Table Of ContentHerodotus – narrator, scientist, historian
Trends in Classics –
Supplementary Volumes
Edited by
Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos
Associate Editors
Evangelos Karakasis · Fausto Montana · Lara Pagani
Serena Perrone · Evina Sistakou · Christos Tsagalis
Scientific Committee
Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck
Claude Calame · Jonas Grethlein · Philip R. Hardie
Stephen J. Harrison · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus
Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy
Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone
Tim Whitmarsh · Bernhard Zimmermann
Volume 59
Herodotus – narrator,
scientist, historian
Edited by
Ewen Bowie
ISBN 978-3-11-058153-9
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-058355-7
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-058210-9
ISSN 1868-4785
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detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
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Preface
This volume assembles the written versions of papers which their authors were
invited to deliver at a conference at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi
planned for 3 – 6 July 2015. The outcomes of the referendum called by the Prime
Minister of Greece in late June included the temporary closure of banks and the
imposition of capital controls, and the Director of the European Cultural Centre
cancelled the conference four days before it was due to start. Those who had been
asked in March 2015 to organise it at very short notice were not consulted on
whether cancellation was necessary, and it will be for future historians to decide
whether prudence or irrational panic prevailed. Despite the frustration, incon-
venience and in some cases financial loss incurred by the Greek and international
scholars who had accepted the invitation to participate, almost all have agreed
to offer their papers for this volume, which is hoped to be a κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί more
than compensating for the loss of the ἀγωνίσματα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν. One
or two were, understandably, not in a position to do so, and an extra paper has
been solicited from a distinguished scholar who had been invited but had a prior
commitment for early July.
The book’s focus remains that of the projected conference: Herodotus: narra-
tor scientist historian. Its papers explore, from different angles and employing dif-
ferent but complementary methodologies, how one of our greatest writers of
Greek prose enlisted for his project techniques of investigation and modes of ex-
planation current in the contemporary intellectual world, where both were being
developed in geographical and medical writing, in other departments of what we
would call ‘natural science’, and in rhetoric and related discussions of literature
and language; how he works in different ways with non-Greek (especially Egyp-
tian) traditions and with elements in Greeks’ accounts of their past that we would
classify as ‘myths’ or ‘folk tales’; and how in his presentation (ἀπόδεξις) of the
results of his enquiry (ἱστορίη) he emerges as a brilliant narrator as well as
thoughtful and provocative analyst of events and objects, often using the latter
to mould readers’ assessments of the former. That combination of investigation,
analysis, explanation and artistic presentation in superbly crafted prose gave
birth to the first work to bring together the qualities that have ever since been
seen as essential to ‘history’. The papers have been arranged under the very broad
categories ‘Narrator’, ‘Scientist’ and ‘Historian’. But few could not have been put
in a different category, and many, like Herodotus himself, straddle all three.
To his huge and diverse masterpiece Herodotus attached a preface of only
forty words. Like that preface, these paragraphs do not offer a pedestrian digest
VI � Preface
of what will follow but invite curious readers to set out on a journey of stimuli
and illumination.
Ewen Bowie
Mykonos August 2017
Contents
I. Narrator
John Marincola
Ὁμηρικώτατος? Battle Narratives in Herodotus � 3
Angus Bowie
Herodotus the story-teller � 25
K. Scarlett Kingsley
Justifying Violence in Herodotus’ Histories 3.38: Nomos, King of All, and
Pindaric Poetics � 37
P. J. Finglass
Sophocles’ Oedipus and Herodotus’ Periander � 59
Ioannis M. Konstantakos
Time, Thy Pyramids: The Novella of Mycerinus (Herodotus 2.129–134) � 77
Gregory Nagy
Herodotus on queens and courtesans of Egypt � 109
II. Scientist
Vasiliki Zali
Herodotus mapping out his genre: the interaction of myth and geography in
the Libyan logos � 125
Reinhold Bichler
Herodotus the geographer � 139
Nikolay P. Grintser
Herodotus as a literary critic � 157
Paul Demont
Herodotus on Health and Disease � 175
VIII � Contents
III. Historian
Christopher Pelling
Causes in competition: Herodotus and Hippocratics � 199
Smaro Nikolaidou-Arabatzi
ἱστορέειν and θωμάζειν: scientific terms and signs of unity in Herodotus’
Histories � 223
Maria G. Xanthou
Χρυσός, χρόνος, and κλέος: objects of gold, cognition, ambiguity, and
authority in Herodotus’ Lydian logos � 243
Rosalind Thomas
Truth and authority in Herodotus’ narrative: false stories and true
stories � 265
List of Contributors � 285
Bibliography � 289
Index locorum � 317
Index of names and subjects � 334
�
I. Narrator
