Detecting Invective in Herodotos’s Histories

Abstract

Invective is rather unwieldy and elastic for analysis. Greek and Roman insult poetry and oratory constitute recognizable invective – extended personal attack. Herodotos first exhibits it in prose. His invectives, relatively primitive, exist in two forms: character speech and author text. The historian presents an historical person denigrating an adversary and his position for an adjudicating presider or presiding body (triangulation). For example, the debate between Demaratos and Achaimenes after Thermopylai. Otherwise, the historian presents his own views that contravene previous traditions, contemporary (oral) authorities, or specific publics. He thus critiques Hekataios, theorist-geographers, Ionians’ views of Lade, Alkmaionid treason at Marathon, and most post-war Hellenes refuting Athenian liberationist claims. Invective essentials in poetry and contemporary oratory influenced Herodotos’s composition, since he resided in Athens, central for developments in Aegean speech-making. Herodotos features invective situations: political status and rivalrous decision-making (characters) and defects of other historians and publics (author text).