SOURCE: "Herodotus' Perspective," in Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay, Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 59-74.

[In the following essay, Fornara contrasts Herodotus with Thucydides, suggesting that while Thucydides wrote for posterity, Herodotus's History addresses chiefly his own generation. Defending Herodotus against scholars who have found the History inconsistent and unscientific, Fornara calls him "essentially an artist" who mixes historical narrative with drama.]

Thucydides believed and claimed that he had written … a possession for all time. The boast may have struck his contemporaries as arrogant and rhetorical. To the modern world it is a truism. Our consciousness of the perfect justification of these words, however, deprives them of impact and robs them of all but superficial meaning. Yet their value is inestimable. They tell us, if we needed to be told, what stance he had adopted, what perspective he had taken, in writing his history. These words explain the principle of his selection and inclusion of material. Thinking of future generations more than of his immediate audience, his task as he defined it was to create a history of the Peloponnesian War that would be self-explanatory; no special knowledge beyond his own history would be required to secure perfect comprehension of the important and universally relevant issues. He neither played upon the knowledge of his contemporaries nor allowed that knowledge to deflect him from his course. He would not be constrained to include matter which his audience might well expect to find—gossip about Pericles, intra-political strife, etc. Thus he divorced his account as much as he could from what he considered intrinsically irrelevant, whatever the expectations of his audience may have been, and he included material which they hardly needed to be told in order to make the picture clear to future generations lacking the specific knowledge of contemporaries. Thucydides' sense of the future is one of the most remarkable aspects of his genius. It dominates his history and justifies his boast. For this reason he is to us not only the most brilliant of historians but also, from our point of view, one of the most satisfactory. Although we miss a good deal by not seeing the world he described through the eyes of his contemporaries, and although we may question whether in certain cases he may not have omitted data important for our comprehension of the war, nevertheless, his conception of history or, rather, of the audience for which he was writing, guarantees that his history of the Peloponnesian War leaves nothing he considered relevant taken for granted.

The same sentence in which Thucydides proclaims the eternal relevance of his work ends by contrasting it with a 'declamation intended for a momentary display'.… The reference is to Herodotus; only his predecessor can here be intended. Thucydides is alluding to an historical work literally comparable to his own, one which was written … in a highly wrought and artistic fashion. That is enough to exclude the more austere and even scholarly works of Herodotus' predecessors and such later contemporaries as Hellanicus of Lesbos. The disapprobation contained in Thucydides' remark is hardly malicious or spiteful. Rather is it a consequence of what, in Thucydides' view, history should be and what Herodotus failed to make it. It reflects Thucydides' belief that Herodotus' perspective was wrong, that his great work was directed to a particular audience at a particular moment in time. In a word, Thucydides wrote for the future, Herodotus for his contemporaries. And in doing so, Herodotus, as Thucydides was very much aware, was incomplete and misleading or would eventually become so through the passage of time. That is probably one of the reasons Thucydides was moved to supplement his predecessor in several important details, as we shall see. It is enough to say here, however, that their difference in perspective, in their conception of the audience to which they were speaking, is of the greatest importance in attaining a just estimation of Herodotus' intent and method. For judged by our accustomed standards, Herodotus' technique is distinctly unusual. We have misconstrued him because automatically we read him in the same way that we read other historians such as Thucydides, who set the standard for all who follow. Although Thucydides wrote a work with an eye to later generations and attempted to present his material as scientifically as possible, Herodotus directed himself exclusively to his own generation. Only by reading him as if we were his contemporaries can his intentions be fully understood.

