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CHRISTOPHER WELSER

Colby College

Of all the Greek CITIES mentioned by Herodotus, none plays a more important role in the Histories than ATHENS. Athens is mentioned quite early in connection with the story of SOLON’s visit to CROESUS (1.29) and soon thereafter is formally introduced as one of the two leading cities of Greece, along with SPARTA (1.56). This is followed by an account of the three attempts at tyranny of PEISISTRATUS (1.56–64), after which Athens receives no sustained attention until the middle of Book 5, when Herodotus resumes his treatment of Athenian history with a discussion of the fall of the PEISISTRATIDAE and the establishment of DEMOCRACY (5.55–78). From that point onward, Athens is omnipresent in the Histories.

Herodotus provides a vast amount of detailed information concerning Athenian history and traditions, and he seems familiar with the topography of Attica (e.g., 5.63.4; 6.116). In a few instances, he appears to have had an Athenian AUDIENCE in mind, as when he writes that the outermost circuit of the WALLS of Median ECBATANA is roughly as long as the circuit wall of Athens (1.98.5; cf. 1.192.3, 2.7.1, 4.99.5). Although he nowhere states explicitly that he has been to Athens, it is almost certain that he had a strong personal connection to the city. Most notably, the Athenian historian Diyllus (4th/3rd centuries BCE) recorded that the Athenians passed a decree granting Herodotus a gift of ten TALENTS (BNJ 73 F3, cited in Plut. Mor. 862b; cf. Euseb. Chron. Ol. 83.4). There is also reason to believe that Herodotus had personal connections to some leading figures in fifth‐century Athens, especially insofar as he seems to have influenced, and been influenced by, Athenian drama. The opening chapters of the Histories appear to be burlesqued in ARISTOPHANES’ Acharnians (523–29), and the response of INTAPHERNES’ wife at 3.118–19 may be alluded to in SOPHOCLES’ Antigone (905–12). Other possible echoes of the Histories in these two dramatists have been alleged as well (e.g., Ar. Ach. 85–87 may be based on Hdt. 1.133.1, and Soph. OC 337–41 may be based on Hdt. 2.35.2). Most intriguingly, Sophocles wrote an epigram, the first two lines of which are cited by PLUTARCH (Mor. 785b), to a man with the name Herodotus.

On the basis of Herodotus’ extensive coverage of PERICLES’ ancestors—particularly his maternal forebears the ALCMAEONIDAE (5.62–71; 6.121–31) but also his father XANTHIPPUS (6.136; 9.120.4)—many scholars have suspected that Herodotus, like Sophocles, must have been a member of the great statesman’s circle and that Pericles himself must have been an important source for Herodotus (see e.g., Jacoby 1913, 237–42). Some support for this hypothesis is provided by Herodotus’ well‐attested association with one of Pericles’ pet projects, the Athenian colony at THURII. Interestingly, Pericles is mentioned only once in the Histories, in connection with a prophetic DREAM of his mother AGARISTE (II) (6.131.2) in which her still‐unborn son appears to her as a LION.

On the whole, it seems quite plausible that Herodotus may have resided in Athens for an extended period, most likely in the 440s BCE. Some connections between Herodotus and Athens in ancient sources, however, are probably inventions based on the historian’s well‐known association with the city. Marcellinus’ Life of Thucydides, for example, reports an encounter between the young THUCYDIDES and Herodotus that seems too good to be true (54). The same source implies that Herodotus was buried near Thucydides at the HOLLOWS OF ATHENS (Κοίλη, 17), but stronger evidence suggests that his grave was at Thurii (e.g., Suda s.v. Ἡρόδοτος (Η 536); Steph. Byz. s.v. θούριοι (Θ 55) claims to quote his funerary inscription), and if a monument at the Hollows existed it is likely to have been a cenotaph, or a fraud (cf. Marcellin. Vit. Thuc. 55).

Throughout the Histories, Herodotus generally celebrates Athenian achievements. He expresses enthusiasm for Athenian democracy (5.78), and he famously assigns to the Athenians the greatest share of the credit for the Greeks’ defeat of XERXES’ invasion, calling them the “saviors of Greece” (7.139). Such statements, together with his highlighting of the Alcmaeonid role in Athenian history and the aforementioned evidence of his personal connections to the city, once inclined many leading scholars, particularly in Germany, to see Herodotus as a partisan and propagandist for Periclean Athens. Nowadays, this view is almost universally regarded as one‐sided. Although Herodotus displays great affection for the Athenians, he is also willing to criticize them. He seems to blame them for inciting the Persian attacks on Greece through a foolish decision to support the IONIAN REVOLT (5.97.2–3; cf. 8.142.2), and he indicates that their MURDER of Persian HERALDS was deserving of retribution (7.133). Even Plutarch, who thought Herodotus had a special interest in Athens (Mor. 862a) and who reported the accusation that Herodotus got his ten talents from the Athenians as a reward for having flattered them, nevertheless pointed out that a number of passages in the Histories could be read as undercutting Athenian accomplishments and detracting from the reputations of eminent Athenians, including the Alcmaeonidae and THEMISTOCLES (862c–863b, 869c–f, 870c–d; cf. 864a, 872a). As many readers have observed, the single reference to Pericles himself, as the lion of Agariste’s dream, is ambiguous at best in its judgment on Pericles’ character.

The view of Herodotus as straightforwardly pro‐Athenian was largely demolished in the mid‐twentieth century by the important works of Strasburger (1955) and Fornara (1971, esp. 37–58 and 75–91), both of whom emphasized the many ways in which the Histories would have evoked, for Herodotus’ contemporaries, the unpleasant specters of Athenian imperialism and the PELOPONNESIAN WAR. Strasburger, for example, called particular attention to the debate at Sparta over whether to restore Athens’ TYRANTS (5.91–93): although SOCLES, speaking for CORINTH, successfully defends the fledgling Athenian democracy, the debate ends with HIPPIAS’ ominous and correct prediction that the Corinthians would see things very differently “when the appointed time came for them to be afflicted by the Athenians” (5.93.1). This warning is even more poignant in light of the similarity in context to a later debate at Sparta on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, reported by Thucydides (1.67–88), in which the Corinthians now argued for war against Athens and again prevailed. Several scholars have also observed that many events near the end the Histories, like Themistocles’ extortion of MONEY from the islanders (8.111–12) and Xanthippus’ cruel execution of the Persian ARTAŸCTES (9.116–20), foreshadow a less benevolent Athens in the near future. Since Fornara’s work, much English‐language scholarship has argued that Herodotus meant to present contemporary Athens as reproducing the pattern of Persian expansionism (Raaflaub 1987; Ostwald 1991; Stadter 1992; Moles 1996). Some scholars have even proposed that Herodotus’ Persians function principally as a mirror for imperial Athens (Provencal 2015).

SEE ALSO: archē; Athenian Empire; Date of Composition; End of the Histories; Herodotus of Halicarnassus; Sources for Herodotus