#logioi

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotus, the abductions of mythological women, and the cause of the Persian Wars

"To this point I have focused on the beginning and the end of Herodotus’ prologue. What lies between them is one of the most enigmatic and disputed passages in the Histories,51 a passage that traces the origins of the GrecoPersian wars to the abductions of familiar female figures from Greek mythology. Yet the perils of these familiar heroines are recounted in decidedly defamiliarising fashion. For the stories are thoroughly rationalised,52 so that no divine agents are involved in the intercontinental transportation of Io from Argos to Egypt, of Europa from Phoenicia to Crete, of Medea from Colchis to Iolcos, or of Helen from Sparta to Troy. Moreover, the stories are linked in causal relationships as two pairs of reciprocal abductions: Io and Europa on the one hand, Medea and Helen on the other.53 Finally, and to the disbelief of several modern scholars,54 Herodotus attributes these stories in their causal succession to non-Greek sources: to Persian logioi in the first instance, as amended in the second instance by Phoenicians who defend their national honour by insisting that Io was not kidnapped, but sailed away from parental wrath of her own volition after being impregnated by the ship’s captain (1.5.2). For his part, after recounting at some length these allegedly foreign versions of primeval Greek stories, Herodotus refuses to state an opinion about them, and begins his own account by fixing blame or responsibility (αἰτίη) upon a more recent figure whom he knows to have committed unjust acts against the Greeks, the Lydian king Croesus.

What can we say about the relationship between this extraordinary sequence and the Greek poetic tradition? As far as content is concerned, Antony Raubitschek, believing that the stories of Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen were best known to Herodotus from Greek tragedy, ventured to identify a single play as the true source of the ‘foreign’ traditions in 1.1–5— namely, the Phoinissai of Phrynichos.55 The assumed co-existence in this play of Persian imperial counselors and a chorus of Phoenician women56 creates a context in which competing national perceptions of Greek mythological material might be aired. This speculative but ingenious suggestion was recently revived by Stephanie West, who thinks it more credible that Herodotus was indebted to a Greek poetic source claiming to reproduce foreign traditions than that ‘Persians with a smattering of Hellenic culture defamiliariz[ed] Greek legend either for their own amusement or, more seriously, by way of addressing problems of war-guilt in the aftermath of Xerxes’ invasion.’57 However, there are other passages in the Histories in which Persians are represented as citing Greek mythology for the sake of persuading Hellenic audiences. At 6.97.2 a herald sent by Datis assures the frightened Delians that they need not flee from the Persian fleet: as the birthplace of two gods (sc. Apollo and Artemis), their island is sacrosanct. In a matter of greater military and political weight, Herodotus reports a story told throughout Greece (7.150.1), according to which Xerxes’ herald invoked local myth as a means of dissuading the Argives from joining the Greek resistance, citing the Persians’ descent from Perses, son of the Argive hero Perseus.58 As Fowler has seen, this episode is especially telling, since its currency throughout Greece demonstrates a general Hellenic belief, right or wrong, that (some) Persians knew (some) Greek myths.59 In view of these and other passages that reflect Greek belief in Persian knowledge of Greek myth,60 I share Fowler’s willingness to accept Herodotus’ representation of Persians (and Phoenicians) as knowing rationalised versions of Greek myths, and therefore consider Raubitschek’s hypothesis unnecessary. At the same time, it seems entirely likely that the raw narrative material of the prologue—i.e., the abductions of Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen—was best known to Herodotus’ audience through authoritative poetic performances; and that the climactic mention of Paris, Helen, and the Trojan War will have called to mind the epic tradition above all.60"

From the article of Charles C. Chiasson "Herodotus' Prologue and the Greek Poetic Tradition", Histos 6 (2012), 114-143

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Charles C. Chiasson on Herodotus and the Greek Poetic Tradition

"Herodotus’ Prologue and the Greek Poetic Tradition

From his opening declaration of intent to preserve the kleos of great and wondrous human deeds, Herodotus demonstrates that his prose account of the Persian Wars (and much else) is written in the wake of and in response to the Greek poetic tradition. In my talk I will consider the implications not only of the Homeric references that bracket Herodotus’ prologue (from opening sentence through 1.5.4, as defined by Wecowski 2004), but also of the poetic rhetorical device used to structure the prologue as a whole, the priamel.

