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Thread: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

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    Default How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    So Herodotus has been dubbed "the Father of history" due to being the first actual historian (and I use that phrase very lightly, as it's a bone of contention within academic circles) He was the first Westerner to write down a chronological narrative of historical events, albeit in his won quirky way, full of ethnographies and so on.

    My question is this; before Herodotus, how did the Greeks write about and/or view their past? Was it all just a blur of forgotten events barely kept alive by a few old wives' tales? I understand that poetry and funeral eulogies might commemorate great events in a person's lifetime, but other than that I'm completely clueless as to how the Greeks kept track of their past before Herodotus.

    Anyone with some insight into this that can clear this up for me?

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    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    Before the narrative style historiography introduced by Herodotus, most developed ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, etc. wrote terse chronicles that listed historical events in chronological order and usually only focused on the deeds and military campaigns of rulers. For instance, the invasion of the Levant by Ramesses II. Starting with Manetho in the 3rd century BC (Ptolemaic era), the Egyptians started writing histories of Egypt in the style of Herodotus and the Greek histories.

    In China's case, narrative histories in the same manner of Herodotus's work were only written after the Western-Han court-sponsored work of Sima Tan and his son Sima Qian in the 2nd century BC. They were the second civilization after the Greeks (and by extension, the Romans) to record history in this narrative format.

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    Farnan's Avatar Saviors of the Japanese
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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    How about the Jews?

    The books of Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles all use a narrative format...
    “The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”

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    Copperknickers II's Avatar quaeri, si sapis
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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    They mainly commemorated it in long poems and songs like the Norsemen, as well as some technical records and chronicles. Its likely tbh that they had a pretty literal belief in their mythology as history itself.
    A new mobile phone tower went up in a town in the USA, and the local newspaper asked a number of people what they thought of it. Some said they noticed their cellphone reception was better. Some said they noticed the tower was affecting their health.

    A local administrator was asked to comment. He nodded sagely, and said simply: "Wow. And think about how much more pronounced these effects will be once the tower is actually operational."

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    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    Quote Originally Posted by Copperknickers II View Post
    They mainly commemorated it in long poems and songs like the Norsemen, as well as some technical records and chronicles. Its likely tbh that they had a pretty literal belief in their mythology as history itself.
    ^ This. Although by at least the time of Josephus the Jews began recording history proper (not Biblical mythology) in the narrative format of Herodotus.

  6. #6

    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    Writing was mostly used for bureaucratic purposes (diplomacy, inventories, etc.) in the Greek Bronze Age, so it's hard to flesh out the course of events. However it should be noted that much of the Greek folklore is actually pretty accurate in light of archaeological discoveries, e.g. a "boar tusk helmet" like those mentioned the Iliad was discovered.

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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    History in the sense of enquiry into events (using available sources) and explaining relationships and causes is the invention of Herodotus. Prior to him there are annals and chronicles, King lists and personal memoirs, apologia and propaganda so the fragments that are used to make history.

    I used to have a sweet textbook about pre-Herodotian Hellenic "historians" who existed only in fragmented form, fascinating stuff but not much to base an analysis on. We know Solon composed poems in defense of his reforms at Athens, so thats political rhetoric with historic content. Herodotus was able to mention the Thalassocracy of Minos, something that strongly suggests the Hellenic communities remembered the Kretan states (but whjich? was Minos a true Minoan, or a Hellneic later interloper?).

    The biblical books like Kings and Chronicles has sources belonging to the annals school, lists of events whose explanations of causes and relationships amount to "God did it" or "X sinned, so God did it". The "court history" that was the source material for part of Samuel and Kings (all the inside dirt on David and Solomon) looks like a firsthand memoir but so much has been heavily edited into a post-exilic re-hash.

    I imagine Hellenes had the same mishmsash of chronicles, epics, personal gossip and the occasional political/religious rehashes which took remembered fragments and constellated them for present purposes. Apparently this is evident in Hellenistic revisions of the Iliad, where heroes and villians are re-cast as being from certain cities to reflect fame or ignominy on ther current inhabitants.

    Everyone would know about Heracles or other local heroes, some ambitious ruler would fiddle up a genealogy that put him a few generations down froma God, misremembered placenames would generate toponymic myths and imagination and revisionism would play their part in storytelling.

    Think about historic references in our popular life. "Ring-a-rosy" was about the plague we are told (but includes no dates or explanmation, just a cryptic reference), we have mythic fims about heroic cops cowboys and marines and native Americans KGB and terrorists...they reflect something about the past, more about the present.
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    Default How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    I can't recommend "In Search of the Trojan War" by Michael Wood enough, he makes a fairly convincing reconstruction of the events of the Iliad using actual Greek and Hittite sources. You can see with the examples he shows that writing was used in the Bronze Age and how it is hard to "fill in the gaps."

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    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: How did the Greeks think about/view their past before Herodotus?

    Hittite sources
    But in this case and the Mycenaean Greeks to a lesser extent to you are shifting through reports by scribes for imperial governments or inventories etc. What you cannot find is what Herodotus did for the first time a major Geopolitical event and try explain why it came to happen and why if ended the way it did for a non specific broad audience.
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