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God in History: Reading and Rewriting Herodotean Theology from Plutarch to the Renaissance

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God in History: Reading and Rewriting Herodotean Theology from Plutarch to the Renaissance GOD IN HISTORY: READING AND REWRITING HERODOTEAN THEOLOGY FROM PLUTARCH TO THE RENAISSANCE HISTOS The Online Journal of Ancient Historiography Edited by Christopher Krebs and †John Moles Histos Supplements Supervisory Editor: John Marincola *. Antony Erich Raubitschek, Autobiography of Antony Erich Raubitschek . Edited with Introduction and Notes by Donald Lateiner (01*2). 0. A. J. Woodman, Lost Histories: Selected Fragments of Roman Historical Writers (01*5). 6. Felix Jacoby, On the Development of Greek Historiography and the Plan for a New Collection of the Fragments of the Greek Historians . Translated by Mortimer Chambers and Stefan Schorn (01*5). 2. Anthony Ellis, ed., God in History: Reading and Re- writing Herodotean Theology from Plutarch to the Renaissance (01*5). GOD IN HISTORY: READING AND REWRITING HERODOTEAN THEOLOGY FROM PLUTARCH TO THE RENAISSANCE EDITED BY ANTHONY ELLIS HISTOS SUPPLEMENT 2 NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE 0 1 * 5 Published by H I S T O S School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE* ;RU, United Kingdom ISSN (Online): 012<-5><6 (Print): 012<-5>55 © 01*5 THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ……………………………………... vi About the Contributors ………………………………… vii Figures ……………………………………………….... viii Preface .………………….……………………………… * *. Introduction: Mortal Misfortunes, θεὸς ἀναίτιος , and τὸ θεῖον φθονερόν: The Socratic Seeds of Later Debate on Herodotus’ Theology Anthony Ellis …………..………...……...…………..… *; 0. Defending the Divine: Plutarch on the Gods of Herodotus John Marincola ……………...……..…….…………… 2* 6. Fate, Divine Phthonos, and the Wheel of Fortune: The Reception of Herodotean Theology in Early and Middle Byzantine Historiography Vasiliki Zali ………………………………………... D5 2. Explaining the End of an Empire: The Use of Ancient Greek Religious Views in Late Byzantine Historiography Mathieu de Bakker ………………………………….. *0; 5. Herodotus Magister Vitae , or: Herodotus and God in the Protestant Reformation Anthony Ellis ………………………………………. *;6 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The papers in this volume represent updated versions of talks originally presented at the Classical Association annual meeting in Reading in $%&'. I would like to thank the contributors for turning their attention to the reception of Herodotean religion for the conference and for agreeing to publish the results. For their many helpful comments on drafts of the preface and the following introductory essay (Ch. &) I am grateful to Mathieu de Bakker, John Marincola, Bryant Kirkland, and especially Michael Lurie, whose work on the reception of pre-Socratic thought and religion inspired this line of investigation. Finally, I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for Histos for their valuable comments on the individual essays, and to the Histos team for their work in seeing the volume through publication, especially to John Marincola for his generous advice, encouragement, and patience throughout the process. Thanks are also due to Cambridge University Library for images—and reproduction rights—of early- modern annotations in editions of Herodotus’ Histories . ANTHONY ELLIS Bern &8 December $%&9 vii ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS MATHIEU DE BAKKER is University Lecturer of Ancient Greek at the University of Amsterdam. His research concentrates on ancient Greek historiography and oratory. ANTHONY ELLIS is a Leverhulme scholar at the University of Bern. His research focuses on ancient Greek religion, theology, and historiography. His current project explores the reception of Herodotus’ religious and ethical thought between the Renaissance and the &<th century. JOHN MARINCOLA is Leon Golden Professor of Classics at Florida State University. He has written and edited a number of books on Greek and Roman historiography, and is currently working on two studies of Plutarch, one on the essay de Herodoti malignitate , and the other on Plutarch’s place in the Persian-Wars tradition. VASILIKI ZALI is Co-ordinator of the University of Liver- pool Schools Classics Project and an Honorary Research Fellow of University College London. Her research interests lie in the use of narrative techniques and rhetoric in classical Greek historiography, Herodotus and his reception. She is the author of The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric (Brill, $%&A) and co-editor of the Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Herodotus in Antiquity and Beyond (Brill, forthcoming $%&B). viii FIGURES Fig. &. Joseph Scaliger’s copy of the Histories (Title Page). Cambridge University Library, Adv. a.&<.$. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library ………………………………………………….