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FRIENDS OR FOES?
HERODOTUS IN THUCYDIDES’ PREFACE∗
MAREK WĘCOWSKI
∗
I am particularly indebted to Benedetto Bravo, Robert L. Fowler, Kurt A.
Raaflaub, Stephanie West, and Aleksander Wolicki for their critical insights and
comments; needless to say, I am the sole responsible for all the mistakes that
remain. I would also like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the Wrocław
“Children of Herodotus” conference, not only for this inspiring intellectual venue
and for their hospitality, but also for their humane indulgence for the lateness of
the present contribution.
1
Of the immense bibliography on the relationship between Herodotus and
Thucydides, see in particular Jacoby 1913a, 505f. and Hornblower 1996, 122-37
(Annex A: “Thucydides’ Use of Herodotus”); cf. also Pelling 1991 and esp.
Tsakmakis 1995. I have not found Rogkotis 2006 very useful for my present
purpose.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 35
2
Cf. below, p. 48 with n. 39.
3
This is not to deny, of course, that these approaches, divergent as they are,
produced many highly valuable studies. To mention only a few: Canfora 1982;
Hunter 1982; Stahl 1983. Cf. already Cornford 1907.
4
Cf. esp. Raaflaub 1987b and 2002b; Fowler 1996; Thomas 2000; Corcella 2006;
Rood 2006; Schepens 2007, esp. 42-8. But cf. already Hunter 1982.
36 Chapter Four
this approach by a detailed parallel analysis of how and what they both tell
us about their respective projects.5
5
In what follows, I will base on the results of an earlier paper of mine on the form
and thought in the prologue of Herodotus (Węcowski 2004a), but I do not
necessarily assume for my readers any acquaintance with this previous study.
6
See e.g. Jacoby 1913a, 505f. What I deliberately leave outside the scope of this
paper is the issue of the relationship between Thuc. 1.1-23 and Hdt. 7.19-21, the
so-called “second preface” of Herodotus.
7
In general, cf. Fehling 1975. For a thorough interpretation of Thucydides’
prologue, see e.g. Erbse 1970.
8
Hornblower 1996, 125.
9
See also Moles 1993, 99.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 37
10
For this issue, cf. recently Corcella 2006, esp. 53-6.
38 Chapter Four
11
Cf. the voting prerogatives of the Spartan kings and the problem of the famous
Pitanate lochos (1.20.3) as well as the disputable greatness of the Persian Wars
(1.23.1). The mention of the Athenian tyrants (for the traditions regarding the
liberation of Athens from the Pisistratid tyranny, cf. in general Thomas 1989, 238-
82) is a more complicated issue for the present state of this passage (1.20.2) may
be due to a late interpolator, as B. Bravo warns me. Cf. also below, pp. 40f.
12
Whether such a public really existed these days or not cannot detain us here, but
I do believe it was more that a virtual reader conceived in Thucydides’ mind.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 39
13
See already Hammond 1952. Incidentally, in that, he clearly followed Herodotus
(recently, cf. Węcowski 2004a, esp. 146-8), but not only him, for this structure is
also present e.g. in the opening sections of the Iliad.
14
Moles 1993, 98.
15
Dewald 1999, 236.
16
Węcowski 2004a, 149-55.
40 Chapter Four
17
Two among the outstanding experts in the realm of archaiologia, more or less
contemporaneous with Thucydides, deserve special attention: Hellanicus of Lesbos
(FGrHist 4) and Hippias of Elis (see esp. FGrHist 6 T 3). For the latter, cf. my
forthcoming commentary in BNJ.
18
But cf. above, n. 11.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 41
for the most people, but they rather turn to what is at hand” (1.20.3 ad
fin.). It is not easy to say whether Herodotus is counted among “the
majority,” οἱ πολλοί, that does not care for striving for the truth, ἡ
ζήτησις τῆς ἀληθείας, or whether he serves here just as the (or one of the)
author(s) of τὰ ἑτοῖμα, “the most easily available stuff.” One way or
another, he and primarily he seems to be targeted here.19
So far so good, and I think almost everybody is prepared to accept this
aspect of Thucydides’ polemics against Herodotus. Things become more
complex and equivocal when another line of the “archaeology” comes to
the fore. In his incipit, Thucydides announces his intention to demonstrate
that his war was in fact much greater that any one before. This claim, as
substantiated in the “archaeology,” has long been stigmatized by modern
scholars as a bold rhetorical exaggeration. Let us think about the casuistic
argument in favour of the relative insignificance of the Persian Wars
(1.23.1): true, it was the biggest “feat,” or ἔργον, of the past, but
incomparable with the Peloponnesian War because the former conflict was
decided in just four battles—two of them naval and two on land. It is hard
indeed to imagine another way of arguing for the superiority of the
Peloponnesian over the Persian Wars. Or take Thucydides’ “proof” for the
relative insignificance of the Trojan War (1.11): true, it lasted for ten long
years; it would have been settled faster, but the Greeks were too weak and,
what is more, Hellas was too poor (cf. the notion of ἀχρηματία
throughout the chapter) to wage a solid full-scale siege of Troy. Ergo, the
Trojan War must have been rather unimportant just because of its length.
