Herodotus & Homer & Lydian customs

Greek Learning Greek
1

Some more musings on Herodotus:

In a different thread we discussed the possible influence of Homer on Herodotus. Whatever may be of that, I’m struck by the similarity of outlook or spirit while reading the Croesus on the pyre episode. Especially the following sentence (1.86.6)

καὶ τὸν Κῦρον ἀκούσαντα τῶν ἑρμηνέων τὰ Κροῖσος εἶπε, μεταγνόντατε καὶ ἐννώσαντα ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸς ἄνθρωπος ἐὼν ἄλλον ἄνθρωπον,γενόμενον ἑωυτοῦ εὐδαιμονίῃ οὐκ ἐλάσσω, ζῶντα πυρὶ διδοίη, πρός τετούτοισι δείσαντα τὴν τίσιν καὶ ἐπιλεξάμενον ὡς οὐδὲν εἴη τῶν ἐνἀνθρώποισι ἀσφαλέως ἔχον, κελεύειν σβεννύναι τὴν ταχίστην τὸκαιόμενον πῦρ 1 καὶ καταβιβάζειν Κροῖσόν τε καὶ τοὺς μετὰ Κροίσου.

(When Cyrus heard from the interpreters what Croesus said, he relented and considered that he, a human being, was burning alive another human being, one his equal in good fortune. In addition, he feared retribution, reflecting how there is nothing stable in human affairs. He ordered that the blazing fire be extinguished as quickly as possible, and that Croesus and those with him be taken down. -translation Godley 1920-)

It brings to mind of course the encounter between Achilles and Priamus but also, I think, the Homeric obituaries. It shares the same deeply human empathy for the other, the enemy, the person suffering, who is recognized in a moment of insight as a fellow human being. Quite an unforgettable sentence.

A few chapters further on Herodotus strikes another register when he discusses the various customs of the Lydians: that they were the first to use coins from gold and silver, an amusing anecdote about how they invented all kind of games (except draughts for some reason), the fact that a most magnificent tomb of a Lydian king was built mostly by prostitutes, closely related to the Lydian custom (according to Herodotus) to prostitute their own daughters so that they might pay for their dowry, followed by the story how Lydian colonists were at the origin of the Etruscan civilisation. All equally interesting and amusing. Better still, according to the Oxford commentary he is probably right concerning the coins and the Etruscans. Excellent! Apart from being a great writer, he deserves the title ‘Father of History’. My original plan was to read just the first book, but I think I’ll just carry on. Herodotus is much too interesting to lay down.

2

I think it’s true that Homer and Herodotus both reject nationalistic chauvinism – both are able to see human beings at both sides of a conflict. Herodotus understood perfectly the problem of cultural relativism, 3.38:

εἰ γάρ τις προθείη πᾶσι ἀνθρώποισι ἐκλέξασθαι κελεύων νόμους τοὺς καλλίστους ἐκ τῶν πάντων νόμων, διασκεψάμενοι ἂν ἑλοίατο ἕκαστοι τοὺς ἑωυτῶν: οὕτω νομίζουσι πολλόν τι καλλίστους τοὺς ἑωυτῶν νόμους ἕκαστοι εἶναι.

For my part, my aim is to read it all. This stuff is excellent!

3

Also, the very beginning of Book 1: the whole course of Greek mythology told from the Persian point of view, and not to the Greeks’ credit: nothing could be more foolish than starting a war over the abduction of a princess–intelligent people would retaliate merely by abducting one of the abductors’ princesses.

4

I am with Fehling in finding it completely implausible that he heard it from real Persians and Phoenicians but if this story is the product of Herodotus’ imagination it makes it more useful not less. If he was tailoring it to his Athenian listeners then it gives some insight into what 5th century Athenian males considered to be an intelligent response.

I’m pretty certain that none of us here would defend the kidnapping and enslavement of an entirely innocent woman to be an intelligent response to such rogue states.

5

“If he was tailoring it to his Athenian listeners then it gives some insight into what 5th century Athenian males considered to be an intelligent response.”

You mean that you start a decade-long war leading to hundreds of deaths over an abducted princess?


“I’m pretty certain that none of us here would defend the kidnapping and enslavement of an entirely innocent woman to be an intelligent response to such rogue states.”

But the Persian sages claimed that the princesses weren’t really abducted–they got pregnant and then fled with their lovers to escape their parents.

6

According to the Persian sages abducting a woman is unjust (ἄδικος) making a fuss about it -in this case, starting a war- foolish (ἀνόητος). I agree with Hylander that that seems a reasonable position.

