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HERODOTUS’ ALLUSIONS TO DEMOCRACY IN BOOKS 7 AND 8: BETWEEN HEURISTIC DEVICE AND PURPOSEFUL ACTION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2025
Abstract
This paper investigates Herodotus’ allusions to democratic tenets dear to fifth-century Athens in Books 7 and 8 and how democracy is there suggested as an actionable possibility for all peoples. The paper also explores what Herodotus might have thought about democracy and how reflecting on it was a means for him to examine his own writing (section II). A discussion of Herodotus’ broad meditations on democracy in 7.10, 7.101–3, and 8.140–3 considers their historiographic and practical implications, showing that the Athenian democratic tenets Herodotus may have had as references formed a nucleus from which he elaborated a complex view of democracy, i.e., as a peaceful counterpart to imperialism (section III). Section IV examines some trade-offs and implications one may derive from the intertwining of allusions to democracy and the writing of history. The paper’s chief conclusions are summarized in section V: that the use of allusions allows Herodotus to discuss constituent parts of a democracy, not only those specific to the Athenian democracy, but also those appropriate to all possible forms of democracy.
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- Research Article
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
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This research is supported by CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico–Brazil (304011/2022–3). Part of this research was developed while I was Visiting Professor at the Dipartimento di Scienze Umane from the Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, Italy (2018–19). I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for helpful remarks and suggestions. All shortcomings and mistakes are my own responsibility.
References
1 ‘Allusion’ is here conceived as a compositional or narrative mode – a heuristic device – with which Herodotus dealt with reality; it seems preferable to hyponoia or allegorization, which implies ways to interpret other texts like Homer’s; see B. Sammons, ‘History and Hyponoia: Herodotus and Early Literary Criticism’, GRBS 6 (2012), 57. Notwithstanding the distinction, what allusion and allegory have in common is the idea that underlying thoughts are aimed at specific audiences able to grasp hints suggested by the historian. Different from hyponoiai, allusions can be grasped by any audience, not exclusively by intellectual elites. See also J. Grethlein, ‘The Dynamics of Time: Herodotus’ Histories and Contemporary Athens Before and After Fornara’, in T. Harrison and E. Irwin (eds.), Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford, 2018), 241. For reminiscences of democratic procedures in the Persian Council Scene in Book 7 – ‘[i]n truly tyrannical fashion, albeit using vocabulary reminiscent of democratic procedures, Xerxes opens the floor for a general discussion of whether or not to invade Greece’, etc. – see J. Grethlein, ‘How Not to Do History: Xerxes in Herodotus’ Histories’, AJPh 130.2 (2009), 198.
2 C. O’Connor and J. O. Weatherall, The Misinformation Age. How False Beliefs Spread (New Haven and London, 2019), 25–6. P. J. Rhodes, ‘Herodotus and Democracy’, in T. Harrison and E. Irwin (eds.), Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford, 2018), 277, reaches a parallel conclusion, which I am also taking as a good starting point, even if it is not yet clear to me what the author considers to be a ‘constitutional government’ for Herodotus in the following lines: ‘[h]e preferred freedom and constitutional government to subjection and despotism; whatever he may have thought of the kind of democracy which Athens had at the time when he was writing, he sometimes used the language of democracy when writing of the freedom and constitutional government of which he did approve (and by doing so he blurred the difference between democracy as it was when he was writing and forms of constitutional government up to a century earlier)’.
3 When, for example, C. Pelling, ‘Speech and Action: Herodotus’ Debate on the Constitutions’, PCPS 48 (2002), 136, says that Otanes’ isonomia ‘tends to connote more clearly what it is not than what it is’, there is a definite concept of ‘Athenian democracy’ that the scholar has as a fixed reference for his observation, however insightful; and when G. Sissa, ‘Democracy: a Persian Invention?’, Métis 10 (2012), 232–3 argues that, following Solon’s advice, ‘[l]et us look at the end!’ (original italics), she directs the reader’s attention to the tragic admonishment associated with the Persian defeat, thus reinforcing the Greek ‘tragic paradigm’ which treats every manifestation of hybris as a future or naturally associated punishment as in a permanent cycle. Both reflections end up reinforcing the traditional view about Herodotus that this paper discusses.
4 All translations from Herodotus are from Herodotus, The Histories. A New Translation by R. Waterfield (Oxford, 1998) unless otherwise stated. All quotations from the original Greek come from Hude’s edition (Herodoti Historiae. Edited by C. Hude. Oxford, 1927; reprint. 1979).
