Appendix 1 Tolerance or Relativism?
Chapter 2 argued that the Histories espouses cultural relativism and that each culture’s nomoi are coherent and valid for it to practice. It might be objected, however, that the Histories merely displays a tolerance for the variety of nomoi found in diverse human cultures. One who judges certain cultural norms correct can still be tolerant of those she disagrees with. The tolerance argument would entail that Herodotus holds that there are objectively correct nomoi but that he declines to pass negative judgment on those that are wrong. For example, Herodotus might be willing to register the diversity of human nomoi, while not viewing these differences as desirable.
An impediment to the position that Herodotus is a cultural absolutist is that there is no hint of what “right” custom might be. I am not aware of any dogmatic statements coming from Herodotus regarding cultural practices that are correct for all societies. More to the point, the locus classicus for identifying cultural relativism (or tolerance) in the Histories includes a quotation from Pindar (3.38.4) that actively works against cultural absolutism and for a position of relativism. The words “Nomos, king of all” are followed in the Pindaric fragment by “of mortals and immortals” (θνατῶν τε καὶ ἀθανάτων). These lyrics rework Zeus’ position as “king of all, mortals and immortals.” In Homer, the formula is Zeus “father of men and gods” (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν). Already in the early fifth century, Heraclitus capitalized on the association in his fragment, “war is the father of all, the king of all” (B 53: πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς). A verse of Corrina’s has been credibly restored along these lines as well: Δεὺς πατεὶ[ρ πάντω]ν βασιλεύς.Footnote 1 In the Cratylus, Zeus’ name is etymologized by Socrates as the “lifegiver” (396a: αἴτιος μᾶλλον τοῦ ζῆν), who is “ruler and king of all” (ἄρχων τε καὶ βασιλεὺς τῶν πάντων). Similarly, the Aristotelian de Mundo calls Zeus “king, ruler of all” (Mu. 401b: Ζεὺς βασιλεύς, Ζεὺς ἀρχὸς ἁπάντων). Nomos, then, is a stand-in for Zeus. This is corroborated by its ability to “make just” (δικαιῶν) actions traditionally deemed unjust. Zeus’ connection with justice (δίκη) is, of course, persistent from early epic onward.Footnote 2 Pindar’s startling personification of Nomos elevates it to a principle akin to cosmic order. In its context in the Histories, this suggests that it is not just the case that there are simply a variety of nomoi in the world but that these nomoi are part of a structure of underlying stability. The evocation of Zeus and his divine authority over all beings does not simply imply a tolerance for the diversity of human nomoi; it indicates a sanction, a validity, to this variety. By including the lyric, and explicitly calling attention to Pindar’s correctness in formulating it as he does (Herodotus says it was composed “rightly,” ὀρθῶς), the Histories imports the association with divine regulation into the context of the nomological marketplace and Darius’ findings on the range of nomoi and the tenacity with which they are held. This is not to suggest that Herodotus (or Pindar) is making a literal apotheosis of nomos; there is no evidence to support that extreme claim. Instead, the intertext acts as a capstone to the argument by pointing to the validity of different cultural systems through the formula descriptive of Zeus’ rule.
An additional obstacle to those favoring tolerance over relativism is the perspective that the text adopts at 3.38. In a classic paper on relativism and tolerance, Geoffrey Harrison reasoned that the relativist assumes an external perspective, that of the observer. By contrast, one who is tolerant adopts an internal perspective within a given system.Footnote 3 Tolerance is the position taken by a participant. As Harrison states, “tolerance … must be from some point of view.”Footnote 4 It is for this reason significant that from the beginning of the hypothetical experiment, Herodotus invites an observer perspective: “For if someone were to put a proposition before all men … ordering” (3.38.1: εἰ γάρ τις προθείη πᾶσι ἀνθρώποισι … κελεύων).Footnote 5 Then, when Darius arranges his actual experiment with the Callatian Indians and the Greeks, he too assumes an outsider’s gaze, as one who follows neither custom. Both cases cultivate the point of view of an observer who sees more than the cultural agents in each experiment. In the madness of Cambyses episode, tolerance would be the response of a cultural agent internal to the experiment of the nomological marketplace or the testing of burial practices. Instead, we find third-party figures. I suggest that these spectators, by standing outside of the cultural system under examination, illustrate the way in which they are equally valid. This is reinforced by the neutral stance of the narrator, himself a Greek. According to the example of the Greeks in Darius’ court, Herodotus should reject the practices of those outside of Greece. Yet he does no such thing and instead acts like an onlooker of Greek and Callatian nomoi with Darius, offering up no ammunition for the cultural absolutist.
