Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus

341 Pages·2015·1.73 MB·English

by  Vernon L. Provencal

Sophist Kings
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Sophist Kings
Persians as Other in Herodotus
Vernon L. Provencal
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2015
© Vernon L. Provencal, 2015
Vernon L. Provencal has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-78093-613-0
ePDF: 978-1-78093-534-8
ePub: 978-1-78093-816-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
To my wife, Tammy-Lynn,
our children, Rachel, Roland, Spencer, Taylor and Vanessa,
our grandchildren, Caden, Chloe and Sophia
and our extended families of Tiberts and Dawsons.
In Memoriam
Grandmother
Caroline Matilda Dawson (1909–1981)
‘Mom’
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
0.1 Greek and Other 2
0.2 Summary overview 9
0.3 Note on abbreviations, dates and translations 12
1 Herodotus and the Histories 13
1.1 Herodotus 14
1.2 Historical narrative of the Histories 16
1.3 Rhetorical purpose of the Histories 17
1.4 Argument of the Histories 18
1.5 Persia as the sophistic Other of Greece 23
1.6 Rhetorical purpose of representing the Persians as sophistic Other 25
2 Herodotus and the Sophists 29
2.1 Sophists and their teachings 29
2.2 Sophist teachings in Herodotus 36
2.3 Introducing Persians as sophists 71
2.4 Conclusion 93
3 Herodotus and the Persians 95
3.1 Persian ethnos 95
3.2 Religion in Persia 118
3.3 Achaemenid religion: Ahuramazdaism 130
3.4 Persian kingship and empire 144
3.5 Achaemenid model of kingship 152
4 Persians as Other in Herodotus 161
4.1 Herodotus’ map of the world 162
4.2 Herodotus’ cultural grid 165
4.3 Egyptian–Scythian axis: Nomos hieros vs nomos phusikos 171
4.4 Greek–Persian axis: Nomos basileus vs nomos phuseōs 177
viii Contents
5 Sophist Kings 215
5.1 Persosophists in Herodotus 215
5.2 Archetype of the sophist king 223
5.3 Median sophist kings 225
5.4 Persian sophist kings 228
5.5 Achaemenid sophist kings 235
5.6 Persosophist Greeks 243
Conclusion 251
Notes 259
Bibliography 291
Expanded Table of Contents 316
Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories 321
Index of Persons 327
Acknowledgements
This work has been enabled by research grants, sabbatical leaves and collegial
support at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and is indebted to
teachers, present and past, of the University of King’s College and the Department
of Classics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Special thanks to those
friends and colleagues of the Atlantic Classical Association and the Classical
Association of Canada, who have shown a supportive interest in my work on
Herodotus over the years, and in particular to the sustained encouragement
of friend and fellow classicist Beert Verstraete (Professor Emeritus, Acadia).
Finally, a word of sincere thanks to past and present editorial staff tasked with
seeing this work through to publication and to the readers for their helpful
comments and suggestions.