Herodotus is also criticized for a lack of understanding of military tactics and strategy (see Chapter 9 on the Persian War for a full discussion); and for giving such major prominence to the continuous intervention of the gods in the affairs of men, thus accepting that they had played a very important part in the shaping of history. Some allowance can be made for Herodotus, since sources such as temple records and the collections of oracles were bound to emphasize the involvement of the supernatural. However, Herodotus appears to hold the same traditional, conservative religious beliefs as the majority of Athenians, such as those who welcomed Ephialtes’ democratic reform of the aristocratic Council of the Areopagus in 462/1, but would have been alienated if its religious powers had been severely curtailed (see Chapter 13), and those who were deeply upset and frightened by the mutilation of the Hermae in 415 (see Chapter 21). Herodotus had no doubt that the gods revealed their will to men in dreams or omens, and especially through seers and oracles. Furthermore, he is happy to accept, without a hint of scepticism, any tale of the supernatural, such as the story of the successful defence of Apollo’s temple at Delphi by the gods against a Persian attack (8.37–39), and of the rumour which crossed the Aegean Sea, informing those Greeks who were about to fight at the battle of Mycale of the victory at Plataea on the same day (9.100). Herodotus is also open to the criticism of being unwilling to search for a historical explanation of an event when a religious one was available. Thus, although he was aware of all the political and military reasons that directly influenced Xerxes’ decision to invade Greece, Herodotus preferred to stress at length that Xerxes and Artabanus, who had previously convinced the King by rational argument that a full-scale invasion of Greece was unwise, both radically changed their minds through the influence of a dream from the gods (7.12–15).
Even with these important defects, there is considerable merit in Herodotus’ History, especially as he was forging a new genre of literature. The scope of his work is far wider than the narrow concentration of Thucydides on politics and warfare, and thus is more in tune with the interests and subject matter of modern historiography. In addition, he lacked the ingrained prejudice and contempt that most Greeks felt for the ‘Barbaros’ (Foreigner), and thus he genuinely praises the naval and engineering skills of the Phoenicians (7.23.3, 7.44, 7.99.3), and the monuments of the Egyptians and Babylonians (1.93.2), and even acknowledges the Greeks’ debt to foreign countries, such as the derivation of the Greek alphabet from Phoenicia (5.58), coinage from Lydia (1.94) and the measurement of time from Babylon (2.109.3). Even more remarkable is his generous and favourable assessment of the Persians – their justice (1.137), their high regard for truthfulness (1.138.1), their loyalty to the king (8.118.3) and their courage (9.62.3). But perhaps his greatest achievement was to prove that history, whatever its subject matter, could be written with charm, humour and panache.
Plutarch
Life and career
Plutarch was born probably in AD 45–50 in the Boeotian town of Chaeroneia in central Greece and died soon after AD 120. He came from a wealthy, cultured family, whose deep roots covering many generations ensured its high standing in local politics: Plutarch himself held a succession of public posts at Chaeroneia. As a young man from such an upper-class background, he naturally went to Athens where he studied under the philosopher Ammonianus, which greatly influenced his approach to his literary works. He spent most of his life in his hometown, but he travelled to Italy and Rome where he lectured and taught. His circle of friends in Rome included men of consular rank, such as Mestrius Florus, whose name was adopted by Plutarch’s family when they gained Roman citizenship, and Sosius Senecio, to whom Plutarch dedicated his Parallel Lives. Such powerful and influential patronage, encouraged by Plutarch’s great respect for Rome and by his belief in the partnership of Greece and Rome, brought tangible rewards in the form of honorary consular rank, and possibly the procuratorship of Achaea. In the last years of his life Plutarch served as a priest of Delphi.
The Parallel Lives
The surviving biographical works of Plutarch consist of 22 pairs of Parallel Lives, in which the lives and careers of an eminent Greek and Roman were described individually and then usually concluded with a formal ‘Comparison’ (four pairs of Lives lack a Comparison, possibly lost in transmission), and four single Lives. Plutarch’s decision to compose dual biographies was clearly influenced by his desire to show that the generals and statesmen of Greek history had an equal claim to fame as their Roman counterparts; and by the ease that this structure allowed for comment on and judgement of the moral worth of their characters (see extract below).
The loss of the first pair of Lives (the Epaminondas and Scipio) is especially regrettable since it is most likely that Plutarch explained his method of composition and purpose in the first of the series. However, in some of the other Lives, he does give us an insight:
If I do not record all their [i.e. Alexander’s and Caesar’s] most famous achievements or describe them in full … I ask my readers not to find fault with this. For I am not writing history but biography, and the revelation of virtue or vice is not usually to be found in men’s most outstanding deeds, whereas minor events, sayings and witticisms may reveal more of a man’s character than battles with countless casualties, the battle-arrays of the greatest armies and the sieges of cities.
