Study guide

The Histories

by Herodotus

Overview

Written: Over several decades in the mid-fifth century BC; the work in its present form was completed in or soon after 430 BC, since it alludes to events of the first years of the Peloponnesian War
Author: Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 484 to c. 425 BC), a Greek from the Carian coast of Asia Minor who travelled widely and later settled at the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy
Genre: Historia, 'inquiry': narrative history mixed with ethnography, geography and story-telling
Language: Ionic Greek prose
Length: Nine books, the earliest large-scale work of Greek prose to survive
Subject: The rise of the Persian Empire and its wars with the Greeks, culminating in Xerxes' invasion of 480 to 479 BC
Time span: From Croesus of Lydia (mid-sixth century BC), with mythical prelude, to the siege of Sestos in 479 BC
Setting: The whole known world: Lydia, Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia, Libya, Greece and the Aegean
Key battles: Marathon (490 BC), Thermopylae and Artemisium, Salamis (480 BC), Plataea and Mycale (479 BC)
Book division: Made by later Alexandrian scholars, who named each of the nine books after a Muse; Herodotus himself did not divide the work

Context

Herodotus was born in Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), a Greek city under Persian rule on the coast of Caria, probably a few years before Xerxes invaded Greece. Ancient tradition says that he took part in political strife against the local tyrant Lygdamis, went into exile on Samos, and later joined the Panhellenic colony of Thurii in southern Italy, founded in 444/3 BC. His work shows that he knew Athens well and travelled to Egypt, to the Black Sea, to Phoenicia and perhaps to Babylon. He probably gave public readings of parts of his work before it reached its final form; the latest events it mentions belong to the opening years of the Peloponnesian War, around 430 BC.

The work calls itself the 'showing forth' (apodexis) of Herodotus' historiē, a word that meant 'inquiry' or 'investigation' before it came to mean 'history'. Its stated purpose is twofold: to keep the great deeds of Greeks and barbarians from fading with time, and to explain why they fought one another. Herodotus inherited the first aim from epic poetry, which preserved the 'glory of men', and he constantly measures himself against Homer. The second aim, the search for causes, connects him with the Ionian thinkers and doctors of his age, who also called their work historiē (Thomas 2000).

Herodotus had predecessors. Ionian prose writers such as Hecataeus of Miletus had already written geographical and genealogical works, and Herodotus quarrels with them, sometimes by name. But nobody before him had attempted a single connected narrative of a great war, set against the history and customs of all the peoples involved. Much of his information came from oral tradition: priests in Egypt, families in Athens and Sparta, local informants in many cities. He tells us repeatedly what he saw for himself, what he heard, and what he concluded, and he often records more than one version of a story (Lateiner 1989) (Luraghi 2001).

The structure of the Histories is both chronological and associative. The main line follows the expansion of Persia under four kings, Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes, as it absorbs Lydia, Babylon, Egypt and the Greek cities of Asia, and then strikes at mainland Greece. Each time a new people comes into contact with Persia, Herodotus pauses to describe its land, history and customs, so that Book 2 becomes a treatise on Egypt and Book 4 on Scythia and Libya. These excursuses were once seen as digressions from the story; modern readers more often see them as part of its argument about how peoples live and why empires grow and fail (Immerwahr 1966) (Gould 1989).

Ancient judgements were mixed. Cicero called Herodotus 'the father of history', but also noted the many fables in his work; Thucydides implicitly criticised predecessors who wrote to please their audiences, and Plutarch wrote an essay 'On the Malice of Herodotus' accusing him of bias against some Greek cities and of being a 'friend of barbarians'. The work was nevertheless read continuously, and since the nineteenth century it has been recognised as a foundation of Western historical writing and of ethnography (Momigliano 1958). The translation quoted here is that of G. C. Macaulay (1890), which keeps something of the old-fashioned, Greek-shaped rhythm of the original and spells many names in Greek rather than Latin form (Dareios for Darius, Kypselos for Cypselus).

Plot overview

Books 1 to 4 tell how Persia became a world empire. Herodotus begins with Croesus, the Lydian king who first subdued Greeks in Asia, and with the warning of the Athenian sage Solon that no man should be called happy before his end. Croesus misreads an oracle, attacks Persia and loses his kingdom to Cyrus, whose own origins, conquests and death at the hands of the Massagetae close Book 1. His son Cambyses conquers Egypt (Books 2 and 3), the occasion for a long account of Egyptian geography, religion and history; Cambyses' madness, the usurpation of the Magus, and the conspiracy that makes Darius king follow. Darius organises the empire and attacks the nomadic Scythians north of the Black Sea, who defeat him by refusing battle (Book 4).

Books 5 and 6 bring the Greeks to the centre. The Ionian Greeks of Asia, led by Aristagoras of Miletus, revolt against Persia in 499 BC and win the support of Athens and Eretria, whose twenty-five ships help burn Sardis. Herodotus calls the Athenian ships 'the beginning of evils' for Greeks and barbarians alike. The revolt is crushed at Lade and Miletus is destroyed in 494. Darius then sends an expedition against Athens and Eretria; Eretria falls, but in 490 the Athenians and Plataeans defeat the Persians at Marathon.

Books 7 to 9 narrate Xerxes' invasion. After long debate and ominous dreams, Xerxes bridges the Hellespont and leads a vast army and fleet into Greece in 480 BC. Most of the Greeks submit, but an alliance led by Sparta, with Athens supplying the largest fleet, resists. Leonidas and his Spartans die holding the pass at Thermopylae; Athens is evacuated and burnt; but the Greek fleet, manoeuvred into battle by Themistocles, wins at Salamis, and Xerxes withdraws to Asia (Books 7 and 8).

Xerxes leaves his general Mardonius in Greece. In 479 the united Greek army under the Spartan regent Pausanias defeats and kills him at Plataea, and on the same day, Herodotus says, the Greek fleet destroys the Persian forces at Mycale in Ionia. The work ends quietly, with the Athenian capture of Sestos on the Hellespont and a story about Cyrus, who long before had told the Persians that soft lands breed soft men (Book 9).

Book by book

Book 1: Clio: Croesus and Cyrus

Summary

After a preface stating his aims, Herodotus reports the Persian and Phoenician view that the conflict between Asia and Europe began with a series of abductions of women: Io, Europa, Medea and finally Helen. He sets these tales aside and turns to the man he knows first wronged the Greeks, Croesus of Lydia. A long flashback tells how Croesus' ancestor Gyges seized the throne after King Candaules insisted on showing him his wife naked; the queen offered Gyges the choice of killing the king or dying himself.

At the height of his wealth Croesus receives the Athenian lawgiver Solon and asks him who is the happiest of men. Solon names obscure people, Tellus of Athens and the brothers Cleobis and Biton, and tells him to look to the end. Disasters follow: Croesus' son Atys is accidentally killed by the exile Adrastus. Croesus tests the oracles, consults Delphi, is told that if he attacks Persia he will destroy a great empire, and crosses the Halys. He is defeated, Sardis falls, and he is placed on a pyre, where he remembers Solon; Cyrus spares him and Apollo, it is said, sends rain to put out the flames.

