The Importance of Being

Nino Luraghi

Classical World, Volume 102, Number 4, Summer 2009, pp. 439-456 (Article)

Published by Classical Association of the Atlantic States

DOI: 10.1353/clw.0.0110

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 439
The Importance of Being λόγιος*
ABSTRACT: This article, part of a broader investigation of the way Herodotus
describes his research, discusses the meanings of the term λόγιος in Herodotus,
in other Greek authors, and in modern scholarship. It argues that the word,
rather unspecific in meaning, originally indicated members of the community
who were seen as particularly authoritative. It probably carried an old-fash-
ioned undertone and in time came to be used with some irony and referred
almost exclusively to non-Greeks, undermined by the increasing specialization
of knowledge in classical Greece. Interpretations that make of “the λόγιοι ”
specialists of oral traditions in prose or oral memorialists should be rejected.

Standing in isolation at the beginning of Greek prose literature,

one of the main challenges that Herodotus’ Histories poses to the
reader is to understand where this incredibly rich and sophisticated
text actually came from. Such a challenge can take different forms: we
can wonder about what we could call, in a broad sense, the literary
models for Herodotus’ narrative style and arrangement, or investigate
his intellectual affinities, or finally, turn to the actual provenance of
the material, stories, and information, which constitute the contents
of the Histories. At first sight, this line of approach seems very
promising: no other ancient historian talks about the process of col-
lecting and assessing information, and about the provenance of such
information, as extensively and explicitly as Herodotus appears to do.
A comprehensive scrutiny of the relevant passages, however, shows
that Herodotus’ authorial statements cannot be taken at face value as
a complete and reliable description of where and how he collected
his information, and not even of his modus operandi in general. 1 Put
in stark terms, Herodotus probably did not always do what he says
he did, and on the other hand did a number of things he does not
talk about. He may not have visited all the places he claims to have
visited, his stories most likely do not always come from the places
he says they come from, 2 and his sources were rather more diverse
than he seems to suggest. This does not mean that we should view
the Histories as a product of pure fantasy, as some scholars have

*
This article is an expanded version of my conference paper. I wish to thank
Paul Cartledge for inviting me to the conference at NYU. Among the participants, I
am especially grateful to Kurt Raaflaub for his response to my paper. John Marincola
and Pietro Vannicelli kindly agreed to read and comment on the written version, im-
proving it in many ways. Warm thanks to Matthew Santirocco for spearheading the
publication of the papers.
1
See “Local knowledge in Herodotus’ Histories,” in N. Luraghi, ed., The Histo-
rian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford 2001) 138–51 and “Meta-historiē: Method
and Genre in the Histories,” in C. Dewald and J. Marincola, eds., The Cambridge
Companion to Herodotus (Cambridge 2006) 81–85. May the reader accept my apolo-
gies for my making reference here to my previous work, of which the present study
is intended to be a development (see n.49 of the first contribution quoted).
2
This had been seen already by Felix Jacoby; see F. Jacoby, “Herodotos,” RE
Suppl. 2 (1913) 420. For a brilliant demonstration see S. Forsdyke, “From Aristocratic
to Democratic Ideology and Back Again: The Thrasybulus Anecdote in Herodotus’
Histories and Aristotle’s Politics,” CPh 94 (1999) 361–72.

