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Sherman Olivier Lit Hum Class Notes and Discussion Points Breaking the text down into pieces Who is Herodotus in favor of? 1. Dan: Greeks vs. non-Greeks, clearly focused on the Greeks, sympathizes with them Hubris: People in power ignore their advisors and, as a result, their advisors are either punished and/or punished themselves. Were people at this time all that savage? 1. Some later writers criticize Herodotus for portraying the Greeks as a civilized people while the rest of the world is full of savages. Parallel: Group of rebels looking to get a former servant to join them. (e.g. Magi and Perxaspes vs. Harpagus and Cyrus) For Herodotus, does fate still have the prominent role that it had in The Iliad and The Odyssey? 1. Roles of oracles and the gods in the lives of the characters. Do the characters have their own will or are they simply instruments in a grand predetermined scheme of life? 2. It is important to note that fate and the gods have a much smaller role in Histories then Homer granted them in Odyssey and Iliad. But they do still have a role. 3. Herodotus gives us an anthropological survey of different cultures perceptions of the Gods. Thus the idea of the power of a single god, such as Zeus, is downplayed or devalued. 4. Oracles, with their messages, emphasize personal interpretation. They give a greater significance to one's own role in their existence. People are left to figure things out for themselves, of instead the gods figuring it out for them. If the Greeks had lost, would Herodotus still have wanted to document history? The idea that democracy is the greatest way to approach government 1. Example: Debate between the Persian rebels on forms of government, p. 205 2. Example: Herodotus has a moment in which he critiques democracy, p. 343, "It is easier to fool a crow than to fool a person" Nomoi Traditional laws and customs 1. Systems and laws keep things in place; bad things happen to people who wreck natural boundaries 2. Sometimes even one's own law is violated (e.g. Cambyses' burning of corpses against Egyptian AND Persian law. Fire considered a god by Persians and a living thing by the Egyptians. One cannot step beyond the nomoi. Tisis retributive justice; returning to some conflict to make someone pay 1. Example: Xerxes combines both Hubris and Tisis wants to bridge Hellespont and march against Greece Histories is bridge to tragedies we will read: when someone tries to perform tisis, pain can be brought upon children There is a profound lack of hope in Histories. In The Iliad, at least men could hope that a god would help them. Here they are hopeless. Here we have also lost the sense of glory after death. The value of Solon's words: Meaning coming from death, from the end. Characters tend to come to great realizations when they die. A perspective on the present that can only come from the past.

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