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‘I AM GOING TO SAY … ’: A SIGN ON THE ROAD OF HERODOTUS’ LOGOS * 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

Clem Wood
Clem Wood*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
clementw@princeton.edu
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Er ist der Wanderer, der genau weiß, wohin er schließlich kommen will, auch genau die Hauptstationen seines Weges vorher festgelegt hat und innehält, der sich aber dabei Zeit läßt, um alles Schöne und Interessante, das die Gegend bietet, zu betrachten, und selbst lange Seitenwege zu diesem Zwecke nicht zu scheuen braucht, da er weiß, daß er die Hauptstraße am richtigen Punkte wieder erreichen wird.

M. Pohlenz, Herodot, der erste Geschichtschreiber des Abendlandes (1937)

Anyone familiar with Greek literature knows at once that this can describe no author but Herodotus. As readers have long recognized, travel is a crucial element of Herodotus’ persona not only as an historian and ethnographer but also as a narrator, to the extent that he has been called a tourist and a guide. Pohlenz draws his vivid metaphor from Herodotus himself, who assimilates movement through his narrative to movement through space by several well-known narratorial habits: he points out ‘paths’ of logoi (1.95.1: λόγων ὁδούς), goes out of his way to justify so-called ‘digressions’ (or Exkurse) and frequently uses verbs of movement to return to earlier narratives or to preview upcoming ones. However, most scholars have overlooked one important feature by which Herodotus creates this sense of progress through his logoi, although it appears in the programmatic sentence that begins his whole network of narrative signposts and recurs in his voice in the first half of the Histories and in important speeches in the second.

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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 13 - 31
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

Er ist der Wanderer, der genau weiß, wohin er schließlich kommen will, auch genau die Hauptstationen seines Weges vorher festgelegt hat und innehält, der sich aber dabei Zeit läßt, um alles Schöne und Interessante, das die Gegend bietet, zu betrachten, und selbst lange Seitenwege zu diesem Zwecke nicht zu scheuen braucht, da er weiß, daß er die Hauptstraße am richtigen Punkte wieder erreichen wird.

M. Pohlenz, Herodot, der erste Geschichtschreiber des Abendlandes (1937)Footnote 2

Anyone familiar with Greek literature knows at once that this can describe no author but Herodotus. As readers have long recognized, travel is a crucial element of Herodotus’ persona not only as an historian and ethnographer but also as a narrator, to the extent that he has been called a tourist and a guide.Footnote 3 Pohlenz draws his vivid metaphor from Herodotus himself, who assimilates movement through his narrative to movement through space by several well-known narratorial habits: he points out ‘paths’ of logoi (1.95.1: λόγων ὁδούς), goes out of his way to justify so-called ‘digressions’ (or Exkurse) and frequently uses verbs of movement to return to earlier narratives or to preview upcoming ones.Footnote 4 However, most scholars have overlooked one important feature by which Herodotus creates this sense of progress through his logoi, although it appears in the programmatic sentence that begins his whole network of narrative signposts and recurs in his voice in the first half of the Histories and in important speeches in the second.Footnote 5

In the first of more than 1,000 first-person statements,Footnote 6 Herodotus activates the metaphor of travel through his narrative by using ἔρχομαι as an auxiliary verb for the first time in extant Greek literature and following it with two other verbs of movement (1.5.3: expressions with verbs of movement in bold):Footnote 7

ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων ὡς οὕτως ἢ ἄλλως κως ταῦτα ἐγένετο, τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων ἐς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, τοῦτον σημήνας προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου, ὁμοίως σμικρὰ καὶ μεγάλα ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων ἐπεξιών.

And as regards these matters I am not going to say that these happened in this way or in some other way, but having indicated the man who I myself know first initiated unjust acts against the Greeks, I will go forward to the further part of my account, going over small and great cities of people alike.

Although this sentence has attracted the attention of many commentators, most of those who have discussed its importance in the Histories have ignored ἔρχομαι ἐρέων,Footnote 8 and those who have focussed on the novel usage of ἔρχομαι have not thoroughly addressed its significance here and in the rest of the narrative.Footnote 9 This is surprising, since some ancient authors recognized it as a trademark of Herodotus’ style and imitated it in their own proems.Footnote 10 For the first time in detail, I discuss the ἔρχομαι expression in relation to the two other verbs of movement in the sentence, προβήσομαι and ἐπεξιών, and argue that, along with these verbs, it initiates Herodotus’ presentation of the first half of the Histories as a narrative journey through the logoi that he gathered on his travels.Footnote 11 Building upon previous scholarship on the auxiliary use of ἔρχομαι, I analyse its other occurrences in the Histories to show that it differs from the future indicative and μέλλω with the infinitive by emphasizing Herodotus’ movement through both space and narrative. I then discuss the expression's appearances in speeches that reinforce major themes of the Histories. I conclude by explaining its importance as a tool of audience engagement and as a distinctive new feature of Herodotus’ voice in his intellectual milieu.

1.5.3: SIGNALLING THE ROAD AHEAD

In 1.5.3, Herodotus uses ἔρχομαι in a new way to announce that he is going to forge his own path through the past.Footnote 12 With the negative, which occurs only here with the ἔρχομαι expression in the Histories, Herodotus accentuates his decision to leave behind the Persian and Phoenician accounts of Io.Footnote 13 He thereby introduces two of his most characteristic tendencies: refusing to decide between alternative stories and signalling the direction he will take in his logos.Footnote 14 He will rely on his own knowledge (τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτός) to move ahead in his narrative, the spatial dimension of which he stresses by repeating προ- in the verb and the prepositional phrase (προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου) and by using another verb of movement (ἐπεξιών) to describe his coverage of both ‘small and great cities’ (ἄστεα). This is the first hint that there is a link between ‘visiting’ places in his narrative and on his travels, which he alludes to by echoing Homer's description of Odysseus, the archetypal wanderer (Homer, Odyssey 1.3: πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, ‘and he saw cities of many peoples and learned their minds’; cf. also Odysseus to Penelope at 23.267–8).Footnote 15 The travels that Herodotus will advertise so frequently give him the authority to take a polemical approach in 1.5.3 and to make the historical and anthropological generalizations of 1.5.4.Footnote 16 All the distinctive features of his voice are here.

Herodotus’ innovative use of ἔρχομαι produces a dynamic tension: although 1.5.3 and the eleven other examples show that it cannot be understood as a literal verb of movement with a future participle expressing intention,Footnote 17 even in its auxiliary function it has not wholly lost its root meaning. ἔρχομαι plays a more active role in Herodotus than may be suggested by the common translation of it as a periphrasis for the immediate future or by the apparent—but misleading—structural analogy with modern languages (French je vais dire, Spanish voy a decir, Portuguese vou dizer).Footnote 18 Responding to this complexity, L. Amenta sees Herodotus’ ἔρχομαι with a future participle as shifting from spatial to temporal directionality while maintaining a trace of its spatial sense.Footnote 19 F. Létoublon traces the development from concrete in Homer to desemanticized auxiliary in Plato and stresses the expression's role in Herodotus’ historiographical meta-language.Footnote 20 Herodotus blurs the boundaries between space and time by following up ἔρχομαι with the two other verbs of movement, προβήσομαι and ἐπεξιών, that describe his progress through his narrative.Footnote 21 Together with ἔρχομαι ἐρέων and σημήνας,Footnote 22 these verbs inaugurate the metaphor of the road of speech in the Histories, which at once emphasizes Herodotus’ travels and guides the reader through his logoi.Footnote 23 LSJ9 reflects this equation of physical and narrative movement by defining ἐπεξιών here as ‘in writing, traverse, go through in detail’.Footnote 24 This is the only passage in the Histories where ἐπεξέρχομαι appears in this ambivalent sense and where προβαίνω is used metaphorically to describe movement through speech.Footnote 25 By reserving the figurative usage for his own programmatic statement, Herodotus makes it a trademark of his voice. Although he does use ἔρχομαι with a future participle in other persons and tenses to describe movement and intention (for example, 1.210.3: ἤιε … φυλάξων, ‘he went … in order to guard’),Footnote 26 he keeps the first-person present exclusively for the auxiliary use with a verb of saying to pave the way through his logos. While earlier poets and contemporary prose writers also build the image of the verbal road,Footnote 27 Herodotus extends it with his novel use of ἔρχομαι and the verbs of movement reinforcing it.Footnote 28

THE OTHER EXAMPLES OF ἜΡΧΟΜΑΙ WITH A FUTURE PARTICIPLE IN HERODOTUS

What sets it apart from the future indicative and μέλλω

The uniformity of Herodotus’ uses of ἔρχομαι with a future participle reveals the construction's meaning and importance. It appears with five different participles, all of verbs of saying (or of a verb used in a metaphor for speech): ἐρέων (five times), φράσων (four), σημανέων (one), λέξων (one) and μηκυνέων τὸν λόγον (one).Footnote 29 Herodotus’ narrow usage suggests a specific and significant function, and indeed the expression always marks a transition to a new subject that the speaker immediately begins discussing.Footnote 30 Although Herodotus also uses the future indicative for this purpose, the crucial difference is that he employs only the future to express what he will relate in another, more distant, part of his logos (for example, 6.39.1).Footnote 31 This amplifies the idea of a journey through the narrative: Herodotus uses the verb of movement with the future participle to indicate the next stop on the road and the future verb of saying for one much further along.