439
440 N ino L uraghi
concluded. The amount of external confirmation for countless details
is just incompatible with this notion. Without forgetting that we should
not take for granted that Herodotus’ concept of truth corresponded to
ours3—whatever that would be—it is obvious that his goal was to offer
a truthful account. What I have elsewhere called meta-historiē, that
is, Herodotus’ authorial comments on the process of collecting and
assessing information and his attribution of stories and information
to other people, should be seen as an attempt to create an authorita-
tive position for the voice that utters the text, in the framework of
widely shared and culturally determined perceptions of knowledge and
authority. In the present contribution, I intend to dwell on one aspect
of Herodotus’ meta-historiē, namely the occasional characterization of
individuals as λόγιοι or as more or less λόγιοι , trying to elucidate it
by comparison with other fifth- and fourth-century usages of the term.4
As with most problems in Herodotean studies, the starting point
has to be Felix Jacoby, the founding father of modern scholarship
on Greek historiography. In a rigorous and extensive investigation
of the problem of Herodotus’ sources, included in his famous Pauly-
Wissowa entry of 1913, Jacoby sketched the familiar picture of
Herodotus traveling around the Mediterranean, collecting information
by talking to people in the various countries he visited. Of course,
a competent researcher would make sure to talk to reliable people,
and Jacoby thought he could find in Herodotus’ own text the traces
of this concern: the people Herodotus relied upon were, according to
Jacoby, the λόγιοι ἄνδρες of the several places, learned men whose
competence and authority were generally recognized by the other
members of their community. 5 One of the most urgent concerns that
informed Jacoby’s approach at that point was to disprove the notion
that, for all his referring to other people who told, in certain cases
explicitly to himself, various things, in reality Herodotus had largely
plagiarized the written works of his predecessors. In his later work,
Jacoby extended his views to the broader problem of the origins of
historical narratives on archaic Greece, and especially of the ori-
gins of the local histories of Attica. Again, he was arguing against
a theory that assigned a key role to written evidence, the famous
theory of his old teacher Wilamowitz according to which at the root
of Atthidography lay the priestly chronicle of the ἐξηγηταί . 6 To this
Jacoby opposed oral tradition, transmitted by word of mouth and
finally collected by the authors of the first Atthides by interrogating
the Athenian λόγιοι ἄνδρες , “men from the ruling classes, who not

3
At the risk of stating the obvious, it is good not to forget that historical truth
is culture-specific; see, e.g., J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, Wis.,
1985) 129–30.
4
An invaluable aid for this pursuit is provided by E. Orth, Logios (Leipzig
1926) with addenda in Berliner philologische Wochenschrift 51 (1931) 1564–566, a
comprehensive investigation of the meaning of the word in ancient Greek and Byz-
antine authors and papyri.
5
See Jacoby (above, n.2) 392–467, esp. 407–409.
6
U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin 1893) esp. I.276–90.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 441
only cultivated the tradition of their own families but, as leading
men, had a certain knowledge of the nature, the administration, and
the history of the State.” 7
In retrospect, one could say that Jacoby’s view of the oral sources
of fifth-century historians was rather unspecific: essentially, it boils
down to identifying the people Herodotus and his colleagues talked to
as upper-class and cultivated, and therefore knowledgeable in various
fields, including the past—especially their own past, so to speak, i.e.
the past of their family or of their community. Decades of research
on oral tradition and collective memory have made possible a much
more nuanced appreciation of the pattern of distribution of knowledge
about the past Herodotus may have encountered. 8 Jacoby’s view was
rather more specific in what it excluded, i.e. the extensive use of
written sources by the early Greek historians and the existence of
specialists of memory among the Greeks. As regards the first part of
this negative conclusion, Jacoby has been successful: throughout the
second half of the twentieth century, nobody has seriously maintained
that Herodotus’ Histories are based to any significant extent on writ-
ten sources. 9 The second part however, concerning the specialists of
memory, has been substantially revised by two recent and influential
investigations by Gregory Nagy and James Evans, which propose in
different ways a redefinition of the social profile of Herodotus’ λόγιοι
as outlined by Jacoby. Nagy’s contribution, which focuses on the
proem of the Histories, makes two related points. First, by opposing
his view of the origins of the conflict between Greeks and Barbaroi
to that of the Persian λόγιοι , Herodotus by implication defines him-
self, too, as a λόγιος . Based on comparison with the use of the term
in Pindar, Nagy then goes on to argue that a λόγιος was a master
of oral traditions in prose, whose task was to celebrate by way of
public performance the great deeds of men and preserve them from
oblivion in the same way as the poets, and Pindar himself, did. 10
Evans investigates Herodotus’ use of oral tradition in a comparative
perspective, looking especially at research on the social and textual
dynamics of oral tradition in Central Africa. 11 On one fundamental
aspect, the conclusions he reaches resemble Nagy’s. While refusing
to see Herodotus himself as a λόγιος , Evans accepts the interpreta-
tion of the λόγιοι as oral narrators, and adds an emphasis on their