A further passage that speaks against the argument that cultural absolutism lurks within the Histories can be found in the description of Cambyses’ abuse of the body of Amasis (3.16). Cambyses ordered the burning of Amasis, an act that is said to contravene both Egyptian and Persian funerary custom. Here, Herodotus emboldens the reader to interpret Cambyses’ actions as sacrilegious by situating them within Egyptian and Persian cultural traditions (3.16.3), since from a Greek standpoint Cambyses’ deed might have been mistaken as a cremation burial. Again, one is positioned beyond Hellenic perspectives on funerary practices, as they are outlined in Darius’ experiment, by treating the Persian and Egyptian injunction against cremation neutrally.Footnote 6 This episode challenges rather than confirms Greek notions as to what is non-normative and blameworthy.
In his introduction of the Egyptian logos that is Book 2, Herodotus explains that he is reluctant to relate stories that he has heard concerning the divine, “considering that all men know equally about these things” (2.3.2: νομίζων πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἴσον περὶ αὐτῶν ἐπίστασθαι). Regarding these traditions, Herodotus is not tolerant of Egyptian narratives on the divine, while believing his own correct. He offers a transcultural acceptance of man’s stories about the gods. Whether we interpret this as a claim to knowledge or, as I prefer, a wry remark on man’s real ignorance in matters of the divine makes no difference. In either case, different national traditions about the gods are on the same footing. Like nomoi, these stories are coherent within their own cultural systems.
The case for the madness of Cambyses starts off by highlighting the relationship between exposure to diverse nomoi and respect for these practices. As ruler of the Egyptians, Cambyses is made an observer of foreign customs but fails to become tolerant and instead laughs at cultural difference. Tolerance is flagged as the response of a practitioner of norms faced with alternative customs. However, the observers – of the nomological marketplace and of the experiment on the Callatian Indians and Greeks – move the argument in a new direction, where what is right for a given people need not be what is right for one’s own. Pindar’s quotation affirms that cultural diversity is part of the nature of the world order.
1 F 1a.13 PMG.
2 E.g., Hes. Op. 239.
3 Harrison (1976).
4 Harrison (1976), 132.
Appendix 2 “Strong” and “Weak” Relativism
In an influential article, Richard Bett argued that there is no “strong” sense of relativism evident among fifth-century sophists, barring, provisionally, Protagoras. Instead, much or all that is defined as relativism is “weak” ethical relativism and “uninteresting.”Footnote 1 In making his case, Bett defines strong relativism as entailing that a statement is correct or incorrect relative to a given framework. Pointedly, this framework precludes any Archimedean vantage point. As an example, tattooing may be immoral in one culture but moral for another, with no superior standard according to which these positions can be adjudicated. Alternatively, weak relativism is situational. It dictates what is good, virtuous, bad, or shameful, and so on, according to the situation. That is, giving assistance to a friend may be noble when they are in their right mind but shameful when they are mad. As Bett concedes, “these arguments admittedly have to do with a kind of relativity; they assert that one cannot say what is good, just or virtuous without qualification, but only in relation to specific circumstances. However, this is … only superficially relativistic.”Footnote 2 They are superficially relativistic in part because weak relativism is still hypothetically compatible with a god’s-eye or objective point of view. For example, one might assert that it is objectively noble to help friends in their right minds and shameful if they are mad. This would then suggest an objective concept of justice underlies both positions. Bett’s position has found wide acceptance among those working on the sophists; however, in its focus on these fragmentary figures, it neglected the additional contexts in which relativism was debated in the fifth century. The conclusion that sophistic relativism is weak can, I submit, be challenged by attending to passages that fall outside of the “sophists” proper.
