Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories [online ed.] 0198820437, 9780198820437

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’
Mapping Out the World
Lines and Dots
Depth and Resonance
Geographical Morality
The Conquest of Nature
Writing an Imperial Geography
Epilogue
References
Subject Index
Index of Passages Cited

Citation preview

Dedication

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Dedication Katherine Clarke

(p.v) For Chris, Charlie, and Scipio (p.vi)

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Preface

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

(p.vii) Preface Katherine Clarke

This is a book about the Herodotean world, or rather about Herodotean worlds, since a key proposition will be that Herodotus creates multiple worlds in his narrative. The constructed landscape in Herodotus’ work incorporates his own literary representation of the natural world from the broadest scope of continental divisions, through features such as seas and mountain ranges, down to the individual setting of specific episodes, and furthermore his own ‘charging’ of those settings through resonant mythological associations or spatial parallels. The physical landscape of the Histories is in turn manipulated and changed by characters within the narrative, whose interactions with the natural world on both the smaller scale of engineering works and the large scale of imperial campaigns form one of the subjects of Herodotus’ inquiry. The element of man’s interaction thus adds another dimension to the meaning imparted to space in Herodotus’ work, bringing together the notions of landscape as physical reality and as constructed reality. Geographical space is not a neutral backdrop to be described by the historian, nor is it even simply to be seen as his ‘creation’, but it is brought to life as an active player in the narrative, the interaction with which reinforces, or maybe even determines, the placing of the protagonists along a spectrum of positive or negative characterizations. The narratological tool of focalization is embedded in this study of Herodotean geography in complementary ways—firstly, in the varied configurations of space that result from viewing the world from different standpoints; and secondly, in the diverse opinions about human interaction with geographical space which emerge from the different voices within the narrative, including that of the author himself. The multivocal nature of the narrative, which lends it depth, in turn complicates whether we can identify a ‘Herodotean’ world at all, still less one in which moral judgements are reliably cast in one voice and according to Page 1 of 4

 

Preface consistent criteria. Hence, the distinctively negative characterization of the Persians with regard to the natural world, which I argue is built up through a combination of context, comparison, and above all a language of passionate desire to control both peoples and places, nevertheless remains contestable and (p.viii) provisional. Furthermore, the mutability of fortune makes it impossible to see Herodotus’ world as static, as the stepping of one imperial power into the shoes of another underlines. The acquisition and exercise of political power, or dynamis, manifested both metaphorically and literally through control over the natural world, results in a constantly evolving map of imperial geography. This book enjoyed its first incarnation as an undergraduate essay, written over twenty-five years ago. I owe a great debt to my Ancient History tutor at St John’s College, Oxford, Nicholas Purcell, who not only tolerated, but positively encouraged my unconventional approach to the narrative of the Persian Wars and oversaw its conversion into a Finals dissertation. Since then it is a topic to which I have always wished to return, and six months of sabbatical in 2010–11, following maternity leave, provided the perfect opportunity. Nevertheless, work and family commitments have made the process of transforming a set of draft chapters into a monograph a protracted one, during which a large number of relevant new works of scholarship has appeared, forcing me to keep refreshing my own thinking. Many people have assisted greatly in the production of this book. Hilary O’Shea, former Classics editor at Oxford University Press, encouraged me from the outset, a role that was ably taken over by Charlotte Loveridge, generously supported by Georgina Leighton. All have provided quick, clear, and helpful advice at all stages, as well as general encouragement. I should also like to thank my project manager, Kavya Ramu, and eagle-eyed copy-editor, Donald Watt, both of whom provided excellent and prompt support through the production process. In preparing translations of Herodotus for this book, I have benefited greatly from a range of existing translations, notably A. D. Godley’s Loeb (1920) and D. Grene, Herodotus. The Histories (Chicago, 1987). The typescript was considered by three readers on behalf of the Press, all of whom provided extensive comments and two of whom did so for two successive versions of the book. Due to their anonymity, I have not been able to thank them personally, but I should like to take this opportunity to express my warm gratitude for their exceptionally close engagement with my work at the level of concept, argument, and detail. Their feedback has been challenging in the most constructive sense and has unquestionably resulted in a significantly revised and improved monograph, for whose shortcomings I still retain, of course, full responsibility. (p.ix) Practical assistance was provided by my college, St Hilda’s, which allowed me a further term of sabbatical leave in 2013, as well as offering a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment in which to work. My Page 2 of 4

 

Preface colleagues there in a variety of subjects have been the source of many a thoughtprovoking conversation, quite apart from their even more deeply appreciated friendship and support. Of none could this be said with greater warmth and affection than my Classical colleagues, Rebecca Armstrong and Emily Kearns, with whom I have worked for many years in the happiest collaboration imaginable. More recently, Amber Gartrell has made an excellent and lively addition to the College team, as has Calypso Nash. Calypso has, furthermore, proved an exceptionally valuable research assistant, checking the ancient references in this book with great expertise, intelligence, and attention to detail, and spotting a multitude of errors and infelicities along the way, and providing much needed help with indexing. Her assistance was kindly funded by the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford and by St Hilda’s College, and has greatly facilitated the final stages of the book’s production. Many individuals have lent their support in various ways, from stimulating conversations and feedback on seminar papers, to quiet encouragement and—at decent intervals—gentle enquiries after Herodotus. More specific debts are owed to Irad Malkin, who has on many occasions lent an encouraging ear and offered enriching responses to my ideas. Conversations with him have always left me eager to get back to the book, intellectually reinvigorated. Richard Rutherford kindly provided valuable feedback on Chapter 1, while Chris Pelling gave early versions of Chapters 2 and 5 his customarily rich and highly productive scrutiny. Some of the material in Chapter 5 received helpful comments from Stephanie West, Tim Rood, Rhiannon Ash, and Judith Mossman in another context. To all of these friendly critics I am immensely grateful. I also owe a considerable debt to Lyndal Roper, whose warm encouragement to allow my own work to regain some priority was instrumental in bringing the project to its conclusion. Following on from Nicholas Purcell’s inspirational teaching, Fergus Millar, my doctoral supervisor, has not only remained a dear friend, but also, with great generosity, retained an interest in my work, characteristically reading and commenting on the entire finished typescript within a miraculously small number of days. His ongoing support and encouragement mean a great deal. (p.x) My husband, Chris Burnand, read the entire typescript some years ago in what I thought was a relatively finished state. His exceptionally detailed and insightful reading at the level of clarity, logic, argument, specifics, and concept led me to the quick realization that the work was, in fact, far from finished. In particular, his advice that I should ‘look more carefully at who says what’ was responsible for the development of one of the two major strands in the resulting book, requiring a fairly fundamental rethinking and rewriting, which I believe has greatly benefited the whole. For Chris’s support in this and so many other ways I remain always grateful. The domestic front has also been enhanced throughout the life of this book by the figure of Scipio. His demands for frequent and lengthy walks around the South Oxfordshire countryside have served to Page 3 of 4

 

Preface clear the brain on many an occasion and the presence of a perpetually relaxed and, walks aside, mostly somnolent creature whether in College or at home has a markedly beneficial effect on the stress levels of all around. Finally, this book has grown up alongside Charlie, the development and nurturing of the latter mostly at the expense of the former. Charlie’s ever-demanding, but upliftingly loving, inquisitive, and engaged character has grown to encompass a touching and persistent interest in the progress of the book itself, a compelling incentive to bring the project to fruition. The book is dedicated to this delightfully lifeenhancing home team.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores two major Herodotean contexts. One is the Greek literary tradition of which he was a part, ranging from Homer, through the periegetic texts, through ethnographic writings, and other early historians, such as Hecataeus. After considering these literary and intellectual milieus within which Herodotus operated, this chapter moves on to sketch out the modern scholarly context of recent work on Herodotus, particularly that which relates to the two chosen strands of analysis—the depiction of geographical space and the application of narratological tools, particularly those with a direct bearing on the articulation and viewing of space, such as the distinction between bird’s-eye and travelling viewpoints. This makes it possible to mark out more clearly the new direction and distinctive contribution of the current monograph within the scholarly landscape. Keywords:   narratological, tradition, ethnographic, geographical, Herodotus, Hecataeus, periegetic

The apparent contradiction between the title of Part I and that of this chapter encapsulates a key tension in the study of Herodotus. On the one hand, some, like Momigliano, who provides the chapter title,1 focus on the unprecedented nature of Herodotus’ work and, on the other, scholars such as Robert Fowler and Rosalind Thomas2 have brought Herodotus in from the cold, from the isolated and unique position implied by his status as ‘father of history’,3 and complemented this picture of ground-breaking inventor of a genre with a sense of intellectual context and literary tradition.4 Keeping in mind the value of thinking about Herodotus and his extraordinary narrative (p.4) in the light of predecessors, such as Homer and Hecataeus, and contemporaries, while Page 1 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ primarily focused on examining this historical text as an innovative creation in terms of both concept and execution, will be one of the tasks of this book. While certainly not wishing to reinstate Herodotus as the father of history, nor indeed to reclassify him as the ‘father of geography’, I shall argue that his historical narrative incorporates and is in turn embedded in a complex spatial framework. This involves viewing geographical space in a fluid way from multiple angles, ranging from the bird’s-eye view of the all-seeing author down to the experiential view of the traveller, while simultaneously evoking fixed viewpoints which are associated with specific moral judgements or focalizations. The constantly shifting focalization of Herodotus’ narrative, has sometimes been analysed in terms of source criticism. It can, however, alternatively or additionally be viewed as part of a complex web of spatial relationships which applies both to the creation of a narrative made up of different voices from different viewpoints and to the viewing of and interaction with the world in which that narrative is located, on the part of both the author and the characters in the text.5 In terms of innovation, geographical space is conceived and articulated in this narrative to a degree that lifts Herodotus’ whole composition to an unprecedented level of sophistication and richness. I have argued elsewhere that the relationship between temporal and spatial matrices, or historical and geographical ways of thinking, is particularly marked in certain works of ancient literature, not least those which take as their subject a period of change in the configuration of power over territory, that is, empire.6 The phase of Roman expansion, in which the shape of the world was dramatically altered, generated a cluster of literary works in which the new world was redrawn. The historical work of Polybius and the geographical work of Strabo, for example, offered differently focused representations of this world, one ordered primarily according to time, the other to space, but both attempting to depict the dynamic world of Roman (p.5) power as one in which space was configured differently across time. Historical processes and events inevitably take place in a real physical context. However, I shall argue that, like the writers who took on the rewriting of the world brought by the Roman Empire, Herodotus too, as a historian of Persian imperialism and one writing at the time of Athens’ bid to alter the map of its own power over mainland Greece and the Aegean, had a particular interest in the conception, representation, and articulation of geographical space in his work. As I shall discuss in this chapter, and seek to demonstrate in the later parts of this book, Herodotus’ spatial representations go beyond the careful and vivid depiction of a geographical backdrop and context for the narrative of his work. Rather he shapes and ‘creates’ a landscape full of meaning and resonance, a morally charged entity with which characters in the narrative interact along a scale from positive to negative, thereby generating a significant layer of characterization, and with it a new level of historical interpretation.7

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ A) Treading in the Footsteps of Giants Let us first consider briefly the literary and intellectual backdrop against which Herodotus was composing his picture of the world. In spite of Momigliano’s stance on the uniqueness of Herodotus,8 a great deal of work has already been done on his relationship with mighty predecessors such as Homer and Hecataeus, as well as on other intellectual contexts—the world of Ionian science and that of the tragic stage being just two. Here, then, I shall present only a broad sweep of the range of literary influences and a glimpse of the vast modern scholarship on the subject, with a view to appreciating what is innovative and distinctive in Herodotus’ own conception of space. (p.6) It seems only right to start with Herodotus’ own opening literary allusion to Homer.9 The public display of great deeds, promised by Herodotus at the opening of his work,10 inevitably encourages us to read his text in the light of Homeric epic, and the challenge has been taken up by countless scholars.11 The focus of this interest has ranged between the shift from oral poetic tradition to written prose text, the identification of Herodotus himself with the figure of Odysseus, the subject choice suggesting an Odyssean start to Herodotus’ work and an Iliadic second half, and the influence of catalogue forms on Herodotus’ own presentation of large quantities of information.12 Nagy’s brief but important contribution argues that Herodotus is not content to work within a Homeric framework of storytelling, but competitively and ambitiously attempts to outbid Homer with his collection of logoi, the master of oral tradition in prose, as opposed to Homer’s role as aoidos in verse. By subsuming the epic conflict of the Trojan War under the even greater conflict between Hellenes and barbarians, the framework of the Histories encompasses and surpasses that of the Iliad, and ‘The history of Herodotus the logios is in effect incorporating, not just continuing, the epic of Homer the aoidos.’13 The death of oral epic at the hands of Herodotus is proposed also by Murray, who sees Herodotus as the heir to the whole tradition of oral logopoioi, but argues that the writing down of these tales in relation to a new and greater theme, as the logographos, destroyed that very tradition.14 More positively, a similar sense of (p.7) competition and innovation, in spite of the obvious overlaps of ethnographic and martial subject matter and the stress on fame, is noted by Boedeker, who argues that resemblances with Homer may have been quite a deliberate way for Herodotus to stress his Persian Wars as the new epic.15 Perhaps a similar sense of one-upmanship underpinned Herodotus’ striking claim to write under his own authority, following Hecataeus’ model, rather than giving first mention in his work to the inspiration of a Muse. Or, more radically with Marincola,16 one might see Herodotus’ engagement being not with his literary rivals, but with their actual logoi, thus erasing the literary figures altogether. Nevertheless, Herodotus was famously celebrated in his home town of Halicarnassus as ‘the pedestrian [i.e. prose] Homer of historiography’,17 suggesting that this particular affinity was widely perceived, at least during the Hellenistic period from which this inscription dates.18 At the Page 3 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ very least, even though it is hard to know precisely how to interpret Homeric echoes and allusions in Herodotus, as Marincola notes, ‘they certainly seem to invest the scenes in which they appear with solemnity or at the very least suggest a sense of something extraordinary or noteworthy’,19 or, in Pelling’s words, the Homeric allusions bring ‘all the glamour, all the wonder of a grand expedition on that scale, all the peculiarly visible role of the gods’.20 Homeric epic is clearly not the only poetic form to offer a backdrop or context for Herodotus’ work.21 The fact that Aeschylus had also (p.8) chosen an episode from the Persian Wars as the subject for a tragedy clearly reinforces the overlap in subject matter between poetic and prose composition, and, as we shall see, the similarities and variations between the Persae and Herodotus’ Histories bear productive exploration.22 In the field of lyric poetry, Ewen Bowie has examined the fragments of early poetic works which he sees as genealogically prior to Herodotus’ Histories. The precise relationship between the development of poetic and prose versions of large-scale historical accounts is fraught with complexity, but, as Bowie notes, ‘Whatever happened in prose works, the extant evidence for this sort of verse suggests movement from accounts of single poleis to an account putting together some sort of overarching narrative—of course we do not know what sort, and it could have been wholly mythographic—concerning several poleis.’23 Nevertheless, the Homeric epics offer an especially resonant point of reference for future literature and for Herodotus in particular, given both the Iliadic and Odyssean elements in his Histories. I shall turn in more detail in the next section to the question of focalization, where the association of Herodotus the travelling historian with the figure of Odysseus himself entails a shifting and internal perspective on the world. But first we might note the geographical resonances of the Odyssey in particular. Besides the Odyssey’s interest in peoples, places, customs, and lands, which, as Marincola notes, clearly offers a rich inspiration to Herodotus’ own ethnographic descriptions, the figure of Odysseus bequeaths to Herodotus a long first-person narrative of adventures and tales as the framework within which this world is depicted.24 The mapping out of the Odyssean world through his encounters with different peoples, often characterized and distinguished by their diets, helps to generate a geographical image that is both detailed and broad-brushstroke, both recognizable and decidedly un-Hellenic, providing some modes of spatial configuration which are easy to discern in Herodotus too. Not only do Odysseus’ hosts eat foods that are strange or indeed magical, such as (p.9) the amnesiac lotus (Odyssey 9.82–104) or the human fare of the Cyclopes (9.105–566) and Laestrygonians (10.80–132, especially 124), but the eating of these foods creates a dietary map which forms just one of many layers of non-Greek behaviour. The Cyclopes, with their lack of laws, assemblies, and social structure, and the absence of agriculture and seafaring, fail to adhere to many aspects of a Greek lifestyle, a fact which is epitomized by the feast they make of their guests, thereby subverting the whole Page 4 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ notion of guest-friendship. The Phaeacians, by contrast, seem superficially to be remarkably Greek, with orchards and meadows, women sitting spinning in the palace, renowned sailors, feasts and games, and bards to entertain them; they believe in Zeus and respect the rules of xenia (7.159–66). But the Phaeacians could be said to inhabit a fantasy land, in an ideal, not a real city. Their gardens produce fruit all year round (7.117–19); they were moved to their newly built city in the land of Scheria as a means of escape (6.7–8). In terms of conceptual mapping in the currency of Greekness and non-Greekness, Odysseus cannot be said to have left the world of his adventures until he has returned to Ithacan soil, and finds himself waking up under a familiar Greek olive tree.25 Although some aspects of altérité of the Odyssean landscape are manifested in geographical ways,26 attempts to ‘map’ the world that Odysseus explored seem doomed.27 Homer’s ethnography, as indeed that of the later Greek ethnographers, is not formulated in those terms. Indeed, whether his characters reside anywhere except in the imaginative worlds of the author and his audiences is debatable. It is perhaps instructive that Odysseus falls asleep for the final leg of his journey back to Ithaca, leaving us to wonder whether it was all a dream. Mapping in terms of ‘otherness’ is inextricably linked to the question of authorial perspective, to which I shall return below (in section b. ii). By what standards is the world outside being assessed? (p.10) What counts as alien? But it also offers a strongly visual way in which to articulate and configure the world of the narrative, which implies a fixed viewpoint to complement the internal, experienced, travelling one of the Odyssean historian.28 We shall consider in more detail later (in this chapter and Chapter 2) the linear perspective of the traveller through experienced space that Herodotus adopts from time to time either in propria persona or through the eyes of characters within the text.29 But I should like now to note the significance of periegetic writing more generally in foregrounding certain types of mental mapping or conceptual geography that are common in Herodotus. In spite of Odysseus’ impatience with the idea of extended journeying, his role as the first describer of peoples and places, from the perspective of the traveller, cements his place within this tradition of conceptualizing space, notwithstanding the obvious differences between the world of epic myth and that of the period of the Persian Wars and beyond.30 The worlds depicted by other periegetic writers such as Pytheas of Massilia and Hanno of Carthage in some respects bear close resemblance to that of the Odyssey in terms of their approaches to mapping out space and their use of increasing strangeness to indicate increasing distance from home. But, quite apart from the obvious methodological difficulty in using texts, some of which are clearly later in date, to suggest anything about the context and consequent novelty of Herodotus’ geographical thinking,31 the nature of these ‘texts’ themselves is problematic.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ The voyage of Hanno II of Carthage at least has the advantage of being undertaken prior to Herodotus’ time of writing, in the early fifth century BC, but the text known to us is primarily a Greek translation of the Punic inscription reportedly set up in the temple of Ba’al Hammon (p.11) in Carthage.32 It is this translation which was known to writers such as Pliny the Elder and Arrian, and significant doubts about the authenticity of the ‘document’ abound. Warmington’s idea that discrepancies between the account of the west coast of Africa offered here and the reality on the ground might be explained through a deliberate policy of manipulation by Carthaginians protecting their trading interests is intriguing,33 but even the very notion of an official inscription set up to commemorate the voyage may overlook the possibility that the entire voyage and its commemorative plaque were a later invention. Just as some would argue that Herodotus never left his library seat, so too has it been proposed that Hanno’s voyage is just a literary construct, a mental exploration of ‘otherness’.34 In some ways this fits well the schematic increase in danger and lack of familiarity as the text proceeds down the west African coast. The Ethiopians in §7 are decidedly unfriendly; the land is full of wild beasts, and, in a disturbing echo of the Odyssey, there are men of a strange shape, called Troglodytes, who can run more quickly than horses. After coming across some humans dressed in animal skins (§9), and passing some crocodiles and hippopotami, Hanno and his companions hit a language barrier. The Ethiopians they meet (§11) speak a language which even the interpreters cannot understand. By §15, Hanno has gone so far from the Mediterranean world that he enters a geographically indistinct zone: ‘We passed a land full of fire and incense. From it streams of fire flowed into the sea. Because of the heat it was impossible to land.’ By the final chapter of the account, the dividing line between man and beast is obliterated, when Hanno comes across a lake on an island: On the lake there was another island full of wild people. By far the majority of them were women with hairy bodies. The interpreters called them Gorillas. When we chased them, we were unable to catch the men, for they all fled from our hands…We captured three women, however, who bit and scratched those who led them and didn’t want to follow. So we killed them and flayed them and took the skins to Carthage. The author of this text, like Herodotus, clearly wants to give the impression of reality. There is additionally a stated practical purpose to the voyage, to found Liby-Phoenician cities. Furthermore, the air of verisimilitude is enhanced by the fact that witnesses bring back (p.12) visible, tangible proofs of their experiences in the form of gorilla skins, a means of authenticating the ethnographic tale until it could be validated by its permanent record in an inscription. Whether or not the journey did actually happen, in narratological terms, the focalization is consistently that of a real traveller.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ The issue of reality and fiction recurs with a later example of the periegetic genre, Agatharchides of Cnidos.35 But leaving truth claims aside, it is possible to identify certain modes of ethnographic and spatial articulation, which again provide comparative material for our reading of Herodotus and of his geographical conceptions. In particular, Agatharchides’ account of the peoples who live in southern Egypt and Ethiopia, in which he distinguishes them in terms of their food, offers a striking form of conceptual mapping to set alongside Herodotus’ ethnographies (§30): In the region south of Egypt there are four main population groups: one that lives by the rivers and cultivates sesame and millet; one that dwells near the marshes and feeds on reeds and soft vegetable matter; one that wanders at random and bases its way of life on meat and milk; and one that lives on the coast and catches fish. Beyond the Fish Eaters, Agatharchides continues to more peoples, characterized by their eating habits—those who eat reed cakes, the Fibre Eaters, Seed Eaters, Hunters, especially Elephant Hunters, then the Locust Eaters, and culminating in the people the Greeks call Dog Milkers, ‘but in the language of the neighbouring barbarians they are “savages” (ἀγρίοι)’ (§60). Agatharchides’ ethnography is one in which the primary distinguishing feature is diet.36 We might note the varied focalizations (p.13) through which the increasingly exotic peoples are viewed—the authorial voice is informed by the perceptions of not just Greeks, but also those who must themselves qualify for inclusion in the ethnography.37 Furthermore, as we shall see with Herodotus, exoticism may be subtly infused with elements of familiar Hellenism. Just as, in the Odyssey, the hero’s return home is marked by the presence of an iconic olive bush, but his arrival at the intermediary land of Phaeacia is marked by his falling asleep under a canopy of standard olive and wild olive intertwined (Odyssey 5.476–81), so too is the map of Agatharchides’ world complex and carefully differentiated. In amongst the exoticism of the far south is a region full of olive trees, but these are ‘not the same as ours, but the sort that grows there’ (§91)— Hellenic but simultaneously alien. Herodotus’ own fascination with the geographical, ethnographic, and cultural diversity of the world, combined with a sense of common humanity and similarity, is neatly mirrored by Agatharchides’ own wonder at the fact that, in spite of the ease and speed of communication and travel, relatively accessible parts of the world could encompass such diversity of peoples and places (§67): A ship can travel from the Maeotian marsh to Ethiopia in twenty-four days, yet move from the utmost cold to the utmost heat, and encounter huge cultural differences.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ The lands and peoples of the Arabian Gulf are envisaged and mapped out, just like those of the west coast of Africa in Hanno’s account, in terms of the animals, geography, people, and their customs, here particularly through diet. The Lotus Eaters and cannibals of the Odyssey are replaced by Sesame Eaters, Fish Eaters, and Dog Milkers, bringing the world to the mind’s eye in terms of diet. As we shall see (Chapter 2), Herodotus’ mapping of various peoples who inhabit the outer reaches of his world is at times framed in similar currency to that used in the account of Hanno’s voyage or in Agatharchides’ description of the Arabian Gulf, if not food, then other aspects of lifestyle and customs, suggesting another mode of spatial articulation with which he is fully engaged. (p.14) These periplus texts, in spite of the predominantly linear sense of space associated with the coasting voyages which articulate the description, nevertheless evoke a much broader sense of whole regions, so that the line of the journey is complemented by the two-dimensional image of cartographic space. In terms of focalization, these periegetic texts thus combine the viewpoint of the traveller who experiences the landscape as he moves through it with the more distanced viewpoint of the external spectator, de Jong’s ‘panoramic’ and ‘close-up’ viewpoints mentioned above (n. 5). As we shall see, the coexistence of multiple angles with their complementary modes of geographical representation is strongly characteristic of Herodotus’ narrative too. The periegetic approach to mapping out space thus forges a close bond between Homer and Herodotus, as well as evoking a wider tradition of geographical and ethnographical writing which is embedded in the world of travel and mobility.38 But one obvious contrast with Homer is the claim of Herodotus to be addressing real geographical problems. In spite of the importance for Herodotus too of altérité and some of the forms of ethnographic mapping that we have already identified in the world of Homer and later periegetic writers, nevertheless I shall argue that Herodotus was at pains to find ways accurately to represent the reality of the world on every scale from the global to the local. It is worth recalling that, although Odysseus’ travels in Homer may strike us as fantastical and imaginative rather than enjoying a close correlation to any specific geographical reality, at least some readers in antiquity came to Homer’s epics with a quite different set of expectations.39 Strabo, for example, set out explicitly to defend Homer’s geography against the criticisms of Hellenistic scientists such as Eratosthenes, and sought to prove the authenticity of the Homeric landscape. This was partly with a view to establishing Homer as the first member of a geographical genre which Strabo was attempting to retroject, and partly because there was a certain general appeal to enhancing the prestige of a place through credible Homeric (p.15) association.40 But, although Strabo offers an illuminating insight into how Homer might be picked up and embraced by a geographical tradition in a very literal way,41 it seems that Herodotus’

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ geographical inheritance from Homer may have been more subtle and indirect than this. In any case, for an explicit and critical engagement with attempts to solve real geographical problems we need to look elsewhere. Hecataeus of Miletus cuts a figure of considerable influence over Herodotus, at the same time as being a player within the narrative,42 an interesting double position vis-à-vis the text from a narratological point of view. As West notes, it is hard to know precisely what use Herodotus made of Hecataeus’ work, although there are occasional instances of almost incontrovertible contact.43 Pearson focuses on the fact that our fragments of Hecataeus are by no means restricted to single place names cited by Stephanos of Byzantium, and that we can make some progress towards a fuller understanding of what his geographical descriptions might have encompassed, at least to the extent of knowing that he was interested in establishing ethnographic details and relative location, often expressed in the terms of experienced itinerary,44 just as we will see is characteristic of some passages in Herodotus. Romm, however, notes that nothing which survives of Hecataeus’ work suggests a developed narrative form, for which Homer is the only identifiable model for Herodotus,45 and West is (p.16) right to stress the difficulty in knowing quite how these two great figures in the history of historiography, Hecataeus and Herodotus, relate to each other. In a sense, the unease of modern scholars in gauging the literary relationship is mirrored in the encounters between Herodotus the author and Hecataeus the historical figure in his text. For West the problems in teasing out the attitude of Herodotus to this great predecessor are exemplified in the difficulty of the encounter between Hecataeus and the extreme antiquity of Egypt (2.143), a scene which she sees as driven less by historical accuracy than by the opportunity to present it as another Solon–Croesus-like moment in which Greek intellect and another mighty civilization or power come into contact.46 Again, a Greek intellectual is taken seriously in the wider world in this showcase encounter, even though Hecataeus’ display piece is ultimately exposed as trivial. It is clear that, in spite of his criticisms of Hecataeus, Herodotus has considerable admiration for this figure. Armayor’s arguments concerning Herodotus’ use of Hecataeus as a source for the Persian Wars and for his description of remote parts of the world also assume Herodotus’ critical admiration for and heavy indebtedness to Hecataeus, but also playful irony. Armayor observes the huge overlap between the fragments of Hecataeus and the contents of Herodotus’ catalogues of the Persian Empire.47 Furthermore, he argues strongly for the map of Aristagoras being based on Hecataean geography, perhaps even a Hecataean map, and indeed for certain passages put forward in Herodotus’ own authorial voice, such as his army and satrapy lists, being strongly visual in their presentation of space, and therefore probably indebted to the cartographic enterprises of either Hecateaus or Anaximander or both.48 Armayor even goes so far as to imply that the title ‘father of history’ should be ascribed to Hecataeus rather than to Page 9 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Herodotus, arguing that it was not the Persian Wars, but Darius’ expedition to Scythia that gave rise to Greek historiography, because it led to Hecataeus’ proto-historical enquiries on Darius’ empire and the exercise of dynamis.49 (p. 17) The possibility that Herodotus’ work too might most satisfactorily be interpreted as a study in the abuse of dynamis, particularly within the context of the ever-evolving imperial geography of the Mediterranean world, is one to which we will return (Chapter 7). But admiration does not lead to blind following, and it seems clear that Herodotus wants to move forward from Hecataeus and build on his work. One manifestation of this is the competitive one-upmanship in which Herodotus engages, almost certainly in the specific instance of his depiction of the Pontic region,50 and more generally in his handling of matters geographical. Even the mere fact of Herodotus’ narrative containing Hecataeus as a character gives Herodotus a certain control over his intellectual rival. Armayor suggests that Hecataeus is subject to mildly ironic treatment by Herodotus, not least since Herodotus has the warmonger Aristagoras arguing on the basis of the luxurious bronze map drawn up by the peacemonger Hecataeus—a scene which is inherently ridiculous, since all Cleomenes actually wants to know is how far away the seat of Persian power is.51 Such a reading would be in keeping with the playful scene examined by West (above) in which gentle fun is poked at the wisdom of Hecataeus. Armayor questions whether Herodotus really understands Hecataeus’ own humour and irony,52 but one could argue conversely that Herodotus’ playful picture of the intellectual whose ideas on chronology are mocked by the barbarians of Egypt precisely pinpoints one of the striking insights of a literary figure who had himself claimed that the ideas of the Greeks were laughable, and illustrates the truth of that very insight through the figure of Hecataeus himself, now not a free speaker, but a character in Herodotus’ own text.53 (p.18) In any case, such a picture of close engagement with Hecataeus has various implications. Armayor’s insistence on the Ionian poetic, literary, and intellectual scene as the context in which to find Herodotus’ sources of information, polemical engagement, literary form, and inspiration,54 may seem at first to sit well with the stress placed by Thomas on Ionian scientific thought and literature as the most significant backdrop against which to read Herodotus’ work.55 Indeed Thomas herself characterizes Herodotus in part as deeply engaged with preceding traditions, particularly through his self-styling as heir and rival to Homer, at the same time as being in dialogue with new ideas and theories.56 However, Thomas importantly lays a quite different stress on Herodotus’ intellectual affiliations, steering our attention away from the late sixth- and early fifth-century world of the pre-Socratic philosophers and of Hecataeus himself, and more towards the mid-to-late fifth-century scene of writers and thinkers who were contemporary with Herodotus himself, notably the Hippocratic writers and the sophists.57 Her argument that antecedents Page 10 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ known to us, such as the Homeric epics and the dry fragments of Hecataeus on geography and genealogy, cannot suffice to explain Herodotus’ extraordinary achievement seems to me convincing and exciting in that it invites a reading of Herodotus which is (p.19) focused primarily not on how he relates to preexisting traditions, but on his own creativity and vibrant interaction with the intellectual trends of his own day.58 This idea of lively and ongoing engagement helpfully liberates Herodotus from too strictly linear a set of connections to key predecessors, just as moving away from seeing him as the ‘inventor’ of a genre frees up new opportunities to appreciate him and his work from multiple perspectives.59 But the question of literary influence and sources does have a direct bearing on arguments concerning Herodotus’ own travels. The figure of Hecataeus here acts as a link, since he was himself deemed a ‘much-travelled man’ (ἀνὴρ πολυπλανής), setting the model for the Odyssean historian.60 Here, perhaps, we have a point of contact between Bakker’s polar characterizations of ‘Thomas’ modern scientific Herodotus, firmly rooted in contemporary intellectual debate’ and ‘Nagy’s conception of a prose storyteller who subsumes the preceding epic tradition’.61 But if we are really to see Herodotus as shaped by the impact of literary predecessors and intellectuals, then perhaps we may need to look no further than the figure of Herodotus in the library, rather than pursuing Herodotus the traveller and primary researcher. Armayor has argued along these lines with regard to Herodotus’ knowledge of the Pontic region, suggesting that apparent glimpses of autopsy are really better explained as critical engagement with literary predecessors, such as Hecataeus.62 He contends that Herodotus’ claims about finding the descendants of Sesostris’ army (p.20) still living around Colchis fit plausibly into a logographic tradition, in spite of Herodotus’ claims to autopsy, and that Herodotus’ expressed connections between the rivers Nile and Phasis can be explained in terms of Ionian geography rather than reflecting real travel.63 Here, as elsewhere, Armayor follows clearly in the tradition of Fehling in preferring to see Herodotus’ travels as a fiction, or at least not the simple basis for autoptic accounts. Indeed the controversial ideas of Fehling concerning the ‘imaginary’ nature of Herodotus’ travels have been extensively picked up, developed, and criticized.64 Whether or not Herodotus actually travelled remains an open question, but from the point of view of his authorial pose, it is clear that the travelling perspective remains firmly embedded as one of many focalizations within the work. I opened this section by alluding to Rosalind Thomas’s reading of the Histories against the intellectual backdrop of scientific thought and sophistic argumentation, but this is only one of many contexts and traditions against which one might choose to locate Herodotus’ work. The volume of essays edited by Luraghi illustrates a wide range of literary and intellectual interfaces, from Page 11 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ the world of the logopoioi to those of the poets, scientists, local historians, and indeed contemporary politics.65 This sense of multiple contexts and the need to carve out a niche is clearly relevant not only to Herodotus, but to us (p.21) also, and leads us to the question of how this book might be located and what it might offer in terms of progress.

B) Finding Space in the Study of Herodotus Just as Herodotus has to place himself amongst a range of literary predecessors and contemporaries, so too does any modern scholar need to carve out a place in a crowded and competitive environment which both takes account of and tries to move on from existing accounts.66 One contribution that I hope to make to the host of existing scholarship on Herodotus lies in the exploration of focalization within the work, that is, the viewpoint adopted when describing the world or relating the narrative, and the perspective from which judgement is passed on the actions of characters therein. Closely linked to and intertwined with this focus on viewpoint is what I hope to be my other major contribution to the appreciation of Herodotus’ text and his skill as a historian and narrator: namely, the close examination of an aspect of the text which is deeply embedded in the historical narrative at all levels: the conception and presentation of geographical space. i) Herodotus’ Spaces, Peoples, and Places: The Scholarly Landscape

The latter is far from being a terra incognita in terms of academic analysis. Romm, for example, has written extensively on the presentation of space in Herodotus, firstly in The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought,67 and subsequently in Herodotus,68 where the geographical aspects of the work and man’s interaction with the landscape (p.22) are both important themes. Indeed, Romm stresses in his preface (xiv–xv) Herodotus’ interest in the broad spatial context for his narrative, stating that ‘Herodotus surveys, in a vast, sweeping circuit, the arena that surrounds his great war and, indeed, all of human history’,69 as well as identifying throughout his analysis various points at which humans clash with the natural world upon which Herodotus looks down from his bird’s-eye position. It will become clear in what follows that I share many of Romm’s views on the Herodotean world, its description and narrative, and that I am much indebted to his work.70 Following immediately in Romm’s wake appeared Harrison’s treatment of Herodotean geography, covering a wide range of stimulating ideas within a small compass. The question of geographical units, the rootedness or otherwise of people in their homelands, varying scales and viewpoints, ethnocentricity, and, importantly here, the significance of crossing geographical boundaries and exercising abusive control over the natural world all find a place in this thought-provoking chapter.71 In addition to general treatments of space in Herodotus, this more specific idea of human interaction with the natural world has also attracted some scholarly attention. In particular, the theme of ‘natural limits’ has been central in many Page 12 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ scholarly works on Herodotus. Sixty years ago, Immerwahr was already highly alert to this aspect of Herodotus’ text.72 Many of his ideas on the Persian transgression of natural limits, the associated moral outrage, and the near inevitability of retribution for these acts establish a clear link between Herodotus’ presentation of characters in his work and their behaviour with (p. 23) regard to the natural world, with hybris being manifested in relation to the landscape as well as against people. The importance of structure and limits in Herodotus’ narrative, not only in the physical space of Herodotus’ world, but also more generally, has been addressed also by Lateiner.73 His discussion of key natural limits, such as the continental divisions, and distinctions between land and water, argues for a Herodotean landscape in which certain types of movement will be morally transgressive.74 The theme of natural boundaries has remained prevalent in more recent treatments. Romm again has offered a compact but rich contribution on this topic,75 in which he frames Herodotus’ interest in the physical world, its flora and fauna, largely in terms of a battle between divinely inspired landscape and abusive Persians, and reads the imperial quest of Persia as a transgression of the natural order. Originally my own reading of Herodotus chimed harmoniously with many of the observations of the scholars noted above. However, the larger scale of a monograph allows more flesh, greater complexity, and more angles to be built onto these arguments. Taking into account the focalization of different key episodes in which man interacts with the natural world reveals a greater degree of nuance in this relationship. In particular, it encourages us to question whether intervention in a ‘divinely ordered’ landscape is per se transgressive at all. A considerable amount of work has been done on the specific spatial structuring devices of Herodotus’ world, including those which depend on particular viewpoints, such as the concept of centre and periphery. I shall assess below (Chapter 2) how dominant or otherwise a means of articulating space this is for Herodotus, but it is worth noting here its place within the scholarly landscape. The important observation that the Persians themselves adopt an ethnocentric view of the world makes (p.24) a helpful and much used starting point for thinking about Herodotus’ own notions of centre and edge: They honour most of all those who live nearest them, then those who are next nearest, and so going ever onwards they assign honour according to this principle: those who dwell farthest off they hold least honourable of all; for they think that they are themselves in all regards by far the best of all men, and that the rest have only a proportionate claim to merit, until those who live farthest away have least merit of all.76 The idea of difference, in this case increasing inferiority, as a direct function of distance underpins a common model in conceptual geography, which is relevant to, although not identical with, the way in which Herodotus approaches other cultures. From which viewpoint, in what spirit, and with what sense of alienation Page 13 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ or similarity does Herodotus approach what we might term ethnography? Does he himself subscribe to the conceptions of and attitudes towards others that he ascribes to characters within his narrative? A great deal of scholarly attention has been devoted both to studies of specific peoples and places77 and to the conceptual and methodological difficulties in pinning down Herodotus to even such broad structures as centre and periphery in his presentation of different peoples.78 Such an approach to the Herodotean world view is immediately reminiscent of some of the issues discussed in the previous section on the propensity of the periegetic tradition to map out space in terms of altérité.79 Meanwhile, the work of Hartog has proved fundamental to the idea that Herodotus invents a new rhetoric to describe ‘otherness’,80 partly in Greek terms and partly with an appreciation that the ‘other’ may have its own ways of articulating its peoples and places.81 Munson’s (p.25) important study of ethnographic discourse in Herodotus also addresses key questions of perspective and paints a picture of complexity, differentiation, and considerable tension between different ethnographic models in the text.82 The presentation of Egypt in the Histories offers a case study for some of the complexities in working out a consistent approach on the part of Herodotus even to one region, let alone a coherent and stable picture of centre and periphery in the world as a whole. Harrison notes the difficulty in pinning down the location of Herodotus’ Egypt— partly distanced as the reverse of the normative Greek world and a land of extraordinary marvels, partly the familiar breeding ground for many Greek ideas83—a stark reminder of the inextricable link between ethnographic description, authorial perspective, and the consequent geographical conception and articulation of space. Our sense of where Egypt is oscillates depending on its perceived nature. Harrison’s observation of the way in which Herodotus elevates Egypt, thereby rejecting a crude Hellenocentric chauvinism (153), must be right, but it is partly counterbalanced by his further suggestion that the Egyptians have somehow turned themselves into a museum, cut off from other influences. Thus, we may wonder how far Herodotus’ gaze can be transferred to this ‘other worldly’ viewing point; how far his focalization can stray from the Greek.84 Study of the ethnographic tradition within which Herodotus operated, and of modern scholarly work on that tradition, has been more recently brought up to date by Skinner. His illuminating analysis of the emergence of ethnographic discourse in a variety of genres, together with a sense of how these views of nonGreeks might be mapped out in conceptual geographical terms, continues the trend towards questioning polarity and defying definitions of various kinds.85 In particular, the view of Jacoby that ethnography was easy (p.26) to define because Greek identity in turn could be readily formulated comes in for significant challenge.86 For Skinner, the Greek ethnographic tradition has a strongly geographical slant, being more concerned with what he terms ‘populating the imaginaire’, that is, imaginative mapping of peoples into more or less distant and exotic locations, than with a deep interest in the characteristics Page 14 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ of other peoples. There is thus much rich work on Herodotus’ ethnographic interests and the closely connected spatial configuration of ‘home’ and ‘away’, ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’. ii) Sharpening the Lens: Bringing Focalization into Play

Work has moved on inexorably in other directions too in the reading of ancient historical texts and there seems to me room to take these ideas on the conception and articulation of geographical space forward in combination with other scholarly preoccupations such as the question of focalization or perspective. As I have argued elsewhere at length,87 historical narratives are naturally configured along the matrices of both time and space, all the more obviously so when covering a vast geographical scope.88 In line with this, the stimulating work of Purves applies to Herodotus among other figures of Greek literature a narratological approach focused on the conceptual configuration of time and space.89 This not only offers new insights into the geographical thought of Herodotus,90 but also suggests a fascinating reading of this and other texts in a way which brings the (p.27) question of focalization to the fore. This is indeed, in my view, the most significant and valuable contribution of Purves’s monograph to the study of this text. She gives a strong sense of the different perspectives offered, on the one hand, by the panoramic viewpoint of Homer’s Muse-inspired Iliad,91 and witnessed in the cartographic allusions in, for example, Herodotus’ map of Aristagoras and in Herodotus’ use of panoramic passages to create pauses in the narrative92 and, on the other hand, by the hodological viewpoint of travelled, experienced space in texts ranging from Homer’s own Odysseus to the many travellers through the space of Herodotus’ narrative.93 Of the two, Purves finds hodological space dominant over the bird’seye view in Herodotus. I do not entirely agree with this assessment, preferring to see the two types as complementary, or more accurately part of a spectrum of focalizations,94 but Purves must be right at least to distinguish between them, not least in their quite different relationships to time (146).95 The elision in Purves’ work between the space in a text and the space of a text is sometimes confusing,96 although potentially eloquent as an illustration of her attempt to collapse the gap between texts and their content, or rather to see texts as reflective of their subjects. Her view that both the Odyssey and the Histories (p. 28) align their geographical subject matter with the metaphor of the narrative as a path (123) captures an important aspect of both works.97 Purves’ overall approach is productive and enriching and is taken still further by Rood in his important study of space in Herodotus from a narratological angle.98 Rood moves from a survey of different scales of geographical space in Herodotus’ narrative to a more explicitly narratological analysis of the key episode in which Aristagoras displays a map to Greek poleis in order to garner support against Persia. Rood’s work is particularly rich in setting out the interpretative consequences of different focalizations and articulations of space, for example the contrasting views of Asia offered by Herodotus and Aristagoras, Page 15 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ or the varying accounts of space and place offered by the Paeonians, seeing these competing visions as important for understanding the imperialist themes of the work.99 The shifting geographies associated with imperialism will form one of the major strands of thought in Chapters 5 and especially 7.100 The application of more recently developed aspects of the study of Classical texts, such as the question of focalization or narrative perspective,101 is one of the ways in which a reading of Herodotus’ natural world may be taken forward. Taking our cue from here, we might shift our gaze from the impact of different viewpoints on the articulation of space in the narrative to think in turn about viewpoints within the text itself.102 We might consider, for example, the way in (p.29) which Herodotus combines his own authorial persona with constant reference to the different perspectives of his informers, thereby immediately creating a multi-focused, spatially complex account.103 The relationship between ‘local stories’ and the ‘grand narrative’ is here at stake.104 I have already touched on the relationship between Herodotus and the Homeric epics in more general literary terms, but, as Purves illustrates well, some more specific narratological approaches that have been applied liberally to the Homeric epics can also open up new ways of reading Herodotus, particularly in ways which reveal the conceptual complexity of space in his work.105 The interplay between Herodotus’ own voice and the voices of his informers has major implications. It is significant not only for the multilocational spatial map evoked, with different voices representing diverse locations, but also for the further important question of what judgements we can actually attribute to Herodotus himself. In this particular study, those judgements will concern man’s relationship with nature, but the methodological issue is much farther-reaching than that. Purves’ eusynoptic Iliad, in which the divinely inspired poet adopts a magisterial and lofty perch, looking down on the world from afar, lends itself to contrast with the dominant focalization of the Odyssey through the figure of the traveller, involved in and experiencing the world as he goes.106 As we have seen, earlier phases of scholarly (p.30) debate have focused on the reality or otherwise of Herodotus’ travels. But, regardless of the truth or falsity of either explicit or implicit claims to have been to this or that place, the real or imaginary viewing of the world through the eyes of the traveller-historian has attracted a good deal of attention in its own right. In particular, Marincola’s study of the Odyssean nature of historiography opens a treasure trove of insights into the authorial persona and perspective(s) of the historian.107 Although Marincola highlights a whole range of correspondences between the Odyssey and Greek historians, such as the role of suffering in learning, or the lying and deception of Odysseus,108 it is the relationship between traveller-historian and his subject matter which is of primary interest to us here, in trying to pinpoint an authorial perspective for Herodotus, locating him within his world. The clear connection made in the Odyssey between travel, inquiry, and knowledge is mirrored in Herodotus’ text through figures such as Solon and Anacharsis (on which, see Page 16 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Chapter 2), but also in the figure of the historian himself.109 And the Odyssey’s great interest in peoples, places, customs, and lands makes it unsurprising, as Marincola observes (36), that it is in Egypt, the land of marvels, that Herodotus takes on most strikingly the narrative manner of Odysseus, presenting himself as the primary viewer of the exotica on display there, and actually appearing as a character in his own work.110 The Odyssean figure of the traveller-historian and its implications for the association of travel with wisdom and for the interpretation of travellers in Herodotus’ own text, including Herodotus himself, alights upon an important aspect of the narrative. There is, however, a danger in overprivileging the Odyssean viewpoint at the expense of (p.31) other, more distanced perspectives.111 An important corrective exists in Redfield’s influential article (noted above, n. 78) on Herodotus’ travels in search of wisdom and ethnographic diversity, as well as natural and man-made wonders. Redfield distinguishes carefully between the processes of tourism, in which he argues Herodotus engages, and ethnography, with its special claims to participant observation of the subjects.112 His study has at least two interesting contributions to make to the question of focalization in Herodotus: first, the proposal that Herodotus views his world from a Hellenocentric perspective, and secondly, the connected idea that this more distanced and externalized standpoint from which Herodotus maps out a world of oppositions, symmetries, and ordered structure is concurrent with and even dominant over Herodotus’ touristic stance as the Odyssean historian.113 This sense of real complexity in the multifaceted focalization of Herodotus’ work captures, in my view, an essential feature of the text more accurately than accounts which rely on a stark polarity between Iliadic bird’s-eye distance and Odyssean hodological experience in the conception and articulation of space.114 I shall argue (in Chapter 2) for a whole spectrum of standpoints from which Herodotus views his world and encourages his readers to do the same, ranging from the most distant survey of whole continents and river systems, through the eyes of those who travel through and experience those same mighty, even epic landscapes on great expeditions, down to the viewpoint of the individual traveller, including Herodotus himself. One contribution that I hope to make to the wider discussion of focalization in Herodotus is this sense of a full spectrum of levels of involvement and detachment, which both reinforces the (p.32) strongly spatial nature of any form of authorial perspective, and also focuses attention on the rich variety of ways in which geographical space can be perceived and articulated.115 The multiplicity of voices in the Histories emanating from the different sources and speakers in the text combines with the multiple standpoints of even just the authorial voice, viewing the world from different angles and at different levels of remove, to produce a hugely complex range of perspectives.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ One consequence of this potentially cacophonous choir is the difficulty in pinning down ‘authorial views’, to which some attention should be devoted now. Examining the different spatial configurations in Herodotus’ text and teasing out the range of different perspectives from which the world of the narrative is viewed and articulated, ranging from the distanced ‘eusynoptic’ standpoint which can take in whole continents down to the world as experienced and interacted with by players within the text, including the travelling author himself, not only elicits a complex geography for the Herodotean world. It also encompasses the long-standing debate concerning sources and attribution. If Herodotus, the author, is both panoptic viewer of and guide to the whole of his world and the narrative contained therein, and simultaneously embedded within that narrative as a player and traveller, alongside other characters offering their own narratives, to say nothing of the literary sources with which Herodotus explicitly and implicitly interacts, the question of what we can say about Herodotus’ own perspective or judgements comes under the spotlight. A reading of the text which is attentive not only to the multiple locations from which geographical space is viewed and configured, but also to the different perspectives from which narrative voices comment on human interaction with that geographical space and pass judgement on those interactions, thus has the potential to enhance both our appreciation of Herodotus’ achievement in evoking a complex and multilayered geographical picture and the sophistication and subtlety of the historical interpretation which moral judgements contained within the work evoke. Furthermore, as de Jong observes, the way in which characters are seen to view and describe geographical space may, in turn, have a bearing on our interpretation of them.116 (p.33) Some fundamental assumptions which underpin the following analysis, namely that interpretative significance attaches to the question of who voices comments or judgements within the Herodotean narrative, and that focalization or perspective are relevant considerations, may benefit from preliminary discussion. The arguments pull in diverse directions. The important point that Herodotus himself is ultimately responsible for the entire contents of his narrative should not be ignored. Here, the description of Herodotus’ selfpresentation as ‘the harassed editor of an unruly text’, which is ‘rhapsodic’ or consciously ‘sewn together’, seems apt.117 In a very obvious sense, everything comes through Herodotus’ gaze, regardless of the stated or implicit source or of the narrative character who voices a particular piece of information or opinion.118 The degree of first-person intrusion into the text makes it hard to forget that the text represents a series of authorial choices, and furthermore that the authorial persona of the histōr is distinct from, although clearly linked to, the persona of Herodotus as a figure within the narrative.119 Nevertheless, there are various ways in which this single authorial figure is subdivided into multiple voices.120 One obvious example is the explicit incorporation of a wide range of sources, some literary, others oral informants, Page 18 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ still others players within the narrative whose insights and opinions are expressed in direct speech. In this sequence, the oral informants hold an intriguing status as both ‘sources’ and (p.34) ‘players’ within the narrative, but can be differentiated from characters within the narrative proper, who exist in an earlier time frame and do not interact directly with Herodotus; rather, these oral informants are characters within the contemporary metanarrative of the creation of the overarching logos, in which Herodotus is the protagonist.121 One might say that the explicit presence of oral and written sources, representing a range of perspectives, is simply the inevitable consequence of Herodotus’ very visible process of historiē, gathering in his information and weighing it up before the reader’s eyes. Most scholars, however, naturally assume that the explicit assignation of views and information to particular sources, whether literary or oral, is a deliberate choice on the part of Herodotus,122 and that it is therefore valid to attach significance to the question of in whose ‘voice’ a statement or view is expressed.123 Bakker’s careful analysis of the syntax of Herodotus’ work helpfully pinpoints the different voices coexisting in the narrative, including that of Herodotus, as both character and author.124 He notes the way in which, in the absence of modern publishing features such as footnotes, page-patterning, subheadings, and so on, the relationships between logoi and shifts in voice are pointed up by the ‘historian’s (p.35) orientating voice’ and by syntactical subtleties. In particular, Bakker observes that through not only syntaxis but also deixis, or the pointing function of language, Herodotus creates distinctions between different voices—most obviously right at the start of the work, where the simple device of contrasting particles men and de acknowledges the barrier between the Persian logos and that of Herodotus himself (96), but also indicates a link between the two. In fact, Bakker’s stress on the blurred boundaries between the different voices in the work usefully illustrates the complexity of focalization and articulates the tension between Herodotus’ overarching authorial control and the multiplicity of voices that speak within that structure. As Bakker notes, Herodotus can either parcel up others’ tales and pass them on intact to posterity or blur the boundaries and leave it less clear where his own voice cuts in. Furthermore, ‘[E]ven though the story (1.1.1) is announced as a Persian logos, it is presented from the historian’s perspective.’125 Thus, the Persians appear as both the source of the story and as characters within Herodotus’ story, and the complexity of focalization is clear.126 Similarly, ‘close collaboration’ between the primary narrator and the Egyptian reported narrators in Book 2 has been observed, as evidenced by the elisions between direct and indirect discourse.127 As we shall see (for example in relation to the Cheops episode in Chapter 5), the syntax often obscures what might be important shifts in focalization, making the task of ascribing views to the author himself extremely difficult. In any case, Herodotus’ omnipresence even when reporting the logoi of others is clear, and, from a spatial point of view, it is interesting that he draws himself closer to the Page 19 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ action from time to time through demonstratives (this), temporal indicators (now), and the use of finite verbs even when in indirect discourse (1.1.1).128 (p.36) Paying attention to questions of viewpoint thus not only helps to articulate a multilayered sense of geographical space. The complexity of focalization also generates a textual space which is similarly complex, with different and interacting standpoints in play. Furthermore, the ascription of views and information to particular sources may colour our reaction to both the source and the object of their gaze; and, more specifically, the expression of responses to the many interactions of man with the natural world may be nuanced by observing in whose voice it is articulated. These are all themes that will be explored further in Chapters 5 and 6. The nuancing brought by an alertness to ‘voice’ or perspective serves in addition to complicate a long-established set of scholarly debates concerning the unity or otherwise of ‘Herodotus’ world’. On the one hand, there are those who interpret Herodotus’ acceptance of and interest in other cultures and points of contact and similarity across geographical boundaries as symptoms of a Herodotean world of blurred boundaries, flexible categories, deconstructed polarities, lack of criticism about difference in customs and behaviour, and an overriding sense of common humanity. On the other hand, some observe much sharper contrasts in the different parts of the world and their inhabitants as depicted by Herodotus, stressing distinctions, boundaries, and a sense of moral judgement. In particular, the whole configuration of Herodotus’ world in terms of an East-West division, or a European-Asian conflict, is here in question. The spatial stakes are high in many regards, such as the fixedness or otherwise of the world’s pattern as described by Herodotus and others, and the implications for theories of geographical determinism in a world of great mobility. But also at issue are some central interpretative questions concerning the differences between Greeks and barbarians, and conversely the problematic similarity of different imperial powers, not least the Persia-like behaviour of Athens itself as Herodotus himself was writing. The unity of Herodotus’ world, or rather the permeability of the boundaries and divisions which provide its articulation, enjoys some notable proponents. Many commentators have noted important overlaps between Greek and barbarian behaviour in particular. The sharp focus of successive commentaries has been particularly effective at teasing out such subtleties. Flower and Marincola, in their commentary on Book 9, observe not only the increasingly despotic behaviour of the emerging Athenian imperialists after Mycale, and conversely the (p.37) bravery of the Persians at Marathon, Plataea, and Mycale,129 but also the various occasions on which Persians express stereotypically ‘Greek’ sentiments.130 Bowie’s excellent commentary on Book 8 similarly stresses the lack of clear-cut distinctions between Greeks and Persians, joining the cause for deconstructing any neat oppositions.131 Bowie, furthermore, eloquently Page 20 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ illustrates how narratological techniques such as focalization serve to illuminate issues of polarity in the text. As he notes,132 Herodotus’ account of the suffering of the Persian sailors hit by storms off Euboea recounts their troubles almost in their own words, clearly aligning the author and his sympathies at least momentarily with the Persian aggressors and complicating any stark distinctions or moral judgements about despotic imperialists attacking the free world of Greece and Europe. This question of focalization and its implications for the sympathies of both author and reader is at the fore right from the start of Herodotus’ work. As has been noted,133 the first and last narratives in Herodotus’ work are focalized through Persian, not Greek, eyes.134 The interpretative implications of ‘through whose eyes the author directs our gaze’ or ‘in whose voice judgements are expressed’ clearly include the question of our affinity with various characters in the work. Herodotus’ choice to keep shifting our viewpoint resists any attempt to pin down key polarities such as ‘them’ and ‘us’. But paying attention to focalization also raises interesting possibilities about the perceived shape of the world itself when viewed from different angles, as Purves’s work illustrates (see earlier in this section). Furthermore, the identification of ways in which Herodotus seems to be viewing the world through Persian eyes or dispelling a wholly negative picture of these opponents of Greece dovetails neatly with debates concerning Herodotus’ use of Persian sources (discussed in note 54 above). It clearly, at any rate, picks up on Persia’s own self-projection. Attempts (p.38) to highlight some of the more problematic crossovers of behaviour between Greeks and Persians, not least the application of traditionally Persian brutality by the Athenians at the end of the work,135 remind us ultimately that we cannot reduce a complex work to ‘some overarching interpretative scheme’.136 Arguing for complexity as opposed to polarity lies at the heart of Pelling’s work on Herodotus. In an influential article,137 he deconstructs the demarcations, boundaries, divisions, and contrasts, both geographical and conceptual, which have characterized many attempts to understand the dynamics and articulation of Herodotus’ reading of the world, its inhabitants, and their history. Pelling provides an important critique of what he sees as unduly schematic ways of reading Herodotus’ text. The over-reliance on stable and fixed categories, such as monarchy typifying the East and isonomia the West, in Hartog’s interpretation of Herodotus’ ‘other’ as a reflection of the self, is subjected to the criticism that it ignores complications such as the presence of tyranny in Greece and the internal dissent within Greece itself. Furthermore, Pelling must be right to note the in-betweenness of places such as Lydia and rulers such as Croesus, who (as I myself shall argue later) partially but not wholly acts as a prototype for the Persian imperialist despots. Pelling’s eye for ambiguity, complexity, and questions rather than answers, especially, for example, regarding the last perplexing chapters of the work, makes for a rich reading, and, as he Page 21 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ importantly notes, ‘a challenge to a polarity is not a rejection, a renuancing of categories is not a cancelling. A similar principle operates here, and the categories are destabilised without being destroyed completely.’138 More recently, Mac Sweeney’s work on the foundation myths of Ionia has acknowledged the frequent use of the East-West polarity in (p.39) ancient historical, literary, and philosophical texts,139 while arguing for the inadequacy of this dichotomy both to describe the political and cultural reality and to satisfy modern historiographical analyses.140 Indeed, her case studies of foundation myths within the political life of a variety of Ionian cities are in part designed to illustrate precisely the failings of any model based on a Greek-barbarian or EastWest divide. The categories and polarities, which scholars such as Pelling and Mac Sweeney do not entirely reject but do much to break down, do, however, form the focus of an opposing school of thought. From observations on the distinctively different ways of seeing associated with Greeks and Persians141 to analysis of the depiction of physical violence in Herodotus, in which a stark contrast may be identified between Asia and Europe, Greeks and barbarians,142 scholars have found various respects in which the distinctions between East and West, Europe and Asia, Greek and barbarian seem predominantly not blurred but stark and clear. The case has alternatively been argued on the basis of a perception of marked difference in Herodotus’ approach to Oriental history as opposed to that of Greece,143 with the Oriental logoi sharing certain common themes such as warning figures, hybris, and the crossing of boundaries. For Solmsen, Persian history has its own cycle of arrogant self-delusion, megalomania, and collapse, which reaches its apogee in the reign of Darius, and its nadir in the catastrophic fall of Xerxes. Meanwhile, the history of the Greek poleis is one of aretē, devotion to ta kala and to liberty.144 This analysis may be unduly schematic and ignores plenty of nuances in Herodotus’ depictions as well as turning a blind eye to the topos of the hybristic ruler that runs through Greek tragedy, but it acts as a striking antidote to the inducements to read Herodotus too readily with an eye to cultural relativism. (p.40) So too does the thought-provoking study by Steiner, in which she uses writing as the prism through which to view distinctions or similarities in the depiction of different cultures.145 Her contention that writing acquires in Herodotus a strong association with tyranny and consequently negative connotations, leads her to see it as a medium through which deliberate contrasts are drawn between the despotic East and the Greek mainland, where writing plays ‘a more muted and normative role’ (128).146 Steiner’s reading of Herodotus is rich and insightful on many counts. She notes the various abusive uses of writing employed by Eastern despots—the trivializing and subverting effects of inscriptions at the pyramids of Asychis and Cheops, and the tomb of Alyattes,147 and the use of the inscribed word as an expression of the obsessively Page 22 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ controlling tendencies of Persian bureaucracy.148 But particularly relevant to the current study is Steiner’s point that the despotism expressed through the inscribed word is intimately connected with the despotism expressed through the control and abuse of the natural world.149 So, she sees Deioces’ forced redesign of space, in which his new palace ‘even contravenes the natural topography, using an existing hill for its foundations, but exaggerating its height’ (1.98.4), as paralleled by his abuse of writing, the inscribed stones set up by Darius at the Tearus and the Bosporus as signalling mastery over the land they are placed on, and the whole act of dividing, regularizing, and mapping land as an abuse both of the land itself and of the practice of inscribing writing. It is thus no surprise that Scythia, which as a land remains largely wild, uncontrolled, and uninscribed, is also dissociated from the written word.150 (p.41) My own approach initially followed a similar method to that employed by Steiner with her observation of quite distinctive characterizations in Herodotus, in her case between those who write, as a manifestation of their despotism, and those who predominantly do not. The fact that she sees despotic writing as intimately connected to abusive behaviour towards and control over landscapes leads neatly to the prism through which I intend in the first instance to argue the case for a prevalence of differentiation and moral judgement in Herodotus over cultural relativism, namely the relationship of different peoples with the natural, physical world. It is, in any case, a natural prism through which both to view this particular text, with its narrative of imperial attempts to redraw the map, and to examine the issue of polarity as opposed to blurred boundaries. The geographical implications of the debate about distinctive portrayals are obvious in so far as cultural and behavioural differences also contribute to shaping a conceptual geography, creating the sense of different and separate worlds. As will become clear, however, paying attention to the focalization of key passages and taking into account in whose voice transgressions of and intervention in the natural world, for example, are negatively viewed will serve to complicate the picture of opposites and polarity, thus adding further nuance to our reading of the text. I shall argue that language, context, and forms of literary patterning do mark out the Persians as distinctive in their relationship to the natural world, but that both the compromising of stark polarities through focalization and the constant evolution of the map of imperial geography serve to complicate such rigid characterizations.

C) Location, Location, Location: Herodotus’ World And The Dynamics of Empire Such a rich scholarly backdrop is both challenging and stimulating. I shall build on and take forward various Herodotean debates in my study of the representation of geographical space in his work. The range of sophisticated methods that Herodotus employs for depicting the physical world epitomizes his distinctive position within the ancient literary tradition. Furthermore, from the point of view of modern contexts, considering this articulation of geographical Page 23 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ space (p.42) with an eye to issues of perspective links this study to broader narratological approaches to historiography. I intend then to examine this ‘Herodotean world’, carefully and expertly conceived and depicted by Herodotus himself, from multiple aspects. A consideration of Herodotus’ articulation of physical space will lead us towards an examination of how humans interact with that space, as we explore the notion of landscape both as physical reality and as constructed reality.151 The constructed landscape in Herodotus’ work incorporates his own literary representation of the natural world from the broadest scope of continental divisions and huge geographical features such as seas and mountain ranges, down to the individual setting of a specific scene, and, furthermore, his own ‘charging’ of those settings through resonant mythological associations or spatial parallels. However, the physical landscape of the Histories is in turn manipulated and changed by characters within the narrative, whose interactions with the natural world on both the large scale of imperial campaigns and the smaller scale of engineering works form one of the subjects of Herodotus’ inquiry.152 The element of man’s interaction thus adds another dimension to the meaning imparted to space in Herodotus’ work and, furthermore, opens up the possibility that Herodotus might use the morally charged interaction with natural features to reflect on and characterize the players in his narrative. A study of Herodotus’ presentation of human interaction with the natural world, whether at the level of individual features and landscapes or on the grand scale of imperial expansion, naturally gains in interpretative depth and complexity by a consideration of perspective, or focalization. The attribution of blame and the forming of judgements imply a specific internal perspective. It is clear that focalization is relevant to our study of Herodotean geography in at least two different but complementary ways—firstly, in the varied configurations of space that result from viewing the world from (p.43) different standpoints; and secondly, in the different opinions about human interaction with geographical space which emerge from the different voices within the narrative, including that of the author himself. I shall thus argue that geographical space, like many other aspects of Herodotus’ text, does not form a neutral backdrop, but is vivified as an active player in the narrative, the interaction with which determines, or at least reinforces, the placing of various protagonists along a spectrum of positive or negative characterizations.153 I propose that physical space, like writing for Steiner or acts of violence for Rollinger, is another medium through which Herodotus differentiates, both upholds and blurs boundaries, and questions the plausibility of a theory of common humanity. Nevertheless, the multivocal nature of the narrative, which represents one strand of complexity in the wider issue of perspective and viewpoint, is also responsible for muddying the water over whether we can identify a ‘Herodotean’ world at all, still less one in which moral Page 24 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ judgements are reliably cast in one voice and according to the same criteria. Furthermore, the mutability of fortune and the constant flux of the world make it impossible to see Herodotus’ world as static, unchanging, and unchangeable, as the stepping of one imperial power into the shoes of another underlines. The acquisition and exercise of political power, or dynamis, both metaphorically articulated and literally manifested through control over the natural world, results in a complex and constantly evolving map of imperial geography. (p.44) Notes:

(1) Momigliano, ‘Herodotus in the History of Historiography’, 33. (2) See the important article by Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, in which he stresses the significance and novelty of Herodotus’ explicit foregrounding of the problem of sources and his critical sense of how his own work relates to that of others, and argues for a lively historiographical milieu in which Herodotus might have operated. Thomas, Herodotus in Context, provides the title for Part I and explicitly locates Herodotus within the intellectual context of fifth-century scientific thought. (3) The view of Herodotus as the inventor of a genre, whether in his own eyes or in those of modern readers, remains implicit in scholarly work on the subject. See Chiasson, ‘Herodotus’ Use of Attic Tragedy’, 5, on ‘Herodotus at the inception of the historical tradition’. See, by contrast, the warning of Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 19–20, against assuming too linear an intellectual development in which each author builds directly on preceding work. Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography, 241, also warns against ‘evolutionary tendencies’ in scholarship, which risk clouding the value of earlier thinking. (4) Grethlein, The Greeks and their Past, 158, captures well the combination of innovation and context: ‘Herodotus, though not the only one writing prose accounts of the past in his time, could not rely on generic conventions, but had to assert a place for his new approach against the established commemorative genres.’ (5) See de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, for an excellent discussion of the interface between different spatial configurations and the spectrum of points from which it may be viewed, with different lenses (panoramic, scenic, and close-up) offering further nuance. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, sets out in chapter 6 some important principles for defining focalization and relating it to narration. (6) Clarke, Between Geography and History, especially 1–76. (7) Thus, I shall be developing a version of what de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 15–16, calls ‘semantically loaded’ space, ‘when space tells us something about a person, his milieu, character, or situation’. Page 25 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (8) Note his pessimism over the possibility of identifying a literary context. Momigliano, ‘Herodotus in the History of Historiography’, 33: ‘The almost total loss of the geographical and ethnographical literature that preceded and accompanied Herodotus’ work makes it impossible for us to assess exactly how much he owed to earlier and contemporary writers.’ (9) But note the observation of Rutherford, ‘Structure and Meaning in Epic and Historiography’, 14, that, in spite of undoubted Homeric affinities, Herodotus generally refers to Homer explicitly to find fault with him. Thus, the relationship is one of critical engagement rather than straightforward emulation. (10) On this programmatic statement, see Bakker, ‘The Making of History’, especially 24–6 on the apodexis of notable achievements. Bakker notes a subtle difference between the Homeric commemoration of klea andrōn and what Herodotus undertakes, since the hero’s kleos is automatically and unproblematically immortalized through Muse-inspired poetry, whereas historical deeds are more vulnerable to the ravages of time and require special historiē on the part of the commemorating historian. (11) See, in particular, Pelling, ‘Homer and Herodotus’, for an overview of Homeric echoes. De Jong, ‘Herodotus’, also starts with an excellent analysis of Herodotus’ narratorial voice in relation to that of Homer. (12) The catalogue can, in itself, of course, be strongly evocative of space, as will be explored below in Chapter 2. See Bocchetti, ‘Cultural Geography in Homer’, for a study of how Homer’s catalogue of ships evokes a whole range of landscapes and offers a means of conceptualizing space more broadly. (13) Nagy, ‘Herodotus the logios’, especially at 184. (14) Murray, ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, 34. (15) Boedeker, ‘Epic Heritage and Mythical Patterns in Herodotus’, 108. However, Herodotus was not alone in creating Homeric or Trojan parallels for the Persian Wars: see Boedeker, 108, for the same parallels implicit in Simonides, and Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, 18, for the presentation of the battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile in Athens alongside the fight between Greeks and Trojans. (16) Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, 15. (17) See Isager, ‘The Pride of Halikarnassos’, for the editio princeps, with an improved version published by Lloyd-Jones, ‘The Pride of Halicarnassus’, the following year. Lines 43–4 of the inscription mention: Ἡρόδοτον τὸν πεζὸν ἐν ἱστορίαισιν ῞Ομηρον. See also Isager and Pedersen, The Salmakis Inscription and Hellenistic Halikarnassos.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (18) See Priestley, Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture, 187–219, for Herodotus as the prose Homer of this period. Longinus, On the Sublime 13.3, goes still further in classifying Herodotus as ‘the only very Homeric writer’ (μόνος Ἡρόδοτος Ὁμηρικώτατος). (19) Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, 14. (20) Pelling, ‘Homer and Herodotus’, 76. (21) See Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, 18–19 and Appendix A, for helpful guidance on the possible relationship between Herodotus’ account of a specific episode, the battle of Plataea, and that of the elegiac narrative of Simonides; also Hornblower, ‘Epic and Epiphanies’. Boedeker, ‘Heroic Historiography’, offers a cautious approach to the possible influence on or interaction between Simonides and Herodotus, noting the dangers of circularity, given that Herodotus’ text has been used in reconstructing and interpreting the fragments of Simonides. (22) On this, see Pelling, ‘Aeschylus’ Persae and History’; Hall, Inventing the Barbarian. (23) Bowie, ‘Ancestors of Historiography in Early Greek Elegiac and Iambic Poetry’, 50. (24) Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the Historians’, 10 and 61 respectively. See Hartog, Memories of Odysseus, for the later reception of Odysseus and his travels. (25) I thank Chris Burnand for the suggestion that this passage might correspond to the end of Book 5, where, on Odysseus’ arrival at the land of the Phaeacians, who, as we have seen, are relatively familiar from the Greek perspective and certainly more so than others whom Odysseus encounters, he falls asleep under a mixture of standard and wild olives intertwined. Here the changing flora seems to correspond to Odysseus’ gradual approximation to home. (26) See, for example, the floating island of King Aeolus (Odyssey 10.3), or the whole area of the Wandering Rocks, Scylla, and Charybdis (Odyssey 12.73–110). (27) Although West, The Making of the Odyssey, 82–6, sees greater geographical coherence and verisimilitude in the western part of Odysseus’ travels than in the East. (28) See Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus, for excellent discussion of Odysseus’ travels as the framework for a wide-ranging exploration of cultural identity.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (29) Herodotus both implicitly and explicitly alludes to such a periegetic perspective, firstly through his measurement of distances in terms of days’ travel and secondly through offering his own (μοι) measurement at, for example, 4.86.4. (30) On the paradigmatic status of Odysseus, see Armstrong and Clarke, ‘Travelling in Greek and Roman Literature’. (31) I am careful to avoid implying that we can draw direct links between Herodotus and periegetic predecessors, since we can date little except Hecataeus with certainty before him. I do, however, think it valid to use our problematic periegetic texts as broadly indicative of the likely form and content of earlier ways of thinking. (32) See Ramin, Le Périple d’Hannon. (33) Warmington, Carthage, 76. (34) See Jacob, Géographie et ethnographie en Grèce ancienne, 84. (35) See Burstein, Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea. Agatharchides held a series of top posts in the Ptolemaic administration in the second century BC, which organized elephant-hunting expeditions in the Red Sea area which Agatharchides described, and had trading posts on the coast, so that silks and spices could be brought from the East and shipped up to Alexandria. These real trade contacts could underpin Agatharchides’ account, but his claim to written sources, especially documentary ones (the hypomnēmata at §41 and §112) rather than autopsy as his guide, suggests that he played the role of the armchair traveller. For a general account of Agatharchides’ life and writings, as well as the claim that Agatharchides was innovative in using geographically remote peoples as a substitute for the temporally distant mythological period, see Ameling, ‘Ethnography and Universal History in Agatharchides’, especially 37. (36) The idea of food-mapping is, of course, familiar to us too. We may live in the era of the ‘global village’, but local cuisines and associated gastronomic stereotypes persist: Irish potatoes, Italian pasta, French baguettes or, more exotically, snails and frogs’ legs. (37) See de Jong’s ‘panoramic’ and ‘scenic’ viewpoints as discussed in n. 5 above. (38) For the ancient world as a fundamentally mobile place, both in reality and in the mythic imagination, see Hordern and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea and Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes, respectively. Malkin, A Small Greek World, 9 and passim, illustrates through case studies how many networks in the ancient

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Mediterranean world resemble the many-to-many model of the World Wide Web, rather than being focused around a central hub. (39) See Kim, ‘Homer, Poet and Historian’, for an analysis of the critiques of Homeric accuracy offered by Herodotus and Thucydides in turn. (40) See Biraschi, ‘Strabo and Homer: A Chapter in Cultural History’. (41) He also uses Homer more generally as a model for how to write geographically and historically. Kim, ‘The Portrait of Homer in Strabo’s Geography’, however, may go too far in arguing that Strabo ‘invents’ Homer not only as the founder of the geographical tradition (366), but also as the model for Polybius’ pragmatic historian (369–70). (42) See, however, West, ‘Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus’, 154–7, for concerns about the historical accuracy of the presentation of Hecataeus’ role in the Ionian revolt, offering a more nuanced approach than the unduly straightforward and now outdated reading of passages where Herodotus mentions Hecataeus’ political role offered by Pearson, ‘Lost Greek Historians Judged by their Fragments’, especially 45–8. (43) Such as Herodotus 2.156 and Hecataeus FGrH 1 F305 on the floating island of Chemmis. See Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors’, for the view that Hecataeus offers the best opportunity to establish connections between Herodotus and other authors, however fraught the process. (44) For ethnographic information, see FGrH 1 F 287; for relative place, F 299: Opiae, an Indian tribe. Hecataeus in his Asia writes: ‘And among them live men along the River Indus called Opiae, and in their territory is a royal fortress. Up to this point the Opiae go. After this there is deserted country until India is reached.’ (45) Romm, Herodotus, 17. (46) See West, ‘Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus’, 151–2. (47) Armayor, ‘Herodotus, Hecataeus and the Persian Wars’, 331 for catalogues. (48) Armayor, ‘Herodotus, Hecataeus and the Persian Wars’, 324 for Aristagoras, and 332 for Herodotus’ own voice. (49) Armayor, ‘Herodotus, Hecataeus and the Persian Wars’, 333. The degree to which Hecateaus laid the foundations for Herodotus’ use of a chronological narrative in history, spanning stories from more than one place, and creating a woven fabric of historical explanation, is discussed by Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: From Genealogy to Historiography’.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (50) On this, see Armayor, ‘Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?’, 47–8. (51) Armayor, ‘Herodotus, Hecataeus and the Persian Wars’, 326. I prefer the sense of gentle teasing found in West and Armayor to the ‘malicious delight’ found in Herodotus’ relation of the Theban episode by Pearson, ‘Lost Greek Historians Judged by their Fragments’, 45. (52) Armayor, ‘Herodotus, Hecataeus and the Persian Wars’, 333. (53) For a less playful, though implicit engagement, see 4.36.2 and Zimmermann, ‘Hdt. IV 36, 2 et le développement de l’image du monde d’Hécatée à Hérodote’, who argues that Herodotus vehemently rejects a tri-continental division of the world, which was probably Hecataeus’ invention, because it conflicted with the bipolar Europe–Asia configuration around which his narrative was based. (54) In particular, see Armayor, ‘Herodotus’ Catalogues of the Persian Empire’, for the view, based on wide discrepancies between the form and content of Herodotus’ depiction of the Persian Empire and those of the Persian sources themselves, that Herodotus’ great catalogues of the Persian Empire are rooted in the Greek, or rather Ionian, tradition of catalogic literature, rather than in the world of Persian bureaucracy. At 7, he claims: ‘In short, Herodotus’ orientation here is not Persian but Greek. It does not in fact belong to Darius, but rather to Ionian geography.’ Contra, see Flower, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, 277–9, but Armayor’s thesis remains appealing. (55) Thomas, Herodotus in Context. But see Bakker, ‘The Making of History’, for a more critical reception of Thomas’ work, as over-preoccupied with the scientific angle, for example in Egypt, where Herodotus’ own focus is on the people he met and conversed with. See also Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 52, arguing that Thomas’ approach produces overschematic choices, such as between scientific curiosity and crude ethnocentrism. In fact, though, Thomas herself (15) explicitly stresses the need for breadth—adding the resonances of medicine, science, and sophistry to the already broad canvas of earlier Ionian thinkers, and preferring subtle complexity to over-crude schemata. (56) Thomas, ‘The Intellectual Milieu of Herodotus’, 73. (57) See also Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, who issues a note of caution about placing too much emphasis on Herodotus’ debt to Hecataeus in the light of Fowler, ‘Herodotus and his Contemporaries’, and himself stresses a much more complex literary and intellectual world underpinning Herodotus’ own work. (58) See Thomas, Herodotus in Context, at 1, 6, 15, 43, 58, on the need to look beyond Hecateaus and the ‘Ionian tradition’ of historiography. Page 30 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (59) Thomas’ stress on Herodotus’ scientific interactions incidentally offers a reminder of the combination of scientific and periegetic approaches in other, more ostensibly geographical texts. See, for example, the fragments purporting to represent the fourth-century voyage of Pytheas of Massilia: Roseman, Pytheas of Massilia, On the Ocean, for fragments of the text, and commentary thereon; also, more recently, Bianchetti (ed.), Pitea di Massalia: L’oceano. For a lively and imaginative response to this early traveller, see Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek. Alongside the travelling perspective, Pytheas was seen as a scientific writer, consulted by Eratosthenes and Crates of Mallos, as well as by Poseidonios: see Zimmerman’s review of Bianchetti, Classical Review 50 (2000) 28–30. (60) See Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the Historians’, 8. Also Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, 166, noting Herodotus’ first statement of authorial method as προβήσομαι, which sets the Odyssean tone. (61) Bakker, ‘The Making of History’, 11. (62) Armayor, ‘Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?’, 48, citing FGrH 1 F197, and noting Anecdota Graeca ed. Cramer Vol 1 p. 287 line 28 to p. 288 line 5, which makes clear that Hecataeus claimed to measure these waters. (63) See Armayor, ‘Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?’, 57–60 on Colchis. As Armayor notes, the rivers Nile and Phasis were commonly seen as marking the ends of the earth (Herodotus 4.45.2; Pindar, Isthmian 2.41–2), and the ends were often linked up in Ionian geography, even if by way of River Ocean. Hecataeus himself (FGrH 1 F18a) has the Argonauts brought back from Colchis by way of Ocean, then downriver along the Nile back to the Mediterranean. (64) Fehling, Herodotus and his ‘Sources’, was largely supported in a series of articles by Armayor dating from the late 1970s: ‘Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?’ concludes that Herodotus’ treatment of the Black Sea was more likely built on the logographic tradition in a spirit of rivalry than on autopsy; ‘Herodotus’ Catalogues of the Persian Empire’ argues similarly that Herodotus’ purported use of documentary evidence from the East is better explained in terms of Ionian catalogic traditions; the sequence culminates in a monograph, Herodotus’ Autopsy of the Fayoum. See also Rollinger, Herodots Babylonischer Logos, who concludes that Herodotus’ errors in describing the city walls, the course of the Euphrates, and other features of Babylon are so serious that he could not possibly have been an eyewitness. Contra, see Dover, ‘Herodotean Plausibilities’, offering an important set of challenges to Fehling’s approach, criticizing not least Fehling’s excessive reliance on what ‘must’ have been the case and unduly strong assumption that ‘uniformity of explanation is superior to heterogeneity’ (224). (65) Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus. Page 31 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (66) The most significant contributions to Herodotean scholarship up until the mid-1980s have been helpfully presented by Dewald and Marincola, ‘A Selective Introduction to Herodotean Studies’, with an updated account in Dewald and Marincola, ‘Introduction’. There is, therefore, no need for another comprehensive survey and I shall focus primarily on trying to identify how my own contribution adds to, develops, and departs from earlier work. (67) Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought, especially chapters 1 and 2 on the edges of the earth and the idealized Ethiopians and Hyperboreans respectively. (68) Romm, Herodotus. (69) See also Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 101–2, for the all-encompassing, panoptic gaze of the narrator, which marks out the author’s perspective as uniquely privileged: ‘no human being could command the breathtaking sweep of the narrative’ (102). (70) Specific geographical features have also received particular attention. Note the valuable work of Ceccarelli on the concept, status, and significance of islands in Herodotus’ narrative in ‘De la Sardaigne à Naxos’. Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, discusses the interface and distinctions between island and mainland milieus, and her application of network theory to the world of the Aegean offers modes of spatial analysis that prove illuminating when brought to Herodotus’ text. (71) Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’. (72) See Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, especially at 28–9. Immerwahr’s interests in the natural order and its transgression by characters within the narrative are further developed in his Form and Thought in Herodotus, especially the concluding chapter on ‘History and the Order of Nature’. (73) Lateiner, ‘Limit, Propriety and Transgression in the Histories of Herodotus’. (74) Lachenaud, ‘Connaissance du monde et représentations de l’éspace dans Hérodote’, too offers a sensitive approach to Herodotus’ presentation of man’s engagement with the physical world, and a carefully differentiated response to episodes in which man fails to respect the natural world. See, for example, 56, on the significantly different tone between the attempt to cut through two isthmuses—at Cnidos and at Athos; the former being a fight against nature, the latter a failure to pay heed to proper military strategy in straying far from home: ‘moins le signe d’un fléau contre nature qu’un symptôme inquiétant pour l’issue de l’expédition’. (75) Romm, ‘Herodotus and the Natural World’. Page 32 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (76) 1.134.2 (adapted from A. D. Godley’s Loeb (1920)). (77) See, for example, the volume of collected essays, Bakker, de Jong, and van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, with separate chapters on ‘Egypt’, ‘Scythians’, ‘The Ethnography of the Fringes’, and ‘Babylon’. (78) Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 106, argues that Herodotus does not write about cultural symmetries in their own right, but uses them to illustrate the structured nature of the physical world: hence the opposed nature of the lifestyles of Egypt and Scythia. (79) The controversial argumentation concerning one such posited pair of semimythical peoples, the Hyperboreans and Hypernotians, is sensitively analysed by Romm, ‘Herodotus and Mythic Geography’. (80) See more recently, Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. (81) See Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus, with insights offered by Dewald and Marincola, ‘A Selective Introduction to Herodotean Studies’, 23–5. The theme of others’ view of the Greeks is taken up also by Rood, ‘Herodotus and Foreign Lands’. (82) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 76: ‘The Histories both presuppose as a given and discourage the commonplace notion of a Greek/barbarian polarity’; 78, on the question of whether ‘high’ cultures in Herodotus are seen as geographically central, as in the Persian model. (83) See Harrison, ‘Upside Down and Back to Front’, 145. (84) A counter-reading is offered by Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism, 42–82, in which he argues for a much stronger Egyptian priestly voice to be detected in dialogue and close interaction with Herodotus’ own account. (85) Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography, 245, nevertheless concludes that we should be ‘thinking about culture from the point of view of an outsider’ when considering the Greek ethnographic project, which inevitably implies a fixed or at least external viewing point. (86) Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography, especially 18, but see Skinner passim for wider discussion of Jacoby’s key question, namely how ethnography and ‘great historiography’ might have related to each other. (87) Clarke, Between Geography and History. (88) See Payen, Les Îles nomades, for an important analysis of Herodotus which sees the chronological and spatial architecture of the narrative as reflective of the work’s overall interpretative force. On a smaller scale, Rood, ‘Mapping Page 33 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Spatial and Temporal Distance in Herodotus and Thucydides’, notes the capacity of verbal representations of space to incorporate a strong temporal element. (89) Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative. (90) See, for example, the unmappable nature of Scythia due to the nomadism of its inhabitants, featureless landscape, with no distinguishing elements to articulate its space, and the ease with which one could get lost (131); this difficulty in pinning Scythia down is also noted by West, ‘Herodotus and Scythia’, 83. Purves also, intriguingly, notes the proclivity of Xerxes towards rolling the extent of the world into a single space, creating a tabula rasa through the destruction of nature and the transgression of boundaries (149). (91) Purves’ term the ‘Eusynoptic Iliad’ applies the term εὐσύνοπτος, which is used by Aristotle (Poet. 23.1459a30–4) to describe the fact that the plot of the Iliad can be ‘surveyed at a glance’, more broadly to the landscape of the entire text, in which the spatial perspective is predominantly distant and allencompassing. (92) Note, however, that de Jong, ‘Herodotus’, defines Herodotus in subtle opposition to Homer’s external and omnipresent narrator voice as an ‘overt narrator’, who refers to himself in the text in three capacities—narrator, historian, and commentator passing judgement. (93) For the term ‘hodological’, literally ‘relating to pathways’, see Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative, 121. (94) Rood, ‘Herodotus’, 135, stresses that any stark opposition between cartographic and hodological space is compromised by the piecemeal way in which Herodotus builds up spatial pictures. Also Barker, Bouzarovski, and Pelling, ‘Introduction: Creating New Worlds out of Old Texts’, 5, and de Bakker, ‘An Uneasy Smile’, 86–7, for the intertwining of hodological and cartographic perspectives in Herodotus. (95) See also Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, 79, for the expression of external and internal focalization in temporal terms, as offering either a simultaneous or non-simultaneous view of ‘things “happening” in different places’. (96) See de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 2–3, for the clearlyformulated distinction between fabula-space (locations of the narrative), storyspace (space as represented by the narrative), and the space of the narrator. (97) See, for example, her argument at 72 that Odysseus’ ‘expedition away from the sea takes us beyond epic territory, thereby registering a movement towards a new literary landscape’, in which the literary landscape is closely mirrored by that of the narrative.

