(or the
frequency of ‘I don’t Heart Herodotus’
T-Shirts in later antiquity)
What’s going here then? I thought everyone
loved Herodotus.
Of course we
do because we are members of Legendum and by implication basically wild nutters
about anything remotely Classics related. And yet here we have another of my
favourite Classical authors, Plutarch (46-120 AD) apparently penning such
poisonous absurdities as ‘The Malice of
Herodotus’ as part of a collection of moral essays, no less. It creates the
image of the ancient world equivalent of a member of the social elite asking (forgive
me for paraphrasing the barrister in the famous Lady Chatterley Trial), “Would you let your house-slave read
this book?!’ The question no doubt would have been a much more pertinent one
if, gods forbid; your slave was an eastern
barbarian. In short Herodotus was batting for the wrong side. In other words a philobarbaros – a lover of barbarians
(non-Greeks).
It is clear that, although the historians
after Herodotus (484-425 BC) were heavily indebted (some acknowledged others
not so openly) to his pioneering work, there was a considerable amount of
polemic aimed at the man himself and his historical method. Such was the reward
for a historian who had practically lit the fuse of the new genre of local
history in his sleep (well, after his death in fact!).
Ctesias of Cnidus (5thC BC) in his work Persica claimed to base his work on
local native records and constantly contradicted Herodotus, calling him a ‘peddler
of myths’. In the Hellenistic era, both Hecataeus of Abdera (4th C
BC) and Manetho(3rd C BC) wrote histories as a counter to what they
considered as false or misleading history concocted by their predecessor.
The critical pot shots (with the notable
exceptions of the later Republic era figures of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
60BC-7AD, Cicero 106-43BC and Quintilian 35-100AD) were more or less constant
right through antiquity, Plutarch being one of the more prominent detractors,
and it isn’t until later in the Renaissance where the father of history starts
to receive some remedial attention culminating in his re-enthronement today. It
goes without saying that he is still subject to and worthy of further dissection
and investigation but moral castigation?
The essay, addressed to Alexander (whether
the Alexander, in a mock rhetorical exercise or an Alexander, a friend or
colleague, Alexander of Cotyaeion (d.150AD) the philologist roughly
contemporary with Plutarch, I have so far been unable to ascertain) is a tour de force of attacks upon Herodotus’
style, his faults as a historian and some ad hominem remarks arising from
Plutarch’s fury at his history for displaying an anti Corinthian, anti-Athenian and
generally anti-Greek bias. Plutarch is not new to this kind of polemical essay
as evidenced by his other works Adversus Colotem and De
Stoicorum Rupugnantiis. It has been suggested that the form of the
essay mimics the genre of judicial rhetoric and indeed legal terms do make
their appearance (diabole, kategoreo, martureo etc) but this is common as an
example of forensic language when ancient historians and commentators want to
deal with their theme and make a case either for or against. But rather than a mere exercise in rhetoric, I do get the impression that the moralist means it in this instance - he would have been too emotionally involved and in the case of Corinth too partisan not to have been.
The De Malignitate as a whole is aware of
Herodotus’ work as a unified and more or less linear narrative (albeit with
switchback railways) and in structure follows the book in order. Its starts
with notes on Book I (The Abduction of Io 865E-857A Hdt.1.1-5) through to the
episode of the absence of the traitorous soldiers from some Hellenic allies at
the battle of Plataea in Book IX (872F, Hdt.9.85). Strangely, there are no
comments on Book IV.
He starts off as many professional hatchet
jobs often do, with apparent praise of his target. Herodotus’’ Histories are
described as being, ‘simple, free and easily suiting itself to
its subject’ and the author as ‘an acute writer, his style is pleasant, there
is a certain, force, and elegancy in his narrations’. But this is only
to build the target up and come crashing down like a sack of olives on top of
him:- Herodotus ‘ pretends to simplicity’ or is ‘really most malicious’
and we are told by Plutarch that ‘his other lies and fictions would have need
of many books.’
Plutarch’s attitude to historians has a
strong moral dimension informed by Plato’s ideas on education. His comment on
the writing of history in his life of Cimon is noteworthy:
‘Since it is difficult, or rather perhaps
impossible to display a man’s life as pure and blameless, we should fill out
the truth to give a likeness where the good points lie, but regard the errors
and follies with which emotion or political necessity sullies a career as
deficiencies in some virtue rather than displays of viciousness, and therefore
not make any special effort to draw attention to them in record. Our attitude
should be one of modest shame on behalf of human nature, which never produces unmixed
good or a character of undisputed excellence’ (Translation: Russell)
All this moral outrage reaches a crescendo around
the midpoint of the essay and we can easily envisage the consummate essayist
and Greek über patriot starting to foam at the mouth when he comes to the
infamous episode of the 300 would be castration victims of the tyrant of
Corinth, Periander, the city which, Plutarch tells us, Herodotus has ‘bespattered
.. with a most filthy crime and most shameful calumny’. For Plutarch, this
is not mere run of the mill shit stirring; it is nothing less than spraying the
stuff all over the city walls!
