Ian Oliver | Session 2 of the Battle of Plataea Conference
Channel: The Center for Hellenic Studies
Date: 2022-06-29

The Other Greeks: Toward Understanding the Plataea Narrative’s Compositional Context(s)

Ian Oliver (Regis University)

Drawing on the theory that Herodotus’s composition of the Histories was greatly affected by his participation in a culture of oral performance, I will propose that the Plataea narrative’s disproportionately positive portrayal of not only Athens, but also Phocis and Macedon, can best be explained by the narrative’s origins in an early stage of the Histories’ pre-publication, possibly dating back as far as the mid-5th century BCE and the context of the First Peloponnesian War.