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‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (98) Rood, ‘Herodotus’. (99) See Rood, ‘Herodotus’, 137–40. (100) The term ‘imperial geography’ belongs, of course, to a discourse concerning the theoretical space of postcolonialism, as exemplified by Clayton, ‘Imperial Geographies’. Certain themes in Clayton’s analysis are very relevant to understanding Herodotean geography; for example, the problem of dealing with ‘native voices’ (460) and, relevantly here, a recognition of the centrality of perspective to any geographical vision. (101) Note also the Hestia project, resulting in Barker, Pelling, Bouzarovski, and Isaksen (eds.), New Worlds from Old Texts. Applying digital techniques to the spatial analysis of the ancient world has yielded new ways of identifying and articulating spatial patterns within a range of media, including historiographical texts. One of the successes of the project has been to use digital techniques, which may appear far removed from the world of literary texts, to identify patterns which then merit further examination within their literary context. (102) For the complexity of focalization in another historical-geographical author, Strabo of Amaseia, see Clarke, ‘In Search of the Author of Strabo’s Geography’. (103) Here the work of Chamberlain, ‘“We the others”’, is particularly helpful, examining Herodotus’ use of a plural voice to refer to the whole process of researching and narrating, rather than to an assumed audience. As he argues at 12, ‘“we” are always the observers, the interpreters, the readers and representers of the other group; and we achieve all this through the defining mediation of language’. (104) See Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the Past’, and Luraghi, ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’. (105) For the way in which multiple focalizations in the work, even at the level of authorial voice as opposed to the perspectives of the various logoi Herodotus presents, can create a complex sense of space, see Dewald, ‘“I didn’t give my own genealogy”, 276, where she contends that Herodotus’ different logoi mean that ‘we are apparently encountering the polyvocalism of the world itself’. (106) See also de Jong, ‘The Subjective Style in Odysseus’ Wanderings’, arguing for the predominance of a subjective style in the Odyssey by contrast with the Iliad, due to the first-person perspective of the narrator-traveller figure. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, 79–80, discusses the external vs internal position of the focalizer: In the first, the focalizer is located at a point far above the object(s) of his perception. This is the classical position of a narrator-focalizer, yielding either a panoramic view or a ‘simultaneous’ focalization of things “happening” in Page 35 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ different places…A panoramic or simultaneous view is impossible when focalization is attached to a character or to an unpersonified position internal to the story. (107) Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the Historians’. Some of the motifs addressed by Marincola seem to me less distinctively Odyssean and more generally literary ones, but this does not detract from the overall value of the piece. (108) See Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 58, for yet another Odyssean aspect of Herodotus’ persona, that of unravelling the psychology and motivation of his characters. (109) As Marincola notes at 14, the interest of Herodotus in ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων again marks a clear self-presentation by Herodotus as an epic, Odyssean traveller. See also Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, 166–7, for Herodotus’ own placelessness and itinerancy as integral to his ability to see the big picture. (110) Pelling, ‘Homer and Herodotus’, 79, expresses this merging of author and character as the adoption by Herodotus of the dual roles of Odysseus and Homer: ‘He and his heroes make a team, and they each have a role to play.’ (111) Here we might note the conclusion drawn by Thomas, Herodotus in Context, at 164 and 212, that Herodotus prefers argument from opsis, but is also, like the scientists of his day, capable of arguing on the basis of a combination of opsis, gnōmē, and evidence. See also Dewald, ‘Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus’ Histories’, 158, for the suggestion that Herodotus alludes to sight positively and with the particular purpose of reinforcing things that the reader might not believe, especially thaumata. (112) Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’. (113) The tension is neatly encapsulated by de Jong, ‘Narratological Aspects of the Histories of Herodotus’, 263, where she notes the simultaneous presence of the invisible narrator and the dramatized narrator, who travels round and organizes the narrative. (114) Dion, ‘Le Danube d’Hérodote’, offers only these two perspectives in his analysis of internal difficulties in Herodotus’ presentation of the mighty Ister, but is nevertheless ahead of his time in focusing on the issue of Herodotean viewpoint at all. (115) Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 79, comments: ‘There is a real tension between schema and experience or the evidence of travellers’ tales’, and this dovetails very neatly into an analysis of the multiple focalizations of the work. (116) De Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 9. Page 36 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (117) Dewald, ‘Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus’ Histories’, 166 and 148 respectively. At 130, she notes that ‘although ostensibly handing over the storytelling to reported narrators, the Egyptian priests, he actually stays largely in charge himself’. See Brock, ‘Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus’, for similar views. (118) Similarly de Jong, ‘The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint’, uses the Helen episode for insights into the nature of Herodotus’ narrative technique. See also de Jong, ‘Narratological Aspects of the Histories of Herodotus’, 253–6, where she cites Quintilian (10.1.31) in support of the view that historiography is a narrative form, and, therefore, de Jong concludes, is appropriately subject to narratological analysis. (119) Dewald, ‘Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus’ Histories’, 150, 153. (120) See Darbo-Peschanski, Le Discours du particulier, for a thorough and important discussion of Herodotus’ creation of multiple voices for himself and for others, all of which are subsumed within ‘la voix de l’enquêteur’. For DarboPeschanski, the subordinate voices can be categorized as follows: ‘narratrices floues’, ‘informateurs désignés’, ‘personnages des récits rapportés’, and ‘lecteurauditeur des Histoires’. By contrast, Bichler, Herodots Welt, 12, seems uncertain whether to stand by his assertion of Herodotean unity or to stress the multiple voices in the work, which make it difficult to identify a clear Herodotean positioning. (121) Bakker, ‘The Syntax of Historiē: How Herodotus Writes’, 98, draws an analogous distinction between speech as part of the tale and speech as the source for the tale. (122) Marincola, ‘Herodotean Narrative and the Narrator’s Presence’, 130, notes the different texture when Herodotus examines written traditions from when he is engaged with actual informants and evidence on the ground. See Waterfield, ‘On “Fussy Authorial Nudges” in Herodotus’, 489–90, for the combination of overall authorial voice with a multiplicity of sources. As Waterfield notes, the mention of sources could hardly have been required by the conventions of an incipient genre, so must be there by Herodotus’ conscious decision. (123) See, for example, Lang, Herodotean Discourse and Narrative, on the disjunction between Herodotus’ own views and those expressed by characters in the narrative. At 61, she notes: ‘Nowhere in his narrative does Herodotus himself attribute to divine jealousy the defeat or fall of any great leader who might have been thought to be exceeding human limits’, but rather he puts this idea into the mouth of others. And furthermore, at 62, she notes that the warnings of Solon and Amasis about taking good fortune for granted do not mean ‘that the historian sees the subsequent fall of both Croesus and Polycrates Page 37 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ as caused by divine jealousy’. This sits oddly with 1.34.1, where Herodotus uses his own voice to express Croesus’ fall in terms of great divine retribution (ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη) and see Chiasson, ‘The Herodotean Solon’, 260, for the suggestion that Herodotus adapts Solon’s views from those expressed in his own poetry in order to support the notion of divine phthonos. However, Lang’s point about the relevance of voice stands. (124) Bakker, ‘The Syntax of Historiē: How Herodotus Writes’. (125) Bakker, ‘The Syntax of Historiē: How Herodotus Writes’, 100. (126) Similarly with the Egyptian priests for de Jong, ‘The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint’, 137, who are made into Herodotus’ own instrument of historiē, when asked to tell ‘whether the Greeks tell a silly story about what happened at Troy’ (2.118.1)’. Thomas, ‘Herodotus and Eastern Myths and Logoi’, reinforces the complexity of the relationship between pre-existing tales and the Herodotean narrative in relation to his use of Eastern myths. (127) See de Jong, ‘The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint’, 131. As de Jong notes, this elision could be the result of ‘downslip’ whereby oral composition tends to veer towards simplicity of expression, but she argues against this in the case of Herodotus, who elsewhere sustains indirect speech without difficulty. (128) Bakker, ‘The Syntax of Historiē: How Herodotus Writes’, 99. (129) Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, 15. (130) See, for example, 38, on the ‘Greek’ speech given by the unnamed Persian at the feast of Attaginus at Thebes, or the Solonic sentiments expressed by Xerxes on the brevity of life at 7.45–6. Cambyses’ insights on his deathbed fall into the same category of blurred distinctions, on which, see Flower, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, 282. (131) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 6–11. (132) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.12. (133) Flower, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, 274. (134) See Vandiver, ‘“Strangers are from Zeus”’, 151–2, for clear disjunctions between what the non-Greeks say and Herodotus’ own views (especially at 2.120, where Herodotus contrasts his own view with that of the Egyptian priests). (135) See Flower, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, 286, on the crucifixion of Artaÿctes, and more detailed comment below in Chapter 7. (136) Flower, ‘Herodotus and Persia’, 284. Page 38 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ (137) Pelling, ‘East is East and West is West—Or Are They?’. (138) This acknowledgement of the importance of difference alongside a sense of blurring or similarity comes through strongly in his work on speeches in the text. Pelling, ‘Speech and Narrative in the Histories’, examines the dynamics of logos in both the autocratic courts of the East and the diverse political systems of Greece and concludes that, in spite of some contrasts in approach and style, Greek deliberation is no less a travesty of logos than the attempts at persuasion made by Artabanus and Mardonius to the Persian king. (139) See, for example, Aristotle Politics 1327b 23–9. (140) Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia, 1–2, 4–5. (141) Konstan, ‘Persians, Greeks and Empire’, contrasting the voyeurism and obsessive surveying of the Persians with the philosophical and non-acquisitive gaze of Greek theoria. (142) Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’, especially at 134–5. Rollinger’s assessment lends fresh significance to the crucifixion of Artaÿctes by the Athenians (at 138), rendering it not only an act of brutality, but a move towards barbarism. (143) Solmsen, ‘Two Crucial Decisions in Herodotus’. (144) See especially 8.140–4. (145) Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ. (146) Although East vs West is the main opposition discussed in Steiner’s chapter, nevertheless, other groupings are prone to similar patterns of interpretation visà-vis the written word. Scythia and Sparta, for example, both paradigms of antidespotic thought and nonconformity, are seen as particularly antithetical to writing in Herodotus’ narrative (174–84). De Jong, ‘Narratological Aspects of the Histories of Herodotus’, 258–9, interestingly suggests that Herodotus’ own stress on oracy in his sources might reflect the negative connotations acquired by writing in his narrative. (147) See Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ, 137–8, for discussion of Herodotus 2.136, 2.125 and 1.93. (148) See Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ,142–9. (149) The written, especially the inscribed, word as an expression of power is a recurrent theme through the Histories, but, as Steiner argues, the inscriptions of tyrants commemorate the controlling achievements of individuals (the Egyptians, Sesostris, Cheops, and Asychis, the Persian rulers, Darius and Page 39 of 40

 

‘…there was no Herodotus before Herodotus’ Xerxes) by contrast with those in Greece which celebrate communal endeavour (as at Thermopylae). (150) See Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ, 131 (Deioces), 133–4 (Darius and inscribed monuments), 146–9 (mapping), and 176–7 (Scythia). (151) On the difference between real and constructed landscapes, see Buxton, Imaginary Greece, 81, noting that, while there are real landscapes, ‘human beings create an image of their surroundings through their interaction with them, so that perception of a landscape is inevitably mediated by cultural factors’. (152) See Alcock, ‘Landscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias’, 249, for the active construction of memory ‘through the marking of specific places in the landscape, either through the telling of stories, the enactment of rituals, or the building of commemorative monuments’. (153) The implication of this is, of course, to challenge those who would still separate Herodotus the historian from Herodotus the geographer, and to support the unitarian proponents.

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Mapping Out the World

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Mapping Out the World Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Starting from the well-known episode in which Aristagoras presents a map of the world to Cleomenes of Sparta in a bid to persuade him to collaborate against Persia, this chapter explores Herodotus’ presentation of different ‘layers’ of geographical space, ranging from the edges of the earth and the encircling Ocean, through the vast scope of continents and geographical symmetries, through patterning sequences such as the interconnected seas stretching from Asia to the Atlantic, then down through various types of ‘travelled space’. First of these is the world as experienced by armies on the march, then the world of recreational travellers in search of enlightenment or pleasure. Lastly, the geographical picture evoked by lists within the narrative is considered. Throughout, the focus is on illuminating the detailed picture drawn by Herodotus from his authorial distance, but incorporating many different viewpoints to create a complex and subtle sense of geography. Keywords:   geography, continent, traveller, Ocean, space

In a much cited and perpetually intriguing passage, Herodotus refers directly to the attempt of someone else to paint a picture of the world, an enterprise to which he too devotes great attention. The famous bronze tablet brought by Aristagoras of Miletus to Cleomenes of Sparta in 499 BC bore a map of the world, engraved with all the rivers and all the seas.1 Alongside this visual depiction of the broad layout of the world, Aristagoras provides a verbal commentary on the relative location of various peoples of Asia who might fall under the sway of his and Cleomenes’ joint efforts.2

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Mapping Out the World ‘The lands where they live lie next to each other, as I shall show: next to the Ionians are the Lydians, who inhabit a good land and are rich in silver.’ (He said this, pointing to the depiction of the earth which he had brought engraved on the tablet.) ‘Next to the Lydians,’ said Aristagoras, ‘you see the Phrygians to the east, the richest in flocks and in the fruits of the earth of all men known to me. Next to them are the Cappadocians, whom we call Syrians, and their neighbours are the Cilicians, whose land reaches to the sea over there, in which the island of Cyprus here lies. They pay an annual tribute to the king of 500 talents. Next to the Cilicians are the Armenians, another people rich in flocks, (p.48) and after the Armenians, the Matieni, who inhabit this country here. Adjoining these you see the Cissian land, in which, on the Choaspes, lies Susa, where the great king lives and where the treasuries of his possessions are located. Take that city, and you need not fear to challenge Zeus for riches.’3 Although Harrison argues that this ‘accompanying narrative’ refocuses the reader’s attention on the imaginary linear itinerary being described, as opposed to the space of the map,4 in fact the ‘bird’s-eye’ perspective is no less prominent in this passage than is the hypothetical journey.5 Indeed, the sense of large-scale geography in the relative positions of the inhabitants of Asia with respect both to each other and to features such as seas and islands is reinforced in Herodotus’ own authorial voice only a few chapters later, since the conversation between Aristagoras and Cleomenes acts as the catalyst for Herodotus’ own lengthy description of the Persian Royal Road, mapped out in terms of distances, guard stations, and rivers.6 Herodotus’ independent account of the geography of Asia acts as guarantor that Aristagoras was indeed speaking the truth when he claimed that the journey from the sea to Susa was three months, and so the two versions of Asian geography intertwine. Herodotus, however, can go one better than Aristagoras in terms of geographical accuracy.7 In competitive spirit, (p. 49) he outdoes in his own voice the account which he himself has put into the mouth of the character in his narrative, and notes that the journey would more accurately be measured to include the journey from Ephesus to Sardis, adding an extra three days (5.54).8 Although this is a small change in the context of a three-month expedition, it suggests an interesting interaction between author and character, representing two different layers of geographical expertise and two different viewpoints—one internal and one external to the narrative—a pattern which we shall see repeated in the parallel geographical enterprises of Darius and Herodotus.9 Furthermore, it gives some insight into the degree of Herodotus’ interest in gaining and presenting an accurate as well as a resonant picture of the physical world of the Histories.10 Engagement with current debates on geography on the grandest scale, a strong sense of continental divisions, an interest in the networks of seas, rivers, and mountains, a wish to bring to the mind’s eye of the reader a vivid picture of landscapes, both peaceful and military, both vast and more confined, and a keen Page 2 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World sense of geographical parallels, which are regularly used to illuminate the unfamiliar: all these multiple perspectives constantly bring the world of Herodotus to the reader in the most vivid way. But I shall begin by focusing on some of the ways in which Herodotus paints his picture of the world at the most schematic and overarching level in terms of the outermost limits, the edges of the earth.11

(p.50) A) Mapping The Extremes The most remote parts of the world have somehow drawn the finest things as their lot, just as Greece enjoys much the best blend of seasons. (3.106.1) Herodotus’ comment that the finest things (τὰ κάλλιστα) are to be found at the outermost edges of the earth, by contrast with the moderate climatic blend, presumably to be considered equally desirable, which is enjoyed by Greece, not only neatly illustrates his fair-handed treatment of different parts of the known world and his open-mindedness to their different virtues, but also thereby reinforces precisely this sense of difference according to place, and does so on a global scale.12 The idea that the best things might be on the perimeter questions the superiority of the centre, illustrated through Persian ethnocentrism (1.134.2–3),13 and perhaps suggests a lack of authorial endorsement of that approach.14 Herodotus’ own interest in different points of privilege thus puts a new spin on the notion of centre and periphery, as expressed through an ethnography or geography focused around a particular point, which is elevated largely through its close association with the authorial standpoint, and from which distance entails divergence and deterioration. Herodotus replaces the Persian model, which sees the world falling away from its own superior position, with one which still involves notions of centre and periphery, but depends on flexibility of viewpoint.15 Herodotus stands outside the space of his narrative, setting up his camera in different positions, and (p.51) exploring a range of centres and peripheries, entailing different answers to the identification of ‘them’ and ‘us’.16 Nevertheless, the notion of centre and periphery itself remains an important structuring device within Herodotus’ world. His description of the Panionium, the league formed in the aftermath of Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia, when the cities of Ionia, except Miletus, are rebuffed in their attempt to come over to Persia and therefore instead band together and request help from Sparta, buys directly into Presocratic and Hippocratic thought on the avoidance of extremes and the desirability of the moderate centre (1.142.1–2): Now these Ionians, who possessed the Panionium, of all men known to us happened to found their cities in places with the finest of climate and seasons. For neither to the north of them nor to the south does the land give rise to the same things as in Ionia [nor to the east nor to the west], Page 3 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World affected on the one side by cold and wet, on the other by heat and drought.17 It is not clear how Herodotus expects his readers to assess the relative merits of the contrasting options expressed at 3.106—the moderate and temperate admixture of seasons enjoyed by Greece, or the high concentration of various good qualities to be found at the margins of the world; and whether they are to prefer the safe average to the risky extreme. Rather than adopting a specific viewpoint within the space that he articulates and resolving the tension between an ethnocentric ‘middle is best’ approach and the discovery of virtue at the edges of earth,18 here it seems that he remains at great distance and looks down on a variety of broad schemas. (p.52) In any case, Herodotus’ interest in the edges of the earth is considerable, and seems to be motivated by a combination of narrative location and the interested gaze of the large-scale geographer. In general, of course, the narrative action does not extend to the extremities of the known world, but some important exceptions exist. The land campaign of Cambyses against the Ethiopians is seen as a campaign ‘to the uttermost ends of the earth’ (3.25.1: ἐϛ τὰ ἔσχατα γῆϛ).19 The army accordingly suffer dreadful hardships and losses until they finally turn back, having resorted to cannibalism.20 It is not quite the case, then, that the extremities of the earth remain only a theoretical construct for all the real players in Herodotus’ narrative,21 although Török’s suggestion that Herodotus conflates or at least incorporates two different Ethiopias in his narrative—the real one in Lower Nubia, and a utopian one on the edges of the earth—offers a neat solution to an apparently implausible campaign.22 But Darius too sets his sights on the edges of the earth. It is indeed in the context of his eastern campaigns that Herodotus’ discussion of geographical extremities arises (3.106–16), and his campaign against the Scythians provides the context for Herodotus’ theoretical and polemical setting out of a global geography in Book 4, where the question of the northernmost inhabitants of the world is under discussion. Herodotus has already prepared the ground for a degree of uncertainty over this edge of the earth. Beyond the north of Scythia cannot be seen or penetrated, he claims, because of the feathers (that is, snow) in the air (4.7.3), and he repeats a little later the claim that north of the Hyperboreans no one knows what there is (4.16.1). The Hyperboreans, thus, seem to mark the last set of people about whom anything meaningful can be known or said.23 Aspiring (p.53) to carry imperial power to the outermost limits of the world might appear to be a feature of the Persian despotic mindset, but subtle distinctions can be detected. While both Cambyses and Darius head towards the dangerous and mysterious extremes of the earth, Darius is characteristically a good deal less extravagant than his predecessor—he does not seem to intend to go so far, as his proposed limit of sixty days for the Scythian campaign indicates, and has a clearer idea of the dangers involved Page 4 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World (4.98).24 As we shall see, Herodotus’ interest in the creation of a Persian imperial geography may well reflect his engagement with similar aspirations on the part of Athens in his own day. On the extremities, even when the motivation for including geographical information is the historical narrative of campaigns and imperial aspiration, Herodotus’ picture is based as much on probability as on empirical evidence. It is the sense of theoretical knowledge about the way the world maps out which leads him ironically to claim the existence of corresponding Hypernotians, inhabiting the southernmost reaches of the world in balance to the Hyperboreans (4.36.1).25 The somewhat mythical quality associated with the northern extremity of the world is brought home both by its poetic mentions by Homer and Hesiod (4.32) and by the charming tale of how the holy offerings of the Hyperboreans to Delos, to which we (p.54) shall return below (pp. 85–6), are carried by relay from the edge of the earth to one of its religious centres each year (4.33). Although this story may connect northern Scythia to the Mediterranean heart, the extremity of Scythia’s climate acts as a constant reminder that there is nothing moderate, temperate, or ‘average’ about this place.26 It is, according to Herodotus (4.28.1–2), winter for eight months of the year, the antithesis of the perfect middle ground. The sea freezes over, as does the whole Cimmerian Bosporus, so that the Scythians can cross with wagons. Strikingly, winter is not just more extreme here, but it operates differently from everywhere else, since there is no rain in the natural season of winter, but in summer it rains incessantly.27 Thunderstorms also happen in Scythia at the opposite time to other places. Just when we might have thought from the lists of increasingly distant peoples that Herodotus’ world was simply extending outwards with ever more extreme versions of the same natural phenomena, it transpires that the patterns of nature are not just exacerbated but overturned at these perplexing, intriguing, and often illogical edges of the earth. The same idea is hinted at in a less frequently cited passage from Book 3, which sets out an equally interesting large-scale geographical picture. Here Herodotus comments that in India the sun is hottest in the early morning, rather than at midday as in other lands and is far hotter than the midday sun in Greece (3.104.2).28 India, then, is contrary to other countries, just like Scythia at the northern extremity of the world and, so often, Egypt to the south. At such edges of the earth, the climate seems to be not only exaggerated and upturned, but also constant and unchanging.29 And India is indeed presented as the (p.55) eastern edge of the known world. The Indians are the most easterly of all the known peoples, and furthermore all their country to the east is sandy desert (3.98.2). Herodotus seems prompted at this point to indulge in an extensive imaginary tour of all the most remote corners of the world. So, he notes that ‘farthest to the south of all the world is Arabia’ and proceeds to offer a detailed Page 5 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World description of its flora and fauna (3.107); then, ‘to the south-west of the world, Ethiopia is the farthest of all inhabited lands’ (3.114.1). He resumes, ‘these, then, are the countries that are at the utmost ends of the earth in Asia and Libya. But about limits of the world towards the west, in Europe, I cannot speak with certainty’ (3.115.1).30 At the end of this whistle-stop tour of the outermost reaches of the known world, Herodotus returns to the statement, formulated as a likelihood rather than a certainty, but one based on an enticingly exotic description of these regions, that ‘it seems likely that the ends of the earth, which enclose and entirely shut in all the rest, should have what we think most beautiful and rarest’.31 Herodotus’ sense of the largest geographical scale is not, of course, confined to the relationship between centre and periphery. The ongoing debate concerning Homer’s all-encircling Ocean, as displayed on the shield given to Achilles,32 occurs several times in Herodotus’ work. We shall return to this question in Chapter 3 when considering the role played by rivers in mapping out Herodotus’ world, but for now it is worth noting Herodotus’ wish to take a stance on this major debate. He notes in connection with Nile floods that some attribute this phenomenon to the fact that the river flows from the Ocean and the Ocean flows around the whole earth (2.21).33 Shortly afterwards, (p.56) Herodotus makes clear his own view on the Homeric Ocean, and it is one of sceptical agnosticism. The Ocean theory is grounded ‘in obscurity’ (ἐϛ ἀφανὲϛ), he says (2.23) in terms which place it beyond the scope of the well-tested method of speculating about the unseen by reference to ‘the seen’,34 as indeed Herodotus himself does in relation to the Nile floods. But arguments from the invisible are spurned for the Ocean. Herodotus claims to have no knowledge of the existence of a river flowing round the earth and he puts forward the explanation that Homer or one of the older poets found the name and introduced it into their poetry (2.23). Herodotus’ position, which is essentially that one cannot firmly refute the Ocean theory, but that there is no positive proof of its veracity, is repeated in relation to the story of Heracles and the cattle of Geryon. Herodotus describes Geryon as lying west of Pontus on a red island near Gades, outside the Pillars of Heracles, on the shore of Ocean (4.8.2). This is a somewhat strange description, since ‘west of Pontus’ is hardly a natural way to describe something which lies on the shores of the Atlantic, except in so far as it occurs in the context of a foundation myth for the land of Scythia, so it could be that Herodotus is simply trying to place the geography of Geryon and that of his current subject, the Pontic region, in meaningful relationship to each other. In any case, our point of interest here is Herodotus’ subsequent comment that some say—without being able to prove it— that the Ocean flows from the east all round the world. Thus far, Herodotus’ world has a sense of centre and periphery, and a question mark hanging over what happens at its outer edge, with some scepticism expressed concerning one traditional solution (p.57) to the edge, namely to tidy it up with a ring of water.35 What lies within is subject to a great deal of Page 6 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World conceptual ‘shaping’ in order that a vast world should become comprehensible, tamed, and articulated.36 Much of that shaping will be discussed in Chapter 3, where we shall consider in turn various geographical features, which break up the space into manageable portions. As I shall suggest, this process of articulating the landscape serves much more interesting and resonant purposes than purely dividing up space, since it allows Herodotus to ‘create’ a landscape full of meaning, with which he can make the players in his narrative interact in morally loaded ways.37 But even the process itself is interesting since it shows us Herodotus operating against a backdrop of earlier and contemporary geographical thought and developing his own vision. Books 2 and 4 in particular, as we shall see later, the two books which are dominated by those great geographical features, the vast rivers, offer Herodotus the opportunity to indulge in some large-scale geographical speculation, which begins to schematize the space of the inhabited world. Throughout the work Herodotus draws a variety of interesting geographical parallels which help to shape his world and to cast judgements upon the inhabitants, as we shall explore in detail in Chapter 4. But on the grandest scale, his sense of symmetry and balance, which we have already noted in passing in connection with the Hyperboreans and Hypernotians and which must in part derive from his interest in Presocratic thinking, leads him to draw connections between the two great rivers which dominate the north and south respectively, the Ister and the Nile. Again, when trying to explore and explain the phenomenon of the Nile floods, he resorts to arguments from probability which entail an acceptance of some kind of global symmetry revolving around these great rivers: if the seasons were changed, he argues, and one were to put the summer and the southern wind where the winter and the northern wind currently are, then the sun would go to the upper reaches of Europe just as it does now to Libya, and, as it went through the whole of (p.58) Europe, it would have the same effect on the Ister as it does now on the Nile (2.26). A little later, the comparison is used for a different purpose, to estimate the length of the Nile, again by probability, since Herodotus claims that the Nile must be as long as the Ister, which starts in the Celtic country and the city of Pyrene and cuts Europe in two (2.33.2–4). The use of symmetry is in itself an interesting strategy since it has implications for not only the mapping out of space, but also the conceptual connectedness of the mirror images. We shall examine in more detail in Chapter 4 how Herodotus compares and contrasts the habits, lifestyles, and behaviour of various geographically parallel peoples, including these polar opposites. It is interesting that, in this particular case, the symmetry of the great rivers requires Herodotus to brush over the fact that, while Scythia may represent the farthermost north, Egypt does not similarly epitomize the extreme south, being southerly, but not so southerly as Ethiopia. The symmetry of the rivers does not quite match that of the lands. Here the mismatch occurs for the obvious reason that the extreme

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Mapping Out the World south is characterized by desert,38 but we are left with a curiously layered effect of different schemata superimposed.39

B) Filling In The Broad Canvas: Continents And Comparisons The last two examples (2.26 and 2.33.2–4) introduce continental divisions to the range of ways in which the geographical space encompassed by the edges of the earth is configured. The continents offered only one of many ways of organizing and delimiting space in the ancient geographical tradition, but nevertheless they loom large in Herodotus’ world, perhaps because of the nature of the clash which (p.59) will occupy much of his narrative.40 Much has been said, with validity, about the lack of clear division between East and West in Herodotus. It is, however, the case that Europe and Asia as distinct spaces, sometimes desirable, sometimes hostile, but always separate, are recurring units in the work. As with so many aspects of geography in Herodotus, it is possible at one level to identify here also a straightforward interest in the spatial configuration of the world, while at the same time observing more resonant associations. On the one hand, Herodotus engages with current debates about the precise nature of the continental divisions. In pondering the circumnavigability of Europe, he questions the value of continental divisions at all, commenting that he is not sure why the earth, as a single entity, should have three names (namely, those of the continents), all indicating descent from women, nor why certain rivers, such as the Nile, the Phasis, and the Tanais, are given as boundaries (4.45.2). But his acceptance of continents as categories of geographical space is apparent throughout. He compares the different continents in terms of their size, and includes the story of the circumnavigation of Libya by Necos as a way of finding out information about that continent (4.42.2–4). Elsewhere, the continental comparison is made in terms of the quality of land: Libya is said to be inferior in this respect compared with Europe or Asia, except the region called Cinyps, that is, one of the very few rivers, and the area around Euesperides (4.198). Much more commonly, however, the continents act as more than mere spatial units and take on a significant role in the dynamics of the narrative. Although one might expect the continents to turn up more frequently in the first, ‘geographical’, part of the work, in fact they are more obviously present as the work becomes more explicitly a war narrative, becoming emblematic of the two opposing sides that will (p.60) offer the culmination of Persia’s imperialist bids. Where Europe and Asia do appear in the conceptual geography of the first few books, it is most often in the context of conquest. In fact, one of the first major mentions of the continental divisions occurs in a military context, at the end of Book 1. Here Herodotus presents the striking dream of Cyrus, immediately after he has crossed the river Araxes, itself a major real and conceptual barrier,

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Mapping Out the World separating off the territory of the Massagetae from the Persian domain (1.209.1):41 When he had crossed the Araxes, he dreamed that night, as he slept in the country of the Massagetae, that he saw the eldest of Hystapes’ sons with wings on his shoulders, and with one of these he cast a shadow over Asia and with the other over Europe. Thus Europe and Asia are here presented as emblematic of the universal conquest, which Cyrus envisages in his dream as the aim of the rival Achaemenid house (Hystapes’ eldest son is Darius, who will in Book 4 return to this part of the world in his pursuit of conquest over the Scythians). That these two continents, which will dominate the narrative at the expense of Libya, should appear so early in a military context in dream mode and in symbolic form, should alert us to the likelihood that they will continue to act as more than spatial units. But it is critical to pay attention to the focalization here. It is Cyrus, not Herodotus, who conjures up the image of wings that span the two continents, just as it will be Darius, not Herodotus, who describes the Athenians as ‘men from the other continent’ (5.106.1: ἄνδρας…ἐκ τῆς ἑτέρης ἠπείρου).42 Herodotus does indeed accept that some find continents a useful way of dividing up space, even though he himself has reservations. But the continent as a resonant unit in the context of imperial conquest is a phenomenon which Herodotus does not pursue in propria persona. The much-cited acknowledgement at 1.4.4 of the fundamentally distinct spaces of Europe and Asia is explicitly (p.61) attributed to the Persians: ‘For the Persians claim, as their own, Asia and all the barbarian peoples who live in it, but Europe and the Greek people they regard as entirely separate.’43 It is the violation of this divide which Cyrus in his dream imputes to the rival Achaemenid house, but both Cyrus and the Achaemenids operate within the same conceptual framework of a resonant continental division which Herodotus himself does not explicitly endorse. Here, then, the arguments of Rood and Friedman concerning the man-made rather than natural origins of the Europe-Asia divide seem persuasive.44 One can choose whether or not to view this particular configuration of space as significant, whether or not to find its crossing a violation. Cyrus’ dream, or rather nightmare, vision of Darius straddling both continents foreshadows an ongoing sequence of attempts to bridge the Europe-Asia divide.45 Even the Egyptian king Sesostris makes the crossing in his expedition to conquer the Scythians (2.103.1). But, picking up on Cyrus’ prophetic dream, it is another Persian, Darius, who first makes a concerted assault on the world of another continent.46 Here, as elsewhere, the question of through (p.62) whose eyes the world is viewed contributes subtle nuances to the picture. When the Scythians call on their allies in the face of Persian incursion, they make much of Page 9 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World the imperial threat in terms of crossing from one continent (ἡ ἤπειρος) to another, claiming that Darius, having subdued all the other continent, had now built a bridge at the neck of the Bosporus and crossed into this one; and, having crossed and conquered the Thracians, was now bridging the Ister, ‘wanting to make that whole region too subject to him’ (4.118.1). The Scythians thus echo Darius’ own concentration (4.85) on the significance of the Bosporus, where the narrative pause for reflection on the spectacle of Darius viewing in turn the spectacle of the great watercourses adds authorial emphasis to the sense of liminality, with Darius’ Persians poised on the edge of a critical divide. In this sense, the geographical conceptions of the aggressor and of the attacked are presented as one and the same by the historian, but, yet again, it is a view that he fails to endorse in his own voice.47 There is, in any case, a curious double-layering of significant divisions here, since both the continental divide and the barrier of the river Ister, one of the key articulators of space in Herodotus’ narrative, as we shall see in Chapter 3, seem to represent important stages in Darius’ bid for power over both halves of the world. Possibly this confusion over exactly whether it is the crossing of the Bosporus or the crossing of the Ister which matters most is due to the exigencies of the Scythian perspective, persuading their allies that Darius has already surmounted not one, but two major obstacles, leaving no one safe. We witness in the earlier books a gradual building up of a resonant geography for this part of the world, so that each crossing of the continental divide, be it of the Bosporus or of the Dardanelles, adds to the cumulative significance of the action. As we shall see in Chapter 7, recollecting, emulating, and even outdoing the crossings made by one’s predecessors of this most important chain of watercourses, separating the two worlds of Europe and Asia, is a leitmotif throughout the work, but the deep significance and resonance of the continental divide seem to be in the minds of the imperialist aggressors rather than necessarily representing an essential ingredient in Herodotus’ geographical conception. We shall return in Chapter 7 to (p.63) the possibility that the Persian crossings of continents do not constitute a transgression of a naturally determined disposition, but rather are symptomatic of a characteristic arrogance because they transgress the Persians’ own professed view of geographical limits. The tension between Herodotus’ criticism of continental divisions and their prominence within the geographical space of the historical narrative may be seen to offer a clear illustration of the combination of traditional and innovative thinking in his work. As Thomas notes, Herodotus might have accepted the emotional and symbolic significance of continental divisions, while finding them intellectually problematic.48 But equally, we may observe that even the emotionally charged and resonant continental division of Europe and Asia is frequently, though not exclusively, ascribed to the Persian aggressors in the narrative or to their victims. One might thus tentatively suggest that it is part of the discourse of imperialism, a manifestation of deliberate transgression on the Page 10 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World part of the Persians, rather than a significant part of Herodotus’ geographical thinking.49 This supports Pelling’s view that East and West do not necessarily offer a clear-cut or helpful opposition for understanding Herodotus’ world.50 Nevertheless, the various crossings back and forth from Europe to Asia strengthen the idea of the continents as separate units of space,51 and we have already seen that this is particularly pronounced in the context of outgoing imperialist expeditions which transgress the natural continental divisions at least in the minds of the aggressors. But it is interesting to see that this is not simply a question of leaders, armies, and others being transferred from place to place with aggressive intent.52 The converse notion of nostos or ‘homecoming’ is one (p.64) which recurs through the work, lending an epic grandeur to the narrative, and this is a mechanism through which Herodotus in propria persona employs the idea of continental separation. But it is striking that he applies it to the Persians, effectively throwing their own geographical thinking back in their faces in the context of ignominious defeat. Whereas Homeric nostoi are made to individual cities and individual homes and families, Herodotus formulates the homecoming of his characters as to a whole continent. The return of Xerxes’ army to Asia (8.130) is seen as a homecoming, as is that of the Greek spies, dispatched to Asia (7.146), who returned home (ἐνόστησαν), not to their individual cities, but ‘to Europe’ (ἐς τὴν Εὐρώπην) (7.148.1); and when Artabazus leaves his men behind in Thrace and rushes to Byzantium to cross the sea by boat, thereby placing himself but not his men back on the correct continent, Herodotus’ comment ‘this was how Artabanus returned home to Asia’ (9.90: οὗτος μὲν οὕτω ἀπενόστησε ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην) continues the theme of nostos as well as hinting at something resembling the epic cycle in which each hero (or in this case, anti-hero) has his own story to tell about how he came home from Troy.53 Thus, in spite of his scepticism concerning the continents as useful articulators of space, Herodotus incorporates the continental divisions, especially that of Europe and Asia, into his narrative, focalized through the prime imperialists in the work, the Persians. As we shall see later (Chapters 5 and 6 passim), there are many ways in which the Persians are demarcated in the narrative, not just from the people of Europe, nor from their victims more broadly, but even from other Eastern tyrants. The alternative sense of geographical space offered by the Persians is but one manifestation of their unique status. It is, however, a manifestation which has interesting consequences for how their imperial ventures may be interpreted. If the Persians themselves propound a geography in which their excursions outside Asia are transgressive, this places a heightened moral charge on those actions, (p.65) blurring the distinction between the formal articulation of space in the Histories and the question of man’s interaction with that landscape.

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Mapping Out the World So far we have taken advantage of Herodotus’ elevated authorial viewpoint to look down from afar on the vast stretches of land that make up the continents, separated by seas, straits, or major rivers. But we have seen that, where the continental divisions are most resonant, this tends to be focalized closer to the ground through players in the narrative. The tension between distant and closer perspectives, each of which generates a different geography, is of some interest. The two competing viewpoints are brought together at one of the key crossing points between Europe and Asia, where Herodotus combines the mental map of a protagonist, who views the scene through Persian imperialist eyes, with his own more detached and scientific lens, juxtaposing internal and external focalizations. This is, of course, the scene in which Darius sits above and views the Bosporus before his fateful crossing, and Herodotus presents a panoramic shot of the whole set of watery expanses which pave the way from the Pontus through the Propontis and down to the Aegean (4.85):54 But Darius, when he reached that place in his march from Susa where the Bosporus was bridged in the territory of Chalcedon, embarked and sailed to the so-called Dark Rocks, which the Greeks say moved in the past; there, sitting on a headland, he viewed the Pontus, a sight worth seeing (ἀξιοθέητον). For it is the most wonderful of all the seas. Its length is 11,100 stades, and its breadth 3,300 stades at the point where it is widest. The channel at the entrance of this sea is 4 stades across; the narrow neck of the channel, called the Bosporus, across which the bridge was thrown, is about 120 stades long. The Bosporus reaches as far as the Propontis; and the Propontis is 500 stades wide and 1,400 long; its outlet is the Hellespont, which is 7 stades in width and 400 in length. The Hellespont empties into a gulf of the sea which is called the Aegean.55 The passage steps back from total immersion in the action and offers a narrative pause, which enhances the momentous nature of (p.66) the subsequent move into another continent. As the reader takes stock alongside Darius and shares his wonder, Herodotus takes the opportunity to present a miniature geography of the region, which brings home the interconnected sequence of seas, trickling down to the central Mediterranean.56 The shift in focalization from Darius to Herodotus hinges on the spectacle of the Pontus, which Darius views and Herodotus finds most wonderful (θωμασιώτατοϛ). In fact, it is left unclear whether the assessment of the Pontus as worth seeing and most wonderful belongs to Darius or Herodotus or both.57 He thereby offers a double focalization, allowing us to view the world through Darius’ eyes, but additionally letting us share his own, still more distant viewpoint, in which Darius is a feature of the scene.58 These two different but intertwined viewpoints underpin Herodotus’ narrative. Herodotus the author marvels at nature and at man’s productive relationship with it, but the Persians will view the same world with desirous and destructive eyes.59 Herodotus’ sense of geographical space, which forms the subject of this part of the book, is difficult to disentangle from the Page 12 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World more resonant and morally charged geographical vision of some of his characters. And, of course, all perspectives fall within the all-encompassing scope of Herodotus as author of the work. There are many such passages in which the geographical ‘big picture’ is drawn, not perhaps at a global and theoretical level, but at the level of the travelled and experienced world, and indeed the interplay between and complementarity of different levels of remove, zooming in and out of the authorial camera, and multiplicity of eyes through which to view the world as a geographical space is characteristic of Herodotus’ text.60 (p.67) It is worth recalling here the proposition made in Chapter 1 that hodological and bird’s-eye viewpoints are intertwined and complementary rather than operating as stark alternatives. The majority of such ‘viewing’ passages, seen through the eyes of participants in the narrative, occur in the first half of the Histories, whereas, as we shall see later in this chapter (pp. 76–80), in the second part of the work, a similar role of bringing the big picture to the reader’s eye is fulfilled rather differently through the description of an ‘expedition landscape’, seen through the eyes of Herodotus’ characters engaged in the narrative of war.61 But in the more descriptive, perhaps even more leisurely,62 earlier books, Herodotus often indulges in viewing-point moments like that attributed to Darius. Book 4 is particularly rich in such large-canvas visions, and it is no coincidence that this is Darius’ book. Herodotus and Darius make an unlikely pairing. Perhaps Herodotus allows the intervention of Darius’ vision alongside his own in order to show how different the world looks through the eyes of an aspiring conqueror from those of a scholarly historian and geographer?63 Or we might be reminded of Brock’s observation that Herodotus’ narrative management is partly achieved through ‘overt interaction with the audience’, here an audience internal to the narrative.64 In any case, in (p.68) the context of his forays in Book 4 into the global picture and debates about the encircling Ocean and the mirror-image peoples of the Hyperboreans and putative Hypernotians, Herodotus maps out the Asian peoples who live between the Red Sea and the Northern Sea [here, the Black Sea]—Persians, Medes, Saspires, and Colchians—sketching out an ethnographic map that is anchored to a broad geographical canvas of seas and major rivers such as the Phasis (4.37). In a sense the descriptive mode is fairly primitive, essentially listing ‘who comes next’ in the line of peoples inhabiting the land between the southern and northern seas, but it serves the purpose of filling in a blank space on the map in the broadest terms.65 From here he moves westwards, where there are two peninsulas stretching into the Mediterranean, both of which are described in terms of coastline, rivers, and cities.66 Again, the technique is straightforward and economical: these are not landscapes resonant with mythological associations or geographical

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Mapping Out the World peculiarities, but they display Herodotus’ knowledge of the area, or at least his command of the relevant accounts (4.38.2): On the north side one of the peninsulas begins at the Phasis and stretches towards the sea along the Pontus and the Hellespont, until Sigeum in the Troad; on the south side, the same peninsula has a sea coast beginning at the Myriandric gulf that is near Phoenicia, and stretching towards the sea as far as the Triopian headland. On this peninsula live thirty population groups. And he moves on from here to consider the parts of Asia to the east of the Colchians, where he has slightly less detail to offer beyond the most general scheme of watercourses which bound the land—the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Araxes river (4.40.1). After India, all Herodotus can do is profess ignorance, which he claims is universal, since ‘after this, all to the east is desolation, and no one can say what kind of land is there’ (4.40.2). In the following chapter he gives the briefest outline of how Libya fits alongside Egypt, before moving on to consider and question the overall division of the world into (p.69) continents, since they are so different in size, with Europe far outstripping the others in scale (4.42.1). This type of mapping, which is not on a global scale, but is concerned with what happens within each continent or region, is common in Book 4. It helps in the generation of a vivid narrative, even just on the level of scene-setting; but also, perhaps more importantly, it elevates the significance and grandeur of the narrative through the scale of the backdrop. When Herodotus returns to the geography of Libya later in Book 4, having briefly alluded to it in his whistle-stop tour of the continents, he devotes many chapters to providing a detailed account. The passage (4.168–99) encompasses a huge ‘digression’67 on the peoples, lands, and customs of Libya. It articulates space through harbours (4.168.2), islands (4.169.1), inland/coastal regions (4.170),68 rivers (4.175.2),69 food (4.177 on the Lotus Eaters), and lakes (4.178 on Lake Triton with its island of Phla, which the Spartans are urged by an oracle to colonize). Mythological geography also comes into play (4.179 offers an alternative story concerning the Tritonian lake, in which Jason and the Argo feature), as do references to Greece (4.180.2–4 mentions a festival of Athena, with a girl dressed in a Corinthian helmet and Hellenic armour; Herodotus ponders what they used to dress her in before the Greeks). From here, we move on to ridges (4.181.1–2 describes a ridge of sand stretching from Thebes to the Pillars of Heracles with salt mounds producing fresh water at which oases are to be found), the use of a day’s journey as a unit of distance, which enables Herodotus to relate the position of one tribe to another (4.183.2 notes that the Garamantes are thirty days’ travel from the Lotus Eaters),70 mountains (4.184.3–4 mentions Mount Atlas), (p.70) and the great unknown (at 4.185.1 he notes that he does not know the names of any peoples along the salt ridge beyond the point reached, even though he knows Page 14 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World that it continues right to the Pillars). The world to the south of the ridge is barren and waterless (4.185.3), at which point a geography of peoples turns into an empty landscape which no longer interests Herodotus and he turns to describe the customs of the inhabitants of the northern section of the continent. At the opposite extreme of the known world in Scythia Herodotus performs a similar feat of painting a picture of a vast region on a large canvas. His account starts as follows (4.17): North of the port of the Borysthenites, which lies right at the midpoint along the coast of Scythia, the first inhabitants are the Callippidae, who are Scythian Greeks; and beyond them another tribe called Alazones; these and the Callippidae, though in other ways their habits are the same as the Scythians, nevertheless plant and eat grain, onions, garlic, lentils, and millet. Above the Alazones live Scythian farmers, who plant grain not to eat but to sell; north of these, the Neuri; north of the Neuri, the land is uninhabited so far as we know. From here Herodotus proceeds to map out the whole of Scythia, breaking up the vast land into manageable segments by reference to the many rivers which dominate the region, in striking contrast to the almost riverless landscape of Libya.71 The rivers Hypanis, Borysthenes, Panticapes, Gerrhus, and Tanais create pockets of Scythia for Herodotus to describe. Often the land on one side of a river is portrayed as significantly different from the other, with the result that the rivers seem not only convenient ways of dividing up space but additionally meaningful in the creation of varied landscapes, habitats, and associated lifestyles. The Panticapes, for example, separates the farmer Scythians from the nomads (4.19). The criss-crossing of rivers across landscapes, both large and small, is a favoured way for Herodotus to articulate space.72 (p.71) But here in the description of Scythia this strategy is just one of several concurrent techniques, layered one on another, to enliven the picture in the reader’s mind. The network of rivers combines with evocative lists of exotically named peoples (the Neuri, the Man-Eaters, the Black-Cloaks, the Thyssagetae, and the Baldies) the careful orientation of the reader around the Asian Steppes through the use of compass coordinates, the sense of distance through number of days’ journey taken from place to place,73 and the anchoring of the list of peoples to a port in a specific location on the coast. The passage quoted above (4.17) illustrates another form of conceptual mapping, namely in terms of diet. We have already seen in Chapter 1 that this is one of the many forms of conceptual mapping to be represented in the ethnographic tradition,74 albeit by authors who postdate Herodotus himself. As so often with ethnographic writings, there is a strong tendency for the level of oddity to increase as one moves away from the centre. Here, beyond the relatively familiar Baldies are the less Page 15 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World plausible Goat-Footed Men, and beyond these are people who sleep for six months of the year (4.25.1).75 In spite of his speculations concerning global symmetry, which lead him into the territory of the scientists, philosophers, and sophists, Herodotus’ interest in the inhabited world, as opposed to the globe in the widest sense, combines neatly with this sense of alienation and disconnection as one moves from the centre, since he spans out in each direction only to the point where there are no further inhabitants known.76 In Book 2 also, Herodotus’ description of Egypt often involves sketching out the landscape on a vast geographical scale. The region beyond Heliopolis, for example, is presented in broad-brushstroke style (2.8–9): Beyond and above Heliopolis, Egypt is a narrow land. For it is bounded on the one side by the mountains of Arabia, which run north to south, always extending south towards the so-called Red Sea. In these (p.72) mountains are the quarries that were hewn out for making the pyramids at Memphis. This way, then, the mountains run, and end in the places I have mentioned; their greatest width from east to west, as I learned, is a journey of two months, and their boundaries to the east yield frankincense. Such is this mountain range. On the side of Libya, Egypt is bounded by another range of rocky mountains, among which are the pyramids; these are covered with sand, and run in the same direction as the Arabian hills running southward. Beyond Heliopolis, there is no great distance—in Egypt, that is: the narrow land has a length of only fourteen days’ journey up the river. Between the mountain ranges mentioned, the land is level, and where the plain is narrowest it seemed to me that there were no more than 200 furlongs between the Arabian mountains and the ones called Libyan. Beyond this Egypt is a wide land again. Such is the nature of this country. The landscape is one of mountains, seas, vast dimensions, compass coordinates, and a strong sense of the large-scale layout in terms of overall shape of the land. It is also one which in many ways resembles its mirror-image region of the north, in which we have seen Herodotus display a similarly broad spatial and ethnographic interest. Herodotus’ wide geographical vision is significantly enhanced and deepened through his attempts to draw sometimes albeit implicit comparisons between different areas, so that one can illuminate the other. We shall consider the more resonant geographical parallels drawn by Herodotus later in Chapter 4, since they often seem to contribute to the moral tone imparted to human interaction with the landscape. For now, however, let us observe those instances where the parallels are drawn in an apparently straightforward attempt to cast light on a geographical phenomenon or a striking spatial configuration, or to help the reader to understand a precise spatial relationship or location.77

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Mapping Out the World Some geographical parallels operate on a very large scale. We have already seen the way in which Herodotus estimates the length of the Nile by reference to that of its northern counterpart, the Ister,78 (p.73) evoking a geographical canvas that spans two continents. His tracing of the courses of these two rivers includes not only their overland routes, in so far as this can be known for the Nile, but also the course from the outlet of the Nile to that of the Ister (2.33.3–4): The river Ister begins in Celtic country and the city of Pyrene and cuts Europe in two. The Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, and they have shared borders with the Cynesii, who live farthest of all the people who inhabit Europe towards the west. The Ister ends, flowing into the Euxine Sea, cutting right across Europe, at Istria, which was settled by Milesian colonists…It [i.e. the Nile from Libya] flows out into Egypt. Egypt lies roughly opposite the mountainous part of Cilicia. From there to Sinope on the Black Sea is a straight journey of five days for a lightly burdened man. Sinope is opposite the Ister as it issues into the sea. So I think that the Nile, which passes through all of Libya, is equal to the Ister.79 Some of the other spatial parallels drawn by Herodotus also operate on a vast scale, building up a relative geography and allowing the reader to benefit from Herodotus’ authorial bird’s-eye view. When Croesus arrives at Pteria in Cappadocia, for example, we are told that the city lies on a line with the city of Sinope, on the Euxine Sea (1.76.1). The placing of the unknown Pteria in relation to a city whose location is much more likely to be familiar to the reader, and indeed which seems to operate as something of a key point in Herodotus’ attempts to sketch out a world, illustrates a technique which Herodotus uses on several occasions. Sometimes the comparison remains outside the realms of the familiar. Herodotus’ conclusion that he cannot discover why the Nile floods in summer and recedes in winter is set in the broadest possible frame of reference, ‘the opposite of every other river in the world’ (2.19.3).80 Indeed the geography of Egypt several times exceeds what can reasonably be explained with reference to anything other than another exotic location in the world.81 Nevertheless, Herodotus (p.74) is able to relate some phenomena of this extraordinary land to other parts of the world. In trying to explain the formation of the land of Egypt, Herodotus speculates that the area was once like the Gulf of the Red Sea, which cuts into Arabia (2.11.3–4). Or, we might consider the case of the manmade Lake Moeris in Egypt, from which no spoil from the digging is visible. The locals told Herodotus that it had been carried away, and Herodotus was inclined to believe them on the basis of a parallel, since he had heard something similar about the Assyrian city of Nineveh, where thieves digging a tunnel to steal Sardanapalus’ wealth from his underground treasure house took the spoil at night and threw it into the river Tigris (2.150).

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Mapping Out the World Very often Herodotus’ comparison involves relating a distant part of the world to one much closer to home, as we have already seen.82 The road to Heliopolis up from the sea is described as ‘roughly the same journey in length as that from the temple of the twelve gods in Athens to the temple of Olympian Zeus in Pisa’ (2.7.1). Apart from the interest of this as a small piece of religious geography, it is also striking how specific Herodotus is about what one might have assumed to be a rather general comparison. Herodotus insists on making the point that the two distances are not exactly the same, since ‘you will find a small difference if you calculate these two roads’, the difference being not more than fifteen furlongs, that is, under two miles. In the context of journeys that are 1,500 furlongs, the difference is so negligible that Herodotus must surely be labouring the point to display his attention to detail and concern for geographical accuracy, as well as perhaps entering into a bit of competitive oneupmanship in opposition to other authors.83 (p.75) But the practice of comparing more remote locations with those in Greece is widespread.84 Lake Sais in Egypt is described as being of a size similar to the Round Pond at Delos (2.170.2), and the Greek connection here is additionally strong, since the site of Sais houses a temple of Athena. The land beyond Memphis seems to Herodotus to have been once a gulf of the sea, like that around Ilium, Teuthrania, Ephesus, and the plains of the Maeander (2.10.1).85 And features of the Greek mainland too can be brought in as examples of a similar situation but on an altogether smaller scale: ‘There are also other rivers, not so great as the Nile, that have had great effects; I could recount their names, but not least among them is the Achelous, which, flowing through Acarnania and emptying into the sea, has already made half of the Echinades Islands mainland’ (2.10.3).86 Perhaps the most striking example of all is Herodotus’ attempt to explain to his readers the spatial relationship between Attica and Scythia (4.99.4–5): For the sea to the south and the sea to the east are two sections of the boundary of Scythia, just as is the case with Attica; and the Tauri inhabit a part of Scythia just as though in Attica some other people, not Attic, were to inhabit the heights of Sounion from Thorikos to the town of Anaphlystos, if Sounion jutted farther out into the sea. I mean, so to speak, to compare small things with great. This is the nature of the Tauric country. But if anyone has not sailed along that part of Attica, I can make this clear from another analogy: it is as though in Iapygia some other people, not Iapygian, were to live on the promontory within a line drawn from the harbour of Brundisium to Tarentum. I am speaking of these two countries, but there are many other similar ones that Tauris resembles.

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Mapping Out the World Here the fairly standard strategy of likening a remote area to one more familiar, the landscape of Attica, is taken to new heights (p.76) of detailed comparison, down to the individual deme of Thorikos. It is hard to see to whom this comparison would be particularly enlightening, especially since it involves a counterfactual in that Sounion is not actually placed exactly where Herodotus needs it to be in order for the parallel to work. It is still less clear why his readers should be any more familiar with southern Italy than they are with the Attic coast. Either this implies something about the envisaged readership or it again shows Herodotus displaying his superior knowledge, or perhaps just reflecting his own links to southern Italy, where he was a resident of the Athenian colony at Thurii from 444 BC,87 and incidentally broadening the spatial scope of the passage still further.

C) Marching Through The Landscape: The Geography of Expeditions The well-travelled reader of Herodotus, who might be familiar with southern Italy, leads us to consider the geographical picture which is built up in the text through various types of movement. One obvious narrative mechanism through which the reader both gains a sense of large-scale space and sees it articulated and experienced is travel conducted by characters within the text. The double layering of viewpoints—that of the traveller and that of the author—offers an interesting depth to the concept and awareness of space conveyed to the reader, as the lived-in space of the traveller is overlaid by the authorial bird’s-eye view, or vice versa. Furthermore, it is worth remembering, as discussed more fully in Chapter 1, that Herodotus himself sometimes adopts the persona of traveller in his text, so that the gaze of the author himself is brought right down to earth. The Odyssean aspects of this work are evident.88 The different perspectives that I have discussed at length in Chapter 1 and alluded to on several occasions through this chapter—the viewpoint (p.77) of the author, who zooms in and out as he adopts more or less external or internal perspectives reaching from the bird’s-eye view of the spectator of whole continents down to the viewpoint of a player in the narrative, complemented by the many narrative characters through whose eyes landscapes are in turn spectated (as in the case of Darius)—have been tending towards the more experiential end of the spectrum through the course of this chapter, as we have moved from the widest-angle lens of the global symmetries, past the broad canvasses on which Herodotus sketches out the continents and regions, and now to the landscapes as they are actually ‘lived’ by characters within the text. The boundaries between these different focalizations are, of course, far from clearcut, since we have already seen examples of Herodotus adopting the external viewpoint of the cartographer, while at the same time filling in the detail of his ‘map’ through the eyes of the traveller. A good deal of travel within Herodotus’ work is either recreational or imaginary and provides the opportunity for Herodotus to show off his geographical knowledge outside the main thrust of the action.89 There is, however, one type of travel which is absolutely integral to the Page 19 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World narrative and which is far from recreational, namely the military expedition. It does, nevertheless, act as a vehicle for Herodotus to revel in the grand landscape through which armies march and thereby to enliven his geographical picture overall.90 Although by no means confined to the narrative of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece, nevertheless this building up of a spectacular landscape of the military campaign is particularly dominant in Book 7, and this section of the work gives the impression at times of taking place on an epic film set.91 The great geographical features (p.78) slip rapidly past our eyes as we trek determinedly forwards with the Persian army towards the Hellespont at Abydos (7.30–1):92 He passed the city of the Phrygians called Anaua and the lake from which salt comes and came to a great city in Phrygia called Colossae. In it the river Lycus descends into a pit in the ground and disappears, and afterwards, reappearing some five stades farther on, it flows into the Maeander. From Colossae the army set out towards the borders of Phrygia and Lydia and arrived at the city of Cydrara, where there stands a pillar set up by Croesus, indicating the boundary in its inscription. From Phrygia he passed on into Lydia. Here the road splits, the left branch going toward Caria and the right to Sardis; by the latter of these the traveller must cross the river Maeander and must also go by the city of Callatebus, where craftsmen made honey of tamarisk and wheat. Xerxes went by this road and found a plane tree which he adorned with gold because of its beauty, and then entrusted it to a guardian who was one of his Immortals. The next day, he came to the city of the Lydians. Cities, lakes, and disappearing rivers here map out a grand landscape which even bridges one mighty region to another, as the army crosses the boundary between Phrygia and Lydia, marked out by Croesus’ pillar. The apparently amorphous Asian land mass is neatly articulated by both natural and artificial boundaries. The sense of real travel is enhanced by the careful reference not only to the road used by Xerxes’ men, but also to alternative routes, which allow Herodotus to evoke an even larger canvas by conjuring up imagined destinations, never to be realized on this particular journey.93 The whole scene is rendered even more vivid by the fact that this is a peopled landscape, with craftsmen at work, and characters such as the tree guardian playing small roles in events.94 These episodes act as moments of (p.79) interaction between the travellers and the population of the landscape through which they are passing, punctuating the otherwise relentless onward progress towards the goal of the Hellespont. Herodotus thus builds up an extraordinarily rich sense of space. On one level, the vast landscape seems little more than a remote backdrop on an epic scale, against which the army presses forwards, barely touching the painted scenery. It is like a film set, grand, powerful, and heroic. But at the same time, the tiny details, the inhabitants of the landscape, and their dealings with the Page 20 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World transitory army bring the epic world down to a human scale. As so often, the bird’s-eye view of the geographer and the experienced places of the historical narrative, the cartographic and the hodological perspectives, are effortlessly intertwined.95 Regularly throughout Book 7 in particular Herodotus pauses the narrative of the army’s expedition to bring to the reader’s eye the grand locations through which they are passing. Whereas, in the earlier, eastern part of their progress, this might serve the purpose of putting flesh on a series of otherwise meaningless but exotic place names for a Greek audience or reader, as the army makes its way through Europe towards Greece itself, the detailed descriptions offer the rather different appeal of recognition. Whether or not these locations are known to the reader, the military landscape, both on land and at sea, is constantly flitting before the reader’s eyes. As the fleet sails out of the Hellespont and west to the cape of Sarpedon, the land army travels east through the Chersonese, with the tomb of Helle, daughter of Athamas, on the right and the city of Cardia on the left, then right through the town of Agora, round the Black Gulf, across the Black river, which they drink dry, and then west past the city of Aenus and the marsh of Stentor to Doriscus (7.58).96 The viewpoint of the troops is at the fore, as they march through and experience the new landscape, probably no less alien to the reader (p.80) than to the army on the march. Even more vividly, Herodotus brings us right down to the level of the troops on the ground when he describes the lie of the land at Artemisium and Thermopylae (7.176): This is Artemisium, where the wide Thracian sea contracts until the passage between the island of Skiathos and the Magnesian mainland is only narrow. This passage leads next to Artemisium, which is a beach on the coast of Euboea, and where stands a temple of Artemis. The approach through Trachis into Hellas is fifty feet wide at its narrowest point. It is not, however, here, but elsewhere that the route is narrowest; that is, in front of Thermopylae and behind it; at Alpeni, which lies behind, it is only wide enough for a wagon, and it is the same at the river Phoenix, near the town of Anthele. To the west of Thermopylae lies a high mountain, inaccessible and sheer, a spur of Oeta; to the east of the road there is only sea and marshes. In this pass are warm springs for bathing, which the locals call the Basins, and an altar of Heracles stands nearby. Across this entry a wall had been built, and formerly there were gates in it…The ancient wall had been built long ago and the majority lay in ruins; those who built it up again thought that they would in this way keep the barbarian out of Hellas. Very near the road is a village called Alpeni; from here the Greeks reckoned that they would obtain provisions. From the overall layout of the area in terms of islands, rivers, mountains and so on, down through the smaller features of roads, thermal springs, and wagonwide passes, then on to individual man-made structures such as temples, altars, Page 21 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World walls, and gates, all infused with temporal depth brought by both mythology and human actions in the past and forecast into the future expectations of the troops, the passage covers a complete spectrum of layers of conceptual space.97

D) Trade, Tourism, and Theōria The military expedition is a type of travel which is prevalent in Herodotus’ narrative and which allows the reader to traverse in the mind’s eye vast sweeps of grand landscapes, punctuated by great geographical features such as mountains and rivers. But it is not (p.81) only mighty armies that travel around Herodotus’ world. Smaller groups and named individuals do so too, in varied circumstances and for a range of purposes.98 This is not the time or place to embark on a detailed discussion of the chronological ordering of or the various motives for trade, travel, and the creation of new settlements. It is, however, worth noting that a good proportion of the movement around the earlier books of Herodotus’ text, before the great military campaigns from Asia to Europe dominate the landscape and the corresponding narrative, is carried out in the service of one or more of these activities. The Phocaeans, notorious travellers, set the ball rolling in Book 1. They are described as the first of the Greeks to engage in long sea voyages (1.163), opening up the Adriatic, Etruria, Iberia, and Tartessus, that is, all the corners of the Mediterranean basin which are not their home. They turn down the suggestion of the king of Tartessus that they should move there from Ionia, and instead accept his money for fortifying their existing home city against the Medes. But the mobility of the Phocaeans does sometimes result in the more permanent transfer of people. Defeated by the Etruscans and Carthaginians, they sail to Rhegium, where they found Hyele (1.167.3).99 Herodotus’ discussion of the history and geography of Libya is also fertile ground for the mapping out of space through travel. He starts with the expulsion of the descendants of the Argonauts by the Pelasgians and their moving to Sparta (4.145.2). This in itself sets the scene for a planetary section of narrative, since the descendants of the Argonauts, who made the great iconic journey of myth, must surely be genetically predisposed to migration. From their move to Sparta, Herodotus launches into a series of migration and colonization stories, including the foundations of Thera and of Cyrene. The result is a Mediterranean (p.82) crisscrossed by travellers and an extremely evocative sense of experienced and livedin space for the reader.100 Another ever-mobile people, the Phoenicians, glide through the text in the second book. Here Herodotus’ own travels merge with those of the characters in his work, as the authorial and narrative focalizations are superimposed in a competitive and correcting context. He is provoked by the claim of the Egyptians not to know about Poseidon or the Dioscuri, a claim which Herodotus finds implausible if the Egyptians were already making voyages and some of the Greeks were seafarers (2.43.2–3), to adopt a more embedded position within the Page 22 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World text at this point, not as the author interrogating informants, but as the autoptic participant in Mediterranean travel. This leads him to note his own voyage to Tyre in Phoenicia to check on the shrine to Heracles there, and, on finding a shrine to Heracles of Thasos, he notes his onward voyage to that island too in the spirit of verification. Here he is able to tie up all the loose ends of the story, since the temple of Heracles on Thasos turns out to have been founded by Phoenicians when they sailed out in quest of Europe (2.44.4). Herodotus’ own travels naturally coincide most closely with those of his characters who set out in the hope of enlightenment and information. Sometimes this is not just a general quest for knowledge, but one specifically aimed at geographical information.101 The striking episode whereby scouts are sent off with Democedes from the Persian court, and finally arrive in Greece, where ‘they put in at various places on the coast and surveyed them and made charts of them’, provides an excellent description of one method of geographical reconnaissance (3.135–6). Circumnavigations of Libya constitute another activity which yields important geographical information, first to king Necos (4.42) and then, in theory, to Sataspes of Persia. However, Herodotus’ account of his navigation is in fact the story of a voyage which did not take place (4.43).102 And these voyages are (p.83) followed immediately in Herodotus’ account by a reference to Darius’ own travels in the quest for new geographical information concerning the outflow of the Indus into the sea (4.44).103 These cases, then, involve a kind of doubly determined conceptual geography brought by both the travels of the discoverers and the fact that the knowledge sought was itself spatial. In those cases, travel was undertaken in explicit pursuit of geographical knowledge, but usually the spatial picture gained from travel in Herodotus’ text is, in a sense, incidental, and the travel is taking place for some other purpose. In this context we may also mark the much-discussed and chronologically problematic visit of Solon to Croesus in Sardis in the course of his ten-year Mediterranean tour (1.29–30). Both the characters and Herodotus himself offer some interesting motivations for travel—Herodotus claims that Solon’s real reason is to avoid having to repeal any of his legislation, although Solon himself uses the explanation of wanting to indulge in sightseeing (κατά θεωρίης πρόφασιν),104 while Croesus in turn relates the even loftier motivation which he has often heard ascribed to Solon of travelling for the sake of knowledge (1.30.2): ‘Athenian friend, we have heard a lot about you because of your wisdom and of your travel (καὶ σοφίης εἵνεκεν τῆς σῆς καὶ πλάνης), how as one who loves learning you have travelled much of the world for the purpose of sightseeing (ὡς φιλοσοφέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας), so

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Mapping Out the World now I desire to ask you who, of those who have seen, is the most fortunate man.’ The two famed qualities associated with Solon, his wisdom and his travelling, are at first simply juxtaposed, but then brought into causal connection (note the transition from καὶ to εἵνεκεν).105 We may (p.84) wonder yet again whether there is a hint of Herodotean autobiography here, given the way in which he casts himself also as the sage traveller in search of yet more knowledge.106 And Solon is not the only wisdom-seeking traveller in the Histories. The altogether more exotic figure of Anacharsis from Scythia is said to have travelled over much of the world, sightseeing and gathering wisdom in the process (4.76.2: γῆν πολλὴν θεωρήσας καὶ ἀποδεξάμενος κατ’ αὐτὴν σοφίην πολλήν). However, his open-mindedness ultimately gets him into fatal trouble. When he returns home, and starts emulating the Greek all-night festival of Cybele that he has observed taking place at Cyzicus,107 the king Saulius is informed and shoots Anacharsis with an arrow. Thereafter, no one acknowledges the name of Anacharsis, since ‘he went travelling to Greece and adopted foreign customs’. A cautionary tale for the mind-broadening effects of tourism.108 Anacharsis was, however, perhaps simply fulfilling his innate Scythian nomadism and more generally following in the footsteps of others from the northernmost reaches of the known world by (p.85) showing an interest in the wider world, especially that of Greece. Herodotus tells of the amazing journey made by holy offerings wrapped in straw and sent by the Hyperboreans to Scythia (4.33). The offerings are then passed on by neighbours in succession to the farthest west point in the Adriatic, then taken southwards, where the people of Dodona are the first of the Greeks to receive them, then down to the Melian Gulf, across into Euboea and from city to city to Carystus; Andros is omitted from the journey because they are carried by the Carystians straight to Tenos;109 then the Tenians take them to their final resting place of Delos.110 As Herodotus explains, it was a real journey made by two young girls which underlay the relay described above. The two young girls and the five men who escorted them on the first such pilgrimage simply never returned, although they appear to have made it as far as Delos, since they were given honorific names by the Delians (Hyperoche and Laodice for the girls, and the Perpherees collectively for their guides). The Hyperboreans, unhappy at the idea of losing people every time they send offerings to Delos in the future, therefore devise this postal system for their offerings, by which, like the Orient Express still today, each land is given responsibility for conveyance through its territory. Stage by stage the offerings and the reader are carried from the edges of the earth right to the core of the Greek world at the pivotal island of Delos, a resonant set of bookends for a journey.111 Conceptually, we have here, as so often, a multifaceted sense of space—the linear space of the successive sections of the journey in what we might call the geography of theōria, and the linking up of the religious and commercial centre of the known world and one of its edges, creating a bridge by Page 24 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World which the intervening space is leapfrogged. Simultaneously, (p.86) the contemporary journey, identical to and mimetic of the version belonging to the mythical age, compresses or leapfrogs over time itself. One form of ‘imaginary’ travel in the text, which is worth noting briefly, occurs when distances are given in terms of the time required to travel them. A few examples will suffice: the Caspian Sea is fifteen days’ rowing long and eight days’ wide (1.203.1) and Lake Moeris is seven days’ journey upriver (the Nile) from the sea (2.4.3).112 Indeed, Egypt does lend itself to description in the currency of days’ travel up the river or along its banks, usually in combination. So, Herodotus maps out his journey as far as Elephantine in a detailed description of the land upstream, and then notes that if one then travels for forty days along the bank due to rocks in the water, followed by a further twelve days’ sail, one reaches the metropolis of the Ethiopians, Meroe (2.29.5–6). Imagining himself still farther in the same direction, Herodotus goes on to claim that for four months’ travel by sailing and road beyond its course in Egypt, the Nile is known country; thereafter, unknown because of the desert (2.31). The example of the Nile illustrates well how difficult it is in practice to separate real from imaginary travel in the text. Herodotus’ real journey is projected beyond his stopping point to provide a way of articulating the vast space of Egypt and Ethiopia. Similarly, the desert crossed by the Persians in the territory of the Scyths and the Sauromatians is described as seven days’ journey long in the context of a real expedition, although ‘seven days’ journey long’ would have been meaningful and evocative as a measure of space in the abstract too (4.123.2). The measure of space through time travelled may seem unhelpfully imprecise, except that Herodotus is quite specific about the likely speed of travel: the neck of land cut off by the river Halys between the area opposite Cyprus and the Pontus is given as five days’ travel for a man suitably [i.e. lightly] dressed (1.72.3: πέντε ἡμερέων ἰθέα ὁδὸς εὐζώνῳ ἀνδρί) or the distance from Cilicia to Sinope on the Pontus is described as five days’ journey for a suitably dressed traveller (2.34.2). Such details not only make the use of time as a measure of distance more accurate; they also give a vivid sense to the reader of moving through a real landscape through the figure of the potential traveller, although, as has been often noted, Herodotus’ (p.87) realism here is only superficial, since he grossly overestimates the distance that could be covered in a day by anyone other than a professional athlete. Nevertheless, Herodotus’ ability to draw the reader into not only the action but also the physical context of his narrative is exemplified throughout. Whether the travel is real or imaginary, both micro- and macro-landscapes are conceptualized and formulated as experienced entities.

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Mapping Out the World E) The Evocative List Herodotus also recreates space imaginatively for the reader through the appearance of various types of list in the narrative.113 The most obvious of these is the military catalogue.114 Occasionally, as in the case of Cyrus’ allied Persian tribes revolting against the Medes (1.125.3–4), the list is not particularly evocative in a spatial sense.115 Even when Darius sets up two white stone pillars at Mandrocles’ bridge over the Bosporus to celebrate his achievement thus far in bringing his vast army to the point where it can cross into Europe (4.87.1), and has the two pillars inscribed in Greek and Assyrian respectively with all the nations he has led there, Herodotus does not exploit the opportunity to take the reader on an imaginative tour of the subject and allied peoples, although the potential is clearly there.116 Sometimes, however, the military catalogue rises above the mere listing of subjects or allies. The vast attention devoted to describing (p.88) the Persian army in Book 7 (7.61–83 for the land army; 7.89–99 for the fleet) reads like a catalogue of nations, or a series of mini-ethnographies, conjuring up a vast geographical space through its inhabitants and focalized through the eyes of the Persian king, surveying his power. This has its counterpart in Book 8, where the contributors to the Greek fleet at the key battles of Artemisium (8.1) and Salamis (8.43–8) are enumerated.117 Bowie makes the important point that what the catalogue of Greek troops lacks in ethnographic richness it replaces with a historical depth that the Persian catalogues lack.118 In spite of the greater dominance of time over space in the Greek catalogue, the arrangement of states is still naturally geographical and therefore evocative of a spatial order. And the two sides are brought together more interestingly in Book 9, where the Persians are lined up opposite the Greek troops at Plataea (9.31): Mardonius posted the Persians facing the Lacedaemonians. The Persians far outnumbered the Lacedaemonians, they were arrayed in deeper ranks, and their line ran opposite the Tegeans also…Next to the Persians he posted the Medes opposite the men of Corinth, Potidaea, Orchomenus, and Sicyon; next to the Medes, the Bactrians, opposite the men of Epidaurus, Troezen, Lepreum, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Phlius. After the Bactrians he set the Indians, opposite the men of Hermione and Eretria and Styra and Chalcis. Next to the Indians he posted the Sacae, opposite the Ampraciots, Anactorians, Leucadians, Paleans, and Aeginetans; next to the Sacae, and opposite the Athenians, Plataeans, and Megarians, were the Boeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, and the thousand that came from Phocis… beside these, he positioned the Macedonians also and those who lived in the area of Thessaly opposite the Athenians. Here, the intertwined lists of Persian and Greek forces create an interesting duo of parallel geographies, as Mardonius pairs up what (p.89) he considers to be well-matched combinations. The vast scale of Asia comes through quite clearly Page 26 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World as each Asian ally is matched to a list of small Greek poleis. More complicatedly still, and reflecting the refusal of Herodotus, just as of the war, to adhere to neat oppositions, some of the ‘Persians’ facing the poleis of Greece turn out to be other Greek poleis. The full physical extent of Europe and of Asia has come together in miniature on the battlefield at Plataea, bringing home the momentous and final nature of this showdown, but the spatial map of the line-up is a criss-crossing network of fragile alliances, and one which breaches and thereby complicates the continental divide. A differently configured mental map is conjured up by yet another set of alliances, this time in prospect rather than in existence. When the Greeks finally decide, under Themistocles’ guidance, to behave in a more united way, albeit in an alliance which is riddled with internal conflicts, envoys are sent out across the Greek world to seek assistance and adherence to the common cause (7.145– 74). The resulting narrative is a grand tour of the Mediterranean which takes the reader from Argos to Sicily, Corcyra, and Crete. The catalogue form turns up in a range of contexts, encompassing a vast geographical span, which is economically telescoped by the list, but expands in the mind’s eye of the reader. The apparently dry list of tribute-paying peoples in the satrapies of Darius’ empire, which is probably derived from a piece of Persian bureaucracy,119 becomes a semi-hypnotic evocation of the continent of Asia (3.90): From the Ionians, Magnesians of Asia, Aeolians, Carians, Lycians, Milyans, and Pamphylians, on whom Darius laid one combined tribute, came a revenue of 400 talents of silver. This was established as his first (p.90) province. From the Mysians, Lydians, Lasonians, Cabalians, and Hytennians came 500 talents; this was the second province. The third comprised the Hellespontians on the right as one sails into the straits, the Phrygians, Thracians of Asia, Paphlagonians, Mariandynians, and Syrians; these paid 360 talents of tribute. From the fourth province, Cilicia, came 360 white horses, one for each day in the year, and 500 talents of silver. A hundred and forty of these were spent on the horsemen who were the guard of Cilicia; the 360 that remained were paid to Darius. Here the listing of just the first four out of twenty satrapies gives a flavour of the whole. The unfamiliar names and the exotic locations contribute to making this an unexpectedly mesmerizing evocation of the mighty Persian Empire. A still more unexpected geographical catalogue comes in the context of the marriage of Cleisthenes’ daughter, which yields a lengthy list of suitors from all over the Greek world, each accompanied by a thumbnail sketch of his home town (6.127.1–3, adapted from Godley (1920)):

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Mapping Out the World From Italy came Smindyrides of Sybaris, son of Hippocrates, the most luxurious liver of his day (and Sybaris was then at the height of its prosperity), and Damasus of Siris, son of that Amyris who was called ‘the Wise’. These came from Italy; from the Ionian Gulf, Amphimnestus, son of Epistrophus, a man from Epidamnos; he was from the Ionian Gulf. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of that Titormus who surpassed all the Greeks in strength, and fled from human society to the farthest parts of the Aetolian land. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes, son of Pheidon the tyrant of Argos, that Pheidon who made weights and measures for the Peloponnesians and acted more arrogantly than any other Greek; he drove out the Elean contest directors and held the contests at Olympia himself. Here again, just part of the list gives a glimpse of its structure and tone, with the light-hearted nature of the episode entirely matched by the anecdotal nature of the portraits offered for each polis to provide a suitor. But the overall result is to take the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the Greek mainland from the Peloponnese to Thessaly in the north.120 Harrison sets out in his chapter on ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’ to find out ‘whether Herodotus had a conception (p.91) of geography, let alone one approximate to any modern definition’.121 Having seen some of the ways in which Herodotus draws a vivid geographical canvas at every level from the global right down to the local, we must surely conclude that at least the first part of this proposition applies. So let us now turn to the articulation of those spaces. I have already discussed the way in which Herodotus combines the bird’s eye, cartographic viewpoint with the more linear and experienced spatial focalization of the human itinerary, cutting through the landscape to give a view from the ground. Furthermore, we have seen that the multifocalized nature of the narrative adds depth and complexity to the geographical shape of ‘Herodotus’ world’. I shall now turn to his use of natural features—linear ones such as rivers and mountain ranges, and discrete points such as islands—further to shape and configure the vast open spaces of the continents, seas, and panoramic vistas of the narrative. (p.92) Notes:

(1) 5.49.1: ἔχων χάλκεον πίνακα ἐν τῷ γῆς ἁπάσης περίοδος ἐνετέτμητο καὶ θάλασσά τε πᾶσα καὶ ποταμοὶ πάντες. See Pelling, ‘Aristagoras’, 184, for the sensible point that Aristagoras might not have used a map in front of an Athenian assembly of 30,000 people, while it made more sense in front of the smaller Spartan audience. A map could, however, more feasibly have been displayed to the boulē or the prytaneis, so the contrast between the two venues is still noteworthy. I owe this point to Chris Burnand. Hornblower, Herodotus. Histories Book V, ad 5.49, suggests that Herodotus’ mention of Aristagoras’ map is owed partly to its status as a ‘famous curiosity’.

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Mapping Out the World (2) On this passage, see the excellent analysis by Rood, ‘Herodotus’. (3) 5.49.5–7. Aristagoras entices Cleomenes to be interested in Asia in the same terms as Mardonius uses to goad Xerxes into invading Europe, namely the allure of its natural resources: ‘Europe was a very fair land and bore every type of cultivated tree, was high in fertility, and it was the Great King, alone of mortals, who deserved to own it’ (7.5.3). (4) Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 44–5. (5) Nevertheless, the narrative does provide the crucial element of scale which Aristagoras conveniently omits, adding the ‘lived’ perspective to the ‘viewed’ map. (6) 5.52–3. This passage is discussed below in Chapter 3. The road route across the Asian land mass is re-evoked when Herodotus describes the journey taken by Xerxes’ message back to Susa after the defeat at Salamis (8.98–9). As Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad loc. points out, the passage echoes Aeschylus’ account of Clytemnestra’s beacons that announce the fall of Troy (Ag. 281–3), hinting at the parallel status and heroic tone of the victory at Salamis with the Greek victory at Troy. (7) Branscome, Textual Rivals, 105–49, examines Aristagoras as a negative foil to Herodotus, whose information on Persian geography is persistently bettered by the historian. For the complexity of this relationship between Herodotus and Aristagoras as geographical inquirers, see Branscome, ‘Herodotus and the Map of Aristagoras’; also Rood, ‘Herodotus’, 133, on the competing and complementary viewpoints offered by Herodotus and Aristagoras. Further discussion of the Aristagoras episode is offered by Barker, Bouzarovski, and Pelling, ‘Introduction: Creating New Worlds out of Old Texts’, focusing on the way in which ‘this episode invites us to consider what difference it makes to depict space using words rather than images’ (5). (8) See also Hornblower, Herodotus. Histories Book V, ad 5.54 for the ongoing competition for accurate knowledge of the route. Hornblower notes a thirdcentury AD papyrus (P. Oxy. LXV 4455) querying Herodotus’ results. (9) The competitive dialogue is also played out in the depiction of rivers, which Aristagoras presents as eminently crossable and no barrier to progress. This is belied by the experience of characters in Herodotus’ narrative, for whom river crossings are often difficult and, I shall argue, morally charged. See Rood, ‘Herodotus’, 133, on ‘the narrator’s alternative account of space’, which seems designed to counter ‘the character’s over-optimistic view’.

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Mapping Out the World (10) As Pelling, ‘Aristagoras’, notes at 199, the narrative of the map is almost certainly intended to evoke Hecataeus too in a competitive way, not least since Hecataeus has only recently appeared as a character in the narrative (5.36.2). (11) In this respect, I follow the organizing principle of the first four chapters of Bichler, Herodots Welt, working inwards from the broadest canvas. (12) See Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 110, on the characterization of the edges of the earth by extremes of climate and of the centre by mixtures of climate and culture. (13) Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 115, sees this inversion as a snub to Persian arrogance. (14) For the Persian construction of societal hierarchies through proximity or distance from the royal court, see Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.67. Bowie notes the parallel way in which those closest to the king on the audience scene that once decorated the North Stair of the Persepolis Apadana were the most important, reflecting Persian geographical hierarchy in miniature and specially focused around the figure of the king. (15) It is worth noting here that natural resources may be seen as marvels or highly valued according to unevenness of distribution rather than to their position at the extremes of the world. The Ethiopians value bronze even more than gold (3.23.4) on account of its rarity, reinforcing the role of relativity or perspective in the allocation of marvels. (16) Alonso-Núñez, ‘Herodotus’ Conception of Historical Space’, 147, observes Herodotus’ lack of focus on Delphi as the centre of the earth, merely noting that Delphi was a Panhellenic sanctuary with the oracle of Apollo and home of the Pythian games. I would not go as far as Alonso-Núñez, however, in claiming that the centre of Herodotus’ world is Persia. (17) See Airs, Waters, Places, 12. It is striking that the same concept is applied to the different ‘centre of the world’ adopted by the writers of the Augustan period, namely Rome and Italy. On the transference of the golden mean mentality from Ionia to Italy, reflected in the literary productions of the Augustan Age, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 216–19. (18) See Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought, 45–81, for interesting observations concerning the presentation of the blameless and imperturbable Ethiopians and the ideally located Hyperboreans (anomalously so, given the harshness of their landscape). Romm (55) finds it particularly fitting that the deranged Cambyses is defeated by the Macrobian Ethiopians, placed at the edges of the earth (3.25). See Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 93, for the same

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Mapping Out the World contrast between ruthless conqueror and morally superior peripheral people in moral and political utopia. (19) Török, Herodotus in Nubia, offers an excellent and insightful analysis of both Herodotus’ presentation of Ethiopia and his narrative of Cambyses’ campaign. (20) As noted by Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 110, Cambyses’ campaign ends in similar disaster, such as starvation, as others of unjust armies such as that of Xerxes (8.115). (21) See Irwin, ‘Ethnography and Empire’, for the appeal of remote parts of the world to the expansionist desires of tyrannical powers. (22) Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 52–3. (23) Indeed, the poem of Aristeas (4.13.1) claims that the Hyperboreans, who live beyond the Issedones, Arimaspians, and griffins in turn, reach the sea, which might imply the outermost physical limit of the inhabited world. There would thus be nothing to know about what lay beyond them. West, ‘Herodotus on Aristeas’, finds Herodotus’ apparent seriousness about Aristeas as a source remarkable, especially given that the Arimaspea was probably more like a poetic periegesis than a real travelogue based on first-hand experience (56). She concludes that Herodotus probably overestimated the value of Aristeas as a ‘conduit for information about the steppe peoples and their beliefs’ (64). See Fehling, ‘The Art of Herodotus and the Margins of the World’, for a predictably contrasting view of Herodotus’ access to and presentation of ‘sources’ of information for the edges of the earth. For Fehling, Herodotus is extremely careful to distance himself from claims to knowledge about the margins as part of his self-presentation as a historian (8). Nesselrath, ‘Herodot und die Ende der Erde’, plausibly suggests that Herodotus’ adoption of criteria to distinguish fact from fiction at the edges of the earth does not preclude errors, but creates the right scholarly impression: ‘im Ganzen machen sie doch einen guten und wissenschaftlichen Eindruck’ (44). (24) My thanks to Chris Pelling for this point. See Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, for the episode of the knots. (25) Romm, ‘Herodotus and Mythic Geography’, offers a sane account of how this problematic passage might be understood. He carefully distinguishes Herodotus’ rejection of extreme symmetry of compass-drawn maps from the passage in question, and suggests (112–13) that Herodotus leaves genuinely open the question of what to make of the Hyperboreans (in whom he appears to believe, to judge from the stories relating to Delos) and the Hypernotians. (26) But this picture of extremity and oddity may be tempered by the observations of Braund, ‘Herodotus’ Spartan Scythians’, who argues for close Page 31 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World similarities between the character traits attributed to the Scythians and those traditionally associated with the Spartans, such as the decision not to express their power through buildings, thereby confounding any neat contrast between centre and periphery. (27) See Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books 1–1V, ad loc. for the observation that Herodotus is indeed correct about the scarcity of thunderstorms during the winter by contrast with the Aegean, but that he exaggerates the uninterrupted nature of the summer rains. (28) This is the logical conclusion to draw from India’s position closest to the rising sun. (29) See, for example, the observation made at 2.77.3 that the Egyptians are the healthiest of men after the Libyans because the stability of the climate, with little seasonal variation, provides the right conditions for curbing the development of diseases. (30) Some of Herodotus’ uncertainties, such as those concerning the tin islands, would be clarified in the fourth century by Pytheas of Massilia. But for now, the far north-west was very confused in the geographical imaginations of the Greeks, leading to Herodotus’ vague edge-of-the-earth tone, similar to that employed over the equally elusive and contentious Hypernotians. (31) 3.116.3: αἱ δὲ ὧν ἐσχατιαὶ οἴκασι, περικληίουσαι τὴν ἄλλην χώρην καὶ ἐντὸς ἀπέργουσαι, τὰ κάλλιστα δοκέοντα ἡμῖν εἶναι καὶ σπανιώτατα ἔχειν αὗται. Bichler, ‘Herodotus’ Ethnography’, 96 claims that Herodotus’ utopianism regarding the edges of the earth is tempered by rationalism, but it would be helpful to see that argument fully explicated. (32) Iliad 18.478–608. For Herodotus, the notion of a circular Ocean is too schematic. His own pursuit of real travellers leads to open desert at the edges of the earth rather than neat edges. (33) Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books 1–1V, ad loc. note that the theory was taken from Hecataeus (FGrH1 F302a), and attribute to Euthymenes of Massilia (FGrH 647 F1 (5)) the explanation for the flood in terms of pressure from the Etesian winds at the point where the Nile met the Ocean. (34) The question of whether this method should be seen as an inheritance from the Presocratic philosophers or indeed Hecataeus, whose modes of argument we can hardly guess at, or whether we should look rather to the Hippocratic writers, natural philosophers, and sophists of the late fifth century is taken up by Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 168–212. As Thomas concludes at 212, Herodotus shows a preference for the visible world over the invisible abstracts of the Presocratics, but is adept at combining different argumentative modes. Page 32 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World Thomas, ‘Ethnography, Proof, and Argument in Herodotus’ Histories’, proposes similar arguments on the language of debate and proof. The strategies adopted by Herodotus in response to the ‘invisible’ nature of much of his subject (in both space and time) are excellently addressed by Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’. (35) For Herodotus’ world as a fully interconnected entity, not just in terms of its composition but also in geographical terms, see Cobet, Herodots Exkurse. (36) Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 45, observes that Herodotus ‘painstakingly constructs geographical space’. (37) See Whittle, ‘Landscapes of the Mind’, for a helpful summary of the methodological clash over whether landscape is indeed neutral or charged, and the new trend towards seeing landscape as primarily ‘experienced’ (323). (38) There is, as Chris Pelling points out to me, further lack of symmetry in that Egypt has a southern border, whether Scythia stretches beyond the known to the north. (39) For resistance to any attempt to reconcile fully all the spatial configurations, sometimes in tension with each other, see Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 52. (40) See Zimmermann, ‘Hdt. IV 36, 2 et le développement de l’image du monde’, for the interesting idea that Herodotus’ vehement polemic at 4.36.2 stems from the need to fight against Hecataeus’ tripartite division of the world into the continents of Europe, Asia, and Libya, in favour of a bipartite division between Europe and Asia, which naturally suited the rhetoric of his narrative. Hecataeus seems to have stood at a moment of transition in thinking about the continents (his works On Asia and On Europe clearly suggest a bipartite division), making Herodotus’ intervention even more topical. See also, more recently, West, ‘Skylax’s Problematic Voyage’, who addresses in part the same issue. I do not think that the evidence supports the assertion of Karttunen, ‘The Ethnography of the Fringes’, 457, that Herodotus ‘introduced a new system with three continents of different size’. (41) Herodotus’ Araxes can probably most reasonably be identified with the modern river Aras which flows in and past Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran; but at 1.202.1, where it is compared in scale with the Ister (Danube), the Araxes seems most likely to be equivalent to the modern Volga. (42) Furthermore, when Darius returns home, he does so by marching to Sestos in the Thracian Chersonese and crossing back to Asia, leaving Megabyzus in Europe in a clear-cut division of labour and responsibility (4.143.1: ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ αὐτὸς μὲν διέβη τῇσι νηυσὶ ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην, λείπει δὲ στρατηγὸν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ Μεγάβαζον ἄνδρα Πέρσην). Page 33 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World (43) On 1.4 and its ring-compositional echo at 9.116.3, where we are reminded that ‘the Persians consider all of Asia their own’, see Lateiner, ‘Limit, Propriety and Transgression’, 89: ‘Europe and Asia were intended to be separate…a truth central also to Aeschylus’ Persai’. (44) Rood, ‘Herodotus’ Proem’, stresses that the early chapters of the Histories establish the continental division as not natural but the result of political discord, and certainly not to be projected back to the time of the Trojan War. See also Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, 165. But Munson, Telling Wonders, 85, while also noting a distinction between natural and humanly imposed boundaries, interprets the continental divide in the former category and therefore reaches a very different conclusion: ‘The large-scale subdivisions of the oikoumene are to him mere theoretical constructs with little empirical validity. Herodotus attributes tremendous importance to natural boundaries as symbols of the limits human action must respect. In this context, the separation between Asia and Europe is fundamental; ignoring it for the sake of aggression epitomizes adikie.’ (45) On the resonance of bridging this continental divide, see Greenwood, ‘Bridging the Narrative (5.23–7)’. Greenwood’s ideas concerning the significance of textual or narrative ‘bridges’ at the location of ‘real’ bridgings may push the metaphorical reading of the text too far, since looking forwards and backwards in this way characterizes the whole of Herodotus’ narrative. However, her observations on the out-of-place Paeonians and on similarities between the warnings of Histiaeus and Artabanus against intercontinental movement are very well made. (46) On Darius as characterized by the wish to break out of limits, see Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 103, arguing that Herodotus’ description of the edges of the earth in the context of Darius’ imperial ambitions (3.115–16) is designed to show that ‘Darius is everywhere enclosed by the limits of a world that does not obey his dictates’; also 172 and 175. (47) Here we may recall the observation of de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 9, that the way in which characters view and describe space may in turn reflect on our interpretation of them. (48) Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 76–101, especially at 99; also Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, for some of the tensions in play. (49) But see Murray, ‘The Waters at the End of the World’, and Haubold, ‘The Achaemenid Empire and the Sea’, for the possibility that Herodotus himself deliberately adopts certain aspects of Persian imperial rhetoric, such as the notion of the Briny River (7.35.2). (50) Pelling, ‘East is East and West is West’. Page 34 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World (51) As Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, stresses at 43, ‘The symbolic conclusion of the Histories is the dedication of the broken Hellespontine cables, with which Xerxes had connected Asia and Europe.’ As we shall see later, in Chapter 7, one reading of the end of the work is the restoration, albeit provisional, of a ‘natural order’, including the separate continents. (52) Sometimes the transfer is formulated in a straightforward way, as at 7.174, when Xerxes is presented on the cusp of transferring from Asia to Europe, but even here, although the formulation is simple, the associations of a Persian crossing across this continental divide make the operation loaded with meaning. Here I find the idea of ‘progressive iteration’, discussed by Rutherford, ‘Structure and Meaning in Epic and Historiography’, especially at 20, useful in supporting the suggestion that the connotations of particular actions accumulate with repetition, so that, by this stage in the narrative, actions which are formulated in a relatively neutral way, may still be loaded with meaning. (53) The associations with the archetypal Europe-Asia conflict of the Trojan War deserve further attention. Here the nostoi are inglorious and in the ‘wrong’ direction. (54) Note de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 9, for the idea that making a character focalize a setting or object does not constitute total pause. (55) Armayor, ‘Did Herodotus Ever Go to the Black Sea?’, discusses how Herodotus might have reached these figures, whether by autopsy, or reliance on either periplus writers or some general geographical authority such as Hecataeus. (56) I am attracted by the suggestion made to me by Chris Pelling that this movement of water might prefigure Darius’ own future movement in the same direction. (57) See Christ, ‘Herodotean Kings and Historical Inquiry’, 178–9, for similar blurring between the focalizations of Herodotus and Persian kings at the river Tearus and at the Peneus. (58) This distinction corresponds to that between external and internal focalization discussed by Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction. See 80 for a description of the kind of scenario in this passage: ‘Spatial focalization may change from a bird’s-eye view to that of a limited observer or from the view of one limited observer to that of another.’ In the terminology of de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 11, this corresponds to the ‘panoramic’ and ‘fixed scenic’ standpoints.