The long shadow cast by Homer is widely recognized in Herodotus’ opening chapters, which begin and end with allusions to the Iliad and Odyssey. Herodotus’ climactic mention in his opening sentence of the reason why the Greeks and non-Greeks fought one another evokes the proem of the Iliad (Nagy 1987), and invites a provocative comparison between the Persian and Trojan Wars: in the modern, revolutionary medium of prose (Goldhill 2002), Herodotus seeks to equate the military achievements of modern Greeks with those of primeval heroes long preserved in the poetic tradition. Moreover, in claiming as the starting-point of his own researches the Lydian king Croesus, whom he knows (οἶδα, 5.3) to have first wronged the Greeks, Herodotus appropriates the authority of the Homeric Muses, whose eye-witness knowledge of long-ago events contrasts with human ignorance (Iliad 2.485-86). Finally, Herodotus’ claim to traverse human cities (ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων, 5.3) large and small alike alludes to the proem of the Odyssey, and Odysseus’ having seen the ἄστεα of many men; Herodotus thus projects for himself a persona that not only suggests travels to the numerous, far-flung destinations canvassed in the Histories, but also a penchant for story-telling that need not be (always) constrained by the truth (Marincola 2007).

In addition to these Homeric references, with their implications for the author’s subject matter, intent, and persona, Herodotus articulates his search for the cause of the war and the proper starting-point of his narrative as an elaborate prose priamel (Race 1982). The priamel is a distinctive rhetorical structure, with numerous precedents and parallels in Greek poetry, that leads from an introductory “foil” (comprising two or more subjects or perspectives) by way of contrast and analogy to the “climax,” a particular point of interest or importance. Thus while Persian logioi and Phoenician authorities trace the enmity between East and West to a series of ancient abductions (Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen) culminating in the Trojan War, Herodotus, by contrast and for his part (ἐγὼ δέ, 5.3), identifies Croesus as having initiated the series of international injustices that result in the Persian Wars. Herodotus’ adaptation of this distinctive introductory stratagem serves several purposes: it introduces Croesus with extraordinary emphasis; it highlights the intrusive first-person narrator that sets Herodotean narrative technique apart from Homeric narrative technique; and, more broadly, it marks Herodotus’ crucial departure from the popular perception of contemporary events as rooted in and inherently inferior to the glorious deeds of primeval heroes—deeds so far removed in time that they lie beyond the reach of Herodotean historie. Race (1982) describes the movement from “foil” to “climax” in the Pindaric priamel as often underscoring the significance of the hic et nunc; in Herodotus’ deployment of the device at the beginning of the Histories this movement underscores a new approach to the study of the past, with important consequences for the development of Greek historiography.

Herodotus’ prologue thus serves as a fitting introduction to a groundbreaking prose work that engages in an ongoing conversation with the Greek poetic tradition, to which it is both indebted and opposed.

Works Cited Goldhill, S. (2002) The Invention of Prose (Oxford). Marincola, J. (2007) “Odysseus and the Historians,” Syllecta Classica (18) 1-79. Nagy, G. (1987) “Herodotus the logios,” Arethusa (20) 175-84. Race, W. (1982) The Classical Priamel from Homer to Boethius (Leiden). Wecowski, M. (2004) “The Hedgehog and the Fox: Form and Meaning in the Prologue of Herodotus,” JHS (124) 143-64."

Charles C. Chiasson Herodotus’ Prologue and the Greek Poetic Tradition (abstract), CAMWS meeting, 2010.

Source:

Charles C. Chiasson is American Classicist, Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

[nhatnamland]

Lộ giới là gì? Cách xác định, bao nhiêu là đạt chuẩn? #nhatnamland #sangiaodich #batdongsan #duancanho #duandatnen #vietnam

[aboutanancientenquiry]

” Book review: “Herodotus (Historians on Historians)” by John Gould

PATRICK T REARDON

October 12, 2021

For more than 2,400 years, The Histories by Herodotus has been a foundation block of Western civilization, the first work of history in Western literature.

Written in classical Greek and completed around 430 BC, it is an account of the recent Persian-Greek Wars and what led up to them, set within the context of centuries of past events as well as a vast array of peoples, cultures and events.  It has been a key source and, in some cases, the only source of information about this era in Greece and the Middle East, and a vast amount of its information, checked against other researches, has turned out to be reliable.

And The Histories is the reason Herodotus is known as the Father of History.

So, why does John Gould’s 1989 book Herodotus, part of a series from Weidenfeld and Nicholson called Historians on Historians, read so much like a defense attorney’s brief?

