Herodotus and Ethnicity 343Alexander, at any rate, somehow persuaded the committee that he was Greek by
descent. Descent, or being “of the same blood” (
́,
oμαιμoν), is a basic criterion of
Greekness, the first in a list given by the Athenians in a famous passage (8.144.2)
in which they explain to the Spartans the reasons that compel them to resist Persia.
Paramount among them is “...the fact of being Greek, which means being of the
same blood and language, and having common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and
similar values” (...τoEλληνικ’ óν, , εoν
́,
oμαιμóντεκα`ι
,
oμóγλωσσoν,κα`ιθεων~,
ιδρυματ́ ά
τε κoινακα` `ιθ휐σíαι
, ́
ηθεατέ
,
oμóτρoπα ...). Coincidentally, only a few pages before this
speech, Herodotus has returned, as he had promised at 5.22.1, to the topic of the
origin of the Macedonian royal house (8.137–9). Here, however, Herodotus is mainly
concerned with the tradition according to which, seven generations earlier, Alexander’s
ancestor, Perdiccas, won the kingship of Macedonia after he and his brothers had
been exiled from their native Argos. On the topic of ancestry, he only states that this
Perdiccas was descended from the Heraclid Temenos, without adding anything in the
way of evidence, testimony, or argument. He gives the line of descent from Perdiccas
to Alexander (139), but does not trace the intervening genealogy from Temenos to
Perdiccas. This may not be surprising, except that the issue is dismissed more casually
than the passage in Book 5 might have led us to expect. Why is that?
Ethnicity among the Greeks
The answer to that question and the means for better understanding Herodotus’ overar-
ching ideological purposes are no doubt embedded in those passages where Herodotus
does in fact underscore the difficulties of delineating ethnicity. Let us take the case of
the Macedonian kings as the dividing line between Greeks and non-Greeks and examine
Herodotus’ views on ethnicity on either side of that line, first within the Greek world
and then among barbarian peoples. The definition of Greekness provided at 8.144.2
has been assiduously analyzed by modern scholars and subjected to all sorts of quali-
fications (Polinskaya 2010). According to Jonathan Hall (1997: 44–5, 2002: 190–1),
it represents an innovation by Herodotus himself, because it emphasizes the cultural
aspects of ethnicity side by side the more traditional criterion represented by kinship.
Others have pointed out, however, that it cannot automatically be taken as Herodotus’
own thought, since it occurs in a speech—and moreover in a speech within an ironical
context (Thomas 2001: 214–25). Here, the Athenians vow to the Spartans that they
will never accept the Persian offer to sign a separate peace treaty because, among other
things, they would never betray their common Greekness, defined in the way we have
seen. Yet, only a few pages later, they declare themselves ready to negotiate with the king
and even march against their fellow Greeks if that alliance should so require (9.11.2)—a
turnaround that would have no doubt reminded Herodotus’ audiences of how Athens
changed from savior to oppressor after the Persian Wars (Fornara 1971: 84–7). Hence,
on the one hand, Herodotus signals that the fiction of a “united Greece” represents only
a half-truth—one of the many we hear voiced by Herodotean speakers. On the other
hand, the fact that he is here unmasking the connection the Athenians assume between