Egypt’s ἔργα λόγου μέζω: Narrating the Nile in Book II of Herodotus
It is routine, by now, to note that the second book of Herodotus’ Histories stands conspicuously out from the whole. Its subject is Egypt, and much of its content is significantly divorced from the main narrative line of the Histories. Charles W. Fornara calls it “excursus-like,” the product of a younger Herodotus eager to show off his flair for argumentation and description, in conversation with the prominent geographers and historians of his day (most particularly Hecataeus). [1] Much attention has been paid to the kinds of information it presents about the Nile, as well as the ways in which Herodotus argues his own theories of the river’s nature, and the ensuing historiographic consequences; others have investigated the accuracy and origin of its claims. However, beyond the argumentative content of the Nile passages, the ways in which Herodotus presents and organizes information about the natural features of Egypt and about the logoi he encounters there are equally noteworthy. In the context of the Histories’ general narrative features and stylistic patterns, the style of the Nile narrative at once links it to the Histories’ broader concerns and emphasizes the singularity of both the logos and the river. Within the Egypt logos, Herodotus’ discussion of the Nile winds stands out in particular for its richness and complexity, and offers the most fruitful ground for examination in light of the other eight books of the Histories.
Herodotus’ own explanation for the attention he pays to Egypt is that πλεῖστα θωμάσια ἔχει καὶ ἔργα λόγου μέζω παρέχεται (“it has the most wonders and proffers works greater than logos”) (2.35.1). It is tempting to separate the sections about Egypt from the main thrust of the narrative, explaining them away as digressions that can be characterized into such discrete categories as “ethnography” or “geography” (a logical extension of concerns about the work’s generally paratactic style). Such a simplistic view of the book’s detachment from the Histories as a whole is equally appealing to refute. It is difficult, however, to argue against the notable differences of the Egypt narrative from other books of the Histories, both in content and style; this includes the distinctive character of Herodotus’ discussions of Egyptian flora, fauna, and customs, in comparison to, for example, his accounts of the battles of the Persian wars.
What exactly does it mean, though, that Egypt proffers πλεῖστα θωμάσια καὶ ἔργα λόγου μέζω? Immediately, we are reminded of the Histories’ proem. Herodotus writes that his intent is to show forth what has been shown: great works and wonders. And Egypt contains not only a few wonderful things or noteworthy accomplishments; it has the most wonders, and works that are beyond description. The logical consequence is that the most words be devoted to it (as compared to other thomata) and this is exactly what Herodotus declares and does. On at least a superficial level, it is clear that the Nile passages have a place under the broadest thematic umbrella that Herodotus offers us.
We can do more than that, however. Herodotus’ penchant for curiosity and spectacle is not in dispute; but in Book Two in particular, it is more closely tied to other Herodotean themes and impulses than first appears. While the simple wondering impulse is sometimes sufficient rationale for Herodotus to include something in the Histories, pure novelty or oddity frequently does not go far enough as an explanation for inclusion. Often (though not always) there is a further drive to investigate the origin or cause of a thoma — and this impetus is definitively present in the Nile narrative, which is unique because of its nature as an investigation into unknown causes. (Additionally, and importantly, Herodotean wonder is a personal phenomenon. It drives the work in varied directions but always from a central viewpoint — the “impulse to wonder is by definition idiosyncratic and proceeds from the one who is in charge of the logos.” [2]) The wandering of the logos and the wondering consciousness track each other closely, and this is a particularly apt way in which to think of the narrative possibilities of Herodotus’ sense of geographic wonder.