It isn’t until his final paragraph that Gould lets himself go to rhapsodize about this major figure in history and historiography:

For the most lasting of all impressions that one takes away from a reading of his narrative is exhilaration.  It comes from the sense one has of Herodotus’ inexhaustible curiosity and vitality.  He responds with ever-present delight and admiration to the “astonishing” variety of human achievement and invention in a world which he acknowledges as tragic; he makes you laugh, not by presenting experience as comic, but by showing it as constantly surprising and stimulating; he makes you glad to have read him by showing men responding to suffering and disaster with energy and ingenuity, resilient and undefeated.

“His process of enquiry”

The “vitality” and “delight” in The Histories that captivates Gould as a reader is the tip-off for his defensive approach to the telling of his story about Herodotus.

The problem goes back to Thucydides.

Herodotus and his Histories (the Greek word historie means “enquiries”) were followed by Thucydides (younger by about a quarter century) and his History of the Peloponnesian War, fought between 431 and 404 BC, another classic, but one written in a much different style.

Herodotus’s approach, Gould writes, was that of a storyteller and one who invites the reader to join him in teasing out the meaning of things:

It is vitally important also to register that Herodotus is at pains, at every point in the presentation of his narrative, to preserve the traces of his process of enquiry; his narrative, that is to say, incorporates indications of its own limitations as “truth-telling.”

Gould cites another expert Carolyn Dewald who argues that Herodotus’s “contract with the reader” includes his efforts to “thwart any tendency we might have had to fall under the spell of his logioi (sources) and treat them as straightforward versions of past events.”

In other words, Herodotus is constantly giving the reader indications of where he obtained his information is and how reliable it might or might not be.  It’s an approach that’s rooted in the oral tradition of the Iliad and Odyssey and of Greek culture to that point.

It’s an approach that is rooted in questions about the sources — many of which can never be completely answered.  The reader is expected to interact with such questions and, like Herodotus himself, come a personal sense of what to believe and what not to.

“Magisterial and definitive”

In sharp contrast to this approach, Thucydides is telling the reader what to believe, period.  As Gould notes:

Thucydides, apart from a methodological paragraph or two early on in his work, systematically covers the traces of his own investigations and presents the reader instead with narrative as a transparent medium for incorporating the events of the past “as they happened.”…

Thucydides the historical investigator presents himself as having conducted his investigations in so rigorous a way as to render his account of them magisterial and definitive: this is the end of investigation….Thucydidean narrative, in the very rhythms and texture of its language, claims and enacts authority.

Thucydides knew better than anyone how different his approach was from that of Herodotus.  And he might have simply left it at that.

Down the centuries, these two methods have been employed by historians to tell what happened in the past: One reflecting the messiness of human existence and letting history be just as messy; the other seeking to get to the bottom of things and present the “truth.”

Father of…

But Thucydides didn’t leave it at that.  Instead, he included in his book a slap at Herodotus who, although not named, was clearly his target:

To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful. But he that desires to look into the truth of things done, and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable. And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize.

Essentially, Thucydides is calling Herodotus simply an entertainer who wove into his account wild stories of gods and goddesses and omens and oracles and whose book, well, isn’t “profitable” to read.

Indeed, starting from that point, Herodotus wasn’t only known as the Father of History.  He was also called the Father of Lies.

“The art of storytelling”

Gould’s book does a good job of looking at what Herodotus was trying to do and the book that he brought into existence.

Gould is a fan of storytelling, signaling this with an epigraph from Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist:

The art of storytelling is coming to an end. Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.

Many readers of history today bemoan the tendency of some academics to de-sap history by following strict scholarly formats and eschewing any literary touches.  Indeed, there are accounts of academic presses rejecting manuscripts for having too much personality.

It is, of course, possible to tell a good story and stick closely to the facts.  And this approach is valuable when the sources of those facts are listed in endnotes.

Herodotus didn’t have endnotes.  Instead, he included his sources inside the story he told. And the story he told was far from dry.  In fact, Gould writes:

The distinctive quality of Herodotus’ perception of human experience is the tragic perception that it is always and everywhere vulnerable to time and chance and to the grim inevitabilities of existence.  Of all the qualities that bear out Longinus’ passing description of Herodotus as “the most Homeric” of historians, it is perhaps this quality of sympathetic engagement with human suffering that is the most fundamental.

The “quality of sympathetic engagement” is the heart of a great story, whether it’s The Iliad or Herodotus’s Histories.

