains delusions of divine grandeur? His adviser Croesus, whose experience on the pyre at Sardis (1.86.6) seemed to have taught his captor a lesson about his own mortality, feels the need to make the point again before explaining to Cyrus his own strategy for fighting the Massagetae (1.207.2). Cyrus’ adoption of Croesus’ strategy is thus framed as an implicit admission of his mortal status. After deciding to follow Croesus’ advice, however, Cyrus sends the Lydian king back to Persia with his own son and successor Cambyses; in Croesus’ absence, Cyrus appears to backslide. For immediately after his departure Herodotus narrates (1.209–10) Cyrus’ dream of Darius, which the king presumes to show the gods’ special concern for him—a dream that he not only misinterprets, but misinterprets with such emphatic certainty as to underscore the deficiency of his merely human knowledge, compared to that of his supposed divine benefactors. Ultimately, therefore, and without his adviser Croesus on hand to temper his delusions of divine kinship, Cyrus does (in Pelling’s own words) ‘come to believe in his own propaganda’. Moreover, to return to 1.204.2, I believe a disposal to such delusion may fairly be attributed to Cyrus at the outset of the campaign as well. Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 74, concurs in thinking that Cyrus had come to believe in the myth of his own miraculous birth and therefore invincibility.

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victory over a third of the Massagetan army. Queen Tomyris warns him not to be elated by what has happened: ‘aplēste haimatos Kure, mēden eparthēis tōi gegonoti tōide prēgmati . . . ’ (‘With your insatiable thirst for blood, Cyrus, do not be encouraged by this event that has taken place’, 1.212.2). Ultimately she fulfils her vow to slake his bloodlust in memorably grisly fashion, after the rest of her army has routed the Persians, by dipping the king’s head into a wineskin full of human blood. If I am right to discern in Herodotus’ deployment of epairō a subtle evocation of Greek tragedy and its heroes, the effect on his transmission of Persian source material will be to magnify for a Hellenic audience both the brilliance of Cyrus’ extraordinary achievement and the pathos of his inevitable failure. Thus Herodotus inscribes in the fate of the founding father of the Persian empire a fundamental truth about the strength and weakness of humanity that Greeks are accustomed to discern in the experience of their own native heroes.

3. CONCLUSION In summary and conclusion, the two sequences that mark the beginning and end of the Cyrus logos demonstrate Herodotus’ concern to tell the historical truth when such can be determined, and his recognition that under some circumstances plausibility is the highest goal a conscientious investigator can hope to achieve. Herodotus uses his ‘mythistorical’ narrative technique, which assimilates recent foreign traditions to traditional Hellenic story patterns, in either context, as we have seen, and for a variety of reasons: to make non-Greek events meaningful to a Greek audience; to enhance their importance and emotional impact through association with the primeval age of Greek heroes; and finally to heighten the truth or persuasiveness (as the case may be) of a given account, as a means of confirming his own historiographic authority. The story of Cyrus’ birth and ascent to power demonstrates with special clarity that Herodotus considers this creative, evocative technique a method for revealing historical truth, as he traces the origins of the Persian empire to a grieving father’s revenge for an act of legendary atrocity.

9 Herodotus and Eastern Myths and Logoi: Deioces the Mede and Pythius the Lydian Rosalind Thomas

In this chapter I concentrate upon ‘myth’ in its looser form, in the sense of ‘myths, legends and story patterns familiar to Herodotus’ audience’.1 One of the examples I wish to examine is a logos with a heavy religious component, and one that also conforms in many ways to a Greek stereotype of Persian cruelty, the tale of Pythius the Lydian in Book Seven (28–9, 38–40). The other, the story of Deioces the Mede, has the appearance of a charter myth, though whether it is a charter myth from the Medes or Persians, or a Greek one that is really a vehicle for political theory, is to be discussed (1.96–100). These cannot really be called Persian or Median stories in the sense that they originate from Persia or Media, because their eastern origin is uncertain; but are they Greek stories? I would like to focus on the possibility of eastern origin for each, but, alongside this, ask about either general Greek transformation, or Herodotean transformation or, of course, both. The sorts of truth, understanding, or interpretation that a Greek writer might derive from foreign logoi—supposing for a moment that he heard foreign logoi—might well fall in different patterns or across the grain of understanding that might come naturally to the Greek world itself. One person’s myth is perhaps another’s historical truth; one culture’s sacred myth is another culture’s barbaric fiction. How would Herodotus—or anyone—judge truth, fiction, 1

See the Introduction of this volume, }2.

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or falsehood when dealing with a story heard about the Persians—or the Medes? Or, if confronted with patterns of action alien or partially unintelligible to a Greek, how does the Greek historian translate it into something intelligible, if at all?2 I am interested here in pursuing more thoroughly the problems and interpretative hazards involved in picking up either foreign stories or stories about foreign cultures, and how they might then be incorporated into Herodotus’ ethnographic vision and narrative. The fascinating ‘unintelligibility’ of one society’s traditional stories to another is something quite familiar to anthropologists, as is the cultural problem of ‘translation’ (see the classic collection of essays in Clifford and Marcus, especially that of Talal Asad, or Marshall Sahlins’ work on Captain Cook3). One wonders if the very attempt to make sense of a tale with totally alien elements in it, would or might result in something that looked like Greek fiction. Another way of approaching this is via a linguistic parallel. The linguistic process involved in the transfer of the Phoenician alphabet to the Greeks has been very clearly described by Brixhe recently and plausibly, criticizing in the process the naivety of many classicists’ theories: ‘Now it is a fact that one “hears” another language with the phonology of one’s own.’ When the two phonologies do not agree, he continues, ‘the phoneme in question is assimilated to the closest phoneme in one’s own language’.4 Hence the Greeks saw and heard as vowels the glottal stops of the Phoenicians; they did not notice some redundant letters in the Phoenician alphabet and think they should use them for their own vowels (the often vaunted Greek invention of the vowels). This gives the cool scientific analysis and authority of the comparative linguist. But it is a useful model to bear in mind for the surely more complicated matter of Persian logoi. One might equally point to the nature of recalling and of memory itself: you have to understand a narrative in order to recall it, and, if a narrative does not immediately

2

Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, asks a similar question vis-à-vis the Cyrus logos. He focuses on the patterns that Herodotus uses to make an eastern story intelligible for his Greek audience. 3 Clifford and Marcus (1986); cf. esp. Sahlins (1995, 2004). Note also the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead’s views of Polynesian society, where, as it is now recognized, she seems to have found and seen what she was intellectually desperate to find. 4 Brixhe (2007: 283).

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make sense, it may be pushed into a different sense by the person retelling it.5 We turn, then, to two case studies, but they form part of the larger question concerning the reliability, accuracy, or otherwise of the Persian history in Herodotus, the Greek colouring that it has inevitably acquired, and the profound level of interaction between Greek and non-Greek cultures in the Near East.

1. PYTHIUS THE LYDIAN (HERODOTUS 7.27–9, 38–40) The story of Pythius the Lydian, son of Atys, is one of the most gruesome in the Histories, elaborating and weaving into itself many of the important themes of Herodotus’ work. Pythius is the phenomenally wealthy Lydian who had helped Darius generously and gave him a golden plane tree and vine (7.27–9). When Xerxes and his army cross over the Halys on the way to attack Greece, Pythius awaits him, gives him and his army hospitality, and offers all his money, counted for the purpose, for the campaign against Greece (7.27). Xerxes makes him his xeinos or guest friend and, refusing the money, gives him still more to make a round number: ‘Continue to enjoy what you have . . . ’ (7.29.3).6 The army and embassies were prepared at Sardis, but, as the army was mustering, a solar eclipse occurred (7.37.2). Despite the Magi’s prognosis of good fortune, Pythius became afraid of the outcome of the expedition, and he persuaded Xerxes to promise him a request. Pythius then asked for his eldest son (and only his eldest) to be excused from the expedition to take care of his father and the property (7.38). But Xerxes was infuriated: though he spared the other four sons and Pythius, he had the eldest son taken and cut in two. The two halves were placed one on the right, the other on the left of the road, and the army marched out between the two halves of the corpse (7.39). The eldest son thus remained at home but not in the

5

Cf. suggestive remarks in Fentress and Wickham (1992: esp. ch. 1). This seems to be a xeiniē different from the Homeric xeiniē at stake in the story of Helen and Paris in Egypt at the court of Proteus (2.112–120), on which see Vandiver, this volume, Ch. 5. 6

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way Pythius had hoped. Thus began the great expedition against Greece from Sardis. Within Herodotus’ narrative, the shocking tale reads as another act of gratuitous cruelty on the part of an authoritarian Xerxes and of the kind one might expect from despots. Xerxes does not keep his promise to grant Pythius’ wish, or, rather, he keeps it only in a perverted and barbaric way and in fact makes the murder a horrific punishment, a motif already encountered with Oeobazus and his sons, for Oeobazus’ request to Darius was answered with the execution of all three of his sons (4.84).7 This is the ‘fatal-favour’ type of story, except that the favour is not fatal for Xerxes, and he keeps his promise in a perverted manner. Pythius’ loyalty and rather slavish support of Xerxes’ expedition is rewarded only in this backhanded way, keeping the eldest son at home because he was dead. Xerxes paid him back only with anger in return for his request, despite having made him a guest-friend and given him money to make up his fortune. This ending has been recently discussed afresh by Rollinger from a Near Eastern perspective in an important article of 2000 that stresses anew that the habit of cutting a victim in half and marching an army (or individuals) between the halves is attested as a ritual action both in the Near East and in Greece (see below, p. 238). Human sacrifice comparable to the one that Pythius’ son suffers is attested in two Hittite texts of the thirteenth century BCE, which specify purification rituals: one is certainly for an army after a defeat (Masson’s text A, see below); the other (Masson’s text D) involves the halving of a prisoner, and so very probably belongs to a military context.8 Much better attested, meanwhile, is the marching between two halves of animal sacrifices, especially with the sacrifice of young dogs,9 and Masson also discussed more recent instances of the practice as it was in use among peoples across the Near and Far East.10 On the basis of this evidence, Rollinger sees two alternatives here: 7

I fail to see why this is really less hubristic than Xerxes: contra Rollinger (2000: 70), who stresses that Xerxes both ignores an omen and breaks a promise. Darius behaves ‘as if a friend’ (4.84.1). Cf. Baragwanath (2008: 269 ff.), more generous to Xerxes. 8 Masson (1950); see also Eitrem (1947) and Haas (2003: 409–10). I thank Ian Rutherford for advice on these Hittite texts. 9 See Rollinger (2000: 68 n. 19) for references. 10 Cf. Masson (1950: 10–17), citing Comte de Gobineau on his travels in Persia; de Gobineau wrote his Histoire des Perses in 1869, and recognized the Herodotean

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1. Herodotus is an ‘independent witness for a Persian purificatory rite’, and gives us good evidence for a Persian rite that was actually performed at Sardis. He claims that the historicity of the story itself is seldom questioned, for Xerxes is a despot; and ‘more often’ it is ‘rationalised and understood as . . . a kind of purificatory rite’.11 2. Herodotus’ story bears so clearly the mark of Herodotean literary creation and his literary (and historical) preoccupations that (Rollinger implies) it has little historical value as a representation of anything that actually took place; a similar ritual may have existed but it was misunderstood by Herodotus and adapted into a literary motif, and something ‘completely new’, a novella, by Herodotus.12 Rollinger himself seems to remain not completely decided, but inclines towards the latter alternative while wishing for more examples. He prefers Erbse’s vision of Herodotus’ own independent creation of the character of Xerxes; because the act is presented as a despotic and cruel one, it is part of Herodotus’ own creation (and, it is implied, an invention of Herodotus).13 However, the whole discussion remains unsatisfying: this fascinating material presented anew by Rollinger leaves much to discuss on several levels. There remain questions both about the impact of Greek storytelling or historical memories on such ritual actions, and also concerning the interaction of Greek and non-Greek societies in Asia Minor. Moreover, repeated story-patterns within the Histories may indicate Herodotus’ own literary techniques: but they could also be signs of repeated preoccupations in societies that had to give military service to Persian rulers. It is not only Herodotus who was capable of entertaining visions of Xerxes as the ‘despotic king’: many other Greeks could have shared this, and we cannot exclude the likelihood that other Greek stories also shared some of the same attitude, especially among those Greek communities who had had to fight

analogy (Gobineau 1869: ii. 195); he seems to have been a highly eccentric writer, a diplomat in Persia with some extreme theories of race; he wrote a nonsensical work on cuneiform, on which see R. Irwin (2006: 169–73). 11 Rollinger (2000: 66, 68), citing only Green to show the basic narrative is usually believed. Note that, for cautious doubts about the story, he cites only How and Wells (1928: ad 7.39.3)—who knew de Gobineau’s work—and Macan in 1908. Fewer classicists now would automatically accept its historicity. 12 Rollinger (2000: 69). 13 Rollinger (2000: 70); e.g. Erbse (1992: 69–79, 86).

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for the Persians. It therefore seems probable that there are further stages of tradition and storytelling to be considered in the creation of this tale of Pythius. With our greater modern critical awareness that the Greeks tended to create a certain vision of Persian royalty, most scholars of Herodotus nowadays would see in the Pythius tale the Greek and Herodotean exaggeration of barbaric and autocratic cruelty we meet repeatedly with Xerxes: because it forms a pattern in a literary work, and one that corresponds all too well with Greek prejudices, it could not possibly be a historical event.14 The Hittite rituals are a shock, however, because they are not embedded in a narrative of the past of any kind, and therefore are not shaped to fit into any such literary model. They are prescriptions, one set among numerous rituals for military activity.15 Text A (Masson), for an army after a defeat, goes as follows: If the troops are defeated by the enemy, they perform the far-side-of-theriver ritual. On the far side of the river, they cut in half a person, a billy goat, a puppy and a piglet. Half of each they place on this side and half on that side. In front they build a gate of hawthorn. Overtop they draw a rope. In front of this, on either side, they light a fire. The troops go through the middle. When they reach the river, they splash them with water. Afterwards they perform the ritual of the battlefield for them in the usual way.16

Thus the troops go along the river, seem to pass between two fires first (following Masson’s interpretation), then under a door made of hawthorn, then between the severed victims; then they are also splashed with water. This is a purification ceremony after a defeat; as Beal puts it, we presume that the combined scraping of hawthorn, burning of fire, purification of water and the severed corpses manage to take away whatever impurity might have caused the defeat.17 If this was a ritual among the Hittites, could it also have existed amongst the Persians? Hittite ritual obviously offers no proof of 14 See, for a literary analysis of this passage, Heni (1977: 25 ff.), with particular interest in the characters of the novella, and the contrast between the two parts. 15 See Beal (1995) on Hittite military rituals. 16 Hittite text from Bogazköy, KUB XVII 28 IV 45–56. Text in Masson (1950: 5–6); translation taken from Beal (1995: 74), who has used the translation of Collins (1990). Text also available in Haas (2003: 545–6). 17 Beal (1995: 74) discusses this, citing Faraone (1993: 71 n. 45, 79 with n. 73). Beal (1995: 74 n. 38) simply takes it that it was a purification ritual misunderstood by Herodotus ‘and turned into a typical Greek tyrant story’—but does not hazard any ideas why it might be used by Persians.

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Persian ritual, but it makes the ritual seem more likely, rather than less likely, to have been Persian. Hittite rituals bear a complicated relationship to those of the ‘Luwians’ whose linguistic group inhabited the southern and south-westerly areas of Asia Minor, and who might have inherited these rituals: do they provide the missing link?18 In any case, similar instances occur across the ancient world, and Eitrem and Masson discuss examples of a ritual of passing between two halves of non-human victims: in the Old Testament Yahweh in Genesis (15:10:17) and the Jerusalem notables in Jeremiah (34:18:19) are to pass between severed animals, though the aim is to subject those passing through to curses if they do not fulfil conditions.19 Livy refers to a similar ritual of the Macedonian army walking through the cut halves of a dog (40.6; cf. 40.13),20 and Plutarch mentions an example of this lustratio in Boeotia (Quaest. Rom. 11). As for human sacrifice, within Greek myth itself there is the example of Astydameia, though it is not absolutely clear that the formal passing between the pieces is actually in question (Apollodorus Bibl. 3.13.7): in Iolcus, Peleus cuts Acastus’ wife in pieces and makes the army pass through them on the way to the city. According to Diodorus, Sabakos the Ethiopian King of Egypt in the eighth century BCE was told in a dream that, in order to rule over Egypt in happiness, he should cut all the priests in half and pass between the halves with his whole retinue; rather than commit this slaughter, he retired to Ethiopia (D.S. 1.65). This latter is also of questionable status, an action advised in a dream to a foreign king according to a Greek writer, and in any case a simpler version appeared in Herodotus, where Sabakos is ‘merely’ told to cut the priests in half, but the ‘army-passing-through’ motif is lacking (2.139.1).21 In nineteenth-century Persia, de Gobineau frequently encountered the halving of animals for propitious purposes.22 Masson concluded that with so many far-flung examples, the ritual must have evolved independently and separately among 18 On the complex relation of Luwian religious lore (which could extend to the coast of Asia Minor) and Hittite ritual, see Melchert (2003). Cf. also Collins, Bachvarova, and Rutherford (2008) for ‘Anatolian interfaces’ of Greek and Hittite. 19 Cited by How and Wells (1928: ad 7.39.3), and cf. Beal (1995: 74 n. 38). Eitrem (1947) discusses these in detail. 20 Cf. Curtius Rufus 10.9.12. 21 Diodorus’ version may be a conflation based on the Herodotean instance, yet includes the extra element of the ‘army-passing-through’ motif. 22 See above, n. 10.

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different peoples, starting as a purification rite after a bad omen or disaster, leaving impurities in the victim, and often turning into a general precautionary ritual to avert disaster.23 Could some version of this rite have been in use by the Persians but without human victims? Thus the Greeks encountered this as a purification ritual but exaggerated the cruelty of the ritual and the antiPersian angle by making the victim human? Yet this seems unlikely. The coincidence of finding a Near Eastern ritual being replicated in a Greek story which does after all treat of a Near Eastern people begins to seem no coincidence after all. The more one learns of the spread of such a ritual, the less likely does it seem that it was an entirely Greek creation, let alone a Herodotean one. A study by Faraone of a range of rituals using sympathetic magic for solemn oath ceremonies shows among other things a wide spread of broadly similar practices—while each had its own peculiarity—from the Greek, Near Eastern, and biblical world, in other words, from the eastern Mediterranean.24 It is striking that scholars such as Masson and Eitrem who analyse these types of rituals do not question the historicity of the Pythius story—and they show little interest in how Herodotus uses it in the narrative. Pierre Briant, coming from the Persian point of view, can simply take it as a purification ceremony because of the solar eclipse; following de Gobineau, he suggests it had to involve a human because the situation was extremely grave.25 On the basis of such historical evidence, it is very hard indeed to avoid the conclusion that the Greek story did recall a ritual that was actually associated with the Persians and that was either used in Sardis at that time, or could plausibly be thought to have been used.26 Let us now explore further the nature of possible Greek transformations or interpretations that could have occurred, had the ritual actually

23 See Masson (1950); for further examples, Eitrem (1947) and Faraone (1993: 71–2), who includes Plato’s Laws, 753d, men passing between tomia, for the enactment of a solemn oath, a suggestion of the Athenian stranger; Beal (1995) puts it within the extensive Hittite armoury of rituals to advance the army. Cf. Rollinger (2000: 68) for some discussion of possible spreading of the ritual. 24 Faraone (1993: esp. 71–2, with n. 45). 25 Briant (1996: 255 (243 in English edn.)). 26 Rollinger does not quite come clean on the question of whether Herodotus invented the story out of nothing but simply with knowledge of a type of Persian ritual.

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happened, bringing together the Near Eastern background and the Greek or Herodotean approach to it. A serious possibility to consider is that the tale of Pythius does in fact have elements within it that might have required propitiatory rituals: the solar eclipse is the obvious candidate, and indeed in Herodotus the Magi were consulted about the omen but produced only favourable interpretations. Could Herodotus’ version have downplayed those elements in order to stress instead the way Xerxes repaid generous support so poorly? Whereas in Herodotus, the eclipse gave Pythius cold feet about the whole expedition and was the motivation for his request (7.38.1), surely the solar eclipse itself could have been regarded as a sign that required the purification? Briant certainly thinks so.27 If we let our imaginations roam, it is even possible to imagine an alternative version in which the solar eclipse created widespread concern, despite the Magi, and even that Pythius offered up his eldest son for the sacrifice. After all, Pythius is something of a fawning courtier, having just offered his entire fortune to Xerxes, and he tends to count money rather like Croesus before he learned his lesson (7.27.2, 28). If Sian Lewis’ attractive argument is correct, Pythius was actually a descendant of Croesus (renowned, after all, for his cultivation of Delphi), and such an offer would only make things worse.28 It must be admitted, though, that Herodotus’ narrative does not draw attention to that ancestry, and perhaps it was not important to him, though other versions could have emphasized it. In any case, there are numerous reasons why the Persian army needed some major ritual fortification or purifying at this point. It is true that they have not yet been defeated, as in the Hittite ritual of Text A, but purification or apotropaic rituals could still be required. Herodotus’ solar eclipse gives a strong reason.29 There are many differences between the Hittite rituals and the Herodotean story, of course, but we are not considering exact influence or replication. The recurrence of similar patterns of ‘passing through the middle’ rituals is suggestive of an original ritual such as 27 Briant (1996: 255 (243 in Engl. edn.)). Pietro Vannicelli (forthcoming) points out that since there was no solar eclipse visible in Sardis at that time, one should probably seek a different reason for the ritual. 28 S. Lewis (1998). 29 Hornblower (20023: 71) suggested tentatively that military service was regarded as a religious duty—but perhaps the solar eclipse could be the sole motive. Cf. Heni (1977: 36–9) on Xerxes as asserting royal authority.

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this enacted at Sardis, but it is not positive proof.30 A crucial point, however, is that, though one can argue at length about whether the Persians could have acted out these rituals, in fact Herodotus is our only source for the idea that the Persians believed in them. Second: in any case, if the Persians did have such rituals, they would certainly not be represented or interpreted kindly by Greek sources or Lydian sources either. We surely have here a religious rite whose importance Greek observers were incapable of appreciating. It is not simply a matter, as Rollinger seems to imply, either of seeing Herodotus as a reliable source, or of seeing the whole story as a creation of the ‘Herodotean genius’. There could have been numerous other ‘intermediary’ sources, or tales, plenty of Greeks or Lydians who witnessed or heard of such actions. One culture’s traditional ritual act, revered and respected, is another culture’s act of gross barbarity. A notorious example is the Hindu practice of Suttee, which was eventually banned by the British administration of India on the grounds that it was totally barbaric. Just supposing an extreme act of purification with army and human victim was thought necessary by Xerxes or his Magi, no extent of accurate reporting would make it anything other than an act of barbaric cruelty for the Greeks. This is not simply a matter of Herodotean storytelling: if there were any tales that had been recounted since the setting-out of the army from Sardis, one doubts that any Greek narrator (or Lydian for that matter) would have had difficulty in seeing it as a story against the Persians and the Persian king. Herodotus could slot it easily into his narrative of the hubristic Xerxes, partly because it was already assimilable to Greek views of Persian cruelty. The need for purification after a solar eclipse was itself eclipsed by the more Lydian-centred interest in Pythius. Herodotus did not need to do all the work of making this a repulsive tale of Persian autocracy. This offers an extreme and puzzling example, but it raises an important point for the reading of Herodotus. If he acquired 30

The Hittite ritual is far more elaborate, and it is after a defeat. But it is worth pointing out the vast range of rituals in Beal (1995), which revolve round ‘casting out’, scapegoat rituals, and purifying by transferring the offending plague/impurity/hostile entity to somewhere else. This seems to make clear that there was a very wide range of such ritual responses (though Beal does not help on the ‘language of ritual’ at play) and makes one less concerned that the story of Herodotus might rather be for purification after eclipse. De Gobineau’s nineteenth-century examples, which led him to see the Pythius ritual as apotropaic, were suggestive but no more.

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knowledge at any point of Persian myths and the performance of Persian rituals, it is virtually certain that intermediary Greek sources, or Greek storytellers, will have understood them in a manner that was more Greek than Persian. So would Herodotus. Any process of transmission would necessarily involve the process of ‘translation’ we mentioned at the start, and therefore, potentially, some misinterpretation. As Herodotus’ section on the ‘Persian ethnography’ shows (1.131–9), he tried to explain certain Persian customs, and in particular the religious ones, and yet he was inextricably influenced by Greek philosophical ideas about anthropomorphism in his claim that they did not think gods had human form (1.131), and other elements in his description show a kind of half-knowledge alongside a more obviously Greek interpretation. Such is his claim that the Persians had no temples.31 So, in the wider world of storytelling and traditions, Persian myths and rituals—if they played any role in events that Greeks wished to recall—would inevitably take on a Greek tinge of interpretation even before Herodotus had finished crafting his own narrative. A Greek colouring is not necessarily a sign of Greek invention. The fact that Pythius’ story also forms the entrée into the grand departure of the Persian army from Sardis makes a ritual purification more likely, whether because of the eclipse or for a general apotropaic function, but the Pythius punishment would have been remembered in Lydia and East Greek cities as the grisly opening act of the great march. Pythius is in some ways a mirror image of Croesus at the start of Book One, fabulously wealthy and surpassed only by Xerxes (7.27.2). Like Croesus, he liked counting his money, and had counted it in order to offer it to Xerxes (a banker’s conversation ensues with Xerxes, 7.28–29.2). He was the only man on the journey so far who offered the whole army hospitality, as Xerxes tells him, and the only one to offer funds for the attack (7.29.1).32 It seems then that we are not dealing entirely with ‘fact’ or entirely with ‘fiction’ but that the layers of Hellenizing interpretation of an army purification ritual overlaid each other with each telling. If there was such a ritual, there was no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ interpretation, only 31

See Thomas (2011). S. Lewis (1998) seems to exaggerate Pythius’ role as tragic warner in Herodotus’ account; she also thinks Pythius is humble and generous in the first meeting—but that too depends on how the audience viewed helping the Persians. 32

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degrees of shock and incomprehension on the part of Lydian and Greek witnesses. Herodotus could build on that, producing Pythius as a strangely Croesus-like figure but deeply unsympathetic until it emerges that Xerxes would not even reward him with the life of his eldest son. The long conversation with Xerxes (7.38–9) fills out the drama of the narrative and enhances the nastiness of the exchange in which Pythius thinks he can get a favour from Xerxes—Xerxes is going with his whole household; why should Pythius, his ‘slave’, think he should be exempt? As Xerxes angrily puts it, Pythius’ xeiniē will save him and his other four sons, but one will pay the penalty with his life (7.39.2). Xerxes’ answer is couched in the terms of reciprocity and in such a way that he claims he is still more generous, more beneficent, than Pythius; the latter’s generosity, his xeiniē, towards Xerxes will succeed only in saving four sons, and that is less punishment than Pythius deserves (elassō de tēs axiēs, 7.39.2). The Persian monarch is thus presented as operating a system of reciprocity that does not work and that cannot be predicted by his hapless subjects. It is this, one suspects, that is the Herodotean elaboration (or ‘addition’) to the Pythius story. Xerxes did not really keep his promise, and reverted to extreme punishment when the loyal subject dared expect a small extra favour from him.

2. THE STORY OF DEIOCES (1.96–101): A MEDIAN FOUNDER HERO OR TYRANT PROTOTYPE? The narrative of Deioces begins with the revolt of the Medes from Assyrian control; ‘fighting for freedom’ against the Assyrians, they were the first to shake off slavery (1.95.2); the other ethnē followed their example. When all (in Asia) were autonomous, ‘they again became subject to tyranny’ (1.96.1), and we are introduced to Deioces the Mede, a sophos, who was ‘highly desirous of tyranny’ (erastheis turannidos, 1.96.2). The inhabitants were now living in villages and in a state of ‘lawlessness’ (anomiē); they needed someone to settle disputes and punish crimes, and they became increasingly dependent on Deioces, who was an excellent arbitrator or judge, starting in his own village, then spreading his influence over an ever larger area. He became very busy, and when his position was unchallenged and he

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was utterly indispensible, in cold calculation he withdrew his services to the cause of justice. Chaos and anarchy ensued (anomiē again: ‘There was even more pillaging [harpagē] and lawlessness [anomiē] than before’, 1.97.2), and they decided they needed a monarch.33 Deioces’ name was put forward by the assembly of Medes without difficulty and he became king (1.97–98.1). His first act was to get the Medes to build him a palace. He effected synoecism, building Ecbatana, creating a single city, a polisma (1.98.3), and thus with other acts of organization he became effectively the founder of the Median monarchy and state. He also perfected the psychology of royal ceremonial to raise himself above other men and cause them to forget his earlier lowly status. The historicity of Herodotus’ account of Deioces, the beginning of the Median state and its empire is notoriously controversial, and the Herodotean narrative, much dissected and discussed, must be seriously doubted as a reliable account of Median history. The most salient feature of the Deioces story is that it seems very Greek indeed. Sancisi-Weerdenburg in a groundbreaking article doubted that Herodotus’ story of Deioces and the foundation of the Median kingdom had the slightest evidential value for historians interested in uncovering the real Media.34 An individual called Daiukku in the Assyrian annals of Sargon II for the late seventh century BCE has been presented as a possible candidate for the Herodotean Deioces.35 However, this Daiukku is in the Assyrian evidence a rebellious governor and deported to Syria. This is perplexing and not particularly reassuring as parallel or ‘confirmatory’ evidence for someone who was supposed to have founded the Median royal line and Median state itself. One could imagine various scenarios in which the Medes themselves could concoct a kind of culture hero who bore as little relation to hard historical fact as Lycurgus of Sparta—but then we know very little indeed about any Median creation of their own myths and legends. So, though Asheri, for instance, believed that ‘a substratum

33 The Medes are, incidentally, one of several peoples in Herodotus who have a choice and decide to give up their freedom. Cf. Walter (2004: 77–8, 83–4), who makes the important point that this and the Constitutional Debate (3.80–2) have as a premiss that the desire for freedom is a cultural universal. 34 Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1988); and see now Michels (2011). 35 See Helm (1981) and Asheri (2007: ad 1.95–106); and see now Wiesehöfer (2004) with bibliography there.

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of popular saga underlies the story of Deioces’,36 there can only be grave doubts whether a historical Deioces ever existed. On the other hand, the name Deioces could be translated into an Iranian form which means ‘the leader of the people’, *Dahyuka, and that raises the interesting suggestion that it might be that type of name that is an office.37 Names of early kings often sound suspiciously like offices, and this could have been turned into the name of an individual at some stage in the Near Eastern traditions. This occurs with various Greek traditions (for example, early names on Spartan king-lists include Eunomos and Prytanis in the Eurypontid line38). Or it could be remotely descended from a weaker folktale about a wise judge, or a builder of Ecbatana, but one can only speculate on the virtually unknown Median or Iranian situation. However, what is most striking in the whole narrative is the very Greek character of the story, the analysis of Deioces’ fascinatingly cynical rise to autocratic power, and the particular relationship it seems to have to some political theory. Moreover, it is coherent, highly rational, and lacking in any folktale elements.39 Here, then, we seem to have another relationship between Greek writing and the Iranian and Persian past, another form of manipulation of the Iranian history. In the Pythius episode, I argued that we had the traces of an alien and barbaric ritual that was interpreted quite reasonably in a Hellenized and Hellenizing way and assimilated to other traditions to become just another sign of the excesses of the Persian king. It was assimilated and Hellenized in the narrative itself. In the Deioces story, however, we now seem to be in a situation where a story/tale from the East is used in a Greek context unmistakably for the purposes of political theory. This is widely recognized and made only more persuasive by the recent analysis by Walter,40 who sees the Deioces story in close comparison with the Constitutional Debate (3.80–2), as revealing a meditation about political power, democracy, and the single ruler. We could simply treat it as a purely Greek story, a 36

See Asheri (2007: ad 1.96.1) for a balanced discussion. ‘Leader of the people’ according to R. Schmitt (1973), cited by Tourraix (2005: 162 n. 9); Wiesehöfer (2004) translates Dahyu as ‘land, territory’. Office as name is suggested by Tourraix (2005), and also Asheri (2007: ad 1.96.1). 38 With Cartledge (1979: app. 3). 39 As Walter (2004: 79) points out; cf. Aly (19692: 47), who instantly recognized the absence of any folktale character. 40 Walter (2004: esp. 75–8, 80–4). 37

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piece of political theorizing that has invented an Iranian context to add exotic colour and distance.41 I am unconvinced, however, that this is all that is happening, and, to anticipate later remarks, I suggest that we need also to consider the following: 1. The extent to which Greek writers, including Herodotus, could take a story about the East, and transform it, possibly almost beyond recognition, simply by the process of Hellenizing and altering emphasis, wording, and style. There are examples of theorizing and arguing from the Persians in a way that needs to keep some elements of truth—or, just as important, what is thought to be factually true— in order to maintain the force of argument. A story about the Persians that is made to bear rhetorical or political force by its Greek narrator should not be treated exactly like the Protagoras myth in Plato—that is, simply as free invention.42 This is not, of course, to underestimate the strength and importance of Greek perceptions of Persians,43 but to take these as part of the chequered background against which Herodotus and others were writing about Persians. On a basic level, it is worth remembering that the Persians were a force to be reckoned with by contemporaries, and could not be treated as a figment of myth in quite the same way as some primeval heroes of ancient times. 2. Closely related, a story that looks very Greek is not necessarily therefore wholly Greek through and through: the very process of ‘translation’ can effect deep alteration. The question is partly the extent of translation and manipulation. 3. A further question concerns the Iranian/Persian emphasis on the king as guarantor of order and justice. This was an idea that was very powerful indeed in the Persian royal traditions. I wonder, therefore, whether there was a specifically ethnographical reason for

41 In fact most fifth-century theorizing that still exists is significantly theoretical and makes no use of examples from Greek or any other society; the Dissoi Logoi is a marked exception, and it is unclear how far this is an accident of survival. See Thomas (2000: 126–9), with further examples. 42 Herodotus’ declaration that the Persians did consider democracy might be a fantasy on his part, but this statement mattered to a Greek audience, even if they were inclined to disbelieve it, as Herodotus’ assertion shows (3.80.1; cf. 6.43). Cf. the Bisitun inscription alongside Herodotus’ account of the false imposter in Book Three, though this raises different issues, since Herodotus’ version seems related to the clearly propagandist version given by Darius; utopian stories in Herodotus, on which see esp. Bichler (2000); consider, too, the Persian ethnography (1.131–9). 43 Following on from E. Hall (1989).