Herodotus then goes back to explain the rise of Persia: the Median kings Deioces and Astyages, the exposure and survival of the infant Cyrus, and Harpagus' revenge on Astyages, who had served him his own son at a banquet. Cyrus conquers the Ionian and other Greeks of Asia, then Babylon, whose walls and customs are described. He finally attacks the Massagetae beyond the Araxes, captures the son of their queen Tomyris by a trick, and is defeated and killed; Tomyris dips his head in a skin full of blood.

Analysis

The preface defines a new kind of work. Herodotus speaks of himself in the third person, like the Ionian prose writers, but his aim of preserving glory echoes epic. The abduction stories that follow are a teasing false start: they parody the Greek habit of tracing wars to mythical causes, and Herodotus sets them aside in favour of what he himself 'knows'. He then announces the principle that governs the whole work, the instability of human greatness, so that small cities and great ones alike deserve record (Immerwahr 1966) (Dewald 2006).

Croesus is the first great example of that instability. The meeting with Solon, almost certainly impossible chronologically, is a moral fable that states Herodotean themes in compact form: the divine is 'envious' of excessive prosperity, life is subject to chance, and happiness can only be judged at the end. Croesus' misreading of the oracle shows a second recurring pattern: the gods tell the truth, but humans hear what they want. The book's architecture is circular, since Cyrus, who learns from Croesus' fall, himself ignores the advice of the now-wise Croesus and dies through over-reaching (Harrison 2000) (Pelling 2019).

Book 1 also introduces Herodotus' interest in customs. The Lydians, Persians, Babylonians and Massagetae are each described in turn, and their customs are often presented without judgement, or with judgements that surprise Greek readers. The Persians, for example, are praised for teaching their sons only to ride, shoot and tell the truth.

This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.

Hdt. 1.0 (preface)

The preface names the author, the method ('Inquiry', historiē) and two aims: to preserve fame, as epic did, and to explain causes. Note the even-handed 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians': both peoples' deeds are worth recording.

so then, since I know that human prosperity never continues steadfast, I shall make mention of both indifferently.

Hdt. 1.5

A programme for the whole work: small and great cities alike will be treated, because greatness does not last. The idea governs the stories of Croesus, Polycrates and Xerxes.

Thus then, O Croesus, man is altogether a creature of accident.

Hdt. 1.32

Solon's verdict, after reckoning up the days of a seventy-year life. It is the moral centre of Book 1 and one of the work's most quoted sayings.

For no one is so senseless as to choose of his own will war rather than peace, since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

Hdt. 1.87

Croesus, saved from the pyre, explains to Cyrus why he went to war. War reverses the natural order of the generations. (Macaulay's text as transmitted lacks 'than' after 'rather'.)

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Book 2: Euterpe: Egypt

Summary

Cambyses, son of Cyrus, prepares to invade Egypt, and Herodotus turns to describe the country. He begins with the Egyptian claim to be the oldest people and King Psammetichus' experiment of raising two infants without speech to discover the first language. He discusses the land itself, which he calls a gift of the river, the extent of Egypt, and the sources and summer flooding of the Nile, rejecting three Greek theories and proposing his own.

He then describes Egyptian customs, many of which reverse Greek ones: women trade in the market while men weave at home, and so on. He discusses Egyptian religion and its relation to Greek religion, claiming that the Greeks took the names of most of their gods from Egypt; sacred animals, festivals, embalming and the methods of mummification; and the Egyptian way of life.

The second half is a history of the Egyptian kings, drawn largely from priests at Memphis. It includes Sesostris' conquests; the story that Helen never reached Troy but was kept in Egypt by King Proteus while the Greeks besieged an empty city; the clever thief who robbed the treasury of Rhampsinitus; the pyramid-builders Cheops and Chephren, remembered as oppressors, and the pious Mycerinus. It ends with the Saite kings, Psammetichus, Necho, Apries and Amasis, the philhellene pharaoh whose reign brings the narrative back to the Persian conquest.

Analysis

Book 2 is the longest of Herodotus' ethnographies and the best evidence for his methods. He separates what he saw, what he judged and what he heard, and he states openly that he records tales without vouching for them. His account of the Nile flood engages with the natural science of his day, and his argument that the Delta was formed by river silt is an early piece of geological reasoning (Asheri 2007) (Thomas 2000).

The book also tests Greek self-understanding. Egypt is older, more pious and more learned than Greece; Greek religion is shown to be partly borrowed, and Greek genealogies look very short beside the priests' lists of kings. The reversal of customs is not mockery but a way of thinking about difference: Egypt is a mirror in which the Greek reader sees his own habits as one possibility among others (Hartog 1988).

The Helen story shows Herodotus as a critic of epic. He argues on grounds of probability that the Trojans would have given Helen back if they had had her, and suggests that Homer knew the Egyptian version but chose the one better suited to his poem. Herodotus defines his own enterprise partly against the poets, while sharing their moral view that great wrongs bring great punishment from the gods.

the Egypt to which the Hellenes come in ships is a land which has been won by the Egyptians as an addition, and that it is a gift of the river

Hdt. 2.5

The famous phrase 'gift of the river': the cultivated land of Egypt is built from Nile mud. Herodotus supports a claim from informants with his own observation.

for among them the women frequent the market and carry on trade, while the men remain at home and weave

Hdt. 2.35

The start of the catalogue of reversed customs. Egypt is presented as the inverse of Greece, an approach that tells us as much about Greek norms as about Egyptian life.

Now as to the tales told by the Egyptians, any man may accept them to whom such things appear credible; as for me, it is to be understood throughout the whole of the history that I write by hearsay that which is reported by the people in each place.

Hdt. 2.123

A key statement of method: Herodotus reports what he is told and leaves the reader free to judge. Compare 7.152.

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Book 3: Thaleia: Cambyses and Darius

Summary

Cambyses invades Egypt, defeats Psammenitus, son of Amasis, at Pelusium and takes Memphis. He tests the captive king by parading his daughter as a slave and his son to execution; Psammenitus weeps only for a ruined friend. Cambyses' expeditions against Carthage, Ammon and the 'long-lived' Ethiopians fail. Back in Memphis he stabs the sacred Apis bull, and Herodotus describes his growing madness: he kills his brother Smerdis, his sister-wife and many Persians, and mocks Egyptian rites.

A long section tells the story of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, whose unbroken success alarms his ally Amasis. On Amasis' advice he throws his most precious ring into the sea, but it comes back to him inside a fish. Amasis breaks off the friendship, and Polycrates is later lured to the mainland by the Persian governor Oroetes and crucified. Herodotus also narrates the Spartan expedition against Samos and the feud between Periander of Corinth and his son Lycophron.

In Persia a Magus impersonating the dead Smerdis seizes the throne. Cambyses dies of a self-inflicted wound. Seven Persian nobles discover the imposture and kill the Magi, then debate the best constitution: Otanes argues for rule of the people, Megabyzus for oligarchy, Darius for monarchy. Darius becomes king through a trick with his horse. Herodotus lists the satrapies and their tribute, describes India, Arabia and the edges of the earth, and ends with Darius' recovery of rebellious Babylon through the self-mutilation of Zopyrus.

Analysis

Cambyses is Herodotus' portrait of the despot who violates nomos, the customs and sacred rules of others. The famous chapter on custom (3.38) draws the conclusion explicitly: every people thinks its own customs best, so only a madman would mock them. The anecdote of Darius and the Callatians, who eat their dead parents, is an early statement of cultural relativism, though Herodotus uses it to condemn Cambyses rather than to suspend judgement altogether (Thomas 2000) (Munson 2001).

