History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed/Chapter XIX

by Karl Otfried Müller

CHAPTER XIX.

§ 1. Events of the life of Herodotus. § 2. His travels. § 3. Gradual formation of his work. § 4. Its plan. § 5. Its leading ideas. § 6. Defects and excellencies of his historical researches. § 7. Style of his narrative; character of his language.

§ 1. Herodotus, the son of Lyxes, was, according to a statement of good authority^[1], born in Olymp. 74. 1. B. C. 484, in the period between the first and second Persian wars. His family was one of the most distinguished in the Doric colony of Halicarnassus, and thus became involved in the civil commotions of the city. Halicarnassus was at that time governed by the family of Artemisia, the princess who fought so bravely for the Persians in the battle of Salamis, that Xerxes declared that she was the only man among many women. Lygdamis, the son of Pisindelis, and grandson of Artemisia, was hostile to the family of Herodotus. He killed Panyasis, who was probably the maternal uncle of Herodotus, and who will be mentioned hereafter as one of the restorers of epic poetry; and he obliged Herodotus himself to take refuge abroad. His flight must have taken place about the 82nd Olympiad, B. C. 452.

Herodotus repaired to Samos, the Ionic island, where probably some of his kinsmen resided^[2]. Samos must be looked upon as the second home of Herodotus; in many passages of his work he shows a minute acquaintance with this island and its inhabitants, and he seems to take a pleasure in incidentally mentioning the part played by it in events of importance. It must have been in Samos that Herodotus imbibed the Ionic spirit which pervades his history. Herodotus likewise undertook from Samos the liberation of his native city from the yoke of Lygdamis; and he succeeded in the attempt; but the contest between the nobles and the commons having placed obstacles in the way of his well-intentioned plans, he once more forsook his native city.

Herodotus passed the latter years of his life at Thurii, the great Grecian settlement in Italy, to which so many distinguished men had intrusted their fortunes. It does not however follow from this account that Herodotus was among the first settlers of Thurii; the numbers of the original colonists doubtless received subsequent additions. It is certain that Herodotus did not go to Thurii till after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war; since at the beginning of it he must have been at Athens. He describes a sacred offering, which was on the Acropolis of Athens, by its position with regard to the Propylæa^[3]; now the Propylæa were not finished till the year in which the Peloponnesian war began. Herodotus likewise evidently appears to adopt those views of the relations between the Greek states, which were diffused in Athens by the statesmen of the party of Pericles; and he states his opinion that Athens did not deserve, after her great exploits in the Persian war, to be so envied and blamed by the rest of the Greeks; which was the case just at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war^[4].

Herodotus settled quietly in Thurii, and devoted the leisure of his latter years entirely to his work. Hence he is frequently called by the ancients a Thurian, in reference to the composition of his history.

§ 2. In this short review of the life of Herodotus we have taken no notice of his travels, which are intimately connected with his literary labours. Herodotus did not visit different countries from the accidents of commercial business or political missions; his travels were undertaken from the pure spirit of inquiry, and for that age they were very extensive and important. Herodotus visited Egypt as high up as Elephantine, Libya, at least as far as the vicinity of Cyrene, Phœnicia, Babylon, and probably also Persia; the Greek states on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the contiguous country of the Scythians, as well as Colchis; besides which, he had resided in several states of Greece and Lower Italy, and had visited many of the temples, even the remote one of Dodona. The circumstance of his being, in his capacity of Halicarnassian, a subject of the king of Persia, must have assisted him materially in these travels; an Athenian, or a Greek of any of the states which were in open revolt against Persia, would have been treated as an enemy, and sold as a slave. Hence it may be inferred that the travels of Herodotus, at least those to Egypt and Asia, were performed from Halicarnassus in his youth.

Herodotus, of course, made these inquiries with the view of imparting their results to his countrymen. But it is uncertain whether he had at that time formed the plan of connecting his information concerning Asia and Greece with the history of the Persian war, and of uniting the whole into one great work. When we consider that an intricate and extensive plan of this sort had hitherto been unknow in the historical writings of the Greeks, it can scarcely be doubted that the idea occurred to him at an advanced stage of his inquiries, and that in his earlier years he had not raised his mind above the conception of such works as those of Hecatæus, Charon, and others of his predecessors and contemporaries. Even at a later period of his life, when he was composing his great work, he contemplated writing a separate book upon Assyria (Ἀσσύριοι λόγοι); and it seems that this book was in existence at the time of Aristotle^[5]. In fact, Herodotus might also have made separate books out of the accounts of Egypt, Persia, and Scythia given in his history; and he would, no doubt, have done so, if he had been content to tread in the footsteps of the logographers who preceded him.

