A magic dolphin & flying snakes: Herodotus and the power of story
Michael Ondaatje wove Herodotus’s stories into his award-winning novel, The English Patient
*Originally published on Oct. 16, 2023.
For someone who died more than 2,400 years ago, Herodotus's voice is still very much alive.
"The directness of his voice sometimes feels like he is speaking directly to you," said Lindsay Mahon Rathnam, a professor of political science at Duke Kunshan University in China.
"He knows the power of a good story. He knows the way it can elevate but also corrupt and destroy our thinking."
Writing in the 5th century BCE, Herodotus broke tradition by setting out to write an accurate account to help explain the Persian empire's failure to conquer the Greek states, despite Persia's massive military and naval force.
He traveled the region, from what's now modern-day Turkey all the way along the Nile River in Egypt, and across to modern day Italy, gathering stories. He was interested in observing different cultures first-hand, while capturing the stories they share in an attempt to better understand those cultures, how they came into being, and why they came into conflict with each other.
While he has been criticized over the centuries for including stories that are obviously false, Mahon Rathnam argues that they are worth considering.
"Even if these stories are wrong and some of the stories he shows are clearly false, clearly fanciful, clearly self-aggrandizing or paranoid or fearful, we learn something about the nature of the political world from listening to them," Mahon Rathnam told IDEAS.
And understanding the stories a given culture tells of itself helps bridge cultural divides.
"We live in this moment of enormous crisis and challenge, and I think Herodotus is showing how people can cooperate and understand each other across difference and how they fail to understand each other and fall into conflict across difference," said political scientist Joel Schlosser, author of Herodotus in the Anthropocene.
"I think that [his] great project is to enable his readers to rise above the parochialism of their upbringings and see human life from a higher and therefore also wider vantage point," said Clifford Orwin, professor of political science, Jewish studies and classics at the University of Toronto.
Herodotus's stories have inspired writers through the centuries, including acclaimed Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński, author of Travels with Herodotus (2004).
And poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje took inspiration from Herodotus when writing his Booker-prize-winning novel, The English Patient (1992).
"It was a great freedom to stumble on Herodotus while writing that book," said Ondaatje.
"There's a great vividness in it… you were allowed to imagine anything. He was imagining, and finding the great stories, which all writers want to find."
I, Herototus of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why they fought each other.
– from Herodotus' The History, David Grene translation (1987)
*This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic.
Download the IDEAS podcast to listen to this episode.
Sources used for translation:
Herodotus: The History, translation by David Grene (1987)
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, edited by Robert B. Strassler. Translation by Andrea L. Purvis. Introduction by Rosalind Thomas (2009)
