Histories

The crossing of natural boundaries, particularly rivers, often represents an act of hubris in the Histories. The expansion of empire involves a transgression of the divinely imposed limitations to human endeavor and provokes the gods’ punishment. Examples of this recurring motif include Cyrus’ crossing the river Araxes to subdue the Massagetae, Darius’ bridging of the Danube to conquer the Scythians, and Cambyses’ expedition across the desert to punish the Ethiopians. Each of these campaigns fail. Most strikingly, Xerxes’ yoking of Europe and Asia by bridging the Hellespont, and his boast that by conquering Europe he will rival Zeus’ dominion over the sky are hubristic acts that incur the retribution of the gods. After the Persian defeat at Salamis, Themistocles observes that Xerxes was vanquished by “the gods and heroes, who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be king of Asia and of Europe too—a man who does not know the difference between sacred and profane” (484). Natural boundaries, particularly those between continents or separating the far reaches of the earth, assume a sacred dimension and denote a divinely ordained demarcation within the landscape of Herodotus’ panoramic history. Violating those boundaries is an act of despotic arrogance, a moral offense.

The transgression of moral and religious boundaries is similarly an affront to the divine order which incurs punishment. This applies to deluded and depraved behavior towards one’s own kinfolk and countrymen, as well as the failure to respect the norms and religious customs of other nations. Candaules’ indecent demand that his servant Gyges see the queen naked results in his own murder as revenge, as well as the retribution visited upon Gyges’ descendant Croesus, five generations later, for his ancestor’s crime of regicide. Xerxes’ wanton cruelty and arrogant grandiosity similarly invite nemesis. Pythius the Lydian, who feeds Xerxes’ army at enormous personal expense before it crosses the Hellespont, temporarily wins the gratitude of the king and the honor of being named his guest-friend. When he asks Xerxes to spare the eldest of his five sons from the campaign, the enraged despot orders the youth be cut in half and tossed on either side of the road as the Persian army marches out of Sardis. The egregiously brutal murder of Pythius’ son is a violation of the traditional institution of xenia, or guest-friendship, that bound a host and a foreigner in a divinely sanctioned relationship of protection and service. Similarly, Xerxes’ whipping of the Hellespont after his bridges are destroyed by storm is a hubristic act that results in nemesis. In describing the sacrilegious behavior of the Persian king, Themistocles notes: “He dared to lash the sea with whips and bind it with fetters,” an outrageous display of arrogance (485).

Cambyses is perhaps the most instructive example of moral transgression in the Histories. Herodotus reports that the Persian king, in his descent into madness, wantonly abused the body of the dead pharaoh Amasis, violating Persian as well as Egyptian custom. After his expeditions against the Libyans and Ethiopians failed, Cambyses in a fit of pique killed the sacred Egyptian bull Apis and massacred its devotees. As a result of this sacrilege, the Egyptians believe Cambyses went completely insane, murdering his brother Smerdis and his own sister, who was the king’s wife (the marriage itself was contrary to Persian custom). Cambyses mocked and burned the statues of Egyptian divinities, as well as committing other sacrileges and abhorrent murders. Significantly, he died as the result of an accidental self-inflicted wound in the thigh, in the same spot where he had stabbed the sacred bull Apis.

Thigh wounds in Herodotus and folkloric tradition are often associated with physical and spiritual impotence and moral malaise; they are a form of symbolic castration. Herodotus notes that Cambyses wounded himself at the exact moment he realized he had executed his brother unjustly, suddenly recovering from his previous delusion. The punishment for moral and religious transgression in Herodotus, as in the plots of Athenian tragedy, often coincides with the protagonist’s recognition of his or her error. Cambyses’ mortal wound is a physical embodiment of his realization of his moral culpability and infection. Such narrative devices, permeating the Histories, demonstrate Herodotus’ reliance on literary motifs and structures, as well as contemporary patterns of Greek thought.

The wise adviser is a recurring character that appears at crucial moments throughout the Histories. Counselor to a king, tyrant, or general, and sometimes a king or commander himself, the adviser may be a famous or obscure figure, occasionally even anonymous. The advice he (or she) offers may be either accepted by scholars as historically plausible or deemed the purely fictitious invention of the historian. The prevalence of the motif in the narrative of the Histories, however, indicates that, for Herodotus, the character and function of the wise adviser are recurring phenomena of history. In other words, historical catastrophes and problems typically necessitate a scene of warning, counsel, or advice requiring the role of an adviser, whether the suggestion offered is heeded or not. The pronouncements of wise advisers often voice or embody major themes in the Histories, such as the mutability of human fortune, the perils of hubris, the value of moderation in human affairs and passions, and the ideals of patriotism, liberty, and valor.

