History in Greek Literature

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Our word 'history', ιστορία comes from the Ionian word historiē, formed on the Indo-European root *wid-, meaning 'see' and in the perfect, 'knowledge from sight'. The origins of history in the West lie in the taste for enquiry which expressed itself in every sphere in Ionia at the end of the sixth century (and was still inspiring the activities of Aristotle and the Lyceum at the end of the fourth century). Thus it has its source in the same curiosity as early science.

Prior to this we ( Greeks ) had satisfied their desire to know about the past with religion and myth. The epic served as history. In the sixth century the first 'historians', who were simply called 'prosewriters' (suggrapheis from graphein, 'to write') or 'logographers' often contented themselves with simply continuing the epic tradition of mythical narratives in prose. They would retrace the genealogy of the heroes and traditions concerning the ancient founding of cities. The work of Hecataeus, at the turn of the sixth and fifth centuries, illustrates this orientation of Ionian curiosity.

Hecataeus carried out geographical and ethnographical research in addition to his investigations of the past. His Peregesis (of which about 300 fragments have been preserved) was no doubt intended as a commentary for a map of the world, thought to have been similar to the earliest known map, which was drawn by Anaximander. Hecataeus also wrote four books of Genealogies. The first sentence of this collection made him famous: 'I write things as they seem true to me, for many of the tales of the Greeks are, in my opinion, ridiculous'. The results he obtained do not always reach the heights of his ambitions, for the subject matter of Hecataeus' Genealogies is the same-mythology and epic legends-as that of the epic poets. He was, however, the first to seek to establish a
rational chronology for the heroic period, linking it to the historical period by a continuous chain of generations.

Thus, in the work of Hecataeus, history had already chosen its form, prose, and its dialect, Ionian.

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Herodotus, 'father of history'

Herodotus was born around 485 in Halicarnassus in Asia Minor and had to go into exile very early on. He spent time in Athens and died as a citizen of Thurioi around 420 BC. He was a great traveller, who seems to have journeyed to almost all parts of the known world of his time. Besides the Greeks he was interested in the Lydians, the Massagetae, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Scythians and the Ethiopians, describing their countries (in terms of such things as climate, soil, vegetation and fauna) and customs (eating and sexual habits, religious beliefs, rites and political organisation). Continuing Hecataeus' research, he thus founded our Greek ethnographical tradition and outlined its field of study.

From the opening lines of his work, Herodotus proclaims himself to be the rival of Homer: he wants to preserve the memory of 'the astonishing achievements of both our own and the Asiatic peoples'. 1 (http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108230277)Yet this search for the 'memorable' is undertaken in relation to a particular event from the recent past: the Persian wars, a conflict between the Greeks and the Barbarians, the West and the East. After recalling the Persian and Phoenician traditions according to which hostility between Asia and Greece dated from the mythical period, Herodotus resolutely turns his back on legend: 'I have no intention of passing judgement on its truth or falsity. I prefer to rely on my own knowledge, and to point out who it was in actual fact who first injured the Greeks' (I, 5). With these words Herodotus founded history. His Histories begin with the story of Croesus, the first barbarian to rule the Greeks of Asia.

The Histories consist of nine books, each bearing the name of a Muse, in what is undoubtedly a later division carried out by the Alexandrians. The first four recount the advance of the Persian empire after its foundation by Cyrus in 549, detailing Cyrus' victories over Croesus, king of Lydia, and Assyria and the Massagetae in Asia Minor (Book I), followed by Cyrus' son Cambyses' conquest of Egypt (Book II), the reign of Darius and his campaigns against Scythia, Thrace and Lydia (Books III and IV). Each new conquest by the Persian kings provides an opportunity for ethnographic discussions, of which the most famous and frequently referred to is the description of Egypt in Book II. The account of the Persian wars themselves opens with the Ionian revolt, whose beginnings are recounted in Book V. There are then a number of digressions devoted to the recent history of Sparta and Athens, the two main Greek cities of the time. Book VI describes the increasing number of Persian incursions into the Greek world and the victorious response by the Athenians, who repelled the Persians at Marathon. Finally, Books VII to IX tell the story of the second Persian war, Xerxes' mobilisation of the Barbarians and Greeks under Persian rule, the invasion of Greece, the heroic resistance of the Spartans at Thermopylae, the victory of the Greek fleet at Salamis in 480, followed by that of the land army at Plataea.