Polycrates' ring is the clearest illustration of the idea that the divine resents unbroken prosperity. Amasis' advice to accept a voluntary loss fails because fate cannot be bargained with. The story looks back to Croesus and forward to Xerxes (Harrison 2000).

The Constitutional Debate is the earliest surviving piece of Greek political theory in which monarchy, oligarchy and democracy are compared. Herodotus insists that these speeches were really made, although 'some Greeks' doubted it; most modern scholars think the arguments are Greek and sophistic in character, set in a Persian frame. The debate matters for the rest of the work, where Greek freedom under law is contrasted with the rule of one man (Pelling 2002).

thus all think that their own customs are by far the best: and so it is not likely that any but a madman would make a jest of such things.

Hdt. 3.38

The conclusion Herodotus draws from Cambyses' outrages. Custom (nomos) is the deepest force in human societies.

Thus then these things are established by usage, and I think that Pindar spoke rightly in his verse, when he said that "of all things law is king."

Hdt. 3.38

Pindar's line 'nomos is king of all' closes the chapter. Macaulay's 'law' translates nomos, which also means custom.

On the other hand the rule of many has first a name attaching to it which is the fairest of all names, that is to say 'Equality'

Hdt. 3.80

Otanes praises isonomiē, 'equality before the law', the slogan of Greek democracy, set improbably in the mouth of a Persian noble.

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Book 4: Melpomene: Scythia and Libya

Summary

Darius decides to punish the Scythians, nomads north of the Black Sea, for their invasion of Asia long before. Herodotus tells the Scythians' own myths of their origin and the Greek version involving Heracles, and describes the northern peoples on the fringes of the known world, the legendary Hyperboreans and the poet Aristeas. He mocks the symmetrical world-maps of the Ionians and sets out his own geography of Asia, Libya and Europe, including the voyage of Phoenicians sent by Necho, who sailed round Libya.

He then describes the Scythians in detail: their rivers, gods, sacrifices, the drinking of enemies' blood and the taking of scalps, divination, oaths, and royal burials with strangled servants and horses. Two stories warn of the danger of adopting foreign customs: the wise Anacharsis and King Scyles are both killed for practising Greek rites. The tale of the Amazons who married young Scythians explains the origin of the Sauromatae.

Darius bridges the Bosporus and the Danube and marches into Scythia. The Scythians retreat, fill wells and burn pasture, and refuse battle; their king Idanthyrsus tells Darius that they have no cities or crops to defend. They send Darius a bird, a mouse, a frog and five arrows, a riddle he misreads. Darius retreats to the Danube, where the Ionian tyrants, persuaded by Histiaeus of Miletus, keep the bridge for him against the advice of Miltiades. The book ends with Libya: the foundation of Cyrene, the vengeful queen Pheretime, the Persian expedition against Barca, and a survey of the Libyan peoples.

Analysis

The Scythians are in many ways the opposite of the Egyptians: young rather than ancient, nomadic rather than settled, without cities or monuments. François Hartog argued that Herodotus constructs them as the 'other' of the Greeks, and in particular of Athens, through a rhetoric of inversion; critics have since pointed out how much genuine information his account contains, some of it confirmed by archaeology of the steppe burials (Hartog 1988) (Asheri 2007).

The campaign against Scythia anticipates Xerxes' invasion of Greece: a great king crosses water on a bridge, invades a poorer people who resist, and fails. The Scythian strategy is the success of freedom without wealth, and Idanthyrsus' proud answer about having no masters but Zeus anticipates the Spartan Demaratus in Book 7.

Herodotus' geography combines scepticism and inquiry. He doubts the stream of Ocean and laughs at maps drawn with a compass, but he records the Phoenician report that the sun was on their right as they sailed round Libya, which he did not believe. To a modern reader the detail he rejects is the best evidence that the voyage really took place.

And they reported a thing which I cannot believe, but another man may, namely that in sailing round Libya they had the sun on their right hand.

Hdt. 4.42

Sailing west round the southern tip of Africa, the sailors would indeed have had the sun to the north. Herodotus' scruple in recording what he doubts preserves the clue.

for they who have neither cities founded nor walls built, but all carry their houses with them and are mounted archers, living not by the plough but by cattle, and whose dwellings are upon cars, these assuredly are invincible and impossible to approach.

Hdt. 4.46

The Scythians' one great discovery is their way of life itself, which makes conquest impossible.

About fighting let so much as has been said suffice; but as to masters, I acknowledge none over me but Zeus my ancestor

Hdt. 4.127

Idanthyrsus refuses to acknowledge Darius as master; the sentence goes on to name Hestia, queen of the Scythians, as his only other master. Freedom from a master links the Scythians to the Greeks of Book 7.

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Book 5: Terpsichore: The Ionian Revolt

Summary

Darius' general Megabazus subdues Thrace and the Paeonians, and receives the submission of Macedon, where the young prince Alexander has the Persian envoys murdered for insulting Macedonian women. Darius takes Histiaeus of Miletus to Susa as an honoured counsellor, leaving Aristagoras in charge of Miletus. After a failed attack on Naxos, Aristagoras, fearing punishment, raises Ionia in revolt in 499 BC.

Aristagoras seeks help in Sparta, carrying a bronze map of the world, but King Cleomenes refuses when he learns that Susa is three months' march from the sea; Cleomenes' young daughter Gorgo warns her father against the stranger's bribes. Herodotus then narrates the recent history of Athens: the murder of Hipparchus, the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias with Spartan help, the reforms of Cleisthenes, and the Spartan attempts to restore tyranny, which the Corinthian Socles denounces in a speech about the tyrants Cypselus and Periander.

At Athens Aristagoras succeeds where he had failed at Sparta. Athens sends twenty ships and Eretria five; the Greeks burn Sardis, including the temple of Cybebe. Darius vows revenge and orders a servant to remind him of the Athenians three times at every dinner. The revolt spreads to Caria and Cyprus but begins to falter, and Aristagoras flees to Thrace, where he is killed.

Analysis

Book 5 is where the Persian story and the Greek story meet. Herodotus presents the Ionian Revolt with little sympathy for its leaders: Aristagoras acts from personal fear and ambition, and the Ionians are poorly organised. The Athenian decision to help is marked by an authorial comment of epic weight, 'the beginning of evils', which echoes the ships of Paris in the Iliad and binds the revolt to the larger war (Baragwanath 2008).

The Athenian sections set out a theme that will be central in Books 7 to 9. Herodotus argues that Athens became great only after it was freed from tyranny, because free men work for themselves. Yet in the same book the Athenian assembly is easier to deceive than a single Spartan king. Herodotus' praise of Athenian freedom is never simple flattery (Moles 1996).

Socles' speech is one of the most elaborate pieces of story-telling in the work, a narrative within a speech within a narrative. The image of Thrasybulus cutting off the tallest ears of corn, to teach Periander how to rule, is a compact allegory of tyranny that later writers borrowed.

This proves that when they were kept down they were wilfully slack, because they were working for a master, whereas when they had been set free each one was eager to achieve something for himself.

