A Fragment of the "Assyrioi logoi" [Greek] of Herodotos Huxley, George Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1965; 6, 3; ProQuest pg. 207

A Fragment of the 'AcrcrUPIOl AOYOl 
of Herodotos 

George Huxley 

I N THE Historia Animalium Aristotle remarks: TO: p.Ev ovv yap.!fwvvxa • 
D'" , "\A' ~ " I ., ('\\' Kava7TEp EtpTJTat '1TpOTEPOV. ws a7TI\WS Et7TELV a7TOTa 7Tap.'1TaV ECTTtv a/\/\ 

t 'R ' ~ t ,,~ , \ \ A , , ~ O'LOUOS TJyvon TOVTO' 7TE7TOLTJKE yap TOV TT}S p.aVTnas 7TpOEUpOV 
, , • ~ (' , ~ \ \ \ , \ 1I.T' , ) 1 

aEroV EV 111 OLTJYTJCTEL TTl 7TEpL TT}V 7TOI\t0pKLaV TTJV 1. v tvOV 7TLVOJITa • 

'HCT~OSOS alii: ~pOSOTOS Da(Vaticanus 262). '1TpoeSpov: '1TpoueSpov 
P(Vaticanus 1339). -'!u{yovos Gutschmid (Kleine Schriften II [Leipzig 
1890] 119). K-rrW£cxs Schoell. 'HpoSwpos Th. Bergk (Griechische Literatur 
geschichte IV [Berlin 1887] 258 n.66). 

Bergk alternatively suggested that the story came from the Hesiodic 
'OpvLBop.aVTe{a, but since Nineveh fell to Kyaxares the Mede in 612 B.C., 

it is most unlikely that Hesiod, who is reasonably supposed to have 
flourished about a century earlier,2 mentioned the capture. Nor is a 
poem masquerading as Hesiod's likely to have persuaded Aristotle 
that Hesiod described the fall of Nineveh: for Aristotle dated Homer, 
who was usually thought to have been a contemporary of Hesiod,a to 
the time of the Ionian migration,4 long before Nineveh fell. The read­
ing 'HCTlooos cannot therefore be accepted here. 

If' H CTloSos is not to be read, then it does not follow that' HPOOOTOS is 
correct, and H. Stein in his remarks upon the 'AaavpLOL AOYOL of 
Herodotos left the matter undecided.5 A. SchoeH, however, suggested 
that Aristotle may have written KTTJalas here,6 and it is true that a 
portent of a drinking eagle may have appealed to the mentality of the 
Knidian. But we happen to possess substantial excerpts from the 
Ktesian account of the taking of Nineveh,? and there is no mention in 

1 Hist.Anim. 8.18.3 (601 b): Aristoteles ed. Bekker IV (Oxford 1837) 287-288. 
I H. T. Wade-Cery, Essays in Greek History (Oxford 1958) 1-16. 
I e.g. Herodotos 2.53.2. 
, [plutarch] Vita Ho»U!ri 3, quoting Aristotle, II£pl1TOt"lTtKiis Book III. 
S Herodotos' I (Berlin 1901) p. 130 on Herodotos 1.106.2 . 
• "Ueber Herodots Lebenszeit," Philologus 9 (1854) 208-209. 
7 Ktesias 688 p I, at Diodoros 2.26-27 (FGrHist vol. me pp. 447-448). 

3-G.R.B.S. 207 



208 A FRAGMENT OF THE A~~YPIOI AOrOI OF HERODOTOS 

them of the augury of the drinking eagle. According to Ktesias, an 
oracle having declared that no one would capture Nineveh unless the 
river first became hostile to the city, part of the walls were over­
thrown by a flood which enabled the Medes to enter. So we cannot 
assume that Ktesias mentioned the drinking eagle, and even if he did, 
that would not rule out the reading ·Hp68oTO~. The corruption of 
17 ,. • U , ~ • TT'~ • b • TT ,~ 
n.7"1JC1UX~ Into nC1LOOO~or npOOOTO~lS not easy, moreover, ut npOOOTO~ 
may reasonably be supposed to have been corrupted to ·Haloao~. Thus 
<Hp68oTOS, the reading of the Ms Da, which according to Dittmeyer 
(in Praefatio p. xiv to his edition) in the later books of the Historia 
Animalium alone preserves many true readings, stood in the archetype 
of our manuscripts of the Historia Animalium, and that is what Aristotle 
is most likely to have written. 

