Herodotus' Histories as natural narrative. Croesus' logos I. 6-92

Iwona Wieżel

The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Where are the questions about the oral characteristics of Herodotean discourse coming from? Are they legitimate and can they still provoke thoughts of a contemporary researcher? In a wider context, the inquiries as to the oral discourse of Herodotus are, in fact, questions regarding the essence of Herodotean narrative. Furthermore, how Herodotus wrote, or maybe rather how he would have liked to write are consequently inquests into the state of culture, concerning how the culture lives in the creative activity of the writer, how the culture manifests itself in it, and, simultaneously, how does the literature transform the culture. Up till this day, researchers are not concordant to the cultural stage of Greece in the 5^th century B.C. Was it still an oral culture or was it a culture of literacy? How did the transmitters of the word in general, and in this case: voice or an inscribed papyrus roll respectively, influence the creation and reception of literature in those times? How did a person who could choose only between the two above mentioned ways of transmitting express himself through them? It seems, that the research of Herodotean discourse enables one to infiltrate a reality that is distant, but, at the same time, in many respects similar to the present time. Here, I have in mind the reality of a narratee from the old days - an ancient Greek, and also a present day narratee like myself - a recipient who receives an information about the past from the text of a middleman: a historian - writer. And, although the report is subjective and constitutes one of the many possible versions, what matters the most is the sole fact of transmission through a narrative (Debray 2-3), of transmitting not only words but also traditions, ways of thinking and, so to speak, a perspective in which one should look at the world and try to understand it. A narrative becomes one of the forms in the process of this cultural transmission and a specific medium of communication, and in this process a sense of identity and that elusive community of human beliefs that is both able to transgress space while still existing in time is being created. So, if a narrative is to be treated as a medium in the process of transmitting a cultural message, than I would consider the natural language to be its basic substratum. The analysis of the connection between those two elements in the form of a natural narrative enables to partially grasp this process, the fruits of which are literary texts, both oral and written, starting with an ancient epic and ending with a contemporary novel.

At first let me recall R. Fowler's remarks on Herodotus' discourse, which he names as 'pseudo-oral'. R. Fowler argues that oral devices^[1] used in the text of Histories prove the written characteristics of Herodotean narrative, particularly with respect to the implied audience of Herodotus.^[2] R. Fowler writes: "We assume that Herodotus' real audiences were large groups of Greeks gathered at panegyreis such as the Olympic games, or small groups of Greeks gathered at homes of eminent Athenians or Thurians; actually, we have no contemporary evidence for this assumption, though it seems reasonable. The implied audience is that implied by the text itself. In a word, Herodotus' implied audience is all of the Greeks. He never speaks in such a way as to exclude any one group, and when he is dwelling on affairs peculiar to any one city, he is careful to explain local customs for the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with them. This attitude implies that the text is fixed; it will work for any audience, anywhere.(.) Take the opening sentence of the Histories: This is the showing forth (apodexis) of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos (I.1.1)^[3]. This is hardly imaginable in anything but the written form of the text, but the word apodexis comes from the world of rhetorical display, and makes it easy to imagine Herodotus on the platform, holding forth. The deictic pronoun with first-person reference proudly announces the work as his; although grammatically it refers to the text, in the imagination it refers to the performer.

All the oral devices in Herodotus hover in this interesting way between the world of the implied and real audiences. One could even go so far as to call them pseudo-oral devices not because they are written down or because they did not work like real oral devices at performances, but because they only seemingly ignore non-oral audience."^[4]

According to R. Fowler, the audience is the key category on which he makes dependent the working of oral devices in the text of Herodotus' Histories. I think that it is the right methodology when it comes to defining the nature and function of texts in general, whether they are oral or written, especially having in mind that Herodotus' real audience were the Greeks, who, at that time, i.e. in the 5^th century B.C., were supposedly not fully literate^[5]. R. Fowler's argumentation could be even more convincing after a replacement of the terms 'real/implied' audience by the 'oral/literate' audience, in a sense 'listener/reader'. Hence, by the oral audience I mean the audience which actually could have listened to Herodotus' speeches, i.e. the fragments of the Histories in the form of public speeches mentioned in the ancient testimonies^[6], and, on the other hand, I would consider every future reader of the Histories as a literate audience of his text. Against this background I would like to write about the "how" (Prince 21) of Herodotean narrative, trying to understand the technique of his oral storytelling with respect to the listeners and readers of the Histories alike.

