We don’t know what Herodotus’ raw material was but it is quite possible to have been no more than the names of the two kings and the fact of a change of dynasty. It is because he so skilfully constructed such a memorable story from the dry facts that the names of Gyges and Kandaules are remembered.
But though Herodotus is far more concerned with making his stories memorable that truthful (as his intro makes clear) he does want to be believable to his listeners. Hence even though his account is of little historical value if we want to understand the politics of Lydia in the 7th-8th century BCE it is of value in understanding the expectations of 5th century Athenian men.
Humans 2,500 years ago had pretty much the the same DNA as humans today. Erotic love then would have had the same basic chemistry as today but the social construct around those feelings was very different. For Kandaules his feelings of love drives him to possess the object of his desire and to demonstrate his possession to others. A hundred years ago the same feelings would be reason to cherish and protect. Today it produces an impulse towards a partnership of mutual respect.
The opening line is redundant if it merely means that Kandaules had the hots for his wife. It is because the underlying feelings are essentially the same as what we call being in love that Kandaules plunges headlong into disaster.
So translation of ηρασθη by “in love” is not anachronistic but both essential to understanding Herodotus’ intention and to how the Athens of his day differ from our societies today.
The meaning of the verb εραω can be established by studying its use in different sentences and contexts and not by a priori reasoning about what its meaning should be. Also, while reasoning you drift into muddy neurophilosophical waters and make several assumptions that are disputable:
-that having the same dna means having the same feelings
-that there is on the one hand an emotion and on the other its expression and that these two entities can be separated
-that the expression of emotions (but not the emotions themselves apperently) are conditioned by ‘the social construct’
This is obviously not the place to discuss these topics, but surely they are not as self evident as you seem to believe.
Indeed, the debate is getting more and more convoluted, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…
My best attempt to translate ὁ Κανδαύλης ἠράσθη τῆς ἑωυτοῦ γυναικός: “Kandaules found her wife very attractive”. It’s not very literal, and it doesn’t quite get the aorist, but I think this is how you’d say the same idea in idiomatic English. He finds her desirable; whether he’s loves her in other respects, we do not know, the story doesn’t tell – probably not, seeing that he treated her the way he did.
Yes, you’re right, it’s a bit weak, something stronger is required… I’m not sure “overcome” is quite right either, because to me at least it suggests a dramatic development in the story like “overcome by desire, he fell into a swoon” or “overcome by desire, he took her in his arms”. But that’s a question of English, so I’m not much of a judge and anyway, this is a Greek & Latin forum…
Chariton 1.1.6 Ταχέως οὖν πάθος ἐρωτικὸν ἀντέδωκαν ἀλλήλοις. As ἐρωτικὸν is the from the same root I my assumption is that Chariton is talking about the same thing as what Herodotos talks about when he uses ἠράσθη. Am I wrong?
I don’t understand why you think my point of view to be obviously off-topic since I have pretty much been arguing from that point of view from the initial post.
Chariton’s tale of erotic passion is about half a millennium later, and the Greek romances do tend to, well, romanticize, but yes, the same dynamics apply. Eros is still at work (or play), inflaming his hapless victims.
But there’s no need to go beyond Herodotus. If you jump ahead to the end you’ll find the comparable but more complex tale of the ερως of Xerxes, no less. He fancied (ἤρα) first his brother’s wife, and then, with more success (ἤρα τε και ἐτύγχανε), their daughter, whom he had meanwhile hitched to his son. When his wife finds out he’s having it off with his daughter-in-law, she takes revenge—but on the wrong person. But I mustn’t spoil the story (9.108-113).
It’s a wonderfully nasty tale of the power of ερως, lust.