5 ‘While Demokratia does no more than describe a fact, Isonomia expresses an idea, indeed a whole set of ideas, by which the partisans of democracy justified the rule of the people’, G. Vlastos, ‘Isonomia’, AJPh 74 (1953), 347 (original italics). ‘The term isonomia has been much discussed, and general consensus is that context tells us that Otanes means democracy here, yet it is worth emphasizing that isonomia does not have to mean democracy. Other nations can attain isonomia without a democratic framework. For Otanes, the rule of the many implies rule by lot, accountability, and making decisions in common (3.80.6)’, C. S. Roy, ‘The Constitutional Debate: Herodotus’ Exploration of Good Government’, Histos 6 (2012), 308 (original italics). On the original meanings of the word and its impact on the definition of demokratia, see J. Ober, ‘“I Besieged That Man”: Democracy’s Revolutionary Start’, in K. A. Raaflaub, J. Ober, and W. Wallace (eds.), Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2007), 95; K. A. Raaflaub, ‘The Breakthrough of Dēmokratia in Mid-Fifth-Century Athens’, in Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace, (eds.), 112–20; P. Cartledge, ‘Democracy, Origins of: Contribution to a Debate’, in Raaflaub, Ober, and Wallace (eds.), 270: ‘whether Herodotus writes of demokratie/demokrateesthai, or of regimes with the iso- prefix, or of placing affairs es meson, his contrast is always with some form of monarchy.’
6 On the historicity of this Otanes, see D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, and A. Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, Edited by O. Murray and A. Moreno (Oxford, 2007), 465, and R. Schmitt, Encyclopaedia Iranica (New York, 2012), Otanes 1.
7 For Otanes as an inquirer ‘by proxy’ similar to Herodotus himself, see P. Demont, ‘Figures of Inquiry in Herodotus’s “Inquiries”’, Mnemosyne 62.2 (2009), 193–6.
8 For the concept of ‘framing device’, see E. Baragwanath and M. de Bakker (eds.), Myth, Truth and Narrative in Herodotus (Oxford, 2012), 40; R. Thomas, ‘Truth and Authority in Herodotus’ Narrative: False Stories and True Stories’, in E. Bowie (ed.), Herodotus—Narrator, Scientist, Historian (Berlin, Boston, 2018), 266.
9 For the Persian Council Scene and Xerxes’ own inquiries within Herodotus, see Grethlein (n. 1 [2009]). For the Persian kings acting as inquirers within the Histories, see M. Christ, ‘Herodotean Kings and Historical Inquiry’, ClAnt 13.2 (1994), and Demont (n. 7).
10 For Rhodes (n. 2), p. 268, ‘Herodotus uses “placing es meson” specifically in connection with the ending of a monarchic regime.’ However valid for Otanes, that is clearly not the case concerning Xerxes.
11 Hdt. 7.10.1: ‘No one else had anything to say – certainly, no one dared to voice an opinion contrary to the one before them – until Artabanus’, etc.
12 Fundamental for the following analysis is C. Farrar’s thesis about how in a democratic polis values from its past impact the elaboration of democratic thinking: ‘[t]he democratic polis enables each citizen to do as he likes and this free interaction somehow both yields the collective good (so that to be ruled is not to be exploited or tyrannized) and constitutes an order which displays those virtues associated with the aristocracy’ (C. Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking. The Invention of Politics in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1988), 10). On democracy as a political ideology and its components, see also M. Hansen, Was Athens a Democracy? Popular Rule, Liberty and Equality in Ancient and Modern Political Thought (Copenhagen, 1989), and M. Hansen, The Tradition of Ancient Greek Democracy and its Importance for Modern Democracy (Copenhagen, 2005), 24-7.
13 S. Forsdyke, ‘Athenian Democratic Ideology and Herodotus’ Histories’, AJPh (2001), 348.
14 Cf. Thuc. 2.37, Arist. [Ath.Pol.] 26.2, Arist. Pol. 4.1292a1–7. The formula patrioi nomoi is perhaps the most explicit acknowledgment of the perception under discussion.
15 For the dialogue purportedly established by Herodotus between the scene and the events of 431, see C. Fornara, Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971), 85–91; for the interrelationship between freedom and democracy, see Rhodes (n. 2), 277: ‘whatever he [Herodotus] may have thought of the kind of democracy which Athens had at the time when he was writing, he sometimes used the language of democracy when writing of the freedom and constitutional government of which he did approve (and by doing so he blurred the difference between democracy as it was when he was writing and forms of constitutional government up to a century earlier)’.
16 However useful, the oscillation described by J. Grethlein, ‘“Future Past”. Time and Teleology in (Ancient) Historiography’, H&T 53 (2014), 311 (improving on Koselleck’s ‘Vergangene Zukunft’), between a ‘past that is future’ and a ‘future that is past’, is misleading when compared to the intentional approach advanced here. By focusing strictly on those two temporalities – on objects, not on actions – it loses precisely its most fertile element: namely, actuality, the permanently creative attitude at the core of his narrative efforts. Besides, Grethlein’s oscillation seems to culminate precisely in that same teleology he sees as inescapable to historians (‘as our examples show, it is hard, if not impossible, to shun teleology fully. The teleological tendency of historiography is rooted in hindsight,’ Grethlein, 312). Changing the focus to an action – to the very intentional bridging between past and future – would be more productive.
