17/11/13

Herodotus, the Homer of European prose | TLS

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Herodotus, the Homer of European prose

EDITH HALL
T he Hellenist John Herington once called Herodotus a literary centaur, because from the front he looks like a rational intellectual, but his rear parts belong to a primitiv e creature of the wild. Herodotus pioneering prose treatise sought to ex plain the nature of the world he inhabited, in the mid-fifth century BC, from the ev ents that had taken place across the Mediterranean and Black Published: 13 November 2013 Sea regions during the reigns of four Persian kings Cy rus, Camby ses, Darius and Xerx es. These culminated in the v ictory of Greece ov er Persia in 48047 9 BC. Herodotus, the father of history , often uses rational ex planations, backed up by ev idence. But he also includes many traditional stories and legends, with patently fantastic elements, deriv ed from poems, fables and oral tradition. Herodotus therefore needs a v ersatile translator who appreciates his hy bridity . Enter Tom Holland, a distinguished and highly readable author of both historical non-fiction dealing with ancient empires (Persian Fire , Rubicon, Millennium , The Shadow of the Sw ord ) and popular fantasy nov els. He knows more than Darius opens the tomb of Nitocris, Queen of Babylon most of us about how to ev oke both real and imagined by Eustache Le Sueur scenarios with economy , elegance and gusto. Although there is no shortage of riv al translations on the market, the Herodotus of Holland has therefore been eagerly awaited.

Herodotus THE HISTORIES Translated by Tom Holland 848pp. Penguin Classics. 25. 978 0 7139 9977 8

This is a twenty -first-century Herodotus. It is a Herodotus whose tongue is often in his cheek: the conflict between Greeks and Persians began long ago with a bout of competitiv e princess-rustling. It is a Herodotus who can speak directly to modern capitalism: the Phoenicians began inv esting heav ily in the long-distance shipping business, ex porting goods to a wide v ariety of markets. Arion, the trav elling poet, raked in an absolute fortune. It is a Herodotus who knows the language in which powerful men are described today : Peisistratus the ty rant was attended by a retinue of heav ies. Cy rus is described as ey eballing Croesus from his riv al camp. But this is also the Herodotus of a translator who respects the old-fashioned niceties of rhetoric and prose sty le. Herodotus was the Homer of European prose, who almost single-handedly dragged writing without the aid of metre from pedestrian paratax is to an ex quisite art form. He was criticized ev en in antiquity for being factually unreliable, but his literary sty le was univ ersally praised by eminent critics, including Longinus, for its sweetness and charm. Many sentences in Herodotus are breathtakingly beautiful; he mirrors content in aural effect (long plangent v owels when people are bereav ed; crescendo as the Nile rises) and is a master of delicate insinuation of his own reserv e or bafflement. Holland works tirelessly to do justice to Herodotus easy flow, dazzling diction and intermittently faux-naf tone. He preserv es the different rhetorical sty les of Herodotus div erse speakers. We gain a strong impression of Herodotean
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Herodotus, the Homer of European prose | TLS

