[sect. 9]
Marks of successive Redactions in Bks. 7, 8, 9
The priority in genesis or composition here demanded
for the last three Books of Herodotus involves the recognition of
a redactive act, or series of acts, whereby these Books have been
combined with the other six, to form the existing whole. Whether
this literary fusion was achieved once for all, or resulted from
more than one revision or process of readjustment, is a problem the
solution of which depends partly upon the general theory of the
genesis of the whole work, and partly upon the actual evidences, or
marks, of revision, which may be detected, and with more or less
probability chronologized, within the volume here immediately in
view. The general priority of the last three Books over the first
six is more easily established than the respective order in composition
of those six Books, or their constituent parts. The all
but total absence in the last three Books of the notes of travel,
specially towards the East and South, makes heavily for the
original priority in the composition of this volume of the work.
[p. lxii]
Apparently when Herodotus first drafted the story of the Invasion
of Hellas by Xerxes his Wanderjahre had hardly begun, his major
journeys lay still before him, the Pontos, the West, Libya, Egypt,
Syria, were still unvisited. The first relatively completed draft of
the story of the Persian war was doubtless in the main calculated
for an Athenian audience; its tentative publication perhaps
brought our author the means and opportunity for those more
extensive voyages, the results of which are conspicuous in the
earlier Books, and more especially in the Skythian Logoi. There
are two fairly well attested and convincing points d'appui in the
life and work of Herodotusthe voyage to the Pontos, and the
voyage or migration to Italy, the clearest traces of which are to
be found in the fourth Book; and these two points combine to
serve the theory of composition and redaction here propounded.
The association of the Skythian Logoi with the expedition of
Perikles into the Pontos in 443 B.C. is a thoroughly acceptable
suggestion, whatever precise rle may be assigned to Herodotus
personally in connexion with that adventure.31 The association
of his western migration, and consequent access to western
sources, with the Periklean settlement of Thurioi in 443 B.C., is
an ancient and long-established tradition in the biography of
Herodotus. The first drafts of much of the Hellenic Logoi now
preserved in the earlier Books, especially the histories of Athens,
Sparta, Korinth, may well date from Herodotus' first visit to the
mainland of Hellas. The Skythian Logoi cannot well be much
earlier in date than his migration to the West, and were perhaps
composed in the first instance for a western audience. Western
sources flow freely in the fourth Book, and it is only by an oversight
that their presence in the first Book can be denied,32 while
their effect in the third Book, notably in its last section, is a
datum with which every theory of the genesis of the work has to
reckon. If Herodotus was ever resident in Thurioi, it can hardly
have been for long33 ; and no positive proof of a visit to Syracuse,
or to Sicily, can be adduced; but, perhaps, enough time can be
[p. lxiii]
allowed in his western adventure to make room for what may
not inconveniently be termed a Thurian redaction of his work.
Though the last three Books nowhere suggest extensive travels,
least of all in the East or South, yet a western deposit, presumably
due to his Thurian migration, is incontestably present;
these Books have been revised in the interests of what we have
ventured to call the Thurian redaction.34 It was this redaction
which first gave the work its full scope, its great width, its profound
unity; but it remains a difficult and delicate problem to
determine how much of the work, as it now exists, was incorporated
in this, its second and enlarged edition, so to speak. A revised
story of the Invasion of Xerxes was there; the antecedents of
the war were there; the earlier history of the Greek states, the
earlier history of the Persian empire, the attempted conquest of
Europe by Dareios, the Ionian revolt, the Marathonian campaign,
perhaps all of these. It is easier to say, with confidence, what
was not yet to be found in the work. The Lydian Logoi were
perhaps already involved with the origines of the Persian power;
but not the Libyan Logoi, still less the Egyptian. The second
Book of Herodotus contains (as I believe) the key to the position,
and points to the right solution of the problems of composition,
genesis, and redaction presented by the work. The higher
criticism has tended recently to date the Egyptian visit of
Herodotus, and consequently the composition of the second Book,
relatively late, but not quite late enough. Let the visit to Egypt
be placed after the western adventure, yes, if you will, on the
way back from Italy to Athens, and the composition of the work
of Herodotus falls into the better perspective.35 The second
[p. lxiv]
revision or enlargement of the plan of the work, the Thurian
redaction, was not final: a later handling, probably again in
Athens, incorporated the Egyptian Logoi in the first section of
the work, perhaps appended the Libyan Logoi to the second, and
to the third added at least those rarer touches which belong
chronologically to the opening years of the Peloponnesian war,
and which, in the case of the last three Books, are separated from
the great mass of contemporary references by so considerable an
interval.
It is most important to realize that the general priority in the
composition of the last three Books is a far simpler and more easily
admitted conclusion than any view of the order and dates in the
composition of the first six Books, or their constituent parts, and
the precise times and places of the successive redactions by which
such disparate elements were fused into a relatively continuous
and complete whole. In regard to the last three Books, with
which this Introduction specifically deals, the evidences of revision,
even of successive revisions, can hardly be gainsaid. The
gap in the references to contemporary events proves it. How is
that gap to be explained if the whole sum and substance of the
last three Books was being written down by the author in its
present form about, or just after, the date of the three isolated
references to the Ten Years' War? Moreover, the signs of
successive revision are apparent in the prevailing tone and point
of view of the general narrative, as well as in the patent stratification
of several distinct passages. The general tone and tendency
[p. lxv]
of the Books suggest a date for their composition before the
middle of the fifth century, while the particular marks of revision
point down as late as the Archidamian War. The great mass of
references to events of the Pentekontaeteris belong, as already
pointed out, to a date before the middle of the fifth century. To
that period may be referred the original draft of the story of the
wara subject for which domestic and Asianic sources would be
largely available, and which Herodotus might easily have projected
before leaving Halikarnassos, and executed, at least in part,
without travelling further than Samos. The war, indeed, is
already a matter of history; the chief agents in it are no more.