Hdt. 5.78

Herodotus' own explanation of Athenian success after the end of tyranny: freedom produces energy. The same idea underlies his account of Salamis.

for it would seem that it is easier to deceive many than one, seeing that, though he did not prove able to deceive Cleomenes the Lacedemonian by himself, yet he did this to thirty thousand Athenians.

Hdt. 5.97

An ironic comment on democracy, placed immediately after the praise of Athenian freedom.

These ships proved to be the beginning of evils for the Hellenes and the Barbarians.

Hdt. 5.97

The phrase recalls the ships that carried Paris to Sparta in the Iliad. Herodotus marks the Athenian intervention as the true origin of the Persian Wars.

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Book 6: Erato: Lade and Marathon

Summary

The Ionian fleet gathers at Lade off Miletus in 494 BC. Dionysius of Phocaea drills the crews, but they soon refuse the hard work; in the battle the Samians and others desert, and the Persians win. Miletus is taken and its people enslaved or deported. At Athens the tragedian Phrynichus stages 'The Capture of Miletus' and is fined for reminding the Athenians of their own sufferings. Histiaeus, now a freebooter, is captured and executed.

In 492 Mardonius' expedition loses its fleet in a storm off Mount Athos. Darius sends heralds to demand earth and water from the Greek cities; many submit, including Aegina. Herodotus turns to Sparta: the origins of the dual kingship, the deposition of King Demaratus through the intrigues of his colleague Cleomenes, Demaratus' flight to Persia, and Cleomenes' madness and gruesome death.

In 490 Datis and Artaphernes sack Eretria and land at Marathon, guided by the old tyrant Hippias. The runner Pheidippides, sent to ask Spartan help, meets the god Pan on the way. The Athenian generals are divided, but Miltiades persuades the polemarch Callimachus to fight. The Athenians charge at a run and win, losing 192 men to 6,400 Persians. Herodotus defends the Alcmaeonid family against the charge of signalling to the enemy with a shield, tells how Agariste of Sicyon was courted and how Hippocleides 'danced away his marriage', and ends with Miltiades' failed attack on Paros and his death.

Analysis

Lade is the counter-example to Salamis: a Greek fleet that might have won but lacked discipline and unity. The Phrynichus story is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for Athenian tragedy and its political force, and it suggests the power of representation to wound a community (Hornblower 2017).

Marathon is narrated with surprising economy. Herodotus offers no tactical analysis of the kind a modern historian would want; instead he emphasises the decision to fight, the debate among the generals, and the courage of men who were the first Greeks to face the Medes without fear. The Pheidippides story and the vision of Epizelus show how quickly the battle became surrounded by legend, and how readily Herodotus records it (Hornblower 2017).

The long section on the Alcmaeonids, ending with the dream of Agariste that she would give birth to a lion, shortly before she bore Pericles, has been read as an oblique reflection on Pericles and the Athens of Herodotus' own time. It is typical of the way Herodotus' narrative of the past looks forward to the present of his audience (Fornara 1971).

the Athenians moreover fined the poet a thousand drachmas on the ground that he had reminded them of their own calamities; and they ordered also that no one in future should represent this drama.

Hdt. 6.21

The fate of Phrynichus' 'Capture of Miletus': early evidence for historical tragedy, and for the pain that the Ionian disaster caused at Athens.

for they were the first of all the Hellenes about whom we know who went to attack the enemy at a run, and they were the first also who endured to face the Median garments and the men who wore them

Hdt. 6.112

Herodotus' account of the Athenian charge at Marathon stresses moral firsts rather than tactics. Note the caution of 'about whom we know'.

"Thou hast danced away thy marriage however, son of Tisander!" and Hippocleides answered and said: "Hippocleides cares not!"

Hdt. 6.129

The comic climax of the wooing of Agariste. Herodotus gives the origin of a proverb, and lightens the political narrative with a story of aristocratic folly.

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Book 7: Polymnia: Xerxes and Thermopylae

Summary

Darius dies while preparing a new invasion, and his son Xerxes inherits the plan. At a council Mardonius urges war and Xerxes' uncle Artabanus warns against it; Xerxes is persuaded first by Artabanus and then, by a recurring dream, to march. Huge preparations follow: a canal through the Athos peninsula and bridges over the Hellespont. When a storm breaks the first bridges, Xerxes has the strait whipped and fettered. At Abydos he reviews his forces from a marble throne and weeps at the thought that none of them will be alive in a hundred years.

At Doriscus Herodotus catalogues the army and fleet, people by people. Xerxes asks the exiled Spartan king Demaratus whether the Greeks will fight; Demaratus replies that the Spartans are free but obey law as a master. The Greeks meanwhile debate their response. Many cities submit; Argos stays neutral. The Athenians receive a terrifying oracle and then a second that promises a 'wooden wall'; Themistocles interprets it as the fleet. Herodotus states that the Athenians, by choosing to fight, were the saviours of Greece. Embassies to Gelon of Syracuse, Corcyra and Crete fail.

The Greeks abandon the pass of Tempe and decide to hold Thermopylae by land and Artemisium by sea. Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and allies holds the pass for two days, until the Malian Ephialtes shows the Persians a mountain path. Leonidas dismisses most of the allies and fights to the death with the Spartans, Thespians and Thebans. Herodotus records the sayings of the Spartan Dieneces and the epitaphs set up on the battlefield, and the book ends with Demaratus' secret message to Sparta warning of the invasion.

Analysis

Xerxes is the most complex of Herodotus' kings. He is not simply a tyrant: he weeps for human mortality, is generous to Pythius until he is crossed, and listens to advice. But the council scene and the dreams suggest that the war is both a human choice and something the gods have decided. Artabanus' speech on the god who 'cuts short' all that stands out above the rest gives the theological frame in which the invasion must fail (Harrison 2000) (Baragwanath 2008).

The whipping of the Hellespont is the central symbol of transgression. A Persian king tries to master the sea, the boundary between Asia and Europe, and treats a natural element as a slave. The Athenian Aeschylus, in his Persians of 472 BC, had already made the bridging of the Hellespont a sign of impiety; Herodotus develops the image with greater nuance (Hall 1989).

The conversations between Xerxes and Demaratus set out the opposition between despotic and free obedience. Spartan soldiers fight not from fear of the whip but from fear of law, and Thermopylae demonstrates the claim. The famous epitaph for the Spartans, attributed by later writers to Simonides, turns the defeat into a moral victory and an act of obedience to the laws (Dewald 2006).

Thou seest how God strikes with thunderbolts the creatures which stand above the rest and suffers them not to make a proud show; while those which are small do not provoke him to jealousy

Hdt. 7.10

Artabanus warns Xerxes: the divine levels whatever is too great. The speech restates the lesson of Solon in Book 1.

it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by.

Hdt. 7.46

Xerxes weeps at the Hellespont. The scene gives the invader a moment of humanity, and Artabanus answers that life holds worse sorrows than its brevity.

for though free, yet they are not free in all things, for over them is set Law as a master, whom they fear much more even than thy people fear thee.

Hdt. 7.104

Demaratus explains Spartan courage to Xerxes. The paradox of free men ruled by law is the core of Herodotus' contrast between Greek and Persian.

"Stranger, report this word, we pray, to the Spartans, that lying Here in this spot we remain, faithfully keeping their laws."

Hdt. 7.228

The epitaph for the Spartans at Thermopylae, in Macaulay's verse rendering of the elegiac couplet.

