If you’re stuck in a lift…

There’s that common question that people ask “Who would you most want to be stuck in a lift with?”, to which the correct reply is “A lift engineer.” While I was lying in bed a similar question came to me. Imagine you’re struck with a rare but incurable neurological disorder which will actually leave you unaffected apart from one problem. You will only be able to see the text of one classical author. All others will be a blur. You get to choose which author it you’ll still be able to read. It might seem odd but sometimes you have to make choices like this in the real world. Which author would it be? Actually I’ve just realised it’s another way of asking who’s you’re favourite classical author, or more accurately which ancient author is the most indispensible? Things seem so much more profound when you’re half asleep.

Anyway who would it be? Sticking with this odd neurological illness (and ignoring the question why can’t I fall asleep think about someone like Cameron Diaz instead) I’d have to rule out Anaximander. Much as I like him, two fragments is not a useful quanity of texts to have. I suppose someone like Cicero would sit that the opposite end of the quanitity scale, but while I appreciate he’s an important source for Republican Rome, I really don’t like him as an individual. When I started Ancient History I assumed all ancient authors would be wise men in togas and beards. Cicero’s whining came as a shock. Aristophanes came as a shock too, but a more pleasant shock.

Pliny the Elder is a possible choice. His Natural History is a terrific book about the universe and all that it contains. Aristotle is even more tempting. He wrote a stack of books on all sorts of topics, so boredom wouldn’t be a problem. Not only that but he still found time to grow a beard and wear a toga. However I think if I had to choose just one author it would be Herodotus.

His history is the oldest that survives. It has been panned by both ancient historians and modern historians, who’ve tended to prefer Thucydides’s gritty realism. Fortunately in recent years he’s had a more sympathic hearing and rightly so. I’ll agree that his history is whimsical, inaccurate and credulous in many places but Herodotus knows how to tell a tale. To be fair, this was his goal. He made it fairly obvious at the beginning.

This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten in time, and that great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by the Hellenes, some by the barbarians, not lose their glory, including among others what was the cause of their waging war on each other.

Place him in the context of other authors with similar aims like Homer and he succeeds amazingly well. Imagine a world where performed stories of major events are myths like the Trojan war. Now imagine the sheer innovation of telling a story about something that happened in the recent past to explain the present. Its an achievement that he does it at all, let alone that he does it so well.

And he does do it very well. There may be better sources for ‘serious’ history, but for sheer reading pleasure Herodotus is hard to beat. —–