352 Rosaria Vignolo Munson
by their king’s participation in the frenzied Bacchic rituals. It is ridiculous, they say, “to go
and find a god who drives people mad” (4.79.3). The reason why Herodotus’ Greek audi-
ences, in this case, would have been able to identify with the contempt that foreigners
have for one of their own Greek customs is that, although Dionysiac cult was tradi-
tional and integrated at a Panhellenic level (not to mention, as modern scholars know,
historically ancient), the Greeks always articulated it as somewhat foreign and strange
(see, e.g., Euripides,Bacchae). Herodotus himself testifies to this attitude when he says
that the rites of Dionysus are, for the Greeks, a recent acquisition that is not entirely
consonant(
,
oμóτρoπα) with Greek ways (2.49).Conclusion
What Herodotus teaches us through the case of Scyles, he expresses in general terms with
the phrase “custom is king of all” (νóμoςπαντων βασιλέ υς́ ), attached to a paradigmatic
narrative that represents the disgust with which Greeks and Callatian Indians regard each
other’s funeral customs (3.38.4). Indeed, Herodotus’ entire theory of ethnicity may be
covered by this principle if we pay attention to its multiple meanings. Herodotus accul-
turates ancestry and shows thatnomoi—in the sense of beliefs, shared history, practices,
and institutions—are conservative but also changeable, so that what count are the differ-
ences that exist among societies at a given time. He accustoms his audiences to cultural
difference, and bombards us with its specifics until we are forced to recognize its nor-
malcy. However, at the same time, and this is my more important point, he also obliges
us to deal with the challenges that difference entails. And they are these: members of
any given society prefer their own customs to those of others and, indeed, may be even
repelled by the customs of others. Even Herodotus gives himself permission to express
dislike for foreign customs, while also making it clear that he is aware of the subjectivity
and relativity of his opinion (2.64.1–2):
Almost all other men in the world, except for Egyptians and Greeks, have sexual relations
in temples and enter a temple after having sex without washing first, since they believe that
humanbeingsarelikeotheranimals....Thisishowtheyexplainwhattheydo,butIdonot
like it(εμ’ ́oιγεoυ’κ
,
αρεστά).On the other hand, his absolute disapproval sometimes also needs to come into play, in
the case of practices that are, in his view, objectively cruel or oppressive (1.199.1):
The most shameful (α’ ́ıσχιστoς) among Babylonian customs is this, that every local woman is
obliged once in her life to go sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have sex with a strange man.The distinction between unjustified and legitimate contempt remains controversial, but
the way in which Herodotus has formulated the phenomenon in some ways anticipates
modern attempts to reconcile relativism and universalism and the (utterly unresolved)
problematic issue of what we would now call “cultural rights” versus “human rights”
(Cowan, Dembour, and Wilson 2001).