Van Wees, Hans. "Herodotus and the Past." Pages 321-349 in Brill's Companion to Herodotus. Edited by Egbert Bakker, Hans van Wees, and Irene de Jong. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
In "Herodotus and the Past," Hans van Wees defends the notion that Herodotus was an historian. At the outset of the study, van Wees observes that Herodotus’s proem defines the scope of the subject quite widely, i.e. it is a universal history. Indeed, van Wees notes that The Histories cover events as far back in time as 11,000 years and cultures across Herodotus' known world. While van Wees acknowledges that the proem recalls the tradition and aims of epic poetry and so inveighs against the notion that Herodotus is an historian, he argues that Herodotus more significantly situates his work within the emerging discourse of intellectuals by referring to his work as an 'investigation' (historiê). To illustrate these points, van Wees identifies and comments on three of Herodotus’ central historical topics: "the origins of communities and customs, the rise and fall of powers, and the causes of war" (324). In the rest of the study, Van Wees discusses each of these topics, one by one, at some length.
First, van Wees explores Herodotus' interest in origins and, in particular, traces the way in which Herodotus seems to systematically undermine any notions of an autochthonous Hellenic civilization and culture. He argues that, over the course of The Histories, Herodotus provides a foreign origin to anything his audience might have proudly considered a distinctive of their civilization and culture. In support of this interpretation, van Wees provides a bewildering number of examples from The Histories in areas from economics to military tactics and weaponry to governance to women's dress to religion and even to foundational ideas about ethnicity.
Second, van Wees explores Herodotus’ interest in the rise and fall of civilizations. Herodotus, van Wees argues, pays particular attention to "the precise extent and duration of the 'leadership' (arkhê or hêgemonia) of the great powers of the past" (328). In the digressions about the various ANE civilizations, van Wees notes that Herodotus follows a pattern whereby "the territorial extent, political nature and chronological span of each [are] set out in notable detail" (330). Van Wees also detects Herodotus's persistent interest in the matter of tribute, such that the collection of tribute seems to be a Herodotean marker for empire. Still, despite the precision and detail with which Herodotus examines these things, van Wees admits that much of the information is "unreliable and indeed demonstrably false"; nevertheless, he argues that Herodotus' attempt bespeaks "an intense research effort" (334). Van Wees then briefly surveys some of the explanations that Herodotus proffers to explain the rise and fall of great powers, including the importance of unity, divine intervention, the role of rivals, rebellion, and soft living.
Under a new subject heading, van Wees continues the discussion with a narrower focus on Herodotus' account of the rise of Greek power. Van Wees notes that Herodotus, more so than even Thucydides, presents the nascent Greeks as an especially weak civilization, a weakness that primarily stems from the internecine conflicts of the city-states. Conversely, their power to resist the Persians ultimately derives from their willingness, in particular the willingness of Athens, to put aside divisions for the common cause of Greece.
Third, van Wees explores Herodotus' interest in the causes of war. In particular, van Wees contends that Herodotus provides a remarkably impartial examination of the causes. He notes that Herodotus repeatedly records allegedly Persian perspectives that attribute primary blame for the conflict to the Greeks. This argument, however, seems particularly weak. For, although van Wees is quite correct that Herodotus records such perspectives, the work as a whole undermines the efficacy of those perspectives. In my view, the clear over-reaching cause of the Persian wars, according to Herodotus, is the hubris and insatiable imperialism of oriental despots, such that any culpability attributed to the Greeks appears as nothing more than a pretext.
In conclusion, van Wees makes a final, and in my mind specious, argument. He admits that Herodotus also makes light of religious phenomena and explains the past in light of such phenomena but then concludes that Herodotus' exploration of the topics van Wees analyzes is sufficiently modern such that Herodotus can still be called a historian. This is a false dichotomy, in my opinion, as it implies that the 'religious' explanations can be separated from the 'historical' explanations. In ancient historiography, however, these modes of explanation are inseparable and, as such, Herodotus should not be evaluated as an historian by our standards—in which case, I think he would fail. Instead, he should be evaluated by the standards of ancient historiographers and thus not regarded as the first historian, as van Wees concludes, but one in a stream of many ancient writers that were interested in the past.
Van Wees on Herodotus as Historian
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