Herodotus & Homer & Lydian customs

Greek Learning Greek
41

I think so. See the link to the ‘The Archaic Smile of Herodotus’:

“Equally baffling is why Herodotus labels as ‘Persian’ tales that are so patently Greek fifth-century rationalizations of native Hellenic myths”

“The chief and remarkable characteristic of the Persian aitia is rationalism, pushed to its absurd extreme. Herodotus here parodies not just myths but rationalism itself. He makes the very plausibility of these demythologized tales suspect, particulary through unspoken or barely hinted comparison with the poetic originals.”

There’s more, but I can’t copy-paste from Google Books.

42

Is this James A. Arieti? I took a Roman-history class from him which first sparked my interest in classics, though I dropped out before I could take either language (so I had to do it myself years later) and have e-mailed him a few times for advice. He probably thinks I’m a lunatic. :smiley:

Apologies if it’s the wrong guy!

43

James A. Arieti, yes. I’m reading his 'Discourses on the First Book of Herodotus. Nice coincidence.

44

Yes – I’m more in debt to that man than he probably realizes. The complaints on RateMyProfessor aren’t totally unwarranted but he’s a great teacher. He actually sent me a copy of the Wheelock’s Latin Reader gratis when I e-mailed him to ask where to go after Wheelock’s Latin.

Off-topic aside. Sorry!

45

Bart – Some miscommunication here, sorry. I agree the “Persian” tales are more probably Greek than Persian in origin (as I said, Hdt may even have made them up himself), but I think that when he says they’re the Persian version he means to be believed. After all, he explicitly points out it’s not the Greek version, and who would quarrel with that? They may be “patently Greek fifth-century rationalizations” to modern scholars, but that doesn’t mean they were so to his audiences, more familiar with their established Greek myths than with cunningly disguised euhemerisms.

I also agree with Flory that Hdt “makes the very plausibility of these demythologized tales suspect.” * (The way he dismisses them is enough to show that, as I’ve indicated, quite apart from his continuously distancing himself from them.) It’s not the plausibility of the tales themselves that’s at issue, but the reception of his opening statement that “According to Persian story-tellers responsibility for the disagreement lay with Phoenicians.” I think that is framed in such as a way as to elicit credence rather than incredulity. What we’re then interested in is “How so? What did the Phoenicians do? Tell us more." Rather than “The Persians say that? You must be joking.”

  • [EDIT. Let me modify that. Hdt takes care to make the tales plausible enough in themselves, but he certainly doesn’t encourage assigning them any truth-value.]

Besides, it would make no sense (this was my main point) for Hdt to kick off his History with a statement perceived (and meant to be perceived) as ludicrous.

Where I disagree with Flory is when he finds it “baffling” that Hdt labelled the tales Persian. I offered an explanation for that. Also, I wouldn’t call the rationalizations parodic exactly, nor would I speak of “the poetic originals.” But these are quibbles.

46

All of us here are familiar with how history should be done and the need to question sources. It is obvious to us that unless we are able to check someone’s sources a claim made by a writer that he heard something from someone doesn’t really prove anything. Anyone capable of making up a story is just as capable of making up the sources as well.

But should really consider 5th century Greeks have such an appreciation of historical method. Indeed when we look at how today very intelligent people swallow the most absurd conspiracy theories we should be cautious about overestimating their skepticism.

But there must have been some skeptics. I repeat my point that Herodotus addition of “when their wares were almost all sold,” he has added something that does not mesh well with the rest of the story.

Hence, I can’t help but seeing it as Herodotus’ answer to some know-it-all Athenian who interrupted H. in full flow with “they couldn’t have been successful merchants if they attacked their customers”.

47

daivid, I quite agree that modern scholarly critical methods should not be projected on to the original audiences. Thank you. But I read the circumstantial detail you fasten on rather differently. I think that in saying the merchantmen didn’t make the snatch until they’d disposed of most of their merchandise Hdt enhances the plausibility of the tale. I don’t see it as added to counter an objection. I think it meshes well enough with the story. They’ve come all this way to sell their wares. Are they going to sail off again before doing so? No, they conduct their business as usual and they’re close to wrapping it up when this bunch of high-class dames turn up and start buying what takes their fancy. A golden opportunity for opportunistic Phoenician sea traders. They take the girls along with the money and run. (Of course they couldn’t expect to conduct much business in Argos after that, but we shouldn’t pursue the story that far. Anyway a princess would fetch a pretty good ransom, and they have no lack of other markets.)