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Mapping Out the World (59) Though the language of Darius’ viewing is interestingly more neutral here than later in the narrative (see Chapter 6 below). He ‘viewed’ (ἐθηεῖτο) the Pontus; and in 4.87 the same verb is used of both the Pontus and Bosporus (ἐθεήσατο and θεησάμενοϛ). (60) The difference between these two spatial perspectives, as discussed in Chapter 1 in relation to Purves’ work, may be responsible for some confusions and misunderstandings of Herodotean geography, such as the nature of the Danube or Ister, as argued by Dion, ‘Le Danube d’Hérodote’. Dion contends that the curious course attributed by Herodotus to the Danube at 2.33 is due to the fact that he and his informants are primarily concerned with a real, experienced itinerary rather than with tracing the bird’s-eye view of a watercourse (16). My thanks to Peter Thonemann for alerting me to this article. (61) Sometimes Herodotus’ own bird’s-eye view comes in a campaigning context, as when Cyrus sets his heart on conquering the Massagetae, the great warlike race to the east, whom Herodotus places beyond the river Araxes and opposite the Issedones (1.201). (62) See Rood, ‘Herodotus and Foreign Lands’, 294, for the interesting suggestion that Herodotus deliberately slows the narrative of the imperial progress of Persia with the weight of ethnographic description in the early books. (63) See the excellent article by Christ, ‘Herodotean Kings and Historical Inquiry’, in which this relationship is explored in detail, as each key episode ‘teases the reader by identifying king and historian with one another initially only to reject this identification in the end’ (179). See Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 60, on this ‘meta-textual’ dimension which facilitates self-reflection on the historical task. Irwin, ‘Ethnography and Empire’, 28, also notes this uncomfortable analogy. Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History’, offers a more robust role for Herodotus here, balancing his decision to allow the interests of Persian kings to focalize the narrative temporarily, with his presentation of those kings as ‘failed historians’. (64) Brock, ‘Authorial Voice and Narrative Management in Herodotus’, 11. (65) And, as Bichler, ‘Herodotus’ Ethnography’, 95, notes, Herodotus often combines such broad-brushstroke visions with very detailed variegation between one tribe and another. (66) The geography is rather confused, but the first peninsula seem to constitute Asia Minor and the second the area from Persia, through Assyria, to Arabia. (67) I use the term with caution, having argued elsewhere that geography is by no means digressive in historical narrative, but integral and essential to Page 36 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World understanding the dynamics of that account. See Clarke, Between Geography and History. Here, however, I use the term to refer to a geographical description which goes way beyond what is needed in order to contextualize and indeed motivate the narrative. (68) The importance of this opposition is largely accounted for by the local habit of transhumance. (69) Here the Cinyps, though rivers are on the whole conspicuous by their absence in Libya, which presents Herodotus with something of a challenge. (70) Here we see an element of hodological space, to borrow the term used by Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative, 146, and a momentary shift in focalization, as the reader experiences the viewpoint of the traveller. As already observed, the interweaving of different perspectives makes a clear-cut distinction between the hodological and the bird’s-eye viewpoints hard to sustain. (71) Herodotus’ persistence in carrying out an intellectual ‘taming’ of the Scythian landscape sits interestingly alongside the argument presented by Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, that Scythia defies attempts to classify, enumerate, and order, as illustrated by the futile attempts of Darius to conquer it as a king ‘obsessed with accounting, surveying, and reshaping as a means of mastering the landscape around him’ (9). (72) See Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 159, for Herodotus’ world as one ‘creusé par les fleuves’. (73) The whole account is presented as an imaginary journey, which increases the sense of vivid involvement on the part of the reader. (74) Most notably in Agatharchides of Cnidos’ work On the Erythraean Sea. (75) Perhaps this is a reference to the exceptionally long nights of winter in the far north, which might give rise to the notion that the inhabitants must simply hibernate through this entire period. (76) See Hartog, ‘Imaginary Scythians’, 247, for the idea that the gradual diminution of humanity as one moves farther out has the effect of making the Scythians themselves seem more civilized. (77) On Herodotus’ strongly comparative mentality, see Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, especially 60. (78) The Ister is also used as a benchmark against which to measure the scale of another river, even less likely to be known to Herodotus’ readers than was the Nile, namely the Araxes, or modern Aras. This river is of some importance in the Page 37 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World narrative of Cyrus’ expedition against the Massagetae in Book 1 and in Herodotus’ historical geography of Scythia in Book 4, but otherwise must have seemed entirely remote. Herodotus’ note on its scale perhaps unhelpfully involves a controversy, since ‘some say the river Araxes is larger than the Ister, others smaller’ (1.202.1), but the wish to offer some comparative context is clear. (79) Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 69, notes the irony of Herodotus’ reliance on a geometricality here which he rejects in Ionian mapping. (80) See also 1.202.4, where the Caspian is contrasted, as a sea all on its own, with the Atlantic and Red Sea, which are seen as joined. (81) For the incomparable nature of the quality and scale of Egyptian geography, see Harrison, ‘Upside Down and Back to Front’, 148. By contrast, West, ‘Cultural Antitheses’, 5, claims that Herodotus generally presents Egyptian life as ‘picturesquely different rather than as alarmingly alien’. (82) This, of course, has implications for the assumed readership. Only a readership which comes primarily from the Greek mainland would find it helpful to have distant parts of the world illuminated by comparison with sites in Greece. Alternatively, we may simply be witnessing a reflection of Herodotus’ own perspective, but that in itself would be interesting, given Herodotus’ Ionian background. (83) A very similar point may be made about the parallel concerning spoil from the digging of Lake Moeris (2.149–50). Here too, Herodotus qualifies the parallel by an apparently over-fussy note that the two situations in Egypt and Nineveh were not precisely the same, since the disposal of the spoil in Nineveh took place at night (naturally, since it was illegal and clandestine) and in Egypt during the day. (84) See Rood, ‘Herodotus’, 130, for further examples. Also Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 57, on Herodotus’ use of especially Greek parallels, which ‘gives an image of invisible reality, makes it visible and comprehensible’. (85) Herodotus interestingly notes the difference of scale in this set of comparisons; his list of similar phenomena involves ‘comparing small things with great’, since none of the respective rivers can compete with the Nile in size. (86) This and the following passage (4.99.4–5) qualify the point made by Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 49, that Herodotus’ tendency to magnify the distant elements in his world results in a lack of sense of scale. This sense seems distorted rather than entirely absent. (87) It is by no means implausible that the comparison with south Italy was indeed a later addition to the text, following Herodotus’ move to that region. Page 38 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World (88) But Carbonell, ‘L’Espace et le temps dans l’œuvre d’Hérodote’, 140, warns against confusing ‘le voyageur dont les souvenirs et les notes nourrissent les logoi non historiques et l’historien’. However, his entire approach, in which he draws sharp distinctions between different genres within the text, whose relative proportions can then be calculated, seems to me misguided and unhelpful. (89) See Whittle, ‘Landscapes of the Mind’, 323, on Tilley’s description of landscape as ‘invested with symbolic meanings, embedded in both memory and action, especially movement’. This stress on travel as the mechanism through which landscape is created and understood seems particularly apposite to Herodotus’ spatial conceptions. See also Pelling and Barker, ‘Space-Travelling in Herodotus Book 5’. (90) It is also worth remembering that even the most leisurely ethnographic descriptions are almost always motivated by the progress of imperial ambition. As Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 16, argues, ethnography replaces military history in Herodotus’ narrative, and acts as the implicit explanation for the success or otherwise of the current campaign. (91) See the comments of Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 21, where he notes the way in which the ‘greatly elaborated Campaign Logos’ builds up a sense of Xerxes’ grandeur and power as he progresses, rendering allusions to his similarity to Zeus at the Hellespont unsurprising rather than astonishing. An illuminating parallel with the massive, panoramic landscape of Western films is offered in Comber, ‘Lucan’s Spaghetti Epic’ (unpublished talk). (92) Adapted from Grene (1987). As Chris Pelling points out to me, this clearly anticipates the style of Xenophon’s Anabasis. (93) See 7.193.2 for another example of a resonant junction of paths, where the Persians moor their ships in a bay visited by not only Heracles but also the Argonauts. This is discussed further in Chapter 4 below. (94) See also 7.109–13, where the army marches through Thrace. Besides the predictable cities, rivers, and lakes, Herodotus also takes his reader together with the Persian army past a kaleidoscope of ethnographic delight. The evocative list of Thracian peoples conjures up an exotic world, peopled by mountain-dwelling tribes who possess the oracle of Dionysus (7.111.2) and gold and silver mines worked by Pieirians and Odomanti (7.112). (95) For the way in which journeys may be helpfully anchored to fixed landmarks, both in reality and in their depiction, see Vella, ‘A Maritime Perspective’, examining the prevalence of Hermes in articulating maritime space.

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Mapping Out the World (96) A similar division of naval and land routes is described at 7.124, where the fleet waits for Xerxes off the river Axius and the city of Therme, while Xerxes marches his land army by a shortcut across from Acanthus to Therme, taking it through Paeonia and Crestonia to the river Cheidorus. As at 7.58, the land army receives far more attention, maybe because its route is more interesting and varied (indeed, the fleet is here simply awaiting the rest), or because it is with the land troops that Xerxes himself travels. (97) The significance of the mythical landscape is discussed further in Chapter 4. See Bowie, ‘Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes’. (98) See Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, for movement and dislocation as a key theme of the work from the initial movement of women in the mythical period, but also noting that Herodotus’ first action is one of travel— 1.5.3: ‘I shall proceed with my account’ (προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου). (99) See Chapter 7 for more discussion of this confused colonial enterprise. As Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books 1–1V, ad loc. note, although Phocaea had been introduced (at 1.152, although the commentary states 1.151) as leading the resistance to Persia, here it assumes the most defeatist reaction to Persian conquest. Herodotus goes on to draw the parallel of the Teians, who, when similarly attacked, by Harpagus in this case, sailed to Thrace and founded Abdera (1.168). Perhaps one might expect that a maritime people would, like the Phocaeans, be naturally seagoing. (100) As noted in Chapter 1, the reality of Mediterranean mobility is demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by the work of Hordern and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods, stresses the conceptual interconnected nature of the Mediterranean world through the travels of gods, heroes, and men. (101) On the relationship between Herodotus’ search for geographical knowledge and that of imperialist characters in his work, see de Bakker, ‘An Uneasy Smile’. (102) Sataspes was sent on a circumnavigation of Libya at the suggestion of his mother, as an alternative to the customary punishment for raping the virgin daughter of Zopyrus. Sataspes was afraid of the length and loneliness of the voyage and so turned back after several months at sea, but Xerxes did not believe Sataspes’ attempt to persuade him that he had sailed right round Libya and impaled him. (103) On this intriguing expedition, see West, ‘Skylax’s problematic voyage’. As West notes, Herodotus’ main point here is to assert that Asia at the most southerly extent was, like Libya, circumnavigable. For West, the chapter ‘illustrates the way in which Greek geographical horizons might be enlarged by

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Mapping Out the World the need of the Achaemenid administration to collect information about the peoples under Persian rule’. (104) Herodotus goes on to endorse sightseeing as a reason too (1.30.1). (105) For the connection between travel and wisdom from the earliest literary traveller onward, see Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the Historians’, especially at 4. Marincola sees Herodotus’ wish to travel ‘for the sake of inquiry, the pleasure of discovery, and the accumulation of wisdom’ (15) as casting himself deliberately as a heroic, epic figure. See also Dougherty, The Raft of Odysseus, 3–7. For travel as a feature of the wise in Herodotus, see also Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 98. See Nightingale, ‘On Wandering and Wondering’, for an interesting discussion of the links between travel, knowledge, and Plato’s presentation of the philosopher as a new type of theōros or intellectual ambassador, who brings home a vision of the divine spectacle to enlighten others (37). (106) The question of whether Herodotus uses Solon as a mouthpiece for his own views is discussed by Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus’. Pelling notes various correspondences between Herodotus and Solon: not only are they both travellers, but Herodotus’ attempt to educate the reader about the mutability of fortune in the preface mirrors that of Solon to educate Croesus. Nevertheless, Pelling argues for the lack of straightforward identity between the two voices. In ‘Speech and Narrative in the Histories’, Pelling further explores the complexity of the interaction between Solon and Croesus and the strain this places on the definition of wisdom (105–6). See also Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, 167, for the parallels between Solon and Herodotus’ own authorial personae and the association of travel with wisdom; Shapiro, ‘Herodotus and Solon’, carefully incorporates into her discussion of the two voices the fact that Herodotus’ views on Solon may be expressed indirectly as well as explicitly, and concludes that Herodotus largely endorses Solon’s views. (107) See also 2.49 for another case of religious rituals learned as a result of travel—the Dionysiac rites learned from Cadmus of Tyre and from the Phoenicians who came with him to the country now called Boeotia. (108) A different form of religious knowledge sought through extensive travel is entailed by Mardonius’ instruction to Mys from Europos (perhaps a significant name, but see Robert, ‘Le Carien Mys et l’oracle du Ptoon’, for discussion of the epigraphic evidence associating the name Europos with that of Euromos) to visit all the oracles (8.133). Herodotus is uncertain what advice precisely was being sought, but presumes that Mardonius wanted guidance on his current situation. Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad 9.42.3, suggest interestingly that Mys’ embassy might have yielded the prediction that the Persians would perish after invading Greece and sacking Delphi. The result, in any case, is an interesting piece of tourism with a mission. Page 41 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World (109) Rutherford, ‘Andros at Delphi’, 60 n. 7, notes the surprising nature of this omission, since Andros, certainly in the early fourth century, was the only state except Athens known to have a part in the administration of Delos and the Amphictyony. Thomas, ‘Greek Hymnic Spaces’, notes at 44 the key political value of being on this route. Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods, 87–8, suggests that the Andrians sent offerings to Delphi instead. (110) See Thomas, ‘Greek Hymnic Spaces’, 43–5, for an excellent discussion of the contemporary political aspects of this story, and in particular Athens’ role in promoting the model of religiosity with obedient tribute-bringing. (111) Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography, 229, notes that by the time Herodotus was writing, the Hyperboreans seem to have been exceptionally prominent in traditions concerning Delos, but questions whether they had been part of Delian propaganda from the outset or were rather a fifth-century phenomenon. (112) At 4.86.1 Herodotus explains how measurements are calculated in terms of journey times. ‘A ship will generally accomplish 70,000 orguiae [the length of an outstretched arm] in a long day’s voyage, and 60,000 by night.’ (113) See Skinner, The Invention of Greek Ethnography, 124, for the close relationship between the linearity of periegetic literature and that of the literary list: ‘The mapping and cataloguing of foreign places and peoples by means of recited lists has much in common therefore with the so-called periegetic accounts that formed some of the earliest prose-writing.’ (114) See Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative, 37, for the catalogue form as one which is inherently spatial, and for its use, along with other techniques of epic poetry such as ring composition, in conveying vast quantities of information to the reader or listener. (115) See also 1.149 and 1.151 for rather bald lists of Ionian and Aeolian cities in the Panionium. An interesting parallel is to be found in the list of Greek cities which combined to found the Hellenium sanctuary at Naucratis (2.178.2). (116) See West, ‘“Every Picture Tells a Story”’, for a reading of these pillars in the context of other Persian depictions and enumerations of subject peoples. West makes an interesting case for Herodotus having used Mandrocles’ picture which commemorated Darius’ crossing as the basis for his description of Xerxes’ forces at Doriscus. (117) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.1, interestingly suggests that these catalogues of Greek forces against Persia contrast almost ironically with the list of Medizers at 8.73. As Bowie notes, ad 8.2, even the unity of the allied Greek forces implied by the catalogues is exaggerated. The catalogue of Greek Page 42 of 43

 

Mapping Out the World allies at Salamis is evoked yet again at 8.82, where Herodotus refers to the monument dedicated at Delphi listing the Greeks who had fought the Persians (ML 27). (118) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.42–8. But see Vannicelli, ‘The Mythical Origins of the Medes and the Persians’, 257, 259, and 261, for the suggestion that sections of the Persian catalogue in Book 7 also have a strong temporal dimension, partly marking out the pre-eminent troops in the army, and partly using myths of origin as an explanatory tool for later collaboration between Persians and Medizing Greek poleis. (119) That Herodotus did use official lists might be indicated at 7.123.3, where he notes, in his list of cities which provided ships for Xerxes’ fleet, that Aenea was ‘the last name on my list of cities’. Munson, ‘Who Are Herodotus’’ Persians?’, argues for Herodotus’ account of the Persians as largely based on Persian information. But note the qualifications to this view put forward by Armayor, ‘Herodotus’ Catalogues of the Persian Empire’, who observes serious discrepancies between Herodotus’ account of the Persian Empire and that presented in the pictorial and epigraphic record of the Persians themselves. ‘Most of the 67 names on Herodotus’ Satrapy-list…do not appear on the monuments at all’ (2). Armayor concludes from these discrepancies, from the fact that Herodotus starts his enumeration from the West of Asia rather than from the heart of the Persian Empire, and from similarities between Herodotus’ catalogues of the Persian Empire and catalogues in the Homeric, Ionian traditions, that Herodotus is primarily influenced by the latter, rather than by Persian bureaucracy. It could be, in any case, that Herodotus’ reference to ‘his list of cities’ is not to any official list but to a list of his own, compiled for his work. (120) See Hornblower, ‘Agariste’s Suitors: An Olympic Note’, arguing for a close connection between this passage and the list of early Olympic victors. (121) Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 44.

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Lines and Dots

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Lines and Dots Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter focuses on the articulation of geographical space, both in reality and in concept, by major geographical features such as rivers and mountain ranges. The importance of rivers such as the Nile and Ister (Danube) in dominating their respective landscapes and offering structure to the world through symmetry is discussed; also the role of rivers in marking the progress of military expeditions and defining the limits of kingdoms and empires. After next considering the place of mountains in Herodotus’ geography, the chapter moves finally to examine the special status of islands as distinctive environments, places of both safety and danger, and liable to commodification in the pursuit of empire. Keywords:   river, island, mountain, space, landscape, military expedition, kingdom, empire

A) Criss-Crossing The Narrative: Rivers and The Articulation of Space Now the nature of this road is as follows…Next after Phrygia it comes to the river Halys, where there is both a gorge which must be passed before the river can be crossed and a great fortress set over it…The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river called the Euphrates…Through this land flow four navigable rivers which must be passed by ferries, first the Tigris, then a second and a third of the same name, yet not the same stream nor flowing from the same source. The first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenians and the second from the Matieni. The fourth river is called Gyndes, that Gyndes which Cyrus parted once into 360 channels. When this country is passed, the road is in the Cissian land, where there are eleven stages and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as Page 1 of 36

 

Lines and Dots yet another navigable river, the Choaspes, on the banks of which stands the city of Susa. (5.52) Herodotus’ description of the Persian Royal Road, expressed in terms of distances (Persian parasangs and Greek stades), guard stations, but above all rivers, neatly illustrates the key role played by the last of these in the articulation of the space of empire and of travel, and provides a smooth transition from the linearity of the human journey, discussed in Chapter 2, to that of the natural watercourse. The vast Asian land mass can be parcelled up into more manageable chunks by the criss-crossing grid of the great iconic rivers—the Halys, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Gyndes.1 In this section I shall consider (p.94) the role played by rivers in mapping out the landscape of Herodotus’ narrative. Here I shall focus on rivers from a geographical point of view, as a means of articulating, defining, and describing space; but some of the aspects to which I shall return later, that is, human manipulation of rivers for good or ill, and the moral implications of transgressing river boundaries, will inevitably start to emerge. Although the discussion here will ostensibly be focused on Herodotus’ own presentation of geographical space, questions of focalization and perspective are never far removed. As we have already seen in Chapter 2, Herodotus often chooses to view the world through the eyes of players within his narrative, resulting in some interestingly slanted descriptions, according to the needs of the moment. The river-laced picture of the world which Aristagoras famously presents to Cleomenes in his bid to entice the latter to provide Spartan help for the Ionian revolt (5.49), and on which the whole sea and all the rivers (καὶ θάλασσά τε πᾶσα καὶ ποταμοὶ πάντες) are depicted as the essential tools for organizing, breaking up, and making sense of space,2 offers a good example. The geographical vision of a network of rivers is clearly consonant with that presented by Herodotus himself, but Aristagoras’ interpretation of this network fulfils a particular rhetorical need to persuade the Spartans that distance is no hindrance and that these rivers are eminently crossable and no barrier to progress, a view which is in stark contrast to the experience of most players within the Herodotean narrative.3 Thus, even apparently straightforward geographical description takes on particular nuance and meaning according to the voice through which it is articulated. I started with the Persian Royal Road as a striking example of how rivers can map out space in the Herodotean narrative. It is worthy of immediate note that here the rivers act as boundaries, drawn perpendicular to the direction of the road, barriers to be crossed. They break up the road route into sections. Elsewhere, as we shall see, rivers (p.95) can themselves be the medium for travel, acting as the conduit for travellers, be they on an exploratory, Page 2 of 36

 

Lines and Dots commercial, migratory, military, or touristic mission. The connotations and moral implications of engaging with rivers at various angles, either along or across the flow, will be considered in Chapter 5. But for now I shall focus on the way in which Herodotus builds up a sense of space through the use of rivers as part of a wider network involving seas, mountain ranges, and individual places. Two areas to whose geography Herodotus devotes a great deal of attention, Egypt and Scythia, are overwhelmingly defined by their rivers. Egypt, the gift of the river [Nile],4 was defined by the oracle at Ammon as being ‘all the land watered by the Nile in its course, and all who lived lower down than the city Elephantine and drank the river’s water were Egyptians’ (2.18.3).5 Scythia, with which Egypt is so often brought into comparison by Herodotus, is so dominated by its rivers that it contains not a single other marvel (besides the footprint of Heracles on a rock by the river Tyras), except the scale of its plains and its huge waterways, which are ‘by far the greatest and most numerous’.6 The Scythian nation was mythologically the gift of a river no less than the land of Egypt, since the first man in Scythia, Targitaus, was the son of Zeus and of the river Borysthenes (4.5.1). Egypt and Scythia, then, were regions defined by their rivers, and both will feature prominently in this chapter. But great (and small) watercourses flow through almost the whole narrative, both within the (p.96) context of wider spatial networks and more locally. Although one might contend that this means of dividing up space simply reflects the physical reality, nevertheless the prominence of rivers in the Herodotean narrative, even in terms of mere physical reality, let alone any symbolic resonance, presumably struck a Greek readership, accustomed to a relatively arid landscape.7 The centrality of rivers to the Herodotean landscape is perhaps best appreciated paradoxically in their absence. The extensive description of the peoples, land, and customs of Libya (4.168–99) is strikingly devoid of rivers. The space of this vast continent is articulated through harbours (4.168.2), islands (4.169.1), and contrasting inland and coastal regions (4.170),8 but of rivers only the Cinyps features in any significant way (4.175.2). It is interesting that Herodotus concludes about Libya that it cannot compare in the quality of its land with Europe or Asia, except in the region of precisely this river, the Cinyps, and to a lesser degree the area around Euesperides (4.198). The conspicuous absence of rivers from Libya and the inferior quality of the land are clearly connected. Conversely, the presence of rivers is associated in Herodotus, as elsewhere, with idyllic locations. At the other end of the spectrum from some of the vast landscapes that characterize Herodotus’ narrative is a charming geographical vignette. Towards the end of the work, in amongst the Persian disasters of Plataea and Mycale, Herodotus presents the story of a flock sacred to the sun at Apollonia on the Ionic Gulf. By day they grazed alongside the river, which flowed from Mount Lacmon to the sea by the harbour of Oricum; by night they were closely guarded (9.93.1).9 The river, anonymous in most manuscripts, is Page 3 of 36

 

Lines and Dots contextualized within the larger framework of mountain ranges and seas by reference to both of its extremities—its source on Mount Lacmon and its outflow at Oricum—a level of geographical detail which brings the space of the narrative so vividly to the reader’s eye. The geographical context of rivers is often relatively circumscribed, with Herodotus offering a brief note as to how a river flows into or (p.97) out of another, or where it reaches the sea. When the Ionians with Aristagoras attack the city of Sardis, we are told that everyone rushes to the marketplace and to the river Pactolus, which carries down gold from Mount Tmolus, and flows through the centre of the marketplace, into the river Hermus and out to the sea (5.101.2). Or, also in the course of the Ionian revolt narrative, the Carians against whom the Persian Daurises has set out when he learns that they support Miletus, gather at a place called the White Pillars by the river Marsyas, which flows from the Idraean country into the river Maeander (5.118.1). Briefly and economically, the immediate obscure location is given a broader geographical context and tied into the wider and better-known world of the river Maeander. This latter, the Maeander, turns up in another small vignette of river networks, this time in the town of Celaenae in Phrygia, visited by Xerxes and his troops (7.26.3). There was to be found the source of both the Maeander and the Cataractes, which Herodotus insists is no less small (implying that it was less well-known to his readers) and which rose in the actual marketplace of the town only to issue into the Maeander.10 But often the rivers articulate a broader canvas, particularly when they are encountered by armies on the move. Book 1 is punctuated by the appearance of some of the great rivers of Asia, rivers whose scale matches the grand narrative which is beginning to unfold. When Croesus and Cyrus meet for battle on the plain before Sardis, Herodotus sets the scene and elevates the event through reference to the great rivers flowing through the landscape (1.80.1). The river Hyllus and others, he says, flow through the plain and combine to join the river Hermus, which flows from the mountain sacred to Mother Dindymene into the sea at Phocaea—the picture of the plain is built up through its rivers and contextualized in the wider continental geography from its source in the mountains to its outflow into the sea. Phocaea itself is, of course, evocative of an even broader context (p.98) of Mediterranean seafaring, colonization, and trade. Later in the same book, when Cyrus on his expedition against Babylon reaches the river Gyndes, we are told that the river springs forth in the Matieni mountains before flowing through the Dardanean country and into the river Tigris, which itself flows by the city of Opis and out into the Red Sea (1.189.1).11 As we shall see in Chapter 5, this episode turns out to be an important forerunner to later Persian abuses of nature and punishment of the landscape when it fails to yield to Persian power. This key river is recalled and further sewn into the richly woven fabric of the Asian landscape of mountains and rivers when Page 4 of 36

 

Lines and Dots Cyrus reaches the mighty river Araxes, which flows from the same Matieni mountains as the river Gyndes which he has violated. Herodotus notes the parallel explicitly and takes the opportunity to remind the reader of Cyrus’ punishment meted out to the Gyndes (1.202.3). As we shall see, the Araxes too falls into a sequence of transgressive river crossings within the narrative, but at this stage it is presented in contrast with the Gyndes. Whereas Cyrus divided the Gyndes into 360 channels to diminish its strength, the Araxes divides itself naturally into forty marshy mouths as well as one clear stream flowing into the Caspian Sea. This is a river which flows from the Matieni to the sea in natural rather than man-made channels—an altogether more harmonious scenario. I have already noted the centrality of rivers to the shape, the nature, even the origins of Scythia. Herodotus devotes an extensive section of Book 4 to Scythian rivers (4.47–57), with the eight most important ones being described in terms of cardinal directions, their relationship to each other, size, and position in relation to mountains.12 Later, in the context of the Persians’ march through Scythia and Sauromatia, it is the network of great rivers which criss-crosses the landscape and brings a sense of shape to the vast space of the Asian Steppes. As the (p. 99) Persians enter the territory of the Thyssagetae (4.123.3), Herodotus comments that four rivers flow from that land to the country of the Maeetians and into the Maeetian lake—the rivers Lycus, Oarus, Tanaïs, and Syrgis. The exotic land of Scythia and its rivers are brought more vividly to the mind’s eye of the reader by comparisons with great rivers elsewhere. At 4.53.1, he claims that the Borysthenes is the most productive, not only of Scythian rivers, but of all others except the Egyptian Nile. Although ‘one cannot compare any other river to the Nile’, Herodotus does so continually, especially the Scythian ones, as we shall see in Chapter 4,13 perhaps implying that the edges of the earth are not so unique or exceptional as might be thought. It may be significant that it is Scythia and Egypt, the child and the gift of a river respectively, which offer Herodotus the fitting opportunity to indulge in some thoughts about broader geographical contexts and to offer his views on key debates.14 In Book 2, besides the whole puzzle of Nilotic flooding, to which we shall return later in this section (pp. 108–9), we find some attention devoted to the other notoriously thorny question of what happened at the very edge of the known world, that is, Homer’s encircling Ocean. At 2.21 Herodotus notes that some attribute the Nile floods to the fact that the river flows directly from the Ocean, which in turn flows around the whole earth. Despite being unable to disprove the Ocean theory, Herodotus himself claims not to know that there is a river Ocean, but thinks that Homer or one of the older poets found the name and introduced it into his poetry (2.23).15 But the question returns in Book 4, at first obliquely in the poem of Aristeas, in which it is said that beyond the Issedones, Arimaspians, and griffins live the Hyperboreans, whose land reaches the sea (4.13.1). The fact that this land marks the outermost limit before one hits water may imply acceptance of the notion of the encircling river. But later in Book 4, in Page 5 of 36

 

Lines and Dots the context of his extensive mapping out of a global geography, Herodotus comes back more (p.100) explicitly to the encircling river Ocean, and it is his critique of that Homeric picture which provokes the much broader Herodotean vision of the world (4.36). Here the rejection of the circular river of water running around the earth is evident, but elsewhere in the same passage there are hints of an implied acceptance that one should expect to encounter water at the edges of the earth.16 For example, when he sets out the peoples who live between the Red Sea and the northern sea—the Persians, Medes, Saspires, and Colchians—he notes that the river Phasis flows into the northern sea (4.37). One striking aspect of the large-scale landscape of rivers and other geographical features which Herodotus draws is its place in the narrative of conquest. In a sense, this is the most obvious point of overlap between the two major strands of Herodotus’ work—the geographical or ethnographical interest and the presentation of a set of historical events, namely the progress of Persian imperial ambitions. The landscape of the military expedition is a grand, even epic, landscape, designed to match and set off the exploits contained within it, and it would be misleading to suggest that its grandeur is manifested only in its rivers. We have already seen some aspects of the way in which Herodotus evokes a vast and vivid landscape for his reader whereby the rivers, mountains, and great cities articulate both the narrative and geographical space. But the rivers do form an important part of this constructed landscape.17 The inexorable progress of Xerxes’ mighty army across Asia, over the Hellespont, and on through Europe is mapped out partly in terms of river crossings—as we shall see later, a particularly resonant transition. But even where rivers are not being crossed, they punctuate the great scale of the expedition, giving a sense of progress, as well as creating the impression of a backdrop of both epic proportions and epic connotations. Book 7 offers a landscape particularly rich in vast rivers to match the scale and ambition of Xerxes and his army. Sometimes the great rivers are conspicuous for their absence. As the army traverses Phrygia, it passes the city of Colossae, where the river Lycus plunges into a cleft in the earth and vanishes until it (p.101) reappears five stades away (7.30.1). The broader context of river networks is here economically evoked by a note to the effect that the river Lycus eventually issues into the great river Maeander.18 The mythologically resonant region of the Troad is similarly articulated by not only mountains and cities, but also rivers, not least the literary river Scamander (7.42–3). As Xerxes presses on into Europe, the names of the rivers may change, but their prominence in the landscape of the expedition does not diminish.19 While the fleet awaits Xerxes just offshore from the river Axius and the city of Therme, Xerxes marches to the river Echeidorus (7.124). As so often in Herodotus’ narrative, the scene is contextualized by reference to the wider river network.20 The Echeidorus, we are told, has its source in the Crestonian land and flows through Mygdonia to join the river Axios. The vast area defined by the sea and the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon, which join into one stream and so Page 6 of 36

 

Lines and Dots make the border between the Bottiaean and Macedonian territories, encompasses Xerxes’ camp. These great rivers clearly outclass the Echeidorus, since the latter ‘was the only one which could not suffice for the army’s drinking but was completely drained by it’ (7.127.2).21 The importance of rivers in the landscape of Xerxes’ expedition is amply illustrated as the army heads towards the momentous site of Thermopylae (7.198.2–200): Now the first city by the gulf as you travel from Achaea is Anticyra, near to which the river Spercheus, flowing from the country of the Enieni, issues into the sea. About twenty furlongs from that river is another called Dyras, which is said to have risen from the ground to help Heracles when he was on fire and twenty furlongs again from that there is another river called the Black river. The city of Trachis is five (p.102) furlongs away from this Black river. Here is the greatest distance in all this region between the sea and the hills on which Trachis has been established, for the plain is 22,000 plethra wide. In the mountains which hem in the Trachinian land there is a ravine to the south of Trachis, and through the ravine the river Asopus flows past the lower slopes of the mountains. There is another river south of the Asopus, the Phoenix, a little stream which flows from those mountains and issues into the Asopus. Near this stream is the narrowest place; for it has been made only one wagon wide. Thermopylae is fifteen furlongs away from the river Phoenix. Between the river and Thermopylae there is a village named Anthele, past which the Asopus flows out into the sea, and there is a wide space around it in which stand a temple of Amphictyonid Demeter, seats for the Amphictyons, and a temple of Amphictyon himself. Here the rivers, small and large, and their relationships to other geographical features and cities provide a framework for Xerxes’ advance. Just as the army’s progress through the epic landscape of the Troad is enhanced by the mention of the river Scamander, famous from the Iliad, so too does the landscape of Thessaly offer heroic enhancement to the expedition through its rivers. The river Dryas is given an aetiology which relates to the labours of Heracles, since it arose in order to save the demigod from flames. Xerxes and the Persians are thus occupying a landscape that was not only passed through, but actually generated by heroes. It is worth noting that the mapping out of Xerxes’ expedition in terms of rivers is not unique to him, but is foreshadowed in Book 4 by the narrative of Darius’ exploits. Darius’ own interest in the mighty river networks is already evident in his keenness to know where exactly the Indus entered the sea, an inquiry which gives rise to significant expeditions being undertaken across Asia (4.44). When he finally ventures not east- but westwards, crossing over to Europe and sending Page 7 of 36

 

Lines and Dots for the Ionians to gather at the liminal river Ister, he himself heads across the Bosporus and straight through Thrace to the springs of the river Tearus (4.89.3). Just as Herodotus makes something of Xerxes’ interaction with the otherwise minor river Dryas, so too does he suspend Darius’ narrative to describe the river Tearus in some detail (4.90.1): The Tearus is said by those living nearby to be the best river of all for purposes of healing, especially for healing mange in men and horses. It has thirty-eight springs flowing from the same rock, some cold and some hot. (p.103) The river is further contextualized by reference to its place in the wider river network, as a tributary of the Contadesdus, which is in turn a tributary of the Agrianes, itself in turn a tributary of the Hebrus, which empties into the sea near the city of Aenus. By a trickle-down effect, we progress from the little-known river Tearus to the mighty Hebrus and out into the sea. Darius’ reaction to this river is full of resonance in the light of both his and later Persian relationships with rivers and other bodies of water.22 Setting up an inscribed pillar at the Tearus immediately recalls his pillars set up only a few chapters earlier at his crossing of the Bosporus, and indeed the whole notion of interlinked watercourses applies both to the sequence of rivers into which the Tearus flows and to the series of seas and straits through which water flows out into the Aegean. The repetition is also reinforced epigraphically. The pillars at the Bosporus had engraved on them ‘the one in Assyrian and on the other in Greek characters the names of all the nations that were in his army: all the nations subject to him’ (4.87.1). The wish to celebrate his subjugation of 700,000 men to fight in his army at a significant channel of water is neatly echoed in the parallel he draws in the inscription at the Tearus between the excellence of that river and his own excellence as a military conqueror (4.91.2): The headwaters of the river Tearus produce the best and finest water of all rivers (ὕδωρ ἄριστόν τε καὶ κάλλιστον…πάντων ποταμῶν); and to them came, leading an army against the Scythians, the best and finest of all men (ἀνὴρ ἄριστος τε καὶ κάλλιστος πάντων ἀνθρώπων), Darius son of Hystaspes, king of Persia and all the continent. The best king and conqueror may be well matched to the best of all rivers,23 but in the very next chapter, Darius has already moved on to another river, the Artescus, at which he makes his army leave a huge cairn of rocks. The articulation of the space of Darius’ expedition through the greater and lesser rivers of Asia and Europe continues its relentless progress. (p.104) I have already suggested that the positive or negative treatment of geographical features such as rivers is a major theme in Herodotus’ narrative, which affords a moral aspect to the landscape. The crossing of watercourses, both rivers and straits, may be seen as a form of transgression to which we shall Page 8 of 36

 

Lines and Dots return in the context of Herodotus’ moral geography. Here, however, it is worth noting the more straightforward way in which rivers delineate space, operating as geographical boundaries and characterizing the various kingdoms as ones associated with certain rivers. In spite of Herodotus’ professed confusion over the continental divisions and the role played by great rivers, such as the Nile and the Tanais, in marking out space,24 it is clear that he regularly adopts this way of thinking in his attempt to bring the world of his narrative to the eye of the reader. In Book 1, it is the river Halys which repeatedly appears as the great defining river of Croesus’ Lydian realm. This river is described as delineating Croesus’ kingdom, as it travels from the south between Syria and Paphlagonia northwards out into the Euxine Sea (1.6.1).25 This picture is further fleshed out later in the book, where the same course is described in terms of the inhabitants of the region, through whose territories the river weaves its way (1.72.2–3). We are told that the Halys flows from the Armenian mountains through Cilicia, then with the Matieni on the right hand side and the Phrygians on the left hand side, before moving northwards with the Syrian Cappadocians on the right hand side and the Paphlagonians on the left. So, the Halys cuts off almost the whole western part of Asia from the Mediterranean opposite Cyprus to the Euxine (1.72.3). As the narrative turns to Cyrus’ expedition against the Massagetae to the north-east, the river landscape changes accordingly as the great boundary (p.105) river is now the Araxes (1.201, 1.205.2). We shall see in Chapter 5 how the crossing of the Araxes foreshadows other significant river crossings enacted by the Persians, but for now let it suffice to note its role in articulating space. The crossing of the Araxes in pursuit of the Massagetae recurs at the start of Book 4 in Herodotus’ attempt to offer a historical geography for the nomadic Scythians (4.11.1). Here it is made clear that the river Araxes marks the boundary of the Cimmerian land, that is, Scythia.26 But it is the river Ister (Danube), which dominates the Scythian narrative, just as the Halys is the defining river for the realm of Croesus in Book 1.27 The significance of the Ister in the grand-scale demarcation of space is nowhere made clearer than when the Scythians themselves warn their prospective allies of Darius’ progress (4.118.1, as discussed in Chapter 2 above): The Persian, now that everything in the other continent was subject to him, had crossed over to their continent by a bridge thrown across the neck of the Bosporus, and having crossed it and got the better of the Thracians, he was now bridging the Ister, wanting to make that whole region too subject to him. In the eyes of the Scythians the Ister, no less than the great continental divider of the Bosporus, stressed by their Persian aggressors, parcels out the space of the world for aspiring conquerors. The river also acts as a geographical Page 9 of 36

 

Lines and Dots boundary in that the land on the far side is not only subject to someone else, but is physically different from that on the near side. Although, as we have seen in Chapter 2, Herodotus’ stance on the relative significance of these two barriers remains ambiguous, he notes that beyond the river Ister the land seems desolate and limitless (5.9.1), implying that the river is the last sign of structured space before an amorphous end-of-the-earth world takes over.28 According to the Thracians, the land beyond the river was inhabitable (p.106) only by bees, a scenario which Herodotus finds implausible, on the grounds that bees do not like the cold (5.10). At any rate, the idea that rivers might mark out the habitats of different fauna recurs in Book 7, where Xerxes and his army are bothered by wild animals on their march. The lions which attack the camels carrying corn are bounded by the river Nestus, which flows through Abdera, and the river Achelous, which flows through Acarnania. There are, according to Herodotus, no lions to the east of the Nestus, nor to the west of the Achelous (7.125–6). Just as rivers divide up vast areas, so too do they articulate the space of battles. This is particularly pronounced in Book 9 at the battle of Plataea, the last great encounter between the Persians and the Greeks on land (and coinciding to the day with the parallel sea battle at Mycale in Ionia, as Herodotus notes twice at 9.90.1 and 9.100.2) before the former retreat in defeat and disarray. The spring of Gargaphia and especially the river Asopus feature heavily in the battle landscape of Plataea. The Greek camp is located near the Gargaphia (9.25.2), which makes it an obvious target for the Persians to spoil in order to deny the Greeks drinking water (9.49.2). And the Asopus acts as the crucial boundary between the two armies, arrayed in advance of battle (9.30–1). In fact, it turns out to be an even more potent divider than one might have imagined. The Spartan seer Tisamenus advises the Greeks that the omens are good as long as they do not cross the Asopus and fight (9.36); and the Persians take the same view, resulting in a stalemate in which ‘neither side would cross the river’ (9.40). Here, as we have seen before,29 opposing sides are made to agree on certain key articulators of geographical space. Only when Mardonius thinks the Greeks are fleeing does he lead the Persians across the Asopus at a run (9.59.1).30 Let us finish, as we started, with a region that is dominated by its rivers, or rather by its river. Book 2, located primarily in Egypt, is more riverine than any other part of the work. Here, we are not (p.107) thinking about rivers as boundaries, since the Nile is not in any sense marginal, but rather completely central, to the land, its shape, and its character. But within the framework of Egypt’s natural wonders, the river Nile holds a special place. It forms a central part of many of the more unusual Egyptian customs, particularly those involving animals. For example, when a bull is sacrificed, if Greek traders are present in the marketplace, the head is given to them; if not, it is thrown into the Nile (2.39.1–2). Cows, by contrast, are thrown automatically into the river when dead (2.41.4). The river can, alternatively, offer cleansing (of both the person and their clothes) to anyone who mistakenly touches a pig (2.47.1). But if it is the Page 10 of 36

 

Lines and Dots river which causes fatal harm to a person, either itself (presumably by drowning) or through its inhabitant crocodiles, then that person must be embalmed and buried in a holy coffin (2.90). It is perhaps appropriate that the river should be so closely associated with some of Egypt’s more distinctive customs, since Herodotus himself notes the parallel between the unique nature of Egypt’s climate and river and the unique nature of its customs (2.35.2). He stops short of making the latter a direct consequence of the former, but the implicit association is clear.31 If the Nile is not quite said to determine the behaviour of the Egyptians, it is the direct creator of the surrounding landscape. The physical geography of the Nile is a source of fascination for Herodotus. He revels in the major contemporary debates concerning this natural marvel. The gradual silting of the river gives rise to some speculative thinking and some relative geography. Herodotus compares the formation of Egypt with the gulf of the Red Sea (2.11) and speculates that the Nile will silt up in the same way within 20,000 or possibly 10,000 years. As proof that silting is in progress, he cites the priests who claim that in the reign of King Moeris, 900 years ago, the river flooded the whole country below Memphis if it was only twelve (p.108) feet higher than usual, whereas in Herodotus’ time, it flooded only when the water level was twentythree or twenty-four feet higher (2.13.1). Assuming the continuation of this process, the forecast is bleak, since the easy natural irrigation system will one day fail as the land level rises (2.14.1). From silting, Herodotus moves onto the related subject of the Nilotic floods and strives to work out why the Nile floods in summer and recedes in winter, rendering the whole nature and cause of the Nile floods ‘the opposite of every other river in the world’ (2.19.3). The uniqueness of the Nile is brought home by the point that general explanations, such as the effect of the Etesian winds, cannot be applied, or at least do not seem to apply in the same way to the Nile as to other great rivers of Syria and Libya (2.20.2–3). We have already considered the Nile in the context of Herodotus’ ‘big’ geographical thinking, his global theories, and symmetrical models. We shall come back in Chapter 4 to examine the significance of parallels that Herodotus draws between the Nile and other rivers, notably the Ister in Scythia and the Euphrates as it flows through Babylon. It will become clear also that many of the more dynamic interactions between rulers and the Nile are closely paralleled by the Babylonians (on the whole positively) and by the Persians (on the whole negatively). The Egyptians themselves, for the most part, like the Babylonians, treat their own river with respect and exploit it to good effect; but there are instances where the Nile receives abusive treatment even from its own native rulers. But for now, as we focus on the river as a physical feature of the landscape, we note that geographical parallels can, at the most basic level, be used to further Herodotus’ attempts to explain the extraordinary behaviour of the Nile. He Page 11 of 36

 

Lines and Dots observes, for example, that if the seasons were changed and one were to put the summer southerly wind where the winter northerly wind currently is, the sun would then go to the upper reaches of Europe just as it now goes to Libya, and would have the same effect on the Ister as it now has on the Nile (2.26.2). But the parallels can only go so far. Although the size of the Nile and Ister may be deemed similar (2.34.2), knowledge about the sources of the two rivers is widely divergent, with the source of the Ister being well known, but the springs of the Nile obscure because of the desert. This perplexing river not only dominates the land and demands explanation for its peculiarities, but it also acts more practically as the major trunk route of the region in terms of measuring out journeys (p.109) and distances.32 The vast scale of the Nile is brought home at 2.31, where Herodotus notes that for four whole months’ travel by sailing and road, beyond the river’s course in Egypt, the Nile is known country; thereafter, unknown because of the desert. The potential of the Nile as the arterial highway through the land of Egypt was exploited by Herodotus himself, since he claims to have been as far as Elephantine and offers a detailed description of the land upstream, made more vivid still by eyewitness notes on the strength of the current (2.29.2). The world of the Nile, as described here by Herodotus, is one of river islands such as Tachompso, great lakes inhabited by nomadic Ethiopians, and a combination of travel by boat and along the bank, where the river becomes too rocky to be navigable. Thus, the utilitarian travel route in a land which is defined, created, and nourished by a single river doubles up as its greatest marvel, quite some feat in a region so rich in wonders. The vast lake Moeris, for example, with a circuit of 420 miles, was greater than the whole seaboard of Egypt. The lake is man-made, with two huge pyramids standing underwater in the middle of the lake (2.149.2). But it is naturally fed with water from the Nile which flows in for six months a year and out for the other six months. Wondrous indeed, but the Nile surpasses even this marvel. The river is so dominant that it can transform the entire landscape from land into sea: when the Nile floods, only the cities show above the surface, ‘very much like islands in the Aegean Sea. The rest of Egypt is a sea, and only these cities float on the top of it’ (2.97.1). The ensuing image of people sailing past the pyramids effectively brings home the potent combination of natural and man-made wonders that typify this region. Nowhere else in the world could one encounter such a sight.

B) Fonts of Rivers, Spines of the Land: Mountains In Herodotus’ Landscape Gifts were also required of the Colchians and their neighbours as far as the Caucasus mountains (which are coterminous with (p.110) Persian rule, since the country north of the Caucasus pays no attention to the Persians); these gifts, namely a hundred boys and as many young girls, were rendered every four years and are still given right up to my times.

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Lines and Dots (3.97.4) Herodotus’ detailed and extensive list of the tribute paid to the Persian Empire by its various subjects reads like a geographical catalogue in its own right, as the reader is taken on a tour of Asia, satrapy by satrapy, with each area defined in terms of its peoples, places, and geographical features.33 Here we find the mighty Caucasus mountains acting as a stark divider in the political landscape of Asia, separating Persia’s subjects from those who count themselves free from the imperial yoke. In this section we shall consider the treatment Herodotus offers mountains on his broader geographical canvas. Mountains have the potential to operate either, as here in the case of the Caucasus boundary and like the rivers we have already considered, linearly in chains or, like the islands we shall go on to examine, as significant dots on the map. They thus embody at least two types of space. It is worth noting immediately that mountains are significantly less prominent as geographical features in Herodotus’ work than are other aspects of the landscape, such as rivers. It is unclear whether this is incidental or the result of a thematic preoccupation with the sometimes blurred distinction between land and water. Mountains most commonly turn up not in isolation, but as one among many geographical features which serve to create a complex, vivid, and detailed landscape, sometimes in a static description, but often as a lived-in, travelledthrough setting for the grand narrative, especially the military narrative. We have already seen in Chapter 2 the way in which Herodotus’ sense of grandscale space is expressed through the bird’s-eye spectacle of mighty continents which are articulated by a network of rivers, mountains, cities, and seas. So, here I devote just a little space to observing the place of mountains in this complex web. The Caucasus mountains opened this section in their role as the divider between two political worlds, that subject to Persia and that which considered itself free. But they also appear more straightforwardly as (p.111) a geographical feature, as in the case of the Caspian Sea, which is bounded on the western side by the Caucasus mountains (1.203.1), and in the mapping out of journeys, as the line of travel naturally follows the line of the mountain range. So, when the Scythians ignored the easy route from the Maeotian lake to Media, following the river Phasis and Colchis for thirty days and then making the quick hop to Media itself, they instead took the longer, higher route ‘with the Caucasus mountains on the right hand side’ (1.104.2). Other great mountain ranges traverse the continents. The early Scythians on their return from exile cut off their land by digging a trench from the Tauric mountains to the Maeatian lake (4.3.2). In the long digression in Book 4 on the peoples, land, and customs of Libya, as we have seen in Chapter 2, Herodotus uses a wide variety of features through which to articulate space, including

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Lines and Dots ridges (4.181.1–2) and mountains (4.184.3–4 on Mount Atlas).34 The ridge which runs all the way to the Pillars of Heracles is described in some detail: About every ten days’ journey along this ridge there are masses of great lumps of salt in hills; on top of each hill, a jet of cold sweet water shoots up from the middle of the salt; men live around it who are farthest away toward the desert and from the country of wild beasts. (4.181.2) Herodotus goes on to outline the different peoples who inhabit the world of the ridge at intervals of ten days’ travel—Ammonians, Nasamones, Garamantes, Atarantes, and Atlantes. The linearity of this very unusual ‘mountain range’ is thus punctuated by inhabited oases. The Atlas mountain too is given a good deal of attention (4.184.3): Near to this salt is a mountain called Atlas, whose shape is narrow and conical; and it is said to be so high that its peaks cannot be seen, for clouds never leave them in either winter or summer. The people of the country say that it is the pillar of heaven. The continent of Libya, which is outstanding for its lack of rivers to articulate the landscape, does at least have its share of mountains and uplands to define space. In Book 2, it is the Casian mountain in Egypt which acts as one of the fixed marker points. The length of the coast is given as sixty schoeni from the Plintinete Gulf to the Serbonian (p.112) marsh under this mountain (2.6.1),35 and the most direct route from the northern sea (the Mediterranean) to the southern (the Red) is said to be from the Casian mountain on the EgyptianSyrian border to the Arabian Gulf, a distance of 125 miles (2.158.4). Mountains are dominant in the Egyptian landscape. Herodotus sketches out the large-scale geography of the area beyond Heliopolis in terms of its mountains—the Arabian mountains which stretch north-south along one side and reach towards the Red Sea and the mountains which bound Egypt towards Libya (2.8). A very different, though no less mountainous landscape is that traversed by Xerxes’ army en route for Europe. The heroic landscape of the grand expedition is typified by the halting of the army for the night under Mount Ida, where they are attacked by thunder and lightning (7.42.2). Once they have crossed the Hellespont, they continue to march through a mountainous world. The Satrae of Thrace inhabit: high mountains covered with all kinds of forests and snow…It is they who possess the oracular site sacred to Dionysus. This place is in their highest mountains; the Bessi, a clan of the Satrae, are the prophets of the shrine; there is a priestess who pronounces the oracle, just as at Delphi…He [i.e. Xerxes] marched under their walls, keeping on his right the great and high Page 14 of 36

 

Lines and Dots Pangaean range, in which the Pierians and Odomanti and especially the Satrae have gold and silver mines. (7.111–12) On a smaller scale, mountains and uplands perform a similar function in helping to enliven the narrative and bring the scene to the reader’s eye. When Herodotus narrates the story of Cyrus’ escape from death as a baby, he sets the hut of the herdsman who saves him in a broader geographical context: ‘The foothills where this herdsman grazed herds of cattle were to the north of Ecbatana and towards the Euxine Sea; here the country of the Medes, towards the Saspires, is hilly, high, and with dense thickets, but the whole of the rest of Media is flat’ (1.110.2). Or, in the momentous context of Thermopylae, a detailed and vivid picture is created of the mountainous environment. The track into Greece at Thermopylae is described as only wide enough for a wagon, surrounded by mountains, with a wall across the pass (7.176.2–3); later, in the context of the actual battle at the (p.113) pass, Herodotus adds flesh to the picture with a description of the path used by the Persians round the back of Mount Anopaea (7.216). It is clear that, at least in the case of Thermopylae, the attention given to the mountainous landscape is warranted by the content of the narrative, since the surroundings have a direct bearing on the progress of the conflict. But often Herodotus seems motivated by the more general aims of akribeia and engaging storytelling. When Mardonius and the Persians, wintering in Thessaly, finally reach the sanctuary of Ptoan Apollo, the scene is briefly but effectively set: the sanctuary sits above Lake Copaïs on a mountain, near Acraephia in the land of Thebes (8.135.1). Sometimes mountains are quite simply in the way. The notorious case of Mount Athos (7.22–4), which stands as an obstacle to the Persian onslaught on Greece and the rest of Europe will be treated in more detail in Chapter 5. It is, however, worth noting here the detailed portrait that Herodotus paints of the mountain that is about to be subject to Persian aggression (7.22.2–3): Athos is a great and famous mountain, running out into the sea and inhabited by men. At the end closest to the mainland, the mountain is in the form of a peninsula, and there is an isthmus about twelve stadia wide; here is a place of level ground or little hills, from the sea by Acanthus to the sea opposite Torone. On this isthmus which is at the end of Athos, there stands a Greek town, Sane; there are others located beyond Sane and on the landward side of Athos, and the Persian now intended to make them into island rather than mainland towns; they are Dion, Olophyxus, Acrothoum, Thyssus, and Cleonae. Herodotus’ assessment of Athos as a ‘great and famous mountain’ (ὄροϛ μέγα τε καὶ ὀνομαστόν) simply enhances the sense of sympathy and outrage at its abuse. Page 15 of 36

 

Lines and Dots That this was an unnecessary display of Persian power, since, as Herodotus goes on to say, the ships could have easily been drawn around this so-called obstacle, adds to the insult. One distinctive role which mountains play in the wider landscape is as the source of minerals and rivers. The gold dust from Mount Tmolus acts as a neat link between the two key geographical features of rivers and mountains, since it is carried down from the mountain by the river Pactolus right into the marketplace of Sardis (5.101.2).36 (p.114) Elsewhere, the stone quarries of the Arabian mountains, which are used by King Cheops of Egypt to build pyramids over underground chambers (2.124.2–4), the silver mines of Macedonia (5.17.2), the gold mines of Thasos (6.47), or the gold and silver mines in Thrace mentioned above (7.112) all contribute to the picture of mountains as an important mineral resource. It is, however, the rivers which are the mountains’ farthest-reaching product, and Herodotus regularly notes the connections between significant rivers and their mountain sources. To the scene-setting that goes on before the battle between Croesus and Cyrus on the plain before Sardis, in which the rivers Hyllus and Hermus form part of a landscape that stretches from the mountain sacred to Mother Dindymene to the sea at Phocaea (1.80.1), or the evocative description of the entire course of the river Gyndes from its source in the Matieni mountains, through the Dardanean country into the river Tigris, which in turns flows by the city of Opis and into the Red Sea (1.189.1),37 we might add Herodotus’ description of another plain, another river, the Aces, and another set of encircling mountains from which the river flows (3.117). This river, flowing down from the uplands, used to irrigate the surrounding lands, with a separate channel flowing through each of five mountain passes, but the Persians subverted the productive relationship between mountain, river, and plain, by damming all the ravines and creating a great lake in the plain, which gave the Persian king control over the people’s water supply.38 As in the case of the Gyndes, the potential for the expression of abusive power through relations with the landscape is here clear, raising questions over whether manipulation of the landscape is negatively charged per se or rather as a manifestation of more broadly tyrannical behaviour.39

(p.115) C) Islands The Greeks took them as far as Delos, and even that far only with reluctance, for everything that lay beyond was a source of dread for the Greeks because of their ignorance of those parts, and they thought that everywhere was full of armed men. They supposed also that Samos was just as far away from them as the Pillars of Heracles. And so it came to pass that the barbarians were too disheartened to dare to sail farther west than Samos, and at the same time the Greeks dared to go at the Chians’

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Lines and Dots request no farther east than Delos. Thus, fear guarded the middle ground between them. (8.132.2–3) An intriguing twist in the story of Ionian requests for Greek assistance to free Ionia from Persian domination comes with Herodotus’ extraordinary claim that the two sides, Greece and Persia, will not, in fact, venture into each other’s marine territory.40 Two islands, Samos and Delos, articulate the geographical space that comprises the arena for Greek-Persian hostilities.41 Indeed, that arena for interaction is itself elusive, since there is clear water between the two islands that keep the Persians to the east and the Greeks to the west. Each side is kept firmly in place by fear, ostensibly not that of each other, but that bred through geographical ignorance, a remarkable suggestion given the mobile and interconnected world of the ancient Mediterranean. The thinking here is itself panicked and disordered. The comparison between the distance from mainland Greece to Samos and that to the Pillars of Heracles not only exaggerates the problem, but it also casts the gaze in a whole new direction, admittedly not a random direction, since the iconic Pillars of Heracles economically evoke the extreme end of the spectrum of bold exploration into the unknown. But the use of islands here to delimit Greek-Persian interaction, be it military (p.116) or otherwise, illustrates a more widespread significance of islands within Herodotus’ narrative of the relations between states around the Mediterranean basin. Islands may be used as key markers of the world in which Herodotus’ narrative takes place, but it is worth noting that they are also used to articulate and structure the space of the narrative itself. Granted the association of the unique space of the island with extraordinary and amazing geographical features, as we shall see,42 it is hardly surprising to find a concentration of marvellous islands in Book 2, devoted to the wondrous land of Egypt. But Herodotus’ treatment of islands tends more generally to mirror the specific tone, content, and preoccupations of the narrative of which they are part. While the islands in Book 2 are wondrous, those in Book 3 are predominantly commodities to be traded. In Book 4, islands are associated with oracles, colonizing expeditions, and confusion over what counts as one of the latter; in Book 5 they tend to be tied up with the geography and history of the mainland as the world of Asia encroaches on the Aegean. In Book 6, they operate as the battleground and indeed as a commodity of war in their own right; in Book 7, islands, particularly the attempt to convert Mount Athos into one, illustrate Persian violations of the natural world, raising questions over when geographical transformation is considered inventive and when abusive. In Books 8 and 9, as we shall see, the positive or negative associations of islands become ambiguous: the semi-insular status of the Peloponnese gains in significance, Athens’ extortion of money from the islands becomes an issue, and the role of islands in the narrative seems to Page 17 of 36

 

Lines and Dots reflect the growing tensions, disagreements, and power struggles within the Greek world. The capacity to act as a barometer of the surrounding narrative reflects the special status of islands within Herodotus’ Histories, which will now be explored. i) The Specialness of Being Nēsiōtēs

Whenever they took one of the islands, as they took each one, the barbarians would net the people. They net them in the (p.117) following way: the men link hands and make a line reaching from the northern sea to the southern, and then advance over the whole island hunting the people down. They also captured the Ionian cities of the mainland in the same way, but they did not net the people; for that was not possible. (6.31, adapted from Godley (1920)) Herodotus’ description of the Persian ‘netting’ of the Ionian islands of Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos, having spent the winter around Miletus after the death of Histiaeus, is interesting not only for the light it sheds on these ‘fishers of men’, but also for the contrast it draws between the treatment of islands and that of mainland cities captured by the Persians.43 The impossibility of ‘netting’ a mainland city, presumably because of its less clearly defined parameters than those of an island’s shores, makes plain the quite different conceptual status of the island from the mainland. Here, being an islander is a clear disadvantage, but the general desirability of the island world is easily attested in the idyllic vision proposed for the Ionians by Bias of Priene, who recommends that they set sail for Sardinia, found a city of all the Ionians, and be blessed and free, since Sardinia is the largest island in the world and will give them a base for hegemony.44 The distinction between the two human habitats associated with the land and the sea—mainland and island—has been seen as integral to Herodotus’ concept of space.45 There is undoubtedly a recurring (p.118) opposition between the categories of islanders and mainlanders.46 For example, we are told that when Harpagos had subdued the Ionians of the mainland, the Ionians of the islands surrendered to Cyrus (1.169.2), a division which incidentally brings home the significant location of Ionia, right on the seaboard, spanning two types of habitat.47 The islanders regularly appear in Herodotus’ narrative as a separate category in the context of catalogues. In his discussion of the Ionian and Aeolian responses to Persian encroachment, after outlining the establishment of the Panionium, Herodotus turns his attention to Aeolian cities, listing those on the mainland and then those on the islands (1.151). More dramatically, as Xerxes’ army lines up at the Hellespont, Herodotus offers an extensive and detailed description of his troops, which reads like a catalogue of nations, including a series of exotic miniPage 18 of 36

 

Lines and Dots ethnographies. The islanders merit a separate chapter (7.80), which is interesting from the point of view of their distinct identity from the mainlanders, but also because this opposition apparently overrides the need for any further differentiation between the various islanders. Their common status as island dwellers seems to be more significant than any local features.48 When the Persian fleet is subsequently catalogued, again the islanders enjoy a dedicated chapter (7.95). The battle of Salamis offers another opportunity for listing the component parts of the opposing fleets, and again islanders are seen as a distinct category.49 In a rather different and non-military (p.119) context, when Demonax sets up a tribal reform commission at Cyrene, we are told that it divides the people into three categories—Theraeans and original Libyans, Peloponnesians and Cretans, and all the islanders (4.161.3).50 Of course, islands are not always a world apart from the mainland. We have already noted the importance of the Ionian seaboard, spanning land and sea environments. When Megabyzus appoints Otanes to be in charge of the people by the sea (5.25.1), the borderlands between islanders and mainlanders, this liminality is reflected in the fact that he captures some mainland cities— Byzantium, Chalcedon, Antandrus, and Lamponium—but also draws on the islands, taking ships from Lesbos and capturing Lemnos and Imbros (5.26). Only a few chapters later (5.28), trouble comes for the Ionians from the dual directions of island and mainland, Naxos and Miletus, about which we are told that Naxos was the foremost of the islands in prosperity and Miletus was the strongest city in Ionia, now that the Parians had helped to resolve its factionalism. In a sense the distinct categories are reinforced by this passage, but the two types of space clearly come together in practice as well as conceptually. The assimilation of the island and the mainland worlds, again both in reality and in concept, can be illustrated throughout the Herodotean narrative. In some cases, the geography of a region simply results in a very close physical connection between islands and the associated mainland. Lade, for example, where the Ionians gather their naval forces against the Persians who are marching against Miletus, is described as a small island (νῆσος σμικρή) lying just off the city of Miletus itself—an island, but only just (6.7).51 The marginal nature of the insular status of Lade is reinforced for the modern reader by the (p.120) fact that it is no longer an island, being simply a hill standing out of the river silt. Even the clearly mainland Peloponnese does not lack island adjuncts— Demaratus advises Xerxes after Thermopylae to send 300 ships to the island of Cythera off the Laconian coast and use it as a base to frighten the Spartans in order to keep them at home (7.235). The Spartan sage Chilon had always said that Cythera would be better sunk than above the water, and warned the Spartans to expect a huge battle at the isthmus to the Peloponnese, if they ignored his advice. Furthermore, the insular status of the Peloponnese escalates in the last two books of the narrative, as the Spartans consider isolating this part Page 19 of 36

 

Lines and Dots of Greece as a full island, and the theme abates only once the isthmus is properly fortified. We shall consider later in this chapter whether the inhabitants of islands are ‘a race apart’ or whether one can become or stop being an islander, but it is clear that islands themselves may not be entirely fixed in their status, being prone to transformation, be it physical or conceptual. ii) Transformation and Migration

The real physical decrease over time in the insularity of Lade and the converse tendency of the Peloponnese towards becoming more fully insular, in conception at least, raise the wider question of how fixed or permeable these distinctions are. Does the ambiguity of insularity relate to the inhabitants no less than to the location? Is an islander, or indeed a mainlander, something one can only properly be by birth and by nature, or can one become nēsiōtēs or ēpeirōtēs?52 Various claims are made about and by players in the narrative to have crossed, or not crossed, the boundary between islander and mainlander status.53 When Harpagos marches against the Carians, Herodotus takes the opportunity to give a little background on their history. The Carians had arrived on the mainland from the islands (1.171.2: εἰσὶ…ἀπιγμένοι ἐϛ τὴν ἤπειρον ἐκ τῶν νήσων), having originally belonged there as subjects of Minos and manned ships for him as tribute. After extended description of the Carians’ island (p.121) existence, Herodotus notes that it was only much later that they were driven to the mainland by the Dorians and Ionians (1.171.5). Thus far the account of the Carians’ transformation from islanders to mainlanders is presented entirely in Herodotus’ own voice, suggesting that he endorses this possibility. However, the whole description of the Carians is framed by distancing devices, which raise questions over the degree to which this notion of island-mainland transition can be ascribed to Herodotus himself. Despite using direct discourse for the substance of his account, Herodotus refers to his use of oral report (ἀκοῇ) concerning the tributary status of the Carians (1.171.2), leaving the reader uncertain as to how much else in this whole section is effectively reported speech. At the latter end of the account, when noting the way in which the Dorians and Ionians drove the Carians to the mainland, Herodotus again refers to informants—‘this is the Cretan story about the Carians’ (κατὰ μὲν Κᾶραϛ οὕτω Κρῆτεϛ λέγουσι γενέσθαι).54 That what is being reported is in fact the subject of dispute is reinforced by Herodotus’ following note that the Carians themselves claimed always to have lived on the mainland, to have been ‘indigenous mainlanders’ (αὐτόχθοναϛ ἠπειρώταϛ), rather than having been transformed from islanders. By contrast, Harpagos’ next victims, the Caunians, are said cautiously by Herodotus to have lived always in the same country (αὐτόχθονεϛ δοκέειν ἐμοὶ εἰσί), but claim themselves to have come from Crete (1.172.1). Becoming a mainlander rather than an islander could happen accidentally as well as deliberately. When a group of Cretans were prevented by a storm from

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Lines and Dots returning home after besieging Sicily, ‘it is said’ (λέγεται) they settled in Iapygia and ‘became mainlanders instead of islanders’.55 Herodotus’ caution over fully endorsing these stories of transformation from islander to mainlander in his authorial voice is noteworthy and has clear relevance for the question of geographical determinism and its interaction with the reality of cross-Mediterranean mobility and the forces of imperial expansion, both of which imply transformations (p.122) of space, both conceptual and real. Throughout the text there is a degree of anxiety attached to the transformation from islander to mainlander, or indeed vice versa. Two paradigmatic passages illustrate the transgressive nature of this process, whether carried out by Persians or by their victims. The notorious attempt to cut through the isthmus linking Mount Athos to the mainland and thereby to turn it into an island is portrayed by Herodotus in propria persona in such a way as to leave little doubt as to disapprobation invited (7.22–4). The act is seen as motivated partly by revenge—Athos had caused difficulties on the earlier expedition, so now was the time to subdue it in turn; partly by Xerxes’ wish to immortalize himself through outrageous actions—‘wishing to display his power and leave a memorial’ (7.24.1: ἐθέλων τε δύναμιν ἀποδείκνυσθαι καὶ μνημόσονα λιπέσθαι). As Herodotus comments, with no trouble they could have drawn their ships across the isthmus—the digging was a gratuitous display of strength.56 The channel through the isthmus is to be dug by men weighed down by chains, underlining the parallel conquest of men and of nature. The current state of the mountain and the peninsula is described in great detail, perhaps all the more to reinforce the corruption of the natural landscape that the Persians will bring by their engineering works. We have already seen that Herodotus’ language almost turns the mountain into a venerable character in the narrative—‘great and famous’ (7.22.2: μέγα τε καὶ ὀνομαστόν). And the Persians are explicitly credited with intending to turn mainland cities into island ones (7.22.3: τὰς τότε ὁ Πέρσης νησιώτιδας ἀντὶ ἠπειρωτίδων ὅρμητο ποιέειν), disrupting this important distinction. Conversely, right back in Book 1, the people of Cnidos had tried to pre-empt the Persian takeover by Harpagos by digging through another isthmus—the one linking their city to the mainland, in an attempt to turn their land into an island (1.174.2–6): All but a small portion of the Cnidian territory is sea-bound (to the north the Ceramic gulf confines it, and to the south the sea off Syme and Rhodes). Now while Harpagos was subduing Ionia, the Cnidians dug a trench across this little space, which is about five stades wide, wishing to (p.123) turn their country into an island (βουλόμενοι νῆσον τὴν χώρην ποιῆσαι). So they brought it all within the ditch; for the border between the Cnidian country and the mainland was the very isthmus which they dug. Even with a huge band of Cnidians working on this, the workers Page 21 of 36

 

Lines and Dots breaking stones seemed to be injured with unnatural frequency (τι καὶ θειότερον), some in other ways, but most in the eyes, so the Cnidians sent envoys to Delphi to ask what was opposed to them. Then, as the Cnidians themselves say, the priestess gave them this answer in iambic verse: ‘Do not wall or dig the isthmus: Zeus would have set down an island, if he had wanted to.’ ( Ἰσθμὸν δὲ μὴ πυργοῦτε μηδ’ ὀρύσσετε· Ζεὺς γάρ κ’ ἔθηκε νῆσον, εἴ κ’ ἐβούλετο). At this answer from the priestess, the Cnidians stopped their digging, and when Harpagos came against them with his army, they handed themselves over to him without resistance. The venture was doomed to fail. In the course of the digging, many workers were hurt by splintering stones, especially damaging their eyes. When they sought advice from Delphi, they were told that Zeus would have made them an island if he had wanted to. So the Cnidians stopped digging and submitted to Harpagos. Becoming islanders when they were by nature mainlanders was not an option for the people of Cnidos. In this case, the transformation is vetoed by the divine, rather than questioned by the historian. We have already seen that Herodotus fails to give authorial endorsement to a series of stories in which islanders become mainlanders. Moral or even divine disapprobation of the physical transformation of mainland into island or island into mainland is added to this authorial questioning of whether tales of migration from islands to the mainland were actually true. But the converse migration from the mainland to the island world appears as a recurrent feature of colonization stories, suggesting that, while turning mainland into island could be viewed as a negative action, turning a mainlander into an islander might prove possible and indeed beneficial. I have already noted the advice of Bias of Priene to the Ionians faced with Persian expansion that they should set sail for Sardinia and establish a city of all Ionians (1.170). It is interesting how often oracles concerning the establishment of colonies focus on an island as the final destination. The Spartans, for example, are urged by an oracle to colonize the island of Phla (4.178).57 In the (p.124) extensive digression on the history and geography of Libya, the foundation stories of Thera and Cyrene are peppered with islands—Thera, Crete, Platea (4.145–58). Interesting here is the recurring theme of colonization going slightly awry due to the lack of appreciation of what constitutes an island and how important the distinction between islands and mainland really is. The Therans colonize the island of Platea off Libya, perhaps assuming that it is close enough to where they are meant to be, but the venture goes badly (4.156.3). Their fortunes improve when they settle in the beautiful location of Aziris opposite the island, where they spend six years (4.157.3–158.1) before being led by the Libyans to their final destination of Cyrene. It is clearly not always the case that ending up on an island is preferable, nor should the Page 22 of 36

 

Lines and Dots distinctions be blurred. Keeping mainland and islands apart and avoiding confusion over exactly what constitutes an island would have helped to clarify things for Arcesilaus, who refused to go to Cyrene because he thought it was the sea-girt (ἀμφίρρυτον) land of the oracle about his death (4.164.3). The Theran colonists of Cyrene could have told him otherwise—Cyrene was definitely a part of the mainland, as witnessed by their own false assumptions. The language of the oracle needed no twisting.58 But a more precise look at the language and outcomes of these colonization stories reveals an ambiguous picture of the possibilities for mainlanders to become islanders. Bias’ plan is not put into practice and, just as other characters in the narrative present a geography designed to support their rhetoric but which is not necessarily endorsed either by the author or by other players,59 Bias tries to win support for his proposal to emigrate to Sardinia by presenting a utopic image of insularity as a realistic goal for a mainland population, even though this flies in the face of experience within the narrative. The Spartan colonization of Phla appears only as a vague and unendorsed story—‘they say’ (4.178: φασί); and in the case of the (p.125) islanders of Thera, their attempts to remain nēsiōtai by colonizing another island soon give way to a move to the mainland. In fact, this shift to Aziris opposite the island is an isolated example of Herodotus claiming in propria persona that anyone had actually changed their status from an islander to a mainlander or vice versa. What emerges, in spite of the known mobility of the Mediterranean world and the critical interface between the world of islands and that of the continental masses, is a reluctance to reflect that reality at a conceptual level. In the mind of the geographical historian, there are not only moral questions in play over the transformation of the landscape, but also a distinct reservation concerning the reality of movement between these two distinct worlds. The specialness of insular status remains intact. iii) The Island as a Commodity

The question of whether or not an island can properly be created, or whether one can only really become an islander by moving to a pre-existing one, opens up the notion of islands as a commodity to be manipulated, defined, even sold. This clearly links in turn to the proposition that islands are not only geographically distinct, but also hold an enhanced conceptual status in Herodotus’ narrative—a nēsos is a special category of space.60 The commodification of islands which characterizes the Persian onslaught against Greece is gently prefigured in Book 1 by the Phocaeans, who try to buy the Oenoussian islands from the Chians (1.165.1). The islands are, we are told, not for sale, since the Chians fear their own trade being damaged by the competition, so the Phocaeans sail to Corsica instead.61 In Book 3, Samos comes into the reckoning-up of islands and their value—monetary and otherwise. First, it is the Samians themselves who engage in island-plundering (3.59). Instead of money, they take (p.126) from the men of Hermione the island of Hydrea, Page 23 of 36

 

Lines and Dots which lies off the Peloponnese. They give it to the Troezenians to look after, then themselves settle on the island of Cydonia near Crete until they are defeated by the Aeginetans in the sixth year. It is only later in the same book that the Samians get a taste of their own medicine. Darius takes Samos—the first of all Greek or barbarian cities to become his—in order to give it to Syloson as a reward for his generosity to Darius in the past (3.139). Samos is ‘swept with the net’, in the process described earlier (pp. 116–17) in relation to the islands of Chios, Lesbos and Tenedos, and handed over to Syloson without its population in a striking illustration of how the island itself, devoid of its islanders, could be seen as a valuable possession (3.149).62 We have already seen that islands are treated as possessions by the Greeks as well as by the Persians. Although the idea of land as a prize applies to all kinds of landscape, the discrete space of the island makes it naturally disposed to being parcelled up and handed around. It is noteworthy that the Greeks, especially the Athenians, as they begin to take on some of Persia’s more worrying imperialist tendencies towards the end of the work, start to mistreat some of their own islands and use them as weapons in inter-polis tension. Andros, the first of the islands to refuse money to Themistocles, is beleaguered by Athens in the first stages of Athenian extortion of money and resources from the islands (8.111.1).63 Only a few chapters later, the Greeks are again abusing an island, this time Carystus, which they devastate as a form of punishment (8.121.1). The islands, as separate entities from the Greek mainland, are vulnerable to being treated as foreign lands. The first hints of the shift from alliance to empire (p.127) within the Greek world are visible here. This reflection of Athens’ developing imperial geography in Herodotus’ account of earlier imperial phases is a theme to which we will return in Chapter 7.64 Capturing islands is a natural part of the Persian advance against Greece, and the large and strategically important island of Naxos is a stepping stone to the rest of the Cyclades and beyond.65 Shortly before his troublemaking embassy to Sparta and Athens, in which he would ruin his chances with Sparta by being too honest about the vast scale of Asian geography, while conversely distorting the ease of river crossings, Aristagoras makes a trip in the other direction to Sardis (5.31). Here he persuades Artaphernes (and Darius) to provide a huge fleet for him to use in his expedition by enticing them with tales of the idyllic land of Naxos—a beautiful and fertile island, which will enable him to win also for Darius Paros, Andros, and the other Cyclades, before moving against the large and rich island of Euboea. The sequence is echoed later in the narrative as the Persians burn Naxos and enslave its people before setting off for the other islands (6.96). Aristagoras here foreshadows the enticements of Mardonius, who offers Xerxes the larger-scale prize of the whole of the beautiful land of Europe (7.5.3).66 The conquest of the islands is perhaps to be seen as an opportunity for Persia to limber up or to enjoy a trial run. In any case, the episode brings together the ideas of islands as sought-after, even utopic, places of special and Page 24 of 36

 

Lines and Dots distinct geographical status, with their consequent vulnerability to be netted, captured, and turned into a commodity of war or empire. Depending on the rhetorical needs of the moment, islands can be presented by those who seek to conquer them as highly desirable, or by those who seek not to be conquered as poor and needy. The converse of the enticements of Samos and Naxos is offered by the Andrians’ self-presentation as abundantly poor in territory, in an island beleaguered by the gods of poverty and helplessness (8.111.2–3). Through whose eyes islands (p.128) are viewed has a significant impact on their perception and presentation, clearly illustrating the importance of focalization in conceptual geography. The tension between islands as idyllic or as worthless commodities is amplified throughout the narrative by their oscillation between being associated with safety or danger.67 As the narrative progresses, the islands are in danger of becoming a mere commodity within the economic and political hegemony of Athens, but at the start of Herodotus’ work they are threatened from the other side of the Aegean in the East.68 At this stage, the distinct status of islands as separate geographical entities makes them safe rather than small and vulnerable. So, when the Panionium is set up to protect the Ionians from Persian anger, Herodotus comments that the islanders were, by contrast, safe, since the Persians were not sailors (1.143.1).69 The safety accorded by insularity is clearly in the minds of the Cnidians when they try to cut themselves off from the mainland, literally by digging through the isthmus, as we have seen on pp. 122–3 (1.174.2–6). When oracular responses make clear their folly in trying to turn mainland into island, they seem to see no alternative but to submit to Harpagos and to Persia—becoming insular offered to them the only hope of salvation.70 It is not only Herodotus and the Greeks within his narrative who see the islands as safe havens. When the Persians island-hop their way to Greece in Book 6, they not only take the opportunity suggested to them by Aristagoras to plunder Naxos and move from there to exploit a succession of other islands, but they (p.129) also, according to Herodotus, illustrate their fear of sailing round Athos again, and use the island route as a safe passage.71 In this context, the islands are vulnerable to Persian ‘netting’ (more so than mainland cities, as we have seen), at the same time as offering the Persians themselves a safe route across potentially hostile water—safe, but precarious. Again, perspective is everything in mapping out the world. The very insularity of the islands makes them vulnerable to being packaged up and used,72 but offers protection and safe haven to those who would seek it and to those with the political, financial, or military resources to dictate the conceptual map. The dual association of islands with safety and danger comes increasingly to the fore as the narrative progresses. We have already noted the unusual situation of the Peloponnese and the concern of the Spartans to fortify the isthmus and to cut themselves off as a semi-island. When the isthmus is eventually fortified and the Peloponnese resembles an island as closely as Page 25 of 36

 

Lines and Dots possible, the Spartans relax a little their anxieties that the Athenians seem to be taking the Persian side (9.8.2). They have, in the lead-up to this, been fearful of being cut off on another island, that of Salamis (8.49.2; 8.70.2). The idea here that an island might offer vulnerability rather than safety is quite emphatic, and the Peloponnese is seen as a relative haven (8.70). For the Athenians, by contrast, Salamis offers safety as much as it brings dread to the Spartans (9.6), evocatively foreshadowing the later attempts by Pericles to give Athens a quasiinsular status, through focusing its imperial wealth and power on the islands of the Aegean, and gathering its population (p.130) within the Long Walls and Piraeus during the Peloponnesian War.73 The double interpretation of Salamis is yet another striking instance of the island world being read in opposing ways by different parties and perhaps symptomatic of the increasing tension between Athens and Sparta, which will characterize the last phase of the effort against Persia and foreshadow the conflicts of the second half of the fifth century. The safety associated with islands is nicely illustrated towards the end of the work by the decision of the Greeks at Plataea to go to ‘the island’ in front of the city, a mile and a quarter from the rivers Asopus and Gargaphia (9.51.1).74 The place would offer water and safety, as islands tended to do. But this is a rather unusual island in that its insularity derives only from its position within the river Oëroë, which splits round the outcrop as it flows down from Cithaeron. This river island prefigures a phenomenon to which we shall return in Chapter 4, namely the island as a thauma in its own right. But before we turn in that direction, let us finish with perhaps the most striking instance of the island conceptualized as an object to be parcelled up and passed around. At the battle of Mycale, Herodotus comments that ‘the two sides, Greeks and barbarians, went eagerly into battle, with the islands and the Hellespont as the stakes of the contest’ (9.101.3).75 As we shall see in Chapter 6, the conquest of nature is here very clear; as the narrative draws to its close, the commodification of the island is complete. In the case of islands, as elsewhere, Herodotus’ articulation and presentation of geographical space reflects his engagement with the loaded imperial geography of fifth-century Athens. The successive threats to Samos, first from the East and then from Greece itself, foreshadow Athens’ increasing use of the islands of the Aegean as saleable commodities, part of the armoury of conflict and a focus of (p.131) the expression of imperial power. As will be discussed further in Chapters 5 and 7, the example of Samos neatly illustrates the role of the tyrant state in the ever-changing map of imperial power. The capacity of geographical space to carry such depth of meaning will lead us in Part III to consider in more detail how resonance may be added to an apparently neutral backdrop. (p.132)

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Lines and Dots Notes:

(1) To anyone who has flown over Asia, the idea of a huge landscape articulated only by a network of mighty rivers is unmistakably familiar. It is a bird’s-eye view which Herodotus could only imagine, making his conception and expression of large-scale geographical space all the more remarkable. (2) See von Scheliha, Die Wassergrenzung im Altertum, 38, for the importance of rivers for orientating and demarcating the landscape: ‘zur Orientierung, zur Einteilung der Landabschnitte waren sie unentbehrlich’; also Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 178: ‘La superimposition sur les régions mal connues du réticule géographique orthogonal…arrive à organiser l’espace en portions pouvant être décrites et confrontées.’ (3) See Pelling, ‘Aristagoras’, 195, for this contrast. (4) 2.5.1: δῶρον τοῦ ποταμοῦ. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. are clear that this was Hecataean doctrine. Presumably this is on the basis of FGrH 1 F301, in which Arrian claims that both Herodotus and Hecataeus call Egypt δῶρον τοῦ ποταμοῦ, but it is, of course, possible that this much later author conflated the two accounts. (5) This declaration comes at the end of a protracted discussion of the various options for delimiting the land of Egypt: the Ionians, for example, say that only the Delta is Egypt, but that would mean, reckons Herodotus, that it had only recently come into existence (2.15). In Herodotus’ view it is better to consider Egypt the land inhabited by the Egyptians, that is, defined by its people rather than by geographical features (2.17.1). (6) 4.82: ποταμούς τε πολλῷ μεγίστους καὶ ἀριθμὸν πλείστους. Von Scheliha, Die Wassergrenzung im Altertum, 38, asserts that Hecataeus is the source for so much detail on the rivers of Scythia, but it is not clear on what basis that assertion is made. On the footprint of Heracles, see Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. for parallels such as the paladins in Palestine and Europe, or the feet of Buddha in the East. Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, cites this as an example of man-made and natural wonders combined, in so far as the footprint of Heracles must refer to a natural rock formation rather than an artificial construction, but one ascribed in myth to a man. (7) The non-Greekness of large rivers might explain why they are prominent, alongside large man-made structures, in his geography of marvels, discussed further in Chapter 4. (8) This opposition recurs frequently due to the habit of transhumance.

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Lines and Dots (9) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 71–2, for the Homeric associations of the scene, in which the remote and idealized setting ‘evokes a primordial and mythical atmosphere of a community close to the gods’. (10) The thumbnail sketch of Celaenae ends memorably with a typically Herodotean note that the skin of Marsyas could also be found in the town. The Phrygians claimed that it was flayed off him and hung up by Apollo. A small mythological note gives status to the town and ties it into the wider Greek world; as so often in Herodotus, the story could be verified by the existence of a visible artefact. If we are to take Herodotus at his word, the local Phrygians themselves clearly knew how to tell stories which connected perfectly with the conceptual world of Greek mythology. See Bowie, ‘Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes’, 275, who sees this story as a resonant reminder for Xerxes of another hybristic man who was unpunished. (11) Frisone, ‘Rivers, Land Organization and Identity in Greek Western Apoikiai’, 89, notes the importance of rivers as conduits in the other direction, drawing colonists inland from the coast and retaining a key part in their structuring of ideas about the region. (12) Such an extensive description might have been particularly appealing for its exoticism to a Greek audience accustomed to a somewhat arid landscape. But see West, ‘Scythians’, 441–2, for the important point that Herodotus’ orientation of the Scythian rivers is confused, understandably so given his lack of the ‘bird’s eye view of topographical relationships to which cartographic conventions have accustomed us’. (13) Even later in this chapter, he notes that ‘only of this river [the Borysthenes] and the Nile can I not tell the springs where they rise’, immediately breaking his own injunction. (14) This is consistent with the proposition of Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 106–9, that Herodotus uses symmetries, such as the opposition between the Nile and the rivers of Scythia to highlight the structured nature of the physical world as a whole, rather than to explore cultural contrasts. (15) See Chapter 2 above. (16) Here we might recall the point made in Chapter 2 that Herodotus’ objection may be to unduly neat geographical schemata rather than to the notion of water at the edges of the earth per se. (17) This is not to suggest that they are somehow literary inventions or not part of the real landscape too, but rather to stress that Herodotus exploits features of the real physical landscape for literary effect.

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Lines and Dots (18) The technique is reminiscent of that used at 5.118.1 to tie the little-known river Marsyas into the river Maeander. The latter was clearly a major artery in the real and conceptual geography of Asia Minor. See Thonemann, The Maeander Valley. (19) See Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 168, for the rivers of Greece as marking out the progress of Xerxes’ campaign as one by one they are touched by the impact of his army. (20) We shall see in Chapter 4 how movement through the landscape may trigger other narratives of travel, whether mythical or historical, particular at the intersection of routes. (21) Herodotus must mean the only one ‘of the rivers in this area’, since the Scamander had also proved insufficient for the army, being described at 7.43.1 in very similar terms to the Echeidorus. For the theme of rivers drunk dry by the Persian army, see Chapter 6. (22) On the fine line between Persian control over nature and excessive enthusiasm for it, as played out in this episode, see Harrison, ‘Mastering the Landscape’, 29. This theme will be addressed further below in Chapter 6. (23) Although it is worth noting, with Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ, 134, that Darius would have been well advised to heed Simonides (Diog. Laert. 1.90 = Simonides fr. 581 PMG), who depicts an ever-flowing stream destroying a monument and its inscription, just as Darius will prove unequal to the wilds of Scythia. (24) 4.45.2: ‘I cannot guess why the earth, which is one, has three names, all belonging to women, and why its boundaries are the Egyptian Nile river and the Colchian Phasis river (though some say that the Maeetian Tanaïs river and the Cimmerian Ferries are boundaries).’ (25) Sleeman, Herodotus. Book 1, ad 1.6, notes that this description of Croesus’ realms ‘within’ the Halys is clearly given from the point of view of a Greek living on the west coast of Asia Minor. See also 1.28, where Croesus’ realm is described as almost all the land west of the Halys and 1.130.1, where the Halys is the definer of the Median empire for 128 years (except the time of Scythian domination). Even by the time of the Ionian revolt, the river Halys still clearly operates as a significant boundary in this part of Asia. At 5.102.1, we are told that the Persians who lived in provinces west of the Halys came to the Lydians’ assistance. And still later, Xerxes crosses the Halys and thereby moves into the region of Phrygia at 7.26.3. (26) The incursion results in a showdown between the Cimmerian princes in which all are killed and buried by the river Tyras, allowing the eponymous Scyths to enter the land (4.11.4). Page 29 of 36

 

Lines and Dots (27) See Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 91–2, for the characterization of successive campaigns by a specific river. (28) This would, of course, tell against any acceptance of the encircling river. The unquantifiable and nebulous nature of Scythia is emphasized by Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, who stresses at 10 the futility of erecting pillars (4.87, 4.91) in the context of a land which defies enumeration. See also Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 175, for Scythia’s defeat of Darius by its very limitlessness. (29) See Chapter 2 for the same point in relation to Scythian and Persian views of the key barriers of the Bosporus (and related watercourses) and the river Ister. (30) As Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad loc. note, the crossing of the Asopus is further complicated by the religious contraindications in the form of omens and is proven to be conducted in error by the subsequent, probably consequent, destruction of the Persian force by contrast with the safety of the Greeks who heeded the omens and remained on their own side. See further on the negative moral aspects of river crossings in Chapter 5 below. (31) Munson, Telling Wonders, is sceptical about Herodotus’ belief in environmental determinism. She sees no causal connection drawn at 2.35.2, only the observation of coincidence (87), and contends (at 88) that any causal links between environment and character in the narrative tend to be put into the mouths of the characters, rather than being endorsed by the author (7.102.1 Demaratus; 9.122.3 Cyrus). Nevertheless, the fact remains that, as Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 182, notes, Egypt’s was ‘la civilisation fluviale’. For Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I– IV, ad 2.35.2, the connection is self-evident: ‘Herodotus was a convinced exponent of environmental determinism.’ I shall return to this issue in Chapter 7. (32) At 2.9, for example, the dimensions of Egypt are said to include the land upriver to Thebes and to Elephantine. The Nile is the major artery of the country, along which space is not only structured but also calibrated. (33) In fact, as Herodotus notes, although his task here is to describe tribute from Asia and a few parts of Libya, as time went on, there was another field of taxation in the islands and even in Europe, as far as Thessaly (3.96.1). (34) The ridge, like the river Ister at 5.9.1, interestingly bridges the two worlds of known and unknown geography. Herodotus notes that it continues all the way to the Pillars of Heracles, with salt mines after every ten days’ travel, but he does not know the names of the inhabitants after the Atlantes (4.185.1). (35) See Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. for the spectacular wrongness of this distance. Page 30 of 36

 

Lines and Dots (36) It is interesting that the gold dust from Mount Tmolus provokes Herodotus elsewhere to comment on the lack of natural wonders (θώματα) in Lydia compared with other countries, with this one exception, in contrast with its offering the most magnificent man-made structure (ἔργον) in the world outside Babylon and Egypt, namely the tomb of Croesus’ father, Alyattes (1.93). (37) On both passages, see in this chapterpp. 97–8. (38) Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. observe that this detail on Persian water control serves to bring the reader back from the fabulous boundaries of the world to the administrative realities of the Persian Empire before the resumption of Darius’ narrative. (39) See Chapter 5 for further exploration of this passage. (40) Extraordinary, since, of course, as How and Wells note, Athenians had been to Sardis twenty years previously and the Spartans had attacked Samos in the days of Polycrates (3.47.1). See Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 58, for a reading of this passage in the context of incipient Athenian imperialism, possibly hinting at how far Athens’ own imperial drive could reach. We will return to the theme of Athens’ imperial geography in Chapter 7. (41) It is thus interesting that Mandrocles’ painting of Darius surveying his troops before the Bosporus crossing (4.88) was dedicated at the Heraion on Samos, the commemoration of a piece of Persian imperial ambition placed at the conceptual limit of that empire’s progress westwards. (42) On this characteristic, see Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 2, for islands as ‘distinct “closed” worlds, ideal locations for the extraordinary and the bizarre’. (43) See Ceccarelli, ‘La Fable des poissons de Cyrus’, for discussion of this phenomenon in the context of the stories concerning dancing fish in both the first and final books. As she notes (43), in Herodotus, no one but the Persians ‘nets’ people. But, whereas I would argue that the phenomenon is specifically an island one, Ceccarelli instead focuses (at 47) on the distinction between the Ionian/Aeolian islands and the other maritime populations of Asia Minor, which are prone to Persian netting, and populations elsewhere, such as Eretria in Euboea, to whose netting Plato refers in the Menexenus, but which, as a part of Europe, suffers no such treatment in Herodotus. For netting as an exclusively island phenomenon, see Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 126–9. (44) 1.170. The proposal is outdone by that of Thales of Miletus, advising that they set up a council in Teos. Lombardo, ‘Greek Colonization: Small and Large Islands’, 78, takes this example to indicate that it was possible to envisage a

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Lines and Dots single Ionian colony occupying the whole island and that ‘one island—one colonial polis’ was the dominant mindset. (45) Ceccarelli, ‘De la Sardaigne à Naxos’, 41. But Ceccarelli rightly goes on to note that, in fact, the status of islands is more complex than the land-sea opposition might suggest. (46) Constantakopoulou, ‘Proud to Be an Islander’, 2, claims that Greek mentality differentiates ‘the world of the islands as distinct and separate from that of the mainland’. (47) See Ceccarelli, ‘De la Sardaigne à Naxos’, 43, for the suggestion that the capitulation of the Greek islands is precisely the result of their relationship to the peraia, the land opposite, which is part of the Persian world. See also Hornblower, ‘Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa’, on the significance of Atarneus’ location in the story of Panionios and Hermotimos. Atarneus’ inbetween status as an island (Chian) territory but located on the Asiatic mainland, argues Hornblower, renders it conceptually polluted: ‘It belonged to that interesting category of territory, namely peraiai, mainland possessions opposite, πέρα, an island’ (40), a negative characterization supported by its description at 1.160.4–5. (48) Constantakopoulou, ‘Proud to Be an Islander’, argues that island identity superseded polis identity for island dwellers. A similar point is made by Constantakopoulou, ‘Identity and Resistance’, 52, as exemplified by the Nesiotic League. See also Lombardo, ‘Greek Colonization: Small and Large Islands’, 76– 7, for the collective, insular identity of peoples coming to the fore above individual polis identities, especially in the context of colonization. (49) 8.43–8 contains the catalogue of Greek ships, including islanders at 8.46; 8.66.2 provides a brief catalogue of the Greeks in the Persian fleet, including all the islanders except five states. There is a slight discrepancy here with the Greek catalogue at 8.46, which mentions six islands by name—Ceos, Naxos, Cythnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and Melos. (50) Here it is interesting to see Cretans as distinct from ‘all the islanders’. As we shall see below (p. 121), the Cretans seem to make the transition from islander to mainlander with unusual ease (7.170.2). For the non-insular nature of very large islands such as Crete, Sicily, and Euboea, see Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands’, 13. (51) This is not the first time that Miletus has been closely associated with an island. At 5.125, Hecataeus suggests to Aristagoras, who is worried about how they will escape if Miletus falls, that they should build a fort on the island of

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Lines and Dots Leros for this purpose. On this and other key island-peraia relationships, see Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 229–53. (52) According to Ceccarelli, ‘De la Sardaigne à Naxos’, 46, the answer is that one cannot simply change from being a continental to a maritime individual, at least within the world of Herodotus’ narrative. (53) For insightful interpretations of such transformations, see Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia, 190–4, and passim. (54) 1.171.5. See Baragwanath and de Bakker, ‘Introduction’, 34, arguing that indirect speech is used to distance Herodotus from information or explanations that appear in his work, here in the realm of myth. As they note, the various accounts of Scythian origins all remain in indirect discourse, including the one to which he gives greatest credence, suggesting a lack of full endorsement. (55) 7.170.2: ἀντὶ δὲ εἶναι νησιώταϛ ἠπειρώταϛ. Note Crete coming up again in the context of these metamorphoses from islander to mainlander, as though it operates as a form of quasi-mainland in its own right. (56) This is in line with the interpretation of Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 254–65, stressing the connection between μεγαλοφροσύνη and display rather than arrogance. In Chapter 7, I argue more fully for an interpretation of this passage in the context of the arrogant attitude of the Persians, rather than either sacrilege against nature or pure display of power. (57) A different association between islands and oracles is found at 7.6.3–5, where the unreliable oracle-monger Onomacritus tells encouraging predictions to Xerxes. He had been banished from Athens by Hipparchus for interpolating into the writings of Musaeus an oracle showing that the islands off Lemnos would disappear into the sea. (58) Another interesting case of confusion over the interpretation of an oracle comes at 1.167.3–4, where the Phocaeans found Hyele. Herodotus notes that the oracle had meant them to establish a hero, Cyrnus, rather than the island of Cyrnus. On this confusion between myth linked to location and myth linked to characters, see Dewald, ‘Myth and Legend in Herodotus’ First Book’, 72. (59) See, for example, the creative geography of Aristagoras and of Mardonius, discussed in Chapter 2 and in this chapter (see pp. 127–8). (60) Note the March 2010 Die Bildzeitung, in which a German MEP suggested that the Greeks could sell uninhabited islands to get out of their economic troubles, with the comment of Constantakopoulou, ‘Identity and Resistance’, 52, on islands as saleable assets, distinct from other geographical features ‘because

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Lines and Dots they are understood as geographically distinct and therefore easy to “measure up” and sell’. (61) Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 177–99, identifies this as a classic case of a mini island network, whereby the large island of Chios controls a penumbra of smaller islands. (62) The paradigmatic nature of Samos as an island is interesting here. Not only is it Darius’ first such conquest and, as noted here, the ultimate commodity, but its inhabitants are the arch-islanders who can, unlike mainlanders, as seen above, successfully migrate to another island. (63) See Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 77, for the strong equation of islanders and subject-allies displayed in this passage. For Constantakopoulou, Herodotus’ focus on the island status of states forced to pay money to Athens ‘presumes the inevitable link between the islands and imperial domination’. As Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad loc. observes, ‘the strategy seems to have been to bring the islands of the Cyclades back into the Greek fold in order to make it difficult for the Persians to use them as a base’. The same plan may have underpinned the decision at 8.108 to allow the Persians to retreat from Salamis via the Hellespont bridges, while the Greeks moved across the Aegean ‘from island to island’ (διὰ νήσων), enabling them both to punish those which had supported Persia and to reassert Greek control and ownership. (64) See, Constantakopoulou, ‘Proud to Be an Islander’, 2, for the idea that the island-mainland opposition becomes for Thucydides a central tool of analysis for Athenian imperialism, playing into Athens’ thalassocracy. (65) This vulnerability brought by the relative proximity of islands to each other strikes a negative contrast with the more productive benefits of island ‘clusters’, discussed by Constantakopoulou, ‘Placing Goats in Context’. (66) See Pelling, ‘Aristagoras’, 180, for the observation that Aristagoras (‘Best speaker’) is already making creative use of geography, in the same way as Mardonius will do to Xerxes, by exaggerating the proximity of Naxos to Ionia. (67) For the inherent danger associated with islands through their instability, see Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 117, on the Scholiast to Apollonius Rhodius 3.41.3—‘in old times, all the islands were wandering’. Aeolus’ ‘wandering island’ of Odyssey 10.1–3 comes to mind here: ἔνθα δ᾿ ἔναιεν Αἴολοϛ Ἱποτάδηϛ…πλωτῇ ἐνὶ νήσῳ. (68) See Ceccarelli, ‘Map, Catalogue, Drama, Narrative’, for the gradual emergence during the fifth century of the Aegean and its islands as a key

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Lines and Dots battleground for imperial bids, ‘shaped by the perceptions of the people who happen to cross it’ (80). (69) At 1.144 Herodotus compares their safe distance from the Persians to the situation of the Dorians of the isolated Pentepolis area—a land-based parallel for the marine environment of the Ionian islanders. (70) For a different form of insularity offering safety, see Hartog, ‘Imaginary Scythians’, 264, interpreting the inaccessibility of Scythia in this light: ‘The islander is impregnable and inaccessible: he is aporos’. See also Payen, Les Îles nomads, especially 315–11, for the parallel opportunities for resistance to conquest offered by the expanse of aporia and the discrete space of the island. (71) 6.95.2: From there they held their course not by the mainland and straight towards the Hellespont and Thrace, but, setting out from Samos, they made the voyage by the Icarian sea and from island to island; this, so it seems to me, was because they feared above all the voyage around Athos, because in the previous year they had come to great disaster by holding this course; in addition, Naxos was still unconquered and constrained them. (72) It is worth noting that the safety associated with insular remoteness is replicated in remote mountain regions, affording conceptual similarity to different types of landscape. See 5.16.1 for the security of the Pangaean mountains and the Prasiad lake by contrast with the more accessible of the Paeaonian lands which rendered the inhabitants vulnerable to Megabyzus’ assault. It is worth noting that the Paeonians island-hop their way back home to safety at 5.98.4: ‘they were brought from Chios by the Chians to Lesbos and carried by the Lesbians to Doriscus, from where they made their way by land to Paeonia’. (73) See Mossé, ‘Athènes comme île’. But, in spite of the utopic associations of islands, expressed not least in the pamphlet attributed to the Old Oligarch (2.14– 16), Athens itself would always be tied to the mainland through the link to its chōra. (74) The precise location of the ‘island’ has been much discussed, but Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad loc. are surely right to conclude that it is no longer identifiable. (75) Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad loc. wonder why the Greek cities of mainland Asia Minor were not included, but this may be partly answered if the significance of insular commodities is accepted.