In the classical studies on Herodotus one may encounter certain expressions that describe the constituent elements of narration in the Histories, starting from 'logoi', through 'excursions', ending up with 'novellas'. In short, all of these terms are related to narrative units interconnected by Herodotus by means of various formal links - by linguistic markers on the grammatical level and on the semantic level by the use of a well-composed sequence of events and featured characters. Apart from the descriptive sections, in which the narration regards mainly ethnographic and geographic issues, the aforementioned units take the form of stories that are characterized by an episodic structure. This is a symptomatic phenomenon in case of the functional aspects of the oral discourse, as it is typified by the episodic structure^[7].

In narratological studies the episodic structure is associated with the so called 'natural narrative' and it is being ascribed to the story level. Every episode in this structure, in its prototypical form, has three components: [1] opening, [2] development of the story together with a turning point (climax) and [3] resolution (ending)^[8]. Undoubtedly, short stories enclosed in the first book of the Histories regarding the ancestors of the Lydian king Croesus, the story about Arion the singer or the visit of Solon the Athenian on the Lydian court display such a construction, but  in several invariant forms. With respect to the content all of these stories are identified in research with tales that have their roots in the oral tradition. (Pohlmann, Aly; more in Long 10 ff.) Moreover, besides the explicit division into episodes, they display most of the characteristics of the 'natural narrative'^[9]. Surely, it would be a breakneck undertaking to claim that the analysis of linguistic material based on contemporary human interactions and the analysis of written down oral tales are the same. In fact, those issues are not identical from the methodological point of view. Nevertheless, the existence of similarities, which manifest themselves in the sequence of the linguistic material mentioned above, allows making some analogies. I think, that the analysis of stories interwoven in the 'conversational storytelling', that is, contemporary research concerned with "how we tell stories" along with some universals relating to the nature of human speech unveil up to a degree the truth about literature even as distant as the Histories by Herodotus of Halicarnassus^[10]. Another question is if the results of contemporary research on oral discourse may be applied to the study of the historical discourse, especially an ancient one? At this point I should recall the reasons by which I have been induced. First of all, there is the fact that ancient testimonies speak about Herodotus' lectures. Secondly, Herodotus' Histories are heterogeneous by nature, i.e. they contain not only historical narrative but also many traditional tales originating from oral sources, that is from those who had told the stories to Herodotus. The final argument is the fact that Histories were written in the epoch when the main medium of popular communication was the word not the writing. I believe that in this special case the role of those who told the stories to Herodotus and listened to his tales, that is, the role of those whom we can 'reconstruct' only on the basis of the text of the Histories and the role of his oral sources is substantial. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian from the 5^th century B.C., must have had in some way adjusted his relation to the not fully literate audience. Moreover, in order to be understood, Herodotus must have had arranged the message according to the rules predominant in the language employed in the natural verbal interaction. The oral nature of this relation inclines to support the thesis stating that fragments of the Histories could have existed as oral presentations intended for an audience. Nevertheless, in a written record they were consciously sequenced by Herodotus and dedicated to all the readers, which fact manifests the change in the author's awareness as the historian.^[11] Taking all the aforementioned facts into consideration, I shall give a tentative analysis of one of the 'logoi' of the Histories, based on the sociolinguistic model of narration described by William Labov for the so called 'experiential conversational storytelling' and, at the same time, I shall attempt to answer the question as to why the analyzed fragment of Herodotean discourse assumed characteristics of 'natural narrative'.

The 'natural narrative' theory outgrown of analyses conducted by William Labov and Joshua Waletzky (12-44) was enriched by Monika Fludernik ("Towards"). This researcher underlines that in 'natural narrative' we can distinguish two basic levels: the communicative level between the speaker and the addressee and the story level. Framing the narrative on the first level enables the transition to the proper telling of the story, i.e. to the second level. In this initial stage in the act of speaking the story is being characterized and the indispensable background for the events that are about to happen is being introduced. The conversational exchanges may appear instead of the incident-reaction sequence, and the sense of the tale is not mainly decoded on the basis of what happened in the story. What makes the tale worth telling (Baroni) is the uniqueness of the events described and - one could say- the moral of thereof, i.e. the lesson we can learn out of them. Then, the events told gain entertainment value. The very model of 'experiential conversational storytelling' forged by W. Labov rests on six categories: 1-Abstract, 2-Orientation, 3-Complicating Action, 4-Resolution, 5-Evaluation, 6-Coda which have certain narrative functions and on corresponding linguistic markers^[12].