The entire work concludes with the taking of Sestos by the Greeks and ends with an edifying fable illustrating the wisdom of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian empire, who remained attached to his people's ancient virtues.

Herodotus' Histories cover a great amount of time as well as space. His narrative is not structured according to chronology and goes back to the earliest periods whenever a people or an important character appear in the story: thus in discussing Croesus he goes back to Gyges, founder of the Mermnad dynasty. His chronology is limited to the establishment of reference points, based on the principle that one century corresponds to three generations.


Despite his vague chronological framework, Herodotus proves himself to be a historian in his concern to establish the facts and his effort to understand and analyse the causes of events. He has often been criticised for his 'naivety'; but this is to forget that, although he frequently refrains from deciding between the different oral traditions on which he relies to reconstruct the past, at other times, when faced with many versions of the same event, he does choose the one he considers to be most trustworthy. In his own way, Herodotus undertook historical criticism. Similarly, he seeks to complement the narrative with explanations, trying, for example, to uncover the causes of the conflicts between the Greeks and the Barbarians (Book I, 1). Yet his explanations are far from systematic: a smile from the tyrant of Corinth, a baby at the time, is enough to save him from death. Among the causes of the first Persian war Herodotus identifies Darius' wife Atossa's wish for Greek servants. Although there is some political analysis, the prime motive for action in the Histories is revenge.

Why did Croesus attack Cyrus? Because he 'had a craving to extend his territories, but there were two other reasons…namely his trust in the oracle and his desire to punish Cyrus for his treatment of Astyages' (Book I, 73). Herodotus thus combines various levels of causality. Divine causes are superimposed on to considerations of a political or psychological order which lend themselves to rational calculation. For the world of Herodotus was one still dominated by the will of the gods, who maintained order and punished all forms of excess.

Herodotus' philosophy of history guaranteed his impartiality: he would write about small cities as well as large ones, for 'in this world nobody remains prosperous for long', and cities that were once great had often lost their importance and those which were currently great were once small (Book I, 5). It also conformed to the wisdom shown in the famous conversation in which Solon, the Athenian sage, teaches Croesus, who thought himself to be the happiest of men, that it is impossible to assess a man's happiness before his death (Book I, 30-3).

This rich, dense work has given rise to many different interpretations. Some see Herodotus as another Hecataeus, presenting a series of ethnographical discussions artificially stitched together; others stress the unity of his project and of the mode of analysis underlying his entire work; yet others prefer to see the coexistence of ethnography and history in the Histories as a sign of the gradual formation of a genre whose parameters were still not fixed. It is true that the narrative follows a firmer line in the last three books, where the information is more precise, the tone more clearly political and where there is more direct effort to provide an understanding of events. In its diversity Herodotus' work thus appears as a transition between Homer and Thucydides.

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Thucydides and political history

With Thucydides we are no longer travelling into the cities of the wide world, enjoying their diversity or contemplating the fickleness of fortune. The focus of history is narrowed to an extraordinary degree: Thucydides only describes the war pursued by his own city in his own time.

An Athenian, born around 460, Thucydides belonged to an illustrious family, who had links with Thrace and owned gold mines in the region of the Strymon. It may have been this that resulted in his being a strategist in that region in 424. He was unable to prevent the Spartan Brasidas from taking Amphipolis and was exiled from Athens following this defeat. He did not return until after the city fell in 404. He is thought to have died in the first years of the fourth century BC, perhaps around 396, leaving his work on the history of the Pelopennesian war unfinished.