What a neat paradox, isn’t it!20
By contrast, and this used to be taken by modern critics as a prime
example of Thucydides’ rhetorical amplificatio,21 his positive arguments in
favour of the primacy of his war strike a note of utmost pathos. The
superiority of the Peloponnesian War is evidenced not only by the sheer
length of the conflict, but also by the “sufferings” throughout its course,
unprecedented in earlier Greek history (1.23.1-4), including natural
phenomena such as earthquakes, eclipses of the sun, droughts, famines and
the Athenian plague (23.3). For our modern taste, this is too much. But to
understand it properly, I think we need, first, to comprehend the notion of
“greatness” as developed throughout the preface and next to grasp the
nature of Thucydides’ overall argument there.
19
If the latter is the case, this sentence might throw some interesting light on the
issue of the popularity of Herodotus those days.
20
Cf. in detail Luraghi 2000.
21
See e.g. Woodman 1988, esp. 28-32.
42 Chapter Four
22
For a well-balanced view, see already Romilly 1966; cf. Hunter 1982, 17-49 and
Meier 1990, ch. 10.
23
For the Pentekontaetia in general, see recently Stadter 1993.
24
I think this judgement was to a large extent based on the message of the funeral
speech delivered at this occasion by Pericles and on Pericles’ vision of the
Athenian empire in general. Cf. below, p. 44 with nn. 29 and 30.
25
See already Schwartz 1929, 178f. and Classen and Steup 1919, ad loc.; for
earlier scholarship, cf. Latacz 1994, 400f.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 43
26
Latacz 1994, 422.
27
Cf. also Latacz 1994, 424-6.
28
In general, cf. Kallet-Marx 1993.
44 Chapter Four
“it is part of the nature of all things to decline” (2.64.3: πάντα γὰρ
πέφυκε καὶ ἐλασσοῦσθαι).
Now, as I tried to show elsewhere, this “growth-oriented” vision of the
Peloponnesian War, its preliminaries, and its first phase, was deeply
rooted in the ideology of the Periclean Athens. Thucydides’ Pericles uses
the slogan of αὔξειν τὴν πόλιν, or “enhancing the country”, several times,
but we know it also from Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Xenophon,
and some fourth-century writers rethinking the Athenian empire and its
ideology, including Plato and Isocrates.29 And I hope to demonstrate at
some other occasion that the historical Pericles, in another epitaphios
logos of his, honouring the heroes of the war against Samos, proudly
declared that it was time to “abandon the toils” (πόνων παυσόμεθα)
because the “apex,” or ἀκμή, of the Athenian power had been reached.
Incidentally, for a Greek this must have been a shocking idea, but
thinkable in the generation, so brilliantly analysed by Christian Meier, that
believed in unlimited possibilities offered by this exceptional epoch to
human mind, courage, and inventiveness.30
Of course, this “growth-and-peak” pattern was deeply rooted in earlier
Greek thought (just think about Solon and archaic Greek wisdom in
general). But Thucydides’ decision to organise in this very way not only
the preliminaries of his war, but his whole account up to the, to put it in
Aristotelian terms, περιπέτεια, or sudden reversal of the plot, namely to
the description of the Plague—all this is highly revealing. The Periclean
“ἀκμή-ideology” was no doubt crucial for Thucydides’ interpretation of
the logic of the Peloponnesian War and of the fate of Athens in general.
However, he was not the first to interpret the preliminaries of a war and
indeed the whole history of Athens in these very terms. It was Herodotus
who organised his monumental narrative of the “cause of hostilities
between Greeks and barbarians” in two parallel developments he
systematically, although at times implicitly or periphrastically, dubs
“growth,” or αὔξησις. On the one hand, the irresistible (to a certain point)
march of the Persian tyranny crushing one oriental kingdom after another.