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Book 8: Urania: Artemisium and Salamis

Summary

The Greek fleet, with Athens supplying the most ships but Sparta holding the command under Eurybiades, fights three inconclusive battles off Artemisium while storms wreck part of the Persian fleet. After Thermopylae falls the Greeks withdraw. The Persians march through Phocis; an attack on Delphi is driven back, Herodotus reports, by thunderbolts, falling rocks and divine warriors. The Athenians evacuate their city to Salamis, Troezen and Aegina, and the Persians take and burn the Acropolis.

At Salamis the Peloponnesian commanders want to retreat to the Isthmus. Themistocles, prompted by Mnesiphilus, argues that the narrow straits favour the Greeks and threatens to take the Athenians away to Italy. When this fails, he secretly sends his slave Sicinnus to tell Xerxes that the Greeks are about to flee; the Persians block the straits. Aristides, crossing from Aegina, confirms the encirclement. On the Persian side, Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, alone advises Xerxes not to fight at sea.

In the battle the Greeks win decisively. Artemisia, pursued, rams a ship on her own side and is taken by Xerxes, watching from the shore, for a heroine. Xerxes, alarmed, sends his fleet home and retreats to Asia, leaving Mardonius with a picked army. Themistocles extorts money from the islanders and wins honours at Sparta. Through Alexander of Macedon, Mardonius offers the Athenians generous terms; they refuse in a speech on the common identity of the Greeks.

Analysis

Themistocles dominates Book 8. He is brilliant, persuasive and unscrupulous; Herodotus credits him with the strategy that won Salamis, but often attributes his best ideas to others and notes his greed and his eye to the future, including a possible refuge with the king. This mixture probably reflects both the hostile Athenian tradition about Themistocles, who was later exiled and ended his life in Persian service, and Herodotus' interest in the ambiguity of cleverness (Baragwanath 2008).

Artemisia, a woman commanding ships, is one of Herodotus' most striking figures, and the fact that she came from his own city may explain his interest. Her good advice is ignored, like that of so many wise advisers, and her deceptive manoeuvre in the battle exposes the limits of Xerxes' vision: he sees only what seems to happen. His comment on his men and women inverts the gender roles of the Greek battlefield (Munson 2001).

The Athenian reply to Alexander states one of the very few definitions of Greekness in classical literature: shared blood, language, religion and customs. It is a high point of Athenian heroism in the work. Yet Herodotus' audience knew that within a generation Athens was ruling many of these same Greeks as an empire, and the speech gains irony from that knowledge (Stadter 1992).

"My men have become women, and my women men."

Hdt. 8.88

Xerxes, mistaking Artemisia's act of self-preservation for valour, inverts Greek assumptions about gender and courage.

then secondly there is the bond of Hellenic race, by which we are of one blood and of one speech, the common temples of the gods and the common sacrifices, the manners of life which are the same for all

Hdt. 8.144

The Athenians' refusal to make terms with Persia. Greekness is defined by kinship, language, religion and custom, not by any single state.

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Book 9: Calliope: Plataea and Mycale

Summary

Mardonius reoccupies Athens in 479 BC. The Athenians appeal to Sparta, which delays while celebrating the Hyacinthia and finishing its wall across the Isthmus, then suddenly sends five thousand Spartans under the regent Pausanias. At a banquet in Thebes a Persian tells his Greek neighbour that most of the army will soon die and that he can do nothing about it. The armies face each other near Plataea in Boeotia; the Greeks kill the Persian cavalry commander Masistius, and both sides wait for days as the seers forbid attack.

After a disorderly night withdrawal by the Greeks, during which the Spartan officer Amompharetus refuses to retreat, Mardonius attacks. The Spartans and Tegeans break the Persian infantry and Mardonius is killed. The Greeks storm the Persian camp; Pausanias refuses to mutilate Mardonius' body and contrasts a Persian banquet with a Spartan meal. The same day, the Greek fleet under Leotychides defeats the Persians at Mycale, and the Ionians again revolt.

The last chapters move to Sardis and to the Hellespont. Herodotus tells of Xerxes' passion for the wife of his brother Masistes and then for her daughter Artaynte, and of the queen Amestris' horrible revenge. The Athenians besiege Sestos and crucify the Persian governor Artayctes, who had plundered the shrine of the hero Protesilaus. The work ends with Artembares' old proposal that the Persians should leave their rugged land, and Cyrus' reply.

Analysis

Plataea is the decisive land battle, yet Herodotus describes it as confused: commanders quarrel, the Greek army almost disintegrates, and victory comes from Spartan steadiness rather than any plan. The speech of the Persian at Thebes gives the defeat a tragic dimension from the losing side, in which knowledge without power is the worst human pain (Flower 2002).

Pausanias' restraint after the battle, refusing to treat Mardonius' corpse as Xerxes had treated Leonidas', presents Greek nomos at its best. But Herodotus' audience knew that the same Pausanias later grew arrogant, adopted Persian dress and was disgraced; the two dinners carry a warning about the seductions of empire (Flower 2002).

The ending has puzzled readers. Herodotus does not finish with a victory but with a crucifixion and an anecdote from the time of Cyrus. Many critics now see this as deliberate: the punishment of Artayctes by Athenians, at the start of their own maritime empire, and Cyrus' warning that rulers who seek softer lands become subjects, invite the reader to apply the lessons of Persia to the victors (Dewald 1997) (Moles 1996).

and the most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event.

Hdt. 9.16

A Persian guest at Thebes foresees the defeat. Herodotus names his informant, Thersander of Orchomenus, giving this moment unusual documentary weight.

Hellenes, for this reason I assembled you together, because I desired to show you the senselessness of this leader of the Medes, who having such fare as this, came to us who have such sorry fare as ye see here, in order to take it away from us.

Hdt. 9.82

Pausanias contrasts Persian luxury with Spartan simplicity. The joke states the Herodotean link between hardship and freedom.

and they chose rather to dwell on poor land and be rulers, than to sow crops in a level plain and be slaves to others.

Hdt. 9.122

The last sentence of the Histories. Cyrus' lesson about hard lands and hard men ends the work with a warning that applies as much to victorious Greeks as to Persians.

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Characters

Narrator

Herodotus (the narrator): The narrator is a strong presence throughout, speaking in the first person to comment, compare sources, express doubt or belief, and refuse to tell some sacred stories. His voice is curious, ironic and humane. He travels, questions informants, weighs evidence and admits ignorance, and his persona is itself a major creation of the work.

Lydians

Croesus: King of Lydia, the first barbarian to subject Greeks to tribute. Rich and pious, he believes himself the happiest of men until he loses his son and his kingdom. Saved from the pyre, he becomes a wise adviser to Cyrus and Cambyses, though his advice to Cyrus leads to disaster. He embodies the instability of fortune.
Gyges and Candaules: Candaules, king of Lydia, forces his bodyguard Gyges to see his wife naked; the queen then makes Gyges kill the king and take the throne. Their story explains the origin of Croesus' dynasty and the punishment that falls on it in the fifth generation.

