2020-3833-AJHIS 1 Hellanicus as Peripheral and a Critic of Athens? Notes on a 2 Study of a Fragmentary Historian 3 4 5 This paper explores the possibility of imagine Hellanicus of Lesbos as a politically 6 critical author. Many works suggest that Hellanicus was a partisan of Athens or at 7 least a sympathizer of that polis. However new approaches have proposed that 8 authors like Herodotus criticized the external politics of Athens, even in subtle ways. 9 Therefore this paper argue the possibilities of thinking on Hellanicus as a peripheral 10 critic of Athenian politics and on the limitations the fragmentary condition of the texts 11 imposes. 12 13 Keywords: Hellanicus of Lesbos; Athenian Empire; Atthis; Ancient Historiography 14 15 16 Introduction 17 18 Recently the debates on the political alignment of Herodotus have regained 19 strength through some works that questioned the relations between the 20 Histories and the political actions of the Athenian hegemony. One of the most 21 recent works about this theme argued, like others, that Herodotus uses his 22 narrative constructions of the past to create images that could reflect his 23 contemporary context for the audience1. However, most importantly, the 24 associations between past and present were completely free, which gave 25 Herodotus the opportunity to stay in a very comfortable position. Safe from the 26 implications of a rigid political alignment declaration, Herodotus did not stop 27 presenting his modest and continuous detractions, while presented the past as a 28 mirror of the different facets of Athenian tragedy; at least in the final version of 29 his logoi, when these were connected and revised2. It’s important to say that 30 this argumentation explored the text of the Histories profoundly and it 1M. Souza Ἀθηνέων κατήκοοι: estudo sobre as Histórias de Heródoto e sua crítica ao Império Ateniense. (Rio de Janeiro: Masters Dissertation, 2020). For other recent works related to this topic, see E. Irwin “The Politics of Precedence: first “historians” on first “thalassocrats”’ in Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: art, literature, philosophy, and politics 430-380 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); E. Irwin ‘Herodotus and Samos: Personal or Political?’, The Classical World, vol. 102, no. 4, 2009: 395-416; E. Irwin ‘The End of the Histories and the End of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars’ in Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); R. Munson ‘Herodotus and the Heroic Age: the case of Minos’ in Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). There is a vast bibliography about Herodotus’ critical stance toward Athens. For one of the most relevant, see M. Souza Ἀθηνέων κατήκοοι: estudo sobre as Histórias de Heródoto e sua crítica ao Império Ateniense. (Rio de Janeiro: Masters Dissertation, 2020), 30-59. The title of this paper is directly related to one of the chapters of his work, entitled ‘Heródoto periférico e crítico de Atenas / Peripheral Herodotus and critic of Athens’. 2I. C. Oliver, The Audiences of Herodotus: the influence of Performance on the Histories (Boulder: Doctoral Thesis, 2017), 21-22; M. Souza Ἀθηνέων κατήκοοι: estudo sobre as Histórias de Heródoto e sua crítica ao Império Ateniense. (Rio de Janeiro: Masters Dissertation, 2020), 155, 157, 185-186, 194. 1 2020-3833-AJHIS 1 depended on the access of most of the nine books. Without reading big 2 excerpts of the books, everything would be mere assumptions. 3 These kinds of argumentation bring us some questions about the 4 possibilities of understanding (or at least questioning) the political alignment of 5 different authors from Antiquity. There are many works about this subject, 6 about Thucydides or some tragedy and comedy writers, for instance. 7 Nevertheless, there is an uncountable number of authors that haven’t reached 8 us and probably never will. From some of them, we have a restricted number of 9 fragments and these are the only material we use to (try to) understand their 10 production and their political inclinations. In this paper, I will discuss some 11 ways to understand one of those authors who rest in a fragmentary condition. 