These various tales about the beginning of the Greek-Asiatic conflict are intriguing. Why are they there at the very beginning of the Histories? They seem to showcase Herodotus’ method: he takes into account different versions of the same story and examines them before making his choice between them. Only, in this case he doesn’t make that choice, he just gives the conflicting accounts and leaves it at that. And then he turns immediately to the first man that, according to him, wronged the Greeks, namely Croesus, indicating perhaps that this is the real beginning of the conflict. According to Arietti he does so to draw a distinction between the kind understanding of human events ‘that the Persians and other rationalizing historical writers use and that which he will exhibit’. But I’m not so sure. As I wrote before, the view of the Persian sages seems too reasonable for this.

7

You described as intelligent the words that Herodotus puts into the mouths of his “Persians” that no one should get upset if women are raped because they are asking for it. Please read that section again as I think you will find that’s what it boils down to. Do you really want to say that?

Actually Herodotus makes his Persians to be quite explicit that Io was violently abducted by the Phoenicians. It is supposedly the Phoenicians who attempt to excuse the rape by the claim that Io had got pregnant as the result of a consensual affair.

And this idea that Herodotus in telling these stories is trying to be even handed between Hellenes and Asiatics falls flat when you remember that in the original legend of Io is Zeus who is the abductor. He takes a story that does not in anyway involve Asiatics and reworks it to make the Asiatics the guilty party and the first to commit a wrong and so initiate the cycle of escalation that leads to a irreconcilable divide (as Herodotus sees it) between East and West.

8

Oh, come on. This is mythology.

9

But the Persians don’t say that. They claim three things with respect to the abducting of the various princesses

  1. it’s unjust to abduct a woman
  2. it’s foolish to make a fuss (σπουδήν ποιήσασθαι ) about this, i.e. start a war over it
    And then they go on claiming:
  3. δῆλα γὰρ δὴ ὅτι, εἰ μὴ αὐταὶ ἐβούλοντο, οὐκ ἂν ἡρπάζοντο.’ (For plainly the women would never have been carried away, had they not wanted it themselves.)

They believe therefore the abuductions took place with the consent of the women involved. That’s quite something different than ‘raped because they are asking for it’, meaning that a woman was sexually harassed without her consent but which she somehow provoked herself (by her way of dressing, behaviour etcetera). Now statement 1 and 2 seem reasonable enough; to the veracity of statement 3 it’s not easy to make a pronouncement since it’s rather difficult to look into the mindset of a mythological princess. Let’s just say it’s not that outlandish a notion: so called ‘bride kidnapping’ (both consensual and non-consensual) is still commonplace in many cultures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping).

Anyway, I have the distinct impression Herodotus means to picture the Persian sages as displaying common sense. The implication is then, that the Greeks were foolish in starting a war over the abduction of Helen.

Interestingly enough, this passage already created quite some buzz in Antiquity. This is from Howard and Well’s commentary (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D4%3Asection%3D2):

“ἀνοήτων. H. probably saw the humour of this argument; but this part of his history gave offence. It was parodied by Aristophanes (Achar. 524 seq. ἐκ τριῶν λαικαστριῶν), as to the origin of the Peloponnesian War; and ‘Plutarch’ (de Malig. 11) is very angry at the ‘passive resistance’ imputed to the much-respected Io, and that ‘the fairest and greatest exploit of Greece, the Trojan War, should be put down as ἀβελτερία’ (‘fatuity’).)”

10

I think Bart’s comment here is to the point. I don’t know so well the other myths involved, but the case of Helen at least is clear. Except for the Iliad, where it’s not entirely clear because of an ambiguous genitive (but even there probable)(*), she runs away in full consent in all Greek literature I’m aware of. She herself says so in the Odyssey (book 4). So what the Persians are saying, according to Herodotus, is that it’s overreacting to go to war over women who have been kidnapped out of their own free will. At the risk of anachronism, I’d be tempted to call that almost a feminist position: if women themselves decide to runaway, you shouldn’t make a fuss about that, let alone a war.

Also, I think it’s worthwhile to note that e.g. Howard and Wells uses the word rape not in the modern sense “sexual assault” but in the archaic one, “bride kidnapping”, which is different (although sometimes just as or even more wrong).

(*)Iliad 2.354 ff.
Nestor advice to other Greeks:
τὼ μή τις πρὶν ἐπειγέσθω οἶκον δὲ νέεσθαι
πρίν τινα πὰρ Τρώων ἀλόχῳ κατακοιμηθῆναι,
τίσασθαι δ᾽ Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε.
“Let no one hurry back home before he has lain beside a Trojan wife, to avenge the toils and sorrows of/because of Helen.”

