Here is one part, the beginning

Me: Thank you for the invitation. This is a wonderful home.

H: I am very pleased to have you. Your reputation, of course, precedes you. And I know you have not come to see my crops and livestock. (He seemed ready to get to the subject).

M: So I have read your work and have heard parts.

H: Yes. (He looked smug, but a little uncertain about what I was going to say).

M: You try to present the world, and some of the worlds within it. It is an important work.

H: I am very proud of it. I know that it has support and popularity, and I also know it has its detractors. In which spirit have you come?

M: Neither. What I appreciate is complexity. I know that for every easy answer there is a much better question, or another answer that contradicts the first.

H: You are famous for saying that man is the measure of all things. As such, if I may be so bold, I have had the courage to be a man who measures all things.

M: Well said (I thought it was very well said, even brilliant, but he was proud enough as it was). But let us test that proposition: Do you understand that everything in your book is framed by your mind?

H: No, in many cases, I wrote about things I saw with my own eyes. These observations are my own personal testimony. Very often, after repeating a tradition which I heard, I pass judgment on its reliability.

M: I mean much more than this.

H: (He did not hear what I said; he was already speaking in a way that sounded like a defense he had made before.) In my account of the first settlement of foreigners, Karians and Ionians in Egypt, I commented that I saw the ruined houses of their first homes (cf. Herodotus, Histories 1.254).

M: (I was not interested but could not stop him, so I humored him). How do you know they were really the ruined houses of those pirates?

H: They were not palaces; they were decrepit huts. Why should anyone make that up? People claim grand beginnings, not humble ones. Besides, it was not Karians who pointed these homes out to me.

Can anyone deny that I have seen the things I have seen? I saw physical phenomena. I witnessed people’s practices.

If you look closely, I report a tradition and then add my personal testimony regarding some aspect of the tradition which can still be verified in my own time. I just add observations. I think I am very cautious in how I transmit native traditions. I dismiss some, accept others, and, when in doubt, I set down the different versions for my readers to decide. Do you want more examples?

M: No. (Actually, I did see what he was saying, but I did not want to admit that I had not really understood how he had, in a way I could now respect better, distinguished between what he had seen, what he heard, what others said, what he thought, and so on. His little speech made me see his whole book in a very different way.)

But I do see now that people do not read your work closely enough. Perhaps this is not their fault. You have developed your own methods of presenting stories and events and make distinctions that others have missed.

I underestimated Herodotus. I had seen him as a popular storyteller, a fabricator of tales. Instead, I now see him as someone who is describing the world as it is, which includes people who believe in all manner of things that I consider laughable. But no one should laugh at Herodotus. He is giving the world something very serious.

Here is a part I remember very clearly. We were drinking wine and he was warming to me. I wanted to keep things sharp.

M: They call you naïve because you believe in oracles.

H. I know that you do not believe in the gods.

M: What I say is that I do not know who or what the gods are. But whatever they are or are not, no, I do not believe that the oracles are from the gods.

H: For someone with such a complex mind, you are missing how fascinating oracles are.

M: Please – they are meaninglessly ambiguous.

H: They are meaningfully ambiguous.

M: Very simply, do you believe that oracles are true?

H: Oracles become true.

M: What does this mean?

H: Let’s distinguish between the way the Ethiopians understand their oracles and we Greeks think about ours.

M: Sorry, I do not know anything about Ethiopian oracles.

H: The Ethiopians obey their oracle to the letter and march wherever and whenever their god tells (cf. Histories 2.29.7). There is only one way to take the command and they take it. This is a rigid system of belief. It cannot last.

M: Why not?

H: Because whatever those oracles are, whoever they come from, they must somehow be interpreted and understood by humans in their moment and place.

M: And Greek oracles?

H: Greek oracles are very different. They are often intentionally equivocal and demand interpretation. Their ambiguity gives them the open-endedness that provides a field for human action. The ambiguity creates arguments and the arguments about the interpretation of particular oracles show that they are not a result.

M: Do you mean that the oracles are designed to create arguments about their meaning?

H: Yes, this is part of the process. In the ensuing debates, the debaters use most of their reason and all of their ingenuity to come up with a plan for their people. There is a kind of competition to determine the best course of action. Someone proposes an interpretation, and this is tested and debated.

M: But there are a lot of oracles that are clear.

H: Yes, of course. But I am more interested in the ambiguous oracles that are debated. Oracles are not about their words; they are about structuring actions. Oracles are thus part of history and have a proper place, in my accounts.

M: Why are Greeks so eager for their oracles to be true?

H: You are right, they desperately want them to be true. And they have different explanations for what went wrong: perhaps they misinterpreted them, or they were to blame or at fault.

M: They go to great lengths to believe in them. But is not this kind of belief irrational?

H: To them, it makes the world rational. If oracles are true, then there is truth. Otherwise, what kind of world do we live in?

This is what I remember from that part. I must say, again, I underestimated Herodotus. I underestimated the complexity of oracles. For someone like me, who can argue both sides of every issue, I have begun to think that oracles are sparks that can light fires of discussion.

H: I heard that Pericles asked you to draft a constitution for my new home. What a breathtaking opportunity! The possibilities are so interesting. I suppose a constitution forces you to reckon with every aspect of governing and power. To be able to concretize your principles with such specificity! What a task!

M: It is intellectually fascinating, but a chance to apply my attitudes as well.

H: You, who love to take two opposing positions and paradoxes and antitheses could create a document that has one consistent set of positions? And I wonder: What exactly do you mean by democracy?

M: Just as there are versions of the truth, and interpretations of oracles, I would like to speak of versions of democracy.

H: Interesting. I have compared different forms of government in an episode in my Histories (3.80–84) about the Persian conspirators who usurped the throne and debated what sort of constitution they should adopt for their new regime,

M: That episode feels like it is based on my kind of philosophy.

Herodotus smiled and did not say anything. That smile and that silence increased my respect for him. I feel like many of us have underestimated this man and his work. My dialogue with him has shown me that there is more to him than I thought. He gathered himself and started to talk again.

M: Here are the choices:

Popular government with equality before the law.

Oligarchy.

Monarchs with absolute power.

M: Each form has serious problems.

H: Correct. In a real democracy, I remain worried about the people, especially giving power to the poor and the uneducated. Democracy can lead to factions, and then there will be a people’s champion, a monarch, who promises to unify everyone.

M: I am just as concerned. But the poor must feel that they are free and important, so they make the democracy strong. These people, in both reality and metaphor, are the crew of the ship of state. On the other side, the elite must show how their qualities make them worthy of leadership.

H: Oligarchy can lead to violent quarrels among the members of the ruling clique, and a monarch will emerge.

M: And yet a monarch with absolute power who is not constrained is as dangerous as anything.

H: Anyway, just as the Persian conspirators had a chance to create a government, you did too, on an obviously lesser scale. I am not sure that a democracy with a constitution will work on a larger scale. Still, for me, in my work, the question is: Is history going to be a record of how the strong preyed on the weak or are we going to have a society based on law and respect? And which of these governments is the best instrument to achieve such a society?

M: Democracy, in any version, is problematic, but it can be efficient and stable. If only we could teach this to the people, through history or philosophy. If only each person had to write a constitution, they would realize that there is an art to politics and to being a citizen.

H: If we are to teach these arts to the next generation, the idea of writing and designing a real or even hypothetical constitution might be an exercise one would never forget.

M: As someone entrusted with this by a great leader as a real-life task, I can tell you that this exercise would inform their political attitudes and activities for the rest of their lives. They would see, as you and I do, how complex it is to create a political system. It would teach those who want to live in a democracy how difficult it is to create a society that is based on freedom, just laws, and the rights of citizens. They would see how difficult it is to inspire the ambitions of the right kind of people but also how to control those ambitions by creating a system of checks and balances.

H: That would be an education in itself.

H: The two of us are very different, a historian and a philosopher, but these are both pursuits of the truth.

M: Yes, just as philosophy provides a framework for living and thinking, history should also provide a framework for action in the political sphere in the present.

H: We are like each other. Rather than emphasize the gods, or the idea that there is one absolute truth, we focus on the actions of peoples, leaders, and the characteristics of groups and societies. As you have said, “Man is the measure of all things.”

M: (I was pleased that he quoted me). If only we could teach this to the people, through history or philosophy.

H: I see my vision of history as parallel to yours and both of our views of the world as parallel to what Hippocrates has said. I know that you know how important his work is to all of us.

M: I think about this all the time. Hippocrates has shown us to make philosophy and medicine allies. Disease is not a punishment inflicted by the gods. Those who think it does are ignorant and superstitious. Disease has a natural cause that comes from the air around us, how we live, what we eat. Medicine should be separated from religion.

H: Correct. This is the way I write history.

M: I was thinking in particular about how you write about Athenian democracy. When there is a state that has a notion of the divine behind the law, it obscures the reason of humans to create and design the state. There is a big difference when you say that the state or the laws are based on the gods, because then people can say that they speak for the gods and that others do not. Inequalities and tyrannies result. But once there is no qualitative difference between the speech of different people, there is a chance of true equality.

H: In my fifth book, I try to show that the movement from depending on the gods to a secular foundation of government enabled the Athenians to take true control of their state. The state was no longer legitimatized by some myth about the gods. Now all Athenians believed that the regime belongs to them. This led to a new patriotism. And it enabled not just a few who say they speak for the gods to speak but allowed everyone to have equality of speech and to have an equal share in decisions.

M: Athenians have self-government. It is a product of humans. Athenians now say, “It is ours.” It brings people closer together. The Athenians take this inside themselves. They see the state as their own, not the product of something outside of themselves. They feel wholeness rather than alienation and distance from the state. The growth of our culture, our success, our prowess is based on our self-determination.

H: Hippocrates has helped us to take control of our own bodies. Protagoras, you have helped us to understand our minds. And we can use our minds to think about the lessons we have learned about human nature from my work about the past. Human nature is illustrated on the pages of my work.

Understanding the whole of human nature, body and mind, creates possibilities for human life according to our highest potential.

M: Let’s talk about the purpose of your work.

H: By inquiring into the various cultures of the world, I attempt to demonstrate that this engagement illuminates what all human beings have in common. Different customs express different aspects of the potential of all humans. Different cultures show alternatives to the way of life of our own.

M: I understand what you are saying, at least in theory. We all face the same problem of the human condition, namely, our mortality.

H: Yes, but not just death. We share the same issues, such as how to create a good government and a safe society. When should we go to war? How should we think about the past?

M: I understand. But this is not what comes across in your narrative. Instead, we see others as exotic, or strange, or primitive, or even comical. We enjoy the sense of traveling to places that otherwise we would never see. But I do not think that the reader sees sameness and commonality; I think the reader sees others walking on a stage in strange costumes.