&<9 Fig. $. Casaubon’s copy of Herodotus’ Histories (Title Page). Cam. Uni. Lib. Adv. a.'.$. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library .……... $$B Fig. '. Casaubon’s copy of Herodotus’ Histories (p. $$<). Cam. Uni. Lib. Adv. a.'.$; Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library ……… $$< Fig. A. Casaubon’s copy of Herodotus’ Histories (p. E). Cam. Uni. Lib. Adv. a.'.$; Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library …………….. $'& Histos Supplement ( ) – PREFACE Anthony Ellis espite countless challenges to Herodotus’ status as the ‘father of history’, his writing remained one of D the most popular paradigms for Greek historians for two thousand years. Within several centuries, the appearance of his Histories was perceived as a watershed moment in the history of historiography, 1 and his influence is as visible as ever in the last great work of the classical historiographical tradition: Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ account of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 3. At the same time, the Histories is soaked in the religious culture of archaic and classical Greece—theology is inextricably built into Herodotus’ vision of historical causation and his dramatic art, and the divine influences human affairs in both momentous and trivial ways throughout the narrative. 2 Although many pre-modern readers wholeheartedly approved of Herodotus’ acknowl- edgement of god’s tangible role in history, the majority self- consciously subscribed to philosophical schools or religious groups which encouraged them to see Herodotus’ view of ‘God’ as fundamentally opposed to their own. This combination of historical authority and theological alterity 1 See particularly Cicero’s oft-quoted sobriquet pater historiae (complete with reference to Herodotus’ fabulae ) at De leg. .. and Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ comments at Thuc. with discussion in Fowler (<<). For the importance of Herodotus to Hellenistic historiography, see below, nn. = and <. For attacks on Herodotus’ veracity in antiquity see Evans (<>) and particularly Momigliano (<) who traces the debate into the modern period. 2 A point made forcefully by Harrison ( ), and emphasised in, e.g., Mikalson ( 3) and Scullion ( ). Anthony Ellis has caused perpetual controversy among Herodotus’ admirers, imitators, and detractors. One fact, above all, has dominated subsequent perceptions of Herodotus’ theological ideas: 3 Herodotus belonged to the religious and literary culture rejected by Plato in his attack on tragic theology, which laid down a number of principles that would be fundamental to later Platonic and Christian conceptions of God, most importantly that god cannot be held responsible for any misfortune or ills (κακά) suffered by humans. 4 The first surviving work of criticism devoted to Herodotus— Plutarch’s scathing essay On the Malice of Herodotus (DHM) which dominated the critical scene until the >th century— rebukes Herodotus for his blasphemous abuse of the gods, and does so using theological arguments first heard in the mouth of Plato’s Socrates and Timaeus (see further Chs. and of this collection). Consequently, the struggle to come to terms with Herodotus’ religious ideas and his strikingly theological ‘philosophy of history’ has, for most Platonic and Christian readers, seemed fundamental to a proper evaluation of his historical achievement. 5 3 My use of the word theology, which has fallen from fashion, requires comment. By theology (etc.) I refer to all verbal reflection which touches on the nature of the gods. It is thus a broad concept, overlapping to some degree with the term ‘religion’, but referring specifically to thought about the gods (where religion is typically associated with ritual and practice). It is important to point out that to talk of ‘theology’, in this sense, is not to imply that Herodotus was a systematic theologian or that only one ‘theology’ can be found in his work (though many commentators would have it so). The term θεολογία is first attested in Plat. Rep. 3=<a (where it refers to stories about the gods written by poets as well as the work of a philosopher: cf. Bordt ( ) –<); it enjoyed popularity in scholarship on Greek religion until the time of Jaeger (< =). 4 For the wider context see Rep. 3=<a–> c. Although Plato’s criticisms are directed primarily at ‘poetry’, they explicitly include texts not in metre: see Rep. 3> c (µήτ᾿ ἐν µέτρῳ µήτε ἄνευ µέτρου µυθολογοῦντα ). 5 I borrow the phrase ‘philosophy of history’ from Fornara (<=) >, –; the existence of any such thing has, however, been challenged— esp. by Gould (<><) ><, Harrison ( ) 3<– , and Versnel ( ) esp. Preface 3 The reception of the religious and theological aspects of Herodotus’ thought, however, has received almost no attention in scholarship, despite the blossoming of interest in both Greek religion and reception studies. 6 Recent years have
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