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Lines and Dots

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Depth and Resonance

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Depth and Resonance Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter Herodotus’ world is explored as a resonant landscape in three main ways. First, through the human emotions of admiration and wonder generated by Herodotus both in his authorial voice and through characters in the narrative in response to both natural and man-made marvels. Here the multiple focalizations bring complexity through their range of responses. Secondly, depth is brought by the dimension of time, as mythological associations of the landscape are revealed, particularly by the progress of the Persian army through locations famous from myth and epic. Finally, additional resonance is brought by Herodotus’ implicit or explicit drawing of geographical parallels, in which different parts of his world reflect their associations on each other. Keywords:   wonder, marvel, man-made, myth, epic, parallel, resonance

The malleable nature of islands in the Herodotean narrative—simulaneously associated with both safety and danger, idyllic places of refuge as well as vulnerable to being parcelled up and traded, above all places of distinctive and special status within the real and conceptual geographical landscape—makes it unsurprising that they play a significant contribution to the geography of marvels which characterizes Herodotus’ work. Besides the island in the river Oëroë, encountered towards the end of Chapter 3, Herodotus comments on many other islands far from the sea and enveloped by rivers. The river Araxes is said to contain islands as large as Lesbos, and Herodotus finds this of sufficient interest to provide a mini-ethnography for the inhabitants as though they enjoy a distinctive, perhaps unique, environment.1 Or we may note the ‘sinking’ islands Page 1 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance off Lemnos, which the false prophet Onomacritus foretold would one day disappear under the sea,2 or the various floating islands which are reminiscent of the mythical landscape of the Odyssey (Odyssey 10.1–3). One extraordinary island off the coast of Libya, to which one can cross from the mainland, contains a lake from which the inhabitants draw up gold dust on feathers (4.195.1–2)— wonderful indeed. (p.136) Herodotus’ world is full of wonder,3 not only in terms of physical geography but also in terms of the fauna that inhabits those landscapes; not only in terms of naturally occurring marvels but also in terms of extraordinary human contributions in the form of monuments and engineering works. These marvels constitute one important manifestation of the depth that is brought to the narrative through reactions and judgements, implicit and explicit, made by the author in his own voice or through the eyes of characters in the narrative. By prompting the reader to share his emotional response to the world or that of his characters, Herodotus ensures that the physical world becomes more than a neutral backdrop. In this chapter, we shall start to explore this depth and resonance brought to the Herodotean world by the admiration of wonders, before considering other elements that lift the physical backdrop into a complex and resonant landscape; namely, the dimension of time, especially allusions to the mythical period, which lends an epic grandeur to the narrative whilst also carrying some negatively charged resonances, and finally the highlighting of parallels and symmetries, which again may add positively or negatively slanted associations. We thus start to move from Herodotus’ careful depiction of the physical landscape to his presentation of landscape as a constructed reality, imbued with depth of meaning.

A) Wonderful World: Works of Nature, Works of Man Let us start with Book 2 as a case study. The spectacular nature of Egypt as a land of marvels is reflected in the fact that the islands in that book are extraordinary, miraculous, and connected to unique customs.4 The island of Prosopitis in the Nile Delta, nine schoeni in circumference, is the place where dead bulls are buried and from (p.137) where their bones are finally collected by boats coming from the Egyptian cities.5 Rather like a more spectacular version of the river island created outside Plataea by the streams of the river Oëroë, is the ‘island’ on which stands the temple of Bubastis (that is, Artemis), created by two separate channels of the Nile flowing around it, and lined with trees on each side.6 The stunning landscape of the flooded Nile transforms man-made cities into islands in their own right, posing a challenge to the normally distinct status of islands in the Herodotean landscape. Land becomes sea, people sail past the pyramids, and the world of the Aegean is recreated in the land of Egypt (as Page 2 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance discussed in Chapter 3). This topsy-turvy world is brought about by the natural wonder of the Nile floods, and it is an insular world and a miraculous one (2.97): Whenever the Nile overflows the land, only the towns are seen standing out above the water, very like the islands in the Aegean. The rest of Egypt is sea, but the cities alone stand above this. So when this happens, people are not ferried, as usual, in the stream of the river, but right across the middle of the plain. Indeed, the voyage for anyone sailing up from Naucratis to Memphis passes close by the pyramids themselves, though this is not really where the course is, but by the Delta’s point and the town Cercasorus; but your voyage from the sea and Canobus to Naucratis will take you over the plain near the town of Anthylla and the one called Archandrus’ town. In fact, much of the marvellous nature of Egypt is left implicit in Herodotus’ account. We are left to surmise that this must be something of a wonderland if, for example, the sun can rise out of its usual place (2.142.4).7 The comment that it has happened only four times in (p.138) the 11,340 years of human history in Egypt not only stresses the extreme age of Egypt, but also has the strange effect of making an event that might be thought to defy the laws of physics altogether seem rarer than we could have expected. Only four times that the impossible happened? Why not more often in this magical land of Egypt? On the whole, the extraordinary habits of the Nile, which defy full comprehension and explanation and can be estimated only by comparison with other, better-known rivers; the unusual flora and fauna; the unique customs of the inhabitants—all these are left to speak for themselves as elements of a landscape and its people which inspire amazement in both those who experience it first-hand and the readers of Herodotus’ account. In a sense it is impossible to separate the marvels of the land from those of its inhabitants, since the latter are heavily influenced by the former. And some of the customs which Herodotus finds worthy of note are intimately connected to the presence of exotic animals, such as the convention that anyone, whether Egyptian or not, who is killed by a crocodile, or dies because of the river, must be embalmed and buried in a holy coffin (2.90). The fauna of the land does constitute one of its marvellous aspects and Herodotus devotes several chapters to its description. Although Herodotus claims (2.65.2) that, despite bordering Libya, Egypt is not very populous in wild animals, in fact, this claim is belied by the length of time assigned to them. There is something noteworthy about the animals of Egypt en masse, leaving aside individual oddities, and that is their sacred status within Egyptian society and the associated system of hereditary keeper posts to maintain each species separately (2.65.3). It is the extraordinary interaction between animals and humans in Egypt, including, for example, the death penalty for anyone who kills a hawk or an ibis even accidentally, which is largely responsible for lending such a sense of alienation to the reader. In addition, Herodotus’ description of some of Page 3 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance the individual beasts and birds leaves the reader in no doubt that Egypt is a land which exceeds normal bounds (2.73): There is also another sacred bird, whose name is the phoenix. I myself have never seen it, except in pictures (ἐγὼ μέν οὐκ εἶδον εἰ μὴ ὅσον γραφῇ); for it rarely comes into Egypt: once every 500 years, so the people of Heliopolis say (ὡϛ Ἡλιοπολῖται λέγουσι). They say (φασί) that the phoenix comes when its father dies. If it is really as in the picture (εἰ τῇ γραφῇ παρόμοιοϛ) then it is as follows in size and nature: its feathers are partly golden and mostly red. It most closely resembles an eagle in (p. 139) shape and size. What they say (λέγουσι) this bird manages to do is incredible to me (ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐ πιστὰ λέγοντεϛ). Setting out from Arabia to the temple of the sun, [i.e. they say] it carries its father encased in myrrh and buries him at the temple of the Sun. This is how it conveys him: it first moulds an egg of myrrh as heavy as it can carry, then tries lifting it, and when it has tried, it then hollows out the egg and puts its father into it, and plasters over with more myrrh the hollow of the egg into which it has put its father, which is the same in weight with his father lying in it, and it conveys him encased to the temple of the Sun in Egypt. This is what they say (λέγουσι) this bird does. Here we see Herodotus oscillating between an authorially endorsed account and various distancing devices—the use of indirect discourse, the explicit acknowledgement that he has never seen a phoenix (not surprisingly, given the bird’s rare appearances), the reliance on visual representations for its description, and the outright rejection of the burial customs as ‘unbelievable’. Herodotus himself thus seems uncertain how much credence to lend to what he has heard. The extraordinary behaviour of the phoenix might be seen in the same light as that of the sun’s rising out of place four times in Egyptian history. The phoenix’ five-hundred-yearly visit to Egypt is admittedly six times more frequent than the sun’s rising out of place, but one could hardly describe it as commonplace. Both events are so rare that they could not be described as ‘typical’ of the region, and this may contribute to the sense of disbelief. And yet both, when set in the context of the vast array of such peculiarities as Herodotus presents, seem quite natural and characteristic of the Egyptian wonderland. The human behaviour of the phoenix in its paternal burial customs, which Herodotus claims not to credit, nevertheless echoes the point made above concerning the unusual interactions in Egypt between man and beasts. Furthermore, when set alongside the other exotic creatures of this part of the world, the phoenix begins to sound plausible. There are, for example, two types of ibis, one black with the legs of a crane and a hooked beak; the other white, except for the head, neck, and tips of wings and tail, all of which are black (2.76). The ibis is yet another example of an Egyptian animal which seems curiously involved in the affairs of man. The white ibis is introduced as the type Page 4 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance which ‘most frequents the company of men’ (2.76.1). By contrast, at first glance, the black ibis seems firmly rooted in the animal kingdom. Herodotus is led to mention it because of its hostile relations with another exotic (p.140) creature, the winged serpent, which he visits the city of Buto in Arabia to investigate (2.75):8 There is a place in Arabia in the vicinity of the town of Buto, and I went to this place to learn about the winged serpents. When I arrived there, I saw countless bones and backbones of serpents: there were many piles of backbones, large and small and even smaller. This place, where the backbones lay scattered, is as follows: where a narrow mountain pass opens into a great plain which adjoins the plain of Egypt. The story goes that winged serpents fly from Arabia towards Egypt at the beginning of spring; but the ibis birds encounter the invaders in this pass and kill them. Because of this, the Arabians say that the ibis is greatly honoured by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians agree that this is the reason why they honour these birds. By contrast with some of the wonders which he presents in indirect speech without necessarily adding full authorial endorsement, Herodotus is left beyond all doubt as to the existence of these flying serpents, on seeing with his own eyes (εἶδον) countless numbers of their bones and spines in a pass crossing from the narrow mountains into a great plain which neighbours the plain of Egypt.9 The subsequent explanation of these piles of corpses might be thought a classic example of the law of the jungle.10 But the defence of Egypt from eastern aggressors at a narrow mountain defile is impossible for the knowing reader to pass over without thinking immediately ahead in the narrative and back in real time to Thermopylae, as will be discussed in Chapter 7. Just where we might have thought that the fauna of Egypt was behaving like brutes, it partially prefigures a major event in human history, reinforcing the oddly anthropomorphic nature of Egyptian wildlife. Just as the exotic fauna of Egypt both constitutes a marvel in itself and is the cause of extraordinary customs on the part of the human (p.141) inhabitants, so too are many of the man-made marvels of Egypt created in response to aspects of the landscape, not least the river’s dramatic flooding. Indeed, Herodotus appears to connect the unusual climate, the unusual behaviour of the Nile, and the unusual customs of the Egyptians at 2.35.2, although it is important to reiterate that here he merely juxtaposes the various ways in which Egypt varies from other places, without drawing an explicit causal link.11 But Egypt’s extraordinary landscape does seem to inspire its inhabitants to amazing human achievements. The extreme nature of the land itself is reflected in the extremity of its human wonders. The labyrinth above Lake Moeris near

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Depth and Resonance Crocodilopolis, for example, surpasses all the wonders of the Greeks put together in terms of time and expense (2.148.1–4):12 I have seen it myself, and it is beyond words (τὸν ἐγὼ ἤδη εἶδον λόγου μέζω); if one were to gather up the walls and evidence of other projects of the Greeks, the sum would not amount to the labour and expense of this labyrinth. And yet the temple at Ephesus and the one on Samos are noteworthy. Though the pyramids are beyond description and each one of them is a match for many great monuments built by Greeks, this maze surpasses even the pyramids. It has twelve roofed courts with doors facing each other: six face north and six south, in two continuous lines, and an outer wall surrounds them all. There are also pairs of chambers, 3,000 altogether, 1,500 above and the same number underground.13 And, if the labyrinth is not wondrous enough, Lake Moeris itself is an even greater marvel (θῶμα ἔτι μεζον), with a circuit of 420 miles, greater than the whole seaboard of Egypt. In case we were in danger of assuming that this is a straightforward case of nature outstripping the works of man, Herodotus makes clear that the lake must be man-made (χειροποίητοϛ) since there are two huge pyramids underwater (p.142) in the middle of the lake (2.149.2). Indeed, the figure of mankind looms dominantly over its creation in the form of two colossal stone statues, one on top of each of the two pyramids which stand fifty fathoms above the water level. Human ingenuity in managing the inflow and outflow of water for Lake Moeris, with the lake fed by a channel from the Nile for six months of the year and then allowed to empty for six months, is perhaps to be expected in a land where the river, which defines the whole region, is so carefully and methodically utilized by man. Within this context of natural and man-made marvels juxtaposed, islands take their place. The island of Chemmis is noted as ‘the next most wonderful thing’ after the shrine in the temple of Leto at Buto (2.156). This was another island within a lake, and said by the Egyptians to be a floating island, for which Herodotus offers some rather confused and perplexing explanations.14 This is a case of a natural wonder, which almost rivals the man-made temple of Leto.15 But sometimes the island itself could be man-made. One extraordinary instance involves a blind ruler from the marshes who lives there on an island he built from ashes and earth (2.140).16 Herodotus tells us that no one found that island, so secluded was it, for 700 years. More mundanely, King Cheops, who put the Egyptians to work for him, some dragging great stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, others hauling them from the other side of the Nile to the Libyan hills, included in his feats the creation of pyramids over underground chambers, which were in turn set in a kind of island, with a channel of the Nile brought in (2.124).

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Depth and Resonance (p.143) Quite how we are to interpret such examples of man-made natural features is a theme to be addressed later. Instinctively, one might admire the blind man’s island and condemn the pyramid island of King Cheops, but it is hard to identify what is negative or positive about such similar geographical processes, and one might focus instead on the harmonious combination of natural marvels and human endeavour, which makes these sites so extraordinary. The juxtaposition of natural and artificial wonders is not, of course, confined to the miraculous land of Egypt. In discussing the few wonders of Lydia in Book 1,17 Herodotus moves swiftly past the flowing down to Sardis of gold dust from Mount Tmolus in the river Pactolus, and instead focuses on the assertion that Lydia enjoys the greatest building outside Babylon and Egypt, namely the tomb of Croesus’ father, Alyattes (1.93.2–5). The apparent hierarchy of man-made over natural wonders foreshadows the same rank order as enjoyed by the shrine in the temple of Leto over the nearby island of Chemmis (2.156.1).18 But what makes this building all the more special, and perhaps could be seen to ‘set it off’, is the juxtaposition of the Gygaean lake with its everlasting springs (1.93.5). The Greek, perhaps incidentally, perhaps more deliberately, makes the lake subordinate to the temple in so far as the location of the former is dependent on that of the latter rather than vice versa.19 But the two wonders, in this land in which such things are rare, in fact enhance each other, at the same time as reinforcing the notion of a hierarchy of marvels. The same kind of collaboration between man and nature to construct something extraordinary can be seen in the building of Ecbatana by Deioces, king of the Medes, with concentric circles of rising walls with battlements: ‘The fact that the place chosen was itself a hill contributes to (τὸ μὲν…τὸ χωρίον συμμαχέει κολωνόϛ) the design, but it was primarily accomplished by skill (τὸ δὲ καὶ μᾶλλον τι ἐπετηδεύθη)’ (1.98.4). Yet again, it is a collaboration, but an imbalanced one, in which nature is eclipsed by man’s ingenuity. (p.144) But if the description of Alyattes’ tomb foreshadows other examples of the juxtaposition of natural and man-made wonders, the passage as a whole in turn also foreshadows the description of another set of wonders, the Egyptian pyramids.20 Three key elements reinforce the parallel. The fact that prostitutes constitute the largest element in the workforce for Alyattes’ tomb will be echoed in Book 2 by the prostitution by Cheops of his daughter in order to finance the building of his pyramid, and the construction in turn of a further pyramid in front of the others from stones which the daughter asked each man who visited her to contribute (2.126).21 The additional pyramid thus stands as a monument to Cheops’ prostitution of his own daughter.22 Secondly, Herodotus’ reference to epigraphy on the monument, which he has himself seen, as evidence for the process of construction, applies to both projects. Of Alyattes’ tomb, he notes that ‘there were still right up to my own time five cornerstones set on the top of the tomb, and on each of these was inscribed the account of the work done by each group; and measurement demonstrated that the work done by prostitutes was Page 7 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance the greatest’ (1.93.3); in relation to Cheops’ pyramid-building, he refers to the Egyptian inscription, which gave details of the expenditure on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen (2.125.6). ‘As I remember well (ὡς ἐμὲ εὖ μεμνῆσθαι),’ says Herodotus, ‘the interpreter, reading the inscription for me (μοί), said that 1,600 talents of silver had been spent.’ Testimony to the mighty scale of the undertaking, but also a reminder of the interplay between Herodotus and his sources, vulnerable as the whole process is not only to poor information but also, here, to the vagaries of the human memory, even that of Herodotus.23 Thirdly, (p.145) Herodotus’ interest in the precise details of dimensions and construction of each monument magnifies the sense of admiration and wonder. Of Alyattes’ tomb, he notes the precise dimensions of both circumference and breadth; and of Cheops’ pyramid, he notes that it was ‘under construction for twenty years, its base is square, each side 800 feet long, and its height the same; the whole was of stone polished and fitted precisely (ἁρμασμένου τὰ μάλιστα); there was no block less than thirty feet long’ (2.124.5).24 Herodotus then entertains, still in his own authorial voice, some detailed theories over the precise methods for constructing the massive stepped sides of the pyramid.25 The link between the two passages on prostitution is clearly a thematic one, but the similarities in the use of epigraphic evidence and Herodotus’ personal interest in precise dimensions and the technicalities of construction may serve a further purpose of reinforcing the historian’s authority through the common method of giving numbers and measurements. In addition, though, the question arises as to whether both building schemes are reflective of a particular characteristic shared by Cheops and Alyattes, namely their despotism, and deliberately illustrative of that quality. Is this kind of mastery of the landscape a source of wonder and admiration, or simply typical behaviour of those who wield absolute power?26 Vasunia sees this as symptomatic of despotic rule, particularly that of the pharaohs: ‘The king treats Egypt as his own personal possession, subjects it to whatever changes suit his whims and desires, and exults in marking it with vain monuments such as pyramids, palaces, and temples.’27 Our observations of the close parallels with the construction of Alyattes’ tomb might suggest that there is nothing peculiarly Egyptian (p.146) about this relationship between rulers and nature, but we shall, in any case, return to the question of man’s intervention in the natural world and consider whether a narratological approach posing questions of focalization enables us to add further nuance to the negative association with despotism.28 Here Herodotus’ admiration of both natural and man-made marvels is explicitly to the fore. As is implied by Herodotus’ claim that the ‘farthest parts of the world have the finest things in them’ (3.106.1), one might expect to find more natural marvels at the outer extremities of the earth than near the centre.29 Indeed, this expectation is articulated a few chapters later, where Herodotus surmises the likelihood that the ends of the earth should contain what we think most beautiful Page 8 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance and rare (3.116.3). It is interesting that in neither passage does Herodotus claim that the phenomena are actually ‘wondrous’ or ‘marvellous’—they are not thaumata—but rather ‘most beautiful’ (τὰ κάλλιστα) and ‘most rare’ (σπανιώτατα) (3.116.3). But, without explicitly making claims about the miraculous nature of the phenomena described, Herodotus paints a picture of the respective edges of the earth in terms which leave little doubt as to the natural wonders on offer there. As noted in Chapter 2, in India, at the far east of Herodotus’ world,30 the sun is hottest in the early morning, not at midday like everywhere else; at this time of day it is already far hotter than at midday in Greece (3.104.2),31 and thenceforth the temperature drops until it is exceedingly cold by sunset—the extremity of India’s location is reflected in the extremity of its diurnal temperature range.32 As Herodotus states explicitly, in India ‘all living things, four-footed and winged, are far bigger than (p.147) elsewhere, except for the horses’ (3.106.2), the fauna clearly also mirroring the extremity of the landscape. From the east, Herodotus moves to the southern extremity of Arabia, where again he illustrates implicitly the extraordinary and marvellous nature of the land and its inhabitants. The first point to note is that Arabia, like other edges of the earth, is unique in its produce. It is the only country (ἐν…ταύτῃ…μούνῃ) on earth where myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and ladanum are grown (3.107.1). Furthermore, the animals associated with the exotic produce of Arabia are equally extraordinary. The frankincense bushes are guarded by tiny winged snakes, dappled in colour, superficially the same snakes that we have already encountered attacking Egypt and being repelled by the ibis (2.75). But, after extensive discussion of the principle that vulnerable creatures tend to procreate prolifically in order to maintain the species, Herodotus notes that these winged snakes are unique to Arabia and their physical concentration there makes them appear more numerous than they really are on a global scale (3.109.3). The unusual, even unique, flora of Arabia, which is related to the equally unusual nature of its wildlife, is also responsible for some of the more noteworthy habits of its human inhabitants. The whole passage about winged snakes and the procreative habits of weak animals is actually subordinate to the description of how frankincense is harvested, and leads on to a similar description of the gathering of cinnamon (3.111). Here at last the language of explicit wonder and amazement begins to creep in, providing an explicit response to Herodotus’ promise to ‘preserve the glory of great and wonderful things (θωμαστά)’ (Preface). The method for collecting cinnamon is said to be ‘even more marvellous’ (θωμαστότερον) and indeed Herodotus’ ensuing description bears that out. The Arabians do not actually know where the cinnamon itself grows, but they gather it from the nests of great birds in the most extraordinary way. Since the nests are to be found on sheer crags, the Arabians entice the birds to overload them to the point of making them fall down, by leaving the limbs of dead oxen nearby for the birds to carry to their Page 9 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance nests.33 With the next Arabian produce, ladanum, Herodotus ratchets up the scale (p.148) of wonder still further. Its production is ‘even more wondrous (θωμασιώτερον) than this [i.e. that of cinnamon]’ (3.112), growing as it does in the beards of goats. With this, Herodotus turns back briefly to the animal life of the region, noting two varieties of sheep that are unique to Arabia and ‘worthy of wonder’ (θώματος ἄξια), one with an immensely thick tail and the other an immensely long one which has to be carried along on a small cart which is attached behind the sheep (3.113). Yet again, human ingenuity is never far away from the world of marvellous flora and fauna, this time expressed through the expertise of the carpenter-shepherds. And Herodotus’ tour of the marvels to be found at the extremities of the world ends with the briefest mention of Ethiopia at the far south. It has much gold, plenty of elephants, and all types of wild trees and ebony, ‘and the tallest, most handsome, and longest-lived men’ (3.114), following the pattern of reflecting its extreme location with superlative versions of nature, including the species of mankind. Egypt, so full of marvels and indeed declared the ‘most’ full of wonders of all lands (2.35: πλεῖστα θωμάσια ἔχει ἢ ἡ ἄλλη πᾶσα χώρη), is rivalled in the application of explicitly ‘marvellous’ language to other regions such as Arabia and Ethiopia, which, in terms of Herodotus’ spatial layout of the world, represent the outer extremity of the world.34 But it would be a mistake to expect or require an unduly schematic approach or a fixed rationale for the application of any particular vocabulary, especially given that these are all exceptional or even unique cases. In any case, any neat correspondence between a wondrous Ethiopia in the far south and a similarly marvellous Scythia and Pontic region in the north is thrown into disarray by the much better-worn comparison between Egypt and its northern counterpart, as we shall see later in this chapter (pp. 160–2). But it is indeed to Scythia, the northern parallel for Egypt, not for Ethiopia, that we should turn for more explicit wonder at a remote part of Herodotus’ world. In a well-known passage which we have already noted in Chapter 2 for its employment of the wide-angle lens in creating a series of geographical panoramas, Darius marches to (p.149) where the Bosporus was bridged and sails to the so-called Wandering Rocks to sit on a headland and view the Pontus (4.85.1–2): But Darius, when he reached that place in his march from Susa where the Bosporus was bridged in the territory of Chalcedon, embarked and sailed to the so-called Dark Rocks, which the Greeks say moved in the past; there, sitting on a headland, he viewed the Pontus, a sight worth seeing (ἀξιοθέητον). For it is the most wonderful of all the seas (πελαγέων γὰρ ἁπάντων πέφυκε θωμασιώτατος).

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Depth and Resonance I have already discussed the interesting double focalization that Herodotus here offers on his world, as he imaginatively extends Darius’ gaze from the point at which he is sitting right down to the outflow into the Aegean. Darius’ reaction to the sight that meets his eyes as he sits magisterially above the Black Sea provides the cue for the reader to share his wonder. The Pontic Sea is not only ‘worth seeing’ (ἀξιοθέητον), but exceeds all other seas in the wonder it inspires.35 Herodotus’ own authorial viewpoint, through which he allows us not only to share Darius’ wonderment but also to join with him in gazing down upon the scene of that wonderment, serves to heighten the sense of marvel. As elsewhere, here again Herodotus reinforces his own sense of amazement and bolsters his authority through quantification, here giving the dimensions in detail and explicitly claiming authorship of those measurements.36 Furthermore, the literary device by which both the natural wonder of the connected seas and the human figure of Darius as their spectator are brought before the eyes of the reader is neatly reinforced by the way in which the natural marvel is followed immediately in the narrative by the celebration of man’s achievements. When Darius sails back to the bridge designed by Mandrocles of Samos, he indulges in yet more spectating—this time of the Bosporus itself. It is a natural feature which is again viewed here, but the choice of viewing point is no longer the rocks but a bridge. And this is not just any bridge, but one which will span the continents. It is here at this most resonant location that Darius celebrates another human marvel, namely the (p.150) vast scale of his gathered army, which is inscribed on two pillars in Assyrian and Greek.37 The landscape envisaged here is very much one of man’s making. The pillars were apparently afterwards carried by the Byzantines into their city and there used to build the altar of Orthosian Artemis, except for one column covered with Assyrian writing that was left beside the temple of Dionysus at Byzantium (4.87).38 The location of the bridge used by Darius is formulated in terms of man-made rather than natural features—at the mid-point between Byzantium and the temple at the entrance of the sea. The triumph of man over nature in creating everlasting wonders is brought home by the reciprocal honours paid by Darius and Mandrocles to each other (4.88). In return for Darius’ thanks to Mandrocles, the latter has a picture made of the bridging of the Bosporus and of Darius sitting over it, watching the army crossing.39 The wondrous efforts of nature and especially of man are brought together through the medium of artistic representation, commemorating in this most human of ways the captivating sight of Darius marvelling at not only nature, as we first saw him, but now the achievements of man in conquering the sea he had so admired. This painting adds yet another, third layer to the focalization of Darius as viewer of the works of nature and of man, as now the viewpoint of the painter is inserted between that of Darius and that of the historian, and the telescopic reach of this narrative stretches out still further. Furthermore, as Grethlein has noted, the insertion of an actual piece of artwork into the narrative at this point, focused on Page 11 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance one of the players as internal viewer, highlights the iconicity of such ‘viewing’ scenes.40 (p.151) The superiority of man’s achievements over those of nature, even in the wonderful world that Herodotus presents to his readers, is nowhere brought home more clearly than in Book 3. Here, not long before he will take us on a tour of the extraordinary extremities of the earth, so rich in natural marvels, Herodotus pauses for a moment’s explicit reflection on the works of man. His reason for devoting so much time to the Samians is that, of all the Greeks, they have made the three greatest works of construction (3.60):41 I have written at such length about the Samians, because the three greatest works of all the Greeks were engineered by them. The first of these is the tunnel with a mouth at either end driven upwards through a mountain 150 fathoms high; the whole tunnel is seven furlongs long, eight feet high and eight feet wide; and throughout the whole of its length there runs a channel thirty feet deep and three feet wide, through which the water coming from an abundant spring is channelled through pipes to the city of Samos. The architect of this work was Eupalinus, son of Naustrophus, a Megarian.42 This is one of the three works; the second is a breakwater in the sea around the harbour, sunk twenty fathoms deep, and more than two furlongs in length.43 The third Samian work is the temple, which is the greatest of all the temples of which we know; its first architect was Rhoecus, son of Philes, a Samian. Herodotus’ celebration here of the wonderful and heroic achievements of man is more concerted and explicit than any of his passing comments about the marvels of nature, important though they are.44 (p.152) As we have seen in Chapter 2, Herodotus’ world is an inhabited world; empty space is of only passing interest, and this preoccupation is clearly reflected here. The focus on human skill and application is reinforced by the unusual amount of detail we are given about two of the architects. The naming of individuals in Herodotus is relatively rare beneath the level of political leaders, but here we have the relevant professionals for two of the projects, identified by not only their own names, but those of their fathers, and also their place of origin. The lack of such information for the middle project listed in a sense has the effect of guaranteeing the accuracy of the details when they are supplied. We might note in passing the fact that these wonderful human feats on Samos include projects which alter and divert the natural course of the landscape, such as digging through a mountain, and which might be seen as symptomatic of tyrannical or despotic behaviour. But, whereas I shall go on in Chapter 5 to argue that apparently similar projects are elsewhere cast in a negative light, here the productive and peaceful manipulation of nature,45 not at the edge of the earth, but right in the centre of the Aegean, merely reflects man’s cleverness and ingenuity.46 As we shall see, the additional nuance that may be brought to our interpretation by taking Page 12 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance focalization into account will enable us to discern more carefully elements of criticism (those of Herodotus or those expressed by characters in the work) from the great sense of admiration at the works of man.

(p.153) B) The Dimension of Time: Unlocking the Mythical Landscape The space of Herodotus’ world is enhanced and given resonance partly through the reactions of wonder and amazement that its natural and man-made features provoke in viewers, not least in the author himself. Through encouraging us to share his viewpoint and that of characters in the narrative, Herodotus simultaneously prompts the reader to share his emotional response, so that the physical world becomes much more than a neutral backdrop. But alongside the depth and meaning brought by the elements of awe and admiration, Herodotus’ world also becomes invested with significance and resonance through the dimension of time. Key here is the proposition that ‘landscape’ can refer both to a discrete physical entity, almost objective in its existence, and to a human ‘construction’ of space. Herodotus’ ‘geography’ encompasses not only the articulation of the former but the creation of the latter, which acts as a vehicle for exploring and expressing interpretative depth and complexity. The passage of time plays a central role in creating a landscape imbued with significance.47 While many periods of the past played their part in contributing layers to the resonant landscape, it is clear already from a consideration of Herodotus’ engagement with preceding geographical traditions that the place of Homer and the heroic age at the heart of the whole educational and cultural background was particularly powerful. A great deal of work has been done on the place of myth within Herodotus’ narrative,48 but here I shall focus specifically on myth as embedded in geographical space.49 It is worth noting that conceptual geography was not fossilized in the remote past, and seeing the landscape through the prism of myth highlights its constantly shifting nature, a geography which is evolving, growing in depth and resonance, ‘created’ in the sense of man-made, therefore contestable and contested, redefined and renegotiated. (p.154) Above all, geographical space and the narrative medium of myth mesh together to create links across time, across different key episodes which have taken place in the same location and have in turn each enriched that space and made it into a place, and across space given the dominance of travel in mythical tales. The progress of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece, marching through a heroic and mythologically charged landscape, illustrates the way in which later journeys not only evoke their own real-time landscape, their own geographical context in ways discussed in Chapter 2 above, but also unlock mythological geographies from the distant past.50 Thus the two time frames might be seen to share a geography, in which one may leap either directly or via stepping stones Page 13 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance across vast stretches of intervening history. Xerxes’ journey is made through a fifth-century world, through a landscape that belongs to the present; but as the troops pass through mythologically resonant locations, their journey unlocks a past geography. Their progress brings an apparently dormant landscape back to life, evoking key moments of its past and taking to a new level the notion that movement is a key element in generating landscape.51 We have already noted briefly in Chapter 3 the epic grandeur brought to Herodotus’ narrative by the Homeric context within which some key episodes take place, and, as ever, close examination reveals only greater complexity. The mention of the Iliadic river Scamander (7.43.1) and Xerxes’ excitement, or rather passion, to visit the site of Troy, linked explicitly to its famous Iliadic phase as Priam’s Pergamon, (ἐϛ τὸ Πριάμου Πέργαμον ἀνέβη ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσασθαι), might seem superficially to be major enhancements to the narrative. The appeal of myth and of Troy in particular to Xerxes and especially to his adviser Mardonius has been noted as a key part of the characterization of those players.52 When the Thebans (p.155) try to halt Mardonius’ progress towards Athens as likely to provoke impossible resistance, Mardonius is overwhelmed by the same passion as impelled Xerxes towards Troy (9.3.1: ἀλλά οἱ δεινὸϛ ἐνέστακτοἵμεροϛ τὰϛ Ἀθήναϛ ἑλεῖν), and the Trojan echo is reinforced by Mardonius’ wish to indicate to Xerxes his expected capture of the city by a chain of beacons across the islands, evocative of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.53 However, in spite of these impassioned attempts by Persians to appropriate the epic grandeur associated with Troy, the Trojan landscape witnesses the first of many setbacks offered by the forces of nature, as the river Scamander is the first to be unable to satisfy the needs of the army, and the troops are assailed for the first time of many by lightning and thunderbolts as they halt for the night under Mount Ida (7.42.2–43.1).54 To a degree, the heroes of the Trojan era articulate the journey onwards into Europe—Xerxes’ fleet sails out of the Hellespont and west to the Cape of Sarpedon (7.58.2). But Troy was not everything, even in the progress of ambitious Persian kings. The landscape of eastern Europe and down into Greece offers a non-Trojan mythical edge to Xerxes’ expedition. In the aftermath of the destruction of 400 Persian ships off the Magnesian coast near Cape Sepias, the Persians moor their remaining ships in a bay (7.193.2): where it is said that Heracles, at the start of the voyage of the Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece from Aea (Colchis), was put ashore by Jason and his companions to get water, and was left behind. The place gained the name of Aphetae, ‘putting forth’, because it was the intention of the Argonauts to set out from there after watering the ship.

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Depth and Resonance (p.156) Whereas the mythological connotations of the Troad might seem to lend an epic grandeur to the Persian expedition, here one of the Persians’ lowest moments sits in poignant contrast to their mythologically charged location, at the junction of two of the most iconic mythical journeys—those of Heracles and of the Argonauts. The Persian journey yet again unlocks the mythological past through the telling of the story that explains the place name. It is not just a static moment in space and time that is elicited here, but two further lines of travel, the journeys of the two respective heroes, which are evoked and start to generate a more complex spatial network to structure a wide geographical area. Thus, the chronological depth offered by the mythological resonances generates further geographical breadth. Furthermore, the triple coincidence of Xerxes’ fleet with the point at which the travels of Heracles and of the Argonauts had come together transforms an otherwise insignificant bit of space along the shore into a highly resonant ‘place’. The area is clearly rich in mythological resonance. Xerxes’ guides at Halos tell him about the local legend of the Laphystian Zeus, which involves an aetiology for the maltreatment of the descendants of Cytissorus and Phrixus, the latter having been saved from death by the former, who swooped in from Colchis for the purpose (7.197.1–3). From a geographical point of view, this apparently very local legend effortlessly evokes another more distant mythological venue and one which, as we have just seen, has its own notoriously itinerant associations. Thus, Xerxes’ progress yet again unlocks not just the mythological geography of the regions he travels through, but also the much broader spatial network of the associated narratives. The river Dryas in Thessaly adds a new dimension, being given an aetiology which relates back to the labours of Heracles, since the river arose in order to save the demigod from flames (as noted in Chapter 3). Xerxes and the Persians thus occupy a landscape that was not only passed through but actually generated by mythical heroes. As Bowie has acutely analysed, the focalization of some of the mythological content of Xerxes’ expedition offers the opportunity for authorial comment on its religious and moral quality, often to its discredit.55 The story of the flaying of Marsyas (7.26.3), situated at (p.157) the key geographical point of Celaenae in Phrygia, at the confluence of the Maeander and Cataractes, offers, as Bowie notes, a reminder of a hybristic man who was brutally punished,56 with clear warning signals for Xerxes himself. Time and again, the mythological episodes elicited by the unfolding narrative tell a tale of hybris and consequent divine displeasure. The Scamander (7.43.1) evokes Achilles’ violent arrogance; the headland of Sarpedon (7.58.2) is the location of Heracles’ destruction of a hybristic tyrant; the marsh of Stentor (7.58.3) too carries strong warning signals, commemorating, as it does, the Thracian who was killed when he challenged Hermes to a shouting competition. As Bowie rightly cautions, ‘One should, however, avoid seeing a simple correlation between supposed impiety on Xerxes’ part and Greek divinities’ displeasure,’ since Xerxes does pay his Page 15 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance respects to the gods.57 Nevertheless, the negative connotations of the mythic landscape in which he operates do generate ominous expectations. As the army progresses, it thus unlocks these mini-mythological narratives at key points along the way. In doing so it creates a multi-temporal narrative which flashes backwards and forwards between mythical times and the present day, making the landscape itself into the constant. Thus, the journeys and episodes of the distant past, which give resonance to various locations, combine with the power of later journeys, which ‘flick on the switches’ of historical and mythical narratives, linking past and present time through space, and adding still further moral depth and complexity to the world of Herodotus’ narrative.

C) Collapsing Spaces, Parallel Places As we have seen, time may be compressed by the direct evocation of a remote past through the presence of players of the Herodotean narrative. Perhaps most strikingly, the complete collapsing of time (p.158) across space from the mythical period to the present day is effected by the holy offerings sent by the Hyperboreans to Delos, in an identical and mimetic re-enactment of a journey undertaken in the mythological period.58 But space too may be collapsed, adding resonance and complexity of connotation. Again, the question is not just about the articulation of space, but the creation of place in the sense of meaningful space, imbued with resonance.59 In its most extreme form, the collapsing of space is played out in the form of historical synchronisms. Herodotus notes that, on the same day as disaster befell the Persians at Plataea, they suffered a coincident defeat at Mycale in Ionia (9.90.1). The effect of the synchronism is to press home the comprehensive collapse of Persian power in the face of Greek opposition. But Herodotus had already noted that the victory of the Greeks over the Persians at Salamis took place on the same day as that of the Sicilian leaders Gelon and Theron over Hamilcar of Carthage (7.166). Here too, the collapsing of space, or the enactment of similar events in different places, might encourage the reader to draw fairly straightforward parallels between, for example, two Greek victors over two ‘barbarian’ adversaries. No matter where one is in the Mediterranean, one story of Greek superiority applies.60 But Herodotus may also be inviting some more subtle reactions in his presentation of this synchronism. Since he goes on to offer a small thumbnail sketch of Hamilcar as a man who had been made king of Carthage for his courage (κατ ̓ ἀνδραγαθίην), the reader is enticed to speculate over whether there might be entertained some more positive judgements of the other barbarian adversary, the Persians themselves. Here, then, the collapsing of space may (p.159) allow Herodotus to add depth of interpretation that goes beyond a merely spatial aspect and enters the realms of moral judgement.

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Depth and Resonance On a broader scale, we have already seen in Chapter 2 parallels drawn between, for example, the Ister and Nile, as part of Herodotus’ attempt to map out the world and give a vivid and accurate sense of geographical space. The strategy of explanation which involves likening the unknown to the known is a common one.61 But parallels can be more than mere recognition of purely formal or coincidental similarities. Nevertheless, the process whereby spatial parallels become interpretatively ‘significant’ is a complex one, and it is difficult to distinguish, if indeed we should, between parallel geographies which are not obviously fulfilling any function beyond that of explaining or elucidating a spatial relationship and those which, perhaps even through simple juxtaposition, lend a certain resonance or depth of meaning.62 Here Dillery’s work on Herodotus’ representation of parallels not in space but in narrative episodes may be helpful, and reinforces Bowie’s comments on the effects of mythic content: If Herodotus tells us two remarkably similar stories that are widely separated by time and narrative space—indeed one that comes from what we may call the more legendary portion, and one from the more historical —does that mean he wants us to see the events as similar or even connected in some way?63 Munson is still more explicit about the impact of parallels, claiming that the repetition of similar events yields patterns which form cultural codes: ‘They now represent canonical terms for speaking about the Histories: the crossing of geographical boundaries for the purpose of conquest; the “rise and fall of the ruler”.’64 One might (p.160) apply similar questions and approaches when considering some of the spatial symmetries, parallels, and similarities which permeate Herodotus’ work. As in the discussion of man-made and natural wonders above (pp. 136–52), Book 2 and the description of Egypt again play a pivotal role here. We shall see in turn the ways in which Egypt is brought into play vis-à-vis other parts of the world— the river Ister, Babylon, and Persia. But it is worth noting first of all the paradoxical claim, in the light of the above, that Egypt is unique and unparalleled. It is the oddness of the Nile which makes it so difficult for Herodotus to fathom why it floods in summer and recedes in winter, since the Nile is ‘the opposite of every other river in the world’ (2.19.3). But standing in opposition at least brings the Nile into the same frame of reference as other rivers. The suggestion a few chapters later is that Egypt and the Nile are qualitatively different from other lands and rivers, even incomparable perhaps (2.35.2): Just as the Egyptians have a climate peculiar to themselves (τῷ οὐρανῷ… ἑτεροίῳ), and their river has a different nature from all other rivers (φύσιν ἀλλοίην παρεχομένῳ ἢ οἱ ἄλλοι ποταμοί), so, too, have they instituted

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Depth and Resonance customs and laws contrary for the most part to those of other people (τὰ πολλὰ πάντα ἔμπαλιν τοῖσι ἄλλοισι ἀνθρώποισι). But the uniqueness of Egypt sits oddly alongside the fact that, of the symmetries which help to structure Herodotus’ world, one of the most striking is the pairing of the rivers Nile and Ister as southern and northern equivalents.65 Here, the notion that the Nile is unique seems to be completely abandoned, since Herodotus’ speculation about that river is largely predicated on the assumption that it operates according to the same rules as the Ister.66 Conversely, as we have seen in Chapter 2, if the model for the effect of the sun is the Nile, that for the length of these two rivers is the Ister; the Nile’s length is assumed by Herodotus to be identical to that of the northern counterpart.67 (p.161) But, interestingly, the apparent symmetry between the Nile and Ister is thrown off balance. In his extensive survey of the rivers in Scythia, Herodotus claims that the Borysthenes is the most productive, not only of the Scythian rivers, but of all the others too except the Egyptian Nile (4.53.1). He goes on to reassert the unique nature of the latter: ‘one cannot compare any other river to the Nile’, but this is clearly belied by his own practice.68 Indeed, later in the same chapter, he brings the Nile and Borysthenes into parallel again and demonstrates their comparability: ‘only of this river [i.e. the Borysthenes] and the Nile can I not tell where the springs rise’. The sources of both the Nile and the Borysthenes are equally opaque. So, the Nile bears comparison with not only the Ister, of the great Scythian rivers, but also the Borysthenes. Conversely, just as more than one Scythian river can shed light on the Egyptian Nile, so too do the rivers of Scythia relate to more than just the Nile in Egypt. As Herodotus notes, the rivers of Scythia are as numerous as, not the rivers, but the canals of Egypt (4.47.1).69 What is the significance of the way in which Herodotus draws Egypt and Scythia into the same frame of reference?70 One could say that they act simply as representatives of two extremes of Herodotus’ (p.162) balanced world and that by bringing out the geographical parallels Herodotus simply reinforces this spatial configuration. But we have already seen earlier in this chapter (pp. 148– 9) that, in terms of explicit marvels, Egypt is rivalled by its still more remote southern neighbour of Ethiopia, and that Egypt, for all its importance, does not actually occupy the far-southern extremity of the world.71 Or one might wonder whether, nevertheless, the geographical similarity of Egypt and Scythia is reflected in other similarities (or oppositions) too; or, more resonantly, whether we should read the similarly harmonious relationship between each of these regions and their rivers as a deliberate characterization of two potential victims of Persian imperialism in contrast to the overbearing attitude of Persia towards the natural world, as we shall see in more detail later.72

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Depth and Resonance One set of correspondences which might reinforce the idea that the conceptual interplay between Egypt and Scythia is not just a reflection of an albeit imbalanced spatial relationship and might instead be a means of stressing the similarity between different targets of Persian domination is that between Egypt and Babylon.73 At first the parallels are implicit and can be drawn out only by the reader. In Book 1 we hear at some length of how the city of Babylon is dominated by its river, the Euphrates. Indeed, it is the river which defines both the shape of the city itself and its relationship to the wider region; it is the river to which the precise layout of the walls, streets, and houses are related (1.180): This, then, is how this wall of Babylon was built; the city is divided into two parts; for a river, called the Euphrates, divides it right down the middle, a wide, deep, and quick river, flowing from Armenia and out into the Red Sea. The angles of the wall, then, on either side are built right down to the river; here they turn, and from here a fence of baked (p.163) bricks stretches along each bank of the stream. The town itself is full of threeand four-storey houses; and the ways that cross it, those that run perpendicular towards the river and the rest, are all straight. Further, at the end of each road there were gates in the riverside fence, one gate for each alley; these gates also were of bronze, and these too opened onto the river. The impression that this is a city dominated by its river is built up only to be in a sense reversed a few chapters later, since here we discover that, although the Euphrates makes Babylon, in fact it is Babylon which has tamed the Euphrates. A sequence of Babylonian queens has worked on ensuring that the river works in the interests of the city. So, Semiramis built dykes to keep the Euphrates in check (1.184), in Herodotus’ view ‘a sight worth seeing’ (ἀξιοθέητα), which solved the long-term problem of flooding in the plain. Five generations later, another queen, Nitocris, undertook an elaborate range of water-management projects (1.185).74 She dug an elaborate system of canals above the city to make the river really crooked,75 as well as having a great reservoir, fifty-two miles in circumference, excavated and using the earth to build an embankment along the river. This is described by Herodotus as worthy for its scale and height of not just seeing but wonder (1.185.3: ἄξιον θώματος). When evaluating man’s ingenious interventions in the natural world, this contributes still further to the stock of instances in which authorial admiration is clear. Although Herodotus does not offer a direct evaluation of the projects, his opinion of the Babylonian Nitocris herself is undeniably positive. She is introduced as being ‘clever’, indeed cleverer than Semiramis (1.185.1: συνετωτέρη).76 Furthermore, Nitocris’ draining of the (p.164) river in order to build a bridge from one part of Babylon to the other, before diverting the river back into its original course (1.186), is a carefully planned manipulation of the river presented as being clearly in the interests of the citizens: the previous Page 19 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance situation is described as ‘annoying’ (1.186.1: ὀχληρός) and the bridge is set up explicitly ‘for the citizens’ (1.186.4: τοῖσι πολιήτῃσι). Herodotus states explicitly that this work by Nitocris was done to lessen the current of the river and generally to slow the approach to the city from the direction of Media for defensive purposes (1.185.1).77 This might suggest a Herodotean presentation of victims of the Medes and Persians as being in productive alliance with nature in the face of Persia’s aggressive abuses. One could, however, alternatively see the whole set of projects as simply illustrative of the Babylonian queens’ positive and creative relationship with the landscape, here played out through an elaborate irrigation system.78 It is indeed the effective irrigation of the land that draws Babylonia and Egypt into such close correspondence. This is played out in both the historical past and the contemporary world. Herodotus’ account of present-day Babylonia comments that, although the land is extremely dry, its effective irrigation by hand and through canals makes it hugely fertile (1.193.1–2). The whole of Babylonia is divided up by canals, with the largest being navigable and running from the Euphrates to the Tigris alongside the site of Nineveh. Here we have a direct link back to the world of Semiramis and Nitocris, and their ingenious solutions to controlling and exploiting the great river that flowed through the centre of their city. It is at this point that Herodotus anticipates the inevitable comparison between the Babylonian Euphrates and the Egyptian Nile, (p.165) typically by a caution against drawing parallels too easily. For, while both regions are excellently irrigated, in Babylonia this is achieved through a system of canals, whereas in Egypt it is managed by utilizing the river (1.193.1).79 As so often, Herodotus is here too rather more precise about the correspondences than his broad largescale geography might lead one to think. But the general similarity between two regions which productively exploit their great rivers in a controlled and controlling way is obvious, and the closeness in overall pattern between Babylon and Egypt holds true.80 The possibility that Herodotus may be deliberately distorting his description of Babylon in order to align it with Egypt suggests a much more inventive reading of an account which is often criticized for its many inaccuracies.81 As in the case of correspondences between Cheops’ pyramidbuilding and the tomb of Alyattes discussed above (pp. 143–6), the question arises as to whether this manipulation of rivers is to be seen as an activity characteristic of tyrannical figures in general, whether it is always correspondingly negative, or whether it is subject to more nuanced modulations in Herodotus’ narrative. The morality of man’s interaction with the landscape will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 5, but it is worth noting already that this may throw off balance previously clear-seeming parallels. While Babylon and Egypt seem initially in quite close parallel, the issue of river diversion illustrates how the interpretation Page 20 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance of behaviour may complicate the picture. Min, the first king of Egypt, dammed off Memphis from the Nile (2.99.2–4). The whole river flowed by the sandy mountain towards Libya, but Min dammed up the southern bend, around one hundred furlongs south of Memphis, dried up the ancient riverbed, and channelled the river through the middle of the mountains.82 Min made the cutoff part into dry land and built Memphis there. Outside it, he dug a lake from the river to the north (p.166) and west. Herodotus interestingly introduces the tale with the note that what follows will be the account of the Egyptians, but that he will supplement what he himself has seen (2.99.1). Two sets of eyes, then, through which to view Min’s changes to the landscape, but no indication of Herodotus’ expressed opinion. Perhaps a grimmer precedent for river diversion in Egypt is that performed by Queen Nitocris. Here an onomastic coincidence between an Egyptian queen and a Babylonian princess brings Egypt and Babylon into direct relation to each other,83 and the ensuing anecdote reinforces the sense of parallel. The brother of Nitocris, who had been king of Egypt before her, was killed by the Egyptians. According to Herodotus’ sources, Nitocris avenged her brother’s death by building an underground chamber and inviting the Egyptians responsible for his murder there, before turning the river in on them through a secret channel: a very clever, but chillingly destructive use to which to put a diverted river (2.100.3). The story ends badly for all concerned, since Nitocris was said to have thrown herself into a chamber of hot ashes to escape vengeance (2.100.4). But yet again, Herodotus’ own voice does not emerge at any point in this story to endorse or comment on what his sources have told him. This anecdote is morally ambiguous to say the least, since the murderers might have been justly punished, but one could hardly say that a mass drowning was a productive use to which to put the Nile. But gauging an authorial response to this example of ‘despotic’ manipulation of the landscape is yet again harder than might first appear. Are we to contrast the two rulers called Nitocris, or to see them as similarly controlling? Is there anything inherently wrong with the diversion of these rivers, or does the interpretation of these actions rest on intention and context? Links between different parts of Herodotus’ world operate on many levels. As we have seen, some connections between, for example, the Nile and the Ister appear to be purely formal or spatial. But at another level we might, as knowing readers, automatically draw connections between different opponents of the same Persian adversary. If we thought that the correspondences between Egypt and Babylon were looking strong, we should note that, when Herodotus does finally draw an explicit comparison between an Egyptian and a (p.167) middleeastern lake, it is not Nitocris’ Babylonian lake he has in mind, but the one dug outside the Assyrian city of Nineveh by thieves wanting to enter the royal palace (2.150.3–4). Now it is the river Tigris, rather than the Euphrates, which corresponds to the Nile.

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Depth and Resonance Conversely, while Egypt may seem to correspond to other victims of Persia, as seen earlier in this section (pp. 161–2), on a number of occasions the Egyptians resemble the Persians themselves, not least in their parallel diversion of the Euphrates. King Sesostris, for example, left as memorials in front of the magnificent temple of Hephaestus huge statues of himself and his wife. Long afterwards, Darius of Persia wanted his statue placed in front of them, but Herodotus notes that this was not allowed because Sesostris had conquered the Scythians, whereas Darius had not (2.110). Here, then, far from being allied with Persia’s victims, Egypt turns out to have the capacity to out-Persia the Persians. Only a chapter later, the Egyptian kings are again setting models for later Persians to follow. Pheros, king of Egypt, the son of Sesostris, foreshadows much behaviour that will come to seem in Herodotus’ narrative characteristically Persian, but should perhaps rather be seen as more generally the behaviour of tyrants. His anger at the Nile’s flooding drives him to hurl his spear into the water in another physical and symbolic act of punishment (2.111.2). He was immediately struck by a blinding eye disease because of this action (2.111.2).84 The similarity between this behaviour and that of, say, Xerxes hurling his spear into another bit of water that needed to be tamed, the Hellespont, is undeniable; nature’s reaction against violent despots is equally formulaic.85 Anger lies behind all of these actions—Xerxes is furious (7.35.1: δεινὰ ποιεύμενος), so too is Cyrus in his episode with the Gyndes (1.189.2: κάρτα…ἐχαλέπαινε τῷ ποταμῷ), and Pheros is enraged (2.111.2: ἀτασθαλίῃ χρησάμενον). These are not calculated responses, but irrational reactions. This is a world of despotic subjugation of nature and of people; a world characterized by arrogant selfconfidence. But Herodotus presents the Pheros episode (p.168) in indirect statement, not necessarily endorsing its negative language in his own voice. As we shall see in Chapter 5, the landscape of moral judgement in Herodotus’ narrative is highly complex. A third instance in which an Egyptian king provides the model for a Persian imitator involves yet another manipulation of a landscape. Necos, the son of Psammetichus, was the first person to try to dig a canal into the Red Sea; the project, we are told, was completed by Darius, the king of Persia (2.158).86 However much Necos may try to dissociate himself in advance from his Persian continuator, by heeding the prophecy which warned him that he was simply doing the laborious preparation for a barbarian and ceasing work, nevertheless the two are yoked as workmates by Herodotus. Clearly Egypt and Persia bear certain resemblances to each other which both recognize, and which we too as readers are encouraged by Herodotus to pick up. Although I shall be arguing in Part IV for a re-establishment of some delimitations between Persians and others in a Herodotean world which can all too easily be blurred into one, nevertheless the neat characterization of Egyptians alongside the other ‘victims’ seems increasingly questionable. Persians seem to have adopted some of their bad habits, from the bottom end of the market of Egyptian rulers. The idea that the manipulation, exploitation, and Page 22 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance creation of natural landscapes is predominantly an activity associated with despotic power, including the generally benign rulers of Babylon as well as the Greek tyrant Polycrates, rather than specifically with Persian power, seems attractive. But the moral judgement of these manifestations of despotism appears less clear-cut when we take into account issues of focalization.87 It is not clear that the manipulation of nature is a bad thing per se in Herodotus’ own eyes, even if it is largely associated with despotic rulers, and this is indeed compatible with what we have already seen of his wonder and admiration at man’s inventive, productive, and often impressive relationships with the landscape. On the other hand, as we shall see, in spite of Darius’ inability to emulate Sesostris with full success, the sequence of Persian kings, ending with Xerxes, will eventually outdo (p.169) anything that the Egyptians had managed in terms of waging war on nature. The oddly contradictory nature of the relationship between Egypt and Persia emerges with startling economy at the opening of Book 3, once the two players have been introduced separately in the first two books. Herodotus here notes first the adversarial relationship, starting Book 3 with the statement that Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, made war on Amasis of Egypt (3.1.1); but he goes on immediately (3.2.2) to imply also the similarity between the two peoples, since ‘no one understands Persian customs better than the Egyptians’.88 Egypt, perhaps more obviously than any other region in the narrative, is both like and unlike its aggressor.89 Collapsing geographical space may have serious consequences, as in the case of Cambyses’ dream, which tells him that he will die in Ecbatana, but fails to specify which city of this name, leading Cambyses to make the wrong assumption that the dream refers to Ecbatana in Syria rather than that in Media (3.64.4).90 Most of the time, geographical elision is of less consequence to players in the narrative. It does, however, act as mechanism for Herodotus to intimate behavioural similarities and moral judgements to the reader. So, it is now to the moral landscape of Herodotus’ narrative that we turn in more detail. (p.170) Notes:

(1) 1.202.1–2. For Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, the comparison of river islands with Lesbos is an example of the magnification of the ‘far-off’ (49). (2) 7.6.3: ὡς αἱ ἐπὶ Λήμνῳ ἐπικείμεναι νῆσοι ἀφανιζοίατο κατὰ τῆς θαλάσσης. Sinking islands may arouse our interest from a geographical point of view, but it seems clear that the unfortunate consequence of exile from Athens which resulted from this prophecy was less to do with a sensitivity to the dispositions of nature and more a religious objection to Onomacritus having been caught in the act of interpolating that prophecy into the writings of Musaeus.

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Depth and Resonance (3) For Herodotus’ own ‘rhetoric of wonder’ and its later reception, see the excellent chapter by Priestley, Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture, 51–108. (4) Lloyd, ‘Herodotus on Egypt and Ethiopia’, 43, sees the marvellous nature of Egypt as the defining feature of the land: ‘A dominant concern directing his attention is the perception that Egypt was a land replete with marvels, in particular marvels which excited admiration for their sheer size.’ (5) 2.41.4–6: Cows are not buried here, but thrown directly into the river. These customs derive from the fact that cattle are sacred to Isis and so not sacrificed, but allowed to die a natural death. (6) 2.138.1. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. note that the enveloping of the temple on three sides was a common element in the shrines of Egyptian goddesses. On river islands, see Ceccarelli, ‘De la Sardaigne à Naxos’, stressing the important link of islands to their respective mainlands, making them not purely maritime entities. (7) Here, as at 2.140, this marvel is produced in indirect statement (dependent on ἔλεγον). Does this suggest that it stretches Herodotus’ credibility beyond breaking point, or is it simply that he cannot have any means to verify the tale? (8) These flying snakes are given a further and more extensive place in the narrative with the detailed description of them in 3.107–9 as guardians of frankincense trees. (9) But note that Herodotus presents the actual explanation for the piles of corpses as a λόγοϛ, rather than something he can vouch for himself. Here, we see a careful distinction made between different levels of verification. Herodotus the travelling historian has seen the evidence of dead snakes himself, but their explanation is something he cannot vouch for. The switch from internal to external focalization marks the decreasing level of verification. (10) Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 142, notes that this Darwinian theory draws on and engages with Presocratic and medical writing of the kind in which Herodotus himself was immersed. (11) See the excellent chapter by Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 102–34, on the relationship between environmental determinism and nomos. She (at 112) sees 2.35.2 as a rather crude and loosely argued suggestion of the connection between customs and place, and out of line with the more typically sophisticated relationships between behaviour, environment, and human intervention. (12) See Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 58, for Herodotus’ creation of a hierarchy of man-made wonders.

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Depth and Resonance (13) The fact that this passage is presented in Herodotus’ own voice and expresses his own wonder through an internally focalized viewpoint is important. I shall return to the fine line between man’s miraculous achievements and his abusive manipulation of the natural world later, where again the question of focalization facilitates a more nuanced reading. (14) As is noted by West, ‘Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus’, 158, the passage clearly echoes Hecataeus (FGrH 1 F305), raising the wider question of how much direct use Herodotus made of his predecessor. See comments in Chapter 1 on Herodotus’ interaction with Hecataeus. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. suggest that Chemmis was mistakenly identified as a floating island in the Greek tradition by confusion with the floating island of Ortygia/Delos on which Leto was believed to have given birth to Artemis and Apollo. In fact, this need not be a misidentification, since floating islands were a common feature of ancient conceptual geography, as noted by Nishimura-Jensen, ‘Unstable Geographies’. (15) The rank order is interesting and revealing. Herodotus in propria persona is very clear on the superiority of the man-made shrine: ‘the shrine was the most amazing of the things visible to me (μὲν…τῶν φανερῶν μοι) around this temple, but of things that came in second place (τῶν δὲ δευτέρων), it was the island called Chemmis’ (2.156.1). (16) One cautionary note may be raised by the fact that the tale is given in indirect speech. Maybe Herodotus wishes to distance himself from such an account. (17) At 1.93.1, Herodotus comments that Lydia is sparse in wonders compared with other lands. (18) The Greek is admittedly ambiguous over whether the fact that the tomb of Alyattes is by far the greatest of all man-made wonders (ἓν δὲ ἔργον πολλὸν μέγιστον παρέχεται) in itself makes it superior to the gold dust which is one of the few natural wonders (θώματα) in Lydia. (19) The lake ‘lies next to’ (ἔχεται) the man-made temple. (20) I thank Stephanie West for pointing out to me Herodotus’ enthusiasm for another tomb, the Scythian royal burial mound (4.71.5), with Rolle, The World of the Scythians, 19–36, on ‘the pyramids of the steppe’. (21) The construction of Alyattes’ tomb by prostitutes clearly struck Strabo (13.4.7) as interesting. He refers directly to Herodotus on the subject and notes that some call the tomb a ‘monument of prostitution’ (πόρνηϛ μνῆμα).

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Depth and Resonance (22) For the link between pyramids and prostitutes, see further 2.134.1–2 and the story of Rhodopis. Herodotus rejects the possibility that a prostitute could have been wealthy enough to construct such an edifice, but Pliny, Natural History 36.82, believes it. Thanks are owed to Rhiannon Ash for this parallel. It is interesting that Herodotus distances himself also from the negative connotations of the pyramid constructed through the prostitution of Cheops’ daughter, all of which is reported in indirect speech with an external focalization. (23) Interestingly here, Herodotus maintains his authoritative voice. If the radishes, onions, and garlic cost so much, then how much more was spent on iron, food, and clothing considering the time spent on the project. This is Herodotus’ own contribution to estimating the overall cost, based on reasoned hypothesis (οἰκὸς…ἐστὶ) and supposition (ὡς ἐγὼ δοκέω) (2.125.7). (24) The passage echoes Herodotus’ interest in the road built in order to provide access to the pyramid construction site. He goes into some detail on the dimensions and decoration of the road ‘standing nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and all of stone polished and carved with figures’ (2.124.4). (25) See Pliny, Natural History 36.81 for a similar fascination with the details of construction techniques. (26) Baragwanath, ‘Characterization in Herodotus’, 33–4, offers a helpful case study on the relationship between building projects and characterization in Herodotus focused on Amasis of Egypt. (27) Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 103. (28) See Gray, ‘Herodotus on Melampus’, 181, for the view that Herodotus saw his work as expressing the ‘struggle between enslaving tyranny and liberating republicanism’. This seems to me too stark a characterization of the work, but despotism and freedom clearly offer one structural opposition. (29) Here, the contrast is between exoticism in the extremities and moderation in the centre. Rood, ‘Herodotus and Foreign Lands’, 296, adds an interesting angle to this contrast, with his observation that Herodotean marvels tend to focus on forms which are specifically non-Greek, that is, great rivers and large man-made structures. (30) This is confirmed at 3.98.2, where Herodotus notes that the Indians are the farthest east of all the peoples known about, and that everything to the east of India is just sandy desert. (31) Again, Greece is the point of comparison, suggesting a certain conceptual centrality, or privileged viewpoint from which the world is calibrated.

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Depth and Resonance (32) The comment clearly connects India’s proximity to the sun’s place of rising and distance from its setting to the relative temperature at different times of day. (33) Although the account of cinnamon collection is that given to Herodotus by the Arabians, the expression of wonder is in his own voice, as is that concerning the ladanum. (34) Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 1, notes that Ethiopia was commonly seen as an appendage to Egypt: ‘Most Greek accounts of Nubia took the form of appendices to digressions on Egypt.’ (35) Whether this assessment belongs to Herodotus or to Darius or to both is left unclear. See Christ, ‘Herodotean Kings and Historical Inquiry’, 178–9, for similar blurring between the focalizations of Herodotus and that of Darius and subsequently Xerxes at the river Tearus and at the Peneus, respectively. (36) 4.86.4: ὁ μέν νυν Πόντοϛ καὶ Βόσπορόϛ τε καὶ Ἑλλήσποντοϛ οὕτω τέ μοι μεμετρέαται. (37) Here, Herodotus’ own fascination with numbers is filtered through Darius’ eyes, as the scale of his expeditionary force is detailed as 700, 000 men and 600 ships. See Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, for Darius’ own obsession with enumeration as a form of control. Thus, character and author are yet again temporarily brought into alignment. (38) See Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History’, 208, for the consequent failure of Darius to capture the present as a record for the future as he intended. The notion of failed commemoration is developed more fully in Grethlein, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography. (39) Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 4.88, note that Herodotus would have been able to see the painting in the Heraion at Samos, and probably drew inspiration from it for his similar depiction of Xerxes at 7.44. See also West, ‘“Every Picture Tells a Story”’, arguing for Herodotus’ use of Mandrocles’ picture as the basis for his description of Xerxes’ forces at Doriscus. (40) See Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History’, stressing the parallel scenes at the Bosporus and Abydos as opportunities for Herodotus to indicate his superiority as a historian over the Persian kings who try unsuccessfully to capture the present as though it were the past. See also the comments of de Bakker, ‘An Uneasy Smile’, 97–8, on how the privileged vantage points adopted by Xerxes at Abydos, Thermopylae, or Salamis, do not result in his acquiring knowledge superior to that of the historian.

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Depth and Resonance (41) Note, however, the argument proposed by Irwin, ‘Herodotus and Samos’, that Herodotus deliberately draws attention to his digression on Samos, which is not unduly lengthy, in order to cast doubt on the success of Athens, another tyrant city with a magnificent building programme, through implicit comparison; or that of Harvey, ‘Herodotus Becomes Interested in History’, suggesting that Herodotus’ interest in Samos came as a result of time spent there in exile from Halicarnassus, according to the Suda. (42) On this magnificent feat of engineering, see Kienast, Die Wasserleitung des Eupalinos auf Samos. (43) As Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.97, notes, the likelihood that Xerxes, even with all the skill of Persian engineers at his disposal, could have constructed a mole across the channel between Salamis and the mainland that was even larger than the one on Samos is extremely small. (44) Herodotus’ extensive treatment of the Nile might seem to offer an important counterexample, but such passages do not alter the fact that, in the main historical narrative, man’s achievements seem to take on a special status. (45) Nevertheless, the emphasis of Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia, in her thought-provoking chapter on Samos, in my view overplays the Samian projects as reflective of a particularly close bond between the landscape and inhabitants. See p. 98, referring to Herodotus 3.60 with the comment that the Samians were not only focused on the land, ‘but also sought to shape both themselves to it and it to themselves’; or p. 100: ‘By choosing to construct the tunnel, the Samians were moulding the very earth to suit their purposes, creating the physical land of their island through engineering, just as Asius created the mythic land through Samos’ genealogy.’ (46) See, however, Armstrong, ‘Against Nature’, for an exploration of the tension between admiration and disapproval at man’s control over nature. At 75: ‘to produce a marvellous object…is at once an admirable achievement and an exhibition of hubris’. Although Armstrong’s focus is on the Augustan period, much of her analysis is equally applicable to Herodotus’ own narrative, in which, as we shall see, controlling nature may be interpreted as a noteworthy achievement and as an act of transgression. Further weight to this connection between marvellous and notorious accomplishments in the preservation of kleos and megala erga is added by Bakker, ‘The Making of History’. (47) See Clarke, Between Geography and History, especially 245–93. Strabo Geography 8.3.3 explains how the distant, mythical past in particular is embedded in the mental geography of any reader through the Homeric focus in education. Rood, ‘Mapping Spatial and Temporal Distance in Herodotus and

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Depth and Resonance Thucydides’, offers a helpful analysis of the space-time interplay in historiographical texts. (48) See the excellent volume edited by Baragwanath and de Bakker (eds.), Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus. (49) For a fuller treatment, see Clarke, ‘Walking through History’. (50) But see de Jong, ‘The Anachronical Structure of Herodotus’ Histories’, for Xerxes’ expedition as deliberately evocative of not just the mythical period but also other historical episodes, through a complex knot of analepses and prolepses (7.5–19), which render the expedition anachronical. Grethlein, The Greeks and their Past, 203–4, describes this as a panopticon in which Homeric, Persian, and recent conflicts all shed light on each other. (51) Discussed in Chapter 2. See also Pelling and Barker, ‘Space-Travelling in Herodotus Book 5’, and Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape. (52) See Baragwanath, ‘Returning to Troy’, 299, noting that Mardonius does indeed enjoy a heroic end at Plataea in accordance with his style. Grethlein, The Greeks and their Past, 171, points out that juxtapositions of the Persian Wars and Trojan War (1.5; 7.43; 9.116.1–3) tend to be made by Persians in the narrative. (53) As Baragwanath, ‘Returning to Troy’, notes at 308, this clearly ties in with Mardonius’ wider vision of the campaign against Greece as retributive, a theme to which we shall return in Chapter 7. (54) Perhaps analogous to the unsatisfactory association with the mythical age here is the analysis by Munson, ‘Herodotus and the Heroic Age’, in which she argues that the historical Samian tyrant Polycrates offers a more useful paradigm for present realities than does the mythical tyrant Minos. As she notes at 212, the obvious parallel is the point in the Proem that Croesus offers a better-documented antecedent of recent events than does the Trojan War. Myth, then, does not always enhance the narrative with greater interpretative depth and insight. See also Saïd, ‘Herodotus and the “Myth” of the Trojan War’, who argues that, in spite of attempts by both Greeks (9.26–7) and Persians (as here) to appropriate the Trojan heritage, Herodotus tends to endorse this in the case of the former and not of the latter (96). (55) This sense of Herodotus deliberately using mythical associations as an interpretative tool pulls against the proposition of Haubold, ‘Xerxes’ Homer’, that Xerxes and the Persians themselves creatively rewrite and exploit Homeric resonances no less than do the Greeks. The weakness in Haubold’s argument, in my view, lies in the difficulty of identifying a Persian voice in this text which is not shaped by Herodotus’ own concerns. Page 29 of 34

 

Depth and Resonance (56) Bowie, ‘Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes’, 273–6. (57) Bowie, ‘Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes’, 278, pointing to examples of Xerxes’ piety. (58) 4.33. See in Chapter 2 above, and Kowalzig, Singing for the Gods, 56–80, for excellent discussion of a close parallel in the form of the Deliades, re-enacting mythical accounts of the birth of Apollo and Artemis. As Kowalzig notes (67), the Deliades simultaneously perform in two time spheres as both narrators of and actors in the story, performing in ritual what they are narrating in myth. ‘In this double role, the chorus of Δαλίων θύγατρεϛ bridges the time gap, linking the mythical past to the present ritual.’ Kowalzig notes (122) a significant overlap between these Deliades and the Hyperborean girls, ‘suggesting an intriguing link between the different sets of mythical worshippers’. (59) On the relationship between space and place, see Clarke, Between Geography and History, 17, 28–9, with bibliography. Also Gilhuly and Worman, ‘Introduction’, 6–7. (60) The sense that the same story is being constantly retold is reinforced in the account of the battles of Artemisium and Thermopylae, sea and land battles not only taking place at the same time, but also being enacted within the same spatial context of a narrow channel. (61) Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, draws heavily on parallels as an interpretative tool for understanding the Herodotean narrative, especially in Chapters 4 and 5. (62) See, for example, Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 106, for the contention that the symmetry between Scythia and Egypt is motivated for Herodotus not by a profound interest in cultural comparison, but purely to reveal and illustrate the ordered structure of the inhabited world. (63) Dillery, ‘Reconfiguring the Past’, 217. (64) Munson, Telling Wonders, 48. See also Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 60, for the idea that the wealth of comparisons in Herodotus means that ‘it is possible to recognize uniformities of structure, of function, and of process that make comparison and translation possible’. (65) Indeed, Fehling, ‘The Art of Herodotus and the Margins of the World’, 12, goes further, arguing that a sense of symmetry was responsible for much of his so-called information about the margins of the world. (66) 2.26.2: ‘I think (ἔλπομαι) that in crossing the whole of Europe it would have the same effect on the Ister as it now does on the Nile.’

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Depth and Resonance (67) 2.33.2–34. In fact, Herodotus’ own suppositions here (‘I deduce (συμβάλλομαι), reasoning about unknown things from visible signs, that the Nile rises proportionately away as far away as does the Ister’ and ‘I suppose (δοκέω) the course of the Nile as it flows through Libya to be the same as that of the Ister’) are introduced in the context of a complex layering of stories. Herodotus’ informants from Cyrene had told him of a meeting with King Etearchus of the Ammonians, who had been visited by Nasamonians after an expedition to discover the source of the Nile. It is Etearchus’ ‘deduction’ (συνεβάλλετο), about the identity of a river flowing far to the south that Herodotus claims to be supporting by ‘reason’ (λόγοϛ), although the same language of deduction is used of them both, raising questions over quite how different their argumentative processes are. (68) Even the rivers of Greece, which are often contrasted with the vast watercourses of Asia and Egypt, bear some points of similarity. Immediately after claiming yet again the incomparability of the Nile, Herodotus goes on to note the considerable effects (through silting) of much smaller rivers, such as the river Achelous, ‘which, flowing through Acarnania and out into the sea, has already made half the Echinades Islands mainland’ (2.10.3). (69) See Harrison, ‘Upside Down and Back to Front’, 152, for the way in which apparently schematic polarities such as this comparison between Scythian and Egyptian waterways are often set off-centre. Also Lachenaud, ‘Connaissance du monde et représentations de l’espace dans Hérodote’, 48, and Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 107, for the unity brought to Egypt by the Nile, as opposed to the diversity of Scythia. (70) On this, see West, ‘Herodotus and Scythia’, 83–5, noting the significantly more unsystematic nature of the Scythian account than that of Egypt. Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, adds an interesting twist by arguing that Darius’ use of the knotted string (4.98) to measure out his time in Scythia involves a misapplication of an Egyptian system of control over land, the schoenus, to the quite different land of Scythia, which is the meandering, untamed, asymmetrical opposite of Egypt’s geometry and reason. (71) On the double symmetry between Scythia and Egypt (ethnographically) and Scythia and Libya (scientifically), see Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 56, 78. Thomas sees Herodotus’ focus as lying more on the latter opposition, as reflecting current debates (70). (72) One of the major contributions of Payen, Les Îles nomades, is to stress this opposition of conqueror vs conquered over Greek vs barbarbian, which renders the ethnographical ‘digressions’ more integral to the historical narrative.

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Depth and Resonance (73) See Kuhrt, ‘Babylon’, for the argument that Herodotus’ Babylon bears only superficial similarities to the picture gained from other literary and archaeological evidence. This level of stylization might support the view that Herodotus is ‘using’ Babylon in the service of larger conceptual or narrative frameworks. For a very full exposition of this argument, see Rollinger, Herodots Babylonischer Logos. (74) But see Dillery, ‘Darius and the Tomb of Nitocris’, who casts doubt on the historicity of the Nitocris episode. He finds the correspondences with Semiramis, recurring narrative motifs, and other folklore elements suspicious, particularly in the episode of Nitocris’ tomb, but also in the duplication of Semiramis’ engineering works. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 1.185, cast doubt on the identification of Nitocris, whose name appears nowhere in Oriental texts as queen or wife of any AssyroBabylonian king. (75) The effect was to make those who approached Babylon by this route pass through the Assyrian village of Ardericca three times! (76) Or does the middle προεφυλάξατο ὅσα ἐδύνατο μάλιστα at 1.185.1 imply that the work was done only in her own self-interest? The fact that she is described as having taken measures not only due to the greatness and restlessness of Media, but also in response to the fall of Ninos and other cities, suggests that her concern might be for the entirety of Babylon rather than just her own supremacy. See Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 62–4, for Herodotus’ positive presentation of Nitocris. (77) As Haubold, Greece and Mesopotamia, 94, points out, Herodotus’ presentation of Babylon as an impressive, but passive and isolationist city contrasts markedly with other literary presentations, such as those found in Ctesias and Mesopotamian texts, for whom Babylon was a dominant force. (78) Whether it is significant that these productive works in collaboration with nature are carried out by women rather than men is hard to tell. As Gray, ‘Herodotus and the Rhetoric of Otherness’, 194, notes, many of Herodotus’ women are intelligent and ingenious, but they represent simultaneously a manifestation of ‘otherness’ and alienness (200), which complicates the interpretation. Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.68, notes that women who rule in their own right, as opposed to holding sway as consorts or princesses, are rare in the ancient Near East, in spite of the impression gained from figures like Semiramis, herself never the actual ruler of Assyria. (79) Though, note 2.108, where Herodotus comments on the vast network of canals dug by Sesostris in order to provide drinking water for those who do not live by the Nile.

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Depth and Resonance (80) See Kuhrt, ‘Babylon’, 482, for the suggestion that Babylon foreshadows ‘the other, much more elaborately depicted, exemplar of “softness”, Egypt’. Or Rollinger, Herodots Babylonischer Logos, 182, for the idea of Babylon as ‘a little brother of Egypt’ (‘ein kleiner Bruder Ägyptens’). (81) See the review of Rollinger by Kuhrt, 109. (82) Even now, the bend was maintained by the Persians and barriers built up again to ensure that Memphis could not be flooded. As in the case of Babylon, the effects of ancient engineering works are still felt in Herodotus’ own times. (83) 2.100.1–2. Herodotus notes that, of 330 rulers in the Egyptian king list, eighteen were Ethiopian men and one an Egyptian woman called Nitocris, with ‘the same name as Nitocris of Babylon’. (84) Pheros was cured after ten years by following the advice of an oracle from Buto, which told him to wash his eyes with the urine from a woman who had never had sex with anyone but her husband. All those who failed to cure him, including his own wife (!), he had burned; the successful woman he married (2.111.2–4). (85) See Lateiner, ‘Non-Verbal Communication in the Histories of Herodotus’, 93, for the further observation that autocratic gestures not only reach a nadir with these acts of spear-throwing, but also transgress the nomoi of the leaders in question which explicitly hold water in reverence. (86) As in the construction of Cheops’ pyramid, the human cost is huge—120,000 men were lost. (87) For arguments against the notion of the ‘stock’ tyrant in Herodotus, but rather a stress on the more nuanced presentation of individual rulers, see Dewald, ‘Form and Content’. (88) One might recall here 1.135, the section on Persian customs, where Herodotus notes that the Persians are more open to foreign customs than are any other people. The influences are here flowing in the opposite direction, but with the same effect of erasing some of the differences between Persia and her intended imperial victims. (89) Indeed, as highlighted by Lloyd, ‘Egypt’, 417, the incorporation of Egypt into the Persian Empire made it not only a fellow victim of Persia, but also one of the forces ranged against the Greeks. (90) See Chapter 6 for a more detailed discussion of the human misinterpretation of divine signs. The specific question of geographical error, confusion, and even deliberate deception is one which would repay further study.

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Depth and Resonance

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Geographical Morality

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Geographical Morality Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Here, the depth imbued in Herodotus’ landscape is enhanced by the element of human intervention, which lends a moral aspect. Characters in the narrative, particularly the holders of despotic power engaging in monumental projects, are seen to manipulate the natural world in ways that can be viewed positively or negatively. This chapter explores this apparent contradiction in terms of context, contrast, and varied focalizations, which combine to encourage the reader to see similar actions in different lights. Close attention is paid to the ‘voice’ in which judgements are cast, resulting in a subtle interpretative framework. The division between water and land is explored as particularly fertile ground for exploring human interaction with the landscape in Herodotus’ narrative. The crossing of continental divisions introduces the relationship between individual projects and wider imperial aims, and the sequence of transgressive river crossings is explored as precursor to Persia’s campaigns against Greece. Keywords:   moral aspect, monumental project, landscape, despotic, continental division

We observed in Chapter 4 that man’s intervention in the landscape could be collaborative as well as exploitative, positive as well as negative. I should now like to explore in more detail the way in which Herodotus builds up a ‘moral landscape’ or a ‘geographical morality’.1 The element of human interaction adds another dimension to the meaning imparted to space in Herodotus’ work and, furthermore, opens up the possibility that he might use the morally charged interaction with natural features to characterize the players in his narrative.2 We have been gradually moving away from a consideration of Herodotus’ conception and articulation of physical space towards an examination of how man interacts Page 1 of 45

 

Geographical Morality with that space, as we move from landscape as physical reality towards landscape as constructed reality. In terms of the two primary perspectives we have noted, that of the external observer with the bird’s-eye view and that of the internal participant in events and in the experienced world, we are approximating to the latter. First, the external viewer and articulator of geographical space, then, the generator of a resonant landscape, Herodotus will now thirdly be studied as the creator of a narrative in which characters are seen to interact with this resonant landscape, altering and shaping the physical environment rather than viewing it from a distance. The question then arises of what kind of moral values are attached to man’s manipulation of his surroundings. (p.172) Are there good and bad ways to intervene in nature? Throughout, the issue of focalization remains key. Both viewpoint and perspective are relevant here. Through whose eyes various transformations of the landscape are viewed and in whose voice admiration or criticism is expressed are factors which serve to complicate the moral landscape.