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Deioces being taken as a case study of the embodiment of the tyrant rising from being an indispensible giver of wise judgement. There could be a particular reason why Herodotus or his Greek contemporaries looked towards the Medes for a paradigm of the rise of the tyrant. One possibility is that that part of the world was already known for believing in kings who embodied cosmic order (arta) and justice.44 Unlike the Pythius story, this seems to be a tale that could well fit a Greek context, with the exception of its geographic location and the founding of Ecbatana and perhaps the kingly ceremonial. Though set in Media, it sounds like a perfect Greek theory of both state-formation and of tyranny. The synoecism of Media offers a mirror image of Greek synoecism, and one can find a near replica in Thucydides’ vision of how Attica was synoecized by Theseus (Thuc. 2.15). A comparison with the Constitutional Debate (3.80–2) shows similar themes and a consistent interest on Herodotus’ part with the dynamics of different political systems and the nature of power, whether monarchic or democratic, and the advantages of each system— though the palace system of Ecbatana itself has strong eastern characteristics, especially echoes of the later Achaemenid monarchy.45 In both, the Near Eastern kingdoms are being used to examine the dynamics of different political systems. As for tyranny, it is obviously more a Greek than a Near Eastern preoccupation. It is striking that Herodotus introduces Deioces with the very word ‘tyranny’—‘Deioces fell in love with tyranny’. Later he slides towards the word basileus (‘king’, 1.96.1, 1.97.2), but this may not be significant; he tends to use basileus and turannos (‘absolute sovereign, tyrant’) indiscriminately,46 so that his use of turannos at the start should simply indicate that, basically, he wishes us to think of Deioces as a tyrant, the Greek discourse on tyranny winning prominence, rather than any Persian ideals about kingship. The method of gaining popularity and trust to gain supreme and authoritarian power echoes stories about certain Greek tyrants. An ambitious individual starts by being important and popular, and then seizes tyranny, as Pisistratus did at Athens (1.59.4–6). 44 See, for this role of the Persian king, Briant (1982: 435–45); cf. Orsi (1988), Tourraix (2005). 45 See Walter (2004: 88), especially with comments about problematic relations with the aristocracy, Michels (2011: 690–1) for possible hints of Athens. 46 Walter (2004: 86 with n. 53); see also Flory (1987).

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Aristotle’s delineation of the clever tyrant is one who makes the people think he is serving the community of citizens (Pol. 1315a–b): this could well describe Deioces. I would like, however, to put even more stress on the implications of the Deioces story for ideas about justice and law, whether specifically Herodotean or late-fifth-century. The tale is indeed a set-piece perfect for illustrating a theory of state-formation, and the growth of power of an individual (as above), but the mechanism for this is wisdom, reputation for fairness, and the process of giving judgement. Most interesting of all is the role of giving justice in the story, and the connection between the legitimate ruler and the dispensing of judgements and justice. The story bears the mark not simply of Greek stories or theories about tyrants, or about the progress towards civilization and the polis, but also of Greek political theorizing about justice. Words with the root dik- are extremely frequent in the tale.47 It is striking that the Medes are described twice as suffering from anomiē (‘lawlessness’): first when they live in villages and Deioces is starting his career as successful distributor of justice (1.96.2: anomiē in the whole of Media), and then at the point where Deioces goes on strike, and they discuss the need for a monarch, Media is described as in a state of anomiē (1.97.2) and Herodotus makes the Medes express a desire for eunomiē in direct speech (1.97.3). anomiē is a very unusual word. It occurs in the famous fragment from the Sisyphus in the mapping-out of the development of religious belief (DK 88, B25, attributed to Critias but perhaps from Euripides), and in Thucydides’ analysis of the effects of the Plague, which sees ‘the beginning of anomia in Athens’ (2.53.1); and also by heavy implication in the Corcyrean stasis (e.g. 3.82.6), though the term anomia itself is not used. It tends to be associated in late-fifthcentury thought with the threat of stasis or a coup that results in tyranny. The late-fifth-century work that goes under the title Anonymus Iamblichi had a long passage about the importance of lawfulness and the dangers of anomia: deriving from the absence of law and justice, it gives rise to tyranny or monarchy (Anon. Iambl. 7.12–14); or else to stasis (Anon. Iambl. 7.10). On tyranny, the author states: Tyranny, too, that huge and horrible evil, arises from no other sources than anomia. Some people who reason incorrectly think that the installation of a 47

As noted by Lateiner (1989: 171, with n. 32 on p. 276).

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tyrant has some other cause, and that when people are deprived of their freedom, they are not themselves to blame, but are overpowered by the established tyrant. This reasoning is not correct. (Anon. Iambl. 7.12)

The author continues, that it is when ‘nomoi [laws] and justice leave most people’, ‘then their protection and oversight fall onto one man’—that is, ‘the law is banished’, and the monarch has to take over (Anon. Iambl. 7.13–14). He further argues that the monarch who may take away law and justice must be made of steel (Anon. Iambl. 7.15), or (possibly, Anon. Iambl. 7.16) he may reinstate them.48 Presumably the people give over protection of justice to one man, who therefore takes it away, or they disregard it. But at least the earlier passage (Anon. Iambl. 7.12) is clear: the people are themselves responsible for a tyrant taking over, and this is because they lack nomoi and justice.49 There seems to be a relationship between this theory and the Deioces story. Perhaps the story and the baldly stated theory both simply have their roots in a mixture of theories and ideas of the latter part of the fifth century, of which the Anonymous text is one surviving manifestation. But is the Deioces story an external and independent illustration for the theory, or a story generated to show the theory by some writer, not necessarily Herodotus? The telling of an invented story in order to persuade an audience of a theory is the method Protagoras chooses in the Platonic dialogue of that name (should he tell a mythos or a logos? (Plato, Prot. 320c)), and one must wonder about the telling of stories as a way of advancing and explaining theory.50 Or is it a bit of both, the story re-formed, manipulated, and restructured with an eye to the relation of lawlessness and tyranny? I prefer the latter. Deioces’ monopoly on arbitration arises from a state of anomiē in Media, and then gives way to his withdrawal of services, and thus artificially and voluntarily he creates anomiē again. It looks like a perfect case study for a sophistic theory about the 48 There is a lack of clarity here (7.13–16) as to whether the monarch is actually conceived as the sole agent responsible for taking away the law, or whether the people are primarily responsible for this loss. 49 It is interesting that the Anon. Iambl. is cited by Walter (2004: 89), but discussion is disappointingly brief: he stresses the parallel importance of people’s responsibility in both writers. Note important remarks in Lateiner (1989: 170 ff.) on the horrors of autocratic states in Herodotus. 50 See Farrar (1988: 87 ff.) on ‘Protagoras’ story as argument’, the mode of explanatory story, with the suggestive remarks by Pelling (2007a).

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development of tyranny, the creation of polis society, and the possible relation between lawlessness, eunomiē (‘good order’), and the tyrant. The very fact that the Medes were lawless meant that they had to turn to an arbitrator in the first place, thus opening up the danger of relying too much on one man—a good illustration of the point the anonymous writer insisted upon, evidently arguing against other views of tyrants. The way that the Medes are in part to blame in bringing this upon themselves makes the Deioces tale a powerful illustration of the problem. This does not necessarily mean that the Deioces tale was an invention by Herodotus; it only suggests that the story has been crafted and restructured with an eye to the theory that is visible in the later sophistic writer—possibly by Herodotus, or possibly by someone else. We might wonder, then, if the Deioces story, Greek though it is, represents the result of a distillation of Greek wisdom from a Near Eastern founder story of some kind (which could be for a village or tiny area, as in a folktale, just as much as a larger kingdom). We are not in a position to be able to say that there was a Median or Persian story or tradition, nor that there were other versions. But we cannot exactly deny that possibility either. What is perfectly conceivable is that if (and I stress if) there were some tradition of a ‘founder’ or a wise bringer of order that was no doubt a travesty of any ‘real’ Median past, then Greek thought would probably transform it still further. In this respect one could compare the fact that the story of Cyrus’ birth in Herodotus Book One looks very Greek but is actually paralleled in the thoroughly Assyrian tale about Sargon of Agade, thus ‘fitting’ the story patterns of two cultures.51 The main element that could be attractive and highly ‘useable’ for Greek thinkers interested in the nexus between giving judgement and taking power or gaining tyranny is the strong Persian tradition that the king was the embodiment of cosmic order (arta) and justice.52 This might make the Median and Persian monarchies seductively accessible for anyone interested in deducing conclusions from the development of nomoi, civil or political society, and the tyrant.

51 See Kuhrt (1995: ii. 661, with i, ch. 1c), for the comparison with Sargon of Agade. Hdt. 1.108–23 gives one of the popular tales current in his time, on which see also Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8. 52 See above, n. 44. Note also the oddly exact distancing by means of written dikai, 1.100.1.

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Herodotus’ Persian ethnography shows interest in the Persian legal system in such a way as to imply that some knowledge of Persian administration of justice has been taken up and probably transformed via certain Greek idealizing interests in punishment and justice (1.137, with Plato, Prot. 324a–c).53 We may compare Xenophon’s use of Cyrus in the Cyropaideia to examine the point of punishment or mercy (Cyr. 3.1.8–43), or Plato’s examination in his Laws of the earlier period (as he saw it) when Persia had good laws that distributed honour and shame properly and thereby created community (Laws 697). These involve the Persians rather than the Medes, of course, but one may suspect that something about the Medes and Persians in both Greek eyes and experience made some of their kings attractive vehicles for examining questions about justice: that was the rigid connection of the king with divine order and justice.

3. CONCLUSION Other examples of Near Eastern history or culture were susceptible to political or theoretical deductions if seen through a suitably philosophical or theoretical lens: the Babylonian Marriage Market, great equalizer of wealth and beauty (1.196), the Constitutional Debate (3.80–2), as well as Persians’ dislike of anthropomorphic deities as seen through the lens of Presocratic questions about the gods (1.131). It did not necessarily create something that we would call fiction— something totally invented and consciously presented as invention— but a change of emphasis and a shift of the crucial words to fit a pattern Herodotus wanted to investigate could have a profound effect. The ‘Herodotean footprint’ in these retellings would perhaps involve a shift of emphasis, a transformative emphasis on one element rather than another: we cannot see this with any precision, because we are usually unable to compare other ‘versions’. In the Pythius story we may imagine multiple retellings by others before Herodotus set it in writing, and it is hard to imagine any Greek retelling such a narrative without heavy moral disapproval—this type of untrammelled cruelty was, after all, the mark of an autocratic ruler. The 53

See Thomas (2011).

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Deioces story is perhaps more complicated and not helped by the absence of clear Near Eastern parallels. But this takes us into the other realm of Greek investigation where the barbarians were a potent and fertile source for thinking about political theory as well as thinking about the barbarian. Non-Greek peoples and customs were used in Greek theorizing,54 though our sources are frustratingly meagre, so that we are not sure how common this was. The non-Greek customs will often have been subtly—or not so subtly—changed in the process of being brought to bear on Greek preoccupations. And, once they were brought into Greek discussion, how could a Greek writer judge their historicity even if he wished? But I return finally to the importance of considering the hinterland to Herodotus’ eastern tales, the rich traditions of non-Greek peoples, and the Greeks’ interactions, borrowing, adaptations, and misunderstandings of the kind that have been receiving more intense scrutiny in recent years. The fact is—for I believe it is a fact—that many Greeks were so fascinated by the various peoples to the East that they sought to trace their own preoccupations and theorizing in the light of these powerful and awe-inspiring kingdoms. The tales of Pythius and Deioces represent two quite different manifestations of the fascination. 54

See above, n. 42.

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10 The Mythical Origins of the Medes and the Persians Pietro Vannicelli

In 1952 Elias Bickerman published a seminal article entitled ‘Origines gentium’ concerning the Greek reconstruction of the pre-history of mankind. He put forward the view that ‘the archaiologia was for the Greeks no retelling of sagas or guesswork but a methodical science’.1 He also emphasized the ‘dynamical, that is historical’ approach implied in this Greek view, according to which ‘nations continued to be formed through expansion and division’, having normally as ‘motor force of change . . . some Greek hero’ (here the comparison was with the more static idea of pre-history based on the Biblical Table of the Nations of the Jews, who ‘could mechanically transfer an old name to some new people’).2 This Greek reconstruction of pre-history was radically Hellenocentric, but gained acceptance also among nonGreeks, who normally accepted the interpretatio Graeca of their national origins ‘because the Greeks, and they alone, tried to reconstruct the pre-history of mankind’.3 Bickerman’s essay is still in many ways the best systematic overall reflection on the Greek reconstruction of the origins of all the peoples they met.4 In this chapter, focusing on one possible line of investigation within this extensive topic (and keeping in mind Bickerman’s

1

Bickerman (1952: 70 = 406). Bickerman (1952: 77–8 = 413–14). Bickerman (1952: 77 = 413). 4 For more recent discussion, see, e.g., Fromentin and Gotteland (2001), Schepens and Bollansée (2004), Patterson (2010), and Gruen (2011). 2 3

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final remark: ‘they failed because they attempted too much’), I hope to shed light on the traditions Herodotus reports about the origins of the Medes and the Persians. This should give us some insight, albeit necessarily speculative, into the mythical traditions Herodotus encountered, and how he used them. Herodotus’ Histories is especially valuable among works that shed light on Greek conceptions of people’s mythical origins, since it allows us to consider within one complete work—rather than in single isolated quotations—various types of tradition concerning the origins of various peoples, and offers a clear view of the Greek background of this type of tradition. Let us start at the proem so as to consider briefly some of the genealogical data it implies. The two mythical abductions that mark the opening (and reopening) of the hostilities between Greeks and Barbarians are those of Io daughter of Inachus from Argos, committed by Phoenicians, and of Medea from Colchis, by Greeks.5 The relationship between the two mythical events is emphasized: The king of Colchis sent a herald to Greece to ask for compensation for the abduction and to demand his daughter back, but the Greeks replied, ‘You have never compensated us for your abduction of the Argive princess Io, so we will not make amends to you either’. (1.2.3)6

At this point the abduction of Europa by Cretans, which happened after that of Io and is seen as squaring the account between Greeks and barbarians (tauta men dē isa pros isa sphi genesthai, 1.2.1), moves into the background. The fact that the rape of Medea goes unpunished is then the reason given by the Trojans for refusing to give any reparation for the rape of Helen. The foolish revenge for her abduction—the Trojan War—is the point of no return in this story of the remote origins of the Greek–barbarian hostilities, as well as the mythical paradigm of the Persian Wars. What I would like to stress is that Io and Medea are not only two king’s daughters involved in a chiastic sequence of abductions, but also two heroines associated with the mythical origins of the Medes and the Persians, as Io from Argos stands at the beginning of the Inachid genealogy that goes down to Perseus, while Medea according For further treatment of the proem, see, in this volume, Dewald, Ch. 1, }1, and Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 101–5. 6 All translations are taken from Waterfield (1998), with various adaptations. 5

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to Herodotus caused the Arians to change their name to Medes (7.62.1). To place these traditions in a wider context, I will consider the catalogue of the Persian army as reviewed by Xerxes at Doriscus (7.60–99), the most complex of all military catalogues in the Histories. The selection in the proem of myths involving—directly or indirectly—the origins of the Persians and the Medes corresponds with their pre-eminent position at the beginning of this catalogue, where the following observations are made: In times past the Greeks used to call Persians Cephenes (even though both they and their neighbours called them Artaei), but then Perseus, the son of Danae and Zeus, came to Cepheus the son of Belus, married his daughter Andromeda, and had a son, whom he called Perses. Cepheus had no male children, so Perseus left Perses there, and as a result the Persians are named after Perses. (7.61.2–3) The Medes used to be called Arians by everybody, but when Medea of Colchis left Athens and arrived in their country—this is what the Medes themselves say—they too changed their name. (7.62.1)

Before focusing on Herodotus’ treatment of these traditions, a few observations on the catalogue of Xerxes’ army are in order.

1. THE CATALOGUE OF XERXES’ ARMY The army list—divided into the three different sections: infantry (7.61–83), cavalry (7.84–8), and navy (7.89–99)—contains a large amount of data concerning the names of the peoples of the empire taking part in Xerxes’ campaign, their military equipment, the names of Persian commanders, and the numbers involved,7 but also remarks concerning the archaiologia of these peoples. The sources behind these chapters are a notorious problem8 that I will set aside, apart from observing that (1) these ‘archaiological’ notes are presumably a 7

In the case of infantry and cavalry, we are not given data about the size of each contingent (with one exception: 7.85.1); in the case of the fleet, we are given also the number of ships for each ethnic group and the names of ‘the best-known’ nonPersians on board (7.98). 8 The best general discussion of the source problems related to the catalogue of Xerxes’ army is still D. Lewis (1985 = 1997).

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product of Herodotus’ own knowledge, since many of them contain information that is also found in other passages of the Histories9 and that (2) in the case of Perseus (7.61.3), the alleged ancestor of the Persians, Herodotus himself is aware of the existence of alternative accounts and elsewhere discusses some of them (6.53–4; cf. 2.91).10 Less often discussed is the question of the function of the archaiologiai within the list of the units of Xerxes’ army.11 Part of the answer lies in the fact that the army list has a strong ethnographical character, which presupposes the presence of genealogical information. It is, in fact, a catalogue of the many peoples of the Achaemenid empire, and Herodotus’ data about the pre-history of the various peoples provide an inventory of sorts of these kinds of traditions: the origins of the various ethnē are connected to eponymous heroes, to migrations or colonization, and special attention is devoted to ethnic names, either by illuminating their origins or by mentioning their alternatives.12 A change of name (metabolē) because of an eponym is explicitly attested for the Persians (7.61.3), the Medes (7.62.1), the Lydians (7.74.1), the Cilicians (7.91), the Lycians (7.92), the Carians (7.93), and the Ionians (7.94, 95.1). In the case of the Phrygians (7.73) and the Thracians (7.75.2), the change of name is connected with migration. Migration or colonization mark the origins of the Armenians (7.73, Phrugōn apoikoi), the Mysians (7.74.2, Ludōn apoikoi),13 the Phoenicians (7.89.2), the Cyprians (7.90), the Pamphylians (7.91, descendants from Trojan refugees), the Dorians of Asia (7.93, gegonotes apo Peloponnēsou), and the Greeks from the Bosporus, Propontis, and Hellespont area (7.95.2, 9

Cf. D. Lewis (1985: 116 = 1997: 359). Nenci (1998: ad loc.). Hecataeus and Hellanicus (for the Medes: FGrH 1, F. 286; FGrH 4, F. 132; for the Persians: FGrH 4, F. 59–60) provide further examples of this kind of ethnographic speculation, which precedes Herodotus; the eponym of the Medes already appears in Hesiod (Theog. 1001, see M. L. West 1966: ad loc.). For Greek traditions on the eponymous heroes of the eastern peoples in the archaic period, see Drews (1973: 8–10, 146–7). 11 One of the few treatments is Vandiver (1991: 46–51, 213–14), according to whom ‘the function of the eponymous heroes mentioned in connection with Xerxes’ army is . . . to link his campaign with earlier, legendary struggles between Asia and Greece, and specifically with the Trojan War’ (1991: 51). 12 This variety of traditions reminds us of the alternative titles, according to Jacoby, of Hellanicus’ work, which was known as Ktiseis ethnōn kai poleōn or Peri ethnōn or Ethnōn onomasiai (FGrH 4, F. 66–70). For a general introduction, see Norden (19233: 312–51). 13 At 1.171.6 Herodotus mentions the eponymous hero Mysus. 10

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Iōnōn kai Dōrieōn apoikoi). Finally, a small category is made up of peoples for which different contemporary names are attested: the Assyrians (7.63), the Sacae (7.64.2), and the Syrians called Cappadocians by the Persians (7.72.2).14 Thus Herodotus appears to give a systematic overview, which is a characteristic essential to the catalogue genre, of whose predecessors in Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Persians Herodotus was aware. Moreover, he is particularly careful to diversify the way in which these traditions are related (and this may occasionally affect the selection of topic). Such concern for variation is typical of the catalogue form, and is evident also in Herodotus’ presentation of all the other items that make up the army list.15 A final point to stress is that the notes on origins and names are confined to the peoples who have a dominant position within the empire (Medes and Persians; a brief comment refers to the name of the Assyrians, the first holders of an empire in Asia according to the Greeks, 7.63), and to those who come from its western provinces (Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Cyprus), that is to say, those with whom the Greeks were more familiar, and the same areas from which hail the ‘best-known’ non-Persian commanders mentioned in 7.98. This highlights Herodotus’ intention of inserting data that were primarily relevant to the Greeks, whether or not they were accepted by the people at issue, and whether or not they occasionally reflect the interpretatio Graeca of a local deity or hero.

2. GENEALOGIES OF MEDES AND PERSIANS Let us now return to the traditions concerning the origins of the Medes and the Persians. It should be observed that their Greek roots go back to poleis and regions that are charged with Medism after the Persian Wars: Perseus originates from Argos, and Medea was ‘abducted’ and lived with Jason in Thessaly. Thus a genealogical connection is made between the alleged ancestors of the Medes and Persians and Greek states that collaborated with Xerxes or were accused of 14 Further remarks about names concern the Mysians (7.74.2) and the Thracians (7.75.2). 15 For a similar ‘tour de force of variation’ in the catalogue of allies of Thucydides (7.57–9.1), see Hornblower (2008: ad loc.).

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collaboration. From this perspective it is interesting that the only detail given in Xerxes’ army list with regard to Medea, the eponymous heroine of the Medes, is that she came from Athens (7.61.1). Even if one is cautious about the interpretation offered by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood of the images of a young man attacking a woman with a sword on a set of fifth-century Athenian vases as Theseus attacking Medea, the Herodotean allusion to the expulsion of Medea from Athens has significance in the light of the outcome of Xerxes’ and Mardonius’ expedition and the expulsion of the Medes from Athenian soil.16 If Athens could take advantage of the traditions about the origins of the Medes, Sparta was more concerned with the traditions about Perseus and his descendants (and this could be an additional reason for the parallel occurrence during the fifth century of what we may call, with Christopher Tuplin, the Persian and Median terminology17). Perseus’ association with the Persians and their kings is already alluded to in Aeschylus (Pers. 79–80; cf. 185–6).18 The impression we receive from Herodotus is that this link played an important role in the propaganda against Argos in the aftermath of the Persian Wars. In the account of the embassy sent to the Argives to ask them to join the Greek Alliance (7.148–52, an account that reflects the ongoing hostilities between Sparta and Argos), Herodotus refers to a logos legomenos ana tēn Hellada (‘told throughout Greece’, 7.150.1), according to which Xerxes proposed an agreement with Argos and used the Perseid ancestry to bolster his request: ‘According to our traditions, we are descended from Perses, whose father Perseus was the son of Danae, and whose mother was Andromeda the daughter of Cepheus—which means that we are descended from Argive stock’ (7.150.2).19 A similar context may be proposed for the 16 Sourvinou-Inwood (1990: 395–445, with bibliography). For a different view, see Bommer (1982: 134 and n. 21), Neils (1994: 945), Servadei (2002: esp. 170 n. 23, 2005: 162–4). On Medea, Athens, and the Persian Wars, see Mills (1997: 239–45). For a later tradition, see Diodorus Siculus (10.27). 17 Tuplin (1994). 18 On Perseus, see Georges (1994: 66–71), Kaptan (2000), Patterson (2010: 46–53), and Gruen (2011: 253–65). For later developments, see Scheer (1993: 282–305). For a recent overview, see Ogden (2008). 19 An early case of kinship diplomacy; see Jones (1999). See also the previous note. This story is generally considered a fiction, and Herodotus himself does not seem to subscribe to it; however, the general possibility that the Persians could make use of this type of tradition in their relationships with the Greeks should be taken seriously into account: see, e.g., Haubold (2007).

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oracle that, according to Herodotus, made the Spartan king Leonidas decide to sacrifice himself at Thermopylae (7.220.4). These are the opening lines uttered by the Pythia: Here is your fate, inhabitants of spacious Sparta: Either your great and glorious city will be destroyed [perthetai] By men descended from Perseus [Perseïdēisi], or that will not be, But the borders of Lacedaemon will mourn the death Of a king descended from Heracles.

As the commentators note, here we have both wordplay that associates the name of the Persians with perthō (to destroy) and an allusion to the mythical connection between Perseus/Perses and the Persians. The conflict between Leonidas and the Persians is presented in genealogical terms as a clash between Heraclids and Perseids and in the manner in which the struggle between Sparta and Argos could have been presented.20 Thus the Greek version of the Persians’ origins may have allowed the Spartans to present Argives and Persians as one and the same threat. This idea may not have been groundless: in Histories 9.12, we are told that the Argives had promised Mardonius that they would prevent the Spartiates from leaving the Peloponnese, but were not able to accomplish this mission. The need for stressing an opposition between Perseids and Heraclids may have been felt by the Spartans all the more acutely, since Heracles and Perseus actually belong to the same genealogy (Heracles’ mother Alcmene was a daughter of Electryon son of Perseus). In my opinion, a similar concern may also be seen in Herodotus’ complex discussion about the kings of the Dorians and Perseus (6.52–5), in which the Spartan tradition reported by Herodotus aims at eliminating any Argive interference in the origins of the Spartan kings. Clearly, traces surface in the Histories of a battle of propaganda conducted by means of genealogical terms. I now turn to the final lines of the above-mentioned oracle to the Spartans: For neither the might [menos] Of bulls nor yet that of lions will check [skhēsei] him [ton] head on, Since he has [ekhei] the might [menos] of Zeus. Nor, I declare, will he

20 Macan (1908: ad loc.) claims that the original context of this oracle was the hostilities between Sparta and Argos.

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Be checked [skhēsesthai] until one of the two has been thoroughly rent asunder [dasētai]. (7.220.4)

In these final lines, the initial opposition between Perseids and Heraclids is narrowed down to a mortal fight between a Heraclid king (Leonidas) and a Perseid king (Xerxes). It is worth considering these lines in detail. Their standard interpretation does not entirely account for their complexity. A first problem is the question of to whom ton (‘him’) refers. It is usually taken as a reference to the Persian invader.21 Consequently, in the mention of the strength of bulls and lions that will not hold ‘him’, the commentators see a play upon the name Leonidas as well as a reference to the stone lion in his honour (cf. 7.225.2); however, from this perspective the mention of the bulls seems rather gratuitous.22 ‘Since he has [ekhei] the might [menos] of Zeus’, if referring to the Persians and more probably to Xerxes himself (see already Aeschylus, Pers. 79–80; cf. Hdt. 7.56.2, contra 7.203.2), may be understood as an allusion to Perseus, son of Zeus, as eponymous ancestor of the Persians. The interpretation is sealed by the final and fatal alternative of the destruction of Sparta or the death of a Spartan king, where the epic verb (dia)dateomai is used, which means ‘to divide’ booty, but is also found as a metaphor of ‘tearing a corpse to pieces’ (Il. 23.21), and thereby alludes to the treatment of Leonidas’ corpse ordered by Xerxes (7.238). Although this reading is correct, the verses are ambiguous and allow for a different, equally valid interpretation. In this case the initial ton can also refer to the Spartan king of the preceding verse (see above). The bulls and lions may be intended as traditional symbols of royal power.23 The meaning of the line would then be that not even the strength of the Great King could keep the Spartan king (Leonidas) away from his decision to confront the Persian enemy. The king of Sparta has, as descendant of Heracles, ‘the

21

Stein (19086), How and Wells (1928). According to Macan (1908: ad loc.), the reference is ‘apparently to someone like the O @æÅ of the Athenian oracle’ (7.140.2). 22 Cf. Macan (19086: ad loc.): ‘the bulls are thrown in’. Stein (18895: ad loc.) sees an allusion to the lions attacking the camels of Xerxes’ army and to the ‘many lions and wild oxen’ (7.125–6). 23 The presence of bulls and lions in Achaemenid iconography is familiar to any visitor of Persepolis.

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might (menos)’ of Zeus (actually the vital might, if not the seed: cf. menos meaning ‘sperm’ in Archil. SLG 478.5224), as recalled in line 3 of the oracle (see above). One could add that the ambiguity is encouraged by the anaphora of menos both for the descendant of Zeus and for the one who is opposed to him. The recurrence of various forms of the verb ekhein seems to press in the same direction. Even the final line has its place in this reading, since only the death of the Spartan king put an end to his resistance, thus fulfilling one of the two events foretold by the oracle (tond’ heteron: the sack of the city or death of the king). The ambiguity of these carefully constructed verses should be considered in the context of Sparta’s intent, in concert with Delphi (7.228; cf. 214.2), to celebrate the battle at Thermopylae as a moral victory over the Persians. Given Perseus’ liaisons dangereuses, the opposition between Heraclids and Perseids keeps Sparta’s origins at a distance from those of her Argive and Persian enemies, and the conflict between a Heraclid and a Perseid/Persian king counterbalances traditions that seek to link Spartan and Persian kings (cf. the comparison between Spartan and Persian kings, 6.58–9). The presence of the former Spartan king Demaratus in Xerxes’ retinue during the Persian Wars may have reminded Herodotus’ contemporaries of such connections, and we may also think about Pausanias’ notorious temptations. Thus we find trends pressing in opposite directions in Herodotus’ genealogical and ethnographical material.

3. PERSEIDS AND ACHAEMENIDS Let us go back to the catalogue of Book Seven and observe the remarkable degree of detail in Herodotus’ account of the Persians (7.61.3): In times past the Greeks used to call Persians Cephenes (even though both they and their neighbours called them Artaei), but then Perseus, the son of Danaë and Zeus, came to Cepheus the son of Belus, married his daughter Andromeda, and had a son, whom he called Perses. Cepheus had no male

24

I owe the suggestion to Albio Cesare Cassio.

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children, so Perseus left Perses there, and as a result the Persians are named after Perses. (7.61.2–3)

This level of detail corresponds with the fact that the traditions concerning Perseus and the Persians are presented, discussed, and alluded to in the Histories far more often than any other tradition concerning the origins of a barbarian people. And yet, in the ‘archaiological’ notes of this catalogue we get data only about the origins of the ethnos (‘people’), whereas the first basileis (‘kings’)—another important element that plays a role in the Greek reconstruction of the pre-history of mankind—are absent. These founders of dynasties are a fundamental element in the construction of the chronological frame of Greek universal history. The Lydians are a case in point. From their entry in the army list we are informed that they ‘a long time ago were known as Maeonians, but they changed their name when they named themselves after Lydus the son of Atys’ (7.74.1). In the opening chapters of the Histories, however, when Herodotus talks about the earliest phase of the history of the Lydians, we get a more complex picture: Lydus son of Atys is mentioned here as the eponymous hero of Lydia, but also as the ancestor of the Lydian kings before Agron ‘son of Ninus son of Belus son of Alcaeus’ (1.7), who was, in his turn, a son of Heracles and the founder of the Heraclid dynasty, which came to an end when Candaules was overthrown by Gyges (the first of the Mermnads, the last dynasty of independent Lydia). Thus a distinction is made between the eponymous hero (Lydus) and the founder of the Heraclid dynasty (the Heraclid Agron, four generations after Heracles). The model at work is that of the origins of ‘the sons of Dorus and Heracles’ (as we read for example in Simonides’ Plataea Elegy: fr. 13, 9–10 West), where the two roots of the traditions concerning the origins of the Dorians in the Peloponnese are juxtaposed25: on the one side, the eponymous hero, Dorus, and the Dorians of Aegimius, Dorians in the stricter sense (cf. Pind. Pyth. 1.60–5, Isthm. 9.4–6); on the other side, the Heraclids, whose ‘return’ to the Peloponnese serves as a reminder of the Achaean past as well as a bridge to the past of the people who inhabited the Peloponnese before the Dorian invasion. Between Heracles and the first Heraclid king in Sparta (or Argos or Messenia) we find the same distance—four generations—as between Heracles and Agron, the first Heraclid king in Lydia. A similar 25

Musti (1984: 38–41).

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structure—to remain within Herodotus’ Histories—is presented by the traditions concerning the origins of the Macedonians: the Argead kings are Heraclids, their origins going back to the Heraclids of Argos (8.137–8), whereas the origins of the people are connected, albeit loosely, with the first phases of the Dorian migration (1.56.3).26 Do we find in Herodotus hints of a similar structure also for the origins of the Persians and their kings? The absence of explicit information about a genealogical connection between Perses son of Perseus and the ancestors of Xerxes son of Darius may not be very significant, since Herodotus focuses on Persian history from Cyrus the Great onwards. And yet perhaps the Histories offers some hints of the difficulties of such a genealogical link. Let us consider from this perspective the list of the Persian tribes (genea) quoted by Herodotus in connection with the rebellion of Cyrus: Now, a large number of tribes go to make up the Persian race, and not all of them were convened by Cyrus and persuaded to rebel from Median rule— only those on whom all the other tribes depended, namely the Pasargadae, the Maraphians, and the Maspians. The Pasargadae are the noblest of these peoples and include the clan [phrētrē] of the Achaemenidae, from whom the Perseid kings [hoi basilees hoi Perseidai] have originated. (1.125.3)

The words hoi basilees hoi Perseidai seem to refer not just to the general mythological connection between Perseus and the Persians, but to a direct genealogical descent of the Persian kings from Perseus. In order to illustrate this nexus Achaemenids/Perseids, let us (re)consider other Herodotean passages. In his debate with Artabanus, Xerxes traces his genealogy back to Achaemenes (7.11.2): If I fail to punish the Athenians, may I no longer be descended from Darius, son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames, son of Ariaramnes, son of Teïspes, son of Cyrus, son of Cambyses, son of Teïspes, son of Achaemenes. (7.11.2)

A linear genealogy tracing the origins of Persian kingship back to Achaemenes is also mentioned in 3.75.1. This genealogy is certainly related to the data we know from Persian sources, even if the exact 26

See also the version of the Scythians’ origins that Herodotus attributes to the Greeks who live in the Pontus (4.8–10). According to this version, Scythes is the youngest son of Heracles and Hylaea, a monstrous being who was half young woman and half viper: ‘every successive Scythian king was descended from Scythes son of Heracles’ (4.10.3). In this case the eponymous hero of the people is also the progenitor of the Scythian kings.