One further contrast between Herodotus and Thucydides, which is the corollary of that already mentioned, relates to the manner in which each of them present their material. If Thucydides is eminently 'scientific', Herodotus is essentially an artist. Herodotus' work, especially the last three books, is neither narrative nor 'drama', but something of both. He owed much to the Iliad and the Odyssey, as frequently has been pointed out. In spirit, however, and in general effect, his work is most like to the Athenian drama. Herodotus' reticence, his reliance on understatement, is the reticence of the dramatist who expresses his opinion through the characters of his creation. Though Herodotus could comment in his own person about whatever he wished, and does so frequently enough, this 'Ionic' and pedagogical strain in his work recedes in proportion as his work becomes dramatic. In VII-IX, for instance, he separates himself carefully from those scenes of greatest dramatic impact. Precisely as the audiences of Aeschylus and Sophocles were intended to form their conclusions without the explicit aid of the playwright, so does Herodotus demand or expect an involved audience participating in and judging what is evoked before them. Herodotus' artistic method is to lead the hearer by what he does not say as much as by what he does. Irony, pathos, paradox, and tragedy develop from his tacit dialogue with his audience. But it is a contemporary audience, whose expectations he could predict, not some future generation with different expectations, for which he was writing.

The truth of these contentions should become apparent from the examination of two test cases. His treatment of Pausanias and Themistocles has frequently been considered problematical or at least surprising. Both are excellent examples of his method and his standpoint.

Herodotus portrays Pausanias, the Regent of Sparta, as if he were the epitome of the knight sans peur et sans reproche. The picture he paints is one of the most detailed in the Histories—a companion piece to that of Themistocles. Unquestionably he expended the greatest care and thought in the elaboration of the picture, which is consistent and obtrusive. He tells us emphatically that at Plataea Pausanias 'won the finest victory of any man of whom we know,' and Pausanias is told substantially the same thing by a noble Aeginetan, Lampon son of Pytheus. 'O son of Cleombrotus, you have accomplished a great and splendid feat. God has granted you, since you have saved Greece, to lay up in store the greatest glory of any Greek of whom we know.' Shortly thereafter, Pausanias, whose attempt to keep the spoil secure is noted, is granted a tenth of it. Herodotus then relates that extraordinary story which has Pausanias look upon Xerxes' oriental luxury, that equipage which he gave over to Mardonius when he fled from Greece. Pausanias orders the servants to prepare the kind of dinner they were accustomed to serve to Mardonius. 'They did as they were bid and then Pausanias, after he saw the richly covered couches of gold and silver, and the gold and silver tables, and the dazzling display of the dinner, was thunder-struck by the good things set before him. He ordered his own servants to prepare a Laconian feast for the humour of it. After the dinner was prepared Pausanias laughed since the difference was great. He summoned the Greek generals and when they came Pausanias said, pointing to the display of each of the dinners, "I have assembled you because I want to show you the folly of the Mede. With a way of life such as this he came to take away from us our miserable fare." This it is said that Pausanias remarked to the generals.' In IX. 88, Pausanias shows compassion and charity to the children of men guilty of treachery. One further anecdote concerns Pausanias' solicitous and lofty treatment of a misused woman.

