Ordering empire: visions of imperial space in Herodotus’ Histories
Author
Faculty Advisor
Date
2024
Keywords
history, myth, interculturalism, customs, political regimes
Abstract (summary)
In Aeschylus’ Persians, the Messenger’s account of the battle of Salamis presents a chaotic list of the subject peoples of the Persian King: over approximately thirty lines (302‑330), the Messenger crisscrosses the expanse of the Persian Empire, doubling back and pivoting, to create the sense of a conglomerate behemoth of an army confronting the small alliance of Greek poleis. Not a generation later, Herodotus would take on the same task of detailing the peoples subject to the Great King of Persia,
but unlike Aeschylus, the historian proceeds in an orderly fashion, moving from the Persian centre outwards in, sweeping from north to east, south to west, in ever increasing distance from the Persian heartland (Hdt. 7.61‑100). This progression through the ethnē in Xerxes’ army and fleet functions similarly to the description of the map of the oikoumenē given in 4.36‑45, where Herodotus likewise begins at a Persian centre to move north and east, then south and west, in his description of the continents of Asia and Libya. The map of the oikoumenē in book 4 destablizes a Helleno‑centric geographic consciousness centred on Delphi; the detailing of the ethnē serving under Xerxes fills the geographical void that, on earlier Greek maps, hugged the edges of the oikoumenē. The result of these geographical exercises is that Herodotus presents his audience with an image of imperial space that is vast and overwhelming, in this case due to the level of detail and the orderly progression from point to point. By combining this effect with the new geographical consciousness that the Histories offers, Herodotus turns the idea and space of the Persian Empire into a thōma, something wondrous and terrible to behold in its totality.
Publication Information
Romney, J. M. (2024). Ordering empire: Visions of imperial space in Herodotus’ Histories. In M. A. de Oliveira Silva, & M. de Fátima Silva (Eds.), Heródoto e a invenção do outro: confrontos e conflitos culturais [Herodotus and the invention of the other: Cultural clashes and conflicts] (pp. 17-34). Coimbra University Press. https://doi.org/10.14195/978-989-26-2601-7
Notes
Item Type
Book Chapter
Language
Rights
Attribution (CC BY)
