Conclusions

There have been many kings, emperors, and heroes in human history. Many ruled over vast territories or conquered fierce warrior peoples. Many left huge monuments to their wealth and political authority. But, it is Herodotus, I think, who has identified the single most outstanding human being in the history of the world, and he is none other than the canon of human happiness, Tellus the Athenian.

The story of Tellus comes very early on in Book One and the remarka­ bly unremarkable constituent elements of his happiness may be enumerated briefly: a flourishing country, beautiful and good sons born to him and his wife, a life of relative comfort, a glorious death after a victorious battle, and a public funeral with honors—a mere six items, none of which seems beyond human comprehension or even extraordinary.

And yet, how many people achieve these elements? Does Candaules, whose self-delusion leads him to show his wife naked to Gyges and results in a violent death at the hands of his wife; does Gyges, whose sleep must surely have been restless as he lay next to a woman who ordered the death of her first husband (perhaps mindful of this anxiety Archilochus claimed not to care about Gyges’s wealth); does Ardys (15), who sees the Cimmerians capture his whole town except the citadel; does Sadyattes (1.16-17), who seems to have spent most of his life waiting for the long rule of his father to come to an end and then dies after a reign one-fourth as long as that of his father, leaving it to his son to complete the war with the Milsians that he had begun; does Alyattes (1.18-26), who suffered a painful disaster at the hands of the Clazomenae and whose impiety towards Arte­ mis resulted in a lengthy illness; does Croesus, whose kingdom was violently overthrown, whose son Atys’s death he could not avert despite a foreknowledge of it, and who fades ignominiously in the History, never receiving even the glory of an obituary; does Pisistratus, who is repeatedly banished from his country (1.59-64); does Cyrus, whose career is marked by increasing madness and whose death at the hands of the Massagetae is unspeakably horrid; does Deioces, whose passion for rule has him transform his land into a police state (1.96-102); does Phraortes, whose greed for rule stirred him to attack the Assyrians, against whom he perished along with the greater part of his army (102); does Cyaxares (1.103-107), who battled the Scythians, lost, and waited twenty-eight years, recovering his kingdom only after ignobly tricking and intoxicating his enemy; does Astyages (1.107-130), who first had to marry his daughter to an inferior man and then contrive to slay his grandchild, only to be overthrown himself and live the remainder of his days under house arrest; do any of the successors of Cyrus—does Cambyses, whose insanity drives him to join the perfidious list of fratricides in the History and whose actions memorialize him as one of the monsters of all time, or does Darius, whose courage extends to evicting the Magi from power, but whose own attempts to conquer the Scythians and the Greeks, attempts motivated by greed and vanity, end in disaster, or Xerxes, who after losing to the Greeks in battle after battle seduces his son’s wife, his brother’s wife, and ends up killing the very brother who had defended his honor; do those who seem to be favored by fortune—does Polycrates, whose good luck came to an end when he was murdered and crucified by Oroetes (3.125), or does Pythius, who rejoiced when Xerxes filled out his wealth to an even four million gold Daric staters and then saw his beloved son split in two while the entire Persian army marched between the severed halves (7.39), or does Syloson, whose good luck in giving Darius a robe resulted in the restoration to him of Samas but who received instead only a devastated and miserable island (3.146); or do indeed the great heroes of the Greeks—does Themistocles, the man who saved the western world but extorted money and favors from every side in the Persian Wars and eventually escaped to Asia while he was condemned in Athens, the city he had saved, or does Pausanias, the hero of Plataea, who later plotted against Sparta and died starving in the sanctuary where he had sought refuge? No. No, Tellus has them all beat, a public-spirited man of private station who led an inconspicuous life of ordinary comfort.

Herodotus devotes very few lines to Tellus, yet the very fewness of the lines is part of the point. Happiness is not to be found in political power or in wealth or in boundless fame; it resides in a life devoted to one’s family and state, in the duties of fatherhood and citizenship. The insights of the first writer of history all subsequent histories have confirmed.

If Herodotus’s readers constantly compare the various lives of the characters in the History to the life of Tellus, they will see how much the former fall short of the standard. Over and over readers will conclude that happiness is not to be found in the quest for money and glory and extended boundaries; over and over again they will see that while many characters suffer— for human life is a vale of tears—the suffering is least for those few who behave virtuously. Thus Arion, though he suffers at the hands of the perfidious Corinthian sailors, eventually emerges triumphant; Bitch and Mitradates, whose sympathy and goodness keep them from killing the infant Cyrus, are spared punishment from the cruel Astyages; and Otanes, whose advocacy of democracy and withdrawal from the contest to be king over Persia preserved perpetual freedom for his family. Perhaps the act of comparing all these to Tellus will move the readers to reflect on their own lives and to realize that their happiness too might be found in dutiful family life and citizenship, the blind pursuit of external goods left to others.