Two types of advisers exist in the Histories: the admonisher whose warnings of danger typically go unheeded, and the adviser who offers a solution to a problem. Among the most prominent counselors of the first group are Artabanus, the Persian lord who tries to dissuade Darius from invading Scythia and Xerxes from attacking Greece; Solon, the Athenian lawgiver who warns Croesus that, being mortal, his fortune may change from good to bad; and Artemisia, tyrant of Halicarnassus, who warns Xerxes not to fight the Greek fleet at Salamis. Urging caution and restraint, these counselors foresee the tragic consequences of the headstrong and/or hubristic impulses of rulers. They express a pessimistic attitude that may be purely practical, such as Artemisia’s realization of the risk attending a Persian naval defeat at Salamis. Frequently, though, this type of adviser voices a philosophical pessimism or provides a corrective moral perspective against the arrogance or ambition of a ruler. This is most obvious in the case of Solon, whose admonishment of Croesus is rejected by the Lydian king as stupid; it is also seen in Amasis, the Egyptian pharaoh who advises Polycrates of Samos to discard his most treasured possession in order to escape the gods’ jealousy of his unbridled success. Fearful for her father’s life, Polycrates’ daughter later warns him not to go to the court of Oroetes, governor of Sardis, where, lured by the promise of increasing his wealth, he is butchered.

Typically, the admonisher is a wise elder who represents a privileged but marginal position within the retinue of a king and offers a solitary cautionary voice. Artabanus, for instance, is the brother of Darius and enjoys his nephew Xerxes’ respect, while Amasis, depicted as an uncharacteristically wise and moderate ruler by Herodotus, is a friend and ally of the Samian tyrant Polycrates. Gyges, Candaules’ trusted bodyguard, represents a different variant of the complicated position the admonisher can occupy. Horrified by the indecency of the king’s proposal, he tries to dissuade his master from forcing him to see the queen naked, to no avail. When she discovers the deception, the queen forces Gyges to murder Candaules as a result of the insult, and he assumes the king’s throne and his wife.

The second type of adviser offers practical advice for solving problems. As opposed to the negative messaging of the admonisher, this counselor offers pragmatic, positive recommendations. The most striking example is Themistocles, who urged the Athenians to devote their windfall from the silver mines at Laurium to the building of a fleet, persuaded them that the Delphic oracle intended them to fight at sea, and convinced Eurybiades and the Peloponnesians to engage the Persians at Artemisium and Salamis. Other Herodotean characters offering this type of counsel include Harpagus, who advised Cyrus to revolt against the Medes; Croesus, who advised Cyrus how to prevent the Persians sacking Sardis from becoming rebellious and how to make the Lydians effeminate and docile; Zopyrus, the Persian who devised a stratagem enabling Cyrus to recapture Babylon, and Mardonius and Artemisia, who encouraged Xerxes to leave Europe. Often, but not always, this type of practical advice is followed, with positive results.

Both types of advice can be offered by the same individual. Croesus offers practical advice on statesmanship to Cyrus and later courageously admonishes Cambyses for the outrages he has committed upon the Persian nobility. Artemisia warns Xerxes of the folly of engaging the Greek fleet and recommends, as an alternative strategy, that he advance with his infantry on the Peloponnese. She also echoes Mardonius’ advice to Xerxes to retreat to Asia, allowing the Persian general to remain in Greece to pursue the war on the king’s behalf. In Artemisia’s case, though Xerxes rejects her warnings, he remains favorably inclined towards her and continues to value her opinion.

Occasionally, the advised becomes adviser. Croesus, who ruefully realizes the wisdom of Solon’s warning about the unreliability of human happiness when bound to a funeral pyre after the capture of Sardis, becomes a trusted advisor to Cyrus, assuming the role of mentor in a remarkable transformation of character. Suffering and/or the realization of mortality is frequently a necessary preamble to exhibiting philosophical wisdom in Herodotus. Demaratus, the dethroned Spartan king, insightfully cautions Xerxes about Spartan patriotism and courage after his exile lands him in the Persian court. Even Cambyses, whose brutality, sacrilegious behavior, and insanity provoke Herodotus’ personal condemnation, awakens from his delusion when mortally wounded and advises the Persians not to allow a Magian on their throne. It is paradigmatic in Herodotus that a ruler’s loss of power inaugurates a capacity for insight and prudence.

