Other Natures. Clara Bosak-Schroeder
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(apodeixis) of his inquiry “in order that the things done by people are not lost in time, and that great and amazing works (erga megala te kai thōmasta), some displayed (apodechthenta) by Greeks and some non-Greeks not be forgotten, in particular the cause of their conflict with one another” (1.1).12 While Herodotus emphasizes his role in preserving erga, the common language of display also underscores the similarities between his endeavor and those who left erga behind. His accomplishment depends on those it records. It is a great work composed of other great works.13
Like the semantics of the English word work, erga can denote intangible achievements as well as tangible objects, “the finished product of an activity.”14 For example, the Greek victory over the Persians is an intangible ergon, but the Histories also describes many concrete works. These erga may have been lost in original physical form, but Herodotus’s record ensures their survival in text, and these tangible erga in turn motivate large sections of Herodotus’s narrative. In book 3, for example, Herodotus explains that he “has gone on so long about the Samians because they accomplished the three greatest works of all the Greeks,” a tunnel for piping water into town, a harbor mole, and the largest temple he has ever seen.15 These objects prove the stories Herodotus relates and provide moments of pause for lush, ekphrastic description.16 Lands that lack human beings lack information, but monuments can testify even in the absence of human informants.17
Objects “worthy of mention” can be as small as a dedication, if it is expensive enough (e.g., the six golden bowls of Gyges; 1.14), but are often very large and qualify as “monuments” (mnēmosuna). These monumental works include tombs, pillars and statues, fortresses, and even whole cities.18 The Greek word for monument, mnēmosunon, is closely related to the word for memory (mnēmosunē), like the English memorial. Monuments commemorate the past and are for historians the material basis of their own creation. Commensurate with their size and expense, mnēmosuna consume vast quantities of natural resources, especially stone and precious metals, but Herodotus (unlike Diodorus, as discussed later in this chapter) does not dwell on this fact.19
Herodotus ties one of these monuments directly to his own authorial achievement. The Egyptian king Moeris is known to the Egyptian priests for building pyramids, the forecourt of a temple, and an artificial lake (2.101). Herodotus calls these works the ergōn apodeixis, the “display of works” promised to readers in the proem as both the form and content of his inquiry. Later on, he says that Moeris’s lake is a thōma, “marvel” (2.149), even more closely identifying it with the “great and marvelous works” (1.1: erga megala te kai thōmasta) he set out to record. Herodotus’s experience of Moeris’s labyrinth, which he wanders through in amazement and claims (ironically) is beyond his power of description (2.148: ton egō ēdē eidon logou mezō), epitomizes his attitude to great works. The labyrinth implicates him both literally and figuratively, enfolding his body and challenging him to surpass its achievement.20
Following Herodotus’s lead, Diodorus uses an architectural metaphor to draw out the competitive relationship between the erga of past rulers and his own work:
τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλα μνημεῖα διαμένει χρόνον ὀλίγον, ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἀναιρούμενα περιστάσεων, ἡ δὲ τῆς ἱστορίας δύναμις ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην διήκουσα τὸν πάντα τἄλλα λυμαινόμενον χρόνον ἔχει φύλακα τῆς αἰωνίου παραδόσεως τοῖς ἐπιγινομένοις.
For these other monuments (mnēmeia) remain but a little while, being uprooted by many circumstances, but the power of history (historia), extending over the whole world, possesses in time—which destroys everything else—a guardian for ensuring perpetual transmission to posterity. (Diod. Sic. 1.2.5)21
Diodorus disparages people’s desire to leave behind physical memorials rather than memorials of virtue, but he too preserves these “monuments of stone” (10.12.2).
Like Herodotus’s mnēmosuna, Diodorus’s semantically equivalent mnēmeia often radically transform land- and waterscapes. Semiramis, the queen of Assyria, cuts through a mountain to make an “immortal memorial” for herself (2.13.5: athanaton mnēmeion), and the Roman censor Appius Claudius levels heights and fills valleys for the same purpose (20.36.2). When these monuments endure, they are also useful to the historian. As Diodorus comments, Semiramis’s memory benefits from the many memorials she left in her wake (2.14.1). Diodorus’s monument of these monuments, the Library, claims to be the ultimate memorial. But his achievement relies on the ambitious building projects of great rulers and heroes.
As Clarke argues, the “consistent alignment of the historian” with rulers’ erga “seems to reinforce admiration rather than dismay.”22 I would go further and assert that historians’ interest in amazing works and reliance on them for information mute historiography’s ability as a genre to criticize human activity. The Hellespont scene in Aeschylus’s Persians provides a helpful contrast. Whereas Herodotus’s disapproval focuses on Xerxes’s punishment of the Hellespont, Aeschylus has Darius lament Xerxes’s decision to offend the gods by enslaving the Hellespont with fetters and “changing its form into a road” (Hdt. l.747: porou meterruthmize). In this tragic setting, the bridge is as much of a sacrilege as the shackles are.23 For Herodotus, on the other hand, the bridge is an artifact of history; the historian has a vested interest in making a distinction between the bridge Xerxes constructs, his bad reasons for constructing it, and the tantrum he throws when the bridge is destroyed.
Historians’ reliance on great works, including those that testify to their actor’s memory by altering geography, limits the degree to which they can criticize the undertaking of these works. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern critique, moments when Herodotus and Diodorus evaluate the merits of these projects and the terms by which they judge them worthwhile.
MONUMENTAL RISKS AND REWARDS
Earthworks, including tunnels, walls, roads, and buildings, run through Herodotus’s Histories. Occasionally they are demanded by the gods, as when Pisistratus (1.64) and, later, the Spartans (1.67) rebury bodies to fulfill oracular demands. But most are initiated by human beings. Amasis, a Persian king engaged in a protracted war with the Barceans, swears an oath to last “as long as the earth stays the same” (4.201: est’ an hē gē hautē houtō echē) but makes sure to limit this promise by standing over a lightly covered trench. The city of Barcē is taken and its citizens captured or killed, the men’s bodies impaled and displayed along with the women’s cut-off breasts (4.202). Although Amasis has tricked the Persians with this earthwork, he suffers neither divine retribution nor the author’s disapproval.24 On the contrary, Amasis’s “trick” (dolon) is the last in a series of moves and countermoves, as the Persians try to tunnel beneath the city and the Barceans counter-tunnel (antorussontes) in return (4.200). Elsewhere, Herodotus reports without additional comment the frequent earthworks provoked by the demands of war, both offensive (1.162) and defensive (1.163, 4.3). The Histories take for granted that people will manipulate the landscape to make war and protect themselves.
Herodotus takes a similar view of waterworks, including bridges (like Xerxes’s), harbor moles, dams, dykes, canals, and a marvelous oxhide irrigation pipe (3.9). When the Lydian king Croesus crosses the River Halys, Herodotus wonders whether he used existing bridges or employed Thales of Miletus to divert the river around his army but does not judge the work itself (1.75). When describing a massive Samian irrigation tunnel and harbor mole, he expresses admiration and classes these achievements with the colossal temple the Samians also constructed, calling the three of them the greatest works of all the Greeks (3.60).
Nevertheless, Herodotus recognizes moments when humans are forbidden to undertake these projects. The Cnidians begin a canal to fortify themselves