The Audiences of Herodotus

Oral Performance and the Major Battle Narratives

Ian Oliver (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

204 Seiten

2024
Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Verlag)
978-1-6669-3620-9 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

By recognizing the pervasive influence that Herodotus’s career as an oral performer had on his composition of the Histories, The Audiences of Herodotus: Oral Performance and the Battle Narratives argues that the Histories’ versions of the three most important battles in the Persian Wars—the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea—persistently and disproportionately advance the interests, biases, and political agendas of distinct audiences in the mid-fifth century, well before Herodotus assembled his famous work of history as it survives to us. The Salamis and Plataea narratives reflect a mid-century audience of Athenians and their allies; the Thermopylae narrative reflects an Amphictyonic audience gathered at the Pythian Festival. Ian Oliver concludes that, as a participant in a culture of wisdom performance (epideixis), Herodotus originally composed short, ideologically motivated performance pieces that he intended to promote tendentious reinterpretations of these momentous events, then relied on these narratives when he composed his final text: the unitary Histories.

Ian Oliver is senior term professor and head of classical languages at Regis University in Denver.

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Epideixis and the Histories

Chapter I: The Battle of Plataea: 8.133 – 9.70

Chapter II: The Other Greeks in Herodotus’s Plataea Narrative

Chapter III: The Battle of Salamis: 8.1 – 8.96

Chapter IV: Athenian Mainstays in the Salamis Narrative

Chapter V: The Battle of Thermopylae: 7.172 – 7.233

Chapter VI: Herodotus and Epideixis at the Pythian Festival

Conclusion: The Impact of Audience-Based Criticism

References

Appendix: Identifying Further Epideictic Material

Bibliography

About the Author

Erscheinungsdatum	20.12.2024
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
ISBN-10	1-6669-3620-0 / 1666936200
ISBN-13	978-1-6669-3620-9 / 9781666936209
Zustand	Neuware