H: I know that seeing other cultures in the way I hope the reader does is difficult. Still, I believe that showing contrast is a key to knowing ourselves. Other people are different. That is the first step. But that difference between our nomos, law, and theirs, should reveal some characteristic of phusis, nature, that we share because we are all human.

M: You really do share a great deal with Sophists like me.

H: Why do you think we are having these conversations?

M: You are saying: If we only know our own little world, our own nomos, we cannot grasp much about the nature of humans.

H: In a way, what my work explores is how to ask the questions so that readers will ask the questions that I am asking about the difference between human beings. If the reader admires a brutal king, or laughs at a community that is being duped by a clever Athenian leader, what does he understand about himself? If the reader recognizes the mistakes of others, does this painful recognition lead the reader to suffer vicariously with others? Can the reader gain insight that will be instructive?

M: I am thinking about the times in your work where you create dialogues between major figures.

H: I have one near the beginning, the conversation of Solon and Croesus (1.30-33).

M: Yes, that was the one I was about to mention. Here you have representatives of two completely different cultures with views of the world that are completely in conflict. How does this give us what you are saying about shared humanity and common issues? Instead, you give us a struggle between civilizations which are unable to comprehend each other. At least in a sophistic agon, contest, like I engage in, there is a chance to see the other side.

H: But you’re missing the point.
(He was not defensive, or condescending. He was confident that I would eventually get the point.)

M: So, tell me the point.

H: The point is that I put them in a dialogue. I have them talking. The very form shows my intent. I do this as often as I can in my work. I create a confrontation of Greeks and Indians before King Darius (3.38).

M: Perhaps I see now. The dialogue itself shows that we are all humans who can communicate.

H: Again, that’s the necessary first step.

M: But I think you show that mutual understanding between different cultures is impossible, and that this lack of understanding is one of the forces that moves history.

H: Yes, of course I show that, but with the intention to say this: If we cannot understand each other, there will be a cycle of violence. I show leaders talking past each other, misunderstanding each other, warring against each other. These leaders do not see their common humanity. They do not see that humans can be different and learn from each other.

M: And you maintain that they can, that there is a possibility of seeing that commonality, and learning from difference?

H: Yes, but only if we keep talking, and learn from each other’s words.

M: What the world needs now is a Sophistic agon.

Herodotus smiled.

M: We’ve been talking about constitutions. You have a famous debate in your Histories about constitutions in which you define three forms of government, monarchy. oligarchy, and democracy. You purposely place the debate in Persia, perhaps to put it at a distance so that Greeks can think about these issues in the abstract. But when I read your Histories, I think that you undermine these definitions.

H: It’s strange that you would not prioritize my abstract philosophical discussion and instead look at my historical narrative. I thought you were the philosopher. Are we exchanging roles?

M: I think that in describing real life, you focus more on the goals of government, the actual, practical goals of government.

H: You’re right. I seek a system of leadership that keeps those leaders accountable, that promotes leaders who make good decisions, who make not just the government but the state stable. These things are, in real life, more important than the actual form of government or what a constitution says.

M: You understand that each form of government, with the right king, the right oligarchs, the right democratic leader, offers the possibilities of stability, accountability, and good decision-making. In a way, having some mix of these forms of government might be the best thing.

H: Yes, so a mix of oligarchs who have breeding, and education and nobility should be mixed with what we might call a democracy.

M: When it comes down to it, we are both worried about the mob, about their gullibility, about the way they can be manipulated, by the way they can respond with anger and emotion to a trivial symbolic incident. We also are concerned with the danger of impulsive, irrational leaders and we are vitally interested in the goal of having rational rulers.

H: Yes, but I would also stress that I favor honoring ancestral customs which give a state a sense of permanence and tradition. I favor freedom, by which I mean autonomy for a people.

M: In your work, you discuss many sieges. I think about a city’s walls, that can be breached in the weak spots. A constitution must be constantly vigilant to shore up those weak spots.

H: I appreciate the analogy. If there are soft spots in the walls, we can be sure that evil or overly ambitious men will find them. When they do, we must renew our defenses in those areas.

M: Another weak spot: You say the best man should be king, but you do not explain how such a system can be perpetuated. Short term ideals do not make long term solutions.

H: Fair enough. I would put it this way: For all the constitutional forms that are the expressions of different philosophies, there must be constant discussion, negotiation, and adaptation to new situations. A state must be like a philosopher like yourself, always seeing different sides, always questioning itself, always being prepared for change.

M: I never thought about it that way. The state must be Sophistic, constantly analyzing itself and being prepared to change.

H: And to use your analogy, it is true that we must walk around the city walls, even when the enemies are not approaching. And yet, unfortunately, the enemies are often inside the walls, and they are creating those breaches. Often, I think that the enemies within are more dangerous than those who are outside. You can stand on the wall and see the enemies when they prepare to attack. You cannot see those among you who would destroy your state. And suddenly, the walls have fallen, and your state is gone.

I shuddered. I know how to shore up walls. I am not sure how to protect the state from the people around me. But the discussion has led me to a renewed concern that we must have strong laws and an ever-changing constitution that does everything it can to protect us from all the enemies around us.

H: Since you think in complex terms, let us think about the most interesting subject: people.

M: People are certainly more complicated than philosophy, which is logical. People are anything but logical.

H: History certainly shows this. But what I’m thinking about is the basic categories of good and evil, and what defines whether a person should be considered good or evil, considering that all of us are capable of both.

M: True enough, but there are clear examples of people who are good and certainly it is easy to point to individuals who are evil.

H: Do you mean ‘capable of evil’? We are all capable of evil, if pushed to a certain point or placed in certain circumstances or tempted when we are weak.

M: But there are people who were never pushed, who, of their own free will and volition, did unthinkable acts. I can give you an example of an evil person with which no one could disagree.

H: Who do you have in mind?

M: Ephialtes (Histories 7.201–233, esp. 213–223).

H: This is a perfect example, but in a slightly different way. If what I have learned is true, that he was trying to get the Persians to go away from his home territory which they were occupying and thereby destroying, I suppose that one could start to make excuses for him. But I will not. In my Histories, I write about many traitors. Some betrayed their cities when under siege, perhaps at least partly out of fear. Some thought they could profit from the victors. But as often as I find treason in my records, I cannot ever excuse it.

M: I want to make this harder. Let us say, just for argument’s sake, that Ephialtes was a faithful husband, a loving father, a loyal son, and a respectable member of his community. And then he did the unthinkable act. Does that one act nullify everything he ever did and everything he ever was? Or could we say that he was a good man who did a bad thing?

H: That act defines his life. It does not matter what the trail of his life was that led him to lead the Persians to the trail to Thermopylae. It does not matter where the trail of his life led him after that. His choice to betray his nation is all there is to know.

M: I accept this. But let me choose the opposite example: A hypothetical person who has not been a good person, who, say, has been loyal to an evil tyrant, but who, in the most important moment of his life, one that affects the lives of many people, stands up to that tyrant, rises above his past and saves those people through his courage and honesty.

H: That act defines his life. That act became his Thermopylae where he stood with his nation.

M: It is interesting, sometimes, to think about myths, and a sophisticated way to think about them is on two levels, the level of talking to people who may take the myth as literally true, and then tasking it in a higher level, as a teachable story that can be used to say things that are important and true.

H: I would say that both are important; people act and create events based on that literal understanding, so that is part of history, and then you can draw your metaphors for a different kind of audience. What are you thinking about?

M: Prometheus. I am thinking about his name and the name of his brother.

H: Epimetheus? I do not remember anything about him.

M: That’s amusing. He is the one who forgot all about human beings.

H: I suppose that is amusing. Prometheus is the one that is in our culture’s thinking.

M: Think about the meanings of the two names.

H: Prometheus is ‘he who understands before’ and Epimetheus is ‘he who understands afterwards’.

M: So, is it unkind of me to call a historian ‘Epimetheus’, ‘he who understands afterwards’? Isn’t this what you do?

H: (bristling) It is unkind and unfair to compare us to someone who forgets about human beings. And I would respond even more adamantly that we do not only understand afterwards; what we understand enables us to understand what the future may bring based on everything we know about the past.

M: (I regretted that one). Sorry.

H: Furthermore, it is not our task to apply the lessons. In fact, it might seem like we were writing history with current political or ideological purposes and undermine our credibility. Perhaps teachers should look less to myths that they don’t believe in ….

M: I hear you.

H: … and more to the history of real human beings who offer examples of the behavior that has ruined nations and destroyed peaceful living.

M: I am in retreat. One cannot be the model historian if one is accused of making points in current debates.

H: Thank you. Perhaps the lessons of history should be applied by neither historians nor philosophers but by those who are active in the community and who are openly claiming that current events can be informed by past events.

M: Agreed. But despite your barb, I want to refer to Epimetheus again.

H: I certainly discuss the beliefs and stories of many peoples, so please, go ahead.

M: Epimetheus, to me, represents people who are thoughtless bodies making thoughtless motions. Do you remember whom he married?

H: Of course, Pandora, who caused so many problems by letting so many bad things come into the world, but kept hope alive in her box. She, too, only thought about things afterwards, after causing so much damage.

M: Yes, and, indulge me, and I do not mean to give you a schoolboy test, but do you remember the name of their daughter?

H: No.

M: Metameleia ….

H: ‘She who regrets what has happened.’

M: Yes. And the message is that there are those, not just individuals but nations, who do not plan ahead and then are left with regrets and sorrows when events happen for which they have not planned ahead.

H: I am beginning to see, without rancor, what we are doing here. History is written for its own sake, as a record. Myth speaks of origins and teaches through legend and story. Philosophy teaches us to analyze. And each of these schools has a separate function, but all of them, in different combinations, can be used not to think afterwards, with regret, to think too little and too late, but instead to think ahead, not like Epimetheus, but like his brother Prometheus.

P: Good. So now, let us leave Epimetheus alone and go back to what I was saying about the two ways of thinking about the Prometheus story.

Here is the first way:

The gods gave Prometheus the task of giving qualities to the different species, including human beings, qualities that would enable to survive and thrive. Prometheus is sorry that his brother forgot about humans and stole fire, which I think also stands for the ability to create and build and provide the necessities such as food and clothing and shelter, all the basic issues of living.

H: I think I see where you’re going. The problem was that human beings did not know how to be in a group; they did not have the most basic wisdom about what we call politics. And so they destroyed each other and scattered and became extinct again. I don’t remember what happens next in the myth.

P: Zeus sends Hermes with Dike (‘Justice’) and Aidos (‘Respect, Shame’) to everyone, not just to leaders but to all humans.

H: They could have just sent those qualities to leaders and others would simply follow and obey. Sending it to all humans shows that all humans should have a voice in governing, in other words…

P: Democracy.

