[sect. 10]
The Sources: analysis inconclusive
General analyses and discussions on the Sources of
Herodotus are disappointing and inconclusive; nor is the secret of
this disappointment far to seek. The work is too large and
complex, its parts are too diverse in character and origin, for
generalizations, based upon the indiscriminate citation of verses, or
evidential items from the whole work passim, to be convincing.
A critique and evaluation of the Sources to be satisfactory must be
conducted on such a scale as to be exhaustive. Moreover, the
historical appreciation of the contents of the work, as attempted
for example in the Appendices of the present edition, requires
constant reference to the particular Sources of particular passages,
and supersedes the attempt at a general and vaguer analysis.
Yet, for particular Books, or groups of Herodotean Logoi, each
with a predominant character of its own, something by way of a
general account of the Sources may within reasonable compass be
profitably achieved; and this Introduction to the three last Books,
which deal with the story of the Great Invasion, a story comprising
but two or three years as its chronological condition, and a
comparatively limited area for its geographical scenes, would be
incomplete without some attempt to deal generally with the
question of the Sources from which the narrative was derived.
Those Sources can only have been of three kinds: (i.) autopsis, or
personal inspection; (ii.) hearsay or tradition; (iii.) documentary
[p. lxviii]
or literary evidence. Even such a classification is apt to be
fallacious, especially in connexion with the work of Herodotus.
The line between a monument and an inscribed monument is
somewhat evanescent: the difference between a description based
upon eyesight in the first degree and in the second is not always
easy to detect; the affidavits of the agent and of the agent's family,
or friends, are sometimes curiously stratified. Herodotus himself
rarely draws clear distinctions between the specific categories of
historical evidence.
(i.) The precipitation of the element of autopsis, personal
inspection, in the seventh, eighth and ninth Books of Herodotus
involves, as in the case of every part of his work, the evidences
of his own movements, travels and researches. Now, apart
from the suggestions, or rather confirmation, of a voyage, or
migration, to the west, you would hardly discover or even
suspect from the contents of these Books that Herodotus had
been a great traveller in his day. Nothing suggests the visit
to Egypt, or the voyage in the Pontos. There is no hint of
the writer's having seen Susa or Babylon, though both are
mentioned in these Books. The Kyrenaica is conspicuous by its
absence. Even the scenes in Sardes, and on the route of Xerxes
in lower Asia, show little or nothing that might not be put down
to fairly vivid but secondary Sources. It would be pleasant to
picture Herodotus tracing in person the route of Xerxes from the
still unidentified Kritalla to Sardes, or even from Sardes to the
Hellespont, and there would be no great extravagance in the
supposition, at least so far as relates to the latter stage; but it is
just here that we find it especially difficult to detect Herodotus in
person. At some time or other Herodotus beheld Abydos, but
apparently not before he had drafted his account of the march of
Xerxes. It is much easier to carry, or to follow, Herodotus by
sea than by land from his native Halikarnassos round the
Aigaian world; and, except in the Hellenic peninsula and in
the valley of the Nile, he scarcely penetrates inland. These
Books may be taken to show, or to suggest, autopsy for
Samos,38 Athens,39 Sparta,40 Delphi,41 Thebes,42 and perhaps also
[p. lxix]
Tegea,43 Argos,44 and other places in Greece proper. The proof
that Herodotus visited Plataia, or the battle-field, before drafting
his account of the battle is not convincing; but, as he certainly
saw Thebes at some period of his career,45 he probably saw Plataia,
and wrote, or revised, the story of the campaign, with the advantage
of a tardy visit to the scene, though without a clear or full
perception of the strategic and tactical problems involved in his
own narrative.46 The gross blunder in the orientation of Thermopylai
makes it very difficult to believe that Herodotus had
studied that story of Spartan heroism an Ort und Stelle, even
though points in the narrative, or topography, are extremely
graphic.47 The description of Thessaly, as seen from the neighbourhood
of Tempe, has suggested to more than one reader the
idea that Herodotus convoyed Xerxes from Therme to Tempe,
because he had performed the voyage himself, and the passage
has notes of autopsis about it besides its graphic force.48
If so, Herodotus' problematic visit might be connected with
his traditional residence at the Makedonian court; but the
alleged residence at the Makedonian court is itself probably
only an inference from the evidence afforded by the
work, particularly in the eighth and ninth Books, of an
admiration for Alexander, a special interest in his achievements.49
Athens, Delphi, Olympia, all might have supplied evidences and
sources sufficient to account for the colour and warmth of
Herodotus' notices of the Makedonian monarch. There are
many vivid touches in the Makedonian and in the Thrakian
geography of these Books50 ; but lists of cities and tribes were to
be had for the asking, and there was no district better known in
Athens than the tributary Thrakian region. The older geography
of Hekataios was especially bright and copious in the north
Aigaian. A serious blunder in regard to Chalkidike51 undoes the
impression made by the descriptions of the canal, of Poteidaia, of
the neighbourhood of Therme; and the too graphic touch on the
[p. lxx]
European habitat of the lion shows that Herodotus can be vivid
and precise at second hand.52 If Herodotus had personal knowledge
of Thrake, it is most natural to connect his Thrakian
experiences with his visit to the Pontos, and not unreasonable to
date that voyage later than the first draft of these Books, a view
which harmonizes well with the non-appearance of the Odrysai
in this volume.53 But, however the vision of Thrake be dated,
it is rash to infer that the geography of the region is in the main
based on personal observation, rather than on the copious Sources,
of various kinds, available for the purpose.
