They thought it was plausible that Phoenician traders might abduct a princess–or that she might have gotten pregnant and run off with them. That was consistent with things that happened in the Mediterranean world, but I’m not sure what light that sheds on the Athenian Weltanschauung.
But really, did they think it plausible that Paris seduced Helen in retaliation for Medea?
I’m late to the party, and don’t have time for much.
What Hdt gives as the Phoenician account of Io develops out of the Persians’ (alleged) defensive contention that abducted women are compliant in their abduction; it’s a kind of gloss on that. The case of Helen nicely exemplifies the equivocation: Did she jump (elopement) or was she pushed (abduction)? The Greeks historically took whichever line rhetorically suited their purpose of the moment. Here it’s presented (nominally by the Persians) as the final αρπαγη in the sequence, distinguished from its predecessors by the lapse in time and by its weak-as-water motivation: Alexander just wanted to snatch “a woman/wife from Greece” and knew he could get away with it. The long-ago abduction of Medea was adduced only after the event, not in justification of the abduction but as pretext for refusal of the quasi-historical demand for her return (the Iliadic απαιτησις Ελενης, which we should remember many of the Greeks at Troy wanted to accede to).
Any plausibility Hdt’s account may have is superficial at best. Acc. to his Persian account the Greeks (Hdt guesses Cretans) answered the Phoenicians’ rape/abduction (αρπαγη) of Io—the initial αδικια—by abducting Europa: now they were even (ισα προς ισα). OK, so far so good. Obviously at odds with the Greek version of both abductions (Hdt doesn’t need even to allude to Europa’s abduction by Zeus, likewise from Phoenicia to Crete), but plausible enough on its own terms.
But the second αδικια (still acc. to the Persians), the Greeks’ αρπαγη of Medea from Colchis, is another matter. Colchian demands for recompense+return (proleptically mirroring the Greek’s demands for return of Helen in Homer and elsewhere) were rebuffed by reference to the abduction/rape of Io—as if it was the Colchians who were responsible for that! and as if that hadn’t been avenged already by the tit-for-tat abduction of Europa! All this is in the interests of setting up the ostensibly Persian “Asia”/Greece dichotomy as backdrop to Hdt’s history of the Persian Wars, reinforcing his opening contrast between “Greeks” and “barbarians.” Phoenicians, Colchians, Lydians, Persians, it’s all the same to Hdt. To be non-Greek is enough to unite them. There are limits to Herodotus’ relativism. He’s a Greek, writing for Greeks, about Greeks versus the rest of the world.
However implausible, though, I doubt that Herodotus had his audiences (not exclusively Athenian?) rolling in the aisles. Intrigued, certainly. As the Phaedrus opening suggests (though that may be some crucial decades later), contemporary Greeks did sometimes seek to rationalize their myths, whether or not they believed the rationalizations, and here they’re offered a fascinating and ostensibly alien take on their inherited tales, coinciding only with regard to Helen. I’m not at all sure response would have been hilarity. The introduction is obviously a teaser; it irresistibly sucks us in; we’re hooked. What’s telling is that Hdt then blithely tosses it all aside—it’s served its purpose as a come-on—and settles down to his own account of what he personally “knows” and to his theme, the mutability of human affairs.
“Phoenicians, Colchians, Lydians, Persians, it’s all the same to Hdt.”
But he does distinguish between the Persian account and the Phoenician account. The Phoenician account is a little more snarky than the Persian account, which puts the Phoenicians in the wrong.
Hylander, you can probably take any single sentence from my post in isolation and find fault with it. Of course I’m not disputing that Hdt makes ethnographic distinctions, and of course he distinguishes the Phoenician account from the Persian one (that was my starting point, in fact). I’m sorry if my meaning didn’t come across. I thought it was plain enough, in all conscience.
I agree that the introduction sets up the overall opposition between the Greeks and the Asiatic barbarians–in an entertaining way calculated to draw his audience in–but I do think that there is a big dose of humor here. And I think you’ll agree that H. doesn’t lump all the barbarians together–he’s infinitely curious about various individual nations’ customs, ideology, etc. Here he draws a contrast between the Persian version, which discredits the Phoenicians (and the Greeks), drawing on the Phoenicians’ reputation for combining mercantile activities with piracy, and the Phoenicians’ cynical response. There’s also the cynicism of the Persians’ account–sensible people don’t start wars over mere abductions, they just seek compensation. (Maybe there’s a suggestion of “oriental” craftiness or willingness to bargain regardless of principle, here.) Also, I don’t think that anyone was deceived or was intended to be deceived by putting the Persian account in the mouths of the Persian sages–this, I think, is part of the humor.
By the way, Phaedrus was probably written 70-80 years after Herodotus’ prime, but I think there was already a long-standing tradition of skeptical inquiry, especially in Ionia, in Herodotus’ day–e.g., Xenophanes (maybe an extreme example).
I can’t really judge the arguments going on here because I’m somewhat confused about who Herodotus thought that his audience was. I take it that he didn’t envision his work being read in nice pocket editions in people’s living rooms.
Who would have owned a copy of the Histories? Rich men? Scholars? Would it have been read aloud at parties? Were there community editions for larger public performance?
Did Herodotus tell his stories professionally? Lucian describes Herodotus reading the Histories aloud to an enraptured audience at the Olympic Games. Did Herodotus “perform” his stories? Was the performance (i.e, Homer) or the writing (i.e, Thucydides) primary? Was there any patriotic or sacred function to what he was doing?
To sum it up in one question, “How seriously did Herodotus take himself?”
Herodotus performed sections of his narrative before public audiences in Athens and elsewhere, but his work also must have circulated in book form.
I mean plausible in the sense that Athenians would consider that his descriptions of abductions and the excuses that the perpetrators put forward to be the sort of thing that happens. I see it in terms of pottery that depicts the Trojan war. They are useless as evidence for the arms and armor used around the time that the war was traditionally said to have occurred but very useful as evidence for the time the pot was made. Likewise, Herodotus’ account, especially that of Io gives some hint of the threat of violence that hung Athenian women of Herodotus’s time.
Indeed yes. Herodotus does not expect the barbarians to speak with one voice but the whole tit for tat story only makes sense if all Greeks can be held guilty for the acts of individuals from amongst themselves. Likewise all Asiatics are collectively guilty for any act by any non-Greek Asiatics - however far flung.
You think Hdt’s listeners and readers disbelieved his statement that the account was that of the Persian λογιοι? and that he didn’t even intend the statement to be believed? I see absolutely no grounds for thinking that. It would have completely undermined his credibility as a historian. Herodotus is no tongue-in-cheek Ovid.
Hecataeus had pronounced the λογοι of the Greeks laughable, and no doubt Herodotus would have extended that to what he presents as the λογοι of the Persians. (He more or less says as much, only more urbanely, when he comes out with his εγω δε at the end, 1.5.3, washing his hands of the various λογοι he’s recounted.) But when he says “X says Y,” he means us to believe him, just as whenever he says “X did Y.”
daivid I understand what you’re saying (just as you understood what I was saying, thankfully), but I think you push this line too hard. Athenian women were in little danger of being abducted. Were they ever under threat of violence, except perhaps from their κυριοι? And even daughter- or wife-beating was frowned on.
“You think Hdt’s listeners and readers disbelieved his statement that the account was that of the Persian λογιοι? and that he didn’t even intend the statement to be believed?”
That this story about the Greek myth of Io emanated from the mouths of Persian sages seems so implausible to me that I can hardly think H. is serious. The alternative narrative of the Phoenicians compounds the absurdity. And the stories themselves twist the Greek myth in ways that are hilarious.
If he was serious, then he was indeed the father of lies. To start his histories with blatant lies would draw into question everything else he has to say–not that a lot of it isn’t implausible on its own terms.
Io abducted by Phoenician traders: a distinctly unGreek (and assertively demythologized) alternative version of how she got from Argos to Egypt, perfectly plausible in its own realistic terms. Hdt says up front it was the Persian version. According to you, he did not mean anyone to believe him; and no-one did. I fear you are fantasizing.
We all seem to agree that Herodotus did not in fact consult any Persian sages about the events described in the introduction. As said before, what would those Persians have to say about Greek mythological princesses in the first place. The difference of opinion then seems to boil down to the fact whether his audience was expected to believe the account that Herodotus knew to be untrue himself. And this brings us back to their attitude to these myths.Take the tale of Io as an example. There are three versions of what happened to her (although the Greek version -well known to the Greek audience- is only briefly mentioned as ‘οὐκ ὡς Ἕλληνές’)
-Persian version: she was abducted by the Phoenicians
-Phoenician version: she got pregnant and eloped with a Phoenician captain
-Greek version: she fled a gadfly in the form of a white cow all the way to Egypt
If the audience did not take its own traditional cow-gadfly-version serious (and I must say, it’s hard to believe they did, but I can be horribly wrong of course), it’s difficult to see how they could be expected to take this juxtaposing of different versions of this improbable tale serious, so Herodotus is writing tongue-in-cheek. If they did however, they must have thought the Persian and Phoenician version wrong. In that case the tale doesn’t illustrate anything (the Greek-Asian dichotomy for example) for it never happened that way in the first place (according to the audience).
The Persian account and the Phoenician account are both entirely plausible; the Greek myth of Io must have been implausible to many Greeks of Herodotus’ era, and the Persian and Phoenician accounts rationalize the supernatural element.
What’s difficult to swallow is that Persian sages knew specifically about the Greek myth, offered a rationalized interpretation, and claimed it was the origin of the hostilities between Greece and the Asian barbarians–and followed up with rationalized explanations for other Greek myths; and that the Phoenicians also had their own, amusingly scandalous, rationalization of the same Greek myth of Io, one that pointedly responds to the Persian account in a way that mitigates their culpability (even recognizing that many of the Greek myths probably trace their origins to the ancient Near East or at least the Aegean world).
