Histos (Journal)
Not a member yet
650 research outputs found
Sort by
A Study of Plutarch\u27s Sayings of Kings and Emperors (on L. van der Wiel, An Opaque Mirror for Trajan: A Literary Analysis and Interpretation of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata)
Full text linkL\u27Art de la narration chez Suétone (on E. Galfré and C. Schubert, edd., Suétone narrateur)
No full textJosephus in the Flavian Age and Beyond (on Davies, Representing the Dynasty in Flavian Rome)
No full textEine innovative Untersuchung über Ironie und Urteilsvermögen im Werk von Thukydides (on Carlotta Voß, Ironie und Urteil. Ironische Historiographie und die Entdeckung des Politischen bei Thukydides)
Full text link
Philostratus\u27 Apollonius: A New Teubner (on G. Boter, Flavius Philostratus. Vita Apollonii Tyanei)
No full textInterpreters and Linguistic Difference in Herodotus and Beyond
Full text linkHerodotus sometimes breaks the general rule in Greek literature by which the whole world converses in effortless Greek. The most notable way he does this is through the presence of linguistic interpreters or other multilingual intermediaries. Less remarked on but similar in effect are situations in which the historian explicitly notes what language (Greek or otherwise) a conversation took place in and episodes in which language barriers prevent communication altogether. This paper examines how such acknowledgements of linguistic difference serve as a distancing device to highlight other kinds of differences between characters, including the political distance between kings and royal subjects, cultural differences between Greeks and others, and, during Croesus’ encounter with Cyrus on the pyre, philosophical differences between the wise and the foolish. It considers examples from Herodotus’ Histories alongside similar episodes in Xenophon’s Anabasis, with a coda on the reuse and adaptation of the device in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives
The Story of Psammenitus from Herodotus to Walter Benjamin
Full text linkFollowing a thread in Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Storyteller’, the article gives sustained attention to a comparatively understudied tale in Herodotus’ Histories, the embarrassment of the Egyptian king Psammenitus by Cambyses at 3.14. I give an in-depth account of the literary quality of the passage, its place in Herodotus’ Histories, and its sometimes surprising legacy in Aristotle, Erasmus (briefly), Montaigne, and Benjamin himself. Central to the success of Herodotus’ story, in my account, is the tension between Herodotus’ ambiguous narrative style and Psammenitus’ ostensibly straightforward self-explanation
