Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians,
by Rosaria Vignolo Munson
The CHS team is very pleased to announce the online publication of Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians, by Rosaria Vignolo Munson on the CHS website. (available for purchase in print through Harvard University Press).
In Greek thought, barbaroi are utterers of unintelligible or inarticulate sounds. What importance does the text of Herodotus’s Histories attribute to language as a criterion of ethnic identity? The answer to this question illuminates the empirical foundations of Herodotus’s pluralistic worldview. The first translator of cultures also translates, describes, and evaluates foreign speech to a degree unparalleled by other Greek ancient authors. For Herodotus, language is an area of interesting but surprisingly unproblematic difference, which he offers to his audience as a model for coming to terms in a neutral way with other, more emotionally charged, cultural differences.
Rosaria Munson is Professor of Classics at Swarthmore College.
Readers interested in this work may also like to read:
- Gregory Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The lyric possession of an epic past
- Alexander Hollmann, The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus’ Histories
- Katharina Wesselmann, Mythical Structures in Herodotus’ Histories
Newest full-text publications online for free from CHS:
- Gregory Nagy, Masterpieces of Metonymy: From Ancient Greek Times to Now
- James Bradley Wells, Pindar’s Verbal Art: An Enthnographic Study of Epinician Style
- Sarah Hitch, King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad