My Reading of Herodotus's The Histories

"Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Summer 2015 Reading List

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Aristotle, in his Poetics, famously summarised Homer’s thick volume epic poem – The Odyssey – in 3 sentences. He summarised it thus: 

“A certain man is absent from home for many years; he is jealously watched by Poseidon, and left desolate. Meanwhile his home is in a wretched plight – suitors are wasting his substance and plotting against his son. At length, tempest-tost, he himself arrives; he makes certain persons acquainted with him; he attacks the suitors with his own hand, and is himself preserved while he destroys them. This is the essence of the plot; the rest is episode.” 

Homer’s The Odyssey is around 560 pages long. I am going to do even better than Aristotle here and summarise Herodotus’s The Histories, which is 734 pages long, in one sentence: “Read it yourself!” 

Summer Readings: 

I come from a country where some dinosaurs still exist who think that not sharing the knowledge they have is a form of distinguishing themselves from the rest. Selfish, selfish, selfish. It is also something that only works to the detriment of the polity. The one thing I learnt, however, from the countries I have been to, where hogging knowledge is frowned upon, is that you don’t really have to converse with these dinosaurs as “everything that is worth knowing has already been put in books, just read them.” Of course, “the man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” Luckily, I have had close contact with policy makers and various successful people who freely publish lists of what they are currently reading and what they have already read. Bill Gates’s Gates Notes is one such public source of good books but as I myself am not a man of business, I have never read any of his recommendations. My interest is in classical texts that teach about international relations, public policy and courtly intrigues. In that regard, I would sooner re-read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince than read the Bill Gates recommended John Brooks’s Business Adventures. So, I have my own sources of reading lists. 

The Histories of Herodotus: 

Two years ago I spent the whole summer reading Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War – excellent book. Before then, in the previous summers, I had read the works of Plato, Thomas More, and Aristotle; the Epic Poems of Homer, Virgil, John Milton and John Dryden as part of my study for my first degree: Classics. It so happens then that the canon I currently enjoy reading was decided for me by my first degree. So, I tend to read works from Greek antiquity and I find them riveting. I had so far not found any time to read Herodotus, owing to lack of time, due to the reading demands of my second and third degrees: my recently finished studies in Modern Warfare. But The Histories has always been the great outstanding work from Greek antiquity that I still had to read. 

When I finally found time to read it, I was also initially very sceptical of Herodotus’s integrity as a Historian, but therein lay my mistake. Volumes have been written about people who miss the forest while looking for the tree. You prevent yourself from absorbing the lessons or enjoying the writing style of an author because you want to question that, “oh, if he wasn’t present when such and such happened, how can he report back to us, word for word, what was said during that occurrence?” Should you ever read all these works from antiquity, a better course of action is to concern yourself only with what you can learn from the recorded actions of the ancients and the outcomes they yielded in each instance. 

An even better way is to take Aristotle’s counsel when he defended epic poetry. He said; 

“Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages.” 

With the passage of time (for Aristotle is a near contemporary of Herodotus), Herodotus’s The Histories can be argued to have come to hold the same value of “expressing the universal” that epic poetry was then argued to hold. 

This, then, is the way I read The Histories; as a recording of the actions that happened in the intercourse between Greeks and their neighbours in Asia, Europe and Africa (Ethiopia, Egypt and Libya feature prominently). What worked and what didn't work in that intercourse is what interested me in his Histories. This book is also excellent in that it applies as a textbook of both international relations and domestic politics. The intercourse between Greeks (Spartans, Athenians, and Thebans) as well as that between the Greeks and Barbarians (Persians, Ethiopians, Egyptians and Libyans) qualify as early forms of international relations. While the relationships between the military, religious figures, political figures and private citizens in, for example, Athens, qualifies as domestic politics 101. If you also look to modern times, after reading Herodotus, you will find that most of the events he recorded have been replicating themselves throughout the years. Herodotus’s Histories, in the words of Shakespeare, thus, held a mirror to human nature. 

Much Better Than Shakespeare: 

The other value of Herodotus’s The Histories is that it supplies you with maxims that have withstood the test of time. Shakespeare (who I read extensively) also has important maxims, but the problem with Shakespeare’s maxims is that they just jump at you, from nowhere, unsupported by the surrounding text. This anomaly has led many scholars to doubt the authenticity of Shakespeare’s authorship. It is as if a much cleverer scholar, after time had passed, added his own maxims but did not have the due care to add his maxims where they were supported by the preceding and succeeding text. An example of this is the Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like It. 