A) Good and Bad Control: Modulating the Moral Landscape The magnificent city of Babylon, traversed by the mighty Euphrates river, makes a good case study for how a landscape can be manipulated by man for either positive or negative ends. The city is introduced into the narrative in the context of Cyrus’ imperial ambitions. Having brought all of the mainland under his sway, we are told, he then attacked the Assyrians, whose most famous and strongest city was Babylon (1.178.1: ὀνομαστότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον). Herodotus’ detailed description of the city in his own authorial voice serves to evoke some sympathy on the part of the reader for this masterpiece of human ingenuity, which is about to be subjected to Cyrus’ assault,3 and various aspects of the narrative serve to reinforce that sense of ‘good’ attacked by ‘bad’. The provision of details such as the square shape of the city and the length of each side as fifteen miles (1.178.2) is strongly reminiscent of Herodotus’ approach to other technically impressive human endeavours such as the labyrinth above Lake Moeris, the tomb of Alyattes, the construction of the pyramids, or the engineering works on Samos. In each case, his inclusion of figures is striking.4 This propensity towards enumeration interestingly aligns Herodotus with some of his ostensibly ‘negative’ characters such as Darius and Xerxes, whose concern with both scale and detail may be (p.173) seen as symptomatic of excessive control.5 We shall see further in Chapter 7 how the excessive quest for and exercise of dynamis lies at the heart of Herodotus’ narrative. But Herodotus’ inclusion of such precise details might be seen more positively as illustrative of his admiring fascination for the marvels of man. Similarly, the presentation of technical details in his own voice not only bolsters his competitiveness in terms of historiographical authority, but also hints at a form of quasi-autoptic engagement, which has the effect of aligning the historian sympathetically with the objects in question and with their creators. As Herodotus notes, the city of Babylon was not just outstanding, but unique, being ‘arranged like no other city Page 2 of 45

 

Geographical Morality known to us’ (1.178.2: τῶν ἡμεῖϛ ἴδμεν), and the allusion to personal acquaintance further increases the sense of proximity and alliance between Herodotus and the city.6 When enumerating the dimensions of the city wall outside the moat as 83 feet thick and 333 feet high, he adds to the rhetoric of number a claim to knowledge of the royal system of measures which vary from standard measures to the tune of three fingers’ breadth (1.178.3), yet again aligning the historian’s perspective with that of the Babylonians themselves. This consistent alignment of the historian with spectacular building projects and attempts by man to control or exploit nature seems to reinforce the notion of admiration rather than dismay at the human impact on the natural landscape. That Herodotus uses his own authorial voice to endorse such projects seems significant. The persistence and coherence of Herodotus’ positive reaction to major alterations or additions to the natural landscape—from Alyattes’ tomb to the amazing engineering works at Babylon, the labyrinth at Lake Moeris, the Egyptian pyramids, or the works on Samos—suggest also that we might see these projects as thematically linked in other ways. It is striking that these are all the works of tyrants, and, as the (p.174) Peisistratids would show, building projects were indeed the stock-in-trade of the Greek tyrant no less than of the oriental one. Tyranny as a phenomenon clearly spans any spatial configuration based on a polarity between Europe and Asia, or indeed West and East, and Polycrates of Samos occupies an interesting position within that framework. The island over which he rules acts, as we have already seen in Chapter 3, as one of the key articulators of space within the Mediterranean, being the point beyond which the Persians fear to sail further west and for the Greeks symbolizing the eastern unknown, to which they dare not venture (8.132.3). That the Persians see Samos as part of their imperial world, albeit a liminal one, is reinforced by the display there of Mandrocles’ painting of Darius at the Bosporus (4.88). From the point of view of Polycrates and Samian positioning vis-à-vis other powers, there are many ways in which Samos anticipates the imperial behaviour of other eastern tyrannies. Polycrates’ taking of islands, for example, clearly acts as a precursor to the commodification and trading of islands which characterize the later narrative of Persian imperialism,7 and which will in time characterize that of the Athenians too. In the course of this, he captures the people of Lesbos and forces them to dig a ditch around the acropolis of Samos in chains (3.39.4: δεδεμένοι), again strongly foreshadowing episodes of Persian exploitation of people and places, not least the men who are forced to dig the Athos canal under the lash (7.22.1). There are also strong thematic parallels between Polycrates and the eastern despots as the recipients of sound advice. The scene in which Amasis of Egypt, seeing Polycrates’ good fortune and finding it excessive, because ‘he knows how jealous the divine is’ (3.40.2), advises Polycrates to throw his wealth and success Page 3 of 45

 

Geographical Morality away can hardly help but recall the scene between Solon and Croesus on the nature of true good fortune and happiness (1.29–33). It is, however, also striking that the dangerous jealousy of the divine forms a strong element in the cautious advice given by Artabanus to Xerxes that ‘the god loves to bring down whatever stands out above the rest’ (7.10e).8 In both cases, as in his island-capturing moments, Polycrates slots neatly (p.175) into the role of the eastern despot, although here his different response—heeding, rather than rejecting, good advice—marks him out as significantly different in attitude from his Asian counterparts.9 The alignment of Polycrates takes a further twist when he offers troops to Cambyses for his attack on Egypt (3.44.1), in spite of Amasis’ friendship and helpful advice to him. The sense that Polycrates is caught between his close associations with the world of eastern tyranny and his alignment with the lowertier tyrants who are one by one falling victims to Persia’s superiority is captured spatially in his conceptual geography of the eastern Aegean. His ‘great hope to rule over Ionia and the islands’ (3.122.2: ἐλπίδαϛ πολλὰϛ ἔχων Ἰωνίηϛ τε καὶ νήσων ἄρχειν) not only prefigures the way in which ‘the islands and the Hellespont’ would be the prizes of the battle of Mycale (9.101.3), but it also makes the Polycratean configuration of the Mediterranean world into the Greek counterpart of Aristagoras’ idea that the islands should form part of Persia’s mental map of Greece, offering the safe, ‘hopping’ route from Ionia to the Greek mainland and constituting a lucrative element in the conquest.10 Thus, Polycratean Samos behaves in ways which foreshadow and chime with the imperialistic tendencies of the Persians and stands tall in the line-up of tyrannical monumental building works. However, it operates as part of this world from the Greek perspective—looking eastwards for its island-hopping imperial ventures, hoping to capture them en route as in a game of draughts— and is explicitly described by Herodotus as the prime example of Greek engineering prowess (3.60.1). The ever-changing map of imperial geography, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 is very much also the world of the tyrant state, whether eastern or Greek. Even the gruesome manner of Polycrates’ death, by crucifixion at the hands of the Persian Oroetes, evokes a complex set of associations. On the one hand, here is a Greek tyrant suffering a brutal and stereotypically Persian murder;11 on the other, we cannot help but think forwards to the identical manner of death inflicted on the Persian governor of Sestos, Artaÿctes, at the end of the work by the Greeks (p.176) themselves. It is perhaps fitting that such an interstitial figure should suffer a form of death which itself appears to switch sides through the work. Samos remains confusingly poised between the world of eastern tyranny and that of its victims, while its story plays out in microcosm a significant turning point in the spatial configuration of the eastern Mediterranean. We have seen that Samos engages in the snatching of islands, but it is only later in the same book that the Samians get a taste of their own medicine. Notably and Page 4 of 45

 

Geographical Morality emblematically, Darius takes Samos—the first of all Greek or barbarian cities to become his. He ‘sweeps it with the net’ and gives it to Syloson as a reward for his generosity to Darius in the past (3.139).12 The ease with which the tables can be turned where Samos is concerned has already been illustrated in the Persian discussion over how easy Samos would be to take, Mitrobates goading Oroetes on by recalling how easily Polycrates himself had taken the island (3.120.2–4). Samos thus might offer a paradigm for a wider trend by which the world of eastern tyrants is gradually taken over by the tyrant state par excellence, Persia, which manages to outdo all other despotic regimes both quantitatively and qualitatively. Polycratean Samos plays the tyrant state, but eventually falls victim to a far more powerful example of the same behaviour.13 The fact remains that Herodotus himself, in his authorial voice, appears sympathetic to Polycrates. His murder is described as ‘not worthy of him’ (3.125.2: οὔτε ἑωτοῦ ἀξίωϛ), a striking statement from an author who is renowned for offering all sides of the picture. This might seem surprising given the various alignments already identified between this Greek tyrant and other figures in the non-democratic world of eastern despots. The explicit reason for Herodotus’ admiration and the inappropriateness of his death, namely ‘that, except for the tyrants of Syracuse, not one of the other Greek tyrants is worthy to be compared with Polycrates for magnificence (3.125.2: μεγαλοπρεπείη)’, (p. 177) offers one possibility for understanding Herodotus’ strong endorsement for a tyrannical figure. It suggests that we should avoid the temptation to bundle up all tyrants in the same category but differentiate more carefully between them. In terms of the relationship between man and nature with which we are primarily concerned, the various alignments and projects of Polycrates of Samos open up some interesting possibilities: that it is possible to ‘lord it over nature’ and for this to win outright praise from Herodotus; that it is possible to resemble, or even inspire, the aspirations and behaviour of the Persians without being a figure of contempt; that, nevertheless, there is something of a hierarchy of tyranny whereby ‘minor tyrants’ may fall foul of the big hitters from Persia, and in this sense are realigned with the free states of Greece, or indeed the amorphous state of Scythia, neither of which is characterized by major building works in the way that tyrant states are.14 It thus appears that the association between monumental building works and other manifestations of despotism may require a subtler handling than has sometimes been assumed. The complexity of Polycrates’ alignment, initially with the eastern tyrants, including the Persians themselves, later with the victims of Persian imperialism, including both ‘free’ peoples such as the Scythians and Greeks, and other tyrant states, such as the Egyptians, suggests that there is no such thing to be found in Herodotus’ narrative as ‘the typical tyrant state’, but rather a shifting and evolving range of possibilities.15 I shall go on to argue in this chapter and in Chapters 6–7 that along this spectrum there is room for despotic rulers whose monumental works and impact on the landscape are seen as cause for Page 5 of 45

 

Geographical Morality celebration in man’s ingenuity, and those, such as the Persians, for whom such works are presented as manifestations of an abusive and exploitative attitude to the world and its inhabitants. The fact that man’s interaction with nature might sometimes, but cannot necessarily, be seen as an accurate barometer of his wider political behaviour (p.178) might seem inconsistent. The widely held view that tampering with the landscape inevitably represents a violation, a transgression, an act of hybris clearly needs to be questioned.16 Scullion’s important article arguing that such ‘violations’ represent despotic arrogance rather than sacrilege needs to be brought into play alongside the observation that altering the landscape per se seems to evoke admiration as often as censure within Herodotus’ text.17 Furthermore, here as elsewhere, the question of focalization may offer some help in creating a more nuanced picture. Whether Herodotus voices praise or criticism in his own authorial persona or whether he reports the views of others can help us to tease out subtly different responses to apparently similar actions, and the different perspectives embedded in the text may enable us to account for apparently contradictory elements in the appraisal of various characters. We have already seen in Chapter 4 that Herodotus indicates his approval of and admiration for the engineering schemes of successive Babylonian queens, controlling and manipulating the river Euphrates and its surroundings to the benefit of the city and its citizens. Semiramis had built dykes to keep the river Euphrates in check and Herodotus makes clear the advantages of this— previously, the river had run all over the plain and flooded it (1.184). This work of the queen is a wonder in its own right, being ‘a sight worth seeing’ (ἀξιοθέητα), a man-made marvel and of obvious benefit. Queen Nitocris had in turn dug an elaborate system of canals above the city to make the Euphrates crooked, as well as having a great lake excavated and using the earth to build along the river an embankment which was ‘worthy of wonder’ (1.185.3: ἄξιον θώματος). Both ventures are seen by Herodotus as defensive against the Medes, and we have already noted that his opinion of Nitocris herself is ostensibly positive. Although, as Munson argues, the landscape-altering antics of the Babylonian queens could be seen as representing ‘monarchic imperialism over the environment’,18 her associated comment that their (p.179) manipulation of the Euphrates is more benign than that of Cyrus rightly introduces a sense of subtle gradation. If we are attempting to differentiate between the interventions in nature made by various tyrannical rulers in the narrative, contexts and contrasts come into play alongside focalization as useful interpretative tools. If playing with the natural landscape is, for Herodotus, simply typical despotic behaviour, what if anything is there to distinguish the Babylonians from the Persians? The shape of the narrative itself offers some initial answers, since the Babylonians, like Polycrates, while sharing in some aspects of tyrannical behaviour, not least

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Geographical Morality the ability to devise and complete extraordinary and admirable engineering projects, nevertheless are cast in the narrative as victims of Persia. That there is something qualitatively different and inherently more benign about the interventions in nature of the Babylonian queens is established partly through context and contrast. Herodotus’ positive comments on the ingenious solutions of Semiramis and Nitocris to controlling and exploiting the great river that flows through the centre of their city set the scene for the imperialist onslaught of Cyrus and the Persians against Nitocris’ son, Labynetus. We are already alerted to Cyrus’ distinctive relationship with rivers by his behaviour towards the river Choaspes, which flows by Susa. On his expedition against the Assyrians and the city of Babylon Cyrus insists on bringing with him silver containers of boiled water from the Choaspes, since he refuses to drink from any other river (1.188).19 This is an interesting form of interaction with the landscape,20 in which Cyrus is so attached to his home river that he will not travel without it in his pocket, so to speak. He thus makes a river which is to be described later as an integral part of the river network that articulates the continent of Asia (5.52) into a discrete item that can be bundled up and possessed, rather like the islands discussed in Chapter 3. In terms of a theme to which we shall return, he is clinging on to his own land at the same time as attempting to step out of it into that of someone else. The lead-up to Cyrus’ assault on Babylon continues with another encounter between Cyrus and a river, this time less harmonious. On reaching the river Gyndes, Cyrus sees one of his sacred white horses dash into the water full of high (p.180) spirits. The horse is drowned and in angry revenge Cyrus punishes the river for its insolence (1.189). The punishment, while illustrating Cyrus’ respect for a sacred horse, comes in the form of manipulation and control. Cyrus drains the river level by digging 360 canals, 180 on each side, an act which Gianotti describes as ‘violence despotique’.21 This episode is interestingly emblematic of the negative relationship between Persians and both micro- and macro-landscapes which, as I shall argue, pervades the narrative. By contrast with his own river Choaspes, which Cyrus treasures to the point of carrying it around with him, the river Gyndes is prevented from continuing its existence as a river at all. Both of Cyrus’ interactions with rivers so far are in a sense destructive to the river, but each is conducted in a quite different spirit, and it is worth recalling the fine line already observed between excessive enthusiasm for and control over watercourses in this narrative.22 Cyrus’ punitive canal-digging sits in contrast to the careful and productive interventions of the Babylonians to manage the river Euphrates, which Herodotus has just outlined in detail. In fact, the language of Cyrus’ actions leaves it ambiguous as to whether the horse or the river was out of order—the horse rushed in ‘through hybris’ (ὑπὸ ὕβριος) and the river was in turn punished ‘for its hybris’ (ὑβρίσαντι), with the former being described as an act of hybris in the narrative voice, whereas the latter is designated hybris in the Page 7 of 45

 

Geographical Morality opinion of Cyrus.23 The king himself is the only party not to be openly accused of this fault. But here parallels and context may help. Later condemnations of Persians punishing water point to a negative reading of Cyrus’ actions here and the suggestion that we might be intended to read Babylonian water management in direct contrast with the punitive water management of Cyrus is reinforced by the fact that Herodotus returns to the positive and productive relationship enjoyed by the Babylonians with their watercourses immediately after he has related Cyrus’ assault on the city of Babylon. Babylonia is, Herodotus tells us, extremely dry, but its irrigation using hand-operated swing-beams and through man-made canals renders it (p.181) hugely fertile (1.193.1). And he goes on to describe how the whole of Babylonia is cut up with canals, of which the largest is navigable and runs towards the south-east from the Euphrates to the Tigris on the banks of what was once Nineveh. The artificial fertility of Babylonia is brought home further by Herodotus’ detailed account of the crops—sesame, palm trees, and so on—produced in this naturally arid landscape (1.193.3–5). If we were in any doubt by now about the excellent relationship between the Babylonians and their environment, it would be finally dismissed by what Herodotus designates ‘in my view the greatest wonder of all’ (τὸ δὲ ἁπάντων θώμα μέγιστόν μοι) besides the city of Babylon itself, namely the circular willow boats, which travel down to the city from Armenia (1.194.1). These are the river-loving people, then, against whom Cyrus launches his attack. It is interesting that, when Cyrus’ attention was diverted from Babylon by his desire to punish the Gyndes, we are told that he ‘let Babylon go’ and instead got on with his punitive canal-digging (1.189.3). The implication that the two activities of conquering a city and conquering a landscape are interchangeable is one to which we shall return in Chapter 6. While the Babylonians carefully and constructively ‘use’ their river, Cyrus can think only of abusing the Gyndes, even if this should be seen primarily as just punishment for the river’s mistreatment of Cyrus’ horse rather than an alternative activity to taking over a city. Although the rights and wrongs of the Gyndes episode may be complex and Cyrus himself remains free from the label of hybris, nevertheless he is presented as angry and threatening (1.189.2: ἐχαλέπαινε; 1.189.2: ἐπηπείλησε), and he turns his troops against the river in an act of warfare (1.189.3). It is thus ironic, but perhaps predictable, that once his mind is finally back on the task of attacking the city of the Assyrians, he does so by exploiting exactly the same trick as Nitocris had done for the purpose of building bridges across the city, namely to divert the Euphrates, drain its channel, and thereby open up a route into the heart of the city (1.191.1–4). Cyrus is no less skilled at river manipulation than are the Babylonians, but precisely the same control of nature can clearly be used for either positive or negative effect.24 The morality of Cyrus’ actions (p.182) may seem fairly clearcut in the case of his treatment of Babylon, with the ‘constructive’ and ‘productive’ Babylonian victims set against the ‘destructive’ aggressions of the Page 8 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Persian despot, and this might seem to be reflected in their respective treatment of rivers.25 Manipulating the landscape seems to be typical of monarchical rulers, but actually different despots may carry it out in sharply contrasting ways, which may delineate their own relationships as more or less powerful, aggressors or victims. Nevertheless, one might argue that Herodotus’ interest lies less in Cyrus’ treatment of nature and more in the folly of the Babylonians for neglecting to notice that their own methods of river diversion could be used against them. Furthermore, another contrast lends additional complexity to the moral landscape articulated by relationships with nature, and with watercourses in particular here. Alongside the alignment of the Babylonian queens with their citizens in providing improvements to the city and attempting to resist the onslaught of the aggressive Cyrus, it is possible, as Munson does, to group the queens with Cyrus in their display of archetypal monarchical behaviour with regard to rivers, by contrast with the productive, ordinary boatmen. Herodotus’ sympathetic alignment with the boatmen, indicated by his rating their ingenuity as the greatest wonder besides the city created by the queens themselves (and reinforced by the use of μοι) is further hinted at by the level of detail with which he describes both the boating system and the boatmen themselves (1.194–5). It is not clear that such alignments are sufficient to raise the ordinary boatmen above the clever queens in Herodotus’ estimation, but it does at the very least encourage a realization of different constituencies within a single people, and this will be of interest as we move on to a parallel case of man’s impact on the landscape which might offer further nuance to the moral landscape, this time adding focalization to context and contrast. If we want to argue that the ‘ordinary people’ are somehow more closely aligned in their relationships with the natural landscape than are despotic rulers, even at the benign end of the spectrum, then another look at the episode of Cheops and the pyramids may be instructive.26 We have already seen in Chapter 4 that, while the (p.183) Egyptians are on the whole aligned with the Babylonians and other victims of Persian imperialism in their benign relationship with the natural world,27 they occasionally resemble the Persians, sometimes not just as imitators, but actually as the models for Persian, ‘despotic’ behaviour. In amongst all the ingenious and productive ways in which the Egyptians utilize, manage, and productively exploit their landscape, the example of King Cheops shines out at first glance as a negative beacon.28 We shall examine in more detail later how the subordination of people and nature goes hand in hand with expressions of despotic power where the Persian kings are concerned. But is this true of Egyptian despots too? In the words of Vasunia, ‘the pyramids are ways for kings to mark the Egyptian landscape…The description of the pyramid of Cheops, for example, raises issues of power, despotism, servility, and geometrization.’29 The king drove his people into misery (ἐς πᾶσαν κακότητα), with all the Egyptians forced to work for him, and their crippling task was precisely to alter the landscape (2.124.1). Some had Page 9 of 45

 

Geographical Morality to drag stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile; others to drag them from the Nile to the Libyan hills (2.124.2). They worked in gangs of 100,000 men for three months at a shift. As Herodotus says, it took more than ten years just to build the road that would be used to drag the stones along. Whereas travel through the Herodotean (p.184) landscape is often carried out for economic, recreational, and touristic reasons,30 or for military purposes,31 here the reader travels a dramatic and unforgiving route at the side of the wretched Egyptian labourers. Indeed, Herodotus’ presentation of the suffering inflicted by Cheops in his search for engineering brilliance seems undeniably to indicate a sympathy for all parties except the ruler himself. Not only did Cheops inflict misery on his people; he was so evil (2.126.1: ἐς τοῦτο δὲ ἐλθεῖν Χέοπα κακότητος) that he put his daughter into a brothel; and the episode culminates in the damning judgement that Cheops and his brother Chephren presided over 106 years of great misery (2.128: πᾶσαν εἶναι κακότητα) and lack of worship due to the closure of the temples. The Egyptians did not even want to name these kings through hatred (2.128: ὑπὸ μίσεος), but called the pyramids after the shepherd Philitis who used to graze flocks there. The kings, whose tyranny over their people was matched by their tyranny over the landscape, are eclipsed in the memorial nomenclature by the humble shepherd who treats the landscape with due care and respect.32 This sense, however, that the ‘ordinary Egyptians’ are given the moral high ground by Herodotus over the despotic Cheops requires some modification. The whole episode is introduced as what ‘they said’ (2.124.1: ἔλεγον), ‘they’ being the Egyptians, priests presumably,33 who have been informing Herodotus about the longer history of Egypt and its religious and philosophical milieu. If we look at the oscillation between oratio recta and oratio obliqua here, a pattern emerges.34 It is (p.185) the Egyptian informants who claim that Cheops drove his people into misery (2.124.1),35 closed the temples, and made the Egyptians work for him; they who designate Cheops as sufficiently evil to put his daughter into a brothel (2.126); they who comment on the reign of Chephren as characterized by similar behaviour to that shown by his brother (2.127.1); and they who hold the kings in hatred and sum up the 106 years of their successive reigns as a period of great misery (2.128) during which the worship of the gods was neglected. Every single negative judgement is presented in oratio obliqua, put in the mouths of Herodotus’ informants, and not explicitly endorsed by the author himself. It might make us additionally concerned about Herodotus’ endorsement of this information that, only a couple of chapters earlier (2.123.1), he has made an ambiguous comment on Egyptian logoi: ‘let whoever finds such things credible (πιθανά) use these stories told by the Egyptians: but for me the underlying principle throughout this whole narrative is that I write down whatever has been said by each informant as I heard it’. Does this deliberate detachment of Herodotus the historian from the tales of his informants and those who believe them36 cast doubt on what precedes and follows?37 Does Page 10 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Herodotus himself not believe what his informants say?38 Or should we be mindful of the differing levels of reliability of different informants? Referring to priestly informants, supposedly expert custodians of the past, or indeed to eyewitnesses of the suffering entailed by the pyramid-building might serve not to cast doubt on but (p.186) to reinforce what Herodotus relates. Here, some of the debates concerning multiple voices, as discussed in Chapter 1 earlier, are clearly of central importance. The interpretation of Herodotus’ Cheops as a ‘bad ruler’, whose building projects were a direct manifestation of his tyrannical power, exercised through exploitation of his own people, is routinely adopted both explicitly and implicitly in modern scholarship.39 A closer look at the focalization of the episode reveals, however, that all criticisms of Cheops are put, naturally enough, into the mouths of the Egyptians themselves. Meanwhile, where Herodotus inserts his own comments into the account given by his informants, it is to stress the scale of the projects through detailed description and an implicit admiration emerges, as we have already discussed in Chapter 4. Where the narrative is focalized directly through Herodotus’ own eyes, the effect is twofold—to inspire wonder at what he describes, allowing the reader to share his astonishment at the impact of man on his environment, and to instil confidence in Herodotus’ knowledge and expertise. His first intervention in propria persona is to comment on the vast human resources engaged in the building of the road along which material was brought for constructing the pyramid of Cheops—they worked in gangs of 100,000 men, we are told, for three months at a time. In Herodotus’ explicitly expressed view (2.124.3: ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκέειν), the work was not much lighter at all than building the [Great] pyramid. He then goes into some detail on the dimensions and decoration of the road, ‘standing nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and all of stone polished and carved with figures’ (2.124.4)—a monument in its own right, which was not just massive and utilitarian, but also adorned to be beautiful. The pyramid itself, built over an underground chamber and set in a quasi-island created by bringing in a channel of the Nile, was an (p.187) extraordinary edifice and gains Herodotus’ detailed description in his own voice: ‘taking twenty years to build, its base is square, each face 800 feet long, and its height the same; the whole was of polished stone, very precisely fitted (ἁρμασμένου τὰ μάλιστα); none of the blocks was less than thirty feet in length’ (2.124.5). Herodotus then entertains, still in his own authorial voice, some detailed theories over the precise methods for constructing the massive stepped sides of the pyramid.40 The interweaving of information taken from his sources and Herodotus’ own interpretation of those traditions is clearly on display here.41 After giving alternative versions of the stepped construction in oratio recta, Herodotus places himself and his management of the narrative even more Page 11 of 45

 

Geographical Morality determinedly at the centre by refusing to decide between the two versions: ‘I have told both these accounts, since both were told to me’ (2.125.4). Both accounts have been adopted sufficiently by Herodotus to be related in his own voice, but neither has won his complete approval. He then moves on to a different form of evidence—the Egyptian inscription, which gave details of the expenditure on radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen (2.125.6). This offers further testimony to the mighty scale of the undertaking, but also another reminder of the interplay between Herodotus and his sources. But Herodotus maintains his authoritative voice, contributing his own combination of reasoned hypothesis and supposition to gauge the overall cost (2.125.7).42 Herodotus returns to oratio obliqua, as we have seen, for the tale of Cheops prostituting his daughter and also to introduce the reign and pyramid-building of Chephren. But he yet again breaks in with his authorial voice to corroborate the reported scale of Chephren’s pyramid with his own measurement (2.127.1: ταῦτα γὰρ ὦν καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐμετρήσαμεν) and then proceeds to give a detailed description of this second pyramid.43 (p.188) It seems that Herodotus’ authorial interventions in the relation of this episode in Egyptian history steer clear of making judgements, especially negative ones, about Cheops and his brother. Instead, all such expressions of disapproval are left to the voice of ‘the Egyptians’, whose focus seems to be primarily the misery of the workers rather than explicitly the erection of a megalomaniac monument. ‘The people’ may for this reason ‘hate the kings’, but it is not self-evident that Herodotus joins in that evaluation. Indeed, although the Egyptians have chosen to elide the names of Cheops and Chephren from their nomenclature of the monuments, Herodotus uses his authorial voice to override their wishes, overthrowing their damnatio memoriae and not only naming the kings, but giving them considerable space in his text,44 perhaps going even beyond the level of memorialization desired by the kings themselves, since we are not explicitly told of any self-commemorative intent. Rather than condemning the pyramid-builders, instead Herodotus uses his own voice to stress the extraordinary nature of these projects through his detailed descriptions of their scale and adornment, personalized even to the degree of his claiming to have taken his own measurements.45 The focus of Herodotus’ own authorial voice on man’s amazing achievement in putting up the pyramids is in keeping with his expressed intention at the start of the Histories to prevent the ‘great and wonderful (μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά) deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks’ from being forgotten (Preface). Indeed, he explicitly characterizes Egypt’s status as a land of marvels, both natural and man-made, as his reason for (p.189) devoting such extensive attention to it.46 The monumental and marvellous features of the land clearly dictate Herodotus’ choice of subject matter, especially his interest in great building projects, which dominates his account of pre-Saite Egypt.47 Page 12 of 45

 

Geographical Morality The strong connections between magnificent man-made projects, the overriding or taming of nature, and the employment of abusive despotic power over people are not diminished by this episode, but these links are ascribed to other sources, not explicitly endorsed by Herodotus himself. The stress is on the toll of human suffering rather than outrage at the ostentatiously constructed landscape. Even the idea that Herodotus inevitably sympathizes with the oppressed people over the tyrannical ruler is complicated when the narrative focalization is taken into account. One might say that Herodotus gives a voice to the ordinary citizen through allowing this sense of subjugation to come through, but we should not adopt too quickly the conclusion that Herodotus has decided to ‘talk like an Egyptian’.48 It is almost as though, in spite of his acknowledgement of the human suffering entailed by the construction of the pyramids, by extending the axis of time and using that as part of his evaluative framework, he is acknowledging the achievement of building the pyramids when detached from their immediate historical circumstances.49 The dual focalization of the episode allows us to find in the narrative both positive and negative interpretations of the same actions. Alternatively, one might even suggest that, in extracting for evaluation these impressive projects from their historical context, Herodotus displays an attitude to the construction of the extraordinary works of man which is ‘amoral’ rather than positively or negatively charged, and we shall need to consider whether this is the case elsewhere in his narrative. (p.190) We have already noted that interventions in the physical world, whether through alteration of the landscape itself or through the imposition of monumental building projects, are routinely associated with tyrannical regimes, perhaps not surprisingly given the huge financial outlay involved and the consequential glory to be sought through eternal self-advertisement.50 We have also seen that such interventions do not automatically incur criticism from Herodotus himself, but that he often rather allows characters in the narrative to express that displeasure while he himself chooses to remain outside the framework of criticism and instead gazes with admiration on the extraordinary achievements of man from a distanced authorial viewpoint. This multiplicity of voices facilitates the creation of a complex moral landscape in which to place each episode. The case of Babylon and the divergent readings accorded to two ostensibly similar attempts to manipulate the river Euphrates, by the Babylonians and Cyrus respectively, point out the importance of context, sequence, and contrast in Herodotus’ presentation and our consequent interpretation of interventions against nature. In various ways, not least of which is the narrative context of an aggressive assault, we are directed towards the view that Cyrus’ diversion of the Euphrates is as negatively charged as that of the Babylonians is benign. Polycrates of Samos illustrates a much more finely balanced and nuanced interface between aggressors and victims. Having himself played out many of the aggressive techniques, such as island-snatching, that would later become Page 13 of 45

 

Geographical Morality synonymous with Persia, he falls victim to the superior power of the latter, making clear that he lies further down the tyrant food chain. Thinking about hierarchy rather than dichotomy seems to be appropriate here, and adds an interesting twist to the various oppositions that have regularly been identified in Herodotus’ work—those of East and West, Europe and Asia, Greek and barbarian, despotism and freedom. The Egyptians too both resemble and turn out to be inferior to their Persian assailants, not, of course, in the scale of their architectural feats, but certainly in terms of imperial ambition. All these ‘tyrannical victims’ (p.191) of Persia win Herodotus’ admiration for monumental works, begging the question as to whether Persia too may be praised by Herodotus for its extraordinary engineering works, or whether we are to see in Herodotus’ presentation of the Persians a qualitatively as well as quantitatively distinctive relationship between shaping or controlling the natural environment and other manifestations of despotism. We shall explore further in Chapter 6 the possibility that the Persians bring together the subjugation of landscapes and that of peoples in a unique way; that they outstrip all others, whether tyrants or free states, in their bid to exercise control; that Herodotus not only reveals their place at one extreme of the spectrum of exploitation of nature, but also develops a distinctive linguistic framework to describe their relationship with the natural world that sets their activities qualitatively apart from those of other players in the text. But for now let us note that it is possible in the eyes of Herodotus for Persians to manipulate the natural world productively. One clear-cut example, expressed in Herodotus’ authorial voice, is the comment that no further damage was done by the Persians to the Ionians one particular year (493 BC), but instead ‘some very useful things indeed’ (6.42.1: τάδε μὲν χρήσιμα κάρτα). Some of these concerned the legal settlement of disputes rather than resorting to plunder, but others were directly related to the good management of space—the Persians, we are told, measured out the land in terms of parasangs and fixed the tribute on this basis. The outcome was peace among the Ionians, hardly a result to be taken lightly and unambiguously credited to the Persians by Herodotus in a rare example of positive and productive Persian interaction with a landscape.51 Cambyses presents a complex example. We have already noted in Chapter 2 the implications of his campaign to the edges of the earth in Ethiopia, and we shall see later that he forms part of a crescendo of Persian abuse of the natural world and of its inhabitants, following on from Cyrus and leading to the excesses of Xerxes in particular. It is, however, important not to brush over the subtleties of Herodotus’ presentation.52 Cambyses’ assault on the land and the people of Egypt (p.192) seems at first to confirm the commonly held idea that Herodotus routinely makes his tyrannical figures abuse the natural world. However, although Vasunia uses Cambyses’ plan to turn Egypt upside down to exemplify Page 14 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Herodotus’ characterization of despotic behaviour, again a close look at the perspective sheds a more pointed light. In fact, the whole episode in which Cambyses makes this threat is related in oratio obliqua and it is part of a story which Herodotus explicitly distrusts.53 Nevertheless, on the whole the Persians dominate ‘negative’ control over the landscape in Herodotus’ narrative. Whether or not they learned their bad habits from Egyptians, such as Cheops, or were already experts in the art of abusing the environment, as Cyrus’ behaviour in Book 1 suggests, is unclear. But by later in Book 3 they are displaying classic despotic tendencies in their treatment of the river Aces (3.117.2–6). The contrast between their abuse and the previously productive and peaceful use of the water made by the inhabitants of the region is brought out starkly not only through juxtaposition, as in the case of Babylon discussed earlier in this section(pp. 178–82), but also in Herodotus’ choice of language. Now a mighty river, the Aces, flows from this encircling mountain range. With its stream divided into five channels, this river used to water the lands of the above-mentioned peoples, going to each through a different pass. However, since they have been under the rule of the Persians, they have suffered the following fate. The king has blocked the mountain passes, and closed each passage with gates; with the water closed off from outlet, the plain within the mountains becomes a watery expanse, because the river pours into it and finds no way out. Those, therefore, who before were accustomed to use the water endure great hardship (συμφορῇ μεγάλῃ διαχρέωνται) in not being able to use it; for, during the winter, god rains for them just as for the rest of humanity, but, in the summer, they sow millet and sesame and need the water. So whenever no water is given to them, they come into Persia with their women, and standing in front of the gates of the king’s palace, they cry and howl (βοῶσι ὠρυόμενοι), until the king commands that the river gate should be opened for those whose need is greatest. Then, when this land has drunk its fill of water, those gates are shut, and the king has others opened for those of the rest who most need it. I know from what I’ve heard that he gets a lot of money, in addition to the tribute, for opening the gates. (p.193) This is not inventive ingenuity, but exploitative extortion.54 The Persians here not only manipulate the river for unproductive ends, where it had previously been used for irrigation, but, in so doing, they wield their power and control over the population. Herodotus’ emotive language and vivid depiction of the suffering of the people makes clear where he is directing our sympathies,55 and it has been suggested that he deliberately omits to mention Persian concern for land management in his greater quest to illustrate Persian oppression.56 What offends here is surely not the altering of the landscape per se in an act of ‘sacrilege’, but rather the exercise of power by the Persian king over his Page 15 of 45

 

Geographical Morality desperate subjects. Not the conquest of nature as an adjunct to, even a metaphor for, the conquest of man as we shall see played out in detail later, but here the conquest of man as a consequence of the conquest of nature. It seems that this is embedded behaviour for the Persians.57 As Xerxes and his army march down through northern Greece, having crossed the Hellespont, Xerxes turns his attention to the river Peneus, which flows through a narrow pass between the Thessalian mountains, Olympus, and Ossa. It is worth noting that Xerxes’ first wish on seeing the Thessalian mountains and hearing that the Peneus flowed through them is to view the river (7.128.1: ἐπεθύμησε… θεήσασθαι).58 (p.194) Having followed through this wish (7.128.2: ὡς ἐπεθύμησε), he is gripped by great wonder (7.128.2: ἐν θώματι μεγάλῳ ἐνέσχετο). We shall consider further in Chapter 6 how the combination of wonder and the desire for control seems to characterize the Persians’ interaction with nature, and with watercourses in particular, in ways which might have implications for the perceived morality of their actions and for their distinctive place in the narrative landscape. Xerxes’ immediate thought, on sailing round to the mouth of the river, is to wonder whether he can divert it to reach the sea at some other point (7.128.2). This gives rise to the story of how Thessaly was once a sea, shut in by mountains and converged upon by rivers flowing in from all sides. But, according to the Thessalians, Poseidon cut a channel to let the Peneus out (7.129). Xerxes’ proposal would thus threaten to transform the land utterly, and in a way which might be seen to threaten the god’s own design. As elsewhere, the precise mode of expression is complex in ways which might seem to introduce an element of moral ambiguity. The story about Poseidon is clearly attributed to the Thessalians (7.129.4: αὐτοὶ…Θεσσαλοί φασι) and contrasts with Herodotus’ own rationalized account of the draining of the Thessalian sea as being really the result of an earthquake (7.129.4: ἔστι γὰρ σεισμοῦ ἔργον), an account which he reinforces as representing his own view (7.129.4: ‘so it seems to me’—ὡϛ ἐμοὶ φαίνεται εἶναι). Herodotus does not, however, fully distance himself from the divine explanation of the Thessalians, deeming it ‘reasonable’ (οἰκότα) and leaving the reader uneasy that Xerxes is contemplating the destruction of a scenario which is both natural and divinely ordained.59 Here, the manipulation of a river would be clearly to the detriment of the local inhabitants, whose land could become sea, a process which (p.195) we shall examine in more detail (see pp. 196–201) as a recurring motif in the narrative. That we should read Xerxes’ proposal to divert the river primarily not as a sacrilegious affront to a divinely sponsored natural landscape, but as an unambiguously aggressive gesture and an expression of superior power is underpinned by the fact that Herodotus directly attributes this line of thought to Xerxes as a motivation for his proposal, since the threat that he might flood Thessaly is presumed by Xerxes as the reason for its anticipatory capitulation. As Page 16 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Herodotus has Xerxes addressing his guides, ‘this, then, was the main reason for their precaution long before, when they changed their mind for the better, for they perceived that their country would be easily and speedily conquerable’ (7.130.2).60 Both Xerxes and the Thessalians know full well what the consequences of diverting this river would be in terms of Xerxes’ exercise of power.

B) Negotiating the Rivers, Moral Barometers We have already seen in Chapters 2 and 3 that rivers are key in the Herodotean landscape both in the creation of networks and a sense of wider geographical context and in the articulation and demarcation of space. The rivers both connect different places together and divide one place from another. One can think of them simultaneously as links between the points or places at either end, lines along which one can travel, lines which both divide and connect the expansive spaces on either side, and barriers which can be crossed. The river is, it seems, the ultimately flexible demarcator of space.61 But we have also seen above (pp. 172–95) that precisely how individuals and groups interact with rivers, and indeed the landscape of the narrative in general, may carry moral weight and thereby act as a defining feature of those groups and individuals. Rivers may (p.196) demarcate not only space, but also good and bad characters within the Herodotean narrative; it is to that set of interactions that we now turn. i) Walking on Water: Sailing over Land

The significance of iconic attempts to bridge watercourses, both rivers and straits, is partly dependent on the broader moral associations of blurring the distinction between land and water.62 We have already seen how turning land into water or vice versa can be viewed as either a positive or a negative thing, according to context. We may recall the wondrous ways in which the Scythians drive across the sea in their wagons (4.28.1) and the Egyptians sail across their flooded landscape (2.97). In both cases, the natural world itself has spontaneously confounded the distinction between water and land, and man’s ingenuity lies in managing the situation to his best advantage.63 The apparent perversion of the natural order, whereby the Scythians can ride over the sea, might be thought to foreshadow the many occasions in the narrative when sea will be turned into land and watercourses will be crossed in an aggressive context. But surely this particular instance of ‘walking on water’ should simply be viewed as a marvel, coming as it does within a larger description of the extraordinary nature of Scythian weather, which is so topsy-turvy that the Scythians themselves are struck by wonder only when the ‘normal’ patterns of weather apply.64 As in the case of the Babylonians, contexts and contrasts strengthen the justification for reading the Scythians’ relationship with nature more positively Page 17 of 45

 

Geographical Morality than that of the Persians, who similarly override key distinctions between land and water. We shall see in Chapter 6 the way in which the ‘alliance’ of Scythia with its environment is set strikingly by Herodotus against the metaphorical ‘war’ of (p.197) the Persian aggressors against their surroundings,65 but even the nature-loving Scythians destroy the landscape in the context of warfare. In their attempt to repel Darius’ invasion, the Scythians, we are told, cannot manage a stand-up fight without assistance, so instead they withdraw, filling up the wells and streams and destroying the grasslands as they go (4.120.1). The supposed allies of nature here use the environment as a weapon of war, destroying the landscape in advance of the Persians. As we shall see, when the Persians destroy landscapes the action is cast in a negative light. But why should this be so?66 Perhaps the Scythian destruction of the landscape can be justified in terms of a defensive manoeuvre, as Munson argues in the case of the Amazons’ crossing of the Tanais?67 Or maybe we should again consider that the landscape itself can be manipulated and changed in warfare, for the public interest, as a display of tyrannical wealth and power, or indeed as a show of technical know-how, without incurring the charge of sacrilege or even carrying negative connotations. Questions of intent are clearly a useful interpretative guide. When the Babylonians and the Egyptians artificially or naturally irrigate their land through flooding, and confound the land–water distinction, this can only be to the common good; when Cyrus forces the Gyndes to spill over the land, it is as an act of aggression.68 This is set in striking contrast with the behaviour of the self-dividing river Araxes, which, like the Gyndes, flows from the Matieni mountains, but splits spontaneously into forty marshy mouths, in addition to one clear stream, into the Caspian (1.202.3–4). (p.198) Furthermore, linguistic and thematic motifs reinforce the grouping of those who play with the landscape ‘well’, and those whose interventions constitute abuse. Not only is the language of wisdom and cleverness applied to the Babylonian queen, Nitocris (1.185.1: she is συνετωτέρη than Semiramis) but the Scythians too are picked out as exceptions to the stupidity of the peoples living near the Pontus (4.46.1): The Euxine Pontus, against which Darius led his army, generates the most stupidity, excluding the Scythian people. For we cannot show that any people within the area of the Pontus has any wisdom (σοφίηϛ), nor do we know of any notable man born there, except the Scythian people (πάρεξ τοῦ Σκυθικοῦ ἔθνεοϛ) and Anacharsis. In particular, as Herodotus claims, the Scythians have made the cleverest discovery (σοφώτατα) in adopting a mobile or nomadic lifestyle so that they can escape attackers.69 Such small details serve to link these positively characterized figures in contrast to the folly that we shall see characterizes the Persians.

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Geographical Morality We have seen cases where the dividing line between extraordinary achievement and human cost is finely drawn, and various instances in which the manipulation of the natural world and the monumental impact of man upon it seem very similar, whether carried out by those who will be aggressors or those who will be victims in the narrative. One such parallel leads us neatly towards the most striking transformation of land into water in the narrative, namely the cutting of the Athos channel. The Egyptian precursor is, of course, Necos, son of Psammetichus, who was the first to try to dig a canal into the Red Sea, Darius the Persian being the second (2.158.1). The canal was, in a sense, a magnificent piece of engineering—four days’ journey in length and two triremes wide—and has been seen by some scholars as eliciting Herodotus’ admiration in just the same way as he wonders at the pyramids or the extraordinary works of Polycrates.70 Herodotus makes vivid the scene by drawing the reader’s attention to one detail after another—the entry point of water from the Nile, just above Bubastis; the fact that digging started at the Arabian end; and he (p.199) sets it in a detailed context of mountains, orientation, relationship to seas, thereby integrating this man-made feature into the natural landscape. As we have seen before, Herodotus often targets his own authorial comments towards technical details of size, scale, and construction, partly in a claim to knowledge that outdoes that of his competitors, and partly as a manifestation of his amazement at the achievements of man. But implicit wonder turns to implicit criticism, as we discover the human cost of this enterprise in the loss of 120,000 Egyptians in the digging, echoing the huge human toll of Cheops’ pyramid-building discussed earlier in this chapter (pp. 186–9), and the story takes a further downwards turn when work is stopped prematurely in response to an oracle—clearly the gods are not wholeheartedly in support of this venture. Furthermore, the note that Necos turned his attention immediately from canal-digging to warfare hints at a theme that we shall treat in more detail in Chapter 6, namely the metaphorical war against nature which is waged by the ‘bad’ characters of Herodotus’ narrative and which reaches its apogee with Xerxes and the expedition against Greece. Unlike in the Cheops episode, Herodotus maintains his authorial voice throughout his relation of Necos’ project, including details of human suffering, which for Cheops were consigned to the voice of the Egyptians. Nevertheless, he stops short of casting any moral judgement on Necos’ works, adopting a flat and factual tone. The lower status of Egypt in the hierarchy of tyrants discussed above (p. 190) is clearly underlined here by the note that Necos’ project was abandoned in anticipation of Persian intervention and that, indeed, Darius completed the work which Necos had started. Necos thereby sets the model officially for Darius, but more obviously in narrative terms for Xerxes and his cutting of a channel through the Athos peninsula (7.22). It has already been noted in Chapter 3 that Herodotus’ detailed vignette of this ‘great and famous’ mountain evokes sympathy for it by contrast with the Persians’ abusive treatment, and indeed perhaps his designation of Page 19 of 45

 

Geographical Morality those who labour over its destruction as ‘foreigners’ (7.23.1: βάρβαροι) reinforces the sense of incursion.71 Furthermore, we have seen that the creation (p.200) of an ‘island’ from a piece of mainland is overlaid with negative connotations, not only those deriving naturally from the enforced change in geographical status, turning ‘mainland into island towns’ (7.22.3: νησιώτιδαϛ ἀντὶ ἠπειρωτίδων), but also from the tone of Herodotus’ presentation of this as an act motivated partly by revenge,72 and partly by Xerxes’ overweening and arrogant pride (7.24: μεγαλοφροσύνη) and a desire to display his power (ἐθέλων τε δύναμιν ἀποδείκνυσθαι)73 and leave a memorial thereof (μνημόσυνα λιπέσθαι).74 The digging through of the channel by men in chains is heavily charged not only generally by the inevitable allusion to the parallel enslavement of people and the landscape, to which we shall return in Chapter 6, but also in the point of detail that these are the same men who will be forced to bridge the river Strymon (7.24). The practical issue of the same workforce being used neatly reflects also the conceptual closeness of the two reverse processes of turning land into water and water into land, toying with and manipulating the natural divisions.75 But before we turn more fully to the question of bridging, we should consider one further way in which water may be turned into land—namely, by drinking rivers dry. This is something of a Persian specialism in Herodotus’ text, reinforcing the sense that the Persians are systematically opposed to the natural world, or at least that Herodotus seems to be consistently presenting them in this way as a mode of negative characterization. On Xerxes’ expedition against (p.201) Greece, wherever the Persian army stops, they drink the rivers dry, Herodotus claims (7.21.1). The main point here is clearly to reinforce the mighty scale of Xerxes’ army, for which only the great rivers could suffice.76 But the catalogue of examples also builds up a set of negative associations with Persian river-drinking which fits into a wider pattern of Persian abuse of nature. It is telling that Herodotus signals explicitly the first occurrence of this phenomenon, making clear that it is the first of many. It is also significant that this happens to be the most iconic of all Homeric rivers, the Scamander in the plain of Troy (7.43.1),77 ill-omened not least by the major Iliadic motif of conflict between this river and Achilles, in which Achilles’ arrogance causes the Scamander to fail, just as that of Xerxes does here. Xerxes thus, as Bowie has noted, may appear to repeat Achilles’ sacrilege.78 The Troad witnesses the first occurrence of not only this, but many other ill-omened interactions between the Persians and the natural world, simultaneously heightening the epic overtones of the narrative at this point, emphasizing the scale of the Persian expedition, and creating a negative context in which to read each interaction.79 The template set by the episode at the river Scamander is applied no less devastatingly to the Black River in the Chersonese (7.58.3) and the river Lisus in Thrace (7.108.2), both drunk dry by Xerxes’ troops. Even the baggage animals alone are enough to drain completely the lake near Pistyrus in Thrace (7.109.2). Different regions Page 20 of 45

 

Geographical Morality naturally cope better or worse with the demands of Xerxes’ army: Herodotus notes (7.196) that ‘of the Thessalian rivers, the Onochonus was the only one which could not provide enough water for his army to drink. In Achaea, however, even the greatest river there, the Apidanus, gave out, remaining nothing more than a sorry trickle.’ (p.202) ii) Bridging Rivers, Bridging Continents: Crossing the Great Divide

We have noted some ways in which rivers might be assaulted, not least through being denied the status of river altogether and dispersed across the land. We shall come back to the real violation of rivers through defilement as an act of aggression in Chapter 6. But the most obvious way in which rivers may be ‘transgressed’ is quite literally through the simple act of crossing. We considered earlier in this chapter (pp. 178–81) the question of whether there are positive as well as negative ways of manipulating and controlling water, and concluded that it is indeed possible to enjoy a productive relationship with watercourses that receives the author’s approbation. Similarly, before we examine the world of river crossings, it is worth noting that rivers may be travelled along, not across, in what seems to be presented as a more productive and benign way. The idea that it might be more acceptable to follow the line of a river rather than cutting across it is illustrated by the example of the Babylonians, whose expertise in irrigation, discussed above (pp. 180–1), is complemented by their extraordinary disposable willow boats, exemplifying their harmonious use of the river (1.194). The wonder (θῶμα) comprised by this system, next in magnitude only to the city of Babylon itself, involves inventively using the river both up and down its course, since one or more asses are sent downstream in the boats, together with the cargo, all the way from Armenia to Babylon itself. The boats are then dismantled, the willow frames sold, and the hides which had formed the fabric of the boats are loaded onto the asses’ backs to be driven back to Armenia for the process to start again. Quite apart from the ingenuity of this remarkably modern-sounding system of combining disposable frames and recycled fabric, Herodotus makes explicit that working the river up and down its course in this imaginative and practical way with asses is sensible and indeed essential, ‘since it is not possible by any means to go upstream by water, due to the swiftness of the current’ (1.194.5). This is clearly a positive model of how to negotiate rivers, using the watercourse as an artery through the landscape by which goods and people can be effectively transported in a sustainable way.80 (p.203) But, while travelling along the line of a river seems a harmless or even productive activity, crossing that line seems fraught with negative connotations, as has been extensively discussed by Herodotean scholars such as Immerwahr and Lateiner,81 and put starkly by Hartog: ‘In the Histories, cannot every movement by the mediation of a bridge be read as a transgression?’82 The crossing of rivers is particularly associated with certain key players in

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Geographical Morality Herodotus’ narrative, and the similarities and differences emerge most clearly if we consider them in turn. It is, in fact, not a Persian, but Croesus the Lydian, who offers the first model for crossing a major river boundary. We have seen the importance of the river Halys in articulating the vast expanse of the Asian land mass, and delimiting Croesus’ realm.83 Croesus’ attempts to transgress this limit in Book 1 may justly be seen as the prototype for later Persian failures to comply with the existing configuration of space. He even receives a warning from Sandanis, when on the cusp of invading Cappadocia and moving against Persia, that Persia is not worth taking over and certainly not worth risking being taken over by the Persians for. Whereas Croesus will not gain a great deal by winning a rocky, wineless, figless land, the Persians will undoubtedly want to possess the natural riches of Lydia when they invade in retaliation (1.71). At this stage in the work, the Persians are characterized as a ‘hard’ people, a state of affairs that would appear to be set into decline towards softness and excess by the decision of Cyrus to transform them into an imperial power, ignoring his own good advice as expressed in the final chapter of the work.84 The logic of Sandanis’ warning is not exactly that of Xerxes’ dissuader figure Artabanus, although he obviously fits the similar mould of the (p.204) Herodotean adviser figure;85 indeed, it is more reminiscent (perhaps significantly so) of the reflections on the pros and cons of imperialism raised in flashback by Cyrus at the end of Herodotus’ work, to which we shall return in Chapter 7. But Croesus’ desire (ἱμέρος) to take over Cappadocia, in addition to his allotted sphere (πρὸς τὴν ἑωυτοῦ μοῖραν 1.73.1) en route for Persia strongly prefigures the language of later Persian military campaigns, where ‘real’ conquest is conceptually associated with metaphorical ‘natural’ conquest and where desire is an explicit motivator, especially for Xerxes and Mardonius, as will be discussed in Chapter 6. Indeed Croesus’ assault on Persia via bridges which cross the Halys (1.75.3) inevitably evokes in microcosm later grander-scale Persian bridgings in the name of aggressive imperialism. The view that Croesus is the important model for later attempts at imperialism in Herodotus’ narrative, and even later in the form of Athens, is strongly supported among scholars. Moles, for example, lays stress on tribute in the Lydian Empire as in that of the Athenians, and the devastation of land by Alyattes, which must have further evoked contemporary situations by reminding Herodotus’ readers of the devastation of Attica by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.86 Success will undoubtedly take Croesus out of his patch of Lydia against the advice of the Delphic oracle, and his crossing of a river which has been noted as a major delimiter of space not once, not twice, but thrice, might hint at a morally reprehensible transgression. He puts oracles to the test,87 and rebukes the gods—when Croesus feels deceived by the oracle sending him against Cyrus to face disaster, he sends Lydians with fetters to put on the threshold of the temple at Delphi as a symbol of his suffering and his sense of betrayal by the gods (1.90.4).88 In various ways, he fits into a pattern of despotic (p.205) Page 22 of 45

 

Geographical Morality behaviour which includes not only the Persians, but also certain Egyptian kings, and, at the more benign end of the spectrum, some Babylonian monarchs as well. The level of aggression in Croesus’ campaign cannot be denied. Once he has crossed the Halys, he comes to Pteria and encamps, ‘devastating the farms of the Syrians’ (1.76.1: φθείρων); he takes and enslaves the city of the Pterians (1.76.2: ἠνδραποδίσατο) and takes all the places around it, forcibly moving the Syrians, although they have done nothing wrong (1.76.2: Συρίους τε οὐδὲν ἐόντας αἰτίους ἀναστάτους). Furthermore, Croesus appears paradigmatically as an aggressive figure from early in Book 1, attacking the islands in a way that prefigures Polycrates of Samos, himself a forerunner of Persian imperial techniques.89 Indeed, Herodotus himself marks out Croesus as the first foreign aggressor against the Greeks and the starting point for his narrative of the series of conflicts which will culminate in Xerxes’ invasion of Greece: ‘This Croesus was the first foreigner known to us who subjugated some Greeks and took tribute from them, and won over others as friends.’90 But the picture is not unambiguous.91 The point might be made, as in the case of the Amazons, that the crossing of the Halys falls into the category of defensive river crossings. Furthermore, the bridges which Croesus uses to cross the Halys are described by Herodotus as pre-existing (κατὰ τὰς ἐούσας γεφύρας). Croesus himself does not attempt to turn water into land. Indeed, in his lack of a great building project he differs from not only the Persians but also many other tyrants within the text, making him hard to fit into any neat patterns. In any case, Herodotus’ narrative takes a new twist when he introduces another version of the story, this time the Greek account that the (p.206) bridges were not yet there at the time of the crossing nor put there by Croesus, but rather that it was Thales who enabled the crossing by dividing the river and making each stream fordable.92 We are left with a lack of clarity over the morality of this version of the episode, since we have seen rivers manipulated and divided in both positive and negative contexts. Furthermore, Croesus is able to see the error of his ways. The Pythia rather reasonably explains to Croesus that he misunderstood the oracle (1.91.4–6), so he should not be punishing the god, especially having been saved from the fire of Cyrus’ pyre by a sudden rainstorm from Apollo (1.87.1– 2).93 The divine order clearly wants to give Croesus a chance to repent, and Croesus takes it. ‘When he heard the story [i.e. of the trip to Delphi and the Pythia’s message], he acknowledged that the mistake had in no way been the god’s but his own. Such is the story of Croesus’ empire and the first conquest of Ionia’ (1.91.6–92.1). More generally, it is important to note that other players in the narrative, and not just the gods, seem to endorse Croesus’ wisdom and find him to be a good man. Solon tries to push him in the direction of insight with a clear statement near the start of the work that success and good fortune need to be defined with caution (1.32), Apollo saves him with a miracle and forgives his unjustified assault on Delphi,94 and ultimately Croesus learns his lesson (although one Page 23 of 45

 

Geographical Morality might contend that he does this only through suffering and on the point of death, like so many tragic heroes). Cyrus too acknowledges that ‘Croesus was loved of god and a good man’ (1.87.2) when he sees the divine support afforded him. (p.207) Whether or not Croesus should be seen as a hybristic character has divided scholars. For many, his attitude towards the Delphic oracle is indicative of innate hybris,95 and Flower notes that Herodotus exemplifies how easily a Greek mind might incline towards attributing Croesus’ fall to that quality.96 But others display some unease in categorizing Croesus thus, perhaps yet again exemplifying the sliding scale of despotic and excessive or abusive behaviour discussed above (p. 190). For Pearson, although Herodotus points us towards the hybris of Croesus, nevertheless ‘Croesus is a much more admirable man than Cambyses or Xerxes.’97 Fisher too wavers over whether Croesus is really guilty of hybris or not, arguing that Herodotus leaves open the question of Croesus’ overbearing ambition being responsible for his problems.98 Fisher’s argument (218) that Croesus cannot really be described as hybristic, since he does not attempt to shame or insult, but merely overvalues his own prosperity, may seem strained, but it pinpoints a critical issue to which we shall return, namely the strength or weakness of Cairns’s proposition that hybris lies in a disposition to ‘think big’ rather than necessarily requiring a victim or an action.99 The interpretation of Croesus’ hybris or otherwise is clearly germane to much broader issues such as Herodotus’ approach to imperialist ventures and the excessive exercise of dynamis, as will be discussed further in Chapter 7. The debate is given a balanced and insightful treatment by Pelling, who notes that Croesus runs close to the line dividing hybristic from non-hybristic behaviour and his ‘thoughts, insufficiently alert as they are to the boundary between god and human, resemble those which lead to or accompany hybristic behaviour elsewhere’.100 Nevertheless, the lack of explicit attribution of hybris by Herodotus to Croesus is significant, and it is the new, reformed Croesus, now the resident wise man, who offers a chillingly accurate insight to Cyrus into actually how unlike the Lydians the Persians are and how different (p.208) (and negative) will be their role in the ensuing narrative: ‘The Persians are by nature arrogant and they are poor.’101 This is an ill-fated combination—poverty, which will drive them to seek lands which are not their own, and arrogance, hybris, which will take their imperial ventures against other peoples and against the natural world far beyond the aggression of Croesus. In spite of the early foreshadowing offered by Croesus the Lydian, it is Cyrus the Persian whose actions in Book 1 more closely prefigure the subsequent narrative in terms of watery transgression. His imperialist bid against Babylon sets up the template for the story that will be played out by Cambyses against Egypt, Darius against Scythia and, on a grand scale, Xerxes against Greece. It is a story of Persian kings. As we have seen, the Babylonian backdrop is one characterized by Page 24 of 45

 

Geographical Morality harmony between the inhabitants and the natural world, especially the river Euphrates. This scenario casts into relief the imperialist campaign of Cyrus, in the course of which he directs his anger aggressively against the river Gyndes and effects the first conquest of Babylon by draining the Euphrates (1.189–91). But when Cyrus, buoyed up by his sense of being more than mortal through his birth and also by his success at Babylon,102 tries his next campaign against a people and a river, this time bridging the river Araxes to attack the Massagetae (1.205.1), another queen, Tomyris of Massagetae, takes a firmer line. She tells Cyrus to stop playing with the river, and either to come over and fight or to invite the Massagetae across. Croesus, not such a perfect adviser on this theme,103 advises him to cross (1.207.5), leading to a huge massacre of the Persians and (p.209) the death of Cyrus himself (1.214.3). This is, in a sense, the ‘right ending’ to Cyrus’ river-crossing narrative, and its moral message is confirmed by the flashback right at the end of the Histories to Cyrus’ own reflections on the dangers of imperialism, to which we shall return in Chapter 7.104 The iconic nature of Cyrus’ crossing of the Araxes is brought home by another attempt by Croesus to use his dubious wisdom and offer advice to a potentially despotic Persian ruler.105 When Croesus this time sensibly tries to warn Cambyses not to harm his own people (3.36.1–2), Cambyses refers straight back to Croesus’ earlier advice to Cyrus to cross the Araxes, which proved to be so misguided. Unfortunately, the message that it is unwise to follow Croesus’ advice or Cyrus’ example is little heeded by subsequent Persian rulers. The despotic excesses of Persia have been steadily increasing through the narrative, with Cambyses surpassing Cyrus, and Darius now taking up the gauntlet.106 Book 3 sees the succession from Cambyses to Darius characterized by a stepping-up of Persian imperial ambitions, expressed partly through the development of the imperial administration and the establishment of twenty Persian satrapies (3.89),107 which gives rise to Herodotus’ extensive description of the exotic extremities of the Persian Empire and beyond (3.97–117). Just as for Cyrus, bad advice also characterizes the inception of Darius’ imperial ambitions and yet another iconic set of bridgings, with his wife Atossa urging him to extend the Persian Empire, the question being simply in which direction. Darius claims to have been already planning to ‘build a bridge from this continent to the other and make war on the (p.210) Scythians’,108 a plan which he will eventually put into practice, but in the meantime Atossa urges him to make Greece his goal, and Darius sees the natural route as lying across the Mediterranean. Hence arises the first voyage by Persians to Greece (3.138.4), not a river crossing, but a sea crossing of monumental significance in reviving the pattern of travel back and forth across the Aegean with which Herodotus’ work opens.109 Although the voyage is presented as primarily one of reconnaissance, it is worth noting another ‘first’ besides that of the crossing itself, namely the capture of the first Greek or barbarian city to be taken by Darius—Samos—and, incidentally, the first occurrence of ‘netting’ in the Page 25 of 45

 

Geographical Morality narrative.110 However, the motivation for the capture of Samos is [is] not, in fact, Persian imperialism, but rather a personal favour owed to Syloson, to whom Samos is handed over once devoid of its inhabitants (3.149). Darius seems to be already in these ventures into the Greek world limbering up to put into practice his intentions with regard to the Scythians. By the opening of Book 4, Darius has confirmed his status as a more determined and more ruthless imperial conqueror than Cyrus had been, one who will bridge not just rivers but continents. The atrocities stemming from his capture of Babylon exceed those of Cyrus, with the destruction by Darius of the city’s manmade boundaries—its walls and gates—which, Herodotus notes, had not been carried out by Cyrus at the first capture of the city (3.159.1),111 the impaling of 3,000 leading men (3.159.1), and the importing of 50,000 women, Sabine-rapestyle, to replace those killed by the Babylonians to conserve food during the Persian siege (3.159.2).112 Book 4 (p.211) opens with a blunt and economical reminder of Darius’ next and long-standing imperial ambition to attack Scythia across the Thracian Bosporus, formulated, like the ambitions of Cyrus, in the language of passionate desire.113 Finally we are back on track for the resumption of the sequence of iconic bridgings, but with a much clearer picture of the moral standing of the current Persian king. In terms of real time, Babylon and Scythia follow directly on from each other, but in narrative terms it is another eighty chapters before we finally reach the long-awaited Scythian expedition and the crossing of the Bosporus.114 The intervening chapters are occupied with Herodotus’ extensive and detailed description of the land which is next in line for Persian imperial devastation, interspersed with his famous and largely polemical contribution to contemporary debates on the shape and layout of the inhabited earth as a whole, discussed in Chapter 2 above. In terms of our current concern with understanding the geographical morality of Herodotus, this lengthy passage may actually be less digressive and more germane than it appears. Herodotus’ interest in the broader layout of the world may give rise to questions about the acceptability of imperial projects, to which we shall return in Chapter 7, and, more specifically here, his detailed description of the landscape of Scythia which Darius seeks to attack, encourages a reading of Darius’ actions which is predisposed to be at best unsympathetic and at worst highly critical. When we finally return to the story of Darius’ expedition and his plan to bridge the Thracian Bosporus (4.83.1), we find yet another reason to have reservations about this action, namely the attempt by Darius’ brother Artabanus to dissuade him. Herodotus explicitly endorses this advice as good (χρηστά), but nevertheless Darius presses on. We have already considered the extraordinary scene in which Darius is pictured by Herodotus surveying the twin wonders in front of him of Mandrocles’ bridge, a magnificent feat of engineering, and first the Pontus and then the Bosporus itself, natural wonders to match the man-made achievement (4.85), discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. But it is not clear whether Page 26 of 45

 

Geographical Morality the reader is to share Darius’ delight. In the light of the escalating brutality of the Persian imperial venture, and of Herodotus’ extensive descriptions of the world that (p.212) Darius is seeking to disrupt—yet another of which interrupts his viewing of the Pontus and Bosporus, while Herodotus painstakingly explains how the precise dimensions have been reached for all these watercourses—how enthusiastically can we join him in congratulating Mandrocles of Samos, whose bridge made it all possible? The association between conquest over a natural watery division and conquest over people, epitomized in the pillars set up to commemorate this masterpiece of man’s ingenuity over nature and listing the nations led there by the Persian king (4.87.1), evokes a parallel of conception to which we shall return in Chapter 6. The parallel gives control over nature, here the distinction between land and water, a moral charge that it might not otherwise have carried.115 Darius is at heart a tamer of landscapes and in particular a transformer of water into land. His bridging of the river Ister is seen, rightly, by the Scythians in their appeal to allies, as an integral part of the same imperial scheme as required the Bosporus to be bridged. While the Bosporus gave Darius access to a whole new continent, the Ister enables him to put more fully into practice his long-term goal: ‘since he wanted everything on this side of the world too to belong to him’ (4.118.1). Yet again, we see the apparently small acts of bridging rivers opening out into much grander imperial plans that threaten even the division of the world into continents.116 Even if Herodotus himself has eschewed a strong sense of continental division, the fact that it looms large in the minds of the Persians lends weight to the intended outrage. Here, different layers of interaction with the natural world come together, as the smaller-scale bridging of a river contributes to an imperial venture that aspires to change the map of power. (p.213) The bridge over the Ister takes on a special significance as a symbol not only of power, but also of fragility. At first Darius instructs the Ionians to destroy the bridge as soon as everyone is across, until Coës of Lesbos wisely advises him to leave it intact as a route home (4.97). Even so, fear and anxiety over the possibility of being cut off on the wrong continent weigh heavily on Darius and force him to hasten back to the crossing point before the Scythians can reach the bridge and destroy it (4.134.2–135.1). The continental division clearly looms a great deal larger in Darius’ mind than in Herodotus’ mental map. The Scythians’ greater knowledge of the land enables them, nevertheless, to beat the Persians back to the crossing, but the Persians are saved by the duplicity of the Ionians, who pretend to be taking care of destroying the crossing, while really only tinkering (4.139). The Scythians, thinking all is in order, are tricked into leaving the scene of the crossing, and the Ionians quickly repair the bridge, allowing the Persians to escape (4.141). Even so, for all their power, control, and ingenuity, the Persians are shown as vulnerable to the natural order resurfacing and the natural divisions between continents and between land and water being re-established. Page 27 of 45

 

Geographical Morality In spite of the ever more magnificent scale of the Persian global operation, Darius’ successor is no less strongly characterized by the curious combination of triumphant commemoration of himself and his natural and human resources at the point of iconic crossings, and at the same time anxiety regarding the potential precariousness of the conquest of land over water. Haubold has done much to contextualize these bids to bridge key watercourses in terms of Persian imperial rhetoric concerning the notion of a ‘Bitter River’ which both defined and challenged imperial aspirations.117 Xerxes implicitly but clearly evokes the model of Darius at the Bosporus when he reviews his own troops before crossing the Hellespont at Abydos: ‘when he got to Abydos, Xerxes had the wish to see the whole of his army’ (7.44).118 But, in spite of this imitative triumphalism, the fragility of Darius’ (p.214) bridge across the Ister is explicitly, and no less clearly, echoed when Artabanus reminds Xerxes of how Darius almost got cut off in Scythia, a fear that Xerxes shares (8.97.1). Furthermore, Darius’ own return to Asia from his Scythian expedition, crossing the continental divide at the city of Sestos in the Chersonese (4.143.1), gains additional resonance when the city’s current governor, Artaÿctes, is executed by crucifixion on a headland halfway between Sestos and Madytus, at the very end of Herodotus’ work (9.120.4). This final atrocity of the work, this time on the part of the Greeks, is inextricably linked not only to Darius’ last crossing between Europe and Asia, but also to Xerxes’ own bridging of that divide, since it is explicitly mentioned in the context of the construction of that bridge (7.33).119 There are several ways in which the episode of Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont is painted in negative moral terms. First, we might ask whether the cumulative effect of Persian imperial transgressions, constantly echoed through deliberate emulation or implicit reference, increases the sense of moral outrage on each occasion.120 Secondly, Xerxes’ crossing is already negatively coloured by the ominous geography of the site, as discussed in the previous paragraph. It was precisely the headland that would see the crucifixion of Artaÿctes which afforded the point from which Xerxes’ bridge was built (7.34). No one could fail to make the connection, since Herodotus himself does so explicitly and in adjacent chapters. Of course, the choice of that spot for the final act of Greek revenge for Persian abuses is particularly resonant given its history as the location for such ebullient Persian arrogance as that shown by Xerxes, and no doubt that resonance underpinned the choice. But Herodotus’ decision to prefigure the crucifixion at this point in the narrative enables him to (p.215) enrich not just the chronologically posterior one, but both episodes, by negative association. In fact, the omens for this crossing have been bad from the start. Mardonius’ dangerous enticement of Xerxes with the very beautiful land of Europe (7.5.3) is backed up in the next chapter by the words of an intriguing prophet from Athens with a worrying track record (7.6.3–4):

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Geographical Morality They had come up to Sardis with Onomacritus, an Athenian interpreter who had set in order the oracles of Musaeus. They had set aside their previous hostility towards him; for Onomacritus had been thrown out of Athens by Peisistratus’ son Hipparchus, when he was caught by Lasus of Hermione in the act of inserting into the writings of Musaeus an oracle showing that the islands off Lemnos would disappear into the sea (ὡς ἐπὶ Λήμνῳ ἐπικείμεναι νῆσοι ἀφανιζοίατο κατὰ τῆς θαλάσσης). Because of this Hipparchus banished him, though they had previously been close friends. Now he had arrived at Susa with the Peisistratids, and when he came into the king’s presence, they used lofty words concerning him and he recited from his oracles; if there was anything that portended disaster to the Persian, he left it entirely unsaid, choosing and reciting such prophecies as were most favourable, telling how it was fated that the Hellespont be bridged by a man of Persia (ἔλεγε τόν τεἙλλήσποντον ὡς ζευχθῆναι χρεὸν εἴη ὑπ̓ ἀνδρὸς Πέρσεω) and describing the expedition. We might wonder why Xerxes follows a prophet who has already been expelled by one set of tyrants for forging oracles about disappearing islands. But, though Onomacritus does here see the truth of impending disaster, he plays into Xerxes’ vainest hopes and tells him what he wants to hear, that the Hellespont must be bridged by a man of Persia. So it is that, motivated in part by Mardonius’ appeal to Xerxes’ greed and Onomacritus’ appeal to his ambitions, Xerxes forms the grandest plan of all—to bridge the sea, and not just any sea, but the stretch dividing Europe and Asia, which the Persians themselves used to recognize as a crucial distinction (1.4.4).121 Even without the longer history of Persian abuses, the ominous geography of the site itself, and the dubious prophecy of Onomacritus, Xerxes’ own behaviour in his treatment of the Hellespont is so (p.216) insulting that it would be hard to cast anything other than the most uncomplimentary of moral judgements. His threat right back at the start of Book 7 to limit the Persian Empire only by the sky and override all boundaries is one to which we shall return in Chapter 6. But more specifically here he applies the image of the yoke not only to his intended subjects but also to the waters of the Hellespont (7.8β: ζεύξας τὸνἙλλήσποντον). This bridge is quite explicitly here an instrument of enslavement: no harmonious collaboration here. It is hardly a surprise, then, that Xerxes’ reaction to the storm which subsequently breaks down his bridge is so violent and excessive. The water, which he has tried to tame like an animal, is yet again treated as a living creature and punished like a slave, with 300 lashes, a yoke of fetters, and branding (7.35.1). The beheading of the bridge-building supervisors alongside the punishment of the sea itself merely reinforces Xerxes’ attitude to man and nature alike. His verbal insults to the magnificent Hellespont, and indeed his redefinition of this great strait as a muddy, briny river,122 contrast markedly with his Persian predecessor’s awestruck wonder at the Pontus and Bosporus and mark a steep decline in the morality of the Persian Page 29 of 45

 

Geographical Morality relationship with nature and with water in particular.123 It is easy to see how, in Bridges’ words, the bridging of the Hellespont ‘would later come to function as shorthand for the arrogance and transgressive behaviour of the king’.124 The scene is set for Xerxes, with bridges rebuilt, to embark upon his aggressive progress through Europe. iii) Reaching the Promised Land: Entering the Gardens of Midas

A final episode, taken from outside the opposition between Persians and Greeks, confirms that Herodotus seems to be using the negotiation (p.217) of rivers as a motif to distinguish between good and bad causes; that the moral charge he gives to geography serves to transform it from an issue of spatial organization to a means of characterizing players within the narrative. This tale, historical and yet semi-mythical in its paradigmatic status, perfectly illustrates the way in which landscapes may act as barometers of human behaviour. When recounting the embassy to Athens seeking alliance with Mardonius made by Alexander, son of Amyntas, Herodotus includes a digression on the descent of Alexander from Perdiccas (8.137–9). He tells of how Perdiccas and his two older brothers, fleeing from the king’s horsemen,125 cross a river that rises up to bar the way to their pursuers.126 The brothers are thus able to enter a beautiful part of Macedonia called the Gardens of Midas,127 a kind of promised land, where grew ‘without planting, roses, each bearing sixty blossoms and in scent exceeding every rose anywhere’ (8.138.2).128 Quite apart from offering an idyllic location, the gardens also act as the base for the conquest of Macedonia.129 An obvious biblical parallel for this motif is the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites on the way to their promised land, pursued by the Egyptians, the ‘wicked rulers’ of that narrative.130 It was posited above (pp. 202–9) that crossing a river might seem morally dubious, but, just as the manipulation of a river can be positive and productive, so too can the act of crossing be sanctioned by the cooperation of the river itself. Crossing a river which has voluntarily turned itself into dry land does not involve any violation or indeed any transformation on the part of those crossing; detailed context is key to ‘reading’ each episode. It seems selfevident that when rivers clear the way for one party and close in to destroy others, we are justified in asserting a (p.218) blunt characterization of ‘good’ and ‘bad’.131 Nevertheless, man’s intervention in the physical landscape does not per se evoke criticism, but its interpretation is guided by context, language, contrasts, and focalization. The establishment of a moral landscape leads us at last to the assault by the Persians on not just the rivers, but the whole natural world in their pursuit of empire. One recurrent theme in this chapter has been the emergence of a negative relationship between the Persians and the natural world at both the micro-level of individual features and landscapes and the macro-level of the map of imperial geography. Many episodes in the narrative illustrate the interaction between these two layers, with specific Persian interventions in natural landscapes being evidently part of a wider imperial programme. Herodotus’ Page 30 of 45

 

Geographical Morality authorial viewpoint oversees both the micro- and macro-level of Persian interaction with the natural world. We now need to explore in more detail the conquest of nature alongside the conquest of peoples, both real and metaphorical. The two intellectual personae of Herodotus the geographer and Herodotus the historian of the Persian wars thus blend quite naturally into one and the same narrative.132 Notes:

(1) There is a large bibliography on the notion of a morally charged geography in Herodotus. See, for example, the important chapter by Romm, ‘Herodotus and the Natural World’; and Lateiner, ‘Limit, Propriety and Transgression in the Histories of Herodotus’. (2) I recall de Jong, ‘Narratological Theory on Space’, 16, for the idea that space can tell us ‘something about a person, his milieu, character, or situation’. This is what I term ‘morally charged’ and de Jong terms ‘semantically loaded’. (3) See Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 1.178, for the fictional nature of the details given and the suggestion that ‘measurements of this sort served to create among the Greeks the notion of a mirage of a gigantic and supernatural oriental city’. (4) See 2.148.4 for the 3,000 chambers in the labyrinth, 1.93.5 for the dimensions of Alyattes’ tomb, 2.124.4 for the dimensions of the work access road for the pyramids, 2.124.5 for the scale of the pyramids, 3.60.1–2 for the dimensions of the Samian tunnel, 3.60.3 for those of the breakwater. (5) See Chapter 2 above for the parallel taming through enumeration of the landscape by Darius and Herodotus in turn. Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 55, observes well that much of the geographical information in Herodotus in fact falls within the frame of Persian power. (6) See 1.93.3 for a similarly oblique self-reference in relation to Alyattes’ tomb (‘there survived until my time—καὶ ἐϛ ἐμέ—five cornerstones’), and 3.60.4 on the Samian temple as the greatest ‘known to us’ (τῶν ἡμεῖϛ ἴδμεν). Quasi-autopsy is sometimes, of course, replaced by actual eyewitness experience, as in the case of the labyrinth (2.148.1: ‘which I have seen myself’ (τὸν ἐγὼ ἤδη εἶδον)) or the inscription on Cheops’ pyramid (2.125.6), which was read to him (μοὶ) by an interpreter. (7) 3.39.4. Also 3.59.1 for the Samian gift of Hydrea, an island near the Peloponnese, to the people of Troezen. (8) The language brings home the parallel very neatly. At 3.40.2 τὸ θεῖον ἐπισταμένῳ ὡϛ ἔστι φθονερόν and at 7.10e referring to the jealous god as ὁ θεὸϛ φθονήσαϛ. See van der Veen, The Significant and the Insignificant, 18–22, for the Page 31 of 45

 

Geographical Morality complex parallel between Croesus-Solon, Polycrates-Amasis, and XerxesArtabanus. (9) That said, Polycrates meets his ultimate demise through failing to heed the warning messages of dreams, in true Persian style. He joins Oroetes, in spite of a dream advising him to the contrary, and is horribly murdered on arrival in Magnesia (3.125). (10) 5.31.1–3, followed up in action at 6.95–6. (11) See Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’. (12) The paradigmatic nature of Samos as an island is interesting here. Not only is it Darius’ first such conquest and, as noted here, the ultimate commodity, but its inhabitants are the arch-islanders who can, unlike mainlanders as seen above (pp. 120–5), successfully migrate to another island. (13) In this sense Samos is not unlike Egypt, offering a model for Persia itself. Looking forward, see Irwin, ‘Herodotus and Samos’, for the suggestion that Herodotus’ insights into the rise and fall of Samos may also shed doubtful light on the likely trajectory of another tyrant city, Athens. (14) One notable exception being Athens, of course. In this context, Thucydides 1.10.1–2 may appear particularly pointed. (15) On this point I concur with the view of Dewald, ‘Form and Content’, although I would suggest that her identification of Greek tyrants as receiving more individual narratives than do others draws too sharp a distinction. Arguments against the stereotypical tyrant in Herodotus, in favour of greater differentiation between individual tyrannoi are also presented by Gray, ‘Herodotus and Images of Tyranny’. See also Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 148–59, arguing for a subtle Herodotean portrayal of the Peisistratids. (16) For some examples of this view, see Bridges, Imagining Xerxes; DarboPeschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’; Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’; Munson, Telling Wonders; Romm, Herodotus; Romm, ‘Herodotus and the Natural World’; Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile. See Romm, Herodotus, 80, for the idea that Herodotus condemns the cutting of the Athos canal as an ‘alteration of the structure of the earth’. (17) Scullion, ‘Herodotus and Greek Religion’. (18) Munson, Telling Wonders, 12. (19) We will return in Chapter 6 to the Persian devotion to, almost passion for, aspects of the natural landscape. Page 32 of 45

 

Geographical Morality (20) Munson, Telling Wonders, 11, sees it as no less than the ‘emasculation’ of the river by the king. (21) Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 163. (22) See 4.91 on Darius at the Tearus and the comments of Harrison, ‘Mastering the Landscape’, 29. (23) 1.189.1–2. Syntactically, both designations of hubristic behaviour come within oratio recta so are technically within the authorial voice, but the hybris of the river is subtly viewed through Cyrus’ enraged eyes. Quite what it means for a horse to display hybris is unclear. (24) For Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 163, in spite of Cyrus’ belief that he is successful in his handling of the Euphrates, he is unaware of ‘l’obscure loi de transgressions et expiations qui tourmente l’histoire hérodotéenne d’ascensions et de chutes’. (25) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 11, for the idea that the relationship with water is part of a kingly code of behaviour in Herodotus. (26) See Clarke, ‘Putting up Pyramids, Characterizing Kings’, for a fuller account of this episode. (27) See, for example, 2.99.2–4 and King Min’s careful manipulation of the Nile through dams to keep the city of Memphis safe, or 2.108 and Sesostris’ network of canals to supply drinking water to those who did not live on the Nile. The productive coexistence of the population at large with the river that dominates their land further reinforces that the Egyptians, like the Scythians, know how to make the most of their native landscape. Hartog, ‘Imaginary Scythians’, 250–1, offers a contrasting reading, in which Sesostris’ canals and land divisions make Egyptian space into ‘a creation of power’, and Egyptian management contrasts with natural harmony in Scythia. (28) As already seen earlier in this section(pp. 178–82), foils may direct the reader towards particular readings of individuals—the Babylonian queens contrast favourably with Cyrus in their productive rather than aggressive exploitation of the Euphrates; here, the framing of the Cheops episode by the ‘good’ reigns of Rhampsinitus and Mycerinus serves to highlight the depths to which Cheops sank. Even a single despotic dynasty contains variation. (29) Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 81–2. Later reception of the pyramids encompassed scorn as well as admiration for such a futile outlay of both money and effort. See Pliny, Natural History 36.75, who describes the pyramids as regum pecuniae otiosa ac stulta ostentatio and refers to those who conceived Cheops’ pyramid (36.79) as tantae uanitatis auctores, cold comfort for the 360,000 labourers over twenty years of effort. Frontinus, De aquaeductu urbis Page 33 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Romae 1.16, contrasts his aqueducts with the pointless pyramids of Egypt (evoking Pliny through his pyramidas uidelicet otiosas). (30) Travel for trade and colonization: see 1.163.1 (Phocaeans), 2.44.4 (Phoenicians); for recreation, enlightenment, and tourism: see 1.29–30 (Solon), 3.135–6 (Democedes), 4.33 (Hyperboreans from Scythia to Delos), 4.42 (Necos), 4.44 (Darius and the Indus), 4.76.2 (Anacharsis the Scythian). (31) Particularly vivid descriptions of military journeys are to be found at 7.30–1 (Phrygia and Lydia), 7.58 (Chersonese), 7.109–13 (Thrace). (32) Note, however, the perplexing observation at 2.133 that an oracle told Mycerinus that Egypt was supposed to suffer during the rule of his predecessors, who were aware of this fact, and were therefore acting in accordance with divine will. (33) On the question of what Herodotus really means by ‘the Xs say’, see Luraghi, ‘Local Knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’. It might be that a wider constituency is intended. West, ‘And it came to pass that Pharaoh dreamed’, 262, makes typically astute observations on the complexity of Herodotus’ Egyptian sources: ‘Herodotus would have us believe that his ancient history of Egypt rests on what he was told by the priests of Memphis, but it is impossible to take at face-value his claim to draw directly on the uncontaminated well-springs of a unitary and continuous native tradition.’ (34) Syntactically, the oscillation is hard to trace accurately, since Herodotus seems to shift almost imperceptibly between oratio obliqua and oratio recta at times. Here, some apparently old-fashioned discussions of Herodotean language, textual interpolation, and problems of translation take on new relevance alongside more recent questions of Herodotean Quellenforschung and still more modern narratological approaches, in the common quest to discover what Herodotus is saying in his own voice. (35) I thus disagree with Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 84 n. 16 and with Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold, 222, who takes this passage as indicating Herodotus’ own sense of depravity in an otherwise excellent discussion of the daughter’s pyramid as a perverse accounting sheet, in which the narrative of barbarian monumentality ‘seems to short-circuit the proper relations of longand short-term transactional orders’. (36) Syntactically reinforced by μὲν…δὲ. (37) Stephanie West suggested to me that this might refer only very specifically to the preceding chapter (on Rhampsinitus’ alleged descent to Hades to play dice with Demeter), which would indeed strain conventional Greek belief. But in my view the further-reaching interpretation is not precluded. Page 34 of 45

 

Geographical Morality (38) See also 7.152.3 for a similar statement: ‘I am bound to report what was said, but I am not bound to believe everything’, or in a rather different vein, 2.147.1, distancing himself from an endorsement of the Egyptian narrative thus far and stating that ‘so far, it is what the Egyptians themselves say that I have declared’. (39) See Africa, ‘Herodotus and Diodorus on Egypt’, 257, who uncomplicatedly notes Herodotus’ account of ‘two despots, Cheops and Chephren, who harassed the temples and built pyramids’. Kelly, ‘Tacitus, Germanicus and the Kings of Egypt’, in his excellent article on the connotations of Germanicus’ visit to Egypt, nevertheless accepts as a premise Vasunia’s view that Egyptian kings are transgressive of the natural order, without questioning that this represents Herodotus’ own take: ‘Tacitus takes up a motif that goes back to Herodotus’ description of Egypt, according to which ancient Egypt was a place in which tyrannical kings constantly engaged in projects involving monumental building and the manipulation of the landscape’ (222). (40) See Pliny, Natural History 36.81 for a similar fascination with the details of construction techniques. (41) Hornblower, ‘Herodotus and his Sources of Information’, argues that Herodotus quite reasonably varied his practice in citation of sources throughout the work; also Shrimpton with Gillis, ‘Appendix 1: Herodotus’ Source Citations’, arguing for the appropriateness of inconsistency. (42) Thomas, Herodotus in Context, 29–30, notes Herodotus’ practice of setting himself up as part of live, scientific debates, and this seems to extend to technicalities of engineering too. (43) See Verrall, ‘Herodotus on the Dimensions of the Pyramids’, attempting to rehabilitate Herodotus’ reputation in the face of criticism over his inaccurate description of the scale and relative size of the pyramids. Verrall argues that Herodotus not only distances himself from the information given by relating most ‘in the form of quotation’ (198), but also introduces the point about his own measuring in an oddly detached way. But the practice of giving numbers and measurements as a route to authority is well established in ancient literature. See Ash, ‘The Wonderful World of Mucianus’, 7–8, for the parallel of Vespasian’s aide and author of a work on Mirabilia, Gaius Licinius Mucianus. (44) In a sense this is more in line with the Egyptians’ customarily exceptional record-keeping behaviour, as celebrated at 2.77.1. Their refusal to commemorate the pyramid-builders is thus all the more striking. (45) I thus adopt a very different reading from that of Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 108, who argues that ‘Although Herodotus presents the kings as transgressing space and as doing violence to the natural symmetry of things, the Page 35 of 45

 

Geographical Morality Egyptian representations of the pharoahs’ building activities point not to transgression and violation, but rather to extension and replication.’ (46) See 2.35.1: ‘I shall speak at some length about Egypt because more than any other land it possesses very many wonders (πλεῖστα θωμάσια) and offers works (ἔργα) which go beyond the power of description.’ (47) See Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad loc. for this point and for the view that Herodotus’ perception of Egypt as a place of wonders is not confined to cases where specific vocabulary (such as θῶμα and cognates) is used. (48) See Harrison, ‘Upside Down and Back to Front’, 148, for the uninhibited nature of Herodotus’ wonder at Egypt, even in the case of [my emphasis] the pyramids built by forced labour, which Herodotus compares favourably with the works of the free Greeks (2.148.2). (49) My thanks to Rhiannon Ash for her help in articulating this idea. (50) See Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 51, for discussion of the connection between despotism and geographical intervention or rather transgression: ‘In the repeated emphasis on Persian Kings’ attempts to master nature…we see what one might, very tentatively, term an environmental theology.’ See also Harrison, ‘Mastering the Landscape’, for a prefiguring of similar thoughts on the control of nature as a manifestation of despotic behaviour. (51) This positive reading of Persian governance is in keeping with Herodotus’ note at 6.43.3 that Mardonius instituted democracies in the cities of Ionia. (52) See also Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 115–19, for the idea that Cambyses does not necessarily conform to a stereotype of Persian kingship. (53) 3.3.1: λέγεται δὲ καὶ ὅδε λόγος, ἐμοὶ μὲν οὐ πιθανός. (54) See, however, Romm, Herodotus, 88, who places this scheme alongside that of Nitocris of Babylon as a victory of technology in the service of the imperial power, and carrying no hint of censure. (55) It is worth noting that Herodotus presents the suffering of the subject peoples in his own voice, by contrast with the suffering of Cheops’ people which is ascribed to the Egyptians. The issue of focalization is, however, not entirely straightforward, since, in spite of the use of oratio recta, Herodotus goes on to note that the amount of money gained by the Persian kings is something he has learned ‘through hearsay’ (3.117.6: ἀκούσαϛ). This might be seen as a compromising factor, or possibly represents a careful distinction between the Page 36 of 45

 

Geographical Morality suffering which he claims to know for himself and the financial gain for which he cannot vouch. (56) Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 3.117. The contrast drawn with the previous irrigation and the current rationing seems clearly designed to highlight their neglect. (57) For the inherited nature of the Persian desire to conquer, control, and enumerate landscapes and their inhabitants, see Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, who sees Darius’ obsession with counting and enumeration, here in the context of his Scythian campaign, as a ‘family trait’ (19). (58) For Grethlein, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography, 186, this is one of several examples in which the scientific interests of Persian kings align with those of Herodotus himself. In my view, however, the additional element of aggressive imperialism to Xerxes’ curiosity makes a qualitative difference. This differentiation is captured by Christ, ‘Herodotean Kings and Historical Inquiry’, who notes at 179, that the episode ‘teases the reader by identifying king and historian with one another initially only to reject this identification in the end’. (59) See Romm, Herodotus, 141, for the view that Herodotus is here avoiding ‘choosing sides in the contest between science and faith’; Harrison, Divinity and History, 15, ponders whether the natural explanation is intended to preclude the divine one, or whether all that is questioned here is the attribution to the particular god, Poseidon, although one wonders then why Herodotus would formulate such a query thus. Gould, ‘Herodotus and Religion’, proposes a strong case for Herodotus’ serious acceptance of divine machinery, noting that care in interpreting the possibility of divine intervention indicates due caution rather than scepticism. (60) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad 8.27–8, notes Xerxes’ reasoning at 7.130 as an endorsement of the decision of many northern Greeks to Medize, since the diversion of a single river would give complete control of Thessaly. (61) See Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 157, on the special status of rivers also within the locus amoenus. (62) See Westerdahl, ‘The Maritime Cultural Landscape’, for the significance of the points at which land and sea meet and the distinction is most vulnerable, such as river estuaries. He calls these ‘transit points’ (6). (63) Munson, Telling Wonders, 75, sees in this a neat pairing of ‘complementary visions of the extraordinary’. (64) 4.28.3: ‘if there is a thunderstorm in winter, they are prone to wonder at it (θωμάζεσθαι) like a portent’.

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Geographical Morality (65) The military language of alliance is used deliberately and emphatically here to reflect the Greek: the Scythians have rivers that are their allies (4.47.1: τῶν ποταμῶν ἐόντων σφι συμμάχων). (66) One might adduce also Alyattes’ cutting down of crops at 1.17, which appears to be more just a typical act of warfare than an assault on ‘nature’. (67) Munson, Telling Wonders, 131, on 4.115. Or maybe even asking this question is to take the text too literally. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 4.120.1, suggest that this tactic of spoiling watercourses makes little sense in a land so rich in rivers and may be simply part of a conventional presentation of warfare on Herodotus’ part and designed to force allies to fight rather than to counter the Persians. (68) For the possibility of a ‘double attitude chez l’historien’ in relation to river manipulation, see Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 162. As Gianotti notes here, some waterworks count as mirabilia, while others are transgressive, but he does not articulate or explain the distinction. See Pelling, ‘The Urine and the Vine’, especially 72, for the resonance of flooding expressed through dreams. (69) Wisdom among non-Greeks is in short supply in Herodotus’ world. Exceptionally among the barbarians set to dig the Athos canal, the Phoenicians are the only ones to display wisdom (7.23.3: σοφίην…ἀποδείκνυνται) in building their section with tapering walls which stood tall while those of the others collapsed. (70) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 5. (71) It is interesting, though, that various elements in the non-Greek workforce are differentiated in their efficacy. Most of the barbarians display a serious lack of engineering expertise, by contrast with the skill of the Samian engineering work, which results in the walls of the canal falling in on them. (72) Athos had caused problems for the earlier expedition. In case we consider that this implies simply that it was sensible not to run into the same trouble twice, Herodotus himself rules this out by noting the ease with which the Persians could have gone around, rather than across, the peninsula. This complex motivation is reflected by Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 23, who distinguishes between the Hellespont episode as an act of sheer despotism and the cutting of Athos as an act of pride. The two episodes combine to give a complementary picture of the King. (73) The use of the word dynamis is important and we shall return to it in Chapter 7.

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Geographical Morality (74) But see Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 5, for a more positive view of this as one of Xerxes’ spectacular achievements, along with the bridging of the Hellespont and indeed the sheer scale of the four-year expedition. We might add the building of dykes at the entrance to the canal to prevent silting (7.37.1). Also note the reading of the Athos episode by Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 254–65, discussed in Chapter 7 below, interpreting μεγαλοφροσύνη in terms of display rather than arrogance. (75) The yoking and bridging language used to describe the work on the Strymon (7.24: καὶ τὸν Στρυμόνα ποταμὸν ζεύξανταϛ γεφυρῶσαι) obviously picks up the language used of the Hellespont (7.8β). (76) The preceding chapter (7.20) is precisely focused on comparing Xerxes’ expedition in scale with all the previous expeditions involving Persia, as well as the Trojan expedition, and even before then that of the Teucrians against the Mysians, when they crossed into Europe via the Bosporus and subjugated the whole of Thrace. (77) As with Xerxes’ prospective exploitation of the river Peneus in Thessaly, the draining of the Scamander is preceded by Xerxes’ indulging his desire to spectate, in this instance the citadel of Priam, which he climbed ‘in his desire to look upon it’ (7.43.1: ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσασθαι). (78) Bowie, ‘Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes’, 275. (79) See comments in Chapters 1 and 4. (80) One might make similar points about the Nile, which emerges very clearly in Herodotus’ account as the major transport route from the coast inland, not least for the historian himself (2.29.2–30.1). (81) See Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 28. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 293, states the principle even more starkly, claiming that crossing rivers ‘is always used to prove the hybris of the aggressor’. See also Lateiner, ‘Limit, Propriety and Transgression in the Histories of Herodotus’, 89, on the moral significance of crossing rivers. (82) Hartog, ‘Imaginary Scythians’, 251. (83) See Chapter 3 and Herodotus 1.6.1, 1.28, 1.72.2–3. The fact that Lydia’s river boundary is mentioned as many as three times might be significant in terms of Herodotus’ preoccupation with limits and their correct observation. (84) But it is worth noting that Persian ‘softness’ is not prominent in the ensuing narrative. Pelling, ‘East is East and West is West’, 63, observes instances of

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Geographical Morality Persian toughness and cites Plataea (9.62.2–3) as an episode in which the Persians were let down not by softness but by inappropriately light armour. (85) On this parallel, see Pelling, ‘Thucydides’ Archidamas and Herodotus’ Artabanus’, 15. (86) See Moles, ‘Herodotus Warns the Athenians’, 260–1. See also Griffin, ‘Herodotus and Tragedy’, 51, and Gould, Herodotus, 121–5, both of whom stress the similarities between Croesus and the Persians. (87) On the presumptuous and impious connotations of this, see Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle, 113. Kindt, ‘Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography’, also stresses the negative significance of this episode. (88) The dedication of a symbol of Croesus’ oppression by the Persians is, nevertheless, different from Xerxes’ notoriously aggressive use of fetters (7.35.1) as part of his punishment of the Hellespont for opposing his crossing. See also the interesting case at 1.66.3–4 of the Spartans who attack Tegea carrying fetters, but when they fail and are taken prisoner, they are made to work land wearing the fetters as they measure the land with ropes. So, the symbols of oppression are turned against the aggressors themselves. (89) 1.27.1 for the plan to attack the islanders, having subjugated the Asiatic Greeks of the mainland. (90) 1.6.2: οὗτος ὁ Κροῖσος βαρβάρων πρῶτος τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν τοὺς μὲν κατεστρέψατο Ἑλλήνων ἐς φόρου ἀπαγωγήν, τοὺς δὲ φίλους προσεποιήσατο. Technically, one could note that Herodotus’ claim is actually about the quality of information, Croesus being the first foreigner known to have done these things, but the associations of priority rub off on Croesus’ actions themselves. (91) Barker and Pelling, ‘Space-Travelling in Herodotus Book 5’, 225–6, for Croesus as an ‘off-key’ start to the sequence of imperial powers that runs through Herodotus’ work. A similar point is made in Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus’, 142, concerning the unusual application of ἱμέρος to Croesus’ wish to interrogate Solon (1.30.2) as well as to acquire land, which is the more normal application of the term in Herodotus. (92) Nevertheless, the Thales version of the account is worryingly reminiscent of Cyrus at the Gyndes. (93) Flower, ‘Herodotus and Delphic Traditions about Croesus’, offers an interesting analysis of Croesus’ relationship with Delphi, suggesting that the vast scale of Croesus’ dedications there, combined with the knowledge of his fall, must have generated various explanatory traditions, of which Herodotus’ is but one.

