Greek Historiography Read online

  reach their own conclusions. He hints constantly and displays the arbi-

  trariness of power, how it is obtained, and how different forms of rule can promote or deviate from justice and rational fairness. Self‐interest, rhetorical persuasion, trust in dubious divine signs, and irrational emotions of ambition, greed, hate, and fear time and again drive off course historical agents, including Greeks. Exceptionally wise warners, such as Solon and Artabanus, only prove the rule and point to how tragic outcomes might

  have been avoided. Yet the narrative is in the end not wholly pessimistic.

  Though replete with examples of human folly in the stories of conflict, the Histories implicitly advocate values rarely witnessed: the fair and moderate administration of power by rulers, thoughtful and courageous

  engagement on the part of the ruled, and restraint from retribution for its own sake. Embodied in the tragic figures of Croesus, Darius, and Xerxes are the paradigms of power, how it is blindly sought, hotly maintained,

  66

  HErodotus and tHE Limits of HappinEss: BEyond Epic, Lyric, and LogograpHy and extended beyond reason, in each case through self‐destructive

  campaigns. The debate on constitutions in Book 3 and the constant

  reference to the contemporary superpowers, Sparta and Athens, highlight the connection of the Persian narrative to that of the very different

  characters of the two states almost “fated,” or predetermined by their

  natures, to clash later in the fifth century. Xerxes cites a “law” of human imperialism and seeks a kingdom that reaches the heavens (Hdt. 7.8).

  Demaratus tells the king that for the Greeks “law” ( nomos) is the despot that they fear (Hdt. 7.104). But the issues are not always reducible to polarities such as barbarian–Greek, good–evil, and so on. Notably, among the Greek forces there are fissures and tensions, for example in Books 7, 8, and 9, when disagreements arise about whether and how to face the

  foe. The tensions can result in missteps, but they can also be negotiated through liberal contestation, often yielding success.

  The narrative is also not narrowly framed, but capacious in including

  digressions or brief observations on the complex customs of the barbarian

  “Other,” often with a sense of Hellenic superiority, but at times with a suspension of judgment or an expression of awe at particular achievements.

  Thus the Herodotean narrative in its rich, idiosyncratic, epic–dramatic fashion establishes certain core principles regarding human behavior and the nature of power. These subjects remain at the core of the narrative of the next great historian, Thucydides, though with a very different approach.

  Bibliography

  Asheri, D., A. Lloyd, and A. Corcella. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ed. O. Murray and A. Morena. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Bakker, E. J., 2006. “The Syntax of historie ̄: How Herodotus Writes.”

  In Dewald and Marnincola, eds., 92–102.

  Benn, S. I. 1967. “Power.” In P. Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5, 424–7. New York: Macmillan.

  Boedeker, D., ed. 1987. Herodotus and the Invention of History. Special issue of Arethusa 20.

  Chiasson, C. C. 2003. “Herodotus’ Use of Attic Tragedy in the Lydian

  Logos.” Classical Antiquity 22: 5–36.

  Dewald, C. 1987. “Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus’

  Histories.” Arethusa 20: 147–70.

  Dewald, C. and J. Marincola, eds. 2006. The Cambridge Companion to

  Herodotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  HErodotus and tHE Limits of HappinEss: BEyond Epic, Lyric, and LogograpHy 67

  Diels, H. and W. Kranz, eds. 1962. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker

  (6th ed.). Berlin: Weidmann (= DK).

  Dumézil, G. 1978. Romans de Scythie et d’alentour. Paris: Payot.

  Evans, J. A. S. 1991. Herodotus, Explorer of the Past. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Fehling, D. 1989 [1971]. Herodotus and His “Sources,” trans. J. G. Howie.

  Leeds: Francis Cairns.

  Finley, M. I., ed. 1972. Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. R. Warner. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

  Flower, M. A. and J. Marincola, eds. 2002. Herodotus Histories Book IX.