Greeks

Solon: The Athenian lawgiver, whose visit to Croesus is a moral fable rather than history. He refuses to call the king happy and teaches that one must look to the end. His sayings frame the work's view of human fortune.
Polycrates: Tyrant of Samos, whose unbroken good fortune makes his ally Amasis fear the envy of the gods. He casts away his ring, which returns to him, and is later lured to his death and crucified by the Persian Oroetes.
Histiaeus: Tyrant of Miletus, who saves Darius' bridge over the Danube and is rewarded with a place at court in Susa. He secretly encourages the Ionian Revolt, then ends as a pirate, captured and beheaded by the Persians.
Aristagoras: Histiaeus' son-in-law and deputy at Miletus, who starts the Ionian Revolt to escape punishment for the failed attack on Naxos. He fails to win Sparta but persuades Athens, and dies in Thrace.
Cleomenes: Energetic and violent king of Sparta, who refuses Aristagoras, intervenes in Athenian politics and engineers the deposition of Demaratus. He dies mad, mutilating himself; Herodotus records several explanations, divine and human.
Demaratus: Spartan king deposed by the intrigues of Cleomenes, who flees to Persia and accompanies Xerxes. In conversation with the king he explains Spartan courage and freedom under law; at the end of Book 7 he secretly warns Sparta of the invasion.
Miltiades: Athenian aristocrat, formerly tyrant in the Chersonese, who urged the Ionians to destroy Darius' bridge. As general he persuades the Athenians to fight at Marathon, but his later expedition against Paros fails and he dies of a gangrenous wound.
Leonidas: King of Sparta who commands the Greek force at Thermopylae and dies there with his three hundred Spartans, fulfilling an oracle that either Sparta or a Spartan king must perish.
Themistocles: Athenian statesman who interprets the 'wooden wall' oracle as the fleet and engineers the battle of Salamis by persuasion, threat and deceit. Herodotus admires his intelligence but notes his greed and his calculations about his own future.
Pausanias: Spartan regent and commander of the Greek army at Plataea. He refuses to mutilate Mardonius' corpse and mocks Persian luxury; Herodotus hints at his later arrogance and fall.

Persians

Cyrus the Great: Founder of the Persian Empire (ruled c. 559 to 530 BC). Exposed as an infant by his grandfather Astyages and saved by a herdsman's wife, he overthrows the Medes and conquers Lydia, Ionia and Babylon. He is shrewd and often generous, but dies attacking the Massagetae. His saying about soft lands closes the work.
Cambyses: Son of Cyrus and conqueror of Egypt (ruled 530 to 522 BC). Herodotus presents him, perhaps following hostile Egyptian sources, as a mad despot who mocks the customs and gods of others, kills his brother and sister, and dies of a wound in the thigh where he had struck the Apis bull.
Darius I: One of the seven conspirators against the Magus, he becomes king (522 to 486 BC) and organises the empire into satrapies. He is a capable, calculating ruler who invades Scythia without success and sends the expedition defeated at Marathon. His test of Greeks and Callatians shows the force of custom.
Otanes: The Persian noble who first suspects the false Smerdis and who, in the Constitutional Debate, argues for the rule of the people. When outvoted he withdraws from the contest for the throne on condition that his family remains free.
Xerxes: Son of Darius and king of Persia (486 to 465 BC), who leads the great invasion of Greece. Herodotus portrays him as capable of grandeur, pity and generosity, but also of arrogance and cruelty: he whips the Hellespont, mutilates Leonidas' body and is ruled by his passions. His failure is the climax of the work's pattern of over-reaching.
Artabanus: Xerxes' uncle, the wise adviser of Book 7, who warns against the invasion and speaks of the god who cuts down what is great. He is persuaded by a dream to change his mind.
Artemisia: Queen of Halicarnassus, Herodotus' own city, who commands ships in Xerxes' fleet. She gives the king sound advice not to fight at Salamis and escapes in the battle by ramming an allied ship, winning Xerxes' praise.
Mardonius: Xerxes' cousin and brother-in-law, who urges the invasion and remains in Greece after Salamis. He offers Athens terms, reoccupies the city, and is killed at Plataea.

Others

Tomyris: Queen of the nomadic Massagetae, who warns Cyrus not to cross the Araxes. When he captures her son by a trick, she defeats and kills him, and fulfils her promise to give him his fill of blood.

Egyptians

Amasis: Pharaoh of Egypt (ruled 570 to 526 BC), a man of common birth, witty and friendly to Greeks, who advises Polycrates to throw away his dearest possession. He dies just before the Persian invasion.

Scythians

Idanthyrsus: King of the Scythians during Darius' invasion, who refuses battle and answers Darius' demand for submission with defiance, acknowledging no master but his gods.

Themes

Inquiry, memory and the historian's voice

The Histories begins by naming its project as historiē, inquiry, and its first purpose as memory: to keep great deeds from being forgotten. Herodotus combines the epic poet's concern for glory with the investigator's concern for evidence. He tells us what he saw, what he was told and by whom, what he believes and what he does not, and he often sets competing versions side by side.

This openness about method is itself a theme. Herodotus makes the reader a partner in judging evidence, and he warns that he reports what is said without being bound to believe it. Modern scholars disagree about how far his citations of sources are genuine, but no one doubts that he invented the self-conscious, argumentative voice of the historian (Dewald 2006) (Lateiner 1989).

The instability of fortune

From the preface onward Herodotus insists that human prosperity does not last. Croesus, Polycrates, Cambyses and Xerxes all rise to great heights and fall. Solon's teaching that man is a creature of accident and that no one should be called happy before his end is repeated, in different words, by Amasis, Artabanus and others.

The theme is not merely fatalistic. It invites humility and moderation, and it explains why Herodotus treats small cities as seriously as great ones. It also shapes his narrative patterns: rises and falls, warnings ignored, and endings that echo beginnings (Immerwahr 1966) (Harrison 2000).

Custom (nomos)

Herodotus describes the customs of dozens of peoples, from Egyptian embalmers to Scythian scalp-takers, and he concludes that every people holds its own customs best. Custom is 'king of all': it determines what people eat, how they treat their dead, whom they marry and what they will die for.

Respect for the customs of others is therefore a mark of wisdom and sanity, and violating them, as Cambyses does, is a sign of madness. But nomos also means law, and for the Greeks, especially the Spartans, obedience to law is the basis of freedom. The theme links the ethnographies to the war narrative (Thomas 2000) (Munson 2001).

Freedom and despotism

The war between Greeks and Persians is presented as a contest between free peoples and the subjects of a king. Demaratus tells Xerxes that Spartans fear law more than Persians fear him; Persian soldiers are driven into battle with whips; the Athenians, freed from tyranny, become energetic and successful.

Yet Herodotus does not make this a simple contrast between Greek virtue and barbarian vice. Persians can be brave, wise and honest, and Greeks can be treacherous, divided and greedy. Many Greek cities submit to Persia, and the Greek tyrants and the later Athenian empire show that the drive to rule others is not confined to Asia (Gould 1989) (Pelling 2019).

Boundaries, transgression and empire

Herodotus' empires grow by crossing boundaries: Croesus crosses the Halys, Cyrus the Araxes, Darius the Bosporus and the Danube, Xerxes the Hellespont. These crossings are physical, but they are also moral, since they mark a desire for more than one's share. The whipping of the Hellespont is the most vivid image of a ruler treating nature itself as a slave.

Expansion is presented as almost a law of empire: each Persian king feels bound to add to what his predecessors won. The pattern raises questions about Athens, which after 479 BC began to extend its own power across the sea (Moles 1996) (Stadter 1992).

