Herodotus and the Presocratics

Scarlett Kingsley joins me in the Lesche to discuss Herodotus' place in the intellectual milieu of the fifth century, the subject of her book Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century BCE.

If you enjoy this episode, you might also like Episode 11 on The Sophists, with Josh Billings and Christopher Moore.

Ancient texts

• Herodotus, Histories (especially the meeting between Solon and Croesus at 1.30-33, and the Constitutional Debate set in Persia at 3.80-82)
• Aristophanes, Clouds
• Euripides, Phoenissae
• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
• Hippias, Synagoge (non-extant)
• Dissoi logoi
• Scattered references to many fifth-century thinkers

Also mentioned

• Dewald, C. (1987) "Narrative Surface and Authorial Voice in Herodotus' Histories," Arethusa 20: 147-68.
• Diels, H. and W. Kranz (1951-52), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch (6 vols.). Berlin.
• Laks, A. and G. Most (2016), Early Greek Philosophy (9 vols.). Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA and London. 
• Carolyn Miller's work on genre
• Nestle, W. (1908) Herodots Verhältnis zur Philosophie und Sophistik. Stuttgart.
• Thomas, R. (2002) Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge.

About our guest

Scarlett Kingsley is an Associate Professor of Classics at Agnes Scott College. Her research explores the intersections of early Greek historiography and philosophy, with a particular focus on Herodotus, Thucydides, and the Presocratics. Her first monograph, Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century, was supported by a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship. She is also the co-editor, with G. Monti and T. Rood, of The Authoritative Historian: Tradition and Innovation in Ancient Historiography (CUP, 2022). She is currently co-writing a book with Tim Rood entitled Land, Wealth, and Empire in Herodotus: Reading the End of the Histories (forthcoming, OUP).

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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

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