a non-Athenian, and thus something of a foreigner, and while such individuals are treated better than slaves, they are not treated as well as native Athenians. Athenian society was highly sensitive to race, with a strongly developed sense of superiority, exclusivity, arrogance even.
But it appears that Herodotus adapts quickly to his new city. The thirty-something-year-old man is open, friendly, a hail-fellow-well-met. He gives lectures, appears for meetings, author evenings—he probably makes his living that way. He establishes important contacts—with Socrates, Sophocles, Pericles. This isn’t that difficult. Athens, with a population of one hundred thousand, isn’t large in those days, and is tightly, even chaotically built up.Two places only stand out and distinguish themselves: the center of religious cults, the Acropolis, and the center of meetings, events, commerce, politics, and social life—the Agora. People gather here from the early morning. The square of the Agora is always crowded, full of life. We would surely find Herodotus here as well. But he does not stay in the city for long. At approximately the time of his arrival, Athenian authorities pass a draconian law, according to which only those both of whose parents were born in Attica, the region immediately surrounding Athens, are entitled to political rights. Herodotus is unable to obtain Athenian citizenship. He sets off once again, and finally settles permanently in southern Italy, in the Greek colony of Thurii.
Opinion differs as to what happens later. Some believe that he did not budge from there again. Others claim that he later visited Greece once more, that he was sighted in Athens. Even Macedonia is mentioned. But in point of fact nothing is certain. He dies at age sixty, perhaps—but where? Under what circumstances? Did he spend his last years in Thurii, sitting in the shade of a sycamore tree and writing his book? Or maybe he could no longer see well enough and dictated it to a scribe? Did he have notes or was he able to rely on memory alone? People in those days had great powers of recall. He could well have remembered the stories of Croesus and Babylon, of Darius and the Scythians, of Persians, Thermopylae, and Salamis. And so many of the other tales that constitute
The Histories
.
Or perhaps Herodotus dies on board a ship sailing somewhere across the Mediterranean? Or perhaps he is walking along a road and sits down on a stone to rest, never to get up again? Herodotus vanishes, leaves us twenty-five centuries ago in a year that is impossible to pinpoint precisely and in a place we do not know.
• • •
The newspaper office.
Field trips.
Assemblies. Meetings. Conversations.
In my free moments I sit amidst dictionaries (a proper English one has finally been published) and various books about India (the imposing work of Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India
, has just come out, the great autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, and the beautiful
Panchatantra, or the Wisdom of India, Five Books
. After Stalin’s death, censorship had eased and books that for years had been kept under lock and key started to appear).
With each new title I read, I felt as if I were undertaking a new journey to India, recalling places I had visited and discovering new depths and aspects, fresh meanings, of things which earlier I had assumed I knew. These journeys were much more multidimensional than my original one. I discovered also that these expeditions could be further prolonged, repeated, augmented by reading more books, studying maps, looking at paintings and photographs. What is more, they had a certain advantage over the actual trip—in an iconographic journey such as this, one could stop at any point, calmly observe, rewind to the previous image, etc., something for which on a real journey there is neither the time nor the chance.
So here I am, becoming increasingly engrossed in India’s extraor-dinariness and riches, thinking that with
But it appears that Herodotus adapts quickly to his new city. The thirty-something-year-old man is open, friendly, a hail-fellow-well-met. He gives lectures, appears for meetings, author evenings—he probably makes his living that way. He establishes important contacts—with Socrates, Sophocles, Pericles. This isn’t that difficult. Athens, with a population of one hundred thousand, isn’t large in those days, and is tightly, even chaotically built up.Two places only stand out and distinguish themselves: the center of religious cults, the Acropolis, and the center of meetings, events, commerce, politics, and social life—the Agora. People gather here from the early morning. The square of the Agora is always crowded, full of life. We would surely find Herodotus here as well. But he does not stay in the city for long. At approximately the time of his arrival, Athenian authorities pass a draconian law, according to which only those both of whose parents were born in Attica, the region immediately surrounding Athens, are entitled to political rights. Herodotus is unable to obtain Athenian citizenship. He sets off once again, and finally settles permanently in southern Italy, in the Greek colony of Thurii.
Opinion differs as to what happens later. Some believe that he did not budge from there again. Others claim that he later visited Greece once more, that he was sighted in Athens. Even Macedonia is mentioned. But in point of fact nothing is certain. He dies at age sixty, perhaps—but where? Under what circumstances? Did he spend his last years in Thurii, sitting in the shade of a sycamore tree and writing his book? Or maybe he could no longer see well enough and dictated it to a scribe? Did he have notes or was he able to rely on memory alone? People in those days had great powers of recall. He could well have remembered the stories of Croesus and Babylon, of Darius and the Scythians, of Persians, Thermopylae, and Salamis. And so many of the other tales that constitute
The Histories
.
Or perhaps Herodotus dies on board a ship sailing somewhere across the Mediterranean? Or perhaps he is walking along a road and sits down on a stone to rest, never to get up again? Herodotus vanishes, leaves us twenty-five centuries ago in a year that is impossible to pinpoint precisely and in a place we do not know.
• • •
The newspaper office.
Field trips.
Assemblies. Meetings. Conversations.
In my free moments I sit amidst dictionaries (a proper English one has finally been published) and various books about India (the imposing work of Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India
, has just come out, the great autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, and the beautiful
Panchatantra, or the Wisdom of India, Five Books
. After Stalin’s death, censorship had eased and books that for years had been kept under lock and key started to appear).
With each new title I read, I felt as if I were undertaking a new journey to India, recalling places I had visited and discovering new depths and aspects, fresh meanings, of things which earlier I had assumed I knew. These journeys were much more multidimensional than my original one. I discovered also that these expeditions could be further prolonged, repeated, augmented by reading more books, studying maps, looking at paintings and photographs. What is more, they had a certain advantage over the actual trip—in an iconographic journey such as this, one could stop at any point, calmly observe, rewind to the previous image, etc., something for which on a real journey there is neither the time nor the chance.
So here I am, becoming increasingly engrossed in India’s extraor-dinariness and riches, thinking that with
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