To me, the Persian and Phoenician accounts are reminiscent of Greek attempts to rationalize the supernatural elements in Greek mythology exemplified by the passage in Phaedrus. But I concede that it’s difficult if not impossible to tell whether this is a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek fabrication not intended to deceive anyone, a bald-faced fabrication that was intended to deceive, or something that grew out of genuine discussions with Persians and Phoenicians. Perhaps Herodotus did participate in such a conversation (in what language?). But even if he did, I have to wonder about the level of seriousness (and sobriety?), and whether, naive as he may have been, Herodotus was so gullible as to take what the Persians and Phoenicians said at face value.
Not entirely unGreek, I’d say. I think Legrand (the Budé editor) is right to point out that this story should be read in parallel with the story of how Eumaios was abducted by his nurse and Phoenician traders in the Odyssey (book XV). I think there’s definitely something going on here. As an alternative to the traditional but highly unrealistic mythological story, Herodotus gives two rationalized versions, supposedly derived from foreign sources, but actually drawing on Greek epic (Perhaps Phoenician traders abducting women was a commonplace, but then it was probably a commonplace originating from the Odyssey). It’s perhaps too much to say that this is meant to remind the reader/audience of Odysseus’ lying tales, but I like Hylander’s idea. Herodotus is being playful here.
Perhaps Phoenician traders abducting women was a commonplace, but then it was probably a commonplace originating from the Odyssey.
It wasn’t a commonplace–it was commonplace in the Mediterranean world.
I’m not sure whether the Persians’ story is necessarily modeled on Eumaeus’ (I mentioned him in an earlier post), or whether there were numerous stories about abductions by Phoenician trader/pirates circulating in Greece and elsewhere in the Aegean, just as there used to be and probably still are stories circulating about children abducted by Roma people (not that I believe these stories), or stories about Jews kidnapping Christian kids and butchering them for ritual purposes.
Herodotus is not really giving two versions but the same story but using unreliable witnesses. The Phoenicians clearly have the greatest reason to lie as being the ones directly responsible for the abduction so Herodotus clearly intends his listeners to disbelieve them and merely continues the story in the sense that we hear the culprits clearly false denial. The reason the culprits must be Phoenician is that it allows the abduction of Europa to be portrayed as a reprisal.
Can you really be that sure?
We don’t have any Phoenician sources. Are there any Greek sources that make this accusation against Phoenicians really free of the suspicion of being mere propaganda?
EDIT Your post is now clear and fully answers the questions I posed above.
I’m sorry, I thought I’d read every post in the thread, but it’s been growing so fast that I probably skipped that one.
I think it’s hard to prove this sort of thing, but certainly Herodotus explicitly refers to Menelaus’ travels in Egypt, for instance. Wouldn’t a reference to a classic be just the sort of thing you’d expect him to do in the beginning of his work?
Indeed, and then we haven’t even touched the really controversial topics like what did Herodotus mean with the mysterious ‘female disease’ afflicting the Scythians and their descendants… 
For a longish but interesting discussion see this passage that can be read in its entirety on Google Books from The Archaic Smile of Herodotus by Stewart Flowry, a book often mentioned by Arieti. It begins at the bottom of page 24 and proceeds up to page 28. Short summary: Herodotus in this introduction parodies not just myths but also the overrationalised attempts at explaining them. Also, I’m glad to see that the writer agrees with me that the interjection ‘οὐκ ὡς Ἕλληνές’ is meant ‘mischievously’.
I can’t keep up with all this. I’ll simply say that to imagine that Hdt would commence the αποδειξις of his ιστοριη with a straightforward statement that was meant to be understood as playfully fictive (despite bearing no outward sign of being so)—and was in fact so understood—seems to me … fanciful. I can think of nothing less plausible.
As I noted above, it’s not until he’s finished his sober recounting of the allegedly Persian tale and its Phoenician variant that he blithely washes his hands of them (thereby revealing his playfulness in retailing them in the first place). He’s entertainingly used them as foil to his own account, which he represents by contrast as authoritative, to be taken seriously. And in choosing to lead off with the Persians (whose account of Io’s translocation conflicts with the Greeks’ one, as he slyly if gratuitously notes), he effectively foreshadows the eventual Persian-Greek conflict of his history proper.
I agree with those who hold that Hdt throughout his work makes up much more than he lets on. (As others have suggested, he may even have himself made up the demythologized versions of the Io story along with their alleged sources.) But my point is precisely that he doesn’t let on. He doesn’t deliberately throw suspicion on his claims regarding his sources, he doesn’t deliberately undercut the credibility of his assertions. Has anyone (outside of this thread) ever suggested he does?