~ LINGUISTIC MATTERS. The English word ãhistoryä is derived from the Greek word Îhistoria,â which means Îinquiry,â especially into particular facts. Thus Aristotle wrote a ÎHistoria of animals,â which describes many, many different kinds of animals, their organs, and their habits.
(Side note: Also, there is an ambiguity today in the way we use the word Îhistoryâ between the thing studied (the past) and the discipline which studies it today. We use the word Îhistoryâ for both the events that happened and the careful study of those events. Thus we use the word Îhistoriography,â which means Îthe writing of historical events,â and this word is not ambiguous between the study and the object of study. Thus, Thucydides and Herodotus were both historiographers, for they wrote down the events they saw or heard about from others.)
~ PREDECESSORS. The study of history, as we know it, has not always existed. It had to be created, invented at some time. As historians, Herodotus and Thucydides had some sort of Greek predecessors, whom scholars call ãlogographers.ä One such predecessor is Hecataeus of Miletus (!). He wrote a geography of the world (as it was known to him), and a genealogy of heroes (like Hercules). Scholars think that Hecataeus based his geography in part on the map of Anaximander, but improved it greatly. His genealogy of heroes (which has not come down to us intact) is not just a sequel to Hesiodâs Theogony, written in a similar spirit; it opens with ãIn what follows, I write what I think is the truth, since what the Greeks say strikes me as both inconsistent and laughable.ä But this still is certainly different from both modern history and the ancient work of Thucydides and Herodotus. For a geography and a systematization of folklore still does not constitute the discipline of history as we conceive it.
Herodotus lived from about 480 to about 425 BC; we do not know exact dates. He wrote a huge work titled History of the Persian Wars, 9 books as we have it (490-480 BC). His family was rich and aristocratic. His family was sent into exile during his childhood, because his parents opposed the tyrant ruling his home (Halicarnassus) at the time. He later returned home. (As Plutarch first noted, all the great Greek historians were exiled at one time or another.) He traveled extensively, including Egypt, and an extended stay in Athens.
~ Motivation. What motivated Herodotus to write his work? At the opening of Book I, he tells us he wrote it ãin order that what men have done may not be forgotten, and so that the great and admirable deeds performed by the Greeks and Barbarians may not be without honor; and particularly, as to what it was that led them to make war against one another.ä We thus see how Herdotus stands in between Homeric epics (which aim to valorize and memorialize great warriors) and modern history (which aims to discover the facts about the past, and the causes of events).
~ Book II (which was all we read) is a digression about customs, culture, and religion in Egypt. Herodotus is more of a social historian; he is almost an anthropologist at times, recording the beliefs and customs of non-Greek cultures.
Herodotus considers different explanations for the Nileâs flooding (no other river rises annually). Interestingly (p. 65), certain Greeks had attempted to explain its strange aspects, whereas no Egyptians (that Herodotus could find) had. This tells us something revealing about Greek ways of thinking. Herodotus is perhaps quasi-scientific in his account; he is at least approaching it rationally.
1. The Etesian winds (which run out of the Northwest for ~40 days in the summer) cause the flooding by pushing the river water back into the river, preventing it from escaping into the sea.
Why is this wrong? (a) There are times when the Etesian winds do not blow, but the Nile keeps rising. (b) If this were the cause, then every river that flows in the same direction as the Nile should rise. But this does not happen. So the winds cannot be the cause.
2. ãThe Nile flows from the ocean, and the ocean flows all round the earth.ä [?] This is Hecataeusâ view; Herodotus says it is too obscure to disprove.
3. Melting snows fill up the Nile at its source, and these overfill the river. Herodotus calls this explanation ãmuch more plausibleä than 1 and 2, but is ãfurthest from the truth.ä
Why is this wrong? (a) The Nile flows out of the hotter south to the cooler north, so there would be no snow at the source of the Nile.
4. (This is Herodotusâ view.) The sun is displaced during the winter to Libya (the source of the Nile), and much of the Nileâs water Îevaporates.â But then during the summer, the summer moves out of Libya, and the Nile waters can rise again. That is, the Nile runs Îunder capacityâ during the winter because the sun sucks away its water, and at Îfull capacityâ when it floods.
Herodotus main claim: The Greeks took their gods from the Egyptians and not vice versa. Hercules exists in Egypt, Phoenicia (~100 miles north of Jerusalem), and Greece. This, for Herodotus, does not show that the Greek gods are any less real. Herodotus is agnostic about the ultimate origins of the gods, since the Greeks simply do not have knowledge of the ancient past. All of Herodotusâs statements are based on interviews with local informants, and actually visually examining temples in different places.
