Munson, Rosaria Vignolo

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 Swarthmore CollegeWorks   Classics Faculty Works   4-1-2007  Review Of "Erodoto E Il "Modello Erodoteo": Formazione E Trasmissione Delle Tradizioni Storiche In Grecia" Edited By M. Giangiulio  Rosaria Vignolo Munson Swarthmore College, rmunson1@swarthmore.edu     Let us know how access to this work benefits you.  Follow this and additional works at: http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-classics/  Part of the Classics Commons   Recommended Citation Rosaria Vignolo Munson. (2007). "Review Of "Erodoto E Il "Modello Erodoteo": Formazione E Trasmissione Delle Tradizioni Storiche In Grecia" Edited By M. Giangiulio". Classical Review. Volume 57, Issue 1. 24-26. http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-classics/6  This work is brought to you for free and open access by the Swarthmore College Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Classics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. The Classical Reviewhttp://journals.cambridge.org/CARAdditional services for The Classical Review:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here(M.) Giangiulio (ed.) Erodoto e il ‘modello erodoteo'. Formazione etrasmissione delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia. (Labirinti 88.) Pp. xxii +396. Trent: Dipartimento di Scienze Filologiche e Storiche, Università degliStudi di Trento, 2005. Paper, €15. ISBN: 978-88-8443-118-9.ROSARIA MUNSONThe Classical Review / Volume 57 / Issue 01 / April 2007, pp 24 - 26DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X06002964, Published online: 06 February 2007Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X06002964How to cite this article:ROSARIA MUNSON (2007). Review of (M.) Giangiulio 'Erodoto e il ‘modello erodoteo'. Formazione e trasmissione delletradizioni storiche in Grecia' The Classical Review, 57, pp 24-26 doi:10.1017/S0009840X06002964Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 130.58.64.71 on 09 Mar 2014In Chapter 8, ‘Tragic Fragments, Ancient Philosophers and the Fragments’,Christopher Gill makes some provocative remarks about the existential similaritiesbetween fragmentary texts and fragmentary identities, before moving on to discussexcerpts from drama as used by ancient philosophers. James Robson also considersthe issue of composition in Chapter 9: ‘Aristophanes on How to Write Tragedy: WhatYou Wear Is What You Are’. By examining the underlying principles of dramaticcomposition suggested by Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae, andcomparing these to later literary criticism, R. argues that Aristophanic compositionwas focussed around embodiment and the importance of texts as performed. Thisdiscussion provides a neat segue into the coda to the volume, where David Wilespresents a discussion and text of his 1997 production based on the fragmentary textof Hypsipyle. With a nod to the innovatory style of Euripides in his later years, theplay as formed around di¶erent versions of ‘the fragment’ was performed at theClassical Association Meeting in 1997, and Wiles notes that the production workedwith the audience’s background knowledge: ‘One of the advantages of performing toan audience of classicists was that one did not have to explain the story’ (p. 191).The new ‘play about a play’ inspires contemplation of the relationship between textand performance, the part and the whole, contextualisation and artistic satisfaction.This production indicates the power of ancient texts to inspire creative endeavours,and I would have liked to see more comment from W. on the power of Hypsipyle notin spite of, but because of, its fragmentary nature.The volume is well presented, with a useful index locorum in addition to the generalindex. While students are unlikely to read this cover-to-cover, they could be directedto some articles, with appropriate guidance about more recent bibliography. Some ofthe essays are more convincing than others, but all contain points of interest, and thecollection deserves praise for its ambition in covering such a wide range of material.University of Manchester E.M. GRIFFITHSemma.m.gri¸ths@manchester.ac.uk24 the classical reviewHERODOTUS AND HIS SOURCESG iangiulio (M.) (ed.) Erodoto e il ‘modello erodoteo’. Formazione etrasmissione delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia. (Labirinti 88.) Pp. xxii +396. Trent: Dipartimento