Herodotus 1.34.3

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Paul Derouda
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Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Paul Derouda »

Croesus has a bad dream about his son, to the effect that he was going to die from a wound from an iron spearhead.

Ὃ δ᾽ ἐπείτε ἐξηγέρθη καὶ ἑωυτῷ λόγον ἔδωκε, καταρρωδήσας τὸν ὄνειρον ἄγεται μὲν τῷ παιδὶ γυναῖκα, ἐωθότα δὲ στρατηγέειν μιν τῶν Λυδῶν οὐδαμῇ ἔτι ἐπὶ τοιοῦτο πρῆγμα ἐξέπεμπε· ἀκόντια δὲ καὶ δοράτια καὶ τά τοιαῦτα πάντα τοῖσι χρέωνται ἐς πόλεμον ἄνθρωποι, ἐκ τῶν ἀνδρεώνων ἐκκομίσας ἐς τοὺς θαλάμους συνένησε, μή τί οἱ κρεμάμενον τῷ παιδὶ ἐμπέσῃ.

ἀκόντια and δοράτια are not, as far as I understand "such things as men use in war" (τά τοιαῦτα πάντα τοῖσι χρέωνται ἐς πόλεμον ἄνθρωποι), but lighter weapons used for sports ("javelins", according to Powell). It seems to me that here Herodotus is painting a humorous tableau where even the lightest and most inconsequential weapons are removed. No translation or commentary I checked seems to agree with me though. Any opinions?

For some reason, a couple of translations give "bedrooms" for θαλάμους. That seems strange. Why not storerooms?

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by mwh »

ακοντια και δορατια, yes it is noticeable that they’re both diminutives. Would the heavier weapons be kept locked away in a store-room, while the smaller but no less lethal stuff festooned the walls of the men’s quarters, ready to fall on young men's heads? I’ve been in castles in more than one country (thanks to my weapons-mad young son) where that was the arrangement. I don’t see it as meant to be humorous—it just makes the point that Croesus’ precautions were thoroughgoing; he takes the terms of the oracular dream seriously, as everyone always does (for all the good it does them). And light weaponry was used in war, after all; not everyone could be a hoplite. And we might note it’s a javelin (ακοντιζων, whether ακων or ακοντιον) that does in fact kill his son, book-ending the story. I’ve always thought it an exceedingly silly folktale, however typical its moral.

Coming after the ανδρεῶνες, the θάλαμοι certainly suggests the women’s quarters to me.

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by jeidsath »

The LSJ examples for θάλαμος A.2.b "store-room" are all in the singular. Maybe this could be multiple store-rooms, but it seems that this refers only to Croesus' palace. So it seems that he has taken everything pointy out of the male rooms and shut it away into the harem (a mild "Lydians are effeminate" joke?).

I thought that ἀκόντια and δοράτια were diminutive because Herodotus was emphasizing the thoroughness of the precaution, like a good story-teller would. So "τά τοιαῦτα πάντα" is similar spear-like implements, not similarly diminutive items.

I notice that τά is accented acute. Does it signal something for the meaning or is it related to the τοιαῦτα? (Or is it a mistake?)

I wonder if "inner room" (literal) and "the inner rooms" (the harem) is a good English way of preserving the ambiguity of treasure-room/harem for θάλαμος.
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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Paul Derouda »

Thanks!
mwh wrote:ακοντια και δορατια, yes it is noticeable that they’re both diminutives. Would the heavier weapons be kept locked away in a store-room, while the smaller but no less lethal stuff festooned the walls of the men’s quarters, ready to fall on young men's heads? I’ve been in castles in more than one country (thanks to my weapons-mad young son) where that was the arrangement. I don’t see it as meant to be humorous—it just makes the point that Croesus’ precautions were thoroughgoing; he takes the terms of the oracular dream seriously, as everyone always does (for all the good it does them). And light weaponry was used in war, after all; not everyone could be a hoplite. And we might note it’s a javelin (ακοντιζων, whether ακων or ακοντιον) that does in fact kill his son, book-ending the story. I’ve always thought it an exceedingly silly folktale, however typical its moral.

Coming after the ανδρεῶνες, the θάλαμοι certainly suggests the women’s quarters to me.
But don't we have also full plate armors on display in many castles?

So you don't see a nuance of sportsweapon/huntingweapon in ἀκόντια and δοράτια? I know light weaponry was used in war, but I thought it wasn't the point here.

It does look like a folktale to me as well, like so many in Herodotus.

Point taken about θάλαμοι. (If you're right about the opposition between men's quarters - women's quarters, wouldn't it be in character if ἀκόντια/δοράτια were similarly just slightly inappropriate in the context of implements of war as θάλαμοι is?)
jeidsath wrote:I thought that ἀκόντια and δοράτια were diminutive because Herodotus was emphasizing the thoroughness of the precaution, like a good story-teller would. So "τά τοιαῦτα πάντα" is similar spear-like implements, not similarly diminutive items.
That's how I took it as well. Whether we consider it humorous or not, I thought the effect Herodotus is trying to convey is (almost) "javelins, darts and other weapons of mass destruction". Basically, I thought it was a more vivid way of saying "not only war weapons, but even light javelins".
I notice that τά is accented acute. Does it signal something for the meaning or is it related to the τοιαῦτα? (Or is it a mistake?)
Mistake I guess. I copy-pasted the text from a random French site.

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Hylander »

I see Croesus as a tragic figure in Herodotus. I don't see any humor in the story/folk-tale about the death of his son.
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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Paul Derouda »

It's true it's not supposed to be a funny interlude or anything like that. Perhaps "gentle irony" is the expression I'm looking for.