7
F. Jacoby, Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens (Oxford 1949) 215–25
(citation from page 216).
8
See O. Murray, “Herodotus and Oral History,” in Luraghi (above, n.1) 16–44
(originally published in 1987).
9
For a perceptive and nuanced discussion of the problem, see R. L. Fowler,
“Herodotus and his Prose Predecessors,” in Dewald and Marincola (above, n.1) 29–45.
10
G. Nagy, “Herodotus the Logios,” Arethusa 20 (1987) 175–86, revised and
expanded in his Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore
1990) 215–49, esp. 221–25.
11
J. A. S. Evans, “Oral Tradition in Herodotus,” Canadian Oral History Associa-
tion Journal 4 (1980) 8–16 (republished with supplementary notes in J. A. Evans, The
Beginnings of History: Herodotus and the Persian Wars [Campbellville, Ontairo, 2006]
271–89) and Herodotus Explorer of the Past: Three Essays (Princeton 1992) 89–146.
442 N ino L uraghi
function in the process of transmission of stories. Evans calls the
λόγιοι “unlettered oral memorialists,” “remembrancers who, in the
preliterate period, stored in their memories the traditions that soci-
ety thought it important to preserve.” 12 Herodotus made use of their
methods for a different enterprise, the composition of a long narrative
in written prose. Broadly speaking, Nagy’s and Evans’ understand-
ing of the λόγιοι as a precise category of people owes something,
especially in Evans’ case, to Jacoby’s insistence on the importance
of the term. Compared to Jacoby however, both Nagy and Evans
replace social status with literary and/or mnemonic competence as
the defining characteristic of the λόγιοι . Furthermore, both envision
the social identity of the λόγιοι as defined mainly by their activity
as eulogists or memorialists, i.e., their λόγιοι are a group of profes-
sionals, identified by their activity and much more sharply delimited
than the upper-class knowledgeable people Jacoby thought of.
In spite of the weight it has come to carry in the works just
mentioned, the term λόγιοι appears only four times in the whole of
Herodotus’ work. The first occurrence, however, happens to be in a
very prominent place, right at the beginning of the work. The famous
introductory period of the Histories, in which Herodotus delineates
the scope of his enterprise, culminates in the formulation of the
problem of the causes of the conflict between Greeks and Barbaroi.
Before turning to what he himself sees as the origins of the quarrel,
Herodotus famously presents an alternative explanation, based on
a sequence of abductions of women that culminates in the Trojan
War (1.1–5). 13 Introducing the reader to the presence of alternative
voices that will constitute one of the most characteristic aspects of
his work, he attributes to Περσέων οἱ λόγιοι this sequence and its
interpretation: while the Phoenicians have some responsibility for
igniting the quarrel in the first place, the Greeks are the true culprit.
They escalated the conflict, from a tit-for-tat limited to the abduc-
tion of women to an all-out war, which formed the real root of the
enmity. Their reaction, according to the Persians, was simply out of
proportion: to unleash the Trojan War for the sake of a woman, and
a Spartan woman at that! 14
The way that Persians, Phoenicians, and Greeks appear as speak-
ers in these paragraphs clearly follows the principles of quoting
the appropriate source and of respecting bias, the two fundamental
principles that apply to all references of this sort in Herodotus, as
Detlev Fehling has shown.15 The Greeks agree on Io’s name and have
12
Quotes from Evans (above, n.11, 1992) 95 and 97; see also 108–109: “They
(scil. the early historians mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in de Thuc. 5)
should perhaps be called not historians in the sense that Herodotus was one, but logioi
who, at some point in their careers, produced texts of their recitals. . . .”
13
For an interpretation of this passage, see now M. Węcowski, “The Hedgehog and
the Fox: Form and Meaning in the Prologue of Herodotus,” JHS 124 (2004) 149–55.
14
See Węcowski (above, n.13) 150 and n.43.
15
See D. Fehling, Herodotus and his “Sources”: Citation, Invention and Nar-
rative Art (Leeds 1989) 88–95 and 105–108; see Luraghi (above, n.1, 2001) 144–48.
On the “principle of the obvious source,” see Jacoby (above, n.2) 401.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 443
a different version of how she came to Egypt—an oblique allusion
to the wanderings of Io transformed into a cow, as Herodotus’ audi-
ence certainly realized. As for the Phoenicians, they add a variant
in which actually Io had an affair with the Phoenician captain and
eloped with him as soon as she recognized that she had become
pregnant. Incidentally, this instance of Herodotus’ consistent and
certainly intentional respect for bias has an interesting implication:
apparently, the Persians have no difficulty in apportioning some of
the blame to their subjects the Phoenicians, whose fleet, as Herodo-