Patrick T. Reardon

10.12.21″

Source: https://patricktreardon.com/book-review-herodotus-historians-on-historians-by-john-gould/

Patrick T. Reardon is American essayist and poet.

Very insightful review! Concerning the very important topic of the relationship of Thycydides with Herodotus, I think that there is today a scholarly consensus that, if it is true that Thucydides was antagonistic toward Herodotus (as most ancient Greek intellectuals were toward their predecessors), Herodotus’ influence on him was huge. I remind also that the characterization of Herodotus as “father of lies’ was a much later invention of Plutarch (or pseudo-Plutarch), who resented Herodotus’ description of the collaborationist attiudes of the Boetian oligarchs during Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, but also Herodotus supposed “philobarbarism”.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

A text of G. Nagy on Herodotus as logios and the Persian logioi (with some critical remarks of mine)

“Herodotus and the Logioi of the Persians

Gregory Nagy

Short Writings: IV. Table of Contents

[This essay was originally published in No Tapping around Philology: A Festschrift in Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston Jr.’s 70th Birthday (ed. A. Korangy and D. J. Sheffield) 185–191. Wiesbaden 2014. In this online edition, the original page numbers of the print edition will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{185|186}” indicates where p. 185 of the print edition ends and p. 186 begins.]

The argument

In this essay, I argue that the term logioi as used by Herodotus applies not only to ‘the Persians’ but also to Greek masters of prose like Herodotus. And the word logioi, I further argue, means ‘masters of prose’, referring to the medium of Herodotus himself.

The background

At the beginning of his Histories, Herodotus says that the logioi of the Persians claim that the cause of the great conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, which is the main subject of the Histories, must be attributed to the Phoenicians—so, not to the Persians, nor to the Greeks. According to the logioi of the Persians, it was the Phoenicians who were aitioi ‘responsible’: Περσέων μέν νυν οἱ λόγιοι Φοίνικας αἰτίους φασὶ γενέσθαι τῆς δ��αφορῆς· ‘the logioi of the Persians say that it was the Phoenicians who were responsible [aitioi] for the conflict’ (Herodotus 1.1.1). 

According to these same logioi of the Persians, Herodotus goes on to say, it was the Phoenicians who had once abducted a heroine named Io from the Greek city of Argos and brought her to Egypt (1.1.1–4). By contrast, as Herodotus emphasizes, the Greek version of the myth is different: it was the Egyptians themselves and not the Phoenicians who abducted the heroine Io from Argos and brought her to Egypt (1.2.1). 

Returning to “the Persian version,” Herodotus goes on to say further that the Greeks reacted to this act of wrongdoing by abducting a heroine named Europa from the Phoenicians, specifically from the Phoenician city of Tyre (1.2.1). So the retaliation of the Greeks is symmetrical, since they abduct a heroine from the Phoenicians, not from the Egyptians, even though the Phoenicians had brought the heroine Io to Egypt and not to Phoenicia. This way, the symmetry of action and reaction sets up a rhetorical dichotomy between Europe as represented by Greeks and Asia as represented by Phoenicians, and this dichotomy is ironically made permanent by way of naming the name of the heroine who is abducted from Asia, Europa, since Herodotus bases the very concept of Europe on the name of this heroine from Asia. 

So far, according to the logic of the logioi of the Persians, things are ‘even Steven’—isa pros isa, as Herodotus reports (1.2.1). But now we are about to see a new cycle of wrongful actions—and of retaliatory reactions. And, this time, it is Greeks who started it (1.2.2). If we continue to follow the logic of the logioi of the Persians, there is a wrongful action that has now been started by Europeans, not by Asiatics, and it is this: the Greeks abduct a heroine named Medea from Colchis in the Far East and bring her to a place vaguely defined as Hellas, imagined as the heartland of Europe (1.2.2–3). When the Asiatics react by demanding not only the return of the heroine Medea but also compensation for her {185|186} abduction, the Europeans refuse, offering the excuse that Hellas had never been compensated for the original abduction of the heroine Io by the Phoenicians, nor had Io been returned to Europe (1.2.3). Then, at a later time in the heroic age, the Trojan hero Paris, also known as Alexandros, abducts the heroine Helen from ‘Hellas’ and brings her to Troy in Asia; now it is the Hellenes who react by demanding not only the return of Helen but also compensation for her abduction, and now it is the Asiatics who refuse, offering the excuse that they in turn had never been compensated for the abduction of Medea by the Hellenes (1.3.1–2).

