in amazing works and reliance on them for information mute historiography’s ability as a genre to criticize human activity. The Hellespont scene in Aeschylus’s Persians provides a helpful contrast. Whereas Herodotus’s disapproval focuses on Xerxes’s punishment of the Hellespont, Aeschylus has Darius lament Xerxes’s decision to offend the gods by enslaving the Hellespont with fetters and “changing its form into a road” (Hdt. l.747: porou meterruthmize). In this tragic setting, the bridge is as much of a sacrilege as the shackles are.23 For Herodotus, on the other hand, the bridge is an artifact of history; the historian has a vested interest in making a distinction between the bridge Xerxes constructs, his bad reasons for constructing it, and the tantrum he throws when the bridge is destroyed.
Historians’ reliance on great works, including those that testify to their actor’s memory by altering geography, limits the degree to which they can criticize the undertaking of these works. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern critique, moments when Herodotus and Diodorus evaluate the merits of these projects and the terms by which they judge them worthwhile.
MONUMENTAL RISKS AND REWARDS
Earthworks, including tunnels, walls, roads, and buildings, run through Herodotus’s Histories. Occasionally they are demanded by the gods, as when Pisistratus (1.64) and, later, the Spartans (1.67) rebury bodies to fulfill oracular demands. But most are initiated by human beings. Amasis, a Persian king engaged in a protracted war with the Barceans, swears an oath to last “as long as the earth stays the same” (4.201: est’ an hē gē hautē houtō echē) but makes sure to limit this promise by standing over a lightly covered trench. The city of Barcē is taken and its citizens captured or killed, the men’s bodies impaled and displayed along with the women’s cut-off breasts (4.202). Although Amasis has tricked the Persians with this earthwork, he suffers neither divine retribution nor the author’s disapproval.24 On the contrary, Amasis’s “trick” (dolon) is the last in a series of moves and countermoves, as the Persians try to tunnel beneath the city and the Barceans counter-tunnel (antorussontes) in return (4.200). Elsewhere, Herodotus reports without additional comment the frequent earthworks provoked by the demands of war, both offensive (1.162) and defensive (1.163, 4.3). The Histories take for granted that people will manipulate the landscape to make war and protect themselves.
Herodotus takes a similar view of waterworks, including bridges (like Xerxes’s), harbor moles, dams, dykes, canals, and a marvelous oxhide irrigation pipe (3.9). When the Lydian king Croesus crosses the River Halys, Herodotus wonders whether he used existing bridges or employed Thales of Miletus to divert the river around his army but does not judge the work itself (1.75). When describing a massive Samian irrigation tunnel and harbor mole, he expresses admiration and classes these achievements with the colossal temple the Samians also constructed, calling the three of them the greatest works of all the Greeks (3.60).
Nevertheless, Herodotus recognizes moments when humans are forbidden to undertake these projects. The Cnidians begin a canal to fortify themselves from Persian invasion but notice that their workers suffer an unusually high number of injuries. They consult an oracle, who scolds:
Ἰσθμὸν δὲ μὴ πυργοῦτε μηδ’ ὀρύσσετε
Ζεὺς γάρ κ’ ἔθηκε νῆσον, εἴ γ’ ἐβούλετο.
Do not fortify or dig up the Isthmus.
Zeus would have made an island if he had wanted to. (Hdt. 1.174)
Like Xerxes, the Cnidians are wrong to undertake this alteration of their world; unlike him, they heed warnings and stop before catastrophe strikes.25 In a similar situation in book 2, the Egyptian king Necos starts digging a canal, which the Persian king Darius will later finish when he has conquered the region. An oracle stops Necos, saying that he is helping his Persian enemy (2.158).26 In Herodotus’s world, the gods are not usually in the business of approving or forbidding earth- and waterworks, but their occasional intervention proves both the risk and reward of undertaking them. Erga can offend the gods and bring ruin upon the rulers who order them (not to mention the workers who get in the way), or they can ensure those same rulers’ fame and memorialization in historiography.27
When negotiating these risks, the best rulers alter land- and waterscapes to benefit their people rather than merely themselves. This principle emerges from a series of stories in book 1 that report the great works of various rulers, both Babylonian (Semiramis, Nitocris) and Persian (Darius, Cyrus). Semiramis, Herodotus reports, constructs dykes “worthy of mention” (axiotheētēs) that prevent a river from flooding the plane of Babylon (1.184). Nitocris, a later successor, leaves behind “monuments” (mnēmosuna, 1.185.1) that Herodotus considers worth describing but also has the foresight to defend against Median encroachment by diverting the Euphrates, fortifying it with embankments, and constructing an artificial lake to slow the river and make it less useful to attackers (1.185.2–6). These interventions are “worthy of wonder” (1.185.3: axion thōmatos) and thus enhance Nitocris’s later reputation, but Herodotus also emphasizes how she has transformed the river into a defense system for her people (1.186.1).28 Another, more modest undertaking benefits the populace in peacetime. Nitocris constructs a bridge that is lowered by day and retracted at night. During the day, the bridge eases the “nuisance” (1.186.1: ochlēron) of conducting business, but at night its absence prevents the Babylonians from robbing one another. Nitocris’s bridge and defense system are the ingenious projects of a responsible ruler.29
Herodotus uses another story about Nitocris to demonstrate the importance of rulers’ intentions in undertaking their erga.30 After describing Nitocris’s bridge, Herodotus reports that she built a tomb for herself above the city gates, inscribed with a message to future rulers:
Τῶν τις ἐμεῦ ὕστερον γινομένων Βαβυλῶνος βασιλέων ἢν σπανίσῃ χρημάτων, ἀνοίξας τὸν τάφον λαβέτω ὁκόσα βούλεται χρήματα· μὴ μέντοι γε μὴ σπανίσας γε ἄλλως ἀνοίξῃ οὐ γὰρ ἄμενον.
Any Babylonian king who comes after me and needs money may open the tomb and take as much as he requires, but if he opens it for any other reason, it will not go well for him. (Hdt. 1.187.2)
Darius, a later, Persian ruler of Babylon, breaks into this tomb both because he wants the promised money and because he dislikes walking under Nitocris’s corpse when he enters the city. Once inside, he is greeted with these words: “Only a terribly greedy person would open the tombs of the dead.”31 Herodotus calls Nitocris’s tomb a “trick” or “deceit” (apatē), but the story also celebrates her ingenuity and portrays Darius as a hypocrite. Darius, who would not be seen in public passing through the gates under Nitocris’s tomb, is willing to violate it by night. Nitocris, on the other hand, subverts her greedy successor from the grave.32
The contrast between Nitocris’s and Darius’s intentions in carrying out their erga provides the background for the next story in the series. This one concerns Cyrus, Darius’s predecessor and the famous founder of the Persian empire. Herodotus reports that Cyrus, like Xerxes, punishes (1.190.1: etisato) the River Gyndus for obstructing him and killing one of his sacred horses, dividing the river into 360 channels (1.189).33 Although Nitocris also diverts rivers, her goal is to defend her people. Cyrus, on the other hand, aims only to satisfy his injured pride. Like Darius, who opened Nitocris’s tomb for the wrong reasons, Cyrus’s arrogance provokes him to alter the Gyndus. Although Cyrus and Nitocris both change the course of rivers, the difference in their motivations is crucial.34
The