One of the three passages where the future indicative and ἔρχομαι with a future participle appear together illuminates their relationship (2.34.2–2.35.1 = Appendix #4; verbs of saying in bold):

Νείλου μέν νυν πέρι τοσαῦτα εἰρήσθω. ἔρχομαι δὲ περὶ Αἰγύπτου μηκυνέων τὸν λόγον, ὅτι πλεῖστα θωμάσια ἔχει [ἢ ἡ ἄλλη πᾶσα χώρη] καὶ ἔργα λόγου μέζω παρέχεται πρὸς πᾶσαν χώρην· τούτων εἵνεκα πλέω περὶ αὐτῆς εἰρήσεται.

Now let that be as much as I say about the Nile. But I am going to prolong my account of Egypt, because beyond every land it has very many wonders and offers works surpassing description: for these reasons more will be said about it.Footnote 32

While both the ἔρχομαι expression and the future indicative εἰρήσεται appear here in a context of travel and announce what will immediately follow, Herodotus uses the verb of movement to mark the first transition, from the discussion of the Nile to the account of the rest of Egypt.Footnote 33 The sense of movement is not otiose, since here travel and narrative merge: with the ἔρχομαι construction, Herodotus justifies lengthening his detour from the account of Cambyses’ expedition (2.1.2) to record his sightseeing of Egyptian wonders (θωμάσια).Footnote 34 In addition, this is the only occurrence of the ἔρχομαι expression in which the future participle is not simply a verb of saying, but a verb used in a common metaphor for speech. μηκύνω appears three other times in the Histories, twice to mean ‘to be lengthy or tedious’, without τὸν λόγον (3.60.1 and 3.60.4),Footnote 35 and once to describe the prolongation of a journey, a physical ὁδός (from the Aegean Sea to Susa, 5.54.2: καὶ οὕτω τρισὶ ἡμέρῃσι μηκύνεται ἡ τρίμηνος ὁδός, ‘and so the journey of three months is prolonged by three days’). But the departure from the Nile in Book 2 is the only place in the Histories where μηκύνω appears with an explicit reference to Herodotus’ logos, which strengthens the idea that ἔρχομαι, too, blends literal and metaphorical senses.

The two passages in which Herodotus uses the first-person singular imperfect ἤια with the future participle λέξων (4.82 and 5.62.1 = #13 and #14) illustrate his commitment to the metaphor of the way:Footnote 36 in both he says he will now go back to or take up again (ἀναβαίνω or ἀναλαμβάνω) a story he had begun to tell earlier before skipping ahead.Footnote 37 Although some commentators have compared ἤια with the future participle to ἔμελλον with the infinitive, they are not interchangeable for Herodotus, who never uses the first-person ἔμελλον or μέλλω in his voice.Footnote 38 Herodotus’ determined preference for the ἔρχομαι construction bolsters the metalanguage of travel that guides the reader through his logos.Footnote 39

The narrator's uses of ἔρχομαι with a future participle

The narrator's eight uses of the ἔρχομαι construction share several features that strengthen his network of signposts. Besides announcing an immediate change of subject, they all appear in Books 1–4 and stress knowledge that Herodotus gained on his travels, and six of them are accompanied by what I call a ‘singularity marker’, either a superlative—πρῶτον (1.5.3 and 2.99.1–2 = #1 and #6), μέγιστος (1.194.1 and 2.40.1 = #2 and #5), πλεῖστος (2.35.1 = #4)—or the numeral ἕν (3.6.1 = #7).Footnote 40 As these singularity markers suggest, the ἔρχομαι construction appears exclusively in places that Herodotus wishes to emphasize.Footnote 41 The singularity markers justify the transition signalled by ἔρχομαι with a future participle by denoting a point of particular interest on the road of logos and promising the audience that it will be worth the trip.Footnote 42 They also indicate ‘the historian's voice’ by implying the research that Herodotus conducted on his travels.Footnote 43

Herodotus stresses this special knowledge when he moves to an important new subject: the first man he knows of who began the conflict between Greeks and barbarians (#1), one of the greatest wonders of Babylonia (#2), Egypt's many marvels (#4), how the Egyptians sacrifice to their greatest goddess (#5), the switch from his autopsy, judgement and inquiry to Egyptian accounts (and some part of his eyewitness experience) (#6), or something which few travellers to Egypt have thought about (#7). The two examples without a singularity marker (#3 and #9) are transitions within the general geographical discussions of Egypt and Scythia, which Herodotus signals with the ἔρχομαι construction but does not have to justify, since the road of logos has already taken him there via Cambyses’ and Darius’ invasions respectively.Footnote 44 From these passages, one could argue that Herodotus uses the ἔρχομαι construction in places where the road of logos recapitulates his physical travel, indicating points at which he turned off the main route to see or learn about a local marvel.Footnote 45

In these places, Herodotus makes an effort to ensure that his audience follows him, as a passage in the Egyptian logos shows well (3.6.1–2 = #7):Footnote 46

τὸ δὲ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἐς Αἴγυπτον ναυτιλλομένων ἐννενώκασι, τοῦτο ἔρχομαι φράσων. ἐς Αἴγυπτον ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος πάσης καὶ πρὸς ἐκ Φοινίκης κέραμος ἐσάγεται πλήρης οἴνου δι’ ἔτεος ἑκάστου, καὶ ἓν κεράμιον οἰνηρὸν ἀριθμῷ κεινὸν οὐκ ἔστι ὡς λόγῳ εἰπεῖν ἰδέσθαι. κοῦ δῆτα, εἴποι τις ἄν, ταῦτα ἀναισιμοῦται; ἐγὼ καὶ τοῦτο φράσω.

I am going to tell of a fact that few of those who have sailed to Egypt have considered. Earthenware full of wine is brought to Egypt from all of Greece and in addition from Phoenicia every year, and there is not, so to speak, a single empty wine jar to be seen. ‘And where, then,’ someone might say, ‘do they disappear to?’ I will tell this also.

With ἔρχομαι φράσων, Herodotus announces that he is now departing from the main narrative of Cambyses’ expedition to address an apparent paradox, which he highlights with a singularity marker underscored by a negative and a qualification revealing that he knows he is exaggerating (καὶ ἓν κεράμιον οἰνηρὸν ἀριθμῷ κεινὸν οὐκ ἔστι ὡς λόγῳ εἰπεῖν ἰδέσθαι). He follows up this statement with a rhetorical question posed by an incredulous imaginary interlocutor whom he immediately reassures with a promise in the future indicative (ἐγὼ καὶ τοῦτο φράσω).Footnote 47 As seen in passage #4 as well (p. 7 above), Herodotus uses the verb of movement to signal the point where he first turns off the road and the verb of saying to indicate the lesser transition en route.

ἔρχομαι with a future participle in speeches

Four speakers in the Histories—Otanes, Miltiades, Artabanus and Demaratus—use the ἔρχομαι expression, and, although in their mouths it does not retain the connection to travel that it does in Herodotus’, it is just as important a signpost to their auditors. All of them use it to make a transition in a polemical speech to a potentially unreceptive or hostile audience.Footnote 48 To stress their points, they employ it in conjunction with a singularity marker: Otanes relates the worst vices of an absolute ruler (μέγιστα, 3.80.5 = #8); Miltiades emphasizes to Callimachus that he has the deciding vote to fight at Marathon and so save Athens (ἐς σέ τοι τούτων ἀνήκει τῶν πρηγμάτων τὸ κῦρος ἔχειν, 6.109.4 = #10);Footnote 49 Artabanus explains to Xerxes that the land, one of the two greatest forces in the world (τῶν δύο … τὸ ἕτερον, 7.49.3 = #11; cf. 7.47.2: δύο τὰ μέγιστα πάντων), will oppose his invasion; and Demaratus tells Xerxes about the courage of the Lacedaemonians alone (μούνων, 7.102.2 = #12).Footnote 50 By putting one of his hallmark expressions in these characters’ speeches, Herodotus enhances his presentation of them as ‘wise advisers’ who often seem like his mouthpieces.Footnote 51 As is typical of such figures in Herodotus, they (except for Miltiades) fail to convince their addressees of their proposals, but the narrative validates their opinions.

The four speakers use the characteristically Herodotean construction of ἔρχομαι with a future participle to express themes emphasized by the narrator at historical moments that he singles out for special attention: the Persian constitutional debate, the Battle of Marathon and Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. In these prominent episodes, the ἔρχομαι expression does double duty, providing a road map through the speeches for the speakers’ audiences and through the Histories for Herodotus’.Footnote 52 Herodotus echoes these speakers’ opinions in the narrative and in his authorial comments and underscores their importance by connecting each of them with a wonder (θῶμα).Footnote 53 In the first example, Herodotus twice goes out of his way to assert the authenticity of the speech of Otanes, the only speaker other than the narrator to use the ἔρχομαι expression in Books 1–4.Footnote 54 One reason that Herodotus feels compelled to do so may be that the Persian noble employs the narrator's language and themes.Footnote 55 Otanes begins his speech with ἐμοὶ δοκέει, a common Herodotean expression that appears only here outside of the narrator's voice,Footnote 56 and moves to his final argument against autocracy with ἔρχομαι ἐρέων. Here it signals not a detour from the main theme, but the arrival at the culminating statement. Although Otanes does not win over his fellow conspirators, the narrative of previous and subsequent tyrants frequently confirms his views,Footnote 57 and like the narrator (5.78), he outspokenly praises equality before the law (3.80.6).Footnote 58

