‘Romantic Poet-Sage of History’

Herodotus and His Arion in the Long Nineteenth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID23444591
AuthorsEdith Hall (0000-0002-8438-6814, corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages46-70
Publication date2020-03-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueHerodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108562805.003
OpenAlexW3011648317
ISBN9781108562805
LanguageEN
References cited312

This chapter uses the figure of Arion, the lyric poet from Methymna whose story is told early in Herodotus’s Histories , to explore the adoption of Herodotus, in the long nineteenth century, as the ‘Romantic poet-sage of History’. This is the title bestowed upon him by the Anglican priest and hymn-writer John Ernest Bode, who in 1853 (following in the fashion set by Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome ) adapted tales from Herodotus into old English and Scottish ballad forms. Herodotus was seen as the prose avatar of poets – of medieval balladeers, lyric singers, epic bards and even authors of verse drama. These configurations of Herodotus are cast into sharp relief by comparing them with his previous incarnation, in the Early Modern and earlier eighteenth century, as a writer who most strongly resembled a novelist. Isaac Littlebury, Herodotus’s 1709 translator, was attracted to the historian for the simple reason that in 1700 he had enjoyed success with a previous translation. But the earlier work was certainly not a translation of an ancient historian. Littlebury had translated Fénelon’s Télémaque , a work of fantasy fiction derived ultimately from the Posthomerica , perhaps better described as a novel combining a rites-of-passage theme with an exciting travelogue.

Art · Drama · EPIC · Fantasy · Hymn · Knight · Literature · Poetry · Romance · Style (visual arts) · Theme (computing) · Classical Studies and Philology · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philippine History and Culture

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