hy perbaton, rhy thm and chiasmus often ignored by prev ious translators: In peacetime it is sons who bury their fathers but in times of war, it is fathers who bury their sons. Judicious parentheses steer us deftly through some of Herodotus more conv oluted sequences. One crucial Herodotean sty listic feature is almost impossible to translate the use of lonely , elev ated poly sy llabic words near the beginning or end of a sentence, anchoring the readers emotional reaction. But Holland ingeniously substitutes an arresting or unusual locution. He rarely forgets that Herodotus wrote in order to deliv er liv e performances, rather than to be pored ov er in a library . Much of his translation is ripe for oral deliv ery . From the respectful reproduction of the first, sonorous period with which Herodotus announces his objectiv es, to the ironic flashback to the glory day s of Persian army discipline under Cy rus with which the History concludes, Hollands tex t makes for energizing reading. He has understood that Herodotus protean work is united by the philosophical question of human happiness, and in particular the demonstration that happiness cannot be guaranteed by power or wealth. This ethical grip on the ov erarching story line makes Hollands unquestionably the best English translation of Herodotus to hav e appeared in the past half-century , and there hav e been quite a few. It knocks out of the water the colourless, trudging Landmark Herodotus of Andrea Purv is (2007 ). It is more pleasurable to read than Robin Waterfields worthy but slightly flat 1 998 translation for Ox ford Worlds Classics, and is comparably accurate. Dav id Grene, a fine Hellenist, prose artist and judge of translation, should hav e done better with Herodotus than he did in 1 987 for the Univ ersity of Chicago Press: his Herodotus sometimes archaizes painfully (It is sweet to hear of the good hap of one who is a friend) and is my stify ingly reluctant to translate the ancient Greek word for ty rant (turannos ) as ty rant. Herodotus nine-book history is so v aried in register, sty le and content that it subv erts any attempt by a single modern analy st to do it justice. Clev er, philosophically minded Herodotus scholars stress his debt to rational science, medicine and Presocratic thought. Those who write empirical, gossipy and anecdotal histories of the ancient world argue that Herodotus was empirical, gossipy and anecdotal. Scholars of ancient poetry insist that Herodotus was indebted abov e all to Homeric and Pindaric v erse. Tom Hollands Herodotus, unsurprisingly , writes like Tom Holland which means fast, funny , opinionated, clear and erudite. I can pay his translation my highest compliment: as I read it straight through, cov er to cov er, I frequently forgot that I was supposed to be ev aluating the translation and became swept away by the v ertiginous forward thrust of Herodotus own story telling. The only other translation that has ev er had this effect on me is the earlier, 1 954, Penguin Classic by Aubrey de Slincourt. Indeed, I suspect that de Slincourts pacy , natural-sounding rendering, as superbly rev ised and annotated by John Marincola (2003), not only informs Hollands fundamentally , but will deserv edly remain a serious riv al. The de Slincourt v ersion was a game-changer. Before 1 954, any one requiring any literary merit in a Herodotus translation, rather than a schoolroom crib, was faced with a dismal choice. The ex plicit aim of J. Enoch Powells 1 949 v ersion was to imitate the language of the King James Bible, resulting in ersatz Jacobean with none of Herodotus lex ical finesse. The Ox ford high churchman George Rawlinson, who lent noisy Homeric and Old Testament resonances to his grandiloquent Herodotus before presenting it to Gladstone, produced prose both archaizing and prudish: Herodotus famous discussion of the genitals of Indian camels was of course omitted. Other v ersions were av ailable, all by academic gentlemen, but they were dull and stilted (G. C. Macaulay , 1 91 4) or dull and inaccurate (A. D. Godley , 1 920). These translators univ ersally assumed that Herodotus, who came from Halicarnassus (in modern Turkey ) and wrote in an eastern Greek dialect, must already hav e sounded quaint and old-fashioned to his allegedly more sophisticated mainland Greek audience. They responded by producing one kind of artificial patois or another, at best alienatingly atav istic and at worst incomprehensible. When the breezy , dy namic (as well as impressiv ely accurate) de Slincourt came on the market, Herodotus seemed fresh, up to date, dy namic, funny , ex citing and therefore almost unrecognizable. Classical scholars, affronted that a freelance writer (albeit a former schoolteacher, and acknowledged ex pert on poetry and on the history of ex ploration) was translating one of their canonical historians, accused him of making Herodotus sound journalistic and slick. But the y achtsman liv ing quietly on the Isle of Wight had ex actly the kind of real-life ex perience which equipped him to put ex citement and v erv e into the story of war between superpowers: hav ing surv iv ed Gallipoli and joined the Roy al Fly ing Corps, he had been shot down by the fly ing ace Werner V oss, and ended the First World War in a POW camp.
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Herodotus, the Homer of European prose | TLS