(ii.) Apart from the advantage to his geographical and
topographical data, and the vivifying effect on a narrative of
events due to acquaintance with the scenes of action, the vast
gain to Herodotus from his travels in the Greek world arose
from the numerous opportunities afforded him of contact and
conversation with men of various tribes and cities who had
taken part in the war, upon the one side or the other. Besides
what the actors themselves still had to say, there were doubtless
strong local traditions in various places, and among the rising
generation, in respect to the parts played by the various cities
and powers of Greece throughout the great struggle. It would
no doubt have been possible, in the time of Herodotus, to
compile a history of the war purely based upon oral traditions,
and to have gathered those traditions largely on the Asianic
main. Such a history might have borne a marked resemblance,
in ensemble and in details, to the actual work of Herodotus in
this part. There is no equal section of his history where the
terminology of oral tradition is so strong and patent, or where,
failing exact and decisive terms, the general indications and
conditions point so clearly as in the three last Books to the
living voice as the main source of the writer's knowledge.
Over and above such cases the catalogue of passages based on
oral tradition may fairly be enlarged by referring thereto
every story, or paragraph, for which a scriptural source is not
distinctly preferable. It is a curious fact that Herodotus has
explicitly named as an informant, and for a comparatively
trivial occasion, but one person, that one happily contemporary
with the war.54 As little as one such reference can represent
[p. lxxi]
the contact of Herodotus with the men who had actually taken
part in the war, so little perhaps do the explicit notes of oral
information represent the actual mass of materials due to this
source in the pages of Herodotus. Waiving the terms, which
are ambiguous (λόγος, λέγεται, λέγουσι, φασί κτλ.), and used
indifferently of oral and of written information,55 though perhaps
in these Books more generally of oral than of written
information, there are not much more than ten or twelve
passages in which unambiguous or explicit reference is
made to an oral source (ἀκοή). Six times the express use of
the term for hearing (ἀκούειν) guarantees the presence of firsthand
oral information56 ; four times the hardly less explicit term
φάτις is used, though with a less direct personal assurance.57 If
the term πυνθάνομαι can be thrown into the same scale, the
total of such references may amount to the baker's dozen.58 For
the most part, be it observed, the passages so marked record
comparatively trifling circumstances to which Herodotus attaches
little importance. The chief exception is signalized not by the
terms employed, but by the express nomination of his informant.
We dare not infer from this paucity of reference that Herodotus
had documentary or written authority for all the rest. The
nature of the case, the character of the story in itself, Herodotus'
own date and the evidences of his travels, all go to prove page
after page of these Books the first literary redaction of the
living voices of men. The Halikarnassian speaks in the exploits
of Artemisia,59 the story of Hermotimos,60 the service and reward
[p. lxxii]
of Xeinagoras.61 Incidents of the battle of Salamis, the campaign
of Mykale, and more besides, come from the lips of Samians.62
Athenian or phil-Athenian report, and apparently still unwritten
report, dominates the records of Artemision, of the battle of
Plataia, and other considerable portions of the narrative.63 It
was in Sparta, or at least from Spartans, that Herodotus heard
many incidents connected with Thermopylai, and with the battlefield
of Plataia.64 Delphic sources, not written, though sometimes
connected with monuments and inscribed objects, flow freely, and
partly to the confusion of truth and consistency in the historian's
work.65 Boiotians are not silent66 ; Argives,67 Korinthians,68 and
Thessalians69 are to be heard; Thrakians, that is Greeks of
Thrake, may have spoken with Herodotus, at Athens for example,
even if he had not visited Thrake when he first wrote down its
geography.70 Western witnesses are cited in a way that suggests,
bearing all the circumstances in mind, a personal rapport.71 For
the copious insertions of contemporary events, the contribution
of Herodotus to the Pentekontaeteris, it stands to reason that his
source is Hearsay, or what might count as such.72 The mass
of materials thus recognized is immense, and gives this volume
of the work a specific character.73 Moreover, behind the living
voice we here and there catch an echo of the traditions in the
making.74
(iii.) But the mass of materials thus recognized, though
immense, is not quite exhaustive, and of a surety the amount of
information, even in the last three Books of his work, which
[p. lxxiii]
Herodotus has drawn from literary sources, from documents and
authorities of one kind or another, other than the living voice of
the actors and spectators of the great war, has been greatly
under-estimated by many recent critics. There is a great deal
of substance in the last three Books of Herodotus besides the
bare story of the war, and belonging to other departments
where learned or poetic pens had long been busy. A deal of
matter in these Books, notably in the Army and Navy Lists,
was ancient history to Herodotus himself: legends, myths,
traditions of migrations, colonization, settlements, foundations,
which had all received treatment from poets and logographers,
whose works Herodotus is innocently exploiting as a matter
of course. Herodotus was not the first man to commit to
writing the Achaimenid pedigree, or the genealogies of the
royal houses of Sparta and of Pella. His geography and
ethnography he had neither to discover for himself, nor to take
simply on hearsay: there was a considerable geographical literature
in existence, and a good deal of his material he found ready to
hand in the works of Hekataios, and perhaps of others. But it
may be thought that such matters, though not inconsiderable,
only bear remotely, if at all, on the story of the war. There
were documents of various kinds in existence concerning the
war: the war had already, and almost immediately, created a
literature of its own. Some critics write, or speak, as though it
were much to the credit of Herodotus to have neglected all
that, and begun de novo, as though to glean the oral tradition and
ignore the written word were a special merit in the historian.
