Ancient Ethnography
New Approaches
Edited by Eran Almagor and Joseph Skinner
To Our Parents: Nili and Uri, Bernadette and Edward
B L OOMSBURY
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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Contents
www.bloomsbury.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
List of Contributors
Preface
First published 2013
Eran Almagor, Joseph Skinner and contributors, 2013
Eran Almagor and Joseph Skinner have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs
vii
ix
Abbreviations
Introduction
1
Eran A lmagor and Joseph Skinner
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
Part 1 Beginnings
23
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
1
or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
The Invention of the 'Barbarian' in Late Sixth-Century BC Ionia
25
Hyun Jin Kim
the publishers.
2
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
Communication in the Herodotean Mediterranean
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
49
Kostas Vlassopoulos
the authors.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
The Stories of the Others: Storytelling and Intercultural
Part 2 Responses
77
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
3
ISBN: HB: 978-1-84966-890-3
Xenophon's A nabasis
epub: 978-1-4725-3759-1
79
Rosie Harman
ePDF: 978-1-4725-3760-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Looking at the Other: Visual Mediation and Greek Identity in
4 Apologetic Ethnography: Megasthenes' Indica and the Seleucid Elephant
97
Paul Kosmin
Ancient ethnography : new approaches / [edited by] Eran Almagor, Joseph Skinner.
pages cm
Summary: "By providing a platform for scholars working in a variety of fields, this volume
5
Monstrous Aetolians and Aetolian Monsters — A Politics of Ethnography?
117
Jacek Rzepka
presents cutting-edge research dealing with various aspects of ancient ethnographic
thought: its formation and devlopment, its intellectual and cultural milieux, the later
reception of ethnographic traditons, and the extent to which these represent major
constitutive elements of shifting notions of culture, power and identity"— Provided by
publisher.
ISBN 978-1-84966-890-3 (hardback)— ISBN 978-1-4725-3759-1 (epub)— ISBN 978-1-4725-
Part 3 Transformations
131
6 Ethnography and the Gods in Tacitus' Germania
133
Greg W oolf
3760-7 (epdf) 1. Ethnology--History—Sources. 2. Ethnology in literature. 3. Civilization,
Ancient. 4. Civilization, Classical. I. Almagor, Eran. II. Skinner, Joseph.
GN308.A54 2013
305.8009—dc23
2013025911
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Printed and bound in Great Britain
7
'But This Belongs to Another Discussion': Exploring the Ethnographic
Digression in Plutarch's Lives
Eran A lmagor
153
Contents
vi
8 Ethnography and Authorial Voice in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae
179
Katerina Oikonomopoulou
Part 4 Receptions
9
201
List of Contributors
Imperial Visions, Imagined Pasts: Ethnography and Identity on India's
North-Western Frontier
203
Joseph Skinner
10 Exploring Virgin Fields: Henry and George Rawlinson on Ancient
and Modern Orient
223
Thomas Harrison
11 The Scope of Ancient Ethnography
257
Emma Dench
Index
269
Eran Almagor is Lecturer in the History Department at Ben Gurion University of
the Negev, Israel. His interests include the history of the Achaemenid Empire, GrecoPersian relations in the fifth and fourth centuries Be and the image of the Persians
in Greek literature, especially in Ctesias. He studies Plutarch's works (the Lives in
particular) as well as other Greek imperial authors. Among his forthcoming books is
the monograph Plutarch and the Persica (Edinburgh University Press).
Emma Dench is Professor of the Classics and History at Harvard University. She is
the author of From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions
of Peoples from the Central A pennines (1995) and Romulus' A sylum: Roman Identities
from the A ge of A lexander to the A ge of Hadrian (2005). She is currently preparing
Imperialism and Culture in the Roman W orld for the Cambridge University Press series
Key Themes in Ancient History. Other current projects include a study of the retrospective writing of the Roman Republican past in classical antiquity.
Rosie Harman is Lecturer in Greek Historiography at University College London. Her
research focuses on cultural representation in Classical Greek historiography. She is
currently working on a monograph on Xenophon. Her publications include papers on
Xenophon's Cyropaedia, A gesilaus and Lakedaimonion Politeia.
Thomas Harrison is Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology
at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Divinity and History: The Religion
of Herodotus (2000) and The Emptiness of A sia: A eschylus' Persians and the History of
the Fifth Century. He has edited (among other volumes) Greeks and Barbarians (2002)
and, with Bruce Gibson, Polybius and his W orld: Essays in Memory of F. W W albank
(2012).
Hyun Jin Kim is Lecturer in Classics at Melbourne University. He is author of
Ethnicity and Foreigners in A ncient Greece and China (2009) and The Huns, Rome and
the Birth of Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2013). His research interests include
comparative literature, Greek and Roman ethnography, and late Roman history.
Paul Kosmin is Assistant Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. He works
on Hellenistic history, ancient geography, and Greek—Near Eastern interactions. He
has published on Hellenistic Iran, Dura-Europus, and various fragmentary Hellenistic
authors; his book, Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the
Seleucid Empire ( Harvard University Press) is forthcoming.
Katerina Oikonomopoulou is currently Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Humboldt
University, Berlin, for the Alexander von Humboldt programme 'Medicine of the
Mind, Philosophy of the Body. Discourses of Health and Well-Being in the Ancient
viii
List of Contributors
World' (directed by Prof. Ph. Van der Eijk). Her research focuses on miscellanistic
and encyclopaedic writing under the high Roman Empire. Her publications include:
The Philosopher's Banquet: Plutarch's Table Talk in the Intellectual Culture of the Roman
Empire (co-edited with Frieda Klotz, Oxford University Press, 2011).
Jacek Rzepka reads Ancient History at Warsaw University's Institute of History.
His main research interests are the history and historical traditions of mainland
Greece concerning Athens and Sparta, as well as Macedonia under the kings. He is
a contributor to Brill's New Jacoby and has authored a number of articles and books,
including The Rights of Cities within the A itolian Confederacy (2006) and two Polish
language monographs on the Macedonian constitution (2006) and the Battle of
Chaeronea in 338 BC (2011).
Joseph Skinner is Lecturer in Ancient Greek History at Newcastle University. His
research is primarily concerned with the history and origins of ethnographic thought.
As well as examining a wide variety of textual, iconographic and archaeological
materials for evidence of an early interest in the foreign or exotic, this involves
studying the reception of ethnographic genre, from antiquity to the present. His
publications include The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus
( Oxford University Press, 2012).
Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor in Greek History at the Department of
Classics, University of Nottingham. His publications include Unthinking the Greek
Polis: A ncient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007) and Politics: A ntiquity and
its Legacy (2009). His research interests currently focus on globalization and the
connected history of the ancient Mediterranean world, with regard to which he is
writing a forthcoming book on Greeks and Barbarians (Cambridge University Press).
Greg Woolf is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. He has
published on literacy, on monumentality and on the ancient economy, and is currently
working mainly on religious history. His books include Becoming Roman: The Origins
of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998) and Tales of the Barbarians: Ethnography and
Imperialism in the Roman W est (2011). He is also the editor with Alan Bowman of
Literacy and Power in the A ncient W orld (1994); with Catharine Edwards of Rome the
Cosmopolis (2003) and with Jason KOnig and Katerina Oikonomopolou of A ncient
Libraries (2013).
Preface
The origins of this volume can be traced back to the final leg of a lengthy journey
from one conference to another, from Lampeter to Liverpool in June 2009. The idea
to assemble a group of researchers employing new approaches to the study of ancient
ethnography was subsequently realized in a panel at the 2010 Classical Association
Conference in Cardiff. Its success and the interest it generated prompted us to expand
the project by soliciting papers from scholars whose work we admired with a view to
shedding new light upon a field of enquiry that was in danger of appearing moribund.
The results are presented here. Many people made this wonderful and rewarding
experience possible, and we would like to thank them all. Our warmest thanks are due
to Deborah Blake, our original contact at Duckworth, who accompanied the volume
from its inception to (almost) its final form only to be succeeded by the ever-helpful
and incredibly patient Charlotte Loveridge at Bloomsbury Academic. Special thanks
are also due to Thomas Harrison, our original panel chair, for invaluable help and
advice throughout the duration of this project. We are grateful to the original participants of the panel, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Katerina Oikonomopoulou, and to Anna
Foka, for timely and vital assistance. We would also like to offer our warmest thanks to
all those who agreed to submit chapters to the volume. Spread across four continents,
their willingness to share their knowledge and ideas has made this an enlightening and
wholly enjoyable experience. We are also grateful to our various friends and colleagues
for their insightful comments. Eran would like to thank the British Academy (and the
overseas fellowship scheme) for the opportunity to conduct research in the UK in
the summer of 2009, thereby facilitating this collaboration. Heartfelt gratitude is also
expressed to Christopher Pelling for sponsoring that research. We are deeply indebted
to Emma Dench, both for her willingness to act as respondent to the volume and for
the kind support and encouragement that she has provided throughout, and to the
Trustees of the British Museum for permission to reproduce the jacket illustration.
Eran Almagor
Joseph Skinner
48
A ncient Ethnography
Shahar, Y. (2004), Josephus Geographicus: The classical context of geography in Josephus
(Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck).
Shaw, B. D. (1982-83), - Eaters of flesh, drinkers of milk": The ancient Mediterranean
ideology of the pastoral nomad', A ncient Society 13-14,5-31.
Sherratt, S. and Sherratt, A. (1993), 'The growth of the Mediterranean economy in the
early first millennium B.C.', W orld A rchaeology 24 (3), 361-78.
Shore, A. F. (1987), 'Egyptian Cartography; in J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (eds), The
History of Cartography, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 117-29.
Smith, D. C. (1987), 'Cartography in the Prehistoric Period in the Old World: Europe, the
Middle East, and North Africa', in J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (eds), The History of
Cartography, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 54-101.
Snell, D. C. (ed.) (2005), A Companion to the A ncient Near East (Oxford: Blackwell).
Solmsen, L. (1943), 'Speeches in Herodotus' account of the Ionian revolt', A JPh 64,
194-207.
Stolper, M. W (1989), 'On interpreting tributary relationships in Achaemenid Babylonia'
in P. Briant and C. Herrenschmidt (eds), Le Tribut dans L'Empire Perse (Paris: Peeters),
147-56.
Strauss Clay, J. (1986), 'Archilochus and Gyges: An interpretation of Fr.23 West', QUCC
1986,7-17.
Tavernier, J. (2006), Iranica in the A chaemenid Period (ca. 550-330 B.C.): Linguistic study
of Old Iranian proper names and loanwords, attested in non-Iranian texts (Paris and
Dudley, MA: Peeters).
Traill, D. A. (1990), 'Unfair to Hector', CPh 85,299-303.
Tuplin, C. (1996), A chaemenid Studies (Stuttgart: Steiner).
—(1999), 'Greek Racism?; in G. R. Tsetskheladze (ed.), A ncient Greeks W est and East
(Leiden, Boston and KOln: Brill), 47-76.
—(2004), 'Doctoring the Persians, Klio 86 (2), 305-47.
Van de Mieroop, M. (2004), A History of the A ncient Near East ca. 3000-323BC (Oxford:
Blackwell).
van der Valk, M. (1985), 'Homer's nationalism, again' Mnemosyne 38,373-6.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1986), The Black Hunter (Baltimore, MD and London: John Hopkins
University Press).
Von Soden, W. (1965), A kkadisches HandwOrterbuch / unter Benutzung des lexikalischen
Nachlasses von Bruno Meissner (1868-1947) bearbeitet von W olfram von Soden
(Wiesbaden).
Werner, J. (1989), `Kenntnis und Bewertung fremder Sprachen bei den Antiken Griechen
1; Griechen und "Barbaren" zum Sprachhewusstsein und zum ethnischen Bewusstsein
im friihgriechischen Epos', Philologus 133 (2), 169-76.
Weidner, E. (1913), `Barbaros; Glotta IV, 303-4.
West, M. L. (1997), The East Face of Helicon: W est A siatic elements in Greek poetry and
myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
2
The Stories of the Others: Storytelling
and Intercultural Communication in the
Herodotean Mediterranean
Kostas Vlassopoulos
University of Nottingham
The publication in 1980 of Francois Hartog's Le miroir d'Herodote and its translation in
English in 1988 brought a widespread shift in the study of Herodotus, Greek ethnography and Greek identity.' According to Hartog, Herodotus' work was primarily
an exploration in the depiction of the Other. Greek identity and Greek cultural
experience, or, as Hartog often seems to conflate, Athenian identity and Athenian
cultural experience, provided the necessary code to understand the various barbarian
peoples depicted in Herodotus' work. Herodotus' barbarians are not there because
Herodotus is primarily interested in conveying information about these peoples; they
are there because they provide a means of thinking about Greek identity, Greek culture
and the great Greek achievement of defeating the Persian Empire. The depiction of
these peoples is thus conditioned by their differences, in one way or another, from
what is considered to be Greek identity and culture: the Herodotean barbarians are
defined and presented in juxtaposition to what is seen as the Greek standard. This is
the reason that one cannot attempt a mere comparison between the barbarian images
of Herodotus and what we can learn about these barbarian peoples from archaeology,
epigraphy and their native sources.' Herodotus' images are exercises in the depiction
of the Other, not objective analyses of non-Greek communities and cultures; they tell
us more about Greek self-perception and self-definition than about the barbarians
they purport to describe. Herodotus' work is an exercise in alterity and polarity.'
A year after Hartog's translation in English, a second important book was translated from its German original of 1971: this was Detlev Fehling's work on Herodotus'
sources.' According to Fehling, Herodotean source citations should not be seen as
the result of research conducted by the historian; instead, they are fabrications that
serve to enhance the verisimilitude of the stories reported by covering the tracks of
Herodotus' fabrication of these stories. Fehling's argument that Herodotus has fabricated his sources stressed in particular a certain kind of story: these stories can be
called `the stories of the others'.' These Herodotean stories which depict non-Greeks,
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
or which are attributed by Herodotus to non-Greek sources, have an evident Greek
colouring and are meaningful largely in a Greek context. Given the insuperable gap
between Greeks and barbarians, one could not expect that a non-Greek would ever
be able to provide Herodotus with such Hellenocentric accounts. Could an Egyptian
ever present the story of Proteus and Helen (2.112-20), or the story of the foundation
of Dodona (2.54-7)? It is thus impossible that any of these `stories of the others' were
actually narrated to Herodotus by any of his barbarian informants; therefore, Fehling
argued that Herodotus had himself fabricated most of the stories he attributed to his
non-Greek sources. Fehling was not interested in the subject of polarity and alterity;
nevertheless, his vision of Greek identity was essentially similar to that of Hartog.
What was implicit in Hartog's lack of interest in the historical veracity of Herodotus'
barbarian accounts becomes explicit in Fehling's judgement of the incompatibility
of Greek-barbarian identities and the kind of Hellenocentric stories presented by
Herodotus' `barbarian informants.
Hartog and Fehling have both raised important issues and have understandably
created debates which are still ongoing. However, I would like to argue that both
their approaches are deeply flawed, because they put the cart in front of the horse. We
cannot start understanding the discursive frameworks within which the Herodotean
stories are situated, or evaluate the historical veracity of Herodotus' account, before we
study the process through which the stories that found their place in the Herodotean
text were generated and communicated. The reason has been presented in a recent
book by Joseph Skinner.' The Mediterranean world at the time of Herodotus was
characterized by centuries of cultural contact and exchange. The networks that
moved goods, people, ideas and technologies, together with the consequences of
Mediterranean-wide colonization and the effects of living under and working for
the great empires of the East (Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Lydia, Persia), had created
a world in which intercultural encounters were a reality for hundreds of thousands
of people.' The problem is that historians of antiquity have devoted little time and
effort in thinking about the forms and patterns of inter-cultural communication. In
what ways and in what forms did people coming from different communities and
cultures communicate with each other? How were stories and information transmitted
between cultures? To what extent did the means and forms of inter-cultural communication transform stories in the process of transmission and in what ways? What were
the uses of such stories once transmitted?
These are admittedly difficult questions. But I would like to suggest that it is in
asking such questions regarding the patterns and forms of intercultural communication that we should approach the stories of Herodotus in the first place. Instead
of blindly following a simplistic model of polarity, as suggested by some of our
ancient sources, and of alleging fabrication when the evidence does not fit the
simplistic model, we should try to explore the ways in which the stories in Herodotus
presuppose and reflect this long-term process of intercultural communication in the
ancient Mediterranean world. I am by no means suggesting that we should reduce
Herodotus to a passive mouthpiece of these processes of intercultural communication.
There is hardly any doubt that Herodotus has his own agendas and that the stories
he reports have undertaken modifications, displacements and transformations in
8
the light of his patterns of composition and emplotting. But we shall never properly
understand what Herodotus does with these stories unless we try to understand the
process of creation, exchange and transmission of these stories until the point they
surface in Herodotus' narrative.
What evidence do we have of such processes? Let me start by looking at three
examples in an effort to illustrate the communicative context that we need to imagine
in order to situate Herodotus' stories. Herodotus has many stories concerning the
Greek and Carian mercenaries that became an important factor of the political and
military history of Saite Egypt. These mercenaries and their descendants became
the nucleus of the Greek and Carian communities that flourished in the Egyptian
9
capital of Memphis for many centuries before and after Herodotus' time (2.151-4).
The life of these Greek and Carian immigrants in Egypt is nicely illustrated by the
`bilingual' stelae of Memphis.'" These are stelae with two or more registers, which
have been called bilingual, because they combine registers in typical Egyptian
fashion (e.g. with scenes of the deceased in front of the enthroned Osiris) with
registers with ekphora scenes which are typical of Greek art. The majority of these
stelae carry inscriptions either in both hieroglyphic and Carian or only in Carian;"
but a recent find has an inscription in the Greek language for a woman whose
fragmentarily preserved name is probably not Greek.''- These immigrants, the result
of processes of mobility and power put in motion by the empires of the East, chose
to be commemorated with stelae which combined Egyptian, Carian and Greek
elements.
My second example comes from Athens. It is a fourth-century epitaph found in the
mining area of Laureion."
50
51
Atotas the miner
From the Black Sea Atotas, the great-hearted Paphlagonian,
put to rest his body from the toils far away from his fatherland.
Nobody vied [with me] in [my] art; I am from the stem of Pylaimenes,
who died subdued by the hand of Achilles.''
Whether Atotas was a slave or a freedman at the time of his death is impossible to tell;
that he must have started as a slave miner is indisputable. We are dealing with a person
who was proud of his manual skill and of his national origins. And what is most tantalizing, he was able to express his national credentials in a language that could appeal
to the Greek reader of this epitaph. This Paphlagonian was clearly steeped in Greek
culture. The epigram uses Homeric expressions; Atotas is described as megathymos
Paflagon, which brings into mind the verse of the Iliad in which Paphlagonians
are described with exactly the same adjective (5.577). Interestingly, though, the
Homeric version of the death of Pylaimenes is different from that of Atotas, since in
the Iliad he is killed by Menelaus (5.576): being killed by Achilles is certainly more
glorious, adding to the aggrandizement of Atotas' mythical ancestor. Clearly, Atotas
could combine a good knowledge of Greek mythology with national pride and his
personal or local Paphlagonian version of mythical events.'s Atotas, a natally alienated
individual par excellence, created a new identity for himself in his new homeland.
How was the Paphlagonian miner Atotas able to acquire the necessary knowledge to
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
portray himself in such characteristically Greek terms? What processes of intercultural
communication do we have to assume?
My third source is a literary work: Xenophon's A nabasis. There is no doubt that
it is not a transparent and objective reporting of what actually happened during the
expedition of the Ten Thousand.' While there is no actual agreement on what the
best prism through which one can understand Xenophon's omissions, selections,
rhetoric and presentation is, there is nevertheless a widespread consensus that the
stories related in the text largely reflect what actually happened, even if they have been
modified or retold from a particular perspective.