(Plutarch, Alexander 1.1–2)
In fact, by modern standards, Plutarch is more of an essayist than a biographer, since the primary aim of his work is not to give a full account of men’s lives and careers, but to inspire later generations to emulate their virtues (and sometimes to avoid their vices) by his portrayal of their characters (Pericles 1–2). As a result, this moral purpose, which permeates and underpins the Lives, shapes Plutarch’s approach to the material for inclusion, resulting in selectivity, distortions, omissions and a marked fondness for anecdotes. Thus the use of Plutarch for historical purposes has to be undertaken with great care, since his own disclaimer in the above quotation and his statements elsewhere about the overriding moral function of his work give the modern historian clear and ample warning. However, although it is necessary to be critical of Plutarch when using him as a historical source, it should be remembered that he was not claiming to be a historian.
Four main weak nesses can be observed in Plutarch as a historical source: first, his careless and casual approach to chronology; second, his frequent inability to make an accurate judgement of the quality and reliability of his earlier sources, especially when they are in conflict; third, his failure to understand the political conditions of the fifth and fourth centuries in Greece, which were so different from his own political experiences under the Roman Empire in the late first and early second centuries AD; and fourth, his avoidance of any attempt to assess the effects and historical importance of his subject’s deeds and policies.
With regard to chronology, it is clear that Plutarch had little interest in being accurate and systematic – detailed narrative histories were available to those readers who desired such knowledge (Fabius 16.6) – because the portrayal of a specific aspect of a man’s character demanded only ‘examples’; therefore the inclusion of deeds from different periods of a man’s career at this point in the Life for this exemplary purpose was far more important than an account of these deeds in strict chronological order. An illustration of this is in chapters 18 and 19 of the Life of Pericles: in chapter 18, Plutarch chooses to highlight Pericles’ caution as a military commander and his determination to avoid Athenian casualties, citing as an example his warning to Tolmides, the impetuous Athenian general, before the Athenian defeat at the battle of Coroneia in Boeotia in 447. As this is now the appropriate moment to show the effectiveness of his style of generalship, chapter 19 is devoted to Pericles’ most famous military successes – his campaign in the Thracian Chersonese, probably in 447, but not necessarily later than the battle of Coroneia; and then his expedition to the Corinthian Gulf c.454, which was earlier than the two afo
rementioned campaigns. Furthermore, when he does provide chronological information, he is unaware of the historical problems that this can cause for modern scholarship. For example, he informs us that Cimon, who was ostracized for ten years in 462/1, was recalled after five years (Cimon 17.8–18.1; Pericles 10), but makes no mention of how great Cimon’s political influence was in Athens and what his foreign and domestic policies were from 457–451 before his final campaign against the Persians in 450. Clearly Plutarch lacked this knowledge of Cimon but did not take the trouble to find out; at least he did not resort to invention, like some other historians, in order to conceal his ignorance.
Concerning his use of sources, Plutarch produces a wonderful array in the Lives, and does show some critical judgement of their worth – for example, his rejection of Craterus’ statement that Aristides was convicted of bribery and died in exile on the grounds that Craterus produced no documentary evidence in support, which was his usual practice (Aristides 26); his recognition of Thucydides’ excellence and his scathing criticism of Timaeus as sources for his Life of Nicias (Nicias 1). He was also aware of the difficulty of acquiring a truthful account from his sources, owing either to the lapse of time between the occurrence of the events and their narratives, or to the bias of writers who were contemporary with the events described (Pericles 13.16). However, his judgement of his sources is not based upon any clearly defined and carefully evaluated historical criteria, but upon his own instinct and good sense. As a result, he often fails to assess the relative merits of his sources when they are in conflict, merely putting both accounts side by side with no attempt to resolve the disagreement or suggest a preference. Thus the deaths of Nicias and Demosthenes in 413 after the failure of the Sicilian expedition are presented either as an execution by the Syracusans, according to Thucydides and Philistus, or as suicide, according to Timaeus, a historian of the late fourth and early third centuries (Nicias 28.5), whom Plutarch had previously condemned as a historian.
There was a vast difference between the worlds of Classical Greece and the Roman Greece of the first and second centuries AD, separated by four to five hundred years. Plutarch was very much a product of his times: an upper-class Greek, living affluently and safely in a small Roman province, who easily accepted as the norm the political conditions that prevailed in Rome under the emperors Nerva and Trajan. Living at a time when political freedom was severely restricted, Plutarch had no understanding of the rough and tumble of Athenian public life, the prosecutions of important men, the nature of political comedy and the existence of political pamphleteers. As a result, he usually takes this evidence at face value, leading to a crude stereotyping of fifth-century Athenian politicians – either as the decent, honest, army-supporting, popular-with-the-allies conservative (e.g. Aristides), or as the devious, dishonest, navy-supporting, imperialist demagogue (e.g. Themistocles). In the same way, Plutarch’s lack of experience of the genre of political comedy often results in either his implicit acceptance of the comic poets’ statements, such as their claim that Pericles intervened on the side of Miletus in its conflict with Samos in 440 because Aspasia, his live-in lover, was Milesian (Pericles 24.1; 25.1); or giving serious historical consideration to their humorous and biting satire, such as his treatment of Pericles’ alleged political problems and his consequent refusal to revoke the Megarian Decree as a cause of the Peloponnesian War (Pericles 31–32 – see Chapter 18). Because of Plutarch’s lack of political insight, it is necessary to be aware of this distortion in his portrayal of individuals and the political context in which they lived and operated.
