Some Observations on Herodotus VII.139

Kent Shigetomi
Brown University

The question of whether or not Herodotus was guided by partisanship towards any particular city-state when he wrote the Histories has been much discussed. For many years, most scholars believed that Herodotus wrote the work as a partisan of Athens,[1] and VII.139 was taken as final proof of this.[2] Within the last fifty years, however, such a view has come under criticism. The result of these attacks has not been so much an increased polarity of viewpoints (Herodotus the pro-Athenian vs. Herodotus the nonpartisan), as a continual modification of theories,[3] stemming from the axiom that Herodotus must be considered in his historical context. It is with this key point in mind that one must consider the Histories, and by extension, the problematic chapter VII.139. To be understood correctly, the passage must first be broken down to its bare elements and then analyzed. Only then can be discern whether or not Herodotus expressed any pro-Athenian sentiments in the chapter, and if he did not, exactly what Herodotus was trying to convey. Secondly, VII.139 cannot be examined in isolation; the chapters preceding and following it must be scrutinized in order to comprehend its position relative to the rest of the work.

In his book on Herodotus, Charles Fornara made a major contribution toward a proper evaluation of Herodotus' Histories. Not only did Fornara realize that Herodotus had to be considered in his historical context, but he also propounded a theory about Herodotus' motivation behind the Histories. Fornara argued that the history was a lens through which his contemporaries could view present events. "Herodotus' intention was to make his listeners understand the crisis of the day (the Peolponnesian War) in historical perspective."[4] The predominant themes in the history are ones which had relevance to the people of Herodotus' day: the instability of human fortune, the sad inevitability of war, and the struggle for freedom against an imperial power. Moreover, Fornara correctly observed that Herodotus' literary technique is primarily artistic, not historical.[5] Herodotus uses the methods of the dramatist: understatement, separation between narrative and narrator, and indirect expression of opinion. In the end, Herodotus is able to convey as much by what he does not say as by what he does.

With these in mind, the passage can now be studied. Herodotus says:

And here I feel constrained to deliver and opinion, which most men, I know, will dislike, but which, as it seems to me to be true, I am determined not to withhold. Had the Athenians, from fear of the approaching danger, quitted their country, or had they without quitting it submitted to the power of Xerxes, there would certainly have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea; in which case the course of events by land would have been the following. Though the Peloponnesians might have carried ever so many breastworks across the Isthmus, yet their allies would have fallen off from the Lacedaemonians, not by voluntary desertion, but because town after town must have been taken by the fleet of the barbarians; and so the Lacedaemonians would at last have stood alone, and standing alone, would have displayed prodigies of valour, and died nobly. Either they would have done thus, or else, before it came to that extremity, seeing one Greek state after another embrace the cause of the Medes, they would have come to terms with King Xerxes; and thus, either way Greece would have been brought under Persia. For I cannot understand of what possible use the walls across the Isthmus could have been, if the King had had the mastery of the sea. If then a man should now way that the Athenians were the saviors of Greece, he would not exceed the truth. For truly they held the scales, and whichever side they espoused must have carried the day. They too it was who, when they had determined to maintain the freedom of Greece, roused up that portion of the Greek nation which had not gone over to the Medes, and so, next to the gods, they repulsed the invader. Even the terrible oracles which reached them from Delphi, and struck fear into their hearts, failed to persuade them to fly from Greece. They had the courage to remain faithful to their land and await the coming of the foe. (Rawlinson's translation)

By breaking down the passage into its constituent parts, one finds that Herodotus basically makes five points.

(A) PREFATORY REMARK: He is constrained by the truth of his opinion to relate it even though he knows that it will be unpopular.

(B) IF the Athenians had left their country out of fear or had submitted Xerxes,

(C) THEN the Spartans would have

(1) EITHER fought to the end and died nobly,
(2) OR come to terms with Xerxes when all was lost.

(D) CONSEQUENTLY, Greece would have been under Persian control, because the walls across the Isthmus would have been useless against the Persian fleet.

(E) THEREFORE, the Athenians were the saviors of Greece, because they could have deserted the fight for freedom, but they did not, and by not doing so, they saved Greece.