The disconnect you find (if I understand you rightly) between their having successfully sold nearly all their goods and there still being enough left for the women to buy some presumably fancy items (lapis lazuli, say) before the merchants pack up and go on their way (back home, or on to their next port of call?—who cares?) doesn’t really jar with me. There are much worse plot holes in Star Wars. I think you are scrutinizing the narrative too hard. It’s only as realistic as it needs to be.

As a realistic explanation of how Io got to Egypt, it’s hard to beat. But of course the Greeks stuck to their story that she was turned into a cow. (Europa, for her part, the next snatch in the series, was abducted by a bull but was spared the metamorphosis.)

48

Michael, thanks for rephrasing your original statement, but its message already came across. You asked whether anyone outside this thread suggested that Herodotus deliberately undercut the credibility of his assertions. In response I quoted Stewart Flory. Flory believes Herodotus to be parodying both Greek myths and the rationalised attempts at explaining them. This implies, I believe, that he is an example of the thing you asked for, namely someone not participating in this thread who thinks Herodotus does not want to be taken at face value here. For if it is parody he aims for in this introduction, surely he wants his audience to recognise it as such (otherwise the parody misses it point) . So assumed Flory is right, how can Herodotus expect otherwise than not be taken (too) seriously by his audience, including his statements about his alleged sources? They’re listening to parody after all.

Also, in writing that it’s equally baffling why Herodotus labels as ‘Persian’ tales that are so patently Greek fifth-century rationalizations of native Hellenic myths, I think Flory means that this is evident not only to us but would also have been so to Herodotus’ contemporary audience. That’s why, I believe, Flory at first calls it ‘baffling’. His explanation for this surprising fact is that it’s meant as parody.

49

Bart,
Sincere thanks for so lucidly spelling out what Flory’s saying that Hdt “parodies not just myths but rationalism itself” should imply. You are quite right. (I won’t quibble that parodies are not always recognized as such.) But I do wonder whether Flory himself was conscious of the full implication of his use of the word parody. Unlike you, he doesn’t follow it through, and he doesn’t coordinate it with his overall argument. (He’s more concerned with contrasting the passage’s “flat and dry style” and its “orderly and sober” presentation with the Gyges episode that follows, and building on that.)

And I’m not so sure that in characterizing the “Persian” accounts as “patently Greek fifth-century rationalizations” he means to suggest that they were that to Hdt’s readers. (If he does, he’s wrong, and not only because they didn’t know they were living in the fifth century and had no notion either of rationalization or of what was patently Greek.)

Whether or not Flory qualifies, I wouldn’t put it past some late 20th- or early 21st-cent. scholar to be so perverse and anachronistic as to argue that Hdt does deliberately undercut his own credibility. Do please let me know if you come across clearer examples.

PS I’ve just done a little digging and find a review by Carolyn Dewald, a wellknown Herodotean expert I have much respect for. You might be interested in it, if you’re reading the book; it’s on JSTOR, if you have access to that. Apparently Flory’s book was his dissertation, directed by Adam Parry (Milman’s son, and himself a Homerist), which might explain a thing or two about this section. While not altogether unfavorable, Dewald says his position is “both naïve and confusing,” and on one important point that “he seems not to understand the radicalism of his own position” (which jibes perfectly with what I said above). That’s in regard to his conclusion (p.156), where he writes of Hdt.’s weaving fictional tales throughout his work “consciously, but without alerting the reader” (sic) as compromising his value as a historical source.

50

Michael, your post is as always instructive and amusing, but this time also a bit disingenuous. For you know well of course that I did not mean that Herodotus’ contemporaries would recognise the statements attributed by Herodotus to the Persians as 5th century rationalisations, but instead as not originating from Persian sources. However I fully sympathise with the fact that sometimes an opportunity to score an easy point is just too alluring to let pass by. :slight_smile:

I do worry a bit though about the supposed perversity among classical scholars. My, my! I always believed them to be such a respectable bunch.