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Geographical Morality (94) This is not the first time that the gods have forgiven Lydian transgression against the natural world and against the temples of gods. At 1.19 during the twelfth year of Alyattes’ campaign against Miletus, corn was being fired by the army: ‘As soon as the corn caught fire, the fire, driven hard by the wind, caught the temple of Athena called Athena of Assesos, and the temple, when it caught fire, burned to the ground.’ Alyattes falls ill and the Delphic oracle says he must rebuild the temple. But no one is smitten by a thunderbolt or hideously punished. Maybe the accidental burning of the temple should not be seen as transgressive, or maybe the gods are benign towards the Lydians. (95) For example, Stahl, ‘Learning through Suffering’, refers throughout to Croesus’ hybris. (96) Flower, ‘Herodotus and Delphic Traditions about Croesus’. (97) Pearson, Popular Ethics in Ancient Greece, 138. (98) Fisher, ‘Popular Morality in Herodotus’. (99) Cairns, ‘Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking Big’. Cairns uses the conversation between Solon and Croesus to exemplify his stress on the importance of attitude rather than action, here attitude to success. (100) Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus’, 150. (101) 1.89.2: Πέρσαι φύσιν ἐόντεϛ ὑβρισταὶ εἰσὶ ἀχρήματοι. Of course, we may decide that Croesus does not constitute a reliable judge of the behaviour of others and, indeed, that the rhetorical needs of the moment may colour his claim here, but his assessment does seem to be borne out by the narrative. (102) He was encouraged for various reasons (1.204.2): ‘first, his birth, because of which he seemed to be something more than mortal (τὸ δοκέειν πλέον τι εἶναι ἀνθρώπου); and next, his victories in his wars (ἡ εὐτυχίη ἡ κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους γενομένη): for no nation that Cyrus undertook to attack could escape from him.’ Yet again the language of passionate desire is used of a Persian imperialist. Cyrus ‘had a longing to launch a campaign’ against them (ἔσχε προθυμίην στρατεύσασθαι 1.204.1). (103) Although, see the view of Shapiro, ‘Learning through Suffering’, emphasizing rather sophistically that Croesus’ advice to Cyrus is not in fact impaired, but that, rather than human wisdom being vulnerable to regression, it is in fact human fortune which changes. Croesus has learned his lesson because he became wise through his own suffering (not the words of Solon), but Cyrus remains unschooled and comes to grief not through bad advice, but through his own arrogant self-belief.

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Geographical Morality (104) Romm, Herodotus, 80, notes the unexpectedness of the successful outcome at Babylon. As he claims, the crossing of the Gyndes ‘is just the sort of megalomania that ordinarily costs a Herodotean ruler dear’. It is true, as Romm claims at 81, that the crossing of the Araxes initiates a new pattern of river crossings leading to defeat, but it is not self-evident why this change in consequences occurs. (105) Chiasson, ‘Myth and Truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus Logos’, 229, notes that other accounts of Cyrus’ expedition, such as those by Ctesias and Berossos, do not mention the crossing of the Araxes, suggesting that Herodotus has introduced the element in order deliberately to make Cyrus part of this pattern. (106) See Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, for this sense of escalation, especially at 99. (107) See Armayor, ‘Herodotus’ Catalogues of the Persian Empire’, for the view that Herodotus’ list bears little resemblance to other—epigraphic—evidence from Persia and that it is rather rooted in the world of Homeric catalogues. Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 3.89, offer some modifications to this reading. (108) 3.134.4: ἐγὼ γὰρ βεβούλευμαι ζεύξας γέφυραν ἐκ τῆσδε τῆς ἠπείρου ἐς τὴν ἑτέρην ἤπειρον ἐπὶ Σκύθας στρατεύεσθαϛ. Note Darius’ focus on the continental division as discussed in Chapter 2. West, ‘“Every Picture Tells a Story”’, comments on the surprisingly casual way in which this extraordinary technical feat is presented. (109) The import of this moment is underlined partly by the brevity of Herodotus’ expression: ‘These Persians were the first who came from Asia into Greece’ (1.138.4: οὗτοι δὲ πρῶτοι ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίης ἐς τὴν Ἑλλάδα ἀπίκοντο Πέρσαι). (110) On this process, see Chapter 3 above. (111) 3.159.1: τὸ γὰρ πρότερον ἑλὼν Κῦρος τὴν Βαβυλῶνα ἐποίησε τούτων οὐδέτερον. Thus, the ratcheting up of Persian abuse is made explicit, though one might see the destruction of a city’s walls and gates as a standard element in ancient warfare. (112) As Chris Burnand points out to me, this action in itself is barbaric, unless one strives to deem it acceptable in extreme circumstances, or simply a practical measure to replace a key element in the population. The self-mutilation of Zopyrus (3.154.2) clearly cannot be attributed to Darius’ devastation, but chimes with the brutality of the episode.

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Geographical Morality (113) 4.1.1: ‘After his capture of Babylon, Darius made his invasion of Scythia…. Darius desired to punish the Scythians’ (ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Δαρεῖος τείσασθαι Σκύθας). (114) De Jong, ‘The Anachronical Structure of Herodotus’ Histories’, discusses variable narrative pacing of this kind. (115) Konstan, ‘Persians, Greeks and Empire’, argues for a contrast between the voyeurism and the desire to see, enumerate, and possess, all of which characterize Eastern despots such as Croesus, Darius, and Xerxes, and on the other hand the Greek way of seeing, which is theōria, looking in search of knowledge and enlightenment. (116) See Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, 99 for this crescendo effect: The narrative thus establishes a gradation of outrage, for where Cyrus was content to build a bridge, Darius goes further by having a votive tablet painted, dedicated to Hera and representing the joining as a form of subjection (ζεῦξιϛ), with his army in the act of crossing and he himself in majesty, absorbed in contemplation of the enterprise (4.88): a way of doubling the transgression in its image and unconsciously provoking the gods. Van der Veen, The Significant and the Insignificant, offers a thought-provoking study of changes in status between great and small in the work, building on 1.5.4, but with more a sense of oscillation than of crescendo. (117) See Haubold, ‘The Achaemenid Empire and the Sea’, setting out the language and rhetoric of the Sargon Geography, an early Assyrian text, and the Babylonian World Map. As Haubold notes, the Daiva inscription shows Xerxes clearly celebrating having conquered the Bitter River in his campaign against Greece. (118) See, however, Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, who argues at 42 that Xerxes’ viewing of his armament and a boat race are not quite like Darius’ viewing of the Pontic, since ‘Xerxes does not admire nature here, but solely his own power.’ (119) I shall return to this episode in Chapter 7, but for now note Derow, ‘Herodotus Readings’, on the implications of the Artaÿctes episode for the future behaviour of Athens. Derow stresses the framing of Xerxes’ campaign against Greece with the two versions of the crucifixion story, the first immediately followed by Persian brutality in the beheading of the architects of the bridge (7.35.3) and the cutting in half of the son of Pythios the Lydian (7.38–9); the second embodying Athenian brutality. See also Fisher, ‘Popular Morality in

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Geographical Morality Herodotus’, on the refusal of Herodotus to allow Greece exemption from brutality (217). (120) Here the idea of ‘progressive iteration’, discussed by Rutherford, ‘Structure and Meaning in Epic and Historiography’, especially at 20, is helpful. Rutherford explores the way in which in Homer ‘something often happens on a smaller scale and is then developed on a larger, with more narrative impact and more emotional force…the last example is usually the most remarkable’. (121) Although see Pelling, ‘“Aeschylus” Persae and history’, 8, for ‘Persian maritime clumsiness’ in Aeschylus, which makes them naturally prone to create land from water wherever possible. (122) But I recall from Chapter 2 the possibility that this is simply a reference to the ‘Bitter River’ of the Assyrian tradition. See Haubold, ‘The Achaemenid Empire and the Sea’, and now also Murray, ‘The Waters at the End of the World’. (123) Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 28, sees Xerxes’ comparison of the Hellespont to a river at 7.35.2 as a sign of his despotic blindness: ‘This was presumption; but it was also a misconception, for the Hellespont is not a river, but a branch of the sea, and therefore properly salty.’ In fact, we might adduce Cyrus’ corresponding reduction of the riverine status of the Gyndes and ask whether Xerxes’ behaviour here actually has a clear precedent among his Persian forebears. (124) Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, 15. (125) Another angry king, as so many Persian despots will be (as we shall see in Chapter 6) and against whom a river rails, but this king is not Persian and the language used of him is different—he is described as ὀξυνθεὶϛ (8.138.1). (126) As Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad loc. notes, the absence of a name for the river ‘contributes to the fairy-tale atmosphere’, while frustrating modern scholars. It is most likely the Haliacmon. (127) Midas was, notably, the first barbarian king to offer gifts at Delphi (1.14.2). (128) The description resembles those of lavish and idyllic paradise gardens of Near Eastern monarchs. (129) Hatzopoulos, ‘Herodotos (8.137–8)’, attempts to locate the ‘real’ Gardens of Midas and sees this story as one legitimating the rule of the Macedonian royal family. (130) See Exodus 13.17–14.31.

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Geographical Morality (131) See the interesting parallel of the crossing of the Tanais by the Amazons, which is seen by Munson, Telling Wonders, 131, as ‘a violation of boundaries in reverse and a spectacular display of sophrosune’. (132) See Payen, Les Îles nomades, for an approach which stresses the unity of the work across this apparent generic boundary. Cobet, Herodots Exkurse, also emphasizes both the literary unity of the work and the geographical unity of the world it describes.

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The Conquest of Nature

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

The Conquest of Nature Herodotus’ ‘Military Narrative’ Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines in detail the metaphorical language of desire, control, war and conquest which characterizes Herodotus’ account of Persian interaction with the natural world. After considering the appeal of beautiful lands more generally, it focuses on the particular and excessive desire for natural beauty which is most strongly manifested by Persian kings and their advisers. It argues that Herodotus associates a specific language of rage, passionate desire, punishment, enslavement, and control with the Persians in relation to their imperial bids, which marks them out as distinct from other characters. The argument is strengthened by Herodotus’ application of the metaphor of the alliance of the natural world with some of the victims of Persian imperialism. The idea that ‘the divine’ responds to the narrative through natural phenomena is also explored. Keywords:   metaphor, conquest, desire, beauty, divine, victim, Persian imperialism

We ended Chapter 5 in the idyllic Gardens of Midas, where Perdiccas and his brothers were admitted by a river which approvingly parted for them and then barred the way to their pursuers. This narrative leitmotif, which so strikingly echoes the biblical tale of the crossing of the Red Sea, leads us to consider the lure of the promised land as a theme in Herodotus’ narrative of Persian imperialism. In Chapters 4 and 5 similarities and continuities between different despotic figures in the narrative have been stressed, generating a sense of hierarchy along a spectrum rather than one of stark dichotomies between ‘good’ Page 1 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature and ‘bad’ relationships with the natural world. Now it is time to examine Persian interventions in the landscape in more detail, and particularly in the context of their imperial ambitions. I shall explore the close relationship between passionate desire, enraged domination, and uncontrolled destruction in the Persians’ interaction with the natural world of their intended empire, considering the way in which Herodotus’ application to the Persians of a language of desire soon evolves into the metaphor of war, possession, and conquest of both peoples and places and is tellingly counterbalanced by a language of alliance between their victims and the natural world. I shall thus argue that the Persians do not simply lie at one end of a spectrum of tyrants, but that their behaviour is presented as being qualitatively as well as quantitatively distinctive; that they bring together the subjugation of landscapes and that of peoples in a unique way, outstripping all others, whether tyrants or free states, in their bid to exercise excessive control.

(p.222) A) The Allure of Beauty and the Language of Desire There is not enough gold in the world anywhere, nor territory so greatly outstanding in beauty (κάλλει) and fertility (ἀρετῇ), that we should take it in return for yielding to Persia and enslaving Greece. (8.144.1) The story of Perdiccas’ miraculous admission to the Gardens of Midas comes as part of a digression on the ancestral line of the Macedonian house, which is in turn motivated by the use by Persia of Alexander, son of Amyntas, as envoy to Athens seeking their alliance with Mardonius.1 The Athenian response to Alexander is predictably negative and predictably robust. They then turn to the Spartan envoys who have been sent to beg Athens not to sacrifice Greek unity, having heard of Alexander’s forthcoming embassy, and reassure the Spartans of their loyalty to the Greek cause. Their insistence that they would never be tempted by the lure of a beautiful land not only picks up rather interestingly the immediately preceding tale of the Gardens of Midas. It also evokes a wider theme within Herodotus’ narrative, namely the role of enticement and desire in the creation and fulfilment of imperial dreams. As Baragwanath notes, ‘The promise of kale chore (beautiful land) and arche (power) continually resurfaces in the Histories as a powerful temptation (including and especially in Mardonios’ speech at 7.9).’2 The rhetoric of the Athenians implies that such desire for beautiful things is universal; hence the moral credit drawn from their being able to resist in this crisis.3 The Persians, however, are shown to find irresistible the desire to enjoy and possess lands of beauty. This desire enhances and complements the overarching wish for archē and dynamis which motivates the whole Persian imperial bid and its eventual failure. (p.223) Taking the two elements in Baragwanath’s ‘double temptation’ in turn, it is worth repeating that inhabiting a beautiful land is a wish by no means Page 2 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature exclusive to the Persians. The ‘grass is greener’ mentality resurfaces throughout Herodotus’ narrative as a significant motivation for migration of various kinds. The appeal of the idyllic environment, though apparently self-evident, is nevertheless spelled out on more than one occasion. First, in Herodotus’ account of the Panionium, he notes that it comprises ‘those who have founded their cities in the most beautiful setting of climate and season (τοῦ μὲν οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῶν ὡρέων ἐν τῷ καλλίστῳ) of all mankind that I know. For the country to the north of them is not the same in these respects, nor to the south or east or west, for some of it suffers from cold and wet, and some from heat and drought’ (1.142.1– 2). Beauty (τὸ κάλλος) characterizes not only Ionia, but also mainland Greece, which, in apparent contradiction to the view expressed at 1.142.1–2, can claim to enjoy the perfect blend of seasons: ‘The most remote parts of the world have somehow drawn the finest things as their lot (τὰ κάλλιστα ἔλαχον), just as Greece enjoys much the best blend of seasons (τὰς ὥρας πολλόν τι κάλλιστα κεκρημέναϛ)’ (3.106.1). This is a rather more complicated case, as we have already seen in Chapter 2, in so far as both the extremities of the earth, with which Greece is here contrasted, and Greece itself enjoy beauty (τὸ κάλλος), but the positive association is clearly not compromised by this double application. It is worth noting that in neither of these cases is desire or conquest at issue. It is perfectly possible to enjoy beauty without embarking on a destructive military campaign, but it does require the luck of the draw, to use Herodotus’ own imagery, to be blessed with a naturally beautiful location.4 So, we shall now see what happens when beauty does not fall naturally into one’s possession, or at least can be seen in greater profusion or intensity elsewhere. The colonization of Libya by the Theraeans, first of the island of Platea,5 then in a beautiful place called Aziris opposite the island, and finally six years later in Cyrene (p.224) (4.156–8), clearly illustrates the appeal and value of the fairest land.6 The site of Aziris is surrounded by ‘the most beautiful streams’ (4.157.3: νάπαι τε κάλλισται) on both sides, but the colonists eventually move on from there. It is interesting that they do so at the bidding of the native Libyans, perhaps jealously guarding a beauty spot. The Theraeans are persuaded to leave by the promise that they would be taken to an even better place (4.158.1: ἐς ἀμείνονα χῶρον), but, in fact, again, the Libyans further reinforce the value, preciousness, and appeal of beautiful locations by guiding the colonists through the most beautiful place of all (4.158.2: τὸν κάλλιστον τῶν χώρων), Irasa, at night so that they will not see it, and presumably desire it.7 Here, then, although the colonists attain a beautiful place to live, they are prevented by the native population from enjoying the absolute pinnacle of what Libya has to offer.8 Another colonization story, which goes awry, results accidentally in an outcome for the Samians that exceeds their expectations in terms of beautiful locations. Just as they are considering founding a colony to escape the threat of Persian enslavement, they and other Ionians are approached by the people of Zancle, Page 3 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature with an invitation to join a colonizing expedition to the Fair Coast of Sicily facing Etruria (6.22). But this plan to inhabit ‘the so-called Beautiful Coast’ (ἡ δὲ Καλὴ αὕτη ἀκτὴ καλεομένη) is superseded by the even more enticing prospect, suggested to the Samians by Anaxilaus, the prince of Rhegium, of taking over the ready-made city of Zancle itself (6.23.1–2). The various migrations are all effected smoothly and without trouble (6.24.2: ἀπονητὶ) from the Samian point of view, since Scythes, the king of Zancle, is given a graceful exit and comfortable retirement by the Persians and the Samians move into Zancle itself, not only beautiful like the coast they had planned to colonize, (p.225) but ‘the most beautiful city’ (6.24.2: πόλις καλλίστη Ζάγκλη). However, as Baragwanath notes, this apparently happy resolution sits uneasily alongside the fact that Samian behaviour in this episode falls within a wider pattern of states which give others ‘freedom from’ their oppressors only to enjoy the ‘freedom to’ become tyrannical themselves.9 Here, the motivation of the Samian colonizing expedition is presented as fear of Persian enslavement if they stay where they are. No character within the narrative is seen to respond to a desire for the physical beauty suggested by the name of the interim destination, but it is, nevertheless, a migration which results in their seizing the even more beautiful city of Zancle. The close and complex relationship between different responses to beauty is illustrated by the episode concerning the Paeonian women. When, having left Megabyzus on campaign in Thrace and himself returned to Sardis, Darius is presented with the sister of the aspirants to Paeonian rule, Pigres and Mantyes, who has been dressed up to parade past the Persian king, he is so taken by her good looks and height, but above all her diligence in fetching water, that he formulates the plan for Megabyzus to conquer the Paeonians and bring them out of Europe to Asia.10 It turns out that the Paeonians were already planning to submit to Darius, and indeed advertise their land with an account of the river Strymon and the cities along it (5.13.2). The land of Paeonia thus has attributes to match those of its women. Both are attractive and well-equipped to be useful, and we await the predictable appropriation by Persia. But this is no straightforward story of conquest, nor the parallel conquest of lands and people, which Herodotus employs so often as a motif. The Persians turn out to be more interested in the women than in the land, and demand a forced migration of the population to Persia (5.14), leaving the land itself behind.11 This time, the movement enforced by the Persians is (p.226) of another people and not themselves, and even then it remains short-lived. The Paeonians are back home by the end of the book, having been encouraged by Aristagoras to escape (5.98). In fact, even this apparent restoration is not as clear-cut as it seems. The question of where the Paeonians really belong might seem to have an obvious answer in Paeonia. But we learn that the Paeonians were originally Teucrian colonists from Troy,12 so that the Persians, with their movement of the people, could be seen as effecting some kind of restoration. On the other hand, once the Page 4 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature focalization of the episode is taken into account, a further twist emerges. It is the Paeonian woman’s brothers, Pigres and Mantyes, who tell Darius that the towns of Paeonia lie on the Strymon, a river ‘not far from Hellespont’ (5.13.2), in a way which hints that Paeonia is closer to the world of Asia than one might have imagined.13 It is, furthermore, also they who tell Darius about their people’s Trojan ancestry in a bid to win his favour and to gain power over their own people (5.12.1: αὐτοὶ ἐθέλοντες Παιόνων τυραννεύειν). Should we or indeed Darius trust the information supplied by those who are motivated by a wish to exercise despotic rule over their own? Herodotus, in his own voice, fails to endorse these suggestions. Instead, he describes Darius’ wish to ‘take the Paeonians out of their homes from Europe to Asia’, using the language which he employs elsewhere in the narrative in cases of forced movement away from home,14 and once the Paeonians are captured, again the language denotes their forced removal from their homes to an alien place.15 As we have seen before, the vision of Herodotus and that of Darius coincides, as Darius observes that the (p. 227) Paeonian woman is not like the Persians, or Lydians, or ‘any of the peoples of Asia’ (5.12.3: οὔτε πρὸς τῶν ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίης οὐδαμῶν).16 For the king of Persia, however implausible the idea that the Paeonians might actually belong to Asia, it fits neatly into his own conceptual geography in which continental divisions are resonant and significant. But it is neither a persuasive nor a necessary part of the argument. He simply wishes them to be moved to where he wants them. This is a rather unusual example. The Paeonians are separated from their homeland and turned into a desirable, beautiful, portable, and above all useful commodity that can be transported back to the king. More often in Herodotus’ narrative, the attraction of beauty entails voluntary migration in search of the desideratum. In the example of the Paeonians, in any case, beauty is wholly eclipsed as a motivator by the more utilitarian wish for good workers. But we may now consider the many occasions on which beauty is more directly the motivation for aggression and possession. As so often, behaviour that will become strongly characteristic of the Persians is prefigured in Book 1 with another despotic figure, Croesus of Lydia. We have already seen in Chapter 5 how Croesus’ crossing of the river Halys into Cappadocia, en route for the much greater goal of Persia, in spite of important differences of degree, nevertheless in some ways prefigures the later sequence of iconic Persian river crossings in the service of aggressive imperialism. Croesus’ desire (ἱμέρος) to take over Cappadocia (1.73.1), in addition to his allotted sphere, en route for Persia foreshadows the language of later Persian military campaigns, where ‘real’ conquest is conceptually associated with ‘natural’ conquest and where desire is an explicit motivator. The primary cause of Croesus’ campaign is, in fact, revenge on Cyrus on behalf of Astyages,17 not desire, which appears as the subsidiary motive, and one might point to similar elements of revenge in the motivation of both Darius and Xerxes in their campaigns.18 (p.228) It would indeed not be surprising to find a combination of Page 5 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature such motives underpinning military actions throughout the narrative by despotic figures, all of whom, as we have seen in Chapter 5, bear considerable resemblance to each other, not least in their two-edged mastery of the natural world, evoking Herodotus’ admiration for the accomplishment of magnificent engineering feats but often bringing misery to their subjects and workers. Nevertheless, it is with the Persians that we see the heady concoction of all of these factors brought together as the underpinning for relentless campaigns of desire, possession, and conquest, in ways which are not only quantitatively but also qualitatively distinctive. The pattern starts to emerge with Cyrus.19 This king’s excessive unwillingness to drink from any river other than the Choaspes (1.188) leads to him having it transported wherever he goes, in a telling illustration of the fine line between desire and control. The language of desire, passion, anger, and self-conscious display, all of which are to become strongly characteristic of Persian rulers in the narrative, starts to build up at the end of Book 1 as Cyrus unleashes his desire towards and against the land of the Massagetae, whom he ‘longs to make subject to him’ (1.201: ἐπεθύμησε Μασσαγέτας ὑπ̓ ἑωυτῷ ποιήσασθαι). The Massagetae may not be explicitly described as beautiful, but they are a great (μέγα) and warlike (ἄλκιμον) race, living in a vast territory beyond the river Araxes and opposite the Issedones. It is against these people that Cyrus unleashes his passion for war (1.204.1: ἐπ’ οὓς ὁ Κῦρος ἔσχε προθυμίην στρατεύσασθαι). The dominant concept in Cyrus’ campaign is ‘passion’ (θυμόϛ),20 and this is acknowledged and echoed by his opponent, Queen Tomyris, as well, who orders Cyrus to allow one side or the other to retreat for three days away from their own side of the river Araxes, ‘if you so greatly desire (1.206.2: μεγάλωϛ προθυμέαι) to try the strength of the Massagetae’.21 The bridging of a major boundary river, the belief in his status as more than mortal, and the strange dream with which the (p.229) Book ends, in which Cyrus, having made the momentous crossing over the Araxes, sees Darius with wings on his shoulders overshadowing both Asia and Europe (1.209.1)—all clearly reinforce the sense that Cyrus’ desire for conquest is intended as a foretaste of an ever-increasing Persian passion to possess and conquer. The catastrophic end to which Cyrus’ campaign comes may be seen as the first warning against such behaviour, but, like most good advice in the Histories, including Cyrus’ own good counsel against migration in pursuit of empire in the flashback with which Herodotus ends his narrative, it goes unheeded.22 Without the explicit element of beauty, one might have argued that this is another false start for the pattern of beauty, desire, and conquest. Other clues, however, speak out loudly and clearly in favour of seeing Cyrus’ wish to conquer the Massagetae as a prototype for later Persian campaigns, characterized by passionate desire, whether the object is explicitly described as beautiful or not.23 Tomyris’ ever-perceptive realization that Cyrus’ proclaimed wish to marry her is but a pretext for desiring her kingdom makes clear the almost sexual longing in play here, applied indiscriminately to people and lands.24 This sexual Page 6 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature frisson is brought out well by Payen, who identifies the characteristics of conquest for the Persians as ‘à l’origine, tout d’abord, le désir (ἔρωϛ) ou l’envie (ἐπιθυμίη) de dominer’, before articulating the implicit link between sexuality and war: ‘la contiguïté entre la sexualité et la guerre’.25 As we have already seen in the context of iconic bridgings, Cambyses himself acts as a bridge between the more developed narrative characters of Cyrus and Darius. The intriguing episode in which he sends a group of Fish Eaters to spy on the Ethiopians with a view to launching an expedition against them prefigures later Persian imperialist campaigns, but in miniature rather than on the grand scale of Darius (p.230) and Xerxes, and in theory rather than in practice. The Ethiopians to whom the envoys are to go are described as ‘the tallest and most beautiful men in the world’ (3.20.1: μέγιστοι καὶ κάλλιστοι ἀνθρώπων πάντων).26 As will be made clear later in Book 3, the physical beauty of the inhabitants is symptomatic of the rich and exotic nature of the land itself, which ‘produces gold in abundance, and huge elephants, and all sorts of wild trees, and ebony, and the tallest and handsomest and longest-lived people’ (3.114).27 But their king quickly realizes that the envoys are spies and censures Cambyses’ unjust ambitions: ‘If he were just, he would not have coveted (οὔτ ̓ ἂν ἐπεθύμησε) other land besides his own’ (3.21.2). The classic combination of beauty and covetousness or desire (θυμόϛ), which characterizes Persian imperial aspiration, is here momentarily glimpsed, together with the transparency of the plan in the eyes of its intended victim, and the routinely ignored sage advice not to covet any land but one’s own.28 In Book 4, Darius takes up the baton of conquest and the language of desire, although the narrative of his desires is somewhat more restrained than that of some other Persian kings.29 Just as Cyrus enjoys what might seem an excessively desirous relationship with the river Choaspes, so too does Darius’ acute admiration for the river Tearus, which verges on anthropomorphizing, particularly through verbal parallels between praise of the river and of himself, seem excessive and unnatural. As noted in Chapter 3 above, the inscription set up to the river treads a fine line between extreme enthusiasm (p.231) and control.30 While Xerxes’ treatment of a plane tree, which he adorned with gold because of its beauty (7.31: τὴν κάλλεοϛ εἵνεκα) and assigned to one of his immortals to guard,31 might be seen as a simple Persian love of ‘natural beauty’,32 the other episodes mentioned above seem to go beyond being merely distinctive interactions with features of the natural world. Rather, they not only illustrate an aspect of Persian kingly behaviour, but also operate as a metaphor for their desirous and covetous approach to other lands and peoples. The themes of beauty and desire are, in any case, more fully developed in the second part of the Histories in the two expeditions against Europe, and against Greece in particular, as despotic excess and specifically its Persian manifestation reach new heights. Aristagoras of Miletus is a key player in the enticement of Page 7 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature others to follow the promise of beautiful lands. When Naxian exiles approach him for help in their restoration, he hatches a plan which he hopes will eventually give him rule over the island, promising to secure troops from Darius’ brother Artaphernes, satrap of Sardis, while really urging him to make a campaign against Naxos. Aristagoras’ own aims regarding the island are expressed as an enticement to Artaphernes, reminding him that Naxos, although not large, is a ‘beautiful and fertile’ island (5.31.1: καλή τε καὶ ἀγαθὴ). The alluring beauty of Naxos is further enhanced by the suggestion that it could act as a stepping stone for further island conquests across the Cyclades, and beyond to Euboea, not itself described as beautiful, but ‘a big and prosperous island’ (5.31.3: νήσῳ μεγάλῃ τε καὶ εὐδαίμονι). Although Aristagoras’ ambitions are really for himself, he plays successfully on the Persians’ innate (p.232) attraction to conquest over people and places of beauty and secures his troops. But when the Naxian expedition fails due to internal strife on the invading side and consequent forewarning for the Naxians, Aristagoras’ position is at risk from Persian annoyance. At this point he adopts the quite different strategy of planning a revolt against Persia, for which he will need Greek support. But, if the strategy entails a turnaround from his previous allegiances, the methods of persuasion employed are strikingly similar. It is as though Aristagoras has only one line of argument at his disposal, which he applies indiscriminately to Europe or to Asia in keeping with his interstitial location on the Ionian coast, and depending on the needs of the situation. So, when he attempts yet again to secure military support, this time from the West not the East, and in the first instance from Cleomenes of Sparta, it is the ‘beautiful land’ motif which comes most readily to his lips (5.49). Cleomenes is supposed to be enticed by the fact that Asia is full of good things (5.49.4: ἀγαθά), which are enumerated in terms of precious metals—gold, silver, bronze —textiles, beasts of burden, and men. The land of Asia, which has been encapsulated in and depicted on the bronze tablet (5.49.1), is no less well presented in verbal form as a ready-packaged and easily taken entity.33 But, just as we have seen the Athenians remind the Spartans that they would never be swayed by the lure of a beautiful and fertile land (8.144.1), so too do the Spartans reject Aristagoras’ enticements. It might be tempting to adduce the apparent lack of susceptibility to the allure of beautiful lands in support of a stark distinction between the two protagonists, Persians and Greeks.34 As we have seen and shall continue to see, Herodotus’ world does involve quite marked distinctions between peoples, which can be all too easily papered over. But in fact Greeks too can be tempted in this way, as is indicated by Cleomenes’ hesitation and indeed the near success of Aristagoras’ attempt to win him over. His negative response to Aristagoras is due to the fact that Susa lies three months’ journey from the coast, not to an invulnerability to the attraction of fine lands (5.50.3). The Athenians (p.233) too appear not to be above indulging in land envy. In the context of Miltiades’ trial for fraud against the people of Page 8 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature Athens, Herodotus relates, as one of his services to Athens, the story of how he captured Lemnos (6.137–40). The Athenians had driven the Pelasgians out of Attica and given them poor land under Mount Hymettus to inhabit. The Pelasgians worked it so hard and successfully that the Athenians were ‘seized with envy (φθόνος) and longing (ἵμερος) to possess it and drove the Pelasgians out’ (6.137.2). It was from there that the Pelasgians moved to Lemnos, snatching Athenian women from the festival at Brauron en route, and only years later being punished by Miltiades. This might appear to offer a clear counterexample to the suggestion that Athenians and perhaps Greeks were broadly less susceptible to the Persian tendency to covet beautiful lands, but in fact the morality and indeed the focalization of the tale are more complicated than to confirm such a conclusion. The story of how the Athenians snatched the land given to the Pelasgians is given in two different voices, neither belonging to Herodotus himself. The version above, in which the Athenians partake of qualities such as desire (ἵμερος) elsewhere ascribed by Herodotus to the Persians, is the one offered by Hecataeus (6.137.1). The Athenians themselves, unsurprisingly, offer a version which is more to their own credit. In their account, the behaviour of the Pelasgians is aggressive and transgressive, not only in their snatching of Athenian women to take to Lemnos, but long before that in their frequent and violent attacks on young Athenian girls coming to draw water at the Nine Springs near Hymettus, and in their alleged plans to attack Athens itself. The move by the Athenians against the beautiful land cultivated by the Pelasgians was thus seen by the Athenians as justified.35 It remains uncertain whether Herodotus himself actually endorses the idea that Athens might be no less susceptible to land envy than are the Persians. But the complex layers of motivation in this episode, explored by Baragwanath,36 do offer Herodotus the opportunity to hint at resonant parallels across both time and space. Although the issue of land envy is brushed aside by the Athenians’ explanation that was more focused on revenge and self-defence as the Pelasgians were attacking their daughters, nevertheless, as Baragwanath notes,37 (p.234) the issue of Athenian land hunger is reinstated in the choice of punishment, by which the Pelasgians must return the land in good order. The characteristics of later Athenian imperialism begin to emerge from this episode, not least greed and profit, and we are left with the uncomfortable sense that Persian acquisitiveness may be all too readily shared by their successor imperialists. It is important to note that the quality of passionate desire, which I have argued is emerging as a key characteristic of Persian imperialism in the earlier books of the Histories, sometimes needs to be ‘brought out’ in the Persian kings themselves by the provocation and enticement of advisers. We have seen how Aristagoras tries to achieve his own ends by appealing to what he hopes will prove an irresistible allure to Darius’ brother Artaphernes, namely the beauty of Naxos (5.31.1). Whereas the same kind of enticement fails to persuade Page 9 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature Cleomenes of Sparta, in the case of Artaphernes it is successful, and the expedition fails for other reasons. Among the multiple spurs used to provoke the Persian propensity to desire and conquest, the allure of beauty is sometimes used not to trigger but to refocus this desire. When Mardonius seeks to entice Xerxes to launch an expedition against Greece, he is engaged primarily in redirecting the king’s attention from Egypt. Mardonius’ attempt to persuade is framed primarily in terms of revenge for the wrongs of the Athenians against Persia, recalling the revenge which motivated Croesus to invade Cappadocia (1.73.1). We have noted already that Croesus’ desire (ἱμέρος) for Cappadocia was driven only incidentally by the attraction of the land, and Herodotus distinguishes very clearly here too the primary motive of revenge against both Athens and Egypt, which in Mardonius’ view have wronged Persia and shown hybris respectively,38 from the supplementary appeal of the land of Europe. That the two are to be clearly set apart is made explicit in the language (7.5.3): On the one hand, this argument was one of revenge (οὗτοϛ μέν οἱ ὁ λόγοϛ ἦ τιμωρόϛ), but he kept adding this additional argument (τοῦδε δὲ τοῦ λόγου), that Europe was a very fair land (ἡ Εὐρώπη περικαλλὴς εἴη χώρη) and bore every type of cultivated tree, was outstanding in fertility (ἀρετήν τε ἄκρη), and was worthy to be possessed by the Great King alone of mortals. (p.235) Thus, Mardonius shifts from Xerxes’ wish to attack Egypt, through the notion that both Egypt and Greece deserve punishment, to the suggestion that, of the two, Greece is the more worthy of attention because of its greater beauty and allure.39 It is interesting that, before hearing Mardonius’ advice, Xerxes is explicitly described by Herodotus as lacking the passion (οὐδαμῶς πρόθυμος ἦν) for an expedition against Greece (7.5.1). It is Mardonius himself who displays the key Persian characteristic of passionate desire, being described by Herodotus as ‘longing for novelty (νεωτέρων ἔργων ἐπιθυμητὴϛ ἐὼν) and wanting to rule over Greece’ (7.6.1).40 In this sense Mardonius echoes the role of Aristagoras vis-à-vis Artaphernes, encouraging Persian military intervention with the ulterior motive of seeking a kingdom for himself, and tempting the Persians to launch their assault by the prospect of moving from their tough land to one which is beautiful and fertile. However, the fact that Mardonius’ enticement of Xerxes is motivated by his own ambitions rather than those of the Persian king does not render the motif of the beautiful land any less effective as a piece of rhetoric,41 in spite of the contrasting insistence on Greek poverty articulated by Demaratus to Xerxes (7.102.1) and the fact that Mardonius himself has, on his own admission, only been as far as Macedonia, so can hardly be described as fully informed.42 But the power of the motif quickly grows on Xerxes or perhaps picks up on preexisting propensities towards a desire for beauty. It is, in any case, already patent in the king’s speech to the Persian council declaring his intentions to Page 10 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature march on Europe, where the appeal and desirability of that continent are thematically embedded, alongside the ongoing (p.236) factors of revenge and the legacy of power lust.43 The prospect of enjoying a land which is no less vast than his own (οὐκ ἐλάσσονα) and more fertile (οὐδὲ φλαυροτέρην παμφορωτέρην) carries considerable appeal (7.8α.2), even if it seems based on wishful thinking. In the mouth of Xerxes, the language of desire quickly evolves into a language of dominance and subjugation. Xerxes’ wish to possess and control the land, rather than merely to enjoy its riches, is clear not only in his plans to override the natural division between continents and between land and sea, in his bridging of the Hellespont, but also in his arrogant claim that he will ‘make all lands into one country for you’ (7.8γ.2). Manipulating nature is to become a visible expression of Xerxes’ power, a manifestation of the exercise of dynamis, which, I shall argue, lies at the heart of understanding Herodotus’ presentation of the imperial quest. Having been enticed by the arguments of Mardonius based partly on the desire for beautiful land, Xerxes moves rapidly towards the complete appropriation and distortion of the motif. In the hands of Xerxes, even more than those of any other Persian, desire will be transformed into possession, conquest, and destruction, thereby threatening the very object of desire itself. Artabanus loses no time in embarking on his series of futile cautions to Xerxes about the folly of desire, reminding him of precisely the precedents discussed above—Cyrus’ expedition against the Massagetae, Cambyses’ against the Ethiopians, and also that of Darius against the Scythians, a campaign which Artabanus himself had advised against (7.10.α.2; 7.18.2).44 Artabanus’ argument is partly one based on risk assessment, stressing as he does the dangers in having the king himself in Europe, potentially cut off from Asia by the destruction of the Hellespontine bridge. When Artabanus is again in position to advise Xerxes, following the pair of dreams which unnerve the king and (p.237) force him to another round of decision-making about the expedition against Greece, he adds to the factor of danger a series of warnings about the folly of desire. His concern about Mardonius’ enticements is that they are characterized by the enhancement of pride (τῆς μὲν ὕβριν αὐξανούσης) and the heart continually seeking more than it has (7.16.α.2: τὴν ψυχὴν πλέον τι δίζησθαι αἰεὶ ἔχειν τοῦ παρεόντος), and this warning against passionate desire (7.18.2: ὡς κακὸν εἴη τὸ πολλῶν ἐπιθυμέειν) is echoed in the context of the other failed expeditions mentioned earlier in this section (p. 236), implying that it underpins their demise. As Xerxes surveys his troops at Abydos, just before the momentous crossing of the Hellespont which will seal his fate, Artabanus warns him of the dangers of sea and land, added once more to the insatiable wish for more which characterizes the Persians.45 And greedy desire for the beautiful land of Europe is one of the factors that will lead Xerxes to ignore Artabanus and make his fateful crossing out of not only his home territory, but even his home continent.

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The Conquest of Nature The language of passionate desire, expressed proleptically as ἱμέροϛ in the case of Croesus but extensively and persistently as θύμοϛ in the case of the Persians, is, it seems, applied systematically to a degree which distinguishes the Persians from other despotic rulers in the text. It is consistent with the excessive and somewhat unnatural relationship with features of the landscape which we have already identified as characteristic of Persian kings, such as Cyrus with the river Choaspes and Darius with the Tearus. Or indeed we may recall from Chapter 5 the desirous response of Xerxes to the river Peneus, first longing to look upon the sight, then being gripped with wonder, and finally spurred to action.46 As we shall see, it sits alongside an equally excessive desire to punish and enslave in a spirit of blind rage.

(p.238) B) The Metaphor of Conquest: Slavery, Rage, Punishment, and Subjugation It should be noted that violation of the landscape was a normal part of real warfare, and the Persians are not immune from the irony of, through their campaigns on the ground, routinely destroying the beauty that they desire to possess. The march through the beautiful land of Europe towards Greece offers plenty of destructive opportunities. Xerxes’ army chops at (ἔκειρε) the mountains of Macedonia, so that it can move down to the Perrhaebian country (7.131). As the Persians move southwards through the sacred landscape of Phocis and Delphi, they generate a catalogue of destruction, involving cities, shrines, and the land itself (8.32.2–33; 8.35), an assault on people, places, and even the gods. We have already seen in Chapter 5 that the Persians’ relationship with water, and with rivers in particular, is often both literally and metaphorically transgressive. The tendency of the Persians to exhaust the rivers on their march, turning them temporarily into land, may be seen as a simple reflection of the vast scale of the army, and a straightforward reality of warfare.47 But there are ways physically to spoil a river other than by drinking it dry.48 The Persians, for example, choke and destroy the stream of the river Gargaphia from which all the Greek troops drew their water (9.49.2). This is a tactic common on all sides in warfare, but the episode takes on a more clearly negative set of associations in the context of Persian manipulation of the natural landscape elsewhere, framed not as glorious technological achievement, but as contempt and abuse. But, however real the violation of the landscape may be, whether through the defilement of rivers, the chopping down of mountains, or the many occasions on which the Persians in particular confound the distinctions between land and water, the conquest of the landscape also acts as a metaphor for the conquest of people. I have already argued that the Persians are characterized as enjoying a distinctive (p.239) relationship with aspects of the natural landscape, but I should now like to explore how this is extended to represent also metaphorically their distinctively negative attitude to their potential subjects. Just as I have Page 12 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature argued earlier in this chapter (pp. 228–37) that the widespread desire for beauty is manifested by the Persians in an irresistible passion to expand their empire, so too now shall I argue that the Persians’ interaction with individual features of the landscape is complemented by their broader imperial ambitions. Similarly, we shall see that the distinctive language used by Herodotus to indicate Persian ‘passion’ or ‘desire’ is mirrored by a distinctive language and symbolism of enslavement, rage, punishment, and subjugation, which permeate the work, but especially the narrative of the Persian expeditions against potential subjects of their imperial power.49 The recurring appearance of fetters through the work acts as a potent reminder of the ever-present threat of enslavement at the hands of the powerful.50 It is in the terminology of subjugation that Mardonius explicitly describes Persian successes over various peoples—the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and others—designating them all ‘slaves’ (7.9.2: δούλους). Early on (1.66.3–4), the Spartans take fetters with them against Tegea to use against their intended subjects, but the campaign fails and the Spartans themselves are enslaved and forced to wear their own fetters, in a complete reversal of the expected power relations.51 The episode neatly brings together the enslavement of people and control over the land, since the Spartans are compelled to measure out the land with rope, wearing their fetters. This image of a people in chains, parcelling out a landscape, hints at the theme of the dual conquest of people and of nature, which will be so important in the narrative. The fetters here are real enough, but applied to the people. Later in Book 1, the fetters are explicitly deployed again, this time against a god, when Croesus, feeling deceived by the oracle which had (p.240) sent him on campaign against Cyrus, sends Lydians with fetters to lay on the threshold of the temple at Delphi (1.90.4). Most notoriously, of course, Xerxes has a yoke of fetters (πεδέων ζεῦγος) lowered into the Hellespont as one part of his multifaceted punishment of that sea for destroying his bridges with a storm (7.35.1), the physical fetters clearly acting here as symbols for Xerxes’ vain assertion of mastery. If fetters represent the attempted enslavement of the water, the 300 lashes which are administered to the Hellespont are clearly symbolic of its chastisement (7.35.1). Herodotus’ claim to have heard ‘that he even sent branders with them to brand the Hellespont’ (7.35.1: ὡς καὶ στιγέας ἅμα τούτοισι ἀπέπεμψε στίξοντας τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον) suggests an act that takes the notions of punishment and enslavement to new excesses. But it is interesting that Herodotus himself cannot or does not vouch for this assertion, and his partial or complete distancing of himself from this and similar claims may be significant when assessing his moral framework. Such violence against the Hellespont contrasts interestingly with the Persian cult of river water described elsewhere (1.138.2), giving rise to Scheliha’s intriguing attempt to explain this in terms of a difference in attitude towards salt and sweet water whereby the sea evokes less awe.52 But, as Scheliha concedes, Cyrus seems to feel no Page 13 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature compunction at taking revenge on the river gods at the Gyndes, punishing the river by digging canals to drain away the water, in retaliation for its drowning one of his sacred white horses (1.189, discussed in Chapter 5).53 Furthermore, both sweet rivers and salty seas seem to elicit sacrifices from the Persians, and indeed the dichotomy between these two types of watercourse is compromised by Xerxes’ insult to the Hellespont, by which he downgrades it to a salty river (7.35.2: ἁλμυρῷ ποταμῷ). One might argue that this acts as an oxymoron in which lies the essence of the insult, or rather that Herodotus is mocking Xerxes’ attempts by himself adopting (p.241) the standard Persian imperial rhetoric of conquering the Briny River.54 In any case, the idea of transgressing a salty river is interestingly prefigured in Croesus’ crossing of the Halys, the ‘Salty’ river of Asia,55 so that the complex interaction between eastern despots and salty watercourses, whether rivers or seas, has already been established. The application of punishments designed for men to physical aspects of the landscape is a recurring theme. The language, symbolism, and sometimes even reality of physical punishment embody in Herodotus’ account of aggressive imperialism the conceptual closeness between the conquest of man and the conquest of nature. Cyrus forgets his campaign against Babylon (μετεὶς τὴν ἐπὶ Βαβυλῶνα στράτευσιν), while he is busily engaged in taming the river Gyndes, almost as though conquering nature is a respectable alternative to conquering men (1.189.3). A reverse example from outside Persia reinforces the interchangeability of these activities. When King Necos of Egypt is deterred by an oracle from his digging of a canal to link the Nile and the Red Sea, a project which will be taken up again, significantly by Darius, but which meanwhile costs Necos dearly in the loss of 120,000 men, Herodotus notes that ‘Necos stopped his canal-building and turned to warfare’ (2.159.1: παυσάμενος δὲ τῆς διώρυχος ὁ Νεκῶς ἐτράπετο πρὸς στρατηίας). But, as we have seen elsewhere, while all tyrants, including Egyptian ones, are capable of behaving in despotic ways, the Persians outstrip them all and lift despotic topoi to new heights. For Vasunia, this is manifested in Persian abuses of the natural order: ‘When his Persian kings go to Egypt, they attempt to surpass even the pharaohs in transgressing the natural order of things in Egypt.’56 I have already questioned in Chapter 5 Vasunia’s interpretation of the despotic interaction with nature as inevitably negative and we shall go on to consider in Chapter 7 whether anything as grand as ‘the natural order’ is at stake. Nevertheless, the more general crescendo of violence and abuse as successive Persian kings adhere to ever-escalating levels of power and consequent punishment and enslavement may indeed create a context in which intervention in nature is seen as self-evidently abusive. The metaphor of enslavement (p.242) for the natural world serves to make for the Persians the connection which Vasunia ascribes to all tyrants. So, at the start of Book 7, just as Xerxes is about to embark on his expedition against Europe, in the course of which he will punish and enslave the very watercourse that separates the continents, Herodotus offers a glimpse into how Page 14 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature abusive Persian behaviour has become and what we may, therefore, expect on the campaign against Europe and Greece. The Egyptians, already outdone by Cambyses and enslaved (7.1.3: Αἰγύπτιοι ὑπὸ Καμβύσεω δουλωθέντες), had revolted under Darius, but Darius’ death pre-empted his intended double assault on both Athens and Egypt,57 leaving that legacy of dual action for his successor. In Xerxes’ hands, and with the encouragement of Mardonius, both the rhetoric and the reality of slavery are lifted higher, as the new king outdoes his predecessors, so that he makes ‘the whole of Egypt much more enslaved’ (7.7: Αἴγυπτον πᾶσαν πολλὸν δουλοτέρην) than Darius had done. It is no surprise, then, to move from this warming-up episode in Egypt to the subjugation of the peoples and landscapes of Europe via the violent punishment and enslavement of the Hellespont. It is this parallel between the conquest of nature and the conquest of man, combined with the language of impassioned rage, which encourages or perhaps even entitles us to view the Persian control of nature as morally tainted. Xerxes switches with remarkable ease between the enslavement, punishment, and subjugation of nature and of people. Notoriously, he applies the image of the taming yoke to both the Hellespont (7.8β.1: ζεύξας τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον) and the peoples he will subjugate (7.8γ.3: ἕξουσι δούλιον ζυγόν),58 and this is followed through, as we have seen, in the punishment of the Hellespont and that of the unfortunate bridge-builders. In one and the same sentence Herodotus has the king order the punishment of the sea and the beheading of those who oversaw the construction (7.35.3). And once Xerxes has finally made this momentous crossing, which defies all natural boundaries, he watches his army crossing under the lash (7.56.1: ὑπὸ μαστίγων), applying the same instrument of slavery to both the water and (p.243) his men. A similar fate awaits the Persians at Thermopylae, where many are driven into battle by their commanders with whips (7.223.3: ἔχοντες μάστιγας). We should perhaps not be surprised at this conceptual coalescence between the brutal treatment of landscapes and of men, since it has characterized not only Persian approaches to imperialism in general, but Xerxes’ campaign in particular. The barbarians set to dig the canal through Mount Athos are divided up according to provenance, or rather by ethnos (κατὰ ἔθνεα), thus turning the digging site into a microcosmic representation of their own world (7.23.1), and mapping out the space of the project against nature through labouring humans.59 That those who cut the canal do so under the whip (7.22.1: ὑπὸ μαστίγων) simply reinforces the dual enslavement of the people and the landscape.60 Similarly, the bridges over the Hellespont itself are built by contingents of people from different places using materials which reflect their provenance—the Egyptians using papyrus and the Phoenicians white flax (7.25.1; 7.34). Thus, Xerxes’ bridges with which he places the watercourse under the yoke of servitude encapsulate the people and the places which build them.61 But this thinking is by no means Xerxes’ sole preserve. When Mardonius Page 15 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature describes Attica as the ‘captive of his spear (ὡς δοριαλώτου)’ (9.4.2), he is engaging in precisely this linguistic and conceptual blurring between subject places and subject peoples. We should recall some of the ways in which we have seen expansionist powers, in particular Persia, dominating the space of Herodotus’ narrative: grand, almost epic marches through the landscape, the points at which rulers simply sit and command their glorious natural (p.244) possessions with their gaze,62 the easy manipulation of land, sea, and rivers, the overriding of natural boundaries, the abuse of water in particular through draining, defiling, and crossing rivers, the conceptual transformation of islands into a commodity to be traded and passed around like possessions,63 while their human populations are ‘netted up’ and similarly pushed around.64 This separation of a people from its native land is all part of the process of conquest and control, and epitomizes the parallel subjugations of man and of his environment. Space in Herodotus is certainly not just a neutral entity to be neatly organized, articulated, and described by its literary master, the historian; rather it is morally charged and subject to the illtreatment of imperial states, offering a medium for the expression of power and control. The presentation of Darius’ attitude from a Scythian viewpoint neatly sums up the perceived extent of the evolution from desire to possession and conquest. Not content simply to look, in spite of his predilection for this activity, ‘he wanted everything on this side of the world too [i.e. across the Ister] to belong to him’ (4.118.1). I would argue that this motif goes well beyond the devastation of landscapes as a natural part of warfare. Herodotus seems to use the striking methods of control employed by the Persians over the physical environment to a degree which exceeds others as a motif by which to characterize them negatively in the narrative.65 The language of enslavement applied to the natural world makes it impossible to view Persian triumphs over (p.245) the landscape as straightforwardly neutral or even admirable feats of human ingenuity and engineering skill, but rather contributes strongly to a negative moral change. Excessive admiration, desire, and control over the natural environment are often combined with a propensity to rage. The anger of Cyrus at the Gyndes (1.189.2: κάρτα…ἐχαλέπαινε τῷ ποταμῷ) is echoed by the rage of Pheros (2.111.2: ἀτασθαλίῃ χρησάμενον), king of Egypt, the son of Sesostris, who foreshadows much behaviour that will come to seem characteristically Persian in the later books of Herodotus’ narrative, but is in some ways more generically despotic.66 His anger at the river’s flooding drives him to hurl his spear into the water in another physical and symbolic act of punishment. Cambyses becomes enraged (3.25.1: ὀργὴν ποιησάμενοϛ) on hearing the report on the Ethiopians from his Fish Eater spies and, impetuously launches an ill-prepared and disastrous campaign to the ends of the earth.67 Xerxes is furious at the Hellespont (7.35.1: δεινὰ ποιεύμενος). These are not calculated responses, but irrational reactions. But they may, nevertheless, be distinctive of a particular ethnic or national type, Page 16 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature and indeed their place in a broader picture of especially Persian subjugation of the natural world in the context of their military campaigns, encourages such a reading. This is a world of despotic subjugation of natural landscapes and of people; a world characterized by arrogant self-confidence. It is epitomized by Cyrus’ belief that he was more than human which encouraged him to attack the Massagetae and their land (1.204.2), and by one of Xerxes’ most extraordinary assaults on the natural world, the cutting through Mount Athos, which Herodotus believes he undertook out of mere self-importance (7.24: μεγαλοφροσύνη). Hybris is a concept to which we shall return in Chapter 7. For now I simply note that, although Herodotus does not voice much direct criticism of the assault on nature undertaken by even the Persians, just as was argued in Chapter 5 with regard to moral judgements being expressed through contrasts, contexts, and language, so too (p.246) here might one argue that the negative characterization of the Persians as the opponents of nature par excellence comes through subtly in their emotional approach to episodes as much as through their actions. Their excessive and unnatural desires, their extreme rage,68 punishing violence, and wish to enslave, all serve to create a linguistic and conceptual frame that encompasses both their real conquests and their metaphorical subjection of the natural world. The idea that Herodotus might be directing us towards a reading of the Persian interaction with nature which is less concerned about violations of the natural landscape and even less of the natural order,69 and more with the emotional state in which the Persians undertake such actions would accommodate the apparent contradiction between an admiration for man’s ingenuity in conquering and even bettering nature and a negative presentation of the Persians, for whom a disregard for nature is conceptually inseparable from their subjugation of peoples and is often undertaken in a spirit of irrational rage rather than measured ingenuity. But because the control of nature is a vehicle for the expression of these excesses, it is hard to pinpoint where Herodotus’ disapprobation lies. The episode at the Hellespont has, for example, regularly been seen as hybristic,70 and Herodotus clearly designates Xerxes’ words to the Hellespont as ‘barbarian and feckless’ (7.35.2: βάρβαρά τε καὶ ἀτάσθαλα) but it is not clear whether the outrage lies in the bridging of the sea and its disrespectful and punitive treatment, or in the related but distinct issue of Xerxes’ frame of mind.71 Here Cairns’s notion of hybris as ‘thinking big’ may be helpful and we shall come back to this question when considering precisely in what ways the Persians are culpable.

(p.247) C) Nature Joins Battle: Opposition and Alliance Whatever the precise nature of their transgression, in the world of Herodotus’ narrative the Persians, who covet, enslave, punish, and subdue the natural world as part of their wider campaign of power and control, are appropriately countered by the very natural world they both desire and destroy. Attempting to conquer nature, whether in reality or metaphorically, provokes a violent and Page 17 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature powerful response, and we shall see that this response is made by various aspects of the natural world not only on their own behalf, but also in support of the humans who are simultaneous targets of the Persian aggression.72 Whether the fact that it is through this very medium that the Persians are punished indicates that Herodotus wishes to express condemnation of assaults on the natural world per se, or whether it is simply an appropriate form of payback for the Persians’ arrogance which is regularly manifested through attacks on the natural landscape is unclear. Either way, it seems that the natural world offers a conduit for expressing both the spectacularly despotic power of the Persians and the equally spectacular resistance, although the causal connection between their attitude to nature and their suffering at its hands is difficult to pinpoint. In any case, the backlash of nature against the Persians escalates through the work. As early in the narrative as Cyrus’ enraged assault on the Gyndes, the surely non-coincidental symmetry of 360 channels producing a year’s delay to the campaign constitutes little more than an inconvenient consequence to the Persian onslaught.73 But under the next Persian king, Cambyses, with his expedition against the Ammonians, the natural world flexes its muscles a little more forcefully against Persian imperialism. As the Persian army marches across the desert from Oasis, on reaching a place called, with cruel irony, ‘Isle of the Blessed’, it vanishes forever. The Ammonians report (p.248) that a sudden violent southern wind blew on the Persians while they were eating breakfast and buried them with sand (3.26.3). But it is worth noting that Herodotus does not himself vouch for this tale, and indeed one might say that a tale of divine retribution would suit the Ammonian sources all too well. As so often, the pattern of nature fighting back, which is prefigured early in the narrative, attains its fully developed form only in the expeditions against Europe and Greece. As Persian ships with Mardonius tried to round Mount Athos on a mission to subdue as many Greek cities as possible, ‘a great north wind, impossible to deal with, fell on them and handled them very roughly indeed’ (6.44.2: ἐπιπεσὼν…βορῆς ἄνεμος μέγας τε καὶ ἄπορος κάρτα τρηχέως περιέσπε) wrecking several of their ships. It is this storm that provokes the cutting of the canal through Mount Athos on the later expedition.74 As if stormy weather is not enough, the natural world has yet more in store: ‘since the coasts of Athos abound in wild beasts, some men were carried off by beasts and so perished; others were dashed against the rocks; those who could not swim died because of that, and still others because of the cold’ (6.44.3).75 The natural world offers another obstacle to the progress of the Persians when yet another storm breaks down Xerxes’ first bridges across the Hellespont (7.34). Either nature is punishing the Persians for their arrogant and aggressive treatment of the landscape or it is more generally opposed to the whole imperial project. But the pattern is clear. Already as Xerxes’ troops pass through the Trojan plain, camping out under Mount Ida, they are struck by (p.249) thunder and lightning, which kills many men (7.42.2). Nature makes known its violent Page 18 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature opposition to Persia in the most resonant of settings here.76 And when the Persians and Greeks actually come into conflict by land and sea at Thermopylae and Artemisium respectively, the weather launches a concerted campaign against the Persians: three Persian ships are wrecked on reefs between Sciathos and Magnesia (7.183.2); then, when the Persian fleet is moored off Cape Sepias,77 a storm brews up at dawn with a wind known locally and with great resonance for the Persians as the Hellespontine, and drives many ships onto the rocks (7.188.2–3). The fact that this storm, described by Herodotus as ‘unbearable’ (7.188.3: ἀφόρητον) rather miraculously arises out of a bright and cloudless sky (7.188.2: ἐξ αἰθρίης τε καὶ νηνεμίης) hints at an element of divine intervention, to which we shall return. The troublesome effects of the tough sea battle at Artemisium are compounded for the Persians travelling on land by rain and a violent thunderstorm at night from Mount Pelion (8.12), and it is even worse for those sailing around Euboea.78 They are hit by a storm and rain as they sail around the Hollows, and are driven onto the rocks (8.13), in what Herodotus describes as ‘an end lacking all dignity’ (8.13: τὸ τέλος σφι ἐγίνετο ἄχαρι). As they approach the temple of Athena Pronaea, bolts fall from the sky and two pieces of rock fall from Mount Parnassus, killing many men (8.37.3).79 In both of these cases, Herodotus’ narrative gives rise to the sense that the natural world reflects divine will in its opposition to the Persians,80 although this clearly need not entail that Persian aggression against the landscape must be read as sacrilegious per se. (p.250) The pressure does not let up even when the Persians are in retreat back to Asia after Salamis. The landscape fails to provide for the Persian troops (8.115.2–3): Wherever and to whatever people they came, they seized and ate its produce. If they found none, they would eat the grass of the field and strip the bark and pluck the leaves of the trees, cultivated and wild alike, leaving nothing. They did this through starvation. Moreover, pestilence and dysentery broke out among them on their journey and killed them.81 On reaching Eïon-on-the-Strymon, Xerxes is said to have embarked on a Phoenician ship back to Asia, only for the great wind, the Strymonian, to arise with huge waves (8.118.1–2).82 Perhaps this is the Strymon responding negatively to the sacrifice of white horses made on its banks at 7.113–14. The ongoing opposition of the natural world to the Persians is manifested yet again not long afterwards, during the siege of Potidaea. Many Persians are drowned by a huge flood tide, which comes in suddenly after a great ebb tide and catches them out on their way to Pallene (8.129.1–2). And yet again, there are hints that the gods may be meting out punishment to the Persians through nature, in a

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The Conquest of Nature sense giving them a taste of their own medicine, since they had behaved sacrilegiously towards the temple and image of Poseidon.83 The systematic opposition of the natural world to the Persian imperial quest, possibly used as a vehicle for the will of the divine and maybe even partly in response to the arrogant and domineering attitude with which Persians approach the natural landscape, is cast (p.251) into sharper relief when set against the ‘alliances’ that are established between the natural world and the victims of Persia. In the case of the Greeks, there can be little doubt that Herodotus facilitates or even encourages a reading in which the natural world takes clear sides in their conflict with Persia.84 The military language of not only war, but now also alliance, reinforces the notion of clear ‘sides’, polarities in Herodotus’ presentation of players within the text, rather than a sliding scale of positive to negative characterizations. The contrasting relationships between the natural world and the Greeks and the Persians respectively emerge most clearly in the later part of Book 7, where, in the context of the battles on land and sea at Thermopylae and Artemisium, Herodotus interweaves the explicit damage done to the Persians by nature, as discussed earlier in this section (pp. 247–51), with explicit examples of the support claimed and given by nature (often through the mediation of the gods) to the Greeks. The result is a very clear sense of divine favour and disfavour manifested through nature, and no doubt as to the moral rights and wrongs of the conflict.85 For example, as the Persians approach the key points of Thermopylae and Artemisium, and the Greeks take up position to defend their land, the people of Delphi consult their oracle in fear for themselves and for Greece as a whole. They are advised by the oracle to pray to the winds, which will be ‘great allies to Greece’ (7.178.1: μεγάλους γὰρ τούτους ἔσεσθαι τῇ ̔Ελλάδι συμμάχους), an explicit application of military language to the world of nature. In accordance with the oracle they make an altar to the winds at the sanctuary of Thyia (7.178.2).86 It is only a few chapters later that the (p.252) storms fall upon the Persians at Cape Sepias. One might assume that this is the answer to the Delphians’ prayer, but there is actually competition to claim responsibility for summoning up the storm wind that damages the Persian fleet. Herodotus notes the tale that the Athenians summon the north wind, Boreas, to help as an ally (ἐπίκουρος, noting yet again the military terminology) in accordance with an oracle telling them to request help from their son-in-law (7.189). Boreas had married a woman from Attica, Orithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, and had helped the Greek side before at Athos. Thus, when the Athenians see that a storm is rising near Sepias, they make a sacrifice to Boreas and Orithyia and ask them to destroy the ships of the barbarians. Herodotus makes clear that he cannot vouch for the causal connection between the storm and the Athenians’ request for help (7.189.3).87 He simply notes that this is the Athenian claim, and that, as with the Delphians, the perceived act of support is

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The Conquest of Nature recognized in a lasting tribute—here, not a religious practice, but an actual shrine to Boreas, set up by the river Ilissus. The competitive element involved in claiming the support of the gods through nature is not confined to the various Greek poleis. The storm off Cape Sepias is finally quelled on the fourth day by the Persian magi, who use spells and sacrifices to Thetis, because they have heard from the Ionians that Thetis was snatched from here by Peleus, so the whole shore around Sepias belongs to Thetis and the other Nereids (7.191.2). This is either an important counterexample to the proposition that the Greek side enjoys a monopoly of support from the gods of nature, or evidence that the magi are very adept at listening to local wisdom and adopting the right local Greek strategy to pacify the deities of the area.88 But the fact that the storm comes to an end does nothing to diminish the delight of the Greeks at the damage that has meanwhile been done to the Persian ships nor to prevent them from assuming that they have enjoyed divine support throughout.89 (p.253) They immediately offer prayers and libations to Poseidon the Saviour, the god of the sea on their side (7.192),90 apparently taking it for granted that the gods of nature are, as ever, on the Greek side. Indeed Herodotus leaves open the possibility that the quelling of the storm had nothing to do with the efficacy of the magi’s spells: ‘In this way they made the wind stop on the fourth day—or perhaps it died down on its own’ (7.191.2). A more complex and ambiguous case is suggested by the Scythians. In certain respects they are developed in the narrative as allies of the natural world, in pursuit of whom the Persians launch a dual assault on both man and nature through the iconic bridging of straits and rivers. We have already noted above (pp. 196–7) that, whereas the Persians engage in an aggressive, enraged, and controlling relationship with rivers, the Scythians are not only in harmony with them, but the rivers are actually described as their allies, using the terminology of war (4.47.1: τῶν ποταμῶν ἐόντων σφι συμμάχων).91 This constitutes on first sight an important indication that the Scythians are marked out as innocent adversaries of the Persians by virtue of their alliance with, rather than opposition to nature.92 In fact, however, the Scythians enjoy a more complex and ambiguous relationship with the natural world than this analysis suggests, in certain respects appearing to resemble their aggressors, the Persians. The Scythians are not immune to destroying the landscape, with which they are otherwise so in tune. When the Persians invade their land, the Scythians spoil wells and streams and destroy grassland in advance of their progress (4.120.1). One might read their destruction as atypical of their usually harmonious relationship with nature. Alternatively, we may argue that their dissonance with their native landscape is actually rather characteristic and that the Scythians (p.254) cannot be so simply aligned with other major opponents of Persian

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The Conquest of Nature imperialism such as the Greeks, who are presented as allied with nature in defence of their land. In the key chapter in support of the view that the Scythians, like the Greeks, are allies of nature, we also hear that the land is well suited to nomadism (4.46.3– 47.1). It could be argued that moving around is one of those many actions that can be morally positive or negative or neutral. Nevertheless, stepping out of one’s native land is something that those on imperial campaigns do, and indeed in the very first chapter of Book 4, no sooner has Herodotus introduced the theme of Darius’ invasion of Scythia than he notes also that the Scythians themselves had indulged in a little rule over others—lording it over Asia for twenty-eight years before returning home to find themselves usurped by slaves cohabiting with their abandoned wives (4.1).93 Maybe this offers a warning to the Persians not to leave home for too long, or indeed at all. But it also sets up Scythians as models for their aggressors, and in a way which involves severing the tie between oneself and one’s native land.94 The centrality of nomadism to the Scythian lifestyle may be relevant.95 On the other hand, one might argue that the nomadic existence of the Scythians does not make them ‘homeless’ but rather makes all of Scythia their familiar territory. This does seem to be the case in their pursuit of the Persians back to the Ister, where the Scythians are able to use their vastly superior knowledge of the land to reach the river first (4.136.1– 2).96 But there are hints at Persian-style behaviour on the part of the Scythians throughout the narrative,97 which make them seem less clear-cut as polar opposites. When the Scythians return to their land (p.255) after their twentyeight years ruling Asia and cut off their territory by having a trench dug from the Tauric Mountains to the Maeotian lake, they attack the labouring slaves with horsewhips—prefiguring the Persian predilection for the whip and crossing an important natural boundary between men and beasts (4.3). Another significant foreshadowing concerns the figure of Scyles, son of the Scythian king and of a Greek woman from whom he learned Greek customs, which might at first align him with the Greek victims of Persia (4.78.1). But his attempts to be initiated into the rites of Dionysus, even though the palace burned down by a thunderbolt hurled by a god (4.79), hint strongly at the divine displeasure meted out to Xerxes through the medium of natural phenomena (see 7.42.2, 8.12, 8.37.3, all discussed earlier in this section (pp. 248–9)). Thus, the behaviour of Scyles looks to both the Greeks and the Persians, perhaps epitomizing the complex status of the Scythians as a whole. There is, of course, no reason to suggest that the Persians, or indeed other imperialists, might have designs only on those who least resemble themselves. The case of Polycrates, discussed in Chapter 5, illustrates well the fine line between being on the side of despotic imperialism and being a victim of that process. Looking forward, as we shall see in Chapter 7, there are many reasons Page 22 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature for believing that the Athenians too are brought into the Persian imperialist frame towards the end of the work. The Scythians complicate a picture in which Persia’s victims live in perfect harmony and alliance with nature, by contrast with their aggressors. But the point stands that the metaphor of conquest allows us to move beyond the idea that interventions in nature are presented by Herodotus as morally neutral, coloured only by context, contrast, resonances of myth or symmetry, and so on. While we may choose to buy Scullion’s argument that altering the natural landscape is not necessarily a negative or sacrilegious action per se and indeed can be viewed as a positive and admirable achievement, nevertheless it is an action that can be given a negative moral charge. The language of war and alliance reinforces further the notion that the Persians approach the natural world in an excessively passionate, arrogant, angry, and aggressive manner, through which Herodotus creates a clear distinction between them and others in the work, expressed at least in part through the relationship with nature that each enjoys. The reality of bad weather, for example, is thus picked up on and woven into a narrative device that produces stark contrasts in characterization. The metaphorical war (p.256) on nature that the Persians wage in tandem with their war on other peoples provokes a response from the natural world as though it were a living player in the narrative, aggrieved, vengeful, and imbued with the divine. The difficulty in teasing out the precise relationship between offending the landscape and offending the gods is illustrated by the case of Cnidos (1.174.3–6), discussed in Chapter 3, where the Cnidians’ attempt to escape the onslaught of the Persians by cutting through an isthmus and transforming their city into an island is dramatically punished by Zeus. If Zeus had wanted the city to be an island, the Cnidians are told, he would have made it so; he did not and therefore those who choose to challenge, emend, and destroy the natural order are punished. One possible reading would be that the eye splinters suffered by the Cnidians as they dig constitute Zeus’ punishment for violating the natural landscape.98 Or is it that the will of Zeus, rather than the layout of the land, has been violated, and thus they have incurred his displeasure? Because the punishment comes from the affected landscape itself, the line between different types of transgression is blurred. The Cnidians sit uneasily within a wider category of transgressors, punished by the natural world. But their eye troubles provoke oracular consultation, which is duly carried out. The Cnidians thus constitute a rare group in the narrative who correctly interpret divine signs, follow them up, and heed the more explicit advice given through oracular channels. In fact, the Cnidians, while on first glance appearing to fall into the category of transgressors of the natural world, turn out to be surprisingly receptive to divine will.

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The Conquest of Nature D) (MIS) Understanding The Divine The divine ordering of events is clear through many indications (δῆλα δὴ πολλοῖσι τεκμηρίοισι ἐστι τὰ θεῖα τῶν πρηγμάτων) and in particular this one, that when the Persian disaster at Plataea fell on the same day as what was to become their disaster at Mycale, this rumour should come to the Greeks so that their (p.257) army was greatly encouraged and more willing to face danger with greater heart.99 This, Herodotus’ most explicit reference to a divine machinery,100 clearly looks back to 9.90.1, where he first notes the synchronism between these two key battles, and to 9.91.1, where a coincidence turns out to be an indication of a divine plan of events (κατὰ συντυχίην θεοῦ ποιεῦντος),101 but now resonant juxtaposition is replaced by direct causal connection. Herodotus’ explicit acknowledgement close to the end of his work that the world is divinely ordered recalls several occasions through the narrative on which the natural world seems to be imbued with the divine, or acting as a channel for divine favour or disfavour with one or other of the human players.102 Of course, whether one adopts the former ‘strong’ interpretation or the latter ‘weak’ interpretation of the relationship between the natural world and the divine has a clear bearing on whether attempts to alter, control, tame, even punish landscapes should be seen as inherently sacrilegious and the cause of divine provocation, or whether nature is simply used as a convenient medium through which the gods can communicate their disfavour or approbation. The line is a fine one, but the latter possibility seems better to accommodate Herodotus’ narrative, which does not offer evidence to support the view that tampering with the natural world is inherently wrong or offensive, but rather that it can be (p.258) illustrative of attitudes and behaviours which are offensive, whether to other mortals or to the divine. Working, then, from the ‘weak’ interpretation, it seems to be universally understood that the gods are best propitiated and not offended, even though actions and behaviour do not always comply with this observation. It may seem obvious that offering gifts and sacrifices might be to one’s advantage, while acts of sacrilege and hybris might incur divine wrath and punishment. But ascertaining the will of the gods is not always so easy to achieve with confidence. As has been often noted, Herodotus’ text is replete with oracles and prophecies, but they often frustrate their recipients as much as illuminate their decision-making.103 The scene is set for the frustrating use of oracles already in Book 1, being prefigured, as so much else, in the character of Croesus.104 In a sense he plays safe by asking the advice of not just one but many oracles over whether he should pre-empt the growth in Persian power by attacking Persia himself. Not only the Greek oracles (at Delphi, Abae in Phocis, Dodona, and Miletus) are consulted, but also the Libyan one at Ammon (1.46.3). But Croesus wilfully rejects the oracles that do not satisfy him (1.48.1), and deliberately puts the Delphic oracle to the test (1.48.2) before he recognizes Delphi as the only Page 24 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature true place of divination ‘because it discovered what he himself had done’ (1.48.1: ὅτι οἱ ἐξευρήκεε τὰ αὐτὸς ἐποίησε).105 Only the oracle that chimes with his own view of the world is fit to be taken seriously, and even Delphi’s (p. 259) support of Croesus comes at the price of multiple offerings once he has decided that this oracle is worth cultivating (1.50–1).106 Just as the Persian magi perform sacrifices rather late in response to a relentless storm (7.191.2) by contrast with the Greeks who perform their sacrifices prophylactically in order to secure good weather, so too here might we argue that the despotic interaction with oracles is conducted at an inappropriate time in the process, in an attempt to purchase propitious signs from the gods. Nevertheless, all seems to be going well, when the Delphic oracle apparently promises Croesus that, if he attacks the Persians, he will destroy a mighty empire (1.53.3). The result is Croesus’ crossing of the river Halys and his campaign against Persia, culminating in his battle with Cyrus on the plain of Sardis. Croesus’ defeat causes him to feel deceived by the oracle and provokes an act of aggression against Delphi in the form of fetters sent to be placed on the threshold of the temple (1.90.4), but the Pythia is gently forgiving of this piece of petulance, and reminds Croesus that Apollo did in fact reciprocate his sacrifices by sending the rainstorm which extinguished the pyre on which Croesus had been placed. The question of blame and responsibility for Croesus’ misunderstanding of the oracle is, however, presented in a complex way by Herodotus. The oracle itself is designated by Herodotus as ‘counterfeit’ (1.75.2: ἀπικομένου χρησμοῦ κιβδήλου), which might suggest that a mere mortal could be forgiven for mistaking it.107 On the other hand, as Kurke notes,108 this, like other counterfeit oracles, is not false, merely duplicitous, and it is Croesus’ unquestioning conviction that it chimes with his own goals which encourages him to take it at face value and not probe to the inner meaning. As the priestess reproaches when Croesus sends Lydian envoys to complain about the misleading oracle, Croesus was wrong to find fault (1.91.4: οὐκ ὀρθῶς Κροῖσος μέμφεται); rather, he should have sought clarification over which empire he was destined to destroy. One might argue that this is hardly a surprising (p.260) response for Herodotus to put into the mouth of the relevant priestess. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates just how easily the divine plan can be misconstrued by humans and how important it is for them to maintain friendly relations with the gods in the best hope of gaining both enlightenment and support.109 Sometimes the misunderstanding of divine signs results in confusion over the location and nature of colonial foundations. In the course of Herodotus’ narrative of the Phocaeans’ flight from Harpagus, and their finally founding the city of Hyele in Magna Graecia, we hear that they had established a foundation (Alalia) on the island of Cyrnus (Corsica) previously, but that this was actually as the result of a misinterpreted oracle which had intended them to establish a shrine to Cyrnus the hero, not a city on the island of that name (1.167.4).110 A similar case of misinterpretation over where an oracle refers to is that of Page 25 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature Arcesilaus, returning king of Cyrene, who refuses to enter the city of Cyrene itself, believing in error that it is the sea-girt land that the Delphic oracle had warned him against entering, at risk of his life (4.164.3). Perhaps the most extraordinary oracle concerning a spatial theme is that offered by Onomacritus, the fraudulent oracle-monger brought by the Peisistratids on an embassy to Xerxes, who was set up by Mardonius to persuade him to undertake an invasion of Greece, as discussed in Chapter 5 above (7.6.3–5). Here, as in the case of Croesus, the misreading of the oracle is exacerbated by the tyrant’s own delusions, and he fails utterly to gain an accurate vision of the divine will. On occasion, divine will is made clearer by the accumulation of signs. In the context of Histiaeus’ campaign against the island of Chios, Herodotus comments in his own voice that (6.27): There is generally, somehow, some warning given in advance when great evils are about to fall on a city or a people. For instance, in the case of the Chians, there were great signs (σημήια μεγάλα) given before their present disasters. There was a group of one hundred youths they had sent to Delphi, and only two of them returned; ninety-eight of them were stricken and carried off by disease. Again, in the city at this time, a (p.261) little before the sea fight, there were children learning their letters in a school, and the roof fell in on them, and, of the 120 children, only one escaped. These were the signs that the god showed them in advance (ταῦτα μέν σφι σημήια ὁ θεὸς προέδεξε); thereafter the sea fight undermined and brought the city to its knees. The catastrophes to befall the island of Chios are presented as manifestations of the divine strategy, sent in advance of the events themselves, although not so as to facilitate any pre-emptive action by the Chians to avert disaster.111 The events of history are glimpsed in advance through a device reminiscent of a pathetic fallacy, with the world around them mirroring the Chians’ imminent sufferings.112 Only the divine can have the foreknowledge of such events, and only the divine can present glimpses of the future through diseases and disasters. Humans can see the meaning of the signs only with the benefit of hindsight.113 In this case, the suffering brought by human disaster cannot be seen as retributive, but must rather be purely ominous.114 If the world of oracles and signs may be prone to misinterpretation and manipulation, another channel for the gods to express their wishes to humans, namely through natural phenomena, is equally vulnerable to misreading. Often a link is also drawn implicitly, if not explicitly, between the occurrence of natural wonders and the events of the surrounding narrative, leaving the reader to infer that some kind of divine comment is being passed on human actions through (p. 262) the medium of the natural world. During the reign of Psammenitus, we are told that ‘an extraordinary phenomenon befell the Egyptians’ (3.10.3: φάσμα Page 26 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature Αἰγυπτίοισι μέγιστον δὴ ἐγένετο), namely the one and only shower of rain ever to fall at Egyptian Thebes. It is not explicitly claimed that this happened at precisely the time of Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt, but the fact that the comment on rainfall breaks right in to the middle of Herodotus’ account of that campaign does lead the reader to wonder whether this exceptional natural event is provoked through the gods of nature in reaction to the Persian invasion. The close relationship between the miracle and the narrative is reinforced by the fact that the very next sentence, as the narrative of the Persian campaign resumes, notes the ‘waterless’ landscape through which the Persians march, highlighting the truly exceptional nature of the rain shower (3.11.1). We have already seen examples of the gods apparently helping humans, especially the Greeks, and hindering others, especially the Persians, by generating the appropriate weather. The notion that it might be advantageous to propitiate the gods of nature in order to secure their alliance is particularly built into the strategy, maybe even belief, of the Greeks, who repeatedly pray to the winds, their allies (7.178) and even relatives (7.189), and in the penultimate chapter of the work perform their last act of piety by taking the cables of the Persian bridges home to Greece to dedicate at their temples (9.121). This brief note sits incongruously, framed as it is both before and after by reference to the Greek atrocity of Artaÿctes’ crucifixion and the stoning to death of his son. Paying lip service to the gods, but behaving tyrannically might be seen as fundamentally problematic. But superficially, at any rate, the Greeks seem to be doing the right thing by the gods, even if their lack of humanity and underlying behaviour are chilling.115 But they are not the only players in the narrative to know the importance of courting and attaining divine favour. We may recall the intervention of the Persian magi in quelling the storm off Cape Sepias (7.191.2). Admittedly in the desperate situation of being on a (p.263) pyre that was already burning, Croesus too calls on the gods and reminds Apollo of the gifts he has offered the god in the past, with dramatic results, since the fire that threatens Croesus’ life is immediately quenched by the rainstorm that Apollo sends (1.87.1–2). Even Xerxes, who hardly epitomizes a pious attitude towards the gods or nature, seems to have a moment of recognition that offending the gods of nature is a dangerous move.116 Herodotus notes that before making his literally and metaphorically transgressive crossing of the Hellespont, Xerxes carries out certain rituals, burning incense on the bridges, strewing the road with myrtle, pouring a libation from a golden cup into the sea and praying to the rising sun (7.54). He then throws the cup, golden mixing bowl, and a Persian sword into the Hellespont. The actions are ambiguous. Herodotus offers two possible explanations. One, that Xerxes was making a dedication to the sun, presumably as an act of piety, and the other, that he repented of having whipped the sea.117 In a sense, both options involve propitiating the gods of nature—either in a straightforward deal to secure safe crossing or perhaps realizing that he had Page 27 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature overstepped the mark with his abusive treatment of the Hellespont and offended the gods of the natural world. But the prayer Xerxes makes is that he should not desist from his conquest of Europe until he should reach the farthest limit of the continent—hardly the prayer of a humble, god-fearing man who respects the divine order of the world.118 Furthermore, his offerings to the sea include a symbol of Persian aggression and domination,119 the sword. Perhaps this should cast doubt on Herodotus’ cautious optimism that Xerxes might have seen the error of his disregard for the gods?120 As we have seen elsewhere, tone, language, and (p.264) context often serve as indicators as to how the reader might be encouraged to interpret apparently similar actions in rather different ways. Here, while the Persian magi and indeed Xerxes himself clearly commit acts of piety, both do so after the event—whether after the onset of a storm or following the violence at the Hellespont—apparently as an afterthought, by contrast with the Greeks’ piety shown towards the gods to secure their goodwill and kind weather in advance of action (7.178). Subtleties of this kind may be important in steering us towards more or less favourable interpretations while acknowledging the formal similarity in expressions of piety to the gods. The link between piety and alliance with nature, or more strikingly between impiety and being at odds with nature, is drawn explicitly by Herodotus, who attributes some of the many occasions on which the Persians are assaulted by storms and thunderbolts to divine intervention. In a sequence of passages mentioned above (p. 249), the storms that hit the Persians off Euboea and drive them on to the rocks121 were brought about because ‘everything was being done by the god (ἐποιέετό τε πᾶν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ), so that the Persian army might be brought down to the size of the Greeks’ (8.13).122 The level playing field is thus presented as divinely sanctioned, even if the Greeks still need military skill to ensure their victory. The bolts which fall from heaven and rocks that plummet from Parnassus, killing many Persians as they approach the temple of Athena Pronaea at Delphi, are accompanied by a war cry and shout from the temple of Athena, a clear indication that the goddess has at least sanctioned and possibly instigated these natural phenomena (8.37.3). In the third (p.265) example of Persian punishment by the gods through nature to follow in quick succession in Book 8,123 it is actually the locals rather than Herodotus in his own voice who attribute the drowning of men by a flood tide near Pallene to the Persians’ sacrilegious behaviour towards the temple and image of Poseidon (8.129.3: ἠσέβησαν). But Herodotus immediately gives explicit endorsement to this opinion: ‘I think that, in saying this is the reason, they are correct’ (8.129.3), so the apparent distancing of the author is very short-lived. The opposition of the natural world to the Persians, as discussed above (pp. 247–51), is explicitly given an explanation in terms of divine intervention, the gods working through nature against the Persians.124

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The Conquest of Nature The last three books of the Histories are liberally interspersed with signs from the gods, expressed through nature, that the Persian expedition against Greece is ill-fated, and, just as we shall see is the case with warnings and advice offered by wise humans within the narrative, Xerxes’ Persians seem particularly obtuse in their failure to recognize or heed the meaning of these divine warnings, by contrast with the Greeks.125 As Xerxes’ army sets out from Sardis for Abydos, finally en route for Greece with the bridges across the Hellespont rebuilt, the Athos canal cut, and moles created at the mouth of the channel as a breakwater —that is, with the whole range of Xerxes’ projects to tame the natural world complete—a solar eclipse occurs (7.37.2). Here, it is possible that the natural world is being used to express divine disfavour at assaults on itself in a form of retaliation. The magi wrongly interpret this as representing the eclipse of the Greek cities. In doing so, they play to Xerxes’ excessive desires, making him ‘extremely glad’ (7.37.3: περιχαρής), but it is interesting and perhaps predictable, given the long-term outcome of Persian ambitions, that in cases where the magi tailor their (p.266) interpretations to suit the whims of Persian despots, they almost invariably turn out to be proved wrong.126 On a rare occasion of divergence between the view of a Persian king and that boldly offered by one of the magi, the latter is ignored, even though it is correct.127 Thus, the magi appear to be poor guides to Persians, but this may be a direct result of the determination of Persian kings to accept only interpretations which chime with their own wishes.128 Immediately on completing the crossing of the Hellespont and thereby effecting an extreme subjugation of nature, Xerxes and his army witness another portent, the birth of a hare from a mare. As Herodotus comments directly, the meaning of this sign was clearly that the Persians would eventually run for their lives, having crossed to Greece in great pomp and pride (7.57.1: ἀγαυρότατα καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατα).129 But Xerxes ignores the sign, just as he had the omen received when he was still in Sardis of a mule that gave birth to a mule with both male and female genitals (7.57.2). Either Xerxes misunderstands the meaning of these portents or he understands, but chooses to ignore them. Herodotus implies, by claiming not once but twice in rapid succession in relation to the birth of the hare that the meaning was easy to interpret,130 that it was wilful ignorance of the wishes of the gods that drove Xerxes to make no account of these omens. The two omens articulate the space of Xerxes’ expedition on a continental scale, one occurring at the start of the Asian and one the European leg of the journey. But it is when the expedition moves into Europe that Herodotus places the narration of both omens, in the immediate aftermath of Xerxes’ violent and enraged crossing of the Hellespont, inviting the reader to consider quite what might be (p.267) the divine response to that crossing, magnificent feat though it was, and indeed to the Greek invasion which it facilitates.

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The Conquest of Nature The Persian misinterpretation of divine signs is mirrored in their tendency to misread the world around them more generally, as when they mistake the headlands of Zoster near Sounium as enemy ships, and flee as a consequence (8.107.2). Earlier in the same book, their misalignment with signs from the gods is manifested somewhat differently at Salamis, where there is confusion over whether the dust cloud which rises from Eleusis and hangs over the island of Salamis is a real cloud kicked up by the Persians or a portent (8.65). The juxtaposition with the Greek prayer to the gods for help in the immediately preceding chapter (8.64), based on the confident assumption that the earthquake at sunrise is a divine sign, offers a striking contrast.131 Again, as we have seen with regard to Herodotus’ presentation of the opposition and alliance of various players with the natural world, so too is there a contrast to be drawn between the misinterpretation and ignoring of divine will as expressed through natural portents by the Persians, and the opposite for the Greeks. Not only do the signs, just like the weather, favour the Greek side,132 but the Greeks seem to understand both the meaning of portents and that they must be heeded. When Cleombrotus the Spartan sees the sun fail in the sky during his sacrifice for triumph over the Persians, he immediately draws his army off the Isthmus, recognizing the possibility of divine disfavour, expressed through the eclipse, and acting on it (9.10.3). This cautious response stands in stark contrast to the unduly bold and dismissive attitude of the Persians, as seen earlier in this section (pp. 265–7).133 It is thus all the more resonant that, as the Greeks (p.268) increasingly take on worryingly Persian tendencies towards arrogant imperialism towards the end of the work, the last natural portent in the Histories should be interpreted more humbly by the Persian governor Artaÿctes than by the Greeks who will go on to crucify him (9.120). When the man guarding Artaÿctes reports seeing the fish being fried on the fire jumping around, Artaÿctes assumes that this is a portent directed against himself and offers to placate the god, but the Greeks proceed unabated with their gruesome punishment of him, raising questions, which will be explored further below (pp. 308–12), over for how long the Greeks will remain aligned with the natural world. Our final portent is, like the first, Egypt’s only rainfall, a unique occurrence, the earthquake suffered by Delos after Datis and the Persians leave the island on their voyage through the Cyclades en route for Euboea and ultimately the battle of Marathon in 490 BC (6.98).134 The episode is discussed in some detail by Herodotus and neatly brings together many of the themes we have considered in connection with divine will being expressed through natural phenomena.135 Herodotus suggests tentatively that (6.98.1–3): The god made this omen manifest to humans I suppose as a portent of the ills that were about to come (καὶ τοῦτο μέν κου τέρας ἀνθρώποισι τῶν μελλόντων ἔσεσθαι κακῶν ἔφηνε ὁ θεός). For in three generations, that is, Page 30 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature in the time of Darius, son of Hystaspes, and Xerxes, son of Darius, and Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, more disasters happened to Greece than in twenty generations before Darius; some coming from the Persians, some from the leaders as they battled over the empire (τὰ δὲ ἀπ’ αὐτῶν τῶν κορυφαίων περὶ τῆς ἀρχῆς πολεμεόντων). Thus, it was no marvel that there should be an earthquake in Delos when there had been none before. The inclusion of the leaders of Greek states among those responsible for its woes is striking for its chiming with other hints in Herodotus’ work that a clear dichotomy between Greeks and Persians may be (p.269) difficult to sustain. The shaking of Delos, the religious, economic, and cultural hub of the Greek world, is emblematic of the whole of that world being under threat—a perfect choice if the gods want to indicate the likelihood of severe and widespread ramifications of any Persian aggression, but also imbued with irony if that destruction will also one day emanate from Greece itself, of which Delos is the heart. Even Datis himself had identified the island as being of exceptional importance and worthy of a cautious approach, but its exceptionality does not prevent it from acting as a natural barometer for the fate of the whole. A forewarning is being offered here through the channel of natural phenomena of not only Persian destruction but also that perpetrated by the Greeks themselves in their own forthcoming Peloponnesian War, and subsequent transformation of the league based on this very island of Delos from anti-Persian alliance to the basis of empire, Herodotus’ readers will know that the Persians did not read or heed signs from the gods expressed through nature, being out of tune with that natural world and indeed at times actively pitted against it, as we have already seen. But the looming question is whether the Greeks, allied with and attuned to nature, will read the message from Delos accurately and heed it any more wisely than the Persians. (p.270) Notes:

(1) It is interesting to note here in Herodotus a key characteristic of another Alexander, much further down the Macedonian ancestral line, namely overweening desire for beauty, leading to the irresistible temptation to conquer. (2) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 165–7, especially 167. (3) The rhetoric of the occasion demands a presentation of the attractions of Attica which is somewhat at odds with the poverty of its soil claimed by Demaratus in conversation with Xerxes (7.102.1: τῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲν αἰεί κοτε σύντροφοϛ ἐστί, ἀρετὴ δὲ ἔπακτοϛ ἐστί), but in any case the logic here is not dependent on Attica holding any appeal other than its status as the cradle of Greek power and identity.

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The Conquest of Nature (4) Though the message of Demaratus at 7.102.1 (ἀρετὴ δὲ ἔπακτοϛ ἐστί) suggests that there were ways in which poor land could be enhanced by human endeavour. Migration was not the only way to improve one’s lot. (5) We have already seen in Chapter 3 the attraction of islands, sometimes derived from their physical beauty and sometimes from the pure fact of their insularity, and it is striking how often tales involving migration to beautiful places do involve islands at some stage along the way. (6) On this phased foundation of Cyrene, see Malkin, Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 49–52. (7) I do not agree with Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 4.158, that it is ‘not clear why the Libyans should lead the Greeks to a favourable place but conceal to them the beautiful location of Irasa’. Surely the concealment of the ‘top spot’ is easy to understand. (8) Another ‘compromised’ migration tale is the colonizing expedition led by Dorieus from Sparta to ‘the most beautiful place in Libya’ (χῶρον κάλλιστον τῶν Λιβύων) which turns out to be short-lived (5.42.3), since the colonists are driven out of this prime location after two years, back to the Peloponnese, from where they embark on yet another colonizing expedition to Heraclea in Sicily on the advice of the Delphic oracle, an expedition which proves fatal to almost all the participants (5.46–7). (9) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 190–2. This is consistent with my view (see Chapter 5) that the Samians are poised between being tyrants and victims of tyrants. (10) 5.12. It is worth noting, though, that the attraction this time is not formulated in terms of ‘beauty’ (τὸ κάλλος); rather, the woman Darius sees is ‘tall and good-looking’ (μεγάλην τε καὶ εὐειδέα). See Irwin, ‘“What’s in a Name?”’, 51, for the thought-provoking suggestion of resonance with the tall, beautiful woman used in the establishment of another tyranny, that of the Peisistratids, later in the same book. (11) The stress of Immerwahr, ‘Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus’, 263–4, on the Paeonian women as desired not just for their virtue, but specifically for their European virtue, raises the interesting question of whether the Persians are attempting to import a little of that continent to their own sphere of Asia. (12) 5.13.2: εἴησαν δὲ Τευκρῶν τῶν ἐκ Τροίης ἄποικοι. (13) Osborne, ‘The Paeonians’, makes interesting points concerning the specialness of the Paeonian setting and the unnaturalness of their forcible move.

