Thomas Harrison
and Polybius.
A similar association of all barbarians together can be seen in
the idea that barbarians are
ἄγλωσσος
(S.
Trach.
). This cannot pre-
sumably reflect a belief that they did not speak, only that their language, by
comparison with Greek, in some sense did not constitute an authentic lan-
guage.
This would tally with the frequent characterisation of foreign lan-
guages in terms of animal sounds.
Another way in which Herodotus’ presentation of foreign languages re-
sists an over-deterministic schematism is on the
subject of the structure of
language. The Greeks tended to see differences between languages as being
differences in names. Learning a language was merely a process of ‘learning
names’ (
Dissoi Logoi,
DK B ()). A sentence, in the phrase of Denyer,
was merely a ‘dollop of names’.
The same idea of ‘language as nomencla-
ture’ is perhaps reflected in the characterisation of foreign languages
through sounds, in the Homeric language of the gods, itself just a series of
separate names, or in the remark of Hermogenes in Plato’s
Cratylus
that ‘dif-
ferent cities use different names for the same things’ (Pl.
Crat.
d-e).
Certain details of Herodotus’ presentation of foreign languages might
have been used to argue against such a position. To begin with, there are
not always equivalent words in one’s own language for the words of foreign
languages. The Greeks never knew a crocodile until they discovered them in
Egypt. So they named crocodiles, or
χάµψαι
,
as they were known in Egypt
according to Herodotus (..), by analogy to something which they did
have a word for, which a crocodile resembled, and which, through being in
another
sense preposterously
unlike
a crocodile, served at the same time to
belittle
the Egyptians, or to reduce their marvels to a more manageable
scale: a lizard or, in Greek, a
κροκόδειλος
.
In this case, the Greeks used a
See e.g. H.
Il.
.-, .-, A.
Pers.
-, Pol. .., ..
Davies, op. cit. (n. ) -. Contrast the Russian term for ‘German’,
nemec,
related
to the word
for ‘dumb’.
N. Denyer,
Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy
(London, ) ;
see further ch. , ‘Names, verbs and sentences’. The distinction of different types of
names was begun by Protagoras, DK A , , A , A .
In the words of Morpurgo Davies (n. ), we find in Greek ‘no structuralist views ac-
cording to which in different languages similar semantic fields are differently divided and
there is no one-to-one semantic correspondence between words.’
The divine names in
Homer are at
Il
. .-, .-, .-, .,
Od
. ., .; that the language of
the gods was a series of separate names is observed by Socrates at Pl.
Crat.
d.
Similar antonyms are
ὀβέλισκος
(spit)
πυράµιδος
(a variety of cake) and
στροῦθος
(sparrow or ostrich). Herodotus appears to have preserved the Egyptian word fairly accu-
rately: see J. Cerný, ‘Philological and etymological notes’,
ASAE
() -, T. O.
Lambdin, ‘Another cuneiform transcription of Egyptian
msh,
“crocodile”‘,
JNES
()
Herodotus’ Conception of Foreign Languages
word already in their language; in another case they borrow a word, albeit
translating it on the way: the one-eyed people,
he remarks, ‘we name in
Scythian’ as ‘Arimaspians’ as ‘Arima’ means one, and ‘spou’ eye (.).
He-
rodotus was also aware, as the
case of the crocodile implies, of what we
would call homonyms, that the same name might
apply to two different
things: the Ligyes who live above Massalia call traders
σίγγυναι
whereas the
Cypriots use the same word to describe spears (..).
Most importantly
perhaps, from the point of view of the idea of ‘language as nomenclature’,
Herodotus shows an awareness that foreign words do not always mean the
same as the equivalent Greek word: that is to say, the referent may be the
same whilst the meaning is different. The Egyptian name for the Ethiopian
deserters,
Ἀσµάχ
, means ‘those who stand on the left-hand side of the King’
(..).
These observations
might
have led Herodotus
to question the idea of
‘language as nomenclature’. Self-evidently, however, they did not. There is
no sign that Herodotus ever thought through the implications of such mate-
rial, or indeed that he ever formulated any general views on the nature of
language.
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