A first story comes from the aftermath of Cunaxa, when Cyrus has been killed,
Tissaphernes has managed by treachery to arrest and execute the Greek generals,
and the Greek army is debating what plan to follow in order to survive and return
back home. Xenophon has already suggested that the only way forward was to fight
their way out of Mesopotamia and back into the Greek world, instead of capitulating
or collaborating with the Persian king. His proposal was refuted by a man named
Apollonides, who spoke in the Boeotian dialect, and who proposed that negotiation
with the king was the only option (3.1.26). Apollonides' speech was met with a furious
refutation by Xenophon, who pointed out the treachery of the Persians and the futility
of trusting them and concluded:
particular case in order to exclude the Other; but this example is a good illustration
that this discourse is a strategy, and not the quintessential Greek view of the Other.
Xenophon has just proposed a bold and extremely risky strategy of escaping from their
cul-de-sac; in order to convince his fellow soldiers to accept a policy that looked totally
against the odds, he has employed a pan-Hellenic and anti-barbarian discourse."
This discourse was a strategy that was necessitated by the particular context and its
needs; and the same discourse is employed as a strategy to marginalize and exclude
those who were opposing the policy proposed. If indeed Apollonides was Aeolian or
Boeotian, the irony is even greater, since the discourse of alterity was employed against
a fellow Greek. Since Apollonides was able to address the assembly, it is clear that in
other contexts Greeks did not object to an Aeolian or Boeotian wearing barbarian
earrings, or saw no problem in accepting a Lydian who successfully passed as a
Boeotian. The alterity discourse is only employed in a certain context and for pursuing
a particular strategy.
That things could be very different in other contexts is shown by a very illuminating
passage that deserves to be quoted in full. While at Cotyora on the Black Sea coast,
the Greek army received ambassadors from Corylas, the king of the Paphlagonians,
proposing a pact of non-aggression; the ambassadors were then invited to dinner by
the Greeks. After eating followed entertainment from the various contingents of the
Ten Thousand (6.1.5-13): 2 "
52
`In my opinion, gentlemen, we should not simply refuse to admit this fellow to
companionship with us, but should deprive him of his captaincy, lay packs on his
back, and treat him as that sort of a creature. For the fellow is a disgrace both to
his native state and to the whole of Greece, since, being a Greek, he is still a man
of this kind: Then Agasias, a Stymphalian, broke in and said: Tor that matter, this
fellow has nothing to do either with Boeotia or with any part of Greece at all, for I
have noticed that he has both his ears bored, like a Lydian's: In fact, it was so. He,
therefore, was driven away. (3.1.30-2)' 7
This is a characteristic example of the widespread practice of ethnography from
everyday people: notice the role in the encounter of the observations of Apollonides'
dialect, his bored ears, and the ethnographic knowledge that this is a practice associated
with the Lydians. This incident obviously can be seen as a verification of the alterity
model and the xenophobic aspect of the Greek attitude towards the barbarians; the
bored ears are evidence of a non-Greek custom, and therefore Apollonides is immediately designated as a barbarian and driven away, in conditions of immediate danger.
But things are not so simple. If Apollonides was actually a Lydian, it is remarkable that
he bore a Greek name and was able to pass along as a Boeotian. But in fact we cannot
be certain that Apollonides was indeed Lydian; it has been proposed that he might
have come from Aeolis in Asia Minor, where a dialect similar to Boeotian was spoken
and where proximity with Lydia meant that certain Lydian customs could be adopted
by the local Greeks; or he might indeed have been a Boeotian who had spent time in
Aeolis during the Ionian war and adopted Lydian customs." Whichever of these three
scenarios we opt for, it is obvious that the strict polarity between Greek and barbarian
appears problematic in practice.
There is nevertheless no doubt that a discourse of alterity is applied in this
53
After they had made libations and sung the paean, two Thracians rose up first
and began a dance in full armour to the music of a flute, leaping high and lightly
and using their sabres; finally, one struck the other, as everybody thought, and the
second man fell, in a rather skilful way. And the Paphlagonians set up a cry. Then
the first man despoiled the other of his arms and marched out singing the Sitalcas,
while other Thracians carried off the fallen dancer, as though he were dead; in fact,
he had not been hurt at all ...
After this a Mysian came in, carrying a light shield in each hand, and at one
moment in his dance he would go through a pantomime as though two men
were arrayed against him, again he would use his shields as though against one
antagonist, and again he would whirl and throw somersaults while holding the
shields in his hands, so that the spectacle was a fine one. Lastly, he danced 'the
Persian' dance, clashing his shields together and crouching down and then rising
up again; and all this he did, keeping time to the music of the flute ...
After the Greek contingents of the Ten Thousand presented their own dances as well,
the Paphlagonians were really impressed by the military format of the dances:
Thereupon the Mysian, seeing how astounded they were, persuaded one of the
Arcadians who had a dancing girl to let him bring her in, after dressing her up in
the finest way he could, and giving her a light shield. And she danced the Pyrrhic
with grace. 'I hen there was great applause, and the Paphlagonians asked whether
women also fought by their side. And the Greeks replied that these women were
precisely the ones who put the King to flight from his camp. Such was the end of
that evening!'
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
This is another great illustration of ethnographic practice. What we see here is collaboration between the various Greek and non-Greek elements of the Ten Thousand in
order to provide entertainment, impress the Paphlagonian ambassadors with the
spectacle and their martial valour, and ensure good relations with the Paphlagonian
king that would be essential for their survival. Ethnographic display is here put into
the service of forging diplomatic relations. Notice also how the visual display of the
dances is associated with the exchange of ethnographic information on the subjects
and the stories related to the dances. Xenophon mentions that the Thracian dancer was
singing a song about Sitalcas, a contemporary Thracian king; this song must have been
another important source of ethnographic information. It is also important that the
dancing performances betray a prior process of cultural mingling: it is not accidental
that the Mysian dances a Persian dance after having served in what was originally a
contingent of a Persian army. But let us also observe that there is not a trace of alterity,
xenophobia or hostility in this passage. Xenophon's authorial voice clearly approves
of the fine spectacle provided by the Thracians and the Mysian members of the Ten
Thousand. But the most interesting thing of all is that it is the Mysian who realizes how
the army can make political capital out of the entertainment and takes the initiative
to convince an Arcadian to lend him his slave girl in order to dance a martial dance,
a fact used by the army in order to impress upon the Paphlagonians that even the
women in the army make valiant fighters. This event should not be seen as presenting
a rosy picture of relationships between Greeks and barbarians; it only means that the
attitudes of collaboration evident in this passage is as much part of the relationship
between Greeks and Barbarians as the discourse of alterity that we saw in the previous
example.
After finally managing to cross to Europe and because of the lack of alternatives due to Spartan hostility, the Ten Thousand decide to offer their services to the
Thracian ruler Seuthes." Xenophon presents his offer on behalf of the army and
Seuthes' reaction is very revealing:
Modern scholars have been particularly keen to stress how Greek self-definition
and the 'invention of the barbarian' took place through the reinterpretation of Greek
myths." It is only recently that scholars have started to recognize that the process
of turning mythical figures into barbarians could lead in the opposite direction as
well; through reinterpretation and retelling, Greek myth could also be used to link
together Greeks and barbarians based on the construction of fictive kinship. 27 Edith
Hall, a prominent supporter of the alterity approach, has argued that even if that is
the case in the case of Tereus, the identification was hardly designed to flatter the
Thracian royal family, but rather stressed the outrageous violence that characterized
Thracians in general.' Xenophon's story proves that attitudes like that of Hall are
largely off the point. Seuthes does not seem to have any qualms in accepting the myth
as evidence of his kinship with the Athenians; in fact, later on in his narrative of the
Ten Thousand's service under Seuthes Xenophon reports that 'they gave out "Athena"
as the watchword, on account of their kinship' (7.3.39). These incidents show that the
use of Greek myths to forge links between Greeks and barbarians was not a process
that was comprehensible by and appealing to Greeks only (though it is a Greek that
relates the story in this case). Seuthes was happy to accept Greek myths and deities
as a means of forging links. Even more, Xenophon illustrates one context in which
many of these stories took shape through intercultural encounters: the court of a
barbarian king in which many Greeks served in various capacities. Xenophon testifies
that Seuthes himself had a sufficient understanding of the Greek language;" in fact,
the knowledge of the Greek language in his court went significantly lower down the
scale."
What does all this evidence suggest? From the bilingual stelae of Memphis, through
the epitaph of a Paphlagonian slave, to the ethnography of bored ears and dances among
mercenaries and the use of Greek myth by non-Greeks, the Mediterranean world of
Herodotus was experiencing a very lively process of intercultural communication. The
discourse of alterity is a very limiting and simplistic approach to understand this very
complex world. And the examples from these various sources show that the stories of
the Others found in Herodotus were not his own fabrication, but reflect Herodotus'
reworking of a very widespread process of intercultural communication. Let us then
proceed to examine in some detail the patterns of intercultural communication and
their role in Herodotus' work along with a typology of the stories that were circulated
within this process.
