Herodotus: Histories, Book IX (review)

Perhaps the wide range of the Histories puts too many demands on commentators, but Herodotus has not been blessed with many modern commentaries. The recent boom in the study of Herodotus, however, is now set to include—alongside the Italian Lorenzo Valla series, now nearing completion—a battery of new commentaries in English on all nine books. Flower and Marincola's commentary on book 9—the first commentary in English on book 9 in over a century (the commentaries of How and Wells and of the splendid R. W. Macan are themselves nearing the century mark, too)—marks an auspicious start to that project.

In keeping with the "green and yellow" series, the volume is intended for a mixed audience: "the intermediate and advanced Greek student . . . graduate students and scholars." The authors' aim is "to bring together grammatical and syntactical help, literary appreciation, and historical criticism"—a balance that they maintain excellently. They always begin with linguistic comment, the careful elucidation of the meaning of the text. They are particularly good on Homeric intertexts (though does Homeric epic provide a "template" precisely?) and at picking out repeated usages and motifs throughout the Histories.(The traditional commentary format perhaps tends to distract attention from the larger-scale interconnections between different logoi.) Above all, in their historical comments, the authors show a consistent, good sense in knowing how far to delve into historical minutiae. (Their few disagreements with each other, on the other hand, are laid out in charming detail.) This good sense is especially evident in the case of what must be the greatest problem for any commentator on book 9: the intractable and interminable debates over the reconstruction of Plataea, the shape not only of the battle lines but of the ground itself. Flower and Marincola are rightly cautious about the possibility of any sort of rationalization of Herodotus' account—though they do rationalize and correct Herodotus' text on occasion (otherwise, they claim, "it is impossible to write traditional history").

Where does their Herodotus stand in relation to other recent scholarly treatments? Squarely in the middle. Though secondary references are kept to a discrete minimum (if I were to identify a fault, it is that sometimes secondary references are rather general in focus—and, just occasionally, misleadingly so), their Herodotus is thoroughly abreast with recent bibliography. He is a "skilled narrative artist" rather than a mere collector of logoi; accordingly, a focus on narratology (especially on "narrative retardation") is inconspicuously embedded throughout. Herodotus, together with his contemporaries, "took religious matters seriously" (though he still somehow needs the term λεγετaι to "[protect] the narrator's credibility in the realm of the supernatural"). Greeks and Persians are polarized but, as Chris Pelling, the volume's dedicatee would have it (quite rightly), these polarities are regularly collapsed. And the end of the Histories is (as for all right-minded readers since the work of Deborah Boedeker, Carolyn Dewald, and others) the intended end of the Histories, complete with hints of incipient Athenian imperialism. Flower and Marincola hold back from committing themselves to an Archidamian-war publication date for the Histories, but they nonetheless highlight the relevance of the "glorious collaborative effort of the Persian wars" for the Sparta and Athens of Herodotus' own day. They practice what they preach in eschewing "the triumphalist, Eurocentric tone" of some previous writers on the Persian wars. Only on the extent of Herodotus' travels (not the most direct concern in book 9) are they apparently adamant: he traveled where he claims to have traveled.

In short, this is a volume that will be well used and, deservedly so, for a long time to come.