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nature of this relationship is difficult to ascertain.27 On the other side, in the Greek version concerning the presumed relationship between Argos and the Persians (quoted above) on the eve of Xerxes’ invasion, Xerxes sends a message to the Argives in which he recalls their common Perseid ancestry. The same tradition is alluded to in the Delphic oracle given to the Spartans (7.220.4, quoted above, p. 261). There, as we have seen, the initial opposition between the descendants of Perseus and a king of the house of Herakles (ll. 1–4) is then more specifically described as a fight between a Perseid and a Heraclid king (ll. 5–7). Perseus is both the eponym of the people and the remote progenitor of their ruling dynasty. Consequently, Perseidai has a wider meaning if related to the whole of the Persian people, but it can also be intended in the stricter sense and refer to the Persian kings exclusively. Therefore, in Herodotus we have two coexisting approaches to the origins of the Persian kings: the first connects them with Achaemenes (Old Persian Haxāmaniš) and receives or elaborates Persian traditions; the second is purely Greek and links them with Perseus (Perseidai). Herodotus’ Achaemenids (Old Persian Haxāmanišiya) are a social group larger than the ruling dynasty, as is evident from the individuals explicitly called ‘Achaemenid’ in the Histories (cf. 1.209.2, 3.2.2, 4.43.1, 5.32, 7.62.1, 117.1).28 As we saw in 1.125.3, this group is defined as a ‘phratry’ (phrētrē), a rare term used only here by Herodotus.29 In this passage Herodotus poses the problem of the relationship between the Achaemenids and the kings of the Persians, and calls the latter Perseids. This reference to the link between Perseus and the Persians in order to distinguish the Persian kings within the Achaemenids (without prejudice to the origins of the former— gegonasi—within the phratry of the latter) befits 1.125.3–4, in which Herodotus tries to illustrate in Greek terms central aspects of Persian society. And yet this juxtaposition of Achaemenids and Perseids is also the point of greatest friction between Greek and Persian 27

See Rollinger (1998). Hystaspes, father of Darius (1.209.2), is the only one who is a direct descendant of Achaemenes (7.11.2); this confirms that in Herodotus the Achaemenids include, but are not identical with, the royal family. 29 Phrētrē is generally translated ‘clan’, but this translation does not really help in understanding the definition given by Herodotus. Asheri (2007: ad loc.) remarks that, ‘in Greek common use, the ª is a subdivision of the çæÆ æ Æ, and not the other way round’. For genos in Herodotus, see Bourriot (1976: 206–9). 28

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traditions about the origins of the Persian kings. Herodotus seems to create a precarious equilibrium without drawing out all the consequences of this association, as he would have done had he established a genealogical relationship between the eponyms of the Achaemenids and the Perseids. It has been noted that the term Achaemenids has a different meaning in Herodotus (a phratry) and in Darius’ Bisitun inscription (his direct ancestry, a line of hereditary kings):30 one may wonder whether this use of Perseidai to define the Persian kings within the phratry of the Achaemenids reflects some perplexity on the part of Herodotus about the belief, widespread in the late fifth century BCE (and reflected also in the genealogy recited by Xerxes in 7.11.2; cf. 3.75.1), that all the Persian kings, including Cyrus, were descendants of Achaemenes and belonged to the same family. Therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility that the absence in Herodotus of a link between Perseus/Perses and Achaemenes reflects a real vacuum.31 And yet Greek mythography does not like blank spaces, and we do have late-attested mythographical traditions connecting Perses and Achaemenes. A genealogical link between Achaemenes and Perseus is found in Plato’s Alcibiades (120e) and possibly in Aelian (NA 12.21). The link is clearly stated in Nicolaus of Damascus (FGrH 90, F. 6): Achaemenes is a son of Perseus, and his name is explained by his forefather’s origins from Achaea in the Peloponnese. To add a rare testimony to this link, I quote a scholion on Herodotus that, at least in its correct form, is probably not very well known. It is a late-twelfth-century scholion in the Codex Romanus Angelicus Graecus (eleventh-century, usually quoted as B), which was recently re-edited by Corcella.32 The last part of it reads: ‘This man [Perses] married Achaemene, the daughter of the Assyrian Belus. Their son was named Achaemenes, and he became king after his father and called the Persians Achaemenids.’ A further instance of the same tradition is attested in a scholion to Dionysius Periegetes (schol. Dion. Per. 1053). The Persian ancestor of the Achaemenids is thus fully included in the Greek network of the origines gentium (‘the beginnings of nations’), and, with 30

Briant (1996: 123). A different view is in Jacoby FGrH 2 C, 236. 32 Corcella (2003: 253–68). I quote his corrected text of the second half of the scholion: ªÆ  b  ı åÆØÅ c ŁıªÆ æÆ Bºı F ıæ ı, › K ÆP H åŁd åÆØÅ KŒºŁÅ· ŒÆd ÆغÆ  a e ç Æ KŒº ÆP f åÆØ Æ . 31

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a movement somehow opposite to the one attested in Herodotus, the eponym of the dynasty is extended to the entire people.

4. CONCLUSION The Histories offers ample evidence of Greek reflection about the origins of the peoples they met. For obvious reasons, the origins of the Persians are given the most detailed treatment. More specifically, Herodotus presents different approaches to the origins of the Persians: the people and their kings are traced back to Perseus, on the one hand, the royal line to Achaemenes, on the other. The former approach is purely Greek, and gained new significance in the wake of the Persian Wars, while the latter was ultimately derived from Persian tradition. A genealogical link between Perseus and Achaemenes is not expressly given, but Herodotus 1.125.3 appears to reflect this problem. Here, then, we get a glimpse of the delicate interplay between non-Greek and Greek traditions on the important subject of origins, as well as of Herodotus’ valuation of them, and effort to find and employ them. Herodotus’ note on Median and Persian origins attests to the variety and complexity of the genealogical material he investigated and worked with, and is in keeping with his stated objective of preserving in his Histories, as he says in the proem, the important and remarkable erga of non-Greeks as well as Greeks.

11 Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes Angus M. Bowie

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the role that mythology plays in the narration of events that occurred relatively few years before Herodotus began composing his history, and so to consider the interplay of myth with events about which reasonably good ‘factual’ knowledge was available to him. As well as considering how ‘myth’ and ‘history’ interrelate,1 I shall also be interested in the question of whether there is anything qualitatively different in the way myth is used in these books compared with the earlier ones. I shall consider two broad aspects: first, the way in which mythology counterpoints and comments on Xerxes’ expedition and its religious and moral quality; and, second, the way myth is used to point up the deeply fissured nature of the Greek alliance. The use of myth in Herodotus’ later books has, of course, a good deal in common with what we find earlier in the Histories. For instance, the story of the origin of the kingdom of Macedonia (8.137–9) matches closely stories of the inauguration of other dynasties. The story takes the familiar mythic form of three brothers, of whom the youngest becomes king because of special signs. These brothers are employed by a king as herdsmen, but dismissed when the king is troubled by the way the youngest’s loaf is always twice the size of the others. When they demand their wages, the king says they may 1 I shall not pause to consider theoretical questions about what exactly is meant by ‘myth’. I propose to use it in the loose manner that befits so protean a term, though I do not think any of the examples are controversial. For the way that ‘myth’ and ‘history’ operate in Herodotus, see Griffiths (1999); for wider considerations, cf. Buxton (1999) and the Introduction to this volume.

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have the sun on the ground: only the youngest realizes that he is unwittingly handing them a kingdom, and scrapes up the earth.2 This story is particularly close to the two accounts of the origin of the Scythian royal family (4.5–10), each of which also contains a group of three brothers: in the Scythian version, golden objects that have fallen from heaven blaze up to repel the approach of the elder two brothers, but allow the youngest to bear them home and become king; in the Pontic Greeks’ version, the brothers are the offspring of Heracles and a half-woman, half-snake: only the youngest can bend Heracles’ bow and wear the girdle as Heracles did.3 Again, the accessions of Gyges, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius are all accompanied by tales that have a mythical aspect to them: in the case of Gyges, there is the paradigm of accession to power through the wife of the former ruler; Cyrus’ origin in the countryside recalls Sargon, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, and others;4 for Cambyses, the motif of the fraudulent exchange of wives is well known from the popular novelistic tradition of the ancient East (e.g. Gen. 29:21 ff.);5 finally, in the case of Darius, the somewhat unlikely story of his accession to the throne of the Achaemenid empire through the whinnying of his horse is constructed out of elements, such as sunrise, thunder and lightning, and horses, which are connected with the ideology of Persian kingship.6 The background to the dispute between Demaratus and Cleomenes is the myth of the origin of the double Spartan kingship in the two identical sons of Aristodemus (6.51–2). So, despite its perhaps surprising folktale nature in the midst of high politics, then, the section on the Macedonian kingship is not otherwise unusual, marking as it does the origins of one who is to play an important part in the coming narrative.

2 Gray, this volume, Ch. 6, p. 175, acknowledges in this story the variation of a pattern of bargaining about a precious commodity. 3 On this narrative, see the Introduction to this volume, pp. 32–4. 4 Cf. Binder (1964), and, in this volume, Chiasson, Ch. 8, }1 and Thomas, Ch. 9, p. 251. 5 Asheri (2007: ad 3.1.3). 6 Thomas, this volume, Ch. 9, pp. 233–5, presents a possible reconstruction of the way in which eastern mythical, ideological, or ritual elements were adapted and changed into Greek stories. Cf., also in this volume, the observations of Dewald, Ch. 1, pp. 81–2, and Chiasson, Ch. 8, pp. 216–17.

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1. XERXES’ EXPEDITION It is now generally accepted that Herodotus saw his war as in a number of ways a reprise of the Trojan War and Homer’s account of it.7 His Histories is clearly a challenge to the authority of Homer on the relationships between Greece and the East, and subsume Homer temporally and spatially by giving an account of a much greater spread of time and geography. The style and manner of presentation also evoke Homer, through the many expressions with vestigial (or more) echoes of the hexameter or Homeric phrasing,8 and through the many passages that evoke more or less explicitly Homeric episodes.9 There is a moral dimension too, in that the defeat of Xerxes’ expedition is a repeat of the defeat of the Trojans. Herodotus’ remarks on the fall of Troy have an obvious resonance for Xerxes: ‘I am convinced that the divine [daimonion] saw to it that the Trojans, by their complete destruction, made it clear that the gods greatly punish great wrongdoing’ (2.120.5). Xerxes’ expedition is regularly presented as having an excess of ambition and arrogance, which is best illustrated by his extraordinary and very dangerous claim that ‘we shall make the land of Persia coterminous with Zeus’ ether’ (7.8ª.1). But Xerxes’ attempt to take Greece is not just morally problematic. It also comes into that category of things that would upset the balance of the cosmos. At 8.13, Herodotus explains the storm that destroys so many Persian ships by saying that ‘the god did everything so that the Persian and Greek fleets should be the same size’, and, in 8.109.3, Themistocles says of the victory at Salamis that the gods and heroes ‘felt phthonos [“envy”] that one man should rule Asia and Europe, especially when that man is impious and wicked’.10 These remarks suggest that the destruction of Xerxes’ expedition can be seen as a

7 On Homer and Herodotus, cf., e.g., Strasburger (1972), Boedeker (2001, 2002), Grethlein (2006), Pelling (2006a), and further below, n. 9. On the Trojan story in Herodotus, cf., in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, de Bakker, Ch. 3, and de Jong, Ch. 4. 8 Cf. Verrall (1903), Jacoby (1913: 502–3), Steinger (1957), and Boedeker (2001: 123–4). 9 For these, cf. Huber (1965) and see Index s.v. ‘Homer’ to the editions of Flower and Marincola (2002) and A. M. Bowie (2007); see also Masaracchia (1977) and Asheri and Corcella (2006); also above, n. 7. 10 See also Artabanus at 7.10, Dionysius at 6.11.3, and Miltiades at 6.109.5 (theōn ta isa nemontōn, ‘if the gods are impartial’); Immerwahr (1966: 306–26).

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further illustration of how divine pronoia (‘forethought’) has decreed that no creature shall have excessive power. This is explicitly enunciated in the context of the natural world in 3.108.2, but is clearly a feature of Herodotus’ world generally: I suppose that the forethought of the divine being wise, as is natural, has made timid and tasty animals have many young, so that they are not eaten up and disappear from the earth, but savage and terrible creatures have few. (3.108.2)

It is not, however, only the Trojan conflict that counterpoints Xerxes’ march. In addition, Herodotus weaves in references to other mythical stories that make their own contribution to the commentary on the expedition. Here we can see a slight difference from earlier books. The recounting of the mythology of places is, of course, common, but the difference lies in this linking of myth and narrative in a military campaign. When Darius is marching around Scythia, Herodotus says much about the peoples and their customs and a certain amount about their mythology, but this is kept separate from the narrative of Darius’ expedition, and the same is true of the expedition to Libya. In the case of Xerxes’ campaign, however, as we shall see, the mythical references are integrated into the narrative itself. Of course, this difference can be explained in part by greater certainty about where the campaign actually went, but the commentary that is offered by the intertexts is the new element. Herodotus is at pains to prove that Xerxes’ expedition is ‘of the expeditions we know about by far the greatest’ (7.20.2), and he lists Agamemnon’s expedition against Troy alongside Darius’ against the Scythians, the Scythian hordes who conquered and for a time ruled Media, and the Mysian and Teucrian invasions of Thrace and northern Greece. These comparisons point up the magnitude of Xerxes’ expedition, but they almost all also look forward to its demise. All these expeditions failed in one way or another. Darius never subdued the Scythians; the Scythians were eventually driven from Media; Agamemnon’s fleet was destroyed on the way home, and the destruction of Troy did not give Greece control of the east. The Mysian and Teucrian invasions are rather more mysterious, but their invasions appear to have left few traces.11 The record of great invasions in

11

Cf. Macan (1908: ad loc.).

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history is not, therefore, all that impressive, and Xerxes will not improve it. As Boedeker importantly showed, the framing of the expedition by references to the story of Protesilaus, the first man to die at Troy (Il. 2.695–710), is fundamental to understanding the significance of Xerxes’ expedition. In 7.33, as the army comes to the end of its march through Asia and reaches Abydus, where Xerxes bridges the Hellespont, there is what seems a casual reference to Protesilaus’ temple at Elaeus on the other shore and the crucifixion by Pericles’ father Xanthippus of the Persian Artayctes, who had polluted it. The full significance of this episode is not made clear until we get the complete story in the very last episode of the Histories before the coda (9.116–20). There Artayctes gains control of the shrine by ambiguously asking Xerxes to give him the house of a man who attacked Xerxes’ lands, so that men may learn not to act in such a way. He gets his way and uses the shrine for sexual purposes. When the Athenians capture him, he is crucified for his sins at ‘the headland where Xerxes had bridged the strait’, and his son is stoned before his eyes. As Boedeker says, The last Persian killed in Xerxes’ offensive is punished for his transgression against the first Greek killed in the Trojan War, at the very spot of Persian transgression against Greece . . . The Protesilaos logos bridges the temporal boundaries between the two greatest transcontinental invasions. At the same time, it proposes, by setting forward suggestive parallels for a perceptive audience, that just as the Trojans were long ago punished by the gods for great injustices, so too perhaps were the Persians within living memory.12

The references to Protesilaus that frame Xerxes’ invasion of Greece stand far apart, but during the course of the expedition Herodotus actually provides an episode that points up this parallelism between Xerxes’ expedition and Troy, by its use of the motif of ‘the first man killed’.13 Of Protesilaus Homer says that ‘a Dardanian man killed him as he jumped from his ship, the very first of the Achaeans’ (Il. 2.701–2). At 7.180, Herodotus also records the first death in his conflict, that of the Troezenian Leon. When his ship is captured, ‘they took the most handsome of the marines into the prow of the 12 Boedeker (1988: 47), and cf., in this volume, the observations of Saïd, Ch. 2, pp. 99–100, and Munson, Ch. 7, p. 200. 13 For the importance of this motif in myth and folktale, see Thompson (1955–8: motifs P.17.1, C.664, and index s.v. ‘first’).

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ship and sacrificed him, making a good omen [diadexion]14 of the first and fairest of the Greeks they captured’. Protesilaus and Leon are both special in that they are the first to die, but their special quality is also marked in other ways. Protesilaus is unique15 among the Greek heroes in having left behind not only his wife but ‘an unfinished house’ (Il. 2.700–1)—that is, he is married but childless. Leon stands out for his physical beauty, a quality of great importance to the Persians:16 by choosing a striking victim, they aim to make the first Greek to die especially significant. Protesilaus has a ‘speaking name’ pointing to his fate, so that Herodotus’ remark about the appropriateness of Leon’s name, takha d’ an ti kai tou ounomatos epauroito (‘perhaps he owed this to his very name’),17 would provide a further link between the two men: the death of a ‘lion’ at the very start is a good omen for the Persians.18 Artayctes is the last to die, but this death is not only an end to this part of the Persian conflict, it is also a beginning, in that his cruel death is one of the many hints in the later books that Athens is to be the next Persia. That it happens at a great place of ‘transgression’ increases its significance. Furthermore, the Athenians carry off the cables of Xerxes’ bridges (hopla), thus symbolically inheriting the means of imperial yoking that have failed Xerxes (9.121). Within this framework, there are a number of more detailed mythological references, which offer various viewpoints on the significance, moral quality, and likely failure of Xerxes’ campaign. These occur especially in the early part of the march leading up to the great review of the troops in 7.60–100, and thus their commentary contrasts with the clear picture of the hubristically large size of the expedition. Xerxes’ transgression in entering Greece is regularly associated with crossing boundaries, especially rivers, and some of these

14 The meaning of the hapax diadexion has been disputed, but for ‘propitious’, cf. perhaps en- and epidexios. 15 Cf. Kirk (1985: ad loc.). 16 Cf., e.g., Hdt. 7.187.2, 9.96.2, Xen. Cyr. 2.2.28–31, 7.4.14, Pl. Alc. 121D, and A. M. Bowie (2007: ad 8.113.3). 17 Some have wanted to see a future reference in the remark, but, for the optative with ¼ of past reference, cf. 9.71.4 ÆF Æ b ŒÆd çŁø fi ¼ YØ. 18 The editors suggest, not implausibly, that, in the light of the omen that said that the death of Leonidas would be the saving of Sparta (7.220.3–4), the prominently positioned death of the similarly named Leon is also a bad omen for the Persians.

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mythological stories are situated at such points.19 At Celaenae in Phrygia there rises the Meander and Cataractes,20 where ‘the skin of the Silen Marsyas is hung up, which Phrygian tradition says was flayed and hung up by Apollo’ (7.26.3). Marsyas had challenged Apollo to a musical competition, lost and been flayed alive, so we are here reminded early in the piece of another man who presumptuously challenged the gods and paid a heavy price. At Troy, the Persians come to the river Scamander (7.43.1), where the army camps. The Scamander ‘was the first of the rivers whose stream failed and was not sufficient for the army’. This motif recalls Book 21 of Homer’s Iliad, where Scamander plays a major role through his conflict with Achilles, in an episode in which this idea of rivers ‘failing’ appears four times. (1) When Achilles kills Lycaon, he warns him that he will pursue the Trojans to their city, ‘and not even your fair-flowing river with its silvery eddies will be enough to save you’ (21.130–1). (2) When he has killed Asteropaeus, who boasted of his ancestry from the river Xanthus, he boasts of his own ancestry from Zeus and says ‘you have a great river on your side, if it does have any power; but it is not possible to fight against Zeus son of Cronus’ (21.192–3).21 He then goes on to dismiss with extraordinary arrogance all rivers and even their source Ocean himself as inadequate before Zeus and so, by implication from his descent from Zeus, before himself (194–9). (3) In the subsequent battle, he first brings Scamander’s stream to a halt because of the number of corpses he piles up (21.219); but soon Scamander is too much for him, and he has to be helped by Hephaestus, who (4) nearly dries the river up with his fires. Again, therefore, there is drawn an implicit parallel between the arrogance of Achilles in causing Scamander to cease to flow22 and Xerxes’ armies abnormal drying-up of a great river. In each case, a human steps far outside his proper actions to threaten a divinity.

19

For this motif, cf. 7.43 (Scamander), 7.58 (Melas), 7.108 (Lisus), 7.127 (Cheidorus), 7.196 (Onochonus, Apidanus). ‘The crossing of rivers (or such branches of the sea as the Hellespont) . . . is always used to prove the hybris of the aggressor’ (Immerwahr 1966: 293; see also index s.v. ‘river motif’; Gianotti 1996). 20 And the Marsyas; cf. Xen. Anab. 1.2.5, Paus. 10.30.9. 21 Richardson (1993: ad loc.) suggests that Scamander is meant here, not Xanthus. 22 Richardson (1993: ad 223–7) notes that, when Scamander asks for a respite, ‘Akhilleus’ assent is at best very perfunctory’.

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Achilles fails, and here, at the very same place, Xerxes’ army symbolically repeats his sacrilege.23 The failing river motif recurs as the two parts of the expedition negotiate the Chersonese (7.58). Here there are three significant mythological references. First, the fleet is to await Xerxes ‘at the headland of Sarpedon’. This headland is named not from the famous Trojan hero, but from a Thracian king killed by Heracles:24 ‘Heracles approached Aenus, where he was entertained by Poltys. When he sailed away, he shot and killed Sarpedon, the son of Poseidon and brother of Poltys on the shore of Aenus, because he acted violently towards him’ (Apollodorus Bibl. 2.5.9).25 The destruction of a hubristic tyrant by Heracles augurs ill for Xerxes’ expedition. At the same time, the army, as it nears the river Melas, which also fails, passes between the tomb of Helle and the town of Cardia. Helle committed no outrage, but she is significant as another person whose attempt to cross the Hellespont ended in failure. Finally, the army also passes Aenus and the Marsh of Stentor. The scholia (AbT) on Il. 5.785, the only reference in Homer to Stentor, remark that ‘some say he was a Thracian, who was killed when he challenged Hermes to see who could shout loudest’. We do not know the date of this tradition, but, if current in the fifth century BCE, it would provide another example of a calamitous challenge to divine superiority. The fact that Herodotus mentions relatively few mythological figures and that these seem in almost every case to have a significance for the expedition perhaps suggests that we do have a mythological geography here that is not random, slight though these examples may at first seem. There are fewer such references in the second part of the march, but mythology is not totally absent. What unites these examples is the idea of Greek heroes being actively involved in the course of affairs 23

There are also differences between the two stories. Achilles has the support of some gods where Xerxes does not. The storm with lightning off Ida recalls the combination of Hera’s winds and Hephaestus’ fire that eventually stop Scamander (21.331–41), but in Homer these stop the river not, as in Herodotus, his opponent. However, the transgression by a human on the divine is the key point in question for our argument. 24 Cf. Eur. Rh. 29: ‘the story goes that there is a difference between the Sarpedon who went on the expedition to Troy and another, a Thracian, after whom they say the Sarpedonian Rock is named.’ Roscher (1909–15: 393–6); RE 2. Reihe Bd. 2.44–5. 25 Cf. IG 14.1293A.82 (the Marmor Albanum, which lists Heracles’ deeds): ‘when he captured Aenus, he killed Sarpedon, its ruler.’

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during the Persian invasion.26 The first example occurs when the storm strikes Xerxes’ fleet off Sepias (7.188–91). Two parallel myths are involved. First, there is an Athenian tale that they had been told by an oracle to pray to their son-in-law, which they decided was a reference to Boreas, who married Oreithuia, daughter of Erechtheus. As the wind began to rise, the Athenians at Chalcis sacrificed to Boreas, who they claim sent the storm and whom they rewarded with a temple at Ilissus. Second, after three days of storm, the Magi, having learnt that the land is sacred to Thetis because she was taken from there by Peleus, sacrifice to her and the Nereids, after which the storm abates. Herodotus admits to possible scepticism about both stories, but their juxtaposition creates a sense of the significance of this conflict in which deities may assist either side in a manner reminiscent of the Iliad.27 This idea of help from divinities recurs during the hostilities. At Delphi, the rout of the Persians climaxes with the appearance of two men ‘of more than human stature’ who pursue the fleeing Persians and are identified as the local heroes Phylacus and Autonous (8.39.1). Shortly afterwards, Erechtheus in the form of the sacred snake appears to have abandoned the Athenian Acropolis (8.41.2–3). However, when Xerxes sends his Athenian allies to sacrifice on the Acropolis after his burning of the city, the olive tree in the shrine of Erechtheus, which was given by Athena during her competition with Poseidon for the patronship of the city, had put out a shoot a cubit long (8.54–5). The foundation-myth of the city is thus evoked at its nadir, with the shoot offering the promise of a similar revival to that of the olive. At Salamis the Aeacidae, who include the Trojan heroes such as Achilles, Ajax, and Neoptolemus, are summoned to help the Greeks and arrive just as Themistocles orders the Greeks to embark (8.64.2, 83.2).28 When the Greeks are reluctant to engage, a mysterious female figure appears brusquely to urge them forward (8.84.2).29 26

In general, cf. Vandiver (1991), who can be somewhat speculative. For another example of divine help for the Persians, cf. the heavily bearded figure who slew the neighbour of the Athenian Epizelus at Marathon (6.117). Cf. also below, n. 42. 28 On the role of the Aeacidae and Aegina in the battle of Salamis, see E. Irwin (2011). 29 It does not involve mythology as such, but the disapproving involvement also of Demeter at various stages is notable: before Salamis, a ghostly Eleusinian procession forebodes disaster for the Persians (8.65); the destruction of her Anactoron in Athens 27

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One should, however, avoid seeing a simple correlation between supposed impiety on Xerxes’ part and Greek divinities’ displeasure. At Troy and at Sepias, Xerxes paid proper respect to local divinities. At the shrine of Zeus Laphystius in Alus in Achaea, Xerxes learns that the descendants of Phrixus’ son Cytissorus cannot enter the Prytaneum and come out again except to be sacrificed, because Cytissorus saved Athamas when he was about to be used as a scapegoat for the city: he duly reveres the sanctuary and neither enters it nor permits any of his men to do so (7.197). Xerxes may burn temples, therefore, but as an act of revenge for the destruction of temples in Sardis: there is no systematic scorn of Greek cult and religion. Xerxes’ defeat is something that must happen, to maintain the balance in the world, the mythological stories repeatedly affirming the point.

2. THE GREEKS The same use of mythology to provide a commentary on events is also found in the case of the Greeks. Here we encounter a use that is a particular feature of the later books, the employment of exempla in forensic debate.30 There are two kinds, what one might call the ‘protreptic’ use, where the stories are used to persuade, and the ‘eristic’, where they are used to support a point in an argument. Both tend to be more a feature of the representation of the Greeks than other peoples.31 The difference from earlier books is that in the eristic form we have mythology not just recounted or reported by the author, or employed by characters as exempla, but used in a hostilely competitive manner by the characters. The protreptic use of story is found earlier,32 but the use of actual mythical tales belongs to the later books. Before Xerxes’ expedition we means no Persian dies on her sacred ground at Plataea (9.65.2); at Mycale, the Persian defeat takes place near her shrines (9.97, 101.1). 30 Cf. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, }3. 31 Xerxes does, however, evoke Pelops in the great debate on the wisdom of Xerxes’ expedition (7.11.4), which otherwise works more by reference to historical precedent involving earlier Achaemenid kings; he also uses Perseus, their common ancestor, to encourage the Argives to ally themselves with him (7.150.2). 32 E.g. in Solon’s appeal to the stories of Tellus and of Cleobis and Biton to prove his point about judging no man happy until he is dead (1.30–3).

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have such examples as the Athenians’ appeal to the Iliad to substantiate their claim to Sigeum (5.94.2),33 and Socles’ narration of the story of the Labdacids to dissuade the Spartans from reinstating Hippias in Athens (5.92–3). The potential power of myth in such contexts is illustrated by Miltiades’ use of it to justify his capture of Lemnos (6.137–40). Long ago, after a crime against their Athenian wives and their troublesome children, Delphi had told the Pelasgians to do whatever the Athenians asked, which was to render Lemnos to them in an excellent state. They agreed to do so, but only when a ship had sailed from Athens to Lemnos in a north wind. Miltiades pointed out that he had just done this, and the men of Hephaestia agreed and submitted to him.34 The eristic use becomes more significant in the account of Xerxes’ expedition: if the myths surrounding Xerxes signify divine displeasure, those involving the Greeks paint a sad picture of deception and disunity. The examples largely cluster around the very start and towards the finish of the Greek resistance. These episodes are associated (1) with the largely unsuccessful Greek attempts to put together an alliance by appealing to the Argives, Syracusans, Corcyreans, and Cretans (7.150–71), and (2) with the preparations for the crucial battle of Plataea (9.26–7). The use of mythology in an eristic and individualistic manner is very much of a piece with the generally fissiparous nature of the alliance of Greek states, which is thus announced at the very start. These examples are then complemented by (3) myths and stories about seers, which further examine the problems of creating unity among the Greeks.

2.1. Forging an alliance The first passage, 7.148–52, provides a marvellous set of examples of tendentious argumentation and diplomatic chicanery. Questions of self-preservation clash with those of self-image, as states try to square the circle of showing a pan-Hellenic spirit while not committing 33

Cf. Vandiver (1991: 61–73). The persistence of the power of myth is also seen in the way that Sparta did not invade the land of Decelea, because Decelus had once revealed the whereabouts of Helen to the Tyndaridae, after her theft by Theseus (9.73; cf. Thuc. 2.19.2–23.3 on the invasion of Archidamus in Attica in 431 BCE). See Baragwanath, this volume, Ch. 12, }2. 34

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themselves too rashly to opposition to the Persians; meanwhile those who are opposing the Persians strive to blacken the name of these others.35 The appeal to or narrating of mythical or historical events plays an important role. The passage begins with the question of why the Argives did not support the Greeks. The Argives say that, when it became clear that the Greeks would ask for their help, they consulted Delphi, which forbade them to join the alliance because of their recent heavy losses against the Spartans. Still, the Argives offered to help, on condition that they should have a thirty-year truce with the Spartans and the command of half the Greek forces. This was refused, so the Argives declined to help (7.148–9). Other Greeks, however, claim that Xerxes himself sent a message to the Argives, saying the Persians believed they were descended from Perses, son of Perseus and Andromeda, and so were descendants of the Argives: neither side should attack the other therefore, and Xerxes would recompense the Argives by the highest honours.36 The Argives then, say these Greeks, made their demand because they knew the Spartans would refuse it, which would allow them to avoid fighting the Persians. This story is supported by Artaxerxes’ positive response later in the century to the question of whether the friendship the Argives had struck up with Xerxes still held (7.150–1). Herodotus seems to incline tentatively to the Argive version,37 and the Greeks’ appeal to mythological links between Argives and Persians is easy to see as an opportunistic etymological attempt to blacken the Argives. Indeed, in the light of Xerxes’ scornful remarks earlier in the Histories about the Greeks as ‘men whom even Pelops the Phrygian, my forefathers’ slave, so subdued that even today they and their land are called after their subduer’ (7.11), one might think 35

Cf. Baragwanath (2008: 210–22). This myth of the origins of the Persians from the son of Perseus and Andromeda (for which cf. also 7.61.3) needs to be considered beside a number of other such myths that associate eastern peoples with Greek mythological figures: cf. the Medes from Medea (7.62.1), the Cilicians from Cilix, son of Agenor father of Cadmus (7.91), the Pamphilians from those who went from Troy with Amphilochus and Calchas (7.91), Lycians from Lycus, son of Pandion of Athens (7.92). These, like the Greeks in Xerxes’ forces, discourage making too great a divide between East and West. Cf. also Dewald (1990: 220). Vannicelli, this volume, Ch. 10, discusses the Medes’ and Persians’ mythical origins. 37 ‘I cannot say for certain that Xerxes sent a herald with this message . . . but I affirm no other version than that the Argives give’ (7.152.1). 36

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Herodotus right so to dismiss it. On the other hand, the claim that the Argives asked for what they knew was impossible gains some credence in the light of the reaction from Gelon a few chapters later to a similar demand to the Spartans for a share of the leadership (7.157–62). Whichever story one prefers, the significant point is that, at the very start of the Greeks’ attempts to put together an alliance, we find not just physical fighting between Greek states but also verbal conflicts, with mythology at the heart of it.38 When the Greeks appeal to Gelon, he notes the Greek failure to help him against the Carthaginians and in the avenging of the death of Dorieus, but offers considerable forces in return for the supreme command. The suitably named Spartan Syagrus (‘Wild boar’) expostulates that ‘Agamemnon, son of Pelops, would cry out loud if he heard that the Spartans had lost their command to Gelon and the Syracusans’ (7.159).39 An offer to command but one arm of the Greek forces is then opposed by the Athenians, on the grounds that they are ‘the oldest race’ and ‘have never been uprooted from their land’, and that their ancestor Menestheus was the ‘best man at ordering and marshalling armies’ at Troy (7.161; cf. Il. 2.552). These appeals to mythology might be thought to function as exempla, in an almost Roman sense, of how the two cities feel they must behave, but there is something wrong with both of them. Syagrus’ appeal to Agamemnon has a dubious logic:40 is the loss of mythologically based prestige worth the loss of Gelon’s promised forces? Furthermore, as Pelling points out, the idea that this would be ‘a terrible travesty of Greece’s past’ is also questionable: ‘after all, jealousies over leadership issues, with the leader being one person, the

Herodotus calls the debate at Plataea logōn pollōn ōthismos (literally, ‘a shoving of many words’, 9.26.1), using an expression from hoplite warfare also found of the debates before Salamis (8.78). Cf. Munson (2001: 231): ‘Concomitant with and symbolic of the unnecessary armed conflicts of Greeks against Greeks are the verbal and ideological quarrels in which claims, counterclaims, self-justifications, and accusations are all a part of a rhetoric of mutual aggression.’ 39 Huxley (1983: 7–9): ‘Pelops is mentioned by Syagrus because Sparta claimed to rule his island, the Peloponnese; Agamemnon, because he led the Achaeans against Troy, as Sparta must lead the Hellenes in the defence of Greece. To match the assertion of hegemony it was necessary to emphasize the Spartan connections of the Pelopidae—not only of Menelaus but also of Agamemnon’. Cf. Stesichorus fr. 39, Pi. Py. 11.31–2. 40 Cf. Grethlein (2006) on how Homeric intertexts also undermine his outrage, and Saïd’s observations, this volume, Ch. 2, p. 94. 38

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man who was making the greatest contribution another, and the Panhellenic cause suffering for it—that is what the Iliad and its Agamemnon are about.’41 The very appeal to myth only underlines Greek difficulties with questions of leadership. Similarly, the Athenians’ arguments are not a little threadbare: they are noticeably lowprofile in the Iliad, and again the appeal to mythology seems an odd way to conduct military strategy. Interestingly, in their similar dispute with the Tegeans, the Athenians will give the game away by their remarks about the irrelevance of myth to contemporary problems: we will return to this below. The final case where mythology is involved as the Greeks are forging their alliance is slightly different, in that it is used not in a competitive way, but in a way that still works against the cohesion of the Greek world. Once again Delphi is involved, this time counselling the Cretans against involvement by reminding them of their mythological past (7.169–71).42 After Minos’ death in Camicus, the other Greeks did not help in the Cretans’ failed attempt to avenge him, yet, despite this snub, the Cretans helped the Greeks retrieve Helen from Troy. Angered, the dead Minos punished the Cretans: first, those who tried to avenge his death never returned home and were largely wiped out fighting in southern Italy, leaving Crete desolate; and, second, when the new Cretans returned from Troy, there was famine and plague, which again almost depopulated the island. Unlike the Argives, who were apparently prepared to go against the advice of the oracle, the Cretans refuse the Greeks’ request.