So rev olutionary did de Slincourts idiomatic v ersion of Herodotus seem that the classicist Hugh Lloy dJones sneered at its sty le, complaining that de Slincourt had rendered Herodotus into flat, functional modern prose, about as distinguished as that of Agatha Christie. Had he been able to read Christie, of course, Herodotus would probably not hav e regarded the comparison as an insult, since she was wonderfully in control of structure and slid gracefully between description, narration and dialogue. But the comparison was certainly intended as an insult. Lloy d-Jones was horrified to discov er that Herodotus had the potential to appeal to a wide public as interested in a good read as in study ing the minutiae of ancient history . Entertaining episodes from Herodotus hav e alway s reached parts of popular culture that more melancholy Greek historians, such as Thucy dides and Poly bius, can nev er reach largely thanks to media other than translation, such as theatre, opera or cinema. The stand of Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopy lae has ex cited millions through Zak Sny ders unsubtle reading of Herodotus eighth book in his film 300 . The second most famous episode from Herodotus, howev er, is the story of the Ly dian King Candaules, so besotted by his own wife that he inv ited his body guard Gy ges to spy on her and admire her body unclothed: this was a key tex t in Anthony Minghellas film The English Patient (1 996), adapted from Michael Ondaatjes nov el. The difference between the v arious av ailable English translations of this episode is illuminating. In one of the most delicate choices of words in all ancient literature, Herodotus makes Gy ges tell his master that his creepy inv itation to v oy eurism is unwholesome and unfitting. Rawlinsons prudish What most unwise speech is this, master, which thou hast uttered? and Godley s pedantic what an unsound suggestion, both fail completely to catch Herodotus tone. Y et de Slincourts felicitous Master . . . what an improper suggestion! hits just the right note of deference, understatement and humour. Holland, in his laudable desire to make Herodotus as v iv id and theatrical as possible, slightly ov er-translates him: Master . . . what a monstrous suggestion! The tendency to opt for striking and emphatically contemporary effect, rather than nuance, is the new translations sole demerit, leav ing aside some confusion about musical instruments, a peculiar av ersion to using the word if in conditional sentences, which produces ponderous and unidiomatic subjunctiv es, and the idiosy ncratic tics duly and y ou see. It introduces a (not large) number of jarring renditions which can distract the reader away from the graceful Herodotus towards his arch and boy ish translator: they include describing Arion, who inv ented the genre of poetry known as the dithy ramb, as a trendsetter, and telling us that no one really has the foggiest idea about what lies between Europe and the sunrise. Occasionally , the y earning for impact actually reduces the penetration of Herodotus insights. The Ly dians struck the first metal coins: Hollands translation tells us that the result was the inv ention of shopping. Herodotus actually means that commodities ceased to be ex changed for other commodities and that a distinct profession of retailers, as opposed to craftsmen, came into ex istence. The word for retailer, kaplos , also has a slightly more derogatory shading in Greek than Holland implies. Herodotus compact phrase both makes a serious economic point, and also suggests that the insertion of the middle man in the process of ex change introduced greater potential for crooked dealings. Hollands liv ely , amusing reference to shopping is therefore created at the ex pense of Herodotean lay ered profundity . Hollands translation comes with thirteen carefully assembled maps, his own insightful preface, hundreds of well-pitched notes, and a brilliant introduction by Paul Cartledge, the best liv ing ex ponent of scholarly controv ersies in ancient Greek history . I wont be throwing out my de Slincourt, but look forward to routinely comparing his translation, in detail, with Hollands. I am not absolutely conv inced that Hollands translation, with its insistent contemporaneity , will show the same stamina as de Slincourts, which still reads freshly and is a bestseller six decades after its first publication. But I am in awe of Tom Hollands achiev ement, and hav e no doubt it will bear rich fruit in bringing Herodotus to public attention.

Edith Hall is Professor in the Classics Department and Centre for Hellenic Studies at Kings College London. She is the author, most recently , of Adventures w ith Iphigenia in Tauris: A cultural history of Euripides Black Sea Tragedy , which appeared earlier this y ear.
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