The prominence of the wise adviser in Herodotus indicates a fundamental narrative pattern that gives order to the presentation of historical events. Certain events, particularly catastrophes, necessitate the presence of an adviser and the moral, ethical, philosophical, or practical perspective he or she provides. Many dramatic situations featuring a counselor, such as Solon’s interview with Croesus, or Amasis’ advice to Polycrates, are hardly historical, yet they elaborate Herodotus’ philosophical and moral view of history. The motif of the adviser alerts us to the presence of literary structures that pervade the historian’s narrative and require that we approach its claims to historical accuracy with considerable caution.

In the Histories, laughter often intimates approaching disaster for the laugher. Scornful laughter is the prerogative of kings and tyrants and indicates the disdainful pride that comes before a fall. Signaling a lack of awareness of one’s vulnerability, laughter typically functions as a narrative code in the Histories for a hubristic attitude soon to be punished by nemesis. Whether expressing a relatively innocent lack of concern, haughty disdain, or malicious glee, laughter usually reflects a moral or psychological blindness that courts divine punishment—or reversal of fortune—in the Herodotean universe.

Amused at Croesus’ request that he be allowed to reproach the oracle of Delphi for encouraging him to invade Persia, Cyrus laughs and grants the captive Lydian king permission to send his chains to the god’s priestess as a rebuke. Cyrus undervalues Croesus’ concern with fate and belief in the reliability of the divine office; he eventually perishes, unable to correctly interpret a dream about his own fate among the Massagetae. The Spartan king Leotychides, who, after scheming to depose Demaratus, ridicules him publicly and later dies in disgraceful exile. Laughter requires the absence of fear, and those powerful enough to enjoy such liberty are susceptible to the illusion of invulnerability, an evil in the Herodotean world. This is not invariably the case, however; the Ethiopian king laughs at Cambyses’ spies, delivering a moral rebuke to the Persian ruler who seeks to expand his empire to the furthest reaches of the world.

Cambyses is the quintessential example of megalomaniacal insanity in Herodotus. He laughs when he stabs the sacred Egyptian bull Apis and again when he murders his own cupbearer, the son of his trusted adviser Prexaspes. With malicious delight, he burns the images of Egyptian divinities, shortly before he accidentally stabs himself mortally in the thigh. Cambyses’ laughter is a clear indication of madness and premonitory of his destruction.

Xerxes’ laughter also foreshadows the catastrophic defeat of his campaign against Greece. Unable to understand the Spartan dedication to military valor, he laughs incredulously when Demaratus respectfully asserts that the Spartans will never capitulate to the overwhelmingly larger Persian force. Xerxes is incapable of grasping the impersonal and egalitarian nomos, or Law, that governs the Spartan war machine and demands either conquest or death. After the Persian defeat at Salamis, Xerxes laughingly rebuffs the Spartan envoys’ request that he pay reparation for the death of Leonidas. His reply that Mardonius will provide all the satisfaction they seek is unwittingly ironic, as the Greeks destroy the Persian general and his forces at the Battle of Plataea the following year.

Whether any of these reports of laughter are historically factual is questionable; for many of them a credible source appears lacking. That said, the motif of laughter functions as a narrative device in Herodotus, serving to elaborate major thematic strains in his work such as the danger of hubris, the character of the despot, and cyclical nature of human fortune.

Guest-friendship was a form of hospitality in the ancient Greek world that linked a host and foreign guest in a reciprocal relationship of generosity and protection. The relationship involved a ritualized exchange of material gifts as well as the offering of security, shelter from enemies, or other favors. While guest-friendship was primarily a personal association, it could become the basis for political alliances, establishing ties of mutual obligation between leaders of city-states or nations.

In the Histories, the institution of guest-friendship forms the context for several significant episodes that develop major themes in the text. Often these episodes dramatize the violation or severing of the obligations established by the host-guest relationship, which either constitutes or foreshadows a tragic catastrophe. In Book 1, Croesus offers protection to the exile Adrastus, cleansing him of his blood guilt for having inadvertently killed his own brother. Adrastus, charged with protecting Croesus’ son Atys during a hunting adventure, accidentally spears the king’s son, killing him. The ironic reversal, in which the supplicant cleansed of murder causes the death of his protector’s child in a horrible violation of xenia, underscore the bitter reversal of fortune Croesus suffers after he dismisses Solon’s warning about the instability of human prosperity.