 In the preceding paragraph, I must note, I have started to use the word ‘Hellenes’ instead of ‘Greeks’, following the usage of Herodotus, who has of course been using the word Hellēnes ‘Hellenes’ from the start. My reason for making this switch from saying ‘Greeks’ to saying ‘Hellenes’ will become clear in the next section. 

At this point, as the report of Herodotus about the Persian version continues, the conflict between Hellenes and Asiatics escalates, since the Hellenes undertake a military expedition against Troy in order to retaliate for the abduction of Helen; and, in so doing, they commit a grave provocation (1.4.1). In Hellenic terms, of course, this expedition is the Trojan War, which is the core narrative of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. 

In Persian terms, by contrast, this expedition of the Hellenes is a grave military provocation that calls for military retaliation, and that is why the Persian Empire will launch its massive military attacks against Hellenes in Hellas. Those attacks are of course the core narrative of the Histories of Herodotus. 

But here is where Herodotus starts interposing his own perspective. He notes a fundamental assumption on the part of the logioi of the Persians, which is this: Persians recognize that the abduction of women may be immoral, but they do not consider such an act to be a grave provocation that is worthy of a military expedition (1.4.2–4). And the attitude of the Phoenicians, as also described by Herodotus, is even more pronounced: this attitude, expressed presumably by their own logioi, is that Io, the first woman to be abducted in this chain reaction of abductions, was not really abducted but rather had intercourse willingly with the captain of the Phoenician ship; when she got pregnant, she was ashamed to tell her parents and willingly sailed away to Egypt along with the Phoenicians (1.5.1–2). And here we see a big difference between the Hellenes on one side and the Persians and Phoenicians on the other: the Hellenes do consider the abduction of women to be a grave provocation that calls for the waging of war. That is why, ostensibly, the Hellenes escalated the hostilities. And it is this war, according to the logioi of the Persians, that ultimately justified the war about to be waged by the Persian Empire against to Hellēnikon ‘the Hellenic thing’ (1.4.4).

European Greeks and Asiatic Greeks

In this new section, I have reached the point where I can explain why I started saying ‘Hellenes’ instead of ‘Greeks’ in the previous section. Herodotus, in reporting the argumentation of the logioi of the Persians about the hostilities between the Hellenes on one side and the Persians along with the Phoenicians on the other side, speaks of these hostilities in terms of an opposition between Europeans and Asiatics (1.4.1, 3–4). Our first impression is that Hellenes were all Europeans while non-Hellenes were all Asiatics. But {186|187} what about all the people who spoke the Greek language in places other than European Hellas? I am thinking here especially of the Greeks in Asia Minor and in such major outlying islands as Chios and Samos. For the moment, let me refer to these Greeks by using the blanket term ‘Asiatic Greeks’. In terms of the formulation made by the logioi of the Persians, as reported by Herodotus, these Asiatic Greeks are not Hellenes. They are Asiatics, just like the Persians and the Phoenicians. In terms of this same formulation, it is only the Greeks of the Helladic mainland, that is, of Hellas, who are Hellenes. [1]

From the pluralistic standpoint of the Persian Empire, the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the outlying islands were not Hellenes but Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians. I list these Asiatic Greeks here in roughly geographical order, proceeding from north to south. And the same nomenclature applies in the earlier era of the Lydian Empire, superseded later by the Persian Empire. When Herodotus gives his own explanation of the causes of the great conflict between Greeks and Persians (1.5.3–1.6.3), he actually starts with the Lydian Empire in general and with the Lydian king Croesus in particular: it was this Croesus, Herodotus reports, who first succeeded in subjugating the Ionians and the Aeolians and the Dorians ‘in Asia’ (1.6.2). The historian evidently lists these Asiatic Greeks here in order of political and cultural importance, and the Ionians take pride of place.

But it is anachronistic for Herodotus to refer to the Asiatic Ionians and Aeolians and Dorians as ‘Hellenes’ in the historical context of the era when the states of these Greeks were tributaries of the Lydian Empire (1.5.3, 1.6.2, 1.6.3)—even if the term surely applies in the context of the later era when these same Greek states became tributaries of the Athenian Empire. In other work, I analyze in some detail the proleptic references of Herodotus to the Athenian Empire as a successor to the Persian Empire and to the earlier Lydian Empire in dominating the Ionians and Aeolians and Dorians of ‘Asia’ after the victory of the Hellenes over the forces of the Persian Empire in 480 and 479 BCE. [2] Here, I simply insist on the anachronism of applying the term ‘Hellenes’ to the Asiatic Greeks at a time when the Persian Empire was waging war against the Athenians and other fellow ‘Hellenes’, as they called themselves. 