Thucydides' work tells the story of the war of 431 to 404 between the two most powerful Greek cities, Athens and Sparta. The author is careful to justify his choice of subject, noting the conflict's importance, 'with more far-reaching effects than those of earlier wars' (Book I, 1), and his position as a privileged observer, since he was able, during his twenty-years exile, to find out what was happening on both the Athenian and the Lacedaemonian sides. His eight-volume narrative is unfinished. The first book describes the events leading up to the war and analyses the causes. Hostilities begin with Book II. Books II, III and IV each recount three years of war, leading up to the Amphipolis campaign, which ended the Ten Years' War. The peace of Nicias was signed in 421 (Book V, 24) and the end of Book V describes the following years of uneasy peace. Books VI and VII recount the Athenian expedition to Sicily (415-13) and Book VIII, whose structure is less clear, suddenly breaks off during the events of the winter of 411-10.

Thucydides was a contemporary of Hippocrates and pupil of the Sophists, whose prime concern was to relate the facts exactly. This concern led him to adopt a rigorous chronological order based on seasons, instead of following the order of succession of the eponymous magistrates of either city, which is a less precise method. Aware that versions of the same event 'differ according to the sympathies and memories of their witnesses', he drew up precise rules for historical criticism. This desire to be accurate is also apparent in the words which Thucydides uses. He does not try to relay the actual words used, seeking instead to remain faithful to the general idea of what was said. Lastly he does not allow any fantastical embellishments into his narrative. There are no gods in Thucydides' history:

And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence of exotic detail. It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same way, be repeated in the future. (Book I, 22)

The corollary of this new methodological rigour was an immense advance in the explanation of historical evolution. The analysis of the causes of the Peloponnesian war in the well-known Chapter 23 of Book I is admired by modern historians, who see it as the source for the model of causal explanation in history. For, beyond the incidents and quarrels which preceded the war, Thucydides distinguished 'the most true, but also the least admitted cause', which was the Lacedaemonian fear of Athenian expansion. It was Athenian imperialism that forced Sparta to war. Herodotus' juxtaposition of heterogeneous causes, including the gods, has been replaced by a rigorous distinction between apparent and fundamental causes, with no place left for supernatural causation. Thucydides restricts his considerations to the world of phenomena, seeking to 'see clearly' and provide understanding, he restricts his considerations to the world of phenomena, seeking to provide an exhaustive and acute analysis. Each fact mentioned is accompanied by explanatory elements such as material data, strategic or economic aims and psychological motivations. In this way Thucydides reconstitutes a rigorous chain of causality in which each fact appears as both the effect of a series of earlier events and the origin and cause of a series of later events. The result is perfect continuity and a narrative that acts as a kind of demonstration. This passion for causality excludes everything else: there is no room for anecdote, expressions of personal feelings or moral judgements, characteristics which again distinguish Thucydides from Herodotus.

To increase the rigour of his exposition, Thucydides provides the calculations and assumptions of the various protagonists of the action, putting words into their mouths. The tactical discussions attributed to the generals before a battle fortell its outcome. Political speeches respond to each other and to the narration in the manner of Protagoras' antilogies. They reveal the forces at work in history and contribute to the intelligibility of the narrative.

Intelligibility is not, however, synonymous with rationality. Thucydides accords a place to chance (Tukhē); he acknowledges that 'the event that occurs may, by chance, take a turn no less unexpected than human dispositions themselves'. He knows that human beings-the efficient cause of historical change-are not only notional beings, they are often driven by irrational impulses. He does not fail to describe the blindness of the mob, the rashness and errors of their leaders. Yet Thucydides' moral pessimism
shown by the success of Themistocles and Pericles. Thus this historian who eschews anecdote, descriptions of physical and moral particularities or details of the private lives of the statesmen, grants an essential place to psychological causality. According to him the prosperity of Athens was partly due to the qualities of Pericles, while Alcibiades' failings 'largely contributed to his ruin' and 'the truest cause' of the war was Sparta's fear on seeing the rise of Athenian power.

Yet beyond these analyses, Thucydides' narrative makes it possible to grasp the logic of political development, which requires that once an empire has been formed, it must face the hostility of its subjects and is soon obliged to maintain itself by force; he also shows how boundless expansionism can lead an empire to its destruction. In this light the analysis of Athenian imperialism functions as an example and is, as its author wished it to be, 'a possession that will last forever'.