The Nile’s status as a thoma is a natural consequence of its position in the Herodotean scheme of polarity and symmetry. [3] Its nature is not only singular and different, but explicitly opposite to the nature of other rivers; it is also the greatest in size. While natural features are frequently termed thomata in the Histories, the Nile’s status is unique by virtue of its extreme singularity. And Herodotus’ discourse about the Nile is unusual among his many descriptions of nature and natural curiosities. Namely, the Nile is argued about, by Herodotus, at length. Elsewhere in Book Two, nature (like ethnography) is usually presented as interesting but unadorned fact — such as the crocodiles and hippopotamuses of Egypt — or, as in the case of the phoenix, as adopted anecdote that may or may not be true, but is not submitted to debate (2.68–73). These may be thomata as well, but they do not prompt equally earnest investigation into causes (in the case of the phoenix, for example, Herodotus explicitly gestures at the anecdotal nature of the story, but shows no sign of discrediting it, seeking counteropinions, or offering his own hypotheses). Elsewhere, landscapes that Herodotus has not seen belong, in James Romm’s terminology, to the realm of “mythic geography” that is not reachable or knowable by observation. [4] The Nile presents an intermediate case — not mythical in a visual-spatial sense, but nevertheless mysterious with respect to its phusis. Autopsy only goes so far towards knowledge of its nature, but Herodotus nevertheless explores — feels compelled to explore — alternate ways of knowing.
The sources and types of Herodotean knowledge are a notoriously knotty problem. The unique position of landscape as an object of knowledge lies in its spatial reality and temporal persistence (with the important exception of natural history, which Herodotus also takes as a subject.) Unlike the historical narratives, which take place in past time, the Nile does not have to rely on logoi alone for its description — it is, and is described, ostensibly, as it exists in the present. Discourse about landscape is conventionally descriptive, and almost entirely referential. However, the Nile (as well as other Herodotean landscapes) poses additional problems of description and interpretation, which are closely connected to the process of evaluating what is not as referential: other discourses, or logoi.
In several places in the Histories, a key way of describing of both discourses and landscape is by the distinction between what is clear/accessible and what is unclear/inaccessible, i.e. aphanes. This word is used to describe both nature and narratives about nature. The most salient example is Herodotus’ dismissal of a circular Ocean: ὁ δὲ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ λέξας ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦθον ἀνενείκας οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον (“the one who speaks about Ocean does not admit of refutation, bringing the story to an unseen place”) (2.23). The story of Ocean (importantly, a muthos, not elenkhos) is innately unable to be engaged with through argument. This is not primarily an attack on the intelligence of the speaker, but an observation about the structural knowability of the type of discourse the speaker engages in. Elsewhere in the Histories, the word aphanes is used to describe geographic features that become unknowable or untraversable (for example, at 6.76: τὴν γὰρ δὴ λίμνην ταύτην ἐς χάσμα ἀφανὲς ἐκδιδοῦσαν ἀναφαίνεσθαι ἐν Ἄργεϊ; the lake disappears underground, and then reappears in geographic certainty, in Argos). Likewise, the man who speaks of Ocean brings the logos to a place where it cannot be scrutinized. To aphanes is opaque by nature — as landscape, it is unseen and unseeable, as logos, obscure and inscrutable.
This does not, however, mean that the discourse must be given up; Herodotus has other tools at his disposal. In his discussion of the sources of the Nile, Herodotus tells us that he learned as much as possible going αὐτόπτης until Elephantine, and after that inquired by ἀκοή (2.29). Even without first-person observation, landscape features can be learned of and known; but this risks venturing into epistemologically dangerous territory, and requires reliance on uncertain and sometimes unverifiable reports. Lacking a straightforward description, the next-best choice tends to be the adoption of a foreign logos, perhaps framed as such, passed on by speakers of various epistemological authority, and with or without additional commentary. In his discussion of the Nile, Herodotus moves between what he can present clearly and what is less certain, and signals the truth status of the information he presents in a variety of ways.