Now this, in my opinion, is an ugly passage, really an incitation to gang rape. But what’s a bit unclear is whether Ἑλένης ὁρμήματά τε στοναχάς τε is “Helen’s sufferings” or “our sufferings for Helen”; I suspect the latter.

11

First off I put my point too strongly last night so I apologize for that.

But those same Persians have describe in detail the abduction of Io an account that leaves no doubt that force was used. I am assuming that Herodotus intends his listeners to assume that the Persians think of all the abductions as occurring in roughly the same way.
Further " εἰ μὴ αὐταὶ ἐβούλοντο, οὐκ ἂν ἡρπάζοντο." seems to me to be making a general point about woman who are abducted. There is no article and it has the form of an unfulfilled conditional in the present. (Assuming I understand conditional constructions which perhaps I don’t.) That surely makes it a general point about all abducted women.


I don’t think it is possible to claim they really believe there was consent in Io’s case though you are right they are at that point claiming that consent is involved. Taking what the Persians say as a whole it seems to me to be clear that Herodotus doesn’t intend his listeners to take what they say at that point at face value.

This video suggests that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKAusMNTNnk that the consensual bit shouldn’t be taken at face value. It doesn’t chime with what we know of Athens though I suspect if a citizen man kidnapped a metic woman he would have probably got away with it. However, as far as I know there is very little in the sources about the situation of low status but free women.

I believe it is carefully crafted to let the Persians condemn themselves while appearing to defend themselves. They make the crucial admission that the whole cycle was initiated by Asiatics by the abduction of Io

Thanks for that. I read though the Plutarch bit. Plutarch is misleading (intentionally?) in that he assumes that everything stated is Herodotus’ point of view which don’t see as being tenable. He does howver take it that when the Persians are talking about abducted women they mean abducted women in general. Hence he seeks to rebut that by giving examples of abducted me who clearly were not willingly taken prisoner,

12

The introduction is a joke, intended, I think, to draw listeners and readers into his history. He turns the traditional Greek mythology on its head, to the Greeks’ disadvantage. It’s cynical and witty, and probably had his audience rolling in the aisles. And it really is hilarious. He claims that this is what the Persian sages say, but he doesn’t expect anyone to believe that.

13

#Daivid: Io, granted, no consent according to the Persian version of the story. The other princesses they don’t go into specifics , but only make the generalisation that women are not abducted against their will. I don’t feel that necessarily conflicts with their statements about Io. When generalising we tend to put our claim in absolute terms. For instance, when we say something like ‘lately, it pours every single time I leave the house’, we don’t literally mean that it rains every day we come outside but that it rains a lot. What the Persian are doing is downplaying the importance of the abductions. They don’t think it is worth to fight a war over them. I don’t think their version of the facts is suspect, as you do.

Btw, Arietti in ‘Discourses on the first Book of Herodotus’ shares your view that Herodotus in this passage shows the Persians in a bad light. Not however because their version of the facts is unreliable but because according to them less stigma attaches to being unjust (abducting women) than to being foolish (making a fuss about this).

And yes, of course , Herodotus made this up himself. What would the Persian sages have to say about Greek mythological princesses in the first place.

Who is Fehling? Writer of another commentary?

I like Hylander’s suggestion that the introduction is a kind of joke: Herodotus ‘examining’ in a pseudo-serious manner the so called different versions of well known Greek mythological stories and putting them upside down. It made me reread the introduction with different eyes. For instance, in

οὕτω μὲν Ἰοῦν ἐς Αἴγυπτον ἀπικέσθαι λέγουσι Πέρσαι, οὐκ ὡς Ἕλληνές, καὶ τῶν ἀδικημάτων πρῶτον τοῦτο ἄρξαι (In this way, the Persians say (and not as the Greeks), was how Io came toEgypt, and this, according to them, was the first wrong that was done.)

Is this οὐκ ὡς Ἕλληνές perhaps to be read as a witty aside? The version of the Greeks namely is that Io in the form of a white cow fled a gadfly all the way to Egypt. There is a comical effect -I feel at least- in putting this version next to that of the Persians and the Phoenicians. But this depends of course on how Herodotus’ audience (male Athenian upper class presumably) thought about such myths.

Finally, I would like to read Plutarchus Περὶ τῆς Ἡροδότου κακοηθείας (on the Malignity of Herodotus): the first bad review in literature.

14

You might be right that I am taking Herodotus too seriously. I think it may also be true that Herodotus expects at least a little skepticism. However, he has clearly reworked the story to ensure some plausibility. He describes a large number number of women arriving and being so absorbed by the goods on offer that they do not notice the men preparing to assault them. Though this is not stated, the implication is surely that there must have been an abundance of goods on display.