H: But this is where it gets complicated. Protagoras, you don’t mean that every human being has been given these gifts and can therefore take part in an appropriate way to make a democracy what it ideally could be. There are some who can participate well in a democracy, but many who cannot. So let us not use the ancient story of Prometheus to proclaim that Athenian democracy is run by all its people. Even if it means that every citizen should be able to express his ideas in public, it does not mean that the citizens will have the right ideas and apply them at the right times.

P: Of course, agreed, but we should aspire to an ideal. We should try to teach the political art. We should stress that dike and aidos should be the qualities we try to inculcate in our people, and that justice and compassion are the virtues we look for in our leaders. A society is just people associated with each other, and a society creates the conditions for helping people to live better lives, to create new possibilities for them. This can only happen in a society that has leaders that embody these virtues in their own behavior. I would say, of course, that many people are not ready for a real democracy. But it is up to us, the philosophers and historians and leaders to move them in that direction.

H: Now I finally understand what you are saying about go back to Prometheus, stealing the fire, bringing it to homes and cities. What have we done with the gifts that enabled us to live? The fire that burns in our hearths is not as important as the fire that burns in our hearts.

M: Our dialogue about democracy is helpful. We both know that democracy has its drawbacks, as does every possible kind of government.

H: Yes, which is why I have narratives that talk about good kings. But then, there are many terrible ones, with no one to check their power.

M: What I am thinking about now as a problem for democracy is how wonderful ideals, like patriotism, can be manipulated by demagogues. I am thinking about the concept of political rhetoric.

H: Rhetoric, to me, is elevated speech by an orator. Great oratory is to be admired. But also feared.

M: Yes, because rhetoric, the art of persuasion, almost assumes lying. It can be harmless lying, like exaggeration and hyperbole, but it can be harmful to everyone.

H: Politics does involve a great deal of deception. But some of that deception, I would emphasize, is self-deception. It is the citizens allowing themselves to be convinced of things that are wrong.

M: Good and evil are relative. What for some is good, others may consider evil. What may be beneficial for some may bring harm to others. Every judgement is justified by the individual who gives it. One should not put rhetoric to the test of what is true and false.

H: But if you accept this, you can legitimize every statement, even one that is objectively untrue. I feel like you play with words and serious notions. I feel like you are the one who is performing. Real rhetoric such as political speech, should be all about telling the truth. The goal should be to guide the democracy.

M: Perhaps, but what do we admire? Think about two heroes in Homer: Achilles and Odysseus. For all his flaws, Achilles is a truthful warrior who hates liars. Odysseus, on the other hand, is a master of resourcefulness but also deception.

H: His very success was based on deception; just think about the Trojan Horse. Or the story with the Cyclops. Odysseus can act this way and win our admiration because he is not a member of our society; he is not in our reality.

(And, after a while of silence) Ah, I understand what you are saying. A politician …

M: Yes, you understand. We accept his words as an act on another plane, the plane of drama or myth.

H: But his lying words affect the lives and deaths of real people.

M: The reality that rhetoric creates is like the reality that drama creates without any claim of being truthful. Political rhetoric is acting and lying, mass deception, and self-deception in democratic societies. In a democratic society, both the social space and the political space are filled with constant communication.

H: If that rhetoric fills all the spaces, the barrier between reality and the way it is being represented breaks down.

M: And so we understand why democracy is so dangerous, and why the people can be so easily manipulated. In a way, they feel that they are watching a performance. Until they wake up and realize that their lives are at risk.

H: Let’s go further with your use of the myth of Epimetheus and Prometheus. Epimetheus gifts all the animals, including humans, with the ability to survive. Prometheus finds that this leaves humans just like the animals, and gives them practical wisdom, fire and the ability to provide sustenance. But they do not have a community and are still defenseless.

M: Yes, and while I have my ideas about the gods, …

H: Watch out…. You can get into trouble ….

P: … I find all this instructive on a metaphorical level. Zeus gets involved and gives humans the ideas of justice and respect so that they can live in groups and cities. The ability to be a citizen is distributed to everyone; if only a few understood the meaning of community and social behavior, the community would not last.

H: So, to bring this from myth to the present, Athens is based on the idea that everyone has the civic virtues or arts (politikai aretai / technai). Those who fail to measure up must be punished.

M: Yes, but to be logical, punishing a man for something he did in the past is illogical. The crime cannot be undone.

H: That’s true, but then, you would not forego punishment, would you?

M: No, but I understand what punishment is really about: not the past, but the future. It wants to change the actions and behavior of citizens who may be thinking in misguided ways. Punishment instills and reminds the value of justice.

H: So this fits with your concept that civic virtues can be taught. Now I understand why, even with the Athenian idea that everyone is capable of the civic arts, we still need teachers like you.

M: Yes, to show the way. Besides, teachers like me, we must preserve justice. Justice for criminals is a way of teaching, not in a school but in life. Again, if we do not punish them, the future will be a very dangerous place indeed.

M: Historians like you build communal identity, like an oration at a funeral or some kind of commemoration or ritual of remembrance.

H: Thank you. One does not build an Athens by living in the present moment. One builds an Athens by creating a foundation in its past. The self-image of the Athenian polis is at least partly based on Marathon (490 BCE), and then Salamis (480 BCE) and Plataeae (479 BCE) ten years later.

These victories led the Athenians to see their state as the leader of all Greeks. And the champions of freedom against foreign invaders. Or Greek oppressors for that matter.

M: True, but I have been thinking that it is more difficult to create memories for a polis because the groups that make up the polis have their own collective memories. And the demes or tribes may remember the past in their own ways.

H: The past also points to the future. Athenians feel that their leadership is essential, and they must act accordingly in times to come.

M: But again, part of the achievement is getting different communities, which may have different memories of events, to remember in the same way. This is no small thing.

Each group, like each person, remembers things differently.

H: Yes. I will make up an example. Let us say that one particular tribe in Athens led the way to victory in one of those battles, and claims the leadership role within the Athenian force. They may emphasize their tribe and thus dilute the collective memory.

M: This is not true, this did not happen, thanks to Cleisthenes. He laid the foundation not only by allying with the common people and instituting reforms, but by replacing the four old Ionian tribes with ten new Athenian tribes. These ten new tribes were carefully constructed. The reforms of Cleisthenes unified Athens and Attica by grouping the villages of three different regions of Attica into ten tribes. It was as if everything was re-set. They all began at the same time. These tribes became as the divisions of a new popular council and an army of the city. It’s strange to me that so much credit goes not to Cleisthenes but to the mythical Theseus. Even historians like you speak of Theseus as the unifier.

H: I transmit history as it is remembered. And there is a reason to push such important achievements into the realm of myth; it elevates the unity to a higher sphere. Theseus or Solon for that matter are said to be restorers of even earlier traditions. I do happily admit that Athens would never have been the Athens we know without Cleisthenes. The institutions he created were based on a political ideology and that ideology became Athens because of those institutions.

But in my defense, who do you think invented those myths? Cleisthenes knew what I am saying. The idea of the ten tribes created the sense of a whole by bringing together people from different parts of Attica. The innovators needed the authority of the past and so the figure of each tribe had a connection with a demi-god or myth. There was continuity through the cult and the clans that had provided the priests continued to do so in the new tribes.

M: I am beginning to understand what your sense of history is. The past is presented and even re-created for the purposes of a stable present and a glorious future. But the danger is when the groups that make up the state no longer share their vision of the past and when that past is no longer shared.

M: Let us talk about democracy and the idea of free space.

H: Athens manifests itself as a democracy through free spaces.

M: Very true. A free space brings all the people together, and this can be problematic, citizens, metics, and even slaves and women. The free space enables all these people to have the same experiences, it allows everyone to interact.

H: I see what you’re doing. Instead of focusing on the assembly or the law courts, as most would do, you focus on a free space like the agora …

M: Exactly. The agora is the perfect example. In some cities, there cannot be any commerce in the agora. But in Athens, everything is permitted. Anything and everything goes. And so an effective speaker can use this free space to say anything he wants, to try to arouse public sentiment in this public arena.

H: I’ve noticed that one of the sentiments that is often expressed in those workshops is criticism of democracy.

M: And this is grand; what could be more democratic than that this democratic free space be used against democracy?

H: You do love irony, don’t you?

M: Yes, but I mean this. I have said that tyranny allows no satire. Democracy has a deep sense of humor about its own weaknesses. I do embrace the paradox that I fear crowds of the lower classes manipulated by politicians and I believe that a democracy should be governed by the people. I look for ways to structure democratic rule. I would love a state ruled by thoughtful citizens sitting in an assembly and making wise decisions based on the best possible information. I distrust the loud, cracked, and hoarse voices of laborers and traders; I fear the rumors, the confusion, and misinformation spread through the shops.

H: I am not sure that I understand your point. Do you mean that the agora, more than anything else, and despite all your misgivings, blurs the different identities to create an identity for Athens itself?

M: Yes. The noisy din of the crowd is democracy itself.

H: But you personally detest that noisy din!

M: I do. Yet I glory in a nation that is a free space in this world of despots and tyrants.

M: In reading your Histories, I was thinking about the origin of ostracism.

H: I am very pleased that my account provokes someone like you to think about these things.

M: Here is what I gather: Cleisthenes devised ostracism as a weapon against the Peisistratids. The demos were basically apathetic, but the nobles were outraged. After Athens was liberated from that tyranny, there was a power struggle.

H: Correct. Between Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid, and Isagoras, a member of a respected and ancient aristocratic family. Again, the demos were not really involved. First, Isagoras was successful, but then Cleisthenes won, and he presented democratic ideas. He restored citizenship to those who had lost it under Isagoras. He led the opposition to Isagoras' attempt to establish an oligarchy.

M: Yes, but, given my own sentiments, I want to be quick to say that Cleisthenes also was certainly not a tool of the demos. He was Solonian about who could hold office and leaving the class structure alone. He was not interested in any radical changes.

H: Still, his constitution put the landed gentry in control of important executive and judicial positions. But I thought you wanted to talk about how ostracism started.

M: I am going to get there. I think logically, step by step.

H: Sorry. Proceed.

M: So, imagine that you are Cleisthenes. You’re worried about the Spartans coming back and the restoration of the oligarchs. But you’re more worried about the people, the lower classes who had supported the tyranny and who, if the threat of oligarchy felt less immediate, might support a new tyrant.

H: Right, Cleisthenes was in a very delicate position. He could fight and devise against tyranny, but he could not destroy tyrannists.

M: Now we have reached the topic of ostracism. He devised a means to deprive a tyrannist party of its leader. It would be hard to argue against a law that was against would-be-tyrants. Such a law would be popular. It was a strong tool in the hands of Cleisthenes to solidify the new political order.

H: Surely at least some people knew that he had his eye on the leader of the tyrannist party, Hipparchus.

M: And that was fine, because then, before anything had happened, it was like the law had its eye on him.

H: And guess who understood this the best?