In chapter ten, the discourse on the Nile begins in earnest:
τῶν γὰρ ὀρέων τῶν εἰρημένων τῶν ὑπὲρ Μέμφιν πόλιν κειμένων τὸ μεταξὺ ἐφαίνετό μοι εἶναι κοτὲ κόλπος θαλάσσης, ὥσπερ γε τὰ περὶ Ἴλιον καὶ Τευθρανίην καὶ Ἔφεσόν τε καὶ Μαιάνδρου πεδίον, ὥς γε εἶναι σμικρὰ ταῦτα μεγάλοισι συμβαλεῖν: τῶν γὰρ ταῦτα τὰ χωρία προσχωσάντων ποταμῶν ἑνὶ τῶν στομάτων τοῦ Νείλου, ἐόντος πενταστόμου, οὐδεὶς αὐτῶν πλήθεος πέρι ἄξιος συμβληθῆναι ἐστί. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἄλλοι ποταμοί, οὐ κατὰ τὸν Νεῖλον ἐόντες μεγάθεα, οἵτινες ἔργα ἀποδεξάμενοι μεγάλα εἰσί: τῶν ἐγὼ φράσαι ἔχω οὐνόματα καὶ ἄλλων καὶ οὐκ ἥκιστα Ἀχελῴου… (2.10.1–3)
For the land between the mentioned mountains lying above the city of Memphis seems to me to have once been a harbor, just as the land around Ilium and Teuthrania and Ephesus and the plain of Maiandros is, if it is possible to compare these small things with great ones; for of the rivers bordering these lands, not one of them is worthy to be compared with one mouth of the Nile (which has five) concerning its volume. There are some other rivers, not as great as the Nile, which have displayed great works; I am able to declare their names and those of others and not least of all Achelous…
Herodotus has a number of ways to indicate why he has included a piece of information in his histories — someone says, he has seen, oikos demonstrates. Here, natural history has “appeared” (ephaineto) to him to be a certain way by analogy; he compares what he has seen what he has not. This is an argument for a nature that is similar on every scale, the same laws underlying the small and the great, with the kind of systematicity that calls to mind Histories 1.5 (which sets out the historical pattern of the rise and fall of great and small cities over time). The comparison of scale is pushed further when we reach the mouths of the Nile and the Nile itself, the greatest and largest of rivers. The difference between cities and rivers is in the permanence of natural features. In 1.5, the stress is placed on the difference between the past and future of cities; here, the comparison between small and large rivers is a synchronic one (though there is history here as well, and a history of change).
This is also the only time in the Histories that erga megala are performed — have been displayed — by a non-human agent. The Nile is described just in the way that Herodotus characterizes prominent generals and celebrated men — no other Egyptian river is ἄξιος συμβληθῆναι, worthy of being pitched in competition against the Nile. Other rivers, though not the Nile’s match in size, have shown forth great works — the Nile is over and above this first test of worthiness to be included in the Histories. A similar declaration of Herodotus’ knowledge of names often occurs during or after the narrative of a battle, enumerating the brave in combat. In several respects, natural history is here narrated in the same ways as human history — with the additional caveat that its subjects continue to exist in the present, both of the narrative and in real space. Like warriors, rivers can be enumerated and taxonomized, organized by name and stratified by nature.
The erga megala of the river are not only implicitly compared to historical feats, however. Herodotus, too, in his discussion of the Nile, performs a similar display. The ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστὰ ἀποδεχθέντα of the proem include the Histories itself, Herodotus’ ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις. And the apodeixis of Herodotus is contained, at least in part, in his relationship with the other voices, or logoi, in his work. [5]
This relationship is overwhelmingly present in the Nile winds passage. After presenting and discarding three possible explanations for the nature of the winds, Herodotus concedes to argue for his own — εἰ δὲ δεῖ μεμψάμενον γνώμας τὰς προκειμένας αὐτὸν περὶ τῶν ἀφανέων γνώμην ἀποδέξασθαι (“if I must, imputing blame to the existing opinions, myself show forth an opinion about unclear things”) (2.24). The display of Herodotus’ own opinion is not governed by the same logical or compulsive constraints of oikos or anankē that he employs in dismantling the opinions of others — it is dei only. This is an opportunity to fill a gap left by other thinkers, but the argument is not made by its own necessity, whether of its truth or otherwise (though the participial phrase emphasizes the connection between Herodotus’ role as arbiter of competing logoi and as author of his own opinion). This is a personal determination, and is stressed as personal. He makes explicit that the subject of his argument is unclear and unseeable; he has moved beyond description, into γνώμη, which may or may not accord with truth.
