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Voiceless Victims, Memorable Deaths in Herodotus

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Voiceless Victims, Memorable Deaths in Herodotus Classical Quarterly 56.2 393–403 (2006) Printed in Great Britain 393 doi:10.1017/S0009838806000401 MEMORABLE DEATHS IN HERODOTUSO. STRID VOICELESS VICTIMS, MEMORABLE DEATHS IN HERODOTUS Herodotus covers a vast repertoire of atrocities. When Apollo, in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (179–90), tells the Erinyes to leave his temple, he says that other places are fitting for them, places where there are beheadings, gouging out of eyes, castration of boys, mutilation, stoning, impalement. The atrocities mentioned by the god are all to be found in Herodotus, and more besides. In this article, I shall review Herodotean examples of the items in Apollo’s list. Sections I.1–6 correspond to the items of the list, with the modification that impalement is replaced by a more illustrative case of crucifixion.1 There is a basic pattern here: the victims are not represented as lamenting or complaining but remain silent, while Herodotus himself wastes no words of empathy on them. Obviously, we can look upon and construe this in different ways, and we can try to find specific reasons for each case of silence. My approach to these cases will be to bring out what Herodotus prefers to focus on. In section II, I will consider some further cases, including deaths in combat, and discuss Boedeker’s and Darbo-Peschanski’s explanations of Herodotus’ reticence concerning the subjective aspect of death.2 I.1 Herodotus relates how after the defeat at Salamis Xerxes marched to the Hellespont and then proceeded to Sardis (8.113ff.). But there is also another report, he says (8.118), according to which Xerxes crossed from Eion on the Strymon to Asia in a Phoenician ship. A storm arose and the ship was in danger. The captain, asked by Xerxes if there was any means by which they could be saved, answered that there was none, save one, that they dispose of the many people on deck. Then, at the king’s request, the Persians on deck jumped overboard and the ship was saved and came to Asia. As soon as Xerxes had gone ashore, he presented the captain with a golden crown for having saved the king’s life, and then had his head cut off for having put so many Persians to death: . Herodotus adds (8.119) that this version of Xerxes’ return to Asia is not credible: . He argues that if the captain really gave Xerxes the answer he is supposed to have given, Xerxes would no doubt have let the Persians on deck go below and instead thrown overboard an equal number of the 1 For a survey of the forms of physical violence in the Histories, see R. Rollinger, ‘Herodotus, human violence and the ancient Near East’, in V. Karageorghis and I. Taifacos (edd.), The World of Herodotus (Nicosia, 2004), 121–50. Rollinger regards impaling and crucifying as one category, since the use of the Greek terms is not entirely clear. 2 D. Boedeker, ‘Pedestrian fatalities: the prosaics of death in Herodotus’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (edd.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003), 17–36, and C. Darbo-Peschanski, ‘La vie des morts: représentations et fonctions de la mort et des morts dans les Histoires d’Hérodote’, AION 10 (1988), 41–51. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 28 Sep 2021 at 16:43:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838806000401 394 O. STRID Phoenician rowers. No, Herodotus says, referring back to the first version, Xerxes returned to Asia by road. Even so, this does not make Herodotus a reluctant reporter of the version he finds incredible. On the contrary, he gives an account full of details—the storm, the frightened king’s question to the captain, the answer, the king’s request, the Persians prostrating themselves before the king and then jumping into the sea, the reward and punishment of the captain. One element, though, is missing: any word or reaction on the captain’s part as he is faced with the requital. He is a voiceless victim. The story ends with focus on the extraordinary combination of reward and punishment. Here a matter, often commented on, needs to be addressed. It involves three questions that are connected. What did Herodotus want to say in relating the story? What did the story say to his contemporary audience? What does it say to his modern readers? Let us begin with the third question. We find answers by looking at what scholars of today and yesterday have to say. In Flory’s eyes, the story reveals Xerxes’ cowardice and stupidity, as well as it illustrates Xerxes’ fickleness, ‘a mixture of generosity and cruelty’.3 Immerwahr, referring