M: Hipparchus, of course. And he got the message. And for a long time, there was an era of cooperation. The law did not even need to be used. The genius of ostracism is that it is an outlet for democracy, to purge, not kill a problematic politician. When necessary, he can be exiled without charges, though only temporarily. It is still a bit harsh, but it protects the democracy. And democracy needs protection, every hour of every year, against those who would destroy it for the sake of their own power.

M: If we agree that democracy, at least in some carefully structured form, is a good form of government, then we should worry together about what can destroy a democracy.

H: Democracy will always be a precarious form of government …

M: … and a precarious way of life. What are the forces that can ruin or imperil or undermine a democracy?

H: I appreciate those verbs. One can undermine a democracy in quiet, insidious ways.

One can imperil a democracy without destroying it.

But then one can destroy a democracy altogether.

M: What do you see as the important forces or issues to be concerned about?

H: We should start with economic disparity, the conflict between the rich and the poor can bring a democracy down.

M: But there will always be inequality, and the domination of the rich over the poor, or for that matter, the poor over the rich, is always a potentially unstable relationship.

H: To make this seemingly simple division more complicated, think about this: There are rich people that will manipulate factions of the poor for their own benefit.

M: Democracy needs stability and consensus.

If we intellectualize in this manner without emotion or fear, it is interesting to think about how political flux leads to collapse. It is as if matters are frozen for a certain amount of time, but the ice can melt at any time, given heat from the outside or the inside. I’m still trying to describe the internal sources of that heat.

H: In a way, almost all regimes are more fragile than they might appear.

M: I will offer one of the causes of internal heat: Semantic instability.

H: I understand what you mean: the misuse of words.

M: This can be accomplished without actually changing the meaning of the words. The words take on different values. They are used recklessly.

H: A leader can do things that are reckless and dangerous to the society but be applauded by groups who see him as daring and charismatic. And if a leader hatches even an unsuccessful plot to overthrow the government, if a leader fosters institutional corruption, if a leader encourages rampant suspicion, all that noise and confusion can disrupt a democracy and create deeply disorienting times.

M: We could call it pseudo-democracy, the attempt by an anti-democrat to capture the support of the people, people can be persuaded to act against their own best interests.

H: Yes, there are these figures, these demagogues who can traverse the boundary, crossing from the rich to the poor, to mobilize the poor at their direction.

M: I wonder sometimes if average people really care whether they live in a democracy or not.

H: It’s a reasonable question. Sometimes I wonder if they only care about their own lives and the lives of their immediate families.

M: They seem more than ready to die for the state. But are they ready to live their lives for it?

M: We have been speaking about politics and government, so I would like to relax and talk about a story in the first part of your Histories, the story of Arion.

H: You call that relaxing?

M: (I laughed.) All right, so you understand that I have selected a very complex test-case to talk about your method.

H: You are always pressing me to find out what I believe. And you always underestimate me, and my understanding of what history is.

M: If I did not greatly respect you and your work, I would not be engaged in our ongoing dialogue.

H: All right. But let’s make sure you understand how I told the story.

M: With pleasure. Arion of Methymna in Lesbos, a poet and performer, was invited to the court of Periander, the tyrant of Corinth. After going and winning a competition in Sicily and gaining lucrative prizes, he boards a ship bound back for Corinth, but the crew seizes him and gives him the impossible choice of killing himself and being buried or jumping overboard. Arion chooses killing himself, but asks to give one last performance, in full costume, of a hymn to the gods. But then, to everyone’s surprise, he jumps overboard, only to be rescued by a dolphin. The dolphin takes him to dry land …

H: It may have been Poseidon, who had a famous shrine at Taenarum …

M: … but he does not send the dolphin back to the sea, and the dolphin perishes. When he tells Periander the story, his patron, like all of us, has a problem believing the whole thing. Very sensibly, he inquires of the crew who lie and say they placed Arion, safe and sound, on land at Taras …

H: … named for the son of Poseidon …

M: By the way, when you write about such inquiries, as you seem to do often, it is like it is you doing an investigation.

H: Yes. Both I and my reader. We are entitled to our gnome, our disbelief, our skepticism.

M: Anyway, the crew is lying, at which point Arion appears….

H: … still in his professional dress, I want to emphasize.

M: Why do you keep repeating this?

H: To show how intact he was, and because those clothes would seem to prove something …

M: When the crew sees him, they are clearly thunderstruck, and Periander concludes that there really was a miracle.

H: Inquiry can confirm belief. And I’ve seen the statue of a man on a dolphin at Taenarum; it was bronze and not very big. But why have you brought this story up? To mock me and all who tell the story?

M: Actually, because I see it as a story about how belief works.

H: You mean, again, inquiry confirms belief?

M: No, not for me. For me, it is that belief confirms itself. Think about Arion’s choice: He can certainly die on board, or he can pray and hope and leap into the sea. It is his belief that gives him a chance.

H: So, in your way, you are in awe of those who believe

M: When you believe, you never know; you may be jumping into a miracle.

M: One of the things I like about your work, and I am willing to guess one of the reasons for its popularity, is your descriptions of other people.

H: Thank you. I think this is true. I feel a “but” coming.

M: Yes. You know me well. But not quite yet.

H: I will wait patiently.

M: You are very Greek.

H: Thank you.

M: And a characteristic of being Greek is to want to travel and observe. As Greeks, I think you say at one point very succinctly, we see three great reasons for travel: war, trade, and just seeing the sights (Hdt. 3.139).

H: I am neither the first Greek nor hopefully the last to spend some part of my life learning about the world by visiting foreign places. I always think about Odysseus, who “wandered much, . . . who saw the cities of many men and knew their mind” (Homer, Odyssey 1.1–3). Our word theoria means ‘going to see great spectacles’, but also has the general sense of going to see another country. I think of Solon, who made theoria his reason for leaving Athens (Hdt. 1.29) and the Scythian Anacharsis, who “saw a great part of the earth” (Hdt. 4.76) and in the process became partly Greek.

M: I wonder sometimes if your observations as a traveler, or as a reporter of what you have heard from other travelers – and I do not mean this as badly as it will sound – is not simplistic. That is, can your observations, for example, about how a people dress really tell us about the whole culture that that dress is only one expression of?

H: You’re correct; I don’t really know those peoples. I am just trying to describe the different peoples I’ve learned something about.

M: Now comes my real criticism: Since you brought up the Scythians, it feels like you split the world between Greek and Barbarian. So at least some of the peoples you discuss are Other. But if one Scythian could travel and become partly Greek, is there not hope that the Others might become more civilized? I worry about splitting the world into Us and Them, as opposed to Us. It is too easy to kill an Other.

H: Let’s be truthful: Those who are Us kill each other all the time. It seems to be easy for human beings to kill each other. They don’t need the excuse of Otherness.

M: Then, is there any hope for peace?

H: Why do you think I have traveled so far? Not just to see the world as it is, but to wonder about what it might become.

M: I want to talk about what you say about the Lotophagi, the ‘Lotus-eaters.’

H: All I said is that there are Lotus-eaters in our day in coastal Libya (Herodotus IV 177). I described that they live on a promontory jutting out into the sea from the country of the Gindanes. The Lotophagi live entirely on the fruit of the lotus tree and even make a wine from it.

M: Notice how you said, “in our day.” I deduce that you mean, “there are still Lotus-eaters in our day.”

H: You parse my words and my writing too carefully.

M: Perhaps, but every educated person will connect Lotus-eaters with Lotus-eaters. I think you mean to connect them to the Lotophagi of the Odyssey. In that famous passage, they offer the plant to Odysseus and his men, and they become so content with their lives that they do not want to return home or journey on. Consuming lotus plants causes them to live in a perpetual state of bliss. Their lifestyle causes them to lose all sense of urgency. Or do you mean to say that the Lotophagi of the Odyssey are based on the real-life Lotus-eaters?

H: I said neither of these things. I think that you are trying to make a point beyond my method of reporting. I report what I have seen and what I have heard. I have a very few words about a people who only eat the lotus. You then connect them to the Lotus-eaters of the Odyssey.

M: I notice that after you talk about the Lotophagi, you talk about the Machiyans, who only use the lotus to some extent, and that they have achievements, whereas you do not report any achievements for those who eat lotus all the time.

H: Again, you have read my words correctly, but you are giving those words more meaning than I intended.

M: Perhaps – I cannot just read historically. I always seek meaning in everything.

H: Please, my friend, I am ready to hear your point.

M: I do not care about Lotus-eaters on the coast of Libya. I do not think that there is a connection between those people, if they exist at all, with the mythical people of a mythical epic poem.

H: What you care about, I now gather after all this, is the Lotus-eaters of our time, those who are lazy or complacent or without drive to act.

M: Yes. And I want to compare the two of us to those who simply want to live blissfully un-constructive lives.

H: A self-serving compliment, but enough of these rhetorical tricks. You have your tasks, but I have mine as a historian. I made no reference to the Odyssey. I was not connecting what I think is a real observation to anything in an epic about people that dream their lives away. I was not thinking metaphorically. I simply reported a sentence or two about what I heard about a small people who I know nothing else about. You are drawing inference after inference, and I deny and reject all of them.

M: I did not dream up those sentences that you wrote. Do you not see how your words might be taken? I’ll say it again: if I hear “Lotus-eaters,” how can I not think about the famous passage? How can I not wonder if that passage was not based even loosely on the historical/geographical reality of people who eat lotus?

H: I am not responsible for all of that. I transmit information. When I reach a conclusion, I say so. I cover a great deal of history and the world. You have picked a bit of trivial information and made it into an issue.

M: I will defer to you. But I do think that there is a place on the spectrum of truth where history and meaning meet.

H: History has many meanings. The question is whether the meanings we attach to it are fair.

M: “Perses, lay these things in your heart / And give heed to Justice, and put violence entirely out of your mind. / This is the law (nomos) that Cronus’ son has established for human beings: / That fish and beasts and winged birds / Eat one another, since Justice is not among them; / but to human beings he has given Justice, which is the best by far.”

(Hesiod, Works and Days 274–280)

H: Why are you quoting from Hesiod?

M: What he’s saying is that unlike the animals, human beings are ruled by justice.

Nomos and democracy are fundamental to our view of the world. They allow us to rise above the brutishness and violence of the natural world. Human beings have the capacity to be involved in the political aspects of society.

H: In myth, Justice is divine, a deity, the daughter of Zeus, who intervened when he saw that men fail to respect her. Myth means a belief in the existence of absolute justice. Human justice is not independent of this order of divine values and should conform to this order.

M: But for someone who thinks as I do, emphasizing the human rather than the divine, the situation radically changes. There is no place for divinity; justice is something human. Justice is expressed in laws, which can vary from one place to the next. Law, for me, is not what brings us close to the gods but what makes it possible to fulfil human potential.