2.2. Plataea The motif of mythological jousting over matters of leadership recurs at Plataea, in the dispute between the Tegeans and Athenians over who should command the wing not held by the Spartans (9.26–7).43 41

Pelling (2006a: 90; cf. 89–92 on this episode and Homer generally). On this episode, see further Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, pp. 208–11. It is a measure of Delphi’s attitude to the Persian invasion that it should have attempted to dissuade Athens (cf. 7.140), Argos, and Crete from helping the Greek cause, which throws into perspective the hostility to the Persians, which is claimed in the account of the attack on Delphi (8.34–9). Once again, one has a sense that there is no simple support from the gods for the Greek cause: cf. above, at n. 27. 43 For a full bibliography, particularly on the use of mythology in rhetorical contexts, see Asheri and Corcella (2006: ad loc.). 42

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Just as the dispute over Argos’ behaviour inaugurated the Greek attempts to form an alliance, so the dispute between Athens and Tegea inaugurates the battle of Plataea. Emphasis is specifically placed on the idea of the importance of ‘deeds new and old’, the phrase appearing three times, and on the continuities of past and present.44 The Tegeans argue from their privilege of always commanding a wing of Peloponnesian armies, which dates from the attempt by the Heraclidae to return to the Peloponnese after the death of Eurystheus. The Achaeans and Ionians gathered at the Isthmus and the Tegean king Echemus defeated in single-combat Hyllus, son of Heracles. There is a contemporary resonance, as the Greeks are gathered to prevent a possible attack on the Peloponnese by Mardonius. This appeal to myth illustrates further the problems with such appeals. The awkwardness of the Tegeans’ recalling of the defeat of the leader of the Heraclidae, ancestors of one branch of the Spartan kings, has been pointed out before.45 Flower and Marincola argue that the Tegeans are trying to gain, not the sympathy of the Spartans, but their respect, and that they do indeed gain this, as is shown by their being placed next to the Spartans in battle (9.28). This is true, but the awkwardness remains: can the Tegeans find no better myth than this? The problems become apparent immediately, when the Athenians cap the Tegeans’ story about the Heraclidae by pointing out that, when the Heraclidae attempted to escape from Eurystheus, the Athenians alone took them in and helped them defeat him. This is much more calculated to please the Spartans, and inaugurates a demonstration of the greater Athenian rhetorical skill in choosing telling episodes. Their second story is of their recovery of the bodies of the Seven from Thebes, when Polynices led the Achaeans to claim his kingdom. This has obvious relevance to the fact that it is the men of Thebes who were even then advising Mardonius. Third, their defeat of the Amazons provides a useful parallel for the current conflict with the East, and, fourth, another claim to excellence at Troy rounds off the mythological section. It is at this point that they deprecate the idea of appeal to past merits, thus, as we have said, exposing the artificiality of such appeals: ‘there is little point in recalling these things, 44 kaina kai palaia 9.26.1, 9.27.1; cf. 27.2 kai to palai kai to neon. The pattern of the two speeches is similar: mythical example(s); deprecation of the use of such arguments; further considerations. 45 Macan (1908: ad 9.26 (pp. 644–5)).

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since those who were then admirable could now be more cowardly, and the cowards then now better men’ (9.27). The Athenians then unveil their knock-down and significantly ‘modern’ argument, their victory alone at Marathon. Their final offer to fight wherever the Spartans choose to put them rounds off a clever speech where they win both at rhetoric and at myth-telling, while calling the whole business of the use of mythical exempla into question.46

2.3. Seers and myths Finally, we have a different form of Greek conflict embodied in the tales surrounding the seers at the battles of Plataea and Mycale. These have been well treated, especially by Munson, so we can be brief.47 In these stories, it is not so much inter-state disputes that are figured as disputes within states, though the fact that the Greeks and Mardonius both have Greek seers again underlines the idea of the lack of any unity. It is here that the historian uses myth to promote his analysis of inter-Greek conflicts. There is a link with the stories in }2.1 through the demands that are made by individuals of the states with which they are involved. The amount of time spent on these stories is striking. The highlighting of the seers is not so prominent a feature of battle narratives elsewhere, but is perhaps best explained, at least for Plataea (Deiphonus plays no part in the Mycale narrative), by the importance of paying attention to oracles in the outcome of the battle: Mardonius eventually tires of waiting for good omens and attacks, but the Greeks wait patiently despite their losses. The length of the episodes suggests greater significance, however. The stories all involve tensions between individuals and cities or Greece as a whole. At Plataea, Tisamenus, an Elean, was the Greek seer. When the Spartans had earlier realized that the ‘five great victories’ promised by Delphi to Tisamenus were military not athletic, they sought his prophetic expertise. His demand of citizenship was refused until the Persian threat grew greater, at which point it was granted, but he then demanded citizenship also for his brother 46 The length of this episode might surprise, but it looks forward to the fact that it is these three nations that will fight best in the battle. Cf. Saïd’s observations on this passage, this volume, Ch. 2, p. 95. 47 Cf. Munson (2001: 59–73).

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Hegias. In this he imitated the mythical seer Melampus,48 who demanded half the Argive kingship for curing their women of madness; when this was refused, matters got worse and the Argives agreed, only to be faced with a demand for a third of the kingship for Melampus’ brother Bias (9.33–4). Mardonius’ Greek seer, Hegesistratus, also of Elis, escaped from the custody of the Spartans, whom he had greatly harmed, by cutting off part of his own foot (9.37).49 For Munson, Tisamenus and Hegesistratus are ‘antithetical figures’, who reflect upon the Spartan king Pausanias. To the extent . . . that both dramatize friction between individual and community, they are also part of the same phenomenon . . . Like his seer Tisamenus, Pausanias gains a splendid victory for Greece. Like the seer Hegesistratus, however, he is already poised to become the accomplice of Persia against Sparta and all the Greeks. Thus, in antithesis to the pair Leonidas and Megistias at Thermopylae, the diviners of Plataea on either side . . . symbolically carry forward and broaden Herodotus’ messages on the disharmonious combination of leadership and citizenship and on the dangers of prominent individuals for the city-states of Greece.50

At Mycale, the Greek seer Deiphonus is introduced by a long and complicated story about how his father Euenius was blinded for falling asleep on his watch over a sacred flock, tricked into accepting compensation and rewarded with prophetic powers by the gods (9.93–5). For Munson, ‘this archaic morality tale about remote Apollonia offers a vision of the righteous city and a hypothetical solution to the problem of the individual’s personal power and privileged status in the Greek polis’.51 The righteousness of the city might be questioned, since its representatives play a trick on Euenius, but reconciliation does indeed finally take place, and Euenius does not pursue the possible extra compensation that he might have been expected to. From all these examples one can see that, while myth can be good for analysis, it is also a powerful means both for creating unity among peoples who share it, and also for creating division and dissent. One has in Herodotus therefore a similar situation to the competitive use 48

Cf., on this story and its narrative patterns, Gray, this volume, Ch. 6. One could dispute whether this is a ‘myth’, but the parallelism with Tisamenus requires Hegesistratus’ inclusion here. 50 Munson (2001: 67, 70). Cf. further Vannicelli (2005). 51 Munson (2001: 73); see also Griffiths (1999). 49

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of myth to be found in choral lyric.52 Even ‘Panhellenic’ myths, such as the Trojan War, are used, not to promote a pan-Hellenic spirit, but in the pursuit of personal aims. It is perhaps significant, therefore, that nowhere is the Trojan War used as a call to pan-Hellenic effort, and that that myth does not figure in the Athenians’ famous praise of to hellēnikon, which they use to show that they would never desert the Greek cause (8.144). This comes at the climax of the debate at Athens about Xerxes’ offer of a pardon if the Athenians will join him, but it is language, religion, and sanctuaries that are invoked, not myth. A number of things bring the Greeks together: but myth is not among them. The exploitation of myth in this way naturally causes reflection on myth in Herodotus’ work generally. He records the stories that men tell, but we see here how stories are not innocent tradition, but weapons in the selective creation of an identity, the claiming of a privilege, or the justification of an act. The uncertainty of historywriting is tacitly acknowledged in these episodes. As Herodotus says when discussing the refusal of the Argives to help against Persia, ‘it is my job to say what was said, but it is not my job to believe it all’ (7.152). In conclusion, therefore, if the displeasure of the gods at his attempts to set the boundaries of his empire too wide for a mortal is suggested by the way that unpropitious mythology dogs Xerxes’ steps, those gods must have been equally exasperated at the Greeks’ great difficulties in uniting themselves to prevent that act of hubris.

52

Cf. Fearn (2007) and Kowalzig (2007).

12 Returning to Troy: Herodotus and the Mythic Discourse of his own Time Emily Baragwanath

1. INTRODUCTION: MYTHIC DISCOURSE IN THE HISTORIES Herodotus articulates the continuing presence and relevance of myth in the world of the fifth century. Occasionally a mythical figure is depicted operating on the level of contemporary events, as when the hero Protesilaus, the first Greek to die at Troy, exacts vengeance on Artyactes at the time of Xerxes’ expedition (9.120), or Talthybius punishes the Spartan heralds during the Peloponnesian War (7.134–7).1 More frequently—for this area is more susceptible to verification through enquiry—Herodotus stages instances of mythic discourse being employed in the contemporary world, as expressed,

I would like to thank the participants of the Herodotus and Myth conference for stimulating discussion, and Mathieu de Bakker for his incisive comments, which enabled me to refine my argument in several respects. This chapter has benefited also from the observations of audiences in Oxford, Asheville, and Sydney, and of Philip Stadter, Sharon James, Owen Goslin, and Brendan Boyle. For wise advice on some perplexing questions, I thank Stephanie West and Peter Rhodes. 1 On Protesilaus, see Boedeker (1988) and, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 100, Munson, Ch. 7, p. 200, and Bowie, Ch. 11, pp. 273–4. On Talthybius, see Boedeker (2002: 114–16) and Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, p. 98. Cf. also Herodotus’ inclusion of alleged epiphanies of a hero or god, as of Pan to Philippides before the battle of Marathon (6.105), and how Cyrus (as Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, p. 74, observes) is motivated by the legend created within his own time, of his divinity.

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for example, through persuasive rhetoric, propaganda, or thought processes. This is our concern in this final chapter.2 One prominent source of authoritative mythic discourse that communities may appropriate and bring to bear on events is the Delphic Oracle. With Persia encroaching on the Asia Minor seaboard, the Cnidians, for example, embrace an oracle containing a counterfactual mythical aetiology to galvanize, sanction, and retrospectively justify their decision to surrender.3 The poetic, archaizing form in which the oracles are presented in the narrative conveys their divinely sanctioned authority in recipients’ eyes, while allowing something of their mystique to reach readers. Individuals, too, are depicted employing mythic discourse. The Spartan King Leonidas ‘writes his own script’ as a Homeric hero in the Thermopylae narrative,4 and equally Leonidas’ textual foil, Xerxes’ second-in-command Mardonius, mythicizes himself and his venture, his mindset infused with mythic models that derive both from the text itself—he may be said to ‘write his own script’ as a counterpart to Leonidas—and from outside the text, from the store of traditional myth. As we shall see, Mardonius’ propensity to conceptualize his own and others’ actions in accordance with larger, heroic, or ‘mythicizing’ models can be seen in his rhetorical enlarging of Xerxes and his expedition, and in his attempts to cast as heroic his own second-wave expedition against Greece. We shall begin by considering an episode near the end of the Histories where Herodotus returns to the subject of Helen of Troy. This example brings out how mythic discourse shapes fifth-century events, at the same time as it assists the historian in communicating truths about historical processes as well as particular incidents. From there we will be in a position to address the more sustained and complex example of Mardonius’ self-mythicizing image and the questions it raises about the purposes and effects of mythic discourse 2

On the persuasive function of myth in the present in Herodotus, see also, in this volume, the Introduction, pp. 43–5, Munson, Ch. 7, and Bowie, Ch. 11. 3 As the Cnidians attempted to turn their territory into an island, ‘the Pythia, as the Cnidians themselves say, replied in iambic trimeters as follows: “The isthmus is not to be fortified or dug through; Zeus would have made an island had he wanted one” ’ (1.174.5). It was possible instead to reject an oracle (or at least a literal interpretation of it), as numerous examples in the Histories show. See also Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, pp. 76–8, on the role of the Delphic oracle. 4 Cf. Pelling (2006a) on Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae ‘almost writing their own script’ (p. 94), and more generally (pp. 92–8) on Homeric resonances in the Thermopylae narrative.

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on the twin levels of history and of the historian’s presentation. In shifting from addressing Herodotus’ use of a local myth of Helen and Theseus to a Panhellenic myth deriving from tragedy, we will gain a sense, too, of how the inflection of myth through tragedy may be a particularly effective tool in the historian’s hands. Far from being mere window dressing, Mardonius’ mythic thinking contributes to the historical picture, enriching the texture of explanation in terms of personal psychology and broader imperialist drives, and sustains the Histories’ overall narrative arc.

2. A REVERSE FACE OF TROY: THESEUS ’ THEFT OF HELEN After recounting the Greek victory at Plataea, Herodotus introduces the story told by his Athenian informants of how the Deceleans aided the Tyndaridae in recovering their sister Helen after her abduction to Athens by Theseus: Now, according to local Athenian tradition, the people of Decelea once did something of lasting value. A long time ago the Tyndaridae invaded Attica at the head of a sizeable army to recover Helen, and they laid waste the country villages because they did not know where she had been hidden. At that time the people of Decelea, as the Athenians say—others say it was Decelus himself—were angered at the high-handed behaviour [hubris] of Theseus and afraid in case the whole of Attica suffered, so they told the Tyndaridae all the facts and showed them the way to Aphidnae, which Titacus, a native of the place [eōn autokhthōn], betrayed to them. (9.73.1–2)5

This occasions Herodotus’ remark (and for modern historians the Histories’ terminus ante quem6) that ‘all the way down to today’ (es tode aiei eti), many years later in his own time of the Peloponnesian War (kai es ton polemon ton husteron polloisi etesi toutōn genomenon Athēnaioisi te kai Peloponnēsioisi), the Spartans continued to honour the Deceleans for their action and avoided ravaging their territory alone of all of Attica (9.73.3). The episode reveals the vital ongoing 5

Translations are based on those of Waterfield (1998) (as here), or my own. A terminus ante quem of 413 BCE, in that Herodotus would surely have mentioned the Spartan occupation of Decelea if that had occurred by the time he wrote his Histories. 6

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role of myth in current events. Herodotus’ informants have remembered the tradition and volunteered it (9.73.1); and the alternative versions (of ‘Athenians’ versus ‘others’) seem to imply persisting controversy attached to part of it. We see, too, Herodotus’ provocative selection and shaping of his material, similar to his controversial presentation elsewhere.7 Herodotus relishes using myth to problematize or unravel ideological claims, puncturing dominant models by pressing other possibilities.8 Theseus’ image had been radically transformed in Athenian literature and iconography over the course of the fifth century from uncivilized Heracles equivalent into quintessential representative of the ideals of the Athenian democracy (including in Euripides’ staging of the Suppliant Women in the late 420s BCE).9 He makes his sole appearance in the Histories, by contrast, as hubristic abductor of women—in parallel, indeed, to reckless Trojan Paris as portrayed in the proem. The self-focused and thoughtless Theseus is juxtaposed both with the concerned and attentive people of Decelea, who fear for the whole Attic land (not just their own), and with Titacus, who, being an autochthon, is perhaps especially aware of the need to safeguard the land. What is more, the incident appears in a narrative recounting acts of heroism on behalf of all of Greece. Herodotus has singled out the fighters who won most renown (onomastotatoi egenonto, 9.72.1) at Plataea: Aristodemus, Posidonius, Philokyon, and Amompharetus (9.71.2). He has described Callicrates’ death away from the battle and his regret not to die for Greece, but to do so without achieving a great deed. And among Athenians he has singled out Sophanes, the mention of whose deme occasioned the story of Theseus. This context underscores how Herodotus has included this story of the Athenian hero, rather than others that might have figured him as a forerunner to these contemporary benefactors of Greece. Athenian 7

Note, e.g., his presentation of another Athenian myth, that of autochthony: this is taken literally so as to demonstrate that the Athenians were once barbarian, originating from the Pelasgians (1.56–8 and 8.44.2 with Thomas 2001b: 222–5). 8 E.g. in his presentation of the Corinthian tyranny: Socles’ description of Periander at 5.92 sits in tension with his role at 5.95 as wise arbiter of a dispute between Athenians and Mytileneans, cf. Baragwanath (2012: 46–7). 9 See especially the development of the iconography of Theseus in vase painting. His rape of Helen is ignored in all but a few cases, where he is presented as handsome ephebe; see Shapiro (1992), Mills (1997), and Vannicelli, this volume, Ch. 10, p. 260. Peleus—father of Achilles—likewise makes his sole appearance in the Histories as abductor of Thetis (7.191.2).

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iconography and political discourse could after all construe Theseus’ mythical victory over the Amazons as analogous to the Greek victory over the Persians,10 and one strand of tradition hailed Theseus as rescuer of an Ionian maiden threatened with hubris by her barbaric abductor.11 The abduction of Helen to Athens, by the hero par excellence of Athens and Athenian democracy,12 in an act regarded by the Deceleans or Decelus himself as hubristic (9.73.2), instead recalls the Trojan War scenario as depicted in the Histories’ proem. There, the catalyst of military conflict was Helen’s theft from Sparta to Troy; and the disproportionate retaliation by Greeks was envisaged by the Persian logioi as the explanation for the ongoing conflict between Persians and Greeks: ‘ever since then [apo toutou aiei], the Persians have regarded the Greeks as hostile to them’ (1.4.4). Here, only the action of a single village (perhaps a single villager) has averted an equivalent outcome and prevented the further devastation of Attica.13 The continuing positive reciprocal consequences of this action into the future—the Athenians regard it as ‘a good deed for all time’ (ergon khrēsimon es ton panta khronon) (9.73.1)—counterpoint the continuing enmity, or negative reciprocity, that resulted from the reverse scenario in relation to the Trojans. The Trojan War’s beginning was indeed just as much a matter of contingency in the Persian account: it depended on Paris’ deliberation and action as a single individual, and on the arbitrary (and in the Persian opinion unwarranted) decision of the Greeks to respond. Decelus’ or the Deceleans’ ‘good deed’ of returning Helen and so nipping in the bud the ravaging of Attica also parallels the counterfactual Herodotus presented when he

10 Note, e.g., the juxtaposition of the Amazonomachy with Marathon in the Stoa Poikilē, and the dedication of the Theseion in memory of Marathon (Paus. 1.17). Cf. Lysias’ Epitaphios, in which the Amazonomachy is a precursor of Marathon. 11 In Bacchylides 17 Theseus orders Minos to cease his hubris (17.41) against Eriboea, observing that a hero ought to check his violence (bia, 17.22). See further Munson, this volume, Ch. 7, n. 23 with text. Cf., e.g., Theseus’ role in Euripides’ Supplices as champion (urged by his mother) of the burial of the Argive dead in the face of the opposition of violent and hubristic Thebans (cf. andras biaious, 308; hubristai, 575; hubristēn laon, 728), and in Sophocles’ Oedipus Coloneus as protector of Oedipus and rescuer of his two daughters in the face of the violence and hubris of Creon (cf. hubris, 883, 1029; bia, 903, 916, 922). 12 See esp. Thuc. 2.15. 13 On this episode, see also Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, p. 99 (with further references).

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returned to the story of Troy at 2.120: Priam, Herodotus surmised, would have given Helen back had she really been there.14 Herodotus’ staging of this reverse face of the Trojan War15 highlights in this historical outcome the role of accident and contingency: it raises the possibility that the sequence of events that issued in the Trojan War, and culminated in ongoing Persian-Greek hostility, might have been avoided, and conversely, that it might rather have been Spartan-Athenian conflict that persisted from the mythic past into contemporary times. This implied counterfactual is rooted in mythic tradition and yet no less suggestive than Herodotus’ famous explicit counterfactual regarding more recent history (7.139: if the Athenians had abandoned their land or sided with Xerxes, the Spartans would have fought to the death or taken the Persian side themselves—with the upshot in either case being Greece’s subjection to Persia). That counterfactual clarified the significance of the fraught narrative that it served to conclude (of the Greeks’ only partial success in rallying others to the cause), and highlighted the crucial difference made by the Athenians. This one generates discordance, for, at this very moment of Greek unity, and of celebration of Spartan and Athenian courage in the battle of Plataea, it raises the spectre of future inter-Hellenic conflict and disunity.16 In other contexts as well, counterfactual history has this tendency to promote reflection on the present.17 In this case, the book end it furnishes the Plataea narrative balances the prolepsis Herodotus included before the

14 Cobet (1971: 65) observes the way in which this digression stretches both back and forwards in time. 15 Another ‘reverse face’ of the Trojan War in the Histories is the Cretan expedition with a great force (stolōi megalōi) against Camicus in Sicily, besieging the place for five years until famine forced them to depart (7.170), on which see, in this volume, Saïd, Ch. 2, p. 99, Munson, Ch. 7, pp. 208–11, and Bowie, Ch. 11, p. 282. The Trojan War was good to think with, as we shall see further below. 16 Modern scholarly discussion of ways in which explicit counterfactual history may supplement historical analysis (the question ‘what if’ is always implicit in discussion of causation) has been growing in popularity since Niall Ferguson’s Virtual History (1997). Treatments of its role in ancient historiography include Will (2000) (Thucydides) and Morello (2002) (Livy). 17 Morello (2002: 80–3). Reflecting this tendency, Roth’s novel The Plot against America (2004)—a counterfactual portrayal of 1940s America, in which in the place of Roosevelt’s re-election, the isolationist anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 and directs the country into a Nazi alliance and fascism—has been read by many as a commentary on the contemporary George W. Bush administration and its policies (though Roth himself denies any such allegorical intention).

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account of the battle to future Spartan victories over other Greeks (9.35, in the account of the seer Tisamenus).18 Theseus’ theft is in fact just one view of the ‘panorama of Hellenic conflicts’ connecting mythical past to present that Herodotus supplies at this point of his narrative.19 The shift into the present with a scenario setting out a mythic forebear for the fifth-century invasion of Attica must have been highly suggestive for Herodotus’ original audience. The idea of reconciliatory action in a bid to prevent further devastation of Attica resonates with the situation of the Archidamian War (and indeed some commentators detect pointed advice to the Athenians and Pericles to act in a reconciliatory manner20). In any case, what at first sight could seem a fleeting glimpse at mythical subject matter, a sign of Herodotus’ impulse towards inclusiveness in recording traditions (cf. 7.152.3), in fact represents a challenge to Athenian ideology, and a commentary on historical processes. With this gesture back to the proem’s content and explanatory paradigms, Herodotus’ use of the Theseus myth contributes to the closural texture that characterizes parts of Book Nine and culminates in an especially resonant mythic reference in the story of Protesilaus (9.116, 12021). Each episode contributes a further perspective that glances back to the opening books, to the themes of the Trojan War and the abduction of Helen. The Athenians’ account of Theseus also furnishes another reminder that the mirror of Self and Other points back at Herodotus’ Greek readers too, hinting at layered patterns of action in history: patterns that unite East and West.22 18

See Gray, this volume, Ch. 6, pp. 171–2. See Cobet (1971: 65–6) for the Sophanes excursus in the context of the other aristeiai of the battle of Plataea, that similarly introduce (past or future) accounts of inter-Greek wars; quotation (‘Panorama hellenischer Auseinandersetzungen’) on p. 66. 20 Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.73.2), observing that, by rejecting Alcman’s version (Paus. 1.41.4 = PMG 21) in which the Dioscuri actually captured Athens, Herodotus implies that contemporary Athenians might still save their city; cf. Biraschi (1989: 83–4). 21 Cf. above, n. 1 with text. See Dewald (1997) and this volume, Ch. 1, n. 20 with text, for the Histories’ closural narratives. 22 These patterns are in keeping with 9.122: the fictional anecdote of Cyrus, with which Herodotus chooses to end his Histories, which likewise encourages readers to look back upon him and the Persians from a different perspective. On other reminders in the Histories of the Self in Other and Other in Self, see esp. Dewald (1990), Pelling (1997b), and Munson (2001). Cf., in this volume, de Jong, Ch. 4, p. 138, and Vandiver, Ch. 5, pp. 152–4, for the alignment of Greek Menelaus with (bad) Trojan Alexander at 2.119. 19

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In recounting Theseus’ theft of Helen, Herodotus thus appropriates local, oral mythological traditions to invite readers to engage with one of history’s more speculative realms—that of what might have been (eternal hatred between Spartans and Athenians that would have prevented them from collaborating at the time of the Persian invasion). At issue in our second example is the historian’s imaginative reconstruction of a character’s mental landscape—another territory sheltered from the historian’s firm knowledge—this time through mythic references inflected through the Panhellenic poetic genres of epic and tragedy. The distinctly Persian perspective that surfaces in Herodotus’ portrayal of Mardonius’ mythic thinking (or, perhaps, his rhetoric) again contributes to the promotion of different perspectives that complicate and enrich readers’ interpretations. After outlining Mardonius’ general propensity for mythic thinking in relation to Xerxes’ campaign (}3), I focus on an intriguing instance where Herodotus appears to be developing this characterization through a reference to the mythical past as mediated in a general way through epic, but also more specifically through a famous scene of tragedy (}4). Here we catch a glimpse of how the historian’s use of myth in combination with his play with genre—his selective use of poetic colour23—might mobilize readers to draw intertextual connections, and thus to overleap the discursive boundary the text establishes between historical and mythic discourse.24 23

For Herodotus’ self-conscious engagement with other genres, see esp. Avery (1979), Boedeker (2000, 2002), and Chiasson (2003). R. Rutherford (2007: 514) likens ‘tragic history’ to ‘a particular color in an artist’s palette, used in specific places for a particular effect’. 24 On the Histories’ establishment of the boundary between these discourses, see, e.g., Shimron (1973), Lateiner (1989: 35), Moles (1993), Feeney (2007a: 72–7, 2007b: 177–82). See esp. Chiasson (2003, forthcoming: ch. 1) and Marincola (2006) for ways in which Herodotus highlights the difference between historical research and the Greek poetic tradition (‘tak[ing] [the poetic] legacy in a different direction’, as Marincola (2006: 14) puts it). Hornblower (2001) qualifies Feeney’s distinction (1991) between epic and history—the presence of ‘characterful narration of divine action’ (261; see further Feeney 1991: 260–2)—by highlighting the possibility of ‘deliberate and daring’ generic crossover: Herodotus’ Pan may thus represent ‘a real epic feature in a real historian’ (Hornblower 2001: 146). Pelling (2006a) brings out the open-endedness of Herodotus’ interactions with epic. The definition of ‘mythic’ is elusive, since it is difficult to ascertain where models are felt to signal back to a legendary/Homeric age, or where they have infused contemporary discourse (thought

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The example invites us to consider how such specific allusion compares in its effect with more general resonances of mythical themes and motifs (as in the case of Theseus’ theft of Helen, discussed above). Mardonius’ propensity to conceptualize his own and others’ actions in accordance with heroic or ‘mythicizing’ paradigms is evident from the first, in his enlarging of Xerxes and his expedition in a timeless, heroic mode, as he seeks to convince the king to undertake a campaign against Greece. A land of such excellence as Europe, he claims, is worthy to belong to the king alone of mortals (basileï te mounōi thnētōn axiē ektēsthai, 7.5.3). Xerxes is the best (aristos) of Persians of all time, past and future, for, as well as uttering the best and truest (arista kai alēthestata) sentiments in other respects, he will not allow the Ionians—unworthy as they are—to laugh at the Persians (7.9.1). The Greeks—if they dare to fight at all—will soon learn that the Persians are of humankind (anthrōpōn) the best (aristoi) with respect to war (7.9ª). As well as reflecting a characteristic tendency of Mardonius as Herodotus depicts it elsewhere, such mythicizing amplification may be expected to appeal to Xerxes, for it matches the traditional Persian requirement for display, as manifested especially in active imperialism—and this is a tradition to which Xerxes is particularly sensitive.25 We see Xerxes’ attentiveness to the power of mythic images, especially in relation to the ‘hearts-and-minds’ battle to justify imperialism, when en route to Greece he pauses at the ancient site of Troy, ascends Priam’s citadel to gaze at it and hear about what happened there, and conducts a great sacrifice to Athena of Ilium while the Magi sacrifice to the dead heroes (7.43.1).26 And Mardonius

and rhetoric) and behaviour. For the issue of historical or historiographical interaction with Homer, see esp. Pelling (2006a). Connor (1984) comments suggestively on the combination in Thucydides’ presentation of the Sicilian expedition of poetic and analytic–historiographical features (‘Mythic patterns and tragic language are juxtaposed with much more mundane descriptions of impulses, dispositions, and desires’ (1984: 168)). On these issues, see further the Introduction to this volume, pp. 48–53. 25 Cf. Baragwanath (2008: 240–88). Huber (1965: 37–8) surveys Homeric resonances in the speeches of Mardonius and (cp. below) Artabanus. 26 Haubold (2007) argues for historical Persian attempts to appropriate Greek epic as a charter for imperial expansion, and thus to justify the conflict in terms familiar to the Greeks. See also Briant (2002) on how the Persians deliberately appropriated religious and cultural characteristics of their subject peoples, and the imperialistic rationale behind this, and Kelly (2003) on the Persians’ use of propaganda in the Persian Wars. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, }3, examines the use of stories about Troy by Persians and others.

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is especially attuned to Xerxes’ mental processes: after the failure of Salamis he alone understood the king’s intentions, Herodotus observes, for he was most experienced in this matter (8.97.2). At issue, then, is the question of whether Mardonius’ inclination to self-mythicizing is a symptom of his way of thinking, or more the product of his rhetorical goals and self-presentation to Xerxes. In his speech in opposition to Mardonius’, seeking to dissuade the king from a Greek campaign, Artabanus deploys mythic discourse directly to counter Mardonius’: calling to mind a negative mythic exemplum, he evokes the epic (and tragic) nostos (‘return’) theme in insisting on the possibility of no return, or a failed return, for the Persians after defeat at the hands of the Greeks (ēn aponostēsēis . . . , ‘if you return’, 7.10Ł.2), with Mardonius and his family executed. Herodotus does frequently draw upon the epic resonances of the Homeric nostos theme, including in the account of the sufferings of the Persians on their return journey after both Salamis and Plataea.27 Particularly suggestive of the motif of sufferings after return home (as Rood has observed) is, for example, Herodotus’ description of the fate of Cyrene’s ruler Pheretime, whose horrible death—eaten alive by maggots immediately after her return from Egypt—proves ‘that excessive vengeance incurs retribution from the gods’ (4.205). In our example it is a character, Artabanus, who evokes the mythic pattern and traditional expectation of disaster for those who travel after extreme violence,28 or perhaps more specifically (in view of the Homeric resonances of his speech: see below) the Greeks’ disastrous nostoi from Troy. At the same time, the cluster of instances in the preceding narrative of the distinctly tragic verb epairō, which injects a looming sense of expected failure,29 suggests tragic associations, too, perhaps specifically with Aeschylus’ staging of the Persians’ disastrous return.30 27

See Rood (1998b: nn. 52–4 with text). Cf. Connor (1984: 168) on this motif in Thucydides’ depiction of the Sicilian expedition. 29 Avery (1979), with Chiasson, this volume, Ch. 8, pp. 230–2. Mardonius’ use of the verb in relation to Greeks (7.9ª) matches the pattern of his ironically applying to others what applies best to himself (cf. below: he accuses the Greeks of agnōmosunē, a term Herodotus applies to Mardonius). 30 The play opens with the chorus anxious about the king’s return (nostos, l. 8); the messenger says he did not expect to return safely himself (l. 261); Darius’ ghost later prophesies that even the Persian forces that now remain in Greece will fail to return home safely (ll. 796–7); and the nostos itself is marked by disaster (with the frozen Strymon melting during the crossing: ll. 504–11). 28

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Compounding the sense of an appeal to Mardonius’ self-mythicizing tendency, Artabanus next raises the spectre of the negative fame that would attend such a failure: should Mardonius go ahead with the expedition, ‘I can tell you what news of Mardonius will reach the ears of those who stay behind here: they will be told that Mardonius was the cause of a great disaster for Persia, and that you were then torn apart by dogs and birds somewhere in Athenian territory or somewhere in Lacedaemon—that is, if this doesn’t happen earlier, on the way there.’ (7.10Ł.2)

The reference in his threat to dogs and birds, coupled with Homeric anaphora, cloaks his pronouncement in an epic guise that responds to Mardonius in kind, tailored to his persuasion.31 Or it may be that Artabanus is trying to mock Mardonius’ self-mythicizing in his choice of the powerful image from the opening lines of the Iliad. We again see Mardonius’ inclination to enlarge his actions on a mythic model once he has taken control of the remaining Persian army after the battle of Salamis. He strives to cast his second-wave expedition against Greece as heroic, in resolving to die honourably (kalōs teleutēsai ton bion) while playing for high stakes (huper megalōn) in the case of failure, rather than suffering punishment at Xerxes’ hands (8.100.1). His choice recalls that of Homer’s Achilles or Hector, but equally Leonidas, whose conscious decision to sacrifice himself for the sake of Sparta’s survival Herodotus recounted at length (7.220) in a narrative abounding in resonances of epic, including a hexametric Delphic oracle.32 The equation of Mardonius and Leonidas finds dramatic expression when Xerxes points him out to the Spartan heralds as the one who will ‘pay suitable recompense’ for their king’s death—a transaction over which the Delphic oracle presides (8.114; cf. 9.64.1).33 Much as Xerxes’ pointed advice that Mardonius ‘make your deeds match your words’ (poieein toisi logoisi ta erga . . . homoia, 8.107.1) was a fitting response to the commander’s inflated claims, the king’s gesture at this point, even as it is in tune with divine will,34 seems also to respond to and extend the rhetoric of Mardonius himself. 31 Cf. Il. 1.4–5, 2.393, 15.348, for the fate of being torn apart by dogs and birds, with Segal (1971: 9). 32 Pelling (2006a: 93 n. 48) observes commonalities, beyond metre, between the oracle’s final lines and Il. 17.502–4. 33 See Asheri (1998) on Plataea as vengeance for Thermopylae. 34 Along with the involvement of Delphi, divine involvement is perhaps felt in the coincidence that Mardonius is standing nearby (hōs oi etugkhane paresteōs Mardonios . . . , 8.114.2).

