Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus' Histories

2 MYTH, TRUTH, & NARRATIVE IN HERODOTUS r edited by Emily Baragwanath & Mathieu de Bakker Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:31 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D1 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi M Y T H , TR U T H , AN D N A R R A T I V E I N HERODOTUS Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:31 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D2 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:31 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D3 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus Edited by EMILY BARAGWANATH AND MATHIEU DE BAKKER 1 Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:32 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D4 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Emily Baragwanath 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–969397–9 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:33 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D5 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi Preface and Acknowledgements In this volume we take as our point of departure the one element on which all those who seek to define the meaning of ‘myth’ in Herodotus agree: its narrative character, which it shares with all works of the ancient historiographical tradition. Our present era has witnessed a kind of rebirth of the appreciation of narrative in historiography. This may be attested by the work of such writers as Simon Schama, Niall Ferguson, and Tom Holland, who present their investigations into the past through an engaging, fluent narrative that appeals to a wider audience. But the blurring of boundaries between ‘story’ and ‘history’ is visible in other genres too. A. S. Byatt in her Booker Prize winning novel Possession (1990) employed a historical Victorian setting as a stage for fictional characters, while the acknowledgements to academic and scientific institutions in Dan Brown’s mystic detective novels buttress the authority of an otherwise entirely fictional narrative. Herodotus himself can be considered the father of narrative historiography. To communicate his story of the past he made use of literary elements, often through patterns that were associated with tales known from the Greek legendary heritage. The aim of this volume is to study such elements in an attempt to contribute to the ongoing reconciliation of Herodotus the purveyor of fictional tales and employer of ‘mythic’ paradigms with the historian of the Persian Wars. In September 2007 we invited an international group of scholars who were working in the fields of Greek historiography and mythology to Christ Church, Oxford, for a conference on Herodotus and Myth. The atmosphere of the conference was congenial and stimulating, and fresh approaches were measured up against the merits of more traditional ones. This volume brings together the papers of eleven of its participants, along with two further contributions solicited in a bid to enrich further the whole. Together, the papers bring out a variety of ways in which one can deal with the ‘mythical’ material of Herodotus’ Histories, and we hope that they open up ample possibilities for future theoretical, historical, and philological debate. Although the editors and contributors have tried to keep the Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:33 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D6 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi vi Preface and Acknowledgements contents of the volume up to date, it should be noted that it was first submitted to the publisher for consideration in 2009. The conference would not have taken place, and the volume that grew from it would not have appeared, were it not for the generous intellectual, financial, and organizational support of many. First we would like to thank the participants of the conference for their numerous observations on individual papers. In particular, we thank the panel presiders Roger Brock and Robert Fowler, and Christopher Pelling, Thomas Harrison, and Tom Holland, for livening up the event with their contributions to the programme. Deborah Boedeker, Angus Bowie, and John Marincola provided us with sage early advice and with support in raising funds. Christ Church we thank for being such a gracious host of the conference. Audiences at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania helped us in sharpening our thoughts about the introduction, as did valuable observations made by members of the Amsterdam Hellenist Society, and by Sean Braswell, who read several versions of it. At various stages we received administrative support from Philippa Duffin, Eleni Kechagia, John Esposito, Saskia Willigers, and John Beeby. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of the OUP book proposal for their careful reading of the manuscript and useful observations, Hilary O’Shea and the rest of her superb team at OUP, our splendid copy-editor Hilary Walford, and our proofreader James Eaton. The department of Classics at UNC-Chapel Hill and its gracious Chair Cecil Wooten provided invaluable assistance with the final preparations for publication. Finally, we owe acknowledgement to the generous sponsors of our conference: the British Academy, the John Fell OUP Fund, the Christopher Tower Fund, the University of Oxford Classics Faculty Board, the Craven Committee, the Hellenic Society, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the Institute of Culture and History of the University of Amsterdam. We should like to note that the order of our surnames as it appears on the volume’s title page and introduction was chosen for euphonic reasons and does not reflect an uneven workload. E.B. and M. de B. September 2011 Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:33 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D7 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi Contents List of Contributors ix Introduction: Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus’ Histories Emily Baragwanath and Mathieu de Bakker 1 Part I: From Myth to Historical Method 1. Myth and Legend in Herodotus’ First Book Carolyn Dewald 59 2. Herodotus and the ‘Myth’ of the Trojan War Suzanne Saïd 87 3. Herodotus’ Proteus: Myth, History, Enquiry and Storytelling Mathieu de Bakker 4. The Helen Logos and Herodotus’ Fingerprint Irene de Jong 5. ‘Strangers are from Zeus’: Homeric Xenia at the Courts of Proteus and Croesus Elizabeth Vandiver 6. Herodotus on Melampus Vivienne J. Gray 107 127 143 167 Part II: Myth and History 7. Herodotus and the Heroic Age: The Case of Minos Rosaria Vignolo Munson 195 8. Myth and Truth in Herodotus’ Cyrus Logos Charles C. Chiasson 213 Comp. by: pg2846 Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 0001493282 Time:11:30:33 Filepath:d:/womat-filecopy/0001493282.3D8 Date:27/7/12 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, 27/7/2012, SPi viii Contents 9. Herodotus and Eastern Myths and Logoi: Deioces the Mede and Pythius the Lydian Rosalind Thomas 233 10. The Mythical Origins of the Medes and the Persians Pietro Vannicelli 255 11. Mythology and the Expedition of Xerxes Angus M. Bowie 269 12. Returning to Troy: Herodotus and the Mythic Discourse of his own Time Emily Baragwanath 287 References Index Locorum General Index 313 343 357