H: For Athenian democracy, this emphasis on law as the result of collective human decisions is particularly well-suited. Democracy is everyone’s government, it is the government of the people as a whole …

M: … and not just of a part of it, like oligarchy. Isn’t that what you are implying?

H: There is very close bond between the individual’s interest and the state state’s interest. Let me read you something from my book:

“So the Athenians grew in power and proved, not in one respect only but in all, that equality is a good thing. Evidence for this is the fact that while they were under tyrannical rulers, the Athenians were no better in war than any of their neighbors, yet once they got rid of their tyrants, they were by far the best of all. This, then, shows that while they were oppressed, they were, as men working for a master, cowardly, but when they were freed, each one was eager to achieve for himself.” (Herodotus V 78)

M: Now we’re getting closer to my concern. Isegoria, everyone’s right to express their idea in the assembly, needs to be taken into account. But the right for everyone to express their ideas relies on the assumption that all opinions are legitimate. This is the principle underlying participatory democracy. This is all good, and I believe everything I just said.

H: So then what troubles you? What cloud covers your face?

M: I worry that if people lose their minds, if a leader can capture their minds and like Circe turn them into pigs, there are no laws or institutions that can control them. That is why, while being a hero for those who love democracy, I maintain many reservations about democracy. I’m the one who said that everyone should express their opinions but I fear that some of those opinions are so far removed from sanity that they are destructive to the society. There must be checks on the power of the people, even, and especially, in a democracy.

M: I am intrigued by one of the figures in your work, Artemisia of Karia.

H: Of Halicarnassus.

M: You are quick to remind me that she came from your hometown.

H: I am proud to do so.

M: There are countless individuals found in your Histories, but she stands out to me.

H: Because she is a woman?

M: In a way, yes, because if any man had been a monarch or satrap in the Persian empire, commanded ships in the naval battles in Xerxes’s invasion, but fought for the enemies of Greece, would you praise him in the same way?

H: I hope to be as objective as I can be, always. But you are correct: I cannot but admire her courage and her sagacity in the light of her gender. Imagine all the Persian advisers and captains urging the king to fight, but this one woman being willing to counter all of them with what she saw was the wiser course. It is not only her courage in battle that I admire, but to speak her mind in a world that does not listen to women’s voices; this is courage in itself.

M: It is not simply advice that she offers, counseling Xerxes not to fight the Battle of Salamis against the urging of all the king’s other commanders. You make her seem to be a Sibyl who predicts the future. Again, a woman playing a woman’s role.

H: I never called her a Sibyl and I was not seeing her in this light. Her counsel was practical and rational. She did not want her side to fight a battle that they were bound to lose. But then, when she was overruled, she fought with her whole heart.

M: I am curious as to what happened to her. The last time you mention her is when she is told to take the king’s sons home. Hardly a fitting assignment for this brave commander.

H: If I did not mention her after this, it was not intentional. I do not think that she was relegated to the role of maidservant, and I did not mean to imply this. She was, after all, a queen. No, after being entrusted with the safety of the king’s sons, I think she returned to her home in Halicarnassus and raised her son to be the next king of the city state and the islands around it.

M: I actually heard another story, that she fell in love with a man, was rejected, and committed suicide.

H: This is turning her into an irrational creature who is dependent on the whims of a man. I wonder if such a story was created to put her back into a box for women, rather than to celebrate her. For me, she was a woman who had the greatest qualities of a man.

M: But notice how you expressed this. You are still dividing qualities between male and female.

H: I cannot transcend the views I was raised with. But at least, I can help to see the potential of every person and honor one who demonstrated how, when given the opportunity, rose to play a role in the events of her time.

M: Another figure that jumps off the pages of your work is Scylax.

H: Another Carian, I might add.

M: I am enamored with the adventures of a man who was sent to go where no one has gone before. If I remember correctly, the Persian king Darius commissioned him to explore the course of the Indus River, and how it ran into the sea. He then sailed west, and after two or three years went around the Arabian peninsula to the Red Sea. (Herodotus 4.44)

H: So why are you so interested in this?

M: I am a philosopher and so I think in very simple, basic ways.

H: Hardly so.

M: I think about what we know about the world? How do we structure knowledge? You think chronologically. If we have knowledge or evidence or facts and we cannot put them in a chronology, we cannot understand anything, starting with cause and effect. This makes your work as a historian vital.

H: I thank you. Truly. I could not agree more, obviously.

M: Scylax, and those who try to make maps or chart the world, also bring vital knowledge. We cannot understand what the Persian empire is, for example, if we do not know what it controls. But we also need to know what is to its south and north and east and west. We have no idea what the world is. Who knows what lies in all those directions?

H: True enough, but Darius was certainly not seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge. He wanted to extend the borders of his empire and he needed to know what lay beyond his borders before he attempted to conquer those lands. He made geographical knowledge a kind of weapon. Once the voyage was completed, Darius conquered the Indians, and made use of the sea in those parts.

M: Yes, but I also admire Scylax for another kind of knowledge he imparted. Scylax not only wrote an account of his explorations but a work on a Carian hero, Heracleides,

H: Yes, I mentioned this. He was the prince of Mylasa who revolted against Darius (Herodotus 5.121).

M: I think that this is the first work of history that is about one man. You write histories about everyone and everything. But how precious to focus on just one man. This, to me, is a whole different area of knowledge; not just to say what a person did, but why.

H: I see your logic. And then we place that person in his time, chronology, and in his place, geography, and perhaps we can get some idea about how human beings act and why they do what they do.

M: And then, with all that, we start to think.

M: I want to ask you about a Persian story in your histories, two passages that are connected.

H: I very often tell these stories not only to report about the Persians but to gives examples for what Greeks should and should not do.

M: I am thinking about kings and judges.

H: I know you: You are thinking about the balance of power. If there is a king, what is his relationship to the law? Is he above the law? Subservient to it? And not just civil laws but religious and moral laws.

M: You are not even allowing me to mention the stories on my mind.

H: Fine. Give me your examples and then we can discuss the important ideas.

M: Sisamnes was a Persian judge in the time of Cambyses II who accepted a bribe which influenced his verdict.

H: No wonder this story caught your attention. He not only had him flayed alive but had the skin cut into leather strips.

M: Then he appointed his son Otanes as his successor as judge, and had his chair draped with the leather strips made with the skin of his father. Otanes would prove to be fair and deliberate in his judgements. Otanes was successful and became a general and a satrap in Ionia.

H: All this can be used as a dramatic lesson against corruption and how one generation should remember the mistakes of the preceding one.

M: But the story is much more complex, because what happened before all this is that Cambyses wanted to marry one of his sisters and summoned the royal judges, one of whom was Sisamnes, to ask whether there was a law preventing a man from marrying his sister. In Persia, the judges were very strong interpreters of the law; all matters on the laws of the land were referred to them. So, the king showed himself subservient to the law.

H: Yes, and these were very intelligent judges, careful and fair. They knew that the law prohibited such marriages, but they also recognized the power of the king to do anything he wanted.

M: Not so intelligent! As soon as they said the king could do anything he wanted, they put him above the law. They degraded the laws and their justice. And from that point, Cambyses became more and more deranged.

H: You are making connections I never made.

M: Think about it: They put their fear of the king above the law as they knew it to be. It is incredibly ironic that the king flayed Sisamnes for taking a bribe, when, actually, he had bribed Sisamnes with fear.

H: So now I see: It was the judges themselves who upset the balance of power and endangered everyone.

M: If the judges do not maintain the law as a wall against the king, the king’s power will be absolute. And absolute power is tyranny.

H: We should all be forced to sit on a chair of the mistakes of the past.

M: Or we should all read history more carefully.

M: One of the most interesting dimensions of your Histories is how you tell the reader about the various and diverse peoples of our world, and report on their customs, rituals and beliefs without acceptance or condemnation. I am willing to guess that many of your readers find these accounts to be the most novel and interesting parts of your work, since we are all interested in other peoples and their ways.

H: I do try to do as much of this as I can. We cannot understand what peoples do and how they act if we do not understand who and what they are.

M: There is one group, the Carians, that come up a number of times; you and I recently had a discussion about the Carian queen Artemisia, and since you come from Halicarnassus, you seem to have a special interest in this people.

H: I do. As I think I’ve said, I am half-Carian myself from my father’s side.

M: What fascinates me about the Carians is that they have a very long history. You discuss at one point what their origins were, but for me the point right now is that they are a very ancient people who lived long before Homer and are mentioned in Homer as an ally of Troy, known for their prowess at sea, for their armor and so on. All interesting, but I want to focus on a short passage, really just one sentence in your work:

Carians who live in Egypt do even more than this, inasmuch as they cut their foreheads with knives; and by this they show that they are foreigners and not Egyptians. (Histories 2.61.2)

H: Yes, but let’s remember the context. The Carians in Egypt carried out an act of self-mutilation when ritually mourning the death of Osiris during the Feast of Isis at Busiris.

M: Good. So I assume that the Carians survived as a people for centuries, despite the absence of a substantial home, by transmitting rituals such as this one, as bizarre and terrible as I see it. They had their helmets and their armor and their religion and their barbaric tongue and their unique rituals.

H: Wait a minute. Do you think that cutting foreheads is a long-standing Carian ritual?

M: Is it not?

H: Absolutely not. Read that sentence again: It is the Carians in Egypt who do this, at an Egyptian festival to an Egyptian god.

M: So other Carians do not do this?

HL Never. This is what makes it so remarkable and why I mention it while reporting about Egyptian gods and rituals.

M: I got the wrong impression. So in that case, if Egyptians did not do this, and other Carians did not do this, why did the Carians in Egypt do this?

H: I am not sure, but I have heard that other mercenaries from places like Moab did this kind of thing. The Carian mercenaries may have adopted it from them. I do not know.

M: So, this ritual is not the perpetuation of a Carian practice? It is not an example of how identity is maintained and transmitted? So, now I have to think about what Carian identity is.

H: I would ask: What are the different parts of the identity of any group in a particular land? Think about Carian mercenaries, finding a home in Egypt where they became an important part of the political structure; they were nothing short of kingmakers. They found a home. Carian Egyptians or Egyptian Carians have an identity that consists of a combination of elements unique to their time and place. Do not think of ethnic identity as a solid rock passed down through the centuries.

Just as a mercenary was a free agent, who could attach himself to any political entity, an ethnic group living in a foreign country could attach itself to natives and adapt and adopt local customs.

M: Perhaps their survival and continuity were due to this ability to change. Perhaps the survival of every people, and every person, depends on the ability to change.

M: I want to talk about the most amusing passage I have found in your Histories.

H: You found something amusing? Do you mean one of my descriptions about barbaric peoples?