On the basis of this, I would like to analyze the logos about Croesus which is spread over 80 chapters, and besides the proper story of Croesus it also contains a very heterogeneous linguistic material of discursive character, i.e. folk tales mixed with historical narrative. Before the first-person narrator - the Historian - introduces the character of the Lydian king, he signalizes the main theme of the whole literary work which is the conflict between the East and the West, or, to be more exact, the finding of the culprit who was the first to commit an unlawful act against the Hellenes: but when I have pointed to the man who first within my own knowledge began to commit wrong against to Hellenes, I shall advance the story (.) - I.5.11-12. Croesus seems to be the first link in the chain of the Eastern kings who were to blame then. It is also worth to stress that at the end of the chapter I.5 there is an important sentence coming from the narrator, expressed in a gnomic form. It tells about the changeability of human happiness: Since I know that human prosperity never continues steadfast in the same place (.) - I.5.16-17. In the economy of the whole Croesus' logos this sentence constitutes a maxim of some sort that shines upon characters and events introduced henceforward. Having confronted the Histories' narrative with the Labovian model, I would call this introductory part an 'Abstract', the role of which is - according to W. Labov - to answer the question "what is this story about?". Thus, the abstract signalizes the commencement of the story to the listener and draws his/her attention, and linguistically it is often represented by a short summing-up sentence, uttered always before the narration becomes "thick".

In the next chapter I.6, in which the narration becomes third-person, i.e. when the narrator hides behind the events he relates but his stigma from the previously articulated first-person narration is still tangible, there follows a direct introduction of characters and the deeds of Croesus, together with his lineage. I would treat this chapter and the next one (I.6-7) as the second category from the Labovian model denoting 'Orientation', that is a description of "who or what is engaged in the story" and "when and where it takes place". This category plays an auxiliary role for the listener, for it makes it possible for him/her to realize the places, characters and actions featured in the tale.

The chapters depicting the lot of Croesus, his conquest and his slow downfall would fall within the domain of the third category called by W. Labov 'Complicating Action'. This story is interrupted by the narrator of the Histories with a lot of digressions anchored with one another by the successive introduction of characters (e.g. Candaules, Gyges, Alyattes, Solon, Atys, Periander etc.) ^[13] Therefore, the third category is filled with chapters: I.25-58, 71-92. They are - as I have pointed out before - chapters concerning Croesus' activities, whereas in the meantime the narrator tells tales about the ancestors of the Lydian king, about their deeds and Croesus' allies in the war against the Persians. Even the digressions are closely connected with the protagonist of the story and form a background for the key happenings. The third category in the Labovian model answers the question "what happened next?" and therefore has an informative function, for it satisfies the listener's curiosity as to the series of main events in the story. On the linguistic level this tale is constructed by the speaker by means of temporal narrative, that is, temporal expressions and verbs in past tense or in the so called historical present. It is reflected in the language of the Histories, for instance by the accumulation of prepositions or particles in the adverbial function (usually adverbials of time): meta de.., meta de tauta..^[14].

The question "and what happened at the end?" is answered in W. Labov's theory by the fourth category called 'Resolution'. Its purpose is to recap the hitherto story by relating of the final and, at the same time, key happening of the tale. In the Histories it would be the chapter I.86. It is the description of seizing Sardis and taking Croesus prisoner by the Persians. The chapter contains also a meaningful recalling of the oracle that turned out ill-fated to the king from the chapter I.53: The Persians then had obtained possession of Sardis and had taken Croesus himself prisoner, after he had reigned fourteen years and had been besieged fourteen days, having fulfilled the oracle in that he had brought to an end his own great empire - I.86.1-4.

The fifth category called 'Evaluation' in W. Labov's terminology answers the question as to the moral of the story. The value judgment of the events is placed in the chapter I.91 in which the narrator by the use of reported speech recalls the words of the Delphic Pythia. By doing so, he explains the sense of the unfortunate prophecy misunderstood by Croesus: When the Lydians came and repeated their message, it is related that the Pythian prophetess responded: (.) And as to the oracle which was given, Croesus finds fault without good ground. Loxias told him beforehand that if he should march upon the Persians he should destroy a great empire. After hearing this, if he wished to take counsel well, he ought to have sent and asked further whether the god meant his own empire or that of Cyrus. Since he did not comprehend that which was uttered and did not ask again, let him pronounce himself to be the cause of that which followed - I .91.14-20.

I believe that in this chapter (I.91) there is also 'Coda', i.e. a summary of the whole logos about Croesus. The prophecy of Pythia recalled by the narrator states that even a god cannot escape destiny. These words correspond to the mental convention enclosed in the abstract (I.5). Therefore, their aim is to signalize the ending of the story and to take the listener back to the starting point of the tale. At the same time, the logic of the story mastered by the narrator becomes visible in the form of a thematic frame. On the story level it is mainly to bestow an overall sense upon the tale. However, on the level of communication between the speaker and the listener the logic of completeness is being preserved and due to this fact the listener knows exactly when the story begun, unfolded and ended.

