Cartledge, Paul and Emily Greenwood. "Herodotus as a Critic: Truth, Fiction, Polarity." Pages 353-371 in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus. Edited by Egbert Bakker, Hans van Wees, and Irene de Jong. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
In "Herodotus as a Critic: Truth, Fiction, Polarity," Paul Cartledge and Emily Greenwood explore the nature of and ways in which truth are used in The Histories. The authors start with a short anecdote, drawing on The Histories itself, about the challenges of 'speaking truth to power.' Cartledge and Greenwood argue that Herodotus, like many of his characters, faced the challenge of asserting truth counter to the established or accepted beliefs of his audience. In doing so, however, the authors are quick to point out that Herodotus does not always assert truth in the same way or with the same degree of certainty. In the article, Cartledge and Greenwood explore these different levels of truth claims.
In the first section of the article, Cartledge and Greenwood start their analysis by quoting the work of Fehling who evaluates Herodotus by modern standards of historiography and concludes that Herodotus fails to meet these standards. Fehling, therefore, considers Herodotus a "pseudo-historian." Cartledge and Greenwood argue that Fehling's approach is misguided and does not respect the nature of Herodotus' work. They note that Herodotus often positions himself in different ways vis-à-vis the stories he retells. Thus, Herodotus will limit his 'authorial guarantee' of each story’s veracity. He will, e.g., state that he was not an eyewitness to the event or express his own reservations concerning a story’s veracity or submit multiple versions of the same event.
The authors argue that Herodotus' reservations concerning his sources reflect the challenges he faces in criticizing the commonly held beliefs and myths of his audience. The authors argue that this relationship of truth to power is even embedded in the work itself, such that traditional forms of power, such as kings and tyrants, often lack or fail to perceive truth. In this regard, the authors cite the role of Solon as truth-teller to the tyrant Croesus and the function of oracles received by various characters in The Histories.
While the characters in The Histories often rely on obscure or esoteric sources of knowledge, the authors observe that Herodotus juxtaposes this inscrutable knowledge with his own scrutable knowledge based on independent inquiry. He is, therefore, able to relate incredible stories yet observe a critical distance and so expose “the uncritical nature of popular lore in comparison to his more critical approach to the past" (360). Consequently, the authors argue that Herodotus' approach reveals a 'predilection' with gradations of certainty and suggest the metaphor of 'being on the right track' or following a path or road to truth aptly describes Herodotus' historiographical project.
In the second section of the article, Cartledge and Greenwood investigate the concept of polarity and the limitations it places upon Herodotus' presentation. The authors explain that polarization is the opposition of two parts that "are both antithetical and mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the category they together represent or designate" (364). The authors investigate three polarities in The Histories: Greeks versus Barbarians, Men versus Women, and Gods versus Mortals.
Examining the Greeks versus Barbarians polarity, the authors show how Herodotus modulates the polarity by presenting Egypt as an inversion of Greece or switching viewpoints to present the Barbarian (especially Persian) perspective or complicating it through a morality tale about culturally conditioned norms. Examining the Men versus Women polarity, the authors show how Herodotus investigates gender constructions and the norms of gender relations within the Greek and Barbarian cultures. Examining the Gods versus Morality polarity, the authors show how Herodotus always takes the side of the divine and repeatedly illustrates the disaster that befalls those who overreach. The authors also point out Herodotus' conspicuous silence on the overweening pride of Pausanias after the battle of Plataea as described by Thucydides, probably because this would have worked against Herodotus' message that the Greeks "live up to the highest Hellenic ideals" (370).
After this, the article concludes rather abruptly with some final comments about whether or not these polarities are inherent to Greek thought and how Herodotus employed them as a critical 'weapon' to manage the expectations of the reader.
On the whole, there are valuable observations in the article but it lacks clarity and never quite sustains a central thesis, let alone proves one. The authors never explicitly connect the issue of polarity back to the issue of truth and indeed their conclusion fails to bring together the results of the investigation and its implications for Herodotus' status as historian.
Cartledge and Greenwood on Herodotus
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