(A) is truly remarkable not only because of what Herodotus says, but for how he says it as well. In VII.139 Herodotus explicitly states his opinion on an issue, whereas in the rest of the Histories he is usually more indirect,[6] using one of three other techniques: speeches, digressions, or the overall presentation of material designed to produce a dramatic effect. For example, in the Croesus logos, Herodotus puts a speech in the mouth of Solon to express his own views on the instability of fortune (I.30-32). The story of Polycrates and the Ring (III.39-43) reveals the inability of man to escape his allotted fate. By assuming a knowledge of history on the part of his listeners, Herodotus could expect his audience to judge what was presented to them without his explicit aid.[7]

In addition, VII.139 is the only instance where Herodotus is compelled to make a historical judgment. He mentions that he is constrained in four other instances, but these reports either deal with the gods (II.3.2, II.65.2) or are left out because they are outside the scope of the Histories (VII.96.1, VII.99.1). Perhaps it is more important that Herodotus' need to give his opinion in the face of widespread unpopularity not only demonstrates that he was convinced of its importance, but also proves that he knew his audience, as well. He knew their thoughts, and hence could construct the Histories in such a way that his methods would convey his messages effectively.

(B) and (C) are, respectively, the protasis and apodosis of a condition involving both the Athenians and the Spartans. (D) is the end result if the condition is fulfilled, and (E) is the conclusion to be drawn. (B) outlines two possible Athenian courses of action if they had not stayed to resist the Persians: either the Athenians would have fled Greece out of fear, or they would have stayed and submitted to Xerxes. Herodotus inferred that the Athenians could have done either of these things from the beginning. This is surprising if one assumes or believes Herodotus to harbor pro-Athenian sentiments. Why would he imply such a point if he were the "proclaimer of Athenian fame"?[8] Surely there is little fame to be won in turning tail or offering submission.

(C) is the main clause of the condition, hence it cannot take place unless the subordinate clause, (B), is fulfilled. This is the crucial point. For (C) to occur, (B) must take place first. Had the Athenians deserted the liberationist cause, the Spartans either would have stood alone, fought the Persians, and died with Honor, just as they would do at Thermopylae; or, when they had been left alone, they would have surrendered to Xerxes. At first Herodotus appears to assume that Sparta would never have Medised: it is only as an afterthought that he adds the possibility that Sparta might have been forced to surrender, but then only when she had been left alone, and her allies had been conquered by the Persian fleet. But he never even considers the possibility that Sparta would have Medised at the onset of Xerxes' invasion. Sparta's "readiness to fight to the last man in defense of freedom is never questioned from start to finish."[9] Athen's readiness is.

Herodotus' tactical reasoning in (D) is brilliant. He recognized that the Peloponnesian plan of fortifying the Isthmus would have been useless if the Persians held control of the sea, and consequently, (D) foreshadows the critical sea-battle of Salamis. (D) heightens the importance of the Athenian decision either to stay and fight or to surrender,[10] because if the Athenians had abandoned the cause, no matter what the Spartans did, Greece would have fallen into Persian hands. His arguments in (D) are unanswerable.

The reader is now led to (E), the conclusion: the Athenian were the saviors of Greece, because whichever side they supported must have won. They, as it were, held the "trump cards" which would win the land.[11] Advocates of the view that Herodotus was partial to Athens cite (A), his direct and emphatic statement about his opinion; (D) the denigration of the Peloponnesian strategy; and (E), the conclusion that Athens saved Greece, to bolster their point. It s outside the scope of this paper to determine whether or not the Histories as a whole were motivated by a need to justify or praise Athens; but it is within its scope, however, to ascertain if VII.139 was written in praise of Athens, contributes to such an end, or if Herodotus meant something else by it.

Herodotus implies that the Athenians had to decide whether to remain in Greece and face the Persians, to flee, or to give earth and water to Xerxes. "For truly they held the scales, and whichever side they espoused must have carried the day. They too it was who, when they had determined to maintain the freedom of Greece roused up that portion of the Greek nation that had not gone over to the Medes, and so, next to the gods, repulsed the invader."[12] In other words, the Athenians faced a choice. Spartan fortitude, however, was independent of any such decision, and absolute. To the Spartans there was no question about what they were to do. Fornara provides a helpful analogy. He observes that "the Athenians were crucial but Sparta was a rock. An Englishman, a Churchill, might say of American's contribution to the Second World War precisely what Herodotus has said of Athens."[13]

There are no speeches praising the Athenians in the rest of the Histories that compare to the three that Demaratus makes to Xerxes (VII.102 and 104; VII.209; and VII.234f.) praising the Spartans. Indeed, if VII.139 did not exist, one might conclude that Herodotus was a Spartan partisan. VII.39, then, cannot be taken as proof that Herodotus was an Athenian partisan because he implies that the Athenian devotion to the cause was not as strong as it could have been. Perhaps it is Herodotus' change of technique in VII.139, from an historical narrative to direct personal statement that leads scholars to believe that what he says in the chapter is evidence for his political sentiments.

