Civil1z@tion

I actually think Herodotus was a great historian in one key aspect: where he doesn't know the real answer he provides several possible explanations. Thucydides pretends he knows the answers to everything and while he's less big on the supernatural, he has a very definite view point and bias. As for Herodotus, accuracy was important (Thucydides makes a lot about his "rigorous" methods but really we only have his word for that), but Herodotus realized not everything could be seen with accuracy.

As for his inaccuracies, they are mainly in the specifics (like the Persian army was no where near as big as Herodotus puts it, though it did heaviely outnumber the Greeks). The general story line is correct. I have to defend Herodotus somewhat because he gets a lot of bad press. Whether or not Cyrus the Great conquered Sardis by scaling the part of the wall where a protection ritual hadn't been done is irrelevant in deciding whether his general narrative is right. Cyrus did conquer Lydia and Croesus was definitely the king of Lydia. Darius I did try and fail to conquer Greece at marathon, the stand of the 300 (well really 1300 but no one remembers the Thespians) did really take place, and Greece did repel the second Persian invasion.

That there is corrobating evidence for Herodotus' work means that we should consider his work a reliable source, but if Herodotus was the only source we had talking about these events, historians would probably trust the general narrative anyways (partly out of necessity).

Rick Sumner

Herodotus didn't care if it could be seen with accuracy or not. He weaves a story around known facts, but that's fundamentally no different than modern historical fiction.

This is an apologetic, and doesn't get us around the problem noted above.

Does it seem likely to you that Solon and Croesus met? I'd call it all but certain that they didn't. Do you think the story could have existed outside of Herodotus' History? I'd call it all but certain he invented, rather than received it.

We can dress it up however we want, but the simple reality is that Herodotus made the story up, and then lied in trying to pass it off as history. It's a great story. It just isn't a true one.

To be sure, it serves as an example of what history was to the ancient mind. But to be equally fair, it's disingenuous to suggest that efforts hadn't improved between Herodotus and the NT. Certainly there is a world of difference between, for example, History and Tacitus' Annals. Consequently, the analogy is damaged on more fronts than one.

No it doesn't. There's corroborating evidence for the Manson girls account of the events at the Spahn movie ranch. I don't think anyone would consider them reliable.

No they wouldn't. The "general narrative" couldn't exist without corroborating evidence. And the simple reality is often there is evidence that says Herodotus was wrong.

But even beyond that, and even if your assertion about what historians would do is accurate, so what? That just means that historians would get it wrong. He still isn't working for you here.

andrewcriddle

Herodotus worked largely on the basis of oral readition.

This causes major problems for his accounts of events before say 550 BCE.

His accounts of later events such as the actual Persian Wars with Greece are more reliable.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

I agree that the account is not historical. But it may not be sheer invention by Herodotus. According to wiki-Croesus Andrew Criddle

Toto

Abe is shooting from the hip again and missing.

The question of a historical Socrates is treated as it should be. There is slightly more evidence that Socrates was historical than there is that he was merely a fictional character in Plato's narrative. But no one gets upset at Socrates Mythicists or compares them to pseudoscientists.

Rick Sumner

But this shouldn't be surprising. Events that were more recent (and more widely known) are of course going to be presented more accurately, even if he's writing history only ostensibly. It's harder to call fiction history if your audience knows better.

I don't mean to suggest that Herodotus had no intention of recording any sort of accurate record, perhaps I worded that badly. It might be more apt to suggest that, in the absence of reliable information, he had no qualms about making it up, which leads to difficulty in telling what's real and what isn't.

ApostateAbe

Do you mean to imply that there are or were a group of skeptics who believed that Socrates never existed?

Rick Sumner

I'll have to check the paper and see what Raubitschek has to say, but it seems to me that while we may suggest that Herodotus didn't make up the meeting, the details of the narrative have all the hallmarks of being his.

Toto

There's no reason for such skeptics to band together. The idea is not especially threatening to anyone.

Did Socrates really exist?Why not treat Jesus the same way?

ApostateAbe

OK, thanks, I would love to know how historians of the archaic period have treated the skepticism about the existence of Socrates. I guess it does make sense that there would be a few atheists on the Internet who would call into question the existence of Socrates, since the evidence of his existence is just a little better to that of Jesus. I imagine that such historians react only with a facepalm, though I could be wrong.