Herodotus is in fact quite cautious in his attempts to steer clear of the term ‘Hellenes’ with respect to the countless Asiatic Greeks who had been recruited by the Persian Empire to fight against the European Greeks—that is, against the Athenians and other ‘Hellenes’ on the Helladic mainland whose states had not already chosen to side with the Persians. In his description of the naval battle of Salamis, for example, where the navy of the Persian Empire was comprised of a massive number of Ionians as well as Phoenicians and other non-Greeks, Herodotus finds ways to maintain a distinction between the ‘Hellenes’ on one side and the ‘Ionians’ on the other side of the sea battle (the most telling passages are at 8.10.2 and 8.90.1). {187|188}

The logioi of the Persians and Herodotus as logios

Given that the Asiatic Greeks were part of the Persian Empire during the war narrated by Herodotus, I argue that the logioi of the Persians were not Persians themselves but Asiatic Greeks who represented the world view of the Persian Empire, just as the Asiatic Greeks who fought for the Persian Empire in the war narrated by Herodotus must have called themselves not ‘Hellenes’ but Ionians or Aeolians or Dorians and so on. I link this argument with another argument, developed in earlier work. [3] In terms of this other argument, Herodotus too considered himself a logios. In linking these two arguments, I find it relevant to highlight the fact that Herodotus of Halicarnassus was an Asiatic Greek in his own right. And his symbolic filiation may have been Doric, though his language of public discourse was Ionic. So, yes, Herodotus too was an Asiatic Greek. But here is the big difference. Herodotus was not a logios of the Persians; rather, he was a logios of the ‘Hellenes’.

 In order to pursue this line of argumentation, I start with the traditional form of Herodotean discourse, which can be described as prosimetrum. [4] By using this term, I mean that the medium of Herodotus can feature poetry—especially oracular poetry—framed within prose. More frequently, however, the poetry framed within the prose of Herodotus is also turned into prose, along the lines of the Life of Aesop tradition, where the fables embedded within the prose that tells the life of Aesop represent a poetic medium that has been turned into prose. [5] For example, Herodotus turns into prose the sayings of Solon, who figures as the most eminent of the Seven Sages in the poetic tradition that records their sayings, and the historian embeds these sayings within the framing prose narrative of the Histories. [6]

Here I repeat a point I have made in earlier work on the similarities between the media of Herodotus and Aesop. [7] These similarities are noted by Plutarch in his essay On the Malice of Herodotus (871d), where he notes wryly that the big difference between Herodotus and Aesop is that, whereas the fables of Aesop present us with talking apes and ravens, the Histories of Herodotus show more elevated talking characters who include not only humans such as Scythians, Persians, or Egyptians, but even the god Apollo himself in the act of speaking his oracular poetry. [8] The talking humans in this negative reference correspond to characters in a genre of fable known as Subaritikoi logoi ‘discourse from Sybaris’. As we learn from the scholia for the Birds of Aristophanes (471), Sybaritic fables are distinct from Aesopic fables in that they feature talking humans as the main characters, not talking animals. [9]

In the case of Plutarch’s comment about the talking characters of Herodotus, I draw attention to the fact that Plutarch here highlights Scythians, Persians, and Egyptians rather than {188|189} ‘Hellenes’. [10]

The negative implication is that Herodotus is disingenuously applying to non-Hellenes what really applies to Hellenes. As I have argued, however, such a strategy of indirect application is what Herodotus himself had really intended: what is disingenuousness for Plutarch is in fact a refined sense of diplomatic strategy for Herodotus. [11]

The diplomacy of Herodotus in the use of ainoi as fables is a topic that I have explored at length in previous work. [12]

And I will explore it further in a future project “Homo ludens and the Fables of Aesop,” especially with reference to the elements of fable inherent in the story of Hippokleides in Herodotus (6.126–130), which are cognate, in my view, with the elements of the fable of “The Dancing Peacock” as attested in the Indic Jātakas. [13]

The point I made earlier about the diplomatic use of ainoi as fables by Herodotus, where the speaking characters may be Scythians, Persians, or Egyptians even though the intended listeners are in fact ‘Hellenes’, is relevant to the use of the word logios by Herodotus, which we can translate loosely as ‘master of speech’ when it is a noun and ‘expert in speech’ when it is an adjective. [14]

