Interpreting Herodotus
Thomas Harrison and Elizabeth Irwin
Abstract
Charles W. Fornara’s Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay (1971) was a landmark publication in the study of Herodotus. It is well known in particular for its main thesis that the Histories should be read against the background of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars during which Herodotus wrote. However, it also includes penetrating discussion of other issues: the relative unity of Herodotus’ work; the relationship between Herodotus’ ethnographies and his historical narrative; and the themes and motifs that criss-cross the Histories, how ‘history became moral and Herodotus didactic’. Interpreting Herod ... More
Charles W. Fornara’s Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay (1971) was a landmark publication in the study of Herodotus. It is well known in particular for its main thesis that the Histories should be read against the background of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars during which Herodotus wrote. However, it also includes penetrating discussion of other issues: the relative unity of Herodotus’ work; the relationship between Herodotus’ ethnographies and his historical narrative; and the themes and motifs that criss-cross the Histories, how ‘history became moral and Herodotus didactic’. Interpreting Herodotus brings together a team of leading Herodotean scholars to look afresh at the themes of Fornara’s Essay, in the light of the explosion of scholarship on the Histories in the intervening years. What does it mean to talk of the unity of the Histories, or Herodotus’ ‘moral’ purpose? How can we reconstruct the context in which the Histories were written and published? And in what sense might the Histories constitute a ‘warning’ for his own, or for subsequent, generations?
Keywords:
Charles Fornara,
Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars,
Herodotus, contemporary context,
Herodotus Book 2,
ethnography,
moralism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198803614 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198803614.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Thomas Harrison, editor
Professor of Ancient History, University of St Andrews
Elizabeth Irwin, editor
Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University
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