Herodotus' description of the Regent is surprising on two counts. In the first place, the dramatic acknowledgement of his personal contribution is unusual and surprisingly emphatic. Herodotus' interest is frankly biographical: the man interests him as much as his achievement. His account is also surprising in view of Pausanias' subsequent career and lamentable end. The question of his intent in depicting Pausanias as he has done, in sparing no effort to portray him as an extraordinarily noble and fortunate figure, naturally suggests itself. The question cannot be skirted by invoking a source hypothetically concerned to magnify Pausanias' role in 479 B.C. That the recollection of Pausanias' greatness managed to survive the obloquy cast upon his name is not to be believed—he was not another Nero, with people setting flowers on his grave. In any event, Herodotus' presentation must be the mirror of his own attitude and that presentation reveals a uniform conception of the Spartan Regent. For this reason, some have concluded that Herodotus' account of Pausanias is governed by scepticism about his guilt, that a natural implication of Herodotus' sketch is that he did not consider Pausanias to be the scoundrel others supposed.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. What surprises us is precisely what Herodotus was counting on but what we do not expect because this is a 'historical work'. It is almost as if we assume that Herodotus intended to write a competing version. When 'historians' are good to villainous characters they are setting the record straight, combating an erroneous tradition, repeating an apologetic source. We are so accustomed to completing Herodotus' account of Pausanias by adding to it as a matter of course the final chapters as recorded by Thucydides that we have forgotten that Herodotus could not know that Thucydides would tell of Pausanias' end. When we realize that he thought in no such terms, that he was confronting his audience independently and alone, the conclusion is as revealing as it is startling. If we had only Herodotus on the subject of Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus would indeed 'have laid up the greatest store of glory of any Greek'. It certainly did not occur to Herodotus that he could mislead anyone in this fashion. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that he could have wished to. It follows inescapably that Herodotus took for granted the knowledge of Pausanias' fall. Herodotus' intention was to build upon that knowledge; the reflections of his contemporaries are the precondition of his narrative. They believed, and Herodotus knew they believed, that Pausanias was a traitor. Herodotus' dramatic treatment of Pausanias takes its departure and acquires its significance from the common knowledge of his time. His portrait of Pausanias is in the light of that knowledge a masterpiece of irony and a harbinger of tragedy. Lampon's words have a double meaning. 'God has granted you to lay up in store the greatest glory of any Greek.' What God granted Pausanias threw away. The implicit lesson is not the less immediate because Herodotus studiously avoided any allusion to Pausanias' later hybris. On the contrary, it is the more impressive because of it. Herodotus has characterized the finest hour of a man whose degeneration provides a striking example of Herodotus' law of history, of the instability of good fortune … That is why his treatment of Pausanias is so carefully done and so eminent a feature of the ninth book.

Herodotus' method is artistic, not historical. He has created a drama to which the audience, as the 'dramatist' well knows, and indeed demands, will bring a level of comprehension that altogether changes its point. What appear to be mere anecdotes without direction are in reality magnificent and richly allusive passages. From the point of view of the audience, that fascination of Pausanias with the luxury of the Persians will have been only too clear. The vision proved too much for him. Herodotus, in depicting the scene, foreshadowed that later disaster and presupposed the knowledge of it. As a final example of his method, one so rich in irony that it needs no comment, let us consider the brave speech Pausanias delivers in refusing to maltreat the corpse of Mardonius, as was suggested by the same Lampon. 'O friend from Aegina, I am delighted by your good feeling and solicitude. Nevertheless you have strayed from sound judgement. For having raised me high in respect to fatherland and deed, you bring me down to nothing by urging me to do injury to the dead, saying that if I do this my fame will be greater. This is a thing a barbarian may suitably do and not a Greek. And them we despise. In this matter, therefore, I would neither desire to please the Aeginetans nor anyone else who desires it. It is enough for me to please the Spartans by acting piously and by speaking piously. And I say that Leonidas, whom you urge me to honour, has been honoured greatly. He and the rest of the dead at Thermopylae are honoured by the numberless wraiths of these men here. Do not you then approach me or advise me if you remain in the same opinion but be thankful that you go off unharmed.'

It is a magnificently ironic and tragic picture. One thinks of Oedipus damning himself, condemning what will prove to be his own tragic flaw. But this picture could be misleading; it depends on knowledge that is taken for granted. Perhaps that explains Thucydides' supplementary account. He may have felt obliged to provide it in order to keep the historical record unambiguous and free from what easily could become a deceptive tradition. Thucydides certainly was capable of such prognosis. It is also, I think, a superb example of what Thucydides had in mind when he spoke of the 'prize composition for the moment'. For Herodotus' concern was with the minds and emotions of his listeners, not with the inferences of later generations or the requirements of 'scientific' history. His account of Pausanias was an imaginative recreation calculated to achieve maximum psychological effect. His contemporaries unquestionably responded as he expected.