Xerxes, Pausanias, Themistokles, Aristeides, are as dead as
Leonidas and Mardonios. It is not so clear whether Alexander
of Makedon was still alive when the first or second draft of the
story was made: his successor is never mentioned, and the
omission of all reference to the Odrysai among the Thrakians
would be almost inexplicable if the passages on Thrake had been
written after the rise of that tribe to supremacy. Herodotus
must have found out before the completion even of the first draft
of his story that, although he could get on fairly well with the
account of naval operations, including Mykale, or even with the
march of Xerxes as far as Thermopylai, perhaps as far as Athens,
yet for his account of the preparations of the Greeks, for the
campaign on land, for Thermopylai, above all for the story of
Plataia, a journey to Athens, to Sparta, to Delphi, to Thebes,
perhaps further afield, was desirable. It may be that a considerable
interval elapsed between the original composition of the
earlier parts of the story and its first provisional completion, a
labour perhaps accomplished before the death of Kimon, if not
before the death of Alexander of Makedon. Athens is evidently
growing in unpopularity: the rehabilitation of Argos is in progress,
that of Delphi is a fait accompli, but Thebes has hardly
yet emerged from the cloud, and though the breach between
Athens and Sparta has taken place, and the battle of Tanagra
had been fought, the battle of Koroneia, with its momentous consequences,
is still in the future. There are no true notes of a
Periklean redaction of the Persian war-story in the last three
Books of Herodotus. The son of Xanthippos is not so much as
named; the Periklean disdain for the Eastern question would have
been fatal to the Herodotean logography: Herodotus writes for a
[p. lxvi]
public that still regards the Barbarian as its chief enemy. The
argument from silence, from omissions, must not be pressed; the
subject and the sources will here account for so much; yet it is
to be observed that the special notes of the Periklean policy,
resumed from Themistokles, anti-Lakonism, Medism, the
Empire, are not found in these Books, or only found in some of
those passages which have been inserted on revision, and furnish
forth the cumulative proof of re-editing and redaction.
The list of such particular passages is a lengthy one, especially
for the seventh Book, and some show traces of more than one
retractation. Such a passage is (1) the highly composite passage,
which connects the first and second parts of Book 7, and especially
cc. 133-137, characterized by the author himself as a digression,
and bearing the marks of more than one revision. Such again
are (2) the passage on the geography of Thessaly, 7. 128-130;
(3) the digression on Argos, 7. 150-152; (4) the Sikeliote history,
7. 153-167; (5) the notes on Doriskos, 7. 106; (6) the king's
high-way in Thrace, 7. 115; (7) the habitat of the lion, 7. 126;
(8) the insertion (παρενθήκη) on Mikythos, or the war between
Rhegion and the Tarentines, 7. 170; (9) the geographical notes on
Thermopylai, 7. 176, and so forth. Moreover, many of the
passages on Thessaly, on Athens, on Delphi have the appearance
of insertions, or additions at second or third hand; e.g. (10) the
story of the expedition to Tempe, 7. 172, 173; (11) the oracle of
the winds, 7. 178; (12) the defence of Athens, 7. 139. To
these instances of addition, retractation, from the seventh Book,
which might probably be increased, may be added some further
ones from Books 8 and 9; (13) the deliverance of Delphi, 8.
36-39; (14) the guardian of the Akropolis, 8. 41; (15) the
Athenian exiles on the Akropolis, 8. 54, 55; (16) the oracle of
Bakis, 8. 77 (perhaps other citations of the Boiotian seer should
be added); (17) the Delphian column, 8. 82; (18) the apparition
at Salamis, 8. 84 ad f.; (19) a variant story of the flight of
Xerxes, 8. 118-120; (20) the siege of Poteidaia, 8. 126-129;
(21) Mardonios and the Oracles, 8. 133-135; (22) the origin of
the Makedonian monarchy, 8. 137-139. From the ninth Book
may be added: (23) the story of Teisamenos, 9. 33-35; (24) the
correct exegesis of an oracle, 9. 43; (25) the note on Dekeleia,
9. 73; (26) the story of Evenios, 9. 93, 94. The great majority
of these passages belong to the second draft; only definite
[p. lxvii]
references to the Peloponnesian, i.e. Archidamian war, can be
admitted as additions at third hand, or on final revision. The list
of insertions and additions in the second draft might probably be
considerably enlarged, but a caveat may here be entered against
gratuitous anachronisms, and the exaggerated suspicion of contemporary
reference. If any stratum in these Books belongs to
the original draft, it is the series of passages in which Demaratos
figures; and the remark put into his mouth with reference to the
island of Kythera is no more a reflexion of the achievement of
Nikias36 in 424 B.C. than the phrases περιπλέειν Πελοπόννησον
(7. 236) or ἅμα τῷ ἔαρι πειρᾶσθαι τῆς Πελοποννήσου (8. 113)
are borrowed from the Athenian strategics of the Archidamian
war; nor is it possible to bring down the final revision of these
Books, and therewith the publication of the work as a whole, much
below the date of the last clear reference to the events of that war.37
