Sappho 16, Gorgias' Helen, and the preface to Herodotus' Histories

Summary

In a recent article on Sappho and Alcaeus, William H. Race pointed out that the discussion of ἔρως in Gorgias' Helen is indebted to Sappho 16, and suggested that the sophist was directly indebted to the poet; in his book on the priamel, Race had already remarked upon the structural similarity of Herodotus' preface to the same poem, without suggesting any direct link. My purpose here is to complete the triangle by demonstrating a connection, independent of Sappho 16, between the two prose authors: the similarities are of such a sort as to suggest either that both were written in a context that generated the similar matter independently in each, or that one work was written in awareness of the other – possibly in rivalry with it.

The similarities between the preface of the Histories (i.e., proem plus chapters 1–5) and Gorgias' Helen (epecially its own prefatory section) are thematic, rhetorical, and verbal. The thematic similarities are obvious: Herodotus reports what he claims to be the account of Persian λόγιοι of a series of rapes culminating in Paris, Helen, and the Trojan War; Gorgias devotes his work in its entirety to these last. Both accounts are legalistic in presentation: Herodotus' Persians carefully keep score, and when the incursions escalate to military engagements they offer a defense of themselves and criticism of the Greeks based upon an assignment of relative culpability.