On the other, the difficult, uneven, and capricious development of Greece,
incarnated in Sparta’s “good political order,” or εὐνομίη, and in her
29
In my unpublished Ph.D. Diss. Hérodote, Thucydide et un aspect de l’idéologie
athénienne du Vème siècle (Paris, École des hautes études en sciences sociales,
2000); for the time being, see my Polish paper (with a summary in English)
Węcowski 2004b.
30
Meier 1990, ch. 10.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 45
hegemony over the Peloponnesus and in the first triumphs of the Athenian
ἰσηγορίη, or democracy.31
Furthermore, Herodotus ends his story at Sestos, where the Athenians
begin to substitute Persians as the would-be cruel “tyrants of the Hellas”
(9.114-21).32 The point is that throughout his work Herodotus gives
enough hints and clues for his public to extrapolate the future course of
events, growing hostilities between the former anti-Persian allies, and
ultimately the fratricidal war between Athens and Sparta.33 But the most
important thing is that this implicit message of Herodotus stems above all
from, and is foreshadowed by, the idea of the parallel αὔξησις of the two
cities in the course of their history before the Persian Wars. This two-fold
line of the narrative subtly structures the whole work of Herodotus,34
investing it with a contemporary meaning. To put it briefly, the two lines
of parallel “growths” of Athens and Sparta go beyond the boundaries of
Herodotus’ book, on a collision course with one another, towards the crush
that was well known to the historian and to his public from their life-time
experience. No doubt, Herodotus must have been very proud of this
extrapolated contemporary meaning encoded in his narrative about the
glorious Greek past.
Well, it is by no means a coincidence that in the Pentekontaetia
Thucydides picks up the Greek and in particular the Athenian history
exactly where Herodotus once dropped it behind, namely at Sestos
(1.89.2).35 Furthermore, he goes on recounting the Fifty Years period
precisely in terms of (the Herodotean) αὔξησις. The goal of this excursus
is to continue, but even more to outclass, Herodotus. And we are not far
from this in the “archaeology” neither. Here again the Herodotean
principle of αὔξησις is used, but in a negative manner. Herodotus is
bettered, so to say, through the systematic, at times pedantic, but always
ingenious and erudite exposé of the “obstacles to growth.” In a word,
Herodotus is defeated on his home turf and using his own weapon.
With all this in our minds, let me briefly return to the incipit of
Thucydides’ work. As I tried to argue before, in the two initial participial
clauses (“beginning at the very outbreak of the war” and “expecting that it
31
For this interpretation, see briefly Węcowski 1996.
32
For this political catchword (and idea), cf. esp. Raaflaub 1979 and Tuplin 1985.
33
As regards the political message in Herodotus, see already the pioneering work
by Strasburger 1955; cf. Fornara 1971, 46-58 and 79-91; recently, see e.g.
Raaflaub 1987b and 2002b, esp. 164-83; Stadter 1992; Moles 1996 and 2002;
Węcowski 1996; Fowler 2003.
34
Cf. already Bornitz 1968, passim.
35
Cf. also below, n. 53.
46 Chapter Four
would be great etc.”) we find a polemical hint at Herodotus. The third one
(τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν κτλ.), on the one hand, explains
how did the narrator come to believe, at the very outset of the war, in its
future greatness; on the other, it forms a starting point of the subsequent
argument in favour of the idea of the relative insignificance of the previous
conflicts. But among other things it also introduces the “αὔξησις-and-
ἀκμή” pattern, which draws from, and elaborates on, the organising idea of
Herodotus. Thus, in the opening statement of his work, Thucydides
proudly declares he will focus on the true “summit” and on the highest
concentration of power thus far, unlike those who, having well grasped the
nature of the pregnant political “growth,” turned their backs on what really
mattered and dealt instead with some distant history. In the phrase to
which the participial clause in question is subordinate, Thucydides makes
a deadly stroke against Herodotus: the superlative ἀξιολογώτατος (lit.
“the most worthy of writing”), clearly corresponds with the idea of the
“peak” of power and preparedness, of the ἀκμή prepared by the αὔξησις
analysed and foreshadowed by Herodotus.36
Let us not forget that Herodotus was still active, even at the height of
his career during the first decade of the Peloponnesian War. Hence,
Thucydides’ charges against the Halicarnassian must have been all the
more severe: “Herodotus should have known better!”