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The Conquest of Nature As he notes (96), the Paeonians of Lake Prasias are very specifically linked to their particular location and entirely dependent on the single resource of fish. (14) As discussed in Chapter 2, the concept of continental divisions is here carefully focalized through Darius. It is the sight of the women which makes Darius desire (5.12.1: ἐπιθυμῆσαι) to give Megabyzus the task of moving the Paeonians from Europe to Asia (5.12.1: ἑλόντα ἀνασπάστους ποιῆσαι ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης). See parallels at 3.93.2, 4.204, 6.9.4, 6.32 for the language of forced removal. For excellent discussion of the element of forced movement and the episode more generally, see Barker and Pelling, ‘SpaceTravelling in Herodotus Book 5’. (15) 5.15.3: ἤγοντο ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην; also 5.17.1: ἤγοντο ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην. Here, though, Herodotus adopts the continental designations in his own voice. (16) Again, as seen in Chapter 2, we find the victims of Persia buying into the rhetoric of their aggressors. (17) 1.73.1–2: καὶ μάλιστα τῷ χρηστηρίῳ πίσυνος ἐὼν καὶ τίσασθαι θέλων ὑπὲρ Ἀστυάγεος Κῦρον. (18) It is thus worth noting the advice of Immerwahr, ‘Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus’, to keep distinct motives which Herodotus himself does not conflate. At 257 he stresses the importance to Herodotus of keeping each motivating factor in historical action separate and in context. Nevertheless, these different motives are inevitably brought together in the narrative frame. (19) Here I acknowledge the point made by Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 117, that there is something inherently ‘unpredictable’ about kingly behaviour, which might render difficult the attempt to identify patterns. (20) But note that the explicit motivations ascribed to Cyrus by Herodotus are his birth, which leads him to consider himself more than human, and his good luck in war (1.204.2). (21) Note yet another interesting instance of Persia’s victims reflecting the aggressors’ terminology and mindset. (22) As Chris Burnand has pointed out to me, the final message of the Histories interestingly pulls against the connection between imperialism and beauty, arguing paradoxically, as it does, that hard lands not beautiful ones make one tough enough to be a conqueror. (23) The connection between sexual desire and conquest may be prefigured by the example of the Lydian king Candaules (especially 1.8), but here the

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The Conquest of Nature connection between taking possession of women and of lands is implicit and weak. (24) 1.205.1. Cyrus said in his message that he ‘wooed’ her as his wife (ἐμνᾶτο), but Tomyris realized that he ‘was wooing’ (μνώμενον) not her but the kingdom of the Massagetae. (25) Payen, ‘Comment résister à la conquête?’, 318. (26) For the Ethiopians as the ‘noble savages’ of antiquity and a source of fascination to writers in both the Hellenistic period and the high Empire, such as Heliodorus in the third century AD, see Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 3.17–25. (27) There is perhaps something rather different about this particular vision of beauty and desire, since the Ethiopians occupy a land which is utopian and semilegendary. (28) As Török, Herodotus in Nubia, 134, notes, this disapproval of expansionism also corresponds to words said to Cyrus by the herald of Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae (1.206), and to Darius by Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians (4.127). But the case of Cambyses also elicits from the king of the Ethiopians the perception that expansionist states cannot be held back. (29) Note that Darius ‘desire’ is to seek revenge (4.1.1: ἐπεθύμησε ὁ Δαρεῖος τίσασθαι Σκύθας), rather than to acquire their land, although he is no less prone than other Persians to a desire to possess what he sees (5.12.1: πρῆγμα τοιόνδε ἰδόμενον ἐπιθυμῆσαι). (30) 4.91.2: ‘The headwaters of the river Tearus produce the best and finest water of all rivers (ὕδωρ ἄριστόν τε καὶ κάλλιστον…πάντων ποταμῶν); and to them came, leading an army against the Scythians, the best and finest of all men (ἀνὴρ ἄριστος τε καὶ κάλλιστος πάντων ἀνθρώπων), Darius, son of Hystaspes, king of Persia and all the continent.’ See the comments of Harrison, ‘Mastering the Landscape’, 29. But it is worth noting that a similarly encomiastic view of this river is, according to Herodotus, given by those who live near it (4.90), offering some kind of endorsement for Darius’ complimentary opinion, or yet again allowing the victims and aggressors to share a common vision and language. (31) See Aelian, Varia Historia 2.14, for the same story. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 235, sees this as evidence for a Persian tree cult. Grethlein, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography, 197, notes this as an example of the Persian desire to freeze time.

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The Conquest of Nature (32) For Persian reverence for the natural world more generally, see 1.131, where we are told that they sacrifice to Zeus on the peaks of mountains and sacrifice also to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds. (33) The amorphous nature of Asia by contrast with other discrete possessions, such as islands, as discussed in Chapter 3 above, makes its parcelling-up all the more striking and explicitly human. (34) For proponents of this stark distinction, see Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ; Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’. (35) 6.137.3: ‘The Athenians say that they expelled them [i.e. the Pelasgians] justly’ (δικαίως ἐξελάσαι). (36) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 136–48. (37) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 141. (38) See 7.5.2: Αἴγυπτον τὴν ἐξυβρίσασαν. This designation comes in Mardonius’ direct speech, so the judgement therein is not necessarily shared by Herodotus. (39) On Mardonius’ twin appeal to revenge and the beauty of Greece, see Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 242–53. (40) For Mardonius embodying the key characteristics of Persian kings, see also his ‘terrible desire’ (9.3.1: δεινὸς…ἵμερος) to capture Athens for a second time and his lack of ‘sound thinking’ (ὑπ’ ἀγνωμοσύνης), which echo the furious passion of the kings. At Plataea, Mardonius is yet more explicitly described as having an opinion which is ‘more vehement and intemperate and not at all inclined to moderation’ (9.41.4: ἰσχυροτέρη τε καὶ ἀγνωμονεστέρη καὶ οὐδαμῶς συγγινωσκομένη). (41) But it is interesting that other factors also play a significant role in persuading Xerxes—not just the motive of revenge on which Mardonius focuses his primary attention, but also subsequently the visions of the false prophet Onomacritus in which he tells of how the Hellespont must be bridged by a Persian (7.6.4). (42) See 7.9α.2, where Mardonius disingenuously describes his campaign to Macedonia as extending ‘not far from Athens itself’ (ὀλίγον ἀπολιπόντι ἐς αὐτὰς Ἀθήνας). (43) At 7.8α.1 Xerxes makes clear the importance of family precedent in motivating his imperial bid. The same spur of ancestral precedent recurs at 7.11.2.

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The Conquest of Nature (44) For the way in which the same past is used for different rhetorical purposes by the different contributors to this debate, see Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History’, 197–203. Pelling, ‘Thucycides’ Archidamus and Herodotus’ Artabanus’, 131, makes the point that the case for advising Darius against his Scythian campaign was overwhelming, whereas Artabanus will need to invoke stronger and more inventive arguments against the invasion of Europe, which is indeed worth conquering. As Pelling notes, Herodotus presents Artabanus’ advice to Xerxes as limited and lacking power. (45) 7.49.4: εὐπρηξίης δὲ οὐκ ἔστι ἀνθρώποισι οὐδεμία πληθώρη (‘No one is ever satisfied with success’). On the land–sea theme here and its evocation of grander manifestations by Xerxes himself, see Pelling, ‘Thucycides’ Archidamus and Herodotus’ Artabanus’, 137. Pelling rightly observes that Artabanus’ anxieties about the dangers of land and sea will turn out to be well founded, even though not in the ways he imagines. (46) See 7.128.1: ἐπεθύμησε…θεήσασθαι and 7.128.2: ὡς ἐπεθύμησε…ἐν θώματι μεγάλῳ ἐνέσχετο. On Xerxes’ desirous viewing, see Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History’, for the interesting possibility that Herodotus presents Xerxes as a ‘failed historian’ who wants to freeze the present as though it were the past. (47) Or see Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, 100, for a stronger reading, in which drinking rivers dry is seen as ‘another way to do violence to these natural dividing lines represented by watercourses: effacing them’. (48) Here one might recall the example of the Scamander, which was caused to fail by Xerxes’ army drinking it dry (7.43.1), but also in the heroic age by Achilles’ arrogance and Hephaistos’ blaze (Hom. Il. 21.200–383). (49) See Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, 99: ‘We notice the insistence with which Herodotus records—generally in terms of outrages, punishments, and vengeance—the upheavals that the Persian kings inflict or try to inflict upon the natural world.’ (50) See 5.77.3 for the Athenian dedication on the Acropolis of fetters worn by the Chalcidians and Boeotians when defeated by Athens in battle. Additional resonance is gained by the note that the walls where the fetters were displayed had been charred by the Persians’ fires. (51) See Stadter, ‘Herodotus and the Cities of Mainland Greece’, 244, for some interesting reflections on the significance of fetters as a symbol of Sparta’s ambitions to rule. (52) Von Scheliha, Die Wassergrenzung im Altertum, 11: ‘einen Unterschied zwischen der Einstellung zum Süßwasser und zum Salzwasser’.

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The Conquest of Nature (53) Here Cyrus is punishing a feature of the landscape for its perceived offence against Cyrus’ horse, but it is worth noting that Persian mistreatment of the natural world can include its fauna as well as its physical geography. At 7.88 a dog runs out in front of the horse of one of the cavalry commanders, who had been left behind ill at Sardis. The horse follows its natural instincts and throws its rider Pharnuches, at which he orders the horse’s legs to be sawn off in an act of brutality and short-sightedness. (54) See Haubold, ‘The Achaemenid Empire and the Sea’, 17. (55) See 1.75.3–6. Strabo 12.3.12 provides the etymology for this river name, as deriving from the salt-yielding areas at points along its course. (56) Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile, 85. See also Harrison, ‘Mastering the Landscape’, on the control of nature as a manifestation of despotic behaviour. (57) 7.1.3 and 7.2.1. At 7.4, the point about unfinished business is brought home even more explicitly: ‘after a reign of thirty-six years, it was not granted to him [i.e. Darius] to punish either the Egyptians after their revolt, or the Athenians’. (58) Both threats are made in direct speech attributed to Xerxes himself. (59) Similarly, the provisions for the work of cutting through Athos and bridging the Strymon are gathered in from a range of places via a variety of channels and make the site microcosmically evocative of a wider geographical area (7.25). (60) See 3.39.4 for Polycrates’ use of chains on a captured workforce, in this case the islanders who came to help Miletus but were set to dig a trench outside the fortifications surrounding Samos. (61) The use of papyrus to construct the bridge is later referred to in the oracle of Bacis made to the Euboeans concerning the danger to them when ‘one of nonGreek speech (βαρβαρόφωνος) casts a papyrus yoke (ζυγὸν…βύβλινον) upon the sea’ (8.20.2). The thinking is perhaps mirrored in the palaces at Persepolis and Susa, whose construction and decoration by the peoples of the empire meant that the buildings reflected in miniature the scope of the subject nations, ‘symbolising the heterogeneity and unity of the empire’, according to Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 4. (62) See Darius marvelling at the Pontus and Bosporus, which he is about to transform into land through his bridge (4.85). Darius takes patent delight in the process of acquiring possessions, whether human or geographical. His surveying of the Pontus is matched by his surveying of his subject troops, numerated and commemorated on stone pillars set up by the Bosporus (4.87.1). Even the moment of survey is immortalized in a painting of Darius sitting by the Bosporus

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The Conquest of Nature watching his army cross (4.88). On this, see Chapter 2 and especially Chapter 4 above. (63) See Chapter 3. (64) See, for example, 3.149 where the Persians ‘sweep with the net’ the island of Samos and hand it over to Syloson devoid of its population. Or 6.96, where the Persians burn the island of Naxos and enslave its people, in a clear example of the parallel human and natural conquest discussed above (pp. 238–43), then set off for other islands to be picked up as possessions in the same way. The propensity of tyrants more widely to move populations around is illustrated by the case of Gelon of Syracuse (7.156), a strong illustration of the fact that this is not a non-Greek preserve. (65) See Romm, ‘Herodotus and the Natural World’, for the articulation of similar readings of the parallel conquest of man and nature in Herodotus. He makes the interesting observation that the association between technological prowess, the transformation of nature, and the imperial quest brings ambiguity and negativity to engineering works which are elsewhere praised by Herodotus (189–90). This backs the point made in Chapter 5 above that there are good and bad ways to manipulate and control nature, and the moral charge awaits allocation. (66) It may be significant that Herodotus presents the Pheros episode in indirect statement, and does not endorse its negative language in his own voice. But it is worth noting that the pursuing king in the Gardens of Midas story is also ‘stung to anger’ (8.138.1: ὀξυνθεὶϛ), suggesting a more broadly despotic trait. (67) On this episode, see Irwin, ‘Ethnography and Empire’. (68) Note Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, 48–50, for anger as a trait that is characteristic of Persians in general and not just of Xerxes, but one which is manifested not only against the natural world. At 7.39.1 Xerxes’ extreme rage (κάρτα τε ἐθυμώθη) results in the cruel punishment of Pythius’ son. (69) Following Scullion, ‘Herodotus and Greek Religion’. (70) See Romm, Herodotus, 85. Romm points to the endorsement of this view given by Themistocles (8.109.3), but it is not clear that Themistocles is a reliable and trustworthy witness. (71) See Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 45–9, for the suggestion that this episode takes on special significance not because it embodies an extreme of hybris or sacrilege, but because Herodotus chooses to lift it from the cultic to the literary level.

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The Conquest of Nature (72) The rather strange inclusion of the Paris and Helen story in Book 2 neatly illustrates the way in which the winds may blow for or against a mere individual. The winds drive Paris to Egypt because of his impiety to Greece (2.114.2), and then when Menelaus wants to leave Egypt, having gone there to fetch Helen, the winds are opposed to this journey and can be propitiated only by the sacrifice of two Egyptian children (2.119.2–3). But, as Chris Burnand reminds me, the episode might indicate a disturbing arbitrariness to the morality of nature. (73) I owe the point about symmetry to Chris Pelling. (74) The idea that the Persians were unnerved by the experience certainly seems to have made an impression on Herodotus, since he attributes their later decision to travel through the islands (6.95.2) to their fear of Athos. (75) The animals around Athos seem to have been particularly dangerous for the Persians. On Xerxes’ later expedition, soon after he passes through the canal, we hear (7.125) that his men are bothered by wild animals, with lions attacking the camels carrying corn. Being in harmony with the animals is nicely illustrated for the Greek side by the story of Arion and the dolphin (1.23–4), a story that has a tangential counterpart in the episode of Scyllies the diver (8.8), who swims bearing messages on behalf of the Greeks as though he were an aquatic animal himself, but it is worth recalling also the high honour in which the Egyptians hold their animals (2.65). For an interesting use of the Arion story to support the view that celebrating the wonder of the world is as important a reason for inclusion by Herodotus as historical explanation, see Munson, ‘The Celebratory Purpose of Herodotus’. See also Munson, Telling Wonders, 253, for the argument that the agency of the dolphin points to the ‘participation of nature in a divine plan that is ethically rational according to the standards of men’. (76) See Chapter 4 for ways in which the mythological associations of the Troad also bring negative connotations to the expedition. (77) But see Bowen, ‘The Place that Beached a Thousand Ships’, 353, for the view that ‘Cape’ is a mistranslation of aktē and that it more likely refers to a piece of shoreline. (78) Bowen, ‘The Place that Beached a Thousand Ships’, traces in detail the route of this journey and concludes that, assuming that little has changed in the topography of the area, the circumnavigation of Euboea was not only unlucky, but also ill-considered. (79) In a typical piece of Herodotean verification through physical artefact, he notes that the two pieces of rock could still be seen in the temple in his own day (8.39.2).

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The Conquest of Nature (80) See Harrison, Divinity and History, 158–80, for discussion of how ‘the divine’ and individual deities coexist in Herodotus’ narrative. (81) The ignominy of Xerxes’ retreat, as presented by Herodotus, is in contrast with the rhetoric of triumphant victory which Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 5, suggests was attached to the whole series of invasions of Greece, after all a fairly insignificant, very small, and outlying corner of a vast empire. But even the misery evoked by Herodotus is restrained when compared with the powerful picture painted by Aeschylus (Persae 480–514), where the sun melts the frozen river Strymon as the Persians cross, punishing those who would yoke the Hellespont and defy the distinction between land and water. Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persae, 76, sees this as a clear vindication of the cosmic order: ‘Greek soil and the Strymon River punish the Persians with the two worst forms of death, starvation and drowning.’ (82) It is worth noting, however, that this particular episode of natural opposition to Xerxes is not personally endorsed by Herodotus, but it is rather introduced as ‘another tale which is told’ (8.118.1: ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος ὅδε λόγος λεγόμενος). (83) See Harrison, Divinity and History, 16. Note that this story is attributed to the people of Potidaea, although Herodotus does explicitly endorse it as the correct explanation (8.129.3). (84) See Hall, ‘Asia Unmanned’, 125, for a similar presentation of the Greek alliance with nature against Persia in Aeschylus’ Persae. As Hall notes, the ghost of Darius enjoins the chorus never to invade Greece again ‘for their land itself is their ally’ (792: αὐτὴ γὰρ ἡ γῆ ξύμμαχος κείνοις πέλει), killing excess population with starvation since it is so barren. And the messenger speech shows the harsh climatic conditions of Greece and Thrace, which toughen up the Greeks, while proving disastrous to the Persians (483–4; 491; 502–11). Here the alliance of nature with the Greeks is manifested not in individual actions of assistance but in the permanent state of the environment. (85) Where the Greeks claim to be foiled by the winds, they turn out to be lying! The people of Corcyra, trying to escape participation at Salamis, since they believed that the Persians would win, remained anchored off the Peloponnese to see how things would go, but claimed to have been foiled by Etesian winds (7.168.4). (86) As so often, Herodotus verifies the tale through continuity. This time the continuity is not one of material evidence, the crucial artefact which can still be seen today, but one of practice, since he notes that the Delphians still propitiate the winds in this way in his own time (7.178.2).

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The Conquest of Nature (87) This is in keeping with the view expressed by Romm, ‘Herodotus and the Natural World’, 183, that while ‘to theion exercises dominion over the natural world as well as the human’, nevertheless Herodotus does not entirely buy into the idea of divine nature simply playing out its retribution. This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. (88) But see Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 50, for the view that the sacrifice offered by the magi constitutes ‘magic’, which is distinctly un-Greek. (89) And again at Salamis (8.64), when an earthquake hits, the Greeks immediately assume that the appropriate action is to pray to the gods, and furthermore that this will be effective, as their allies, the gods of nature, will come swiftly to their aid. (90) Yet again, Herodotus goes on to comment on the continued use of the title Saviour for Poseidon by the Greeks up to his own day (7.192.3). (91) As Braund, ‘Herodotus’ Spartan Scythians’, notes at 30, Herodotus clearly attributes Scythian strength to the relationship with the environment. Darius faces the task of defeating not only the Scythians but also their rivers, and they are, as Braund notes, no ordinary rivers (4.82 on the rivers as Scythia’s great marvel). (92) See, however, Immerwahr, ‘Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus’, who insists that the Scythians are not presented as innocent victims. At any rate, their neighbours are clear in their assumption that the Scythians are being punished out of vengeance for their own transgressions of the past (4.119.2–4). Whether or not Herodotus endorses this view is less clear. (93) The period of Scythian rule in Asia is mentioned also at 1.106.1 and 1.130.1. (94) At 4.119 we see the negative consequences for Scythia of its earlier imperial ambitions. When the Scythians are hard-pressed by the Persians and call on their neighbours for help, some refuse, since the Scythians had themselves been aggressors long ago, and they said that they would fight only if they themselves were invaded. (95) At 4.46.2–3 Herodotus comments that Scythian cleverness lies in their nomadism. (96) The subsequent way-finding difficulties of the Scythians (4.140) are put down by Herodotus to the fact that they have deliberately wrecked the landscape to impede the Persians and therefore no longer recognize their surroundings—a foolish move, perhaps, but one that in a sense reinforces their normal expectation of being confident and knowledgeable in their own land.

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The Conquest of Nature (97) As Chris Pelling points out, this is very much in keeping with the Hartogian double mirror. (98) See Romm, Herodotus, 79, on the perils of ‘attempting to alter this divinely sanctioned topography’. (99) 9.100.2. On synchronisms in historiography, see Clarke, ‘Universal Perspectives in Historiography’, 267. Thomas, ‘The Intellectual Milieu of Herodotus’, 69, makes the interesting suggestion that Herodotus’ insistence here on the verified proof of divine intervention acts as an implicit correction of the religious scepticism of contemporary sophists, as depicted in Aristophanes’ Clouds and elsewhere. For Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 14, the synchronism of Plataea and Mycale also serves to close a ring stretching back to the Ionian Revolt, when two battles were fought on the same day at Cypriot Salamis (5.108–15): one on land lost through treachery, one by sea a Greek victory. See also 7.166 for the defeat of the Carthaginians in Sicily by Gelon and Theron on the same day as the battle of Salamis. (100) Other explicit references to divine intervention are plentiful. See, for example, 2.120 on divine organization of the fall of Troy (τοῦ δαιμονίου παρασκευάζοντος) and 4.205 on the divine punishment of Pheretime in response to her excessive revenge against the Barcaeans. But both examples are specifically focused on retribution. (101) Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad loc. point out that Herodotus’ linking of the two events is conceptual and literary rather than militarily strategic. (102) Gould, ‘Herodotus and Religion’, 85, notes the many examples throughout the text which illustrate Herodotus’ acceptance of τὰ θεῖα as an element in human experience. Gould’s interpretation offers a serious challenge to those who propound the notion of a sceptical Herodotus. (103) Both the hybris of individuals and the misleading nature of signs from the gods are among the tragic motifs identified in Herodotus by Saïd, ‘Herodotus and Tragedy’. (104) In a neat ring composition, it is another piece of oracular misunderstanding and ignorance of divine signs, this time by Mardonius, which leads to the last major sufferings of the work (8.133–5). This, in spite of the fact that the oracle of Apollo overlooking Lake Copias near Thebes had actually been delivered, according to the messenger Mys, in Carian (8.135). Robert, ‘Le Carien Mys et l’oracle du Ptoon’, argues convincingly that the claim by Mys to have been delivered an oracle in Carian gives us no grounds whatsoever for following those who therefore see the oracle of Apollo at Ptoon as Carian in origin. The nonGreek nature of the oracular response is, as Herodotus notes, to be viewed as a Page 42 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature ‘very great marvel’ (θῶμα μέγιστον) and it is clear ‘que le carien, que la langue barbare, n’est pas la langue rituelle, la langue oraculaire, maintenue…par tradition’ (29). Rather, the episode gives us a peculiar insight into the bilingualism of the early fifth-century figure Mys, who knows both Carian and Greek. (105) The uniqueness of Delphi’s good form is somewhat contradicted by 1.49, where Herodotus notes that the oracle of Amphiaraus was also credited by Croesus with having produced a true answer (μαντήιον ἀψευδές). (106) See Kindt, ‘Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography’, 37–8, for Herodotus’ presentation of Croesus’ consultation of Delphi as ‘a grotesque distortion of an ordinary request at Delphi’, in which Croesus ‘does not acknowledge the difference between the human and divine spheres’. (107) See Kurke, ‘“Counterfeit Oracles” and “Legal Tender”’, 417, for the idea that Herodotus sees oracles as valid only when they have, unlike this one, been ratified by community discussion. (108) Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold, 156. (109) Even the Egyptian king, Necos, with all his proto-Persian behaviour in digging a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, knew the importance of respecting and abiding by oracular instructions to cease from the work prematurely (2.158.5). (110) Here, the verb κτίσαι is clearly being used in two different senses— referring both to the act of founding a colony and to the establishment of a cult centre to a hero. (111) Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 16–17, notes the important contrast between this destruction of a school in Herodotus, where the event is revelatory of fate, and a similar event in Thucydides (7.29.5), where the school and all its children in Mycalessus in Boeotia are destroyed by a band of Theban mercenaries. In the latter case, in keeping with the different characteristic approaches of the two historians, there is no revelation of fate, but the embodiment of the horror of war with immediate effect. (112) See Hornblower, ‘Panionios of Chios and Hermotimos of Pedasa’, for Herodotus’ account of the elimination of Panionios’ Chian male relatives by Hermotimos of Pedasa, and its relationship to the disaster that befell Chios in 494 when the Persians castrated the boys and deported the girls in reprisal for the Ionian Revolt. For Hornblower (50), the portent of the collapsing school is to be read as symptomatic of a terrible phase for Chios demographically. Although both Lesbos and Tenedos also suffered Persian reprisals for their participation in the revolt, Chios is singled out for Herodotus’ special attention in part because Page 43 of 46

 

The Conquest of Nature of the portents foretelling its fate. See Gould, ‘Herodotus and Religion’, 189, for historical events which prefigure other catastrophic events holding a special place in Herodotus’ narrative. (113) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 194, on the miracle at Mycale as standing ‘at the intersection between divine communication and divine interference’. (114) On this, see Harrison, Divinity and History, 114–15. (115) Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 27, acutely observes that the complex ending of the work inter alia make plain that Herodotus is interested in much more than the simple revelation of a divine plan. It is this interaction between human action and divine intervention that for Immerwahr (29–30) lifts the complexity of causation and analysis in Herodotus above the inevitable playing out of a divine plan in Aeschylus. (116) See also 7.45–6, where Xerxes reviews the troops at Abydos and cries at the shortness of human life in a rare moment of Solon-like insight before his crossing. (117) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 281–4, interestingly discusses these options in terms of competing focalizations, piety in the eyes of the Persians and repentance for the hybristic whipping in the eyes of the Greeks. (118) Note, yet again, that the continental divisions form part of the conceptual geography of the Persians in a way which is not consistently mirrored in Herodotus’ own voice. (119) Even if military offerings may have been typical Persian gifts, here, in the context of Xerxes’ aggression, it seems hard not to view the offering of a sword as a similarly aggressive act. (120) See, though, Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 9 and ad 8.55 (on the tendency for Persians to respect local religious practices), for the view that such moments of apparent piety and self-awareness mean that we should modify the currently prevailing view of him as embodying the foolishness of imperial expansion. Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, 58, supports this view. (121) Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad loc. points to the verbal echo in the description of these storms (such as σκληραὶ βρονταί) of the description of Zeus’ preparations for the destruction of the monstrous Typhoeus, ‘whose defeat inaugurated our orderly world’, and the punishment by Apollo (Hesiod, Theogony 839, fr. 54 (a) 7). Such evocation serves to reinforce the cosmic importance of the storm and the heroic, even epic tone of Xerxes’ expedition, as narrated by Herodotus.

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The Conquest of Nature (122) It is important that these incidents are not presented as punishment for Persian violations against the landscape or even their broader attitude to the natural world. The notion of a neutral principle of ‘divine balancing’ may be helpful here. But the sense that the gods, through nature, are deliberately curbing the excessive ambition of the Persian king clearly echoes Artabanus’ warning to Xerxes at 7.10 ε, as well as exemplifying the principle that the gods prefer to create level playing fields in conflict. See 6.11.3 and 6.109.5, and Mikalson, ‘Religion in Herodotus’, 192, for the imperative to facilitate a fair fight. (123) See Harrison, Divinity and History, 94 and 98, for the power lent by accumulation of incidents to the notion that the gods are angry with the Persians. (124) In the words of Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, 42, ‘In short, the entire Persian expedition and the Greek victory are seen as divinely ordained in some way,’ although they importantly note that the sense of a divine plan no more exonerates humans from responsibility for their actions than it does in Homer. Similar offence to the gods is implied, this time in Herodotus’ authorial persona, at 9.65.2 for the fact that none of the Persians dares to enter the grove of Demeter in the land of Thebes, in flight after Plataea, since they had burned Demeter’s temple at Eleusis. (125) See Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 43, for the systematic acceptance of omens by Greeks and rejection by Persians. (126) At 7.19 they (mis)interpret Xerxes’ dream that he is crowned with an olive branch, from which shoots spread over the earth until the crown itself disappears, as a sign that Xerxes will rule over all. (127) In his campaign against Scythia, the Scythians, seeing they have the upper hand, send to Darius gifts of a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows, signifying the need for the Persians to flee, represented by the flight of the animals into the sky, earth, or water respectively (4.131). But, in spite of the advice of one of the magi, Gobryas, to this effect, Darius at first interprets the gifts as a sign of submission (4.132). (128) We might note that Xerxes does heed the message of dreams, but when they seem to be endorsing a campaign for which he is already eager. (129) Note that, yet again, Herodotus fails to adopt the Persian formulation of their imperial ambitions as intercontinental. (130) 7.57.1: καίπερ εὐσύμβλητον ἐόν and εὐσύμβλητον ὦν τῇδε τοῦτο ἐγένετο.

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The Conquest of Nature (131) The earthquake, which affects both land and sea, is taken as a sign of double success (on sea and on the island of Psytalleia). Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, ad loc. hints that the Persians are not just ignorant, but pitilessly rendered incapable by the gods in spite of some insight into the meaning of the sign: ‘those on the Persian side seem powerless to act, though they see that the omen is not propitious. The divine plan moves remorselessly on.’ (132) For example, during the sacking of Athens, the sacred olive on the Acropolis is burned by the Persians, but it springs miraculously back to life (8.55). But see Romm, Herodotus, 194, for the view that the portents at Salamis serve not to indicate that the gods are on the Greek side, but rather ‘to add to the sense of destiny surrounding the entire course of the war’. (133) Or, one might argue, that the Persians’ failure to understand the clearly indicated intentions of the divine renders them, in the mould of tragic heroes, always the last to see. I owe this point to Chris Burnand. (134) The uniqueness of both phenomena is ascribed to the local inhabitants as the best, and perhaps only, guarantors. (135) See Rusten, ‘An “Imaginary Earthquake” on Delos’, for the fascinating suggestion that the chronologically incompatible references by Herodotus and Thucydides to an earthquake on Delos, an island notoriously never shaken by a significant earthquake, rest on misinterpretation of an oracle, further supported by the historiographical wish for an omen to mark out a key narrative turning point.

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Writing an Imperial Geography

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Writing an Imperial Geography Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter explores Herodotus’ presentation of mobility as opposed to stability, such as autochthony. As with monumental projects, context and perspective help to determine whether movement should be viewed as positive or destabilizing. It then considers whether Herodotus supports the idea of a ‘natural order’, on either a small or large scale, and whether changes to the natural world are inherently disrespectful, hubristic, even sacrilegious; or whether such judgements are to be associated only with the enraged, passionate, punitive behaviour of Persia’s grand imperial scheme. The propensity of others, such as the Athenians, to step into Persian shoes encourages a reading of Herodotus’ declaration of the mutability of fortune as a more specific reflection on the everchanging map of imperial power. Dynamis is seen to be at the heart of Herodotus’ work, no less than that of Thucydides. Keywords:   mobility, stability, autochthony, natural order, hubristic, dynamis, mutability of fortune

The shaking of the island of Delos, the hub of the Greek world, by an earthquake in the run-up to the battle of Marathon, heralding three Persian kingly generations of trouble for Greece, offers an example of how the natural world may be used to indicate a divine reaction to human actions, not as a form of direct retaliation to specific episodes of abusive treatment or control over natural features, but rather as a response to the broader sweep of imperialist campaigns. The group of portents which bookend Xerxes’ march across Asia, from the solar eclipse (7.37.2) and birth of a double-gendered mule on his setting out from Sardis on the expedition (7.57.2) to the birth of a hare from a mare on his crossing of the Hellespont (7.57.1), similarly may be interpreted as Page 1 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography divine displeasure at the expedition tout court, as opposed to punishment for individual violations of the natural world. So, now we turn to the enraged, desirous, and controlling behaviour of Persia’s broader imperial quest to shed further light on man’s intervention in the landscape and in the power map of the world. Is it the case that Persian interaction with and control over the landscape is marked out as qualitatively different from that of other tyrants because the metaphor of conquest and subjugation applied systematically by Herodotus to them beyond all others in the narrative and the spirit of unbridled anger in which they proceed1 transforms a neutral action into a violation per se? Or is it not so much the abuse of nature as the abuse of power (dynamis) which is at stake? Or, more precisely, (p.272) does the metaphor of conquest make the natural world the inevitable channel through which that abuse of dynamis is played out and articulated? Here, it might be helpful to recall the formulation that manipulating nature becomes a visible expression of Xerxes’ power, a manifestation of the exercise of dynamis, which lies at the heart of understanding Herodotus’ presentation of the imperial quest. But Herodotus’ close conceptual and linguistic linking of Persian conquests over lands and over peoples, as well as his interweaving of individual episodes, such as the whipping of the Hellespont, in which nature might be seen as retaliating against its own violation with the broader progress of an imperial project, which threatens to rewrite the map of power, makes it difficult to pin down precisely where the Persian transgression lies.

A) Determining Nature’S Will: Stability or Mobility Among other remarkable customs is their [i.e. the Egyptians’] one chant, the Linus Song, which is sung also in Phoenicia and on Cyprus and elsewhere, with different names throughout the nations (κατὰ…ἔθνεα οὔνομα ἔχει); but it is agreed that it is the same song (ὡυτὸς) that the Greeks, when they sing it, call the Linus Song. (2.79, adapted from Grene (1987)) The Linus Song, which Herodotus finds so intriguing, is neatly emblematic of the tension explored here. The song is essentially the same everywhere; at least it is incontrovertibly recognized as ‘the same song’, whether being sung in Egypt, Phoenicia, Cyprus, or Greece; but it is given a different name in different places. Sameness and difference according to location, the degree and nature of regional variation, the question of whether different places really do engender different people, practices, modes of behaviour, landscapes, flora, and fauna, or whether the essential similarity of all humankind, in spite of variations in habitat, overrides those differences, ultimately the question of how natural or unnatural it is to leave one’s place of birth and move around, whether it be motivated by curiosity, by economic factors, or more sinisterly by the desire to possess the (p.273) apparently greater beauty that belongs to others—all of Page 2 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography these questions are evoked by the sameness in difference of the Linus Song. Poignantly, and in keeping with the tragic element in his own work, Herodotus notes that the origin of the song in Egypt is said to be a funeral chant to honour the untimely death of Maneros, only son of the first king of Egypt. It is thus built into Egyptian history from its very beginning as a lament.2 The question of homogeneity and diversity across space is clearly linked to a consideration of the innate or learned nature of characteristics and behaviour, and the consequent implications of stability or movement. The theory of geographical determinism, which sets great store by the influence of location and environment, is relevant to Cyrus’ famous comments at the conclusion of Herodotus’ work (discussed below, pp. 304–5) and also to the privileging of certain parts of the world implicit in Herodotus’ description of, say, the Panionium (1.142), discussed in Chapter 2. Conversely, as we have already seen in Chapter 4, the existence of parallel landscapes, phenomena, and customs in different places modifies the uniqueness of any particular location. In this discussion, the claim to autochthony holds a special place, representing, as it does, a particularly strong link between place, on the one hand, and behaviour, characteristics, and culture, on the other. Against this backdrop, the phenomenon of migration grows in significance and complexity, as we consider how transferable different peoples are from one place to another, when the lifestyle of, say, the Egyptians or the Scythians seems to be specific to their habitat. How fixed or fluid is the map of peoples and places that Herodotus articulates so carefully and in such vivid colours? I shall examine first the positive benefits of mobility and the idea that movement might be deemed natural rather than transgressive. In what follows I take it as read that the evidence for considerable mobility around the ancient world in reality is overwhelming and incontrovertible.3 What is at stake here is the presentation of such movement by Herodotus and its relationship to other conceptual (p.274) threads in the work, in particular that which seems to condemn those who seek to take over territory which is not their own.4 The exchange of goods, ideas, and people permeates the narrative. We have already seen in Chapter 2 the extensive intellectual exchanges entailed by the movement of individual travellers around the Mediterranean world and beyond, such as Solon, Anacharsis, and Cadmus of Tyre, who brought the Dionysiac rites to Egypt on his way to Boeotia with his fellow Phoenicians (2.49.3).5 But we might want to distinguish between mobility from and back to a fixed address, as it were, and movement from one place to another on a one-way ticket. Even the latter need by no means entail the desire for conquest and empire. The propensity to travel is undoubtedly stronger in some peoples than others, embodying the paradox that regional variation does produce different types of behaviour and distinct characteristics, but that one such mode of behaviour might be to move and thereby sever the link with the location or environment Page 3 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography which shaped one in the first place. Does one then become assimilated to the new environment, as Cyrus’ closing comments suggest, or remain imbued with the traits determined at birth—once a sailor, always a sailor? As we shall see, there is a strong sense of ‘national characteristics’ in Herodotus, which might suggest a certain permanence to the lifestyle, but it remains to be seen whether wholesale movement on the part of a people can alter the entire mode of behaviour. The behaviour of individuals may, in any case, clash with that of their compatriots, so that, for example, while Herodotus notes that the Persians welcome foreign customs more than any other people (1.135), Cambyses mocks the customs of others (3.38.1).6 Thus, the notion of national characteristics is subject to qualification. Nevertheless, much of Herodotus’ comment on the mobility or otherwise of people concerns groups, not individuals, and most peoples seem prone to move. (p.275) The Pelasgians are picked out by Herodotus as exceptional for having never moved, by contrast with the Hellenic people, who have been exceedingly mobile (1.56.2: τὸ δὲ πολυπλάνητον κάρτα). But the natural predisposition of the Greeks to be on the move in fact sits uncomfortably alongside frequently made claims to autochthony.7 The Athenians were perhaps the most proactive and persistent in advertising their claim to autochthony in the fifth century, which could be put to good use in underpinning their claim to leadership of the Greeks. When, for example, seeking the alliance of Gelon of Syracuse they argue that: ‘we are the only ones of the Greeks who have not changed our country’ (7.161.3: μοῦνοι δὲ ἐόντες οὐ μετανάσται ̔Ελλήνων).8 But Athenian claims to autochthony were by no means unique. The same claim was made for peoples of the Peloponnese, the Arcadians and Cynurians,9 as for any Greek city that wanted to deploy the argument.10 Furthermore, Pelling has interestingly argued that Athenian autochthony claims ran only skin-deep, since, in spite of the rhetoric which allowed them to claim Greek leadership, in fact it was their willingness to leave the land which proved critical to their success.11 It appears that Athenian (p.276) autochthony claims were most effective when combined with the city’s extroversion, mobility, and diplomacy, and this may have been true for other poleis too. If the Hellenes enjoy being mobile (πολυπλάνης), so too do the Phoenicians on the other side of the Aegean. We have already noted their travels to Boeotia. Herodotus briefly follows in the wake of their voyages with his own travels, sailing to Tyre to check on the shrine to Heracles, finding that it is a shrine to Heracles of Thasos, so sailing there in turn, and thus echoing the mobility of the Phoenicians themselves who had founded the temple on Thasos when they sailed out on a much grander voyage in quest of Europe (2.44.4: κατ’ Εὐρώπης ζήτησιν). The language of desire, which characterizes Persian imperialist travels, is here only hinted at in the mildest possible form. This is a voyage driven by curiosity rather than by unbridled power lust or land envy, and, importantly, is it not a one-way journey, but rather one which will return home Page 4 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography again. But it is interestingly the natural mobility of the Phoenicians,12 nevertheless, which sets in train the sequence of voyages that opens Herodotus’ narrative and is implicitly the catalyst for the catastrophic unfolding of events thereafter, culminating in the Persian expedition against Greece. In the very first chapter of the work, we are told that the Persians attribute responsibility for their falling out with the West to the Phoenicians, since they came from what was called the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and, having settled, they set about long voyages, including one to Argos, from where they carried off Io (1.1). That was the first snatching of a woman, which initiated the sequence of rapes and counter-rapes across the Aegean that provides the conceptual framework for not just the Trojan War but also the Persian Wars of Herodotus’ narrative. Various qualifications should be made to this clear-cut attribution of blame for the woes of the fifth century to the wanderlust of the Phoenicians. The account is presented not as Herodotus’ own view but as that of the Persian storytellers (logioi). No surprise perhaps that (p.277) the Persians prefer to give their imperial incursions a deep-seated cause which has nothing to do with their own greed and everything to do with Phoenician itchy feet. The Greeks, Herodotus reminds us, do not tell the story this way (1.2.1: οὐκ ὡς Ἕλληνες), as right from the start of his work, Herodotus establishes the importance of focalization.13 It is also worth noting that, even in the Persian version, the original reason for the Phoenician voyage to Argos is not aggressive in any sense, but merely economic. It was only after almost a week of hard selling and buying of goods that their minds seemed suddenly to turn to women. The motif of desire for beauty as characteristic of the Persians is one we have already explored in Chapter 6, but for the Phoenicians it seems like something of an afterthought. In fact, the vocabulary of desire which is used of the Persians to refer to their conquests over men, women, and lands, is applied here to the Phoenicians’ commercial activities, as they bargained for the goods ‘which they especially wanted’ (1.1.4: τῶν σφι ἦν θυμὸς μάλιστα), and is not used of the women at all. Similarly, for the second round in this set of tit-for-tat exchanges, the Greeks conduct all their business with the people of Colchis before snatching the king’s daughter Medea on departure (1.2.2). It is not clear that these episodes really encourage us to see travel for trade as inherently dangerous or at least proleptic of the driving forces that will characterize later imperialist expeditions. Rather, the Phoenicians’ actions in the proem seem to offer a contrast with what will follow later in the narrative. But the tension between mobility as both natural and potentially destructive runs through the work. The Scythians present an interesting illustration of the idea that one might be naturally predisposed to move around. The different versions of their foundation myth encompass both autochthony, with the first man in Scythia, Targitaus, being the son of Zeus and the river Borysthenes (4.5.1), and migration, since the alternative account, which Herodotus favours, populates their land with nomadic so-called Scythians living in Asia, who were Page 5 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography displaced by war with the Massagetae and ended up in the land of the Cimmerians, that is, Scythia (4.11).14 The Scythians are (p.278) thus from their very origins either tied conceptually to their land or invaders of it—two radically opposed accounts. But the nomadic lifestyle of the Scythians, as described by Herodotus, in a sense encapsulates both stability and mobility, rather than treating them as mutually exclusive options. The nomadism of the Scythians is seen as a function of the land itself, which is suitable (ἐπιτηδέης) for their lifestyle (4.47.1), and when King Idanthyrsus is quizzed by Darius on why he and his men never stop still for a face-to-face battle, but instead keep flitting around, he replies that he is not running away from the Persians but merely behaving as he does in peacetime too, that is, remaining always on the move (4.127.1).15 There is little explicit suggestion that the natural mobility of the Scythians causes them to migrate in the way that may be associated with those aggressively seeking imperial expansion, since their movement is within their own land. On the other hand, some of the language used of their behaviour begins to ring alarm bells. We are told by Herodotus in his own voice that the whole land was ruined ‘because of their violence and their pride’ (1.106.1: ὑπό τε ὕβριος καὶ ὀλιγωρίης), which entailed them riding round ‘snatching’ everyone’s possessions. Furthermore, the verb used of their activities here is ἁρπάζω, interestingly echoing the arrival of the archetypal Persian ‘snatcher’, Harpagos, onto the scene of Asia. Even though the Scythians do not appear at first glance to be motivated by the impassioned desire or imperialist impulses that characterize the Persians, nevertheless both their attitude and their actions leave them ambiguously placed between natural nomads and aggressive imperialists.16 Thereby, as in the case of (p.279) the incipiently imperialist Greeks, yet another contrast between Persia and its victims is elided, as the benign and natural nomadism of the Scythians takes on a more sinister twist. Much of the movement in the Histories is carried out in terms of migrations and colonizing expeditions. We have already seen in Chapter 3 some more or less successful attempts by groups of people to leave one land and transplant themselves to another. Whether this is to be viewed positively or negatively, whether changing one’s status from mainlander to islander or vice versa invites opprobrium or approbation, is far from clear, and indeed should be better viewed as case-specific.17 But, just as the contrast between travel from and to the same place and that from one place to another as the final destination might provide a framework for understanding the positive or negative associations of certain journeys, so too is some clarity gained through the contrast between voluntary and forced migration. When the Persians force the Paeonian women to move to Asia (5.14.1), this is a hostile act on the part of the Persians, and their return home, encouraged by Aristagoras, may be seen as a form of restoration (5.98.3–4).18 The Persian custom of ‘netting’ the inhabitants of islands they conquer is similarly a violation of the proper order of things, involving the forced movement of whole populations.19 That enforcing the movement of people is yet Page 6 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography another distinctively Persian characteristic20 is already established in the first book of the narrative. By contrast with the voluntary migrations of those seeking a new and better home, Book 1 is replete with the movements of people under threat from Persian control. The imperial drive involves mobility on the part not only of the imperialists, but also of the many peoples displaced by their onslaught.21 (p.280) An early migration story offers a glimpse into the various scenarios on offer. Some Lydians move voluntarily to Tyrrhenia to escape food hunger (1.94.5). This turns out in retrospect to be a wise manoeuvre, since their fellow Lydians who stay at home are taken over by Persia. Here, mobility is a good thing; and staying in place is not. But the early intimations of Persian rule, which here turn out to be only retrospectively relevant, hint also at a common direct cause of migration in Book 1, namely to escape that imperial yoke. To this end population after population is forced to make a crucial decision over whether to stay or go. What we might term ‘the Harpagos effect’, since his ‘snatching’ sweep through Lower Asia underpins much of the migration or mooted migration in this book, provokes a wide range of reactions among potential subjects of Persia, rather than a unified response.22 The Phocaeans are the first of the Ionians to be attacked by Harpagos, as well as the first of the Greeks to engage in long sea voyages, having opened up the Adriatic, Etruria, Iberia, and Tartessus (1.163).23 The king of Tartessus had tried to entice the Phocaeans to move from Ionia, but they refused and instead fortified their city against the Medes with funds provided by the Tartessan king. That was when they were still at liberty to make their own decisions, and their choice was not to turn their habitual mobility into a permanent move but to remain living in their natural habitat and make excursions from there.24 But where the king of Tartessus failed, Harpagos succeeds in driving the Phocaeans out of their homes on a more permanent basis, since, under siege from him, the Phocaeans pack everything onto ships and sail off to Chios (1.164.3).25 It is the same with the population of Teos, perhaps as peninsula-dwellers another naturally (p.281) seagoing people with a flourishing harbour area, who, when Harpagos attacks, sail to Thrace and found the city of Abdera (1.168). However, according to Herodotus, the other Ionians all stay in place rather than fleeing at the onset of Harpagos, and when he has subdued the Ionians of the mainland, the islanders surrender to Cyrus (1.169.2). So far, then, no active resistance to the Persian advance under Harpagos, but two contrasting responses—one to capitulate while remaining in situ, the other to abandon one’s home and migrate elsewhere. A similar pair of alternatives is proposed by two wise men, not just pondering idly, but trying to offer practical advice to the Ionians threatened by Persian expansion.26 For Bias of Priene, the obvious solution is to set sail for Sardinia, set up a city of all the Ionians, and be free and Page 7 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography blessed,27 since Sardinia is the biggest island in the world and inhabiting it would enable the Ionians to rule over others, thus becoming not unlike their own aggressors, the Persians.28 This is in a sense the fully developed version of the Phocaean/Tean answer. For Thales of Miletus, the solution still involves flight, but this time internally within Ionia to the city of Teos, where they should set up a council (1.170.3). This latter option wins favour, perhaps surprisingly, since, as we have just seen, the people of Teos have already fled the onset of Harpagos themselves. But it adheres to the general principle that, with the exception of the notoriously mobile Phocaeans and the historically maritime Teans, the considered response of the Ionians to Harpagos is to remain in their own land, where they are subdued.29 (p.282) In keeping with the idea that different peoples behave in characteristically different ways, the reactions to Harpagos of the various peoples of Asia Minor are henceforth catalogued separately. The Carians, Caunians, and Lycians are lined up chapter by chapter for the Persian assault. But a striking feature of this section of the Harpagos narrative is that the focus is actually not on the response of the people to what I have termed the Harpagos effect, but rather on the migrations undertaken by these populations in the distant, sometimes heroic past, and made towards rather than away from Asia Minor.30 The migration narratives of the Carians, Caunians, and Lycians (1.171– 3) are complex in their focalization, as discussed in Chapter 3 above, and Herodotus’ reluctance to give his full endorsement to these stories of transformation from islander to mainlander may have implications for the relationship between geographical determinism and mobility. But, in any case, these supposed migrations predate the arrival of Harpagos, and the response of the other peoples of Lower Asia, like that of the Ionians, appears relatively uniform. They neither move nor put up much resistance. There are a few notable exceptions. The Lycians put up brave resistance on the plain of Xanthus, but end up completely annihilated, since they themselves burn their women, children, and possessions in the citadel of that town, before all being killed in battle (1.176). As Herodotus notes, briefly, the Caunians had already been captured in similar fashion. Of the Carians, only the Pedasians put up significant resistance to Harpagos, but they too were eventually subdued (1.175). The Carians overall, we are told scathingly by Herodotus about his compatriots, were enslaved by Harpagos, having achieved no distinguished deed at all (1.174.1: οὐδὲν λαμπρὸν ἔργον).31 Whether autochthonous peoples or immigrants, all the Greeks of Lower Asia who fail to flee fall victim indiscriminately to Harpagos’ devastation. (p.283) Although Herodotus has similarly little sympathy, respect, or admiration for the people of Cnidos (1.174.6), their response to Harpagos in trying to transform their city into an island was individual enough to attract his attention, if not his favour, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 6. Although the Page 8 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography Cnidians capitulate no less than the other Carians, they explore a different response to the Harpagos phenomenon. Coming so soon after another narrowly missed escape by the potential victims of Persian imperialism in the failed plan to transform the Ionians into islanders with a mass exodus to Sardinia, this episode proposes a solution that involves keeping the people where they are, but transforming the geographical status of the place itself, so that the Cnidians would be transformed from mainlanders into islanders without going anywhere at all.32 But becoming insular is an escape mechanism denied twice in close succession. In moral terms, the various scenarios discussed above play out interestingly. In terms of movement, it seems that moving voluntarily for trade or curiosity may be undertaken without disapproval; moving under the compulsion of a greater power, as do the Paeonians, evokes sympathy rather than outrage; forcing others to move is a clear act of aggression.33 Staying still also provokes a variety of moral evaluations. It might seem more virtuous and in line with the maintenance of the natural status quo not to migrate permanently for reasons of greed, desire, and power, in the way that characterizes imperial projects. But those who fail to come up with a creatively mobile response to Harpagos and instead capitulate where they are seem to evoke disappointment at the least. I have already suggested that the moral evaluation of man’s interference with the landscape may be conditioned by the tone, context, and purpose of the enterprise, and the same might be said of the larger ‘changes to the map’ entailed by the movement of peoples. Mobility is clearly both prevalent and accepted, depending on the motivation and the method. But the momentous occasion of the very first move by Persians to Greece, highlighted by Herodotus himself, (p.284) and its ill-omened nature raise a question over quite how natural such movement really is.34 Persians sailing from Croton are shipwrecked by bad weather off Iapygia (3.138.1), setting in train a sequence that will run through the narrative of their expedition against Greece, as time and again natural phenomena thwart their progress and their return, as noted in Chapter 6 above. Perhaps nature is trying to tell the Persians right from their first sortie that their attempts to extend beyond their native land run counter to the natural order and will not be tolerated. It is now time to consider the other side of the mobile picture painted above, namely the importance of the structured, stable world, the relevance of geographical determinism, the significance of regional variation and the consequent conceptual problems associated with movement, and the incompatibility of imperialism with the desirability of respecting the natural dispositions of the world. We have already explored above in Chapter 2 some of the ways in which Herodotus’ world is to be seen as a structured entity, rather than an amorphous mass or an indiscriminate melange of peoples, places, and customs in a state of Page 9 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography flux. The continental divisions are complemented in Herodotus’ world by other symmetries and spatial models, which lend a sense of structure, stability, and differentiation. The model of a world made up of concentric circles, or at least a centre and periphery,35 is one which underpins Herodotus’ comments on the perfect and temperate location of the Panionium (1.142.1–2), just as in a different context it is Greece itself which is implicitly promoted to the favoured central position in the conceptual geography of the world, by reference to its perfect ‘blend’ of seasons (3.106.1).36 The huge-scale symmetries of Herodotus’ world, such as the corresponding behaviour of the mighty rivers of the north and the south, the Ister and Nile (2.26) or the assumption of Hypernotians to match their northern counterparts, the Hyperboreans (4.36.1), further underscore the idea of a highly structured, cosmologically determined, perfectly formed, balanced, and stable world. (p.285) This sense that there is a ‘natural order’, which is furthermore divinely sanctioned, but threatened by Persia’s imperial bid, is prevalent in modern scholarship on Herodotus. This view is strongly represented by Immerwahr, with his claims that ‘the work assumes the existence of a natural order by which Europe and Asia are equal and separate, and it deals with a period which constitutes a disturbance of that order by the unlimited expansionism of the Persians’; further, that ‘the main concern of the divine is the maintenance of balance’, especially in nature, and that ‘only when the order of nature as a whole is disturbed do the gods act in concert, thereby becoming Herodotus’ “divine”’.37 This is a clear articulation of a fixed natural order, which is actively protected by the divine.38 The notion has been reformulated in terms of an ‘environmental theology’, that is, in the divinely sanctioned nature of the world in which certain divisions, such as those between the continents, count.39 In the strong words of Darbo-Peschanski, the narrative effectively demonstrates the validity of this view, since we can see that the organization of the physical world is governed by justice when: the modifications that the human actors bring to it are presented as transgressions liable to punishments. The world as it has been ordered should not be touched; notably, one does not change the divisions effected by rivers, seas, and mountains, on pain of incurring the reprisals of divine justice, which thus declares itself the guarantor of the integrity of the cosmos.40 Furthermore, this disruption of the natural order is largely the activity of Eastern kings: ‘Asian rulers are thus guilty of wishing to assume the superhuman power of redistributing space and remodelling the order of the inhabited world. In this particular, they have gravely violated the justice that guarantees and protects that order.’41

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Writing an Imperial Geography (p.286) If Herodotus’ concept of geographical space suggests an orderly and structured world, so too do his ethnographical portraits.42 The idea that people and their habits are distinct and distinctive from place to place, and not just incidentally, but because they are in fact a function of their location, generates a sequence of lively and vibrant descriptions of various peoples encountered, often aggressively so, by the Persians as they move outside their own place and encroach on other places and their natural inhabitants. Herodotus’ description of the extraordinary customs of the Egyptians, in keeping with their location in the most extraordinary environment in the world, is prefaced by an explicit statement of this connection, since, just as the Egyptian climate is different from that of anyone else and their river quite different, so too are their customs the opposite of most people’s habits (2.35.2). The specific and distinctive nature of the Egyptian lifestyle is underlined, since they ‘avoid Greek customs and indeed any other than their own’ (2.91.1). And even within the confines of Egypt itself, variations in habitat produce distinctive habits, which Herodotus describes in full, such as the diet of the marsh-dwellers, with their diet of lotus, calyx seeds, papyrus, and fish (2.92).43 Egypt is, of course, not the only part of the world to enjoy distinctive and noteworthy customs or to adhere to the principle of geographical determinism. The Ionians who face the Persians at the island of Lade fade in the heat of the sun and prove too feeble for the task, perhaps the natural product of the soft and luxurious landscape that houses the Panionium (6.12). The Greek mainland also bears specific, but contrasting characteristics. When, in the aftermath of Cleomenes’ death, Leotychides asks the Athenians for the return of some Aeginetan hostages who were being held in safe-keeping there, a request which is refused, he tells an intriguing tale of a Milesian visitor to a certain Glaucus in Sparta, famed for his devotion (p.287) to justice. The Milesian declares a wish to deposit half of his wealth, converted into silver, in Sparta, since ‘I have always reflected that Ionia is a risky place (ἐπικίνδυνος), whereas the Peloponnese is a land of firmness and safety (ἀσφαλέως ἱδρυμένη)’ (6.86 α.4).44 Ionia and the Peloponnese have their own traits, and it is clear that place matters. Not everywhere is the same. But not every difference can be ascribed to a theory of geographical determinism. An interesting case in point is that of the lack of mules in Elis (4.30). Unlike the absence of horns from Scythian cattle, which can be directly attributed to the cold in a clear connection between the land and the characteristics of its (animal) inhabitants, the failure of mules to be bred in Elis cannot be put down to the cold, since it simply is not cold enough for that to be the case. Instead, Herodotus records the explanation offered by the Eleans, namely that the problem is due to a curse. It is a curious piece of thinking, which moves from a clear case of geographical determinism to a wholly unrelated and ultimately negative example of the same theory, only to resort to a religious, or perhaps rather superstitious, explanation.45 At the very least it illustrates Herodotus’ propensity to see whether an environmental cause for oddity can be Page 11 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography found, in the belief that the connection between a land and its inhabitants is strong and compelling. In general we may conclude that Herodotus presents a significant case for geographical determinism and the importance of location.46 As he notes in relation to the Egyptians, their healthy lifestyle is not only due to the climate in which they live, but more specifically to it being a climate in which there is little seasonal variation of the kind associated with the growth and spread of disease (2.77.3). It is hard to find a more explicit statement of the benefits of stability and lack of change.

(p.288) B) Thinking Big: Imperial Designs and The Problem of Hybris The story goes that winged serpents fly from Arabia towards Egypt at the beginning of spring; but the ibis birds encounter the invaders in this pass and kill them. Because of this, the Arabians say that the ibis is greatly honoured by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians agree that this is the reason why they honour these birds. (2.75.3–4) As so often, the Egyptians pinpoint what is of value and significance by honouring the ibis birds who defend the pass between Arabia and Egypt against the annual onslaught of winged serpents. The defence of Egypt from eastern aggressors at a narrow mountain defile is impossible for the knowing reader to pass over without thinking immediately ahead in the narrative and back in real time to Thermopylae, where the Greeks defend the pass at Thermopylae against the Persians, who are similarly stepping out of their own territory.47 Indeed the description of the pass at Thermopylae (7.176) bears strong resemblance to that defended by the ibis here. The attempted preservation of a ‘national’ boundary by a small force in the face of transgression by a multitude suggests a similar scenario at the two defiles.48 Both Arabians and Egyptians agree that the ibis is held by the latter in great honour for this service, just as Thermopylae would become synonymous with Greek bravery. In the latter case, however, the stakes are significantly higher, as the combination of the natural lie of the land and man-made features at Thermopylae is designed ‘to keep the barbarian out of Greece’ (7.176.5: ἀπαμύνειν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος τὸν βάρβαρον), and, of course, the final outcomes are very different. The episode of winged snakes and ibis birds is a tale of invasion and resistance, which is neatly emblematic of the tension at the heart of Herodotus’ narrative: between a naturally mobile world and one in which certain peoples, notably the Persians, seek not only (p.289) to move around but to do so aggressively and at the expense of others. Stepping out of place, or empire-building, is central to this narrative. The excessive ambitions and self-confidence of certain individuals, most notably the Persian despots, are visible from Book 1 onwards and are regularly associated with imperial projects. As we have seen before, Polycrates of Samos offers an interesting Greek parallel for Eastern tyrannical behaviour and Page 12 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography illustrates the fact that dichotomies are better replaced by a spectrum of positive and negative interaction with nature in the Histories, and that the dividing line between aggressors and victims may be blurred. Although Polycrates is to slip in the course of Book 3 into the role of victim of the far greater tyranny of the Persians as his realm of Samos becomes Darius’ first conquest (3.139.1), nevertheless Herodotus notes him as the first thalassocrat, except Minos of Knossos; but, stresses Herodotus, Polycrates was the first human to rule the sea (3.122.2), and he planned to work from there to mastery of Ionia and the islands, that is, to a maritime empire. Not only does Polycrates step beyond the scope of any previous Greek ruler of the post-heroic age, but his failure to heed warnings, like many of the Persian rulers, ultimately leads to his death.49 This may seem surprising, given the wisdom and humility shown earlier in his life, where he follows the good advice of Amasis of Egypt to throw away his most prized possession, a ring, in an attempt to avoid the envy and wrath of the gods (3.40). The fact that the divine plan subverts Polycrates’ attempt to take his head down below the parapet of excessive wealth and success by returning his ring to him in a fish’s stomach does not alter Polycrates’ intentions, which mark his behaviour out as quite different from that of Persian despots who will routinely ignore similar advice to avert divine envy and not stand ‘too tall’. Nevertheless, Polycrates’ humility goes only so far. His downfall is attributed partly by Herodotus to his great desire for Oroetes’ money (3.123.1: καί κως ἱμείρετο γὰρ χρημάτων μεγάλως), picking up on the excessive and passionate desire (ἱμέροϛ) which characterizes despotic figures through the work, as discussed in Chapter 6. Furthermore, Herodotus notes that Polycrates’ diviners and friends advised against Polycrates’ voyage to Oroetes and that his own daughter saw a dream in which Polycrates was aloft in the (p.290) air, being washed by Zeus and anointed by the sun (3.124.1). While this was, in fact, a reference to Polycrates’ gruesome crucifixion, which left him vulnerable to the rain and burning sun (3.125.4), it easily appealed to Polycrates’ sense of himself as more than human, being served by even the gods. This misinterpretation motivated by self-conceit clearly chimes with other mistakenly positive interpretations by Persian kings, discussed in Chapter 6 above.50 The ambiguous position of Polycrates with regard to despotic arrogance as opposed to admirable aspiration and technological achievement illustrates the difficulty of pinpointing exactly at whom, if anyone, Herodotus consistently directs his moral censure and in what transgression consists. Just as we have seen with regard to transgressive river crossings in Chapter 5 in the figure of Croesus, Polycrates here too may be seen to offer a partial prototype for the behaviour of Persian despots, with elements of similarity and elements of dissonance. I have argued that Herodotus creates a complex moral landscape in respect of the relationship that different players in the narrative cultivate with the world around them. Nevertheless, the Persians are marked out partly by contrast, partly by context, partly by a distinctive language of excess, passion, Page 13 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography and aggression, partly by the application of a metaphor of conquest to their interaction with the natural world, as being qualitatively and quantitatively set apart from other players in the narrative. Even close forerunners such as Croesus, who prefigures some of the ‘distinctively’ Persian language of desire and transgresses boundaries as the first foreign aggressor against Greek freedom, seem to fall short of the Persian capacity for arrogance and excess. As discussed in Chapter 5 above, the borderline figure of Croesus has provoked much debate over whether or not he embodies the fatal characteristic of hybris, and that is a question which merits application to the Persians themselves. But it is worth recalling here Pelling’s comment that Croesus runs close to the line dividing hybristic from non-hybristic behaviour and entertains ‘thoughts, insufficiently alert as they are to the boundary between god and human, which resemble those which lead to or accompany hybristic behaviour elsewhere’.51 This exemplifies well the notion that (p.291) apparent prototypes such as Croesus and Polycrates can only hint at what the Persians will actually realize. And it is significantly Croesus himself, whose own crossing of the river Halys proved an incomplete model for the crossings carried out by Darius and Xerxes, who is present at and concerned about the first explicit example of hybristic behaviour from a Persian king. In contrast to the general lack of explicitly hybristic terminology employed by Herodotus himself in relation to the Persians or anyone else in the work stands Croesus’ observation that ‘the Persians are by nature arrogant (ὑβρισταί) and they are poor’ (1.89.2). One might say that Croesus hardly constitutes a reliable witness, or that he naturally recognizes character flaws in others which are innate in himself, or indeed that his rhetoric is driven by the needs of the moment. Nevertheless, it seems significant that he articulates the key Persian characteristics in these terms. When Cyrus plans to cross the river Araxes and attack the Massagetae, Herodotus notes his double motivation: one cause for optimism was his previous record of victory in war, since no people that he attacked could withstand him, and the other reason for his confidence was his birth, ‘because of which he seemed to be something more than mortal’ (1.204.2: ἡ γένεσις, τὸ δοκέειν πλέον τι εἶναι ἀνθρώπου). Cyrus’ miraculous survival to adulthood in spite of Astyages’ plot to have him killed might indeed have seemed like evidence for divine intervention, although it hardly amounted to divine blood.52 But Croesus, who seems to enjoy the blessing of the gods, is concerned about the superhuman ambitions of his Persian counterpart.53 We have seen Croesus himself turning down the wisely cautious advice of Sandanis against expanding out of his territory (1.71), and Solon’s attempt to enlighten him falls on deaf ears (1.33), but by the time Apollo too through the Pythia has given Croesus a chance to recognize his misconceptions (1.91), he is presented as a wise adviser who understands the limits of humans in the face of the divine. Nevertheless, at the Araxes, Croesus’ advice seems poor, since he recommends that Cyrus should cross, in spite of his worries about (p.292) Cyrus’ undue confidence. Page 14 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography Reminding him that ‘he and his men are only mortal’ (1.207.2: ὅτι ἄνθρωπος καὶ σύ εἶς καὶ ἑτέρων τοιῶνδε ἄρχεις) and that good fortune moves around,54 he nevertheless argues on this basis for a pre-emptive attack, catastrophic advice which will seal his fate not to be listened to when he tries to advise Cambyses and has his poor track record of advice thrown back at him (3.36.3). Croesus is thus a strangely ambiguous figure with regard to both his own imperial ambitions and his advice to other aspiring rulers.55 He has sufficient insight to be concerned about Cyrus’ arrogant sense of himself vis-à-vis the gods, but not enough to enable him to draw the necessary conclusions in his advice. He has clearly learned something from his own experiences, but it is striking that he has not yet abandoned all sense of his own specialness, introducing his recommendation at the Araxes with a reminder that ‘Zeus gave me to you’ (1.207.1: με Ζεὺς ἔδωκέ τοι), hardly the self-presentation of a man who fully understands his relationship to the gods.56 Croesus remains only semi-enlightened, and indeed Herodotus himself tentatively attributes his fall to divine retribution (ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη), which came into play in the context of Croesus’ dream about the death of his son, ‘as I guess, because he supposed himself to be blessed beyond all other men’.57 Nevertheless, his self-belief is eclipsed by that of his Persian counterparts.58 The logic of Cyrus’ belief that his more-than-mortal status entitles him to attack the Massagetae is picked up and expanded upon by Xerxes (p.293) in particular, underpinning and justifying his imperial ventures. Mardonius, Xerxes’ ‘bad’ adviser, is a key figure in bringing out the worst tendencies of the Persian king. Mardonius embodies some of the overconfident characteristics of the Persian kings at times even more fully than Xerxes himself.59 Just as he projects his own desire for conquest onto Xerxes and thereby picks up on Xerxes’ propensity to passionate longing and entices him with the lure of the beautiful land to invade Europe, so too does Mardonius’ own arrogance play into that of the king. Mardonius’ additional enticement to Xerxes is that Europe deserved to be owned ‘by the Great King, alone of mortals’ (7.5.3: βασιλέι τε μούνῳ θνητῶν). Although Mardonius might be said to implant and encourage tendencies of passionate desire and arrogance in Xerxes, nevertheless Xerxes is happy to subscribe to these characteristics. His speech to the Persian council declaring his intention to follow Mardonius’ advice takes the latter’s view of Xerxes’ exceptionality further with the implicit claim that he rivals the divine. Xerxes promises to show that the Persian Empire ‘has the same limits as Zeus’ sky’ (7.8γ.1: τῷ Διὸς αἰθέρι ὁμουρέουσαν). Even if this formulation simply reflects the Persian custom of calling ‘the whole circuit of heaven Zeus’ (1.131.2), to the Greek reader Xerxes is seen to equate the scope of his realm with that of the king of the Greek gods. The language of hybris is commonly applied by modern scholars to Xerxes, his attitude, words, and actions, just as to other characters in the narrative who transgress natural boundaries. Immerwahr’s influential work takes it as read Page 15 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography that hybris is the motivating force behind Persian imperialism in general (on the basis of 1.4.4) and that the crossing of rivers in the Histories ‘is always used to prove the hybris of the aggressor’.60 The language of hybris is prevalent also in Gianotti’s analysis of rivers within the narrative. For him crossing the Halys is ‘un acte transgressif (et dangereux)’ and a sign of hybris; similarly Cyrus’ punishment of the Gyndes constitutes an act of hybris whose mention when Cyrus meets his demise at the Araxes acts as a (p.294) reminder that this constitutes payback for that violation, in a ‘paradigme vivant d’hybris punie’.61 Kindt in turn asserts that natural transgression ‘as an act of hubris’ is a common motif in Herodotus, and offers multiple examples of such occasions.62 Romm too, although he carefully notes that Xerxes’ behaviour at Athos is identified as pride rather than hybris, argues that Herodotus makes clear Xerxes’ behaviour at the Hellespont ‘embodies the larger hybris of Persian imperialism’.63 But it is interesting that not one of Kindt’s examples—Croesus and the Halys (1.75), Cnidians seeking to turn their city into an island (1.174), Cyrus and the Gyndes (1.189), Xerxes and Mount Athos (7.22–4), and Xerxes and the Hellespont (7.35)—employs the term hybris or its cognates, although other forms of disapproval are clearly in play. Similarly, Romm is reliant on Herodotus’ tone, which ‘clearly registers disapproval of this alteration of the structure of the earth’, in the cutting of the Athos canal, and the reference to Xerxes’ reckless and barbarian words at the Hellespont, as indicators that Herodotus really wants us to think of hybris.64 While tone, context, contrasts, and so on may be valuable guides to interpretation, and indeed have been used extensively in the argument of this book, nevertheless the persistent absence of the term hybris in the context of these natural transgressions is striking and interesting. It may indeed be worth recalling Haubold’s suggestion that, in the case of the Hellespontine insults, we have a misinterpretation as impiety or hybris by Greeks of a standard piece of Persian imperial rhetoric, which stressed the importance of the Salty River as an imperial boundary but also a bridge to further imperial expansion.65 In Aeschylus’ Persae too, often cited as further evidence for the hybristic nature of Xerxes’ Hellespontine crossing, the term hybris does not occur in that context. There, the sacred nature of the landscape is brought out (p.295) through the ‘holy Hellespont’ and ‘Bosporus, stream of a god’,66 but the enslavement and violation of these features does not elicit the term hybris.67 Rather, Xerxes is guilty, in the eyes of his father Darius here, of ignorance (744: οὐ κατειδὼς), youthful rashness (744: νέῳ θράσει), and poor counsel (749: οὐκ εὐβουλίᾳ). It remains unclear whether we should be thinking in terms of hybris and, if so, what that would actually comprise, but the elision between other forms of foolishness and hybris seems to me all too easy.68 Romm’s two examples of Xerxes’ hybris—the cutting through Mount Athos and the uttering of insults at the Hellespont—neatly illustrate the complexity in discerning not only whether hybris is an appropriate concept with which to approach Herodotus’ presentation of those who wield despotic power against Page 16 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography peoples and against landscapes, but also whether the assault on the natural world itself constitutes an offence or whether, rather, the problem is one of attitude and arrogance. I have noted at length (in Chapters 4 and especially 5) that the impression, or perhaps even assumption, that alterations to the natural world carry an inevitably negative charge in Herodotus’ narrative is compromised by the wide range of reactions encouraged towards such behaviour through language, context, and so on. This makes it difficult to maintain that man’s domination over the natural world per se constitutes an offence either to the landscape or to any divinely ordained dispensation.69 As Romm notes, with a hint of surprise, some alterations to nature, such as the waterworks of the Babylonian queens, come without a sense of hybris, representing instead the victory of technology in the imperial service.70 Romm ponders whether this is due to the location of these events in Asia, while a more predictable moral code might apply in Europe. But a different explanation for the apparent lack of moral outrage here (p.296) might be more satisfactory, namely that altering the landscape is not in itself to be considered hybristic. Kindt, like many scholars, applies the terminology of hybris to natural transgressions, and she also notes ‘the hubris of Croesus, who thinks that he can communicate with the gods on their level’.71 On examination, this transition between two manifestations of hybris seems a little too easy, and it may be more accurate to unhook the pairing and consider each side separately. What Kindt identifies as the hybris of Croesus is not his actions, but his arrogant attitude, and in the case of Xerxes too it is arrogance that characterizes his thoughts and actions.72 The omen which appears to his troops on their crossing of the Hellespont indicates his flight home having set out for Greece ‘with great pomp and pride’ (7.57.1: ἀγαυρότατα καὶ μεγαλοπρεπέστατα); his digging of the Athos canal is put down by Herodotus to Xerxes’ being too full of himself (7.24: μεγαλοφροσύνης εἵνεκεν); the words he commands those whipping the Hellespont to utter are ‘foolish’ (7.35.2: ἀτάσθαλα).73 Xerxes’ belief that he exceeds the normal constraints of being human clearly reaches the ears of his opponents as well, since the Greeks summon help from the people of Opuntian Locris and the Phocians by insisting that the invader was not a god, but human, and so must fall short of his excessive aspirations (7.203.2, adapted from Grene (1987)): They said that this invader of Greece was no god but a human being (οὐ γὰρ θεὸν εἶναι,…ἀλλ ̓ ἄνθρωπον), and that there was no mortal and never would be who did not have evil blended in his lot at his birth, and (p.297) the greatest evil for the greatest of mortals.74 So, the invader too, since he was mortal, must certainly fall from his high hopes. As has been seen many times, here again the rhetorical needs of the occasion may be shaping the presentation of Xerxes, with an allusion to his inflated sense

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Writing an Imperial Geography of self deliberately designed to heighten the contrast with an enemy who is not unbeatable, clearly an image fashioned to appeal to potential allies. Hybris seems to be emerging as an unduly easy label for rather different types of excess or transgression. In fact, alterations to the natural world are not necessarily to be viewed negatively, let alone constitute an offence against the divine. As we have seen in Chapter 5, where criticisms are voiced concerning the major projects of despots, these tend to be focalized through characters in the narrative who have a vested interest in the human cost of such projects. What distinguishes Persian interventions in nature from those of other despots in the work is partly that the metaphor of conquest implies that their aggression extends to an assault on nature itself, and partly the spirit in which they are undertaken, one of passion, anger, and arrogance. Yet even here the terminology of hybris is more a modern assumption than a concept actually embedded in the language of the text.75 But the idea of ‘thinking big’ might help us to identify a common element in the projects of Croesus, to some degree, and the Persians more fully, which distinguishes them from other despotic figures in the Histories, namely their imperial drive and abuse of power. Whereas individual engineering works are rightly deemed amazing by Herodotus, ‘thinking big’ on the grander scale of stepping out of one’s natural place in the world may receive a more ambiguous response. This might help to explain why, for example, peaceful projects such as the water system of the Babylonian queens or even the construction of the Egyptian pyramids evoke admiration from Herodotus, while projects undertaken in the context of imperial conquest, such as Cyrus’ angry punishment of the Gyndes, or Xerxes’ (p.298) works at the Hellespont or Athos, fail to gain endorsement and are instead couched in terms of despotic display, unbridled passion, and arrogance.76 The interesting dissonance between Herodotus’ own scepticism concerning the value of continental divisions and the Persian insistence on their significance, as noted in Chapter 2, may also be of relevance to understanding precisely what constitutes the Persian transgression. The fact that they are made by Herodotus, rather ironically, to articulate their proper place in the world as being in Asia tells us from the horse’s mouth, as it were, that place matters and that different parts of the world properly belong to different peoples.77 The Persians do not go so far here as to condemn attempts to move from one’s own land, a retrospective reflection which is reserved for Cyrus at the opposite end of the work,78 but it is striking that, mirroring the structured nature of the world itself, the narrative is neatly framed by self-referential expressions of structure, differentiation, and stability. This serves only to highlight the wrongness of their imperial campaigns, whereby they deliberately and self-consciously contravene the boundaries which they themselves have formulated. If hybris lies in thought and attitude rather than in action, here we have a prime example of hybristic Page 18 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography behaviour where there may be nothing inherently wrong with this continental crossing, except its status as a deliberate act of transgression. The whole notion of ‘the natural order’ or ‘natural dispositions’ begins to look vulnerable. On this interpretation, what Immerwahr sees as ‘the symbolic conclusion of the Histories’, that is, ‘the dedication of the broken Hellespontine cables, with which Xerxes had connected Asia and Europe’, might take on a hint of penance. Warnings are made throughout the text of Herodotus about the dangers of standing too tall, being too successful, incurring divine envy, succumbing to the temptations of arrogant self-belief, and expanding outside one’s allotted station, whether that be one of status, wealth, or (p.299) geographical location.79 Some such warnings are heeded, others not; some are general, others more specifically targeted against particular courses of action. Many concern the most dramatic manifestation of ‘stepping out of place’, which constitutes the driving force of Herodotus’ narrative, namely the desire to enjoy, possess, conquer other people and especially places—in short, the aspiration to command an empire. We shall return to the principle of the mutability of fortune and its implications for imperial projects. But for now, the propensity of the mighty to fall is worth note. We have already seen Croesus’ warning to Cyrus, with his superhuman ambitions, that ‘all human matters are a wheel, and, as it turns, it never allows the same men to be happy all the time’ (1.207.2: ὡς κύκλος τῶν ἀνθρωπηίων ἐστὶ πρηγμάτων, περιφερόμενος δὲ οὐκ ἐᾷ αἰεὶ τοὺς αὐτοὺς εὐτυχέειν). The rhetoric of the Greeks to their prospective allies concerning Xerxes’ violability (7.203.2 above) adds a further explanation for the potential for good and bad fortune to strike, through its notion of varying mixtures of good and bad, but both this and the natural cycle of good and bad luck should warn the wise against excessive pride in success, knowing that misfortune can be only round the corner. A slightly different logic underpins Amasis’ concerns about the rise of Polycrates of Samos, and his letter of warning that ‘these great pieces of good fortune do not entirely please me. For I know that the divine is a jealous thing (φθονερόν)… I have never yet heard tell of anyone who was fortunate in every way who did not end up in complete ruin’ (3.40.2–3).80 Here, the shifting fortunes of any one individual and the likelihood of falling from a height are attributed not simply to the natural mutability of fortune, but to the intervention of the divine. In a sense, the various rationales may converge quite straightforwardly in the notion of a divinely imbued natural order, which inevitably plays out the jealous emotions of the underlying (p.300) gods and periodically redresses imbalances of wealth and success—more a neutral process of restoring equilibrium than a morally driven system of punishment. But the reference to jealous gods is quite specific and closely targeted against individuals who step out of line or stand too tall, rather than being simply the establishment or maintenance of a general divine order.81 It marks the difference between the world of general philosophical Page 19 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography observations on the nature of the world, which mortals can do little except note, and the world of active warnings about arrogant or greedy behaviour which violates the natural distribution of good fortune and which might incur particular punishment. We have already seen in Chapter 6 instances of humans being attacked by the gods through natural phenomena. Herodotus uses both his own authorial voice and the voices of warning figures in the narrative to make explicit the connection between such treatment and the transgression of boundaries and limits by the individual(s) concerned. When Darius’ brother Artabanus urges Xerxes not to repeat the mistakes of Darius’ Scythian expedition in invading Europe, in an attempt to counter Mardonius’ enticements, which appeal to Xerxes’ desire to possess the beauty of that land, fit only for the Great King of all mortals to own, he warns him that (7.10ε): Do you see how it is the living things that tower over the others that the god strikes with lightning and will not let them show their grandeur, whereas the little ones do not goad the god into action. Do you see how it is always the greatest houses and the tallest trees that the god hurls his thunderbolt upon? For the god loves to thwart whatever is stands out above the rest. It is in this way that a great army may be destroyed by a small one; for once the god has conceived jealousy against the great army, he may hurl fear upon it or his thunderbolt, and it will perish in a way unworthy of itself. The god does not allow pride (φρονέειν μέγα) in anyone but himself. ‘Thinking big’ is the prerogative of gods, and mortals undertake it at their peril.82 It seems that when the divine element in the universe (p.301) sends storms and bolts down on the Persians as they pursue their imperial goals, their actions serve three purposes: to punish the arrogance of those who would think themselves the equals of the gods, to allow some retributive justice for the natural world which has been violated, abused, and metaphorically conquered as part of the imperial quest, and more practically to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Persians to keep making imperial bids and disrupting the natural order of the world. The bolts sent down from heaven are real enough, as the gods play out their will through the very landscape that the Persians would subdue.83 Thus, one might say that the natural world in Herodotus acts as the medium through which the angry and passionate control of the landscape (as opposed to benign and impressive displays of man’s engineering ingenuity), the same arrogant passion which leads some to undertake such projects in the broader context of imperial conquest, the refusal to ‘stay put’, and consequent punishment by the gods are all brought together. If hybris means ‘thinking big’, then one might say that Herodotus’ presentation of the Persians is precisely a

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Writing an Imperial Geography story of hybris punished, in which the fault and the punishment are conducted through the medium of nature. We are thus moving towards a more specific application of the general principle that excessive good fortune is dangerous, even when it is part of the natural cycle of change, and that actively to seek it is the height of folly. Solon’s wise words to Croesus note that ‘it is impossible for one who is human to have all the good things together, just as there is no country that is sufficient of itself to provide all good things for itself; but it has one thing and not another, and the country that has most is best’ (1.32.8). This offers again a slight variation on the theme of mutability of fortune, proposing not that fortune moves around, but that no one place has a monopoly over it, that it is dispersed rather than concentrated. Again the implications are interesting for the wider issue of the imperial quest. It suggests diversity of produce and culture according to place, with the further implication that location does matter since self-evidently no two places are the same, and that therefore the structure and order of the world are significant and (p.302) worth respecting. This might seem like an antiimperialist argument. On the other hand, since no land has a monopoly over all that is good, anyone ambitious might understandably be tempted to expand their territory and appropriate the goodness of another land besides their own, that is, to undertake an imperial campaign. We have already seen in Chapter 5 that the allure of occupying someone else’s place in the world is sometimes misconceived. Croesus is warned by Sandanis that Persia is not worth having and certainly not worth losing Lydia for. Croesus risks gaining a rocky, wineless, figless land while losing one that is far superior (1.71.2–3). The question of what is actually at stake seems central here. The language of desire assumes that the grass is always greener elsewhere and that beauty is on offer for the taking. This is patently not the case, but sound judgement over the quality of what lies elsewhere is difficult to find. Croesus invades Persia, in spite of Sandanis’ warning as to its poor quality; the Persians in turn are led to believe that Europe and Greece in particular are more opulent and fertile than they really are. When, in the aftermath of Xerxes’ flight from Greece, Pausanias of Sparta makes the Persian cooks prepare him dinner as they had for Mardonius and then instructs his own cooks to prepare a Laconian meal, the contrast is literally laughable in Pausanias’ eyes (9.82.3):84 ‘Men of Greece, the reason I have summoned you together is because I want to show you the stupidity of the leader of the Medes. He had daily meals like this, and came upon us to take from us the miserable meal we have here.’ It is clear that to some extent a logical consideration of the relative merits of possessing or ruling over different lands is entirely eclipsed by the crude desire for more, that is, straightforward greed. Time and again, Persians are warned Page 21 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography about this throughout the text. Cambyses is warned by the king of the Ethiopians, via his Fish Eater envoys, that (p.303) ‘if he were just, he would not desire any land but his own’ (3.21.2: εἰ γὰρ ἦν δίκαιος, οὔτ’ ἂν ἐπεθύμησε χώρης ἄλλης ἢ τῆς ἑωυτοῦ). The Scythians express their concern at Darius’ apparently limitless greed for land, which will, they warn their neighbours, certainly not stop at Scythia alone: ‘He wanted everything on this side of the world too to belong to him’ (4.118.1); ‘From the day he crossed over to this continent, he has been taming all that has come his way’ (4.118.5). Artabanus warns Xerxes against desiring too much (7.18.2: τὸ πολλῶν ἐπιθυμέειν), as his ancestors before him have done to their collective disaster, with Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius enumerated as bad examples of aggressive imperialism. One might argue that what is at stake here is at least as much the issue of divine disapproval of general greed as the wrongness of moving out of one’s allotted place and disrupting a divinely sanctioned order of the world. The very last chapter in the work contains some enigmatic remarks exchanged between Cyrus and the grandfather of Artaÿctes whom the Athenians have just crucified at the point where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont (9.122). The resonances of the passage are manifold and thus it acts as a neat link to our final set of questions. The family tree of Artembares and Artaÿctes provides a chronological frame that throws a bridge out across the entire narrative of another, far more powerful dynastic line from Cyrus to Xerxes.85 As we have seen, Cyrus is the first in the narrative to embody Persian aggressive imperialism, in the form that will be played out by later generations, in spite of the various strong foreshadowings of what it might be like, such as those offered by Croesus. Xerxes is the last, and the crucifixion of the Persian governor of Sestos at the point where Persian transgression reached its height forms a neat closure to a long cycle of enraged abuse of both man and nature. It is thus particularly poignant that it is Artembares, Artaÿctes’ grandfather, who tried to (p.304) set the whole imperial ball rolling in the first place by proposing to Cyrus that he should move from his small rocky land to somewhere better, interestingly encompassing the same characterization of Persia as had been used by Sandanis unsuccessfully to persuade Croesus not to bother to invade (1.71.2–3). The rhetoric of enticement, the lure of beauty, the promise of greener grass elsewhere—these are all motifs which run through the work. Beauty clearly lies in the eye of the beholder, or rather that of the persuader. To the Persians, not only the riches of Lydia but even the much greater austerity of Greece can be held up as a target of desire. But the Persians are misled. As Thucydides would make explicit,86 Greece was not the land of plenty promised to Xerxes by Mardonius.87 As we have seen, Pausanias of Sparta cannot imagine why the Persians should leave behind their opulence for such poor reward. Or perhaps the enraged state which seems to characterize the Persian kings in their imperial bids renders the demand for perfect logic futile.

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Writing an Imperial Geography But compared with their immediate neighbours in Asia and therefore their first imperial conquests, the Persians rightly claim to have something to move for. Cyrus’ reply to Artembares is predicated on the assumption that Persia is a harsh land, able to produce harsh, fighting men. ‘From soft countries usually come soft men. It is not possible that from the same land comes a growth of wondrous fruit and men who are good soldiers’ (9.122). According to Cyrus’ logic, stepping into the luxurious environment of Lydia would soften the Persians and undermine the very strength which enabled them to win their conquest. The paradox of imperialism begins to emerge. Success in inhabiting or possessing somewhere beautiful risks rendering one weak and unsuccessful, thus encapsulating one of the vanities of all human ambition.88 Maybe this is what we see played out in Herodotus’ narrative, since, by the time the Persians embark upon their expeditions to Europe, they are already softened by their successes in Asia and unfit adversaries for the sturdy Greeks.89 Cyrus’ (p.305) comment, for all the confusion it engenders,90 at the very least adheres to the principle of geographical determinism, whereby a person’s location is fundamental to their nature and character.91 Movement is not incompatible with this theory, as long as one understands the likely consequences. Men hardened by a brutal environment and therefore sturdy and aggressive imperialists might well stop being so if they are successful enough to gain the beauty that they seek. But the question remains as to whether pursuing the desire for more and better is, as Herodotus’ narrative might seem to suggest, transgressive, sacrilegious, morally wrong, or even hybristic. Does stepping out of one’s allotted place constitute a straightforward displacement or enslavement of other people, does it violate the natural order, does it go so far as to threaten the cultural map of the world?92 Or are movement and change themselves an integral part of the natural order? Are we ultimately to read Herodotus’ narrative as a moral lesson, directed not only against the Persians but also the aspiring imperialists of Athens,93 concerning the dangers and consequences of (p.306) expanding beyond one’s natural limits, or merely a study in the succession of empires and the constantly changing face of the earth?

