Herodotus and Greek History (Routledge Revivals)

John Hart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317678373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Ancient Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Herodotus has shaped our knowledge of life, religion, war and politics in ancient Greece immeasurably, as well as being one of the most entertaining of all Classical Greek authors: fascinating, perceptive, accessible and not at all pretentious.

Herodotus and Greek History, first published in 1982, examines the themes and preoccupations which form the basis for Herodotus' style of history. The Athenian nobility, important protagonists in the context of what we know of his sources; the human and divine forces, which Herodotus understood as influencing the course of history; and the concepts of character and motivation are all discussed. Herodotus' treatment of religious belief and oracles, politics and war, and his portrayal of certain prominent individuals are specifically investigated. The final chapter situates Herodotus in his historical context.

John Hart's lucid, well-informed and lively discussion of Herodotus will be value to A-level candidates, school teachers, undergraduates, lecturers and curious non-classicists alike.

1. The Athenian Nobility

One of the most remarkable features of Athenian history is the long survival, in positions of rank and dignity, of certain noble houses. Even under the developed democracy this continued to be the case, a phenomenon at least partially explained by ‘Xenophon’: the Athenian commons had no desire to hold such offices as carried responsibility for the public safety; generalships were best left to the magnates. By way of illustration we can think of Cimon’s son Lacedaemonius being given a potentially tricky commission in Corcyrean waters before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and Pericles’ nephew Hippocrates leading the Athenian hoplites to defeat on the field of Delium; and many other instances.¹

The two families that displayed the greatest vitality were of course the Alcmeonidae and the Philaidae.² Members of each house hold prominent roles in Herodotus’ story down to the Persian Wars, and the fact that the families, or their connections, retained high importance during the historian’s own lifetime must have added piquancy both to his enquiries into their past history and to his treatment of them.³ No one doubts that Herodotus drew upon the accumulated traditions of these houses for material; the question that every student of Herodotus must ask himself is whether, and if so to what extent, his account is coloured by them. Do we, in other words, read what the Alcmeonidae and the Philaidae of the middle fifth century wanted us to read and believe, or is the interpretation of their ancestors’ conduct Herodotus’ own?

We can only answer this question by considering everything that Herodotus tells us about members of the two houses, with any comments or expressions of opinion that he voices, alongside such information as we have from other sources; Herodotus of course tells us more than all the rest put together.

THE ALCMEONIDAE

Chronologically the first appearance of the Alcmeonidae is the mention of their role in the suppression of Cylon’s attempted coup in c. 630 BC.⁴ The full story is not directly relevant to its context in Herodotus, and he omits a number of details for which we are indebted to Thucydides and Plutarch,⁵ who evidently draw at least partly on some independent tradition. As the narrative in both these latter writers is intended to serve the same purpose as that of Herodotus – to explain the curse upon the Alcmeonidae – it may be presumed that Thucydides, at least, was consciously filling in details that the curious reader might require, and correcting errors or misconceptions.

Herodotus’ account is certainly brief and tantalising. Cylon, an Athenian with an Olympic victory behind him, began to entertain hopes of making himself tyrant of Athens. Aided by friends he attempted to seize the Acropolis but failed, and he and his party fled for sanctuary. The ‘Presidents of the Naucrari’, who ‘in those days were the administrators of Athens’, induced them to leave sanctuary and stand trial under promise of safe conduct. This promise was broken, Cylon’s party was murdered, and the blame fell upon the Alcmeonidae.

This account obviously leaves a number of questions unanswered. Who were Cylon’s ‘friends’? What grounds had he for hoping to succeed? What was the constitutional importance of the ‘Presidents of the Naucrari’, an office extinct in Herodotus’ own day? Lastly and most crucially, what was the supposed connection with the Alcmeonidae? To each of these questions Thucydides, with one important detail added by Plutarch, supplies the answer. Cylon was the son-in-law of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, who had lent him a body of troops. He had been advised by the oracle at Delphi to make his attempt on the Acropolis during the great festival of Zeus. As an Olympic victor, he took that to mean the Olympic Games. In fact, as Thucydides guessed, the oracle obviously meant the Athenian festival of the Diasia, which involved the whole population and took place outside the city – a circumstance strongly favourable to one attempting a coup. (Delphi often made up for its lack of spiritual guidance by an abundance of sound common sense.) Thirdly, as to the responsible authorities, Thucydides bluntly contradicts Herodotus – it was the Nine Archons who held the political power and who conducted the siege of the Acropolis. Finally, Plutarch gives us the name of the Archon⁶ for the year – Megacles the Alcmeonid, the then head of the family.

We can pass over the minor inconsistencies: in Thucydides the Acropolis was actually seized, and Cylon and his brother contrived to escape; in Herodotus the attempt was a total failure, and all, by implication, were murdered. The question of the responsible authorities however is more serious, and we are bound to agree with Thucydides in rejecting the ‘Presidents of the Naucrari’. The Naucrari were officials in charge of the 48 districts into which Attica was divided for the purpose of levying money to pay for ships. The 48 districts (Naucrariae) were superseded by the ‘demes’ (parishes) under Cleisthenes’ reform of 508 BC, with ‘demarchs’ as the responsible officials,⁷ and, beyond Herodotus’ statement, there is no reason for supposing that they ever wielded the kind of central political power implied by the story. At the very best they might have been responsible for calling out the local levies to oppose Cylon. The archonship, on the other hand, lay at the very centre of the aristocratic government of Athens at that time, as Thucydides and ‘Aristotle’ make plain. The passage, therefore, must be considered as an instance of Herodotus either making a false statement in support of his Alcmeonid friends or accepting uncritically a falsehood from the family tradition.