M: It is this: You say that if the Athenians claim to be born of the land, autochthonous, then they were Pelasgians, who were the original inhabitants of the land. In your subtle way, you show the contradiction by discussing language. You say that the Athenians must have learned Greek at some point. You do all this in a complicated way, but you are clearly saying that the Hellenes came later and were not born in the land (1:57-58).

H: You take this as making fun of the Athenians, but I am really trying to say something very important about origin stories. Most people I have studied, including the Karians for that matter, have at least two stories about their origins.

M: One about their conquest of or migration to the land, and the other that they were born in the land?

H: Autochthony is not that common. Most peoples have two stories and both are about migration or conquest. As a general rule, I would posit three stages: 1. An original people of the land; 2. The epic founder or founders of a city or people, often an eponymous ancestor; and 3. The more historical stage.

M: It is that third stage which is, frankly, more believable as history.

H: I cannot disagree. But I think that we learn about peoples from all of these stages, from what they say about themselves, and I find it important to report all that I learn.

M: And when there are two stories that contradict each other?

H: Find the meaning in each, and in the space in between

M: What I learn from this is that all founders were originally foreign.

H: True.

M: So, we are all colonizers. We are all conquerors. This is the way of the world. And if we know this, we should not be hypocrites. We should not claim that others are terrible conquerors, and we are wonderful saviors. History is all about migration and invasion and conquest. No one was born in the land. We are all interlopers.

H: But let us not go too far. After a people is established, they should have the right to live in their land in peace. We do not want to make all conquest equivalent. If we equalize all conquests, we justify every war.

M: Of course not. It is interesting that a discussion of origin stories can lead to a discussion of what is happening today.

H: And this is a strong case for understanding history.

M: I want to talk about Cyrus and the end of his life. There is so much in this story, I can’t get my mind around it all.

H: Really? There are so many stories in my Histories, I’m puzzled that you would choose this one to discuss.

M: I wonder sometimes if you have written so much and that your ambition is so great that you do not stop and realize the worth of each jewel in your endless necklace. I see my role as polishing these jewels by interpreting their many meanings.

H: This dialogue with you does make me focus on individuals and specific cases and stories. All right. Help me think about the meaning of the end of Cyrus.

M: I’d like to get into this complex story by asking you about another woman.

H: Another one? You already asked about Artemisia.

M: Does it bother you that I mention two women when we discuss men at every point?

H: No, I am just surprised. I do not mention many women in my Histories.

M: You make part of my point for me. I want to ask you about Tomyris as a way of delving into the Cyrus story, for she was the cause of the end of the life of one of history’s greatest figures (Histories I 201–214).

H: I know more about Artemisia because she was Karian as I am. But Tomyris is certainly a dramatic story.

M: So here was Cyrus the Great, ruler of Persia, founder of one of the mightiest empires the world has ever known. who expanded his empire by conquering Babylonia.

H: From the Mediterranean to the Indus.

M: And here was Queen Tomyris, ruling the land north of Persia and east of the Caspian Sea. Her people were the nomadic Massagetae.

H: Great warriors who use bows and lances, but their favorite weapon is the battle-axe. But still, a much smaller army than fielded by the Persians.

M: The women of the Massagetae rode horses, fought in battles, and even on occasion ruled. Tomyris ruled the Massagetae after her husband’s death, with their son, Spargapises.

M: When Cyrus wanted to move north, he needed to deal with the Massagetae. The problem was that Tomyris would not submit.

H: Yes, even though Cyrus sent envoys to ask her to marry him. She saw the truth; she knew that Cyrus wanted her kingdom, not her. She told him ‘no’ and suggested he rule his lands rather than try to run hers.

M: Think about her courage. She knew what would happen next. This is one of the parts of this story that fascinates me. A woman ruler of a nomadic people brazenly rejects the greatest king’s offer to marry him. She was not thinking like a woman; she was thinking like a true leader.

H: But let us consider this. Why not submit and live your life on the grasslands with your people and your horses? Are you so certain that she did the right thing?

M: This brings me to my point for right now. In a world of empires, what is a smaller people to do? My sense of complexity could take either side of this dialogue.

H: Now I see. We are not really thinking about Tomyris as a woman, after all. We are thinking about the perspective of history on leaders faced with the most difficult choices for their people.

M: And I ask, as a question that I struggle with, is it better to fight for independence and die, or submit and live? If a leader leads his, or her, people to death, is that good leadership? What is the purpose of a state?

H: Let us pause and consider this next time. I am not sure that you are framing her choice correctly.

H: Let us go further into the story of Tomyris. Perhaps she did not see her destiny as inevitable. She did not see her choice as freedom or death. She saw the real possibility of continued freedom and independence, and maybe even more.

M: But when she rebuked the mighty king Cyrus, he sent his army north to invade the Massagetae lands. How could she be so foolish and self-destructive?

H: Your assumption is exactly what Cyrus assumed after his conquest of the great city of Babylon. He had vanquished the king of the Medes, integrated many tribes, triumphed over the mighty Croesus of Lydia, who I am sure we will talk about. He had gathered untold wealth.

M: He was now richer than Croesus.

H: Amusing. The Babylonians had opened their gates to Cyrus; he entered to a grand and joyful celebration. He thought he would now have an easy conquest of a wild people with, of all things, a queen at their head. But what does this brazen woman do? When the Persian army approaches her land, she sends a warning to the mighty king: If he does not retreat, she and her Massagetae will attack in three days.

M: He must have laughed. He had 200,000 men. She must have known the size of that force. Was she a madwoman?

H: Not at all. And the Persians took this opponent seriously. They started to build a bridge for the army to cross the river. But while they were involved in this construction, Tomyris sent a message to stop the effort, and offered a brilliant challenge: Cyrus could give her three days to retreat into her territory before he invades or allow her to come into his territory.

M: It is a strange offer. What was on her mind? It is almost like she could not stand watching the building. Why not let them work hard, cross over, and then attack them? Was this some brilliant, strategic game to confuse Cyrus? Every good general wants to choose his battlefield. She let him choose the place.

H: Cyrus was not sure what to make of it, either. He gathered his advisers who unanimously said to let her come into his territory. But Croesus, that famous captured king of Lydia, opposed all of them, reminding Cyrus that he was not immortal but mortal, and that he could lose. If he allowed the enemy to come into his territory and she won, she could go on to conquer his whole empire.

M: So now I think I understand. She wanted him to make this choice, to think it was better to bring her to his territory, and then go on from there.

H: She was not afraid; she was extremely confident. She was as ambitious as he was. She sought an empire.

M: I like what Croesus said. He who had lost an empire, reminded Cyrus that he could lose his.

H: I’m reading from my Histories (I 207) to remind myself what Croesus said, at least in my account:

“Consider that there is a cycle in human affairs, and as it goes around it does not permit the same person to enjoy good fortune forever.”

M: My dear friend, you have no idea what Croesus said. You are trying to teach lessons to all leaders.

H: I am trying to teach some practical principles: Choose your battleground. Do not allow yourself to be outsmarted. Do not underestimate your opponent, even if the opponent seems to be inferior to you. No victory is assured. There is nothing inevitable in the unfolding of events.

H: All true. Ironically, it will be this counsel that will lead to the death of Cyrus. But let us talk about this next time.

M: We said that we would discuss the counsel that Croesus gave to Cyrus, counsel that would eventually lead to Cyrus’s defeat and death.

H: Indeed, Cambyses will blame Croesus for the death of his king (Histories III 36.3). But I think it was good advice.

M: Are you certain of this? A huge army must be able to communicate within itself, and this would be more difficult in enemy territory. When the Persians crossed the river, they now had the river at their backs, barring any possibility of escape in the case of defeat.

H: But remember that Croesus offers more than just advice about crossing the river. He creates an elaborate ploy about displaying many luxuries, a great feast of food and wine that the tribal warriors would fall upon, and concealing the greater part of the Persian army.

M: But all of this would be much easier to do on the Persians’ own soil. Is it not a bad idea to fight an enemy on his own ground? Was not the crossing of the mighty Araxes a major effort, as we see from all the construction of boats and towers? Here is a cynical question: Do you think that Croesus purposely gives Cyrus bad advice, as a way of gaining revenge?

H: No, now that you have pushed me, I think that there is something more important here.

M: Yes, this is what I am reaching to understand: What are the lessons for all of us?

H: The real question is: Do we learn from our experiences? Or do human beings have a very limited capacity to learn? Croesus insists on the need to learn from experience, as I think we all should not be blind to the lessons of our experiences, but this does not mean we can learn the correct lesson. Paradoxically, if we draw from our narrow experiences, we may fall into a kind of trap, because the new situation may be very different from the earlier one.

M: So, you mean: Croesus may take what happened to himself, how he lost to Cyrus, and apply this to a very different situation against a very different kind of army and leader. We may be reliving our own pasts too closely. We may think we recognize the new situation as parallel to the earlier one, and act in a way that is inappropriate and even dangerous.

H: Yes. And now let us return to the story, and the bigger subject of whether history unfolds in inevitable ways. Who knows how inevitable an empire really is? Even when one thinks one knows what the outcome of a battle will be, one must still fight the battles.

M: And who knows how one’s clever plans will turn out? In the story three days pass, and the Persians successfully trick the Massagetae. And yet that trick would lead to Cyrus’ downfall.

H: The Persians follow Croesus’s clever idea. They pretended to retreat, and when the Massagetae advanced, they found a deserted camp filled with wine. The nomads never drank wine; they were only used to milk. But now in celebrating what they took to be a victory, the Massagetae drank the wine. And once they were drunk, the Persians attacked, capturing many of the Massagetae soldiers, including Tomyris’ son, Spargapises.

M: I am tired. Let us finish the story and examine its lessons next time.

M: The more deeply I read in your Histories, reading not just for information but for the way you present and transmit and shape the materials that you have received, I find that this is literature, moralistic literature, which is fine with me. I am not criticizing. In my mind, your Histories transcend history itself.

H: How can I respond? Except to say that I do not mean to falsify anything.

M: You have a huge mind, and perhaps even you don’t know the greatness of your accomplishment. So let me come back to our example. You had Solon teach Croesus with his wisdom, and then Croesus seems to echo these wise thoughts about learning from experience. And Croesus, basing himself on the implicit assumption that civilized people can out-smart uncivilized people by luring them with the glorious products of civilization, represented by the feasts of food and wine, sets his trap.

H: It did work. When we left the story, many tribesmen were captured, including the queen’s son Spargapises. Ashamed of his defeat, he pleads with Cyrus for permission to end his own life and kills himself. Cyrus, it seemed, had won.

M: But Cyrus, known for his mercy and benevolence, could have done much better. He could have sent the prince home and forged peace with his defeated enemies. Tomyris had offered peace in return for her son. Instead, Tomyris blamed Cyrus for her son’s death and vowed to kill him.

H: I am starting to see your point. I will read what she said before the young man’s death.

M: You mean, what you say she said.