EDIT. And to perfect our understanding, here’s Hdt.2.131, echoing the opening of the Candaules tale: Μυκερῖνος ἠράσθη τῆς ἑωυτοῦ θυγατρὸς καὶ ἔπειτα ἐμίγη οἱ ἀεκούσῃ· μετὰ δὲ λέγουσι ὡς ἡ παῖς ἀπήγξατο
“Mykerinos ἠράσθη his own daughter, and had sex with her against her will. They say that afterwards the child hanged herself.”
I don’t think we’d call that falling in love, or think that he only did what he did because he loved her.
Oh, I see. Now I come to think of it I have done the same thing. I once was criticizing the direction a conversation was going having my own role in mind but the other person took it as a criticism of their role.
But if you need to tackle my underlying assumptions to rebut what I am saying then where ever that takes you must surely be on topic.
Herodotus not only knows how to write a great opening sentence but also how to end a story. The last sentence of the Atys/ Adrastus interlude -Greek tragedy in short story format- is truly magnificent:
'Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, he who was the slayer of his own brother and the slayer of the one who purified him, when there was no one left and it was quiet about the grave, recognising himself as the most heavily beset by misfortune of all human beings he knew, killed himself upon the tomb. ’
Especially the ‘ἐπείτε ἡσυχίη τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐγένετο περὶ τὸ σῆμα’ part is chilling. I read it as both indicating people had gone away and it being (therefore) quiet about the grave. It is the loneliness and silence of that moment that captures the entire tragedy of Adrastus’ life.
On a different note: the story opens with μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα οἰχόμενον ἔλαβέ ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη Κροῖσον → after Solon’s departure a great vengeance from the god visited Croesus. Intriguingly Arieti believes the vengeance doesn’t consist in the death of Croesus’ son Atys, but in the premonitory dream itself.
That seems a singularly perverse reading by Arieti. It’s true that Croesus may have been rather less happy after the dream, but surely the great nemesis is not the immediately following forewarning of his son’s death but the actual death. Dreams, oracles, prophecies, you take steps to prevent their fulfilment—futilely, to be sure, but you don’t know that. (We do, of course; Hdt is strong on dramatic irony.) Disaster comes only with the fulfilment of the prophecy, and only then it is assured that Croesus will not die happy. That’s built in to the structure of Hdt’s telling of the story too.
I fully agree on the ending of the Adrastus part. Was ever an ending so strongly marked? I also like the precision, not to say pedantry, of των αυτος ηδεε (you wouldn’t find such a qualification in tragedy!) and the expressively weighty βαρυσυμφορώτατος before we finally reach that killer phrase (suggestive of sacrifice in –σφαζει) that brings both the story and the life to their predetermined end.
The Croesus tale is less satisfying, less tragic, than that of Oedipus, say, since he doesn’t bring disaster on himself by his efforts to avoid it, but just by being stupid. It fits a familiar folk pattern, but rather clumsily.
Yes, Arieti’s interpretation seems counterintuitive. His reasoning goes more or less like this:
-Croesus mistake (thinking himself the most fortunate man on earth) is an intellectual error not a moral one; so it seems fitting that divine justice takes the form of an ‘intellectual challenge’ (i.e. the dream, throwing him into confusion)
-secondly capital punishment on an offspring is much too severe a penalty for the arrogance of the father and not in keeping with the justice attributed by Herodotus to the divine. In myth boastfulness is punished on the boaster (Ariadne, Hippolytus)
-the son was fated to die regardless of Croesus having foreknowledge or not
-and then, the ‘syntax of the sentence’ confirms this interpretation, for the next words indicate the close connection with the vengeance: μετὰ δὲ Σόλωνα οἰχόμενον ἔλαβέ ἐκ θεοῦ νέμεσις μεγάλη Κροῖσον, ὡς εἰκάσαι, ὅτι ἐνόμισε ἑωυτὸν εἶναι ἀνθρώπων ἁπάντων ὀλβιώτατον. αὐτίκα δέ οἱ εὕδοντι ἐπέστη ὄνειρος,
Mmm, having written it down I don’t feel the argument to be very convincing.