One is now left with the inevitable question of determining exactly what Herodotus intended by VII.139. The answer lies in (D), wherein Herodotus points out the inefficacy of the walls across Isthmus. Without the Athenian fleet, the Persians would easily have been able to control the sea, and from there they could have made repeated raids on the Peloponnese, destroying one city after another. Hence Herodotus meant to register his opinion that without the Athenians, Greece would have fallen in 479. The Athenian fleet had been decisively important, since it tipped the scales in favor of the Greeks.

This is no doubt a view that would have been unpopular in his day, as shown b the speeches made by the Athenian representative and the Spartan ephor Sthenelaidas at the meeting of Sparta and her allies in 432, which were recorded by Thucydides. The Athenian representative first apologized for bringing up the matter of who saved Greece from the Persians during the Persian Wars, implying that the matter had been discussed a great deal in the past (Thuc. I.73.2). He continued by saying that the Persian defeat at Salamis "proved that the fate of Hellas depended on her navy. Now we contributed to this result in three important ways: we produced most of the ships, we provided the most intelligent of the generals, and we displayed the most unflinching courage."[14] No doubt much of this is Athenian polemic, but at the core, the Athenians are telling the truth: the fate of Greece depended on command of the sea, and with their fleet the Athenians contributed greatly towards the defense of Greece.

To this Sthenelaidas provided what would have been the standard rebuttal to that claim. "I do not understand these long speeches which the Athenians make. Though they said a great deal in praise of themselves, they make no attempt to contradict the fact that they are acting aggressively against our allies and against the Peloponnese. And surely, if it is the fact that they had a good record in the past against the Persians and now have a bad record as regards us, then they deserve to pay double for it, since, though they were once good, they have now turned out bad."[15] As mentioned above, Herodotus knew his audience, and for him to deliver his opinion when he knew that it would not be received favorably is a clear indication of the conviction of his view.

It would be foolish to consider VII.139 in isolation, and an examination of the surrounding chapters suggests certain interesting conclusions which shed light on Herodotus' literary technique. VII.132 gave a list of the states that presented earth and water, the traditional tokens of submission, to the Persians. In VII.133 Herodotus explains that Xerxes had not sent heralds to the Athenians or the Spartans because the heralds previously sent by Darius had been killed. The Athenians threw the heralds into the pit of punishment, and the Spartans threw the heralds into a well. This act brought a curse upon the Spartans (VII.134), and to purify themselves, they sent two men to Xerxes to die in retribution. Along the way, these two men went before Hydarnes, the Persian satrap of the seacoast of Asia Minor (VII.135). Hydarnes asked them whey they would not consent to Persian rule, because the King knew how to treat his friends. To this the Spartans replied that Hydarnes did not know what freedom was like, but had he known, he would have encouraged them to fight with any means possible. In VII.136-13, Xerxes released the two men, and Herodotus noted that the curse had been mollified for a while, only to flare up again in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War. In VII.138 Herodotus returned to the narrative of Xerxes' expedition, and explained that all of Greece was the true object of Xerxes' cupidity, not only Athens. Some states had given earth and water, but the ones that had not were in panic. Then, in VII.139, operating from the assumption that Spartan devotion to liberty was unmitigated, he flatly stated that without the Athenian fleet, Greece would have fallen under Persian control.

This provides a splendid introduction to the mean behind the fleet, Themistocles. In VII.140-141, the Athenians receive a terrible oracle bidding them to flee Greece. Dismayed, they approached the delphic Oracle again, but this time as suppliants, and received a second oracle, which recommended that they hide behind the "wooden walls." Greece was in chaos, and the Athenians, who Herodotus has just said were the only people who could have saved Greece, were about to quit their country. But a figure emerged who offered a novel interpretation of the oracle; his name was Themistocles.

Themistocles' introduction is riveting. Herodotus creates a scene of intense drama, with Themistocles at the center,[16] thereby heightening Themistocles' importance for the preservation of Greece. He persuaded the Athenians to stay and fight, and once they had decided to stay, the future of Greece was secured. One can now see how very precisely Herodotus has constructed this section of the Historia. From VII.132-138 the picture becomes ever bleaker as city after city submits to Xerxes. Clearly all of Greece was in danger. The spartans would never have knuckled under, but if the Athenians could be persuaded to desert, Greece was doomed. To make matters worse, the Athenians had just received oracles advising them to leave their city. In the midst of this confusion Themistocles convinces the Athenians to remain loyal to the cause and thereby almost singlehandedly saved Greece.

