BMCR 2009.08.05: DeVore on Irwin, Reading Herodotus: A Study of the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus' Histories

Elizabeth Irwin, Emily Greenwood (ed.), Reading Herodotus: A Study of
the Logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus' Histories.  Cambridge/New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.  Pp. xvi, 352.  ISBN 9780521876308.
$99.00.

Reviewed by David J. DeVore, University of California, Berkeley
([email protected])
Word count:  2443 words
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Table of Contents (http://lccn.loc.gov/2007300387)

[The reviewer apologizes for the tardiness of this review.]

This collection of twelve essays, by twelve Anglophone scholars based
in four countries, grew out of a Cambridge conference in July 2002.
Each contributor applied individual autopsy to a specific logos from
Book 5 of Herodotus. As Irwin and Greenwood explain in their
"Introduction: reading Herodotus, reading book 5" (pp. 9-19), Book 5
was chosen because it stands at a transitional point in Herodotus'
narrative, both thematically (the non-Hellenic ethnographies cease) and
ethno-politically (the Ionian Revolt embroils mainland Greeks in
Persian affairs). Contributors' only guidelines were "to respond
individually as readers" to the text and "to trace the relevance of
his/her logos in ever widening narrative contexts" (6).  In doing this,
the editors "hoped that the project of bringing together different
readers to address the same book in concert, but with distinctive
voices and guided by different logoi, would provide an apt
demonstration of just how much may be required to read Herodotus in all
his complexity" (1).

To convey some of the flavor of how the different essays jell as unit
when read in succession, what follows summarizes, compares and (to a
lesser extent) evaluates the main points from each of the volume's 12
voices.

Elizabeth Irwin, ""What's in a name?" and exploring the comparable:
onomastics, ethnography, and kratos in Thrace. (5.1-2 and 3-10)".

Irwin argues that Herodotus juxtaposes her passage's
Perinthian-Paeonian battle and the Thracian ethnography not
accidentally at a geographical, and therefore textual, hinge.
Throughout both logoi, Herodotus encourages readers to symballesthai
(interpret and infer), just as the Paeonians' reflection on the onomata
in a Delphic oracle delivers their victory over the Paeonians (5.1.2).
Irwin further elucidates allusions to Athenian matters in the onomata
of this logos, suggesting fairly convincing affinities between
Herodotus' Paeonians and his Athenians.  (Unmentioned in Irwin's
treatment are both people's treacherous tendencies.  Where the
Paeonians attack the Perinthians after they have agreed to settle their
dispute through a tripartite duel (5.1), Herodotus' Athenians
constantly threaten or enact treachery toward their allies.)[[1]]
Irwin then locates the subsequent Thracian ethnography within a late
fifth-century Athenian discourse on Thracians. His representation of
their exceptional customs and analysis of their alleged powerlessness
is compared to Thrakia in Sophocles' fragmentary Tereus, Thucydides'
more directly power- and resource-driven remarks (esp. Thuc. 2.29 and
96-101), and Aristophanes' domesticating parody (Acharnians 141-71).
Irwin's conclusion: both logoi present "different (Thracian) ways to
talk about the same thing, contemporary Athens" (86).

Robin Osborne, "The Paeonians (5.11-16)".

Osborne singles out sources of power and the consequences of choice as
salient themes in Persia's conquest of (most of) the Paeonians.
Examples: Darius, on the one hand, can reward his Hellenic henchmen
Histiaeus and Coes with tyrannies respectively in Myrcinus and
Mytilene, and then conquer Paeonia as more or less an afterthought, for
(5.12.1) he "sees for himself, desires, orders" (91).  On the other
hand, certain Paeonians choose ingeniously to elude Persian mastery by
building elevated houses on Lake Prasias and catching fish through
trapdoors (5.14-16).

David Fearn, "Narrating ambiguity: murder and Macedonian allegiance
(5.17-22)".

