Motivation and narrative in Herodotus
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Motivation and narrative in Herodotus
（Oxford classical monographs）
Oxford University Press, 2008
Available at 4 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [325]-341) and indexes
Contents of Works
- The Histories, Plutarch, and reader response
- The Homeric background
- Constructions of motives and the historian's persona
- Problematized motivation in the Samian and Persian logoi (Book III)
- For better, for worse : motivation in the Athenian logoi (Books I, V, and VI)
- "For freedom's sake" : motivation in the Ionian revolt (Books V-VI)
- To medize or not to medize : compulsion and negative motives (Books VII-IX)
- Xerxes : motivation and explanation (Books VII-IX)
- Themistocles : constructions of motivation (Books VII-IX)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In his extraordinary story of the defence of Greece against the Persian invasions of 490-480 BC Herodotus sought to communicate not only what happened, but also the background of thoughts and perceptions that shaped those events and became critical to their interpretation afterwards. Much as the contemporary sophists strove to discover truth about the invisible, Herodotus was acutely concerned to uncover hidden human motivations, whose depiction was vital to his
project of recounting and explaining the past. Emily Baragwanath explores the sophisticated narrative techniques with which Herodotus represented this most elusive variety of historical knowledge. Thus he was able to tell a lucid story of the past while nonetheless exposing the methodological and
epistemological challenges it presented. Baragwanath illustrates and analyses a range of these techniques over the course of a wide selection of Herodotus' most intriguing narratives - from those on Athenian democracy and tyranny to Leonidas and Thermopylae - and thus supplies a method for reading the Histories more generally.
Table of Contents
- 1. The Histories, Plutarch, and reader response
- 2. The Homeric background
- 3. Constructions of motives and the historian's persona
- 4. Problematized motivation in the Samian and Persian logoi (Book III)
- 5. For better, for worse ...: motivation in the Athenian logoi (Books I and VI)
- 6. 'For freedom's sake ...': motivation in the Ionian Revolt (Books V-VI)
- 7. To medize or not to medize ...: compulsion and negative motives (Books VII-IX)
- 8. Xerxes: motivation and explanation (Books VII-IX)
- 9. Themistocles: constructions of motivation (Books VII-IX)
- Epilogue
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