The Oenoe Painting in the Stoa Poikile, and Herodotus' Account of Marathon

Ch. Carey / M. Edwards (eds.), Marathon – 2,500 Years. London: Institute of Classical Studies, BICS Suppl. 124, 2013, 45-61.

Myth, Truth, and Narrative in Herodotus, pp. 287-312. Edited by E. Baragwanath and M.P. de Bakker. Oxford University Press

1999

2020

Previous scholarship on the Pompeiian representations of the Achilles at Skyros myth has largely focused on how these works of art communicate moralizing messages about traditional gender roles. I argue, however, that artists seem especially interested in exploring and representing Achilles and Deidamia's love story. Through a close analysis of images and texts, I demonstrate how amatory themes were central to Roman versions of this myth in both literature and art. By focusing on the decorative ensembles from the House of the Dioscuri and the House of Apollo I highlight the importance of these images' architectural contexts in framing the viewer's interpretation of this myth—a myth that touched on themes of love and loss.

The significance of the Athenian treasury at Delphi’s sculptural decoration has long been debated in terms of its historical associations. This essay demonstrates that the treasury’s decoration is not only an early example of a newfound emphasis on Theseus as Athens’ particular hero, but also is indicative of an effort to create visual parity between the deeds of Theseus and those of Herakles. It is, therefore, the first building to use mythic imagery involving Theseus, Herakles, and their battles against the Amazons as a sophisticated allusion to conflict with Persia and to Athens’ decisive role at the Battle of Marathon of 490 B.C. The mythological themes elaborated in the treasury’s decoration ingeniously predicate ancient parallels for contemporary events. A reevaluation of the Athenian treasury’s decoration invites us to reconsider the intersections between art, life, and myth in the aftermath of Marathon.

Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 14, 2008

Exemplaria Classica

The series 'Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics' is in the process of producing an excellent series of texts cum commentaries of Herodotus' Histories. The currently latest of this series, edited by Simon Hornblower and Christopher Pelling, has Book VI (named after Erato, the muse of the hymn, the song, and the lyric) as its subject. Though Hornblower expressly states in his 'Introduction' to Book V 1 that Book V ('Terpsichore') and Book VI form in various respects a unity, Book VI is, nevertheless, "a structural unit" in itself as well (Hornblower 2013, 3). As a matter of fact, the recognisable relationship between Books V and VI appears to be an argument in Hornblower's view "to think away the conventional book divisions altogether" (Hornblower 2013, 1). As it is, however, such divisions (which Hornblower believes to have originated in the fourth century bC, during the Hellenistic period: Hornblower 2013, 1) are totally accepted by now and have become common practice. Book VI-as we have it today-of the Histories is one of Herodotus' most varied books. It starts with the final collapse of the Ionian Revolt (capita 1-32, with some emphasis on the Battle of Lade (capita 7-18)) and goes on describing the Persian expedition to Greece of 490 bC (including the destruction of Eretria on Euboea (capita 100-101)), 2 which ended in the Athenian triumph at Marathon (capita 103-117). Besides, it provides, inter alia, (in my view) fascinating material on Sparta, full of court intrigue (capita 61-74) and culminating in Cleomenes' grisly death (caput 75), but also comedy, detailing Alcmeon's cramming clothes, boots, and even cheeks with Croesus' gold dust (caput 125) and Hippoclides happily "dancing away his marriage" (capita 126-129).

Herodotus was born in a city with mixed Hellenic and Carian population, and grew up in a region (south-west Asia Minor) which was in constant and close contact with the great states of the Near East, such as Lydia and Achaemenid Persia. He was thus in a privileged position in terms of communication and exchange with the cultures of the ancient Orient. In this paper I propose to explore Herodotus’ authorial debt to the narrative and intellectual traditions of the East with regard to certain major, macroscopic compositional tendencies of his historical oeuvre. Three fundamental narrative structures, which condition the organization of Herodotus’ material and the layout of his work, seem to have been inspired by characteristic techniques and thematic patterns of Near-Eastern texts or lore. Firstly, Herodotus conceives and recounts world history according to the typical structure of West-Asiatic and Egyptian king lists and chronicles: these latter works enumerate a series of successive rulers and record basic biographical data, key historical incidents, and occasionally picturesque anecdotes about the reign of each one of them. Herodotus assimilates this pattern and uses it both on a small and on a grand scale in his narrative. The individual historical sections (logoi) concerning particular peoples (Lydians, Egyptians, Medians) are constructed in the manner of a chronicle; the narrator lists a sequence of kings and offers briefer or longer reports of historical events and anecdotal tales for every name of the list. The Herodotean oeuvre as a whole is built on the same chronographic principle; a succession of Achaemenid monarchs (Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes) forms the framework, which is filled in with extensive accounts of each king’s exploits, wars, and other ventures. Secondly, Herodotus appears to have taken over from Near-Eastern storytelling the concept of the frame narrative, i.e. the tales emboxed inside other tales like “Russian dolls”. This technique first appears in ancient Egyptian novellas and story collections of the second and first millennium BCE, and subsequently spread all over the eastern world up to Iran and India, conditioning the layout of the great oriental narrative compilations, from the Book of Sindbad to the Pañcatantra, the Kathāsaritsāgara and the Thousand and One Nights. Herodotus exploits this pattern already in the first and paradigmatic long novella of his work (the story of Solon and Croesus, 1.29-33) and then in various subsequent narrative sections (e.g. the account of the Spartans’ conference and Socles’ speech, 5.91-93). In all these cases, one of the characters of the main narrative tells a series of didactic stories in close sequence, in the manner familiar from ancient Egyptian story collections (Papyrus Westcar, Tales of Petese) and from the Book of Sindbad. Thirdly, Herodotus’ entire composition is punctuated by a long accumulation of failed military expeditions of Persian kings against various lands. The climax of this series is represented by the Persian wars, Darius’ and Xerxes’ unsuccessful campaigns against mainland Greece, which are recounted in the last books of the History. These accounts are inspired, of course, by momentous historical events. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the theme of the failed expedition was also endemic in the mythology of ancient Iran: Kai Kaus, a king of the legendary Kayanian dynasty, is the archetype of the rash and vainglorious monarch who oversteps his limits and attempts a sequence of foolhardy campaigns against formidable opponents, invariably ending up in defeat and disaster. This serial pattern of ancient Persian myth, if known to Herodotus, may have influenced his decision to structure his work as a gradation of failed military ventures undertaken by the Persian kings, from Cyrus’ fatal war against the Massagetae and Cambyses’ disastrous march to Ethiopia to Darius’ defeats in Scythia and Marathon and Xerxes’ debacle before the Greeks.

Mnemosyne 63.2, 2010