What a wonderful lesson!

* * * *

The first book of the History records many dreams, oracles, and omens concerning children. Readers learn about all of these omens; a few characters learn some of the omens in cautionary tales concerning other characters, and a few learn the omens as they pertain to their own situations. It is obvious that readers learn of all the oracles from the historian; Croesus learns about the omen that Hippocrates saw concerning the birth of the child who turns out to be Pisistratus; and while Herodotus never discusses Croesus’s reaction to this knowledge per se, it comprises the background informing his decision to invite Sparta into an alliance. Inasmuch as Croesus himself has received an oracle about his deaf and dumb son and has already experienced the horror that befell Atys, one can only imagine how the account of the warning to Hippocrates resonated in his psyche. Croesus, Hippocrates, and Astyages all receive some kind of foreknowledge of evils concerning their children.

In the case of Hippocrates, the foreknowledge is ignored; we do not know what suffering it causes him, if any. But the foreknowledge of Croe­sus and Astyages, as we have seen, causes immeasurable mental suffering.

The foreknowledge leads to actions that are painful in themselves.^[1] Croe­sus feels he must cause his son to lead a dull and trivial life; Astyages feels he must marry his daughter to an inferior man. In Croesus’s case in partic­ular, the dream brings only unnecessary suffering before Atys’s death; after­wards, it must bring the agony of second thoughts. Croesus must torture himself with: “If only I had done this….” He never draws the conclusion that foreknowledge is vain. Indeed, his very testing of the oracles seems to suggest that the conclusion he drew from his experience of the foreshadow­ owing dream about Atys was the opposite, that his failure lay in not getting sufficiently accurate information about the future. Thus, he is led to test and then repeatedly question the Delphic Oracle. He is like a gambler who, having lost a lot of money on a horse, concludes not that he ought to give up gambling but that he ought to make an even bigger wager on the next race.

Astyages lives after his overthrow under Cyrus’s protection, all the time knowing that his grandchild is treating him far better than he would have treated his grandchild. What afterthoughts, what second-guessing, must be going on in his head we can only imagine. He too must realize the uselessness of the foreknowledge. If the fate could not be averted, then the foreknowledge of it led to the kind of reprehensible actions that could cause him only mental agony. If there was no averting a fall from power, then there was no need to marry Mandane to the insipid Cambyses, and no need to destroy his grandson. In the case of Astyages, perhaps, we feel only righteous indignation at his suffering, for the monstrous slaughter of Harpagus’s innocent son deprives him of any sympathy.

What lesson are readers to adduce? Perhaps the advice that Bacchylides’ Apollo gives (3. 78-84):

As a mortal, thou must nourish each of two forebodings—that tomorrow’s sunlight will be the last that thou shalt see; or that for fifty years thou wilt live out thy life in ample wealth. Act right­eously, and be of a cheerful spirit; that is the supreme gain.

* * * *

Croesus had Solon; Xerxes had Artabanus; mid-fifth-century Greece had Herodotus. All served as wise advisers to their contemporaries.

It is the natural tendency of human beings to compare their own condition with that which they are hearing or reading about. Aristotle observes in the Poetics (1148b 10-15) that the chief pleasure in literature comes from the comparison we make between what we see represented and what we know. When, therefore, one reads about the evils of wars of motiveless greed, of misplaced faith in oracles, of self-delusion, the effect ought to be to stir reflection about one’s own situation. In view of the fact that the sins of Persia and Lydia were being repeated by the Athenians and Spartans of Herodotus’s generation, it is likely that Herodotus’s portrayal of the earlier events is molded to resonate with the present. Such would not only be not unusual, but what we might very well expect.

Finally, it is in the matter of causation that we find the greatest evidence of Herodotus’s genius. Very many of the actions of the personages result from impulses, from sudden notions that simply arise spontaneously in their heads—the impulse to acquire more, the impulse for power, the impulse to show one’s wife naked. What is needed to avert the destructive consequences of these impulses is only sophrosyne, or self-control, the ability to subject one’s impulses to the rule of reason. This is a great and useful lesson, for private persons and for great nations. Not all impulses need be gratified. When some Persians put forth Artayactes’s suggestion that they conquer more lands, they take to heart Cyrus’s then wise response about soft hearts and soft men (9.122). As Herodotus says, “Their judgment had been overcome by that of Cyrus, and they chose to rule, living in a wretched land, rather than to sow the level plains and be slaves to others.” It is possible to choose the reasoned way. On this happy, hopeful note Herodotus ends his History.