  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Fornara, C. 1971. Herodotus, an Interpretative Essay. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  French, J. R. P. and B. Raven. 1959. “The Bases of Social Power.” In

  D. Cartwright, ed., Studies in Social Power, 150–67. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  Grene, D., trans. 1987. The History: Herodotus. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

  Guthrie, W. K. C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Hartog, F. 1988 [1980]. The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, trans. J. Lloyd. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Hunter, V. J. 1982. Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides.

  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Immerwahr, H. R. 1966. Form and Thought in Herodotus, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

  Konstan, D. 1987. “Persians, Greeks, and Empire.” In Boedeker, ed.,

  59–73.

  Lateiner, D. 1989. Historical Method of Herodotus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  Lattimore, R. 1939. “The Wise Adviser in Herodotus.” Classical Philology 34: 24–35.

  Lattimore, R. 1958. “The Composition of the History of Herodotus.”

  Classical Philology 53: 9–21.

  Luraghi, N., ed. 2001. The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus.

  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Meier, C. 1987. “Historical Answers to Historical Questions: The Origins of History in Ancient Greece.” In Boedeker, ed., 41–57.

  Munson, R. V. 2003. Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  68

  HErodotus and tHE Limits of HappinEss: BEyond Epic, Lyric, and LogograpHy Murray, O. 2001. “Herodotus and Oral History.” In Luraghi, ed.,

  16–44.

  Ostwald, M. 1988. Ananke ̄ in Thucydides. (American Classical Studies 18.) Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.

  Pelling, C. B. R. 2006. “Speech and Narrative in the Histories.” In

  Dewald and Marincola, eds., 103–21.

  Pritchett, W. K., trans. 1975. Dionysius of Halicarnassus: On Thucydides.

  Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Pritchett, W. K. 1993. The Liar School of Herodotus, Amsterdam: Gieben.

  Raaflaub, K. A. 1985. Die Entdeckung der Freiheit: Zur historischen Semantik und Gesellschaftsgeschichte eines politischen Grundbegriffes der Griechen. Munich: Beck.

  Raaflaub, K. A. 2002. “Herodot und Thukydides: Persischer Imperialismus im Lichte der athenischen Sizilienpolitik.” In J. Deninger, N. Eherhardt, and L.‐M. Günther, eds., Widerstand, Anpassung, Integration: Die

  griechische Staatenwelt und Rom. Festschrift für Jürgen Deininger zum 65. Geburtstag, 11–40. Stuttgart: Steiner.

  Rhodes, P. J. 2004. Athenian Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Scanlon, T. F. 1994. “Echoes of Herodotus in Thucydides: Self‐

  Sufficiency, Admiration, and Law.” Historia 4(3/2): 143–76.

  Szegedy‐Maszak, A. 1987. “Commentary on Carolyn Dewald.” In

  Boedeker, ed., 171–4.

  Tracy, S. V. 2002. “Herodotus and Xanthippus, Father of Pericles.” In

  P. Flensted‐Jensen, C. G. Tortzen, and B. Amden, eds, Noctes Atticae: 34 Articles on Graeco‐Roman Antiquity and Its Nachleben. Studies

  Presented to Jorgen Mejer on his Sixtieth Birthday, March 18, 2002, 315–

  19. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen.

  Wecowski, M. 2004. “The Hedg
ehog and the Fox: Form and Meaning

  in the Prologue of Herodotus.” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 124: 143–64.

  Woodman, A. J. 1988. Rhetoric in Classical Historiography. London: Areopagitica Press.

  3

  Thucydides on the Ends of Power

  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in Rome around 30 to 8 bc, a period of intense and ambivalent Roman fascination with Hellenic culture,

  sketched Thucydides’ place in historiography as follows:

  Then came Thucydides, who was unwilling either to confine his history to a single region, as did Hellanicus, or to elaborate into a single work the achievements of the Greeks and barbarians in every land, as did Herodotus; but, scorning the former as trifling and petty and of little value to the readers and rejecting the latter as too comprehensive to fall within the pur-view of human reckoning with regard to the exactness of modes of behavior, he selected a single war … and gave his attention to the writing about this.