No person is depicted by Herodotus with more care and more skill than Themistocles. It is therefore illustrative of the manner in which Herodotus has been studied, of the presuppositions which we bring to our reading of his work, that his portrait of Themistocles has been held up as an example of Herodotus' malignity and incomprehension. Ivo Bruns, in his excellent study of biography, helped to formulate this prevalent view. In speaking of Herodotus' Themistocles he claimed that Herodotus, unlike Thucydides, lacked a clear conception 'of the nature of his characters and stood helplessly before the most contradictory traditions'. That opinion is misconceived. Far from lacking a conception of Themistocles' personality, Herodotus is responsible for having created it. He presents us with a person whose distinguishing characteristics are cleverness and foresight on the one hand and greed and unscrupulousness on the other. The problem has not been that Herodotus lacks a self-consistent idea of Themistocles but that we evidently would prefer a different conception. And that preference has facilitated the view that Herodotus was either unaccountably malicious or that he mechanically reproduced 'hostile traditions' without clearly knowing what he was doing. It is ironic that an author who is supposed to have written an encomium of Athens is suspected of malignancy towards that state's greatest hero and is regarded as incapable of distinguishing a 'hostile' tradition from a favourable one.

Herodotus' 'intent' deserves clearer analysis than it has received. When, for example, Themistocles is described essentially as the sort of man 'openly filling his pockets at every opportunity', is Herodotus malignant or uncomprehending because Themistocles was actually known to have been honest? The charge of cupidity levelled against him is an ancient one. Was Herodotus hostile, then, because it is a mark of hostility not to have suppressed this objectionable trait? Herodotus assuredly did not write his history in order to present Themistocles as if he were the hero of a nineteenth-century novel. The important consideration for judging Herodotus' historical perception is that he recognized Themistocles' genius and resource and, more important, that the picture he paints of Themistocles is one which permits us to recognize his greatness. For Themistocles is the dominant figure in his account of Xerxes' War.

Again, I suggest, the cardinal assumption has been that Herodotus was writing 'scientific' history—that he intended his sketch of Themistocles to be a straight-forward 'historical' portrayal like that of Thucydides. Thucydides, from his perspective, wanted future generations to realize that the intelligence and the foresight of Themistocles were crucial factors in the development of the Athenian state. His moral character and even the question of whether he became treasonable are irrelevant to that concern—not, by any means, that his own opinion of Themistocles' character is noticeably different from Herodotus'. Thucydides' emphasis is different. Herodotus, though he provides us with the material permitting us to form a proper estimate of Themistocles' intellectual capacity, was concerned to present a dramatic portrait of this figure which would be credible to his contemporaries. He was dealing with the expectations of his audience. Merely consider, for instance, that oft-discussed and unappreciated first mention of Themistocles made by Herodotus in VII. 143. 'Now there was a certain Athenian man who recently had stepped up to the forefront whose name was Themistocles and who was called the son of Neoeles'…

Most commentators consider this introduction a slap. Would his audience have thought so on hearing it? Herodotus has just finished describing very dramatically the plight of Athens, the fact that 'authority' was against any attempt to fight a sea-battle at Salamis (which the audience well knew was crucial). Dark was the moment; 'but there was a certain Athenian man who had recently stepped to the forefront'. The first two words … are enough to show a rift in the clouds. And then, deliberately, the name is withheld until the sentence runs to its end. Expectation, suspense and understatement: Herodotus has given Themistocles a drumroll. The formula is an excellent one with which to start an important episode. Homer used it to introduce Dolon (Iliad X. 314). The tone of such an introduction is nicely indicated by Xenophon in Anabasis III. I. 4. At a critical moment, when the Greek mercenaries faced crisis, Xenophon introduced the hero with these words: 'Now there was a certain man in the army, Xenophon the Athenian,'… We seem to expect that Herodotus should have provided us with some reference to Themistocles' earlier career (assuming he had knowledge of it) or have made some weighty historical judgement when actually his own concern was dramatic.

Let us therefore consider Herodotus' Themistocles from the point of view of his audience. The artistic and dramatic problems which the expectations of his audience would have created for him, if his account was to be successful, were considerable. Whatever his contemporaries may have known of Themistocles' contributions in 480-79 B.C. and however they viewed his epochal work in making Athens a sea-power, we may assume that he was chiefly pre-eminent as the personification of wiliness. The popular conception of this great man undoubtedly centred on his suppleness and craft. He had been condemned to death for treason and after a sensational flight to Persia had gained an extraordinary reception from the Great King. Themistocles' life was the kind to make people marvel; the final chapter of it would have been as notable and even more inciteful of speculation about the man and anecdotes about his nature than the earlier ones. His greatness may have been proved by his leadership in 480-79 B.C.; but to a later generation removed from that era the amazing dexterity and capacity to look after himself signalled by his final Asiatic venture will have been the most remarkable and most notorious of all.

