Reception — how the record has been read; the house quotes the fighters and picks no side

Plutarch against Herodotus

attack · 1st–2nd century CE · dated approximate · ascription conventional receipt — the reception record

Transmitted among Plutarch's Moralia and served here from Goodwin's 1874 edition under his name; Rawlinson's 1862 essay calls its author 'Plutarch, or rather an author who has made free with his name' — the ascription is the tradition's, adopted and labeled, not a proof.

The oldest surviving prosecution of the father of history: a Boeotian, defending 'our ancestors and the truth,' reads the charm of Herodotus' style as malice's own instrument, sets out signs to know a malicious narration by — and then works through the Histories charge by charge. The whole attack is served in this house; every blow below carries its episode receipt, and where the struck passage is served too, it stands beside the blow.

The reader / the read — who reads, and who stands accused or defended

the reader

Plutarch of Chaeronea — c. 46–120 CE. his witness card. his person room. The reading itself is served: Of Herodotus’s Malice (43 episodes).

the read

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, The Histories. his witness card. The target is served: The Histories.

The reader's stance — his own method, in his own words

The attack opens by naming the charm as the crime: the style that persuades is malice's best disguise.

The style, O Alexander, of Herodotus, as being simple, free, and easily suiting itself to its subject, has deceived many; but more, a persuasion of his dispositions being equally sincere. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 1 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

The prosecutor declares his brief: Boeotia and Corinth are the wounded parties, and the defender steps forward by name.

Now since he principally exerts his malice against the Boeotians and Corinthians, though without sparing any other, I think myself obliged to defend our ancestors and the truth against this part of his writings, since those who would detect all his other lies and fictions would have need of many books. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 1 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

The prosecutor states his own test of a just historian — the standard he means to convict by.

But an historian is then just, when he asserts such things as he knows to be true, and of those that are uncertain reports rather the better than the worse. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 5 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

The charges and the findings — blow by blow; where the struck passage is served, it stands beside the blow

Marathon: the full-moon excuse for Sparta is called an invented calendar — the attack addresses Herodotus in the second person. charge

But thou, O Herodotus, transferest the full moon from the middle to the beginning of the month, and at the same time confoundest the heavens, days, and all things; and yet thou dost pretend to be the historian of Greece! Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 26 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: It was the ninth day of the rising month, and they said that on the ninth they could not go out to war until the moon's circle was full. Hdt. 6.106 The Histories · Herodotus

Wave D's chronology desk already serves this same fork on the 490 rung — the moon dispute is a date with its own room. the deed: battle of Marathon · the year: 490 at the chronology desk

Thermopylae: the Thebans-as-hostages sentence is read as a calumny that contradicts itself. charge

Does he not here manifestly discover himself to have a peculiar pique and hatred against the Thebans, by the impulse of which he not only falsely and unjustly calumniated the city, but did not so much as take care to render his contradiction probable, or to conceal, at least from a few men, his being conscious of having knowingly contradicted himself? Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 31 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: The Thebans remained against their will and desire, for Leonidas kept them as hostages. Hdt. 7.222 The Histories · Herodotus

the deed: battle of Thermopylae

Artemisium: the sea-fight's credit is read as stolen — a victory rewritten as bribery and theft. charge

But Herodotus, by whom, as some will have it, Greece is honored, makes that victory a work of bribery and theft, saying that the Greeks, deceived by their captains, who had to that end taken money, fought against their wills. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 34 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: These two, then, were won over by gifts, the Euboeans got what they wanted, and Themistocles himself was the gainer. Hdt. 8.5 The Histories · Herodotus

the deed: battle of Artemisium

Salamis: the Corinthian flight story — the heaven-sent pinnace is mocked as stage machinery. charge

This pinnace was certainly let down from heaven. For what should hinder him from erecting a tragical machine, who by his boasting excelled the tragedians in all other things? Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 39 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: The Athenians say that when the ships joined battle, the Corinthian general Adeimantus, struck with bewilderment and terror, hoisted his sails and fled away. Hdt. 8.94 The Histories · Herodotus

the deed: sea-fight at Salamis

Themistocles at Salamis: the Mnesiphilus story is read as an accusation of stolen counsel. charge

You see how he accuses Themistocles of disingenuity in arrogating to himself the counsel of Mnesiphilus. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 37 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: Themistocles sat next to him and told him all that he had heard from Mnesiphilus, pretending it was his own idea and adding many other things. Hdt. 8.58 The Histories · Herodotus

the person: Themistocles son of Neocles

The philobarbarian charge: acquitting Egypt of human sacrifice, Herodotus is read as convicting Greece instead. charge

Nay, he is so favorable to the barbarians, that, acquitting Busiris of those human sacrifices and that slaughter of his guests for which he is accused, and attributing by his testimony to the Egyptians much religion and justice, he endeavors to cast that abominable wickedness and those impious murders on the Grecians. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 12 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the passage under attack — served as the record carries it: for how should they sacrifice men when they are forbidden to sacrifice even beasts, except swine and bulls and bull-calves, if they are unblemished, and geese? Hdt. 2.45 The Histories · Herodotus

Plataea: the roll of honor is read as robbery — every absent city defrauded of its part in the victory. charge

At last he says, that only the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeates fought with the barbarians, and the Athenians with the Thebans; equally defrauding all the other cities of their part in the honor of the victory Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 42 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

the deed: battle of Plataea · the year: 479 at the chronology desk

The verdict — the reading's own summary, never the house's

The prosecution rests with its warning: the calumnies hide under the well-couched phrases as cantharides hide in roses.

But as in roses we must beware of the venomous flies called cantharides; so must we take heed of the calumnies and envy lying hid under smooth and well-couched phrases and expressions, lest we imprudently entertain absurd and false opinions of the most excellent and greatest cities and men of Greece. Plut. Mor., Herodotus's Malice 43 Of Herodotus’s Malice · Plutarch

The same closing chapter first grants the style its graces — 'an acute writer... a certain grace, force, and elegancy in his narrations' — before the warning; the tribute rides the episode beyond the excerpt.

The aftermath — how this reading has itself been read

The 1912 referees grade the ancient attack: shrewd in places, but proving inconsequence, not malice.

Plutarch’s (de Malig. 26) censures of the account of the shield signal as improbable, and of the defence of the Alcmaeonids as hollow, are shrewder, and indicate not malignity but some incompleteness and inconsequence in the historian How & Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, vol. II (1912), p. 356 cited, never reprinted — the apparatus shelf

The 1862 defense doubts the prosecutor's very name — 'an author who has made free with' Plutarch's.

Ctesias the court-physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon, and Plutarch, or rather an author who has made free with his name, have impeached the truthfulness of the historian, and maintained that his narrative is entitled to little credit. Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, vol. I (2nd ed., 1862), p. 61 cited, never reprinted — the apparatus shelf

The record here: 166 works · 12,119 episodes served · a reception entry asserts that a named reader read the record this way — never that the reading is right · every blow carries its receipt; 6 struck passages served beside their blows

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