Fearn builds on past scholarship about constructions of Greekness,
kingship and (to a lesser extent) gender in Alexander of Macedon's
assertion of Hellenic kingship.[[2]]  To Fearn, Herodotus "raises
questions and problems concerning the ambivalence of Macedonian
cultural practices" (114) by spotlighting (1) Alexander's symposiastic
coup against his father Amyntas; (2) the new king's stealthy murder of
Darius' envoys by sending crossdressing assassins to pose as the
Persians' customary female symposiasts (a doubly bad performance of
Hellenic xenia by Alexander?); and (3) his alleged (<greek>kh|</greek>,
5.22.2) victory in the Olympic stadion (which the unreliable
hellanodikai affirm, cf. 2.160).[[3]] Like Irwin with the Paeonians,
Fearn associates the tyrannical tendencies and ambiguous loyalties of
the Histories' Alexander with contemporary Athens.  Allusions to
mythical exemplars (the Iliadic Paris for Alexander, the Odyssey's
Laertes for Amyntas) further enrich this thick explication.

Emily Greenwood, "Bridging the narrative (5.23-7)".

One of the few Herodotean interests that Fearn largely omits,
geography, emerges to direct audiences in Janus-like "reading backwards
and forwards" (131), according to Greenwood's reading.  Backwards: it
is while crossing the Hellespont that Darius remembers how Histiaeus
had rescued him from Scythia (5.11, cf. 4.97).  Forwards: the Persian
general Megabyzus' excuse for removing Histiaeus from Myrcinus, namely
that Myrcinus supplies the wood and timber that could fund a revolt,
"has an anachronistic colouring, calling to mind the importance of
Thrace in the Pentekontaetia and the Second Peloponnesian War" (132).
Moreover, Darius' recall of Histiaeus may echo stories about Pausanias
and Themistocles.  Greenwood is also one of the few authors in the
collection to note economic structures: she presses the unHellenic
juxtaposition of <greek>misqo\n dwreh/n</greek> at 5.23.1, showing how
the conflation of the asymmetrical exchange of misthos with symmetrical
gift-exchange at the court of Darius characterizes both the Persian
"commodification of advice" and (following John Gould) the Herodotean
"give-and-take" economy of historical causation.[[4]] (Greenwood
appears to allude to Darius' now-famous epithet of
<greek>ka/phlos</greek>, earned through his financially-driven
administration of the Persian Empire (3.89.3).)

Rosaria Munson, "The trouble with the Ionians: Herodotus and the
beginning of the Ionian Revolt (5.28-38.1)".

Munson continues the collection's stress on narrative transitions.
Whereas the historian's statement, commonly cited among Herodoteans,
that Athens' reinforcements for the Ionian rebels "came to be the
beginning of misfortunes [<greek>a)rxh\ kakw=n</greek>] for both Greeks
and barbarians" (reviewer's translation, 5.97.3) has become a locus
classicus among Herodoteans,[[5]] Munson contextualizes the
<greek>a)rxh\ kakw=n</greek> into a lengthier causal chain: both 5.28
and 5.30.1 held that the Naxian-Parian disputes that prompted
Aristagoras' machinations were the <greek>a)rxh\ kakw=n</greek>--for
Ionian Greeks, at least.  Later, the equally famous 6.98 casts the
vicious chain of <greek>a)rxai\ kakw=n</greek> beyond Herodotus'
chronological boundaries: this proleptic observation of the coming
<greek>kaka/</greek> that the struggle for <greek>a)rxh/</greek> (here,
"hegemony/rule/empire") produced points the reader to further evils
down into the Peloponnesian War.  Munson proceeds incisively through a
careful reading of the Ionian protagonists' mixed motives ("imperialism
as well as liberation," 156) and parallels between Milesian and later
Athenian imperialism.  Most fascinating is her creative reading of
Aristagoras and Histiaeus as comic characters: she asks, e.g., whether
the audience could take Aristagoras seriously when he fancies his rule
over Miletus as a <greek>basilhi/h</greek> (5.35.1).

Simon Hornblower, "The Dorieus episode and the Ionian Revolt (5.42-8)".

Hornblower replicates Irwin's feat of proving a Herodotean digression's
larger relevance, here with Herodotus' west Greek diversion from east
Greek affairs.  First, Dorieus mirrors but also contrasts his brother
the Spartan King Cleomenes religiously and militarily.  Hornblower also
sees parallels between Sybaris in its fight against Croton and the
Ionian first city Miletus, and in the verbal echo between Philippus of
Croton's loyal liturgies at Cyrene and those of and Cleinias of Athens
at Artemesium.

