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Adam Smith, the Wicked Knight, and the use of Anecdotes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Thomas W. Africa
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Extract

Since Herodotus, historians have found anecdotes indispensable and notoriously unreliable. Although the historicity of an anecdote may be elusive, its use by posterity can be illuminating. Whether or not Canute commanded the incoming tide to halt cannot be proven, because the episode was not reported until a century later by a moralistic chronicler, Henry of Huntingdoa According to Henry, the king staged the scene to demonstrate to sycophantic courtiers his impotence before the forces of nature and their creator. However, later generations forgot his pious motive, and Canute survives in the popular imagination as an examplar of executive folly, like Xerxes who had the Hellspont scourged. Whatever the facts, posterity has its own uses for anecdotes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 1995 , pp. 70 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

Notes

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