Now it is a commonplace of Herodotean literary criticism that the 
historian twice promises to explain events of Assyrian history and 
twice breaks his promise. Once (1.184) he promises to describe the 
kings who ruled over Babylon (which he took to be part of Assyria):8 

" ~'B Q ,,, , "" , "'" " Q' , '"IS o€ CXfJV"WVO~ TCXV7"1J~ 1TOI\I\OL P.EV KOV KCXL CXI\/\OL EYEVOVTO fJcxaL"EE~, 
... , "" ~A '\1 , , tl \ , , TWV €V TOLC1L aavpwLC1L "OYOLaL /LV1]p."fJV 1TOL"fJC10P.CXL, Ot TCX TELXECX TE 
., , ,<, , ~,~, - <:" h 
E1TEKOC1P."fJC1CXV Kat Ta 'pa, EV DE 0"fJ yvvaLKES OVO: t e two women, 
Semiramis and Nitokris, are mentioned (1.184-185.1), but there is no 
excursus devoted to the kings who ruled over Babylon. Earlier 
(1.106.2) he states that the Medes took Nineveh-"how they captured 
it I shall show elsewhere": Kat T~V TE Ntvov dAov (w~ 8£ ElAOV, ~V 

ET€pOLaL MyoLaL 8"fJAwaw). The promise is not fulfilled in the extant 
Histories of Herodotos, but it is remarkable, in view of the promise, 
that in the archetype of the Mss of the Historia Animalium Aristotle was 
stated to have cited Herodotos for an episode in the capture of 
Nineveh. Now Powell9 remarks, "If Aristotle wrote 'HC1lo8o~ the 
corruption 'Hp68oTO~ involves a most remarkable coincidence, where­
as if he wrote 'Hp68oTOS, the corruption 'HC1lo8o~ involves none." 

Of the other conjectures, V. Gutschmid's 'Ialyovos can be neglected, 
since Isigonos, the Nikaian author of a work llEpt a1TtaTwv, drew on 
Theophrastos and other post-Aristotelian writers.10 Bergk's 'Hp68wpo~ 
is plausible. Aristotle (De Gen.Anim. 3.6.6) shows that he was interested 

8 See 1.106.2., 1.178.1, and 3.92.1; and E. Bachof. "Die 'AaaJp'o, ,\oyo, des Herodotos," 
NJbb 1877, 582.. 

t J. E. Powell, The Histcry of Herodotw (Cambridge 1939) 35. 
10 W. Kroll, RE IX (1916) 2082 S.V. ISICONOS (1). 



GEORGE HUXLEY 209 

in animals and critidses his foolish opinions concerning the hyena and 
the creature called TPOXOS: here one Ms (Z) even has the corruption 
'f]PWOOTOS. We also learn from Aristotle (Hist.Anim. 6.5) that Herodoros, 
who lived about 400 B.C. and came from the Pontic Herakleia,n wrote 
about the 'YvI/J in his work on Herakles, so that the reference to the 
drinking eagle at Nineveh in the Historia Animalium might be thought 
also to come from Herodoros. However, Aristotle does not call him 
tHp6owpos tout court, but either 0 Bpvawvos TOV aocpLaTov 7TaT~p or 
o tHpaK)"€clJ'T'f]S, whereas Herodotos is simply called by him 
'Hp6oo'TOS12 or, once, tHp6oo'TOS 0 p.v{}0)"6yos (De Gen.Anim. 3.5.15). Be­
sides, Herodoros is not known to have written on subjects outside the 
mythology of the heroic age-a Herakleia, Argonautika, and Pelopeia 
are ascribed to him (FGrHist no. 31): hence it is difficult to see how he 
can have treated the fall of Nineveh, a relatively recent historical 
event. Bergk's tHp6owpos is ingenious, but not to be accepted. We 
conclude therefore that Aristotle wrote tHp6S0TOS: as we have seen, 
he cannot have written Hesiod's name because the chronological 
objection is insuperable to the reading 'HaloSos. 