Christopher Pelling, "Aristagoras (45.49-55, 97)".

Pelling reads his title character more tragically than Munson's comic
bungler.  He investigates two terms associated with Aristagoras: first,
<greek>diaba/llein</greek> ("throw words around," "slander" and
"trick"/"put one over on," esp. 5.50.2, 5.97.2) fits both Aristagoras'
and his interlocutors' acts.  Second, Aristagoras' Lieblingswort,
<greek>eu)peth/s</greek>, consistently heralds tragically impossible
situations (5.31, 5.49.3 and .8, 5.97.1).  Pelling then defends
Aristagoras' rationality in trying unsuccessfully to diaballein
Cleomenes (5.49), in the light of both Cleomenes' own interventionism
and previous Spartan expeditions the eastern Aegean (1.69f., 1.82f.,
3.46-8, 148).[[6]] Finally, Aristagoras' failed cartographically
enhanced rhetoric with Cleomenes provokes a metaliterary reflection:
does Herodotus expect his geographically informed apodexis (as at
5.52-4) to be any more persuasive than Aristagoras' (and Hecataeus',
5.36)?

Vivienne Gray, "Structure and Significance (5.55-69)".

Gray resumes the collection's now-familiar quest to uncover themes in
her passage significant to the Histories as a whole. The Homeric ploy
of pathetic digressions on fallen soldiers' lives indeed supplied
Herodotus with a narrative model, though oddly Gray mentions this
device not when she contextualizes Herodotus' lengthy tangent on the
tyrannicides' Phoenician and Eretrian origins (5.57-62), but in
discussing Hipparchus' "warning vision" of 5.56 (203). As for
Cleisthenes' reforms (5.66-9), Gray frames them within Herodotus'
general interest in ethnic tension and the relevance of names; in
contrast to Munson, she plays down the historian's continual
disparagement of the Ionians.

Johannes Haubold, "Athens and Aegina (5.82-9)".

Herodotus' digressive archaeology of Aeginetan-Athenian enmity, Haubold
argues, constitutes a "shift from a history of the gods to a history of
humans...a gradual and complex shift which is never complete and always
remains open to modifications" and thus a questioning of epic
causalities (230).  Particularly sensitive is his treatment of
Herodotus' sunkrisis of the two explanations for the failed Athenian
theft of Aeginetan cult statues: did the gods prevent a lone Athenian
crew from dislodging the statue (5.85), or did a numerically superior
Argive-Aeginetan force defeat several ships of Athenian marines
(5.86)?[[7]]

John Moles, ""Saving" Greece from the "ignominy" of tyranny?  The
"famous" and "wonderful" speech of Socles (5.92)".

Moles' subtle touch fingers some fundamental questions about Herodotean
discourse. Noting nine (!) previous scholarly interpretations of 5.92,
he stresses the speech's "strong muthos qualities" (248) and sets about
disentangling both internal and external audiences' reception of the
speech.  First, the Spartan direct audience, though its response goes
unmentioned (cf. 5.93), was perhaps shamed when Socles invoked Sparta's
past defense of isokratiai against tyranny (5.92<greek>a</greek>.1).
Second, the indirect audience of Sparta's other allies (who go
unnamed), while taking courage in Socles' resistance to their Spartan
hegemon, would loathe the potential for tyranny represented in the
"figured speech" about Cypselus and Periander (5.92e-g).  Third, the
meta-audience composed of Herodotus' readers would find confirmation of
the historian's own hostility toward tyrants,[[8]] though attentive
readers might detect discrepancy between Socles' speech and Periander's
character elsewhere in the Histories (e.g. a page later at 5.95.2!).
Thus, "one man's tyrant can be another man's king,...and...even the
tyrant can play a positive role in the imposition of law over previous
disorder--even, perhaps...within ultimately 'equal governments'" (258).

