Abstract Summary
One of the most pressing questions for the historically-minded nineteenth century was this: just how much could one trust Herodotus? Known since antiquity as ‚the father of history,’ Herodotus was also notorious for reporting improbable marvels (immense man-make lakes) and sensational tall tales (Arion the bard saved from drowning by a dolphin). Already in the later eighteenth century, scholars began following in the footsteps of the widely-traveled Greek, measuring the Hellespont, investigating wind patterns on the Nile, following crocodiles to check Herodotus’ accounts. The process involved scholars of all types—military geographers, zoologists, proto-ethnographers, archaeologists, orientalists—and a great deal of controversy about how to translate ancient measurements, how to ‚read through’ Herodotus’ Greek to establish proper Egyptian or Persian terms or names, how seriously to take his account of the flying snakes of Egypt, how much change in ‚oriental’ habits to expect over time. In each case, scholars had to decide what it would mean to verify a report given by Herodotus, and debate led to new cycles of research, and more, often highly creative, strategies of verification (or falsification). In this paper, I will offer a few examples of the ways in which scholars with different backgrounds tried to fact-check Herodotus. I will underscore the difficulties all sides faced in making arguments that stuck, but also the gradual emergence of a consensus across the disciplines that Herodotus, in many cases, was a worthy companion, if hardly an inerrant patriarch.
