topography of Scythia and the nomadic ways of its inhabitants, both of which are described at some
length. Since the territory contains many rivers, there is no need for the Scythians to build fixed
settlements near a reliable source of water and, since their land is flat, they have become accomplished
horsemen and can easily outrun any attackers. Characteristically, however, Herodotus combines this
naturalistic explanation for the Scythians’ ability to frustrate Darius’ invasion with suggestions that Darius
has angered the gods with his presumptuous designs on Europe when he was already master of Asia.

Books and Readers

What Herodotus has done, then, is to attempt to reconcile, in one prose narrative of epic proportions, an
historical account that applies the most advanced, “scientific” thinking and a more standard form of
explanation, in terms of the traditional anthropomorphic gods, of a sort that is normally found in works of
Greek poetry. The very fact that Herodotus writes in prose is itself a departure, and is an indication of the
“analytical” character of his work. For the predominant means of literary expression before Herodotus’
time was in verse, as in the heroic poetry of Homer or the more recently developed poetic genre of Attic
tragedy. Prose had been used, but never on such a vast scale, by the early Ionian philosophers to
communicate their scientific theories and occasionally by others for other purposes. It is only in the fifth
century that we begin to see the development of prose as a frequent vehicle for literary and technical
expression. One of the reasons for this is the increasing (but still relatively limited) level of literacy in
Greece. Prior to this time, poetry, even if it existed in written form, was disseminated largely in
performance rather than in writing: Epic poems were recited either by the poets themselves or by
professional performers known as “rhapsodes,” lyric poetry was composed for performance by an
individual or a chorus, and tragic poetry was intended for a mass audience in the theater. With increased
literacy, it became more usual for works of literature to be read by individuals in private, rather than to be
experienced in common with other members of the community.

This, in turn, had an effect on the character of what was written, and we begin to see a division between
poetry, which is more suited for public performance because its metrical form allows it to be more easily
remembered, and prose, which can forgo the fancier trappings of verse, particularly when it is intended
for a more limited and more solitary audience. Thus we hear of technical and theoretical treatises being
written in prose in the middle of the fifth century BC – the treatises themselves have for the most part not
survived – on such specialized subjects as medicine, music, architecture, city planning, and sculpture. The
development of prose literature, however, was slow and gradual, and it should not be thought that there
was a sharp distinction between largely “oral” poetry and largely “written” prose. Both poetry and prose
were normally written down in the fifth century BC and both were, to a certain degree, “oral” as well. To
begin with, reading a written text in ancient Greece, even if the reader was completely isolated from other
people, was generally done out loud. Such graphic conventions as punctuation, division between words,
accent marks, and the distinction between upper-case and lower-case letters had not yet been invented in
the fifth century – and even much later were used only intermittently (see figure 26) – so that it was often
necessary for the reader to “sound out” the words of a text in order to interpret it correctly. In addition,
even works of prose could on occasion be performed as display pieces, and we are in fact told that
Herodotus recited portions of his history in public. In any event, the essentially oral nature of Herodotus’
work is apparent from its structure, which some readers today find difficult to follow, precisely because
we are no longer accustomed to listening to large-scale oral narratives. Herodotus’ narrative does not
proceed in a straight chronological sequence but is interrupted by frequent and sometimes quite lengthy
digressions. But Herodotus could count on the fact that his contemporary audience, whether they read the
work to themselves or heard it recited, would be able to keep the sequence of events securely in their