Instructive Irony in Herodotus: The Socles Scene
Richard Fernando Buxton
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 52 (2012) 559–586 (2012)
Abstract
EVER SINCE Hermann Strasburger’s landmark 1955 essay, “Herodot und das perikleische Athen,” scholarly attention has been drawn to the deeply ambivalent por- trait of democratic Athens found in the Histories. In particular, frequent depictions, in the later books, of cynical behavior on the part of the Athenians and their manipulative, emblematic leader Themistocles have been read as foreshadowing the con- temporary context in which the Histories was completed. This was Greece in the first half of the Peloponnesian War, the unity of the Persian War period shattered by the imperial overreach of Athens. Some scholars have even argued that Herodotus constructs his authorial persona as a ‘warner’, analogous to internal figures like Croesus who repeatedly attempt to dissuade the rulers of bygone empires from sliding into destructive overconfidence. In this view Herodotus’ narrative of Persian defeat functions, at least in part, as a cautionary tale aimed at an increasingly despotic Athens about the negative eventual con- sequences of its exploitative behavior.
Such an approach implicitly assumes a clear division in Herodotus between the despotic tendencies of the Athenians, which would become dominant in the latter half of the fifth century, and more positive aspects of their democracy, which contribute decisively to the Greek victory over Persia. In the text these constructive aspects are rooted to a large degree in the high value placed on freedom (ἐλευθερία) by the Athenians. It is, after all, the motivational capacity of this ideal, together with the “virtuous poverty” of Hellas, to which He- rodotus repeatedly attributes the victory of the non-Medizing Greeks against such overwhelming odds—a victory which he depicts Athens as spearheading.6 Accordingly, the imperial practices of Athens, both during the Persian War period and afterwards, would represent a striking reversal from a normative commitment to freedom critical to Greece’s broader self- definition.
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