But seriously, thanks for taking the trouble to look into what Flory has to say. I don’t have access to the review unfortunately. And I do miss the implication of what you’re saying about Adam Parry I’m afraid. Is there some work dealing with the Histories you would recommend instead of Flory?

51

You have understood how I understand the disconnect perfectly. Your alternative would fit if it had just been the queen. (“We have kept back this special item just for you.”) However, Herodotus says many women came and he reinforces that by saying that those taken were only a minority as the majority fled. Further τῶν φορτίων τῶν σφι ἦν θυμός μάλιστα is suggestive of them being spoilt for choice. The partitive genitive implies that there even more goods that they were not interested in along with those that were to them especially desirable.

Though as we are dealing with impressions so there can’t be a clear answer, I find it hard to see that anyone could get an impression other than there were rather a lot of goods on offer unless Herodotus had not told them in advance that there were almost none.

52

@Bart. I hate disingenuousness and I hate easy point-scoring, so I do apologize for having given that impression. I really didn’t mean it that way. I guess I should have added a smiley to that parenthesis.

@daivid. All good points. Our approaches to the narrative logic differ, that’s all.

53

Those apologies are totally unnecessary. I had hoped that the use of a smiley and of ‘but seriously’ would have been enough to demarcate the tongue-in-cheek part of my post, but to no avail. For the communicating animals we are said to be we are often surprisingly bad at getting our meaning across, especially on the internet. Also, it could well be that, English not being my mother tongue, I don’t totally catch all the shades of meaning of a word like ‘disingenuous’. My apologies for that.

Maybe Herodotus was struggling with the same difficulties in writing his introduction, hence our discussion. If only he had had the use of an (archaic) smiley at his disposal :slight_smile:

54

We need smilies because we are using text here and are not speaking aloud,
Herodotus would have read aloud.
Didn’t Plato call Aristotle “the reader” because he read scrolls to himself rather than reading aloud to his friends. How anti-social, how wierd!


Point taken.

55

The Greek physician Democedes is amply rewarded by Darius for healing his foot, and Democedes’ ex-slave Sciton also gets his share:

3.130.5. ὑποτύπτουσα δὲ αὐτέων ἑκάστη φιάλῃ τοῦ χρυσοῦ ἐς θήκην ἐδωρέετο Δημοκήδεα οὕτω δή τι δαψιλέι δωρεῇ ὡς τοὺς ἀποπίπτοντας ἀπὸ τῶν φιαλέων στατῆρας ἑπόμενος ὁ οἰκέτης, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Σκίτων, ἀνελέγετο καί οἱ χρῆμα πολλόν τι χρυσοῦ συνελέχθη.

Asheri & al.'s commentary on this passage: “Sciton is an Attic name; it means “wretch”, “worthless”; it was also a stock character in ancient comedy. Herodotus uses the name humorously while, at the same time, aiming to add credibility to his story by exhibiting a false pedantic attitude.”

I’m not exactly sure what “aiming to add credibility to his story by exhibiting a false pedantic attitude” exactly means – how can one actually add to one’s credibility by giving a blatantly false name to character in one’s narrative? But other than that, what is suggested here doesn’t seem entirely different from what Hylander said earlier about Herodotus writing humorous parody in the first chapters of his book.

56

Perhaps a smidgeon of scepticism is in order. I know of two Scitons beside Hdt’s. One was a real-life Athenian fined on a charge of γραφὴ παρανόμων, mentioned in Demosthenes, the other is said to have been a good-for-nothing fuller made fun of by the Pherecrates and possibly by Aristophanes (if it’s the same Sciton, which it probably is). I expect there are others too—I haven’t checked prosopographical authorities. I suppose it’s possible that Hdt took the name from comedy and is alluding to his character there, but I wouldn’t say it’s likely.