As we shall see shortly, this tentative reading of what is implied in
Thucydides’ incipit will be corroborated by my interpretation of the final
chapters of the prologue (1.21-3). But already at this stage of my
argument, I would posit that his polemic with Herodotus assumes so
monumental and so intensive a form just because he did understand and
did adopt Herodotus’ view of earlier and contemporary Greek history. In
the eyes of his successor, however, the “teacher” got it all wrong when
choosing his subject. In sum, the (implied) charge is that he badly realized
in practice his most perspicacious insight.
36
One more thing must be said about the way Thucydides used the Herodotean
notion of auxesis. What was implicit, allusive and required “extrapolating” in
Herodotus, is now explicit and duly restated time and again. The sheer number of
straightforward references to this idea in Thucydides makes it very tempting to
infer that he severely disagreed with this peculiar literary technique of Herodotus
who offered to his public a “coded message” beneath, and going far beyond, his
narrative. Is this disagreement tangible in the opposition between the useless
“ornament” and “pleasure” (τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον,
21.1) allegedly offered to the readers by his predecessors and the “non-
entertaining” (cf. ἀτερπέστερον and τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες) “usefulness” (cf. ὠφέλιμα,
22.4) of his own work? I think so.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 47
37
See esp. Boedeker 1995 and 1996. Cf. in general Bowie 2001. Here, one could
also mention the “historical” plays by Phrynichus and Aeschylus.
38
I am aware of the risk of overstating my case here and in particular of leaving
Dionysius of Miletus, with his Events after Darius and his Historical Cycle
(FGrHist 687 T 1 and T 2, for his contemporaneity with Hecataeus of Miletus; the
latter work might have in fact belonged to Dionysius of Samos), beyond the scope
of this enquiry. As Robert Fowler suggests (per litt.): “one could argue...that the
cumulative understanding…would go well with an understanding of logographoi
as a kind of composite picture, in which Hdt. looms large but for this or that
particular aspect of the composite might not in fact be the most apposite
example...(this is one of the places where, if a name is needed, Dionysios could be
a candidate).” However, I am not optimistic about the early date (based only on the
Suda entry on Hecataeus) for Dionysius (in general, cf. von Fritz 1967, vol. 2, 78
[n. 97]). Of course, such authors of Hellenika as Charon of Lampsacus (FGrHist
262) and (probably) Damastes of Sigeion (FGrHist 5) seem to have preceded
Thucydides, but I assume they were not responsible for narratives comparable to
Herodotus’ one in its grandiosity and philosophical outlook (cf. below, esp. p. 55).
Cf. also below, n. 41.
39
In general, cf. Lendle 1964 and Smart 1986.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 49
40
We are perhaps entitled to link this idea with τὰ ἑτοῖμα, “the most easily
available stuff” (1.20.3 ad fin.) mentioned earlier, as the main source of
information for those interested in the recent and the more remote past. Cf. above,
pp. 40f. with n. 19.
41
This is of course not to deny that, for Thucydides, Homer and Herodotus
represent just how inferior to his own achievement poetry and, say, earlier
historiography are. The point is that he (implicitly) chooses the two authors as
those deserving (for the reasons studied below) his attention and his criticism.
42
Recently, see the illuminating comments in Rood 2006.
50 Chapter Four
43
Cf. above, n. 21.
44
Strasburger 1972.
45
Witness the utterly anachronistic, but once very popular, “Great Divide”
opposition between the written (cf. κτῆμα) and oral (cf. ἀγώνισμα) modes of
communication as allegedly present in 1.22.4.
46
Cf. e.g. Malitz 1982.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 51
47
Lendle 1990.
48
Cf. recently Thomas 2000, esp. 267: “It [scil. 1.22.4] should perhaps be
understood more widely [scil. more widely than as “a narrow jab at Herodotus
alone, or at the sophistic epideixis in its extreme form alone,” ibid.] as a rejection
of the agonistic, confrontational and rhetorical mode of intellectual discourse and
argument that became popular in the latter part of the fifth century and which Plato
also rejected” (cf. in general Thomas 2000, 249-69).
52 Chapter Four
49
Węcowski 2004a, 158.
50
Thucydides also thinks, as Herodotus did, that one of the most obvious tests of
the efficiency of the historian’s analytical tools and of the historical knowledge as
such is the capacity to disclose the mechanisms of historical causation. Starting in
1.23.5f., and throughout the rest of Book 1, he produces a multidimensional and
clearly anti-Herodotean vision of the causes, origins, and antecedents leading to his
war.