That final chapter must, for Herodotus, have been the starting point in his attempt to fathom the character of that remarkable man. The challenge to his skill was to create a believable character who was capable of being at once the saviour of the Greeks in Xerxes' War and the presumed traitor of not very long after. Herodotus married the known unscrupulous but invariably successful figure who died in Persia with the man who in 479 B.C. was proclaimed 'the wisest man in Greece.'

As in the case of Pausanias, Herodotus expected his audience to superimpose its knowledge of the sensational downfall of Themistocles on to his description of that character. Where we are apt to make him an abstraction, Herodotus gave him verisimilitude. An admirable instance of his technique is provided by his narration in VIII. 108ff. of Themistocles' famous message to Xerxes after the battle of Salamis. The Greeks, having reached Andros in pursuit of Xerxes, halted for a council of war. Themistocles as usual hit upon the most effective means to wound the enemy and advanced the proposal that the Greeks race to the Hellespont and dismantle the bridges. We are reminded of former occasions when the others are hostile to his bold and successful measures. However, though Herodotus could attribute the resolve to Themistocles, the nature of the case forbade him from presenting us here with the successful operation of his powers or his craft. The plan was not attempted. Yet Themistocles' defeat is but temporary, for he is able to capitalize even on that. 'When he understood that he would not persuade the many, at any rate, he changed course with the Athenians. For they were especially grieved at the thought of the Persians escaping, and were eager to sail to the Hellespont even if the others did not want to and even if they must act alone.' Themistocles then dissuades them with an effective speech and Herodotus resumes: 'This he said intending to lay up store with the Persian in order that he might have some place of refuge if by some chance a disaster should come upon him from the Athenians. And this was the very thing that happened. Themistocles deceived them in his speech and the Athenians were persuaded' to give up the venture. Sicinnus was thereupon sent by Themistocles to tell Xerxes that 'Themistocles, desiring to do Xerxes a service, stopped the Greeks when they wished to pursue his ships and break down the bridges at the Hellespont.'

Eduard Meyer excoriated Herodotus for this story. He believed that Herodotus intended to make Themistocles responsible for 'the betrayal of the Greek cause'. Macan and Stein assume the phrase 'intending to lay up store of credit with Xerxes' 'shows how much prejudiced Herodotus is … even in a case where not a shadow of suspicion falls on him.' How, in his note to VIII. 110, writes that Herodotus is 'evidently here under the influence of traditions hostile to Themistocles. There is no special reason to suspect him of double dealing in this case.' Surely these scholars have studied the passage with the wrong lens. Herodotus' intent was to show Themistocles' great capacity for the clever ruse. Deceit, to be sure, is part of the nature Herodotus, like Thucydides, supposed him to possess. That, after all, was the key to his strategic genius. But the purpose of the anecdote is not to show some treasonable intent on Themistocles' part. Herodotus went to considerable length to make that clear; one half of the episode should not be separated from the other. Themistocles was forestalled by his colleagues from inflicting the crushing blow that he had himself conceived of. If Herodotus had intended to make Themistocles a traitor, he would have presented the story differently. Themistocles did not deceive the Greeks; he fooled Xerxes. His allegation that he had stopped the Greeks from racing to the Hellespont was the reverse of the truth. But Xerxes did not know it and so Themistocles laid up store of credit with the King.

What is worthy of especial note in Herodotus' narrative is the care he has taken not to suggest that Themistocles was already marching down the path of treason. Herodotus has attributed to Themistocles a remarkable instance of his famous foresight. But he put Themistocles' prevision in the most general terms—'If possibly … some evil fall upon him from the Athenians.' His Themistocles viewed the possibility of a dangerous turn in his career very hypothetically. Herodotus has separated the actual treason everyone thinks of from Themistocles' own prognostication. It is a splendid example of Herodotus having it both ways, and intentionally so.