§3. It is stated that Herodotus recited his history at different festivals. This statement is, in itself, perfectly credible, as the Greeks of this time, when they had finished a composition with care, and had given it an attractive form, reckoned more upon oral delivery than upon solitary reading. Thucydides, blaming the historians who preceded him, describes them as courting the transient applause of an audience^[6]. The ancient chronologists have also preserved the exact date of a recitation, which took place at the great Panathenæa at Athens, in Olymp. 83. 3. B. C. 446 (when Herodotus was 38 years old). The collections of Athenian decrees contained a decree proposed by Anytus (ψήφισμα Ἀνύτου), from which it appeared that Herodotus received a reward of ten talents from the public treasury^[7]. There is less authority for the story of a recitation at Olympia; and least authority of all for the well-known anecdote, that Thucydides was present at it as a boy, and that he shed tears, drawn forth by his own intense desire for knowledge, and his deep interest in the narrative. To say nothing of the many intrinsic improbabilities of this story, so many anecdotes were invented by the ancients in order to bring eminent men of the same pursuits into connexion with each other, that it is impossible to give any faith to it, without the testimony of more trustworthy witnesses.

The public readings of Herodotus (such as that at the Panathenaic festival) must have been confined to detached portions of his subject, which he afterwards introduced into his work; for example, the history and description of Egypt, or the accounts concerning Persia. His great historical work could not have been composed till the time of the Peloponnesian war. Indeed, his history, and particularly the four last books, are so full of references and allusions to events which occurred in the first period of the war^[8], that he appears to have been diligently occupied with the composition or final revision of it at this time. It is however very questionable whether Herodotus lived into the second period of the Peloponnesian war^[9]. At all events, he must have been occupied with his work till his death, for it seems to be in an unfinished state. There is no obvious reason why Herodotus should have carried down the war between the Greeks and Persians to the taking of Sestos, without mentioning any subsequent event of it^[10]. Besides, in one place he promises to give the particulars of an occurrence in a future part of his work^[11]; a promise which is nowhere fulfilled.