The examples from the other three speakers also show that Herodotus gives the ἔρχομαι expression only to speeches that reinforce the themes of his Histories. When Herodotus introduces the debate at Marathon among the Athenian generals, he endorses Miltiades’ proposal by calling the opposing opinion, to avoid battle, ‘the worse’ option (6.109.2: ἡ χείρων τῶν γνωμέων). Miltiades uses ἔρχομαι φράσων to signal his transition from describing the crisis to explaining how Callimachus can be responsible for saving the city, which, as R.W. Macan notes, might be useful for Herodotus’ audience but hardly for the polemarch himself.Footnote 59 Another sign that Miltiades shares the narrator's perspective is that in one of his more impassioned outbursts, Herodotus substantiates Miltiades’ fears of stasis and medism in Athens (6.109.5) by describing the accusations against the Alcmaeonids (6.115 and 6.121–4) and twice expressing his amazement at them (6.121.1 and 6.123.1: θῶμα). Miltiades’ predictions of Athenian primacy are anachronistic before Marathon but consonant with Herodotus’ subsequent narrative and events of his own day.Footnote 60

Later in the account of the Persian Wars, two wise advisers use the ἔρχομαι expression and echo the narrator's themes in conversations with Xerxes. Artabanus, who consistently employs Herodotus’ vocabulary, gnōmai and techniques, uses ἔρχομαι ἐρέων to tell Xerxes that the land will not support the Persian forces.Footnote 61 Although Artabanus’ prediction of famine (7.49.5) does not come true at first, Herodotus endorses his concern as sensible by remarking that he is amazed that the land did sustain the Persians on their way to Greece (7.187.1: θῶμα). Artabanus’ warning does prove prescient once the Persians retreat and starve or die from binge-eating (8.115.2 and 8.117.2). Another ‘tragic warner’ of Xerxes, Demaratus, uses the expression in a statement about Herodotus’ central theme of nomos vs physis.Footnote 62 With ἔρχομαι λέξων, Demaratus highlights his claim that the Lacedaemonians will never surrender and will fight even if the other Greeks medize (7.102.2)—a marvel born out by authorial comment and narrative.Footnote 63 While Herodotus empowers these speakers with the ἔρχομαι expression so that they can make emphatic points bolstering his emplotment of events, he keeps his voice distinct by reserving the connection with travel for himself.Footnote 64

CONCLUSIONS

Herodotus’ use of ἔρχομαι with a future participle of a verb of saying is part of his innovative engagement with his audience. The ἔρχομαι construction links two of his major—and possibly new—authorial habits: his emphasis on autopsy during his travels and indication of his movement through his logos.Footnote 65 In this regard it may be deliberate that Herodotus never uses ἔρχομαι with γράψων, but always with a verb of saying. He thereby casts his authorial statements as direct oral communication with a putative immediate audience at a performance.Footnote 66 While Herodotus certainly conceives of the Histories as a written work, λέγειν is his favourite word to describe his own authorial activity,Footnote 67 and ἔρχομαι ἐρέων adds another flavour of spoken discourse, as it does in Plato's dialogues as well. The verb of movement represents the reciting or reading of the Histories as a process, with the author guiding his audience through narrative space.Footnote 68 At least one prominent ancient reader happily followed Herodotus’ lead: it is largely because of how well Herodotus moves through his logoi and engages his audience that Dionysius of Halicarnassus ranks him far ahead of previous historians (Thuc. 5 and 23) and Thucydides (Pomp. 3).Footnote 69

To conclude, my observations support Létoublon's assertion that ἔρχομαι with a future participle of a verb of saying is not just a transitional marker, but a form of historiographical metalanguage appearing at key points in the work. I go further than Létoublon by noting that all of the narrator's uses of this expression underscore the travels he claims to have conducted. After 1.5.3, every instance in his voice occurs in an account of a foreign land (Babylonia, Arabia, Egypt and Scythia). Five of his eight uses appear in the Egyptian logos in Books 2 and 3, which also feature 31 of the 44 autobiographical statements in the whole work, and after which he no longer details his own travels.Footnote 70 Just as Herodotus gives many more source citations for distant or unfamiliar lands than for Greece,Footnote 71 so too he gives more narrative orientation as he guides his audience through his text and the world beyond places they may know. The clustering of all the examples in the narrator's voice in the first half of the work suggests that he is making a particular effort to establish his distinctive individual persona at the start.Footnote 72 This strategy makes sense in the competitive world of fifth-century Greek prose writers, many of whom begin their works with strong authorial statements.Footnote 73 In the second half of the Histories, the other speakers’ use of the ἔρχομαι expression to make emphatic points to possibly unsympathetic auditors offers a parallel to Herodotus’ strategy and confirms the construction's importance to engaging the audience. As a signpost, ἔρχομαι with a future participle of a verb of saying not only points the way through the logos, but also announces a new direction in Greek literature.

APPENDIX: PASSAGES WITH ἜΡΧΟΜΑΙ OR ἬΙΑ WITH A FUTURE PARTICIPLE OF A VERB OF SAYING IN HERODOTUS

Expressions with ἔρχομαι or ἤια with a future participle are in bold in the Greek text and translation, singularity markers are underlined in the Greek, and deictics and temporal adverbs are underlined and italicized in the Greek.

1. 1.5.3: programmatic statement about the logos

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: superlative (πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: περὶ μὲν τούτων , ὡς οὕτως ἢ ἄλλως, ταῦτα ἐγένετο, τοῦτον σημήνας

ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων ὡς οὕτως ἢ ἄλλως κως ταῦτα ἐγένετο, τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων ἐς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, τοῦτον σημήνας προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου, ὁμοίως σμικρὰ καὶ μεγάλα ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων ἐπεξιών.

And as regards these matters I am not going to say that these happened in this way or in some other way, but having indicated the man who I myself know first initiated unjust acts against the Greeks, I will go forward to the further part of my account, going over small and great cities of people alike.

2. 1.194.1: the wondrous boats of Babylonia

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: superlative (τὸ δὲ ἁπάντων θῶμα μέγιστον)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: ταύτῃ

τὸ δὲ ἁπάντων θῶμα μέγιστόν μοί ἐστι τῶν ταύτῃ μετά γε αὐτὴν τὴν πόλιν, ἔρχομαι φράσων. τὰ πλοῖα αὐτοῖσί ἐστι τὰ κατὰ τὸν ποταμὸν πορευόμενα ἐς τὴν Βαβυλῶνα ἐόντα κυκλοτερέα πάντα σκύτινα.

And I am going to tell of what seems to me to be the greatest wonder of all in this country after the city itself, at any rate. They have boats that proceed down the river to Babylon that are round and all leather.

3. 2.11.1: the gulf of Arabia

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: none

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: οὕτω

ἔστι δὲ τῆς Ἀραβίης χώρης, Αἰγύπτου δὲ οὐ πρόσω, κόλπος θαλάσσης ἐσέχων ἐκ τῆς Ἐρυθρῆς καλεομένης [θαλάσσης], μακρὸς οὕτω δή τι καὶ στεινὸς ὡς ἔρχομαι φράσων …

And in Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a gulf coming in from the sea called the Red, as long and narrow as I am going to show …

4. 2.34.2–2.35.1: transition from description of the Nile to the rest of the Egyptian logos

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: superlative (πλεῖστα θωμάσια … πρὸς πᾶσαν χώρην)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: νυν, τούτων εἵνεκα

Νείλου μέν νυν πέρι τοσαῦτα εἰρήσθω. ἔρχομαι δὲ περὶ Αἰγύπτου μηκυνέων τὸν λόγον, ὅτι πλεῖστα θωμάσια ἔχει [ἢ ἡ ἄλλη πᾶσα χώρη] καὶ ἔργα λόγου μέζω παρέχεται πρὸς πᾶσαν χώρην· τούτων εἵνεκα πλέω περὶ αὐτῆς εἰρήσεται.

Now let that be as much as I say about the Nile. But I am going to prolong my account of Egypt, because beyond every land it has very many wonders and offers works surpassing description: for these reasons more will be said about it.

5. 2.40.1: transition to discussing the Egyptians’ greatest goddess, presumably Isis (who is not named, but there may be a lacuna in which she is)

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: superlative (μεγίστην twice)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: ταύτην

ἡ δὲ δὴ ἐξαίρεσις τῶν ἱρῶν καὶ ἡ καῦσις ἄλλη περὶ ἄλλο ἱρόν σφι κατέστηκε. τὴν δ’ ὦν μεγίστην τε δαίμονα ἥγηνται εἶναι καὶ μεγίστην οἱ ὁρτὴν ἀνάγουσι, ταύτην ἔρχομαι ἐρέων.

And then the disembowelling and the burning of the sacrificial victims occurs in a different way for every sacrifice of theirs. But in fact I am going to tell of the goddess they consider the greatest and for whom they conduct the greatest festival.