  (D.H. Th. 6, Pritchett 1975, adapted).

  Selection and formation of the topic for a major historical work was a crucial and open question at this early time in the tradition. Thucydides’

  contemporary Hellanicus of Lesbos (c. 480–395 bc) wrote Atthis, the first history of Attica, and he is the only historian named by Thucydides, who does so for the purpose of criticizing his too brief and chronologically inaccurate treatment of the period between the Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War (Th. 1.97.2). Dionysius devalues the range and the

  utility of local history in itself by these comments, echoing in part

  Thucydides’ own criticisms. Herodotus on the other hand, in Dionysius’

  estimation, erred in selecting too broad a topic, forfeiting exactness with fascinating yet distracting digressions on non‐Greek customs. Thucydides refined and redefined the parameters of one type of history in a way that Greek Historiography, First Edition. Thomas F. Scanlon.

  © 2015 Thomas F. Scanlon. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  70

  ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr

  held for centuries thereafter, namely through focus on war with a close narrative of the motives and strategies of combatants.

  The genre of history is intensely refined and narrowed by Thucydides

  mainly in response to Herodotus, but partly his history reflects also the works of other prose chroniclers ( logioi), Homer, lyric poetry, tragedy, the sophists and medical authors. Thucydides is also in dialogue with all of these predecessors and can be seen as directly selecting from among

  many aspects of their subject matter, themes, style, and method. The

  author rigorously excludes from his narrative all elements that, in his view, contain patriotic fiction and poetic exaggeration, maintaining his focus intensely on war as a political “upheaval” ( kine ̄ sis, Th. 1.1.2) of states and on the “human element” ( to anthro ̄ pinon, Th. 1.22.4) – which owes something to Protagoras’ (c. 485–c. 415 bc) human‐centered cosmos

  (see Irwin 1989: 59–60).

  In the historiographic tradition Thucydides’ work is fashioned for a

  more literate public, an audience more keenly conscious of rhetorical

  manipulation, and one situated at a time when prose was becoming ever

  more crucial for the Greek states and poetry was less highly regarded

  among the ruling elite (see Plato’s Ion and Republic; also P. Murray 1996). Even so, Thucydides can be read as an extended allegory on

  human “upheavals” with a utility for all future citizens and leaders (Th.

  1.22.4). He happened to write about a war that he personally experienced and that was in his view greater than others, but the essential experience of war in human life suggests that he might have narrated any major

  conflict to illustrate the same human truths.

  Life and Times

  The historian’s text is the only reliable evidence for his life (fuller discussion in Rhodes 2009: xxiv–xxviii). We can estimate that Thucydides was born

  around 460–455 bc, since he was likely at least thirty years old when serving as a general in 424 bc and seems to have been young at the start of the war (Th. 5.26.5). He was born in the deme of Halimous and was a

  son of Olorus, possibly the great grandson of King Olorus of Thrace,

  Cimon’s Thracian grandfather. He is distantly related to the Alcmaeonids Pericles and Alcibiades and more closely to Miltiades, his great-grandfather, and to the politicians Thucydides son of Melisias and Cimon, both his great‐uncles. He may have been in the cavalry because of his elite status, and may have heard Pericles’ funeral oration in the winter of 431–

  430 bc. The historian himself suffered from the plague in 430 bc

  ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr

  71

  (Th. 2.48.3). He possibly ascended the typical course of captain and

  regimental commander ( lochagos and taxiarch) before standing as general from his tribe, Leontis. He was assigned as general to Northern Greece, logically in view of his Thracian family connections and their lease to gold mines there (Th. 4.105). Thucydides was stationed at Thasos when

  Brasidas successfully took Amphipolis in 424 bc, despite the former’s best efforts to intercept the latter (Th. 4.102–8). Despite his securing of the nearby city of Eion, Thucydides realized that he would face trial at home, and thus chose exile (Th. 5.26). His military career was over, and yet the situation presented an opportunity for him to devote more time to

  chronicling the conflict. Just as importantly, he was able to travel freely (except to Athens) and interview witnesses and informants from both

  sides. Ironically, the author’s own misadventure at war afforded a greater refinement of content and a broader balance of sources to his account.

