Herodotus and the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ in the Nineteenth Century
Recent discussions about the great battles of the Persian Wars presume that the idea that ‘despotic’ Eastern and ‘free’ Western civilization are destined to clash was born 2500 years ago, in Herodotus’ Histories. This paper rejects any such claims to continuity in European thinking about these Wars, and shows that for centuries, readers of The Histories were quite unconcerned with this line of thought. Even in the nineteenth century, when a ‘Whiggish’ reading of the Wars came to the fore, many continued to find other aspects of Herodotus’ work more interesting, and contested the Whiggish view. The paper concludes with a discussion of the myriad audiences for ancient history in the nineteenth century, and the legacy of diverse orientations and fascinations they left behind.
Suzanne L. Marchand is the Boyd Professor of History at Louisiana State University. Now writing a book about the history of Herodotus’ many readers, 1700 to the present, tentatively titled Herodotus and the Instabilities of Western Civilization, Suzanne Marchand continues to be interested in the history of the humanities, especially classical studies, art history, anthropology, history, and theology in modern Europe, as well as in the history of porcelain and related topics in the history of material culture and consumption in Central Europe.