Discuss two Greek Inventions in one: Philosophy and History in Herodotus of Halikarnassos
The circumstances under which the Greeks began to think historically and philosophically is a very important question of intellectual, social and political history. It’s also one my key areas of researchwatch this video (6mins 45 secs) as I try to explain what it means to ‘think historically’ about the past:
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The intellectual context of the Greek World in the second half of the 5th century B.C. was perhaps the most dynamic and experimental period in Western history. For us the period survives in echoes, traces and half-heard rumour: the fragment dominates the researchers gaze. In stark contrast to this stands the Histories of Herodotus of Halikarnassos (c.490-420 BCE), the first historian in the Western tradition and its master practitioner.
Herodotus set himself the task of explaining the conflict between the Persian Empire and the Greek world. The template for representing a conflict between Greeks and others was, of course, the Homeric epic cycle of the Trojan War. But Herodotus did something radically differenta way of representing the past which we call ‘history’.
Strangely, no work after Herodotus ever attempts or repeats his style, form or content. His famous successor, Thucydides did something very different again, and it was Thucydides, who set the bar for future historical writing. Herodotus therefore stands in splendid isolation. But as a pioneer he is of central importance to the history of the whole Western tradition of thought. Meandering across human experience he is at once witness, interpreter, cultural middle-man, anthropologist, indefatigably curious tourist, liar, gullible story-teller, master narrator, poet. He has been compared to epic poets as a sort of prose Homer. But for many reasonsas you will seethe search for the origins of Herodotus’ approach (ancestors, predecessors, etc) is futile because he seems to arrive fully-grown and also because there seems to be almost nothing like his work before him (at least in scale!). His work itself is inexhaustiblescholars have written thousands of pages interpreting bare paragraphs and passagesonly a few dare tackle the whole.