Herodotus considers that the story might be a ãfableä (p. 77). The legendary fight occurred because the treasure and Helen were all detained in Egypt. Another interesting methodological note: Herodotus comparatively evaluates the stories of the Egyptians and the Iliad, and declares the Egyptian story more likely. The modern historian has to sift through evidence as well.
Thucydides was an Athenian aristocrat, who lived from ~450-395 BC. His book is called The History of the Peloponnesian Wars. This war was a 27-year conflict between Athens and her allies and Sparta and hers, starting in 431, ending in 404. Sparta was the eventual victor. He was actually a general in the war for a time, but was exiled from Athens and discharged from his service in 424 for failure to obey commands from his commanding officer. So he wrote his history as a contemporary observer; perhaps we should say that he was a historian of the present (if there can be such a thing), or that Thucydides was a journalist with a taste for uncovering the big picture and basic causes. His book is, far and away, our greatest source of evidence for the Peloponnesian War; virtually no other information exists beyond scattered archeological finds.
~Why does he do history? P. 231: ãThe absence of romance [ta muthodes] in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers [historians] who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future·I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.ä His aim is NOT entertainment, but towards understanding human nature and human events.
~ But, the question for us now is why an ãexact knowledgeä of the particular details of the war would contribute towards a broad understanding of human nature? Why did he write and demand such a precise list of events?
~ Thucydides never states explicitly what he ãthought history was about, why it was worth a lifetime [~30 years] of very hard effort to write a detailed and accurate history of the war·These were far from obvious questions in his day, for the simple reason that the writing of history had scarcely begunä (Finley, 13). Myths and legends served the obvious purposes of establishing community with ancestors and one another, teaching moral lessons, and so on. What was the purpose or point of history as a catalogue of names, dates, and places woven together, i.e., as Thucydides practiced it? Plato and Aristotle both denigrated studying history: Plato disliked it because it dealt with non-eternal, changing, particular events, whereas true knowledge had to be like mathematics; Aristotle thought that a chronological list of events would yield no real understanding, rather just a set of disconnected facts.
The Funeral oration of Pericles reveals how the Athenians (who were the scientists and philosophers in the classical period) view themselves, and the character of their lifestyle. (There are several similarities to Lincolnâs Gettysburg address.) He begins by singing the praises of the city, instead of the fallen soldiers.
1. Originality - Their democratic laws are original, not imitations.
2. Social freedom - This freedom carries over from the legal into the social sphere, without becoming lawless.
3. Openness - Athens also lets foreigners into her city (268).
4. Discussion valued - In terms of the rise of science, the following quotation is interesting. ã[I]nstead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at allä (269). Lloyd thinks that the ãGreek phenomenonä occurred for precisely this reason.
[[Side note: Cf. Euripidesâs play Suppliant Women, ll. 405-8. Theseus says to a visitor from Thebes:
ã Our city is not ruled
By orders of a single ruler: no, it is free.
In annual terms of office, men succeed
Each other; the rich receive no more
Consideration than the worthy poor.ä]]
The plague of Athens comes immediately after the lofty and moving funeral speech of Pericles. Scholars like to point out the contrast between the two sections: the speech glorifies the laws and institutions of Athens, whereas the plagues caused lawlessness in Athens. This points to a recurrent theme in Thucydides: under duress and strain, nobility and social norms crumble, and greed and hedonism take over. See pp. 277: normal burial ceremonies were ignored, people ãresolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day,ä ãfear of god or law of man there was none to restrain them.ä
~ Scholars are not sure what the plague was; the best current guess is that it was toxic shock that made people susceptible to the flu.
~ Thucydides takes a jab at oracles at the end of the plague section. He asserts that people will interpret folklore and oracles in the way that is most convenient; the example is the ambiguity between Îlimosâ (dearth) and Îloimosâ (death).
~ History, as Herodotus and Thucydides practiced it, ãanalyzes the moral and political issues of the time by a close study of events, of the concrete day-to-day experiences of society, thereby avoiding the abstractions of the philosophers on the one hand and the myths of the poets on the otherä (Finley, 16).
~ Differences between Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus focused on re-creating an atmosphere of the far distant past. Thucydides focuses on a succession of events that are occurring as he writes; he is a contemporary of the action. Thucydides does not place weight on gods and oracles, whereas Herodotus will still talk about them in earnest (Hercules).