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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 67-6363 ROBSON, Arthur George, 1939- ASPECTS OF THE HERODOTEAN CONTEXT. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1966 Language and Literature, classical University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan ASPECTS OF THE HERODOTEAN CONTEXT DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Arthur George Robson, B.A., M.A. ******* The Ohio State University 1966 Approved by Department of Classics PREFACE This paper grew from one of much briefer compass on Herodotus* philosophy of history; prepared for a graduate seminar at the suggestion of the author but under the stimulation and inspiration of his dissertation adviser, Robert J. Lenardon. 1 can indirectly indicate the quality of guidance afforded me by saying that a lover of Thucydides inculcated a love of Herodotus. Whether such fair-mindedness and high-minded objectivity derives more from the example of Herodotus or of Thucydides is a moot point which the two of us resolve in quietly opposed ways. This continually growing interest then in why Herodotus wrote what he wrote in the way he did produced the present study. I do not of course presume to furnish the definitive answer to these questions. 1 have rather chosen simply to reflect upon important aspects of these topics in an organized fashion. The emphasis of my own studies has been literary and philosophical; and accordingly the present work represents this emphasis. From these two vantage ii points X have dealt more with Herodotus the historian than I have the history of Herodotus. While organizing materials for this project I wap introduced to the name of Marshall McLuhan. He begins his prologue to The Gutenberg galaxy by acknowledging an otherwise barely visible debt to Albert Lord's The singer of tales. My debt to McLuhan is in only slightly greater evidence. But my concern with influences relative to the oral tradition are dependent upon him for their existence if not their development. The sources used by him, primary and secondary, were very useful in helping me reach at time quite different emphases or conclusions. A more complete list of the printed sources upon which I drew is contained in the bibliography. I am also greatly indebted to the sharp, editorial eyes and aid of my other readers, Professors W. Robert Jones and Clarence A. Forbes. In all ways possible 1 must acknowledge gratitude to my wife and family for their active assistance, encourage­ ment, patience, and numerous sacrifices. iii VITA August 26, 1939 Born - Elyria, Ohio. 1960 ............ B.A., John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio. 1961 ............ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1960-1964........ Graduate assistant, Department of Classics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1964-1966........ Instructor, Department of Comparative Literature, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1966-1967........ Instructor, Department of Classics, Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin. 1966 ............ Ph.D., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. PUBLICATIONS Editor: Latin Our Living Heritage, Book Three, Charles E. Merrill Books Inc., Columbus, Ohio. FIELDS OF STUDY General Classics, including Greek and Latin Literature; Historical Greek and Latin Grammar; Latin Phonology; Vulgar Latin; Latin Paleography; Greek and Roman Philosophy; Greek and Roman History. GRADUATE PROFESSORS John B. Titchener, Kenneth M. Abbott, Clarence A. Forbes, W. Robert Jones, Robert J. Lenardon, Anthony Nemetz, Morris Weitz, William F. McDonald. iv INTRODUCTION "... The Greek historian's method precludes him from choosing his subject. He cannot, like Gibbon, begin by wishing to write a great historical work, and go on to ask himself what he shall write about. The only thing he can write about is the events which have happened within living memory to people with whom he can have personal contact. Instead of the historian choosing the subject, the subject shooses the historian."^ G. T. Griffith quotes Collingwood's statement and curtly rejects it: "This^ is probably wrong Just because 2 it is modern." Rather than playing logician and noting that Griffith's insertion of the word "probably" renders the opposite view equally valid, we prefer to suggest that Collingwood's statement is not so much "wrong" as it is in­ complete— at least as far as Herodotus is concerned. *R. G. Collingwood, The idea of history, 26-27. 