54
Upon hearing these words Seuthes said that he should not distrust anyone who
was an Athenian; for he knew, he said, that the Athenians were kinsmen of his,
and he believed they were loyal friends. (7.2.31) 23
What Seuthes was probably referring to was the myth of Procne and Tereus. According
to the myth, Tereus had married the Athenian princess Procne who begat their son,
Itys; Tereus then raped Procne's sister, Philomela, and cut her tongue so that she would
not be able to reveal the horrific truth to her sister. Nevertheless, she managed through
embroidering a message on a robe to reveal the truth to Procne, who went on to kill
Itys and serve him up to Tereus in order to punish him; all three of them were subsequently transformed into different birds. It is probable that in the earlier versions of
the myth there was no Thracian connection to this story and Tereus was connected to
Megara or to Daulis in Phocis; but in tandem with the wider process which saw the
'barbarization' of various characters in Greek myths, Tereus became identified as a
Thracian king. The earliest attestation of this new version of the myth was Sophocles'
lost Tereus;" the story was clearly taken seriously, for in a famous aside Thucydides
protested against this identification. 25
*1
55
Patterns of intercultural communication
Cultural contact and encounters between two different groups do not lead to a single
type of reaction. What we have to posit, in order to assess the process of creation of the
various stories that found their way into the text of Herodotus, is a variety of patterns
that the cultural encounters we examined above gave shape to. We can divide these
patterns in two different ways: according to perspective and according to content. As
regards perspective, stories can be told either from a Greek perspective (interpretatio
graeca) or from a non-Greek perspective (local perspective)." In other words, stories
57
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
can either try to translate the customs, values and history of one community in terms
understandable by another (i.e. the Greeks in the case of Herodotus), or explain them
in terms native to the community from which the stories originate. As regards content,
the stories can either take as their subject issues that focus on the differences between
Greeks and non-Greeks (polarity) or on common, shared or universal values and
ideas (universality). Of course the division by content and the division by perspective
are not mutually irreconcilable. A story, for example, can emphasize the differences
between two cultures, while also trying to explain a custom of one culture in terms
of the other.
The first pattern of communication is the polarity model we are so familiar
with. This pattern focuses on differences between groups and creates stories which
emphasize these differences. Given that nomos is king (Hdt. 3.38.4), every culture
inclines to take its own customs as superior; accordingly, there is a strong tendency
in such stories to portray other groups as inferior."' The stories concerning Sperthias
and Boulis, the Spartan messengers, are characteristic: they lecture the Persian satrap
Hydarnes, who has only experienced subservience to the Persian king, on the value
of Greek freedom, and they refuse to perform the Persian custom of obeisance to
the king (proskynesis), as the Greek custom approved of obeisance only to the gods
(7.135-6).
Polarity does not work only in one direction though; while some of the stories are
used in order to denigrate other cultures and people and praise one's own values, it
is equally possible to find stories in which the values and customs of others are used
as a form of internal criticism.' This is the case in stories in which non-Greeks show
the absurdity or problematic character of Greek customs and values. A nice example
is Mardonius' speech in favour of Xerxes' plan to invade Greece.
the Egyptian soldiers who in the time of pharaoh Psammetichus rebelled and escaped
towards Ethiopia:
56
Yet the Greeks are accustomed to wage wars, as I learn, and they do it most senselessly in their wrongheadedness and folly. When they have declared war against
each other, they come down to the fairest and most level ground that they can find
and fight there, so that the victors come off with great harm; of the vanquished
I say not so much as a word, for they are utterly destroyed. Since they speak the
same language, they should end their disputes by means of heralds or messengers,
or by any way rather than fighting; if they must make war upon each other, they
should each discover where they are in the strongest position and make the
attempt there. (7.9) 34
An outsider's perspective is used in this story to criticize Greek practices of warfare as
inane. We cannot verify whether Mardonius actually uttered this criticism, although
that would not be implausible; what is important is that Greeks like Herodotus were
willing to incorporate in their works stories which criticized their culture from an
outsider's perspective (see also below the non-Greek bon mots). 35
In contrast to polarity, the second pattern of cultural communication creates
stories that stress similarity; they are stories that can appeal to common or shared
denominators, or present Greeks and non-Greeks as similar. It is particularly unfortunate that the discourse of alterity has effectively hidden from sight this pattern, 36
numerous examples of which appear in Herodotus' work. A typical example concerns
MI
7
Psammetichus heard of it and pursued them; and when he overtook them, he
asked them in a long speech not to desert their children and wives and the gods
of their fathers. Then one of them, the story goes, pointed to his genitals and said
that wherever that was, they would have wives and children. (2.30.4)-"
This is the kind of story that could easily be understood by both a Greek and an
Egyptian: every male could understand the moral that as long as they had genitals,
they could create a new family, as well as the implications of such an approach to
family and mobility."
Perhaps one would think that stories which are mutually meaningful only appeal
to the lowest common denominator,' but in fact such stories can relate to the most
serious aspects of human existence. The story of Intaphernes' wife is justly famous:
when Darius offered her the opportunity to save one of the members of her family
who had been convicted to death, she opted to save the life of her brother, instead
of her husband or son. To the astonished Darius who enquired about the rationale
of her choice, she answered that while she could get a new husband and beget more
children,'" she could not get another brother since her parents had already died (3.119).
This argument makes its presence in a notorious passage of Sophocles' A ntigone,
generating a long discussion about the authenticity of the passage.' Comparative
research has shown that this view is current in a number of cultures, so there is no
reason to suppose this is an exclusively Greek view attributed to a non-Greek person.''
This is a story that makes sense to people of different cultural backgrounds. The story
of Pharaoh Pheros is another good example, also attested in an Egyptian Demotic
text."' Pheros was punished with blindness for an offensive act; an oracle predicted
that he would regain his sight if he washed his eyes with the urine of a chaste woman.
Predictably, there was only a single chaste woman in the whole kingdom, which the
Pharaoh duly married, while exterminating all the unchaste ones (2.111). Female lack
of chastity is of course an issue of male concern in very different societies.'
Some other stories present non-Greeks expressing values and ideas which are seen
as being of universal application; whether the values and ideas expressed could be
comprehensible and accepted by non-Greeks, or would only be acceptable to Greeks
is more debatable than the stories mentioned above.' I think that the most likely
hypothesis is that these stories as presented in the Herodotean text are the result of
a complex process of interaction. A nice example is a story concerning the Pharaoh
Amasis, who was criticized by his friends for spending his day in drinking and
idleness after he had finished dealing with state business. Amasis defended his habits
by arguing that in the same way that constantly strung bows break, human beings
need a combination of relaxation and work in order to avoid mental and physical
breakdown (2.173). The motif of Amasis the merrymaker can be found in Egyptian
literature: a Demotic tale about a sick skipper is presented as a story narrated to
entertain Amasis during a hangover, after the Pharaoh had consumed a large quantity
of heavy wine despite the warnings of his councillors." The story found in Herodotus
clearly has an Egyptian basis, reflected in other Egyptian stories about the Saite kings
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
who were fond of wine," even if we cannot establish whether its moral would be
understood by the Egyptians as well."
Let us now move to patterns according to perspective. A third pattern tries
to explain a culture and its particular features not in terms of understanding this
culture's particular views, but by creating stories that attempt to explain the other
culture by means that are comprehensible in one's own cultural terms: this would
mean the interpretatio graeca of Egyptian customs or the interpretatio aegyptiaca
of Greek customs. On the opposite side, the fourth pattern is exemplified in stories
which try to explain a particular culture and its customs, monuments and history
by means of this culture's own terms. Perhaps the best way to show the difference
between the third and the fourth patterns is the various stories concerning the origins
of the Scythian nation that Herodotus reports. He explicitly states that one story is
told by the Greeks of the Black Sea area while the other is related by the Scythians
themselves (4.5.8).
The Greek story seems a characteristic example of interpretatio graeca. While
Heracles was driving the oxen of Geryon, he came to the land of Scythia where he lost
his mares and had to copulate in the area of Hylaea with a half-woman, half-snake
monster in order to get them back." This copulation produced three sons: Agathyrsus,
Gelonus and Scythes. When Heracles was leaving, he gave to the monster a bow and
a belt with a flask for its buckle and told her to give the land to whomever of the sons
was able to draw the bow. Scythes, the youngest one, was the only one who managed
to draw the bow and thus became the ruler of the land and the ancestor of the Royal
Scythians; Agathyrsus and Gelonus had to leave the land of Scythia and became the
ancestors of the neighbouring nations of the Agathyrsi and the Geloni (4.8-10). The
origins of the Scythian nation are explained through the adventures of a famous Greek
hero. In a typical fashion, Heracles' presence in Scythia forms part of a wider Greek
tale: bringing to Eurystheus the oxen of Geryon, one of the famous Twelve Labours.
Let us now see the Scythian story:
to interpret the golden objects in the light of the three functions of Indo-European
social ideology;" whether one accepts this interpretation or not, it is obvious that this
is a totally different kind of story from that propounded by the Black Sea Greeks."
There are no figures of Greek mythology in the Scythian tale and there are no links to
any Greek tales or Greek concerns; it contains only native Scythian characters and is
related to purely Scythians customs.
The different stories about the Scythians present the distinction between the third
and the fourth patterns of communication in ideal clarity. In practice, Herodotean
stories can show enormous complexity. We can find stories of non-Greek content
similar to the Scythian story of Scythian origins," or cases of interpretatio graeca
which seem to have little connection with non-Greek views and traditions." But
equally interesting are those stories that seem to partake of both patterns in a
complex form of interaction. This is clearly an issue that will require future study,
but I want to draw attention here to one aspect of this phenomenon. This is the
construction of stories in order to account in narrative form for non-Greek traditions, customs or rituals:" in other words, the use of narrative as a media res between
interpretatio graeca and pure local lore. In particular, Herodotus' book on Egypt is
full of stories which attempt to account for rituals, monuments or objects in narrative
terms. The two stories narrated about Pharaoh Mycerinus can be seen as attempts to
explain Egyptian rituals by means of storytelling. One story narrates how after the
death of Mycerinus' daughter, the king built a hollow cow of wood and after gilding
it buried her in it; this gilded cow was kept in a chamber of the royal palace of Sais,
where they would burn incense and light a lamp all night long. Herodotus provides
a description of the statue and narrates how it is brought to light annually, when the
Egyptians mourn for Isis, because the girl begged her father when she was dying
that once a year she should see the sun (2.129-32). It is clear that this is an attempt
to explain the rituals connected to Isis not by recourse to Egyptian religious beliefs,
but through constructing an elaborate and fascinating story which is understandable
in terms of Greek culture." In the story of Mycerinus' oracle, it is predicted that he
would rule only for another six years, although he had been a wise and virtuous
ruler and in contrast to his predecessors, who had enjoyed long reigns despite being
unjust; in response, Mycerinus used lamps in order to turn the nights into days
and prove the oracle wrong by living 12 'years' instead of six (2.133). As Stephanie
West has noticed, both the religious principle that gods do not care to reward just
and virtuous behaviour and the fact that Mycerinus must have been quite old by
the time he came to rule, and thus could not justly complain that his life was cut
short, are difficult to explain on their own; but the story becomes meaningful if the
purpose of the oracle is to explain Mycerinus' reaction to keep lamps alight." But it
has also been convincingly shown that the Herodotean story is related to an earlier
Egyptian story about Mycerinus." These examples should be sufficient to show the
complexity in which Herodotean stories employ different patterns of intercultural
communication.