6. 2.99.1–2: transition from Herodotus’ own autopsy, judgement and inquiry to Egyptian accounts and his autopsy

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: superlative (πρῶτον βασιλεύσαντα)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: μέχρι … τούτου, ταῦτα λέγουσα, ἀπὸ τοῦδε

μέχρι μὲν τούτου ὄψις τε ἐμὴ καὶ γνώμη καὶ ἱστορίη ταῦτα λέγουσά ἐστι, τὸ δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦδε Αἰγυπτίους ἔρχομαι λόγους ἐρέων κατὰ τὰ ἤκουον· προσέσται δέ τι αὐτοῖσι καὶ τῆς ἐμῆς ὄψιος. Μῖνα τὸν πρῶτον βασιλεύσαντα Αἰγύπτου οἱ ἱρέες ἔλεγον …

Up to this point my autopsy and judgement and inquiry have been saying these things, but from this point on I am going to tell Egyptian accounts according to what heard; and they will have in addition some of my autopsy. The priests said that Min was the first king of Egypt …

7. 3.6.1–2: transition from the geography of the Sinai desert to what happens to wine jars in Egypt

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: numeral (ἓν κεράμιον)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: τοῦτο

τὸ δὲ ὀλίγοι τῶν ἐς Αἴγυπτον ναυτιλλομένων ἐννενώκασι, τοῦτο ἔρχομαι φράσων. ἐς Αἴγυπτον ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος πάσης καὶ πρὸς ἐκ Φοινίκης κέραμος ἐσάγεται πλήρης οἴνου δι’ ἔτεος ἑκάστου, καὶ ἓν κεράμιον οἰνηρὸν ἀριθμῷ κεινὸν οὐκ ἔστι ὡς λόγῳ εἰπεῖν ἰδέσθαι. κοῦ δῆτα, εἴποι τις ἄν, ταῦτα ἀναισιμοῦται; ἐγὼ καὶ τοῦτο φράσω.

I am going to tell of a fact that few of those who have sailed to Egypt have considered. Earthenware full of wine is brought to Egypt from all of Greece and in addition from Phoenicia every year, and there is not, so to speak, a single empty wine jar to be seen. ‘And where, then,’ someone might say, ‘do they disappear to?’ I will tell this also.

8. 3.80.5: Otanes speaks against monarchy in the Persian constitutional debate

Speaker: Otanes

Singularity marker: superlative (μέγιστα)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: none

τὰ δὲ δὴ μέγιστα ἔρχομαι ἐρέων· νόμαιά τε κινέει πάτρια καὶ βιᾶται γυναῖκας κτείνει τε ἀκρίτους.

But indeed I am going to say the worst things: he overturns ancestral laws and does violence to women and kills people without trial.

9. 4.99.2: the geography of Scythia

Speaker: Narrator

Singularity marker: none

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: ἤδη

τὸ δὲ ἀπὸ Ἴστρου ἔρχομαι σημανέων τὸ πρὸς θάλασσαν αὐτῆς τῆς Σκυθικῆς χώρης ἐς μέτρησιν. ἀπὸ Ἴστρου αὕτη ἤδη <ἡ> ἀρχαίη Σκυθίη ἐστί …

And beginning from the Ister I am going to indicate the coastland of Scythia proper with regard to measurement. Now ancient Scythia itself is from the Ister …

10. 6.109.4: Miltiades tries to persuade Callimachus, the Athenian polemarch, to vote to fight at Marathon

Speaker: Miltiades

Singularity marker: emphatic direct address (ἐς σέ τοι τούτων ἀνήκει τῶν πρηγμάτων τὸ κῦρος ἔχειν)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: ταῦτα οἷα, τούτων … τῶν πρηγμάτων, νῦν

κῶς ὦν δὴ ταῦτα οἷά τέ ἐστι γενέσθαι, καὶ κῶς ἐς σέ τοι τούτων ἀνήκει τῶν πρηγμάτων τὸ κῦρος ἔχειν, νῦν ἔρχομαι φράσων. ἡμέων τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐόντων δέκα δίχα γίνονται αἱ γνῶμαι, τῶν μὲν κελευόντων συμβαλεῖν, τῶν δὲ οὔ.

So how then these things can happen, and how the decision about these matters has come down to you, I am now going to show. The opinions of us ten generals are divided, with some of us urging to fight, and others not to.

11. 7.49.3–4: Artabanus advises Xerxes at Abydos

Speaker: Artabanus

Singularity marker: one of two superlative things: τὸ ἕτερον of δύο τὰ μέγιστα πάντων (7.47.2)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: τῇδε

καὶ δὴ τῶν δύο τοι τοῦ ἑτέρου εἰρημένου τὸ ἕτερον ἔρχομαι ἐρέων. γῆ δὴ πολεμίη τῇδέ τοι κατίσταται· εἰ θέλει τοι μηδὲν ἀντίξοον καταστῆναι, τοσούτῳ τοι γίνεται πολεμιωτέρη ὅσῳ ἂν προβαίνῃς ἑκαστέρω, τὸ πρόσω αἰεὶ κλεπτόμενος …

And now that I have told you about one of the two, I am going to tell of the other. The land, then, becomes hostile to you in this way: if nothing is going to stand against you, so much more hostile does it become the further you go forward, always being deceived about what lies ahead …

12. 7.102.2: Demaratus warns Xerxes about the Lacedaemonians

Speaker: Demaratus

Singularity marker: focus on one people out of many (περὶ Λακεδαιμονίων μούνων)

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: τούσδε τοὺς λόγους

αἰνέω μέν νυν πάντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας τοὺς περὶ ἐκείνους τοὺς Δωρικοὺς χώρους οἰκημένους, ἔρχομαι δὲ λέξων οὐ περὶ πάντων τούσδε τοὺς λόγους, ἀλλὰ περὶ Λακεδαιμονίων μούνων …

Now I esteem all the Greeks dwelling around those Dorian lands, but I am going to give this speech not about all of them, but about the Lacedaemonians alone …

13. 4.82: end of the Scythian geographical excursus begun in 4.2 and return to Darius’ campaign against the Scythians (resuming from 4.1)

Speaker: Narrator

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: τοῦτο μέν νυν

τοῦτο μέν νυν τοιοῦτόν ἐστι, ἀναβήσομαι δὲ ἐς τὸν κατ’ ἀρχὰς ἤια λέξων λόγον.

Now this being such as I have described, I will return to the story I was beginning to tell.

14. 5.62.1: end of Hipparchus’ dream and return to how the Athenians were freed from tyranny

Speaker: Narrator

Deictics or temporal adverbs nearby: πρὸς τούτοισι

δεῖ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι ἀναλαβεῖν τὸν κατ’ ἀρχὰς ἤια λέξων λόγον, ὡς τυράννων ἐλευθερώθησαν Ἀθηναῖοι.

And it is necessary in addition to these things still to take up again the story I was beginning to tell: how the Athenians were liberated from their tyrants.

Footnotes

*

It is my pleasure to thank Michael Flower, Joshua Katz, Tim Rood and the two anonymous referees for CQ for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this piece. They have improved it in many places. I am also grateful to Andrew Morrison, the co-editor of CQ, for helpful edits, and to Rob Cioffi for highlighting a useful point in one of the works cited. They are not responsible for any errors or omissions.

1

Abbreviations of ancient authors and works follow those of OCD 4. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Citations in which no author is indicated are from Herodotus, and those including ‘#’ refer to passages in the Appendix. The text of Herodotus is from the OCT edited by K. Hude, Herodoti Historiae 3, 2 vols. (Oxford and New York, 1927). I refer multiple times to the following works and cite them simply by author: Ph. Thielmann, ‘Über periphrastische Verba im Griechischen’, Blätter für das Gymnasial-Schulwesen 34 (1898), 55–65; M. Pohlenz, Herodot, der erste Geschichtschreiber des Abendlandes (Neue Wege zur Antike 2.7/8) (Leipzig and Berlin, 1937); H. Stein, Herodotos 7, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1962, orig. 1901); F. Létoublon, ‘Les verbes de mouvement en grec: de la métaphore à l'auxiliarité?’, Glotta 60 (1982), 178–96; R.L. Fowler, ‘Herodotos and his contemporaries’, JHS 116 (1996), 62–87, repr. in R.V. Munson (ed.), Herodotus: Volume 1: Herodotus and the Narrative of the Past (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies) (Oxford and New York, 2013), 46–83; R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2000); C. Dewald, ‘“I didn't give my own genealogy”: Herodotus and the authorial persona’, in E.J. Bakker, I.J.F. de Jong and H. van Wees (edd.), Brill's Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002), 267–89; R. Brock, ‘Authorial voice and narrative management in Herodotus’, in P. Derow and R. Parker (edd.), Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest (Oxford and New York, 2003), 3–16; D. Asheri, A. Lloyd and A. Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV (edd. O. Murray and A. Moreno) (Oxford and New York, 2007); G.C. Wakker, ‘Intentions and future realisations in Herodotus’, in R.J. Allan and M. Buijs (edd.), The Language of Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology 13) (Leiden and Boston, 2007), 168–87; and A.C. Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (Cambridge and New York, 2010).

References

2 Pohlenz, 43, cited by I.J.F. de Jong, ‘Narrative unity and units’, in Brill's Companion (n. 1), 245–66, at 249, who translates: ‘He is a traveller who knows exactly where he wants to go, who has exactly plotted the main stages of his voyage and keeps to them, but who also allows himself the time to look at all beautiful and interesting things which the road offers, and needs not even be afraid to make long detours to this end, because he knows that he will eventually rejoin the main road at the right point.’

3 Dewald, 272–3 divides Herodotus’ authorial ‘I’ into two voices, ‘the narrator’ and ‘the histōr’. I generally use ‘Herodotus’ to refer to the narrator, but sometimes to denote the histōr as well. On Herodotus’ travels, see D. Asheri, ‘General introduction’, in id. et al., 1–56, at 6–7. Redfield, J.M., ‘Herodotus the tourist’, CPh 80 (1985), 97–118 Google Scholar, repr. most recently in R.V. Munson (ed.), Herodotus: Volume 2: Herodotus and the World (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies) (Oxford and New York, 2013), 267–91 calls Herodotus a tourist to contrast his methodology with that of modern anthropologists who travel as participant observers. Dewald, 276 discusses Herodotus as a guide on the road of logoi.