The personal relationship and political alliance between Polycrates of Samos and Amasis of Egypt ends not because of either party’s violation of the rules of guest-friendship, but to avoid the distress its obligations might impose. Amasis, realizing that Polycrates’ success will incite the envy of the gods, advises his friend to cast away his most treasured possession. When the ring that Polycrates throws into the sea is found and returned to him, Amasis realizes that the tyrant is destined for a tragic end. To prevent the grief he would feel when his friend suffered the inevitable calamity, he ends their alliance. Later, Polycrates is lured by a deceptive proposal of guest-friendship with Oroetes, the Persian governor of Sardis, to his ignominious death.

Xerxes, after being offered lavish hospitality and gifts at the outset of his Greek campaign by Pythius the Lydian, formally declares him a guest-friend and flatters him with reassuring promises. Shortly after, Pythius asks Xerxes to spare the eldest of his five sons from the Persian forces to care for him in his old age. Enraged, Xerxes has the youth found among the ranks and cut in half, in a display of wanton cruelty and arrogance. Xerxes’ violation of the obligations of xenia is additional evidence of his hubris and sacrilegious behavior, defiling a sacred bond in his presumption of superhuman—and “supramoral”—status. It is noteworthy that the egregious violations of the rules of guest-friendship, a fundamental social institution of ancient Greek culture, in Herodotus’ text are typically committed by non-Greeks and are associated with oriental despotism.

A central feature of ancient Greek religious and political life was the cult of the hero. Heroes were deceased ancestors associated with specific localities and were venerated with ritual offerings at their tombs or shrines to gain their protection for the community. Greek heroes were usually participants in the Trojan War, the conflict known as the “Seven Against Thebes,” or other mythical adventures memorialized in Homeric epic and dramatic literature. Usually the son of a deity or minor divinity, the hero had supernatural status but was not a god; the major exception being the most famous and atypical Greek hero, Heracles, who was deified after his death. Many prominent aristocratic families traced their origins back to a heroic ancestor; the two royal houses of Sparta, for instance, claimed descent from Hyllus, the son of Heracles, while the family of Miltiades, the Athenian victor at Marathon, claimed Ajax, a hero of the Trojan War, as its ancestor.

The remains of heroes were coveted and thought to provide supernatural protection to the local community. In the Histories, possession of the bones (or statues) of specific heroes is often considered crucial for military victories and surviving moments of national crisis. During their long unsuccessful war with the neighboring Tegeans, the Spartans were promised victory by the Delphic oracle if they located and repatriated the bones of Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, to Spartan soil. By means of a ruse, the colossal bones of the hero were discovered in Tegea and returned to Lacedaemon, after which the Spartans subdued most of the Peloponnese. Before the crucial Battle of Salamis, the Greeks called upon Ajax, Telamon, and the sons of Aeacus, heroes associated with Aegina, and sent a ship to the island to retrieve their statues. The ship returned at the start of the battle and was the first to engage the Persian fleet, according to the Aeginetans. Herodotus notes that at both Thermopylae and Marathon, the Greek forces initially took their position on land sacred to Heracles. When a division of Xerxes’ forces attacked Delphi on the march to Attica, the Persians were terrified by portents and fled the sacred city, pursued by two enormous hoplites whom the Delphians claimed were their local heroes Phylacus and Autonous.

The exploits of heroic ancestors were considered political capital in determining the conferral of honor among Greek cities and families. As the allied forces took up their position at Plataea near the sacred fountain of the hero Androcrates, the Tegeans and Athenians each claimed the right to hold a wing of the army, the most distinguished position. Both contingents based their claims for the honor on the heroic deeds of history: The Tegeans declared their ancestor accepted the challenge of Hyllus, son of Heracles, and killed him in mortal combat, thereby defending the Peloponnese from invasion by the Heraclids. The Athenians countered that they, alone among the Greeks, had sheltered the exiled Heraclids and with their help deposed Eurystheus, the tyrant of Mycenae and enemy of Heracles and his children. In this remarkable episode of one-upmanship, the Athenians prevailed by appealing to their performance at Marathon, demonstrating that more recent acts of heroic valor could outweigh those of ancient history.

Certain local heroes, such as Erechtheus of Athens, were founders of cities and do not appear in Homeric epic. Local heroes, and those venerated in multiple locations of the Greek world, like Heracles and Oedipus, were a constitutive aspect of the Greek identity, and their veneration in cult forms an essential part of the social, religious, and political fabric of the Hellenic world portrayed in the Histories.