Herodotus’ Conception of Foreign Languages
Persian Goliath.
The detail of the Greeks present at Darius’ court is quite
incidental. Now, of course, we know that there were Greeks at Darius’
court,
and we might guess that they could speak a spattering at least of Per-
sian. In general, it is reasonable to suppose also that there was a far greater
degree of contact between Greece and Persia, and by extension of linguistic
contact, than appears to be the case at first sight. But we cannot safely pre-
sume that Herodotus envisaged the conversation in Persian, or indeed that
he ever thought to think about it.
Sometimes Herodotus makes explicit
the presence of interpreters, for
example during Cyrus’ interview of Croesus on the pyre (..), or in the
context of Darius’ demonstration that the Callatian Indians would not burn
their parents for any sum of money, whereas the Greeks would not (as the
Callatian Indians do) eat their parents (..-); Cambyses commandeers
some fish-eaters to interpret with the Ethiopians (..);
Darius talks
through an interpreter to the Samian Syloson (..); Herodotus refers to
his own interpreter on his (alleged) travels in Egypt (..); he also refers to
the need for seven interpreters to accompany Scythians on visits to the Ar-
gippaei (.).
However,
on other occasions,
for example the earlier con-
versation between Syloson and Darius (.), or in written correspondence
between people
of different nationalities, for
example the extended corre-
spondence of the Samian Polycrates and the Egyptian king Amasis (.-),
Herodotus does not appear to bother himself—any
more than his model,
Homer—with the question of the language spoken. Though we may wonder
in some instances whether the presence of interpreters constitutes a marker
of the especially alien nature of the dialogue at issue—so, Herodotus’ men-
tion of an interpreter during Darius’ ‘seminar
on comparative funerary
practices’ comes only after the introduction of the Callatian Indians
—there
See T. Harrison, ‘Aeschylus, Atossa and Athens’ in E. Dabrowa (ed.)
Ancient Iran and
the Mediterranean World
(Kraków, forthcoming).
For contacts between Greece and Persia, see D. M. Lewis,
Sparta and Persia
(Leiden,
) and his ‘Persians in Herodotus’ in M. H. Jameson (ed.)
The Greek Historians. Papers
presented
to A.E. Raubitschek (Palo Alto, ) -; see also now M. C. Miller,
Athens and
Persia in the Fifth Century
(Cambridge, ), esp. chs. -. For widespread epigraphic evi-
dence of Iranians in the Aegean (not just Asia Minor), see M.-F. Baslez, ‘Présence et
Traditions Iraniennes dans les Cités de l’Égée’
REA
() -. For aristocratic con-
tacts between the Persian and Greek worlds, see also the ingenious reconstruction of L.
M. Whitby, ‘Ion of Chios and the margins of the Delian League’, in E. Dabrowa, op. cit.
(n. ), and now L. Mitchell,
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