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by mwh »

Paul, I think you’re seeing something that isn’t there. Distinction between war weapons and “sportsweapons” is anachronistic, and Hdt’s tale itself invalidates it. (Besides, Greeks don’t kill for sport.) Iron-tipped weapons, including javelins—weapons of war, as Croesus naturally thinks of them—are used to kill men and animals alike, including or especially boar—something Croesus would have done well to remember. He could have used a reminder of the outcome of the Calydonian boarhunt.

In fleshing out the simple outline of the tale Hdt. makes it as rational and plausible as he can (which is not very). The king takes two practical measures to protect his son from death by iron-tipped weaponry: he marries him off so as to keep the lad busy with his new bride at home (ταῦτα οἱ νῦν μέλει, as he explains to the Mysians!) safe from the perils of military action and the outside world, and he guards against accidental death at home by removing all the iron-tipped weaponry hanging around the place (literally).
ακοντια head the list—significantly, since it will be a javelin that will in fact kill the son. But Hdt, not wanting to spoil the story, withholds that till the end of the tale.
If we want to read anything into ακοντια rather than ακοντας (I'm not sure we should, for morphologically "diminutive" forms don't necessarily imply smaller size, but there is that δορατια too), we can say that even the smaller missiles are tucked away—they all have αιχμαί, after all, so none is "inconsequential."
In any event, your imagined contrast between ακοντια and weapons of mass destruction doesn’t hold. (I know you were paraphrasing, but still.) Javelins of various sizes were the closest the Greeks/Lydians came to WMDs (apart from arrows, perhaps, but arrows, unlike javelins, won’t come into the story). It's a mistake to try to drive a wedge between ακοντια and weapons used in war. Just ask a peltast.

The ironies of the story are multiple—Hdt. even mixes in Adrastus for the sake of multiplying them—but they’re all tragic.

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Paul Derouda »

Thanks again. I don't think I was seeing anything much that wasn't there, more like wondering if there was some technical distinction implicit in the use of the diminutives (like with θαλαμος mentioned just after the men's quarters). Beside that, I like to overstate my point to make clear what I mean.

However, I'm not sure whether I agree about Greeks not killing for sport. (Beside the fact that we're talking about Lydians here) How about Odysseus' boar hunt in his youth, where he got his famous scar? Wouldn't that be some sort of aristocratic sport? And are you quite sure that all those myths about boar hunts (beside this story, the Calydonian boar etc.) are not related to some sort of aristocratic hunting tradition?

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by mwh »

I’m sure young Greek aristocrats got a rush in a boar hunt, but the motivation seems always to be practical. Boar are destructive of crops etc., and are hunted for that reason alone, out of necessity. Or that’s what the stories suggest. They may be sent by a god as punishment. Romans used them for sport, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem the Greeks did. It was more like going to war against an enemy. That’s how we’re to imagine Odysseus got his scar.

As for Lydians and their domestic arrangements (“harems”?!), aren’t they just modelled on Greeks here? (Like Homer’s Trojans?) Of course Greeks viewed the Lydians as orientals, with their lives of effeminate leisure and their fancy clothing, but I don’t see anything culturally non-Greek about this particular tale.

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Paul Derouda »

But surely traditional British fox hunting was always considered a form of pest control?

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by jeidsath »

I was thinking about that when I suggested harem. θάλαμοι is an interesting word, and seems very functionally similar to the Persian word for harem: Andaruni (inside). From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:
The word harem is strictly applicable to Mahommedan households only, but the system is common in greater or less degree to all Oriental communities, especially where polygamy is permitted. Other names for the women's quarters are Seraglio (Ital. serraglio, literally an enclosure, from Lat. sera, a bar; wrongly narrowed down to the sense of harem through confusion with Turkish serai or sarai, palace or large building, cf. caravanserai); Zenana (strictly zanana, from Persian zan, woman, allied with Gr. γυνή), used specifically of Hindu harems; Andarun (or Anderoon), the Persian word for the “inner part ” (sc. of a house). The Indian harem system is also commonly known as pardah or purdah, literally the name of the thick curtains or blinds which are used instead of doors to separate the women's quarters from the rest of the house. A male doctor attending a zenana lady would put his hand between the purdah to feel her pulse.
The Greeks certainly didn't have any sort of a oriental harem system. But I wonder how often non-related men would ever be permitted to enter into the θάλαμοι.
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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by Timothée »

Persian اندرون (andarūn, from *andarān) means ‘entrails, innards’ (also more generally ‘inner part’), and is in etymological contact with Sanskrit अन्तर् (antar), Latin inter, Armenian ընդերք (ǝnderkͪ), and Greek ἔντερον, the last two having the same meaning as Persian. From that is derived اندرونی (andarūnī). Persian سرای (sarāj) or (nowadays) سرا (sarā) has no etymology (the one in Horn is probably false). Latin paretymology seems a little superfluous (FEW does not mention it), but I suppose it influenced the Italian word via the verb serrare.

I think I had a logical grounds for recounting the etymology, but I already forgot what that was. :o

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Re: Herodotus 1.34.3

Post by mwh »

Paul Derouda wrote:But surely traditional British fox hunting was always considered a form of pest control?
Perhaps (at any rate defended on those grounds), and you could probably say the same of pig-sticking (the favorite activity of Boy Scouts founder Baden-Powell, I learn from Wiki and can well believe). But foxhunting quickly became a ritualized sport in ways I don’t think Greek hunting ever did, at any rate not boar hunting, an ad hoc affair calling for courage in confronting so formidable a creature. A British Master of Hounds would not welcome the eradication of foxes. It’s the huntsmen who became the pests.
jeidsath wrote:But I wonder how often non-related men would ever be permitted to enter into the θάλαμοι.
Never! Men kept their women closely guarded. But the difference is that Greeks were monogamous.

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