A useful comparison here is the Paris and Helen logos that comes later in Book Two. There, too, Herodotus responds to certain interpretations of what is in this case a historical event, and adds his own. But the explicit rhetoric of apodeixis, and in particular of the compulsion for apodeixis, is missing — instead, we have argumentative and narrative terms like ἐπιλεγόμενος and ἀποφαίνομαι. Set in contrast to the Nile apodeixis, the key first-person phrase ἐγὼ γνώμην ἀποφαίνομαι is telling here. The sentence that follows, which declares that great revenges result from great injustices, is highly reminiscent of 1.5 in its preoccupation with equal reciprocity (2.120). And the particular concern here is that this interpreted law is made καταφανές: painfully visible, searingly clear.
Herodotus tells us that the story of Paris and Helen uncovers and makes clear a natural-theological pattern; and his own narration of the story is a “making-clear,” an unveiling, of his position on its truth. His uncovering of the true causes of the Trojan War stands in contrast to the Greeks’ inability to believe the Trojans’ claim that they do not have Helen. Herodotus is drawing results from evidence, and using the story to help illuminate a detectable pattern in the workings of divinity and men. But he is not contesting logoi, or logographers, that he has presented in the text — only, by implication, drawing conclusions from the poetic tradition. This is not an act of dialogue but an act of interpretation. [6]
Likewise, when he investigates the sources of the Nile, Herodotus writes of his inquiries from the Egyptian clerk: οὗτος μὲν δὴ ὁ γραμματιστής, εἰ ἄρα ταῦτα γινόμενα ἔλεγε, ἀπέφαινε, ὡς ἐμὲ κατανοέειν, δίνας τινὰς ταύτῃ ἐούσας ἰσχυράς (“that clerk, if, evidently, he spoke the truth, showed, as I understand, some strong whirlpools were there”) (2.28.5). The act of showing or uncovering (here, in the active) is conditional upon the description of tauta ginomena, closely connected to the evidential particle ἄρα. It requires evidence, and is a speech act about a natural, observable truth that must be revealed to the one who has not seen it for himself (similar moments are at 1.129.8, in which truth is revealed in logos, and 6.65, which is an interestingly ironic use — Leutychides is not, in fact, revealing the truth about Demaratus, he only believes that he is). Herodotus confirms and reveals, but does not dissect or argue.
In 7.152, the same formulation is connected to other Herodotean ways of indicating truth; οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως εἰπεῖν, οὐδέ τινα γνώμην περὶ αὐτῶν ἀποφαίνομαι ἄλλην γε ἢ τήν περ αὐτοὶ Ἀργεῖοι λέγουσι (“I am not able to speak unswervingly, and I do not reveal any opinion about these things other than that one which the Argives themselves say”). In the absence of surety, he refrains from showing forth a clear opinion, and instead uncovers, and relies upon, the logos of others. Paul Cartledge and Emily Greenwood illuminatingly point out the basic meaning of Herodotus’ habitually critical adverb, ἀτρεκέως, as “the idea of ‘being on track’, as opposed to misleading information, which strays from the path of truth.” [7] The Nile passages are, if anything, even more strongly spatially represented.
