12 Mourning and Motives (§46.1)
For two years Croesus profoundly mourned his son. if he was active in any great enterprises, Herodotus is silent about them. That he “sat in deep mourning” for two years is significant in view of the advice that Croesus had given Adrastus, to bear his calamity as lightly as possible: Croesus is like the philosopher in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, who preaches bearing loss with Stoic reserve but collapses when his own child dies.[1] His deep mourning lends piquancy to what we shall learn later. After being defeated by Cyrus, Croesus sends to Apollo, and Apollo tells him that his demise had been postponed for three years. If we reckon two years for the mourning period and one year for the preparations and brief war with Cyrus, we find out what Croesus’s three extra years were like. They were years of grief and defeat, surely no boon. Would not Croesus have been better off spared these three years? He had three more years of wealth and power, but at what cost! How lucky were Cleobis and Bito, athletes dying young, who perhaps were spared added years of suffering and defeat.
Cyrus has seized power over Persia from Astyages, who, we shall learn later (1.74), is Croesus’s brother-in-law. Croesus hears that the power of Persia is growing, and, wishing to keep it from growing very great, he reflects on how, if it even be possible, he might deal with the menace. The motive attributed to him is the same as that attributed to Sparta by Thucydides before the Peloponnesian War, except that there it is Athens, not Persia, who is the perceived threat (Thucydides, 1.23). And in Thucydides the fear is attributed to a polis; in Herodotus, to an individual.[2] Lydia is, after all, a monarchy; its safety depends on the ruminations of a single man. As always, Croesus is moved by prudential but unprofitable anxiety.
This, the first mention of the Persians outside of the opening sentence, shows them creating an empire—the same activity in which Croesus has been engaged. It thus ties the events of Book One to the greater subject of the whole History,[3] and, for the keen-eyed, drops the Persians in the relentless track of the principle of vicissitude.
- The irony is noted also by Long, 99. ↵
- Contrasting Herodotus and Thucydides, J.A.S. Evans (“Father of History or Father of Lies; The Reputation of Herodotus,” CJ 64[1968]: 16-17) attributes to Thucydides causes in the realm of politics and the view that war is an instrument of political purpose, views he says that have become part of the main historical thinking of the West. Insofar as fear of the expansion of another state is political, Herodotus is surely aware of this motive. According to Evans, however, “For Herodotus, war could be explained in terms of customs and usages, vengeance and countervengeance.” Of course, Herodotus is aware of a great range of human motivations; in his knowledge of human nature he is a master and thus does not try to impose his history onto a set of very limited preconceived notions of how people operate. In his complexity he will displease those who see all human behavior as deriving from a very small set of principles, whether that set be political, economic, or social. One of the reasons for the historian’s popularity throughout the ages has surely been the reaction of his readers in identifying with the motives he attributes to the personages. Of course, Herodotus has also had, at least since Thucydides, his share of detractors, not only because of his “unscholarly methods” of traveling and asking questions about a war that he had not himself experienced, but also for his sympathy for barbarians and for Athens, his lack of truthfulness, and so on. For a discussion of Herodotus’s reputation and how in the course of historiography he was often blamed for not being a Thucydides, see the splendid article by A. Momigliano, “The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography,” History 43(1958): 1-13. ↵
- Cf. Drews, 72. ↵