2"Greek historians," in Fifty years of classical schol arship, ed., M. Platnauer, 154 (author's italics). v Herodotus has followed as Collingwood observes the regular— but not inviolable— pattern of classical Greek writers of history and on historical subjects, and has chosen an at least partially contemporaneous subject. But he has rejected the comparatively easy task of investigating strictly contemporary events. Herodotus indicates in his proem that in addition to a history of the Persian Wars, he has written 6 i* rp aiTCrju erco\€|a‘noau In thus extending his concerns historically beyond the battles of Books Seven through Nine, he has already surpassed the limitations imposed by Collingwood. But Herodotus proposes to go even further. Again in the proem, he tells us he will deal not only with the zpya \xzy6Xa but cpya \xzy6Xa -re nal 0cop.aaTd, Tit p.fcv "SWrjOi, t& (3ap|3dpo 101. The StopaGTd extend Herodotus a good deal beyond the confines of what Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Plutarch and other historians, each in varying ways, understood by history. The dramatic devices and perspectives, the techniques of the logoi, the philosophical, theological and mythological currents all point to purposes beyond but not at odds with "scientific" history. Herodotus considerably extended his view without forsaking his radical concern. Herodotus1 adjectives 6cop,aaT6g and Goopdoios are as vi conceptually alive and varied in significance as the English word "marvelous," a word itself able to conjure up myriad images and only in part equivalent to the Greek adjec­ tives. These Greek and English adjectives, however, do permit some generalizations about their approximate sig­ nificance. We readily associate them, for example, with the miraculous, the mythical, the "outlandish": "Whatever is seen or felt by mythical perception is surrounded by a special atmosphere— an atmosphere of joy or grief, of anguish, of excitement, of exultation or depression. Here we cannot speak of 'things* as a dead or indifferent stuff. All objects are benignant or malignant, friendly or inimical, familiar or uncanny, alluring and fascinating, or repellent and threatening."^ For Cassirer then wonder is most con- •s. spicuously associated with myth, and the result is a drunken subjectivism. Margaret Mead associates wonder with that which is literally outlandish: Shock and wonder at the differing ways of other peoples have been part of our human tradition since nomad tribes became willing to pause between flight to the fastnesses of the forest or fight so immediate that the practices of the enemy were only seen as they appeared in cicatrices on a dead body or the shape of a weapon held by a lifeless hand. O E. Cassirer, An essay on man , 102-103. vii As men learned to tolerate the presence near them of others different from themselves, their wits were sharpened by contrast; they came to admire the ways of their neighbors, or to fear them and shape their own customs as defenses against the alien and the strange. A new kind of objectivity, a new dimension of historical consciousness is born when men cease to call themselves simply "human beings," naming others as "eaters of snakes" or "dweller farther inland," and instead apply to themselves names by which other men may speak of them. Slowly through history this process has developed— through the curiosity of the Greeks, to whom we owe our roots for the science of ethnology, the study of the barbarous, the non-Greek where, although observation flourished, ethnocentrism still reigned.4 For Buess wonder represents not the geographically remote but the intellectually removed. He equates "all die Begriffe, mit denen wir das Jenseits des logischen Erkennens bezeichneten" with "das Wunderbare, das Schicksalhafte, das Heilige, das Damonische,"5 Each of these three sources has described wonder as a product of the mythical awareness of antiquity. Presumably the tools of our twentieth century, scientific consciousness led them to these conclusions. In considering, however, the testimony of antiquity we must say either that the con­ clusions of Cassirer, Mead, and Buess are incorrect or at 4M. Mead, Primitive heritage, xxii-xxiii. 5 E. Buess, Die Geschichte des mythischen Erkennens, 69. viii least that their thinking better represents the twentieth century than it does antiquity. The two Greek adjectives above are correlative with Gaupd££t,v derived in turn from 0eao6at. Through this etymological tracing we see that "wonders" and "marvels" have close association with the process of scientific inquiry. One of the first wonder-workers in Herodotus* history, Solon,travelled, we are told, ttk GetopCrig eiueweu. And in the Theaetatus (550D) Socrates represents philosophy as the offspring of wonder: p,dX.a 7&p cpiXoaopov touto Tb rtdGos, 9auijLd£e iv* ou 7&P dpx^l qpiAocrocpCag rj avTi], Hal coiner 6 TIptu ©au^avTo^ £*7ovov cp^oag ou nuxajg 7 £V£aX.Q7 £ tv. Aristotle echoes and extends Socrates' state­ ment in noting the role of wonder as central to the develop­ ment of scientific inquiry. Aristotle regards the associa- Q tion of wonder with myth as secondary in importance: 6 id Y&p t b 9aup,d^£tv o! auGpwrtotkg I vuv w al t o rrpwTov Tip^auTo <piXooocp£tv^ ££ dpx% l-t£v t& npoxetpa tgou atortcou GaupdaauTeg, £iTa xa,T& p.inpbv ouTti) rtpo- i6 v T eg vtal rtepl tuSv p,ei£6vu>v tarcopfjoavTeg,6 o to v Ttept t £ tcUu Tfjg OE\f|UT|g rcaG'np.dTuru x a l tC v n e p l t 6 v tiX.lov xat <t&> aaTpa nal rtepi Tfjg tou JtavTbg 7 £veo£ciig.

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