That said, I return to my argument that Herodotus is a logios. This word logios, in terms of the argument, is applicable to Herodotus in his capacity as a master of prose performance. I say applicable, not applied, because Herodotus (1.1.1) applies the word not to himself but to those who identify themselves with the Persians, not with the Hellenes, and who are therefore representatives of a world view that is different. Examining all the Herodotean contexts of the word logios (1.1.1, 2.3.1, 2.77.1, 4.46.1), I argue that logioi are masters of discourse about different world views as represented by Persians (1.1.1), Egyptians (2.3.1, 2.77.1), and Scythians (4.46.1). [15] In terms of my argument, then, this word logios could apply only implicitly to Herodotus as a Hellene but it applies explicitly to non-Hellenes, just as the ainoi or fables of Herodotus could apply only implicitly to Hellenes but explicitly to Persians, Scythians, or Egyptians. [16]

In support of my argument that the term logios in the sense of ‘master of speech’ applies implicitly to Herodotus himself, I highlight the parallel semantics of the word logopoios ‘artisan of speech’, which Herodotus actually applies to Aesop himself (2.134.3), to be contrasted with the word mousopoios ‘artisan of song’, which he applies to Sappho (2.135.1). [17] As in the case of the word logios, Herodotus does not apply the word logopoios to himself, but he does in fact apply it to another Asiatic Greek who happens to be his rival, the historian Hecataeus of Miletus (2.143.1, 5.36.2, 5.125). By implication, then, Herodotus is a logopoios, an ‘artisan of speech’, just like Hecataeus. [18] And, as a logopoios, Herodotus is even like Aesop. {189|190} 

In short, I interpret the word logios in the sense of a ‘master of speech’ to refer to mastery of prose in contrast to song, just as the word logopoios ‘artisan of speech’ as applied by Herodotus to Hecataeus refers to mastery of prose in contrast to the word mousopoios ‘artisan of song’ as applied to Sappho, which refers to mastery of song. [19]

Conclusion

As I think back to the stories about the abductions of women as retold by Herodotus in the initial paragraphs of his Histories, I find there was an element of playfulness in the way he retells those stories, though of course the consequences of the storytelling lead to historical events that are very serious. Such playfulness reflects a delight in mimesis, which has the power to re-enact forms of verbal art that range from the fables of Aesop all the way to narratives about grim wars that determined the course of history. The war, recounted by Herodotus, was of course won by ‘Hellenes’, who made their name stick, especially in the context of the Athenian Empire. If the war had been won by the Persians, however, I doubt that Greek-speaking people would have persisted in calling themselves ‘Hellenes’. My guess is that they would call themselves Ionians. The Persians still call them that. {190|191}

Bibliography

Asheri, D., A. Lloyd, and A. Corcella. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV (ed. O. Murray and A. Moreno; translated by B. Graziosi et al.). Oxford.

Kurke, L. 2011. Aesopic Conversations: Popular Traditions, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. Princeton.

Luraghi, N. 2009. “The Importance of Being λόγιος.” Classical World 102:439-456.

Maslov, B. 2009. “The Semantics of ἀοιδός and Related Compounds: Towards a Historical Poetics of Solo Performance in Archaic Greece.” Classical Antiquity 28:1-38.

Nagy, G. 1990. Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore, MD.

Nagy, G. 2009. “Hesiod and the Ancient Biographical Traditions.” Brill’s Companion to Hesiod (ed. F. Montanari, A. Rengakos, and C. Tsagalis) 271–311. Leiden.

Nagy, G. 2011a. “Asopos and his multiple daughters: Traces of preclassical epic in the Aeginetan Odes of Pindar.” Aegina: Contexts for Choral Lyric Poetry. Myth, History, and Identity in the Fifth Century BC (ed. D. Fearn) 41–78. Oxford.

Nagy, G. 2011b. “Diachrony and the Case of Aesop.” Classics@, Issue 9, “Defense Mechanisms.”

Footnotes

[back] 1. On the politics of the term ‘Hellene’ (Hellēn) in its earliest phases, I offer an analysis in Nagy 2009:274–275. On the politics of the same term in its later phases, I offer further comments in Nagy 2011a:54n32, with references to recent discussions.

[back] 2. Nagy 1990:229–231 = 8§§22–23

[back] 3. Nagy 1990:221–225 = 8§§8–14; for background, see Asheri et al. 2007:74.