tus’ audience knew all too well, was crucial in making it possible at
all for the Persian Empire to counter Greek sea power. In any case,
it is clear that both the method and the conclusions of the Persians
are rejected, and probably trivialized, 16 by Herodotus. With a very
forceful statement, he declines to judge the reliability of these stories
and promises to point out the first whom he knows started the chain
of evils—and here, we should not fail to notice that no argument or
source is brought up to buttress Herodotus’ bold οἶδα , “I know.” It
should also be noticed that the opinion of Περσέων οἱ λόγιοι is im-
plicitly rejected in a passage of Book 2, where Herodotus says that
he does not believe Helen ever went to Troy. There, the evidence
comes from the more reliable Egyptians, but Herodotus is ready to
accept it because the resulting version is more plausible and makes
sense to him in religious terms. 17
The reliability of Egyptian tradition and its specific social distri-
bution are one of the central motives that run through the expansive
excursus that constitutes our book 2 of the Histories. Nowhere else
is Herodotus nearly so explicit in describing his activity of collecting
and evaluating information, and in explaining where that information
came from. 18 Herodotus’ loquacity in talking about his job in this
part of the Histories has often puzzled scholars. It is conceivable
that Herodotus needed to foreground his own contribution precisely
because others, e.g., Hecataeus of Miletus, had covered the same
ground before him. 19 Certainly, of all the foreign lands described by
Herodotus, Egypt must have been the one his Athenian audience was
most familiar with: we ought not to forget that a massive military
expedition sent to support the rebel pharaoh Inaros had spent some
16
Węcowski (above, n.13) 150–52 makes a compelling case for interpreting the
sequence of abductions as a parody. If this is the case, then the authority of Περσέων
οἱ λόγιοι is undercut from the outset, and it is a fortiori unlikely that Herodotus in
this passage might be counting himself in the same category as them.
17
See Węcowski (above, n.13) 154. The story of Helen in Egypt narrated by the
Egyptian priests, Hdt. 2.113–119, is interrupted by a discussion of Homer’s knowledge
of the “true story.” Notice Herodotus’ own comments on its credibility, 2.120: for
a number of logical reasons, it is implausible that Helen was really at Troy during
the war—one more proof of the superiority of γνώμη over ἀκοή for Herodotus, see
Luraghi (above, n.1, 2001) 142. For a detailed discussion of Herodotus’ γνώμη , see
A. Corcella, Erodoto e l’analogia (Palermo 1984) 63–84.
18
See J. Marincola, “Herodotean Narrative and the Narrator’s Presence,” Arethusa
20 (1987) 122–28.
19
See, e.g., C. Darbo-Peschanski, Le Discours du particulier. Essai sur l’enquête
hérodotéenne (Paris 1987) 112.
444 N ino L uraghi
years in Lower Egypt before the final disaster, and as late as 445/4
Athens was still receiving a significant donation of grain from a
Psammetichos of Egypt, probably a descendant or successor of sorts
of Inaros. 20 Be this as it may, insofar as Herodotus refers to local
Egyptian informants, they appear to be priests, whose reliability he
underscores in various ways. 21 In particular, he relates how he dis-
cussed with the priests of Hephaestus in Memphis, and then checked
their report against those of the priests of Thebes and Heliopolis, for
the latter, he says, are considered to be the most λόγιοι among the
Egyptians (2.3.1). 22 This is quite a distinction, for, as he says later
(2.77.1), the Egyptians who live south of the Delta, that is, upstream
from Heliopolis, are by far the most λόγιοι among all the people he
was able to test, and this has to do with the fact that they cultivate
memory more than anybody else. Leaving open for the moment the
question of what the expression means, 23 let us notice that in both
cases Herodotus is clearly thinking in terms not of being or not being
“a λόγιος ” but rather in terms of being more or less λόγιος . In other
words, for him being λόγιος is a quality that a person may possess
to a varying degree, not a term that identifies a category of people. 24
As in many other ways, the area around the Black Sea is de-
scribed by Herodotus as the opposite of Egypt also from the point of
view of cultural development. It includes the most ignorant peoples of
all, with the exception of the Scythians, and Herodotus is not aware
of there having ever been any other man that could be qualified as
λόγιος except for Anacharsis (4.46.1). 25 The very fate of Anacharsis,
however, shows that the Scythians combined practical cleverness with
refusal of culture and contact with other peoples (4.76.1). The wise
Anacharsis had been killed by the king of the Scythians because he
had adopted Greek customs, and then underwent a damnatio memoriae
of sorts among the Scythians, who according to Herodotus denied ever
having heard of him (4.76.5). It is only Tymnes, presumably a Greek or