Herodotus’s maxims in The Histories, on the other hand, are logical as they are supported by the surrounding text. Here are two quick examples: his quotation, “This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power" comes during a conversation between a Persian soldier and Thersander, a Greek traitor who had taken sides with the Persians when they invaded Greece. The Persian implores Thersander to desert and seek his safety as this Persian expedition was doomed to perish. Thersander then asks the Persian soldier why he doesn’t take this knowledge to his generals so that they may forthwith stop the invasion, to which he then gets the above reply. The second quote is; “If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.” This comes from the passage where the Egyptians confonted their King, Amasis, and said to him his style of drinking and joking with common people was unbecoming for royal dignity, and the above is the suitable response he gave them. 

Herodotus: Not Just Another Academic: 

As I have a disdain for academics and scholars, I also warmed up to Herodotus because, not only did he record history, he also participated in its creation. Here is how he casually mentioned his involvement in the history he was recording in Book Eight, Chapter 132:  

When the whole fleet was collected together at Aegina, ambassadors from Ionia arrived at the Greek station; they had but just come from paying a visit to Sparta, where they had been entreating the Lacedaemonians to undertake the deliverance of their native land. One of these ambassadors was Herodotus, the son of Basileides. Originally they were seven in number; and the whole seven had conspired to slay Strattis the tyrant of Chios; one, however, of those engaged in the plot betrayed the enterprise; and the conspiracy being in this way discovered, Herodotus, and the remaining five, quitted Chios, and went straight to Sparta, whence they had now proceeded to Aegina, their object being to beseech the Greeks that they would pass over to Ionia. It was not, however, without difficulty that they were induced to advance even so far as Delos. 

Criticism of The Histories: 

Herodotus has been criticised for not writing his history in a chronological sequence as did Thucydides. I argue that as a pioneer of the writing of history, Herodotus had no frame of reference, unlike his successors like Thucydides, who just refined his invention. Another famous criticism is by Plutarch titled, The Malice of Herodotus. I advise you to read it yourself but his general complaint was that Herodotus painted the Barbarians (Persians, Europeans, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans, Indians) in a positive light while denigrating his own kind – The Greeks. As a non – Greek myself, this does not bother me in the least.

The Histories is 734 pages long.

Thucydides. The Only Authority On International Relations.

"In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time" - Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.

I took this picture at the waterfront on the Island of Aegina, in September 2012, when I was visiting all the places where the History says the battles of the Peloponnesian War took place. 

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Most scholars of International Relations think the Melian Dialogue the most instructive passage in The History of the Peloponnesian War. I beg to differ. The passage below by Thucydides is one of the most compelling and densest historical accounts I have ever read. For me, the most instructive point is how thin the veneer of civility truly is, as evinced in the breakdown of order during the plague. Here is what Thucydides said about the plague, with nothing left out;

"The original outbreak, it is said, was started in Ethiopia, the far side of Egypt: the plague then spread to Egypt and Libya, and over much of the King’s territory. It fell on the city of Athens suddenly. The first affected were the inhabitants of the Peiraeus, who went so as to allege that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the wells (at that time there were no fountains in the Peiraeus). Afterwards the plague reached the upper city too, and now the number of deaths greatly increased.

Others, doctors or laymen, can give their individual opinions of the likely origin of the plague, and of the factors which they think significant enough to have had the capacity to cause such a profound change. But I shall simply tell it as it happened, and describe the features of the disease which will give anyone who studies them some prior knowledge to enable recognition should it ever strike again. I myself caught the plague, and witnessed others suffering from it.

It so happened that this year was commonly agreed to have been particularly free from other forms of illness, though anyone with a previous condition invariably developed the plague. The other victims were in good health until, for no apparent cause, they were suddenly afflicted. The first symptoms were a high fever in the eyes and reddening and inflammation of the eyes; then internally the throat and tongue began to bleed and the breath had an unnaturally foul smell. There followed sneezing and hoarseness of voice, and shortly the affliction moved down to the chest accompanied by a violent cough. When it settled in the stomach the turmoil caused there led to the voiding of bile in every form for which the doctors have a name, all this with great pain. Most of them suffered from an empty retching which brought violent spasms: in some this followed as soon as the vomiting had abated, in others much later.

