The Audiences of Herodotus: Oral Performance and the Major Battle Narratives

By recognizing the pervasive influence that Herodotuss career as an oral performer had on his composition of the Histories, The Audiences of Herodotus: Oral Performance and the Battle Narratives argues that the Histories versions of the three most important battles in the Persian Warsthe battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataeapersistently and disproportionately advance the interests, biases, and political agendas of distinct audiences in the mid-fifth century, well before Herodotus assembled his famous work of history as it survives to us. The Salamis and Plataea narratives reflect a mid-century audience of Athenians and their allies; the Thermopylae narrative reflects an Amphictyonic audience gathered at the Pythian Festival. Ian Oliver concludes that, as a participant in a culture of wisdom performance (epideixis), Herodotus originally composed short, ideologically motivated performance pieces that he intended to promote tendentious reinterpretations of these momentous events, then relied on these narratives when he composed his final text: the unitary Histories.