Herodotus as a literary critic

Abstract

The author analyses a number of passages in Herodotus' History containing direct quotations from or allusions to various literary texts. The way Herodotus treats them helps to reveal his general views on literature and language and to contrast them with the ideas of his contemporaries, Democritus and the Sophists. The paper demonstrates that the historian was deeply involved in contemporary intellectual disputes on poetry and on language as such, and shared with the Sophists the idea of internal coherence and consistency as the primary requirement for a literary piece. Moreover, in some instances one can fnd traces of Herodotus' commenting on particular episodes and poetic lines taken from Homer and Pindar. For example, a new interpretation is suggested concerning the sense Herodotus implied into the famous Pindaric verse: “Law is the king of all”.