di Scienze Filologiche e Storiche, Universitàdegli Studi di Trento, 2005. Paper, €15. ISBN: 978-88-8443-118-9.doi:10.1017/S0009840X06002964In his narrative of the battle of Thermopylae, Herodotus discusses the reasons why,in the face of a Persian encirclement, Leonidas decided to keep his position with theThree Hundred while dismissing the rest of the Greek army: he wanted to save Spartaby his own death (in accordance with an oracle), as well as reserve undying glory forthe Spartans alone. This small passage may serve to illustrate – albeit somewhatsimplistically – two end-terms of a continuum for approaching the text. Are we goingto ponder the meaning, in the economy of the Histories, of Herodotus’ emphaticpresentation of his account of Leonidas’ motives as his own opinion (gnômê)? Or isthe critic going to underline that this representation of Leonidas is part of apeculiarly Spartan tradition and examine, as Mario Lombardo does in this volume,how Herodotus’ narrative combines that tradition with another, more panhellenic,version of what happened at Thermopylae? Giangiulio’s introduction to thisThe Classical Review vol. 57 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2007; all rights reservedcollection suggests a double task: 1) to identify the traditions on which thehistoriographic text is based, studying their ideological value and the historicalcontext in which they were formed; and 2) to analyse the relationship ofhistoriography to this pre-existing material. The major unifying theme of the volumeas a whole is to conμrm a revival of the e¶ort to recuperate piece by piece the oraltraditions out of which Herodotus has fashioned his Histories. This enriches ourknowledge of the social history of the Greek archaic period as well as of Herodotus’method of engaging with it.Most of the contributions attempt to reconstruct the traditional components of aparticular section of historical narrative in the last four books of Herodotus(ethnographic descriptions are not treated in this volume). One article (by LuigiGallo) argues for an Alcmaeonid source for a single piece of information inHerodotus, the reference to 30,000 Athenians at 5.97.2–3 (and 8.65). Only one articledeals with non-Greek tradition: Mauro Moggi demonstrates Herodotus’ likely use ofPersian sources in his representation of Artabanus, defending Herodotus’ credibilityas a historian (against Fehling, 1988).The μrst two articles of the collection pursue di¶erent, if related and interesting,themes: the parody of Herodotus’ proem in the Acharnians (Leone Porciani) and thetreatment of oral and written messages in Herodotus (Paola Ceccarelli). The last twoessays examine how Herodotus’ model of historiê in·uenced the later historiansEphorus (Luisa Breglia) and Pausanias (Marco Dorati). These are both useful,although the second formulates the parallel with Herodotus in rather vague terms; theanalysis of Pausanias is erudite and speciμc.Nino Luraghi’s illuminating article complements the Editor’s introduction bysurveying the history (and giving a few recent examples) of the study of oral traditionin Herodotus. Already Wolf Aly (1921) had attempted to discover in the Histories thetraces of a Greek oral genre of popular storytelling mixed with the scientiμc prose ofhistoriê. But largely because of the in·uence on Herodotean studies of Felix Jacoby,Aly remained without followers. This changed some 30 years ago, when the studies ofthe anthropologist Jan Vansina and others on the mechanics of oral transmission inAfrica gave classical scholars the methodological tools to return to the problem ofHerodotus’ sources – not merely of orally transmitted pieces of information, butof entire narratives. This new wave of studies on oral tradition in Herodotus beganwith Oswyn Murray’s important general article ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, whichμrst appeared in Achaemenid History II. The Greek Sources, edited by H.Sancisi-Weerderburg and A. Kuhrt (Leiden, 1987). There are now several importantstudies on the subject. One of the most useful additions to the μeld is the recentcollection edited by Luraghi himself, The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus(Oxford, 2001).As several of the contributors themselves acknowledge, a study of oral tradition inHerodotus may be highly conjectural and circular, especially when it tries toreconstruct an original story that was transformed long before