A part of the Assyrian ),,61'0£ of Herodotos is extant, namely the 
description of Babylon in Book J.l3 Various views have been held 
about the missing remainder of the ),,61'0(, which, as the promises of 
Herodotos show, would have discussed the capture of Nineveh and 
the kings who ruled over Babylon, amongst other matters. Stein 14 

was inclined to regard the' AaavpLoL MyOL as a lost work, parts of which 
were incorporated in the Histories, but which was originally intended 
to be an independent publication. J. E. Powell15 supposed that 
Assyrian )..6YOL were originally written for the History and were 
placed before 3.150 but were later deleted, except for the description 
of Babylon in Book I. Herodotos, he believed, overlooked the forward 
references in the two unfulfilled promises and forgot to delete them 
too. Another suggestion is that the Assyrian )..0YOL were to have been 
included after the point at which the unfinished ninth book termi-

11 F. Jacoby, RB VIII (1913) 980-987 S.V. HERODOROS (4). 
12 Bud.Bth. 7.2.13, Hist.Anim. 3.22.1, De Gen.Anim. 2.2.11. 
18 Ch. 188-200. See also G. De Sanctis, ""La composizione della Storia di Erodoto." 

RivFilC!ass N.S. 4 (1926) 289-309. 
U Herodotcs' I, pp.liii-liv. § 43. E. Meyer (Forschungen II [Halle 1899] 198-9 n.l) thought 

of the • Aaaop,o, ,\6yo, as an '"Erganzung" of the '"Hauptwerke." 
10 op.cit. 18 and 23. Powell (p. 35) claimed that Aristotle. Hist.Anim. 8.18 (601bIff) comes 

from the hypothetical "Persian history" of Herodotos. which in his analysis was a prelude 
to the "Persian Wars." 



210 A FRAGMENT OF THE AEEYPIOI AOrOI OF HERODOTOS 

nates.16 The variety of suggestions shows only that certainty is not 
attainable, but there are signs that Herodotos had done much work 
in collecting and sifting facts, and what he took to be facts, about 
Assyrian history: he may well then have written down the informa­
tion in a coherent fashion, and there is nothing a priori unreasonable 
in the evidence that Aristotle had read work by Herodotos which is 
no longer extant. 

The chief evidence for close study of Assyrian history by Herodotos 
is that he had worked out a coherent Assyrian chronology. The 
Assyrians, he says, had ruled Upper Asia for 520 years when the Medes 
revolted from them (1.95.2) and Deiokes became king. Since in the 
Herodotean chronology Deiokes became king in 708 B.C.,17 the 
Assyrian empire began ca 1228 B.C. Now the epoch 1228 B.C. coincides 
with the lifetime assigned by Herodotos to king Ninos, the eponymous 
founder of Nineveh; for the historian tells us that the Herakleidai of 
Lydia ruled for 505 years until the accession of Gyges (1.7.4), who 
became king, according to Herodotos, in 716 B.C.18 Thus Agron, the 
first king of the Lydian Herakleid line, came to the throne in 1221 B.C. 

Agron was a son of Ninos, son of Bel os (Hdt. 1.7.2): so Ninos flourished, 
in Herodotos' view, at the time of the founding of the Assyrian empire 
shortly before 1221 B.C. Thus he dates Ninos in ca 1228 B.C., quite 
consistently. Ktesias followed Herodotos in making Ninos founder of 
the empire, but dated him much earlier, because he held the Assyrians 
to have ruled for more than 1300 years.IO 

It is clear then that Herodotos had thought out his Assyrian 
chronology carefully. His date for Ninos is consistent not only with his 
Lydian chronology, but also with his dating of Herakles nine hundred 
years before his own day (2.145.4) or ca 1350 B.C.: for Ninos he believed 
to have been a great-grandson of Herakles (1.7.2) and so to have lived 
rather more than a century after ca 1350 B.C. 

Here the old suggestion that the name Ninos recalls Tukulti-

11 So Ebert, ZUT FTage nach deT Beendigung des Herodoteischen Geschichteswerkes (KielI911), 
discussed by F. Jacoby 5.11. liBRODOTOS, RE Suppl. II (1913) 372-376. The context for the AO)'(" 
would then be the disturbances in Babylonia after the return of Xerxes from Greece 
(Arrian, Anabasis 3.16.4): but this seems unduly late. The most likely context for the AO)'O' 
(I think) is with the account of Babylonia in Book I: they thus would have completed 
Herodotos' panoramic view of the Near East, and have led on to the description of 
Egypt. 

17 H. Strasburger, "Hero dots Zeitrechnung," HistoTia 5 (1956)136. 
11 Strasburger, op.dt. 139-140. 
11 FGrHist 688 p 1. 28, 8 (vol. me p. 449). 