What we, in an overprotective way, have taken to be an anecdote derogatory of Themistocles would to his audience have appeared to be the ultimate example of Themistocles' capacity to look after himself. Herodotus did not intend to suggest that Themistocles was a traitor to the Greek cause. But he very definitely permitted that conception of Themistocles to illuminate his account. His purpose is artistic. He was attempting neither to blacken Themistocles' reputation nor to whitewash it. He was recreating Themistocles' character for the sake of his story, not for the 'historical record'. If we do not like this fifth-century Odysseus, it is perhaps because we are apt to glorify our heroes in more conventional terms and because we are unaccustomed to finding this kind of dramatization in a history. That was not the opinion of Cicero or, one suspects, of Thucydides. The Greeks were not so prim in their younger days. They could admire cleverness and dexterity for their own sake. We have only to think of Themistocles' predecessor and his protector's attitude to him:

             Athena began to smile;
She caressed him, her form now that of a
  woman,
Beautiful, tall, skilled at weaving fine things.
She spoke to him in winged words:
'Cunning and thievish the man who could beat
  you
In all your tricks, even if some god were to
  try it.
You devil! You schemer! Fraud! You never
  cease,
Not even at home, from the cheats
And lying words that are your nature.
But we'll say no more: we're both
Alike.'

Herodotus' treatment of Themistocles, like that of Pausanias, is directed to contemporaries well aware of what he leaves unsaid. The impact derives from his reliance on the response of his audience, from what he knows his hearers will conclude. His procedure is not substantially different from that of the tragedians. The basics were known, the end result predictable. What mattered was the presentation of the detail in such a way as to keep the audience involved and make the pattern explicable. This is the essence of Herodotus' art and the key to his technique. The instances already discussed provide what are perhaps the most remarkable examples of this technique because of Herodotus' subtlety and because his imaginative recreation was so daring. But it is the same with Xerxes. No Greek was unaware that this splendid figure would fall heavily and Herodotus, in presenting Xerxes to his audience, made him the more splendid so that the fall would be more dramatic. In this case, to be sure, our own presuppositions coincide with those of Herodotus' contemporaries. What I have tried to suggest, however, is that this is not inevitably so, as the usual interpretation of his treatment of Pausanias and Themistocles should show. When our expectations do not jibe with contemporary expectations, it is easy to misconstrue Herodotus' intentions as being to 'exculpate' Pausanias or to 'vilify' Themistocles. We expect him to 'tell the truth' where he expected his contemporaries to use 'the truth' as the touchstone of his account. How different might our interpretation of Herodotus' portraits of Pausanias and Themistocles have been if we realized that in both cases Herodotus expected his audience to be thinking primarily of the fall of each man. Instead we have assumed that these final stages of each man's career were unimportant for Herodotus or, rather, that Pausanias' was unimportant. For in the instance of Themistocles, it is we who dissociate that final chapter from the earlier and virtually condemn Herodotus for remembering it. The difference between Herodotus and Thucydides, between the Histories and 'history', is at once subtle and profound.

We must therefore think away the predisposition to approach Herodotus as if he were speaking to us directly, and understand him, as best we can, as his contemporaries would have done. There are fundamental but unspoken connections he relied on his audience to make. In this respect, also, we must abandon that general willingness to judge events from a perspective favourable to Athens, to assume that everyone shared it. The projection of that attitude into Herodotus has made his sympathies seem a chaos of inconsistency. Herodotus did not write his history for the partisans of the Athenian democracy. He directed his work to the Greek world in general and more particularly to a class which he, like Thucydides considered hostile to the state of Athens. Finally, since it is Herodotus' technique to mesh his narrative with the predictable thoughts of his contemporaries, we must remind ourselves constantly that the people for whom he was writing were living during the outbreak of the Archidamian War.