§ 4. The plan of the work of Herodotus is formed upon a notion which, though it cannot in strictness be called true, was very current in his time, and had even been developed, after their fashion, by the learned of Persia and Phœnicia, who were not unacquainted with Greek mythology. The notion is that of an ancient enmity between the Greeks and the nations of Asia. The learned of the East considered the rapes of Io, Medea, and Helen, and the wars which grew out of those events, as single acts of this great conflict; and their main object was to determine which of the two parties had first used violence against the other. Herodotus, however, soon drops these stories of old times, and turns to a prince whom he knows to have been the aggressor in his war against the Greeks. This is Crœsus, king of Lydia. He then proceeds to give a detailed account of the enterprises of Crœsus and the other events of his life; into which are interwoven as episodes, not only the early history of the Lydian kings and of their conflicts with the Greeks, but also some important passages in the history of the Greek states, particularly Athens and Sparta. In this manner Herodotus, in describing the first subjugation of the Greeks by an Asiatic power, at the same time points out the origin and progress of those states by which the Greeks were one day to be liberated. Meanwhile, the attack of Sardis by Cyrus brings the Persian power on the stage in the place of the Lydian; and the narrative proceeds to explain the rise of the Persian from the Median kingdom, and to describe its increase by the subjugation of the nations of Asia Minor and the Babylonians. Whenever the Persians come in contact with other nations, an account, more or less detailed, is given of their history and peculiar usages. Herodotus evidently, as indeed he himself confesses^[12], strives to enlarge his plan by episodes; it is manifestly his object to combine with the history of the conflict between the East and West a vivid picture of the contending nations. Thus to the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses (Book II.) he annexes a description of the country, the people, and their history; the copiousness of which was caused by his fondness for Egypt, on account of its early civilization, and the stability of its peculiar institutions and usages. The history of Cambyses, of the false Smerdis, and of Darius, is continued in the same detailed manner (Book III.); and an account is given of the power of Samos, under Polycrates, and of his tragical end; by which the Persian power began to extend to the islands between Asia and Europe. The institutions established by Darius at the beginning of his reign afford an opportunity of surveying the whole kingdom of Persia, with all its provinces, and their large revenues. With the expedition of Darius against the Scythians (which Herodotus evidently considers as a retaliation for the former incursions of the Scythians into Asia) the Persian power begins to spread over Europe (Book IV.). Herodotus then gives a full account of the north of Europe, of which his knowledge was manifestly much more extensive than that of Hecatæus; and he next relates the great expedition of the Persian army, which, although it did not endanger the freedom of the Scythians, first opened a passage into Europe to the Persians. The kingdom of Persia now stretches on one side to Scythia, on the other over Egypt to Cyrenaica. A Persian army is called in by Queen Pheretime against the Barcæans; which gives Herodotus an opportunity of relating the history of Cyrene, and describing the Libyan nations, as an interesting companion to his description of the nations of northern Europe. While (Book V.) a part of the Persian army, which had remained behind after the Scythian expedition, reduces a portion of the Thracians and the little kingdom of Macedonia under the power of the great king, the great Ionian revolt arises from causes connected with the Scythian expedition, which brings still closer the decisive struggle between Greece and Persia. Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, seeks aid in Sparta and Athens for the Ionians; whereupon the historian takes occasion to continue the history of these and other Greek states, from the point where he had left it (Book I.); and in particular to describe the rapid rise of the Athenians, after they had thrown off the yoke of the Pisistratids. The enterprising spirit of the young republic of Athens is also shown in the interest taken by it in the Ionian revolt, which was begun in a rash and inconsiderate manner, and, having been carried on without sufficient vigour, terminated in a complete defeat (Book VI.). Herodotus next pursues the constantly increasing causes of enmity between Greece and Persia; among which is the flight of the Spartan king Demaratus to Darius. To this event he annexes a detailed explanation of the relations and enmities of the Greek states, in the period just preceding the first Persian war. The expedition against Eretria and Athens was the first blow struck by Persia at the mother country of Greece, and the battle of Marathon was the first glorious signal that this Asiatic power, hitherto unchecked in its encroachments, was there at length to find a limit. From this point the narrative runs in a regular channel, and pursues to the end the natural course of events; the preparations for war, the movements of the army, and the campaign against Greece itself (Book VII.). Even here, however, the narrative moves at a slow pace; and thus keeps the expectation upon the stretch. The march and mustering of the Persian army give full time and opportunity for forming a distinct and complete notion of its enormous force; and the negotiations of the Greek states afford an equally clear conception of their jealousies and dissensions; facts which make the ultimate issue of the contest appear the more astonishing. After the preliminary and undecisive battles of Thermopylæ and Artemisium (Book VIII.), comes the decisive battle of Salamis, which is described with the greatest vividness and animation. This is followed (in Book IX.) by the battle of Platæa, drawn with the same distinctness, particularly as regards all its antecedents and circumstances; together with the contemporaneous battle of Mycale and the other measures of the Greeks for turning their victory to account. Although the work seems unfinished, it concludes with a sentiment which cannot have been placed casually at the end; viz. that (as the great Cyrus was supposed to have said) "It is not always the richest and most fertile country which produces the most valiant men."

