The questiion whether the Histories, as we have it, ends at the point where Herodotus intended it to end has been debated for more than a century, and even now there seems to be no firm consensus as to the answer. Although over the past few decades the majority of students seem to have inclined to the affirmative for various reasons, a respected authority on Herodotus could still conclude, in 1985, that “there is in fact no proper ending to the work, and though I have accepted the capture of Sestos as a logically reasonable endpoint, other material could well have followed and some kind of ‘epic’ conclusion might well have been expected.” The present article reconsiders the question in the hope that, at least, a greater measure of certainty is attainable than that.
On one factor in the problem only there seems to be general agreement, andthismaybediscussedfairlybriefly: As a historical narrative of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, the Histories is clearly unfinished. Many scholars, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, observed (perfectly correctly) that as a matter of history those wars did not end with the capture of Sestos; and from this they concluded that Herodotus did not live, or perhaps did not care, to complete his project. The conclusion seemed to be reinforced by Uie observation of Lipsius that the last sentence in Herodotus’ actual narrative of die war (9. 121), “and during this year nothing happened any more beyond these things,” belongs to a group of transition-iormulae, that occur fairly frequently within the Histories; could there be clearer proof that Herodotus had somehow been prevented from completing his intended narrative?
John Herington
Illinois Classical Studies: XVI (1991)
Abstract
The questiion whether the Histories
, as we have it, ends at the point where Herodotus intended it to end has been debated for more than a century, and even now there seems to be no firm consensus as to the answer. Although over the past few decades the majority of students seem to have inclined to the affirmative for various reasons, a respected authority on Herodotus could still conclude, in 1985, that “there is in fact no proper ending to the work, and though I have accepted the capture of Sestos as a logically reasonable endpoint, other material could well have followed and some kind of ‘epic’ conclusion might well have been expected.” The present article reconsiders the question in the hope that, at least, a greater measure of certainty is attainable than that.
On one factor in the problem only there seems to be general agreement, andthismaybediscussedfairlybriefly: As a historical narrative of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, the Histories is clearly unfinished. Many scholars, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, observed (perfectly correctly) that as a matter of history those wars did not end with the capture of Sestos; and from this they concluded that Herodotus did not live, or perhaps did not care, to complete his project. The conclusion seemed to be reinforced by Uie observation of Lipsius that the last sentence in Herodotus’ actual narrative of die war (9. 121), “and during this year nothing happened any more beyond these things,” belongs to a group of transition-iormulae, that occur fairly frequently within the Histories; could there be clearer proof that Herodotus had somehow been prevented from completing his intended narrative?
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