Finally, Plutarch never fully appreciated the lasting effects of men’s actions and policies on future generations. The best example of this weakness is his failure to recognize the greatest and most long-lasting achievement of Alexander the Great: the creation of the conditions for the development of the Hellenistic Age (c.330–30 BC) which, on account of the opening up of the Orient to the Greeks, enjoyed a dramatic flourishing of literature, learning, art and science, and had a profound effect upon the development of Rome and the west. A further illustration is his failure to appreciate the effect of Cimon’s naval policy in the 460s on the Athenians and their relations with the rest of Greece until the end of the fifth century. He acknowledges rather superficially Cimon’s role in turning the Delian League into the Athenian Empire (Cimon 11), but fails to realize that his aggressive foreign policy of crushing the League allies was the main cause of the Spartans’ and their allies’ fear of Athens and the source of the ongoing conflict between the two superpowers throughout the century. Instead, Plutarch exonerates Cimon by stressing his glorious exploits against the Persians, and puts the blame firmly on the later demagogues and warmongers (Cimon 19), even though he frequently used Thucydides as a source, whom he admired greatly and who specifically identified the growth of Athenian imperial power and Sparta’s resultant fear as the truest cause of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 1.23).
Despite these reservations Plutarch is a valuable source, especially for the fifth century from 478. Without his Lives, our knowledge of the Pentecontaetia (the ‘Fifty-Year Period’, 478–432) would be even more limited, consisting solely of a few statements in Herodotus, the brief and highly selective digression of Thucydides (1.87.6–118.2) and Diodorus’ confusing and often inaccurate account. Furthermore, he fills in the background of the last third of the fifth century by including biographical detail of some of the leading politicians, as well as the irreverent and mocking criticisms of comic poets and political pamphleteers, all of which Thucydides deliberately omitted on the grounds that it had (in his opinion) no relevance to the political and military history of the period. There are also occasions when Plutarch can be justly praised for displaying historical ability, such as his treatment of the battle of Artemisium in the Persian War in 480 (Themistocles 7.5–9.2): he makes use of Herodotus’ definitive account, but concentrates on Themistocles’ role; adds extra information from Phanias of Lesbos, the late fourth-century philosopher and historian, about Themistocles’ handling of the Athenian opposition to his strategy; includes some lines of Pindar, the fifth-century Theban lyric poet, about how Athenian morale was greatly boosted by their experience of fighting at close quarters with the Persian fleet; and finally quotes the official epigram on display outside the temple of Artemis in Thessalian Olizon.
Plutarch’s breadth of knowledge and his inclusion of such a wide variety of historical, literary, oratorical, philosophical and epigraphic sources make him a very important and useful asset to modern scholarship.
Thucydides
Life and career
Thucydides was probably born in the 450s: this can be deduced from his statement that he lived through the whole 27 years of the Peloponnesian War, being at an age to understand what was happening (5.26), and by his tenure of the generalship in 424 (4.104) for which post the minimum age was probably 30. He was the son of Oloros, and this fact is evidence that he was probably related by blood both to Thracian royalty and to Cimon, the dominant aristocratic Athenian politician of the 470s and 460s (see Chapter 11), whose grandfather was also called Oloros; and also to Thucydides, son of Melesias, the relation of Cimon, who provided the main opposition to Pericles in the 440s (see Chapter 18). Thus Thucydides came from an aristocratic background. Furthermore, Thucydides informs us that he had the right to work the gold mines in that part of Thrace, which would have also ensured that he was a rich man (4.105). It is important to bear this in mind, since this upper-class background would have coloured his political views and exercised some influence on his writing.
Thucydides was an Athenian citizen from the deme of Halimous, and was present in Athens when the plague struck in 430. Although he contracted the disease (2.48.3), he managed to survive, unlike Pericles and many other Athenian citizens (see Chapter 19). In 424 he was appointed as ‘strategos’ (general), one of the ten posts that were open for election annually. However, it was his misfortune to be ranged against Brasidas, one of Spar
ta’s best military commanders, and his failure to save Amphipolis, the strategically most important city in Thrace, from falling into the hands of the Spartans resulted in his exile from Athens for 20 years (5.26). Nothing is known of the rest of his life. It would seem likely that he spent some time on his Thracian estate at Skapte Hyle, which is on the mainland opposite the island of Thasos. However, he must have travelled extensively to acquire the necessary information for his history (as implied in 5.26), and returned to Athens in 404 at the end of the Peloponnesian War, when a general amnesty for all exiles was decreed – one of the terms imposed upon the defeated Athenians. He probably died around 400 or very early in the 390s, although a recently discovered inscription from Thasos raises the possibility that Thucydides may have lived several years into the 390s.
Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC) Page 4