But there is a problem. Merchants would not make much money if they treated their customers so badly. I suspect that one Herodotus’ listeners actually made such an objection. It was to answer such an objection, I believe, that Herodotus inserted the comment about the merchants having sold almost all their goods.
This doesn’t really sit well with the rest of the story and that to me is good grounds for taking that bit to be an addition and not part of the original story.

The way the men mutually incite each other into action does sound like reports of gang rapes today in places like India and Bangladesh and suspect was based on actual cases that Herodotus had heard of - possibly he may have listened to the boasting of perpetrators. The victims would not of course included princesses.

15

I imagine it is the sort of thing fathers might say about wayward sons. They are trying to minimize the serious of the matter and aren’t too scrupulous about how they do so. The “it pours” example might well be not far off the mark but we tend to use such sweeping expressions when we aren’t too bothered about the truth of what we say and just want to convey a general expression.

He argued that most if not all the sources cited by Herodotus were fake and hence when he claims to be quoting someone else it is a sign that he is likely have made up himself what follows.
http://www.francis-cairns.co.uk/Arca21_1st.html

16

The attitude of Herodotus’ contemporaries who heard him or read his book was probably not too different from the attitude portrayed in Plato’s Phaedrus:

Phaedrus: Tell me, Socrates, is it not from some place along here by the Ilissus that Boreas is said to have carried off Oreithyia? Socrates: Yes, that is the story. . . . Phaedrus: for Heaven’s sake, Socrates, tell me; do you believe this tale is true? Socrates: If I disbelieved, as the wise men do, I should not be extraordinary; then I might give a rational explanation, that a blast of Boreas, the north wind, pushed her off the neighboring rocks as she was playing with Pharmacea, and that when she had died in this manner she was said to have been carried off by Boreas. But I, Phaedrus, think such explanations are very pretty in general, but are the inventions of a very clever and laborious and not altogether enviable man, for no other reason than because after this he must explain the forms of the Centaurs, and then that of the Chimaera, and there presses in upon him a whole crowd of such creatures, Gorgons and Pegasuses, and multitudes of strange, inconceivable, portentous natures. If anyone disbelieves in these, and with a rustic sort of wisdom, undertakes to explain each in accordance with probability, he will need a great deal of leisure. But I have no leisure for them at all; . . .

People either didn’t believe myths like Io or tried to explain the supernatural elements in them away. (Not that most of them didn’t believe in the general historicity of the Trojan War and other events from the Heroic Age, or didn’t accept the reality of the gods in some form or other.)

The initial chapters of Herodotus are something like an amusing parody of traditional mythology, framed in terms of the rational explanations offered in his day for the supernatural elements, and he puts this complete inversion of the traditional myths in the mouths of the Persian sages. No one, at least among his contemporaries, would have taken this seriously. Plutarch, writing 500-600 years later, is a different story–he thinks Herodotus is serious and full of it.

17

You put a very convincing case that the original listeners did not believe that Herodotus was describing what really happened nor did Herodotus expect them to. However it is not irrelevant that Herodotus clearly intended his retelling to be plausible. That Herodotus seems to have reworked his stories too be plausible we get some insight into the attitudes of 5th century Athenian male citizens. To the extent that these attitudes were shaped by reality we also get some indirect indications of conditions in 5th century Athens.

18

If Hylander is right -and I think he probably is- the pseudo-serious way in which Herodotus treats this well known myths as ‘plausable’ history at the basis of the Greek-Persian conflict is exactly part of the joke.

19

Herodotus’ version of the Io myth owes something to Eumaeus’ tale in Od. 15.403 ff., or to what may have been a body of tales of abductions of princes and princesses by Phoenician traders. The Phoenicians doubled as merchants and pirates. Thucydides mentions Phoenician piracy at 1.8.1. The Mediterranean was full of unscrupulous seafarers–Arion’s story offers an example, and there are others.

The Persians claim Io was abducted by the Phoenicians, but "sensible men don’t start wars over abductions. The Phoenicians don’t agree with the Persians. “Io got pregnant by one of the Phoenicians and ran off with him voluntarily.” So there are three versions of the same story: Greek, Persian and Phoenician. The Persian version is told to the discredit of the Greeks and the Phoenicians; the Phoenician version counters the Persian version to the discredit of Io. I can’t see this as anything other than humor. The icing on the cake is Paris’ seduction of Helen in retaliation for Jason’s abduction of Medea.

20

Well yes, but that doesn’t undermine my point that given that Herodotus is making an effort to be plausible his stories have value in that they give a window into what 5th century Athenians thought was plausible.