Herodotus in The Theatre at Alexandria? On Athenaeus 14.620D

Abstract

This article discusses a passage in Athenaeus (14.620d) that refers to the performance of Herodotus’ work in a theatre in Hellenistic Alexandria. In his edition of Athenaeus, highly valued and still influential, August Meineke replaces Herodotus’ name (unanimously transmitted in Athenaeus’ manuscripts) with Hesiod’s. In this article I set out to overturn a widespread tendency to accept Meineke’s emendation of Athenaeus 14.620d, reconsidering the possibility that Athenaeus did in fact name Herodotus in the light of (a) the difficulty of explaining the origin of the alleged mistake in Athenaeus’ manuscript tradition and (b) the ancients’ tendency to draw parallels between Herodotus’ style and language and Homeric poetry. The fact that Athenaeus refers to theatrical performances of both Herodotus’ work and the Homeric poems will be shown to be very much in line with the ancient rhetorical, historiographical and biographical tradition which regarded Herodotus as the most Homeric of all prose writers.