In the Nile discourse, Herodotus is the ἵστωρ at his most unambiguous, beginning at the end of I.19. The object of his investigation (ἱστορέων) is the unusual phusis of the river, and more specifically those Egyptains who might know it. In the beginning of the chapter he is eager to learn from them, expecting that there are those in Egypt who know why the Nile has such a strange and opposite nature. Frustrated by the ignorance of the priests, he turns to a ἱστορίη that is the comparison of second-hand accounts. He is now ταῦτα βουλόμενος εἰδέναι, and so, he says, he inquires (2.19). What he wants is knowledge, and this object is pointedly contrasted to those previous writers on the nature of the Nile:
ἀλλὰ Ἑλλῄνων μὲν τινὲς ἐπίσημοι βουλόμενοι γενέσθαι σοφίην ἔλεξαν περὶ τοῦ ὕδατος τούτου τριφασίας ὁδούς: τῶν τὰς μὲν δύο τῶν ὁδῶν οὐδ᾽ ἀξιῶ μνησθῆναι εἰ μὴ ὅσον σημῆναι βουλόμενος μοῦνον… (2.20.1)
But certain Greeks, wishing to be notable in their wisdom, said three roads about this river; of them, two of the roads are not worthy of mention unless one wishes to indicate only how they are…
Other Greek writers (Thales, Hecataeus, and Anaxagoras have all been identified as the originators of the following viewpoints) [8] sought not knowledge but their own notability. This idea of being marked by the success of a discourse is cleverly turned around by Herodotus, and this, too, is narrated in language reminiscent of the heroic narratives in the Histories. Two of the opinions, he writes, are not worthy of mention — not in a narrative of a river worthy to be included in a catalog of great works and wonders. He does mention them, however, in order to mark them only as neglectable; he beats them at their own game of signification. He is indicating discourse now, not himself or an object, but the object and discourse are judged for inclusion on similar standards. There is a kind of thoma in these false logoi as well, as well, as when Herodotus refers to the second opinion as θωμασιωτέρη (2.21). It is included for the same reason the Nile is — as an object of wonder and as an object of investigation.
Of particular interest in this passage is the way Herodotus describes the three Greek opinions, as τριφασίας ὁδούς. Three chapters previously, Herodotus tells us the shape of the Nile:
μέχρι μέν νυν Κερκασώρου πόλιος ῥέει εἷς ἐὼν ὁ Νεῖλος, τὸ δὲ ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς πόλιος σχίζεται τριφασίας ὁδούς. καὶ ἣ μὲν πρὸς ἠῶ τρέπεται, τὸ καλέεται Πηλούσιον στόμα, ἡ δὲ ἑτέρη τῶν ὁδῶν πρὸς ἑσπέρην ἔχει: τοῦτο δὲ Κανωβικὸν στόμα κέκληται. ἡ δὲ δὴ ἰθέα τῶν ὁδῶν τῷ Νείλῳ ἐστὶ ἥδε…
Now, until the city of Kerkasoros the Nile runs as a single stream, but after this city it splits into three ways. And one turns toward the east, the one called the Pelousian mouth, and another of the roads points toward the west; this is called the Canobicon mouth. And the straight one of the ways of the Nile is this… (2.18)
The Nile and Herodotus’ discourse about the Nile are, quite literally, the same shape. Like the argumentative section of the Nile discourse, the Nile itself runs along one course, splits — σχίζεται — and is eventually followed on a single narrative line (σχίζω is also used for a difference of γνῶμαι in the Greek deliberations about Thermopylae, which results in a physical split of the army, at 6.219). Both the river and conjectures about its nature split down three paths; and both have each variant path elaborated before the ἰθέα τῶν ὁδῶν is resolved upon. Herodotus’ explication of the Greeks’ opinions follows the same ἡ μέν, ἡ δὲ ἑτέρη pattern that the tributaries of the Nile do (additionally, 2.29 will pick up the μέχρι…πόλιος, τὸ δὲ ἀπό pattern to describe Herodotus’ decreasing access to firsthand knowledge of Egypt). The final demonstrative, ἥδε, identifies the ἰθέα τῶν ὁδῶν with the text that follows, strengthening the spatial ties between the Nile and its narrative (exactly as occurs with the first-person deictic pronoun in the proem). The description of the Nile hews closely to the shape of the Nile itself; the syntax is comparatively simple and paratactic. This style is maximally referential and minimally interpreted.
