20 - Herodotus' influence in antiquity

Summary

Charming beyond all other ancient authors, Herodotus surely never sank from view. His home city in Asia Minor was always proud of him: a recently discovered long poem, inscribed on stone and dating from the second century BCE, celebrates the glories of Halicarnassus, including the 'prose Homer, Herodotus'. And his statue stood in the royal library of Hellenistic Pergamum. Did his work continue to be recited in later centuries as it certainly was in his lifetime? We can be certain only of literary reception, but we should not forget that Greek culture continued to be oral long after the arrival of widespread literacy and that this most memorable of historians may have exerted influence in informal ways as well as via the written papyrus roll. The only specific mention of Hellenistic public recitation of Herodotus, in the theatre at Alexandria, is not usable if we adopt the standard emendation to 'Hesiod'. The other author there said to have been recited is Homer, who is the reason for emending the other name; but it is tempting to keep 'Herodotus' and juxtapose the poetic and the prose Homer, as above.