Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 769

JOHN MARINCOLA

Florida State University

David Asheri (1925–2000) was born in Florence, but his family left Italy after the promulgation of anti‐Jewish statutes in 1938 and settled in Palestine in 1939. Asheri wrote his doctoral thesis in 1962, under Alexander Fuks, on land tenure in ancient Greece, and much of his early work concerned debt, loans, and issues surrounding land and tenancy. The influence of ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO led Asheri in the late 1960s to a new interest in historiography and, more particularly, in the ways in which we know about the past. He came to believe that the historian is always limited by the partial and problematic nature of the sources, and he was pessimistic that one could ever get at what really happened (Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella 2007 (= ALC), xii–xiv; cf. Herman 2001).

The fruits of his deep thought and engagement with Herodotus are most visible in his four exceptional Italian commentaries on Books 1, 3, 8, and 9 (Asheri 1989, 1990a, 2003, 2006; the latter two were edited and brought out posthumously by Pietro Vannicelli; the commentaries on Books 1 and 3 are available in an English translation as part of Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella 2007). Despite his pessimism about what we could really know about the past, his commentaries display a dazzling command of, and interest in, the historical Realien of the Persian world, and the issue of whether or not what Herodotus says is actually true is never far from his mind.

Asheri believes that Herodotus did not begin with any sort of unifying plan, but instead composed independent accounts (somewhat like Hellanicus) and only later integrated these into his main narrative, though the process of reworking was ultimately incomplete. He takes a traditional view of Herodotus’ TRAVELS and his SOURCES in those travels (e.g., in EGYPT he spoke not with actual PRIESTS but with “low‐ranking ministers with limited learning”; similarly, the logioi with whom Herodotus claimed to speak were either such men as these or were fictional). On the other hand, Herodotus clearly had access to genuine traditions or documents: witness his accounts of the conspirators against the MAGI (where most of the names agree with the BISITUN inscription), the ROYAL ROAD, and the tributary states of the Persian Empire. Asheri allows for slippage, however, between Herodotus’ sources and his own views, when (for example) Herodotus wishes to state something more pointedly; for one is dealing here with the conventions of a new genre (historiography), and these, rather than questions about Herodotus’ “honesty,” should be the focus of scholarly inquiry (Asheri 2007, 12–22). In his efforts to make sense of history, Herodotus records events selectively so as to invest them with greater meaning: Herodotus “is the prototype of the historian who teaches PHILOSOPHY by examples. His Persian kings, Greek statesmen, his wars and peoples—even his RIVERS and mountains—are often paradigmatic or fulfil some symbolic function” (1990b, 131).

Herodotus eschewed the abstract in favor of the personal. This can be seen in widely divergent areas. For example, he cares less about types of rule (tyranny, OLIGARCHY) than about how well individuals ruled and behaved. Elsewhere, important historical events, such as the IONIAN REVOLT or the establishment of DEMOCRACY at ATHENS, are often told through characters associated with those events. Wise ADVISERS bring a human dimension to the formulation of abstract concepts and help to articulate the issues at stake, reinforcing Herodotus’ own didactic message: “impersonal causes, though invisible, need real personalities to embrace them and translate them into action” (2007, 40).

Herodotus’ respect for tradition does not mean that he is without a critical spirit, since he disbelieves many fantastic tales and chooses among variant versions on occasion; nor is he easy to pin down in the realm of the divine, steering a middle course between credulity and skepticism. Herodotus’ geographical inquiries have their starting point in EPIC tradition and Ionian rationalism, and combine empirical observations with aprioristic models, credulity with criticism of predecessors; his models are regularly vitiated by a love of symmetry and parallelism. His notions of the past have the same starting point, but here Herodotus rejected very early times, seeing more recent history as the more reliable, confining himself to the spatium historicum, and refusing to give the same level of credence to early MYTHS. Even so, his chronological and genealogical studies show the same reliance on the epic tradition in making all people the descendants of gods and demigods (2007, 29–42).

In sum, Herodotus’ narrative persona combines the qualities both of the storyteller and the man of SCIENCE and philosophy. He bequeathed to later historiography the tradition of inquiry (HISTORIĒ) and criticism, of explanation (his is “a narrative that wants to make sense of historical events or reveal their direction”: 2007, 36), and of a focus on the more recent (and knowable) past; and most importantly the notion that “the real aim of historical research is not an accurate collection of facts … but the discovery of what is universal” as a way of “emphasiz[ing] the ethical, historical, and philosophical universal significance of what he tells” (2007, 56).

SEE ALSO: Historical Method; Reliability; Scholarship on Herodotus, 1945–2018