GEORGE HUXLEY 211 

Ninurta I of Assyria deserves notice.20 That king conquered Babylon, 
deported the statue of Marduk and ruled over the city for seven 
years,21 events which are likely to have made a strong impression on 
the Babylonians and on their view of the past in later times; and the 
suggestion that Herodotos, having heard about Tukulti-Ninurta I in 
Babylon while making enquiries into Assyrian history, identified that 
great king with Ninos, whom he supposed to be the founder of the 
Assyrian empire, is strengthened by the observation that the floruit of 
Ninos according to Herodotos falls close to the middle of the reign of 
Tukulti-Ninurta I, who was king of Assyria from 1242 to 1206 B.C. It 
looks then as though Herodotos when in Babylon took the opportunity 
to discuss chronological matters with the keepers of the archives. He 
then went on to link his Assyrian chronology to Lydian and early 
Greek dates, thus proving himself a pioneer in the Orientalists' 
intricate craft of synchronising king lists. 

The outlines of his Assyrian king list can be discerned from passing 
remarks in the Histories. He took Sardanapalos to be a son of Ninos.22 

From his Babylonian informants he heard of Semiramis (1.184), who 
may be a confused memory of the Babylonian wife of Shamshi-Adad 
V, Sammuramat; and he thought that Nitokris was queen of Babylon 
when Nineveh had fallen to the Medes (1.185.1). The disastrous expe­
dition of Sanacharibos to Egypt (2.141.2) was perhaps recounted to 
Herodotos there, not in Babylon. Those are the only surviving royal 
names from the Assyrian studies of Herodotos, but his promise to 
relate the many kings of Babylon implies that many more names of 
Mesopotamian rulers were known to him. The names he intended to 
give in the rest of the • AUUVpLO£ '\oyo£, and perhaps did give, even if the 
'\oyo£ were never included in the entirety in the Histories: for we do 
not know that all that Herodotos ever wrote survives in our version 
of the Histories. On the contrary, the likelihood is that Herodotos 
wrote down the evidence he had gathered in Mesopotamia, so that 
most of the Assyrian '\oYOt are now lost. Whether the entire '\oyo£ 
once formed part of the Histories, or whether they were removed by 
Herodotos himself or fell out later, we do not know. 

20 It is revived by R. H. Drews, "Assyria in Classical Universal Histories," Historia 14 
(1965) 137 n.39 and 142. 

21 M. B. Rowton, CAH2 vol. I ch. 6. p. 35. 
II 2.150.3. Aristotle's allusion to a plot against the effeminate Sardanapalos (Politics 

1312al) need not have been made with the' Auuvp,o, .\0,,0' of Hero dot os in mind: with the 
plot compare the conspiracy in Ktesias 688 F 1 (Diodoros 2.24.4). 



212 A FRAGMENT OF THE AEITPIOI AOrOI OF HERODOTOS 

We return to Aristotle's remarks in the Historia Animalium. Since 
fHp080TOS was what he wrote, Aristotle himself had read writings of 
Herodotos on Assyria which no longer exist. The failure of other 
ancient authors to cite the lost Herodotean writings may be explained 
by the greater popularity of the irresponsible Ktesias, who naively 
claimed to have studied royal documents of the Persians23 and, it 
appears, to have corrected Herodotos in all essential matters, such as 
the date of the fall of Nineveh.24 

Another ancient author may have known the lost Assyrian .:\01'0£ of 
Herodotos. Eusebios 25 writes of Herodotos beside Hellanikos and 
Ktesias as though he were an authority on Assyrian king lists, and 
since the extant Histories do not include Assyrian regnal lists such as 
those of the Lydians in the Av8LClKa in Book I, it is conceivable that 
Eusebios had 'AUUVPLO£ .:\OyOL by, or purporting to be by, Herodotos 
in mind. 

The' AUuVPLOL ':\0YOL then, as the historian's unfulfilled promises show, 
would have given an account of Assyrian history including Babylon 
from the founding of Nineveh by Ninos about 1228 B.C. to its capture 
by the Medes under Kyaxares late in the seventh century. To judge 
from his descriptions of other parts of the world, there would have 
been much geographical and ethnographic narrative as well, but of 
that, apart from the account of Babylon, we have no evidence. What 
is certain is that Aristotle had read an account by Herodotos of the fall 
of Nineveh which is missing from the extant version of the Histories.26 

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST 

October, 1965 

23 Diodoros 2.32.4 (Ktesias F 5). 
U He dated the fall before 859 B.C.: Agathias 2.25.4 (FGTHist vol. me, p. 441). The con­

queror Ktesias called Arbakes. 
25 Arm. ChTon. p. 28, 28ff Karst. 
26 I thank Professor W. M. Calder m and Mr W. G. Forrest for discussing a draft of this 

paper with me.