It is also worth mentioning that components of the Lydian logos, i.e. minor stories which fill up the discussed narrative space, demonstrate a similar structural composition. For example, let us look at the story about Candalues, the ancestor of Croesus, and his servant Gyges (chapters 8-12 of the first book). As I mentioned before, the story is embedded into the longer tale about Croesus (I.6-92). The omniscient narrator introduces Candalues by presenting the lineage of the Mermnad dynasty, the ancestors of both Croesus and Candalues, which is justified by the old eastern writing practice that influenced the Greek writing tradition. I would consider this part of the story the introduction ('Orientation'), that is, a brief signalization of: who? when? and where?. Then, the narrator portrays Candalues' motivation that pushed him towards making an immoral offer to his subordinate - Gyges. Right after that, there is the 'Complicating Action', the third category from the Labov's model, introduced by the so called 'temporal juncture': after short time and, oddly, the dialogical part is preceded by a proleptical mention in the form of the sentence: therefore, by fate, a misfortune was supposed to fall upon Candaules^[15]. This sentence not only makes the listener more watchful when it comes to following further events and fans the curiosity as to the outcome, but also is the prognosis of the meaning of the whole tale.

The ultimate sense is obtained by the narrator by presenting an outline of events up to Candaules' death. Such a particular meaning of events acquires, in my opinion, a cognitive and aesthetic value. The initial event that advances the action^[16] is Candaules' immoral proposal given to Gyges. Afterward, there is a dialogue between Candaules and Gyges. It is constructed according to the principle 'challenge-response' (Lang 167; Fludernik's 'incident-reaction'). This dialogue replaces the continuous narrative which undoubtedly could have been introduced by the narrator in order to tell the story of Candaules and Gyges. The dialogue is introduced not only in order to make the listener another member of verbal interaction or to transfer him inside a situation that mimics a live conversation, but also to stimulate his spontaneous reactions. The omniscience of the narrator, i.e. his knowledge about character's inner motivations signalized in the introduction to the story and in the mention about the fate of the protagonist is in turn what especially engages the listener on the cognitive level in the sense of satisfying his curiosity as to the further lot of the characters and establishing the cause-and-effect relations.

In this final section of the article I will try to explain why, in my opinion, Herodotus' discourse acquired characteristics of 'natural narrative'. At the same time, it will be a quest for the answer to the question whether we are dealing with an intentional stylization in certain fragments of the Histories. As we know, there is a tendency to discuss Herodotean writings in the aspect of the epic convention by making comparisons between the manner of narrative construction and the creation of the narrator with what can be found in the works of Homer. In brief, it can be said that the narrative in the Histories is characterized by its epic flamboyance, Homeric vocabulary and themes, and the fact that the narrator in some parts of the work is omniscient, omnipresent and third person. (Jong et al. 101 ff.) Indeed, those statements are undeniable, but only in the case when Herodotus is studied "from the Homeric perspective" that behold the epoch in which Homeric literature is still alive in the social life and the literary convention. (Nagy 17 ff.)

By the above analysis I would like to divert from perceiving Herodotus as an epic writer. I would rather look for the oral structure of his discourse not in the imitation of Homeric works but in Herodotus' oral sources , since Herodotus claimed that he wrote down only what had been said (ta\ lego/mena). It is a well-known fact that the Historian was
a traveller and the method of his research (i(stori/h) was an interview and a personal view of things. I think, that those who related various events to Herodotus and told him folk tales etc. did that under the circumstance of a common conversation. For this reason, the narrator of the Histories may have been replaced by anyone who told Herodotus a given fragment of his story. The subject matter analyzed by me might be the proof in supporting such a point of view. For, on the basis of the analyzed material, the thematic and linguistic structure of the story shows symptoms of what is still existent in live human verbal interactions. Therefore, the Histories are a recording of Herodotus' personal experience, but also, or, maybe, most of all, a recording of a personal experience of those he had been talking to. If, on the other hand, the subject matter which is oral by nature was by Herodotus preserved in writing and put in order according to rules imposed on by the writing (as it occurred in case of the extensive logos about Croesus which in the written form would have been too long for an oral presentation), then, in fact, this discourse gives only an illusion of orality and becomes to some extent "an imitation of its original oral prototype". This is how I would understand the argumentation of R. Fowler who speaks only about the pseudo-oral Herodotean discourse. Considering that, we would probably be also dealing with an intentional stylization of the Histories, in this case resembling not an epic text but the natural language, made especially with regard to the personal experience of the future reader.

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