Herodotus 1.1-95 (in English)

Summary:

1.1-5: Proem, women snatching by Greeks and barbarians
1.6-25: Kings of Lydia before Croesus (Gyges through Alyattes), including the stories of Gyges' rise to power and Arion
1.26-58: Croesus: Solon's visit, Adratus & Atys, Croesus tests oracles
1.59-64: Athens at the time: Peisistratus the tyrant
1.65-70: Sparts at the time: the Spartans successfully conquer Tegea
1.71-94: Croesus' war against Cyrus, ending in his miraculous salvation from the pyre

1) the Gyges story interestingly contrasts hearing and vision as means to belief: ὦτα γὰρ τυγχάνει ἀνθρώποισι ἐόντα ἀπιστότερα ὀφθαλμῶν (1.8). Candaules uses this argument to justify why Gyges should sneak in and see Candaules' beautiful wife naked. But when Gyges goes to see, bad things happen -- the wife makes Gyges kill her husband, ultimately leading to a curse on his whole family (incidentally we don't learn if the wife is so beautiful). In this case it would have been better for Gyges to rely on hearing over vision.

At other points too vision is deceptive, like when the Milesians fake prosperity with a feast (1.21-2). It's tempting to generalize for Herodotus as whole -- Herodotus' audience must also rely on his report over first-hand sight, and so perhaps Herodotus privileges that medium.

2) Herodotus states a purpose of his work is an explanation of why Greeks and barbarians fought each other (δι' ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι). For that reason, he starts with Croesus, "the first to begin unjust acts against the Greeks" -- and yet we never really get an explanation for why Croesus conquers the Asiatic Greeks. He just kinda does in 1.26.

3) We do get lots of other explanations for wars though, including Croesus' war against Persia (1.71-3). There we get several different kinds of explanation: 

  • large-scale generalizations about hard and soft peoples,
  • generalizations about human behavior (desire to expand one's empire),
  • contingent factors (Croesus and Alyattes' personal relationship)
  • fate

Seems like a 'yes and' approach to causality -- everything is overdetermined, and the relationship between these different causes is not well examined (to my eyes). Looks like Christopher Pelling has a 2019 book on causality in Herodotus, "Herodotus and the question why," favorably reviewed in BMCR

4) Solon's speech to Croesus has an idea pretty similar to Mimnermus, with similar language: αὐτίκα δὴ τεθνάναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος (Mimnermus 2.10) vs. ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν (Hdt. 1.31.3). I wonder if there is some complicated game with Mimnermus here -- the actual Solon apparently engaged with Mimnermus' thoughts on aging.



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