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End of the Oedipus Rex CHAPTER SIX HERODOTUS AND TRAGEDY Suzanne Sai:d In the Poetics (145lbl- l l), Aristotle drew a clear line between poetry and history, exemplified by Herodotus and Thucydides: poetry is more concerned with the universal, that is to say, 'what a certain type of person on a certain occasion will do or say according to probability or necessity', whereas history is more concerned with the particular and 'what Alcibiades did or had done to him' (an illus­ tration which suggests that he had also Thucydides in mind, cf. de Ste Croix (1992) 27). Yet many critics, ancient and modern, found this opposition inadequate and emphasized the influence of the poetic tradition on Herodotus' Histories. Ancient authors, from Thucydides to Themistius, paid much atten­ tion to the parallels between Herodotus, who was fond of myths, 1 and Homer, 2 but they never made a case for a 'tragic' Herodotus. The father of history is never praised, like Thucydides or Xenophon, 3 for the dramatic quality and the vividness of his narratives, which convert the listener into a spectator, as the tragedians did (Isoc. in Nicoclem 49). The only traces of a link between Herodotus, 'who followed Homer'4 and Sophocles, 'the most Homeric' of the tragic poets5 are to be found in the biographical tradition and the scholia: Plutarch (Moralia 785b) alludes to an epigram written by Sophocles for Herodotus and the tragic poet is said to have paraphrased the words of Solon at the beginning of the Trachiniae as well as at the end of the Oedipus Rex. l Th. 1.21.l; Arist. De generatione animalium 756b, Div. som. I.69.7; Lucianus Philopseudes 2; Them. Oratio. 33, 376c; Cic. De legibus. 1.1.5 and Gell. III. l 0.11. On Herodotus in ancient criticism, see Pernot (1995). 2 D. H. Ad Pompeium 3.11 and Ps. Longin. On Sublimi!)i 13.3. See also Ch. 5 in this volume. 3 Plu. Moralia 347a and D. H. On 17zucydides 15 on Thucydides; Plu. Artaxerxes 8.1 on Xenophon. 4 D. H. Ad Pompeium 3.11: 'Oµripou S'll"-CO'tTJ<;. 5 Suid. s.v. 'Polemon'. See also Arist. Poetics 1448a26; D. L. 4.20; Vita Sophoclis 20. 118 SUZANNE SAID Conversely, modern scholars, starting with H. Fohl who, in 1913, wrote a dissertation entitled Tragische Kunst bei Herodot, are prone to associate words such as 'tragic' and 'tragedy' with various aspects of Herodotus' Histories. At the most factual level, critics have compiled a list of words and phrases borrowed from tragedy.6 For example 'the maxim of Solon ...- that no one should call a man happy before his death­ is repeated in all three tragedians', as is demonstrated by Evans.7 Others have stressed 'the use of comparable and often identical material' (Walbank (1960) 237) by Herodotus and tragic poets: the Capture ef Miletus, the Phoenician Women of Phrynichus, the Persians of Aeschylus, and the much debated Gyges deal with historical events which are narrated also by Herodotus. Conversely, Herodotus' Histories contain myths,8 as is demonstrated inter alia by the preface. This is no surprise, for mythical characters and events were as historical for Herodotus and his contemporaries as those belonging to 'the time of men' (that is to say those about whom Herodotus' informants have first hand information).9 It is only later that the rhetoricians will introduce a polar opposition between 'myth' (muthos or fabula), which is neither plausible nor true, and 'history' (historia). 10 Some have emphasized that Herodotus and the tragic poets used the past- either mythical or historical- in the same way, to 'shed light on contemporary political issues . .. , address some of the cen­ tral political concerns of [their] audience and time' (Raaflaub (1987) 231 - 2) and 'give historical events and characters a paradigmatic value transcending the occasion' (Hunter (1982) 82). Others focussed on Herodotus' debt to the literary techniques of Greek tragedy. 11 They attempted to locate the impact of tragedy on Herodotus' 'mimetic presentation', pointing out his 'dramatization of history' through speeches and conversations among historical characters as well as the vividness of his descriptions- a major component, 6 Aly (1921 ) 281 - 6, Schmid and Staehlin (1934) 569, n. 7; Avery (1979) and Chiasson ( 1982) passim. 7 Evans (1991 ) 4, who quotes Agamemnon 928- 9; Oedipus R.ex 1528- 30 and Andromache 100- 1. 8 See Nesselrath (1995- 6) and Ch. 5 in this volume. 9 Wiseman (1979) 145 and Shimron (1973) passim. 1° Cic. Ad Herennium 1.12, Quint. 2.42; S. E. Adversus Mathematicos I. 263-4 etc. On 1.cr1:opi:a, see Ch. I in this volume. 11 Myres (1914) passim and (1953) 78; Egermann (1957) 38. .
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