Herodotus on Lydia
Herodotus’ narrative on Lydia takes up almost one half of Book I of his Histories and the section dealing with King Croesus is among the best-known and often anthologized. The last section, in which he discusses Lydian women as prostitutes, is not as well-known but continues a criticism of the region earlier reserved only for its king.
Herodotus (l. c. 484-425/413 BCE) visited Lydia in the course of his travels and provides an account in I.6-I.94 of Histories. In the last two chapters, he describes the women of Lydia as prostitutes who sell themselves to build up a dowry for marriage and then discusses how this relates to the famous Tomb of Alyattes before moving on to a discussion of how the Lydians reacted to famine by playing distracting games and some of them relocating and changing their names.
His description of the young women of Lydia as prostitutes is thought to be accurate as the same is mentioned by Strabo (l. c. 64 - c. 24 CE) and Aelian (l. 175-235 CE) – Strabo at 11.14.16 of his Geography and Aelian at 4.1 of his Histories – regarding other cultures. Strabo references Herodotus as accurate and, at 5.2.3, also supports Herodotus’ claims below (I.94) on the Tyrsenians changing their name from Lydians after leaving the region.
Scholar Irene-Evangelia Georgiou, and others, however, have noted how Herodotus seems to use the description of the Tomb of Alyattes, and how it was funded primarily from prostitution, to encourage a sense of superiority among his Greek readers at the Lydians’ expense. He writes at I.94, “Now the Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Hellenes, with the exception that they prostitute their female children” and then continues on, having already described the practice, without further commentary.
This silence on Herodotus’ part here has led some scholars, including Georgiou, to surmise that, in his last two chapters on Lydia, Herodotus is not-so-subtly suggesting Greek superiority in a way that is not apparent elsewhere in his work. As Georgiou notes, “Herodotus' implication is that the Greek way is the right way” in that, however wealthy and prosperous Lydia may have been, they still engaged in a practice that Greeks would reject as shameful (201). While this may be true, Herodotus’ criticism of Lydia is not reserved for the last two chapters of his narrative. It actually begins in I.6, continues all the way through, and is only overlooked because, for most of the account, it is directed at Croesus.
Herodotus on Croesus
Herodotus spends most of his time on the reign of Croesus between I.6-I.92 and, midway through I.6, seems to hint at how he will portray the Lydians to his Greek audience when he notes how “Croesus was the first non-Greek to have subjected Greeks to the payment of tribute.” He moves on from this point to his now-famous narrative of the Mermnad Dynasty (c. 700-546 BCE) and its fall. This sentence on tribute may mean little to a modern-day reader but, to Herodotus’ Greek audience, it would have been a reminder of the subjugation of the Ionian Greeks by Croesus whose story is then told in an unflattering light beginning with the first king of the Mermnad Dynasty.
The dynasty was founded by Gyges (r. c. 680-645 BCE) who had assassinated the last king of the Heracliade Dynasty, Candaules. Gyges, who had been Candaules’ bodyguard, had been forced by the king to hide in the royal bedchambers so he could secretly see the queen naked and corroborate Candaules’ claim that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. The queen noticed him, however, and, humiliated at having a bodyguard see her unclothed, offered him the choice of helping her avenge herself on her husband, as she recognized he had come up with the scheme, or being executed on the spot. Gyges chose survival, killed the king, married his widow, and assumed the throne.
Gyges and his successors Ardys (r. 644-637 BCE) and Sadyattes (r. 637 - c. 635 BCE) all died fighting Cimmerian raiders who were continuously sacking Lydian settlements. The Cimmerians were defeated by Alyattes (r. c. 635-585 BCE) father of Croesus (r. 560-546 BCE), who becomes Herodotus’ focus for the first part of Book I of the Histories. Under Alyattes, the first coins in the world were minted – made of electrum – while under the reign of Croesus, they were minted of gold.
After a power struggle with his stepbrother Pantaleon, Croesus took the throne and began systematically conquering the Greek city-states of Asia Minor. Once he had subdued Ionia, he then drew up treaties with the island cities off the coast in the Aegean and profited from these alliances in exacting tribute. From Herodotus’ mention of Croesus subjecting Greeks to payment of tribute in I.6, through his description of Croesus’ harsh military tactics in his war with the Greek colony of Miletus in I.17 and his predecessors’ tactics in I.18-I.25, his interview with the Greek lawgiver Solon the Wise (I.29-I.33) and on through I.94, Croesus – as well as his predecessors – are depicted as graceless and scheming tyrants while the Greeks, epitomized by the Solon meeting, are shown as wise and thoughtful. Croesus, as the central character of the narrative, is regularly shown as dull-witted, malicious, and greedy.
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