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Mardonius’ association with Leonidas is pressed further by Herodotus’ inclusion of an expressive prolepsis, which presents his slayer Aeimnestus as a Leonidas figure:35 Mardonius was killed by Aeimnestus,36 a famous man among the Spartans, who later in time after the Persian Wars, during a time of war, with a force of three hundred men made an attack on the whole army of the Messenians at Stenyclerus, and both he and the three hundred met their death [kai autos te apethane kai hoi triēkosioi]. (9.64.2)

The 300 is a Spartan fighting unit, but it also recalls Thermopylae in particular—which has been a symbolic presence through the Plataea narrative;37 and here the number is accentuated through its repetition and emphatic placement at the culmination of the clause, and within a weighty kai . . . kai construction that singles out the heroic leader alongside his 300 men. The specification of place (en Stenuklērōi) perhaps even exploits a further possible resonance of Thermopylae, with its central theme of ‘straights’/‘narrows’ (steina).38 This narrative strand presents Mardonius not so much consciously mythicizing himself, as caught up in mythicizing patterns beyond his comprehension: patterns that figure him as the counterpart of Leonidas, and reflect the broader theme of Plataea as vengeance for Thermopylae.39 Mardonius’ mythicizing tendency is also evident in a more general way, in his conception of the Persian expedition in terms of a larger pattern of retributive justice. Lateiner has brought out how repeatedly

35

On this digression, see Cobet (1971: 64–5). See Huxley (1963), with Herman (1989: 93 n. 35 with text) and Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.64.2) for preferring the stronger manuscript tradition in favour of Aeimnēstou over (Hude) Arimnēstou. 37 Cf. Asheri (1998) and Dillery (1996). 38 The Persians at 7.211.2 fight en steinoporōi . . . khōrōi; until the betrayal of the pass the Greeks fight es ta steinopora, but at that point, certain of death, they meet the enemy exō tōn steinōn (7.223 bis); and just after Leonidas’ death, they again withdraw es . . . to steinon tēs hodou (7.225.2); cf. 7.175.1, 176.2 bis. The ‘narrows’ motif of Salamis will again look back to this (8.60 bis). Moreover, as at Thermopylae, a contrast is highlighted between the few and the many (300—‘all the Messenians’), and in the name of Mardonius’ killer, Aeimnēstos—‘Always to be remembered’, ‘ever memorable’—is evoked a key theme of the Thermopylae narrative, that of memory and memorialization (see esp. 7.225–8: memorials of Leonidas in the form of a stone lion, and of the 300 in the form of memorable sayings and concrete inscriptions). 39 Cf. Asheri (1998). 36

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he is the subject of the dikas didonai concept in the Histories.40 By envisaging Persian victory over Greeks in these terms, Mardonius glamorizes, enlarges, and justifies it, for dikas didonai can have archaic or epic overtones. It occurs, for example, in reports of oracular utterances.41 This claim against the Greeks ‘comes home to haunt him’42 when his own death in battle compensates the Spartans for that of Leonidas. Mardonius’ heroizing of his secondary campaign and himself as its commander from one perspective—read as directly reflecting his actual thinking—thus seems delusory: he has misunderstood the real significance of Thermopylae as a moral victory for Greeks that displayed Spartan excellence in war.43 And yet the insecurity revealed by one of his motives for continuing the campaign—the desire to avoid punishment for having urged Xerxes to the expedition (8.100.1)—opens up an additional, different possibility. Mardonius’ self-mythicizing may in part represent a response to his acute awareness of the need to promote a heroic image of himself vis-à-vis Xerxes in particular, so as to compensate for his compromised position at the Persian court.44 This will have been exacerbated by the failure at Athos of the first expedition he had championed. The portrayal of his mythic thinking thus helps Herodotus bring out an aspect of Mardonius’ psychology as a subordinate. But the heroic image is not merely rhetorical or a figment of Mardonius’ imagination. Ultimately Mardonius meets his end at Plataea in genuinely heroic—epic—fashion: fighting bravely from a white horse, it is he who holds off Persian defeat so long he survives (9.63), and it is he whom Herodotus acknowledges as the individual who, of all the foreigners, fought most bravely (ēristeuse, 9.71.1). Ēristeuse here evokes the epic aristeia, intimating that his action recalls those of Homer’s heroes. Thus Mardonius lives up in truth

40

Lateiner (1980). Lateiner (1980: 30). Lateiner (1980: 31). 43 See Dillery (1996) for Herodotus’ reconfiguration of Thermopylae as a moral victory by means of the duel motif. 44 In the council before Salamis, Mardonius is not seated about the king like the other leaders of cities and commanders of ships, whose proximity to the king reflects their degree of honour, but instead serves as Xerxes’ messenger (8.68, as again at 8.140). Should anything happen to Mardonius, Artemisia tells Xerxes (in a speech that reflects his own opinions: 8.103), ‘it won’t be a big deal’ (logos oudeis ginetai, 8.102.3). 41 42

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both to Xerxes’ command to ‘make his deeds match his words’ (8.107.1) (in accordance indeed with the heroic code45) and to his own resolve ‘to risk either subduing Greece or dying nobly in failure’ (8.100.1). Of the different traditions available, Herodotus has memorialized the most positive.46 The way in which ēristeuse (‘he was the best’) responds to and corroborates Mardonius’ earlier heroizing of himself (cf. above, p. 297) unsettles our assumption that those claims were deluded. In the end the text thus invites a complex rather than straightforwardly negative response to Mardonius’ character;47 and I shall suggest that Herodotus invites a similarly nuanced and reflective, rather than straightforwardly dismissive, response to the mythic discourse in which Mardonius conceptualizes his secondary campaign.

4. ENVISAGING CAPTURING ATHENS (9.3) Mardonius’ mythicizing tendency helps to explain the enigma at the opening of Book Nine of his ignoring the Thebans’ practical advice to him in Thessaly to overtake Greece by means of bribery and his resolve instead to take Athens by force; and later his continued resistance to Artabanus’ further advice along the same lines48: to withdraw into Thebes and engage in systematic bribery of the leaders in the Greek cities rather than to risk battle (9.41). In each case Herodotus highlights Mardonius’ delusion by remarking on his agnōmosunē (obstinacy/folly).49 This course of action also matches his inclination, already observed, for preferring the heroic route of direct

45 Cf. Peleus’ instructions to Phoenix to teach Achilles ‘to be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds’ (Il. 9.443). 46 See Asheri and Corcella (2006: ad 9.64.7) on these traditions, which include Mardonius’ being stoned to death (Plut. Arist. 19.2), or fleeing with a small band of followers (Justin 2.14.5). 47 Cf. Evans (1991: 67–70) and Flower and Marincola (2002: 9–11). 48 Cf. 9.41.4: ‘Artabanus’ opinion was the same as the Thebans’, since he too had particular foreknowledge.’ 49 The desire to sack Athens results in part from obstinacy (hup’ agnōmosunēs), while by the prelude to Plataea his opinion has become ‘more forceful, more obstinate and in no way yielding’ (iskhuroterē te kai agnōmonesterē kai oudamōs sugginōskomenē, 9.41.4).

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action over indirect. Herodotus explains Mardonius’ decision with a remarkable attribution of motivation: He was not persuaded, however, but there dripped into him [enestakto] a terrible desire [deinos . . . himeros] to take Athens a second time, motivated partly by obstinacy/folly [agnōmosunē], and partly by the fact that he could see himself using beacon fires placed on successive islands to signal to the King in Sardis that he held Athens. (9.3.1)

The ascription of motivation spotlights the cognitive dissonance of Mardonius’ expectation of jubilant victory, which ignores reality on the ground: the Persians have recently suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of Athenians and others at Salamis. The grand vision of a victory signalled by means of cross-continental beacon fire also stands out against Xerxes’ earlier, simpler communication to Susa via horseman to announce his own sack of Athens (8.54). By juxtaposing the statement of motivation with the outcome of the action it generates, Herodotus underlines the discrepancy between them: ‘Not this time either [oude tote], when he arrived in Attica, did [Mardonius] find the Athenians, but he discovered that the majority were on board ship at Salamis, and he took the city empty [haireei te erēmon to astu]’ (9.3.2). Through negative presentation (oude tote) Herodotus here underscores the frustration of Mardonius’ expectations: the city he envisaged himself capturing in grand mode is empty (erēmon). The capture of an empty city is not a heroic feat (indeed it is not a true city at all, on one proverbial Greek view50). And, beyond the sack of Athens, the entire secondary expedition will prove a failure, with Mardonius himself killed in the defeat at Plataea. Further irony perhaps resides in the capture of an ‘empty’ Athens, since a pervasive theme of Aeschylus’ Persians, which quite possibly reflects a more general Greek (or Athenian) conceptualization of the Persian invasion, is the emptiness of Asia that resulted from the Persian defeat at Salamis.51 It will be to the Persians’ own state of emptiness/lack in another sense—erēmos hoplōn (‘lack of armour’)— that Herodotus attributes Persian defeat at Plataea (9.63).

50 Intriguingly, in Aeschylus Persians the messenger conveys to the queen this very same sentiment, observing that a city is secure as long as its men remain (l. 349). 51 Cf. T. Harrison (2000b: 71 with n. 24, with further references for the theme of emptiness in Persians). Xerxes returns erēmon (alone/lonely, l. 734).

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The ascription of motivation at 9.3 thus contributes suggestively to the wider portrayal of Mardonius as conjuring up a (misplaced) vision of himself as (epic) hero. And yet Homer’s world itself furnishes examples of deluded heroes. The dream sent by Zeus in Iliad 2 persuades Agamemnon that Troy will be captured on that very day, when many more woes for the Achaeans are in fact in store (2.37–40). Only seven books later does the king acknowledge that at that earlier point he was ‘blind through yielding to my miserable passion’ (9.119). Agamemnon’s blindness was god-sent; and equally in the case of Mardonius the wider nexus of themes and vocabulary at 9.3 complicates a reading in terms simply of his personal delusion (cf. above, p. 300). Herodotus’ use here of the hapax enestakto may be suggestive in this respect. A quite rare poetic word denoting ‘to drop in/into’, it is used by Homer of courage being instilled in someone (Od. 2.271), by Bacchylides of Clio imbuing his spirit with the gift of poetry (12.229), by Pindar of the gods dripping nectar and ambrosia on a baby’s lips (Pyth. 9.63, with tmesis),52 and in this instance of the way in which desire (himeros) entered into Mardonius. Desire is characteristic of Mardonius, especially imperialistic desire; but formulated as here as an active subject that enters into someone, apparently from outside, it occurs only twice in the Histories,53 though it is a common formulation in poetry.54 We might wonder indeed whether the historian is tapping into tragedy’s imagery of inner flow used to describe 52 Cf. Aristophanes’ Wasps 702 for the democratic pay Athens ‘drips into’ its subjects—presumably a humorous use of a poetic word in an everyday context. The simple form stazō is more common, occurring several times in Homer and other poetry: Il. 19.39, 348, 354 (of nectar and ambrosia implanted in Patroclus and Achilles), Pind. Nem. 10.81, Aesch. Cho. 1058 (of the Erinyes’ eyes dripping with blood), Eum. 42 (of Orestes’ hands dripping blood in the Pythia’s vision), Ag. 179 (see below), Eur. Bacch. 620, Tro. 1199, Phoen. 230, Hipp. 122, etc., used once by Herodotus of water dripping from a rock into a pool–water that is said by the Arcadians to flow from the Styx (6.74.2). In Aesch. Ag. stazō denotes the dripping of pain, with perhaps a suggestion too of the weeping of tears (see below, n. 74 with text). 53 The other occasion is Croesus’ remark to Solon that ‘desire came into him [himeros . . . moi epēlthe] to ask whether he had ever seen a happier man’ (1.30.2). In this instance the powerful irony generated through Croesus’ speaking of his himeros in asking the wise man’s advice (since desire is in Greek thought essentially opposed to wise action) suggested that this was not merely a casual formulation. Elsewhere in the Histories, desire is envisaged as a passive object: one ‘holds/has/seizes a desire’ (5.106.5, 6.137.2, 7.43). 54 Cf. Pind. Ol. 1.40–1: Poseidon longs to seize Pelops, ‘struck in his wits with longing’, damenta phrenas himerōi.

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the movement of emotions, which Padel has brought out in reclaiming the ‘rebarbative physiology of its original use’.55 While the direction of the flow is usually from outside the body to within—evoking a person’s daemonic possession—a degree of ambivalence about its direction usually remains and implies ambivalence about whether internal or external forces are to be held responsible for the action the emotion produces. Here likewise it might suggest that Mardonius is afflicted by a force from without. That would be in keeping with his depiction elsewhere as agent of some higher power.56 Beyond the general contrast that surfaces between heroic aspiration and diminutive reality, the beacon-fire image opens up the possibility of more specific intertextuality. The striking image of fire signals placed on successive islands has often been viewed in terms of the historical practice of signalling by fire beacons, which the Greeks learned from Ancient Eastern cultures, and certainly used in the fifth century. It has usually been assumed that Aeschylus in the famous opening scene of the Agamemnon was inspired by the historic ‘mardoniograph’.57 However, the fact that the Persians at this point no longer had control over the islands west of Samos (8.132) poses a difficulty for taking the signals literally: it would not have been possible to set up such a chain of beacons. Following Macan, Flower and Marincola have raised the reverse possibility, that Herodotus is inspired by Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: ‘Just as in Agamemnon the beacon fires signal the fall of Troy, so H[erodotus] here has beacons signal the sack of Athens.’58 Importantly, the beacon signals occur not in Herodotus’ narrative of events, but in an ascription of motivation. The realm of motives demands the historian’s conjecture, and supplies an opportunity for imaginative reconstruction; and a grandiose notion in tension with 55

Padel (1992: 84). Marked out to the Spartans by the unwitting Xerxes as the human agent of ‘what is fitting’, he ‘will give such justice as befits’ the Spartans and Heraclidae (dikas dōsei toiautas hoias ekeinoisi prepei, 8.114.2). Serving as the pawn of a higher power (presumably Apollo), he does indeed render to the Spartans their due for that death. 57 On the historical practice of signalling by fire beacons, see Hdt. 7.183.1 (Greeks stationed at Artemisium informed by beacons) and Thuc. 2.94, 3.22, 80, 8.102.1. See further How and Wells (1928), Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover (1981: ad 8.102.1), and Asheri and Corcella (2006: ad 9.3.1). On the historical ‘mardoniograph’, see Munro (1904: 151) (‘it is not unlikely that Aeschylus has preserved for us . . . the list of Mardonius’ signal-stations’). 58 Flower and Marincola (2002: ad 9.3.1). 56

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reality would be characteristic of Mardonius, as we saw above. Thus, whether or not Herodotus has conjectured Mardonius’ motivation ex eventu, from historical signals, the ascription of motivation would supply a natural opportunity for him to further his characterization and more generally expand his readers’ frame of reference. He does this, for example, in exploring Leonidas’ motivation in resolving to remain and die at Thermopylae.59 It may be expressive that Herodotus’ unusual formula for dating Athens’ capture highlights the significant number ten.60 Herodotus engaged with a text of Persians.61 The textual connections noted below suggest that he also had access to a text of the Oresteia. Setting authorial intentions aside—shifting from the terminology of allusiveness to intertextuality62—a good proportion of Herodotus’ audience will have recognized a mythic reference with epic resonances at this point. In the fifth century contemporary wars could be conceptualized in terms of the Trojan War. Pericles compared his capture of Samos to Agamemnon’s of Troy, judging more impressive the capitulation after nine months of the city of the most powerful people of Ionia, than the capitulation of the barbarian city of Troy following a ten-year siege (etesi deka).63 Beyond the general sense of Troy in the background, the beacon image recalls the famous scene of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in which Clytemnestra informs the chorus 59 7.220, with Baragwanath (2008: 69–72). In such cases the skeleton of the ascription may have reached Herodotus in the form of oral tradition, but its elaboration may be counted Herodotus’ own. 60 Herodotus’ remark that the capture of Athens by the king occurred ‘in the tenth month’ with respect to the later capture by Mardonius (9.3.2)—dekamēnos, a hapax in the Histories (and a date that Macan (1908: ad loc.) found ‘unfortunately . . . only approximate’)—could strengthen the intertextuality by bringing to mind the ten years Agamemnon’s army have spent at Troy. As the chorus sing at Ag. 40: dekaton men etos tod’ epei (‘This is now the tenth year since . . . ’); see, too, the Herald at Ag. 505. 61 Cf., e.g., Rosenbloom (2006: 162). For the Persians as an important intertext for Herodotus’ account of Salamis, see Saïd (1981, 2002: 137–45), E. Hall (1996), Pelling (1997a), T. Harrison (2000b: 44–8), and Chiasson (2003: 31–2). We may certainly think in terms of the circulation of texts of Attic tragedy: Dionysus in Frogs (ll. 52–3) remarks that he has just been reading Euripides. Travelling troupes will have needed texts, and so provide a model for texts themselves circulating beyond Athens, but texts could also be sent on their own with a view to performance. See further Dearden (1999: 227–8) (including on evidence for the ‘flourishing trade in texts back and forth across to mainland Greece’ from the late fifth century: p. 228). 62 Cf. the distinction of D. Fowler (1997). 63 Plut. Per. 28.5. See also the Athenians’ epigrams on the siege of Eion, one vaunting Athens’ leadership of a new Trojan War Page (FGE XL = Aeschin. In Ctes. 3.184–5, Plut. Cim. 7.4–5), and, earlier, Simonides’ epigrams on the Persian Wars. Cf. Saïd, this volume, Ch. 2, }4.

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that fire signals have signalled to her the fall of Troy (281–316). Many, Athenians and non-Athenians alike, would have seen the Oresteia in reperformance, while others must have heard about this memorable scene.64 The general mythic baggage of Troy that the beacon image brings with it, together with its specifically tragic associations, enrich and intensify the dramatic ironies we observed above, amplifying the theme of delusion by the notion of Mardonius’ sack of Athens as replaying the Greek sack of Troy. If in his earlier description of the famous messenger system Herodotus, as Angus Bowie has expressed it, ‘repeat[ed] Aeschylus’ ironic move of talking of a victory over the East in terms of one of the glories of the eastern empires’,65 here it is all the more ironic that it should be the Persian commander who envisages potential Persian victory in terms of Troy. Mardonius’ ‘terrible desire’ in this poetically charged context, as well as recalling his own lust for imperialism, brings to mind Agamemnon and the Greeks’ destructive desire in attacking Troy,66 to which Clytemnestra refers in her deceitful response to the Argive Elders: ‘may no lust [erōs] fall upon [empiptē] the army to ravage what it should not [porthein ha mē khrē], through being overpowered by greed’ (l. 341). This was an excessive impulse to violent action that demanded divine retribution—which came in the form of the terrible nostoi, including Agamemnon’s. Erōs can be envisaged as a sickness, as Thucydides’ Nicias conceives of it: ‘the fatal, passionate lust for what is out of reach’ (in Cornford’s expression67)—the lust for 64

Aeschylus was reperformed in the decades following his death not only at Athens ( Ar. Frogs 10, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 12 T 1, E. Hall 1996: 2) but also elsewhere in Greece, and the Oresteia was perhaps particularly well known. One scene of Euripides’ Electra (produced around 413 BCE) is notoriously reliant for its full effect on audience awareness of the scene in Choephoroi of Electra’s identification of Orestes (Cho. 167–245). Aeschylus is the only Athenian tragedian whom Herodotus names (2.156). In the description of the Persian messenger system that relayed news of the Salamis defeat, Herodotus has already drawn on this very beacon passage of the Agamemnon (mentioned above, p. 301): A. M. Bowie (2007: ad 8.98–9). See further the Introduction to this volume, p. 52, for the Panhellenic character of Attic tragedy (for which Herodotus’ use of Attic tragedy is further evidence), and n. 216 with text for the Histories’ affinities with tragedy. 65 A. M. Bowie (2007: ad 8.98–9). 66 himeros and erōs are never used in this way in Homer, but only of sexual lust or (in the case of himeros) desire for lamentation. 67 Cornford (1907: 205). Cf. Thuc. 6.13.1, Nicias advising the Athenians: med’ . . . duserōtas einai tōn apontōn (‘and do not fall victim . . . to the fatal desire for the

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conquest, in that case, that caused the Athenians to ignore Nicias’ advice. Thus, in Thucydides’ formulation, ‘Erōs fell upon [enepese] everyone alike to sail for Sicily . . . The desire [epithumia] of most of them was excessive’ (6.24.3–4).68 Cornford proposed a ‘dark allusion’ here to Clytemnestra’s lines, ‘which so terribly fits the sequel’ (p. 214).69 Herodotus, too, hints at this model—of lust that overpowers wise advice and urges one to irrational and hubristic action—to supply one way of explaining Mardonius’ failure to heed the Thebans’ advice.70 The original context of the beacon image71—the powerful first scene of Agamemnon—enriches interpretation still further. The Argive elders’ response to the news of Troy’s capture is initially elated, but tempered as the ode goes on by a growing awareness of disquieting aspects.72 They hover between hope and anxiety, since the gods’ implacable vengeance risks falling on the Greeks, and especially their

faraway’). On duserōtas, see Young (1968: 116–17, 120 n. 18), and (with further references) Hornblower (2008: ad 6.13.1). 68 Rogkotis (2006) observes the sickness analogy and finds an intertextual connection with Hdt. 9.3: enestakto suggests that Mardonius is ‘intoxicated by a desire . . . dripping like poison inside his body’, while enepese at Thuc. 6.24.3 ‘evokes a powerful metaphorical image of an æø . . . that invades from outside like a disease’ (p. 63). Cf., in tragedy, Achilles on the planned Trojan campaign (Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis 808–9): ‘So great a passion [houtō deinos . . . erōs] for this expedition has fallen upon [empeptōk’] Greece, not without the involvement of the gods’; cf. 411: Greece is ill (nosei). 69 See also Connor (1984: 167–8) (‘The phrase is poetic, evocative of tragic drama, perhaps specifically modelled on the famous lines of Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon . . . ’, p. 167), and more generally Macleod (1983a: 141–6) and Hornblower (1987: 148–9) on tragic elements in Thucydides’ depiction of the Sicilian expedition (though Macleod (1983a: 157) prefers to view such affinities with tragedy in terms of the ‘common source’, Homer). See also Eur. IA 808–9 quoted above, n. 68. 70 Cf. Rogkotis (2006: 59–65), comparing the Athenians’ irrational disregarding of Nicias’ advice before the Sicilian expedition. Lust does frequently, in the Histories, have fatal—even, in T. Harrison’s formulation, ‘fateful’—consequences, which perhaps imply divine involvement even if this is never made explicit. T. Harrison (2000a: 238) offers examples. 71 Several recent readings find Herodotus exploiting suggestively readers’ familiarity with the context of an allusion. See, e.g., Grethlein (2006), arguing that the rhetoric of the speakers in the Syracusan embassy scene (7.153–63) is undermined by the contexts of the Iliadic references they cite. For an excellent discussion of intertextuality in Thucydides and a note of caution in the matter of detecting and analysing specific allusions to particular texts, see Rood (1998b). 72 The capture signifies righteous vengeance brought about by the gods, who sent the army to Troy in the first place (ll. 40 ff.). The struggle has been ‘over a woman of many men’ (l. 62) and has afflicted Greeks and Trojans alike (l. 67). See Denniston and Page (1957: ad 40–103).

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leader Agamemnon.73 Beset by fear, they invoke Zeus: ‘Zeus, who put men on the path to wisdom [phronein] by establishing the principle of learning by suffering [pathei mathos]’ (l. 177). The thought is enlarged in the lines that follow: There drips [stazei]74 before the heart instead of sleep pain that reminds them of their wounds; and against their will there comes discretion [par’ akontas ēlthe sōphronein]. (ll. 179–81, trans. Lloyd-Jones)

The human thoughtlessness evoked in these lines, which reflects a motif that reverberates through the entire trilogy, resonates with the parallel strand of motivation Herodotus ascribes to Mardonius, hup’ agnōmosunēs (9.3.1): in resolving to capture Athens, Mardonius is acting under the influence of the quality directly opposite to sōphronein (as Asheri has remarked on the passage75). Again, agnōmosunē (a word found only in poetry before its appearance in Herodotus) is a vague explanation,76 and infused in this instance by irony, for Mardonius himself has accused the Greeks of acting under the same impulse (e.g. 7.9.1; cf. 4.2). It would seem to evoke a world that is not altogether intelligible in terms of human explanations77: a world in which the divine, whose conduct can seem capricious to human eyes, is intimately involved.78 Some readers 73 In the striking metaphor, the eagle/Atreidae’s killing of the hare provokes Artemis’ phthonos (‘jealousy’)—hinting at the retribution to be feared for Iphigenia’s killing (135). 74 Cf. Fraenkel (1950: ad 179.): ‘here in Ag. 179 we must be careful not to lay too strong an emphasis on the possible reference to a wound. It is also possible to find in the passage the idea of constant dropping (cf. E. Suppl. 79 ff. . . . ); . . . to reproduce it with pedantic accuracy: “instead of sleep” (or “in the place where if things ran their untroubled course one would find sleep”) “one finds the slow drip, drip of pain”.’ Aileen Ajootian suggests to me an additional reference to tears, perhaps specifically those of Niobe—a quintessential sufferer of the gods’ vengeance and the subject of Aeschylus’ lost Niobe, also depicted weeping in statuary. 75 Asheri and Corcella (2006: ad 9.3.3). 76 Translated above as ‘obstinacy/folly’; Powell (19602) translates as ‘wilfulness’. 77 For this aspect of the Histories, see Lateiner (1989), Thomas (2000), and (for human motivation) Baragwanath (2008). 78 Agnōmosunē is the term selected by Sophocles’ Hyllus to denote the unkindness of the gods (Trach. 1266): ‘Raise him up, companions, showing great sympathy with me in what has happened, and knowing of the great unkindness [megalēn . . . agnōmosunēn] of the gods displayed in these events, gods who beget us and are called our fathers but who look on such sufferings as these!’ Cf. Euripides’ Bacchae, where

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might be reminded of the theological texture of the Aeschylean intertext, with its imagery of Moira, fate, taking its course. For some, the awareness and anxiety of the chorus of Aeschylus’ Argive Elders might serve as a foil to Mardonius’ simplistic and optimistic conception of his situation. More broadly, the way the trilogy stages a shift from tit-for-tat justice to the more stable resolution provided by the institution of the Areopagus court might prompt some to question as unproductive (or outmoded) Mardonius’ model of justice through vengeance.79 In several ways the Aeschylean intertext might thus enrich the effect of the mythic image, sharpen the reference to Troy, and amplify the general theme of delusion while presenting it as a human quality rather than as specific to Mardonius. Herodotus’ readers might, then, sense a far wider application of the image of beacons back to Sardis than could be imagined as being present in the mind of Mardonius. Whereas for Mardonius at 9.3, victory and Xerxes’ favour are anticipated in his focalization of the Greek mythic past, for readers, the image taps into their own mythic past, foreshadowing disaster. At the same time, however, this cannot be a matter simply of Persian delusion: the mythic referent is a story of a Greek attack: of the Greeks’ excesses in destroying Troy, with grievous consequences. To this extent, it complements the Persian perspective in Herodotus’ proem: the view that the Greeks’ destruction of Troy was disproportionate, and marked the beginning of East-West hostilities. Readers recalling Agamemnon may find Mardonius’ motivation ominous for him, but at the same time they are presented again with a different way of viewing his planned action: as being overdue retribution for Troy. Thus Mardonius’ conception of the campaign against Greece as retributive,80 as payment for recent Greek wrongs but also, on the wider scheme, for the destruction of Troy, culminates spectacularly in the way he envisages his capture of Athens at 9.3, with beacons of victory stretching this time towards the East.

conversely agnōmosunē is associated with the mortal folly of not revering the gods: divine strength ‘corrects/chastises [apeuthunei] those of mortals who honour folly [tous t’ agnōmosunan timōntas] and in their mad judgment don’t reverence the things of the gods’ (ll. 884–7). 79 Cf. below, n. 80 with text. 80 Beyond the specific dikas didonai terminology, note also the timōros logos (‘vengeance argument’) he presents to Xerxes (7.5.2–3).

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Herodotus’ presentation points not only back towards the mythic past, but also out towards the contemporary world. Thucydides’ reading of the Sicilian expedition as motivated by erōs highlights the possibility that contemporary Athenian imperialism could be viewed in this way81—and that would turn the mirror towards Greeks at this narrative moment (much as we found in Herodotus’ presentation of Theseus’ abduction of Helen), with late-fifth-century realities serving as a reminder that the pattern of lust-impelled conquest applies equally to Greeks: more broadly, that grand and deluded desires are not confined to Persia—nor to the legendary past.82 Contemporary wars could be conceptualized in terms of the Trojan War, as we have seen. And the Histories makes clear that it is not only Mardonius and the Persians who are in the grip of mythical thinking. The Spartan myth, for example—never to abandon one’s post in battle—finds over-amplified expression in Amompharetus’ uncompromising refusal to follow his superiors’ orders to shift position at Plataea following their agreement with the rest of the Greeks (9.53–7). The most famous instantiation of this myth is the Spartans’ last stand at Thermopylae, where Leonidas deemed it indecorous for Spartans to abandon their post, and resolved that they alone should remain and gain the glory (9.220).83 Amompharetus (who is later singled out as one of the bravest fighters: 9.71) appears to cast himself and the Spartans in this same Thermopylae mould: Euryanax and Pausanias in vain advise against thus imperilling the Spartans by causing them to remain there alone of all the Greeks (9.55.1). His picking up a stone with both hands and hurling it in a protest vote seems a gesture of similarly inflated and old-fashioned proportion (9.55.2); indeed it is Iliadic.84 This action prompts Pausanias’ accusation that Amompharetus is out of his mind; and yet Amompharetus hits the mark in terms 81 Note also the depiction of Greek imperialism in Euripides IA of 406 BCE (see above, nn. 68–9). 82 Cf. the Histories’ hints forward to Athenian empire: see inter alia Stadter (1992), Moles (1996), E. Irwin (2007b), and Bowie, this volume, Ch. 11, p. 274. 83 Mardonius—himself so sensitive to reputation—throws in the Spartans’ teeth this reputation when he sees them changing their battle order: ‘Men of Lacedaemon, you are held by everyone in this part of the world to be the bravest of men. They boast that you never retreat and never break rank, but keep to your post until you either kill your opponents or are killed yourselves. But this is a pack of lies, apparently. Before the battle has even started, before we have got to close quarters, you’ve already pulled back and left your post—we saw you do it!’ (9.48.1). 84 Cf., e.g., Il. 5.301–5, 7.263–71, 12.445–62.

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of a wider truth, for the Spartans are compromising in significant measure in following the other Greeks, who, rather than sticking to the agreed plan, have fled in fear into the town of Plataea (9.52). Elsewhere Herodotus stages the capacity for truths other than factual ones to communicate meaning.85 In the aftermath of Plataea, for example, he suggestively juxtaposes alternative possible readings and explanations—‘mythic’ (in the sense of symbolic or metaphorical) versus literal—in the twin accounts of Sophanes. This warrior was either grounded in battle by a real iron anchor, or his shield blazon depicted a painted anchor (9.74); and, while the latter version is the more plausible and realistic, the former far more effectively conveys the warrior’s extraordinary steadfastness in battle and a sense of the stories that have sprung from it. Besides opening up disquieting avenues of reflection for Greek readers by vividly encapsulating Mardonius’ conception of Xerxes’ invasion as just retribution against Greeks—for recent wrongs as well as the wrong against Troy—the beacon image also highlights the elusive nature of intertextuality, which has an ever-amplifying potential to provoke associations in readers. This potential is in large part out of the historian’s control. Its effect in this case is not to insist on a particular interpretation, but to expand readers’ imaginative vistas and interpretative frameworks and to complicate too-simple responses. Importantly, however, in the case of 9.3, the historian contains the mythic or tragic reading we have pursued—limiting this ‘touch of tragic colour’—by going on to provide (at 9.4.2) additional practical reasons for Mardonius’ ignoring the Thebans’ advice and capturing the city: ‘he assumed that the Athenians would give up their obstinacy now that the whole of Attica had fallen and was under his control’ (9.4.2). Thus Mardonius may be understood as aiming to show the Athenians the dire consequences of their refusal (at 8.140–4) to align themselves with the Persians. Such overdetermination, with the layering-up of explanations, is typical of Herodotus. The interpretation that the mythic image gestures towards becomes in the end just a further possibility, a further explanatory strand, but one that enlarges the significance of the action and proliferates explanatory possibilities.

85

See, e.g., Flory (1987) and Moles (1993).