A parallel Herodotean "historical irony" applies to the democratic-(in
Herodotus' time but not at 5.92)-yet-tyrannical Athens (262).  Does
Herodotus imply that the Spartan coalition of 504 should have
reinstated Hippias and risked the moral outrage of an individual
tyrant?  "Wrong," answers Moles (263), for in this counterfactual
scenario Sparta would have emerged as the tyrannical power had she
deposed Athens' isokratia.  Less convincing is Moles' parting induction
(265f.), from the Herodotus'/Socles' metatextual warning against
inherently abominable tyranny, that the Histories as a whole had a
specifically moralistic purpose ("a great libertarian text," 268).
Besides 5.92, Moles only goes so far as to support his moralistic
Herodotus by an appeal to "historiographical tradition"--but he only
supports this point by citing ("E.g. ...") Diodorus, Livy and Tacitus
(265, nn. 96-8)!  Nonetheless, a more explicit and focused debate about
whether or to what extent the Histories were moralistic (and what we
mean by this) would be welcome, especially after the past generation
and more of scholarship since Immerwahr has alerted us to Herodotus'
sophisticated narrative and rhetorical techniques.[[9]] How does
Herodotean description translate into prescription?

Anastasia Serghidou, "Cyprus and Onesilus: an interlude of freedom
(5.104, 108-16)".

Serghidou asserts that "the geographical and cultural liminality of
Cyprus furnishes Herodotus with a convenient symbolic counterpart to
his treatment of the Ionian Revolt" (272).  Thus, though the most
rebellious Cypriot poleis, Salamis and Soli (whose names may evoke the
Attic polis and lawgiver, respectively), show clear Hellenic
acculturation and loyalty, the Salaminian monarch Onesilus shows
("'Eastern'") autocratic traits.  How (un-)Hellenic these and other
such these cultural structures and practices were remains up for
debate, Serghidou shows.

John Henderson, ""The Fourth Dorian Invasion" and "The Ionian Revolt"
(5.76-126)".

Ranging the most widely in Herodotus' text is John Henderson's
contribution (though the essay keeps coming back to 5.76). In typically
idiosyncratic style, Henderson justifies his reading of Cleomenes'
"fourth Dorian" invasion of Attica in the context of the Histories'
many far-reaching imperialisms and (taking a Foucaultian step past
Osborne's essay) concomitant knowledge.  He then brings the collection
to an (ironically) neat summation by tracing "the poetics--the
metapolitics--of esbole" through an "off-centre passage" (297).  He
pinpoints numerous allusions throughout the chain of invasions in the
Histories starting with 5.76 to events in the Peloponnesian War:
highlights include the four Spartan invasions into Attica during the
Peloponnesian War (whence Henderson's title), the repeated stress on
Plataea and Decelea, and Thucydides' Spartan ambassador echoing
Herodotus on <greek>a)rxh\ kakw=n</greek> (5.97.3, Thuc. 2.12.2f.).
Henderson then traces Herodotus' discursive causality from Cleomenes'
foreign policies to the Spartan invasion (and the "?fifth? 'Dorian
invasion' non-episode" of 5.90-3 (306)) to the Athenian naval
awakening, which brings the two mainland Hellenic imperialists to their
contemporary status as rival powers. "The Histories are pledged to halt
the march of expansionist empires right here, on the outskirts of
Attica," Henderson gnomizes (309, among numerous other observations).

As the preceding summaries aim to suggest, the collection achieves its
aim of promoting a multiplicity of interpretive experiences for
Histories 5.  The essays are generally trenchant and nuanced, and cover
more than just the themes the editors choose to highlight in the
introduction (Greek politics--particularly criticism of Athens--Greek
ethnicity, and historiographical representation): Persian power
structures, political geography, early Greek rhetorical technique, and
the undertones of Herodotus' wordplay also recur frequently. Regularly
I found myself rushing back to a Herodotean passage I'd read several
times before to observe it from a different angle, or flipping back
from, say, Henderson's piece to see whether Irwin reinforced or
disputed his point about "political dialectic sloganized through this
family of puns" (303 n. 50).

It must be noted, however, that the collection's greatest strength,
namely thick coverage of Book 5, may also prove to be its greatest
weakness, i.e. a narrow focus.  While all the essays contextualize
their respective logoi quite solidly and at times brilliantly within
the Histories, fewer take the more daring step of drawing fresh
conclusions about the totality of Herodotus' project.  Put another way:
insights concerning a character, an ethnic or political group, or
rhetorical and structural tactics come frequently; but original
thoughts on characterization, ethnicity, politics, rhetoric, and
structural strategy are more scarce.

