represented with the taste of Mrs Gamp. II. is a monologue by the Πορνοβοσκός (“Whoremonger”) prosecuting a merchant-trader for breaking into his establishment at night and attempting to carry off one of the inmates, who is produced in court. The vulgar blackguard, who is a stranger to any sort of shame, remarking that he has no evidence to call, proceeds to a peroration in the regular oratorical style, appealing to the Coan judges not to be unworthy of their traditional glories. In fact, the whole oration is also a burlesque in every detail of an Attic speech at law; and in this case we have the material from which to estimate the excellence of the parody. In III. a desperate mother brings to the schoolmaster a truant urchin, with whom neither she nor his incapable old father can do anything. In a voluble stream of interminable sentences she narrates his misdeeds and implores the schoolmaster to flog him. The boy accordingly is hoisted on another’s back and flogged; but his spirit does not appear to be subdued, and the mother resorts to the old man after all. IV. is a visit of two poor women with an offering to the temple of Asclepius at Cos. While the humble cock is being sacrificed, they turn, like the women in the Ion of Euripides, to admire the works of art; among them a small boy strangling a vulpanser—doubtless the work of Boëthus that we know—and a sacrificial procession by Apelles, “the Ephesian,” of whom we have an interesting piece of contemporary eulogy. The oily sacristan is admirably painted in a few slight strokes. V. brings us very close to some unpleasant facts of ancient life. The jealous woman accuses one of her slaves, whom she has made her favourite, of infidelity; has him bound and sent degraded through the town to receive 2000 lashes; no sooner is he out of sight than she recalls him to be branded “at one job.” The only pleasing person in the piece is the little maidservant—permitted liberties as a verna brought up in the house—whose ready tact suggests to her mistress an excuse for postponing execution of a threat made in ungovernable fury. VI. is a friendly chat or a private conversation. The subject is an ugly one, but the dialogue is as clever and amusing as the rest, with some delicious touches. Our interest is engaged here in a certain Kerdon, the artistic shoemaker, to whom we are introduced in VII. (the name had already become generic for the shoemaker as the typical representative of retail trade), a little bald man with a fluent tongue, complaining of hard times, who bluffs and wheedles by turns. VII. opens with a mistress waking up her maids to listen to her dream; but we have only the beginning, and the other fragments are very short.
Within the limits of 100 lines or less Herodas presents us with a highly entertaining scene and with characters definitely drawn. Some of these had been perfected no doubt upon the Attic stage, where the tendency in the 4th century had been gradually to evolve accepted types—not individuals, but generalizations from a class, an art in which Menander’s was esteemed the master-hand. The Πορνοβοσκός and the Μαστροπός we can piece together from succeeding literature, and see how skilfully the established traits are indicated here. This is achieved by true dramatic means, with touches never wasted and the more delightful often because they do not clamour for attention. The execution has the qualities of first-rate Alexandrian work in miniature, such as the epigrams of Asclepiades possess, the finish and firm outlines; and these little pictures bear the test of all artistic work—they do not lose their freshness with familiarity, and gain in interest as one learns to appreciate their subtle points.
The papyrus MS., obtained from the Fayum, is in the possession of the British Museum, and was first printed by F. G. Kenyon in 1891. Editions by O. Crusius (1905, text only, in Teubner series) and J. A. Nairn (1904), with introduction, notes and bibliography. There is an English verse translation of the mimes by H. Sharpley (1906) under the title A Realist of the Aegean. (W. G. H.)
HERODIANS (Ἡρωδιανοί), a sect or party mentioned in
Scripture as having on two occasions—once in Galilee, and again
in Jerusalem—manifested an unfriendly disposition towards
Jesus (Mark iii. 6, xii. 13; Matt. xxii. 6; cf. also Mark viii. 15).