17 C. Pelling (n. 3); G. Sissa (n. 3); S. de Vido, ‘Il dibattito sulle costituzioni nelle Storie di Erodoto’, in S. de Vido (ed.), Poteri e legitimità nel mondo antico. Da Nanterre a Venezia in memoria di Pierre Carlier (Venice, 2014).
18 For the episode, see Christ (n. 9), 186–7; Demont (n. 7), 193, n. 38; and T. Harrison, ‘Truth and Lies in Herodotus’ Histories’, in V. Karageorgis and I. Taifacos (eds.), The World of Herodotus. Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the Foundation Anastasios G. Leventis, Nicosia, September 18–21, 2003, and Organized by the Foundation Anastasios G. Leventis and the Faculty of Letters, University of Cyprus (Nicosia, 2004), 255–6.
19 Both Christ (n. 9), 186–7, and Demont (n. 7), 193, analyze the passage but insist on the alleged madness of Cambyses without taking into account the last correlation between his attitudes and the truth he supposedly aimed at.
20 For the dubious light on Darius, see R. Rollinger, ‘Herodotus and the Transformation of Ancient Near Eastern Motifs Darius I, Oebares, and the Neighing Horse’, in T. Harrison and E. Irwin (eds.), Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford, 2018), 134. For the sophistic flavour and the supposed metahistorical reflection the passage seems to convey, see T. Harrison, ‘The Moral of History’, in T. Harrison and E. Irwin (eds.), Interpreting Herodotus (Oxford, 2018), 345. For the bottom line of the episode as a ‘recognition of the possibility of different levels or registers of truth’, see Harrison (n. 18), 259–61; and T. Harrison, ‘Herodotus on the character of Persian imperialism (7.5–11)’, in A. Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence, History and Culture (Wiesbaden, 2015), 17.
21 For Zopyrus as a trickster figure (in contrast to the savant-advisers), see Harrison (n. 20 [2018]), 338.
22 On the problem of historical truth in Herodotus, see L. Scott, Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6 (Leiden; Boston, 2005), 196; Asheri, et al. (n. 6); Baragwanath and de Bakker (n. 8), 245, n. 33, 214, n. 3, 216, n. 10, 247, n. 42, especially p. 1: ‘Such a discussion ushers in questions of verifiability, and the equally contestable concept of truth. It would appear from the Histories that Herodotus believed in the possibility of attaining a truthful reconstruction of past events, and yet we also find traces of the Protean struggle he undertook to capture an often elusive past: a past that presented itself in different forms and versions, and through alternating channels’, and p. 36: ‘With alētheōs we are reminded that the truth criterion remains a concern for the historian even in dealing with this early mythical material (a higher goal than the ‘agreement’ that the priestesses and neighbors reach in the second version)’. D. Branscome, for example, reviews the assessments of the truth-issue in Herodotus according to Darbo-Peschanski, Lateiner, Dewald and Marincola among others, and concludes that ‘Herodotus wants readers to believe that with the Histories he is trying to give them the most truthful account possible’, D. Branscome, Textual Rivals: Self-presentation in Herodotus’ Histories (Ann Arbor, 2013), 5–11; the references are to C. Darbo-Peschanski, Le discours du particulier: Essai sur l’enquête hérodotéenne (Paris, 1987); D. Lateiner, The Historical Method of Herodotus (Toronto, 1989); C. Dewald, ‘“I Didn’t Give my Own Genealogy”: Herodotus and the Authorial Persona’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong, and H. van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2002); and J. Marincola, ‘Odysseus and the Historians’ SyllClass 18 (2007). A. Marzi, ‘“Più vero del vero”? La funzione del falso e della simulazione nella storiografia antica’, Quaderni di storia 82 (2015), 61, in recalling Herodotus’ proem, indirectly addresses the problem of defining truth in the Histories by considering that ‘[n]ella visione di Erodoto, il polo negativo, il male assoluto storiografico, non era dunque il falso o l’inverosimile, ma l’oblio, cioè la scomparsa vera e propria dei ‘lógoi degli elleni’, senza i quali non poteva darsi nessuna critica, nessuna attività di ricerca, eventualmente nessuna polemica’. (‘In Herodotus’ vision, the negative pole, the absolute historiographical evil, was therefore not the false or the improbable, but oblivion, that is, the actual disappearance of the “lógoi of the Hellenes”, without which there could be no criticism, no research activity, and possibly no controversy.’) For other similar examples, see also S. Flory, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus (Detroit, 1987), 49–79; J. Moles, ‘Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides’, in C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman (eds.), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter, 1993); R. L. Fowler, ‘Early historiē and Literacy’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford, 2001), 102–3; P. Cartledge and E. Greenwood, ‘Herodotus as a Critic: Truth, Fiction, Polarity’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong, and H. van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2002).
23 Artabanus is harshly disqualified by Xerxes as κακῷ τε καὶ ἀθύμῳ (a coward and lacking in spirit) (Hdt. 7.11.1), Demaratus is dismissed amid laughter (Hdt. 7.105.1), and the alliance offered to the Athenians was just another move from Mardonius in the long war to reduce them to Persian control.