Strange aberration! We should feel more complete confidence
in Herodotus could we be assured that he had made a systematic
study of all that had already been written about the war, and
had examined all available documents dating from the war period
itself. It is all to his credit if, scanty as are the materials
for comparison, and slight as are the hints afforded by his own
methods and result, we can yet perceive that he did not wholly
ignore what others had done before him, or disdain the monuments
of the war, the history whereof he undertook to write.
Any one can see that Herodotus must have had access to
written collections of Oracles, as well Delphic as less august
vaticinations,75 but there the recognition of written sources
[p. lxxiv]
appears for some critics to stop. None will be rash enough
to claim for him an inspection of the king's despatch to
Mardonios, dramatically reproduced by Alexander,76 and even the
tablet of Demaratos has a somewhat apocryphal air about it.77
Herodotus might easily report the inscriptions of Themistokles
without having actually seen them in situ,78 and the Apographai
and Anagraphai of the Royal Scribes would have been indecipherable
to him, even if he could ever have had them in his
hands.79 But his chronology, as far as it goes, is based at least
in part upon official documents, for example the list of Attic
Archons. His Army and Navy Lists, however composite, must
go back ultimately to authoritative documents. He had seen
many monuments of the war, tombs, stelai, votive offerings, and
he had surely not merely heard what was said of them, but
copied all that was written upon them.80 The epigrams of
Simonides were to be read all over the Greek world, and not his
epigrams alone.81 He and the other poets had been busy with the
war.82 It is not fanciful to trace some items in Herodotus to the
Attic Skolia.83 We can see the legend of Themistokles growing
under the malignant pen of Timokrates; and the stories of
Themistokles told by Herodotus have already suffered from such
pens.84 Aischylos and Phrynichos had both celebrated events of
the war upon the stage, long before Herodotus committed the
facts to prose.85 The debt of Herodotus to Aischylos is admitted,
though it concerns rather the spirit than the letter, the moral
rather than the material of the story, making us moderns, with
our precise habit in the weighing of evidence, wonder more at a
difference in the legends of Salamis than at a resemblance in the
portraits of Xerxes. Had we more of the poetry of the fifth
century in our hands we should probably find a still larger debt, in
form and in substance, to its credit with Herodotus. A writer of
large range and experience has thought it not unlikely that
the story of the Greek embassy to Gelon came from a play of
[p. lxxv]
Epicharmos.86 Just now an exploded hypothesis has been
recalled, and Choirilos of Samos figures once more among the
Sources of the Herodotean version of the Medika.87 There were,
I suppose, collections of bons mots, of anecdotes, of wonders, of
gnomes, or wise saws and modern instances, already in existence
in Ionian prose literature, on which Herodotus sometimes draws.88
Some natural philosophy has found its way into the pages of
Herodotus from earlier literature, as well as some moral philosophy.89
Was there no genuine historical literature connected
with the war? It is generally admitted that the Hellenes, who
had, according to Herodotus, turned the name of Masistios into
Makistios, were writers.90 The admission is a far-reaching one:
the authors are plural, and their concern is the Persian war.
Was not Dionysios of Miletos one of their number?91 If we
cannot further verify the details, we must at least concede the
principle, that even the story of the war had for Herodotus its
literary sources. The attempt to identify one such source with
the exiled Athenian Dikaios has not been generally regarded as
successful; but the suggestion was a legitimate one, and its chief
defects lay in undertaking to realize too definitely the contents of
the Memoirs, and to confine too narrowly Herodotus' fountains of
knowledge.92 The art of Herodotus, which has cast the glamour of the
living voice over the most disparate materials, makes it difficult
to determine nicely the exact quality of his several Sources, or
the precise provenience of every chapter in his work.93 His own
action and redaction were too considerable in their effects for
[p. lxxvi]
that; but those critics most anxious to defend or to appreciate
his authority, while compelled to admit that his work is largely
derived from mere hearsay, and that he has allowed himself a
very wide literary licence in dealing with his materials, will be
especially glad to detect any signs the work may contain, that
the author realized the obligation he was under to acquaint
himself, so far as might be, with all the literature and documents
connected with his subject.94