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5. CONCLUSION Mythic reference, whether derived from local tradition or inflected through Panhellenic poetic genres, thus supplies a powerful means by which the historian engages readers in reflecting on history’s more speculative realms (of counterfactual history, and character and motivation). In this way it comments upon and enriches Herodotus’ narrative of ta genomena, ‘what actually happened’. Mythic thinking shapes individual psychologies and motivates and justifies action, supplying a further explanation for the shift Herodotus’ proem documents from free East–West movement between continents (prior to the theft of Io) to military escalation and acquisitive imperialism. The depiction of thought processes that promote overweening, arrogant, tyrannical acts—including those of Theseus, Xerxes and Mardonius86—at the same time sustains and underscores the Histories’ overarching narrative structure: the ‘red thread’ of imperial conquest (punctuated by tyrannical actions) that runs right through it. Mardonius’ self-mythicizing exposes a distance between myth and reality, which, beyond conveying his rhetorical aims along with a measure of delusion, invites reflection on the very process and validity of applying mythicizing parallels to recent history. Using the Trojan War as an analogue to the Persian Wars always entailed risk, as Dillery has observed: a case had to be made; the comparison did not go without saying.87 Mardonius’ use of the Trojan War comparison highlights this trouble with mythic analogy, since a reading in terms of exacting divinely sanctioned justice is challenged by an equally accessible reading that foregrounds the disturbing consequences of so doing. Mardonius’ invocation of the Trojan War analogy parallels Xerxes’, when he ascended Priam’s citadel (7.43.1, mentioned above, p. 295) and thereby staged an interpretation of the war against Greece in terms of justice for Troy. But Herodotus demonstrates how very easily the mythic past may be Dewald, this volume, Ch. 1, discusses the related ‘thoughtless ruler’ motif. Dillery (1996) argues that Herodotus makes such a case by means of the duel structure in his Thermopylae account, and observes (p. 247) that Simonides in his Plataea poem could not take the comparison for granted either, but felt obliged to make the case. Similarly Herodotus’ Homeric resonances do not simply signal replications of heroism, but also draw attention to failures quite to measure up—and consequently foreground the complexities involved in positing such comparisons: Pelling (2006a). 86 87

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appropriated as argument and justification, right from the spectacle in the proem of Persian logioi crafting Greek myth into the shape that best suits their purposes, as Dewald has shown.88 Mardonius’ mythic discourse (and equally Leonidas’ and Amompharetus’) illustrates the power of myth in shaping recent history, but equally points to areas of disparity between the contemporary context and the mythic referent, and the perilous consequences of mythic analogy or ideology where it promotes unreflective and belligerent action. In his presentation of the Theseus myth Herodotus staged the power of mythic discourse to serve instead as a tool of peace and reconciliation. 88

Dewald (1999).

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Index locorum AELIAN De Natura Animalium 12.21: 267 AESCHINES Against Ctesiphon 3.183–5: 94 n. 33, 97 n. 42 3.184–5: 304 n. 63 AESCHYLUS Agamemnon 40 ff.: 306 n. 72 40–103: 306 n. 72 40: 304 n. 60 60–2: 150 62: 306 n. 72 67: 306 n. 72 135: 307 n. 73 177: 307 179–81: 307 179: 302 n. 52 281–316: 305 341: 305 505: 304 n. 60 Libation Bearers 167–245: 305 n. 64 1058: 302 n. 52 Eumenides 42: 302 n. 52 Persians 8: 296 n. 30 79–80: 260, 262 185–6: 260 261: 296 n. 30 349: 301 n. 50 504–11: 296 n. 30 734: 301 n. 51 796–7: 296 n. 30 Prometheus 484–506: 182–3 n. 46 ANONYMUS IAMBLICHI 7.10: 249 7.12–14: 249

7.12: 249–50 7.13–16: 250 n. 48 7.13–14: 250 7.15: 250 7.16: 250 APOLLODORUS THE MYTHOGRAPHER Epitome 1.7–9: 202 n. 23 Library 1.9.11–3: 168 2.2.2: 168 2.5.9: 276 3.9: 202 n. 24 3.13.7: 239 3.15.5–8: 208 n. 39 3.15.7: 202 n. 23 3.210: 202 n. 24 ARCHILOCHUS SLG 478.52: 263 ARISTOPHANES Frogs 52–3: 304 n. 61 Clouds 42: 231 n. 55 Wasps 702: 302 n. 52 1174–80: 14 n. 51 ARISTOTLE Poetics 1452a16–21: 222 n. 30 1452a29–b8: 222 n. 30 1454b19–55a21: 222 n. 30 Politics 2.7.2–4 = 1271b: 202 n. 24, 207 n. 37, 209 n. 41 1315a–b: 249 Rhetoric 1.15.13/1375b: 93 ARRIAN Anabasis

344

Index locorum

ARRIAN (cont.) 6.29.4–7: 219 ATHENAEUS 8.347e: 165 n. 77 2.23d: 168 n. 9 BACCHYLIDES 11: 177 n. 30 12.229: 302 17: 202, 202 n. 23, 212 17.22: 291 n. 11 17.41: 291 n. 11 CENSORINUS De die natali 21.1: 28 n. 113 CICERO De Divinatione 2.115–6: 3 n. 6 De Legibus 1.5: 3, 64 n. 9 [CRITIAS] Sisyphus DK 88 B25: 249 CURTIUS RUFUS 10.9.12: 239 n. 20 DIO CASSIUS Trojan Discourse xi: 137 n. 33 DIODORUS SICULUS Library 1.21: 188 1.22.7: 183 n. 47 1.65: 239 1.96.2: 183 n. 47 1.97.4: 183 n. 47 4.60.3: 202 n. 24 4.79.1–2: 207 n. 37 5.51.3: 206–7 n. 36 5.64–80: 207 n. 37 5.84: 206–7 n. 36, 207 n. 37 10.27: 260 n. 16 DIOGENES LAERTIUS Life of Solon 1.48: 93 n. 26 DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS De Thucydide

5: 59 n. 1 6: 46 8: 47 EPHORUS FGrH 70, F. 8 = D.S. 4.1.2: 195 n. 1 EURIPIDES Bacchae 620: 302 n. 52 884–7: 308 n. 78 Electra 302–547: 305 n. 64 Hippolytus 122: 302 n. 52 Iphigenia at Aulis 411: 306 n. 68 808–9: 306 n. 68, 306 n. 69 Phoenissae 230: 302 n. 52 Rhesus 29: 276 n. 24 Supplices 79 ff.: 307 n. 74 308: 291 n. 11 575: 291 n. 11 728: 291 n. 11 Troades 1199: 302 n. 52 EUSEBIUS Praeparatio Evangelica 10.8.6: 183 n. 47 HECATAEUS FGrH 1, F. 1: 12 n. 48, 13 n. 49, 169 n. 16 FGrH 1, F. 1b22: 91 n. 19 FGrH 1, F. 20: 185 n. 53 FGrH 1, F. 27: 90 n. 18 FGrH 1, F. 286: 258 n. 10 FGrH 1, F. 302: 12 HELLANICUS FGrH 4, F. 59–60: 258 n. 10 FGrH 4, F. 66–70: 258 n. 12 FGrH 4, F. 132: 258 n. 10 HERODOTUS Histories 1.1–5: 18, 18 n. 71, 20, 61 ff., 62, 67 n. 17, 102, 133, 152 n. 33, 198, 200 1.1: 91

Index locorum 1.1.1: 103, 200 n. 18 1.1.4: 91 1.2: 69 1.2.1: 91, 91 n. 20, 103, 256 1.2.2: 91 1.2.3: 103, 256 1.3: 89, 133 n. 25 1.3.1: 91, 103 1.3.2: 103, 133 n. 25 1.4.1–3: 95 1.4.1: 96, 104 1.4.2: 104 1.4.4: 95, 104, 291 1.5: 66–7, 151, 151–2 n. 32 1.5.1–2: 198 1.5.2: 89, 105 1.5.3: 27, 39, 66, 96, 156 n. 48, 189, 199, 199 n. 14 1.5.4: 19, 68, 95 1.6.2: 89, 89 n. 12, 104 1.6.3: 104 n. 71 1.7: 68–9, 264 1.8.1: 102 1.8.4: 102 1.13: 76 1.14: 70 1.19–25: 172 1.19–21: 81 1.19: 76–7 1.22.4: 20 1.23–4: 136 1.24.6: 136 1.24.7–8: 189 n. 65 1.24.7: 120 n. 38, 136 1.24.8: 172 1.27: 50, 79 1.29–33: 82 1.30–3: 278 n. 32 1.30–2: 79 1.30.2: 302 n. 53 1.31: 16, 77, 221 n. 29 1.32.1: 220 n. 25 1.32.9: 78 1.34–45: 135, 155 1.34: 77 1.34.1: 156, 231 1.35–45: 145 1.35: 71 1.35.2–3: 158 1.35.4: 159 1.41–2: 158 1.41.3: 158

1.42: 158 1.43.2: 160 1.44: 161 1.45: 158 1.45.2: 161 1.45.3: 163 n. 69 1.46: 76, 76 n. 39 1.47–8: 76 1.49: 76 1.52: 76 1.53: 3 n. 6 1.53.3: 165 n. 76 1.55: 76 1.56–8: 72, 290 n. 7 1.56: 69 1.56.3: 265 1.57: 188 n. 62 1.57–8: 187 n. 58 1.59–60: 63 n. 7, 81 1.59: 79 1.59.4–6: 248 1.62: 77 1.63: 188 n. 61 1.64.2: 104 n. 74 1.65–8: 39 n. 146 1.65: 184 1.66: 76 1.67–9: 173 1.67–8: 70, 72, 81 1.67.5: 174 1.68.1–3: 174 1.68.3: 196 1.68.5: 174 1.68.6: 104 n. 74 1.71: 79 1.73: 82, 104 n. 74 1.74: 81 n. 48 1.75: 81 n. 48, 104 n. 74 1.78: 76, 77 1.80: 71 1.82: 73 1.84: 71 1.85: 76 1.86–9: 80 1.86: 84 1.86.3: 163 1.86.6: 219, 231 n. 57 1.87–8: 163 1.87: 77 1.87.3: 231 n. 56 1.89: 80 1.90.3: 231 n. 56

345

346

Index locorum

HERODOTUS (cont.) 1.90.4: 231 n. 56 1.91: 76, 188 n. 61 1.91.1: 157 1.91.6: 225 1.92–3: 69 1.92: 76 1.95: 63, 217 n. 16, 229 1.95.1: 215–6, 216 n. 13, 217–8, 228 1.95.2: 244 1.95–106: 245 n. 35 1.96–101: 244 ff. 1.96–100: 233 1.96.1: 244, 246 n. 36, 246 n. 37, 248 1.96.2: 244, 249 1.97–8.1: 245 1.97.2: 245, 248–9 1.97.3: 249 1.98: 82 1.98.3: 245 1.99.2: 218 n. 18 1.103.2: 182–3 n. 46 1.105: 73, 77 1.106: 80–1 1.107–22: 5 1.107–8: 77 1.107.2: 218 1.108–23: 251 n. 51 1.108.3: 223 1.110: 218 n. 20 1.110.1: 218 n. 18 1.111.1: 219 1.114–9: 221 1.114.1: 221 1.115.2: 227 1.116: 222 1.116.5: 115, 215, 226 n. 44 1.117.1: 115, 215 1.117.2: 215, 226 n. 44 1.118.1: 215 1.118.3: 91 1.119: 82, 101 n. 57 1.119.6: 222 1.122.3: 218, 218 n. 20, 219 1.123: 81, 223 1.123.1: 223 1.123.2: 224 n. 35 1.124.1–2: 219 1.125–6: 79 1.125.3–4: 266 1.125.3: 265–6 1.126.6: 40, 219

1.127: 79 1.127.1: 224 n. 35 1.127.2: 220 1.129: 224 1.130: 104 n. 74 1.130.1: 224 1.130.3: 217, 217 n. 16 1.131–9: 243, 247 n. 42 1.131: 243, 252 1.136.2: 227 1.137: 252 1.139: 216 n. 12 1.141: 79, 104 n. 74 1.146: 72, 73 1.147: 69 1.153: 79 1.155–6: 79 1.155: 80 1.155.4: 105 1.157–60: 77 1.157–9: 76 1.160: 77 1.160.2: 139 1.165–7: 73 1.165: 76 1.166: 72 1.167: 72, 76 1.168: 77 1.171: 69, 72, 104 n. 74 1.171.2: 104 n. 74, 204–5, 208, 210, 212 n. 45 1.171.3: 206 1.171.4: 206 1.171.5–6: 205 n. 28, 206–7 n. 36, 210 1.171.5: 205–6 1.171.6: 205, 205 n. 28, 258 n. 13 1.172: 188 n. 62, 205 n. 28 1.172.1: 73 n. 33 1.173: 69 1.173.2: 91 n. 20, 207 1.173.3: 207, 209 1.174: 76, 104 n. 74 1.174.5: 288 n. 3 1.175: 77 1.176.4: 104 n. 74 1.182: 63, 76 1.182.1: 13 n. 49 1.184: 71, 71 n. 28 1.187: 80 1.191: 82 1.196: 252 1.201–14: 227

Index locorum 1.201–3: 228 1.204: 59, 74, 84 1.204.1: 228 1.204.2: 40, 219, 230, 231, 231 n. 57 1.205.2: 230 1.207: 80, 229 1.207.2: 229, 231 n. 57 1.207.6–7: 80 1.209–10: 231 n. 57 1.209.2: 266, 266 n. 28 1.211: 80 1.212: 80 1.212.2: 232 1.214: 84, 229 1.214.1: 228 1.214.5: 217, 228, 228 n. 47 2.2.4: 121 2.2.5: 113 n. 23 2.3: 59–60 2.3.1: 200 n. 18 2.3.2: 31 2.4.2: 114 2.10.1: 179 n. 37 2.20–7: 12 2.20.1: 12 2.21: 12, 13, 113 n. 23 2.22.1: 113 n. 23 2.23: 1, 12, 12 n. 48, 51 n. 208, 123, 195 n. 1 2.32–3: 186 n. 56 2.32–33.1: 137 n. 33 2.42: 186 n. 54 2.43–5: 68 2.43: 27 n. 109, 196–7 n. 5 2.43.2: 91 n. 20, 197 2.44: 27 n. 109 2.44.2: 190 2.44.4: 91 n. 20 2.45: 13, 113, 195 n. 1, 197 2.45.1–3: 138 2.45.1–2: 13 2.45.1: 1, 113 n. 23 2.47–8: 183 2.47.2: 189 n. 63, 190 2.48–9: 185 2.48: 186 2.49: 137 n. 33, 169, 182, 186 n. 55 2.49.1–2: 186 2.49.1: 115, 188, 190 2.49.2–3: 186 2.49.2: 186–7, 189 2.49.3: 186, 190

347

2.50: 190, 196–7 n. 5 2.50.3: 112 n. 20 2.52: 78 2.54–7: 184 2.54–5: 34 2.54.2: 34 2.55: 42 2.56: 35, 188 n. 61 2.57: 36, 182–3 n. 46 2.58: 114, 183 n. 49 2.64: 114 2.65.2: 189 n. 63 2.73.3: 13 n. 49 2.77: 43 n. 167 2.77.1: 200 n. 18 2.79: 114 2.81: 114 2.83: 110 n. 9, 182–3 n. 46 2.91: 258 2.91.2: 91 n. 20 2.91.4–5: 114 n. 27 2.98.2: 114 n. 27 2.99–192: 107 n. 2 2.99–142: 107 n. 1, 107 n. 2, 108 n. 4 2.99–141: 129, 131 n. 17 2.99: 124 2.99.1–141: 124 2.99.1: 3 n. 3, 120, 130 n. 12, 197 n. 8 2.99.2: 124 n. 46 2.99.4: 112 n. 19 2.100: 124 n. 46 2.100.1: 141 2.100.2–3: 108 2.100.2: 71 2.101.1: 124 n. 46 2.101.2: 112 n. 19 2.102–6: 183 2.102.2: 104 n. 74, 124 n. 46 2.102.5: 105 2.103: 188 n. 62 2.103.1: 104 n. 74 2.107.1: 104 n. 74 2.108.1: 104 n. 74 2.108.2: 112 n. 19 2.110.1: 112 n. 19 2.110.2: 104 n. 74 2.111: 108, 130 n. 11 2.111.1: 124 n. 46 2.112–21: 200 2.112–20: 18, 18 n. 71, 33 n. 130, 47 n. 188, 91, 108, 127, 129 ff., 146, 197 n. 8, 235 n. 6

348

Index locorum

HERODOTUS (cont.) 2.112: 111 n. 15, 112 n. 19, 132, 146 2.112.1: 90–2, 110–1, 111 n. 16, 112 n. 19, 124 n. 46, 129, 133 n. 23 2.112.2: 91–2, 129 n. 8, 200 n. 18 2.113: 114 n. 25 2.113.1: 120, 130–1, 131 n. 15, 132, 135–7 2.113.2: 92, 132 2.113.3: 96, 134, 134 n. 26, 136 n. 30 2.114–7: 145 2.114: 147 2.114.1–3: 96 2.114.2: 120, 134–5 2.114.3: 134, 136 2.115: 148 2.115.1: 136 2.115.2–3: 121, 135 2.115.2: 136, 158 n. 55 2.115.3: 115, 134, 134 n. 26, 136–7 2.115.4–6: 115 2.115.4–5: 96, 134, 148 2.115.4: 135, 138, 150 2.115.6: 138 2.116–7: 133, 133 n. 24, 139 2.116: 92, 201 n. 19 2.116.1: 30, 30 n. 116, 123, 123 n. 44, 129 n. 8, 130 2.116.3–5: 123 n. 44 2.116.3: 133 2.118: 130 2.118–9.3: 136 2.118.1: 91–2, 113 n. 23, 118–20, 132, 136–8 2.118.2–3: 133 n. 25 2.118.2: 137 2.118.3: 138 2.118.4: 112, 131 n. 14 2.119: 152, 293 n. 22 2.119.1: 92, 137–8, 139 n. 35 2.119.2–3: 113, 138 2.119.2: 101 2.119.3: 101, 120, 132, 137, 139, 188 n. 62 2.120: 139, 140 n. 40, 150–2, 151–2 n. 32, 155, 292 2.120.1: 129 n. 8, 139 2.120.2: 92 2.120.4: 140 2.120.5: 96, 100, 116, 138 n. 34, 140, 271 2.121: 108, 130, 200

2.121.1: 124 n. 46 2.122.1: 111 n. 16 2.122.2: 33 2.123: 27, 114 2.123.1: 125 2.124.1: 124 n. 46 2.127.1: 124 n. 46 2.128: 30 n. 119 2.129: 124 n. 46 2.131: 22 2.133: 108 2.136.1: 124 n. 46 2.137.1: 124 n. 46 2.139.1: 239 2.141.1: 124 n. 46 2.142–3: 141 2.143: 24 n. 95, 31 n. 124 2.145–6: 183 2.145.3: 91 n. 20 2.145.4: 90, 112 2.146.1: 91 n. 20 2.152.4: 205 n. 31 2.156: 52, 305 n. 64 2.167: 188 n. 62 2.171: 114 2.171.3: 115 2.173: 124 2.182.2: 104 n. 74 3.1: 43 3.2.1: 104 n. 72 3.2.2: 266 3.16.7: 218 n. 18 3.36: 80, 84 3.38.4: 181 3.50–3: 16, 55, 221–2 n. 29 3.64: 188 n. 61 3.65: 225 3.72.4: 229 n. 48 3.75.1: 265, 267 3.75.2: 115 3.80–2: 5, 245 n. 33, 246, 248, 252 3.80.1: 214 n. 3, 216 n. 10, 247 n. 42 3.82.5: 181 3.88: 104 n. 74 3.97: 104 n. 74 3.108.2: 272 3.115–6: 188 n. 62 3.122: 23 n. 89, 25, 25 n. 96, 142, 201, 211 3.122.1: 204, 230 n. 53 3.122.2: 23, 88–9, 196–7, 197 n. 6, 204, 212

Index locorum 3.125: 212 3.130: 188 n. 62 3.143.2: 105 3.164–5: 162 4.2: 307 4.5–10: 270 4.5–7: 32 4.5.1: 13 n. 49, 32 n. 126 4.7: 40 4.7.1–2: 32 4.7.1: 32 4.8–10: 32, 265 n. 26 4.8: 168 n. 11 4.8.2: 13 4.10.3: 265 n. 26 4.11–2: 32 4.11.2: 33 n. 129 4.11.4–2.1: 33 n. 128 4.12.1–3: 33–4 n. 131 4.12.3: 33–4 n. 131 4.16: 30 4.18: 104 n. 74 4.25: 188 n. 62 4.25.1: 13 n. 49 4.36.2: 12 n. 48, 13 4.42.4: 13 n. 49 4.43.1: 266 4.45: 69 4.81.1: 188 n. 62 4.84: 236 4.84.1: 236 n. 7 4.89: 184 4.99.4–5: 179 4.103: 101 n. 57 4.105: 63 4.114: 188 n. 61 4.144: 104 n. 74 4.145–6: 170 n. 18 4.145: 196–7 n. 5 4.148.1: 104 n. 72 4.154: 116 4.179: 196–7 n. 5 4.187.2: 188 n. 62 4.189: 185 4.189.1: 185 4.189.2: 185 4.197: 188 n. 62 4.205: 296 5.2: 104 n. 74 5.18.3: 73 n. 33 5.32: 266 5.57–61: 8 n. 27, 184–5

5.58.1: 185–6 5.58.2: 185, 187 5.58.3–61: 185 5.63: 35 n. 134 5.65: 69 5.67: 38 5.69: 39 5.70.1: 116 5.76: 69 5.86: 188 n. 62 5.86.3: 13 n. 49 5.89.2: 104 n. 74 5.92–3: 279 5.92: 290 n. 8 5.92Ç.3: 173 n. 23 5.94.2: 40, 93, 279 5.95: 93, 290 n. 8 5.97.3: 25 n. 98, 44 5.106.5: 302 n. 53 5.122.2: 88 6.6: 104 n. 74 6.11.2: 43 6.11.3: 271 n. 10 6.14: 188 n. 62 6.14.1: 139 6.21: 53 n. 218 6.43: 216 n. 10, 247 n. 42 6.43.3: 214 n. 3 6.44: 104 n. 74 6.51–2: 63 n. 7, 270 6.52–5: 261 6.53–4: 258 6.53: 197 n. 6 6.53.1–2: 91 n. 20 6.53.2: 197 6.55.1: 204 n. 27 6.58–9: 263 6.61–3: 63 n. 7 6.61: 197 n. 5 6.61.3: 98 6.62: 175 6.62.1: 98 6.62.2: 175 6.65.2: 98 6.66: 35 n. 134, 63 n. 7 6.68–70: 63 6.72.1: 98 6.74.2: 302 n. 52 6.86: 116 6.105: 287 n. 1 6.109.5: 271 n. 10 6.117: 277 n. 27

349

350

Index locorum

HERODOTUS (cont.) 6.137–40: 279 6.137.2: 302 n. 53 7.5.2–3: 308 n. 80 7.5.3: 295 7.6: 63 n. 7 7.7: 104 n. 74 7.8: 104 n. 74 7.8ª.1: 271 7.9: 104 n. 74 7.9.1: 295 7.9.1: 307 7.9ª: 295, 296 n. 29 7.10: 271 n. 10 7.10Ł.2: 296–7 7.11: 280 7.11.2: 218 n. 19, 265, 266 n. 28, 267 7.11.4: 104 n. 74, 278 n. 31 7.17: 52 n. 216 7.20: 21, 88, 90, 96, 102, 199 7.20.2: 89, 102–3, 104 n. 74, 272 7.26.3: 275 7.27–9: 235 ff. 7.27: 235 7.27.2: 241, 243 7.29–9.2: 243 7.28–9: 233 7.28: 241 7.29.1: 243 7.29.3: 235 7.33: 100, 101 n. 57, 273 7.37.2: 235 7.38–40: 233, 235 ff. 7.38–9: 244 7.38: 235 7.38.1: 241 7.39: 117, 235 7.39.2: 244 7.39.3: 237 n. 11, 239 n. 19 7.43: 88, 95, 199 n. 14, 275 n. 19, 302 n. 53 7.43.1: 275, 295, 311 7.51: 104 n. 74 7.54: 188 n. 62 7.56.2: 262 7.58: 275 n. 19, 276 7.59: 199 n. 14 7.60–100: 274 7.60–99: 257 7.61–99: 187 n. 58 7.61–83: 257 7.61: 91 n. 20, 197 n. 6

7.61.1: 260 7.61.2–3: 257, 263–4 7.61.3: 20, 258, 263, 280 n. 36 7.62.1: 20, 257–8, 266, 280 n. 36 7.63: 259 7.64.2: 259 7.71: 206 n. 33 7.72.2: 259 7.73: 187, 258 7.74.1: 258, 264 7.74.2: 258, 259 n. 14 7.75.2: 258, 259 n. 14 7.84–8: 257 7.85.1: 257 n. 7 7.89–99: 257 7.89.2: 258 7.90: 258 7.91: 88, 258, 280 n. 36 7.92: 258, 280 n. 36 7.93: 258 7.94: 258 7.95.1: 258 7.95.2: 258 7.98: 257 n. 7, 259 7.104.4: 181 7.108: 275 n. 19 7.114: 101 n. 57 7.117.1: 266 7.125–6: 262 n. 22 7.127: 275 n. 19 7.133–7: 98, 117 7.133.2: 117–8 n. 34 7.134–7: 287 7.134.1: 110 n. 12 7.134.3: 98 7.135.1: 117 7.136.2: 117 7.137.1–3: 98 7.137.1: 90, 99 7.137.2–3: 117 7.137.2: 99 7.139–43: 211 7.139: 292 7.139.1: 214 n. 3 7.140: 282 n. 42 7.140.2: 262 n. 21 7.143: 188 n. 61 7.148–52: 211 n. 44, 260, 279 7.148–9: 280 7.150–71: 279 7.150–1: 280 7.150: 211 n. 44

Index locorum 7.150.1: 260 7.150.2: 260, 278 n. 31 7.152: 188 n. 62, 286 7.152.1: 280 n. 37 7.152.3: 27, 42, 213, 293 7.153–63: 52 n. 212, 306 n. 71 7.157–65: 211 n. 44 7.157–63: 94 7.157–62: 39 n. 147, 281 7.159: 94, 110 n. 13, 281 7.160–1: 211 n. 44 7.161: 199 n. 14, 281 7.161.3: 94 7.168: 211 n. 44 7.169–71: 282 7.169–70: 99 7.169: 209 7.169.2: 99, 209, 209 n. 41 7.170: 90, 292 n. 15 7.170.1–2: 209 7.170.1: 210 7.170.2–4: 210 7.170.2: 209 n. 42 7.170.3–4: 209 7.171: 90 7.171.1–2: 209 7.171.1: 99, 203 n. 25, 205 n. 28, 209–10 7.171.2: 91 n. 22 7.175.1: 298 n. 38 7.176.2: 298 n. 38 7.180: 101 n. 57, 273 7.183.1: 303 n. 57 7.187.2: 274 n. 16 7.188–91: 277 7.189: 31 n. 123 7.191.2: 290 n. 9 7.193: 44 7.196: 275 n. 19 7.197: 278 7.203.2: 262 7.204: 68 n. 20 7.208: 68 7.209: 104 n. 74 7.209.5: 13 n. 49 7.211.2: 298 n. 38 7.214.2: 13 n. 49, 263 7.220: 297, 304 n. 59 7.220.3–4: 274 n. 18 7.220.4: 261–2, 266 7.223: 298 n. 38

7.225–8: 298 n. 38 7.225.2: 262, 298 n. 38 7.228: 48, 263 7.238: 262 8.3.1–2: 25 n. 98 8.8–9: 63 8.8: 188 n. 62 8.13: 271 8.34–9: 282 n. 42 8.39: 39 n. 148 8.39.1: 277 8.41.2–3: 277 8.44.2: 290 n. 7 8.54–5: 277 8.54: 301 8.60: 298 n. 38 8.64.2: 277 8.65: 277–8 n. 29 8.68: 299 n. 44 8.78: 281 n. 38 8.83.2: 277 8.84.2: 277 8.87: 188 n. 62 8.88.3: 105 8.97.2: 296 8.98–9: 305 n. 64, 305 n. 65 8.100.1: 297, 299–300 8.102.2: 104 n. 74 8.102.3: 299 n. 44 8.103: 299 n. 44 8.104–6: 77 n. 40 8.107.1: 297, 300 8.109.3: 52 n. 216, 271 8.113.3: 274 n. 16 8.114: 68, 297 8.114.2: 298 n. 34, 303 n. 56 8.119: 13 n. 49 8.132: 303 8.134.2: 110 n. 12 8.135: 76–7 n. 39 8.137–9: 269 8.137–8: 265 8.137: 174 8.137.2: 174 8.137.4–5: 175 8.138: 70, 175 8.140–4: 310 8.140: 299 n. 44 8.143.2: 100 8.144: 186, 286 8.144.2: 183 n. 48

351

352

Index locorum

HERODOTUS (cont.) 9.2.1: 104 n. 74 9.3: 104 n. 74, 300 ff., 302, 306 n. 68, 308, 310 9.3.1: 301, 307 9.3.2: 301, 304 n. 60 9.3.3: 307 n. 75 9.4.2: 310 9.12: 261 9.16: 85 9.18: 188 n. 62 9.26–7: 39 n. 152, 68, 95, 110 n. 13, 279, 282 9.26: 283 n. 45 9.26.1: 95, 281 n. 38, 283 n. 44 9.27: 284 9.27.1: 95, 283 n. 44 9.27.2: 283 n. 44 9.27.2–4: 95 9.27.4–5: 199 n. 14 9.27.4: 95 9.27.5: 39 9.28: 283 9.28–32: 170 9.32.2: 172 n. 22 9.33–4: 285 9.33: 170 9.33.1: 171 9.33.2: 171, 171 n. 20 9.33.3: 171, 171 n. 21 9.33.4: 171, 174 9.33.5: 171, 174 9.34: 169–70, 172 9.34.1: 171, 172 n. 22, 179 9.34.2: 174 9.35: 293 9.35.1: 172, 174, 181 9.37: 182, 285 9.37.4: 182 9.38.1: 182 9.41: 300 9.41.4: 300 n. 48, 300 n. 49 9.48.1: 309 n. 83 9.52: 310 9.53–7: 309 9.55.1: 309 9.55.2: 309 9.62–3: 170 n. 19 9.62: 12 9.63: 299, 301 9.64: 68 n. 20 9.64.1: 297 9.64.2: 298, 298 n. 36

9.64.7: 300 n. 46 9.65.2: 277–8 n. 29 9.71: 309 9.71.1: 299 9.71.2: 290 9.71.4: 274 n. 17 9.72.1: 290 9.73: 45 n. 182, 196–7 n. 5, 202 n. 22, 203 n. 25, 279 n. 34 9.73.1–2: 289 9.73.1: 90, 99, 290–1 9.73.2: 291, 293 n. 20 9.73.3: 99, 289, 293 n. 20 9.74: 310 9.81.2: 188 n. 62 9.84: 188 n. 62 9.92–6: 221 9.92–5: 45, 168 n. 10 9.92–94.3: 178 9.93–5: 285 9.96.2: 274 n. 16 9.97: 69, 277–8 n. 29 9.98.4: 179 9.101.1: 277–8 n. 29 9.108–13: 5, 175 9.108.1: 102 9.108.2: 102 9.109: 175 9.109.3: 175 9.110: 175 9.116–20: 100, 273 9.116: 44 n. 174, 199 n. 14, 200, 293 9.116.3: 96 9.120: 44 n. 174, 200, 287, 293 9.120.2: 100 9.120.3: 196–7 n. 5 9.120.4: 101 9.121: 100, 274 9.122: 293 n. 22 9.166.3: 100 9.220: 309 HESIOD Theogony 338: 12 n. 47 1001: 258 n. 10 Fr. 37 MW: 177 n. 30 Fr. 140 MW: 202 n. 24 Fr. 145 MW: 202 n. 21 HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS On the Nature of the Child 29.2: 179

Index locorum HITTITE TEXTS KUB XVII 28 IV 45–56: 238 n. 16 HOMER Iliad 1.4–5: 297 n. 31 2.37–40: 302 2.393: 297 n. 31 2.485: 141 2.552: 281 2.555: 94 2.557–8: 93 2.695–710: 273 2.700–1: 274 2.701–2: 100, 273 2.867: 206–7 n. 36 2.876: 69 3.156–7: 140 3.443–4: 134 4.491–2: 163 n. 71 5.62–3: 44 5.301–5: 309 n. 84 5.785: 276 6.289–92: 92 n. 24 6.326–31: 140 7.263–71: 309 n. 84 7.372–4: 140 9.119: 302 9.443: 300 n. 45 10.121: 186 n. 57 10.427: 189 10.428: 206–7 n. 36 11.568–71: 202 n. 24 12.445–62: 309 n. 84 14.321–2: 202 n. 24 15.53: 189 15.348: 297 n. 31 17.502–4: 297 n. 32 18.607–8: 12 n. 47 19.39: 302 n. 52 19.348: 302 n. 52 19.354: 302 n. 52 21.130–1: 275 21.331–41: 276 n. 23 21.192–3: 275 21.194–9: 275 21.195–7: 12 n. 47 21.219: 275 23.21: 262 24.380: 189 24.656: 189 Odyssey 1.169: 189

1.170: 157 2.271: 302 4.351–570: 110 n. 8 4.352: 101 n. 56 4.452: 111 n. 17 4.478: 101 n. 56 4.556: 118 4.582: 101 n. 56 4.585–6: 101 6.207–8: 144 8.145–57: 159 11.281–97: 176 11.288–91: 176 n. 26 14.57–8: 144 15.223–81: 176 15.224: 177 n. 28 15.225–55: 176 15.228: 177 n. 28 15.238: 177 n. 28 15.248–50: 177 15.272–8: 177 n. 29 15.272: 177 15.275: 177 n. 28 15.277: 177 n. 28 19.395–6: 175 n. 25 MARMOR ALBANUM IG 14.1293A.82: 276 n. 25 ISOCRATES Panathenaicus 12.42.2–43: 206–7 n. 36 JUSTINUS Epitome of Trogus 2.14.5: 300 n. 46 LIVY Ab Urbe Condita Praef. 6–9: 37 Praef. 7: 37 40.6: 239 40.13: 239 LONGINUS On the Sublime 13.2: 105 n. 76 13.3: 51 n. 211 LYSIAS 2 (Epitaphios): 17 n. 68, 291 n. 10 NICOLAUS of DAMASCUS FGrH 90, F. 6: 267

353

354

Index locorum

NICOLAUS of DAMASCUS (cont.) FGrH 90, F. 66: 220 FGrH 90, F. 66.12: 220 n. 24 FGrH 90, F. 66.33: 220 n. 24 FGrH 90, F. 66.45: 220 n. 24

Paean 4 = fr. D 4: 177 PLATO Alcibiades 120e: 267 121d: 274 n. 16

OLD TESTAMENT Daniel 5:30: 82 6:19–23: 82 Genesis 15:10:17: 239 29:21 ff.: 270 Jeremiah 34:18:19: 239

