Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus

Thomas Figueira, Carmen Soares, Thomas Figueira, Carmen Soares

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351805582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness – and necessarily that of later civilizations influenced by the ancient Greeks – which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups.

In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity – the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings – and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural differentiation may affect the lives, and even the very existence, of one's own people.

Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.

Chapters 8 and 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Part I

The methodology of ethnic identification in Herodotus

1 Herodotus' Hermēneus and the translation of culture in the Histories

Steven Brandwood

Introduction

Both Plutarch and Aelius Aristides, following traditions unattested in the Herodotean account, relate how Themistocles executed the interpreter accompanying Darius’ embassy to Athens in 491 BCE.¹ Plutarch’s report in particular emphasizes the ethnolinguistic nature of this interpreter’s alleged crimes, namely his use of the Greek language to verbalize the commands of a foreign potentate (Plut. Them. 6.3):

ἐπαινεῖται δ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὸν δίγλωσσον ἔργον ἐν τοῖς πεμφθεῖσιν ὑπὸ βασιλέως ἐπὶ γῆς καὶ ὕδατος αἴτησιν. ἑρμηνέα γὰρ ὄντα συλλαβὼν διὰ ψηφίσματος ἀπέκτεινεν, ὅτι φωνὴν Ἑλληνίδα βαρβάροις προστάγμασιν ἐτόλμησε χρῆσαι.

His conduct is also praised concerning the translator who was among those sent by the King to demand earth and water. Once he arrested him, he had the man executed by popular decree even though he was an interpreter, because he dared to subject Greek speech to barbarian commands.²

Whether Themistocles’ actions should surprise us or not, it is noteworthy that this report comes as the first in a list of the great man’s praiseworthy achievements, a list that concludes with Themistocles’ successful conduct of the Greek war effort.³ Themistocles would likely not have taken such a measure under normal circumstances – Darius’ impending invasion of Attica loomed over the proceedings – but the passage nonetheless provides an interesting glimpse into the possibly charged or precarious position of the interpreter and of bilingualism generally in the sphere of ancient international relations and its historiographic representation.⁴

Themistocles’ aversion to interpreters became a part of his legend,⁵ but suspicion of bilingualism is a familiar enough trope that was echoed in antiquity after the Persian Wars and even later.⁶ Nonetheless, such distrust finds its way into Herodotus’ Histories, a work centrally concerned with cultural difference, in a notably understated fashion, appearing only in episodes like the death of Skyles, and earning Herodotus’ disgust on each occasion.⁷ More generally, however, the Histories lack the kind of pathological discomfort with interpreters and language difference that Plutarch’s Themistocles demonstrates, and the interpreter’s death accordingly plays no part in Herodotus’ account of the invasion. Language and bilingualism for Herodotus, as Rosaria Munson has comprehensively demonstrated, “represents a particularly unproblematic area of difference”, between ethnic groups, and is a difference that can be easily overcome by the use of interpreters.⁸

Such interpreters, however, are conspicuous by their absence from the Histories, and appear in name in only six episodes throughout the work, and only once in connection with Herodotus’ personal description of his travels.⁹ Interpreters do not generally appear in ancient sources as often as they may have been used,¹⁰ but Herodotus’ silence concerning the role is still noteworthy. Xenophon, for instance, makes numerous references to his own use of interpreters during his travels with the Ten-Thousand, and demonstrates clear awareness of the many varieties of translation involved in inter-ethnic communication.¹¹ It is, therefore, possible to read the presence or absence of interpreters within the Histories as a matter of “narrative convenience”,¹² and it is certainly the case that the overwhelming majority of Herodotean conversations occur without any specified linguistic mediation. The Histories’ conversational immediacy should not be used to suggest, however, that Herodotus was himself necessarily multilingual and comfortable with either the spoken or written forms of the languages employed by the cultures described in his work.¹³ On the contrary, rather than demonstrating any mastery of non-Greek languages, Herodotus in fact occasionally betrays a lack of awareness of the workings of languages like Old Persian, such as in his claim that all Persian names end in the letter sigma, or that the names Artaxerxes and Xerxes share a root.¹⁴ Further, Herodotus admits to relying on Greek translations of Persian imperial stēlai,¹⁵ and must have employed intermediaries to interpret documents like the Bisitun inscription that were important to his work.¹⁶ It is perhaps reasonable to assume that Herodotus could have attained some degree of practical facility in non-Greek languages over the course of his travels, but, as Lloyd has put it, “this does not mean that [he] would be capable of dealing with Iranian theology or of extracting detailed information on the organization of the army dispatched by Xerxes to bring the Greeks to heel”.¹⁷ Herodotus the histōr may appear multilingual and conversant with all the languages and cultures that he encounters in the Histories,¹⁸ but Herodotus the traveler required linguistic intermediaries, despite their seemingly irregular narrative appearances.

This sustained absence of hermēnees throughout the work accordingly leaves the rare moments when they do appear subsequently marked and allows Herodotus to explore the ethnographic and narrative consequences of such figures. Herodotus’ treatment of hermēnees demonstrates a characteristicof the balance at work in effective cross-cultural communication: language barriers can be easily and straightforwardly overcome by means of an interpreter, but understanding and meaningful communication between ethnic groups can only result from careful cultural explanation and positioning, a kind of ancient “thick description” that the Histories and their histōr serve to provide.¹⁹ Hermēnees, however, appear too seldom in the Histories to carry this burden alone or to represent a truly concerted and effective pattern on Herodotus’ part. So, their presence must also serve a narrative function. On each of their appearances, therefore, interpreters serve as part of Herodotus’ apparatus of inquiry and help to define and focalize the roles of both the histōr and his audience, while also marking points in the Histories’ narrative of cultural translation that require the intervention of the work’s archtranslator, Herodotus himself.²⁰

The most important appearances of interpreters in the Histories occur during the interview between Croesus and Cyrus, the journey of the Ichthyophagoi to Ethiopia, and Herodotus’ own interactions with his personal interpreter in Egypt. Before engaging more fully with these episodes, however, it is first necessary to examine Herodotus’ more general treatment of hermēnees in Egypt, Persia, and Scythia, in order to illuminate some of the patterns that will characterize the figure’s employment in the rest of the Histories.

