In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

xi Introduction Herodotus and Ssu-ma Ch’ien: A Preliminary Study of Styles and Sources in Their Early Chapters No picture, then, and no history, can present us with the whole truth: but those are the best picture and the best historians which exhibit parts of the truth as most nearly produce the effects of the whole. –Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course, this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with have a date dangling after and a question mark –Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture I. Introduction The two great historians of East and West, Herodotus (Hēródotos, ca. 484-ca. 425 B.C.) and Ssu-ma Ch’ien (司馬遷, 145-ca. 86 B.C.), have been compared many times in the past.1 There are of course obvious differences: Herodotus focuses his Histories to the conflicts between the Greeks and the Persians, whereas Ssu-ma’s Grand Scribe’s Records (Shih chi 史記) is an account of all known history up to his era. Moreover, their styles differ radically. Yet the similarities between them are striking. To begin with, their backgrounds are comparable. Herodotus hailed from Halicarnassus, on the coast of Asia Minor 1 See, for example, S. Y. Teng 鄧嗣禹, “Ssu-ma Ch’ien yü Hsi-lo-to-te chih pi-chiao 司馬遷 與西羅多德 (Herodotus) 之比較,” Chung-yang Yen-chiu-yüan, Li-shih Yü-yen-so chi-k’an 中央研 究院, 歷史語言所集刊, 28 (1956): 445-63, or Siep Stuurman, “Herodotus and Sima Qian: History and the Anthropological Turn in Ancient Greece and Han, China,” Journal of World History, 19.1 (2008): 1-40. My thanks to Ms. Xin Zou for help in assembling and in discussing texts cited herein and to Barry Powell for guiding me through Herodotus. xii Introduction near the frontier with the Persians; Ssu-ma Ch’ien was from Han-ch’eng 韓城, a provincial town near the border lands which the Hsiung-nu, the people just to the north of the Han-dynasty empire, often raided. Both men spent little time, however, in their hometowns, gathering much of their source material through conversations with people they met in their extensive travels. Each wrote only one major work and died shortly after completing it. Herodotus’ Historiē (Inquiries) and the Shih chi (Records of the [Grand] Scribe) were the first complete histories in their respective cultures. Moreover, unlike the local character of most early histories in Greece (cities) and China (states), Herodotus and Ssu-ma Ch’ien presented narrative accounts of their entire known world for the first time in their respective cultures. Herodotus wove disparate materials into a single focus—the causes and effects of the wars with the Persians. Ssu-ma Ch’ien took similarly diverse sources and shaped them into what some feel were reflections on the policies and politics of the single ruler under whom he spent most of his life, Han Wu-ti 漢武 帝 (r. 141-87 B.C.), focusing on those policies which dealt with the military methods the emperor employed against the Hsiung-nu. Each man had his work criticized by an important successor-historian shortly after death (Thucydides, ca. 460-ca. 395 B.C., and Pan Ku, 32-92). Both Herodotus and Ssu-ma Ch’ien were interested in the ethnography of neighboring peoples (especially Egypt and the Hsiung-nu). Both–from vastly different points of view–were interested in imperialism (as embodied in Darius and Xerxes of the Persians and Emperor Wu of the Han).2 Even the motivations for compiling their respective works have strong affinities. Herodotus tells in the first line of his text that he “presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians—not go unsung” (1.1).3 Ssu-ma Ch’ien in his own postface admits that “if I should permit the labors of the meritorious ministers, the feudal families, and the worthy officials to fall into oblivion and not be transmitted . . . I could certainly be guilty of no greater sin” 滅功臣世家賢大夫之業不述，墮先人所言，罪莫大焉4 and 2 David Schaberg, “Travel, Geography, and the Imperial Imagination in Fifth-Century Athens and Han China, Comparative Literature 51.2 (Spring...

Share