Before we leave the story, there are some points in it that are of general interest to the historian. First, the fact that Cylon, an Athenian nobleman, was married to the daughter of a neighbouring tyrant; we find this paralleled twice in Herodotus. Megacles (II), grandson of the Archon, married Agarista, daughter of Cleisthenes tyrant of Sicyon, after a famous wooing;⁸ while the defeated suitor Hippocleides, son of Teisander, he whose ill-timed dancing cost him the bride, was connected with the family of Cypselus tyrant of Corinth,⁹ a fact that had commended him to Cleisthenes. A member of the Philaid house, he was probably first cousin to Miltiades the elder, first tyrant of the Chersonese.¹⁰ Such marriages were obviously sought after by both sides – by giving his daughter to an Athenian magnate the tyrant could secure an influential voice in Athenian policy-making, while the Athenian, in his turn, would gain not only a handsome dowry but also prestige and dignity, so long as tyrannies were benevolent and looked upon with favour.

Secondly, it is interesting to speculate on the reasons for Cylon’s failure. Tyrannies were, after all, well established in Corinth, Sicyon and Megara, each with a degree of popular support. The most significant fact in Thucydides’ account is that the Athenian peasantry rallied in force to the established government of the aristocracy. Evidently, economic conditions in Attica had not yet produced a revolutionary situation, for, unlike Peisistratus in 561, Cylon did not identify himself with a large and discontented class, nor perhaps did he possess the charisma of the successful military man. It may be, too, that his reliance on foreign troops revealed his personal ambition too nakedly. His mistake was to try 30 years too early.

We pass now to the son of Megacles the Archon, Alcmeon. Megacles himself and those with him immediately involved in the sacrilegious murder of Cylon’s party had been forced into exile,¹¹ and the charge of pollution was to be revived by enemies of the family at least three times over the next two centuries; but if Alcmeon had been obliged to leave Athens then, he was certainly back by the end of the 590s. He worked his passage back with the help of Delphi, serving as general of the Athenians in the First Sacred War,¹² in which the Amphictyonic Council¹³ destroyed the Cirrhaeans who had been preying upon Delphi and, by implication, those who travelled there. In this war he fought side by side with Cleisthenes of Sicyon; perhaps the future family alliance was forged at Delphi. The motion to make war was proposed by Solon, and we may conclude that the great reformer and the son of Megacles were not political opponents; they may have been close allies.

None of this is relevant to Herodotus, and he omits it. What we do have is the story of Alcmeon’s abrupt enrichment by Ring Croesus of Lydia as a reward for assistance rendered to the Lydian delegation sent to consult the oracle at Delphi.¹⁴ Even leaving aside the obviously comical exaggeration, the story cannot be pressed in all its details, for chronologically it was no more possible for Alcmeon to visit Croesus than it was for Solon. But while the immortal tale of Solon’s visit may be dismissed as a piece of pure fiction, illustrating with historical personalities a principle of popular ethics, this is by no means so with the brief story of Alcmeon. First, there is the connection with Delphi, where Alcmeon must have been a person of influence after the successful conclusion of the Sacred War; this connection was revived to good effect in the time of Alcmeon’s grandson Cleisthenes, as we shall see. Secondly, there is the undoubted advance in the family’s prominence and wealth. What Herodotus says is this: ‘The Alcmeonidae had been distinguished in Athens in earlier times too, but from the time of Alcmeon, and then Megacles [II], they became exceedingly distinguished’; then follows the story of Croesus’ generosity, and finally, ‘In this way the family became very rich, and Alcmeon was enabled to carry off the prize for the four-horse chariot-race at the Olympic Games.’

This account is extremely probable. We are not obliged to believe that Alcmeon was the founder of the family’s name and fame, for his father Megacles could not have been Archon before Solon’s reforms unless the family had been of ‘Eupatrid’ (i.e. patrician) status. But it was not until the sixth century that the family sprang into real prominence; but for the unlucky coincidence of Cylon’s coup with the archonship of Megacles we should not have heard about them earlier. The marriage of Megacles [II] to Agarista of Sicyon, and of their daughter to Peisistratus, show a family that is definitely on the upgrade. Chariot-racing, too, was emphatically a sport for the very rich only.¹⁵ The Philaids were equal to it – the elder Miltiades and his half-brother Cimon both won Olympic victories,¹⁶ as did Cleisthenes of Sicyon and Damaratus, King of Sparta. Outside the pages of Herodotus we find hymned by Pindar Alcmeon’s great-grandson Megacles [IV], and millionaire rulers like the Sicilian tyrants and Arcesilas IV of Cyrene. Alcibiades, the most dazzling sportsman of his day, was the son of a man of great wealth, Cleinias, who had footed the entire ...