To give a brief synopsis the Corinthian
tyrant Periander had sent 300 boys, sons to the leading men of Corcyra to King
Alyattes to be gelded, the boys luckily ended up sailing first to the island
Samos where the Samians gave them sanctuary and saved their skins…and
presumably juvenile balls into the bargain. This apparently infuriated the
Corinthians who accordingly as revenge decided to aid the Spartans in their
later attack on the Samians. Plutarch takes any accusatory rumour involving a
Greek city state as a personal slight. He is well known as a hyper patriot and
there is nothing that lights his fuse more easily than a rumour or piece of
hearsay relating to Greek double dealing, treachery or downright scummy
behavior – unfortunately it’s just this kind of sordid microtale that
Herdodotus loves to pepper his Histories with. It is the dirty diesel fuel that
throbs deep down in the boiler room of the Herodotus’s text, motoring the macro
level story along of how the East and West came to grips and how a bunch of
disparate and paranoid Greek statelets put their differences aside (until 431
BC that is) and managed to pull off one of the greatest victories in world
history, literally saving the Fifth Century Greek world.
It
would take Thucydides to recount the sequel to this story of how this world,
recently united against the Persian peril, proceeded to eviscerate itself over
27 years of bloody and confused internal conflict. Thucydides, a new breed of
leaner and sharper political historian, could see how Herodotus may have foreshadowed
the future with the seeds of all this through his strangely ambiguous and
haphazard meandering investigations. But for Plutarch the seeds are definitely
poisonous ones.
The great difference between the two writers
is that Herodotus likes his history warts and all, spicy and ambiguous – and
for me this makes his work that of an incredibly prescient and modern
historian, constantly able to renew its urgency as a text and remind us of the
dangers of the embedded approach which is more Plutarch’s line. You get the
feeling that anything negative about Greeks or their heroes, regardless of
whether or not it may be factually true – should never make it into the record.
We still suffer from this suspect kind of history today (You might call it the
curse of Kissinger) – you only have to look at any ‘official’ authorised US
Military history of the 20th CVietnam/Indochina conflict to know the
truth of that. If Herodotus, this ‘pleasant and cunning scoffer of a writer’
had been writing about the Cold War in the way that he does about the Persian
Wars, he would definitely have been berated as ‘un-American’ and ‘off-message’.
Plutarch is of course right to point out factual inaccuracies and by Zeus there
are numerous instances in the Histories as well as a cornucopia of
non-sequiturs, dead ends and other goofs, but for giving a more rounded account
of events, with all of the mosaic-like reportage pro and anti, surely he is unfairly
characterized as
‘he
who has collected and recorded the fart of Amasis, the coming of the thief’s
asses and the giving of bottles…cannot seem to have omitted these gallant acts
and these remarkable sayings (of Leonidas) by negligence and oversight, but as
bearing ill-will and being unjust to some.’
This for-and-against characteristic of
Herodotus lends weight to another important overarching theme of his work, that
of the moral dimension of deed and actors on the stage of history when faced
with momentous choices and their own fate (often inescapable). The heroes and
heroines (for let us note in passing that there are quite a number of active
female figures throughout the history and barbarian at that!) come across as
all the more authentic as a result and I would argue more rather than less
moral. There are moments of cowardice, good and bad deeds in the same man or
woman – all of human inconsistency and self-doubt is there in The Histories.
Plutarch makes the common error of many
conservative patriots, confusing high morality with the public persona of his
Greek heroes (the women are of course doing their duty at home!); offering us the
essentially massaged heavily redacted version of character in contrast to
Herodotus’ more compromised and thus more human figures. It is in fact Plutarch who encourages us into potential moral error should we
paint too bright a picture of history’s victors. The embedded versus the
independent historian has its roots in this battle between Plutarch and
Herodotus (in its turn prefigured by the earlier debate in the Republic between philosophy and poetry or as Plato would describe it 'imitation') and still rages in academia today, not only about modern events but
those of the ancient world as well. It still matters and so too does Herodotus
for this very reason.
The moral essayist ends with his famous caveat
which has come to stand as his signal red flag to those in danger of being
seduced by Herodotus’ smooth style..’But as in roses we must be aware of the
venomous insects called cantharides;so must we take heed of the calumnies and
envy lying hidden under smooth and well couched phrases and expressions, lest
we imprudently entertain absurd and false opinions of the most excellent and
greatest cities and men of Greece.’
No ‘I –Heart-Herodotus’ T-Shirt for Plutarch
then!
But I can’t let Plutarch have the last word
and so we end this post with a quote from Book VII, Ch.152,
‘I
am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it’
Euge!
‘Epei de angelie apiketo peri tes maches en Marathoni genomenes
para Basilea Dareion to Hystareos, kai prin megalos kecharagmenon toisi
Athenaioisi dia ten es Sardis esbolen,
kai de kai tote polloi te deinotera epoiee kai mallon hormeto strateuesthai epi
ten Hellada.’