4 Paths of logoi: 1.117.2 and 2.20.1–2.22.1. Justification of ‘digressions’: e.g. 3.60.1 and 4. Return to earlier narratives: 4.82 and 5.62.1 = #13 and #14; preview: 7.77. The examples of ‘paths’ of logoi are noted by M.L. Lang, Herodotean Narrative and Discourse (Martin Classical Lectures 28) (Cambridge, MA and London, 1984), 151 n. 8. See also O. Becker, Das Bild des Weges und verwandte Vorstellungen im frühgriechischen Denken (Hermes Einzelschriften 4) (Berlin, 1937), 101–38, at 101–16; Létoublon, 185–6; and Dewald, C., ‘Narrative surface and authorial voice in Herodotus’ Histories ’, Arethusa 20 (1987), 147–70Google Scholar, at 165. De Jong (n. 2), 246–58 summarizes scholarship on the ‘digressions’ and argues that the term should be dropped. ‘Detour’ is perhaps a more useful concept, since the passages in question often feature ring composition, as noted by W.M. Bloomer, ‘The superlative nomoi of Herodotus's Histories’, ClAnt 12 (1993), 30–50, at 32, by which Herodotus returns to the earlier route, as Pohlenz, 43 describes. Purves, 118–58 argues that Herodotus’ style and narrative reflect a ‘hodological’ model.

5 1.5.3 is the first place in which Herodotus calls his work a logos, a term by which he refers to both the Histories as a whole (e.g. 1.5.3 and 1.95.1) and narratives within it (e.g. 2.38.2), as O. Murray, ‘Herodotus and oral history’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford and New York, 2001), 16–44, at 24–5 points out.

6 Dewald, 271 counts 1,086; in her 1987 article (n. 4), 150 n. 10 she counts 1,087.

7 Létoublon, 183–4 notes that Homer always uses ἔρχομαι with a future participle to express movement in space and purpose, e.g. Il. 1.12–13 and 2.801. Although Thielmann, 55 gives some examples in Homer that he thinks suggest a move towards an auxiliary usage, none of them is convincing. Without citing Thielmann, Becker (n. 4), 101 n. 1 and F.R. Adrados, Nueva sintaxis del griego antiguo (Madrid, 1992), 453 recognize the difference between Homer's usage in two of Thielmann's examples (Il. 13.256-7 and 14.205) and Herodotus’. Thielmann, 57 also identifies five allegedly periphrastic uses of ἔρχομαι or εἶμι with a future participle in tragedy from around the same time as Herodotus (ἔρχομαι at Eur. Alc. 503–4; εἶμι at Eur. Suppl. 326–7 and Hec. 579 and Soph. Trach. 83 and Phil. 1366), but in each case the verb seems to describe literal movement, and none of them is with verbs of saying. All but one of the commentaries I consulted agree that these verbs express physical motion: on Eur. Alc. 503–4, see W.S. Hadley, Euripides: The Alcestis (Cambridge, 1912), 94 and contra, H.W. Hayley, The Alcestis of Euripides (Boston, 1898), 118, who, however, acknowledges the ambiguity; on Suppl. 326–7, J. Morwood, Euripides Suppliant Women (Oxford, 2007), 65 and 169; on Hec. 579, A. Garzya, Euripide: Ecuba (Rome, 1955), 80 and K. Matthiessen, Euripides, “Hekabe” (Berlin and New York, 2010), 328; on Soph. Trach. 83, R.C. Jebb, Sophocles: Plays. Trachiniae (London, 2004; orig. Cambridge, 1892), 17 and P.E. Easterling, Sophocles Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1982), 83; and on Phil. 1366, R.C. Jebb, Philoctetes (London, 2004; orig. Cambridge, 1898), 211.

8 E.g. Thomas, 245 elides the future and the sense of movement by translating it as ‘I cannot say’; it is not mentioned by Fowler, 83–6 or Węcowski, M., ‘The hedgehog and the fox: form and meaning in the prologue of Herodotus’, JHS 124 (2004), 143–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, nor by D. Fehling, Herodotus and His ‘Sources’: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art (trans. J.G. Howie, ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 21) (Leeds, 1989), 58–9, although he focusses on the sentence as a transitional statement.

9 Stein, 8 comments briefly on the construction's importance. Brock, 8 n. 13 observes that ‘the periphrastic constructions with ἔρχομαι tend to highlight the idea of movement in the narrative’ but does not go into further detail. Only one occurrence (2.11.1 = #3) is discussed in Asheri et al., at 250. It is treated as a periphrasis by Thielmann, 55–6; J.M. Stahl, Kritisch-historische Syntax des griechischen Verbums der klassischen Zeit (Heidelberg, 1907), 686; Dietrich, W., ‘Der periphrastische Verbalaspekt im Griechischen und Lateinischen’, Glotta 51 (1973), 188–228 Google Scholar, at 217–18; Coseriu, E., ‘Der periphrastische Verbalaspekt im Altgriechischen’, Glotta 53 (1975), 1–25 Google Scholar, at 6–7; and A. Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction 3 (Chicago, 2006), 127.

The standard grammars are unhelpful: W.W. Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (Boston, 1897), §895 explains that, with some verbs of coming and going, the participle contains the main idea, but this undervalues the importance of ἔρχομαι. R. Kühner and B. Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache. Zweiter Teil: Satzlehre (Hannover, 1904), 60–1 attempt to explain it as a form of emphasis on the participle, but do not separate concrete from metaphorical usage, as Létoublon, 183 n. 11 points out. H.W. Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev. G.M. Messing (Cambridge, MA, 1984; orig. 1956), does not comment on any of the Herodotean examples.

10 Lucian uses it in the proem of Syr. D., written in a pseudo-Ionic style in imitation of Herodotus, and also cites an anonymous epigone of Herodotus who began his history of the Parthian War with ἔρχομαι ἐρέων περὶ ῾Ρωμαίων καὶ Περσέων (Hist. conscr. 18 = BNJ 203 F 1). As Létoublon, 187 describes, after Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato also use ἔρχομαι as an auxiliary with a metaphorical sense. Xenophon uses it in a similar way as Herodotus, but for the first time puts the participle before the verb (Ages. 2.7: οὐ τοῦτο λέξων ἔρχομαι, ‘I am not going to say this’). Plato extends the usage to other persons and moods of ἔρχομαι and to participles of verbs other than of saying (e.g. Tht. 198e4). The expression becomes popular again with Atticizing authors in the Roman period: besides the examples from Lucian, J.L. Lightfoot, Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford and New York, 2003), 289 cites Dio Chrys. Or. 38.6, Aristid. Or. 26.42 Keil and Ael. NA 9.8. See also S. Ek, Herodotismen in der Archäologie des Dionys von Halikarnass: ein Betrag zur Beleuchtung des beginnenden Klassizismus (Lund, 1942), 45–7, for examples in Dionysius of Halicarnassus. A TLG search shows that the expression explodes in popularity in Late Antiquity.

11 For my purposes it is irrelevant whether he actually visited the places he describes; what matters is that he says he did. In this regard I follow N. Luraghi, ‘Local knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories’, in Historian's Craft (n. 5), 138–60, at 140–1 on Herodotus’ source citations.

12 This use of ἔρχομαι with a future participle appears neither in the poets mentioned above (n. 7) nor in the extant fragments of the twelve prose-writers mentioned by Dion. Hal. Thuc. 5, nor in the eight additional authors that Fowler, 68 thinks Herodotus could have known, nor in the ten known beginnings of fifth-century prose works by named authors (listed by Fowler, 69 n. 60). Since the remains of Herodotus’ predecessors and contemporaries in prose-writing are so slight and because expressions describing progress through the narrative are likely to occur only in texts of some length, one cannot say for sure that Herodotus was the first to use ἔρχομαι with a future participle of a verb of saying in this way, but one can say that he saw it as an important component of the Histories. For this view of Herodotus’ innovation, cf. Fowler, 69 and 74. A TLG search of the Hippocratic corpus gives only one instance of the first-person present ἔρχομαι, at Hippoc. [Ep.] 27 in É. Littré, Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, vol. 9 (Paris, 1861), 418, where it is used as an auxiliary with an infinitive. Incidentally, this pseudepigraphic letter evokes and even ‘corrects’ Herodotus’ narrative in several places, as W.D. Smith, Hippocrates: Pseudepigraphic Writings (Leiden, 1990), 2–4 describes. At 5–7 he dates [Ep.] 27 to between 350 and 250 b.c.e.

13 Cf. the discussion of ‘presentation by negation’ in S. Hornblower, ‘Narratology and narrative techniques in Thucydides’, in id. (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford and New York, 1994), 131–66, at 152–7. Many have read 1.5.3 as declaring a division between mythical and historical time, e.g. Pohlenz, 5–6, but Rood, T., ‘Herodotus’ proem: space, time, and the origins of international relations’, Ariadne 16 (2010), 43–74 Google Scholar, at 65–6 (with bibliography at 65 n. 58) points out that Herodotus does not rigidly separate them.

14 On his refusal to choose between different versions, see Dewald (n. 4), 162–3 and D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Phoenix Supplementary Volume 23) (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1989), 76–90. Fowler, 77 stresses that Herodotus is the first author to discuss alternative sources.

15 Stein, 8 and J. Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the historians’, in Munson (n. 3), 109–32, at 114–15 emphasize this reading of 1.5.3 in connection with the Homeric echo. G. Nagy, Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore and London, 1990), 231 links the semantics of Herodotus’ οἶδα (‘I have seen: therefore I know’, his gloss and italics) with Homer's ἴδεν and ἔγνω. Pohlenz, 9 n. 1 also compares Parmenides’ description of the path ‘that carries a man who knows through all towns’ (DK 28 B 1.2–3: ὁδὸν … ἣ κατὰ πάντ’ ἄστη φέρει εἰδότα φῶτα).