In each of these cases their name is coupled with that of the
Pharisees. According to many interpreters the courtiers or
soldiers of Herod Antipas (“Milites Herodis,” Jerome) are
intended; but more probably the Herodians were a public
political party, who distinguished themselves from the two great
historical parties of post-exilian Judaism by the fact that they
were and had been sincerely friendly to Herod the Great and to
his dynasty (cf. such formations as “Caesariani,” “Pompeiani”).
It is possible that, to gain adherents, the Herodian
party may have been in the habit of representing that the
establishment of a Herodian dynasty would be favourable to
the realization of the theocracy; and this in turn may account
for Tertullian’s (De praescr.) allegation that the Herodians
regarded Herod himself as the Messiah. The sect was called
by the Rabbis Boethusians as being friendly to the family of
Boethus, whose daughter Mariamne was one of Herod the
Great’s wives.
(J. H. A. H.)
HERODIANUS, Greek historian, flourished during the third
century A.D. He is supposed to have been a Syrian Greek.
In 203 he was in Rome, where he held some minor posts. He does
not appear to have attained high official rank; the statement
that he was imperial procurator and legate of the Sicilian provinces
rests upon conjecture only. His historical work (Ἡρωδιανοῦ τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον βασιλείας ἱστοριῶν βιβλία ὀκτώ) narrates
the events of the fifty-eight years between the death of Marcus
Aurelius and the proclamation of Gordianus III. (180–238).
The narrative is of special value as supplementing Dion Cassius,
whose history ends with Alexander Severus. His work has
the value that attaches to a record written by one chronicling
the events of his own times, gifted with ordinary powers of
observation, indubitable candour and independence of view.
But while he gives a lively account of external events—such as
the death of Commodus and the assassination of Pertinax—the
barbarian invasions, the spread of Christianity, the extension
of the franchise by Caracalla are unnoticed. The dates are often
wrong, and little attention is paid to geographical details, which
makes the narrative of military expeditions beyond the borders
of the empire difficult to understand. Herodian has been accused
of prejudice against Alexander Severus. His style, modelled
on that of Thucydides and unreservedly praised by Photius, is
on the whole pure, though somewhat rhetorical and showing a
fondness for Latinisms.
Extensive use has been made of Herodianus by later chroniclers, especially the “Scriptores historiae Augustae” and John of Antioch. His history was first translated into Latin at the end of the 15th century by Politian. The most complete edition is by G. W. Irmisch (1789–1805), with elaborate indices, but the notes are very diffuse; critical editions by I. Bekker (1855), L. Mendelssohn (1883); see also C. Dändliker.
HERODIANUS, AELIUS, called ὁ τεχνικός, Alexandrian grammarian, flourished in the 2nd century A.D. He early took up his residence at Rome, where he enjoyed the patronage of Marcus Aurelius (161–180), to whom he dedicated his great treatise on prosody. This work in twenty-one books (Καθολικὴ προσῳδία) included also an account of the etymological part of grammar. The work itself is lost, but several epitomes of it have been preserved. His Ἐπιμερισμοί dealt with difficult words and peculiar forms in Homer. Herodianus also wrote numerous grammatical treatises, of which only one has come down to us in a complete form (Περὶ μονήρους λέξεως, on peculiar style), articles on exceptional or anomalous words. Numerous quotations and fragments still exist, chiefly in the Homeric scholiasts and Stephanus of Byzantium. Herodianus enjoyed a great reputation as a grammarian, and Priscian styles him “maximus auctor artis grammaticae.”
The best edition is by A. Lentz, Herodiani. Technici reliquiae (1867–1870); a supplementary volume is included in Uhling’s Corpus grammaticorum Graecorum; for further bibliographical information see W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (1898).
HERODOTUS (c. 484–425 B.C.), Greek historian, called the Father of History, was born at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, then dependent upon the Persians, in or about the year 484 B.C. Herodotus was thus born a Persian subject, and such he continued until he was thirty or five-and-thirty years of age. At the time of his birth Halicarnassus was under the rule of a queen
