Motivation and Narrative in Herodotus

by Emily Baragwanath

In his extraordinary story of the defence of Greece against the Persian invasions of 490-480 BC Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and became critical to their interpretation afterwards. Much as the contemporary sophists strove to discover truth about the invisible, Herodotus was acutely concerned to uncover hidden human motivations, whose depiction was vital to his project of recounting and explaining the past. Emily Baragwanath explores the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represented this most elusive variety of historical knowledge. Thus he was able to tell a lucid story of the past while nonetheless exposing the methodological and epistemological challenges it presented. Baragwanath illustrates and analyses a range of these techniques over the course of a wide selection of Herodotus' most intriguing narratives - from those on Athenian democracy and tyranny to Leonidas and Thermopylae - and thus supplies a method for reading the Histories more generally.

Genres: History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2008

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Baragwanath does an admirable job of illuminating the multivalent narratological methods and structures within the Histories with key insights on Themistocles, Xerxes and the Athenians themselves. Much of the first half of her book is an excellent answer to Plutarch - and I think answers his charges of malice in a fair way.