16 On the polemical tone of 1.5.3, see Lateiner (n. 14), 35.

17 It has been so construed: e.g. H.M. Johnson, Herodoti Orientalia antiquiora; comprising mainly such portions of Herodotus as give a connected history of the East, to the fall of Babylon and the death of Cyrus the Great (New York, 1859), 83 translates: ‘I come not to say, i.e. with the intention of asserting’ (his italics). A further objection to this version is that it raises the question of where Herodotus is ‘coming’ from.

18 LSJ9 s.v. ἔρχομαι A.IV.2: ‘in Hdt. like an auxiliary Verb, … I am going to tell’. Stein, 8 translates it as ‘schicke mich an zu sagen, franz. je vais dire’, and Ph.-E. Legrand, Hérodote: Histoires, vol. 1 (Paris, 1932), 16 as ‘je ne vais pas prononcer’. K. Bentein, Review of L. Amenta, Perifrasi aspettuali in greco e in latino: origini e grammaticalizzazioni (Milan, 2003), Journal of Greek Linguistics 10 (2010), 127–41, at 128 notes the parallels in modern languages. But as Létoublon, 186–8 explains, if ἔρχομαι were lexicalized as an auxiliary verb like aller or ir in these examples from Romance languages, one would expect it to appear with participles other than ones of saying and subjects other than the first person, which does not happen until Plato. But even then, ἔρχομαι with a future participle never appears with an inanimate, abstract or concrete subject, which may indicate that it is not a full auxiliary, as G.C. Wakker, ‘Future auxiliaries or not?’, in E. Crespo, J. de la Villa and A.R. Revuelta (edd.), Word Classes and Related Topics in Ancient Greek: Proceedings of the Conference on ‘Greek Syntax and Word Classes’ held in Madrid on 18–21, June 2003 (Louvain, 2006), 237–55, at 253 n. 32 thinks. Finally, while in many languages auxiliaries cannot be separated from their complements (as Wakker, 243–4 describes), in three of the occurrences in Herodotus at least one word separates ἔρχομαι from its future participle (2.35.1 = #4, 2.99.1 = #6 and 7.102.2 = #12, where the intervening element is a particle).

19 Amenta (n. 18), 90–1 gives two translations for each occurrence of the construction in Herodotus: in brackets, a literal rendition with the sense of movement, ‘[io circa questo non vado a parlare]’, and in italics, a more idiomatic one without it: ‘ma non intendo parlare di questo’.

20 Létoublon, 188 summarizes the development and describes the rhetorical function at 186: ‘Les locutions avec ἔρχομαι / ἤια + participe futur se rencontrent aux articulations du récit: elles fournissent des “transitions” rhétoriques, elles sont le signe du recul pris par Hérodote par rapport aux événements et à leur interprétation, et expriment la conscience qu'il a de ne pas faire de l'histoire “objective”: c'est le début d'un métalangage de l'auteur historien, inscrit dans l’œuvre aux points stratégiques.’

21 See P. Payen, Les îles nomades: conquérir et résister dans l’Enquête d'Hérodote (Recherches d'histoire et de sciences sociales 72) (Paris, 1997), 259 on how these verbs embrace historical time and narrative space.

22 σημήνας also participates in the metaphor of the way: at 2.20.1, Herodotus says he will ‘point out’ (σημῆναι) two of the three ‘ways’, or opinions (τριφασίας ὁδούς), that some clever Greeks hold about the Nile, but he himself takes a different path of logos. R.V. Munson, Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus (Ann Arbor, 2001), 33 n. 32 adduces this passage as an example of how ‘metaphorical and literal terms of the code of narration mix in a striking way’. A. Hollmann, The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus’ Histories (Hellenic Studies 48) (Cambridge, MA and London, 2011), 27 n. 52 lists twelve occurrences of forms of σημαίνω describing the narrator's activity. Six indicate the direction of the logos (1.5.3, 1.75.1, 2.20.1, 6.39.1, 7.77 and 7.213.3), and three give the measurement of a physical route (2.9.2, 4.99.2 and 5.54.1).

23 R. Friedman, ‘Location and dislocation in Herodotus’, in C. Dewald and J. Marincola (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge and New York, 2006), 165–77, at 166 rightly comments on these verbs, ‘the language of his first statement of authorial method is the language of travel’, but does not discuss ἔρχομαι. Munson (n. 22), 33 (with n. 31) does not analyse the verbs in detail but succinctly explains their significance: ‘This metaphor of the journey creates the illusion of an overlap between the code of narration and the code of historie (where verbs of motion are in most cases used literally). Thus it reinforces our sense of the identity between the narrator and the researcher.’

24 LSJ9 s.v. ἐπέξειμι A.III.2. J.E. Powell, A Lexicon to Herodotus (Cambridge, 1938), 129 lists it under ἐπεξέρχομαι. Stein, 8 compares Aesch. PV 870, where Prometheus, having recounted Io's wanderings and foretold her future, says: μακροῦ λόγου δεῖ ταῦτ’ ἐπεξελθεῖν τορῶϲ, ‘a long speech is needed to go through these things clearly’. Prometheus also uses the metaphor of the path of logos as a rhetorical signpost earlier in the same speech (PV 844–5: τὰ λοιπὰ δ’ ὑμῖν τῆιδέ τ’ ἐϲ κοινὸν φράϲω, | ἐϲ ταὐτὸν ἐλθὼν τῶν πάλαι λόγων ἴχνοϲ, ‘and I will declare the rest to you and to her in common, coming to the same track of my previous speech’). Given the context of Io, it is tempting to wonder if Herodotus may have had this passage in mind in 1.5.3. Regardless, Herodotus enhances the metaphor by using ἔρχομαι with a future participle, rather than the future indicative, as Prometheus does.

25 προβαίνω also appears in this sense in a contemporary comedy, Cratinus’ Eumenides, fr. 69 K.-A.: ἐπίϲχεϲ αὐτοῦ· μὴ πέραι προβῆιϲ λόγου, ‘stop there: don't proceed further in your account’ (cited by LSJ9 s.v. προβαίνω A.I.3; PCG 4.156 ad loc. gives Hdt. 1.5.3 as a parallel). Artabanus, one of the four speakers in Herodotus’ narrative who employ ἔρχομαι with a future participle of a verb of saying, also uses προβαίνω in close proximity to it, but in a literal sense (7.49.3–4 = #11). Another speaker, Otanes, uses ἐπεξέρχομαι, but not as a metaphor of discourse, shortly before he uses the ἔρχομαι construction (3.80.2; cf. 3.80.5 = #8): εἴδετε μὲν γὰρ τὴν Καμβύσεω ὕβριν ἐπ’ ὅσον ἐπεξῆλθε … τὰ δὲ δὴ μέγιστα ἔρχομαι ἐρέων, ‘for you saw to how great an extent Cambyses’ hubris advanced … But indeed I am going to say the worst things’.

26 Létoublon, 183–4 highlights this example.

27 The image of the path of song (οἴμη) appears in Homer (Od. 8.74, 8.481 and 22.347) and Pi. Ol. 9.47. For a discussion of the term, see A.L. Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca and London, 1992), 41–4. The metaphor of the road of words (ὁδὸς λόγων) appears several times in Pindar: Ol. 1.110 and 6.23–4; Pyth. 4.247–8 and 11.38; and Nem. 7.51, on which see R. Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache in der frühgriechischen Dichtung (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998), 259 and 310 (on Ol. 1), 255 (Ol. 6), 241 (Pyth. 4 and 11) and 253 (Nem. 7). Thomas, 226 also notes the metaphor in Xenophanes, DK 21 B 7.1 and Hippoc. Nat. puer. 20.6 and VM 13.1 (at 243 n. 88). For a general account of the conceptual metaphor of argument as journey from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, see R. Martínez Vázquez and J.M. Jiménez Delgado, Metáfora conceptual y verbo griego antiguo (Zaragoza, 2008), 14–16.

28 Becker (n. 4), 101–38 surveys the metaphor in Herodotus and discusses 1.5.3 at 101–2. Nünlist (n. 27), 239 n. 12 highlights 1.5.3 and Herodotus to show that the image of the way as a transitional formula appears in prose. Purves, 69 and 122–3 explains how Herodotus’ road of logoi is more complex than Homer's path of song.

29 I do not include ἔρχομαι λέξων in 2.11.3, which is bracketed by Hude (n. 1), Legrand (n. 18) and Stein, following J. Schweighaeuser, Herodoti Musae sive Historiarum Libri IX (London, 1830), though retained in the Teubner edition of H.B. Rosén, Herodoti Historiae, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1987). λέξων does not occur in the narrator's voice with ἔρχομαι, but does in both examples with ἤια (4.82 and 5.62.1 = #13 and #14). Herodotus uses both σημαίνω and φράζω as key verbs in his relationship with his audience, as Hollmann (n. 22), 24–7 and 29–30 shows. Although by Herodotus’ time both verbs were commonly used of speech, their connotations of visual display strengthen the metaphor of the path of logos.

30 Wakker, 178.

31 Wakker, 180. First-person singular verbs of saying in the future indicative appear 27 times in the narrator's voice: ἐρέω (three times), φράσω (ten), σημανέω (seven), λέξω (one), δηλώσω (six). The narrator also uses the passive εἰρήσεται three times. Twenty-two of these instances indicate an immediate transition. φήσω, which the narrator uses twice (2.49.2–3), does not have the same function, since it simply introduces a dependent statement, as Wakker, 178 n. 11 notes.

