1. Herodotus
Social Context/Influences
• The Greek Oral tradition – Homer (‘The Poet’) * influenced Herodotus – aspired to be like Homer * copy his style of delivering history.
• Homer born in Halicarnassus (within Persian Empire), however claimed he was Greek (shared culture, language, religious system and customs) * glorify the Greeks.
• The unification of the Greek city-states during the Persian wars and subsequent victory in the Persian wars * further influenced Herodotus’ bias towards the greatness of the Greeks.
• John Gould said “Herodotus’ world is still the world of story tellers”.
Methodology
• Herodotus’ Histories (any form of intellectual inquiry), thus problematic, may not have intended to research into the past.
• No access to written achieves or the works of past generations.
• His sources were oral and read out to an audience.
o John Gould believes Herodotus’ first paragraph could be rendered “What follows is a performance of the enquiries of Herodotus from Halicarnassus”, thus emphasising oral element.
• Unstructured narrative guided by the fiction of the epic poet Homer.
• Herodotus frequently refers to the extensive traveling he has done; naming places and occasionally naming people he has gathered his information from.
o However, this once again can act as a means of entertainment and as Detlev Fehling believes “appears to have tried to make his accounts more plausible or well-supported by simply inventing witnesses”.
• Hypothesised the information gathered * bias!!
• History of great families and priests of holy places * glorify these groups.
• Legend and Myth – particularly in terms of the events caused, by the direct involvement of the g-ds * less plausible, however, part of context * question the extent to which his work was a genuine rational enquiry into human motivation and past vents.
• Hartog: “Even though he is the father of history, he is not really a historian”.
Purpose
• Claimed he was preserving “the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples”, however, the Greek influence caused an inequitable and inevitable bias against the Persians, and thus, the Persian achievements were not documented correctly.
o i.e. (Marathon) – 192 Greeks, 68 000 Persians!!!
• To assess the causation of war, “how they came into conflict”.
• Entertain the public * exaggeration, leave out facts and Greeks will inevitably appear more victorious, prestige, powerful.
o Nature of speech = added drama, pace and capture emotions * demonstrating deeds of renown.