20
On the Athenian expedition to Egypt, see R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire
(Oxford 1972) 93–94 and 101–08. The donation of Psammetichos in 445/4 is recorded
by Philochorus, FgrHist 328 F 119; see also Plut. Per. 37.4.
21
See P. Vannicelli, “Herodotus’ Egypt and the Foundations of Universal History,”
in Luraghi (above, n.1) 214. Explicit and implicit references to the Egyptian priests
as sources of information are listed by A. B. Lloyd, Herodotus, Book II. Introduction
(Leiden 1975) 89–91. On the priests as depositaries of Egyptian memory under Persian
domination, see now I. Moyer, “Herodotus and the Egyptian Mirage: The Genealogies
of the Theban Priests,” JHS 122 (2002) 70–90.
22
On the identity of these priests, see Lloyd (above, n.21) 113 and Herodotus,
Book II. Commentary 1–98 (Leiden 1976) 16–17.
23
See Vannicelli (above, n.21) 214–15.
24
See K. von Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung I. Noten (Berlin 1967)
344. This is what I meant by saying that for Herodotus λόγιος is an attribute, not a
predicate (Luraghi [above, n.1, 2001] 157) but my formulation was open to misun-
derstanding, see Evans (above, n.11, 2006) 284.
25
In this passage, λόγιος is clearly used as an attribute, i.e. as a quality that a
person may or may not possess, not as the name of a category of people, exactly as
in 2.3.1 and in 2.77.1: Herodotus says that he could not mention any people distin-
guished in terms of σοφίη nor any individual who deserves the qualification of λόγιος.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 445
Carian who had reached a high standing in the Scythian court, 26 who
tells Herodotus the story of the only λόγιος of the region (4.76.6).
What earned Anacharsis the attribute is the σοφίη he displayed dur-
ing his wandering through many lands, including Greece (4.76.2). 27
The contrast between Persians, Egyptians, and Scythians, in terms
of being λόγιοι , appears to reflect a more general contrast between
the level of competence and quality of information characteristic of
these three peoples, and also, more broadly, their level of civilization.
If we compare Egypt and the Black Sea, the contrast is particularly
obvious in the enormous depth of the Egyptian past as opposed to
the nonexistence of an ancient history of the Scythians. 28 As for the
Persians, they turn out to be more loquacious than reliable, as shown
by Herodotus’ repeated references to multiple Persian versions of
key episodes of Achaemenid history. 29 Before drawing more specific
conclusions on the use of λόγιος in Herodotus, it will be helpful
to scrutinize the few passages from other fifth- and fourth-century
authors where the word appears. For reasons of affinity, the scrutiny
will start with the prose authors and then move to the two poets who
mention λόγιοι , Ion and Pindar.
The first passage to be considered is a fragment of the philoso-
pher Democritus of Abdera, a younger contemporary of Herodotus. It
refers to the discovery of the gods at the dawn of civilization. Back
then, says Democritus, a few of the λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι stretched their
hands towards “what we Greeks now call the air,” proclaiming that
Zeus regulates and knows everything, and he gives and takes and is
king of all (68 B 30 DK). This passage is generally thought to have
been part of an exploration of the origins of civilization, a topic we
know Democritus was interested in. 30 Another fragment shows that
Democritus explained the origin of the worship of gods with the
attempt by early men to make sense of the natural phenomena that
scared them (68 A 75 DK). It seems obvious to connect the two
fragments. 31 The problems start when we try to figure out who are
the people Democritus is talking about. Eric Havelock thought the
philosopher of Abdera had in mind ancient doctrines that attributed
to early poets, especially Hesiod, the “discovery” of the gods, and
therefore he interpreted their being λόγιοι in relation to their power