Reciprocity, revenge and the divine

Much of the action is driven by reciprocity: gifts and favours repaid, wrongs avenged. Harpagus avenges his son, Tomyris her son, Darius the burning of Sardis, the Athenians the destruction of their temples. Herodotus often explains events at several levels at once: the human motive of revenge, the working of fate, and the divine punishment of excess (tisis, 'retribution').

The gods rarely appear directly, but oracles, dreams and portents show that events are shaped by forces beyond human control. Herodotus is cautious about what can be known of the gods, yet he sees their hand in the great reversals of history (Harrison 2000) (Gould 1989).

Motifs

Oracles and their misreading

Oracles, especially from Delphi, punctuate the work, from Croesus' 'great empire' to the Athenian 'wooden wall'. They are usually true, but ambiguous; disaster comes from interpreting them carelessly or as one wishes. The motif shows both the limits of human understanding and the value of careful interpretation.

The wise adviser

Again and again a ruler is warned by a wise counsellor: Solon and Sandanis advise Croesus, Croesus advises Cyrus, Amasis advises Polycrates, Artabanus and Demaratus advise Xerxes, Artemisia advises against Salamis. The advice is usually right and usually ignored, and the pattern reinforces the theme of human blindness (Lattimore 1939).

Wonders

Herodotus promises to record 'works great and marvellous', and the work is full of wonders (thōmata): the pyramids, the walls of Babylon, the gold-digging ants of India, the Nile, Arion's dolphin. Wonder is a mode of inquiry, a stimulus to investigate rather than mere entertainment (Munson 2001).

Dreams and portents

Dreams warn Croesus of his son's death, Astyages of his grandson's power, Xerxes to invade Greece and Agariste of the birth of Pericles. Portents such as eclipses, rain in Thebes or the leaping of dead fish signal great changes. They point to a pattern of events that human actors cannot see clearly.

Banquets

Dinners are scenes of revelation and danger: Harpagus is served his own son, Hippocleides dances away his marriage, a Persian at Thebes foretells defeat, and Pausanias contrasts Persian and Spartan meals. The table becomes a place where character, culture and fate are exposed.

Symbols

The Hellespont

The strait between Asia and Europe is the most important boundary in the work. Xerxes' bridge, his whipping of the water and his weeping over his army at Abydos make it a symbol of the arrogance and fragility of empire; the last episode of the work, at Sestos, returns to the same waters.

Polycrates' ring

The ring that returns in the belly of a fish stands for the impossibility of escaping one's destiny by a token sacrifice. It is the clearest image of the divine envy of excessive good fortune.

The Nile

The Nile, which creates Egypt with its silt and floods in summer against the pattern of other rivers, symbolises Egypt's strangeness and antiquity, and also Herodotus' method: it is a puzzle to be solved by observation and argument.

The wooden wall

The Delphic oracle's promise that a wooden wall would save Athens becomes a symbol of Athenian resourcefulness and of the fleet that defeated Persia and later made Athens an imperial power.

Critical debates

Father of history or father of lies?

Herodotus' reliability has been questioned since antiquity. Thucydides implicitly dismisses predecessors who aimed to please, and Plutarch accused Herodotus of malice and invention. In modern times Detlev Fehling argued that many of Herodotus' source citations are literary fictions, constructed by rule to give authority to stories he invented or adapted (Fehling 1989).

Others have defended him vigorously. W. Kendrick Pritchett, calling Fehling and his followers the 'liar school', set out archaeological and topographical evidence that Herodotus' reports are often accurate (Pritchett 1993). Most scholars now take a middle position: Herodotus is a careful collector of oral tradition whose material is shaped by his informants, his literary aims and the conventions of his age, and who should be read critically but not dismissed (Luraghi 2001) (Asheri 2007).

The unity of the work

Felix Jacoby argued in 1913 that Herodotus began as a geographer and ethnographer in the tradition of Hecataeus and only later became a historian of the Persian Wars, so that the Histories combine separate earlier lectures. This 'developmental' view explained the long ethnographies of Books 2 and 4 as remnants of a different project.

Henry Immerwahr and later critics argued instead that the work is a carefully constructed whole, organised by recurring patterns of rise and fall, by chains of cause and effect, and by the logic of Persian expansion. The ethnographies are now generally read as integral to the argument, since they set out the customs and freedoms that are at stake in the war (Immerwahr 1966) (Fornara 1971) (Gould 1989).

Greeks and barbarians

Plutarch called Herodotus philobarbaros, 'friend of barbarians', and his even-handed preface and admiration for Egyptian and Persian customs support the charge. On the other hand the war narrative relies on a sharp contrast between Greek freedom and Persian despotism.

Edith Hall has shown how Athenian tragedy, especially after the Persian Wars, invented the barbarian as the opposite of the Greek (Hall 1989), and François Hartog read Herodotus' ethnographies as a 'mirror' in which the Greek self is defined by inversion (Hartog 1988). Critics such as Rosaria Vignolo Munson and Rosalind Thomas have stressed instead the variety and curiosity of Herodotus' representations, which often undermine simple oppositions and implicate the Greeks in the faults attributed to others (Munson 2001) (Thomas 2000).

Herodotus and the Athenian empire

Herodotus completed his work as Athens and Sparta went to war, at a time when the Athenian empire was resented by many Greeks. His praise of Athens as the saviour of Greece in 7.139 is offered almost defiantly, as an opinion that 'most men' will dislike.

Charles Fornara and Philip Stadter argued that the work also contains warnings to the Athenians: the pattern of Persian expansion and fall, the comment on the ease of deceiving a democratic assembly, and the ending at Sestos all suggest that Athens has inherited the Persian role (Fornara 1971) (Stadter 1992). John Moles developed this reading of the final chapters (Moles 1996). Others doubt that Herodotus' history is so pointedly allegorical, but the debate has made readers attentive to the work's contemporary resonances.

Divine and human causation

Herodotus explains events both through human motives and through the gods, fate and divine retribution. Older critics saw a contradiction between his rational inquiry and his piety, or treated the religious explanations as a primitive survival.

Thomas Harrison argued that Herodotus' religious beliefs are coherent and seriously held, and that divine and human explanations are compatible levels of causation rather than rivals (Harrison 2000). John Gould and Christopher Pelling have shown how Herodotus layers motives, from personal revenge to imperial necessity, and leaves room for the reader to weigh them (Gould 1989) (Pelling 2019) (Baragwanath 2008).

The speeches and the Constitutional Debate

Herodotus' speeches are not records of what was said: they are his own compositions, though they may preserve traditions. The Constitutional Debate of 3.80 to 82, which Herodotus insists really took place, is the most famous case. Its arguments seem to reflect Greek political thought of the fifth century, and many scholars regard it as a sophistic set-piece placed in a Persian setting.

Christopher Pelling has argued that the debate is carefully integrated into the work: its arguments about monarchy, oligarchy and democracy are tested by the narrative that follows, including the Athenian democracy's mistakes and successes (Pelling 2002). The debate is thus not merely a piece of anachronism but part of Herodotus' reflection on politics.