The thick but narrow focus of the volume as a whole makes it a
must-read for Herodoteans, though historiographers and Greek prose
specialists too will profit from a careful study of it with Book 5; and
certainly, any scholar researching any passage in Histories 5 will have
to consult it (with the aid of its excellent index locorum).  Most
recommended for Hellenists generally are those essays that manage to
transcend the confines of specific logoi to reach broader insights
about Herodotus' project.  This group includes Irwin's (on Herodotus'
participation in Athenian ethno-political discourse), Munson's (on
causation and humorous characterization), Henderson's (on narratival
engagement with contemporary power structures), and especially Moles'
(on relations among types of audiences and embedded political theory).


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Notes:


1.   On Athenian characterization in the Histories see most recently E.
Baragwanath, Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus (Oxford, 2008), esp.
chs. 5 and 9.

2.   Particularly E. Badian "Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: a
study in some subtle silences", in S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek
Historiography (Oxford, 1994).

3.   In adopting (manipulating?) the symposium and the Olympics,
presumably so as to affirm their own Selbstdarstellung as Greek, but
then inviting the "women" in to satisfy the Persian envoys' nomoi, do
the Macedonians parallel the Persians as ("barbarian") appropriators of
others' customs (Hdt. 1.135)?

4.   J. Gould, Herodotus (New York, 1989): ch. 4; "Give and take in
Herodotus" in id., Gift, Ritual, Memory and Exchange. Essays in Greek
Culture (Oxford, 2001).  Greenwood's discussion supplements the
discussion of Darius as economic innovator in L. Kurke, Coins, Bodies,
Games, and Gold: the Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton,
1999), 68-88.

5.   At least since Fornara pressed it in advocating Herodotean
opposition to Athenian imperialism.  See Fornara, Herodotus: an
Interpretive Essay (Oxford, 1971), 12 and 76.  In this book alone, the
editors (10), Hornblower (171f.), Haubold (244) and Henderson (300) all
refer rather casually to 5.97.3, and the index locorum shows a dozen
other appeals to 5.97 as a whole.

6.   Though it comes shortly after the Aristagoras-Cleomenes meeting,
Pelling does not mention 5.63.2f. Here the first Spartan
anti-Pisistratid force invades Phaleron; a second, more successful
force comes by land under Cleomenes, who pointedly scraps the marines
and succeeds (5.64f.; cf. Henderson at 302).  Could this pair of events
have amounted to a further signal of a Spartan retreat from naval
warfare?

7.   The "Athenian" appeal here to the supernatural diverges from the
general scarcity of supernatural agency in most Athenian logoi in
Herodotus. See O. Murray, "Herodotus and Oral History" [1987],
reprinted in N. Luraghi ed., The Historian's Craft in the Age of
Herodotus (Oxford, 2001): 29-34.  Murray's trenchant observation that
the extent of supernatural elements from logos to logos tends to
correspond to putative geographical provenance has not received the
attention that it warrants, even though the essay is frequently cited
(but cf. Murray's later reflections in "Herodotus and Oral History
Reconsidered," also in Luraghi, ed., 2001).

8.   Though Moles does not cite him, Donald Lateiner showed the
pervasiveness of Herodotus' hostility to tyrants in The Historical
Method of Herodotus (Toronto, 1989), ch. 7.

9.   See e.g., L. Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold (Princeton,
1999): esp. chs. 1-4 passim; T. Harrison, Divinity and History. The
Religion of Herodotus (Oxford, 2000): esp. ch. 4; R. Thomas, Herodotus
in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion. (Cambridge,
2000): ch. 4; R. Munson, Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political
Discourse in the Work of Herodotus (Ann Arbor, 2001), passim;  N.
Fisher, "Popular Morality in Herodotus," in E.J. Bakker et al. (eds.),
Brill's Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002); J. Griffin, "Herodotus
and Tragedy" in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (eds.), The Cambridge
Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge, 2006); Baragwanath (2008), passim.