Histories

The instability of human prosperity is another major theme in the Histories. Herodotus emphasizes its significance at the start of his narrative, when he announces he will tell the story of small cities as well as great: “Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike” (5). For Herodotus, the mutability of human fortune is an important dynamic of historical change, affecting both nations and individuals. The story of Solon and Croesus epitomizes this belief. The wealthy but improvident Lydian king assumes Solon will declare him the happiest man he has ever seen and is angered when Solon says no man can be considered happy until he has died, because human fortune is notoriously unstable. Solon provides a theological explanation for the instability of man’s well-being: The gods are envious of human prosperity. Shortly thereafter, Croesus undergoes a reversal of fortune; his son is tragically killed, and, as a result of his own short-sightedness, he attacks Persia with catastrophic consequences for himself and the Lydian empire. Cyrus, chastened by the example of Croesus’ fall, rescues the Lydian king from immolation, reflecting on “the instability of human things” (36) and his own vulnerability to a similar fate. Similarly, the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis, prompted by the same knowledge, dissolves his alliance with Polycrates of Samos, realizing his friend’s extraordinary luck will come to a disastrous end.

The theme of “the instability of human things” permeates the Histories and is closely related to the ideas of fate and the punishment of hubris by nemesis. Croesus’ ruin is partly the result of his pride and short-sightedness; Herodotus explicitly states that the gods inflict a nemesis upon him for supposing himself to be the most fortunate of men. It is also Croesus’ fate, because the murder of Candaules by Croesus’ ancestor Gyges was destined to be avenged in Croesus’ lifetime. The death of Cyrus among the Massagetae and the defeat of Darius and Xerxes are reversals shadowed by fate, as their arrogant imperial ambition prompts the nemesis of the gods. Examples of reversals of fortune abound in Herodotus’ narrative: Candaules, Polycrates, Cambyses, Leotychides, Mardonius, Miltiades, among many others, suffer ruin or death after enjoying power, wealth, and influence.

The account of the Spartan king Cleomenes’ deplorable end demonstrates the overdetermination of causes that can operate in such reversals. Cleomenes, who had forced Demaratus from the throne, mutilated himself fatally during his confinement while insane. Herodotus notes that most of the Greeks assumed this was punishment for having corrupted the priestess at Delphi to libel Demaratus, while the Athenians claimed it was for his desecration of the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone when he marched to Eleusis. The Argives, conversely, claimed it was punishment for his having massacred Argive fugitives seeking sanctuary in a sacred wood that he burned down. While Herodotus repeatedly invokes fate in the reversals of fortune suffered by his characters, he implies a certain freedom of choice in human action. The crimes, immoderate passions, and shortcomings that come before a fall find their source in human nature and desire; the will of the individual is implicated in the fulfillment of his destiny.

Intimately related to the mutability of human fortune is the theme of hubris and nemesis (destruction). The traditional concept of the divine punishment of human insolence and pride is a fundamental principle of the Greek religious mind and informs the plots of Athenian tragedy as well as Herodotus’ narrative. Hubris necessitates nemesis, which operates with the inexorable power of fate on the arrogant and sacrilegious. Solon expresses the idea when he tells Croesus early in the narrative that “God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us” (14). In Herodotus, hubris is any overweening act or attitude that trespasses over divinely ordained or natural boundaries. Croesus’ self-centered complacency, Cambyses’ immoral brutality and desecration of the statues of the gods and bodies of the dead, Xerxes’ megalomaniacal arrogance, Cyrus’ imperial ambition, and Periander’s murderous savagery are all hubristic and result in some form of punishment: ruin, death, defeat, or the death of one’s offspring.