58
The Scythians say that their nation is the youngest in the world, and that it
came into being in this way. A man whose name was Targitaus appeared in this
country, which was then desolate. They say that his parents were Zeus and a
daughter of the Borysthenes River ... Such was Targitaus' lineage; and he had
three sons: Lipoxais, ArpoxaIs, and Colaxals, youngest of the three. In the time
of their rule (the story goes) certain implements - namely, a plough, a yoke, a
sword, and a flask, all of gold - fell down from the sky into Scythia. The eldest of
them, seeing these, approached them meaning to take them; but the gold began
to burn as he neared, and he stopped. Then the second approached, and the gold
did as before. When these two had been driven back by the burning gold, the
youngest brother approached and the burning stopped, and he took the gold
to his own house. In view of this, the elder brothers agreed to give all the royal
power to the youngest. (4.5)"
The story continues by showing how the different Scythian groups are descended
from the three sons of Targitaus and finishes off by linking the miraculous golden
objects with some Scythian rituals and customs (4.7). Some scholars have attempted
59
60
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
Types of Greek stories
Other stories are the result of efforts to explain customs, rituals or ideas. The custom
of women in certain Ionian cities not to eat together with their husbands or call them
by their name is explained through a story of how the original Greek colonists killed
the Carian inhabitants and married their daughters and wives, who consequently
passed down the custom of abstention in order to protest and commemorate the
massacre of their relatives (1.146). The Spartan custom of calling a cup of strong and
undiluted wine 'Scythian cup' is attributed to a visit of the Scythians after the failed
campaign of Darius to enlist the Spartans in a joint campaign against the Persians.
As a result of this visit, the Spartan king Cleomenes learnt the drinking habits of the
Scythians and became mad due to heavy drinking (6.84). The Scythian custom of
carrying flasks attached to their belts is explained by the objects that Heracles gave
to the monster mother of the Scythian nation to be given to the son who would rule
Scythia (4.10).
Finally, stories are attached to specific individuals or occasions. Sometimes the
individual or the occasion functions as a peg on which to append the story and the
emphasis is on the story or motif, not necessarily on the individual, because many
of these individuals might otherwise be insignificant from other points of view.
Narrating the retreat of the Persian army after the catastrophic Scythian campaign,
Herodotus relates the following story:
Let us move from the patterns exemplified by the stories to the stories' types. We can
posit one major division. On the one hand are stories which relate to objects, practices
and people; in effect, they are either connected to them, or are aetiological. On the
other hand, we can find stories which are related to interactive contexts: such stories
emerge out of these contexts, or take these contexts as their setting.
Some stories are clearly the result of efforts to explain or describe particular
monuments and objects: some of these are non-Greek objects and monuments found
in Greece, or Greek monuments and objects which relate to non-Greeks; others are
objects and monuments found in non-Greek countries. Among Croesus' dedications
at Delphi, Herodotus mentions 'a female figure five feet high, which the Delphians
assert to be the statue of the woman who was Croesus' baker' (1.51.5). We are not
told why the Delphians thought that the statue represented Croesus' baker; there was
probably a story related to the statue and it is likely that it arose out of some peculiar
feature of the statue." According to Herodotus, the only marvellous monument of
Lydia was the tomb of Alyattes, whose enormous mound of earth was constructed by
the men of the marketplace, the craftsmen and the prostitutes (1.93.2). Again some
story, which we are not told, must have explained why the building of the monument
was attributed to craftsmen and prostitutes. Referring to the legendary Egyptian king
Sesostris, Herodotus mentions two reliefs carved on the living rock from different
parts of Ionia, which depicted a warrior with spear and bow accompanied by an
inscription in a script that was taken for Egyptian hieroglyphs (1.106). Herodotus
was probably the first to associate these carved reliefs, which in reality were Hittite
monuments with inscriptions in what is conventionally called Hittite Hieroglyphic,
with the figure of Sesostris; to other Greeks it seemed more natural to associate these
monuments with a script that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphic with a figure known
from Greek myth. This figure was Memnon, the legendary king of the Ethiopians, who
had participated in the Trojan War. It is not difficult to imagine how these monuments
could be related to Memnon's trip to fight together with his Trojan allies.
In Scythia, Herodotus reports that 'there is one most marvellous thing for me to
mention: they show a footprint of Heracles by the Tyras river stamped on rock, like the
mark of a man's foot, but forty inches in length' (4.82). The statue of Pharaoh Sethos
holding a mouse (2.141) is the generator of a story of how the Pharaoh defeated the
Assyrians through an attack of mice, who ate through the quivers, bows and shield
handles of the Assyrian army.'" The story about how Sesostris escaped from a burning
house by treading on two of his sons (2.107) can be plausibly seen as an explanation
of the Egyptian convention of depicting the victorious pharaoh with his feet on the
heads of his prostrate foes, who are depicted on a smaller scale." The smallest of the
three great pyramids was explained through the story of how Cheops prostituted his
own daughter, who built the pyramid out of the stones left by her lovers as a present
(2.126). We could go further and say that certain famous monuments and objects tend
to attract stories which become attached to them, or to the persons who are connected
with these objects and monuments.
61
This Megabazus is forever remembered by the people of the Hellespont for
replying, when he was told at Byzantium that the people of Calchedon had
tOunded their town seventeen years before the Byzantines had founded theirs,
that the Calchedonians must at that time have been blind, for had they not been,
they would never have chosen the worse site for their city when they might have
had the better. (4.144)
The reason the story seems to be remembered is because of the bon mot, which the
Byzantines would be happy to use against Calchedonians, not because of the importance or notoriety of Megabazus himself.
But there are individuals who are widely seen as important and therefore stories
related to them tend to be widely disseminated as well as widely attested stories or
motifs tend to be attached to them. Whether these individuals are historical figures or
not is not necessarily important from our point of view. There are stories which locate
figures in the world of the fairy tale, like the Phrygian ruler Midas and the Lydian king
Gyges. 62 Possibly historical figures can be transformed into legendary figures whose
exploits do not bear much relationship to the historical figures: Sesostris or Semiramis
are two famous examples of this process. On the other hand, historical or possibly
historical figures can be transformed into personae or types which are used in order
to exemplify particular kinds of lessons, or to narrate particular kinds of stories: the
historical figure of Anacharsis the Scythian ruler is transformed into the persona of
the wise primitive barbarian who acts as an external critic of the values and practices
of a particular society."
62
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
Contextual stories
the presence of Greek envoys and other visitors to the courts of non-Greek kings and
potentates. Herodotus provides two interesting stories about relationships between
Greek communities and the Egyptian pharaohs.
Let us now move to stories which emerge out of interactive contexts or take such
contexts as their settings. Herodotus presents explicitly a number of encounters and
contexts in which such stories are told. He describes how the Scythian king Scyles
came to a bad end for his participation in Bacchic rituals:
Now the Scythians reproach the Greeks for this Bacchic revelling, saying that it
is not reasonable to set up a god who leads men to madness. So when Scyles had
been initiated into the Bacchic rite, some one of the Borysthenites scoffed at the
Scythians: 'You laugh at us, Scythians, because we play the Bacchant and the god
possesses us; but now this deity has possessed your own king, so that he plays the
Bacchant and is maddened by the god. If you will not believe me, follow me now
and I will show him to you: (4.79)61
The Scythians duly observe Scyles and kill him, but the interesting detail, from
our point of view, is the setting. This is a setting of encounters between Greeks and
non-Greeks in which taunts and assertions of superiority play an important role' The
Scythians taunt the Greeks in such encounters over their Bacchic revelries and on this
occasion a Borysthenite has found an opportunity to hit back by telling them about
the actions of their own king. There are innumerable stories in Herodotus which can
be seen as answers to questions and debates that took place in such encounters. These
encounters provide the ideal context for many of the bon mots preserved in Herodotus'
text; they are equivalents to the Borysthenite's attempt to score points against his
Scythian interlocutors. Herodotus narrates how the Egyptians,
learning that all the Greek land is watered by rain, but not by river water like
theirs, said that one day the Greeks would be let down by what they counted on,
and miserably starve: meaning that, if heaven sends no rain for the Greeks and
afflicts them with drought, the Greeks will be overtaken by famine, for there is no
other source of water for them except Zeus alone. (2.13) 66
He also reports that Ithe Persian] courses are few, the dainties that follow many, and
not all served together. This is why the Persians say of Greeks that they rise from table
still hungry, because not much dessert is set before them: were this too given to Greeks
(the Persians say) they would never stop eating' (1.133).
Other stories are located in a context involving the exchange of information.
Herodotus presents a visit of some Cyrenaeans to the Libyan oracle of Ammon, which
also attracted a Greek clientele; during that visit, the Cyrenaeans come to converse
with the local king Etearchus (who interestingly bears a Greek name) and in the course
of discussion the geographic issue of the sources of the Nile is raised, as a result of
which the local king comes to narrate a story he has heard in a different encounter
in his court with members of a Libyan tribe (2.32). Places of international pilgrimage
and conceivably other places of international encounters are places where stories were
exchanged.