to this story among others, says that Xerxes ‘rewards and punishes his own subjects to excess’.4 Immerwahr emphasizes Xerxes’ contradictory nature, in which opposite qualities counterbalance each other (magnificence and weakness, courage and fear, nobility and baseness). Aly says of the crowning and decapitation of the captain that Xerxes acts ‘als characterisierter Tyrann’.5 To Benardete, Xerxes ‘is shown acting out a perfect caricature of justice’.6 The story, Benardete says, points to a truth about justice: strict application of a just rule, to repay what is owed, leads to a contradiction. Returning to the second question and the first, we find of course no precise answers. Something of what the scholars say could perhaps also be applied in tentatively answering the second question, and as for the first question, we might expect that the answer, to some degree at least, should correspond with the answers to the other two questions. That would be all. However, what if the first question is slightly changed so that we ask instead what Herodotus wants in relating the story? In that case, too, various answers are conceivable and they need not, of course, be mutually exclusive.7 One answer, however, is obvious. Herodotus wants to point to the extraordinary form and circumstances of the requital. And this, as we will see, applies also to the stories to be reviewed below. Herodotus aims at the extraordinary and exceptional in respect of requital and revenge as he does in many other respects as well. The marvellous, which springs from extraordinary and unexpected things, accumulates in the Histories.8 3 S. Flory, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus (Detroit, 1987), 59. On the pattern used in this and other stories in the Histories, cf. V. Gray, ‘Short Stories in Herodotus’ Histories’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong, and H. van Wees (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002), 291–317. 4 H. R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (Cleveland, 1966), 182–3. 5 W. A l y, Volksmärchen, Sage und Novelle bei Herodot und seinen Zeitgenossen (Göttingen, 1921), 87. Cf. D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto, 1989), 180–1. 6 S. Benardete, Herodotean Inquiries (The Hague, 1969), 5. 7 Flory (n. 3), 54ff., discusses passages where Herodotus contrasts two versions, one trivial but true, the other dramatic but untrue. The true version, Flory (68) says, does not contain significant motifs and so Herodotus adds a significant but untrue version. The version ending with the captain’s reward contains, according to Flory (58–9), ‘a number of ideas about Xerxes, the Persians, and life in general’. 8 As to Herodotus’ predilection for the extraordinary and marvellous and the possible influences of folktales and anecdotes of the oral culture, cf. Aly (n. 5) and Flory (n. 3), 152–4. On Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 28 Sep 2021 at 16:43:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009838806000401 MEMORABLE DEATHS IN HERODOTUS 395 I.2 The Thracian king of the Bisaltae and Crestonia, Herodotus tells us in 8.116, committed a monstruous deed ( ). The king, who refused to submit to Xerxes, had forbidden his six sons to serve in the Persian army attacking Greece. The sons disobeyed him and joined the expedition. Herodotus suggests they did so from a desire to see the war: .Whenall six returned safe and sound, the father punished them for their disobedience by gouging out their eyes: . The sons are voiceless victims. It is the form of punishment that interests Herodotus. We notice that he has suggested a cause of the disobedience which is in keeping with the punishment: the desire to see the war matches the gouging out of the eyes. This, Herodotus concludes, was the payment they received: .9 I.3 The story of the vengeance of Hermotimus from Pedasa is told in 8.104–6. Panionius, a man from Chios, made his living by castrating boys and selling them in Sardis or Ephesus. One of the boys treated in this way was Hermotimus. He was sent together with other gifts to the Persian king and came to be most highly valued of all the eunuchs by Xerxes. Once, when Hermotimus had gone on business to Atarneus, he happened to meet Panionius, and he lured him, by making false promises, into settling in Atarneus with his wife and children. Then, having Panionius and his four sons in his power, he could have his revenge.10 Panionius is characterized by Herodotus as making his living from very unholy deeds: ’ . When Hermotimus has got hold of Panionius, he addresses him with similar words: ’ . To Hermotimus it is clear that it is the gods who have led Panionius into his hands.
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