I suppose by a “false pedantic attitude” Asheri means that nobody would care what the man’s name was, and so by (?faux-)pedantically naming him Hdt adds credibility to his account. Which would hardly be the effect of borrowing the name of a comic character, and anyway the premise seems questionable, given Hdt’s propensity to identify even minor characters. Seems to me Asheri wants to have his cake and eat it. Is the name a plausible one meant to be credited or an implausible one meant humorously? It can hardly be both at once.

In any event, I don’t see that this passing naming of the servant has much in common with Hylander’s take on the beginning of Hdt’s work. I agree that that’s a humorous teaser (jettisoned once we’ve been drawn in) but not that Hdt means to reader to disbelieve him when he calls the unfamilar account the Persian one. What does Asheri say about that?

57

At a quick glance, I could’t find in suggestion in Asheri that the proem is a joke.

I didn’t mean that the naming of the servant had much in common with Hylander’s take per se; I’m just pointing a case where a commentator thinks that Herodotus is deliberately saying something he knows his audience is not going to believe. Although Asheri might well be wrong about this particular case (especially if, as you suggest, Sciton was also a real-life Athenian name), it still shows that Asheri believed that Herodotus was capable of such parody – which I wanted to point out in response to your earlier “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?”.

58

If Herodotus was “aiming to add credibility to his story,” as Asheri claims, that’s the very opposite of deliberately undercutting his credibility.

59

I doubt this debate is leading anywhere. But if Sciton’s name were a parody, as Asheri suggests, that would mean that we shouldn’t always take Herodotus to the letter. As to whether being capable of parody undermines the credibility of Herodotus’ sources, I find Asheri’s statement incomprehensible and contradictory.

60

I’ve been thinking about the meaning of Herotus’ introduction. The more I think about, the more I feel that the closing words of the introduction are key:

1.5.3. ταῦτα μέν νυν Πέρσαι τε καὶ Φοίνικες λέγουσι: ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων ὡς οὕτω ἢ ἄλλως κως ταῦτα ἐγένετο, τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων ἐς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, τοῦτον σημήνας προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου, ὁμοίως σμικρὰ καὶ μεγάλα ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων ἐπεξιών.

Here H. basically rejects everything he has said until now, almost as if the stories about abductions had been a false start, and what he really wanted do was to start the story with Croesus in the first place. But why, then, did H. start with those abductions? What is their narrative purpose?

The way I see it now, H. wants to show the uncertainties inherent in his enterprise. He is working mainly with oral sources, and he is fully aware that the further he goes back in time, the more unreliable they get. I don’t think the abduction stories are meant to be a joke, but they are certainly meant to sound absurd to many of H’s listeners/readers, who probably would have viewed even the traditional Greek stories with (some) skepticism. Even if H. made up the abduction stories, he would thought that they were just what “could have” been told by Persians/Phoenicians; he is not deliberately undercutting the credibility of his sources, as mwh has said earlier in this thread. But on the other hand, I have the impression that many commentators overestimate H’s credulity. He doesn’t believe everything he reports, not even closely, even when doesn’t overtly express his skepticism. He’s just reporting what he has been told, or that’s how he wants to represent what he is doing. So, it seems to me that what he really wanted to say with his introduction (beside that the model of traditional epic and such demanded something in this vein) is something like this: “Ok, this is the sort of material I’ve had to work with. You’ll see that the task was not always easy, and you’ll have to take some of this with a grain of salt.” Herodotus might have explained his method more explicitly, but that’s exactly what he’s doing here.

I recently started to read Oxford Readings in Classical Studies on Herodotus (vol 1). I haven’t gotten very far yet, but until now I’ve found it excellent. It’s a collection of the “very best” articles on different subjects from different authors ranging from 1950’s or so until recent years. There’s an article by Robert L. Fowler there that I’ve found very enlightening. He argues that an important aspect of Herodotus’ inquiry is that he restricts its scope to things that are falsifiable, just as modern researchers do, even if he’s willing to accept legends that seem plausible to him for some reason. Because of this, he doesn’t think that Thucydides is as diametrically opposed to him as is often held, only Thucydides took this principle of falsifiability much further than H. did and was willing to write only contemporary history, while H. starts two centuries before his own time. It’s a very good article and I recommend it to everyone who wants to understand better the introduction and H’s method.