A different occasion of creating and narrating stories is in the context of diplomatic
relationships between Greeks and non-Greeks. These relationships tend to focus on
63
Moreover, Amasis dedicated offerings in Greece. He gave to Cyrene a gilt image
of Athena and a painted picture of himself; to Athena of Lindos, two stone images
and a marvellous linen breast-plate; and to Hera in Samos, two wooden statues of
himself that were still standing in my time behind the doors in the great shrine.
"I he offerings in Samos were dedicated because of the friendship between Amasis
and Polycrates, son of Aeaces; what he gave to Lindos was not out of friendship for
anyone, but because the temple of Athena in Lindos is said to have been founded
by the daughters of Danaus, when they landed there in their flight from the sons
of Egyptus. Such were Amasis' offerings. (2.182)"
Herodotus states that the gifts of Amasis to the temple of Lindos were due to the fact
that the temple was founded by the daughters of Danaus in their flight from Egypt."
How are we to interpret this statement? We should, I suggest, imagine an embassy
from Lindos requesting gifts and donations, and justifying these requests on the
basis of a Greek myth which established a cultic relationship between the sanctuary
and Egypt; or perhaps we could assume that these gifts were the result of suggestions
of some Greeks who served under the Pharaoh and used such a mythic narrative in
order to justify the present. Whatever the case, what is important is how Greek myth
is used in order to construct a relationship between Greeks and non-Greeks and to
elicit benefits out of this relationship. The encounter between Seuthes and Xenophon
that we examined above is an excellent illustration of this phenomenon, while also
suggesting that the use of Greek myth as a means of intercultural communication is
not Herodotus' fabrication.
It is in such a context that we should interpret another Herodotean story
concerning the visit of a Greek embassy to Egypt. According to the story, an embassy
from Elis visited the court of Pharaoh Psammis and, boasting about their organisation
of the Olympic Games, enquired whether the Egyptians could think of a more just way
of organizing the games. When the Egyptians found out that the Eleans allowed their
own citizens to participate at the games, they criticized them for this:
For there is no way that you will not favour your own townsfolk in the contest
and wrong the stranger; if you wish in fact to make just rules and have come to
Egypt for that reason, you should admit only strangers to the contest, and not
Eleans. (2.160) 69
Herodotus presents the story as if the occasion of the Elean visit is to boast about the
fair organization of the Olympic Games; it is perhaps easier to assume that we have
here another case of a Greek embassy soliciting gifts and privileges. One can easily
i magine, if one wishes to maintain the historicity of the story, that in the context of
such a visit, the Egyptians enquired about the Olympic Games and in the course of
discussion the Egyptians raised the issue of the unfair participation of the Eleans
themselves in the games. It is of course possible that there is no historical kernel
in this story and that the story is 'simply' a Greek construction which presents a
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
Greek discourse on justice and the organization of the Olympic Games. Even if this
were the case, the first important thing to notice is how a Herodotean discourse on
a Greek topic is presented in a non-Greek context and in a very favourable light for
the non-Greek side; this fact clearly shows how limiting is the usual way in which the
discourse of alterity is presented as a mere polarity. The second important thing to
notice is that the historical context in which such an exchange is presented as taking
place is entirely plausible and has its real historical counterparts. In other words, the
visits of Greeks to non-Greek courts in a variety of capacities are clearly occasions on
which stories were exchanged and created to foment links and relationships.
Stories of the feats of Greeks in non-Greek courts, and of the deeds they accomplished while serving non-Greek monarchs, circulated widely in antiquity. Herodotus
reports a famous story of Thales' engineering services to Croesus, although he does
not believe it personally (1.75). There were many such individuals who returned to
their places of origin after serving a foreign king and they must have been among
the most important sources for the transmission and generation of stories. A few
years ago a sixth-century Egyptian basalt statue was found at Priene in Asia Minor;
it was dedicated by Pedon, who proudly recorded that he had served under Pharaoh
Psammetichus II and was rewarded by the Pharaoh for his excellence with a golden
bracelet and a city." Pedon must have related many stories when asked about his
exploits and adventures in Egypt and it is stories like these which ultimately found
their way into Herodotus' narrative.
Other stories put the emphasis less on services rendered to the kings and more
on the individual Greek, the setting of the barbarian court, or the character of the
barbarian monarch, like that of Alcmeon's visit to the court of Croesus (6.125). This
is a story which uses very efficiently the image of the fabulous wealth of Oriental
kings in order to draw a vivid image of the setting of an Oriental court. Similar stories
move on to depict in more detail an aspect of Oriental courts that proved irresistibly
appealing to Greek imagination: the Oriental harem, both deeply fascinating and
deeply abhorrent!' The story of how Democedes of Croton, another Greek in the
service of an Oriental monarch, was rewarded by Darius for healing his injury takes
the opportunity to depict the harem:
variety of different forms and express a variety of different attitudes. The stories of
the visits of Greek wise men to the courts of non-Greek kings adopt precisely such
a historicizing setting. These stories can express the superiority of Greek values like
moderation or free speech in the face of Oriental luxury and tyranny, as dramatized
in the encounter between Solon and Croesus (1.29-33). They can be used to portray
a clever and successful ploy or proposal by a Greek wise man; the story of how Bias
or Pittacus went to Sardis and convinced Croesus not to attack the islanders is a good
example (1.27). They can be used to illustrate Greek wise men in search of foreign
wisdom; the stories of Greek wise men visiting Amasis are the exact opposite to
those featuring Croesus.' They can be used in order to portray external, non-Greek
criticism of Greek cultural practices and values, as in the case of the Elean example
we examined.
64
After this, Darius rewarded him with a gift of two pairs of golden fetters. 'Is it your
purpose, Democedes asked, 'to double my pains for making you well?' Pleased
by the retort, Darius sent him to his own wives. The eunuchs who conducted
him told the women that this was the man who had given the king his life hack.
Each of them took a bowl and dipped it in a chest full of gold, so richly rewarding
Democedes that the servant accompanying him, whose name was Sciton, collected
a very great sum of gold by picking up the staters that fell from the howls. (3.130)"
This was a topic that generated innumerable stories, and became one of the central
themes of the Persian History of Ctesias, another Greek doctor who, according to his
own account, had served at the Persian court and was thus in an excellent position to
provide a Greek audience with such titillating stories."
The story of Democedes shows that such visits and services could provide the
setting for many stories which need not be historically true, but which can take a
65
Conclusions
We can, I believe, now move to some generalizations and conclusions. The examples
from the A nabasis and the other non-textual sources cited should be sufficient to
show the complex process of intercultural communication that was taking place in
the Mediterranean world, before and after the time of Herodotus. They also provide
convincing parallels for the kind of stories presented in Herodotus' text. I have tried to
sketch a general typology of the intercultural stories that can be found in Herodotus'
text and the patterns of intercultural communication that mediated them. We are a
long way from having a full-scale analysis of Herodotus from the perspective of intercultural communication; but I would like to finish by emphasizing four important
aspects of this complex phenomenon.
1. The first is the necessity of recognizing different forms of compatibility and
comprehension that take place in intercultural communication. The Memphite stelae
for Greek and Carian immigrants illustrate one possibility; the artists that made them
were cognisant of both the Egyptian and the Greek/Carian style of a funerary stele,
but they merely juxtaposed the one next to the other. There must have been many
people involved in these networks and processes who were able to think in both
cultural modes and address Egyptians in Egyptian and Greeks in Greek. Some of
the most peculiar stories in Herodotus must have been the result of mediators who
were able to address a Greek in a Greek mode of thinking. But it is also possible that
instead of juxtaposing two modes, one can make them compatible. One of the most
nefarious results of the alterity approach initiated by Hartog is its negation of agency
to non-Greeks; the Greek stories about non-Greeks merely reflect what the Greeks
wanted to say about themselves. But it is also possible that what the Greeks found
interesting in those stories was compatible with the way non-Greeks wanted to present
themselves. The famous story of Hecataeus and the Theban priests, who ridiculed
his claim to be descended from gods in the sixteenth generation by showing him
345 statues of successive former priests (2.143), is a characteristic example superbly
analysed by Ian Moyer." The ossified culture of Egypt, in which 345 generations of
priests had succeeded father to son, could be seen as a typical example of how Greeks
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
like Hecataeus and Herodotus perceived Egyptian alterity and contrasted it with Greek
76
culture; a similar approach can be found in Plato's comments on Egyptian art. But as
Moyer has shown, this image of Egypt was one consciously created and maintained by
contemporary Egyptians. An Egyptian discourse could therefore be compatible with a
Greek one, and many Herodotean stories exemplify such a pattern."
2. My second point is that not all materials and means of intercultural communication had the same potency and circulation. We have seen many examples of
the use of Greek myth as a means of intercultural communication: Seuthes and his
Athenian mythic ancestors or Amasis and the Lindians. It is not always recognized
how peculiar Greek mythology was in the ancient Mediterranean and how easily it
led itself to be used as such a means. Greek mythology, and in particular its peculiar
heroic component, is unique in being located in space and time; the movements
of Greek heroes in space and time link communities and individuals, found settlements, instigate feuds." There is nothing equivalent in the Mesopotamian or Egyptian
mythologies, which are the only ones where we have sufficient evidence to judge.
This power of Greek myth in creating a Mediterranean-wide mental landscape and
in mediating intercultural communication is a major reason why it was adopted and
adapted by non-Greek communities from Etruria to Lycia already during the archaic
period."
