Book contents
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Ethnography to History
- Chapter 2 ‘Romantic Poet-Sage of History’
- Chapter 3 Herodotus as Anti-classical Toolbox
- Chapter 4 George Grote and the ‘Open-hearted Herodotus’
- Chapter 5 Imagining Empire through Herodotus
- Chapter 6 Two Victorian Egypts of Herodotus
- Chapter 7 Of Europe
- Chapter 8 From Scythian Ethnography to Aryan Christianity
- Chapter 9 Herodotus and the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War
- Chapter 10 Herodotus’s Travels in Britain and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages of Herodotus Cited
- General Index
Chapter 1 - From Ethnography to History
Herodotean and Thucydidean Traditions in the Development of Greek Historiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2020
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Ethnography to History
- Chapter 2 ‘Romantic Poet-Sage of History’
- Chapter 3 Herodotus as Anti-classical Toolbox
- Chapter 4 George Grote and the ‘Open-hearted Herodotus’
- Chapter 5 Imagining Empire through Herodotus
- Chapter 6 Two Victorian Egypts of Herodotus
- Chapter 7 Of Europe
- Chapter 8 From Scythian Ethnography to Aryan Christianity
- Chapter 9 Herodotus and the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War
- Chapter 10 Herodotus’s Travels in Britain and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages of Herodotus Cited
- General Index
Summary
The aim of this chapter is to analyse the role played by ethnography in perceptions of the opposition between Herodotus and Thucydides and of the development of Greek historiography. From a vast range of possible evidence, I have selected a number of writers, some influential in their own right, some simply representative of their age. I will focus in turn on the place of ethnography in narratives of the development of historiography, in views of Herodotus’s own work and in comparisons between Herodotus and Thucydides. This reception history will show how views of the ancient development of the genre of historiography were influenced by new conceptions of history in the modern world, in particular by the new forms of historicism that develop over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Besides its inherent intellectual interest, the story unfolded here is important for its continued influence on modern scholarship. In the context of this volume, it provides a firm basis for understanding the instances of Herodotean reception which are explored in subsequent chapters. From the chapter as a whole it will emerge not only that histories of historiography, as much as any other form of historical writing, are moulded by the concerns of the historian’s present but also, and perhaps more unexpectedly, that ethnography, a practice often criticized as a vehicle of demarcation and exclusion, has itself become a target of exclusionary rhetoric in modern accounts of historiography.
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- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century , pp. 20 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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