In Euripides’ Phoenissae, there is evidence for strong relativism in the words of Eteocles:Footnote 3
εἰ πᾶσι ταὐτὸν καλὸν ἔφυ σοφόν θ᾽ ἅμα | οὐκ ἦν ἂν ἀμφίλεκτος ἀνθρώποις ἔρις | νῦν δ᾽ οὔθ᾽ ὅμοιον οὐδὲν οὔτ᾽ ἴσον βροτοῖς | πλὴν ὀνόμασιν: τὸ δ᾽ ἔργον οὐκ ἔστιν τόδε.
If to all the same thing were by nature noble and wise, there would be no strife talking out of both sides of its mouth among humans: but as it is nothing is similar or equal for mortals except for names – but this is not the thing itself.
Eteocles’ words are a nimble response to his brother, who had closed his own speech by affirming that he avoided deceitful rhetoric in preference to what is “just to the wise” (495–6). To discount the claim, Eteocles shifts to the abstract values of nobility and justice and the fact that language (ὀνόμασιν) captures in a single term what in reality (ἔργον) has no stable determinant. The strife that arises from this between men is literally “spoken on two sides” (ἀμφίλεκτος); it is a polyphonic struggle for meaning. It is possible that the statement should be interpreted as another instance of situational relativism, but if so, what precisely are the situational parameters for determining what is noble and wise? Eteocles does not offer any. Beyond the absence of an explicit situational framework, there is an additional problem for interpreting this as a case of weak relativism: Eteocles claims that nothing is similar or equal for men. This makes the case for a situational standard of behavior operative behind Eteocles’ words even more difficult to maintain, since the human values of nobility and wisdom are expressed in language with referents that vary according to the individual, not according to the situation in which individuals find themselves. Further, the evaluative framework for this disagreement is explicitly “mortals” (βροτοῖς), which recalls Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine. What of the potential for an objective point of view? In making his case against the sophists, Bett maintains that their formulations do “not deny that there might be some objectively correct general definition of goodness, justice, or whatever the evaluative concept under scrutiny.”Footnote 4 Yet, the impossibility of objectivity in identifying nobility and wisdom is precisely what is at stake in Eteocles’ words. For man, these concepts share only names, not what underlies them.
The opposition of language and reality and the reference to values such as wisdom and nobility having a “nature” (ἔφυ) put the passage squarely in the sphere of the “correctness of language” debate, one that Protagoras was known to have been closely associated with from the title of his lost work, Orthoepeia (Pl. Phdr. 267c). Eteocles rejects the potential for natural correctness in naming, establishing a rift between language and its referents, a position that implicitly relies upon convention, a rickety foundation for any objective sense to be present behind these terms.Footnote 5 Much like Hermogenes in Plato’s Cratylus, Eteocles points to the absence of an objective relation between language and the world.Footnote 6 As the ability to discuss values is mediated by language, there is no objective path to process these terms. And since Bett identified strong relativism as statements made correctly or incorrectly relative to a given framework, the severance of language from reality provides the foundation for individual humans to serve as the framework for determining that statements are correct or incorrect, with no possibility of an independent vantage point.
In addition to the subjectivism of the individual, there is also debate in the fifth century on the status of nomoi as relative to a given society. The strong form of relativism for such a conception would be as follows, according to Bett:Footnote 7
It makes no sense to talk of things being right or wrong physei. Rather, there are merely various sets of nomoi in various different communities; and rightness and wrongness, in any given community, is relative to the nomoi prevalent in that community.