But there is another aspect of Greek myth which is equally important. This is
its ability to incorporate local traditions through selective filtering as well as the
opportunity it offers to non-Greek cultures to present their traditions to a wider,
Mediterranean-wide audience. Herodotus alludes at various places to the myth of Io
and her sojourn to Egypt (1.1-5, 2.41). Greek myth tells the story of how Zeus fell
in love with Io, how Io attracted the wrath of Hera and how Zeus had to transform
Io into a cow to escape Hera's wrath. But Hera sent a gadfly to sting and persecute
Io, who then roamed all over the world till she reached Egypt, where she gave birth
to Epaphus." This is no doubt a Greek myth, which seemed to have more than one
version;" but it is also clear that a Greek myth of a woman turned into a cow is linked
here to the Egyptian tradition of Isis depicted as a cow and to Apis, an important deity
of Memphis, where Greek presence was strong, depicted as a calf and with a name
sounding similar to that of Greek Epaphus. The Greek mythic tradition has brought
Io to Egypt and then identified her through translation with Egyptian traditions about
Isis and Apis. It seems that when the world of mobility and empire brought Greeks to
Egypt as mercenaries, traders and pilgrims, they identified one of their own mythical
figures with a local one and located Io's sojourn in Egypt. Greek myth, because of its
location in space and time, was in a position to link with a local myth and incorporate
it as part of a Greek mythical narrative. Because Greek myth was located in space, it
lent itself easily to adoption and adaption by non-Greek people, who already existed
in it and often in very admirable roles; it is no surprise that Lycians were willing to
adopt a famous Greek hero like Bellerophon, whose sojourns and travails Greek myth
had located in Lycia. There are innumerable such cases in Herodotus;" but the wider
desideratum is a large-scale study of the use of Greek myth in intercultural communication in the ancient Mediterranean.
3. If Greek myth had a privileged position in Mediterranean intercultural
communication, the same applies to the imperial powers which shaped the Eastern
Mediterranean world in the Archaic and Classical periods. From Assyria, Egypt
and Lydia to Achaemenid Persia, the imperial rulers and their courts exercised an
enormous role not only in the lives of their subjects and enemies, but also in their
imaginations and conversations. In the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and
the Near East, countless stories circulated about these kings and their courts. Of
significance is the emergence of complex literary narratives which used these rulers
and their courts as settings for the most various projects." Unfortunately, with two
major exceptions, the vast majority of these texts have been lost. The two major exceptions are Greek literary texts and those Jewish texts that survived because they became
part of the Bible." Otherwise, we have only fragmentary glimpses of this extensive
literature, like the famous text of Ahiqar, preserved in an Aramaic papyrus found in
Elephantine in Egypt."
It would be instructive to compare a Herodotean story with the texts of the Bible.
The story of how Darius enquired about the diversity of human customs by asking
the Indians present in his court to bury their dead fathers and the Greeks to eat theirs
is justly famous (3.38)." I Esdras has a parallel story in which three bodyguards
attempt to convince Darius on what is the strongest thing, with the Jewish bodyguard
Zerubbabel winning in convincing Darius that the strongest thing is truth (3-4). The
authorial aims of these two stories could not be more different: Herodotus is using it
in order to argue the relativity of human customs, while the author of I Esdras aims to
glorify his religion and uses the story as a means through which Darius is convinced
to allow the erection of the Temple." But in both cases there is a common theme of the
Persian court as an arena of enquiry. The story of Ahiqar is built around the theme of
the wise courtier who is unfairly condemned, but who secretly escapes execution only
to be vindicated afterwards; Stephanie West has rightly recognized the same theme
in the story of Cambyses and his decision to execute Croesus (3.36)." But while in
Ahiqar the travails of the hero largely provide a setting for the didactic part of the
text, in Herodotus the same motif has been used in order to portray the mad tyrant
that Cambyses 'was' We need to recognize the international character of these motifs
and settings and the complex role they played in articulating the most different stories.
Alterity and polarity are very limiting interpretative tools here; the same applies to
the Hellenocentric myopia which has examined such Herodotean stories outside
their wider context of intercultural communication." Imperial rulers and their courts
functioned as a means of intercultural communication in the most variable ways.
4. My final point is to stress that these two factors (the popularity of Greek myth
and the imaginary potency of imperial rulers) were by no means unrelated. Many
years ago, David Lewis observed that the presence of Greeks under the service of the
Persian king and his satraps played a significant role in the formulation of GrecoPersian diplomatic relationships:
66
It is to people of this kind that we have to look when we are considering the availability to the Persians of knowledge of Greek institutions and psychology, and
they should certainly be thought of when we come to the detailed working out of
diplomatic documents.'"
67
68
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
These Greeks did not merely conduct negotiations or formulate diplomatic
documents. There are good reasons to believe that they were instrumental in
creating stories that allowed the Persians to comprehend the nature and views of
their Greek subjects, opponents and allies and to intervene in Greek affairs for their
own benefit. We have already seen how Greeks could use mythology and genealogy
in order to connect to non-Greeks and accrue benefits out of such links; but the
process could work the other way round, as some stories in Herodotus manifest.
Thus, Herodotus reports one of the stories that circulated in order to explain why
the Argives did not participate in the pan-Hellenic campaign against the Persians:
Xerxes sent a herald to the Argives, who claimed that since the Persians originated
from Perses, who was the son of the Argive Perseus, the kinship between the two
people should prevent them from fighting each other; the argument apparently
convinced the Argives (7.150). Mythological stories that linked together Greeks
and barbarians could originate from a non-Greek initiative, although it is rather
likely that this non-Greek initiative was formulated and expressed through Greek
brokers. 9 ' The complexity of intercultural communication in antiquity and its
importance for understanding Greek ethnography and Herodotus are truly fascinating issues; it is only to be hoped that future research will devote more attention
to this area.
69
15 I assume that the epitaph was composed by Atotas himself, or at least with his
collaboration; see also the commentary of Raffeiner (1977: 14-16, 87-8).
16 See the articles in Lane Fox (2004a).
17 See also Harman's contribution to this volume, who deals with the same passage.
18 Lane Fox (2004b: 204); Ma (2004: 336-7).
19 Rood (2004). The charges brought against Xenophon for treason might be relevant
to why he presents himself adopting pan-Hellenic discourse here.
20 See again Harman's contribution to this volume.
21 E7Tl TOOTOLC OQWV O Mucrec., l<7.1€7TA1ly1.1&VOt; OOTOOC„ 7TELOCAC, T61)V
AQICti&OV Tlva 7TE7Talli:VOV OQXT1OTChtla civayEL OKEllCiOlIC WC
KaAAio- Ta Kai affaiba boOC Koftipriv
CoQxijaaTo ravQixriv
ilAcxcjvc-oc.,. i: vTaftea KOOTOC 1)V 710A15C,", Kai of IIMPAO)/OVEC 1)Q0VTO
Kai
yuvaixEc.,- ovvElicixovTo a0Toic.,. of Meyov OTi aitTcxt Kai ai TOE 01.1EVOL
Ei.EV PaOlitia EK TOO OTQaTO7TEO0V. TI] pEV VUKTi Ta0Til Toirro TOTMoc
a
&)/EVETO.
22 Stronk (1995).
23 'AKoOoac, Ta0Ta O Le0O11c, eimev OTi oObEvi
ciTILOTTiGELEV
'AOnvaiwv....Kat yao OTl int y -yEvEic EiEv EitteNai Kal (1)(Aoug Envooc Ecpl1
vopiCEiv.
24 Fitzpatrick (2001).
25 2.29.3; it seems that a significant factor in the transformation of Tereus into a
Thracian was the phonetic similarity of his name with that of Teres, who was the
founder of the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace around the middle of the fifth century.
26 For example, Hall (1989); see also Hall (2006).
27 Erskine (2005); Gehrke (2005); Gruen (2011).
28 Hall (1989: 104-5).
29 A nabasis, 7.6.8-9.
30 A nabasis, 7.3.22-25.
31 This is not to deny complex triangulations when more than two traditions are
involved; some examples of such complexity are examined below.
32 Herodotus, though, protests against this tendency precisely because nomos is king:
given the universal disagreement, it is best just to respect other people's customs.
33 Munson (2001: 144-6).
34 KaiTot hbOcxai "EAAnvec, wC 7Tuv0civoi_tai, al3ouAOTaTa TroAtuovc,
icrTau0ai O7TO TE CZ yvul_tocrOvric Kai (TKOLOTIITOC• E7TEAV yao aAAtjAoiai
7TOAEuov 7Too€17Twol, i:Ern ettoOvTec TO KaAAiaTov xwoiov Kai AELOTUTOV,
C TOUTO KaTLOVTEC 1.1aX0VTal, 6.7 KYTE GOV KLIKCOI..tEyaAgo of VI.K6A/TEC
artaAAao- o- ovTai. nEpi bE Tiov bzro-oviiivcov ()Obi: A tyco aQX1)V•
E.43AEEC," yap blj yiv0VTat. TO1)C, XO:11V, EOVTat; 61.101/AthCTOOVC„
TE OILIXQECOpEVOIN; Kai ayyiAoioi KaTaAappavEiv TaC tnacpooai; Kai
TravTi paAAov ij 1..tax11at• ei bE TIO.VTWC EbEE 7TOAEpetv moec aAAijAottc,
EE,EUQiUKELV XQ1)V T1) athTEQ01. £tGt OLKSXELOCOTOTOTOL Kai Mimi 7TELQaV.
TQO7TCp TOiVIJV ou xono- T(it "EAAtivEc btaxo€64.1Evoi
35 See also 1.153.
36 Gruen (2011).
37 TappliTixoc bE TwOOpEvoc a•tici_ce.• eitc, bE KaTMap€, EbEETO TioA A A A fywv
Kai o- cinocc Ocoi)c TiaTQCJi3OUL; aTIOAL7TaV 00K to Kai Ta<VCX Kal yllVaiKOLC•
TC0V bt TWO /WyETal. tlEiavTa TO aiboiov Ei7TEiV, .VOCX av ToOTo
i: OECTOal a0T0i01. 6,0aOrTa Kai TaCVLX Kai yvvahcac.
av
Notes
Hartog (1988); for the French intellectual background, see Leonard (2005). I would
like to thank Elton Barker, Erich Gruen, Johannes Haubold, Kyriaki Konstantinidou,
Ian Moyer, Isabelle Torrance and the editors for their invaluable comments and
bibliographic suggestions. They are obviously not responsible for the views expressed
here.
2
Hartog (1988: 3-11).
Cf. Pelling (1997).
3
4
Fehling (1989).
Fehling (1989: 49-77).