32 Here I have partially adapted A. Lloyd's translation in Asheri et. al., 235.

33 In the two other cases where a future indicative verb of saying appears in close conjunction with ἔρχομαι with a future participle, it also comes after and signals a smaller transition within the larger one already announced: 3.6.1–2 = #7 (see p. 10 below) and 4.99.2 = #9, where ἔρχομαι σημανέων is followed by ἐγὼ δὲ ἄλλως δηλώσω (4.99.5).

34 I owe this point and the emphasis on the ‘detour’ to one of the referees. It is no coincidence that Herodotus remarks on the accretive tendency of his logos when he tells of a wonder (4.30.1): θωμάζω δέ (προσθήκας γὰρ δή μοι ὁ λόγος ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐδίζητο) …, ‘But I am amazed—for indeed my logos sought additions from the beginning …’. On this passage, see F. Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, trans. J. Lloyd (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1988), 234 and 344, and Munson (n. 22), 242. Hartog, 236 also comments on the link between the size of the wonder and the length of the narrative in 2.35.1.

35 LSJ9 s.v. μηκύνω A.3 defines it thus and lists parallels in contemporary Attic writers.

36 Strictly speaking, ἤια is the imperfect of εἶμι, but it serves as the imperfect of ἔρχομαι, which never appears in prose (Smyth, §774). F. Létoublon, Il allait, pareil à la nuit. Les verbes de mouvement en grec: supplétisme et aspect verbal (Paris, 1985), 59–109 analyses the relationship of ἔρχομαι and εἶμι.

37 Létoublon, 185 cites other Herodotean examples of the metaphor with ἄνειμι/ἐπάνειμι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν πρότερον λόγον and ἀναβαίνω/καταβαίνω.

38 F.W. Sturz, Lexicon Xenophonteum, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1801), 366 s.v. ἔρχεσθαι equates them in, among other passages, Xen. An. 7.7.17 (which he cites as 7.7.10: ἐρχόμεθα … βοηθήσοντες) and Ages. 2.7 (see n. 10). Sturz is cited by Dietrich (n. 9), 218. Wakker, 179 n. 13 notes that both ἤια with the future participle and ἔμελλον with the infinitive can be used for interrupted or postponed actions. ἔμελλον occurs only at 3.155.4, in Zopyrus’ speech to Darius. Wakker also points out that ἔμελλον never appears with a verb of saying in Herodotus. This is in contrast to Homer, who does use it with the present infinitive of verbs of saying, e.g. Il. 10.454–5: ἔμελλε … λίσσεσθαι, ‘he was about to entreat’.

39 As Wakker, 178 n. 11 points out, Herodotus’ avoidance of μέλλω to announce what he is going to say immediately afterward is a remarkable contrast to Plato's use of both μέλλω and ἔρχομαι with a future participle to do so.

40 I have noted these singularity markers in the Appendix. Though the sample is admittedly small, this may be another difference between the ἔρχομαι construction and the future indicative, since only eight of the narrator's 27 uses of first-person singular verbs of saying are accompanied by a singularity marker: ἐρέω (4.129.1 and 6.43.3), φράσω (2.155.3, 2.156.6 and 5.65.5) and δηλώσω (1.192.1–2, 2.101.1–2 and 4.81.4–5). In addition, two of the narrator's three uses of εἰρήσεται (2.35.1 and 4.16.2) are accompanied by a singularity marker, and two of them occur in close proximity to ἔρχομαι (2.35.1 = #4: see p. 7) or ἤια with the future participle (4.82). As J. Priestley, Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture: Literary Studies in the Reception of the Histories (Oxford and New York, 2014), 61 notes, the future indicative also appears ‘frequently … in his descriptions of marked thōmata’. But a neat illustration of the difference is provided by the contrast between ἐρέω with a singularity marker without a definite article in 4.129.1 (θῶμα μέγιστον ἐρέω, ‘I will tell of a very great wonder’; cf. also 6.43.3) and ἔρχομαι φράσων with the same superlative, but with a definite article, in 1.194.1 = #2 (τὸ … θῶμα μέγιστον … ἔρχομαι φράσων, ‘I am going to tell of … the greatest wonder’). Wakker, 180 notes that this difference suggests that only the future indicative can indicate ‘a kind of characterization of what the narrator is going to tell, rather than an announcement of what he is going to tell’.

41 Although Lightfoot (n. 10), 289 claims that in Lucian the expression has ‘a portentous significance in general absent from Herodotus’ (with the exception of 2.35.1 and 2.99.1), the singularity markers and the appearance of the construction in the proem and at the beginnings of other sections suggest that every occurrence is important.

42 Brock, 4 observes: ‘When he wants actively to draw the audience on, Herodotus frequently uses the carrot of an evaluative adjective or phrase’, each of which in his examples is a superlative (1.60.3, 8.105.1 and 9.37.2). Herodotus launches into the whole Egyptian logos with a superlative, leading the reader in medias res with a singularity marker without the ἔρχομαι expression (2.2.1): οἱ δὲ Αἰγύπτιοι … ἐνόμιζον ἑωυτοὺς πρώτους γενέσθαι πάντων ἀνθρώπων. ‘And the Egyptians … thought that they were the most ancient of all peoples.’

43 I adopt the term ‘the historian's voice’ from Fowler, 69, who at 71 defines one way in which it appears as ‘giving unusual information that implies special knowledge or research’, e.g. with superlatives followed by τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν. 1.5.3 is the only instance of ἔρχομαι and the future participle connected with τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν: Herodotus delivers on his promise to tell of the first man he knows (τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον) to have committed hostilities against the Greeks with the words οὗτος ὁ Κροῖσος βαρβάρων πρῶτος τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν …, ‘this Croesus was the first of the barbarians we know of …’ (1.6.2). Although the other uses do not include the phrase, they all underscore Herodotus’ personal knowledge. Dewald, 281–2 argues that ‘these superlatives [with τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν] express in an abbreviated form the diffidence that Herodotus insists on as a critic’, but on the basis of the polemical tone of 1.5.3 I agree with Fowler that they advertise Herodotus’ efforts.

44 In fact, as Hartog (n. 34), 3 stresses, Herodotus notes that Scythia has hardly any wonders (4.82: θωμάσια δὲ ἡ χώρη αὕτη οὐκ ἔχει, χωρὶς ἢ …), in contrast to Egypt (2.35.1 = #4), which may partially explain the absence of a singularity marker in 4.99.2 = #9.

45 Herodotus also uses future indicative verbs of saying in travel contexts. Although he does not explicitly mention his travels in connection with all of the instances of the ἔρχομαι construction in his voice, his statements about his autopsy or its limits suggest that the expression does introduce descriptions of places and phenomena that he claims to have seen or learned about abroad. Marincola, J., ‘Herodotean narrative and the narrator's presence’, Arethusa 20 (1987), 121–36Google Scholar, at 122–3 n. 5 lists the passages in which Herodotus claims or denies autopsy, mentions personal contact with a specific source or makes general remarks about his historiē (2.99.1 and 2.147.1).

I will go briefly through the passages in the Appendix to show the travel context, besides #1, which I discuss above. Herodotus does not tell us if he went to Babylon (#2), but Asheri et al., 197 think there is no reason to doubt that he did. By stressing the fact that he did not see the statue in the temple there (1.183.3), Herodotus may imply that he did see the other features he describes: compare how his other denials of autopsy appear to enhance the credibility of his account by defining the limits of his efforts (e.g. 2.34.1, 4.16.1–2 and 4.25.1–2). In the Egyptian logos, while it is not clear if he is claiming to have personally visited the gulf of Arabia (#3), he describes it to support his own observation and the priests’ report about the deposition of sediment by the Nile (2.10.1 and 2.12.1). Similarly, #4 and #5 are in the part of the logos that he attributes to his own autopsy, judgement and inquiry (#6). While in #7 he does not say outright that he noticed the absence of wine-jars in Egypt on his travels, his use of ἰδέσθαι may indicate that it is based on his eyewitness experience. Finally, his knowledge of the coast of Scythia in #9 may be connected with his claim of autopsy of that region in 4.81.1–2 (and possibly also in 4.86.4, though there it is uncertain if he is saying that he personally measured the Pontus, as Marincola, 123 n. 5 explains). As Purves, 142 points out, almost half of the θωμ- words in Herodotus occur with sights he claims to have seen himself, as may be the case in one of their two appearances with the ἔρχομαι expression (#2) and surely is in the other (#4).

46 Brock, 14 cites this passage as an example of Herodotus’ attention to his audience.

47 Munson, R.V., ‘Herodotus’ use of prospective sentences and the story of Rhampsinitus and the thief in the Histories ’, AJPh 114 (1993), 27–44 Google Scholar, at 36 notes that this is the only example of an open-ended direct question in Herodotus and that it is a common technique used by oral folk-narrators to connect parts of a story.

48 Darius refutes Otanes’ proposal because it is contrary to their ancestors’ practice (3.82.5), Miltiades opposes the prevailing opinion among the Athenian generals (6.109.2), Artabanus had spoken freely to Xerxes previously (7.46.1) and had been rebuked (7.11.1), and Demaratus asks permission to speak the truth to the king (7.101.3).

49 Here I consider the singularity marker to be this emphatic address to the one person in particular who has the power to determine the decision (τὸ κῦρος). V. Zali, The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric: A Study of the Speeches in Herodotus’ Histories with Special Attention to Books 5–9 (International Studies in the History of Rhetoric 6) (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 265, with n. 111, well notes the ‘recurrent use’ of the second-person singular pronoun in Miltiades’ address to Callimachus (6.109.3, 4 and 6).