Leges 697: 252 706a–b: 202 n. 23 753d: 240 n. 23

PAPYRI P.Oxy 2506 Fr. 26.1: 109 n. 6

PSEUDO–PLATONIC Minos 320e–321b: 202 n. 23

PAUSANIAS 1.15.1–4: 97 n. 44 1.17: 291 n. 10 1.17.2–3: 212 n. 46 1.27.9: 202 n. 24 1.35.5: 207 n. 37 1.41.4 (= PMG 21): 293 n. 20 2.18.4: 169 n. 13 3.18.16: 112 n. 18 4.36.3–5: 168 n. 11 4.36.3: 169 n. 13 5.5.10: 169 n. 13 7.2.3: 207 n. 37 8.18.7: 169 n. 13 10.30.9: 275 n. 20

PLUTARCH Aristides 19.2: 300 n. 46 Cimon 7.4–6: 94 n. 33, 97 n. 42 7.4–5: 304 n. 63

PHILOCHORUS FGrH 328, F. 94: 205 n. 31 PINDAR Isthmian Odes 9.4–6: 264 Nemean Odes 10.81: 302 n. 52 Olympian Odes 1.40–1: 302 n. 54 Pythian Odes 1.60–5: 264 4.146: 177 n. 31 9.63: 302 11.31–2: 281 n. 39 Fr. 152 OCT: 181

Critias 113a–b: 137 n. 33

Protagoras 320c: 14 n. 51, 49, 250 324a–c: 252

Pericles 28.5: 304 n. 63 Solon 10: 93 Theseus 15–22: 202 n. 23 16.7–9: 202 n. 23 Moralia 857A: 208 n. 40 Quaestiones Romanae 11: 239 SAPPHO Fr. 16 LP: 47 Fr. 206 LP: 202 n. 21 SCHOLIA Hom. Il. 2.557–8 (AbT): 93 n. 26 5.785: 276 Ar. Frogs 10: 305 n. 64 Dion. Per. 1053: 267

Index locorum Flor. in Callim. Fr. 4 Pf. 1.23–26: 202 n. 24 SIMONIDES Plataea Elegy Fr. 11 W (ll. 9–10): 264 Fr. 11 W (l. 42): 177 n. 30 [SIMONIDES] FGE XL: 304 n. 63 SOPHOCLES Oedipus Coloneus 883: 291 n. 11 903: 291 n. 11 916: 291 n. 11 922: 291 n. 11 1029: 291 n. 11 Trachiniae 1266: 307–8 n. 78 STESICHORUS Fr. 39: 281 n. 39 STRABO 1.3.2/C 48: 202 n. 24 9.1.10: 93 n. 26 10.4.7/C 476–7: 202 n. 23 10.4.8/C 476: 202 n. 24 12.8.5: 207 n. 37 14.2.27: 206 n. 33 SUDA Fr. 12 T 1 TGF: 305 n. 64 THUCYDIDES History 1.4: 203–4, 204 n. 27, 206–7, 207 n. 38 1.8: 203 1.8.1: 203, 206 1.8.2–3: 203 1.8.2: 205 1.10.3–5: 206 n. 35

1.12.3: 28 1.13: 181 1.20: 196 n. 3 1.21–2: 64 n. 9 1.21.1: 14, 30 n. 120 1.22.4: 3, 3 n. 4, 20 1.96.1: 206 1.99.3: 206 2.15: 248, 291 n. 12 2.15.1–6: 203 n. 25 2.19.2–23.3: 279 n. 34 2.53.1: 249 2.94: 303 n. 57 3.22: 303 n. 57 3.80: 303 n. 57 3.82.6: 249 4.36.3: 179 4.40: 180 6.13.1: 306 n. 67 6.24.3–4: 306 6.24.3: 306 7.57–9.1: 259 n. 15 8.102.1: 303 n. 57 XANTHUS FGrH 785, F. 15: 207 n. 37 XENOPHON Anabasis 1.2.5: 275 n. 20 Cyropaideia 2.2.28–31: 274 n. 16 3.1.8–43: 252 7.4.14: 274 n. 16 Memorabilia 2.1.21–34: 44 n. 171 3.4.2: 172 n. 22 Respublica Lacedaemoniorum 15: 181 n. 42 15.7: 181 n. 42

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General Index Achaemenes, 41, 69 n. 22, 265–8, 266 n. 28 Achilles, 97, 163, 275–7, 297, 300 n. 45, 302 n. 52, 306 n. 68 Aeacidae, 39 n. 149, 49 n. 200, 277 Aegeus, 70, 207–8 Aesop, Aesopic fable, 5 n. 12, 43 n. 166, 50, 79–80, 82 Adrastus, 38, 71, 71 n. 29, 82, 135, 145–6, 149 n. 23, 155 n. 46, 157–64, 157 n. 50, n. 52, 158 nn. 56–7, 159 n. 58, 160 n. 61, 162 n. 68, 163 nn. 69–71, 164 n. 74, 226 n. 42 Aeschylus, 5 n. 14, 52–3, 52–3 n. 216, 53 n. 218, 150, 165, 182–3 n. 46, 214 n. 4, 230, 259–60, 262, 296, 301, 301 n. 50, 303, 303 n. 57, 305–8, 305 n. 64, 306 n. 69, 307 n. 74 Aeschylus’ Persians/Persae (and see Index Locorum), 52–3 n. 216, 230, 259, 301, 301 n. 50 aetiology, 32–36, 40, 44, 70, 73, 73 n. 33, 288, see also “myth, aetiological”, “origins” Agamemnon (for Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, see Index Locorum), 45, 70, 82, 84, 90, 94, 98, 110 n. 12, 114, 118, 150, 153–4, 186 n. 57, 195 n. 2, 272, 281–2, 281 n. 39, 302, 304–5, 304 n. 60, 307 agnōmosunē (‘folly’), 296, 300, 300 n. 49, 301, 307, 307–8 n. 78 ainos (‘praise’), 17, 17 n. 68, 79–80, 79 n. 43 aitiē, aitiai (‘cause(s)’), 20, 40, 62, 65, 67 n. 16, 78, 162, see also “aetiology” aitios (‘responsible for’, ‘guilty’), 103, 161–2 Alcmaeonids, 35 n. 134 alētheia (‘truth’), see “truth” Alexander, 91–2, 98, 109–10, 115–6, 118, 120–1, 123, 127, 130, 132–8, 135 n. 29, 136 n. 30, 140, 147, 147 n. 15, 148 n. 19, 151 n. 32, 158 n. 55, 293 n. 22, see also “Paris”

interchangeability with ‘Paris’, 132–3 allusion, 12 n. 48, 48, 52, 87–90, 95, 98–101, 116, 118, 204 n. 27, 260–2, 262 n. 22, 264, 266, 295, 304, 306, 306 n. 71, see also “intertextuality” alternative/variant version(s), 31, 34, 41–2, 69 n. 22, 109, 127–8, 128 n. 3, 213, 214 n. 3, 228–9, 258, 263–8 (and Ch. 10 passim), 290, 310 Altertumswissenschaft (‘the scholarship of Antiquity’), 3–4 Aly, Wolf 4–5, 6 akoē, see “hearsay” Amazons, 95, 97, 283, 291 ambiguity/ambivalence, 25, 25 n. 98, 44 n. 172, 62, 165 n. 76, 197, 202 n. 23, 263, 303 Amestris, 175 Amompharetus, 290, 309, 312 Amphilytus, 77, 81 analytical vs. unitarian view of Histories, 8, 45, 49–50, 223 Anchises, 81 Andromeda, 20, 91 n. 20, 257, 260, 263, 280 anomiē (‘lawlessness’), 244–5, 249–50 Anonym(o)us Iamblichi, 249 Aphrodite, 73, 77, 81, 91–2, 130, 146, 200 n. 18 Apollodorus (and see Index Locorum), 17, 168–9 Argos/Argives, 38, 41, 73, 167, 167 n. 1, 169, 172–3, 175–8, 177 n. 30, 178 nn. 32–33, 182, 190, 211 n. 44, 256, 259–61, 261 n. 20, 263–6, 278 n. 31, 279–83, 282 n. 42, 285–6, 291 n. 11, 305–6, 308 Arion, 64, 81, 120 n. 38, 136, 138, 172, 189 n. 65 Aristeas, 30 Ariston, 98 Artabanus, 265, 271 n. 10, 296–7, 300, 300 n. 48 Artayctes, 96, 99–101, 199 n. 14, 200, 273–4

358

General Index

Artemis, 81, 307 n. 73 Artemisia, 105, 299 n. 44 Artemisium, battle of, 303 n. 57 Assyrians, 91, 244, 259, 267 Astyages, 77, 115, 214–5, 215 n. 8, 217–8, 220–7, 220 nn. 24–5, 224 n. 35, 230 Astydameia, 239 Athamas, 278 Athena, 76, 81, 96, 184–5, 277, 295 Athenian Empire, 84 n. 55, 203, 309 n. 82 Athens/Athenians: 20, 25 n. 98, 38, 40, 49 n. 202, 53, 53 n. 218, 68–9, 81–2, 85, 89, 93–5, 97, 100–1, 104 n. 74, 110 n. 13, 117, 117–8 n. 34, 179, 184, 186, 199 n. 14, 202–3, 202 nn. 22–23, 206–7, 206–7 n. 36, 208 n. 39, 211–2, 212 n. 47, 214 nn. 3–4, 248–9, 257, 260, 260 n. 16, 265, 273–4, 277, 277 n. 29, 279, 280 n. 36, 281–4, 282 n. 42, 286, 289–94, 290 nn. 7–8, 293 n. 20, 300–1, 300 n. 49, 302 n. 52, 303–4, 304 nn. 60–1, n. 63, 305 n. 64, 305–6 n. 67, 306 n. 70, 307–8, 310 foundation–myth of, 277 atrekeōs (‘accurately’, ‘clearly’), 34, 120, 139, 188–9 Attic Tragedy, see “Tragedy, Greek/ Attic” Atthis myth, 7 n. 29, 82 Atreus, 222 Atreusmahl (Thyestean feast), 82, 222–3 Atys, 69, 71 n. 29, 77, 82, 135, 155–8, 155–6 n. 46, 157 n. 52, 160, 160 n. 61, 163 n. 69, 164 n. 74, 226 n. 42, 235, 264 Aulis, sacrifice of Iphigeneia at, 101, 114, 153–4 authority, historiographical, 2, 13, 29 ff., 44, 44 n. 176, 51, 57, 78, 90, 92–3, 112 n. 22, 119 n. 36, 119–22, 125, 137, 139, 141–4, 155 n. 45, 164, 189–90, 232, 271, see also “judgement, gnōmē ” in recounting myth, 29–37 autopsy, see “personal observation, opsis” Babylon, Babylonia, 63, 71, 82, 218 Babylonian god, 68 Babylonian marriage market, 252 Bacchylides (and see Index Locorum), 202, 212

Bias, 50, 79, 167 n. 1, 168–9, 172, 177 n. 30, 285 Bronze Age, 38 Brothers Grimm, 4 Burkert, Walter, 222 Buxton, Richard, 6 n. 19, 9–10, 16–7, 87 Cadmus, 69, 183–6, 189–90, 280 n. 36 Calchas, 280 n. 36, 171 n. 21 Callicrates, 290 Cambridge school of myth and ritual, 15 Candaules, 7 n. 25, 68, 84, 226, 264 Candaules’ wife, 64, 88, 81, 102 Car, 69 Carians, 72, 203–5, 205 n. 28, n. 31, 206–8, 206 n. 33, 206–7 n. 36, 210, 258 Castor and Pollux, 99 Catalogue of Ships, 93, 94, 170 Caucones, 69 Caunians, 73 n. 33, 206, 208 n. 28 Cerberus, 90 change, cultural, 20–21, 187–8 of name, 20, 207, 255–8, 264 Herodotus’ principle of, 19–23, 20 n. 75 Cheops, 30, 124 n. 46 Chephren, 30, 124 n. 46 Chilon, 79 Cimon, 97 chronology, 22, 24 n. 95, 28, 28 n. 112, 42 n. 161, 70, 90, 107, 156 n. 48, 183, 198 n. 10, 210, 304, see also “spatium”, “time” by generations, 28, 28 n. 112 Herodotus’ establishment of, 68 n. 18, 70, 112 n. 21, 145, 264 Cicero, 3 Cimmerians, 32–4, 104 n. 71 Cleobis and Biton, 16, 49, 77, 84, 221 n. 29, 278 n. 32 Cleomenes, 35 n. 134, 98, 116, 182 n. 45, 270 Cleisthenes (of Athens), 38–9, 179, 180 n. 41 Cleisthenes (of Sicyon), 38, 179, 180 n. 41 collective significance of myths, see “myths, collective significance of ” Constitutional Debate, see Index Locorum, Hdt. 3.80–82

General Index Corcyreans, 211 n. 44, 249, 279 counterfactuals, 288, 291–2, 311 Crete/Cretans, 28 n. 110, 69, 91, 96 n. 39, 99, 178, 184, 196, 201 n. 20, 206 n. 36, 207 nn. 36–37, 208–11, 209 n. 42, 211 n. 44, 258, 279, 282, 282 n. 42, 298 n. 38 Croesus, 3 n. 6, 27, 28 n. 110, 47, 47 n. 191, 49–50, 60–1, 66, 67 n. 16, 68–9, 71, 71 n. 29, 72 n. 31, 76–7, 76 nn. 38–9, 79–85, 81 nn. 47–8, 82 n. 54, 89, 104–5, 143, 145–6, 149 n. 23, 155–65, 155 n. 46, 156 n. 48, n. 50, 157 n. 54, 158 n. 57, 160 n. 61, 161 nn. 66–7, 162 n. 68, 163 n. 69, n. 72, 164 n. 74, 165 n. 76, 186 n. 57, 212, 214–5, 217, 219, 225–6, 226 n. 42, 229–31, 231 nn. 56–7, 241, 243–4, 302 n. 53 cultic sites, 37 cultural translation, 187–8, see also “source–material, transmission of eastern” culture hero, Cyus as, 227 Melampus as, 169 (and Ch. 6 passim) motif of, 182–90 Cyaxares, 80, 81, 82 Cyrnus, 72–3, 76 Cyrus I (the Great), 5, 27, 27 n. 108, 37, 40, 40 n. 153, 43, 48 n. 197, 54, 59–61, 61 n. 3, 63–4, 63 n. 6, 74, 74 n. 34, 76–7, 79–84, 105, 115, 156, 163, 165 n. 76, Ch. 8 passim, 234 n. 2, 251–2, 265, 267, 270, 287 n. 1, 293 n. 22 Cytissorus, 278 Daiukku, 245 Danae, 82, 91 n. 20, 257, 260, 263 Danaus, daughters of, 115 Darius, 32, 80, 82, 89, 98, 102, 110 n. 12, 117, 181, 218 n. 19, 229, 229 n. 48, 231 n. 57, 235–6, 236 n. 7, 247 n. 42, 265, 266 n. 28, 267, 270, 272, 296 n. 30 dating, see “chronology” Deceleans, 289, 291–2 Decelus, 99, 279 n. 34, 289, 291–2 Deioces, 82, 180 n. 41, 218 n. 18, 226, Ch. 9 passim

359

question of historicity of, 245–8 as example of Greek theory, 248–53 Deiphonus, 284–5 Demaratus, 49 n. 200, 63, 98, 182 n. 45, 263, 270 Demeter, 277 n. 29 Demythologization, see “rationalization” Deucalion, 69 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 46, 59 Dionysus, 304 n. 61 rites of, 115, 137 n. 33, 169, 182–4, 183 n. 47, 186–90, 186 n. 54, 190 n. 66 divine, the, see “god(s)”, “ta theia” Dorus, 69, 264 dreams, 45, 75, 77, 157, 157 n. 51, 220–1, 224, 230, 231 n. 57, 239, 302 Ecbatana, 245–6, 248 Egypt/Egyptians, 12–3, 21–2, 21 n. 83, 22 n. 87, 24 n. 95, 27–30, 27 n. 109, 28 n. 110, 30 n. 119, 33–4, 33 n. 127, 33 n. 130, 40 n. 155, 42–3, 43 n. 167, 63, 65 n. 12, 71, 76, 89 n. 14, 90–2, 96, 101, 104 n. 74, 107–15, 108 n. 3, 109 nn. 5–6, 110 nn. 8–9, 111 n. 14, n. 16, 112 nn. 19– 20, n. 22, 114 nn. 25–27, 117 n. 34, 118–9, 119 n. 36, 122–5, 127–8, 128 n. 4, 129–30, 133, 135, 137–42, 137 n. 33, 140 n. 39, 142 n. 44, 146–7, 147 nn. 14–5, 150, 151 n. 29, 152–5, 153 n. 36, 154 n. 42, 155 n. 44, 169, 169 n. 14, 182–6, 182 n. 46, 183 n. 47, n. 49, 186 n. 54, n. 56, 188–90, 189 n. 63, 190 n. 68, 200 n. 18, 206 n. 34, 218 n. 18, 235 n. 6, 239, 296 as inventors, 114 historical awareness of, 27, 28, 43 n. 167 priests as sources, see “source reference(s), Egyptian priests as” elegchos (‘refutation’), 13–14 empiricist principles (empiricism), 4, 6, 6 n. 16, 8, 26 n. 104 emplotment of mythic material, 48, 53 n. 217, 220 enquiry, historiē, 2–4, 5 n. 10, 8, 11 n. 45, 26–8, 31, 40, 46, 57, 62, 74, 78, 107–8, 110–2, 118–26, 119 n. 36, 128 n. 2, 136–7, 142, 156, 167, 169, 178, 183–4, 187, 189–90, 189 n. 65, 197–201, 204–5, 210–112, 213 n. 1,

360

General Index

215 n. 8, 217 n. 16, 228, 287, 294 n. 24, see also “empiricist principles”, “motif, of enquiring ruler” epairō (‘to incite, exhort’), 50, 230–2, 296 epic, see “(Homeric) epic” epideixis (sophistic) (‘display performance’), 43, see also “sophists” epinician poetry, 30, 47, 47 n. 191 epistemological criteria, 18, 18 n. 70, 19 eponyms, 69, 258, 266, 268 epopoiiē (‘the making of epic’), 29, 123 erōs (‘lust’), 98, 102, 305–6, 305 n. 66, 306 n. 68, 309 Etearchus, 116 Ethiopians, 16, 90–1, 142 n. 46, 229, 239 ethnography, 8, 64 n. 9, 72 n. 30, 110 n. 9, 119, 243, 247 n. 42, 252 Euenius, 26 n. 194, 44–6, 54, 168 n. 10, 178, 221, 285 Euripides (and see Index Locorum), 52, 109, 111, 138, 190 n. 66, 249, 290, 305 n. 64 Europa, 20, 65, 69, 91, 102–3, 198, 210, 256 Euryanax, 309 exitēlos, exitēla (‘extinct’), 21, 62, 66, 115 fiction, 4 n. 9, 50, 125, 233–4, 243, 252 fluidity of identities, see “change” folktale(s), folklore, 4–5, 11 n. 43, 15, 15 n. 54, 18 n. 69, 61, 64, 81–2, 157 n. 52, 168, 218 n. 20, 246, 251, 270, 273 n. 13 foundation stories, 18, 70 foundation of oracle at Dodona, see “oracle(s), Dodona” funeral oration(s), 17, 30 Gelon, 39 n. 147, 94, 110 n. 13, 211 n. 44, 281 genealogy, genealogies, 18, 24 n. 95, 68–9, 74, 81, 218 n. 19, 256, 261, 265, 268 (and Chs. 1 and 10 passim) geneē (‘era’, ‘generation’), 23–4, 88, 142, 196, 196 n. 4, 197 n. 6, 212 genre, 6, 8–10, 17, 30 n. 120, 37, 40 n. 156, 50, 50 n. 204, n. 206, 53, 230, 259, 294, 311, see also “panhellenic genres”

Herodotus’ sensitivity to, 50 n. 206, 51 nn. 209–10, 294 nn. 23–4 of the Histories, 6, 8, 10, 31 n. 121, 43 n. 166, 47–56, 81 n. 49, 123, 143 geography, 38, 70 n. 24, 179, 271, 276, see also “myth, geography and” geographer(s), 31, see also “Hecataeus” Gephyrae, 8 n. 27 gnōmē, see “judgement, gnōmē ” gnomic sayings (gnomic mots), 78–80 de Gobineau, Arthur, 236 n. 10, 237 n. 11, 239, 240, 242 n. 30 god(s), 15 n. 54, 17, 23, 24 n. 95, 27, 30, 46, 48, 51, 51 n. 209, 60, 62–3, 65–8, 75–8, 80–1, 85, 91, 99–101, 110 nn. 8–9, 111–2, 112 n. 20, 114, 116, 122, 135, 139 n. 38, 140, 144, 146, 147 n. 15, 150–1, 151 n. 29, 153 n. 37, 154, 156–7, 156 nn. 49–50, 160–2, 161 nn. 66–7, 162 n. 68, 164–5, 183, 185, 189–90, 189 n. 63, 195 n. 2, 196–8, 196–7 n. 5, 209, 214, 219–20, 220 n. 24, 225, 231, 231 n. 57, 243, 252, 271, 271 n. 10, 273, 275, 276 n. 23, 282 n. 42, 285–6, 287 n. 1, 296, 302, 306, 306 n. 68, n. 72, 307 n. 74, 307–8 n. 78, see also “religion”, “ta theia” Greek/non-Greek binary, blurring of, 154, 155 n. 44, 208, 280 n. 36, 293 harpagē (‘kidnapping’, ‘theft’), 102, 104, 104 n. 71, 133–4, 133 n. 25, 137, 245 Harpagus, 81–2, 215, 218–26, 226 n. 44 hearsay, akoē, 125, 128, 197, 203–5, 204 n. 27, 210 Hecataeus, 12, 12 n. 48, 13 n. 49, 24 n. 95, 27, 30, 31 n. 124, 50 n. 204, 70 n. 24, 90–1, 90 n. 18, 102, 109, 109 n. 6, 128, 128 n. 3, 147 n. 14, 167, 169 n. 16, 183, 185 n. 53, 258 n. 10 Hegesistratus, 182, 285 Hector, 139–40, 230, 297 Helen (of Troy), 22, 29, 46 n. 187, 47, 47 n. 188, 65, 65 n. 12, 72 n. 31, 89–93, 89 n. 14, 98–101, 103, 109–12, 109 nn. 5– 6, 118, 118 n. 34, 120–3, 123 n. 44, 125, 127–42, 131 n. 17, 133 nn. 24–5, 136 n. 30, 138 n. 34, 140 n. 39, 145 n. 9, 146–7, 146 n. 13, 147 n. 14, 149–55, 151 n. 29, n. 32,

General Index 152 n. 32, 153 n. 36, 154 n. 42, 162–4, 162 n. 68, 186 n. 56, 197–9, 200 n. 18, 202 n. 22, 203 n. 25, 229, 235 n. 6, 256, 279 n. 34, 282, 288–9, 290 n. 9, 291–5, 309 Helen logos, 47, 127, 129–42, 138 n. 34, 140 n. 39, 145 n. 9, 153 n. 36, 155 Hellen, 69 Hephaestus, 112 n. 19, 275–6 priest of, 124 Heracles, 13, 22–3, 27 n. 109, 32–3, 44, 68, 68 n. 18, 68 n. 20, 89, 91 n. 20, 92, 113, 132, 134, 138–9, 147, 147 n. 15, 168 n. 11, 183, 190, 195 n. 2, 197, 261, 264, 265 n. 26, 270, 276, 276 n. 25, 283, 290 Heraclids (Heraclidae), 63 n. 7, 68–9, 68 n. 20, 95, 171, 172 n. 22, 180, 195 n. 1, 261–6, 283, 303 n. 56 Hermes, 168 n. 11, 276 hero(es), 15, 15 n. 55, 17–8, 24 n. 95, 25 n. 97, 38–9, 39 n. 149, 46, 48, 51, 57, 62–3, 68, 69 n. 22, 72–3, 77, 88, 91, 94, 96, 99–100, 110 n. 12, 112 n. 20, 113, 114 n. 27, 142, 144, 155 n. 44, 157–8 n. 54, 164, 167 n. 1, 168–70, 168 n. 11, 172, 174, 176, 182 ff., 182, 184, 195–7, 195 nn. 1–2, 196–7 n. 5, 200, 202, 221, 225, 227, 232, 244 ff., 245, 247, 255, 258–9, 258 nn. 10–11, n. 13, 264, 265 n. 26, 271, 274, 276–7, 287–91, 287 n. 1, 291 n. 11, 295, 299, 302, see also “culture hero” cult of, 18, 167, 219 eponymous, 41, 68, 69, 99, 258, 260, 262, 264, 265 n. 26, 266 (and Ch. 10 passim) Herodotean narrator, 7 n. 22, 31, 43 n. 166, 124 n. 46, 130–2, 131 n. 13, 134–5, 137, 139, 143, 156–7 n. 50, 199, 226 (and passim) compared with Homeric, 2 n. 1, 30, 30 n. 118, 43 n. 166, 47, 118–21 double aspect of, 42–3, 63–5 credibility of, 2, 13 n. 49 Herodotean ‘paradox,’ 3, 6, 10, 75 n. 36 Herodotus, and Egypt, see “Egypt” and his audience, 2, 12 n. 48, 47–56, 64–5, 68, 70–2, 82–3, 97–8, 140

361

n. 39, 214, 214 n. 3, 216, 222–3, 243, 247 n. 42, 293, 304, 305 n. 64 and Homer, see “Herodotean narrator, compared with Homeric”, “Homer” and poetry, connections to, 3, 30 n. 120, 47–8, 50–53, 57, 82, 88, 169, 170, 302–3, 305–8, see also “epinician poetry”, “Homer”, “tragedy” and poetry, divergence from, 26, 30–31, 51, 170, 176, 189, 201 n. 19 authority of, as historian, see “authority, historiographical” critical arbitration of, see “judgement, gnōmē ” focalization, character perspectives, 39 n. 151, 132 n. 18, 137–9, 216–7 n. 15, 294, 308 historiographical method, 47, 113, see also “alternative/variant version(s)”, “source reference(s)” inquiry, see “enquiry” ‘mythistorical’ technique, 11 n. 42, 225–6, 232 narrative artistry of, see “Herodotean narrator”, “Herodotus, narrative technique” narrative technique, 1–2, 5, 5 n. 12, 7, 7 n. 21, 8, 14–18, 29 n. 115, 31, 36, 40, 49–51, 51 n. 209, 55–6, 57, 59–61, 72 n. 31, 74, 77–8, 81 n. 49, 83–4, 101–2, 105, 107–10, 116–7, 122–5, 132, 135 n. 27, 139, 141–2, 164–6, 167–9, 170, 176, 178–9, 189, 191, 213–4, 225–6, 310–12 (and passim) sophists and, see “sophists” sources used by, 4–5, 5 n. 10, 21 n. 81, 26, 30 n. 119, 33–5, 41–2, 48 n. 195, 51, 67 n. 17, 83, 89–90, 125, 128, 139, 141, 143, 146–7, 151, 153 n. 37, 177 n. 30, 183, 183 n. 48, 187, 197 n. 8, 199–200, 201 n. 19, 205, 205 n. 28, 210, 215, 217 n. 16, 225, 227–8, 230, 242–3, see also “source–material” storytelling, 1, 3, 5 n. 12, 9, 35, 39 n. 151, 48, 55 n. 227, 57, 126, 129–30, 132, 135, 167, 168 n. 7, 169, 176, 188–90, 221, 237–8, 242–3

362

General Index

Herodotus, (cont.) treatment of myth compared to treatment of religious experience, 31–6 heroic age, 25 n. 97, 28 n. 110, 116, 165, 195–6, 196 n. 3, 197–201, 206–8, 210–12, 211 n. 44 separation from human, 123 n. 44, 211–12, see also “spatium, historicum/mythicum” Hesiod, 9–10 n. 39, 12 n. 47, 51, 128, 128 n. 3, 176, 177 n. 30, 202 n. 21, 202 n. 24, 258 n. 10 historic present, 124, 132, 141 historiē, see “enquiry” Hittite rituals, 236, 238–9, 238 n. 15, 239 n. 18, 240 n. 23, 241, 242 n. 30 Homer, 10 n. 39, 12, 18, 21 n. 82, 23, 29, 30 n. 116, 30 n. 118, 43, 44 n. 176, 45, 47, 50 n. 204, 51, 51 n. 211, 92–4, 97 n. 45, 109 n. 6, 111 n. 14, 111 n. 17, 116, 118–9, 123, 123 n. 44, 127–8, 132–3, 133 n. 24, 139–42, 145, 150, 150 n. 25, 155, 158, 159 n. 59, 162–5, 165 n. 77, 167, 170, 171 n. 21, 176–9, 186 n. 57, 189, 201 n. 19, 202 n. 24, 259, 273, 275–6, 276 n. 23, 282 n. 41, 305 n. 66, 306 n. 69, see also “(Homeric) epic”, “Iliad ”, “Trojan War” allusion to/ resonance of, in Herodotus, 2 n. 1, 43, 44 n. 175, 47, 51–2, 51 n. 211, 52 n. 212, 55, 64, 64 n. 8, 73, 93–6, 97 n. 45, 105, 109, 111, 123 n. 44, 126, 143–6, 145 n. 10, 150–51, 154–68, 229–30, 271, 271 n. 7, 275–6, 281 n. 40, 288 n. 4, 294–5 n. 24, 296–7, 299–300, 302, 305, 309, 311, 311 n. 87 (and Chs. 2–5 passim) criticism of or divergence from, in Herodotus, 18, 21 n. 82, 30, 51, 123 n. 44, 133–4, 139–42, 176–8, 271, 276 n. 23, 201 n. 19 (and Ch. 4 passim) ‘muthos’ in, 16 n. 63 (Homeric) epic, 2, 14 n. 52, 15 n. 55, n. 63, 16 n. 63, 29, 38, 38 n. 144, 44, 44 n. 172, 47–8, 48 n. 195, 50, 51 n. 209, n. 210, 52, 52 n. 213, 57, 64 n. 8, 65, 94, 102, 105, 116, 123, 123 n. 44,

125–6, 133 n. 24, 143–5, 149, 149 n. 21, 151, 155, 157, 157–8 n. 54, 164, 169, 175 n. 25, 176, 178, 201 n. 19, 225 n. 37, 262, 294, 294 n. 24, 295 n. 26, 296–7, 299, 302, 304, see also “Iliad ”, “Odyssey” Homeric narrator, compared with Herodotean, see “Herodotean narrator, compared with Homeric” hospitality, see “xenia” Hyperboreans, 16 Iliad (and see Index Locorum), 7, 15, 15 n. 55, 18, 38 n. 144, 44, 44 n. 172, 52 n. 212, 69, 82, 92, 109, 140–1, 140 n. 41, 162–3, 165 n. 76, 170, 202 n. 24, 207 n. 36, 230, 259, 275, 277, 279, 282, 297, 302, 306 n. 71, 309, see also “Homer”, “Trojan War” Immerwahr, Henry, 6–7 indirect discourse, see “speech, indirect” injustice, 27, 134–5, 138, 140, 273 intentional history (“intentionale Geschichte”), 43 interpretatio Graeca, 255, 259 intertextuality, 52 n. 212, 303–4, 304 n. 60, 306 n. 71, 308, 310, see also “allusion”, “Homer, allusion to/ resonance of, in Herodotus” Io, 20, 65–6, 89, 91, 102–5, 198, 210, 256, 311 Ionians, 43, 67 n. 16, 73, 79, 104–5, 179, 185, 187, 205 n. 31, 206–7, 258, 283, 291, 295 Ionian Revolt (and see Index Locorum), 44 Jacoby, Felix, 4, 6 Jason, 196–7 n. 5, 259 judgement, gnōmē, 3 n. 3, 36, 51, 63, 67 n. 17, 91, 120, 127–8, 130, 139, 151, 155, 197 n. 8 justice, 40, 99–100, 140, 144 n. 6, 151, 161, 161 n. 67, 245, 247–52, 298, 303 n. 56, 308, 311 Kirk, Geoffrey, 16–7 knowledge, 2, 6, 14 n. 50, 19–29, 21 n. 84, 29 n. 115, 30, 31 n. 125, 33–4 n. 131, 34–5, 40, 42, 49, 51 n. 208, 52 n. 213, 89–90, 101, 103, 105, 118, 119 n. 36, 120, 126, 132 n. 20, 137, 139, 146

General Index n. 13, 168, 171 n. 20, 184, 186, 188–91, 188 n. 62, 193, 198, 203 n. 25, 207, 215–6, 224–5, 228, 231 n. 57, 240 n. 26, 243, 252, 269, 294, see also “prōtos idmen”, “verification, potential for” elusive character of, 21–2, 36, 50–51, 181, 189, 191, 201, 228, see also “unverifiable material” legend, 15, 15 n. 54, 19, 36–7, 37 n. 141, 55, 61–2, 64, 66–7, 72–4, 78, 80, 81 n. 48, 83, 88, 110 n. 8, 133, 138, 144, 164, 166, 168 n. 11, 202, 203 n. 25, 233, 245, 287 n. 1 leitmotif, 105, 136 Leleges, 72, 204 Lemnos, 279 Leonidas, 43, 68, 68 n. 20, 181, 261–2, 274 n. 18, 285, 288, 288 n. 4, 297–9, 298 n. 38, 304, 309, 312 Leotychides, 98, 116, 179, Lichas, 71 n. 26, 73, 81, 173–4 likelihood, argument from, see “probability, argument from” Livy, 36–7, 37 n. 139, 46 n. 185, 50 n. 206, 51, 239, 292 n. 16 logioi (‘wise men’), logiōtatoi (‘most wise men’), 29, 39, 65–6, 91, 95–6, 104, 151–2, 152 nn. 32–3, 198, 200, 200 n. 18, 291, 312 Persian, 39, 65–6, 91, 96, 104, 151–2, 152 nn. 32–3, 291, 312 logographers, logographoi, 14, 30 n. 120, 169 n. 16, logoi, 3–4, 7, 7 n. 24, 12 nn. 48–9, 14 n. 51, 41, 60, 61 n. 3, 63–7, 71, 71 n. 28, 74, 83, 122, 135 n. 28, 145–6, 155–6 n. 46, 164–5, 165 n. 76, 195 n. 1, 233–4, 247 n. 41 longue durée, 20 Luwians, 239, 239 n. 18 Lycians, 69–70, 206–8, 210, 258, 280 n. 36 Lycophron, 16, 55, 221 n. 29 Lycurgus, 174, 184, 245 Lycus, 69, 207, 208 n. 39, 280 n. 36 Lydus, 69, 264 lyric, 2, 48, 52, 97 n. 45, 109 n. 6, 168, 176, 178, 286