§ 5. In this manner Herodotus gives a certain unity to his history; and, notwithstanding the extent of his subject, which comprehends nearly all the nations of the world at that time known, the narrative is constantly advancing. The history of Herodotus has an epic character, not only from the equable and uninterrupted flow of the narrative, but also from certain pervading ideas, which give an uniform tone to the whole. The principal of these is the idea of a fixed destiny, of a wise arrangement of the world, which has prescribed to every being his path; and which allots ruin and destruction, not only to crime and violence, but to excessive power and riches, and the overweening pride which is their companion. In this consists the envy of the gods (φθόνος τῶν θεῶν), so often mentioned by Herodotus; by the other Greeks usually called the divine Nemesis. He constantly adverts, in his narrative, to the influence of this divine power, the Dæmonion, as he also calls it. Thus he shows how the deity visits the sins of the ancestors upon their descendants; how the human mind is blinded by arrogance and recklessness; how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own destruction; and how oracles, which ought to be warning voices against violence and insolence, mislead from their ambiguity, when interpreted by blind passion. Besides the historical narrative itself, the scattered speeches serve rather to enforce certain general ideas, particularly concerning the envy of the gods and the danger of pride, than to characterise the dispositions, views, and modes of thought of the persons represented as speaking. In fact, these speeches are rather the lyric than the dramatic part of the history of Herodotus; and if we compare it with the different parts of a Greek tragedy, they correspond, not to the dialogue, but to the choral songs. Herodotus lastly shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. For, if the eastern princes by their own rashness bring destruction upon themselves, and the Greeks remain the victors, yet he describes the East, with its early civilization, as highly worthy of respect and admiration; he even points out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings of Persia; shows his countrymen how they often owed their successes to divine providence and external advantages, rather than to their own valour and ability; and, on the whole, is anything but a panegyrist of the exploits of the Greeks. So little indeed has he this character, that when the rhetorical historians of later times had introduced a more pretending account of these events, the simple, faithful, and impartial Herodotus was reproached with being actuated by a spirit of calumny, and with seeking to detract from the heroic acts of his countrymen^[13].

§ 6. Since Herodotus saw the working of a divine agency in all human events, and considered the exhibition of it as the main object of his history, his aim is entirely different from that of a historian who regards the events of life merely with reference to man. Herodotus is, in truth, a theologian and a poet as well as an historian. The individual parts of his work are treated entirely in this spirit. His aim is not merely to give the results of common experience in human life. His mind is turned to the extraordinary and the marvellous. In this respect his work bears an uniform colour. The great events which he relates—the gigantic enterprises of princes, the unexpected turns of fortune, and other marvellous occurrences—harmonise with the accounts of the astonishing buildings and other works of the East, of the multifarious and often singular manners of the different nations, the surprising phenomena of nature, and the rare productions and animals of the remote regions of the world. Herodotus presented a picture of strange and astonishing things to his mobile and curious countrymen. It were vain to deny that Herodotus, when he does not describe things which he had himself observed, was often deceived by the misrepresentations of priests, interpreters, and guides; and, above all, by that propensity to boasting and that love of the marvellous which are so common in the East^[14]. Yet, without his singlehearted simplicity, his disposition to listen to every remarkable account, and his admiration (undisturbed by the national prejudices of a Greek) for the wonders of the Eastern world, Herodotus would never have imparted to us many valuable accounts, in which recent inquirers have discovered substantial truth, though mixed with fable. How often have modern travellers, naturalists, and geographers, had occasion to admire the truth and correctness of the observations and information which are contained in the seemingly marvellous narratives of Herodotus! It is fortunate that he was guided by the maxim which he mentions in his account of the circumnavigation of Africa in the reign of Necho. Having expressed his disbelief of the statement that the sailors had the sun on their right hand, he adds: "I must say what has been told to me; but I need not therefore believe all, and this remark applies to my whole work."

Herodotus must have completely familiarised himself with the manners and modes of thought of the Oriental nations. The character of his mind and his style of composition also resemble the Oriental type more than those of any other Greek; and accordingly his thoughts and expressions often remind us of the writings of the Old Testament. It cannot indeed be denied that he has sometimes attributed to the eastern princes ideas which were essentially Greek; as, for example, when he makes the seven grandees of the Persians deliberate upon the respective advantages of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy^[15]. But, on the whole, Herodotus seizes the character of an Oriental monarch, like Xerxes, with striking truth; and transports us into the very midst of the satellites of a Persian despot. It would be more just to reproach Herodotus with a want of that political discernment, in judging the affairs of the Greek states, which had already been awakened among the Athenian statesmen of his time. Moreover, in the events arising from the situation and interests of states, he lays too much stress on the feelings and passions of particular individuals; and ascribes to Greek statesmen (as, for instance, the two Cleisthenes of Sicyon and Athens, in reference to their measures for the division of the people into new tribes) motives entirely different from those by which they appear, on a consideration of the case, to have been really actuated. He likewise relates mere anecdotes and tales, by which the vulgar explained (and still continue to explain) political affairs; where politicians, such as Thucydides and Aristotle, exhibit the true character of the transaction.