Herodotus and the intellectual world of his time

Herodotus was once seen as a naive story-teller, separated from the more 'scientific' Thucydides. Rosalind Thomas has shown that he belongs to the intellectual world of the late fifth century: his arguments about the Nile, about climate and character, and about proof and evidence share the vocabulary and methods of the Hippocratic doctors and the sophists (Thomas 2000).

Robert Fowler has placed Herodotus among the early Greek prose writers and mythographers, showing both his debts and his originality (Fowler 1996). Arnaldo Momigliano's classic essay traced how Herodotus' reputation fell and rose, and argued that his methods of oral inquiry founded a lasting tradition of historical research (Momigliano 1958).

Key passages

to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown

The narrator · Hdt. 1.0 (preface)

The preface states the work's first aim, which is to preserve memory. Like an epic poet, Herodotus wants great deeds and wonders to keep their fame; unlike most poets, he grants that fame equally to Greeks and to non-Greeks. The sentence goes on to name the second aim, explaining causes, which makes this a work of inquiry and not only of praise.

Thus then, O Croesus, man is altogether a creature of accident.

Solon · Hdt. 1.32

Solon tells Croesus that no day of a man's life is like another, so happiness can only be judged at the end. The saying states the work's view of human fortune, and Croesus' fall soon proves it. Readers meet the same idea again in the stories of Polycrates and Xerxes.

since in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

Croesus · Hdt. 1.87

Croesus, saved from the pyre, explains the madness of war through the reversal of the generations. The line has become proverbial. It expresses the pity for human suffering that runs through the work, even in its celebrations of victory.

Thus then these things are established by usage, and I think that Pindar spoke rightly in his verse, when he said that "of all things law is king."

The narrator · Hdt. 3.38

After the story of Darius' experiment with Greeks and Callatians, Herodotus concludes that custom rules human life. The passage is central to his ethnography: respect for the customs of others is a mark of sanity, and Cambyses' contempt for them proves him mad.

These ships proved to be the beginning of evils for the Hellenes and the Barbarians.

The narrator · Hdt. 5.97

Herodotus marks the twenty Athenian ships sent to help the Ionian Revolt as the origin of the Persian Wars. The phrase recalls the ships of Paris in the Iliad, giving the moment an epic resonance, and it hints that Athens bore some responsibility for the suffering that followed.

for God is wont to cut short all those things which stand out above the rest.

Artabanus · Hdt. 7.10

Artabanus warns Xerxes against the invasion of Greece with images of lightning striking the tallest trees and buildings. The speech states the theology of divine envy that underlies Herodotus' stories of the great, and it explains in advance why the vast Persian army will fail.

for though free, yet they are not free in all things, for over them is set Law as a master, whom they fear much more even than thy people fear thee.

Demaratus · Hdt. 7.104

The exiled Spartan king tells Xerxes why the Spartans will fight against any odds. The paradox of men who are free yet ruled by law defines Herodotus' contrast between Greek and Persian, and Thermopylae proves the claim.

if a man should say that the Athenians proved to be the saviours of Hellas, he would not fail to hit the truth

The narrator · Hdt. 7.139

Herodotus gives his own judgement on the Athenian decision to resist Persia. He presents it as an unpopular opinion, since in his own day Athens was the resented ruler of an empire, and he defends it by argument. It is a rare moment where the historian takes an open stand.

I however am bound to report that which is reported, though I am not bound altogether to believe it; and let this saying be considered to hold good as regards every narrative in the history

The narrator · Hdt. 7.152

Discussing the charge that Argos betrayed Greece, Herodotus states a rule that he says governs his whole work. He records the traditions he hears, but the reader must not take this as endorsement. The passage is central to debates about his reliability and method.

and the most hateful grief of all human griefs is this, to have knowledge of the truth but no power over the event.

A Persian guest at Thebes · Hdt. 9.16

Before Plataea a Persian tells his Greek dining companion, with tears, that most of the army will soon die. Herodotus gives the defeated side a voice of tragic insight. The saying is a reflection on human helplessness before fate.

Questions for study

What does Herodotus mean by 'inquiry' (historiē), and how does his preface define the aims of his work?
Look at the two aims of memory and causation, and compare the preface with the opening of an epic poem such as the Iliad.
Why does Herodotus begin with the abduction stories of Io, Europa, Medea and Helen, and then set them aside?
Consider what the stories reveal about how different peoples explain wars, and why Herodotus prefers to start with what he 'knows'.
How does the meeting of Solon and Croesus prepare the reader for the rest of the Histories?
Trace the theme of the instability of fortune through Polycrates, Cambyses and Xerxes, and consider the role of the wise adviser.
What is the function of the long account of Egypt in Book 2 within a history of the Persian Wars?
Think about Egypt as a mirror of Greek customs, about Herodotus' methods of inquiry, and about his criticism of Homer in the Helen story.
Is Herodotus a cultural relativist? Discuss with reference to 3.38.
Weigh the force of 'custom is king' against the fact that he uses the principle to condemn Cambyses, and against his judgements of other peoples' customs.
How does the Scythian campaign in Book 4 anticipate Xerxes' invasion of Greece?
Compare the bridges, the refusal of the Scythians to be ruled, Idanthyrsus' answer to Darius, and Demaratus' speeches in Book 7.
How far is Herodotus' portrait of Xerxes sympathetic?
Consider the council and dreams of Book 7, the weeping at Abydos, the whipping of the Hellespont, and his behaviour at Salamis and in the Masistes story.
What role do the gods play in Herodotus' explanation of events?
Look at oracles, dreams, Artabanus' speech in 7.10 and the portents at Delphi, and ask whether divine and human causes compete or work together.
How does Herodotus present Athens? Is he an admirer or a critic?
Compare 5.78 with 5.97, 7.139 with the Themistocles narrative, and think about the ending at Sestos in the light of the later Athenian empire.
Why does the Histories end with Cyrus' saying about soft and rugged lands rather than with the Greek victory?
Consider ring composition, the theme of empire and luxury, and what a Greek audience around 430 BC might have taken from the warning.

The Histories

Overview

Context

Plot overview

Book by book

Book 1: Clio: Croesus and Cyrus

Summary

Analysis

Book 2: Euterpe: Egypt

Summary

Analysis

Book 3: Thaleia: Cambyses and Darius

Summary

Analysis

Book 4: Melpomene: Scythia and Libya

Summary

Analysis

Book 5: Terpsichore: The Ionian Revolt

Summary

Analysis

Book 6: Erato: Lade and Marathon

Summary

Analysis

Book 7: Polymnia: Xerxes and Thermopylae

Summary

Analysis

Book 8: Urania: Artemisium and Salamis

Summary

Analysis

Book 9: Calliope: Plataea and Mycale

Summary

Analysis

Characters

Narrator

Lydians

Greeks

Persians

Others

Egyptians

Scythians

Themes

Inquiry, memory and the historian's voice

The instability of fortune

Custom (nomos)

Freedom and despotism

Boundaries, transgression and empire

Reciprocity, revenge and the divine

Motifs

Oracles and their misreading

The wise adviser

Wonders

Dreams and portents

Banquets

Symbols

The Hellespont

Polycrates' ring

The Nile

The wooden wall

Critical debates

Father of history or father of lies?

The unity of the work

Greeks and barbarians

Herodotus and the Athenian empire

Divine and human causation

The speeches and the Constitutional Debate

Herodotus and the intellectual world of his time

Key passages

Questions for study

Further reading