This story supports the Greek notion that PUNISHMENT for the crimes of a FAMILY or community can be inflicted on subsequent generations (see Gagné 2013, 296–306).
The Athenians’ execution of Aneristus and Nicolaus is the latest event explicitly and unambiguously mentioned by Herodotus and has often been viewed as a terminus post quem for the “publication” and/or final composition of the Histories. However, allusions to even later events have been posited, and recently it has been argued that Herodotus does, in fact, refer to an event of 413 in Book 9 (Irwin 2013a). Some scholars see the references to Aneristus’ exploit at Halieis and to his and Nicolaus’ deaths as later additions to the text by the author himself, as revealed by perceived rough edges in the Greek syntax (Wilson 2015, 139).
SEE ALSO: Aneristus father of Sperthias; Athens and Herodotus; Date of Composition; Nicolaus father of Bulis; Reciprocity; Treachery
REFERENCES
1 Gagné, Renaud. 2013. Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2 Irwin, Elizabeth. 2013a. “‘The hybris of Theseus’ and the Date of the Histories.” In Herodots Quellen—Die Quellen Herodots, edited by Boris Dunsch and Kai Ruffing, 7–84. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
3 Macan, Reginald Walter. 1908. Herodotus: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Books. 2 vols. London: Macmillan. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
4 Wilson, N. G. 2015. Herodotea. Studies on the Text of Herodotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
FURTHER READING
1 Irwin, Elizabeth. 2013b. “The Significance of Talthybius’ Wrath (Hdt. 7.133–7).” In Herodots Wege des Erzählens: Logos und Topos in den Historien, edited by Klaus Geus, Elisabeth Irwin, and Thomas Poiss, 223–60. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
ANGER
DOUGLAS CAIRNS
University of Edinburgh
Anger comes in a number of forms in the Histories—as cholos (the primary term in HOMER), as orgē and thymos (the regular terms in Herodotus’ own day), occasionally also as mēnis. The latter is normally used of GODS (7.197.3) or HEROES (7.134.1, 137.1–2; 9.94.2), but may also be used of humans (e.g., 7.229.2, 9.7.β.2). Thymos and orgē are occasionally used interchangeably (3.34.3/3.35.1), as are orgē and cholos (1.114.5/1.118.1). As in other authors, both orgē and thymos have wider meanings (e.g., orgē as “temperament,” 6.128.1; thymos as “spirit” or “COURAGE,” 1.120.3 etc.; as DESIRE, 1.1.4 etc.; or as “mind” or “heart,” 1.84.4 etc.); but anger is a regular and focal sense. The phrase deinon poieisthai (“considering it terrible”) normally refers to anger or indignation. Other terms (enkotos, lypē, nemesis, phthonos) also occasionally come into play in anger scenarios.
For ARISTOTLE, anger’s motivation is the desire for redress (timōria) following an unwarranted slight (Rh. 1378a30–31), or the desire to return pain for pain (De an. 403a29–30). Given that forms of retribution and retaliation loom so large in the Histories as aspects of CAUSATION and MOTIVATION, anger is one of the work’s most prominent EMOTIONS. The characteristic link between anger and slights, i.e., dishonor, is as clear in Herodotus as elsewhere: at 1.114.5 it is the HYBRIS his son suffered at the hands of Cyrus (as yet unrecognized) that provokes the Mede ARTEMBARES’ orgē; this is a loss of HONOR (timē) that Artembares’ king, ASTYAGES, wishes to make good (1.115.1), but he himself then experiences cholos at the insubordination of his retainer, Harpagus, in failing to expose the infant Cyrus in the first place (1.118.1). The sister of LYCOPHRON, son of the Corinthian tyrant, PERIANDER, describes her brother’s persistence in anger as “love of honor” (philotimia)—a stupid attitude, in her eyes (3.53.4).
