Herodotus: Histories Book V by Peter J. Rhodes (review)

Book 5 of Herodotus has been well served in recent years, with the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (aka “green and yellow series”) commentary by Simon Hornblower as well as Philip Peek’s undergraduate text and notes published by the University of Oklahoma, not to mention the collection of scholarly essays edited by Elizabeth Irwin and Emily Greenwood.¹ The volume under review is the first to appear in Aris and Phillips’s projected series of commentaries on Herodotus. Book 5 is particularly crucial, for it marks the beginning of Herodotus’ continuous narrative of the Persian Wars with the outbreak of the Ionian Revolt, which carries over into Book 6 (the conventional book division, which was not his own, failing to occur at a natural break). Furthermore, with an impressive string of definitive publications on the history and historiography of fifth-century Greece stretching back nearly a half century, Professor Rhodes was ideally positioned to anchor this new series (the sad news of his unexpected death arrived as I was working on this review). In keeping with other Aris and Phillips editions, the volume contains a general introduction, the Greek text (along with a selective critical apparatus), a translation into English, and a commentary on individual passages.

The Greek text is generally Rhodes’s own, although in terms of the Ionic versus Attic forms of names he defers to N.G. Wilson’s 2015 OCT. In the translation, Rhodes’s aim is “to express the meaning accurately in good English” (v), and in this he succeeds admirably. Like Herodotus’ own narrative, his translation is clear and deceptively simple, and for the most part succeeds in capturing the paratactic flavour of the original.

The bulk of the introduction (1–33) is devoted to a discussion of Herodotus, including his life, the themes and overall structure of his history, his sources, his narrative techniques, his opinions and beliefs (so far as these can be ascertained),² the text, his language and dialect, and his reception (mostly in antiquity, but with a brief nod to the modern period). It is rounded off with a short overview (34–43) of the conflicts between the Greeks and Persians (from Cyrus all the way to the modern period), along with a useful summary of Book 5, three maps (which are generally not detailed enough to be a helpful guide to the geographical and ethnographical excurses), and a select bibliography of previous editions and books that are frequently cited (publication details for articles, and books cited occasionally, appear at point of contact in the notes).³ Rhodes is mainly concerned with “the history which Herodotus relates, and how and why he relates it as he does” (vi). As such, he offers particularly insightful observations on Herodotus’ effective and remarkably sophisticated narrative techniques, as well as his blurring of the precise distinctions not only between different forms of constitutional government (both of his own time and of earlier periods) but also between various kinds of one-man rule (especially Greek versus Persian). There are also some fascinating tidbits of information; for example, I was not previously aware that it was Karl Hude in his 1908 OCT who first divided the chapters into the now conventional numbered sections (2).

The commentary offers explanatory detail upon individual passages and elaborates further on the broad themes touched upon in the introduction. Rhodes deftly unpacks the nuances of Herodotus’ narrative and elucidates the literary and thematic functions of his characteristically long digressions. He correctly observes that Herodotus’ loose usage of political vocabulary reflects standard late sixth-century terminology (e.g., note to 37.2) and is also governed by the narrative requirements of the context (e.g., notes to 20.4 and 30.1). Rhodes is particularly informative on the Spartans, providing, for example, perceptive explanations of their evolving foreign policy (notes to 72.3, 74.1, and 91.2) and the consistently unfavourable portrayal of Cleomenes (notes to 39.1 and...