12 Exploring the profound fragilities of conjecturing anything about these authors, 13 I will suggest that an analysis like the one made on Herodotus, completely 14 impossible to do on Hellanicus, is the only way to understand the political 15 alignment of an author who didn’t expressly write it. 16 17 18 Interpreting Hellanicus 19 20 Hellanicus of Mytilene has been traditionally crowned as the father of 21 horography in Ancient Greece. This interpretation commonly comes together 22 with the whole theory about the development of Greek historiography created 23 by Felix Jacoby. A theory that was full of a linear development idea, in an 24 evolutionist meaning, by the way. In this theory, it’s important to note, 25 Thucydides is the ideal telos of the Greek historiography, and all the other 26 authors are evaluated by this criterion3. In fact, the hegemony of Thucydides in 27 historiographic theories at Jacoby’s time is a kind of second-wave, since the 28 19th century, that elected Thucydides as the masterpiece of Greek 29 historiography, culminating in the model of Jacoby, based on Ancient 30 arguments such as Dionysius’ and Cicero’s4. However, Jacoby became the 31 most important reference to the fragments’ studies of Greek historians, 32 especially because of his prolific opera. Joseph Skinner, in a recent paper, has 33 remembered the relevance of Jacoby, despite the recent criticism on 34 imprecisions of Jacoby’s work5. It is impossible to declare something about 35 Hellanicus’ fragments, for example, without talking about Jacoby’s theories. 36 Furthermore, it is impossible not to criticize it nowadays. 3J. B. Marques ‘Historicizando as categorias de Felix Jacoby: os gêneros historiográficos da Antiguidade e sua classificação pelos modernos’ in Fronteiras Mediterrânicas (Porto Alegre: Editora Fi, 2019), 230, 234-237. 4P. Payen, ‘A constituição da história como ciência no século XIX e seus modelos antigos: fim de uma ilusão ou futuro de uma herança?’, História da Historiografia, no. 6 (2011): 120-121; J. B. Marques, ‘Historicizando as categorias de Felix Jacoby: os gêneros historiográficos da Antiguidade e sua classificação pelos modernos’ in Fronteiras Mediterrânicas (Porto Alegre: Editora Fi, 2019), 235-236; J. E. Skinner, ‘Writing Culture: historiography, hybridity, and the shaping of collective memory’, Histos Supplement 11 (2020): 199. 5E. Skinner, ‘Writing Culture: historiography, hybridity, and the shaping of collective memory’, Histos Supplement 11 (2020): 198. 2 2020-3833-AJHIS 1 One of the relevant points Jacoby has imposed on the studies of Hellanicus 2 is a claimed inspiration of Herodotus upon the birth of horography, as a kind of 3 inspiration for local and patriotic narratives6. It is interesting to see that a 4 contrary possibility had been thought by B. Perrin, some years before Jacoby. 5 There was indeed much freedom in these interpretations: before Jacoby, Perrin 6 was saying that many titles of Hellanicus’ works were in fact subtitles of an 7 entire opera7. Jacoby, of course, tried to crystalize a chronology that made his 8 theory plausible and placed Hellanicus as a kind of minor successor of 9 Herodotus. In his mind, there was a clear evolutive chronology between 10 Hecataeus and Thucydides, where Herodotus was a kind of an intermediary 11 author and where Hellanicus and others were different forms of evolution in 12 the rational Greek historiography, nothing but different and insufficient if 13 compared with Thucydides8. This is probably the first point we could 14 contradict in Jacoby’s vision of Hellanicus. In fact, recent studies have pointed 15 out a significant possibility that Herodotus would have lived until after the 16 420s BC, probably seeing the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC.9 If 17 these propositions are correct, it makes Herodotus’ production date of the 18 Histories later than the production of Hellanicus’ work, which is 407 BC. I will 19 point this out later in this paper, but, for now, it must be clear that there is a 20 possibility that Jacoby’s statements are partially wrong. And I say ‘partially’ 21 because it is not impossible that Herodotus has inspired some of Hellanicus’ 22 writings, but what needs to be considered now is that the opposite direction of 23 influence could have happened as well. 24 Some of Jacoby’s notes have been questioned in the last decades and one 25 of the most recent and relevant responses to the German philologist is the one 26 delivered by John Marincola. Defending the necessity of a new taxonomy for 27 the different kinds of ancient historians, Marincola is one of those who asked 28 for a less teleological comprehension of the Greek historiography development, 29 as well as a less rigid categorization. 30 31 […] enquanto Jacoby parte de uma pergunta a priori, de caráter evolutivo, 32 Marincola faz o contrário, pois seu propósito é entender a lógica interna da 33 narrativa do autor em primeiro lugar para só depois (talvez) interpretá-lo dentro 34 do conjunto.10 6J. B. Marques, ‘Historicizando as categorias de Felix Jacoby: os gêneros historiográficos da Antiguidade e sua classificação pelos modernos’ in Fronteiras Mediterrânicas (Porto Alegre: Editora Fi, 2019), 238. 7B. Perrin, ‘The Iereiai of Hellanicus and the Burning of the Argive Heraeum’, The American Journal of Philology, vol. 22, no. 1 (1901): 40. 8Nevertheless, Perrin’s considerations over Hellanicus had indeed an evolutionist sense, in the traditional primacy of Thucydides. See note 4. 9E. Irwin ‘The End of the Histories and the End of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars’ in Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).