Such strong relativism is rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence for this position among the sophists. This too can be countered. Chapter 2 argued for relativism in Herodotus’ narration of the actions of Cambyses (3.38), who mocked the religious observances of his own and other peoples. The passage clearly answers the question “what constitutes right and wrong behaviour,” as strong ethical relativism requires. In it, individual cultures are the framework relative to which all nomoi are noble or otherwise. That there is no possible objective view on these observances is made clear by the hypothetical experiment in which peoples are asked to select the best customs out of a pile of all human customs. The fact that each group would return with its own speaks to the tenacity of a people’s relative sense of what is best. The concluding lyric from Pindar, that nomos is “king of all,” further bolsters the claim that this is strong and not situational relativism. It posits that there is no standard higher than convention to serve as a stable foundation for an objective perspective on whether a given nomos is laughable or laudable.
Examples of strong relativism can be identified in philosophical texts as well. The Dissoi Logoi lists varying human cultural practices with a running commentary on their status as noble or shameful according to the individual culture. The Lydians, for example, find it seemly to prostitute their daughters and acquire dowries for them in this way, whereas in Greece such conduct would be shameful (2.16). There is no sense in which one cultural position is morally superior. As the philosopher concludes, “not all men observe the same things” (2.18: οὐ γὰρ πάντες ταὐτὰ νομίζοντι). Depending on the evaluative framework of a given culture, human beings consider differing moral predicates valid. To resist the conclusion that the Dissoi Logoi contains examples of strong relativism, Betts argues that those instances in which ethical frameworks are made relative to differing societies are “superficial.”Footnote 8 His evidence for this is a fragment of an unknown poem that the Dissoi Logoi cites as a capstone to the entire argument – not the sections on cultural relativism alone. In it, ὁ καιρός, “opportunity,” changes the value of what is seemly and shameful for differing humans. The introduction of kairos commits the author, for Betts, to a situational framework that would be objectively right for each group, given their own needs. This is to say, since kairos is a feature of circumstantial difference, it cannot rule out an objective viewpoint. On this reading, the point is not that the author of the Dissoi Logoi is exploring the potential for basic differences in the conception of what is seemly and shameful in the absence of any objective vantage point – but the situational differences between populations that give rise to objectively correct moral behaviors, given the circumstances.
It is certainly the case that there are instances of situational relativism in the Dissoi Logoi. These instances nonetheless fulfill the aim of the treatise in this part to create an identity between what is seemly and shameful in “reality” (2.1: τὸ σῶμα). So it is seemly for a woman to have sex with her husband indoors but unseemly out of doors. A single frame of reference, “for a woman,” and single action, “sex,” create a reality according to which “sex” is subject to opposing moral predicates because of the variation in circumstance. It is impossible to imagine the philosopher being able to make the argument that to the same woman, sex with her husband is both shameful and seemly in the same way, and so the alteration in circumstance creates the possibility according to which the single action and both predicates overlap. Still, it should be understood that there is a correct moral action dependent on circumstance and that this is an example of weak relativism.