The conclusions may be briefly summarized. By breaking VII.139 down and then analyzing it relative to the surrounding chapters, three conclusions were reached. First, the passage does not reflect any pro-Athenian sentiments on the part of Herodotus. If he had wanted to express such feelings, he would have described the will of the Athenians as more resolute. Secondly, the passage can be regarded as Herodotus' considered realization of the decisive importance of the Athenians in repulsing the Persians. And thirdly, the placement of the passage in the history seems to have been calculated to produce a dramatic effect. The increasing gloominess from VII.132 to VII.141 gives way to hope, as Themistocles, the man who not only persuaded the Athenians to build a fleet of ships in 483, but convinced them to stay and fight in 479, enters the history.

[1] For example, Eduard Meyer posited that Herodotus wrote "as a defender of Athens and her policies, as they were guided by Pericles, which led to the Peloponnesian War." Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1899)) II. 196ff. Felix Jacoby wrote that Herodotus was the "proclaimer of Athenian fame. It was not that he wished to defend the policies of Pericles but rather to portra the services to Hellas of the state now guided by Pericles in a time when no one wished to hear anything about these services." RE Suppl. II. 359.43-7. For a discussion of the problem, see Charles W. Fornara, Herodotus. An Interpretive Essay, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 35-53, esp. 41-44. Hereafter referred to as Herodotus.

[2] C. E. Robinson, ed., Herodotus Book VII, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 121, gives a typical example of this: "This passage (VII.139) brings out how pro-Athenian Herodotus was. It was probably written shortly after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens was very unpopular in Greece."

[3] The first criticism of the idea that Herodotus was a partisan of Athens that I have found is by Joseph Wells, in Studies in Herodotus, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923), 153ff. He observed, "Certainly if Herodotus put his history together to glorify Periclean Athens, he chose a very unsuitable subject, and treated it in a very curious manner." Wells believed that Herodotus was interested in the question about the "period which culminated in the defeat of Xerxes. The relations of East and West, Colonization in general, the position and credibility of the Oracle of Delphi, the lines of Greek trade, these and such questions as these are the subjects of Herodotus." In my opinion, Wells makes Herodotus out to be an antiquarian, ignorant or at least uncaring of the world around him.

[4] Herodotus, 80.

[5] Ibid., 61-61, 65.

[6] Valerie French, "Herodotus: Revisionist Historian," in Panhellenica: Essays in History and Historiography in Honor of Truesdell S. Brown, Stanley S. Burnstein and Louis A. Okin, eds., (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1980), 32; Raphael Sealey, "Thucydides, Herodotus, and the Causes of War," Classical Quarterly, N.S. 7 (1957): 6f.; and H. Immerwahr, "Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus," Transactions of the American Philological Association 87 (1956): 254, 276ff.

[7] Fornara, Herodotus, 61-62. See 62-74 for a discussion of this method used in Herodotus' portrayal of Pausanias and Themistocles, and 81-83 for a discussion of how the method is used with Athens. Cf. John Hart, Herodotus and Greek History, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982), 111, 168-170; and J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus, (Boston: Twayne Pbulishers, 1982), 166. K. H. Waters, Herodotus on Tyrants and Despots: A Study in Objectivity, (Weisbaden: Franz Steiner, 1971), esp. 84-100, takes an opposing view.

[8 ]The quotation is from F. Jacoby, RE Suppl. II 359.58-64.

[9] N. G. L. Hammond, "Herodotus' Concept of History," a review of Fornara, Herodotus, in Classical Review N.S. 24 (1974): 41.

[10] I discuss this in detail below.

[11] The analogy is borrowed from John Hart, Herodotus and Greek History, 109.

[12] VII.139.5 Emphases mine. The fact that Herodotus first recognizes the gods as the "real saviors of Greece," as it were, seems to me to be significant. It seems to bear a direct relation to Herodotus' concept of the jealous god,and Xerxes' prefatory experiences at the beginning of Book VII. Just as the gods take an active role in driving Xerxes to attack Greece, Herodotus here remarks that in the end, it was the gods who were responsible for repulsing Xerxes. By doing so, they were, in fact, fulfilling his destined defeat.

[13] Fornara, Herodotus, 50.

[14] Thucydides I.74.1. All translations of Thucydides are by Rex Warner.

[15] Thucydides I.86.1.

[16] Fornara, Herodotus, 67-74, esp. 68, where Fornara analyzes this passage.