Anger is regularly elicited by personal slights and features prominently in rivalries between persons and communities. It is PEISISTRATUS’ disrespectful treatment of the daughter of MEGACLES (II) that arouses Megacles’ orgē (1.61.2). DARIUS I’s implication that the SCYTHIANS are his slaves excites their kings’ orgē (4.128.1). The Sicilian tyrant, GELON, claims the moral high ground by publicly disavowing the thymos that the Spartans’ atimiē and hybris warrants (7.158.4, 160.1), but he is in fact indignant (deinon poieisthai, 7.163.1) at the idea that he, as tyrant of SYRACUSE, should be under their command. Deinon poieisthai is used repeatedly in scenarios in which agents present it as beneath their dignity to be thought inferior or unfavorably compared to those who are not in fact their superiors (1.127.1; 4.147.3; 5.42.2; 8.15.1, 16.2, 93.2). In a similar way, the Spartans are indignant at the idea of sharing their civic status with a non‐Spartan (9.33.5—which they did only in this one exceptional case, 9.35.1). Like all forms of anger in Herodotus, this can be taken to EXTREMES: the Persian commander, ARTAŸNTES, is so enraged (deinon poieisthai) at being called “worse than a woman” by XERXES’ brother, MASISTES, that he draws his sword and tries to kill him (9.107.2); the plan of ZOPYRUS (1) to mutilate himself in order to capture BABYLON for Darius is motivated by his indignation that ASSYRIANS should mock the Persians (3.155.2). This concern for the honor of one’s state or nation is widespread, both in individuals and in the groups to which they belong, so that (for example) it is cholos towards each other as long‐standing enemies that determines the policy of both the Thessalians and the Phocians towards PERSIA in 480 BCE (8.27.1, 31).
No doubt most if not all of these angry individuals and communities considered themselves justified. Herodotus’ narrative often seems to suggest that anger is warranted, for example, EUENIUS’ heroic mēnis (9.94.2) and indignation (deinon poieisthai, 9.94.3) at being first blinded, then cheated by his fellow‐citizens. And because anger in Greek is typically represented as a response to gratuitous harm (“negative reciprocity”: Sahlins 1972), even purely interpersonal cases can be associated with ideas of “justice.” Thus Darius’ orgē at the Eretrians (6.119.1) encompasses the notion that they took the initiative in harming him and thus committed adikia. Just as no one in Persia can be executed for only a single offense, so a master may not do irrevocable harm to a slave for a single offense; but if a slave’s adikēmata outweigh his services, then the master may give vent to his thymos (1.137.1). The Spartan judicial decision to hand over their king, LEOTYCHIDES II, to the Aeginetans for PUNISHMENT is questioned by one Spartan, taken in orgē as it was (6.85.2).
On the whole, however, it is extreme, irrational, and pathological forms of anger that make the greatest impression. CYAXARES’ humiliation of his Scythian protégés, out of anger (orgē) at their failure to bring anything home from the hunt, leads them, in their indignation, to invite Cyaxares to a cannibal feast (1.73.4–5). Extreme anger is one of the ways in which the powerful abuse their position. This is true not only of kings (who must be approached with caution, 4.97.2), but also of subordinate figures such as the Persian, MEGABATES, who, furious to find that one of the allied ships under his command has been left unguarded, has the captain bound half‐in and half‐out of one of the oar‐holes (and is then just as furious when ARISTAGORAS [1] sets the man free: 5.33.2–4). But the classic examples involve such prototypes of the insane oriental despot as CAMBYSES (II), whose outbursts of extreme anger Herodotus repeatedly represents as merely some among the many examples of his MADNESS (e.g., 3.37.1; cf. Harris 2001, 230). In one account of his MURDER of his wife, Cambyses’ fury (thymos) at her frankness leads him to jump on her so that she miscarries and dies (3.32.4). Angered by his officer PREXASPES’ suggestion that his only weakness is love of WINE, he sets about demonstrating his sanity by shooting Prexaspes’ son through the heart (3.34–35). This elicits from his adviser,