5
Skinner (2012). As Skinner shows, Greek ethnography as a textual genre is
6
predicated on the widespread practice of ethnography, defined as 'thinking about
culture from the point of view of the outsider', from thousands of Greeks and
non-Greeks during the archaic and classical periods.
Vlassopoulos (2013).
7
See, e.g. Boedeker (2000).
8
Vittmann (2003: 155-79, 194-235).
9
10 Masson (1978).
11 Kammerzell (1993).
12 Gallo and Masson (1993).
13 See Biibler (1997: 94-7); Lauffer (1955-6: 200-4); Mitchell (2010: 95-7).
14 IG II' 10051: ATthTOCC peTaAAEitc,- . I I TIOVTOU a71' EiThE,EiV011 fla0Acxycitv
avi:rtocuo- e TcOvcov I I Txviji
pEyaGyi_toc ATcbTLIC I I fiC yaiac Tr1Ao0
IMAMVEVEOC b' 6(76 0,(I1i; I I {iv', Oc AxtAAfjoc XELQi
b' OOTI.0
€Oav€v.
1
Al;
70
A ncient Ethnography
The Stories of the Others
38 But see Lloyd (1976: 129).
39 Genitals here, or farting as a sign of contempt in 2.162.
40 There are notable similarities here with 2.30.4.
41 West (1999).
42 Hansen (2002: 62-6); Miiller (2006: 309-35).
43 Ryholt (2006: 31-58).
44 Aly (1921: 66, 255).
45 I do not have the space here to discuss whether an Egyptian or Persian could indeed
have narrated such a story and whether these stories have a non-Greek origin or are
merely Greek stories with Greek values attributed to non-Greeks.
46 Simpson (2003: 450-2).
47 Lloyd (1988: 213-14); Quaegebeur (1990).
48 Compare also 3.14 with Aly (1921: 81-2).
49 For the cultic connections of the Greek myth, see Dubois (1996: 61).
50 'QS bf EKUOGIL AEyOUCTI„ VEC;)TaTOV aflaVTWV EOVEWV EiVal TO 01:13 1 ETEQ0V,
TOUTO bE yEVECTOal (;)OE. ' AVO0.1 yEVECTOaL 7ICK-0TOV EV T1) yfl Taimi
Qltjpcp T(4-.) o0volaa
TaoyiTaov• Tot) tA T(AQyvraoo Tot5Tou TOO; TOKEaC
Aiyouo- t eivm... Aia TE Kai BoQuo- NvEoc Tot) TroTapoti OoyaTeQa. TEVEOC
p.EV TOLOUTOU blj TLVOC yEVE08al TON/ TIXQyiTa0V, TOOTOU bE yevhrOat.
Traibac TQELC, AtrrOE,aiv Kai 'AQTrOal:v Kai vaInaTov KoAciaiv.
TOUTWV OCQXOVTLAJV EK TOO OU0A.V01) CPEQ0i.A.E.Va XQUOI:IX TrottipaTcx, 40T05V
TE Kai 1.Y)/OV Kai Claya0V KCCi COLAATIV, 7TECTELV t5 Tf1V
ExvOudiv, Kai TWV
LOOVTa 710.;3TOV TOV TECIECTPUTaTOV aCYCTOV LEVal POUAOilEVOV /IOTA AIXPEiV,
wucrev E7tiovTOS Kaieo- Ocn. A rraA A oixEMyroc bE To&Tou Trpoolvat.
,
TOV bekEpov, Kai thy aOnc TaUTa 7TOLEELV. Toil)c i v Ofi KarOliEvov TON
TOV bL
VEWTOLT4) i7ttA0OvTt
xox:r6v a7TaxTIXGOal, TQlinp
KaTao- f3fIvat, Kai
f.ILV EKELVOV KOp.iffal EC kCOUTOO• Kai TOOL"; TIQEOPUTECIOUC atm/VI: 1 E00C TWO;
-
TIXOTIX croyyvOvTac Ttjv pat/knit iv maaav 7TaQatioUvai TCJ VECOTaTCp.
51 Durnezil (1978).
52 Ivantchik (1999b).
53 For example, that of King Meles of Sardis and the lion (1.84).
54 For example, that of Croesus and the change of Lydian customs (1.155-6).
55 See Llewellyn-Jones and Robson (2010).
56 Lloyd (1988: 79).
57 West (1998).
58 Kammerzell (1987). This interesting phenomenon of communicative complexity
is not restricted to narrative. Peter Haider has impressively shown how Herodotus'
confused description of Lake Moeris (2.149-50) is in effect a transposition in the
form of a realistic geographical description of the theological geography of the
Egyptian Book of the Fayum: Haider (2001).
59 Flower (1991).
60 Lloyd (1988: 104-5).
61 Spiegelberg (1927: 24).
62 Gyges was a figure who attracted both Greek and non-Greek stories: see Burkert
(2004).
63 Kindstrand (1981).
64 EKOOLAL bL Tot-) paKx€0Eiv 71E0 "EAATYL OVELKOUCTL• ou yOCQ taut oricec;
awn Oehv anvio- KEtv Totirrov OuTtc; paivtcrOat tvayet aveQthrcot)c.
E7TEETE bE iTEAt.a01i T(.) BaKx€1.(p O EKOAnc, bLETIOCYTEUCTE TWV
71
BoQuoDEvdthov Tc(lx-, Tobc EictiOac A tywv
yaQ xaTayEAATE,
EKOOar, oTl f3aKX€00p.EV Kai ljpELIC O Ocec.; Aappavet• vi)v o0Toc o bat awv
Kai TON/ 01.1ETEQOV PaCTIAECX AEACiPliKE, Kai PaKXEUEL TE Kai OTId TOO 0E130
bci4o".
65 Braund (2008).
66 111)04tvot yaQ c`oc ijeTat Tiaaa tj xcbcon TWV 'EAAI1VLOV, aAA' ou
koETaLKIXTa MeV l j c4ETe.0 -1, L0:1)(XCY(XV "EAArivac, tkUCTOEVTaC KOTE
EA7IXO0C VEriAnc,- KaKcoc Tim/fp ay. TO
t'TEOC TOUTO E N:AU AyEtv dc, Ei
OtaxQau0ai, AtycO oL TAAnvEc
latj t0EAljcYEt (TOL OE LV O 0E6,; aAA'
aiQE01jCTOVTal• 00 ya Q
CTOL ECTTl LibaTOC 00bE.F.Aia aAAn (ircooTQoqii OTt
EK TOO Atec.; poUvov.
67 'AvahiKE Ot Kai ava0filiaTa o 'Alacxo- tc; tc T,jv TAAaba, Totirro 1..ttv
Kuolivriv ayclApa tmtXeuoov 'AOrivainc, Kai eircOva EWUTOU yQa(j)i)
Ei bE VOL aTROTEETE, E7TE0- 0E, Kai 11)[..1 iv
a
Eitcacrpivriv, TOUTO bL Tt) Ai.vbcp bOo TE ayaApaTa Aieiva taxi
"
Oc;_viiKa Atv€ov aE.i.o0Ei1rov, Toirro b'
HQ11 ELKOV(5 ELOUTOU
OLOCACILLXC ,t)Aivac„ ai Ev T(4) vllw Tc p luE yaAqi IOQ'OaTo ETL Kai To pxQi.,.;
Orao- OE TWV OvQ6ov. 'Ec pEv vvv Eapov avg0nKE KaTix EEtvinv
Tlly EWUTOU TE Kai 1-10AUKOATEOC," TOO Arciictoc,
ALvbov
[,t 6) o00Eutijc, eivexcv, OTi bE TO iQOV TO EV /VOW TO TliC,
AEyETal TaC, <TOO> Aavaoü OrryaTQac., LOQUOIXGOal, 7TOOCTOXOUCTCXC OTE
aTiEbibQ110- KOV -mix; Ai yin rum, maiticxc. TaUTa lAv avahlKE
68 Francis and Vickers (1984).
69 oi)OEpiav yixQ Etym. t.tri xavilv OK(oc 00 TClo ac T()cicycoviCopvco
r(QocrOtjo- ovToct, abLKEOVTEC TOV 4LVOV. aAA' Ei Of] potMovT(xt OtKaiwc
TLOEVal Kai TOOTOU EiVEKa a7TLKOiaTO Aly1J7TTOV, E,£LVOl6l etyCOVUTT1101
EKEAEUOV TOV fiCyC;)VOL TLOEVal, HAEiLOV bE 1.111bEVi EiVaL ayLOViCEGOal.
70 SEG XXXVII 994; Masson and Yoyotte (1988).
71 Harrison (2000).
72 On the tales of Democedes, see Griffiths (1987); Davies (2010).
73 On the veracity of Ctesias' presence in the Persian court, see Dorati (1995); on his
court tales, see Llewellyn-Jones and Robson (2010).
74 Muller (2006: 189-224).
75 Moyer (2002).
76 Laws, 656d-657a; Davis (1979).
77 For a similar reading of the story of the Scythian youths and the Amazons (4.11016), see Ivantchik (1999a: 504).
78 Scheer (1993). Hebrew stories, such as Genesis 10, show a similar ability to create
mythic genealogies linking various people together.
79 Malkin (1998).
80 Hicks (1962: 93-7); West (1984).
81 Mitchell (2001).
82 Nesselrath (1996; 1999).
83 Dailey (2001).
84 Wills (1990); Johnston (2004).
85 Fales (1993; 1994); Luzzato (1992; 1994).
86 Christ (1994).
87 Gruen (1998: 161-7).
88 West (2003).
89 The attitude of Christ (1994) is typical.
72
A ncient Ethnography
90 Lewis (1977: 14-15).
91 In fact, in a recent brilliant article, Johannes Hauhold has argued that the use of the
Trojan War as a mythological exemplum through which to understand the Persian
Wars and the opposition between Greeks and barbarians is likely to be a Persian
invention to justify their invasion, which was subsequently taken over and reversed
by the victorious Greeks! See Hauhold (2007).
Bibliography
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