Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:57:39.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Herodotus and Histiæus1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. Blamire
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

‘He who tries to play a double part, and fails in the attempt, as Histiaeus did, is not likely to occupy an honourable place in history. He seems to have been of great and selfish ambition, without the capacity to form a judgement as to the means requisite to carry it out, and without any scruple as to the means he did adopt.’ Grundy's judgement has proved widely influential among modern scholars. It has been seriously questioned only by Heinlein, who, in making Histiaeus the loyal confidant of Darius, offered a radically different interpretation of his political career. But the wild and undisciplined nature of many of Heinlein's conjectures prevented his hypothesis from winning acceptance. In this paper I venture to suggest that the accepted view of Histiaeus as a private adventurer might be false, and that a revaluation of his career along the lines proposed by Heinlein might be profitable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 3-4 , November 1959 , pp. 142 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 142 note 2 Grundy, G.B., The Great Persian War and its Preliminaries (London, 1901), p. 141.Google Scholar

page 142 note 3 Klio, ix (1909), 341–51.Google Scholar

page 142 note 4 All references are to Herodotus, except where otherwise indicated.

page 142 note 5 The earlier reconstructions are summarized in How and Wells's note on 4. 137. Recent papers, with references to the later literature, have been contributed by Wade-Gery, , J.H.S. lxxi (1951), 212–21Google Scholar, and by Hammond, , C.Q., N.S. vi (1956), 113–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 143 note 1 As suggested by Duncker, cited and followed by Swoboda, P.W., s.v. Histiaeos, cols. 2047–8.

page 143 note 2 Op. cit., p. 344.Google Scholar

page 143 note 3 Op. cit., p. 346.Google Scholar

page 143 note 4 Op. cit., pp. 70–75Google Scholar.

page 143 note 5 Grundy, , op. cit., pp. 65–66, 70–71Google Scholar, needlessly magnifies die apparent contradiction between the expression and what Herodotus elsewnere (5. 2 and 16) says about the range of Megabazus' conquests. In the former passage he writes: . Here the direction implicit in the preposition is fixed by the narrative which follows, i.e. east to west from the Hellespont towards Macedon. Herodotus means only that Megabazus reduced every city and tribe encountered along this route, not every city and tribe anywhere in Thrace. In the latter passage the words are only a qualification of Herodotus' earlier assertion, not a flat contradiction of it. It is clear in general that the oral traditions upon which Herodotus drew for this part of his work, uncritical as they were and tainted with local prejudice, prevented him from forming any coherent picture of Persian strategy. He was for example led to believe that the expatriation of the Paeonians had no deeper motive than Darius' admiration of the domestic efficiency of their native women (5. 12–15), while his Macedonian informants concealed their court's reception of Persian overtures in the attractive legend that the Persian ambassadors were secretly done away with as they wined and whored (5. 17–21).

page 144 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 341–3.Google Scholar

page 144 note 2 Herodotus IV–VI (London, 1895), ii. 59–60.Google Scholar

page 144 note 3 Op. cit., p. 342.Google Scholar

page 146 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 84 ff.Google Scholar

page 146 note 2 Riv. Fit., N.S. ix (1931), 49–54.Google Scholar

page 146 note 3 See Gardner, , A History of Ancient Coinage (Oxford, 1918), pp. 91–103.Google Scholar

page 146 note 4 C.A.H. iv. 218–19.Google Scholar

page 146 note 5 Miletus, he says, fell in the sixth year after the apostasis, and the apostasis he has already identified with the deposition (6. 18 with 5. 37).

page 147 note 1 See How and Wells on 1. 141.

page 147 note 2 As is done by Heinlein, , op. cit., p. 346Google Scholar, Swoboda, , op. cit., col. 2048, and De Sanctis, , op. cit., p. 60.Google Scholar

page 147 note 3 See the observations of De Sanctis, , op. cit., p. 60.Google Scholar

page 148 note 1 I am not convinced by the suggestion of De Sanctis, , op. cit., pp. 60–61Google Scholar, that the cautiousness of Hecataeus represents a tradition which he himself circulated post eventum to dissociate himself from what transpired to be the ill-judgement of Aristagoras and the rest of his council.

page 148 note 2 Op. cit., cols. 2048–9.

page 148 note 3 Op. cit., pp. 349–51.Google Scholar

page 148 note 4 The personal hatred underlying his accusation is admirably analysed by Hein-lein, , op., cit., pp. 345–6Google Scholar, who reconstructs the stages by which the tradition that Histiaeus was party to the revolt developed from it.

page 149 note 1 Op. cit., p. 345.Google Scholar

page 149 note 2 See, e.g., How and Wells on 6.4.

page 149 note 3 Op. cit., p. 349.Google Scholar

page 149 note 4 See the discussion of De Sanctis, , op. cit., pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

page 150 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 346–7.Google Scholar

page 150 note 2 Op. cit., p. 347.Google Scholar

page 151 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 136–40.Google Scholar

page 151 note 2 Gesch.des Altert, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1939). iv. 287.Google Scholar

page 151 note 3 Op. cit., col. 2049.

page 151 note 4 Op. cit., p. 348.Google Scholar

page 152 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 140–1.Google Scholar

page 152 note 2 Op. cit., p. 351.Google Scholar

page 152 note 3 Op. cit., col. 2050.

page 152 note 4 Herodotus' Persian sources are investigated by Wells, , Studies in Herodotus (Oxford, 1923) PP 95–111. He argues that much material was derived from Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus, who deserted Persia for Athens (3. 160).Google Scholar

page 152 note 5 Repeated recently by Andrewes, , The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956), pp. 124–7.Google Scholar

page 152 note 6 Thus Grundy, , op. cit., pp. 135–40, passes straight from a detailed analysis of his final adventures to an overall estimate of his career-a procedure which predisposes the reader to accept an unfavourable verdict.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

page 153 note 2 Compare 6.6 (Lade) and 7. 236 Salamis).

page 153 note 3 My attention was drawn to this point by Mr. C. Hignett.

page 153 note 4 See Tarn, , Hellenistic Military and Naval Developments (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 43 ff.Google Scholar

page 153 note 5 The passage, however, contains well-known historical difficulties. See, e.g., Gomme, ad loc.