The Dissoi Logoi’s transition to communities and cultures maintains the opposition between language (two terms, “seemly” and “shameful”) and reality (a single action). The action that sustains both moral predicates, however, no longer relies on situational differences and “weak” relativism. Consider the first case study, on the difference between Greek peoples in terms of women’s exercise and dress: “for the Spartans it is seemly that girls engage in athletics <and> appear in public without sleeves or tunics, but for the Ionians it is unseemly” (2.9). The single frame of reference is now women’s athletic and dress codes, but there is no need to specify differing circumstances to create an overlap between both predicates and the frame of reference, since there is now a division in qualifiers, “for Spartans” and “for Ionians.” For Bett, there is an unexpressed understanding of the polis of the Spartans or the peoples of Ionia turning to their objectively correct nomos on the basis of unique historical conditions. These historical conditions further imply an iron law of objectively correct values for the shameful and the seemly. But unlike the prior example, there is no situational qualification parallel to “indoors” and “out of doors.” That is, no historical explanation is given to support a situational relativism that is underpinned by objective reasons for Spartan and Ionian nomoi. The plausible inference for this omission (which is shared by each example that follows) is that nomoi in fact cannot be assessed objectively by the referents “shameful” and “seemly,” which aligns it with strong relativism. This is supported by the parallels in the Histories, where no historical events explain cultural difference as objectively valid due to a supra-principle.Footnote 9
It is also supported by the fifth-century Hippocratic treatise, On the Sacred Disease, a speech advertising the author’s superiority over his contemporaries.Footnote 10 In a discussion of the brain’s governance of human emotion and perception of “what is unseemly and seemly, base and good, pleasant and unpleasant” (Morb. 14: τά τε αἰσχρὰ καὶ τὰ καλὰ καὶ τὰ κακὰ καὶ ἀγαθὰ καὶ ἡδέα καὶ ἀηδέα), the author divides the brain’s critical faculties to process these concepts into those that are judged by nomos and those perceived by advantage (τὰ μὲν νόμῳ διακρίνοντες, τὰ δὲ τῷ ξυμφέροντι αἰσθανόμενοι). Because the seemly and the shameful are measured according to convention or individual advantage, there is no single objective viewpoint that obtains and that can be superimposed over these factors. The treatise goes on to state that the same things do not satisfy humans because we “discern what is pleasurable or unpleasurable according to context (τοῖσι καιροῖσι).” This implies a framework specific to the individual but not one that is objectively right for each individual.
On a final note, these values are treated in the Dissoi Logoi as being applicable only by convention (nomos), rather than nature (physis). In the quotation that closes the section, the unknown poet asserts that there is a nomos (2.19) for mortals and that, according to it, nothing is noble or shameful in every respect. If there were an objective concept superior to these values, aligning it with nature over convention, then physis would have been a more rhetorically effective choice. As the text stands, all human nomoi regarding the seemly and the shameful are governed only by another contingent convention, nomos.
The above passages draw attention to the presence of arguments for strong relativism outside of Protagoras. If these passages are accepted as evidence, they constitute a claim for the wider reception of Protagorean relativism. They may equally point the way toward a reassessment of Bett’s influential argument.
1 Bett (Reference Bett1989), 141. Accepted by Barney (Reference Barney, Louise and Pellegrin2006), 87. For a provisional acceptance of Bett’s argument, see Lee (Reference Lee2005), 9–10.
2 Bett (Reference Bett1989), 146–7. There is doubtless a situational relativism found among the philosophers, cf. Gorgias, as recorded in Arist. Pol. 1260a, and the Dissoi Logoi, e.g., 1.1–10, 2.1–8.
3 L-M ‘Dramatic Appendix’ T 68 = Phoen. 499–502. For discussion, see pp. 46–7.
4 Bett (Reference Bett1989), 147.
6 Bett (Reference Bett1989), 156, on Hermogenes’ position as non-relativistic on the basis that he does not accept Protagoras’ philosophical position, which need not entail a rejection of relativism writ large.
7 Bett (Reference Bett1989), 162.
8 Bett (1989), 148 n. 14.
9 Pl. Leg. 637c–d hypothesizes that accusations of immorality that city-states lodge against one another can all be countered with, “Don’t be astonished, friend; this is our nomos, perhaps among you there is another nomos about these things” (μὴ θαύμαζε, ὦ ξένε· νόμος ἔσθ’ ἡμῖν οὗτος, ἴσως δ’ ὑμῖν περὶ αὐτῶν τούτων ἕτερος). No objective standard above nomos is supplied for variability in the cultural practices of drunkenness and the license given to women.
10 Laskaris (Reference Laskaris2002), 73–124, argues for the speech’s sophistic influence. Alternatively, for Thomas (Reference Thomas2000), 246, it is “not particularly ‘sophistic’ in its rhetorical style.”