This idea of the ὁδὸς λόγων is made explicit several times in the Histories. Additionally, as Silvia Montiglio elegantly outlines, it is everywhere implicit in Herodotus’ language and style. [9] She places his physical wanderings and paratactic narrative in parallel — Herodotus’ text wanders because he, too, wanders, meandering into digressions and splitting off down different paths according to what interests him. This idea of wandering, and specifically of a choice of roads, is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, bound up with the emphasis that Herodotus places on demonstrable truth — the ὁδὸς λόγων is not necessarily a straight road, but contains multiplicity, some false ways and some true. At 1.95.1:
ἐπιδίζηται δὲ δὴ τὸ ἐνθεῦτεν ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος τόν τε Κῦρον ὅστις ἐὼν τὴν Κροίσου ἀρχὴν κατεῖλε, καὶ τοὺς Πέρσας ὅτεῳ τρόπῳ ἡγήσαντο τῆς Ἀσίης. ὡς ὦν Περσέων μετεξέτεροι λέγουσι, οἱ μὴ βουλόμενοι σεμνοῦν τὰ περὶ Κῦρον ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐόντα λέγειν λόγον, κατὰ ταῦτα γράψω, ἐπιστάμενος περὶ Κύρου καὶ τριφασίας ἄλλας λόγων ὁδοὺς φῆναι.
My enclosed logos continues to inquire with respect to Cyrus, namely being who he destroyed the empire of Croesus, and with respect to the Persians, in what way they became leaders of Asia. I will write according to those things that some Persians say (those not wishing to make the affairs of Cyrus notable but to speak the true account), knowing also how to show three other about roads of logos about Cyrus.
This is the only other place in the Histories where the phrase τριφασίας ὁδούς applies to the logos, and the formulation has some crucial differences. The chapter opens with ἐπιδίζηται, a going-on or continuation of inquiry; likewise, Herodotus justifies his elaboration of Egyptian customs and works by telling us that he is prolonging his logos on account of Egypt’s extraordinary nature. This time, however, the conversation is different. The certain Persians speak in the present, unlike the certain of the Greeks; and they do not wish to present a certain version of themselves (or in this case, of Cyrus), but rather to speak τὸν ἐόντα, the logos that is factually true. Herodotus tells us that he will write according to the things that they say, but not without indicating that this is not the only path he could have gone down. In this case, his intentions and his fellow logographers’ align — by implication, of course, Herodotus values the path of what is true. The act of writing, because it is writing about a logos that chosen from someone else and not contested, means that it can be an act of “showing,” just as landscapes are shown. There is also a close connection and not unexpected here between epistamai and phainō — showing implies knowing.
Later in Book One, in the conversation of Astuages and Harpagus, the relationship between true and false ὁδοὶ λόγων is neatly demonstrated:
Ἀστυάγης δὲ τοῦ μὲν βουκόλου τὴν ἀληθείην ἐκφήναντος λόγον ἤδη καὶ ἐλάσσω ἐποιέετο […] ὁ δὲ Ἅρπαγος, ὡς εἶδε τὸν βουκόλον ἔνδον ἐόντα, οὐ τρέπεται ἐπὶ ψευδέα ὁδόν, ἵνα μὴ ἐλεγχόμενος ἁλίσκηται […] Ἅρπαγος μὲν δὴ τὸν ἰθὺν ἔφαινε λόγον… (1.117–118)
And Astyages, when the cowherd explained the true logos, then made him of less account… Harpagos, when he saw the cowherd was inside, did not turn onto a false road, so that he might not be caught and refuted…Harpagos, indeed, showed the straight logos…
Since the cowherd has uncovered the true logos, Harpagos must not turn to the false road, which might not admit of scrutiny (just as the story of Ocean does not admit of scrutiny). The road becomes metaphor here, having taken on the characteristics of speech. The speech opens by saying that he does not turn to this false road, and concludes, “Harpagos, then, showed the straight logos,” i.e. the true one — the false road and the straight logos are opposites.
