Thrace and the Paionians

At first sight, the opening chs. of bk. 5 ‘belong’ more with bk. 4 than with the Ionian revolt narrative which follows: cf. Hdt. 4.80.2 (confrontation between Sitalkes, son of the Thracian king Teres, and Oktamasades, brother of Skyles of Skythia and son of Teres’ daughter). This part of the world was topical at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431–29 bc), when Hdt. was still active: Th. 2.29, 95–7, 4.105.1 and 7.29.4. In addition to Th., another possible literary intertext is the undatable Pindar Paian 2, for the Abderites; this exploited the verbal similarity ‘paian’ /‘Paionians’ in a way comparable to Hdt., see below. (Radt 1958: 60, cf. 14f.; Rutherford 2001: 43f., 116, 270f.; Archibald 1998: 86 n. 36).

But there are also important pointers forward to the Ionian revolt narrative proper (which begins only at 28.1): earlier relations between Dareios and Histiaios (11.1), and the first suggestion that the conflict is a freedom fight (2.1). Immerwahr 1966: 110–11 sees the whole section 4.143–4 and 5.1–27 as a link between the Skythian campaign and the Ionian revolt.

(a) Book divisions

Bks. 5 and 6 of Hdt., which contain the narratives of the Ionian revolt and the Marathon campaign, are central to the Histories. The present section will, after some remarks about book divisions, discuss the structure of bks. 5 and 6, both internally and in relation to the Histories as a whole.

The first requirement is to think away the conventional book divisions altogether; such divisions seem generally to be a fourth-century innovation. There is no good reason to think that Herodotus divided his own work into nine books (unlike, say, Polybius, he does not use them himself to cross-refer or rather back-refer). The Herodotean division is probably Alexandrian i.e. Hellenistic, perhaps third or fourth century bc. We must distinguish two questions: who first says that Hdt.'s work was in nine books, and who first cited him by book number.

The ‘chronographic’ source of Diodorus, which provided him with some good-quality historiographic and poetic dates, as well as king lists and dates of city-foundations and mergers (synoikisms), tells us that Hdt.’s work was in nine books.4 Diodorus himself wrote in the time of Julius Caesar or the early years of Augustus’ principate, but the chronographer worked in perhaps the second century bc, the time of Apollodoros the Chronicler (FGrHist 244). Apollodoros is, however, an unlikely candidate himself, as is Kastor of Rhodes (FGrHist 250), whose chronicle ended with Pompey’s triumph in 61 bc. It is better to leave the Diodoran chronographer without a name.

This single-authored volume is planned as one of a pair with an edition of and commentary on bk. 6 in the same series, by the present author and Christopher Pelling in collaboration. Some sections of the Introduction to the present volume concern bk. 5 only; some concern both books; and some topics common to both books (Hdt. and Homer; Hdt.'s handling of Kleomenes and of Aigina) will be covered in the Introduction to bk. 6. Chronology will be covered in both volumes; for the distribution, see the Introduction, 3. For what is known or can be plausibly inferred about Herodotus’ life and travels, see S. West in Bowie 2007: 127–130.

The groundwork for the commentary on book 5 was done as part of graduate (MA) teaching at University College London (UCL). In 2008–9, I taught books 5 and 7 jointly with Professor C. Carey, and in 2009–10, my last academic year at UCL, I taught books 5 and 6 on my own. I am grateful to Chris Carey for many insights and much shared enjoyment, and to all the students for their stimulating contributions.