Appendix 3 Knowledge and the Herodotean Narrator
The initial statement made by Herodotus at 1.5.3 on proceeding from “the first one I know (οἶδα) to have begun unjust deeds against the Greeks” strikes a confident posture. It is followed up quickly by another claim to knowledge: the Herodotean narrator “knows” (ἐπιστάμενος) that human happiness is ever on the move (1.5.4). Despite this assured beginning and its apparently strong truth claims, much of the discussion on epistemology and the Histories has focused on the absence of a rhetoric of truth. In what follows, I consider those instances in which the narrator makes self-referential claims to or disclaimers of knowledge and examine the extent to which these differ from truth claims.
The narrator assured of his knowledge reappears after the preface. Herodotus knows that the soils in Libya differ from those in Arabia and Syria (2.12.3) and that it is Egypt’s border, if any, that separates Asia from Libya (2.17.1). He also claims knowledge of the nomoi observed by the Persians (1.131.1); this precise (ἀτρεκέως) information is contrasted with the unclear reports that he has received on the burials of Persian men (1.140.1–2).Footnote 1 In an assertion reliant on his deductions from a hypothetical experiment, Herodotus knows that all peoples would happily carry away their own evils if asked to exchange them with another people’s (7.152.2).
Elsewhere, the desire for knowledge is a motivation toward historical inquiry, rather than a verification of its truthful outcome. Wishing to know if the stories he has heard in Memphis are true, Herodotus travels to have them corroborated in Thebes and Heliopolis (2.3.1). The same motivation prompts his inquiry into the reason for the Nile flooding in summer rather than winter and not giving rise to breezes (2.19.3). The decision to travel to Tyre is made “to know something certain” (σαφές τι εἰδέναι) about the god Heracles (2.44.1). There are also instances in which knowledge is disclaimed in the context of the fantastic, as in Herodotus’ announcement that he does not know that there is a river Ocean (2.23) or whether the Tin Islands exist (3.115.1).Footnote 2 He has no eyewitnesses, after all, to vouch for these.Footnote 3
Native traditions play an important role in the acquisition of knowledge. This stands in contrast to the criteria necessary for truthful narrative, which hearsay seldom satisfies, as we saw in Chapter 6. Herodotus says “I know” (οἶδα ἐγὼ) the story of the Lydians’ burning of the temple of Athena Assessus because he heard it from the Delphians, whose oracle was consulted on the matter by the Lydian ruler, Alyattes (1.20); and “I know because I have heard in Dodona” (ὡς ἐγὼ ἐν Δωδώνῃ οἶδα ἀκούσας) that the Pelasgians used to call on the gods in prayer during their sacrifices (2.52.1); again, of the provenance of the story of the Persians controlling the water sources of the Chorasmians and their neighbors for additional revenue, “I know because I have heard it” (3.117.6: ἐγὼ οἶδα ἀκούσας). A more complex piece of knowledge is generated by a process of combining stories in Proconnesus and Metapontion in order to arrive at what Herodotus “knows” (οἶδα) happened in Metapontium 240 years after the second vanishing act of Aristeas (4.15.1). On another occasion, Herodotus is easily persuaded by his interlocutors that the man-made lake Moeris had its mounds of earth conveyed to the Nile, “because I knew by report” (ᾔδεα γὰρ λόγῳ) that something like this occurred in Nineveh (2.150.2). This principle applies to the historical actors as well, as when Gobyras counsels Darius that he “knew by report” (λόγῳ ἠπιστάμην) that the Scythians were hard to handle but had now really learned it (4.134.2: ἐξέμαθον). We might have expected a reversal of the verbs, with Gobyras learning by report and knowing by experience, but this is not what we find. Such passages tell against the position that Herodotus’ knowledge claims depend exclusively on his own eyewitness testimony, important as this is. J. H. Lesher, for example, has found that “Herodotus held that knowledge, i.e. clear and certain awareness of truth, required confirmation on the basis of first-hand observation,” a claim that is often repeated.Footnote 4 This is incompatible with Herodotus’ willingness to affirm knowledge derived from oral testimony.Footnote 5
Elsewhere, it is clear that knowing a logos and knowing its truth value do not necessarily overlap. Beyond the one that he will relate, Herodotus states that he “knows” (1.95.1: ἐπιστάμενος) three other variants for the life of Cyrus, which are not the true report (τὸν ἐόντα … λόγον). In short, sources are at times identified as purveyors of “knowledge,” which is not to say that the Halicarnassian vouches for the veracity of each of these episodes. What is interpreted as knowledge can also be delusion. The Agiad brother of Leonidas, Doreius, “knew … well” (5.42.1: εὖ … ἠπίστατο) that he would become king due to his manliness, but the Spartans defer to tradition and appoint Cleomenes.Footnote 6 The misleading nature of Doreius’ knowledge points to its only provisional overlap with truth. Yet the irony of the passage clearly depends on the association of knowledge with true belief.