50 As in the narrator's voice, so too in other speakers’ mouths the ἔρχομαι expression is more closely associated with singularity markers than are future indicative verbs of saying. Of the ten uses of first-person future verbs of saying and one of εἰρήσεται by characters within the narrative, four are accompanied by a singularity marker: ἐρέομεν at 4.118.4 (Scythian messengers), φράσω at 5.111.3 (Onesilus of Salamis’ squire), εἰρήσεται at 6.86δ (Leotychidas) and ἐρέω at 9.42.2–3 (Mardonius).

51 All except Otanes appear on the list in R. Lattimore, ‘The wise adviser in Herodotus’, CPh 34 (1939), 24–35. J. Gould, Herodotus (London, 1989), 78 and Thomas, 285 note the connection between wise advisers and the narrator.

52 C. Scardino, Gestaltung und Funktion der Reden bei Herodot und Thukydides (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 250) (Berlin and New York, 2007), 350 and 752 stresses the interpretative function of speeches for the external audience.

53 As the proem declares, ‘great and wondrous deeds’ (ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά) are one of the main subjects of the Histories. The frequency of θωμ- words (94 instances) shows their importance, on which see Munson (n. 22), 232–65 and Priestley (n. 40), 51–108.

54 When Herodotus introduces the constitutional debate, he declares (3.80.1): ἐλέχθησαν λόγοι ἄπιστοι μὲν ἐνίοισι Ἑλλήνων, ἐλέχθησαν δ’ ὦν, ‘speeches were given that are unbelievable to some Greeks, but in fact they were given’. He defends the historicity of Otanes’ speech in particular by analogy with Mardonius’ actions in 492 (6.43.3): μέγιστον θῶμα ἐρέω τοῖσι μὴ ἀποδεκομένοισι Ἑλλήνων Περσέων τοῖσι ἑπτὰ Ὀτάνεα γνώμην ἀποδέξασθαι ὡς χρεὸν εἴη δημοκρατέεσθαι Πέρσας· τοὺς γὰρ τυράννους τῶν Ἰώνων καταπαύσας πάντας ὁ Μαρδόνιος δημοκρατίας κατίστα ἐς τὰς πόλιας. ‘I will tell of a very great wonder to those Greeks who do not believe that Otanes declared his opinion to the seven Persians that the Persians should have a democratic government: Mardonius in fact deposed all the tyrants of the Ionians and set up democracies in their cities.’

55 This takes a step further the common observation that in this debate ‘non-Greeks are speaking and thinking in Greek-like ways’, as C. Pelling, ‘Speech and action: Herodotus’ debate on the constitutions’, PCPhS 48 (2002), 123–58, at 124 puts it.

56 3.80.2. Asheri et al., 473 note that the expression is common in Herodotus, and a TLG search shows that ἐμοὶ/μοι δοκέει or (ὡς) ἐμοὶ/μοι δοκέειν appear 22 times. Of the four occurrences of ἐμοὶ/μοι ἐδοκέε, one is in the voice of another character (the fisherman to Polycrates, 3.42.2), as is one of the six of ὡς ἐγὼ δοκέω (Xerxes to Demaratus, 7.101.2).

57 See Lateiner (n. 14), 163–86 for many examples. As he notes at 171, ‘Herodotus does not categorically condemn one-man rule’, and one should evaluate the tyrants case by case.

58 Roy, C.S., ‘The constitutional debate: Herodotus’ exploration of good government’, Histos 6 (2012), 298–320 Google Scholar, at 301 notes this correspondence.

59 R.W. Macan, Herodotus: The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books, with introduction, notes, appendices, indices, maps, vol. 1 (New York, 1973; orig. London, 1895), 366.

60 Macan (n. 59), 366.

61 For Artabanus as an Herodotus-like figure, see Grethlein, J., ‘How not to do history: Xerxes in Herodotus’ Histories ’, AJPh 130 (2009), 195–218 Google Scholar, at 214 with additional bibliography at 199 n. 15.

62 Thomas, 109–11 analyses the debate from this perspective, and D. Branscome, Textual Rivals: Self-Presentation in Herodotus’ Histories (Ann Arbor, 2013), 54–104 discusses the parallels between Demaratus and Herodotus. On the figure of the ‘tragic warner’, see H. Bischoff, Der Warner bei Herodot (Diss., Marburg, 1932) and Lattimore (n. 51), 24–6.

63 Herodotus affirms Demaratus’ prediction by describing the boldness of the Spartan ambassadors Sperthias and Boulis as worthy of wonder (7.135.1: θώματος ἀξίη) and by praising the Lacedaemonians’ courage in a notorious counterfactual scenario (7.139.3). Although he then envisions an alternative in which they might have medized (7.139.4), the narrative vindicates Demaratus’ view, since they did end up fighting. A Persian horseman marvels at the Lacedaemonians exercising and combing their hair before the battle of Thermopylae (7.208.3: ἐθώμαζε), which Xerxes finds so incredible that he summons Demaratus again (7.209.1).

64 This may be emphasized by the fact that Solon, the archetypal wise adviser, does not use the ἔρχομαι expression even though both the narrator (1.29.1 and 1.30.1) and Croesus (1.30.2) stress his travels.

65 Although Hecataeus treats Egypt in his Periegesis, in the extant fragments there is no evidence of first-hand observation, as West, S., ‘Herodotus’ portrait of Hecataeus’, JHS 111 (1991), 144–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 152 n. 46 notes. She also points out that Hdt. 2.143 is the only evidence that Hecataeus ever left Ionia, except for Agathemerus’ description of him as ‘a much-wandering man’ (BNJ 1 T 12a: ἀνὴρ πολυπλανής), which may be derived from the Herodotean passage.

66 Cf. R.L. Fowler, ‘Early historiē and literacy’, in The Historian's Craft (n. 5), 95–115, at 108–9. This is a trait that Herodotus shares with earlier philosophers and contemporary medical writers, as Thomas, 235–48 and 257–69 shows.

67 As W. Rösler, ‘The Histories and writing’, in Brill's Companion (n. 1), 79–94, at 89 points out, Herodotus uses the metaphor of λέγειν for the message of a written text (e.g. 1.124.1 and 3.40.1) and uses λέγειν and γράφειν more or less interchangeably. γράφω occurs in the first person at 1.95.1, 2.70.1, 2.123.1 and 2.123.3, 4.195.2, 6.53.1 and 7.214.3, συγγράφω at 3.103 and οὐκ ἔχω … συγγράψαι at 6.14.1. Cf. also 1.93.1 (ἐς συγγραφήν) and 4.36.2 (ἐς γραφήν). The last passage, in which Herodotus ridicules others’ attempts to draw maps, alludes to the opening of Hecataeus’ Genealogies, which also juxtaposes a verb of saying with γράφω (BNJ 1 F 1a: ῾Εκαταῖος Μιλήσιος ὧδε μυθεῖται· τάδε γράφω, ‘Hecataeus of Miletus speaks as follows: I write these things’), on which see L. Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: from genealogy to historiography’, in Historian's Craft (n. 5), 67–94, at 80–4 and Fowler (n. 66), 110–11. The allusion to Hecataeus in 4.36.2 is noted by D. Boedeker, ‘Herodotus’ genres’, in M. Depew and D. Obbink (edd.), Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 97–114, at 107, cited by Purves, 128 n. 24.

68 I am grateful to one of the referees for suggesting I sharpen this point. The deictic pronoun οὗτος and the temporal adverbs νῦν and ἤδη, which occur in close conjunction with the ἔρχομαι expression in eleven of the twelve examples (all but 3.80.5 = #8) and in all eight of the narrator's uses, provide further direction. For this understanding of deixis in Herodotus, see E.J. Bakker, ‘The making of history: Herodotus’ historiēs apodexis’, in Brill's Companion (n. 1), 3–32, at 30 and id., ‘The syntax of historiē: how Herodotus writes’, in Cambridge Companion (n. 23), 92–102, at 95–101. I have marked deictics and temporal adverbs in the Appendix. It should be stressed that deictics are ubiquitous in Herodotus and not unique to the ἔρχομαι construction.

69 Dionysius’ use of compounds of βαίνω and ἔρχομαι in his praise of Herodotus (Pomp. 3.8 and 3.14) may reflect Herodotus’ own practice, even if unconsciously, since the vocabulary was standard (e.g. Plut. de Malig. 3 and 22 = Mor. 855c and 859e uses the metaphor of the path of discourse in his attack on Herodotus). For the importance of audience engagement to Dionysius’ conception of history, see C.C. de Jonge, Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supplements 301) (Leiden and Boston, 2008), 356–61 and N. Wiater, The Ideology of Classicism: Language, History, and Identity in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 105) (Berlin and New York, 2011), 132–44.

70 Marincola (n. 45), 122–3 and 133.

71 Luraghi (n. 11), 156.

72 The absence of the ἔρχομαι construction from the narrator's voice after Book 4 may be seen as evidence of the more focussed narrative of the Persian Wars, since Herodotus uses the expression to justify detours and transitions, which occur more frequently in the earlier books. Thus it is no surprise that 20 of the 27 first-person future indicative verbs of saying appear in Books 1–4. Brock, 14 observes: ‘The density of many of the signposting features thins out in the later books as the narrative line becomes more straightforward and robust’.

73 Fowler, 69 with n. 61 discusses the forceful beginnings of other fifth-century prose works.