herodotus Archives • https://goyrownway.com/tag/herodotus/ Charting the Sea Lanes to Global Awareness, Global Mobility and Freedom of Thought Thu, 12 Dec 2024 14:43:28 +0000 en hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://goyrownway.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cropped-GYOW_Favicon_Web_072ppi-32x32.png herodotus Archives • https://goyrownway.com/tag/herodotus/ 32 32 Did Herodotus See “The Suppliants”? https://goyrownway.com/did-herodotus-see-the-suppliants/ Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:01:57 +0000 https://goyrownway.com/?p=687 Herodotus had a few theories about the source of the Nile River and his least favorite was spot on. But his countryman Aeschylus already seems to have known the correct answer, and gave it in his play "The Suppliants" 23 years earlier, yet Herodotus seems none the wiser.

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]]> Aeschylus, 463 BC (The Suppliants):
  • “Where, fed from far-off snows, Life-giving Nilus flows…”
Herodotus, 440 BC (The Histories, 23 years later):
  • “The third explanation, which is very much more plausible than either of the others, is positively the furthest from the truth; for there is really nothing in what it says, any more than in the other theories. It is, that the inundation of the Nile is caused by the melting of snows.”
Whereupon we must posit that Herodotus either:
  • didn’t see the Aeschylus play “The Suppliants”,
  • slept through the key scene or
  • didn’t believe the playwright’s explanation.

Yes, Herodotus, there is that much snow in the world, though I envy you your Mediterranean climate, the mysteries to solve and the time and resources you had to go your own way and see the world as you knew it.

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