In Herodotus, the expansion of empire frequently involves acts of hubris. Croesus’ attack on the Persians, Cyrus’ attempt to conquer the Massagetae, Darius’ bridging of the Danube during his expedition to Scythia, and Xerxes’ bridging of the Hellespont to subdue Europe all involve the transgression of natural boundaries, often rivers, in the pursuit of imperialist ambition. All these campaigns fail, indicating that Herodotus believes any far-reaching empire is doomed by divine ordinance to destruction. Laughter, too, is typically a sign of hubris and indicates that nemesis will soon occur. Denoting a disregard of one’s vulnerability or an overly complacent attitude, and often indicating an unbalanced mind as well, laughter comes before a fall, as the cases of Cambyses and Xerxes demonstrate. The punishment of hubris by nemesis is the fundamental moral dynamic in the Histories, providing both a religious framework and recognizable pattern to human affairs.

In the proem to the Histories, Herodotus declares that he publishes his inquiry so that “great and marvelous deeds—some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians—may not be without their glory” (4). He intentionally models his account of the Persian wars on his great epic predecessor, Homer, who sang of the glory of Achilles and the heroes of the Trojan War in the Iliad. Placing his own history in this tradition, Herodotus makes the daring claim that the recent war for Greek independence against Persian despotism was just as glorious and significant, full of memorable deeds, as the legendary war immortalized in Homeric epic. Herodotus also alludes to Homer’s tale of marvelous adventure, the Odyssey, through the many wondrous events, miracles, strange peoples, and exotic lands he describes in his narrative. In the Histories, Herodotus attempts to accomplish in prose what Homer did in poetry. His focus, however, is on the achievements of men, distinguishing him from the epic poet who included the dramatic interventions of the Olympian gods in the lives and affairs of mortals in his verse.

To compete with the Homeric tradition of heroic deeds, glorious battles, and marvelous events, Herodotus enlarges his view to encompass the entire known world, its diverse geography and peoples. The glory of the Greek victory over the Persians is similarly enhanced by magnifying the odds against which the small and constantly squabbling Greek city-states had to contend. Herodotus presents Xerxes’ invasion of Greece as the greatest ever mounted in human history; the numerical superiority of the Persian forces is utterly overwhelming, by Herodotus’ calculation, in comparison with the Greek confederacy. The Spartan success at Plataea, “the most splendid victory of all those we know” (523), Thucydides’ daring stratagem at Salamis, the valor of Leonidas and his warriors at Thermopylae, the Athenians’ miraculous triumph at Marathon, are achievements worthy of epic distinction. Similarly, the prolific conquests of the Persian emperors, the engineering and architectural accomplishments of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, the institution of democracy in Greek city-states, the rise and tragic fall of Croesus, Cyrus, and other eastern potentates are among the great historical deeds the historian believes are worth memorializing.

Herodotus’ concept of the marvelous extends beyond human acts and artifacts to the natural world: the fecundity of the Nile, the immense and desolate Sahara, the exotic animals of Africa and India, and the mythical hyperborean North are wonders deserving the historian’s attention. He frequently recounts anthropological oddities; after the battle of Plataea, a skull was found with the jaw fused to the braincase, along with a skeleton of a man seven and-a-half feet tall. His interest in such details is attested by anecdotes of what he has seen himself, such as his comparison of the skulls of Persians and Egyptians while visiting a battlefield in the Nile delta. Herodotus’ fascination with the wonderful embodies the miraculous workings of the divine as well.

During the Persian attack at Delphi, two giant hoplites, believed to be local heroes, were seen pursuing the barbarians, a divine voice was heard from the temple, and lightning dislodged two immense pinnacles of rock from Mount Parnassus, which fell on the invaders. Herodotus claims he saw the boulders when visiting Delphi. Noting that, miraculously, no Persian bodies were found in the sanctuary of Demeter near where the fighting at Plataea took place, Herodotus opines “My own view is—if one may have view at all about divine matters—the Goddess herself would not let them in, because they had burned her sanctuary at Eleusis” (523). Though he often reserves judgment on the veracity of such wonders, saying “some say,” or “it was reported,” he nevertheless finds accounts of the miraculous interesting, as they may be seen to corroborate his own belief that some divine force is manifest in the human world, on both the personal and collective level.