Rightshelf

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Consider first this link. The following jumped out for me:

Herodotus made history by inventing history. There are two senses of "history" in that English sentence, neither of which corresponds to the Greek historia. The first sense seems to me to be a powerful one in public usage. This is the sense involved in such phrases as "making history", "history will show", or "the end of history". Really, this is the way that moderns get at a concept of "fate"--where fate itself is an ossified word that lives, for most people, as something the ancients "believed in".

Think of the Congressional Record: it is not the minutes of a meeting. Things get put in there that were never uttered by a live human being. Similarly, we all have a space in our consciousness for statements we consider "for the record", or "off the record", as though there were a cosmic ledger somewhere being filled with the detail of our lives and our countries' lives, a ledger of record, the last word before we "close the book".

Herodotus fears the wearing agency of time, which can turn colourful statues with piercing eyes into the falsely pristine marble of neo-classicism. (Greek temples were more like Hindu temples than like the touristy ruins now left behind.) Perhaps this justifies David Grene's use of "history" to translate historia. At the very least, Herodotus does want to get the record straight. But there is more, a majestic even-handedness in his recognition that both warring agents produced great and wonderful deeds that deserve to be remembered vividly. ("Great" and "wonderful" should not be taken to imply "good".)

The second sense is "history" as a discipline, a thing in which you can earn an advanced degree. The professional historian, along with humanists of many other disciplines, is especially concerned with a thing she has invented called "methodology". Whole books of historical writing climax with vindications of their own methodology. It is the way.

By these lights Herodotus does not usually qualify as an historian. He is merely a "story-teller". I rather think that he is anti-methodological, and hence a kind of champion. The irony in the modern historian's verdict comes when Herodotus is treated as source material. Whenever it has been possible to corroborate elements of his narrative or description independently, almost always Herodotus has been vindicated. (There are whole swaths of ancient history for which he is, apparently, our only source.)

And consider this one as well. Again, the following passage struck me as being especially important:

Perhaps Solon's admonition, "look to the end", best applies to those who are wont to confuse the extravagant external with an internal worth. Surely those who count themselves blessed are not completely aware of their situation. Croesus thought he was the most blessed of all, given his wealth and importance, yet he was deluded and delusional. But when Adrastus "knows within himself" that he was "the heaviest-stricken with calamity", he was smitten with perfect clarity and self-knowledge. Alas, those who think they're God's gift often have misfortune coming to them, but depressed people usually have good reason to be so. Adrastus shows us that there can be a piercingly specific, terribly non-delusional, and altogether internal clarity about one's random and yet genuine misfortune.

Read it all. My copy of Herodotus is this one. I look forward to reading it and I imagine that it will be considered a classic translation in the years to come.