Thucydides and Herodotus, and not Herodotus and Thucydides: in the title of this book the younger author precedes the elder, because the main focus of the essays comprising this collection is the relationship between the two major Greek historians of the fifth century b.c. The younger stands before the elder and defines his own range of action.
In their introduction, the editors recommend a revision of the old antithesis between the ‘father of fables’ and the first champion of scientific history, stressing a substantial continuity between their ways of narrating human events, as different as these may seem. This positive relationship is established under the sign of the epic roots of Greek historiography, and the similarities of both historians with Homer, as in the case of speeches, are often emphasised in the book. Thus Homer opens his ample umbrella to cover Herodotus and Thucydides, allowing them to meet again and get to know each other better. This interpretative framework in not new per se, nor do the editors exhibit such a claim: it suffices to recall Jacoby, ‘Greek Great Historiography … consciously followed the epos, and … it therefore is Panhellenic’, Atthis (1949), p. 199. But the main emphasis now is much more on narrative structures than on a historiographical perspective.
R.B. Rutherford describes the narrative techniques employed by Homer and by the two historians in a long-awaited and thoughtful essay; he conceives history as a narrative structure sovereignly planned by its author, who keeps a constant eye on epic models. Progressive iterations in epic (e.g. the aristeiai in the Iliad) and situation reversals (Hector and Andromache, Il. 6 and 22) provide the reader with tools with which to interpret analogous narrative structures in historiography. But iterations in the historians are less clearly progressive, and reversals (such as Pylos–Syracuse: Thuc. 7.71.7) can be viewed as ironic reversals, as Rutherford rightly labels them: are we sure that irony too is a lesson that Herodotus and Thucydides learn from epic?
In his contribution on Thucydides as ‘reader’, or listener, of Herodotus, P.A. Stadter explores several features in Thucydides that are the result of a close imitation (or simply a profound knowledge) of Herodotus. Stadter shows a remarkable esprit de finesse when he argues (p. 61) that in the Lydian logos Herodotus invites his listeners to adopt a forward-looking perspective and to see ‘to the end’ of a historical process, as Solon recommends in his dialogue with Croesus (Hdt. 1.32.9). Thucydides seems influenced by that model in the speeches of the Corcyraeans and the Corinthians.
C. Scardino has studied the oratio obliqua in the two historians and rightly notes that, in comparison with direct speeches, it has been frequently neglected. He concludes that, despite some minor differences, indirect speeches exhibit a level of fictionality similar to direct ones, and that Thucydides exploits them in a quite Herodotean manner.
C. Rubincam, who is currently involved in a wide-ranging research project on numbers in historical narratives, offers a clever explanation of the different numeric practices in Herodotus and Thucydides. The former likes to set forth his calculations (e.g. Xerxes' army in 7.184–6), while the latter prefers to avoid any display of arithmetic exactitude. This does not mean that Herodotus was more rational than Thucydides: the difference corresponds to their authorial personae, shaping their respective historiographical habits also in other aspects (Herodotus quotes variant versions, while Thucydides tends to conceal the spadework of his research).
H.-P. Stahl examines some patterns of action in which initial confidence is followed by disastrous outcomes, from the Melians choosing to resist Athens in the vain hope of having some chance, to Xerxes' eagerness to invade Greece. There are many good observations on single passages (e.g. on Persian expansion, Hdt. 7.8, p. 135), but the main topic is too general and too similar to the tragic thematic plexus, such as ate, to draw any relevant conclusion about Herodotus and Thucydides on desires, irrationality and factual outcomes.
L., on ‘Oaths’, writes an important chapter on the historians' attitude towards a significant religious practice. A close examination of the relevant passages in Herodotus and Thucydides leads to the conclusion that the two historians' interest in vows concentrates on their precarious nature and on their destructive potential, when they are violated or when their observance brings about increasing violence and disorder; and Thucydides' sensitivity to such a religious practice is a conclusion which deserves particular attention.
F. describes the Pylos narrative in Thucydides' Book 4 in terms of imitation of the Herodotean Thermopylae paradigm. Thucydides himself is aware of some analogies (4.36.3), and F. is able to articulate his narrative so that the Spartans and the Athenians, in the successive phases of fighting, appear to play all the Herodotean parts at Thermopylae: the many and the few, the Persians and the Spartans; and Herodotus' account is not devoid of Homeric echoes. F.'s analysis is very accurate, the comparison of the Spartan prisoner in Thuc. 4.40.2 with Dieneces in Hdt. 7.226.2 is masterfully ingenious (p. 210), but some questions seem inescapable: are the Pylos facts in Thucydides nothing but a step in a literary genealogy? Is the sequence of events simply the effect of an imitative relationship?
W. Blösel compares Herodotus' and Thucydides' treatments of Themistocles, and denies that the latter was meant to refute the former: Thucydides built on oral tradition and on previous written sources, such as Charon (but no attention is paid to the hard chronological problems concerning this author): in a word, he worked in a ‘Herodotean’ manner.
R. Vignolo Munson explores the changing role of Persians in different parts of Thucydides' work; as for the relationship to Herodotus, she has detailed pages on Thuc. 1.128–38, in which she points out the Herodotean traits in such a way as to fit usefully in with Blösel's article.
C. Pelling, who opens the ‘Reception’ part of the book, brilliantly shows how fourth-century handbooks of rhetoric (Aristotle and Rh. Al.) allow us to reconstruct a rhetorical code which can be assumed as already functioning in the fifth century; in this framework, Herodotus and Thucydides are fully examined for the space given to moral arguments in the speeches they include.
E. Baragwanath delineates Herodotus' and Thucydides' influence on Xenophon through a close textual enquiry. The comparison of Procles' second speech (Hell. 7.1.2) with Solon's precept of ‘look to the end’ (loc. cit.) seems somewhat far-fetched: τοῦτο σκοπεῖν … ὅπως ἡ ϕιλία … συμμενεῖ has a different meaning (‘to examine how’ to get an effect, and not ‘to see’ the conclusion of a process). But Baragwanath has excellent remarks on Thucydides and Solonian wisdom, and on the intertextuality between Hellenica's close and Thucydides' opening.
I. Samotta looks for possible traces of a reception of the first Greek historians in Roman historiography, ranging from its origins to Sallust. Notwithstanding ample handbook material and some dubious points (e.g. the image of a mighty archaic Rome quickly labelled as ‘factually anachronistic’), there are penetrating pages, especially on Cato, his experience of Thermopylae and his relationship to Herodotus (pp. 358–60). As regards Coelius Antipater on different types of proof (fr. 29 P.), Samotta might have added a possible parallel, Hdt. 2.99.1.
This is a stimulating book, which allows us to compare different views of important problems and topics. The book is well produced, and I noted few misprints.Footnote 1 The bibliography is rich and older works are well exploited (though two important titles are missing: H. Strasburger, Studien zur alten Geschichte, II.963–1016; on Thuc. 1.128–38, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechisches Lesebuch [1902], I.50–1 and II.1.26–33). I much appreciated the constant focus on the first two Greek historians who have come down to us, and interpret this as an acknowledgement of the early existence and effectiveness of the historical genre. But the authors too frequently espouse an overtly literary approach, and this is too one-sided a method of research into ancient historiography. To give one example: in reading Herodotus on the struggle over Leonidas' body (7.225), one is entitled to think of Patroclus in the Homeric model (Il. 17). But does this attest to Homer's influence on the writing ‘table’ of Herodotus, or on the Spartans' military behaviour? This is a well-known problem, still worth debating, to which the reader of this book has new means to find his own solution.