The surface of the body was not particularly hot to the touch or pallid, but reddish and livid, breaking out in small pustules and ulcers. But the sensation of burning heat inside the body was so strong that sufferers could not bear the pressure of even the lightest clothing or sheets, or anything other than going naked, and their greatest wish was to plunge into cold water. Many who had no one to look after them did in fact throw themselves into cisterns, overcome by an insatiable thirst: but as a rule the quantity of water drunk made no difference. A constant infliction was desperate restlessness and the inability to sleep. Throughout the height of the disease there was no wasting of the body, but a surprising physical resilience to all the suffering, so that there was still some strength in them when the majority died from the internal fever after six to eight days. If they survived this period most others died from the consequent weakness when the disease spread down to the bowels causing heavy ulceration and the onset of completely liquid diarrhoea.

The disease first settled in the head then progressed throughout the whole body from the top onwards. If any survived the worst effects, symptoms appeared when the disease took hold in their extremities. It attacked genitals, fingers, and toes, and many lived on with these parts lost: some too lost their sight. There were those who on recovery suffered immediate and total loss of memory, not knowing who they were and unable to recognize their friends.

Indeed the pathology of the disease defied explanation. Not only did it visit individuals with a violence beyond human endurance, but there was also this particular feature which put it in a different category from all other diseases with which we are familiar: although many bodies lay unburied, the birds and animals which prey on human flesh kept away from them, or, if they did eat, died of it. Evidence of this was the notable disappearance of carrion birds, nowhere to be seen in their usual or any other activity: the dogs, being domestic animals, allowed more immediate observation of this consequence.

This then, leaving aside the many variants in the way different individuals were affected, was the general character of the disease. Throughout this time there were no attacks of the usual illnesses: any that did occur ended in the plague.

Some died in neglect and others died despite constant care. Virtually no remedy was established as a single specific relief applicable in all cases: what was good for one was harmful to another. No particular constitution, strong or weak, proved sufficient in itself to resist, but the plague carried off all indiscriminately, and whatever their regime of care. The most dreadful aspects of the whole affliction were the despair into which people fell when they realized they had contracted the disease (they were immediately convinced that they had no hope, and so were much more inclined to surrender themselves without a fight), and the cross-infection of those who cared for others: they died like sheep, and this was the greatest cause of mortality. When people were afraid to visit one another, the victims died in isolation, and many households were wiped out through the lack of anyone to care for them. If they did visit the sick, they died, especially those who could claim some courage: these were people who out of a sense of duty disregarded their own safety and kept visiting their friends, even when ultimately the family members themselves were overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster and abandoned the succession of dirges for the dead. But the greatest pity for the dying and the distressed was shown by those who had had the disease and recovered. They had experience of what it was like and were now confident for themselves, as the plague did not attack the same person twice, or at least not fatally. These survivors congratulated by all, and in the immediate elation of recovery they entertained the fond hope that from now on they would not die of any other disease.

The suffering was made yet more acute by the influx from the country into the city, and the incomers suffered most of all. With no houses of their own, and forced to live in huts which at that time of year were stifling, they perished in chaotic conditions: the dead and the dying were piled on top of each other, and half-dead creatures staggered about the streets and round every fountain, craving for water. The sanctuaries in which they had encamped were full of corpses – people dying there were not moved: all sacred and secular constraints came to be ignored under the overwhelming impact of the disaster, which left men no recourse. All previously observed funeral customs were confounded, and burial was haphazard, any way that people could manage. Many were driven to shameful means of disposal for lack of friends to help them, so many of their friends already dead: they made use of other people’s funeral pyres, either putting their own dead on a pyre constructed by others and quickly setting light to it, or bringing a corpse to a pyre already lit, throwing it on top of the other body in the flames, and then running away.

In other respects too the plague was the beginning of the increased lawlessness in the city. People were less inhibited in the indulgence of pleasures previously concealed when they saw the rapid changes of fortune – the prosperous suddenly dead, and the once indigent now possessing their fortune. As a result they decided to look for satisfactions that were quick and pleasurable, reckoning that neither life nor wealth would last long. No one was prepared to persevere in what had once been thought the path of honour, as they could well be dead before that destination was reached. Immediate pleasure, and any means profitable to that end, became the new honour and the new value. No fear of god or human law was any constraint. Pious or impious made no difference in their view, when they could see all dying without distinction. As for offences against the law, no one expected to live long enough to be brought to justice and pay the penalty: they thought that a much heavier sentence had already been passed and was hanging over them, so they might as well have some enjoyment of life before it fell…" 

Notes:

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book 2, Lines 48 – 54, pp.96 – 99.

Thucydides. “The Peloponnesian War.” Translated by Martin Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.