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Sight and Seeing in Herodotus

  • Nikos Miltsios EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 15. Juli 2016
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Abstract:

The theme of sight and vision is particularly pronounced throughout the Histories of Herodotus. It plays a privileged role in both the historian’s overt methodological remarks and the purely narrative sections of his work. But while Herodotus explicitly values sight as an important means of gaining knowledge and recognizes its centrality to historical research, in his narrative he often questions its reliability by having his characters develop inaccurate, grossly distorted pictures of reality through visual perceptions. On numerous occasions in the Histories, the characters are deceived by what they themselves see or what others show them. Aiming at resolving this tension, the present article explores the ways in which Herodotus thematizes and describes vision in his work. It argues that when Herodotus records failed attempts on the part of his characters to interpret visual evidence correctly, he generally locates the cause of the problem in the inadequacy not of sight itself but of its subject, the observer, and their intellectual and emotional dispositions.


Article Note:

This paper was originally read on 5 December 2014, at a conference on Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Greek Literature organized with the sponsorship of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Freiburg.


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Published Online: 2016-7-15
Published in Print: 2016-7-15

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