  I certainly remember that all along, when the war began until it ended, there were many who prophesized that it must last thrice nine years. I lived through all of it when I was of an age to comprehend and had my mind engaged,

  in order to know with some exactness; it also happened that I was exiled from my city for twenty years after the command at Amphipolis, and, being present at the activities on both sides, especially the Peloponnesians, unoccupied because of my exile, I understood these all the more. (Th. 5.26,

  Lattimore – and so passim from here on, unless otherwise indicated)

  We may guess that Thucydides returned to Athens in 404 bc. As he refers to the end of the war in 404 bc (e.g., Th. 2.65.10–13), we can guess that he survived a few years after that, dying about 400 bc. Pausanias (1.23.11) recounts a decree whose vote to recall Thucydides from exile was carried by a certain Oinobius, adding that Thucydides was murdered on his way

  home and that his funeral memorial is not far from the Melitian Gate.

  The ancient biographer Marcellinus ( Vit. Thuc. 33), generally unreliable, says that Thucydides died in Thrace and had a cenotaph in Athens.

  Speculation about a sudden death may have arisen from the incompleteness of the text. Whatever the truth of the story, the Melitian Gate location gains some credibility when we know that the burial “monuments of

  [his relative] Cimon” were nearby (Marcellin . Vit. Thuc. 17).

  Thucydides’ personal political views are, to judge from his text,

  sophisticated and notoriously difficult to line up with those of any specific individuals or groups leaning to the traditionalist elite or to the new thinkers of his day. Scholars have variously labeled him as pro‐Periclean or elite, conservative, and antidemocratic (e.g., McGregor 1956; Chambers

  1957). The text evidences some affinities to various camps or persons,

  72

  ThucydidEs on ThE Ends of PowEr

  but the author’s views probably changed over time. His negative views of Cleon are well delineated (Woodhead 1960) and may have given rise to

  the story in Marcellinus that Cleon decreed his exile. We may detect

  sympathy with Nicias’ fear of
the “natures” ( phuseis) of the Athenians (Th. 7.48), and he scorned the irrational reaction of the demos at Athens (Th. 8.1) and elsewhere. He seems to have had a positive view of Pericles, whose speeches all stand without direct responses, most brilliantly the funeral oration. Yet we must ask if the historian was a dedicated Periclean or simply used Pericles’ image to make his own political points, critical of Pericles’ successors (Th. 2.65). The historian had his criticisms of democracy (e.g., Th. 2.65 and 8.24) and he highly praised the rule of the Five Thousand as “the best government” of Athens, a “moderate mixture of

  the many and the few,” a hybrid of democracy and oligarchy (Th. 8.97).

  Thucydides himself had witnessed the last years of growth of the

  Athenian power over other Greek states in the years just prior to the

  Peloponnesian War, as a boy growing up during the First Peloponnesian

  War of about 461–446 bc, and then the Athenian expansion in the early

  430s. He “recorded the war … beginning as soon as it came into being,

  expecting it to be great and more noteworthy than previous ones …”

  (Th. 1.1.1). So he started the project when the war “came into being”

  ( kathistamenou), a vague enough term that includes not just the formal declaration of hostilities, but also the events leading up to it that made the conflict seem inevitable. In short, his authorial engagement starts with the movement to war and is carried on until its end in 404 bc.

  Composition, Style, and Structure of the Work

  Thucydides’ first sentence, characteristically lengthy and challenging, carries a programmatic importance, like that of Herodotus, yet the

  Athenian is clearly in dialogue with and challenging his predecessor:

  Thucydides, an Athenian, recorded the war between the Peloponnesians

  and the Athenians, writing how they waged it against each other and

  beginning his work as soon as the war broke out in expectation that it

  would be a major one and notable beyond all previous wars, basing this

  assumption on the fact that both sides came into it flourishing in overall preparedness and on seeing that the rest of the Hellenes were aligning