So we might expect that the straight road of the Nile and Herodotus’ most correct explanation of its nature would be paralleled as well. However, the three roads in Herodotus’ discourse all refer to the opinions of the other Greeks, not his own (as do the three roads — τριφασίας ἄλλας λόγων ὁδούς — about Cyrus.) The third road seems the most reasonable, but in fact is the most false (2.23). Herodotus’ own argument includes both an explication and dismissal of the three roads of Greek opinion and, additionally, his own opinion about the Nile. Each road, like the Nile tributaries, is taken singularly, described, and refuted. It is only once we have arrived at the muthos of Ocean that space opens up for Herodotus’ own argument, which is an apodeixis περὶ τῶν ἀφανέων — in other words, it cannot be a straight road/true logos. Its character is fundamentally different from his description, for example, of the Nile itself, which can be seen and experienced.
As James Romm writes, this rejection of Ocean is not entirely based on the obscurity of the myth; “for lack of empirical evidence on which to judge the matter — obviously his preferred procedure — Herodotus falls back onto a more subjective form of refutation, based on his own sense of to oikos, or ‘likelihood.’” [10] The empirical argument only throws the story of Ocean into question, since it cannot be refuted empirically. The arguments Herodotus himself puts forward about the Nile are not ironclad, and they are not based on an aphanes/ithun dichotomy. Knowledge and description of the Nile itself and the Greek arguments about the Nile both track the ὁδὸς λόγων; Herodotus, in demonstrating his own opinion, follows a different path. However, both he and the Nile share the distinction of having performed an apodeixis, which the other Greeks cannot claim.
Herodotus’ apodeixis of natural causes only comes into play when he is also engaging with other logoi. A logos, in the Histories, can be true or false, straight or not, a road that deceives or a speech that is unswerving. But that kind of logos is a largely referential one, and so it can be described in the same way as its objects — as clear or obscure, traced over diverse and multiple roads. Herodotus describes his language objects like the landscapes they attempt to describe, like geographic features; but in presenting his own opinion about the unobservable he ventures into unknown territory, and so his discourse is constructed according to more complex standards. The wonders of Egypt are μέζω λόγου, beyond simple description in logos.
As part of the Scythian narrative in Book Four, Herodotus again takes up the question of Ocean: τὸν δὲ Ὠκεανὸν λόγῳ μὲν λέγουσι ἀπὸ ἡλίου ἀνατολέων ἀρξάμενον γῆν περὶ πᾶσαν ῥέειν, ἔργῳ δὲ οὐκ ἀποδεικνῦσι (“They say, in logos, that the Ocean begins in the east and runs around the entire earth, but they do not demonstrate this by erga”) (4.8.2). Using this and Herodotus’ dismissal of the Ionian opinions about Egyptian geography, among other examples, Bakker argues that apodeixis in Herodotus “is not merely a matter of ‘proof’, but also the act of proving something, as a response to a specific situation.” [11] In particular, it can be a response to other gnomai, and is a personal achievement (just as the act of wonder, as Munson writes, is a personal one). [12] Herodotus’ presentation of his own opinion about the Nile is exactly this kind of apodeixis. It exists in dialogue, which the muthos of Ocean cannot, and it is not a statement of truth or reality. What it does do, however, is place Herodotus’ dialogue about the Nile on the same level as the extraordinary nature of the Nile itself. The Nile is differentiated from all rivers; in addressing the arguments about its nature, and not simply in its description, Herodotus differentiates himself from previous geographers. Importantly, too, this apodeixis is explicitly not a matter of knowledge or truth. Herodotus makes clear that the nature of his subject is, in some sense, mythical; and, in any case, is impenetrable to epistēmē.