363

Mandane, 77, 220, 224 Marathon, battle of, 95, 97, 277 n. 27, 284, 287 n. 1, 291 n. 10 Mardonius, 40, 40 n. 154, 41 n. 158, 43, 43 n. 170, 76–7 n. 39, 193, 199, 214 n. 4, 260–1, 283–5, Ch. 12 passim Masistes, 102 Masistes’ wife, 5, 175 Massagetae, 32–3, 40, 40 n. 153, 59, 74, 74 n. 34, 80, 84, 214, 217, 219, 227–30, 231 n. 57 Medea, 20, 65, 91, 103, 133 n. 25, 198, 210, 256–7, 259–60, 260 n. 16, 280 n. 36 Medes/Media, 20, 34 n. 131, 40–1, 82, 90, 103, 215–6, 218 n. 18, 219, 221, 223–4, 224 n. 35, 226 n. 42, 233–4, 244–6, 245 n. 33, 248–52, 255–60, 265, 268, 272, 280 n. 36 Melampus, 19 n. 74, 73 n. 32, 97 n. 40, 115, 115 n. 28, 137 n. 33, Ch. 6 passim, 285 Melanippus, 38 Memnon, 90 mē muthōdes (the ‘not–fabulous’), 3, 49, see also “muthōdes, to” Menelaus, 90–3, 99, 101, 110, 112–4, 112 n. 18, 116, 117 n. 34, 118–9, 122, 126–7, 130, 132, 134–9, 137 n. 33, 139 n. 36, 140 n. 39, 141–2, 145, 149, 151–5, 153 n. 36, 154 n. 40, 186 n. 57, 209, 211, 281 n. 39, 293 n. 22 Menestheus, 94, 97, 281 metanarrative, 204, 215, 228 Midas, 70–1, 70 n. 25, 71 n. 29 Miltiades, 271 n. 10, 279 Minos, 20 n. 76, 23–7, 25 n. 97, 69–70, 88, 90, 91 n. 20, 96 n. 39, 99, 104 n. 74, Ch. 7 passim, 282, 291 n. 11 (Athenian) discourse on sea power and, 201–8, 209 n. 42 Minotaur, 202, 208 n. 39, 209 Moses, 54, 82 motif, 17, 54, 55 n. 224, 56, 60 n. 2, 61, 71, 79–82, 84, 108, 113, 136, 138, 142, 157, 160, 168, 168 n. 7, 168 n. 11, 184, 186, 188, 199, 214 n. 5, 223 n. 33, 236–7, 239, 239 n. 21, 270, 273, 273 n. 13, 275–6, 275 n. 19, 282, 295–6, 296 n. 28, 298

364

General Index

motif, (cont.) n. 38, 299 n. 43, 307, 311 n. 86, see also “leitmotif ”, “mythic patterns/schemata”, “theme(s)” ‘Coyote’-, 80, 80 n. 46, 81 n. 48, see also “motif, trickster” ‘Laius’-, 79 of bargain, 54, 168, 170–8, 175 n. 25, 177 n. 30 of blindness followed by wisdom, 54 of child miraculously saved, 54, 82, 218 n. 20, 218–21, 270 of civilized haves vs. uncivilized have–nots, 79 of deceptive cleverness, 80–1, 223 of enquiring ruler, 119–22, 123 n. 44, 136, 138, 141, 189 n. 65, 215 n. 8 of escalation of conflict, 39 of failing river, 274–6 of first man killed, 273–4 of fraudulent exchange of wives, 270 of Greek conflict, 279–86, 292–3 of harpagē, 102, see also “harpagē ” of imperfect knowledge, 171 n. 20, 188–9, 191, see also “knowledge, elusive character of” of lust–impelled conquest, 309 of nostos (‘return’), 296, 296 n. 30 of quest, 168 n. 11 of reciprocity, 39, see also “reciprocity” of revelation of one’s ancestral heritage, 82 of royal Asian wrongdoing vs. Greece, 164–5 of transgression of natural boundaries, 102, 229, 274–5, 275 n. 19 of transmission of names, 186 of thoughtless ruler, 56, 82, 84–5, 165 n. 76, 290, 311 n. 86 of women’s role, 39, 102, 270, see also “women” of wise adviser/Warner, 79, 79 n. 44, 243 n. 32, 156, see also “Solon” trickster, 80–1, see also “motif, ‘Coyote’–” muthōdes, to (‘the fabulous’), 3 n. 4, 14, 46, 49, 64–5, see also “mē muthōdes” muthos (mythos), 1, 9, 9 nn. 38–9, 10–16, 49, 49 n. 201, 60, 87, 144 n. 4, 195 n. 1, 250

vs. logos, 9–10, 11, 14 n. 51, 144 n. 4, 250, see also “myth” Mycale, 44–5, 48, 277–8 n. 29, 284–5 Mycerinus, 21, 108, 124 n. 46 Mysians, 69, 205 n. 28, 258, 259 n. 14 and Teucrians, invasion of, 90, 96, 103, 104 n. 74, 272 Mysus, 69, 258 n. 13, 108, 124 n. 46 myth, aetiological, 36, 67–74, 175, 197 n. 7, 269–70 as enlarging significance, 44, 225–6, 232, 295 as example (exemplary function of ), 46, 97–105, 118–22, 165, 225 collective significance of, 18, 285–6 colonizing, 18, 55, 73 competitive use of, 278, 285–6 contextualizing function of, 46, 60–61, 70, 73, 83, 108, 226 definitions of, 10–19, 60 n. 2, 75, 195 n. 1, 233, 269 n. 1, 310 distinction between history and, 65, 196–200, 197 n. 6, see also “mythos, vs. logos”, “spatium, historicum/ mythicum” eastern, 69, 81, Ch. 9 passim, 270 n. 6 ethnic/ cultural identity and, 18, 20, 20 n. 75, 23, 33, 38, 42–3, 69–70, 73 n. 32, 83, 183 n. 48, 197, 207 explanatory function of, 38, 45–6, 60–61, 73, 83 (and Ch. 1 passim), 214, 250, Ch. 11 passim, 289 genealogical, see “genealogy, genealogies” geography and, 38, 44, 70–1, 272–8 Greek interpretations of eastern/ Persian, 216–17, 243, Chs. 9 and 10 passim history and, 19–29, 40, 46, 55–6, 193, 199–200, Part II passim identity and, 18, 20, 33, 37–8, 43, 73 n. 32, 83, 167 n. 1, 197, 207, 286 ideology and, 45, 60 n. 2, 61, 74–82, 75 n. 35, 83–4, 201, 290 motivational and justificatory use of, 31, 40, 73–4, 83, 119 n. 14, 103, 199, 278–84, 286, 288, 311–12 moral lessons/truths and, 50, 108, 140, 144, 151, 154, 200, 269, 271–2, 274, 285

General Index persuasive function of, 41, 43–5, 282 n. 43, 288 n. 2 representation of motivation and, 300–10 timeless aspect of, 49 truth and, 37–47, 114, 193, 195 n. 2, 226 (and Ch. 8 passim), 288 universal patterns and, see “mythic patterns/ schemata”, “mythos”, and “to mythōdes” mytheme, 44, 54, 54 n. 221 mythic discourse, 43, 287–8, 294, 296, 300, 312 mythic names, 44 n. 173, 70, 71, 82, 155 n. 46 mythic patterns/schemata, 97–9, 105, 298, see also “motif ”, “myth”, “mytheme”, “story-patterns” historicity of, 54–6, 84 international, 218 n. 20, 224 of initiation, 16 of threatening child, 221 mythic thinking, 60–1, 85, 193, 289, 294 ff., 294, 299, 309, 311 (and Ch. 12 passim) mythical origins, see “origins” narrative mode(s), 43 n. 166, 47 ff., 51 mythic, 9 n. 37, 48–50, 295 prosaic/analytical, 45, 48–9, 223 combination of mythic and analytical/ realistic, 64–5, 294–5 n. 24 narrative patterns, see “mythic patterns/ schemata”, “narrative mode(s)”, “story–patterns” narrative rhythm, 134, 141 narrative ‘seed’, 135, 199 n. 13 narrative technique, see “Herodotus, narrative technique” narrator, see “Herodotean narrator” Neleids, 69 Neleus, 168, 176 nemesis, 71 n. 29, 156, 156 nn. 49–50, 157 n. 50, 160, 163–5 Nestle, Wilhelm, 5 n. 13, 6, 6 n. 20, 9–10, 9 n. 37, 87 Nitocris (Queen of Babylon), 71, 80, 107–8 Nitocris (Queen of Egypt), 71, 124 n. 46 nomos, nomoi (‘custom(s), law(s)’), 20 n. 75, 181, 250–1, see also “anomiē” nostos theme, see “motif, of nostos”

365

novella(e), Ionian, 4–5, 4 n. 9, 5 n. 12, 7, 7 n. 25, 237, 238 n. 14 Ocean, 12–3, 51 n. 208, 123, 275 Oedipus, 49 n. 200, 221–2, 270, see also “Theban Cycle” Oedipus myth, see “Theban Cycle” Oeobazus, 236 Odyssey (and see Index Locorum), 101, 109, 118–9, 144, 149, 154 n. 40, 176, 202 n. 24, see also “Homer” Old Testament (and see Index Locorum), 239 oracle(s), 3 n. 6, 31, 34, 36, 36 n. 138, 38, 51, 67 n. 16, 71 n. 26, 73, 75–7, 75 n. 37, 77 n. 39, 80–1, 96 n. 39, 108, 110, 165 n. 76, 171 n. 20, 173–4, 184, 184 n. 51, 187, 208–11, 211 n. 43, 225, 231, 261–3, 266, 277, 282, 284, 288, 288 n. 3, 297, 297 n. 32, see also “dreams”, “portents” Amphiaraus, 76, 110 n. 12 Branchidae at Didyma, 76–77 Delphi, 38, 45, 51, 66, 66 n. 14, 70–2, 75 n. 37, 76–7, 76 n. 39, 83, 89, 165 n. 76, 171, 208, 210–1, 225, 231, 241, 266, 279–80, 282, 282 n. 42, 288, 288 n. 3, 297 Dodona, 34–7, 36 n. 138, 45, 76, 182–3 n. 46, 184, 184 n. 51, 187 Zeus Ammon, 34, 76 oral characteristics of Histories, 131, 143–4 orality, oral tradition, 17 n. 67, 21, 41, 53–4, 54 n. 222, 60, 67 n. 17, 72, see also “source–material”, “source reference(s)” connection to myth, 60 n. 2 Herodotus’ relationship to, 2, 30, 30 n. 120, 49, 213, 294, 304 n. 59 orator(s), 31, 31 n. 121, 41, 43, 93 Orestes, 196, 196 n. 5, 211, 302 n. 52, 305 n. 64 Bones of, 39 n. 146, 70, 72–3, 76, 81, 173–4 Oresteia myth, see “Atreusmahl ”, “Aulis, sacrifice of Iphigeneia at”, “Orestes” origines gentium (‘origins of peoples’), 255, 267 origins, 258–9, see also “aetiology”, “myth, aetiological”

366

General Index

origins, (cont.) of the Carians, 72, 204–5, 210 of the Caunians, 205 n. 28 of the Dorians, 28, 114 n. 26, 206, 207 n. 37, 258, 264–5 of the Lydians, 68–9, 258, 264 of the (kingdom of the) Macedonians, 265, 269–70 of the Medes, 20, 41, 233, 244–52, Ch. 10 passim, 280, 280 n. 36 of the Persians’ rule over Asia, 40, Ch. 8 passim of the Persian kings, 260, 265–7 of the Persians, 20, 41, 79, 91 n. 20, 233, Ch. 10 passim, 258 n. 10, 259–66, 268, 280, 280 n. 36 of the (royal family of the) Scythians, 32–3, 41, 265 n. 26, 270 of the Spartan kings, 261, 270 Pactyas, 77 Pan, 31 n. 123, 51 n. 210, 183, 287 n. 1, 294 n. 24 Pandion, 69, 208 n. 39, 280 n. 36 panhellenic genres, 52, 294, 305 n. 64, 311 panhellenic myth, 286, 289 Panhellenism, 183 n. 48, 286 paroemiography, 78 Paris, 29, 65, 82 n. 54, 103, 127, 132–5, 135 n. 29, 140, 142, 145–55, 148 n. 20, 152 n. 32, 153 n. 36, 158 n. 55, 164–5, 235 n. 6, 290–1, see also “Alexander” Parmenides, 10 Pausanias, author (and see Index Locorum), 17, 97, 112 n. 18, 167 n. 2, 168 n. 11, 169 n. 13, 212 n. 46 Spartan king, 68 n. 20, 263, 285, 309 Pelasgians, 72, 279, 290 n. 7 Peleus, 239, 277, 290 n. 9, 300 n. 45 Peloponnesian War, 46, 85, 88, 98–9, 287, 289 Pelops, 94, 104 n. 74, 278 n. 31, 280–1, 281 n. 39, 302 n. 54 Perdiccas, 174–5 Periander, 16, 81, 120 n. 38, 136, 138, 173 n. 23, 189 n. 65, 221 n. 29, 290 n. 8 Pericles, 273, 293, 304 Perseids, 261–3, 265–7

Perses, 20, 41, 69 n. 22, 91 n. 20, 257, 260–1, 263–5, 267, 280 Perseus, 41, 69 n. 22, 82, 91 n. 20, 114 n. 27, 197 n. 6, 221, 256–68, 260 n. 18, 278 n. 31, 280, 280 n. 36 Persian King, 183, 213, 229, 242, 246, 248 n. 44, 263, 265–7, 270 Persian religious rituals, 239–40, 243 Persian Wars, 3, 22, 29, 31, 31 n. 122, 39, 41, 44, 63, 68 n. 20, 83, 99, 101, 105, 146, 165, 196 n. 3, 198, 209, 226, 256, 259–60, 260 n. 16, 263, 268, 295 n. 26, 298, 304 n. 63 Trojan War as counterpart to, 46, 48, 88, 140–1, 198 n. 10, 199, 271, 311 Persians, 17 n. 67, 20, 40–1, 43, 52–3, 63, 66–7, 73 n. 33, 79, 85, 91 n. 20, 95–7, 101 n. 57, 104, 104 n. 74, 115, 117–8 n. 34, 133 n. 25, 152, 152 n. 33, 170, 179, 181–2, 189, 198–200, 200 n. 18, 210–1, 215–8, 216 nn. 14–6, 223–4, 224 n. 35, 227 n. 45, 232–4, 238, 238 n. 17, 240, 242–3, 243 n. 32, 247, 247 n. 42, 252, 256–68, 257 n. 7, 258 n. 10, 260 n. 19, 273–5, 274 n. 18, 277, 277 n. 27, n. 29, 280, 280 n. 36, 282 n. 42, 291, 293 n. 22, 295–6, 295 n. 26, 298 n. 38, 301, 301 nn. 50–1, 303–4, 304 n. 61, 309–10 personal observation, opsis, 3, 92, 119–21, 124, 128, 130, 130 n. 12, 132, 147 n. 15, 200, 200 n. 18 persuasive function of myth, see “myth, persuasive function of ” Pheretime, 296 Pheros, 90–1, 108, 111 n. 14, 124 n. 46, 130 n. 11 Philippides, 51 n. 210, 287 n. 1 Phoenicians, 27, 34–6, 65–7, 69, 96, 103–4, 114 n. 25, 133 n. 25, 152, 184–5, 198–9, 203, 256, 258 Phoenician alphabet, 185–7, 234 Phoenix, 300 n. 45 Phrixus, 278 Pindar, 17 n. 68, 47, 97, 97 n. 45, 176–8, 181, 302 Pisistratids, 207 Pisistratus, 77, 79, 81–2, 93, 104 n. 74, 180 n. 41, 248 Pittacus, 50, 79 Plataea, battle of, 12, 17 n. 68, 30 n. 117, 39, 48, 48 n. 194, 68, 85, 95, 97, 99,

General Index 110 n. 13, 168, 170–1, 173–4, 176–7, 177 n. 30, 180, 182, 191, 198 n. 10, 199 n. 14, 264, 278 n. 29, 279, 281 n. 38, 282–5, 289–90, 292, 293 n. 19, 296–9, 300 n. 49, 301, 309–10, 311 n. 87 Plato, 10, 14 n. 51, 49, 132, 137 n. 33, 202 n. 23, 240 n. 23, 247, 250, 252, 267 Pohlenz, Max, 6, 7 n. 24 Polycrates, 23–5, 25 n. 97, 88–9, 196, 204, 212, 212 n. 47 Polynices, 221, 283 portents, 61, 75–7, see also “dreams”, “oracles” predecessors of Herodotus, 47, 167–8 (and Chs. 3–6 passim) poetic, 2, 26, 123, 259, see also “Homer” prose, 26, see also “Hecataeus” Presocratics, 9–10 n. 39, 252 Priam, 17, 22, 91–2, 96, 139–40, 150–1, 162–3, 162 n. 68, 292, 295, 311 probability (to oikos), argument from, 18, 63, 92, see also “sophists, Histories’ affinities with” Prodicus, 14 n. 51, 43–4 proem, of the Histories (and see Index Locorum), 2 n. 1, 3 n. 4, 18 n. 72, 20, 27, 39 n. 151, 41 n. 158, 42, 46–7, 47 n. 193, 61–7, 69, 89, 91 n. 22, 95–6, 95 n. 37, 101–4, 130, 133 n. 25, 151–2, 198–200, 199 n. 11, n. 14, 201 n. 19, 210, 212, 256–7, 256 n. 5, 268, 290–1, 293, 308, 311–2 Proetus, 169, 177 n. 30 propaganda, 30 n. 119, 41, 88, 95–6, 231 n. 57, 260–1, 288, 295 n. 26 Persian use of, 96, 231 n. 57, 247 n. 42, 295 n. 26 Protagoras, 5 n. 13, 14 n. 51, 49, 247, 250, 250 n. 50 Protesilaus, 44, 96, 100, 100 n. 51, 197 n. 5, 200, 200 n. 15, 211, 273–4, 287, 287 n. 1, 293 Proteus, 21, 90–2, Ch. 3 passim, 130, 133 n. 23, 134, 135 n. 29, 136–9, 137 n. 33, 139 n. 36, 141, 142 n. 44, 145–50, 145 n. 9, 148 nn. 18–9, n. 20, 152–5, 153 nn. 36–7, 154 n. 40, n. 43, 158 n. 55, 184 n. 52, 186 n. 56, 235 n. 6

367

meta-historical function of, 108 revision of, 111 prōtos idmen (‘first of whom we know’), 21, 21 n. 82, 23, 89 proverbs/proverbial wisdom, 50, 301 Pythius the Lydian, 61 n. 3, 117, 117 n. 33, 233, 235–6, 238, 240–1, 242 n. 30, 243–4, 243 n. 32, 246, 248, 252–3 historicity of story of, 240–1 (and Ch. 9 passim) Quellenforschung (‘the study of sources’), 4 rationalism, 6, 64–5, 90 n. 18, 105, 147 n. 14 rationalization/demythologisation, 19 n. 74, 27, 36, 57, 152, 176, 200 reciprocity, 99, 102, 144, 158, 244, 291, see also “motif, of reciprocity” religion, 13, 36, 50, 75, 76 n. 38, 112, 114, 114 n. 27, 116, 278, 286, see also “god(s)”, “ritual” repetition, 77 n. 40, 124, 134–5, 134 n. 26, 135 nn. 28–9, 141, 148, 161, 185, 228, 298 research, see “enquiry” Rhadamanthus, 206 n. 36, 207 n. 37 Rhampsinitus, 33, 55 n. 224, 90, 108, 124, 130, 131 rhetoric, 9, 23, 40–1, 43, 45, 67 n. 17, 87–8, 93–4, 97, 110, 199, 201, 201 n. 19, 206 n. 35, 212, 247, 281, 282 n. 43, 283–4, 288, 294, 294–5 n. 24, 296–7, 299, 306 n. 71, 311, see also “orator(s)”, “speech” ‘Rise of the rational’ theory, 6, 9 Rite de Passage, 16 ritual, 13, 15–6, 16 n. 57, 16 n. 59, 31–2, 38, 40, 46, 50 n. 203, 54–5, 54 n. 223, 55 n. 227, 114–5, 149, 160 n. 61, 186, 236–43, 238 n. 15, 238 n. 17, 239 n. 18, 240 n. 23, n. 26, 242 n. 30, 246, 270 n. 6, see also “Hittite rituals”, “Persian religious rituals” ritualistic context, 16 Romulus, 54, 270 Sabakos, 239 saga, 15, 15 n. 54, 17 n. 65, 71 n. 29, 84, 202 n. 21, 208, 246, 255

368

General Index

Sandanis, 79 Sappho (and see Index Locorum), 47 Sargon, 216 n. 14, 245, 251, 270 Sarpedon, 69, 91 n. 20, 207, 276 scepticism, 13 n. 49, 34, 64, 195 n. 2, 197 n. 8, 200, 277 Scyllias, 63 Scythia/Scythians, 31–3, 33 n. 128, 33 n. 129, 33–4 n. 131, 40–1, 63, 73, 77, 81, 90, 102–3, 104 n. 74, 229, 265 n. 26, 270, 272 Sesostris, 105, 112 n. 19, 124 n. 46, 183 Seven against Thebes, 95, 283 Sicilian expedition, 294–5 n. 24, 296 n. 28, 306 nn. 69–70, 309 self-mythicizing, 288, 296–7, 299, 300–11 Semiramis, 71 Simonides, 48, 168, 176, 304 n. 63 Plataea Elegy (and see Index Locorum), 17 n. 68, 30 n. 117, 48 n. 194, 97, 198 n. 10, 311 n. 87 Socles, 279, 290 n. 8 Solon, 20, 49–50, 49 n. 201, 78–80, 79 n. 44, 82, 84, 93, 116 n. 30, 117, 117 n. 32, 121, 137 n. 33, 156–7, 156 n. 50, 163, 164 n. 74, 165, 186 n. 57, 220 n. 25, 220 n. 32, 302 n. 53 Sophanes, 290, 293 n. 19, 310 sophists, Histories’ affinities with, 5, 5 n. 13, 6, 8–9, 14 n. 51, 22 n. 85, 43, 101, 151–2 n. 32, 190 Sophocles (and see Index Locorum), Herodotus and, 5, 52, 222 see also “tragedy, Greek/Attic” Sosicles, see Socles source-material, Assyrian, 71, 245 Cretan, 205, 210–12 Egyptian, 91–2, 107–8, 109 n. 6, 110 n. 8, 111–12, 127–9, 153 n. 37, 190, 200, 210 Persian, 215–16, 218, 229, Ch. 9 passim transmission of eastern, 111–12, 185, 190, 216–7, 216 n. 14, 220–21, 225, 232, 242–4, 246–9, 251–3 (and Ch. 9 passim), 255 source reference(s), 4, 7–8, 187 n. 59, see also “Herodotus, sources used by”

Egyptian priests as, 33, 90–2, 96, 101, 111, 114 n. 25, 127–9, 131–3, 137, 137 n. 33, 141, 183, 188 n. 62 Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, 16 n. 59, 55, 260 Sparta/Spartan(s), 25 n. 98, 39 n. 146, 41, 43, 63, 63 n. 7, 65, 68–71, 73, 73 n. 32–3, 76, 81, 92–4, 98–9, 104 n. 74, 109 n. 6, 110 n. 12, 110 n. 13, 117–8, 134, 146 n. 13, 170–5, 179–82, 184, 191, 196 n. 5, 199 n. 14, 209, 245–6, 260–4, 261 n. 20, 266, 270, 274 n. 18, 279–81, 279 n. 34, 281 n. 39, 282–5, 287–8, 288 n. 4, 289, 289 n. 6, 291–4, 297–9, 303 n. 56, 309–10, 309 n. 83 spatium, historicum, 2, 24, 24 n. 95, 29, 66, 87–8, 88 n. 8, 90, 110 n. 11, 142 n. 47, 195 n. 1 mythicum, 2, 19, 24, 24 n. 95, 87–8, 88 n. 8, 110 n. 11, 142 n. 47, 195 n. 1 see also “time” speech, 11 n. 43, 13 n. 49, 16, 36, 52, 78–80, 94–5, 116–7, 124–5, 124 n. 46, n. 48, 130–1, 131 n. 13, n. 17, 158 n. 55, 168, 185, 187, 199 n. 14, 220 n. 24, 222, 221–2 n. 29, 229, 249, 284, 296, 299 n. 44 direct, 116, 124, 131, 131 n. 13, 158 n. 55, 220 n. 24, 222, 249 indirect, 13 n. 49, 31, 34, 36, 37 n. 139, 124, 124 n. 46, 124 n. 48, 125, 131, 131 n. 13, 131 n. 17 Sperthias and Boulis, 98, 117 Stentor, 276 Stoa Poikilē, 97, 291 n. 10 story-patterns (narrative patterns), 44, 47, 54 n. 222, 55–6, 55 n. 224, 61, 64 n. 8, 73 n. 32, 78, 84, 98, 129, 129 n. 9, 131 n. 17, 136, 141–2, 144, 168–70, 172–5, 184, 189–91, 198, 214, 220, 225–7, 232–3, 234 n. 2, 237–8, 251, 270, 285 n. 48, 293 n. 22, 295–6, Ch. 6 passim, see also “motif ”, “mythic patterns/ schemata”, “theme(s)” significance of, 236–7 structuralism, 8–9, 17, 54, 54 n. 221 Syagrus, 94, 281 Syracusans, 94, 279, 281, 306 n. 71

General Index Talthybius, 90, 98, 110 n. 12, 117, 117–8 n. 35, 211, 287, 287 n. 1 ta theia (‘divine things’, ‘divine doings’), 31, 59, 60 Herodotus’ reticence about, 189 Targitaus, 32 tekmēria (‘evidence’), 27, 27 n. 109, 63 Telemachus, 118–9, 176–7 Tellus, 49, 84, 278 n. 32 Teucrians, see “Mysians and Teucrians, invasion of ” thalassocracy, 201 n. 20, 202 n. 24, 204–5, 207 n. 36, 209 n. 42, 212 Thales, 69, 81 n. 48, 116 n. 30 Theban Cycle, 38, 222, 291 n. 11, see also “Oedipus”, “Seven against Thebes” Thebans, 110 n. 12, 291 n. 11, 300, 306, 310 theme(s), 25, 39, 65, 81–2, 84, 102, 153, 165 n. 76, 174, 177–8, 219, 223, 225 n. 37, 296, 298, 298 n. 38, 301, 301 n. 51, 305, 308, see also “motif ” Themistocles, 179, 271, 277 Theoclymenus, 176–9 Thermopylae, 41, 43, 48, 54 n. 222, 68, 179–80, 261, 263, 285, 288, 288 n. 4, 297 n. 33, 298–9, 298 n. 38, 299 n. 43, 304, 309, 311 n. 87 Theseus, 45 n. 185, 46 n. 187, 55, 69, 90, 97 n. 40, 99, 202, 202 nn. 21–4, 203 n. 25, 207 n. 36, 208, 208 n. 39, 212 n. 46, 248, 260, 279 n. 34, 289–91, 290 n. 9, 291 n. 11, 293–5, 309, 311–2 thōmata (‘wonders’, ‘the miraculous’), 64, 75, 77–8, 83 Thonis, 118, 120, 125, 134–5, 147 thoughtless ruler theme, see “motif, of thoughtless ruler” Thrasybulus, 64, 81, 173 n. 23 Thucydides, 3, 3 n. 4, 3 n. 5, 7, 7 n. 21, 13–4, 14 n. 51, 18, 20–1, 24 n. 95, 26, 26 n. 103, 28, 30 n. 120, 31 n. 121, 36, 44 n. 176, 46–7, 49, 50 n. 206, 60, 64–5, 67, 78 n. 41, 85, 179, 181, 195–8, 196 n. 3, 197 n. 8, 198 n. 9, 202–7, 202 n. 24, 203 nn. 25–6, 204 n. 27, 205 nn. 30–1, 206 n. 35, 207 nn. 36–7, 212 n. 47, 230 n. 54, 248–9, 259 n. 15, 292 n. 16, 295 n. 24, 296 n. 28, 305–6, 306 n. 69, n. 71, 309 Thucydides’ Archaeology, 21, 198, 198 n. 9, 203, 205 n. 30

369

Thyestes, 222 time, 1, 9, 14, 19–29, 29 n. 115, 41–2, 46, 49 n. 202, 62, 67, 74, 90, 119 n. 36, 137, 155, 180, 180 n. 40, 188, 195–7, 201, 206, 208, 210, 221–2 n. 29, 271, 284, 287 ff., 292 n. 14, 295, see also “spatium, historicum/mythicum” continuity across, 19–20, 22–3, 165 timeless aspect of myth, see “myth, timeless aspect of ” Timesius, 77 Tisamenus, 54, 73 n. 32, Ch. 6 passim to muthōdes (‘the fabulous’), see “muthōdes, to” Tomyris, 80, 84, 230, 232 to palaion, ta palaia (‘ancient’), 19, 20, 50, 203–4, 208, 283 n. 44 tragedy, Greek/Attic, 9 n. 38, 48, 78 n. 41, 97–8, 225 n. 37, 289, 294, 305 n. 64, see also “Aeschylus”, “Euripides”, “Sophocles” Histories’ affinities to, 44, 48 n. 195, 50, 52–3, 52 n. 213, 52 nn. 215–6, 79 n. 44, 81, 157, 160 n. 61, 214, 220–25, 227, 230–32, 296, 302–3, 304 n. 61, 306 nn. 68–9, 310 transgression of natural boundaries, see “motif, of transgression of natural boundaries” Trojan Cycle, 38, 88, 90–1, 93, 98 Trojan War, 15 n. 55, 18, 27–8, 33 n. 130, 39, 46, 46 n. 187, 48, 87–91, 93–101, 96 n. 39, 103, 105, 109, 112, 118, 127–8, 137–8, 137 n. 33, 140–2, 140 n. 40, 151, 151 n. 29, 154–5, 195, 197 n. 8, 198–201, 198 n. 10, 199 n. 14, 200 n. 15, 201 n. 19, 203 n. 25, 207 n. 36, 208–10, 212, 256, 258 n. 11, 271, 273, 286, 291–3, 292 n. 15, 304, 304 n. 63, 309, 311 historicity of, 15 n. 55, 87 Troy, 15, 17–8, 22, 29, 40, 47, 82, 88, 91–3, 96–7, 99–100, 109, 116, 122, 127–8, 135, 135 n. 29, 137–9, 140 n. 39, 146, 150–2, 151 n. 32, 152 n. 32, 154, 158 n. 54, 165, 198–9, 199 n. 14, 200, 206 n. 35, 271–3, 275, 276 n. 24, 278, 280 n. 36, 281–3, 281 n. 39, 287–9, 291–2, 295–6, 295 n. 26, 302–6, 304 n. 60, n. 63, 306 n. 72, 308, 310–11

370

General Index

truth (alētheia), 1, 2 n. 2, 3, 5, 11 n. 42, 14, 18 n. 70, 19–20, 26 n. 103, 27–9, 27 n. 108, 32–3, 35–7, 35 n. 134, 40, 42–3, 42 nn. 162–3, 45, 47, 49–50, 55–6, 62–3, 83, 85, 91–2, 97, 104, 115, 119, 119 n. 36, 121–2, 123 n. 44, 126–7, 131–2, 134, 136–8, 137 n. 33, 140, 147, 150, 157, 189, 193, 195, 201, 213–7, 213 n. 1, 214 n. 3, 219, 222, 226–30, 226 n. 44, 227 n. 45, 229 n. 48, 230 n. 53, 232–3 (and Ch. 8 passim), 247, 288, 299, 310 and pleasure, 49–50 Herodotus’ commitment to, 1–3, 18 n. 70, 19–37, 40, 42–3, 46–7, 83–5, 122, 137–8, 189, Part II passim tyranny, 180 n. 41, 181, 223, 238 n. 17, 244, 246–52, 290 n. 8, 311

169, 169 nn. 12–3, 170 ff., 170, 172, 176–7, 177 n. 30, 185–7, 190–1, 198, 285, 290, see also “motif, of women’s role”

Varro, 28, 89 verification, potential for, 18 n. 70, 33, 164, 287, see also “enquiry”, “authority, historiographical” verisimilitude, argument from, see “probability, argument from” Veyne, Paul, 40

xenia (Ionic xeiniē) (‘guest-friendship’, ‘hospitality’), 1, 113, 113 n. 24, 115–7, 116 n. 29, 121, 144–55, 145 n. 8, n. 18, 149 nn. 21–2, 153 n. 36, 157 n. 57, 159–61, 159 n. 60, 160 n. 61, n. 65, 161 n. 66, 163–5, 235 n. 6, 226 n. 42, 243–4, see also “Zeus, Xenios” Xerxes, 5, 20, 40, 40 n. 154, 43–5, 43 n. 170, 44 n. 172, 52–3 n. 216, 68, 82 n. 54, 88, 88 n. 6, 95–6, 96 n. 39, 98, 100–1, 105, 117, 141, 164–5, 175, 193, 199–200, 199 n. 14, 206 n. 33, 208–9, 218, 220, 229–30, 235–6, 236 n. 7, 237–8, 241–4, 241 n. 29, 257–60, 257 n. 8, 258 n. 11, 262–3, 262 n. 22, 265–6, 269, 271–80, 276 n. 23, 278 n. 31, 280 n. 36–7, 286–8, 292, 294–7, 295 n. 25, 299–301, 299 n. 44, 301 n. 51, 303 n. 56, 308, 308 n. 80, 310–1 army list of, 257 ff., 257–60, 264 invasion of, 95, 100, 200, 209, 266, 273, 277, 310 sacrifice of Oebazus’ sons, 237 n. 11

Warner-motif, see “motif, of wise adviser/warner” Weltanschauung (“world view”), 5–6 Wise-adviser motif, see “motif, of wise adviser/Warner” women, 34–6, 39, 63, 73, 100, 102, 104–5, 115, 133, 133 n. 25, 151,

Zeus, 13, 32–5, 32 n. 126, 69, 76, 91 n. 20, 144, 147 n. 16, 150, 161, 161 nn. 66–7, 187, 197, 205 n. 28, 257, 261–3, 271, 275, 278, 288 n. 3, 302, 307 Xenios, 147 n. 16, 150, 161, 161 n. 66

unverifiable material, 3–4, 7, 9–10, 14, 21, 23, 26–7, 35, 39, 42, 45, see also “knowledge”