In this important book C. provides a detailed analysis of Herodotus’ engagement with Greek epic, lyric and tragedy. A brief introduction setting out the book’s topic and structure is followed by two chapters, in which C. discusses Herodotus’ explicit references to poetry and his general attitude towards it (Chapter 1), and considers how Herodotus’ prologue refers implicitly to the Iliad and Odyssey as well as echoing lyric in being structured as a priamel (Chapter 2). Part 1 is a book-length treatment of Herodotus’ engagement with Homeric epic: C. begins by looking at cases where Herodotus uses specific phrasing or narrative structures drawn from Homeric epic (Chapters 3–4), before arguing that Herodotus owes significant aspects of his narrative technique to Homeric epic (Chapters 5–7) and responds to epic in his conceptions of truth and falsehood and in his view of the heroic past (Chapters 8–9). Part 2 deals with lyric: C. discusses how the poetry attributed to Solon influences Herodotus’ portrayal of him (Chapter 10), considers the fragmentary evidence for historical narrative in early poetry such as Simonides’ Plataea elegy and the possible influence of this on Herodotus (Chapter 11), and examines the relationship between Herodotus’ work and the victory odes of Pindar and Bacchylides (Chapters 12–13). Part 3 turns to tragedy: after an introduction discussing Herodotus’ likely presence in Athens and acquaintance with Sophocles, C. considers the influence of Aeschylus’ Persians on Herodotus’ account of Xerxes’ invasion (Chapter 14) and argues for tragic influence on Herodotus’ stories concerning Gyges and Croesus (Chapter 15) and concerning Cyrus, Cambyses, Polycrates and Periander (Chapter 16).

The merits of this book are great. C. discusses a vast range of material, in a way that will make the book an indispensable reference point for anyone looking at this topic in future. Other scholars’ theories regarding individual episodes or features are considered throughout, so that C.’s treatment integrates earlier discussions and provides a reliable guide to them. By synthesising these perspectives into a single overall argument, C. puts forward a unified and consistent picture of Herodotus’ engagement with the poetic tradition. C. demonstrates throughout that Herodotus draws on poetry both in individual episodes and for important aspects of his technique and outlook, but adapts this material in ways that reflect his distinctive orientation as a practitioner of historical inquiry (historiē). Only a long monograph of this kind could provide a single cohesive view of Herodotus’ relationship to the poetic tradition, and C. has performed a significant service to scholarship on classical Greek literature by devoting his career to this topic.

As C. recognises, the subject involves many difficulties and uncertainties. It is often debatable whether particular correspondences between surviving poetic texts and Herodotus are due to the influence of those texts on Herodotus or whether they might result from the wider prevalence of the shared features in Greek culture or in texts now lost. With regard to tragedy, matters are further complicated by the possibility of Sophocles and Euripides being influenced by Herodotus’ work or by the storytelling traditions on which his work is based. Also, the correspondences between Herodotus and poetry are very heterogeneous, consisting of a wide variety of features and techniques, some but not all of which are secured by clear verbal parallels. It is therefore no criticism of this book to say that C.’s arguments vary a great deal in their certainty, and that readers may disagree with him in individual cases; rather, this is an inevitable result of the nature of the topic, and it is a merit of the book that C. is willing to consider the probabilities and reach a judgement even in difficult cases. However, C.’s discussion is perhaps open to the criticism that, because the aim of his argument is to explore poetic influence on Herodotus, correspondences are generally explained on this basis, including in cases where this possibility might have been weighed more fully against the alternatives that C. recognises, namely that the shared features may have been present more widely in Greek traditions of poetry or storytelling, or that (in the case of tragedy) the influence might run in the opposite direction.

In Part 1 there are compelling parallels establishing Herodotus’ use of the Iliad and Odyssey, perhaps the only poems of sufficient length and complexity to serve as models for Herodotus’ narrative technique. Consequently, the case for Herodotus’ reliance on these specific poems is convincing, although it might nevertheless have been useful to consider more fully whether some (though not all) of the phrasing and narrative techniques discussed could have appeared elsewhere in the epic tradition, given its fundamentally formulaic nature, as well as in the Iliad and Odyssey.

However, the issue is perhaps more significant when it comes to tragedy. In the introduction to Part 3 C. emphasises that it is often difficult to determine the direction of influence between Herodotus and tragedy, and he agrees with the widespread view that at least some of the verbal parallels between Herodotus and Sophocles are due to Herodotean influence on Sophocles rather than vice versa. However, in Chapters 15–16 the argument often relies on identifying features shared with tragedy in Herodotus’ stories about Croesus, Cyrus, Cambyses, Polycrates and Periander, and on ascribing these features to tragic influence on Herodotus. C.’s arguments for this view sometimes have considerable force, but I was not always convinced that competing possibilities had been fully excluded in each individual case. In places more consideration could perhaps have been given to the possibility that features shared with tragedy might already have been present in oral stories about archaic rulers before Herodotus.Footnote ¹ For instance, C. sometimes suggests that tragedy is reflected in the way in which certain Herodotean characters realise in the end the transience of human prosperity and their responsibility for their own downfalls, but it is not clear to me that we can be sure that this motif was distinctively associated with tragedy (or poetry more broadly) in Herodotus’ day, rather than also being native to Greek oral storytelling. Equally, given that C. accepts that a passage in Herodotus’ third book (3.119.6) is echoed verbally in Sophocles’ Antigone (909–12), and given that other scholars have argued that the stories concerning Cambyses and Periander in Herodotus’ third book are echoed in Sophocles’ work,Footnote ² I am not sure whether C.’s contention that shared features between these stories and Sophocles’ plays are due to tragic influence on Herodotus is capable of being fully demonstrated, without being weighed in more detail against the alternative possibility that Sophocles is partly inspired by Herodotus (or by oral stories similar to those told by Herodotus) in his use of these features.

There are, then, aspects of this book that may prompt disagreement and debate, but this should not detract from the admiration of C.’s valuable work. In its depth of analysis and unity of vision, this book provides an account of Herodotus’ engagement with the poetic tradition that is unlikely to be supplanted.