Skip to main content

Herodotus and the “Constitutional Debate” (3.80-82)

By Brian M. Lavelle

The so-called “Constitutional Debate” (3.80-82) has long been the subject of intense interest among Herodotean scholars. Some hold that the debate is authentic, grounded in Persian sources traceable to the occasion (cf. Brannan, Traditio 19 [1963] 427-38). Others aver that the passage is fictitious, whether Herodotos or another invented it (e.g., Maass, Hermes 22 [1887] 581-95; cf. Lateiner in Munson, ed. Herodotus: Volume 1: Herodotus and the Narrative of the Past [Oxford, 2013] 197).

Darius the Would-Be King: Ambition, Power, and the 'Best Man' in Herodotus' Histories

By Carolyn Dewald

One prominent organizing element in Herodotus's narrative analysis of political power is his portrait of powerful and ambitious Eastern kings: Croesus and Cyrus at the outset, Xerxes at the end. Darius, in significant ways the most powerful and successful of them all, occupies and thematically ties together the narrative of Books 3 to 6 of the Histories. He emerges as one of the seven co-conspirators against the Magi in Book 3, and as the proponent of monarchy in the constitutional debate shortly thereafter.

Megabyxus in the Constitutional Debate

By Rosaria V. Munson

In an important book, Margaret Miller argues that fifth-century Athenians, even while engaging in anti-Persian rhetoric, nevertheless 'appropriated and reshaped aspects of Achaemenid culture to their own social and imperial needs'. As evidence for this receptivity, Miller cites the Athenians' adoption of Persian art and other items of material culture (1997:1). I would like to explore a different side of Athenian receptivity towards Persia.

The Fairest of Constitutions? Democracy and Its Discontents in Herodotus’ Histories

By Ellen G. Millender

Although post-Cleisthenic Athens is the only actual democracy featured at length in the Histories, Herodotus provides numerous accounts of groups – both Greek and non-Greek – engaged in deliberation and voting. These examples of group political activity provide Herodotus’ readers with the opportunity to assess (1) the validity of the claims about popular rule that the Persian conspirators make in the “Constitutional Debate” and (2) Herodotus’ reputation as a fan of popular rule.

Kingship, Symposia, Gift-Exchange: The Scientific Self at Ptolemaic Courts

By Marquis Berrey

What was the habitus of the experimenter broadly understood in Alexandrian

medicine, such as the court physicians Andreas Carystius (d. 217 BCE) or Apollonius

Citiensis (fl. 75 BCE)? The medical author's ethical self-presentation -- a discursive

construction of truth-telling, discrimination between explanatory alternatives,

observational ability, honorific addresses -- is the scientific self (Daston and Galison

2007). Scholars of early modernity have noted the rhetoric and society of genteel

Hippocratic Experimentation and Poetic Simile in Homer

By Ralph Rosen

On several occasions in the course of an argument the Hippocratic treatises recommend corroborative procedures to their readers that closely resemble what we would call an empirical ‘experiment’. Airs, Waters, Places, for example, offers two in succession in ch. 8, which discusses rain water and water from snow. In the case of rain water, the author asserts that the sun draws up the finest parts and leaves behind the heavier, and that the same process holds for the human body, namely that the sun draws up the lightest part of its humors.

The Sliding Scale of Experiment-Kinds

By Paul Keyser

Scholars contemplating the nature of scientific endeavor since ca 1600 AD have often argued that

“experiment” is a distinctive or even definitive feature of “science,” and correlatively that “experiment”

was absent in prior endeavors, which are thus excluded from “science.” However, the claim that

science emerges like a sudden breakthrough assumes either the emergence of new cognitive capacities,

or the new deployment of existing capacities, and neither hypothesis admits a sensible account of how

that could occur (Lloyd 2009, 159–160).

Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen's Anatomical Experiments

By Luis Alejandro Salas

Galen of Pergamum (129- ca. 216 CE) often writes about the need for experimentation, peira, in epistemic medical claims (e.g., Pecc.Dig. V 68; SMT XI 459-61; Comp.Med.Gen. XIII 376; Hipp.Med XVIIb 61-2). In these contexts and others, Galen's discussion of experimentation and of his experiments regularly is part of a polemic against rival theorists, in which knowledge production is a means to an end. To what extent are the heuristic and agonistic functions of Galen's anatomical experiments separable?

Pagan Monotheism and Pagan Cult

By Frederick Brenk

Some scholars have denied altogether the possibility of pagan monotheism (e.g., Edwards 2000) in response to the recent interest (e.g. Frede 1999 and 2010). One objection is that “monotheistic” authors also believed in other supernatural beings (see, e.g., Versnel 2011, 239-308, on Xenophanes). Another objection is the lack of cult to a monotheistic God. The first objection, taken strictly, would rule out Judaism and Christianity, which admit lesser spiritual beings (Hurtado 1998, 27).