"Digressive anecdotes, narrative excursus, and historical thought in Herodotus". Digressions in Classical Historiography: International Conference, University of the Peloponnese, 26/9/2020.
By Ioannis Konstantakos and Vasileios Liotsakis
https://www.academia.edu/44175454/_Digressive_anecdotes_narrative_excursus_and_historical_thought_in_Herodotus_Digressions_in_Classical_Historiography_International_Conference_University_of_the_Peloponnese_26_9_2020?rhid=40951081566&swp=rr-rw-wc-4488596&nav_from=fdeadfbc-d1ab-460e-b6cc-5a9feedcc27b
THE PAPER: Next to Apuleius, De Quincey, Robert Burton, Milorad Pavić, and Salman Rushdie, Herodotus is one of the most digressive writers in world literature. One of his favourite types of digression is the short narrative excursus, an anecdote or brief historical legend that is inserted, in an occasional and associative manner, into a broader storyline of different thematic content and constitutes a temporary deviation from the main stream of the narrative. Such digressive tales are not to be attributed solely to Herodotus’ Erzählfreude and his will to preserve every memorable story he collected in the course of his long researches. Many of them are connected with important recurrent themes and thought patterns of Herodotus’ oeuvre, such as the irruption of the marvellous into ordinary human existence, the confrontation between power and wisdom, or the unexpected verification of predictions. Above all, the most enthralling of these narrative deviations encapsulate in a graphic manner a significant finding of Herodotus’ research, an argument or an idea that is central to the author’s anthropological worldview or to his exposition of historical experience. The digressive anecdotes look back and forward to important episodes of Herodotus’ main narrative, echo characteristic statements of the author’s philosophy of history, and thus serve as connective links within an intricate network of historical thought. In the most successful cases, these tales schematize and illustrate deeper forces which underlie the development of the historical process and regulate the course of human societies. They give aesthetic form to basic laws which, in Herodotus’ mind, determine the condition of humanity. This function of narrative digressions will be analyzed through the examination of a series of examples from Herodotus’ work. Thrasybulus’ riddling advice to Periander (5.92ζ-η) highlights the tyrannical structure of the cosmos and simultaneously reveals the hubristic desire of the powerful to replicate the cosmic order to which they are themselves subject. The confrontation of Greeks and Indians before King Darius (3.38.3-4) may be read in parallel with other celebrated disputes of the Herodotean narrative (e.g. Solon and Croesus, Cambyses and the Ethiopian ruler) and points to the impossibility of mutual understanding between different cultures as the prime mover of history. The final digression of the entire work, Cyrus’ dialogue with Artembares (9.122), looks back to the very beginning of the Persians’ rise to world power; offering a suitable epilogue to this most digressive of compositions, it establishes the alternation of dominion and decline in the life of nations ― a demonstration of Herodotus’ capital axiom about the circularity of history THE CONFERENCE: A very exciting small conference on digressions in ancient Greek and Roman historiography took place this weekend (26 and 27/9/2020), hosted by the University of the Peloponnese and organized by Vasileios Liotsakis and Mario Baumann (http://phil.uop.gr/images/anak/anak_sinedrio_26-27_09_20.pdf). The proceedings will eventually be published in book form. The papers in the conference covered the entire range of ancient Graeco-Roman historical writing, from Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, via Polybius, Diodorus and the Hellenistic historians of Alexander, to Sallust, Caesar, Arrian and Tacitus. Two main themes have emerged, which run through the papers and unify the approaches to the various different historical authors: 1) Digressions are not superfluous; they are not pieces of detachable material which could be easily discarded. On the contrary, almost all the speakers showed that digressive excursuses, in each and every one of the ancient historians, are intrinsically connected with the overall themes and aims of the historical work. The digressions are usually placed at key points of the composition and serve to highlight important issues of historical thinking, to underscore capital events, or to bring forward the characters of the main protagonists. 2) Nonetheless, at least from Thucydides onwards, most ancient historiographers feel the need to justify the inclusion of digressions in their work. They adduce arguments or even apologetic statements in order to explain the interruption of the linear historical narrative by excursive materials. Many other questions of great value were discussed at the conference, such as the definition of what constitutes a digression (which depends indeed on the historical work under examination); the techniques and linguistic gimmicks by which ancient historical authors try to demarcate digressions, distinguishing them from but also incorporating them into the surrounding historical narrative; and the meta-narrative or meta-historiographical function of digressive sections, which may function also as a channel of meditation on the composition of historical narrative. And one memorable thing, which we have learned from the paper of Mario Baumann: the legendary Sicilian lawgiver Charondas was credited with inventing free-of-charge education (δωρεάν παιδεία)! He was the first to institute schools in which all citizens' children were taught reading and writing without paying any fees. An example to remember indeed, in the hard times for humanistic education which are upon us, and in those that lie still ahead.
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