[back] 4. Nagy 2011b §§124, 133–134, 151–153.

[back] 5. Nagy 2011b §153.

[back] 6. Nagy 1990:248 = 8§50; 332 = 11§32.

[back] 7. Nagy 2011b §154.

[back] 8. Nagy 1990:332 = 11§19; 334 = 11§35.

[back] 9. Nagy 1990:324–325 = 11§21; 334–335 = 11§35.

[back] 10. Nagy 2011b §155.

[back] 11. Nagy 1990:324–325 = 11§21n59.

[back] 12. Nagy 1990 ch. 11.

[back] 13. I disagree here with Kurke 2011:417, who thinks that the Greek version of the story was somehow borrowed from the Indic version.

[back] 14. Nagy 2011b §157.

[back] 15. I offer a short commentary on these Herodotean passages in Nagy 1990:224 = 8§13n54.

[back] 16. Nagy 2011b §159.

[back] 17. Nagy 1990:224 = 8§13n54.

[back] 18. Nagy 1990:324–325 = 11§21

[back] 19. Nagy 2011b §160. There I highlight the attestation of an explicit contrast between logioi ‘masters of speech’ and aoidoi ‘singers’ in a song of Pindar (Pythian 1.92–94), where the word logioi occurs in a phraseological context that is parallel with what we find in Herodotus (1.1.1). There are also examples of logioi in other songs of Pindar (Nemean 6.45, Pythian 1.92–94) where the word occurs in phraseological contexts that are once again parallel to what we find in Herodotus (1.1.1). My synchronic study of the linguistic evidence showing collocations of these words in their attested contexts was the basis for my arguing, from a diachronic point of view, that these contexts are cognate with each other (Nagy 1990:221–225 = 8§§8–14). In Nagy 2011b (especially §161), I criticize what Kurke 2011 as well as Maslov 2009 and Luraghi 2009 have to say in their interpretations of the relevant Pindaric passages.”

Source: https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/gregory-nagy-herodotus-and-the-logioi-of-the-persians/

Gregory Nagy (Hungarian: Nagy Gergely, pronounced [ˈnɒɟ ˈgɛrgɛj]; born Budapest, October 22, 1942)[1][2] is an American professor of Classics at Harvard University, specializing in Homer and archaic Greek poetry. Nagy is known for extending Milman Parry and Albert Lord's theories about the oral composition-in-performance of the Iliad and Odyssey (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Nagy

Gregory Nagy is an eminent classicist and this article of his is for sure thought provoking. 

I remark, however, that λόγιος is in Greek the learned person or the scholar, not specifically the “master of prose”.

 It is of course important that Herodotus records in the beginning of his Histories what the “learned among the Persians” reported about the origins of the hostility between “Asia” and Greece, presenting in this way the Persian version about the responsibility for the Greco-Persian wars. I believe that Herodotus’ sources on the views of the “learned Persians” on this matter must have been Greeks having worked for the Persians or hellenized Persians living in Asia Minor. 

However, what is far more important is that Herodotus in a revolutionary move eventually dismisses such researches in the mythological past as beyond verification and starts his account of the Greco-Persian conflict and its causes with a historical person, namely Croesus of Lydia, whose misguided pre-emptive attack on the emerging Persian empire and his defeat by Cyrus the Great put an end to the Lydian state and brought Persians and Greeks in contact for the first time, with the Persian conquest of the Greek colonies in Asia Minor. 

Moreover, I don’t find particularly fortunate Nagy’s comparison of Herodotus with Aesop, as we are talking about the representatives of two very different literary genres. I add that the authenticity of the anti-Herodotus diatribe On the Malice of Herodotus as work of Plutarch is not beyond doubt and that, anyway, this diatribe is mainly an apology for the Boetian aristocracy and its collaboration with the Persians during Xerxes’ invasion (although the author of the On the Malice... combines the defense of his pro-Persian ancestors with claims that Herodotus would have been “philobarbaros”-”barbarian lover”!). 

I remind also that the Ionians were one of the four major Greek (Hellenic) “tribes” (alongside the Dorians, the Achaeans, and the Aeolians) and that Dorians and Aeolians too had established colonies on the coast of Asia Minor (Herodotus’ hometown -Halicarnassus- was a Dorian colony). Now, I fail to see how and why, in the case of Persian conquest of mainland Greece, the Dorians or the Aeolians or the Achaeans would have identified themselves as Ionians, not as Hellenes.