Murray, Oswyn. "Herodotus and Oral History." Pages 16-44 in The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus. Edited by Nino Luraghi. Oxford: Oxford, 2001.
In "Herodotus and Oral History," Oswyn Murray investigates and elucidates Herodotus' use of oral tradition in The Histories. Murray confronts this issue in two stages. First, he examines Greek, and specifically Herodotean, oral tradition through a comparative lens and second, he applies the insights of this comparative approach to the apparent oral sources that lay behind Herodotus' Median and Persian cycles.
In the first part of his article, Murray draws on the works of Jan Vansina and Ruth Finnegan on oral tradition in Africa to formulate some essential parameters for understanding oral tradition. Murray responds first to the objection of Moses Finley that oral tradition is short-lived, noting that Vansina's empirical research demonstrates that oral traditions may reach 150-200 years in the past. Interestingly, this accords well with the limits of Herodotus' knowledge as the traditions that he recounts about the various Greek city-states are generally limited to a period after 650 BCE. For earlier information, Herodotus enters a decidedly more mythical realm, albeit that the transition from myth to tradition (or history) is quite permeable.
The next area that Murray explores is Vansina's distinction between fixed and free traditions. While fixed traditions depend on verbal formulae and are generally restricted to aetiological, genealogical, or proverbial and oracular traditions, free traditions are biographical or epic and much more adaptable. The aesthetic concerns for the latter are generally more pronounced and the emphasis in the accuracy of the presentation may focus more on "the mode and purpose" of the tradition rather than its historicity. Consequently, the relationship of such traditions to history may vary depending on the importance of the historical details to the purpose of the traditions. Murray observes that these free traditions are the predominant type of oral traditions found in Herodotus' Histories.
Murray then concludes this section by examining "the importance of the group" that preserves the traditions and the significance of their social and geographical location. He observes that Herodotus favours professional group memory, such as the merchant class traditions with respect to Naucratis and aristocratic traditions for Athens and Persia. Professional group memory, while more static and persistent than folk tradition, is "more limited and more liable to bias, for it reflects the interests of the group rather than those of the society as a whole" (27). These biases Murray calls 'deformation' and are particularly pronounced in the aristocratic and merchant class traditions on which Herodotus relies. These groups are less likely to have broader social concerns, as, for example, may exist in royal traditions (insofar as royalty are an embodiment or representatives of society).
This first part of the article is rich in detail and my summary inevitably falls short of encapsulating Murray's nuanced and important discussion. Yet, Murray does not end here and instead moves forward to look at Herodotus' apparent oral sources for his Persian and Median logoi. Murray starts this discussion by summarizing two salient points from his previous section: (1) that the question of historical reliability in oral traditions is secondary and must proceed from a clear understanding of the type of tradition, and (2) that the primary question must, therefore, center on the "channels of information" and types of tradition available to the enquirer.
So, the second part of the article attempts to identify the type and social and geographical locations for Herodotus' oral traditions of the Persians and Medians. At the outset, Murray excludes a priestly source for these traditions, observing Herodotus’ shallow depiction of religious concerns. Instead, Murray posits two likely channels. First, he agrees with David Lewis, who argues "that one source for Herodotus' information on Persia was the Greek element in the Persian imperial bureaucracy" (37). He also hypothesizes that this information, primarily covering the fall of the Medes and the rise of Cyrus, exhibits a "Median slant" and so may ultimately originate in Median aristocratic circles. Second, Murray revives the old argument of J. Wells that another block of information, specifically the siege of Babylon and the story of the intrigues leading to Darius' accession, originate with Zopyrus, a great-grandson of one of the conspirators in Darius' plot, "who deserted to Athens in the lifetime of Herodotus" (39). According to Murray, these oral sources, combined with some written materials such as lists, were the basis of Herodotus' accounts of the Medes and Persians. In my view, Murray's borrowed hypotheses are intriguing but he does not provide sufficient proofs from the texts themselves to substantiate these ideas; this section requires further development and support.
Murray concludes his article with some reflections on the implications of his reconstruction, especially as it pertains to a possible legacy or trace of Persian historiography preserved in the Greek historiography of Herodotus, Ctesias, and Xenophon. Murray suggests the Greek and Jewish Novelle, which bears considerable resemblance to Herodotus' Persian and Median logoi, may have a shared foundation in such a Persian court tradition. In this regard, Murray builds on and interacts with the seminal ideas of Momigliano on the development of Greek and Jewish historiography in the Persian period. For the Greek tradition, Murray posits the fusion of the Persian and Lydian kingdoms as the likely conduit for this influence.
In sum, Murray's article is an adept and careful analysis of the issue of oral tradition. He interacts with a range of cross-disciplinary literature and handles the insights from each in a judicious and insightful way. Scholars and students will undoubtedly profit from the article.
Murray on Oral History in Herodotus
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