Evidence for the only partially authoritative position of knowledge is confirmed by its connection to a higher standard, “exactness.” To avoid the danger of remaining forever among the Persians, Democedes feigns ignorance of Greek medicine. When pressed, he confesses that he has familiarity with the art from his conversations with doctors but does not know it “precisely” (3.130.2: ἀτρεκέως). Herodotus speaks of the Hellenic knowledge of Egypt as “exact” (ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως) after there is a Greek presence in Egypt (2.154.4). Likewise, the Egyptians support their exact knowledge of the age of the gods Heracles, Dionysus, and Pan by pointing to the written record they have always kept (2.145.3); interestingly, precision here depends not only on physical presence but also on writing. The distinction between knowing and exact knowledge is also seen in the Egyptian version of the Greek nostoi after the Trojan War. They certify their information about Menelaus and Helen because they know parts of the story by inquiry (ἱστορίῃσι ἔφασαν ἐπίστασθαι) and other parts “precisely” because they happened on their own soil (2.119.3: ἀτρεκέως ἐπιστάμενοι). The stress in these instances is not so much on sight as on presence more generally.
At the start of the Histories, Herodotus claims to “know” that Croesus first committed injustices against the Greeks and that man’s well-being is unstable. These declarations prepare the ground for an intrusive narrator, one whose presence in the remainder of the historical narrative will remain prominent. Knowledge can approximate a more rigorous standard alongside the language of precision, which often takes the form of direct observation or a close relation to it. It can also be produced through reliable hearsay, in a departure from Herodotus’ practice elsewhere of depreciating akoe. Finally, knowing need not be synonymous with true belief. Due to these nuances in meaning and the importance of taking into account narrative context, interpreting what is at stake in “knowing” in the Histories must be done with care.
1 Cf. also 1.193.4, 2.122.2, 4.33.5–4.1, 5.22.1, 7.238.2, 9.43.1–2.
2 Cf. 4.46, 4.195, 7.26. At times, knowledge cannot be related, 1.51.4, 2.47.2, 2.123.3, 2.171.1, 4.43.7.
3 1.23: δὲ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ λέξας ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦθον ἀνενείκας οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον. 3.115.2: τοῦτο δὲ οὐδενὸς αὐτόπτεω γενομένου δύναμαι ἀκοῦσαι, τοῦτο μελετῶν.
4 Lesher (Reference Lesher, Dancy, Sosa and Steup2010), 607. Starr (Reference Starr1968), 358, “Almost never does Herodotus proclaim anything outside the range of his own observation unmistakably true; more often it is atrekes, a term which means ‘exact,’ or ‘precise’ in the first instance.”
5 As de Jong (Reference De Jong, Baragwanath and de Bakker2012), 132, rightly finds: “Eyewitness reports being (until Plato) the height of reliability in Greek storytelling about the past.”
6 The capacity for the verb to mean “false belief, mis-placed confidence” in this context is noted by Hornblower (Reference Hornblower2004), 110 n. 84.
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