H: “You bloodthirsty Cyrus, pride not yourself on this poor success. It was the grape juice — which, when you drink it, makes you so mad … it was this poison by which you ensnared my child, and so overcame him, not in fair open fight. Restore my son to me. Refuse, and I swear by the sun, the sovereign lord of the Massagetae, bloodthirsty as you are, I will give you your fill of blood.” (Histories I 212)

I take your point; Cyrus should not have ignored the queen’s threat. Tomyris attacked the Persians and in a fierce battle defeats them.

M: I think you call it the fiercest battle ever fought by barbarians. Again, think about the dichotomy you place on all this, separating Greeks from non-Greeks, civilized people from so-called primitives.

H: Let me come back to this criticism. First, finish the story. In hand-to-hand combat, a large part of the Persian army was killed.

M: Including the mighty Cyrus himself.

H: She finds him and puts his head into a wineskin filled with blood.

M: It is too literary to be true. She is saying: ‘My son died because of wine, the product of civilized life. I will bury you in wine. My so-called savagery triumphs over your strategy and imperialism and leaves you soaked in your treachery.”

H: I am not creating this dichotomy. They do not plant crops, the hallmark of civilized life. They eat animals and fish and drink milk, all natural foods. They sacrifice horses to their sun god. The Massagetae share their married women. When a man dies on the day assigned to him, he is sacrificed along with some sheep. They stew the meat and eat him. They think this is the most blessed way to end one’s life.

M: What if the person was filled with disease?

H: They bury him.

M: I am trying to decide whether I would prefer to die of sickness. I must ask: Did that story about Cyrus’s head really happen?

H: I have heard many stories about Cyrus’s death. This one seems to be true.

M: What is true is that your literary art is in clear view. This is how you conclude Book One. These barbarians defeated a great empire. It is the triumph of the primitive in the incredible dramatic irony that a great king can out-strategize himself. And it closes a circle about the rise and fall of kings and the remarkable turns of fortune. You have taken us beyond events and created history.

M: I want to focus on the idea that sometimes people willingly give away democracy and actually want tyranny. You will remember your story about Syloson’s red cloak? (Histories 3.139-149)

H: Of course. Syloson, brother of Polycrates, was in exile in Egypt. One day he was walking in the marketplace in Memphis and met Darius, who at the time was just the bodyguard of the Persian king Cambyses, who had conquered Egypt. Syloson was wearing a red cloak. Darius saw it and asked Syloson for it. Syloson said that he would not sell it to him but that if he really wanted it, he would give it to him. Syloson felt foolish, but Darius was very pleased to have the red cloak.

When Cambyses died, Darius rose to power, and Syloson went to Susa and reminded the king of how he had helped him when he was in Egypt and had nothing. Darius remembered and granted Syloson his wish to rule Samos, as his late brother Polycrates had before he was killed.

But … I am not sure why we need to review this story. Are we going to discuss the death of Polycrates?

M: Another time if you don’t mind. We will get to my point for now. Back in Samos, the man designated by Polycrates to rule in his absence, Maeandrius, who had not liked how Polycrates had used his power to rule over the people, said to the people that he was placing the government in the hands of the people and was making everyone equal under the law. He did ask for six talents and for the priesthood of Zeus the Liberator, for he had dedicated an altar to that god near the entrance of the city.

H: Now I see why you are interested in this story. The people reacted harshly to this announcement. Instead of grabbing the opportunity for equality, they denounced him as a lowborn nothing and wanted an accounting of what he might already have taken.

M: Maeandrius realized that if he gave up power, there would be a tyrant instead of him. So, he decided that he should be the tyrant.

H: I think I wrote that the Samians did not want to be free.

M: The people are offered freedom and equality and a type of democracy, and they refuse! I do not find Maeandrius’ requests so outlandish; he wanted to live comfortably and to have ongoing revenue from the priesthood. He deserved this for ruling well and for giving up power.

H: The people did not want this leader because he was not of noble birth. But it was exactly his birth status that made him a democratic dream. Then when he saw their nature, he became a tyrant himself. Maeandrius will turn out to be a murderer and a fool whose resistance to the Persians when Darius sends his army to take Samos and give it to Syloson, will lead to the destruction of the people.

M: This is what I want to say: People like Syloson give up their red cloak.

H: This is not the meaning of the story. It is that divine fortune turned his naïve generosity to pave the path to power.

M: Do you really mean that divine powers made him give away that cloak so that the recipient would reward him at a later point? Did the divine powers want to help the career of this tyrant? Did they want the destruction of Samos? Syloson was not a generous man who should be rewarded for his kindness. He was a selfish man who got caught by his own words.

H: The Fates apparently wanted events to unfold in this way.

M: But he was still naïve. He had no idea what he was doing. He gave away his red cloak for nothing to a nobody. And that is my analogy: The people gave away their red cloak. And what happened? They were all killed; men, women and children. And Syloson ruled an island without inhabitants.

H: Who says that democracy and equality is the real dream of common people? Democracy may be the dream of idealists for people rather than the dream of the people.

M: And that is my sadness. We give up our red cloaks to tyrants and villains. And in return, we are all destroyed, with nothing and no one, each of us alone on our deserted islands.

M: In our talks, you seem to be willing to think about the myths without taking them literally, to see the gods as symbols rather than real entities.

H: Between us, yes, but I would add that the myths can be meaningful and inspiring and evocative.

M: So, indulge me if I mediate about Kronos and try to relate this figure to your Histories. Let’s think through the myth. Kronos is the youngest of the twelve Titans, the divine descendants of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus. Kronos, with his sickle, castrates Uranus. He marries his sister Rhea and they have the Olympian gods, including Poseidon and Hades. Kronos, ‘Time’, insisting on his dominion, swallows his children. Kronos, Time, is the Eater. Time marches on and gives no quarter, the way that the god ate his offspring.

H: For me, these stories show the tenuous nature of dominion. One kingdom swallows another. But then the rebellion of Zeus and his divine siblings symbolizes how the conquered peoples can rise and destroy the destroyer.

M: Yes, but I want to stick to the level of the metaphor of Time eating everything. This underlies the succession of empires.

H: But I have another line of thought. In the Golden Age, Kronos was seen as a harvest god overseeing grain and agriculture. This is why Rhea, another earth mother, but more so the goddess of bounty, is his consort. Rhea was responsible for allowing crops to grow, and Kronos performed the harvest. You think of the sickle in a grotesque way, as a weapon of usurpation and destruction. I think of it as a tool to harvest crops. Do you know where the sickle came from?

M: No.

H: Gaia created a massive iron sickle so that she and her children could orchestrate their revenge on Uranus for doing terrible things to their children. She gave Time the tool to emerge as the ultimate power. But that same tool has been used to create agriculture, in other words, civilization.

M: In Athens, on the twelfth day of the Athenian month of Hekatombaion, there is a festival called Kronia. It was held in honor of Kronos, the god of agriculture. The festival occurs after the final grain harvest. During Kronia, slaves are emancipated from their duties, and permitted to participate in the festivities alongside their masters.

H: I have heard that in some households, masters even serve their slaves food during the feasts.

P: To remember a time when slavery and oppression did not exist. Perhaps there is something about the nature of Time and Dominion in this, too. Just as Kronos overthrew Uranus, only to be overthrown himself by Zeus, all dominion is fragile and time bound.

H: This is too radical for me. I will stick to history. Time can indeed be a Destroyer. But Zeus and the gods then conquered Time. My Histories does detail the succession of kingdoms, and the development of civilization, but I hope that it is not just a record of destruction, but a harvest, a gathering of all of the events, with, of course, one purpose: To see what we human beings have done with our tools, and how we human beings might do better.

M: I’m still thinking about Kronos because there are so many myths about the god and the Titan, so I want to use the confusion to think about a part of a story where Kronos and his Titan brothers are condemned to Tartarus for eternity.

H: You’re right to talk about confusion. I cannot get my mind around Time being confined forever. Does this mean that Time the Devourer is in chains, so that we can live our lives without the threat of Time devouring us? If only we could live this way. As it is, we are slaves to Time; if we could live without the fear of death, we would be truly free.

M: I want to add to the complexity. I have heard that Zeus is merciful and frees Kronos.

H: Where does he go? Does he try to devour Zeus?

M: No, he goes to the Isle of the Blessed where he rules over the heroes that go there as a reward for their courage. Those who have repeatedly attempted to refrain from all evil transcend time in this way; they follow the road of Zeus to the tower of Kronos. And they live untouched by sorrow, on an island where the breezes from the ocean blow, flowers of gold blaze, and they entwine their hands with wreaths and garlands.

H: And this means…

M: I think that this means that there is eternity beyond this life for those who deserve it. It is justice, as if the accounts are balanced. The good, who often suffer in this life, finally receive their just rewards.

H: When I think about Time, I think about history, and in my very first sentence, I say that I do not want human events to fade with time, to be forgotten. This is the very purpose of all my work.

M: Have you, like Zeus, wrestled time and confined it to eternal prison?

H: The opposite: I bring it out of prison and show it to the world. I do try to master Time but use it for a blessing, to praise the heroes and at least give a clear-eyed view of the wicked.

M: Let’s move from myth to reality. It is astonishing how people do not learn from the past, how they make the same mistakes over and over again.

H: They cannot remember the past if we do not teach it to them. This should not be a controversial topic: we should give that clear-eyed view, say, of rulers and forms of government.

M: But frankly, my friend, your descriptions of tyrants can be, shall we say, ambiguous. Yes, you see some of them as dangerous oppressors. You fear the tyrants from the East who want to rule Greece. And yet you clearly praise certain Greek tyrants as heroic individuals who save their cities and preserve our values.

H: This is fair. Every form of government is only as good or as bad as the leaders make it. Still, it is extremely useful to study the different tyrants so that we can judge the would-be tyrants in the here-and-now.

M: I do see what you mean. Time will not devour us if we use an understanding of what it has wrought not to destroy, but to build.

M: In your accounts of different peoples and their laws and customs, you bring many bizarre and exotic examples. Many of them are entertaining, many of them make me feel like our laws and customs are superior, that we are indeed the civilized ones and others are indeed the barbarians.

H: There are many noble foreigners who live good and decent lives.

M: Granted, of course, but I cannot refrain from mentioning one that haunts me.

H: I am haunted by many of my experiences, but I am curious as to what is bothering you.

M: In your first book, when you are writing about the Babylonians, about their wealth, their irrigation agriculture and the resulting astounding fertility, their public medicine, and so on, you talk about the most revolting custom about women that I can imagine.

H: Ah, of course, you’re talking about how every woman in the country must go and sit in the sanctuary of Aphrodite or Mylitta.

M: Sit!? They must submit to having intercourse with a stranger, the first man who selects her.

H: I think that I wrote that it is the most revolting of all Babylonian customs. This from a people who, after a married couple has intercourse, sit before burning incense and bathe to purify themselves.