Herodotus; at othertimes it does not tell us much that is new (positive portrayals of Athenians come fromAthens, of Spartans from Sparta, and so on). Also, although ‘oral tradition’ does notjust mean oral sources, the term is here broadly applied. It seems to cover anythingHerodotus may have gathered through hearsay, from the whole narratives thatMurray and Luraghi are most interested in, to disarticulated details or views aboutrecent events. In the episode of the Greek embassy to Gelon in 480 b.c. (7.157–62), forexample, Silvio Cataldi can only tentatively attribute some of the data to di¶erentgroups at di¶erent times (anti-Gelonian continental and Siceliot sources, Deinomenidthe classical review 25propaganda, or later Athenian, Spartan, Syracusan or Western Chalcidian sources).He argues that Herodotus’ dramatic re-elaboration of this material has beenprofound, producing a veritable web of allusions to the hegemonic debate of his day.But even scholars devoted to a more authorial approach to the Histories will learna great deal from this collection. A ‘stratigraphic’ analysis – to use a recurring term –shows the depth of Herodotus’ research and the care with which he expresses it innarrative. In the best cases it allows one to begin to distinguish several layers ofancient traditions and the addition to them of more recent interpretations. Thishappens, for example, with the story of the tyranny in Corinth in the speech of Socles(5.92), where Maurizio Giangiulio identiμes the following: (1) generalised folkloricelements, elaborated into a speciμc ‘legend’ at the time of the stasis that led to thetyranny in Corinth; (2) later local elements inserted shortly after the fall of thetyranny; (3) broader Greek anti-tyrannical themes with an aristocratic stamp; (4)further re-elaboration of the above by a subsequent democratic ideology; and, μnally,(5) Herodotus’ own contribution, which mainly consists of integrating these variouselements. In one of the best articles in the volume, Pietro Vannicelli examinesHerodotus’ section about the seer Teisamenus at Plataea, teasing out the componentsof a complex Spartan tradition designed to reinterpret the μrst period of thePentecontaetia in opposition to the better known Athenian version. Herodotusreports the tradition but also, as Vannicelli argues, ever so slightly distances himselffrom it. Herodotus’ narrative of the battle of Plataea proper is the subject of the studyby Marco Bettalli; here heterogenous traditions, especially Athenian and Theban, butalso Delphic and Spartan, come together to create the fragmented and ambivalentnarrative in Herodotus. These essays taken together show how the study of whatHerodotus is trying to say to his audiences is enhanced by inquiry into where hismaterial comes from.Swarthmore College ROSARIA MUNSONrmunson1@swarthmore.eduHERODOTUS IN CYPRUSKarageorghis (V.), Taifacos (I.) (edd.) The World ofHerodotus. Proceedings of an International Conference held at theFoundation Anastasios G. Leventis, Nicosia, September 18–21, 2003,and organized by the Foundation Anastasios G. Leventis and the Facultyof Letters, University of Cyprus. Pp. xx + 423, ills, maps. Nicosia:Foundation Anastasios G. Leventis, 2004. Paper, €48. ISBN:978-9963-560-57-8.doi:10.1017/S0009840X06002976This large, attractive and glossy book is not in any sense light reading, although thePreface, the Introduction and a number of the articles convey some of thespontaneity and scholarly conviviality of the original conference. The authors of the25 articles are from Austria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece (Crete), Italy, theU.K. and the U.S. Herodotus is an appropriate focus for a conference volume fromCyprus. Like the island itself, he represents the con·uence of di¶erent interpretivelanguages and concerns. Four approaches to his text occur in this volume:considerations of individual passages, questions of genre and intertextual in·uence,The Classical Review vol. 57 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2007; all rights reserved26 the classical review

Review Of  Erodoto E Il  Modello Erodoteo : Formazione E Trasmissione Delle Tradizioni Storiche In Grecia  Edited By M. Giangiulio

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Review Of Erodoto E Il Modello Erodoteo : Formazione E Trasmissione Delle Tradizioni Storiche In Grecia Edited By M. Giangiulio

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