§ 7. But no dissertation upon the historical researches or the style of Herodotus can convey an idea of the impression made by reading his work. To those who have read it, all description is superfluous. It is like hearing a person speak who has seen and lived through an infinite variety of the most remarkable things; and whose greatest delight consists in recalling the images of the past, and perpetuating the remembrance of them. He had eager and unwearied listeners, who were not impatient to arrive at the end; and he could therefore complete every separate portion of the history, as if it were an independent narrative. He knew that he had in store other more attractive and striking events; yet he did not hurry his course, as he dwelt with equal pleasure on everything that he had seen or heard. In this manner, the stream of his Ionic language flows on with a charming facility. The character of his style (as is natural in mere narration) is to connect the different sentences loosely together, with many phrases for the purpose of introducing, recapitulating, or repeating a subject. These phrases are characteristic of oral discourse, which requires such contrivances, in order to prevent the speaker, or the hearer, from losing the thread of the story. In this, as in other respects, the language of Herodotus closely approximates to oral narration; of all varieties of prose, it is the furthest removed from a written style. Long sentences, formed of several clauses, are for the most part confined to speeches, where reasons and objections are compared, conditions are stated, and their consequences developed. But it must be confessed that where the logical connexion of different propositions is to be expressed, Herodotus mostly shows a want of skill, and produces no distinct conception of the mutual relations of the several members of the argument. But, with all these defects, his style must be considered as the perfection of the unperiodic style (the λέξις εἰρομένη), the only style employed by his predecessors, the logographers^[16]. To these is to be added the tone of the Ionic dialect,—which Herodotus, although by birth a Dorian, adopted from the historians who preceded him^[17],—with its uncontracted terminations, its accumulated vowels, and its soft forms. These various elements conspire to render the work of Herodotus a production as harmonious and as perfect in its kind as any human work can be.

 

 

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1. Of Pamphila in Gellius N. A. XV. 23.
2. Panyasis too is called a Samian.
3. Herod. V. 77.
4. Compare Herod. VII. 139. with Thuc. II. 8.
5. Aristotle, Hist. An. VIII. 18. mentions the account of the siege of Nineveh in Herodotus (for, although the manuscripts generally read Hesiod, Herodotus is evidently the more, suitable name); that is, undoubtedly, the siege which Herodotus I. 106. promises to describe in his separate work on Assyria (comp. I. 184).
6. Thucyd. I. 21.
7. Plutarch de Malign. Herod. 26.
8. As the expulsion of the Æginetans, the surprise of Platæa, the Archidamian war, and other events. The passages of Herodotus which could not have been written before this time are, III. 160. VI. 91. 98. VII. 137. 233. IX. 73.
9. The passage in IX. 73. which states that the Lacedæmonians, in their devastations of Attica, always spared Decelea and kept at a distance from it (Δεκελέης ἀπέχεσθαι), cannot be reconciled with the siege of Decelea by Agis in Olymp. 91. 3. B.C. 413. The passages VI. 98. and VII. 170. also contain marks of having been written before this time. On the other hand, the passage I. 130. appears to refer to the insurrection of the Medes in Olymp. 93. 1. B. C. 408. (Xen. Hell. I. 2. 19.): on this supposition, however, it is strange that Herodotus should have called Darius Nothus by the simple name Darius without any distinctive adjunct.
10. It may, however, be urged against this view, that the secession of the Spartans and their allies, the formation of the alliance under the supremacy of Athens, and the change in the character of the war from defensive to offensive, made the taking of Sestos a distinctly marked epoch. See Thucyd. I. 89.
11. Herod. VII. 213.
12. Herod. IV. 30. Thus he speaks of the Libyans in the 4th book, only because he thinks that the expedition of the Satrap Aryandes against Barca was in fact directed against all the nations of Libya. See IV. 167.
13. Plutarch's Treatise περὶ τῆς Ἡροδότου κακοηθείας, concerning the malignity of Herodotus.
14. Aristotle, in his Treatise on the Generation of Animals, III. 5, calls him Ἡρόδοτος ὁ μυθολόγος, "Herodotus the story-teller."
15. Herod. III. 80. He afterwards (VI. 43) defends himself against the charge of having represented a Persian as praising democracy, of which the Persians knew nothing. This passage proves that a part at least of Book III. had been published before the entire work was completed.
16. Demetrius de Elocutione, § 12.
17. Nevertheless, according to Hermogenes, p. 513, the Ionic dialect of Hecatæus is alone quite pure; and the dialect of Herodotus is mixed with other expressions.