A Historian in a Changing World: Evolution of the Image of Corinth in Herodotus’ Histories
Surikov Igor E.
Herodotus was composing his Histories for a lengthy period of several decades. During that period the political situation in the Greek world was continually changing, and the changes must have left their mark on the historian’s work, especially as the latter obviously contained some pro-Athenian bias, and Athens was in the centre of new trends. Particularly drastic were new features in the relationships between Athens and Corinth. In the late 6 and early 5 centuries BC the two major cities were often in the state of partnership and co-operation. But their relations had considerably deteriorated since the 450s, and the growing tension eventually led to manifest enmity on the eve of the Peloponnesian War. The image of Corinth in Herodotus' treatise is very contradictory. Three kinds of judgments on Corinth and Corinthians can be found there, namely: positive, negative and neutral ones. If the latter are scattered throughout the work, the situation with biased judgments is different. They are absent from the first and in the last half of the Histories; positive statements prevail in Books V, VI and VII, while the negative ones are concentrated in Books VIII and IX. Thus, one can ascertain the evolution of Herodotus’ views on Corinth: the nearer to the end of the work, the worse the attitude. Strictly speaking, it was not the historian’s personal position, but the Athenian public opinion reflected by Herodotus that grew more and more hostile to the Corinthians. The episode in Histories where the Corinthians and their leader Adeimantos are represented in the worst possible light (VIII. 94: the flight of Corinthian ships during the Salamis Battle) may well have been written at the latest stage in Herodotus’ career, i.e. in the 420s, when Adeimantos’ son Aristeas conducted strongly anti-Athenian politicy. Changing narrative by Herodotus’ informants appears to coincide and correlate with political developments. Nevertheless, the historian himself tried, as usual, to be as unbiased as he could. Even in VIII. 94, while reporting the strongly anti-Corinthian version coming from Athens, he at the same time honestly mentions that «the rest of Greece» thinks otherwise.