Title: The Man Who Invented History – Travels with Herodotus
Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: John Murray, 2009 (First)
ISBN: 9780719567131
Pages: 333
Legend is a collection of traditions handed across generations in oral form while history is a collection of traditions transmitted in the written form. This is a very loose interpretation or definition of the state of things as far as these two ideas are concerned. How did history originate? Hagiographies aside, we have a clear source of the description of past events and a resourceful attempt to pinpoint the reasons that led to specific events. Herodotus, also known as the Father of History, was a Greek geographer and historian who compiled a history of the Greco-Persian wars in the fifth century BCE. In it, he examined what prompts a king or a country to go to war and comes up with the famous axiom that 'no one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace. In peace, sons bury fathers, but in war, fathers bury sons'. Justin Marozzi is an English journalist, historian and travel writer who offers easily and pleasantly readable travel histories. In this book, he retraces the travels of Herodotus into Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece and provides a re-reading of the ancient Greek historian in the changed intellectual setting of the modern era and finds that Herodotus is still relevant, perhaps even more so, than in the centuries that had gone.
Herodotus' book 'The Histories' is a chronological history of the Persian wars, of kings like Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes. It also consists of hundreds of digressions some of which are not relevant to the storyline, but consciously incorporated to titillate the audience because Herodotus told his story in front of groups of his countrymen. 'The Histories' is somewhat huge and with full of digressions, containing illicit eroticism, sex, love, violence, crime, strange customs of foreign peoples, imagined scenes in royal bedrooms, flashbacks, dream sequences, geographical speculations, natural history, short stories and Greek myths. It's history as well as a page-turner (p. 6). The book includes rich samplings of these asides. Still, the original is beyond the reach of Marozzi as it contains stories about 'life-saving dolphins, multiple testicle slicers, other-worldly animals, beard-growing priestesses' and so on. Herodotus acknowledges the fantastical nature of his narrative and confesses that 'I am obliged to record the things I am told, but I am certainly not required to believe them'. Moreover, he wrote in prose. In an era when poetry was the ultimate form of literary expression, Herodotus mastered prose. History is often said to show warnings to present society on the logic that 'if one understands the past, he will be able to avoid making the same mistake twice'. Marozzi deems this to be one of history's most enduring illusions.
Herodotus' historiography, as reported by the author, is rather straightforward. He relied for his historical enquiries on the priests, with whom he appears to have checked in on every trip. He introduced the concept of cities rising and falling as time goes on and of empires coming and going. It was a penetrating observation when history itself was in its infancy. Herodotus is the quintessential travel writer and historian and travel writing has a long and distinguished tradition of artifice and exaggeration which is abundantly exhibited by his works. What makes Herodotus' works stand apart is the supreme ideal of religious tolerance in his narrative at a time before the region was filled with the monotheistic bigotry of the Abrahamic faiths. Castigating the Persian King Cambyses who desecrated Egyptian temples after conquering the land, he remarks: "Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things" (p. 95). Herodotus was the first to record so much details about Egypt which provided the world with the greatest store of information about the country until the nineteenth century. He devoted an enormous chunk of his book 'Histories' to Egypt. He describes about the 'opposites', how everything about Egypt is completely different from the rest of the world such as its writing system that goes from the right to left, the practice of circumcision, and priests shaving their heads. But there is nothing scornful or dismissive in the narrative or in his tone. The richness and diversity of human life is something to be cherished, not to fear or despise, he seems to say. What Herodotus said about Greece is not much dwelt upon, even though the author has spent a considerable time there. He contents with the remark that a new era of Athenian democracy and the golden era of Greece was dawning at the time Herodotus lived and observed.
