Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T02:29:02.919Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evidence for the Date of Herodotus' Publication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

Charles W. Fornara
Charles W. Fornara
Affiliation:
Brown University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this paper I contest the usually accepted terminus for the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, namely, just prior to the production of the Acharnians in February 425. I argue instead that Herodotus survived the Archidamian War—basically a return, this, to the position taken until the middle of the last century, especially in Germany, before the work of Schoell, Kirchoff and then Meyer and Jacoby. Further, I suggest that he published at a date close to 414 B.C. or, at least, that his Histories reached the Athenian public at around that time. Since even the orthodox date for his publication (426 or so) figures in the constructions of modern scholars merely as a literary curiosity devoid of significance—such are the preconceptions dominating our notion of Herodotus' ‘era’—a reconsideration of this question needs no apology if it serves the purpose of directing attention to a matter vitally affecting our interpretation of this author.

First, a general observation. In seeking for external evidence to establish the date of the publication of Herodotus' Histories, we need to distinguish between possible and certain echoes of Herodotus in the works of others. The question must constantly be asked whether any allusion we have isolated presupposes and requires the knowledge of Herodotus' work on the part of the contemporary audience. For otherwise we could be misled by a coincidence or we could reach a false conclusion because some point of specific knowledge eludes us. Of the latter the famous parallel in the Antigone of Sophocles (909 ff. with Herodotus iii 119) provides a notable example. If Herodotus had been just a little more strict with himself in avoiding allusions to his own time, who would not suppose that his work had been published prior to 441? What we require, therefore, is material which is calculated to evoke Herodotus himself—the special characteristics of the man and his Histories—so as to leave in no doubt a general familiarity with his work on the part of others.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 91 , November 1971 , pp. 25 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Jacoby, PW Suppl. ii 235. 6 ff. Todd, O. J., CQ xvi (1922) 5 fGoogle Scholar. also placed Herodotus' death after the Archidamian War.

2 N. G. L. Hammond, for instance, conceives of Herodotus as having written his account of Marathon about forty years prior to that date (JHS lxxxviii [1968] 28); Jacoby, , PW Suppl. ii 358Google Scholar. 62 ff., supposed that the Histories embrace a point of view acquired twenty years before and faithfully maintained ever after, in spite of two decades of changing conditions. Wrong though Meyer, Eduard, Forsch, ii 196 ff.Google Scholar, seems to have been to make Herodotus a ‘Wahl-Athener’, at least he placed Herodotus in the proper chronological context by assuming a correlation between the lastmentioned events in Herodotus' work and the time in which he was engaged in writing it.

3 For example, Browning, R., CR n.s. xi (1961) 201 f.Google Scholar, pointed out a possible echo of Herodotus v 4 in Euripides fr. 449N. If we knew that Herodotus was already published, this correspondence might reasonably suggest the dependence here of Euripides on Herodotus. But we cannot argue from a merely possible echo that Herodotus must have been Euripides' source.

4 Studies in Herodotus (1923) 170. The word ‘ridiculed’ appears on page 171.

5 Studies in Herodotus (1923) 172.

6 ibid. 174.

7 ibid.

8 See Wells 173 f.

9 Philologus lxx (1911) 246.

10 Studies 179 f.

11 Schmid-Stählin i, 2. 591 n. 3.

12 The Electra is generally dated to 413 on the strength of vv. 1347 ff., where the Dioscuri announce that they are going ‘in haste to the sea of Sicily to save the prows of ships’. In spite of Zuntz, G., The Political Plays of Euripides (1955) 66 f.Google Scholar, the reference is assuredly to the Sicilian Expedition. (For reactions to Zuntz and criticism of his treatment of the exodos of the Electra see Vögler, A., Vergleichende Studien zur sophokleischen und euripideischen Elektra [Heidelberg 1967] 53 n. 8, 55–62.Google Scholar) However, the usual date inferred from the passage, 413, may be less likely than the year before it, 414. The general view holds that since the reference cannot allude to the first expedition of 415 it must therefore refer to the second expedition sent in 413 under Demosthenes (Parmentier, Denniston) or to the slightly earlier contingent— winter 414/13—headed by Eurymedon (Schmid-Stählin i 3. 488 n. 4). But these verses do not imply that the Dioscuri are accompanying anyone. They are going in haste (σπουδῆ) to rescue ships already at Sicily. That rules out Demosthenes' force and probably also Eurymedon's. On the other hand, the reference to Alcibiades, if it is that, in 1350, would be as understandable in 414 as it would be an irrelevancy a year later. The tone of the passage also better suits the condition of affairs in Sicily in winter 415/14. In fairness to Zuntz it should be added that the part of the play of concern to me, the exodos, is above all others the most likely to have been written with a view to the time of the play's presentation, and so at the very last. We do not know when the torso of the play was written or what Euripides' habits may have been in this respect. But Euripides probably did not present every play he wrote or stage every play he did present immediately on its completion. Only the exodos need have been geared to the date of production when, as here, some contemporary allusion was intended.

13 A. M. Dale, in her commentary, xxiii, following Zuntz, , Political Plays, 65 f.Google Scholar

14 The less we know, it seems, about a possible source, the more influence we ascribe to it (see, e.g. Gregoire's preface to the play in the Budé series, p. 97). Another factor inciting Euripides to write the play may have been Sophocles' Chryses (Pearson, , frags. 726–30)Google Scholar, though see Wilamowitz, , Hermes xviii (1883) 257Google Scholar, for a cogent case against it. But we may well be cautious before changing in fragment 727 (schol. Birds 1240) the vulgate Σοφόκλειον χονοῆ to έν Χρύση (with Nauck and Pearson after Fritzsche) or even in assuming that the scholiast correctly traced Aristophanes' parody to Sophocles rather than to Aeschylus, , Ag. 530Google Scholar. On that assumption, of course, hangs the date or rather priority of Sophocles' Chryses.

15 See, e.g., Electra 34–39, which Steiger, , Philologus lvi (1907) 585Google Scholar, suggested was an echo of the Mandane story in Herodotus i 107. See also Denniston at the word θερμάν in Electra 740 and the two fragments of the Andromeda (412 B.C.) 152, 153N.

16 i 3· 503.

17 ibid. 488.

18 ibid. 488 n. 2.

19 How ad loc.

20 Needless to state, the conception also implies that Herodotus was so credulous as to project this alleged plan into an inevitable and momentous success. Such an assumption as this would be inadmissible even if we were guided by that persistent misconception of Hercdotus as the naïve admirer of Pericles.

21 Crawley's translation.

22 See my Herodotus (Oxford 1971) 75–91.