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 53
poor public.51 The most striking is the fact that by criticizing Herodotus
and Homer side by side Thucydides intentionally disregards one of the
most important and most spectacular accomplishments of the earlier
historical writing, namely the qualitative difference between what is
adopted κατὰ τὰ λεγόμενα (or from ἀκοαί), usually consisting in
particular of the evidence of the “good old poetry,” and what is known
(cf., in Herodotus, τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν) based on one’s research into the
matter (as, for instance, in Hdt. 7.20.2). This is by no means a coincidence
since establishing this dichotomy was one of the main goals of Herodotus’
preface (see esp. 1.5.3).52 For Thucydides, any cognition but that gained
through a personal observation of events or through impartial cross-
questioning of actual witnesses is mere hearsay as opposed to (his)
“accuracy” (ἀκρίβεια), the only solid basis of knowledge (1.22.2). From
this standpoint, both Homer’s and Herodotus’ endeavours,
notwithstanding their ambition to provide deep insights into the human
condition, deserve to be called ἀγωνίσματα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν.
The only “durable possession” for the Greek public, or κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί, is
Thucydides’ own work.
51
And Thucydides does this following very closely in his “archaeology” (as well
as in his “archaeology” in Book 6) Herodotus’ language and technique, including
the “markers of Herodotus’ voice,” as Fowler 1996, 76f. (with n. 106) puts it.
52
Cf., famously, Hdt. 2.99.1.
53
Cf. also the brilliant passing remark by Gomme 1954, 116: “he [Thuc.] paid him
[Hdt.] the compliment that later historians were to pay to himself of beginning
where he left off, not attempting to do again what he had once done, whereas he
must do again what Hellanikos had attempted.”
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 55
54
In the discussion following my talk during the Wrocław conference, Kurt
Raaflaub drew my attention to the fact that when presenting his subject matter in
the incipit and in the whole prologue Thucydides limits himself to a pre-war
perspective. From my point of view it is intriguing that he stresses the “growth-
and-peak” (see above) pattern but without hinting at the (all too well known to his
public) outcome of the story, so without presenting the whole “growth-peak-and-
collapse” model, typical of archaic and classical Greek ethics. The reason for that
is not the (to some extent) unrevised state of his work, neither the need for a brief
introductory advertisement for the book, but a conscious literary strategy resulting
from Thucydides’ ambition to join in the earlier wisdom tradition. His reader will
progressively be inculcated with the historian’s view of the human nature based on
his detailed narrative of consecutive historical events (signposted at that with
revealing speeches or “debates”). This principle of, so to say, cumulative
instruction of the reader was characteristic of Herodotus, too.
55
More trivially, we should also mention meaningful selection of episodes, their
meaningful temporal order, telling juxtapositions etc. These characteristics do not
disappear, of course, with Thucydides. In general, see Romilly 1990; cf. also
Rawlings 1981.
56 Chapter Four
The real difference [between a poet and a historian] is this, that one tells
what happened and the other what might happen (τὸν μὲν τὰ γενόμενα
λέγειν, τὸν δὲ οἷα ἂν γένοιτο). For this reason poetry is something more
philosophic and serious than history (διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ
σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν), because poetry tends to give
general truths while history gives particular facts (ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις
μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ’ ἱστορία τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστον λέγει). By a “general
truth” I mean the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say
either probably or necessarily (…κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον)…By
“particular facts” I mean what Alcibiades did or suffered.
56
Cf. above, n. 36. The same is true of Thucydides’ explicit statements about his
method and of many other characteristics of his writing, but of course not about his
implicit dealing with Herodotus, which belongs to another facet of his work.
57
At least for the time being; cf. K.A. Raaflaub in this volume.
58
What is more, our historians clearly comply to Aristotle’s view of the usefulness
of tragedy: they do offer mimetic structures of human action embodying the
Friends or Foes? Herodotus in Thucydides’ Preface 57
generalised patterns of universals and are open to the contemplative mind able to
perceive the plot as the dramatic communication of universals (for the Aristotelian
mimesis, cf. Halliwell 1986, 79). For this passage in general, cf. also Else 1967,
302-14. For my present purpose, Gomme 1954 (passim) still remains an
indispensable commentary on Arist. Poet. 1451b.
59
Did he understand that Alcibiades in Thucydides is not only a historically
determined individual, but also incarnates Athens’ energies and drawbacks? I do
not think so.
60
One can reasonably ask oneself in more general terms what has happened in the
meantime and it is here, after Thucydides, that we may also postulate a
hypothetical change in a wider cultural paradigm influencing Greek historiography
(and its later assessment)—involving especially the social role of the intellectual
and the fora of the communication with his audience (in general, cf. Wallace
1995).