Marozzi travels to Turkey, Iraq, Egypt and Greece and retrace the travels of the ancient Greek historian. He visited Bodrum in Turkey which was Herodotus' birthplace that was known as Halicarnassus at that time. At every place, the author visits local scholars and archaeologists to assess how Herodotus is still relevant to the local society. His visit to Babylon in Iraq coincided with the US invasion against Saddam's 'weapons of mass destruction' and the Iraqi society was on the boil. He spends a tense time there expecting a terror attack every time he steps out of the International Green Zone. He compares Bush's war to Xerxes' against Greece which he undertook repudiating the sage advice of his uncle to his cost. Egypt was safe, but again they 'are religious to excess, beyond any other nation in the world' as observed by Herodotus 2500 years ago. He further points out the moral decay in Egyptian society. On Greece, the author notes democracy as a significant feature of Greece then as well as now. The fact that democracy established itself in Greece but lost out to monarchy in Persia, is thought of as a defining feature of the Hellenic spirit. Two and a half millennia later, Greeks are still passionate about their democracy. They go on strike or do a protest march at the drop of a hat.
Quite obviously, Herodotus was constantly interested in religion as he is fascinated with how two civilizations with different customs come to confront each other in wars. It was like this in the fifth century BCE and it still is, in the twenty-first century except that it is the Greek Orthodox Church which serves as the bastion of Greek identity against the encroaches of Islam from the East. This being so, Marozzi displays an evident asymmetry while handling the two religions. While he maintains a respectful silence towards Islam in spite of the horrifying instances of terrorism that was running rampant around him at the time of his visit, he mocks the Greek Orthodox Church and makes fun of it in every possible way. This goes even to the extent of body-shaming senior clergy as in one instance he describes a high priest as 'a man who could eat half a cow, a couple of chickens, a side of ham and still have room for baklava and ice cream' (p. 314). But in Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, he is a disciplined school boy who does not waver from the obedient line when Islamic practices are concerned. They are never criticised and not even their perceived shortcomings are pointed out even though he has met activists in all these places. Marozzi takes particular care not to revisit the Ottoman occupation of Greece that was ended only in 1832. The centuries of Turkish dominance were a devastating period in Greek history that saw enslavement of the people to their Muslim overlords. This background must be kept in mind while evaluating the Greeks' attitude to Turkey. Without narrating this crucial backdrop, the author criticises Greeks' natural animosity against Turks who occupied them for five centuries and nearly wiped out its culture. He introduces the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and a right-wing politician who accuse the Turks as barbarians as intolerant individuals and their outlook uncivilized even though they clarify that what they mean is those Turks who actually took part in the atrocities. At the same time, he joins a protest march organised by Left student unions against the 'imperialist' policies of America and Britain, which is the author's own country. This protest burned violent in the end and clashed with the police. Wokes seem to be anti-national everywhere.
It is evident from the text that the author fancies himself as a modern-day Herodotus, the Father of History. He faithfully follows the master in his footsteps and even tries to imitate the tropes which were used to attract readers' attention. Unfortunately, he does not live up to the reputation of his celebrated role model except in making some explicit and suggestive descriptions of erotic situations. Marozzi's obsession with erotic passages in Herodotus' narrative makes the book unrecommendable to general readers. Of course, this is subjective and relative too. There are people who would enjoy them. The reason for including so much of them in the book seems to be the same as that of the original - to keep the readers or listeners amused. The author plays some tricks to extrapolate them to modern times. Herodotus speaks of a strange Babylonian custom where every woman must go to the temple of Aphrodite once in her life and sit there till a stranger comes to have intercourse with her. Then she can go home. Herodotus slyly notes that some unattractive ones have to linger for three or four years to get the chance. Here Marozzi takes over and informs us that the Polish archaeologist blonde who guided him at Babylon 'would not have had to hang around for so long'! As part of following the Herodotean tradition of recording strange events, this book witnesses the exorcism of a woman in an Orthodox Church in Thessaloniki by a priest. The interesting part is that the woman was a doctor. However, this may be doubted to have been a deliberate inclusion to accentuate the cultural backwardness of modern Greece and to stress the author's perception that it does not inherit the intellectual efflorescence of ancient Greece. This is unfortunate because the author was helped to the extreme by Greek cooperation while travelling the country and its warm hospitality is repaid like this.
The book is recommended only to serious readers of history.
Rating: 2 Star
