Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture

Abstract

This book thickens the account of Herodotus' early reception history, building significantly on previous accounts of Herodotus' Nachleben. In a series of literary studies, it explores some of the earliest ancient responses to Herodotus' Histories through the extant written record of the early and middle Hellenistic period. Responses to the Histories were rich and varied, and the range of Hellenistic writers that can be seen responding in different ways to Herodotus' work is in part a reflection of the Histories' own broad scope, but it reflects more than this too. The Histories remained relevant in this later age and continued to speak meaningfully to a broad range of readers long after Herodotus' death. Herodotus and Hellenistic Culture exposes a variety of discourses where Herodotus occupies an important place in the intellectual background, and, in particular, it draws attention to writers not usually categorised as historians in order to broaden our perspectives on Herodotus' cultural importance. Through discussion of contemporary discourse relating to — for instance — the Persian Wars, geography, the wondrous, aesthetics, literary style, and biography, it nuances our understanding of how ancient readers reacted to and appropriated the Histories to serve their own distinct rhetorical goals. This book also contributes to scholarship that reappraises the use of the term ‘Hellenistic’ in the periodization of Greek history, by drawing attention to both diachronic continuities and synchronic diversity in ancient Greek literature.