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2 results

  • Chapter 5 - Physis on the Battlefield

  • K. Scarlett Kingsley, Agnes Scott College, Decatur
  • Book:
    Herodotus and the Presocratics
    Published online:
    07 March 2024
    Print publication:
    14 March 2024, pp 141-166

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the Histories’ interest in human nature on the battlefield in terms of valour. It reviews instances in which the historical actors – including Pixodarus, Xerxes, and Themistocles – foreground the strategic importance of "surpassing nature." This is a motif that places the speakers in a network of sophistic and later, Platonic, theories on man’s desire to outstrip his own nature. At stake is a philosophy of "superior nature" that is strongly undercut by the complexity of the action on the battlefield.

  • Chapter 4 - History peri physeos

  • K. Scarlett Kingsley, Agnes Scott College, Decatur
  • Book:
    Herodotus and the Presocratics
    Published online:
    07 March 2024
    Print publication:
    14 March 2024, pp 117-140

  • Summary

    The study of nature as an object of scientific interest matured through the investigations of Presocratic philosophers on the observable world. Herodotus is in dialogue with those expanding its domain into the spheres of natural science and the human. Physis embraces the interior and exterior regularities of subjects as diverse as landmasses, rivers, seas, elements, animals, and men. Unique to Herodotus, however, is the use of nature as a category of historical explanation; it is a standard of measurement that permits historical inference.