C) Passion for Power: A Persian Paradigm? The Persians are by nature arrogant (φύσιν ἐόντες ὑβρισταί), and they are poor. (1.89.2) I have argued throughout that Herodotus uses his transformation of organized and carefully articulated space into meaningful places and a morally charged geography to facilitate and enhance a characterization of the Persians as distinctively set apart from other peoples in the work. The Persians are distanced both from other despots with their amazing building projects and from the victims of the Persian imperial quest, as impassioned, angry, desirous players on the narrative stage. Croesus’ observation at 1.89.2 of the natural hybris of the Page 23 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography Persians begs the question as to whether they are innately different from other peoples. The notion of behaving according to geographically determined ‘type’ may partly account for any specific Persian behaviour, but this is complicated in Herodotus’ narrative by repeated reference to ancestral models, a pattern which is most frequently observed in the Persians, whose despotic imperialism seems to pass from generation to generation.94 Indeed, successive Persian kings explicitly model their behaviour on that of their ancestors.95 We have already seen in Chapter 6 strong similarities between the actions of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes in turning water into land and thereby embarking on a conquest of nature to match their conquest over peoples, as well as parallel iconic moments such as Darius’ enumeration of his troops as he surveys the Bosporus and Xerxes’ review of his troops at the (p.307) Hellespont, discussed in Chapters 2 and 5.96 Sometimes the past models are not just there for the reader to infer, but are made explicit either by Herodotus in propria persona or through characters in the narrative. Artabanus warns Xerxes about the dangers of getting cut off far from home by reference to Darius (7.10γ.1): ‘I know what disaster once almost overtook us, when your father, yoking the Thracian Bosporus and bridging the river Ister, crossed over to attack the Scythians.’97 And Herodotus himself draws explicit comparisons between the scale of Xerxes’ expedition and those of his predecessors (7.20).98 Xerxes’ campaign may be on a grander scale than anything that has gone before, but this is a quantitative not a qualitative adjustment to traditional Persian behaviour.99 The drive to emulate and indeed to surpass his ancestors and turn himself into a model for the future, as Darius had done by Mandrocles’ bridge, is a clear motivator for Xerxes when he commits the outrage of digging the Athos canal, ‘wishing to display his power and leave a memorial’ (7.24: ἐθέλων τε δύναμιν ἀποδείκνυσθαι καὶ μνημόσυνα λιπέσθαι).100 Indeed, the start of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece is replete with (p.308) references to his ancestors (7.50.3). The fact of their very limited success seems not to diminish the value of the model.101 The importance of ancestral emulation means that it is hard to be certain whether the Persians behave according to a stereotype because they are, as it were, programmed that way by their environment or because they are imitating each other’s behaviour and actions. The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive. One passage raises interesting questions concerning quite how innate imperialist drives are. Deioces, we are told, united Media, but ruled this land only (1.101), presumably by implicit contrast with the many despots who would step beyond their own boundaries and seek to expand. But Deioces’ son Phraortes attacked the Persians and then began to subdue all Asia, going from people to people until he came against the Assyrians in Nineveh, by whom he was killed (1.102.1–2). The imperial sweep across the land of Asia sounds remarkably like a foreshadowing of Harpagos’ progress, as discussed above (pp. 280–3). But the important thing to note is that there is a moment of Page 24 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography transformation here, from non-imperialist to a people who covet the land of others. Maybe imperialistic and other behaviour is due as much to nurture as to nature; maybe different characteristics can be learned and transferred from place to place after all and the map of culture, customs, and behaviour is more flexible than it might seem. The notion of flexibility in behaviour seems at first to sit uncomfortably with a stark contrast between Persians and Greeks, who respect the dispositions of the world in a way which is illustrated not only on the micro-level of their treatment of individual geographical features, such as rivers, and their alliance with the gods of nature, but also on the larger scale in their understanding that people and places belong together, and that one should essentially not ‘step out of place’. The extraordinary scenario in which the Greeks, summoned to come and help to free Ionia, dare not go any farther east than Delos, mirroring the enemy’s anxiety of going farther west than Samos, leaving a space in between created by fear, shows a reservation on both sides about moving onto alien territory (8.132.3). Only a few chapters later we find the famous claim by the Athenians that no gold or beautiful land would ever entice them to capitulate to Persia and enslave Greece (8.144.1). Whereas the Persians apparently do (p. 309) not know how to resist the allure of beautiful territories, wishfully overestimating the value of a land such as Greece right up to the moment of Cyrus’ final wisdom, and perhaps irresistibly driven by their natural and compelling combination of hybris and poverty (1.89.2),102 by contrast the Greeks seem able to withstand such blandishments. But this stark contrast between Greeks who respect the natural order and Persians who subvert it cannot be allowed to stand unqualified. Already the Athenians are beginning to behave like Persians, beleaguering Andros, the first of the islands to refuse money to Themistocles (8.111.2).103 The argument for imperialism put into the mouth of Xerxes at 7.11.2, namely that if the Persians stay still, the Greeks will not, offers a sinister parallel for the argument put into the mouths of the Corinthians in Thucydides’ work (1.68–71).104 One after another of the key figures in the development of the ‘free’ Athenian democracy is brought perilously close to the thinking and terminology of Persian despotism when it comes to the acquisition and exercise of imperial power. As Pelling notes, ‘The Athenian story is beginning as the Persian story ends; the Thucydidean notion of the enslaving tyrant-city, with its insinuation that Athens is Persia’s successor, is already here.’105 When the other Greeks, especially the (p.310) Peloponnesians, contemplate depopulating Ionia and leaving it to the barbarians while the Ionians are incorporated again into Greece (9.106), in a neat piece of ring composition with, and indeed endorsement of, the view of the Persian logioi that each side has its own allotted continent (1.4.4) and a clear evocation of the plan of Bias of Priene (1.170.2) to move the Ionians to a utopic Sardinia, the Athenians flatly refuse. The Ionians are their colonists, offering Athens a foothold on a continent where it does not belong. The Persians are not Page 25 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography the only ones to disrupt the dispositions of nature. The Athenians are already limbering up for their own imperialist drive,106 further complicating the idea of sharply differentiated national characters. As we have already noted, the crucifixion of a Persian governor in the penultimate chapter of Herodotus’ work by the civilized, rational Athenians strikes a harsh and barbarous tone,107 and we worry that Athens could be capable of exercising tyrannical power as ineffectively and self-destructively as the Persians.108 Will the Athenians be any more capable of heeding the wisdom of Cyrus, which Herodotus chooses to place in immediate juxtaposition?109 The insight of Cyrus that moving to a better place might be at very least problematic and self-defeating fails to move on to the more extreme observation that it might also contravene the natural order and the will of the gods (p.311) (9.122). But Herodotus’ preceding narrative has already exemplified the problematic nature of imperialist behaviour time after time.110 Pelling’s proposal that Thucydides’ Athens might be seen as a tyrant city can be amply illustrated. We might think, for example, of the propensity of the Athenians to display their power in monumental projects, just as do the tyrants of Herodotus’ Histories.111 As Thucydides notes (1.10.2), Athens’ architectural programme would give the impression to posterity of power (δύναμιν) twice as great as the polis really enjoyed. More explicitly, the Corinthians in their second speech at Sparta urge resistance to Athens on the grounds that allowing her to continue unhindered would result in the establishment of a ‘tyrant city state’ (1.122.3: τύραννον…πόλιν), a view reiterated still more strongly at the conclusion of the speech, where Athens’ status as a tyrant city seems already taken for granted as a fait accompli and is furthermore linked to its imperial successes and ambitions: ‘We must believe that the tyrant city (πόλιν… τύραννον) that has been established in Hellas has been established against all alike, with a programme of universal empire, part achieved, part in prospect (ὥστε τῶν μὲν ἤδη ἄρχειν, τῶν δὲ διανοεῖσθαι)’ (1.124.3). This Corinthian view of Athens, not just the tyrant polis, but the tyrant imperialist, is systematically adopted by the Athenians in their own rhetoric, famously by Pericles in his last speech (2.63.2: ὡϛ τυραννίδα γὰρ ἤδη ἔχετε αὐτὴν) and by the demagogue, Cleon, in his speech urging the execution of the Mytileneans (3.37.2: τυραννίδα ἔχετε τὴν ἀρχὴν). As Connor notes, the idea of the tyrant city is used with increasing strength and clarity at every repetition, with Cleon abandoning Pericles’ important qualifying ‘like’ (ὡϛ).112 As the Thucydidean narrative progresses, the Athenians turn the Corinthian view of them into an increasingly firm reality, embracing the rhetoric and living up to the image.113 (p.312) Furthermore, the similarity between the imperial tyranny of Persia and that of Athens is given additional force by Thucydides’ Pericles in his Funeral Oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, where Pericles exhorts the Athenians to look upon the power (δύναμιν) of Athens day by day and become lovers of this (ἐραστὰϛ γιγνομένουϛ αὐτῆϛ).114 Although ‘this’ most Page 26 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography naturally refers to the polis of Athens, the alternative (or complementary) interpretation that it refers to Athens’ dynamis opens up the tantalizing and disturbing possibility that, in Thucydides’ view, Athens’ ever-increasing imperial power evokes the destructive passion with which the Persians undertake their own imperial bids, as seen in Chapter 6 above.115 If the spirit in which such campaigns are undertaken is depicted as displaying worrying similarities from one power to the next, the same may be said of their conclusions. The exaggeration by both Herodotus and Aeschylus of the true scale of the Persian defeat and devastation sits interestingly alongside Thucydides’ similarly exaggerated sense of endgame for the Athenians in Sicily, indicating the strong appeal of the literary and tragic topos of pride brought low and reinforcing the repetitive nature of such patterns of behaviour.

D) Herodotus and the Geography of Dynamis I shall proceed in my account, covering alike the small and great cities of mankind. For, of those that were great in earlier times, most have now become small, and those that were great in my (p.313) time were small in the time before. Since, then, I know that man’s good fortune never abides in the same place, I will mention both alike. (1.5.3–4)116 The principle of the mutability of fortune is expressed explicitly by Herodotus in relation to his writing of history, since it underpins his decision to include peoples, places, and events which appear small or trivial, on the grounds that they may one day become large and significant. This has interesting implications for both imperial ambitions and the malleability of the ‘natural order’. On the one hand, the reversal of great and small strikes a note of caution and warning to anyone who aspires to rule over others; the theory of the succession of empires is not explicitly addressed by Herodotus, but is, in a sense, implied by the warnings about Athens’ stepping into Persia’s shoes as the narrative draws towards a conclusion.117 On the other, the suggestion that places will automatically change over time in terms of their absolute and relative size and status raises questions concerning the stability or otherwise of the map of power. Gray’s description of Herodotus as ‘the first historian of power and change’ seems particularly apposite.118 But this important and much-discussed passage also encapsulates and articulates the constant turning of the tables in the world of tyrannical dynamis, the evolutions and revolutions of an imperial geography. I have argued that Herodotus’ care and accuracy over depicting geographical space and his creation in turn of a resonant and morally charged landscape against which to locate his narrative (p.314) enable him to use this as a prism through which to view and analyse the behaviour of characters. In puzzling over the interaction of different characters with the natural world at the level of both geographical Page 27 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography features and the broader map of power, it has emerged that the notion of a divinely sanctioned ‘natural world’ which it is sacrilegious to alter or transform needs to be replaced by a more nuanced analysis, which takes into account not only the perspective of the narratorial commentator, but also the declared attitude of the perpetrator. The metaphor of conquest examined in Chapter 6 and the channeling and expression of opposition to the Persian imperial progress through natural phenomena are helpful in providing a way to articulate and reinforce Persian transgressions and their punishment but they do not entitle us to claim that the real offence is against ‘nature’, still less the ‘gods of nature’. Mikalson’s suggestion that Herodotus uses Greek religious concepts to articulate the emergence of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in his work, lifting examples of impiety from the cultic to the iconic literary level, from acts of unholiness through desecration (anosios) to manifestations of literary or poetic unholiness through unrestrained individuals offending the divine (atasthala),119 seems to me a helpful parallel for the way in which the natural world too may be seen as both barometer and medium for expressing success and failure, rather than the prime focus of Herodotus’ moral or political enquiry. It seems that, rather than offering an account of sacrilegious abuses of nature, Herodotus’ inquiry into the wonderful deeds of Greeks and barbarians and how they came into conflict could be more accurately described as a study in the creation and development of imperial geography. ‘Man and nature’ are conceived as the dual medium for expressing imperial dynamis rather than as protagonists pitted against each other. Herodotus’ application of a specific language of passion and unbridled rage to the Persians suggests that their behaviour is not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different from other tyrants. And yet we have seen that the Persian paradigm in which passion, thymos, anger, and power are brought together is not after all unique to them, but is to be replicated in the imperial power of Athens with its own combinations of erōs and dynamis. (p.315) Above all, the abuse of dynamis, which one might assume to be a Thucydidean theme applied to a world of Athenian imperial power, can no less appropriately be seen as lying at the heart of Herodotus’ Histories, where the Persian imperial quest entails the aggressive and abusive enslavement of peoples and places alike. It is worth recalling that the control which Xerxes achieves in his domination of the landscape of Mount Athos is defined as dynamis (7.24: ἐθέλων τε δύναμιν ἀποδείκνυσθαι καὶ μνημόσυνα λιπέσθαι), rather than any other form of power. This is what makes the episode paradigmatic for Baragwanath, who reads it not as an indication of hybris but primarily as an opportunity for the ‘impressiveness’ (megalophrosynē) of the Persian king to be displayed: ‘The Athos project thus showcases the power and bottomless resources of the King, declaring to all the magnitude of the planned expedition…in accordance with Persian tradition, and in the hope that no war should ultimately need to be fought.’120 Nevertheless, the notion of hybris or Page 28 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography ‘thinking big’ is not entirely absent. The wider imperial project, with all of its abuses and transgressions, forms the backdrop to this wish to impress, to overwhelm, ultimately to deter opposition. Again, the possibility of double focalization may offer a way to reconcile these interpretations, with the Greek viewpoint seeing tyranny where the Persian one sees a traditional display of power.121 Alongside Herodotus writing against the backdrop of Homer and Hecataeus we need to acknowledge Herodotus the political theorist, engaged in very similar debates to those explored by Thucydides—on dynamis, imperialism, passion, and erōs as political forces.122 This is, of course, consistent with the prominence of the Persian-Athenian parallel in scholarly literature and offers reinforcement to those who would stress the intellectual affinity between Herodotus and Thucydides. The notion that Athens in the late fifth century was consciously defining itself against its Persian foe is compromised by the possibility that its imperial behaviour is being reflected and articulated through a Persian paradigm.123 (p.316) But I wonder whether even this duality oversimplifies the argument. Samos too offers an important manifestation of a similar paradigm, linking Persia and Athens with its themes of Polycratean monumentalism, as well as Polycratean crucifixion; testing out the imperialist water before becoming the first victim of Persia’s similar designs, as discussed in Chapter 5. Athens will, of course, reverse this fate, being first a victim and then a wielder of dynamis against others, not least the Aegean islands.124 But Samos importantly establishes itself as paradigmatic for the constantly shifting map of imperial geography and the way in which the tables keep turning in the world of tyrannical dynamis. Here, the work of Irwin is particularly insightful, noting as she does the potential provocation entailed in the fact that Samos’ monuments are still impressive, even though it is now Athens’ turn, as it were, to be the monumental tyrant city.125 In terms of Herodotus’ theory of mutating good fortune, we might observe that the rotation of imperial power is not accompanied by the erasure of its physical traces in former locations. The result is a complex and multilayered imperial geography. Irwin’s analysis of the Ethiopian logos in Book 3 explores further the potential universality of the Persian paradigm: The Ethiopian logos participates in a universal truth made explicit and prominent in the logoi of Cambyses to come: the orgê and madness of an imperial ruler. One knows better than to speak plainly before a tyrant, a truism that the Cambyses narrative of Book 3 repeatedly demonstrates. Did the same hold true before a tyrannis polis and its tyrannical demos?126

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Writing an Imperial Geography The notion that imperial geography is constantly in flux sits well within the context of one of the most discussed chapters of Herodotus’ work, with which this section opened. The idea expressed in 1.5.4 that new powers are constantly coming to the fore may be more specifically interpreted as a reflection on the ever-changing map as thymos and eros, even orgē, motivate imperial powers to exercise and display (p.317) their dynamis in extravagant and excessive ways. Rather than embodying sacrilege against a divinely ordained natural world, the lavish impositions of such imperialists on landscapes both small and large are problematic because they are indicative of an angry desire for control which will affect not only landscapes but also their inhabitants. The Persians seem to manifest these traits to an exceptional degree, being marked out by Herodotus through a combination of language and context as supremely aggressive and passionate in their imperial quests. But, as Herodotus’ programmatic statement at 1.5.4 anticipates, they cannot be seen as unique. (p.318) Notes:

(1) Note, of course, that the Persians do not hold a monopoly over anger in the work, Periander’s rage against his son offering an example from a Greek tyrant. But, as argued throughout, the claim is not that the Persians are unique in their traits, but rather that there are accumulation and a level of certain characteristics, which sets them apart. (2) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 98–100, for interesting comments on this apparently uniform custom, consensus over which carries proof of the unity of cultures to a new level. As Munson notes, it is striking that here, unusually, Egyptian custom fails to adhere to its characteristic opposition to customs elsewhere. (3) See Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes, for the Mediterranean as a fundamentally mobile world in the mythological imagination; for the reality of this mobility, see Hordern and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea. (4) See on this Harrison, ‘The Persian Invasions’, 556: ‘It might be better if peoples were able to remain apart in peace, but contact is inevitable—and, just as inevitably, contact leads to war.’ (5) Herodotus finds it implausible (2.43.3) that the Egyptians say they do not know about Poseidon or the Dioscuri, if they were already making voyages and some of the Greeks were seafarers. The assumption is that sea travel acts inevitably as a medium for social and cultural interchange and the spread of ideas. (6) See Humphreys, ‘Law, Custom and Culture in Herodotus’, for sensible comments on the (mis)interpretation of Herodotus’ famous ‘statement’ of cultural relativism here.

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Writing an Imperial Geography (7) And, indeed, at 8.44.2 the autochthonous Pelasgians are identified with the Athenians, granting the Athenians some backing for their oft-made claims to autochthony. It is perhaps significant that this boost to the Athenian self-image is made in the catalogue of Greek troops immediately preceding the iconic battle of Salamis. See Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Herodotus (and Others) on Pelasgians’, for a detailed examination of the malleability of the Pelasgians in the Greek ethnographic imagination. Their flexible status allowed for varied and contradictory presentations, even within a single author such as Herodotus, with them seen sometimes as pre-Greeks and sometimes as Greeks themselves. (8) Related arguments are adduced in the debate between Tegea and Athens over command of the left wing at Plataea. The Athenians’ claim to supremacy here is derived largely from their glorious achievements in the past to counteract those of the Tegeans, but also from their innate and unchanging characteristics, which strongly resemble the topoi of the epitaphios and are predicated on the notion of autochthony and consequent constancy of behaviour. (9) See 8.73.1. Rosivach, ‘Autochthony and the Athenians’, points to passages such as this to prove that autochthony is by no means exclusively linked to myths of the earth-born race, but is applied more generally to indigenous peoples. (10) Herodotus notes the autochthonous status of various non-Greek peoples too. See 4.197.2 on the Libyans in the north and the Ethiopians in the south of Libya. (11) See Pelling, ‘Bringing Autochthony Up-to-Date’, especially 474, for the longlasting appeal of the autochthony claim, and 482, for the contradictory nature of Athens’ position. See also Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia, 15, for the tension between Athenian autochthony claims and the claim to be Ionians and Hellenes descended from eponymous heroes. But Fragoulaki, Kinship in Thucydides, 209–28, offers an ingenious reading of Athenian claims to autochthony and Ionian kinship not in tension but as compatible and complementary elements in an evolving foreign policy in which autochthony stood not for exclusion but for superiority and hegemony. (12) This is already a hallmark characteristic for the Phoenicians in Homer, who describes them as ‘famed for their ships’ (Odyssey 15.415). As van Wees, ‘Herodotus and the Past’, 324, notes, it is significant that the mobility of the Phoenicians constitutes the first piece of historical information to be included in Herodotus’ work. (13) Vandiver, ‘“Strangers Are from Zeus”, 152, adduces 2.120 against Herodotus’ endorsement of the rationalized abduction stories attributed to the Persians and Phoenicians, and sees those stories as part of their negative characterization.

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Writing an Imperial Geography (14) Braund, ‘Herodotus’ Spartan Scythians’, 25–7, argues that autochthony is not important for Herodotus as a category of description for the Scythians, in opposition to Hartog’s dichotomy between the nomadic Scythians and autochthonous Athenians, on which, see Hartog, ‘Imaginary Scythians’, 260–1: ‘one of these peoples is autochthonous and lives in a polis, while the other is ignorant of agriculture and of city life’. While it is true that no clear-cut dichotomies can be drawn, I would argue that this is due to the complexity of the status of the Scythians, rather than to Herodotus’ lack of interest in these particular categories. (15) See Purves, ‘The Plot Unravels’, 10–11, for the idea that Scythian nomadism is the key to understanding its resistance to quantification and, therefore, to conquest by the number-obsessed Darius. The fact that its people do not keep still to be counted makes them impervious to the usual techniques of imperial record-keeping and control. (16) See van Wees, ‘Herodotus and the Past’, 331, for the distinction drawn between the Cimmerians, in whom Herodotus displays little interest, since they merely raided (1.6.3), and the Scythians, who raised tribute wherever they went (1.106.1). See Harrison, ‘Herodotus on the American Empire’, 388, on the distinction between arbitrary and benign rule: ‘it all comes down to taxes’. In this way, the Scythians are to be seen as imperial leaders no less than other imperialist powers in the work. Similar questioning of Scythian innocence is expressed by Immerwahr, ‘Aspects of historical causation in Herodotus’, noting their wrongdoing against Persia in the past, and extending this ambiguity even to the attribution of shared blame to Greece for the ‘mutual transgression’ between Europe and Asia (270). (17) Thanks to Chris Burnand for the observation that it is precisely the lack of hard and fast codes of conduct which prompted Greek poleis to seek divine guidance from Delphi and other oracles before undertaking a migratory project. (18) For the complexities of this toing and froing, see Chapter 6 above. (19) See 6.31 for the netting of several islands: Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos, discussed in Chapter 3. (20) Distinctive, even if not unique, to the Persians. See, for example, the movement of people effected by the Greek tyrant Gelon (7.156). (21) Rood, ‘Herodotus’ Proem’, argues at 51–2 that various actual and proposed migrations from Asia Minor and the islands (1.164–9; 1.170; 6.22–4; 9.106) ‘underline the provisional nature of the Persians’ early polarizing of Europe and Asia’.

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Writing an Imperial Geography (22) For the range of reactions, see Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia, 175. (23) Malkin, A Small Greek World, 143, describes the Phocaean network during the seventh and sixth centuries as ‘staggering’. (24) But see Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ad 1.163, for the alternative interpretation of this decision as the most defeatist reaction possible to Persian conquest, with emigration en masse as the greatest liberation. (25) In fact, the final resting place of the Phocaeans is not Chios, but Rhegium (1.166.3). As Friedman, ‘Location and Dislocation in Herodotus’, 174, notes, this and similar episodes generate many exiles throughout Herodotus’ work, raising questions about what it means to be ‘at home’ or mobile, and how mobility relates to identity. (26) 1.170. The use of the Panionium as the opportunity for these men to offer advice to the Ionians as a whole gives an interesting insight into the world of that gathering. (27) Munson, ‘An Alternate World’, 262, notes that the status of Sardinia and the West in general as a refuge from tyranny is far from unambiguous, since, while Aristagoras suggests colonizing it as an escape, Histiaeus proposes to conquer the island for the Persian king. (28) One might wonder for how long the Ionians would maintain their rule over others when both coming from and moving to soft and beautiful lands, if Cyrus’ theory of the incompatibility of power and soft environments holds true (9.122). (29) See Demand, ‘Herodotus and metoikésis in the Persian Wars’, 418, for Herodotus’ presentation of movement as the difficult option; staying and submitting are the easy choice. In the case of the Ionians, however, who are consistently presented by Athens as their colonists in Asia Minor, the question of what constitutes ‘home’ is complicated. Their proposed migration and the refusal to participate (echoed at the end of the work by Athens’ refusal to contemplate a relocation of Ionians to Greece at 9.106.3) are not, therefore, a straightforward example of resistance to moving, which the Ionians have already done. (30) For excellent discussion of early foundation myths, particularly in Ionia, see Mac Sweeney, Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia. The complexity and flexibility of such myths may be illustrated by the case of Miletus, which had ‘not only an Ionian past and a Carian past, but also a Cretan past and an autochthonous past’ (79).

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Writing an Imperial Geography (31) Hardly worthy, one might suppose, of inclusion at all in a work focused on ‘great and wonderful deeds’ (Preface). (32) See Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands, 152, for a political interpretation of the episode as intended as a backhanded remark on the reality of Athens’ own deliberate isolation, epitomized through the construction of her Long Walls. (33) Although, occasionally, even forced change can be beneficial. Themistocles’ insistence on using the money from the mines at Laurium to buy ships for the Aeginetan war, and thereby ‘forcing the Athenians to become men of the sea’ (7.144.2: ἀναγκάσας θαλασσίους γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίουϛ) turns out to be the salvation of Greece. (34) See Harrison, ‘Herodotus on the American Empire’, for the sense that in Herodotus contact ultimately leads to trouble, with wise rulers such as Nitocris of Babylon attempting to keep the Medes away by introducing bends into the river Euphrates (384). (35) See 4.36.2 for Herodotus’ own refutation of the idea that one can represent the earth by simply drawing a circle with a pair of compasses. Nevertheless, his own geographical ideas seem at times to presuppose a circular model. (36) Both passages sit uncomfortably alongside Solon’s observations at 1.32.8 that no one place contains the perfect combination of all good things. (37) Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 306, 312, 314. This notion of balance might account for some occasions on which ‘divine’ action that appears punitive and moralizing is rather an attempt to redresses imbalances in a neutral way. (38) For a formulation of the notion of natural law in Herodotus which is nevertheless ‘divine only in the sense that it transcends individual instances to unify the real’, see Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 62. (39) See Harrison, ‘The Place of Geography in Herodotus’ Histories’, 51. (40) Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, 98. (41) Darbo-Peschanski, ‘Herodotus and historia’, 100. See also Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 43, for the view that Herodotus assumes that ‘the basic motivation—expansionism—was a permanent feature of Eastern monarchy’. (42) Bichler, ‘Herodotus’ Ethnography’, offers a thoughtful assessment of the complexities of Herodotus’ theory of the impact of environment on habits. He notes that the theory of hard and soft nations is fragile and vulnerable to the Page 34 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography reality that travel and communications make cultural boundaries easily permeable. (43) For a striking Hellenistic example of a literary ‘map of food’, see Agatharchides’ On the Erythaean Sea. (44) Of course, the demands of the argument may affect this characterization, but rhetoric tends not to be effective if entirely implausible. (45) Herodotus himself seems perfectly well aware that the logic of the chapter is tortured to say the least. When moving from Scythian cattle to Elean mules, he notes ‘this History of mine has from the beginning sought out additions to the main argument’ (4.30.1). (46) But see Thomas, ‘Ethnicity, Genealogy, and Hellenism in Herodotus’, playing down the importance of geographical determinism for Herodotus, especially by contrast with the Hippocratic writers. Thomas argues at 342 that there is little evidence in Herodotus for the idea of static or natural ethnic characteristics. (47) See initial discussion of this passage in Chapter 4. (48) See Braun, ‘Spines of Winged Snakes’, for an entirely different interpretation of this passage as an example of Egyptians pulling Herodotus’ leg with an implausible story, lacking proper evidence, or a simple case of Herodotean misunderstanding. I prefer to give both the Egyptians and Herodotus the benefit of the doubt in making a serious point. (49) See Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, 19, for the stock nature of the adviser figure and of advice in archaic poetry: ‘In all archaic poetry, human wisdom requires both knowing one’s place in the world…and having a sense of limits.’ (50) While here, as elsewhere, the Persians do not enjoy a monopoly over this trait, nevertheless it does seem to characterize them more strongly than others, and the cumulative effect is powerful. (51) Pelling, ‘Educating Croesus’, 150. (52) The very specific origin for Cyrus’ belief in his immortality in the account promoted by his parents of his birth and survival does not diminish its effect on his behaviour or on his arrogant characterization. (53) Croesus’ concern for Cyrus contrasts with the fact that his campaign across the Halys was partly motivated by revenge against Cyrus on behalf of Astyages (1.73.1). As we have seen in Chapter 5, the moment of transformation from foe

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Writing an Imperial Geography to friend is driven by Cyrus’ recognition that Croesus is a good man and loved by god (1.87.2). (54) A clear echo of 1.5, a note on the mutability of fortune made in Herodotus’ own authorial voice. (55) See Moles, ‘Herodotus Warns the Athenians’, for links between the world of Solon-Croesus and that of Sparta-Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Moles suggests that Croesus and the Lydian court are the important template for potentially soft imperialists of the future (265), noting that Croesus did not learn from Solon, just as Athens would not learn from Herodotus. (56) Even if some of the rhetoric here is empty bluster in front of the Great King, note Griffin, ‘Herodotus and Tragedy’, who sees Croesus as a tragic figure and emblematic of the propensity of humans to forget their limitations (51). (57) 1.34.1. This statement makes it hard to support the view of Lang, Herodotean Discourse and Narrative, 61, that: ‘Nowhere in his narrative does Herodotus himself attribute to divine jealousy the defeat or fall of any great leader who might have been thought to be exceeding human limits.’ (58) See Rutherford, ‘Structure and Meaning in Epic and Historiography’, 24, for the proposition that the ‘wise adviser’ scene of Solon-Croesus repeated in the encounter between Xerxes and Artabanus in Book 7 ‘gains added force from our memories of book 1’. Cobet, ‘The Organization of Time in the Histories’, 411, makes the interesting point that repeated patterns ‘turn time into a secondary dimension of what is told’. (59) As noted in Chapter 6, Mardonius himself displays the characteristics of Persian kings, as an aspiring imperialist, showing δεινός…ἵμερος to take Athens (9.3.1). At Plataea he ignores the inauspicious omens, displaying again the impetuosity and extreme opinions associated with the kings themselves (9.41.4). On Mardonius’ disregard for divine will, see Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad loc. (60) Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, 44 and 293, respectively. (61) Gianotti, ‘Hérodote, les fleuves et l’histoire’, 161 (Halys); 164 (Gyndes). (62) Kindt, ‘Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography’, 46; n. 64. (63) Romm, Herodotus, 80 (Athos); 84–5 (Hellespont). Here we recall Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 45–7, for the suggestion that this episode takes on special significance for literary rather than religious reasons. Note Bargawanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 7, for the idea that

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Writing an Imperial Geography ‘on the broader, cosmic level, Persian imperialism seems invariably to entail hybris’. (64) Romm, Herodotus, 80 and 85, respectively. (65) See Haubold, ‘The Achaemenid Empire and the Sea’, 16. On this, see Chapters 2 and 6 above. (66) Aeschylus, Persae 745: Ἑλλήσποντον ἱρὸν; 746: Βόσπορον ῥόον θεοῦ. (67) See Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persians, 46, for the view that, although the chorus in the parodos do not actually use the term hybris, ‘they intuitively grasp that the invasion involves atê (93–101), which implies hybris’. (68) See again, Rosenbloom, Aeschylus: Persians, 108, for the insistence that the Persians is really about hybris, in spite of the avoidance of the term, claiming that ‘hybris is the essence of Persian imperialism’. (69) Note the important discussion of Scullion, ‘Herodotus and Greek Religion’, arguing that the transgression of natural boundaries is not an act of sacrilege, though undoubtedly an act of despotic arrogance. Scullion sees the divine element in Herodotus as to theion rather than the intervention of specific angry gods. (70) Romm, Herodotus, 88. (71) Kindt, ‘Delphic Oracle Stories and the Beginning of Historiography’, 48. (72) See again the debate between Fisher, ‘Popular Morality in Herodotus’, on the side of action, and Cairns, ‘Hybris, Dishonour, and Thinking Big’, focusing on attitude. Cairns’s important article, proposing that hybris relates to an attitude rather than to particular actions, clearly provides the title for this section. (73) The language is clearly picked up by Themistocles in his direct attribution of Xerxes’ failure at Salamis to his acts of sacrilege (8.109.3): ‘Not we but the gods and heroes accomplished this. They begrudged one man who was unholy and rash (ἀνόσιόν τε καὶ ἀτάσθαλον) to be king of Asia and Europe. He treated holy and profane things alike, burning and throwing to the ground the statues of the gods. He even whipped the sea and hurled leg irons into it.’ As Mikalson, ‘Religion in Herodotus’, notes at 194, Xerxes’ impiety at the Hellespont is of a different order from that displayed by others, but see Fisher, ‘Popular Morality in Herodotus’, 224, for the observation that Themistocles, pronouncing judgement on Xerxes, is himself one of the most morally corrupt figures in the Histories. Are we to trust him? Page 37 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography (74) The echo of Achilles’ description of Zeus’ two jars of good and evil fortune at Iliad 24.527–33 is unmistakable. (75) Thus, although Bowie, Herodotus. Histories Book VIII, 5, takes a more positive view of Xerxes’ spectacular achievements, along with the bridging of the Hellespont and indeed the sheer scale of the four-year expedition, I would still argue that the language of wonder which Herodotus applies to other major engineering works is notably absent from his account of Xerxes’ projects. (76) See Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, 56, for the ‘implicit’ relationship between individual engineering works and the larger imperial quest. (77) 1.4.4: ‘For the Persians claim, as their own, Asia and all the barbarian peoples who live in it, but Europe and the Greek people they regard as entirely separate.’ (78) As Dewald, ‘Wanton Kings, Pickled Heroes, and Gnomic Founding Fathers’, notes at 72, while Cyrus’ message in Book 9 is far more subtle than his typical conqueror behaviour in Book 1, nevertheless that earlier mould is more consistent with the narrative as a whole, in which successive aspiring imperialists come to the fore. (79) See Lateiner, ‘A Note on the Perils of Prosperity in Herodotus’, for discussion of four key terms (akmazō, akinetos, eutych-compounds, and euprexie) through which Herodotus explores the theme of impending loss of greatness. Lateiner points out (100) that Herodotus only mentions the prosperity of characters when he is about to hint at their fall. (80) Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 39, notes that this common Herodotean motif of the phthoneros god, as expressed here by Amasis and at 7.10 by Artabanus, is routinely linked in Greek thought to hybris. But note Romm, Herodotus, 64–5, who observes a further motivation for Croesus’ fall, namely the fulfilment of the revenge motif concerning Gyges and Candaules. (81) See Munson, Telling Wonders, 185, on the idea that divine envy might be actively, if unwittingly, provoked by ‘culpable human attempts to rival, antagonize, and replace it [i.e. the divine]’. (82) Although it is worth noting with Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 40, that the argument put by Artabanus is compelling in Greek terms, but proves unpersuasive for its Persian recipient. (83) See Shapiro, ‘Proverbial Wisdom in Herodotus’, for an interesting analysis of the way in which the debate between Artabanus and Mardonius here, like others in the work formulated in terms of gnōmai or proverbs, is eventually tipped one

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Writing an Imperial Geography way or the other by authorial endorsement through the subsequent narrative. In this case, the caution of Artabanus turns out to be well placed. (84) The irony of this passage for a readership who knew full well that Pausanias would go on to adopt the luxurious lifestyle of the Persians is brought out by Forsdyke, ‘Herodotus, Political History and Political Thought’, 232. Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad 9.82, make the point that it is specifically the extravagance of Mardonius that Pausanias refers to here, not that of the Persians in general; therefore, the passage cannot be adduced as proof that the Persians have become soft through luxury, although there does seem to be at least a hint of that broader theme. (85) The theme of intergenerational links picks up on similar links at the start of the work between Gyges and Croesus, on which, see Dewald, ‘Wanton Kings, Pickled Heroes, and Gnomic Founding Fathers’, 78. But see Boedeker, ‘Protesilaus and the End of Herodotus’ Histories’, for the interesting further chronological bridge evoked by this story, one which goes right back to the Trojan War, in which Protesilaus was the first Greek to die. The punishment of Artaÿctes, who desecrated Protesilaus’ shrine, thus acts as a final act of revenge from the Greek side for Asian atrocities, from both the heroic age and the current Persian dynasty. The two greatest transgressions of the Asia/Europe divide, the Trojan and Persian Wars, are brought into their last of many juxtapositions in the work. (86) See Thucydides 1.2.5 on the barrenness of Attica in particular. (87) In spite of Herodotus’ comments at 3.106.1 concerning the privileged status of Greece. (88) This degradation of the conquerors by the conquered is seen by Redfield, ‘Herodotus the Tourist’, 113, as a form of revenge. (89) Part of the confusion here derives from sporadic elision between the ‘hardness’ of Persia and the natural ‘softness’ of Asia in general, leaving us unclear as to the precise state and status of the Persian imperialists. See Hall, ‘Asia Unmanned’, for the characterization of the whole continent of Asia in Aeschylus’ Persae as effeminate, implying softness and weakness. One might argue that Herodotus’ picture is more complex, but some of the implications are common to both authors, not least that the wealth of Asia’s blessings cannot engender ‘courage, endurance, industry, and high spirits, which are the defining characteristics of the European’ (123). (90) This confusion is brought out well by Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, 27–8.

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Writing an Imperial Geography (91) See Corcella, ‘Herodotus and Analogy’, 71, for the observation that Cyrus presents the link between location and characteristics using the terminology of a natural law (9.122: ‘from soft places usually (phileein) come soft men’). (92) See Ceccarelli, ‘La Fable des poissons de Cyrus’, for interesting ideas concerning the reappearance of the miraculous phenomenon of dancing fish at the crucifixion of Artaÿctes, strongly echoing the story told by Cyrus himself at 1.141. Ceccarelli emphasizes the sense of closure and the restoration of due balance, as the Persians finally give up their imperial bid over the wrong continent. Cyrus’ refusal to join with the Ionians and islanders and the flashback at the end of the work to his reflection that the Persians should stay where they are and abandon the idea of beautiful lands are thus marked out as the two key moments when the balance of Asia is shifted (50). The liberation of the islands after Mycale is mirrored in the resurrection of the ‘netted’ fish (52). (93) Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, Human Violence and the Ancient Near East’, 138, suggests that the crucifixion of Artaÿctes as the final retribution for the Persian refusal to respect the Asia/Europe frontier is intended as a warning to Athens not to become violent and imperialist like the Persians. But it is possible to take the lesson more narrowly and ponder whether Athens is being warned against turning to barbarous behaviour such as that of the crucifixion. (94) Note, however, the contrasting interpretation visible in Aeschylus’ Persae, in which Xerxes is seen as anomalous among Persian kings, having deserted the good judgement of his predecessors (759–64; 782–6). (95) But see 3.89.3 for a carefully differentiated characterization of successive kings—Darius the merchant, Cambyses the master, Cyrus the father—reportedly adopted by the Persians. This does, however, arise in the very specific context of Darius’ tribute-fixing. (96) See 4.87 and 7.44, with Rutherford, ‘Structure and Meaning in Epic and Historiography’, 26 on parallels between Darius and Xerxes, and more generally on the idea of progressive iteration. But see the important difference noted by Immerwahr, ‘Historical Action in Herodotus’, 42, in that ‘Xerxes does not admire nature here, but solely his own power.’ Also 7.59 and the description of the beach at Doriscus and the River Hebrus, where Xerxes reviews his troops, just where Darius set up station on his Scythian campaign. (97) The warning is still in Xerxes’ mind when the reality is played out and he fears being cut off at the Hellespont (8.97.1). See Solmsen, ‘Two Crucial Decisions in Herodotus’, 143, for the idea that the cycle of Persian history reaches its height with Darius. Perhaps he is thus to be privileged over other Persian models?

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Writing an Imperial Geography (98) I agree with Saïd, ‘Herodotus and Tragedy’, that Herodotus’ stress is not, as in the Persae, on the campaign of Xerxes as the accidental result of youthful rashness, but rather ‘the logical outcome of the unlimited expansionism which characterized the rulers of Asia right from the beginning’ (145). (99) Although, see Marincola, ‘Herodotus and the Poetry of the Past’, 23, for the view that Herodotus is primarily interested in and amazed at the particularity of history, so that his Xerxes is like Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, but importantly ‘not exactly like any of them, and his own story is unique’. (100) On the theme of memorialization in Herodotus and its connection to Herodotus’ own presentation of erga megala, see Bakker, ‘The Making of History’, 26–8. See also Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 257–8, on the way in which the works of Xerxes should be placed alongside those of the Egyptians, Samians and others as erga megala which need to be displayed and commemorated; Grethlein, Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography, 186–99, discusses the failed memorialization of Persian kings. (101) See also the interesting observation of Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, 27, that Darius overlooks the model provided by his own bridging of the Bosporus when condemning that by Xerxes of the Hellespont in the Persae. (102) As well as the underpinning nomos of expansion, expressed by Atossa at 3.134 in her attempt to encourage Darius’ imperial bids. (103) On this, see Derow, ‘Herodotus Readings’, 41, where he resonantly terms Themistocles’ discussions with Andros the ‘Andrian dialogue’ in clear allusion to Thucydides’ Melian dialogue at a later stage in Athens’ abuse of imperial power. Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad 9.114–121, on the Athenian siege of Sestos, note this as the culmination of a progress towards Athenian imperialism which includes not only the Parian episode concerning Themistocles, but also Miltiades’ attempt to extort money from that island after Marathon (6.133–5). See also Blösel, ‘The Herodotean Picture of Themistocles’. (104) On the implications, see Forsdyke, ‘Herodotus, Political History and Political Thought’, 230: ‘Through his portrait of Xerxes, Herodotus draws a tacit parallel between Athens under Pericles and Persia under Xerxes that suggests the injustice and dangers of Athenian imperialism.’ (105) Pelling, ‘East Is East and West Is West’, 60. See also Moles, ‘Herodotus and Athens’, examining dark undercurrents throughout Herodotus’ presentation of Athens and its history, and concluding at 48–9: ‘So, implicitly, the warning is Herodotus’ and includes Athens, the coming imperial power, already at the History’s end pushing against the re-established and natural geographical boundaries, already erupting beyond the textual boundaries.’ See Raaflaub, ‘Philosophy, Science, Politics’, for the idea that Athens ‘later turned enslavers of Page 41 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography Greeks and became the polis tyrannos against which the Spartans eventually rallied with their own battle cry of freedom’ (167), and more generally for a detailed examination of the proximity of the political thought of Herodotus and Thucydides. (106) As Flower and Marincola, Herodotus. Histories Book IX, ad 9.106 note in restrained terms, ‘It may be fairly questioned…whether the incident here redounds to the Athenians’ credit.’ (107) One that is particularly sinister, not least because of the dominant role in the episode attributed by Herodotus to Xanthippus, the father of Pericles himself (9.120.4). (108) On the worrying implications of the Artaÿctes episode for the likely future behaviour of Athens, see Derow, ‘Herodotus Readings’. Derow notes the framing of Xerxes’ campaign against Greece with the two versions of the crucifixion story, the first immediately followed by Persian brutality in the beheading of the architects of the bridge (7.35.3) and the cutting in half of the son of Pythios the Lydian (7.39.3); the second embodying Athenian brutality. See Fisher, ‘Popular Morality in Herodotus’, for the view that Herodotus uses ‘traditional moral justifications and problematics concerning revenge both to bring out Persian and other barbarian cruelties and to question any easy confidence that Greeks were always their superiors’ (217). (109) The answer offered by Demand, ‘Herodotus and metoikésis in the Persian Wars’, is emphatically yes. Demand notes (423) that Herodotus makes the Athenian decision not to relocate, but to stay and fight, crucial to Greek freedom. Her interpretation of the end of the work is that Cyrus once saw this wisdom too, but he and his successors had succumbed to greed and lost their fighting spirit. I agree with the interpretation of Cyrus, but consider Demand too optimistic about the wisdom of the Athenians. (110) On the other hand, see Munson, Telling Wonders, for a more sceptical approach to Herodotus’ belief in environmental determinism, noting (at 88) that any causal links between environment and character in the narrative tend to be put into the mouths of the characters, as here. (111) It is worth reflecting on the role played by the tyrant Peisistratus in developing Athens’ monumental architecture. See Gray, ‘Reading the Rise of Pisistratus’, especially 142, for the relevance of Athens’ earlier tyrannical history for understanding its late fifth-century tyrannical behaviour. (112) For the way in which the Athenians not only adopt the Corinthian view of themselves but also turn it into a reality, see Connor, Thucydides, 234.

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Writing an Imperial Geography (113) See Thucydides 6.85.1 for Euphemus’ speech to the Sicilians stressing the importance of expediency to ‘a man who is a tyrant or a city that has an empire’. (114) Thucydides 2.43.1. See Wohl, Love among the Ruins, 1, for the view that ‘imperial politics’ in Athens were ‘driven by lust’. Wohl argues that erōs was no mere rhetorical tag for Thucydides but that ‘Thucydides develops a complex imperial psychology around the notion of eros.’ See, however, Ludwig, Eros and Polis, 141–2, expressing uncertainty over how far such rhetoric percolated into practical political discourse and deliberation. (115) The possibility of this interpretation is raised by Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides Volume I: Books I–III, ad 2.43.1, with the acknowledgement that Dover thought the reference to polis more likely. It is roundly dismissed by David Potter in his BMCR review of Hornblower’s commentary. While accepting the natural reading of ‘this’ to refer to Athens itself, nevertheless it seems to me that even a brief hesitation over the referent is sufficient to hint at the more adventurous interpretation. (116) Adapted from Grene (1987). Grethlein, The Greeks and their Past, 202, argues that Herodotus forces patterns onto events with a view to rendering exemplarity meaningful. Grethlein sees the idea of the cycle as one way of mitigating the impact of ‘chance’ as expressed at 1.5. For Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 108, the passage is a prediction of unpredictability. (117) See Cartledge, ‘Herodotus and “the Other”’, for the irony, therefore, of Athenian stress on Greek unity at 8.144 and freedom, which, as Cartledge argues, is precisely what differentiates them positively from the Persians: ‘Politically…Greek nomos was the only objective basis of true freedom and incommensurably superior to oriental despotism’ (38). Dewald, ‘Wanton Kings, Pickled Heroes, and Gnomic Founding Fathers’, 82, makes the acute observation that Aegospotamoi, where Artaÿctes was captured in 479, will be precisely the location of Athens’ final defeat in 404 BC, a detail unknown to Herodotus, but which adds extra resonance for his readers. But see Pelling, ‘East Is East and West Is West’, 60–1, stressing Herodotus as memorialist rather than warner. (118) Gray, ‘Reading the Rise of Pisistratus’, 150. (119) Mikalson, Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars, 81–2. (120) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 261. (121) Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 261–2. (122) But see Irwin, ‘Ethnography and Empire’, for a reading of this episode which brings together strong Homeric aspects in the fabulous ethnography and poetic allusion with more contemporary reflections on expansionist desire. Page 43 of 44

 

Writing an Imperial Geography (123) See Hall, Inventing the Barbarian. (124) Note Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus, 192–202, for an interpretation of ‘freedom’ in this context as ‘freedom to dominate’, which further supports the notion of an imperial cycle, as liberation allows a polis the opportunity to take up the imperial reins itself. Baragwanath here argues for Athens as a tyrannical city already in Herodotus, following the model set by others such as Samos. (125) Irwin, ‘Herodotus and Samos’, 401. (126) Irwin, ‘Ethnography and Empire’, 68.

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Epilogue

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

Epilogue Katherine Clarke

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198820437.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter recalls the way in which landscapes are constructed, both in literary terms and in physical terms by characters within Herodotus’ narrative. It explores some modern parallels, such as the Kerch bridge which will link Crimea to Russia, for the manipulation of landscape through monumental engineering works as a symbol of imperial ambitions. It suggests, therefore, that the narrative of Herodotus, with its subtle and differentiated presentation of man’s interaction with the natural world, especially in the context of imperial projects, and its underlying proposition that the map of empire is constantly evolving, remains of immediate relevance to the modern world. Keywords:   Crimea, Russia, Kerch bridge, map of empire, imperial ambition, landscape

Press reports of Vladimir Putin’s grandiose and monumental project to construct a twelve-mile-long bridge across the Kerch Strait, linking Crimea to Russia and due to open at the end of 2018, have been replete with Herodotean echoes.1 The Kerch bridge, if it can be achieved in such a hostile and unpropitious environment, will be simultaneously a magnificent feat of engineering and a political statement of mammoth proportions, cementing in physical and visible form the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and undermining the importance of the existing physical link between Crimea and Ukraine. It will constitute the completion of a scheme which was first mooted by Britain in the nineteenth century as part of a rail project to link Britain to India via Crimea. Serious plans were drawn up under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, and in 1942, when Crimea was under German control, the Nazis reached the point of constructing a bridge, but were driven back by the advancing Red Army before they could complete it. In Page 1 of 3

 

Epilogue spite of a couple of unsuccessful attempts made during the Soviet era, no one has yet been able to complete this spectacular construction. Rivalry with past bids to tame, control, or manipulate the natural landscape recalls the competitive attempts by successive rulers in the pages of Herodotus to emulate or even outdo their ancestors in the magnificence of their monumental projects and imperial designs. Furthermore, the figure of the Kerch project manager Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire and Putin’s judo partner from childhood days, recalls Mandrocles, the mastermind for Darius’ bridging of the Bosporus. One wonders whether Rotenberg will be so touched by Putin’s (p. 320) gratitude that he will commission a painting of Putin gazing in stunned admiration at the completed bridge. Rotenberg’s much-cited wish for the bridge ‘to mean something for future generations’ stops short of making explicit a wish for himself or indeed Putin to be immortalized alongside or through the monument itself, but nevertheless strongly evokes forward-looking rhetoric used of Xerxes at the Athos canal or of Darius through Mandrocles’ painting. It is worth recalling also the description of the Athos canal as motivated by Xerxes’ wish ‘to display his power and leave a memorial’, even though the boats could easily have been dragged over the isthmus (7.24). According to some the same might be said of the Kerch bridge: Blinkin told me that the bridge wasn’t strictly necessary; Crimea could accommodate travellers to and from the peninsula by simply increasing the number of ferries between the city of Kerch and the Russian mainland… But an expansion in ferry service is not as grand as a bridge, and doesn’t send a message about Russia’s status as a world power.2 The £2.6 billion price tag on the bridge not only demonstrates its scale but also the priorities of its sponsor state, recalling, for example, the vast expense of the pyramids detailed by Herodotus. The Kerch bridge, described as a ‘symbolic move’ with regard to Moscow’s intended long-term control over Crimea, has also been seen as ‘an imperial symbol for the Kremlin’.3 That changes to the physical landscape can carry deeper meaning in terms of the intentions of the instigator and can reflect in turn on their own characterization by the focalizer of the account is very familiar from the pages of Herodotus. The relationship between small changes to the landscape in the form of individual features and large ones on the scale of territorial claims is a theme we have explored at length. Here contemporary parallels abound. China’s rapid creation of artificial islands by heaping sand and concrete onto coral reefs among the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea could be viewed as a way of laying claim to gas and oil resources, or the development of military bases, or more symbolically as a gesture of expansion and ownership. ‘For China the struggle over the South China Sea is less about resources, though, than it is about (p.321) sovereignty and strategic space.’4 Page 2 of 3

 

Epilogue Shaping imperial geographies is by no means confined to the world of Herodotus. This book has explored one historian’s presentation of geographical space, but the examples above stand as a stark reminder that the contested, provisional, and constantly evolving nature of geopolitical space is ongoing. It is a space that is sometimes quite literally ‘constructed’ by man, but it is always ‘created’ in terms of its conception, articulation, and presentation. The close consideration of Herodotus’ presentation of space and place, on which the opening chapters are focused, has naturally evolved into an exploration of how space is shaped not just at the intellectual level, but also in terms of real human interaction, a process which is then the subject of the historian’s gaze in its own right. The complex focalizations in the text contribute, alongside Herodotus’ shaping and ‘creation’ of landscapes full of meaning and resonance, to a remarkably rich sense of the natural world as no neutral backdrop but rather a highly charged and resonant entity. The approaches of various individuals in the narrative to the natural world thus become morally charged in their own right, not least when the interaction goes beyond the level of individual monuments and projects and involves attempts to rewrite the wider map of power. Playing with the landscape, turning water in land and vice versa, creating islands, bridging the sea—all of these feats demonstrate wealth, expertise, and above all power. At the heart of much human interaction with the natural world lie the exercise and above all the display of dynamis. Herodotus demonstrates the truth of his own claim concerning the mutability of fortune through the prevalence of such behaviour in his narrative, as successive states each with their own imperial geographies to inscribe on the world generate an ever-evolving map of power. (p.322) Notes:

(1) See, for example, Shaun Walker, ‘Russia’s Bridge Link with Crimea Moves Nearer to Completion’, The Guardian, 31 August 2017. (2) Joshua Yaffa, ‘Putin’s Shadow Cabinet and the Bridge to Crimea’, New Yorker, 29 May 2017. (3) Oleksandr Gavrylyuk, ‘Russia’s Kerch Bridge: Time to Act for Ukraine’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 13: 102 (May 2016). (4) Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, ‘China’s Island Factory’, BBC News Website, 9 September 2014.

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References

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

(p.323) References Katherine Clarke

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Subject Index

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

(p.341) Subject Index Aces (river) 114, 192–3 Aeschylus 262 Agamemnon 48, 155 Persae 8, 61, 215, 250, 251, 294–5, 305, 306, 312 Agatharchides of Cnidos 12–13, 71, 286 Altérité see Otherness Alyattes 197, 204, 206 tomb of 40, 114, 143–5, 165, 172, 173 Anacharsis 30, 84, 184, 198, 274 Anger 167, 208, 228, 245–6, 247, 266, 271, 316 as characteristically Persian 221, 237, 242–3, 245–6, 253, 303, 304, 314 Animals as dangerous 106, 248 as marvellous 138–40, 146–8, 240, 250, 287, 288 and religion 107, 266 Arabia 13, 55, 71–2, 74, 112, 114, 139–40, 142, 147–8, 288 Araxes 67, 72–3, 98, 135, 197 as a boundary 60, 68, 98, 104–5, 208–9, 228–9, 291–1, 293–4 Argonauts 20, 69, 78, 81, 155–6 Aristagoras of Miletus 17, 97, 119, 127, 128, 175, 226, 231–2, 234–5, 279, 281 map of 16, 27, 47–9, 94, 124 Artabanus 38, 61, 64, 174, 203–4, 211, 214, 236–7, 264, 292, 299, 300–1, 303, 307 Artaÿctes, crucifixion of 38, 39, 175–6, 214–15, 262, 268, 303–4, 305, 310, 313 Artemisium 80, 88, 158, 249, 251–3 Athens and the Athenians 7, 47, 60, 74, 76, 127, 129, 130, 155, 222, 232–3, 235, 242, 308 autochthony claims of 275–6, 277 as brutal like the Persians 36, 38, 39, 214, 303, 310, 313 as imperialists 5, 36, 53, 115, 116, 126–7, 130, 174, 204, 233–4, 255, 292, 305–6, 309–12, 315 insularity of 129–30, 284 Page 1 of 10

 

Subject Index helped by nature 252, 267 as tyrannical 151, 176, 177, 309–12, 316 Athos (mountain) 113, 116, 122, 129, 199, 245, 248 Athos canal 178, 198–200, 248, 254, 265, 294–5, 296, 315 involving forced labour 174, 243 as vanity project 122, 200, 245, 307, 320 Atlas (mountain) 69, 111 Atossa 209–10, 309 Autochthony 273, 275–6, 277–8, 282 Autopsy 12, 19–20, 65, 82, 173 Babylon and the Babylonians 20, 172–3, 205 capture of 172, 208, 209, 210 rivers and irrigation of 108, 162–7, 178–82, 190, 197, 202 similarities with Egypt and the Egyptians 162–7, 183 Beauty 55, 78, 222–7, 229–32, 234–7, 238, 305 attraction of 222, 224, 225, 227, 229–30, 231, 233, 234–5, 272–3, 277, 304–5, 308– 9 motif of the beautiful land 127, 215, 222–3, 232–8, 281, 293, 305, 308 ‘Bitter River’ 63, 213, 216, 240–1, 294 Borysthenes 70, 95, 99, 161, 277 Bosporus 54, 62, 65–6, 105, 216, 295, 306 bridging of 62, 65, 105, 148–9, 211–12, 244, 307 monuments at 40, 87, 103, 115, 150, 212, 244 Boundaries 22, 59, 110–11, 288 lack of 26, 36–7 natural and artificial 61, 210, 295 rivers as 94, 104–5, 106 transgression of 22–3, 26, 39, 159, 203, 217–18, 242–4, 293–5, 298, 300 (p.342) Cadmus of Tyre 84, 274 Cambyses 37, 207, 209, 247, 274, 292, 306, 307 and the Ethiopians 51–2, 191, 229–30, 236, 245, 302–3 as tyrant 53, 192, 209, 303, 316 invasion of Egypt 169, 175, 191–2, 208, 242, 262 Cannibalism 9, 13 Carians 97, 120–1, 282–3 Catalogues 87–91, 209 influence of Homeric 6, 89, 209 islanders in 118–19 military 87–9, 275 of Persian empire 16, 18, 20, 89–90, 109–10 Centre and periphery 23–6, 50–6 Cheops 40, 142–6, 165, 199 Egyptian criticism of 184–6, 188, 193, 199 prostitution of daughter 144, 145, 187 pyramid–building of 40, 114, 142–6, 165, 168, 173, 182–9, 199 Cleomenes 17, 48–9, 94, 232, 234, 286 Cnidos and the Cnidians 23, 122–3, 128, 256, 283, 294 Comparisons and analogy 56, 72–6, 141, 159–69 Continents 31, 32, 42, 49, 58–65, 72–3, 105, 125, 284 Page 2 of 10

 

Subject Index Herodotus’ criticism of continental divisions 17, 59, 60–1, 63, 64, 68–9, 104, 212, 298 important to Persians 60, 62, 210, 212–13, 214, 226, 236, 263, 266, 298, 310 three (Europe, Asia, Libya) 17, 59, 104 Credibility 137, 139–40, 185, 192, 240, 248, 252, 274, 287 Croesus 34, 38, 78, 97, 114, 203–9, 227, 234, 237, 263, 290–2, 302, 303–4, 306 and the Delphic oracle 204, 206, 207, 239–40, 258–60 and the Halys 104–5, 203–5, 227, 241, 259, 291, 293–4 hybris of 207–8, 290–1, 296 and Solon 16, 34, 83, 174, 205–8, 291–2, 301 Cyrene 124, 223–4, 260 Cyrus 60–1, 118, 172, 210, 229, 281, 292 and the Araxes 98, 104–5, 208–9, 291–2, 293 and river Choaspes 179, 228, 230, 237 and Croesus 97, 114, 204, 206, 207–8, 227, 259, 299 and Euphrates 180–2, 183, 190 and the Gyndes 93, 98, 167, 179–81, 197, 208, 216, 240, 241, 245, 293, 294, 297 and the end of the Histories 107, 203–4, 273, 274, 281, 298, 303–5, 309, 310–11 and the Massagetae 60, 67, 72, 104–5, 208–9, 228–9, 236, 245, 291, 292–3 escaping death as a baby 112, 228, 291 Darius 77, 87, 90, 127 and Egypt 168–9, 198–9, 241, 242 as like Herodotus 67, 149–50, 172–3 as imperialist 52–3, 60–2, 102, 209–13, 228–9 and rivers 82–3, 102–3, 180, 237 and Samos 126, 176, 210, 289 and Scythia 105, 196–7, 210–11, 253–4, 266, 303, 307 and Scythia as across continental divide 61–2, 208, 214 and Scythia as unconquerable 70, 161, 167, 300 surveying the Pontus 62, 65–7, 77, 148–50, 211–12, 213, 244, 306–7, 320 and Xerxes 172–3, 213–14, 227, 295, 300, 306–8, 320 Delos 53, 75, 84–6, 115, 142, 158, 268–9, 271, 308 Democedes 82, 184 Desire 204, 222–37, 245–6, 276–7, 289, 293, 302, 304 as characteristic of Persians 193–4, 200, 201, 204, 208, 211, 212, 221, 228–31, 234–7, 239, 290 Despotism/Tyranny 145, 146, 174–9, 182, 204–5, 208, 209, 314, 316 of the Greeks 36, 38, 168, 176–7, 271, 279, 289, 309–12, 316 hierarchy of 175, 177, 190, 199, 207, 209, 221 of the Persians 53, 64, 204–5, 221, 237–9, 255 and relationship with nature 41, 114, 145–6, 152, 165–6, 167, 168, 178–80, 190–1, 192, 221, 236, 238–9, 289 (p.343) ‘tyrant city’ 151, 176, 177, 309–12, 316 and writing 40–1, 103 Diet and food–mapping 8–9, 12–13, 69, 286, 302 Divine intervention 123, 157, 174, 195, 256–7, 262, 265–6, 285, 291 jealousy 34, 174, 289, 292, 299–301 order 23, 194, 248, 257, 260–1, 285, 300, 303, 310–11, 317 retribution 34, 248, 249–50, 252, 256, 257–8, 265, 294 Page 3 of 10

 

Subject Index signs 169, 206, 215, 258, 265–9, 271, 296 Dream/s 9, 175, 197, 289–90 of Cambyses 169 of Croesus 292 of Cyrus 60–1, 228–9 of Xerxes 236–7, 266 Dynamis 16–17, 43, 173, 200, 207, 222, 236, 271–2, 312, 313–17 East-West division 36, 38–9, 59, 60, 63, 174, 190, 308 Edges of the earth 50–8, 146–8 and extreme climate 54–5, 146–7 ignorance of 52, 68, 69–70, 71 as location of most beautiful and rare things 50, 55, 146 Egypt and the Egyptians, see also Pyramids; Cambyses, invasion of Egypt; Darius, and Egypt; Nile 12, 16, 25, 183–9, 191–2, 198–9, 208, 217, 234–5, 241, 242, 245, 260, 272–3 animals of 107, 138–40, 248, 288 climate of 54 geography of 71–2, 73–4, 75, 86, 95, 106–9, 111–12 counterpart of Scythia 24, 54, 58, 95, 99, 159, 160–2 similarities with Babylon and the Babylonians 162–7, 182–3, 197, 205 similarities with Persia and the Persians 167–9, 182–3, 190, 205 sources for 35, 37, 184–5, 187, 193 as unique 73–4, 99, 160, 273, 286 wonders of 30, 109, 136–43, 196, 262, 268 Empire and imperialism of Athens 5, 36, 53, 115, 126–7, 204, 233–4, 309–12 as hybristic 293–5, 298 and migration 279–83 paradox of 229, 304–6 Persian imperialism as inherited 208–10, 302–3, 306–7 role of islands in 126–7, 130–1, 174 succession of empires 43, 299, 312–17 victims of 162, 164, 167, 169, 177, 179, 182–3, 190–1, 198, 221, 251 warnings against 298–9, 300, 302 Environmental determinism 36, 107, 121–2, 137–8, 141, 273, 274, 282, 286–7, 304–5, 311 Environmental theology 190, 285 Eratosthenes 14, 19 Ethiopia and the Ethiopians 11, 12, 13, 50, 86, 109, 166 Cambyses’ campaign against 52, 229–30, 302, 316 as edge of earth 51–2, 55, 58, 148, 162, 275 as idealized 21, 51–2, 229–30 Ethnocentrism 18, 51 Hellenocentrism 25, 31 of the Persians 23–4, 50 Ethnography 8–13, 24–6, 30–1, 50, 67–8, 71, 78, 87–8, 118, 135, 286 Euphrates 93, 108 and Babylon 22, 162–7 control of 163–5, 172, 178–81, 183, 190, 208, 284 harmony of Babylonians with 181, 202, 208 Page 4 of 10

 

Subject Index Fetters 204–5, 216, 239–40, 259 Fiction vs. reality 11–12 in Hanno and Agatharchides 11–12 in Herodotus 20, 29–30 in Homer 14–15 Focalization, see also View and Viewpoint 4, 25, 26–41, 140, 172, 186, 282, 321 double- 14, 15, 65–6, 149, 226, 315 and moral judgement 156, 168, 189, 233, 297, 320 multi– 22, 66, 77, 91, 150, 263 nuance created through 23, 42, 94, 146, 152, 178, 179, 182, 226 through Persians 60–1, 64–5, 67, 88, 226, 277 of traveller 12, 14, 20, 69, 82, 91 (p.344) Fortune 103, 174, 297, 301 mutability of 34, 43, 84, 206, 292, 299–300, 301, 312–13, 316 Foundation myths, see also Local history and stories 38–9, 56, 81–2, 124, 275–6, 277–8, 282 Gardens of Midas 216–17, 221, 222, 245 Gyndes 93, 98, 114 crossing as paradigmatic 206, 208, 209, 216 punished by Cyrus 93, 98, 114, 167, 179–80, 181, 197, 240, 241, 245, 247, 293, 294, 297 Halys 86, 93, 104–5, 203–5, 227, 241, 259, 291, 293–4 Hamilcar of Carthage 158 Hanno of Carthage 10–12, 13 Harpagos 118, 120–1, 122–3, 128, 278, 280–3 Hecataeus of Miletus 10, 15–17, 19 as character in Herodotus 15, 16, 17, 49, 119 as literary predecessor 3–4, 5, 7, 15–19, 20, 49, 55–6, 59, 65, 95, 142, 233, 315 Heliopolis 71–2, 74, 112, 138 Hellespont 38, 175, 236, 244, 308 bridging of 150, 200, 235, 236, 242–3, 248, 250, 303 dedication of cables 63, 298 geography of 65, 68, 226 omens concerning 215, 265–6, 271, 296 punishment of 167, 204, 216, 240–1, 242–3, 246, 263–4, 272, 296 Xerxes at the 118, 213–16, 237, 245, 246, 294–5, 298, 306 Hellespontine wind 249 Heracles 56, 78, 101–2, 155–6, 157 footprint of 95 Pillars of 56, 69, 73, 111, 115 shrines and temples of 80, 82, 276 Herodotus authorial perspective of 32–6, 43, 66–7, 173, 185, 187, 188, 193, 218 as ‘father of history’ 3, 4, 16 as geographer 4 literary and intellectual context of 5–21 as traveller 19–20, 29–31, 76–7, 82–4, 86–7 Homer, see also Catalogues, influence of Homeric and epic grandeur 154, 201 Page 5 of 10

 

Subject Index as literary predecessor 6–7, 14–15, 18, 29, 64, 96, 153, 157 Iliad 6, 27, 29, 31, 102, 154, 201 and Ocean 55–6, 99–100 Odysseus and the Odyssey 6, 8–10, 13, 27–8, 29–31, 135 Humour 17 Hybris 157, 180–1, 203, 246, 290–1, 293–7, 306, 309, 315 of Croesus 207–8, 290–1, 296 ‘thinking big’ 297–8, 300–1, 315 Hyperboreans 21, 24, 51, 52, 53–4, 85–6, 99, 157–8, 184 and Hypernotians 24, 28, 52–3, 55, 57, 68 Ida (mountain) 112, 155, 248–9 Imperial geography 17, 28, 41, 43, 53, 175, 218, 313–17 of Athens 115, 127, 130 India and the Indians 15, 54–5, 68, 88, 146–7, 239, 319 Indirect discourse 121, 137, 139, 140, 142, 144, 167–8, 185, 187, 192–3 elided with direct 35, 184 Inscriptions, see also Despotism/Tyranny, and writing 7, 10–12, 78, 144, 213 set up by Darius 103, 149–50, 212, 230–1 at pyramids 40, 144, 173, 187 Ionians 97, 102, 117–18, 119, 121, 123, 175, 191, 206, 213, 280–2, 287, 310 foundation myths of 38–9, 152 geography of 47 intellectual background of 5, 18–19, 20, 73, 89 Panionium of 51, 128, 223, 286 revolt of 15, 94, 97, 115, 257, 261 Islands 115–31, 152, 155, 174–6, 244, 279, 320 as commodities 116, 125–31, 176, 179, 231–2, 244 disappearing 135, 215 vs. mainland, and islanders vs. mainlanders 116–25, 161, 176, 199–200, 281–3 migration to and colonization of 123–5, 223–4 (p.345) safety and danger of 128–30 wonders of 135, 142–3 Isle of the Blessed 247 Ister, and Darius 62, 102, 105, 212–13, 244, 307 symmetry with the Nile 57–8, 72–3, 99, 108, 159–61, 166, 284 Labyrinth 9, 172–4 Landscape abuse of, Chapters 5 and 6 passim 290–8 physical vs. constructed 42, 77, 136, 153–4, 171–2 Libya 68, 69–70, 72, 73, 81, 111–12, 135, 160–1, 275 absence of rivers in 25, 59, 70, 96 circumnavigations of 82–3 colonization of 123–4, 223–4 continent 55, 58–60 healthy inhabitants of 54 Linus song 272–3 Local history and stories 29, 74, 80, 97, 156, 184, 194, 247–8, 252, 265, 287 Maeander 75, 78, 97, 101, 156–7 Magi 252–3, 259, 262, 264, 265–6 Page 6 of 10

 

Subject Index Mandrocles 319 bridge of 87, 149–50, 211–12, 307 painting of 87, 115, 150, 174, 319–20 Map/s Babylonian World Map 213 of Aristagoras 16, 17, 27, 28, 47–9, 94 of Hecataeus 16 Marathon 7, 36–7, 268, 271, 309 Mardonius 84, 88–9, 106, 113, 248, 258, 302 as persuader 38, 127, 154–5, 234–7, 239, 242, 243, 260, 293 and appeal of Europe 48, 127, 215, 234–7, 293, 300, 304 Marsyas 97, 101, 156–7 Measurement 19, 72, 108–9 of constructions 141, 144–5, 151, 172–3, 186, 188, 199 as control 150, 161, 278 of distance by travel-time 10, 13, 69, 72, 73, 86–7, 111, 198 and historian’s authority 48–9, 74, 149, 188 Memorials 122, 167, 184, 188, 200, 307, 320 Miletus 51, 97, 117, 119, 206, 243, 258, 282 Moeris (king) 107 Moeris (lake) 74, 86, 109, 141–2, 172, 173 Moral landscape 5, 104, 171–2, 182, 190, 218, 290, 306, 313–14 Morality 181–2, 206, 209, 214, 245, 247, 290, 295–6, 300, 305 amorality 189 geographical 171, 211, 217 of interaction with nature 42, 104, 165, 181–2, 194, 196, 203, 204, 216, 245, 254– 5, 283, 305, 321 popular 296, 310 of travel 23, 254, 283–4 Mountains 71–2, 109–14, 231 as boundaries 110–11 as obstacles 113 Caucasus 109–11 Mythological geography 42, 69, 95, 97, 101, 153–7, 158 Narratology 12, 15, 26, 28, 29, 33, 37, 42, 146, 185 Nature as ally 196–7, 251–6, 262, 308 as enemy of Persia 247–51, 284 Naxos 119, 127, 128–9, 231–2, 234, 244 Necos 184 and canal 168, 198, 199, 241, 260 and circumnavigation of Libya 59, 82 ‘Netting’ of people 116–17, 129, 176, 210, 244, 279 Nile 20, 86, 104, 106–9, 142, 165–6, 183, 198, 202, 241, 260 as defining Egypt 59, 95, 106–8, 141, 161 flooding of 55–6, 57, 73–4, 99, 108, 136–8, 160, 167 as incomparable 75, 99, 160, 161 silting of 107–8 source of 108, 161 Page 7 of 10

 

Subject Index symmetry with Ister 57–8, 72–3, 99, 108, 159–61, 166, 284 Nitocris Babylonian 163–4, 166–7, 178–9, 181, 193, 198, 284 Egyptian 166 Nomadism 26, 70, 84–5, 105, 109, 198, 254, 277–9 Nostos 63–4 (p.346) Ocean 20, 55–6, 68, 99–100 Olympus 193 Onomacritus 123, 135, 215–16, 235, 260 Oracles 78, 84, 95, 112, 116, 167, 184, 199, 215, 241, 243, 252, 258–61, 268 concerning colonization 69, 123–4, 224, 279 at Delphi 51, 204, 206–7, 224, 239–40, 251, 258–60 Orality 6–7, 33–4, 35 Otherness 9–10, 11, 14, 24, 164 Pactolus 97, 113, 143 Paeonia and the Paeonians 28, 61, 79, 129, 225–7, 279, 283 Panionium 51, 87, 118, 128, 223, 273, 281, 284, 286 Peisistratids 173–4, 177, 225 Pelasgians 81, 233–4, 275 Pericles 129–30, 309, 310, 311–12 Periegetic tradition 10–14, 19, 24, 53, 87 Persia and the Persians, see also Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes passim Chapters 5–7 as paradigmatic for Athens 308–12, 315 positive depiction of 191 similarities with Egypt and the Egyptians 167–9, 183 Phasis 20, 59, 68, 100, 104, 111 Phocaeans 81, 124, 125, 184, 260, 280–1 Phoenicians 82, 84, 184, 198, 243, 274, 276 Phoenix 138–9 Phoenix (river) 80, 102 Plataea 106, 130, 137 battle of 7, 37, 88–9, 96, 106, 158, 203, 256–7, 265, 275 Mardonius at 154, 235, 293 Polycrates of Samos 155, 168, 174–7, 179, 190, 205, 255, 289–90, 299 building works of 198, 243, 307, 316 death of 34, 175, 176, 290 Pyramids 40, 71–2, 109, 137, 320 of Cheops 114, 141–5, 165, 168, 182–9, 199 and prostitution 144, 187 as a wonder 141–3, 172, 173, 188–9, 198, 297 Pytheas of Massilia 10, 19, 55 Rationalization 55, 194, 277 Rivers 93–109 as boundaries 59, 93, 94, 104–6, 203, 228 crossing of 100, 104–5, 106, 202–18, 227, 243–4, 259, 291, 293–4 drained by the Persian army 79, 101, 200–1, 238, 244 manipulation of 162–6, 178–82, 192–5 symmetry of 57–8, 72–3, 99, 160–1, 284 Page 8 of 10

 

Subject Index Royal Road (Persian) 48, 93, 94–5 Salamis 129, 150–1, 251, 252, 257, 267, 296 Persian defeat and retreat 48, 126, 158, 250 troops at 88, 118, 275 Samos and the Samians, see also Polycrates of Samos 115, 141, 174–7, 224–5, 308, 316 building works of 151–2, 172, 173, 198–9, 307, 316 ‘netting of’ 125, 126, 176, 210, 244 Scythia and the Scythians 70–1, 75, 111, 144, 198, 287 animals of 287 and Darius 52–3, 61–2, 70, 105, 167, 210–11, 214, 231, 244, 266, 303, 307 at edge of earth 52–3, 54, 70, 161–2 Egyptian counterpart 24, 54, 58, 95, 99, 108, 148, 159, 161–2 invasion of by Sesostris 61, 167 nomadism of 84–5, 105, 198, 254, 277–9 relationship with nature 54, 183, 196–7, 213, 253–5 rivers of 70–1, 95, 98–100, 105, 161–2, 183, 196–7, 212, 253 as uncontrollable 26, 40, 70, 103, 105, 128, 161, 177 Semiramis 163, 164, 178, 179, 198 Sesostris 19–20, 40, 167, 168 campaign against Scythia 61, 167 and irrigation 165, 183 Slavery 200, 216, 224–5, 239–44, 254–5, 282, 295, 305, 315 Solon 30, 83–4, 184, 263, 274, 284 and Croesus 16, 34, 83, 174, 205–8, 291–2, 301 Space and place 154, 156, 158 and time 4, 26 in Herodotean scholarship 21–6 (p.347) Sparta and the Spartans, see also Cleomenes 106, 115, 120, 222, 239, 267, 286–7, 302, 304 and Aristagoras 47, 94, 127, 232, 234 and colonization 69, 81, 123–4, 224 in Peloponnesian War 129–30, 204, 292, 309, 311 like Scythia 40, 54 Stephanos of Byzantium 15 Strabo 4, 14–15, 144, 153, 241 Symmetry 53, 162, 247 global, marked by rivers 57–8, 72–3, 99, 160–1, 284 Synchronism 158, 257, 262 Tanais 59, 70, 99, 104, 197, 218 Tearus 40, 66, 102–3, 149, 230–1, 237 Themistocles 89, 126, 246, 283, 296, 309 Thermopylae 40, 158, 243, 249 terrain of 80, 101–2, 112–13, 120, 140, 288 Tigris 74, 93, 98, 114, 164, 167, 181 Tomyris 208, 228, 229, 230 Travel 81–2, 183–4, 272–84 of the historian 19–20, 29–31, 76–7, 82–4, 86–7 for the sake of knowledge 30–1, 77, 82–4, 184, 274 Page 9 of 10

 

Subject Index migration 225–6, 279–83 as tourism 31, 83–4, 184 Trees 9, 13, 48, 234, 250 in exotic locations 137, 140, 148, 181, 230 worshipped by Persians 78, 231 Trojan war 5, 48, 64, 155, 201, 257, 276, 303 Troy 154–5, 201, 226, 248–9, 257 Verification 82, 97, 137, 140, 249, 251 View and Viewpoint, see also Focalization 4, 10, 24, 37, 91, 141, 146, 153, 172, 244, 315 bird’s eye view/cartographic 4, 14, 27, 31, 48, 66, 67, 69, 73, 76–7, 79, 93–4, 98 external and internal (to the narrative) 14, 27, 28–9, 49, 50–1, 65–6, 140 of Herodotus 149, 153, 190, 218 hodological 14, 27, 30–1, 67, 69, 79 Wisdom 198, 206, 208, 252, 289, 309, 310 through travel 30–1, 83–4 Wonders 25, 50, 95, 109, 135, 136–52, 188–9, 211 of Babylonia 163, 178, 181, 202 at the edges of the world 146–9 hierarchy of 141, 142–4, 147–8 manmade vs. natural 140–6, 150–2 Xerxes 127, 231, 235–7, 248–50, 255, 303, 307 and Achilles 157, 201 and Athos peninsula 122, 199–200, 243, 245, 294–5, 307–8, 315 and the divine 263–6, 296 as hybristic 246, 293–7 and rivers 101–2, 149, 193–5, 200–1, 238 and the Hellespont 167, 213–16, 240–1, 242–3, 245, 246, 248, 266, 294–6, 298 on the march 77–8, 100–2, 112, 154–7 (p.348)

Page 10 of 10

 

Index of Passages Cited

Shaping the Geography of Empire: Man and Nature in Herodotus' Histories Katherine Clarke

Print publication date: 2018 Print ISBN-13: 9780198820437 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198820437.001.0001

(p.349) Index of Passages Cited Aelian VH 2.14 231 n. 31 Aeschylus Ag. 281–3 48 n. 6 Pers. 480–514 250 n. 81 744–9 294–5 759–64 306 n. 94 782–6 306 n. 94 Agatharcides of Cnidos §30 12 §41 12 n. 35 §60 12 §67 13 §91 13 §112 12 n. 35 Aristotle Poet. 23.1459a30–4 27 n. 91 Pol. 1327b 23–9 39 n. 139 Arrian FGrH 1 F301 95 n. 4 Diogenes Laertius 1.90 103 n. 23 Euthymenes of Massilia FGrH 647 F1 (5) 56 n. 33 Exodus  13.17–14.31 217 n. 130 Frontinus Aq. 1.16 183 n. 29 Hanno of Carthage §7 11 §9 11 Page 1 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited §11 11 §15 11 §18 11 Hecataeus FGrH 1 FGrH 1 FGrH 1 FGrH 1 FGrH 1 FGrH 1 Herodotus

F18a 20 n. 63 F197 19 n. 62 F287 15 n. 44 F299 15 n. 44 F302a 55 n. 33 F305 15 n. 43, 142 n. 14 1.1.1 35 1.1–2 276–7 1.4 60–1, 215 1.4.4 293, 298, 310 1.5 98, 155 n. 52, 212 n. 116, 292 n. 54 1.5.3–4 312–13, 316–17 1.6 104 and 104 n. 25, 203 n. 83, 205 n. 90 1.6.3 278 n. 16 1.8 229 n. 23 1.14.2 217 n. 127 1.17 197n. 66 1.19 206 n. 94 1.23–4 248 n. 75 1.27.1 205 n. 89 1.28 104 n. 25, 203 n. 83 1.29–30 83–4, 184 n. 30 1.29–33 174 1.30.2 205 n. 91 1.32 206 1.32.8 284 n. 36, 301 1.33 291 1.34.1 34 n. 123, 292 n. 57 1.46.3 258 1.48 258 1.49 258 n. 105 1.50–1 258–9 1.53.3 259 1.56.2 275 1.66.3–4 204 n. 88, 239 1.68–71 309 1.71 203, 291, 302, 304 1.72.2–3 86, 104, 203 n. 83 1.73 204, 227–8, 234 1.73.1 291 n. 53 1.75 204, 259, 294 1.75.3–6 241 n. 55 1.76 73, 205 1.80.1 97, 114

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Index of Passages Cited 1.87.1–2 206, 263, 291 n. 53 1.89.2 208 n. 101, 291, 306, 309 1.90.4 204, 240, 259 (p.350) 1.91 291 1.91–2 206 1.91.4 259–60 1.93 114, 143–4 1.93.3 173 n. 6 1.93.5 172 n. 4 1.94.5 280 1.98.4 40, 143 1.101–2 308 1.104.2 111 1.106.1 254 n. 93, 278 1.110.2 112 1.125.3–4 87 1.130.1 104 n. 25, 254 n. 93 1.131 231 n. 32 1.131.2 293 1.134.2–3 24, 50 1.135 169 n. 88, 274 1.138.2 240 1.138.4 210 n. 109 1.141 305 n. 92 1.142 51, 223, 273, 284 1.143.1 128 1.144 128 n. 69 1.149 87 n. 115 1.151 87 n. 115, 118 1.152 81 n. 99 1.160.4–5 118 n. 47 1.163 81, 184 n. 30 1.163–76 280–83 1.164–9 279 n. 21 1.165.1 125 1.167 81, 124 n. 58, 260 1.168 81 n. 99 1.169.2 118 1.170 117 and 117 n. 44, 123, 279 n. 21, 310 1.171–2 120–1 1.174.2–6 122–3, 128, 256, 294 1.178 172–3 1.180 162–3 1.184–6 163–4, 178–9 1.185.1 198 1.188 228 1.188–9 179–82 1.189 98, 114, 167, 180 n. 23, 240–1, 245, 294 1.189–91 208 Page 3 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 1.191.1–4 181 1.193 164–5, 180–1 1.194 181, 202 1.194–5 182 1.201 67 n. 61, 104–5 1.201–6 228–9 1.202 98, 135 n. 1, 197 1.202.4 73 n. 80 1.203.1 86, 111 1.204 208 n. 102, 245, 291 1.205–14 208–9 1.205.2 104–5 1.206 230 n. 28 1.207 292, 299 1.209.1 60, 229 2.4.3 86 2.5.1 95 n. 4 2.6.1 112 and 112 n. 35 2.7.1 74 2.8 112 2.8–9 71–2 2.9 109 n. 32 2.10 75, 161 n. 68 2.11–14 107–8 2.11.3–4 74 2.15 95 n. 5 2.17.1 95 n. 5 2.18.3 95 2.19.3 73, 160 2.19–20 108 2.21 55, 99 2.23 56, 99 2.26 57–8, 108, 160, 284 2.29–30 202 n. 80 2.29.2 109 2.29.5–6 86 2.31 86, 109 2.33 58, 67 n. 60, 73, 160 2.34.2 86, 108 2.35 107 and 107 n. 31, 141 and 141 n. 11, 148, 160, 189 n. 46, 286 2.39–41 107 2.41.4–6 137 n. 5 2.43–4 82 2.43.3 274 n. 5 2.44.4 184 n. 30, 276 2.47.1 107 2.49 84 n. 107, 274 2.65 138, 248 n. 75 2.73 138–9 Page 4 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 2.75–6 139–40, 147 2.75.3–4 288 2.77.1 188 n. 44 2.77.3 54 n. 29, 287 2.79 272–3 (p.351) 2.90 107, 138 2.91.1 286 2.92 286 2.97 109, 137, 196 2.99–100 165–6 2.99.2–4 183 n. 27 2.103.1 61 2.108 165 n. 79, 183 n. 27 2.110–11 167–8 2.111.2 245 2.114.2 247 n. 72 2.118.1 35 2.119.2–3 247 n. 72 2.120 37 n. 134, 257 n. 100, 277 n. 13 2.123–8 183–9 2.124 114, 172 n. 4 2.124–6 142–5 2.125.6 173 n. 6 2.133 184 n. 32 2.134.1–2 144 n. 22 2.138.1 137 n. 6 2.140 137 n. 7, 142–3 2.142.4 137–8 2.143 16 2.147.1 185 n. 38 2.148–9 141–2 2.148.1 173 n. 6 2.148.2 189 n. 48 2.148.4 172 n. 4 2.149–50 74, 74 n. 83, 109 2.150.3–4 167 2.156 15 n. 43, 142–3 2.158 168, 198–9 2.158.4 112 2.158.5 260 n. 109 2.159.1 241 2.170.2 75 2.178.2 87 n. 115 3.1–2 169 3.3.1 192 n. 53 3.10–11 262 3.20–1 229–30 3.21.2 303 3.25.1 52, 245 Page 5 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 3.26.3 247–8 3.36.1–2 209 3.36.3 292 3.38.1 274 3.39.4 174, 243 n. 60 3.40 174, 289, 299 3.44.1 175 3.47.1 115 n. 40 3.59 125–6 3.60 151–2, 172 n. 4, 173 n. 6, 175 3.64.4 169 3.89 209 3.89.3 306 n. 95 3.90 89–90 3.93.2 226 n. 14 3.96.1 110 n. 33 3.97–117 209 3.97.4 109–10 3.98.2 55, 146 n. 30 3.104.2 54, 146–7 3.106 50–1, 146, 223, 284 3.106.1 304 n. 87 3.106–16 52, 146–8 3.107 55 3.107–9 140 n. 8 3.114 230 3.114.1 55 3.115–16 61 n. 46 3.115.1 55 3.116.3 55 n. 31, 146 3.117 114, 192–3 3.120.2–4 176 3.122.2 175, 289 3.123–5 289–90 3.125 175 n. 9, 176–7 3.134 309 n. 102 3.134.4 210 n. 108 3.135–6 82, 184 n. 30 3.138.1 284 3.138.4 210 3.139 126, 176, 289 3.149 126, 210, 244 n. 64 3.154.2 210 n. 112 3.159 210 4.1 211 n. 113, 230 n. 29, 254 4.3 255 4.5.1 95, 277 4.7.3 52 4.8.2 56 Page 6 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 4.11 105, 105 n. 26, 277 4.13.1 52 n. 23, 99 4.16.1 52 4.17–25 70–1 4.28 54, 196 4.30.1 287 n. 45 4.32–3 53–4, 85–6, 157–8 4.33 184 n. 30 4.36 17 n. 53, 53, 59 n. 40, 100, 284 4.37 100 (p.352) 4.37–42 68–9 4.38.2 68 4.42 59, 82, 184 n. 30 4.43 82, 82 n. 102 4.44 83, 102, 184 n. 30 4.45.2 20 n. 63, 59, 104 n. 24 4.46–7 154 4.46.1 198 4.46.2–3 254 n. 95 4.47.1 161, 197 n. 65, 253, 278 4.47–57 98–9 4.53.1 99, 161 4.71.5 144 4.76 84, 184 n. 30 4.78.1 255 4.79 255 4.82 253 n. 91 4.83–7 211–12 4.85–8 62, 65–8, 148–50, 244 n. 62 4.86.1 86 n. 112 4.86.4 10 n. 29 4.87 66 n. 59, 87, 103, 105 n. 28, 149–50, 307 n. 96 4.88 115 n. 41, 150, 174 4.89.3 102 4.90 102–3, 231 n. 30 4.91 103, 105 n. 28, 180 n. 22, 231 n. 30 4.97 213 4.98 53 4.99.4–5 75–6 4.118.1 62, 105, 212, 244, 303 4.118.5 303 4.119.2–4 253 n. 92, 254 n. 94 4.120.1 197, 253–4 4.123 86, 99 4.127 230 n. 28, 278 4.131–2 266 n. 127 4.134–41 213 4.136.1–2 254 4.140 254 n. 96 Page 7 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 4.143.1 60 n. 42, 214 4.145.2 81 4.145–58 123–4 4.156–8 223–4 4.161.3 119 4.164.3 124, 260 4.168–99 69–70, 96 4.178 123–4 4.181.1–2 111 4.184.3–4 111 4.185.1 111 n. 34 4.195.1–2 135 4.197.2 275 n. 10 4.198 59 4.204 226 n. 14 4.205 257 n. 100 5.9–10 105–6 5.9.1 111 n. 34 5.12.1 230 n. 29 5.12–14 225–7 5.14.1 279 5.15.3 226 n. 15 5.16.1 129 n. 72 5.17 114, 226 n. 15 5.25–8 119 5.31 127, 175 n. 10, 231–2, 234 5.36.2 49 n. 10 5.42.3 224 n. 8 5.46–7 224 n. 8 5.49 47–8, 94, 232 5.50.3 232–3 5.52 48 n. 6, 93–4, 179 5.54 49 5.77.3 239 n. 50 5.98.3–4 279 5.98.4 129 n. 72 5.101.2 97, 113 5.102.1 104 n. 25 5.106.1 60 5.118.1 97, 101 n. 18 5.125 119 n. 51 6.7 119 6.9.4 226 n. 14 6.11.3 264 n. 122 6.12 286 6.22–4 224–5, 279 n. 21 6.27 260–1 6.31 117 6.32 226 n. 14 Page 8 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 6.42–3 191 6.44 248 6.47 114 6.86α4 287 6.95.2 128–9 and 129 n. 71, 248 n. 74 6.95–6 175 n. 10 6.96 127, 244 n. 64 6.98 268–9 6.109.5 264 n. 122 6.127.1–3 90 (p.353) 6.137–40 233–4 7.1.3 242 7.2.1 242 n. 57 7.4 242 n. 57 7.5–6 215, 234–5 7.5–19 154 n. 50 7.5.3 48 n. 3, 127, 293 7.6.3–5 123 n. 57, 135 n. 2, 260 7.7 242 7.8α.1 236 n. 43 7.8α.2 236 7.8β 200 n. 75, 216, 242 7.8γ.1 293 7.8γ.2 236 7.8γ.3 242 7.9 222, 239 7.9α.2 235 n. 42 7.10 299 n. 80 7.10.α.2 236 7.10γ.1 307 7.10e 174, 264 n. 122, 300–1 7.11.2 236 n. 43, 309 7.16.α.2 237 7.18.2 236–7, 303 7.19 266 n. 126 7.20 201 n. 76, 307 7.21.1 201 7.22 113, 174 7.22–4 121–2, 199–200, 243, 294 7.23.3 198 n. 69 7.24 245, 296, 307, 315, 320 7.25 243 7.26.3 97, 104 n. 25, 156–7 7.30.1 101 7.30–1 77–9, 184 n. 31 7.31 231 7.33 214 7.34 214, 243, 248 7.35 294, 296 Page 9 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 7.35.1 167, 204 n. 88, 216, 240, 245 7.35.2–3 63 n. 49, 214 n. 119, 216 n. 123, 240, 242, 246, 310 n. 108 7.37 200 n. 74, 265–6, 271 7.38–9 214 n. 119 7.39.1 246 n. 68 7.39.3 310 n. 108 7.42–3 101, 154–5 7.42.2 112, 248–9, 255 7.43.1 101 n. 21, 157, 201, 238 n. 48 7.44 150 n. 39, 213, 307 n. 96 7.45–6 37 n. 130, 263 n. 116 7.49.4 237 n. 45 7.50.3 307–8 7.54 263 7.56.1 242 7.57 266–7, 271, 296 7.58 79, 155, 157, 184 n. 31, 201 7.59 307 n. 96 7.61–99 87–8 7.80 118 7.88 240 n. 53 7.95 118 7.102.1 107 n. 31, 222 n. 3, 235 7.108.2 201 7.109–13 78 n. 94, 184 n. 31 7.109.2 201 7.111–12 112, 114 7.113–14 250 7.123.3 89 n. 119 7.124 79 n. 96, 101 7.125–6 106, 248 n. 75 7.127.2 101 7.128 237 n. 46 7.128–30 193–5 7.131 238 7.144.2 283 n. 33 7.145–74 89 7.146 64 7.148.1 64 7.152.3 185 n. 38 7.156 244 n. 64, 279 n. 20 7.161.3 275 7.166 158, 257 n. 99 7.168.4 251 n. 85 7.170.2 119 n. 50, 121 n. 55 7.174 63 n. 52 7.176 80, 112, 288–9 7.178 251, 262, 264 7.183.2 249 Page 10 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 7.188 249 7.189 252, 262 7.191–2 252–3 7.191.2 259, 262 7.193.2 78, 155–6 7.196 201 7.197.1–3 156 7.198.2–200 101–2 7.203.2 296–7, 299 7.223.3 243 7.235 120 (p.354) 8.1 88, and 88 n. 117 8.8 248 n. 75 8.12 255 8.12–13 249, 264 8.20.2 243 n. 61 8.32–3 238 8.35 238 8.37.3 249, 255, 264 8.39.2 249 n. 79 8.43–8 88, and 88 n. 118, 118 n. 49 8.44.2 275 n. 7 8.49.2 129 8.55 267 n. 132 8.64 252 n. 89 8.64–5 267 8.66.2 118 n. 49 8.70 129 8.73.1 275 n. 9 8.97.1 214, 307 n. 97 8.98–9 48 n. 6 8.107.2 267 8.108 126 n. 63 8.109.3 246 n. 70, 296 n. 73 8.111 126, 127–8, 309 8.115.2–3 250 8.118.1–2 250 8.121.1 126 8.129 250, 265 8.130 64 8.132.2–3 115, 174, 308 8.133 84 n. 108 8.133–5 258 n. 104 8.135.1 113 8.137–9 216–17 8.138.1 245 n. 66 8.140–4 39 n. 144 8.144 313 n. 117 8.144.1 222, 232, 308 Page 11 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited 9.3.1 155, 235 n. 40, 293 n. 59 9.4.2 243 9.6 129 9.8.2 129 9.10.3 267 9.25.2 106 9.26–7 155 n. 54 9.30–1 106 9.31 88–9 9.36 106 9.40 106 9.41.4 235 n. 40 9.49.2 106, 238, 293 n. 59 9.51.1 130 9.59.1 106 and 106 n. 30 9.62.2–3 203 n. 84 9.65.2 265 n. 124 9.82.3 302 9.90 64, 106, 158, 257 9.91 257 9.93.1 96 9.100.2 106, 256–7 9.101.3 130, 175 9.106 279 n. 21, 281 n. 29, 309–10 9.116 61 n. 43, 155 n. 52 9.120 214, 268 9.120.4 310 n. 107 9.121 262 9.122 281 n. 28, 303–4, 310–11 9.122.3 107 n. 31 Hesiod Theogony 839, fr. 54 (a) 7 264 n. 121 Homer Odyssey 5.476–81 13 6.7–8 9 7.117–19 9 7.159–66 9 9.82–566 9 10.1–3 9 n. 26, 128 n. 67, 135 10.80–132 9 12.73–110 9 n. 26 15.415 276 n. 12 Iliad 18.478–608 55 n. 32 21.200–383 238 n. 48 24.527–33 297 n. 74 Longinus, On the Sublime 13.3 7 n. 18 Pindar Isthmian 2.41–2 20 n. 63 Page 12 of 13

 

Index of Passages Cited Pliny NH 36.75 183 n. 29 NH 36.79 183 n. 29 NH 36.81 145 n. 25, 187 n. 40 NH 36.82 144 n. 22 P. Oxy. LXV 4455 49 n. 8 Quintilian 10.1.31 33 n. 118 (p.355) Simonides Fr. 581 PMG 103 n. 23 Strabo 8.3.3 153 n. 47 12.3.12 241 n. 55 13.4.7 144 n. 21 Thucydides 1.2.5 304 n. 86 1.10.1–2 177 n. 14, 311 1.122.3 311 1.124.3 311 2.43.1 312 n. 114 2.63.2 311 3.37.2 311 6.85.1 311 n. 113 7.29.5 261 n. 111 Xen. [Ath. Pol.] 130 n. 73

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