Hermēnees in the logoi

Egypt

Herodotus mentions his own practical interactions with interpreters on only one occasion,²¹ but his discussion of the role of interpreters in Egyptian society, while brief, sheds light on the ethnolinguistic position of these figures and their employers, and on the relationship between interpreters and Herodotus’ own patterns of inquiry. The first of these general references appears in Herodotus’ description of Psammetikhos I’s conquest of Egypt, achieved with the help of Greek and Carian mercenaries, whom he then allowed to settle in the country. Psammetikhos subsequently sent certain Egyptian youths to the Greek encampments to learn the language (Hdt. 2.154.2–3):

καὶ δὴ καὶ παῖδας παρέβαλε αὐτοῖσι Αἰγυπτίους τὴν Ἑλλάδα γλῶσσαν ἐκδιδάσκεσθαι· ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων ἐκμαθόντων τὴν γλῶσσαν οἱ νῦν ἑρμηνέες ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ γεγόνασι.

Moreover, he entrusted Egyptian boys to them to be taught Greek. The interpreters in Egypt today are descended from these boys who had mastered the language.²²

Herodotus does not openly investigate Psammetikhos’ motives for taking such a step, but these interpreters in all likelihood represent part of the pharaoh’s attempt to regulate communication with foreign mercenaries.²³ Psammetikhos’ preparations chime with his established interests in language acquisition and childdevelopment,²⁴ and so represent a possible connection between these hermēnees and a type of official form of inquiry, a connection that Herodotus compounds in his focus on the relationship between interpreters and mathēsis, “learning”. Mathēsis is a recurring concept in Herodotus’ discussion of hermēnees,²⁵ appearing in this instance in the grammatically redundant ἐκμαθόντων τὴν γλῶσσαν, and marks even this bare reference to interpreters as one fundamentally associated with historiē.

Herodotus then allows his reader to witness the importance of these hermēnees in practice. The Greeks of the Stratopeda, “military camps”, and the Egyptians, Herodotus relates, engage in bi-directional exchanges mediated by interpreters,²⁶ such that the Greeks in general gain knowledge of Egypt through them rather than through the Egyptians themselves (Hdt. 2.154.4):

τούτων δὲ οἰκισθέντων ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ οἱ Ἕλληνες οὕτω ἐπιμισγόμενοι τούτοισι τὰ περὶ Αἴγυπτον γινόμενα ἀπὸ Ψαμμητίχου βασιλέος ἀρξάμενοι πάντα καὶ τὰ ὕστερον ἐπιστάμεθα ἀτρεκέως· πρῶτοι γὰρ οὗτοι ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ἀλλόγλωσσοι κατοικίσθησαν.

Once settled in Egypt, the Greeks intermingled with the Egyptians to such an extent that we now accurately know all Egyptian history, beginning from the reign of King Psammetikhos onward. For these were the first alloglōssoi who settled in Egypt.

The kinds of interactions that Herodotus describes here between the Greeks and Egyptians go well beyond the mute cross-cultural exchanges that he details elsewhere in the work.²⁷ Rather, the Greeks have knowledge of the history of the country, τὰ περὶ Αἴγυπτον γινόμενα, and Herodotus is sure to underline the accuracy of this information for his own ethnographic project, stressing that the accounts on which he relies are atrekēs.²⁸ Furthermore, the reference to the Greeks as alloglōssoi rather than xenoi or metoikoi, indicates the importance and persistence of the ethnolinguistic split between the Greeks and the Egyptians in this instance and, notably, from an Egyptian perspective.²⁹ The Greeks are the outsiders in this encounter, the alloglōssoi characterized by their lack of linguistic assimilation, and hence seem to have themselves benefitted from the interpreters they had trained earlier in the same chapter. The lines of inquiry from Egyptian logioi to Herodotus hence pass through the hermēnees that operated as the poros between these Greek and Egyptian communities in the Nile Delta, and Herodotus is clear to emphasize the provenance of the information that he subsequently provides.³⁰

Herodotus mentions this class of Egyptian hermēnees again in his list of the different castes within Egyptian society, noting that (Hdt. 2.164.1):

ἔστι δὲ Αἰγυπτίων ἑπτὰ γένεα, καὶ τούτων οἱ μὲν ἱρέες, οἱ δὲ μάχιμοι κεκλέαται, οἱ δὲ βουκόλοι, οἱ δὲ συβῶται, οἱ δὲ κάπηλοι, οἱ δὲ ἑρμηνέες, οἱ δὲ κυβερνῆται. γένεα μὲν Αἰγυπτίων τοσαῦτά ἐστι, οὐνόματα δέ σφι κεῖται ἀπὸ τῶν τεχνέων.

There are seve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I The methodology of ethnic identification in Herodotus
• PART II Ethnicity among the Greeks
• PART III Ethnic identity among the Barbaroi
• PART IV Reflections of Herodotean ethnic historiography
• Index Locorum
• General Index