M: If this is what a legally married couple must do, how can the same people have this other primitive and bizarre custom?

H: I did judge this harshly.

M: So I pursue this because I want to know: How can this be?

H: One could say that it is to raise money for the sanctuary, as silver is donated after each act. Or one could say that this is a re-enactment of a divine process, as each woman represents the Goddess of Sex and Love. Or one could say that it is a way to release what might have been adulterous desires.

M: These are all platitudes This is about the humiliation and subjugation of women. It is to say that even the most brutish man can command the most highborn and wealthiest woman.

H: My “platitudes” are apparently believed because they are followed.

M: I am not foolish. In know that every society places men above women.

H: And every society gives its “reasons” and convinces its people of their truth. Think of the languages that separate between masculine, feminine and neuter. It is the way we see the world.

M: It is the way we have been taught to see the world. But I wonder sometimes ... if it must be this way. I likewise wonder about free and slave. But to return to the Babylonian women, my heart goes out to them. When I think of this, I feel humiliated to be a man.

H: I know that you fear tyrants. The word tyrannos should be used carefully, as I try to do in my work. I mean it more neutrally than it might be taken. I do mean that a tyrant may seize power through illegal means. But tyranny can be a response to aristocratic control of the city-states. It is only through tyranny that we can destroy the stranglehold of the aristocracy on the other classes. This is why tyrants can seize power with popular support, sometimes by force, sometimes without force. This popular support allowed them to control the aristocrats, either by getting them to submit or exiling them, or executing them.

M: I don’t mean to be difficult. But I think that you do feel a negative connotation of tyrannos. Remember, I have read your work carefully, and I notice things.

H: You do me honor.

M: You may not feel that way after I have pushed you. Here is an example I have dwelt on. Within a single chapter, you use both tyrannos and basileus for the same person.

H: I do?

M: Telys, ruler of Sybaris. I read from your Histories (5.44): "Just at this time, the Sybarites say, they and their king (basileus) Telys were about to make war upon Croton, and the Crotoniates, greatly alarmed, begged Dorieus to aid them. Dorieus was prevailed upon, took part in the war against Sybaris, and had a share in taking the town. Such is the account which the Sybarites give of what was done by Dorieus and his companions.

The Crotoniates, on the other hand, maintain that no foreigner lent them aid in their war against the Sybarites, with the exception of Callias, an Elean diviner of the Iamid clan. About him there was a story that he had fled to Croton from Telys, the tyrannos of Sybaris, because as he was sacrificing for victory over Croton, he could obtain no favorable omens.

H: I see. I differentiate from one account to the other. This makes sense in this context. I am not as concerned about the terms we use as determining that there is a difference between kinds of absolute rulers, one is an obstacle on the road to democracy, and one paves the way. Like Telys, leaders can be seen differently by different people. But let’s get back to my point.

M: I agree that, in a way, tyranny may serve as a necessary step on the road to democracy. But there is, nevertheless, a great danger.

H: I understand. But …

M: I want to use a simple image to illustrate why tyranny may take us further away from, not towards the goal of democracy. The leader walks into the assembly hall. He is like the god of winds….

H: The god of winds?

M: In the Odyssey, Aeolus, the father of the Aeolians, is placed in relationship with Aeolus the ruler and god of the winds. Sometimes Aeolus, the son of Hippotes, is neither the god nor the father of the winds, but merely the happy ruler of the Aeolian island, whom Cronion had made the tamiēs of the winds, which he might soothe or excite according to his pleasure (Odyssey 10.21 ff.).

H: I thought Aeolus was the god and king of the winds, which he kept enclosed in a mountain. Doesn’t Hera appeal to him when she wishes to destroy the fleet of the Trojans.

M: My point is that the absolute ruler can be either, the soothing breeze or the destructive wind. He can walk into the assembly hall as a happy ruler who promotes free debate or he can suck the air out of the room, like the god of winds gathering everything in his bag, and no one can talk, out of fear for their lives. The first moves us toward democracy, the other takes us in the other direction.

H: And if we are in the center, trying to see both sides?

M: Use my test. Do the people gasp for breath, or do they breathe freedom?

M: I feel like I could put my finger on any passage in your Histories, and find something interesting.

H: I am not sure that it is my account that is so interesting. It is that you are a person who is interested in the human experience.

M: Yes, but you have collected so much history and so much experience that interested people will be reading your account for centuries to come.

H: I am deeply gratified, of course, but the real question is whether they will learn from all of it.

M: That is exactly what I want to talk about right now. I want to bring up a story that continues to haunt me. It is the story of the origin of the Golden Fleece.

H: Since there are many versions of this myth, let us make sure that we are speaking about the same details. When Xerxes arrives at Halos in Achaea, he is told the story about the sanctuary of the Laphystian Zeus, how Athamas son of Aiolos with his wife Ino plotted to have Phrixios sacrificed. Kytissoros, the son of Phrixos, prevents the sacrifice. Is that the version you read?

M: Yes, but first, why are there so many versions? I am confused about who was supposed to be sacrificed and who was saved. There are elaborations and revisions because the story is extremely important: It is supposed to be a turning-point, moving from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice. A god rescues the potential victim. The god provides the ram with the Golden Fleece, which becomes one of the most famous symbols of all time. The whole story of Jason and the Argonauts, one of our most famous sagas, is based on this. The ram is not just famous because it becomes a golden fleece. It is famous for what it symbolizes, a waterfall moment in human history.

H: I accept this.

M: And yet to this day, the kingdom involved is still demanding human sacrifice of that lineage; the Achaeans impose human sacrifice on Athamos’ descendants. So, this is retribution for trying to sacrifice a human by continuing to sacrifice humans. Haven’t they missed the whole point of the story? Let’s be very basic. I put this to you: is a human sacrifice morally wrong?

H: Yes, but in an earlier time, it was considered an essential way to propitiate the gods for favorable weather and fertility. To disobey the god was wrong. It is human sacrifice commanded by Zeus. Perhaps what is stopped is just the wrong human sacrifice. A sacrifice of a king’s son could be claimed by Zeus Laphystios under certain conditions. This city takes human sacrifice as a punishment against that family for what their ancestor did. And Xerxes is in awe of the whole thing and protects their temple. I am just reporting. This is what happened.

M: But it’s the way you report it. Where is the outrage?

Can we at least agree that instead of perpetuating human sacrifice, this is the last thing they should be doing? How about sacrificing a mock golden ram to remember the miracle of salvation?

They punish the descendants; they make them run into exile or be killed. Why are the descendants responsible? This is a sin in itself. Xerxes may have been in awe; I am appalled.

H: Our civilization has not missed the point of the story. Yes, there are isolated examples like this one, but this relative exception shows that we’re making progress.

But my friend, with all this, you are not going deep enough. What human sacrifice tells us about humans is the deeper lesson.

M: I see. I may be focusing too much on one event or one practice. Yes, they got the story wrong. But more important, history is a history of violence. And if human sacrifice shows our barbarism, so does every war. So does every page of history. It is humanity that has written the wrong story.

M: I have read your Histories very closely, as you know.

H: These dialogues honor me, even when we disagree.

M: What would a dialogue be without disagreement?

H: So, I know that there is such a criticism coming.

M: Yes, but not only of you. Of every historian and chronicler I can find. Reading through your work, I read thousands of details about wars. But I look in vain for information on the impact of wars on children.

H: I’ve never thought about it.

M: That’s my point.

H: I think that I write sometimes about the children of a general or king. Or about a city wanting to save its children.

M: Yes, I think you recounted how the Euboeans petitioned Eurybiades of Sparta to wait until they saved their children. And when they could not persuade him, they turned to the Athenians (8.4).

H: I must say, no one has ever confronted me about this. I have been criticized in many ways, but you are the first to mention it.

M: So, were all those wars, countless wars, only about men?

H: Yes, all the tactics and strategies and tales of heroism and infamy, glory, and violence are about men.

M: But of that list you just gave, the word that jumps out is “violence.” There were many massacres in your Histories. What happened to the children?

H: They were either killed or taken as prisoners to be slaves.

M: So, if they lived, their lives were changed forever.

H: If I grant you the point that they should be mentioned more, what exactly was I supposed to say about them? They were dead or slaves. What historian even has information to recount about children? There are no stories to tell.

M: Perhaps not, but what happens to children in wars is a story that should be told. It is one of the most horrible dimensions of war. It is part of the toll of war. It is a reason in itself not to wage war in the first place. It is an argument against being so glib about masses of human beings. It should be part of history.

M: As soon as you walked in the door, I could see that you are not your usual confident, positive self.

H: True. I’m not.

M: What ails you, my friend?

H: I have spent my life writing history. Most of what I have written is a history of wars. Peace only occurs after a war, usually after one side has decimated the other.

M: History is the story of wars punctuated by peace

H: Do you remember my account about the rites of Ares at Papremis in Egypt?

M: No, sorry, I can’t remember everything in your vast history.

H: They make the usual sacrifices, but then when the sun goes down, some of the priests bring the image of Ares that was put it in a small wooden shrine which is then put on a wagon.

M: I remember now. There is a kind of violent battle.

H: Correct. Other priests stand at the entrance of the sanctuary holding wooden clubs. Against them are a thousand men, who have taken vows to the god of war, also holding clubs.

M: And the battle ensues. Heads are bashed. People die. It is insane. What is all this about?

H: The idea is that the mother of Ares lived in this sanctuary, and raised him there, but then when he grew up, he wanted to have sex with her.

M: Lovely. But why is that the background for this lunacy?

H: The mother’s servants would not let Ares near her, and so he came back with men from another city, and they bashed in the heads of the servants, and he took his mother.

M: So those crazy people are re-enacting that sordid event?

H: Yes.

M: But again, what does it mean?

H: Ares is the god of war. War destroys all morality, symbolized here by incest. Some try to hold War back, to beat it away. The priests, symbols of morality, win. But notice, they can only beat war away with violence. People die, on both sides, from the wounds they incur in the battle. But the shrine is not destroyed.

P: So relatively speaking, things go back to normal.

H: But normal is only quiet until the next war. It is all violent.

M: We know all this. Why are you so depressed today?

H: Because the point of history is to change the future.

And nothing ever changes. Every new war, every new act of violence, proves that Ares always wins. It’s just a question of how bad it will be.

P: But if you are one of those priests, you cannot let the savage attack his mother?

H: Of course not. The priests must beat back the attackers. They have no choice. But this does not make me feel any better.

M: So the hope is…

H: Despite everything, I still believe that learning about history is the way.

M: You expect them to remember what they learned? They do not remember what happened a few weeks ago!

H: This is very true. From now on, I will pray to Mnemosyne. Perhaps the Muse of Memory will help us to remember the horrors of the past so that we can stop bashing and bashing with the clubs of war.