Romm, examining the representation of borders in Herodotus, observes the linguistic ambiguity of references to a γῆς περίοδος, which might indicate (as it did for Hecataeus) both a journey and an account of that journey. Herodotus’ own text has more than once been compared to a γῆς περίοδος. However, Herodotus rejects the conventional model of Ocean as an encircling border several times, and definitively; the very first instance is part of his discussion of the sources of the Nile. [13] In Book Five, the map of Aristagoras is distinguished by its comprehensiveness: inscribed in it is the γῆς ἅπασα περίοδος…καὶ θάλασσα τε πᾶσα καὶ ποταμοὶ πάντες (5.49.1). Aristagoras can be seen as one of many textual doubles for Herodotus, and many of Herodotus’ narrative quirks are reflected in Aristagoras’ own account; but he is ultimately a “negative model,” against which Herodotus contrasts his own, truthful account of the Persian Royal Road. [14] When Aristagoras’s knowledge fails, Herodotus adds to Aristagoras’s account, both picking up where he leaves off and giving his own version of the speech that Aristagoras gives to Cleomenes. [15] He introduces his own version thus: εἰ δέ τις τὸ ἀτρεκέστερον τούτων ἔτι δίζηται, ἐγὼ καὶ τοῦτο σημανέω (“but if someone seeks still [an account] more unswerving than these things, I will indicate that also”) (5.54.1). Herodotus’ account of the road is as unswerving a path as a road itself, and it is over and above the comprehensiveness that Aristagoras claims to present; he claims authority over the description of both the geography and the logos of Aristagoras (using another verb of reference and representation, sēmainō, remarkable in its own right).
Herodotus ends his discussion of the Nile winds, and begins his investigation into the Nile’s sources, with the statement ταῦτα μέν νυν ἔστω ὡς ἔστι τε καὶ ὡς ἀρχὴν ἐγένετο (“now let these things, then, be as they are and as they were in the beginning”) (2.27). While similar to other transitional closing statements in the Histories, this particular formulation is unique. Like other transitional phrases, it appears to be situated firmly within the narrative time, with a “narrative” νυν and an ἀρχή that, in similar contexts, often refers to the beginning of Herodotus’ own discourse. But the phrase ἔστω ὡς ἔστι is found only here. It makes little sense that this also be referring to the Nile winds discourse, which presumably has progressed since it began. Instead, its referent is most probably the geographic reality of the landscapes Herodotus makes the focus of these passages (which also colors our reading of ὡς ἀρχὴν ἐγένετο, which could in theory refer either to the beginning of the Nile logos or to the beginning of time).
Though the precise referent of ταῦτα is not clear — is it the logos, or what the logos contains? — Herodotus seems to be referring to his hypothetical rearrangement of the winds and seasons, which would cause the Ister, in his imagined, symmetrical geography, to experience the same strange effects as the Nile. We leave the realm of the aphanes and come back to earth, where Herodotus began — in both narrative time and geographic space.
Notes
[1] Charles W. Fornara, An Interpretive Essay on Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971), 17–19.
[2] Rosaria Munson, Telling Wonders (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 242–3.
[3] A good summary of the pervasiveness of symmetry in the Histories is in James Redfield, “Herodotus the Tourist,” Classical Philology 80.2 (1985): 103.
[4] In particular, Scythia and the Hyberboreans. See James S. Romm, “Herodotus and Mythic Geography: The Case of the Hyperboreans,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 119 (1987): 97–113.
[5] Gregory Nagy’s proposition in “Herodotos the Logios,” Arethusa 20 (1987): 175–184. Also see Egbert J. Bakker, “The Making of History: Herodotus’ Historiēs Apodexis” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, ed. Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, and Hans van Wees (Brill, 2002), p. 3–32.
[6] Aristotle, in fact, seems to make a similar distinction between these two verbs and associated actions in the Poetics (1450a.5–10).
[7] Paul Cartledge and Emily Greenwood, “Herodotus as Critic” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, ed. Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, and Hans van Wees (Brill, 2002), 362.
[8] Daniel W. Graham, “Philosophy on the Nile: Herodotus and Ionian Research,” Apeiron: A Journal For Ancient Philosophy and Science 36:4 (Dec. 2003): 293–4.
[9] Silvia Montiglio, Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2005), 136–140.
[10] Romm 1987: 100.
[11] Bakker 2002: 20.
[12] ibid., 22.
[13] James S. Romm, “The Boundaries of Earth,” in Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Herodotus: Volume 2, ed. Rosaria Vignolo Munson (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 100.
[14] David Branscome, “Herodotus and the Map of Aristagoras,” Classical Antiquity 29:1 (2010): 3.
[15] ibid., 27.