26
On Tymnes, see A. Corcella’s commentary in D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, and A.
Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, O. Murray and A. Moreno, eds.,
(Oxford 2007) 637.
27
On the wise and legendary Anacharsis, subject of many anecdotes, see Corcella
(above, n.26) 636 with refs.
28
For the connection between informants who are λόγιοι and chronological depth,
see especially Vannicelli (above, n.21) 214.
29
Such as the birth and death of Cyrus (Hdt. 1.95.1 and 214.5 respectively)
and the conquest of the throne by Darius (3.87); see Luraghi (above, n.1, 2001) 155.
30
See T. Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology (Atlanta
1990 2) and L. Bertelli, “Per le fonti dell’antropologia di Democrito (68 B 5 D.K.),”
QS 11 (1980) 231–66.
31
See G. Pfligersdorffer, “Λόγιος und die λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι bei Demokrit,” WS 61–62
(1943–47) 6–8, J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (London 1982) 456–57.
446 N ino L uraghi
of expression. 32 Democritus, however, was clearly thinking of a very
early stage in the development of mankind, and it seems more plau-
sible to suppose that what characterized his λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι was
the authority to formulate a doctrine that would then be accepted by
the whole community. It seems therefore preferable to interpret the
meaning of the word in this passage as wise or authoritative, and it
is very possible that the definition involved a shade of irony. 33
The other occurrence of the term in Democritus comes from
a fragment (68 B 299 DK = FgrHist 263 F 1) whose authenticity,
against the doubts previously expressed by various scholars, 34 has
been defended with strong arguments and should be seen as highly
likely. 35 Democritus, in the first person, claims to have traveled
more than anybody else in the course of his enquiries, to have seen
more places and to have heard more λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι , and to have
acquired impeccable knowledge in geometry, superior even to that
of the Egyptian ἁρπεδονάπται , with whom he had studied for some
years. 36 The fragment is found in a passage of Clement of Alexandria
(Strom. 1.15.69), whose general goal is to show that Democritus, like
other Greek philosophers, had actually borrowed heavily from Egyp-
tian and Near Eastern predecessors. In this case, Clement claims that
Democritus had transcribed and plagiarized “the stele of Akikaros,”
passing off Babylonian moral philosophy as his own. The reference
is clearly to the popular Sayings of Ahiqar, a text of wisdom that
circulated in the Near East from the fifth century at the latest.37 Much
of the discussion about the authenticity of the fragment has revolved
around the problem of whether or not the Sayings of Ahiqar may
have been known in late-fifth-century Greece. 38 The two questions

32
E. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven 1957) 120
and 412, followed by Cole (above, n.30) 57–58 and n.34. The same conclusion had
been reached by Pfligersdorffer (above, n.31) 17–19, whose interpretation, however,
depends on his views of the meaning of the word in Pindar, ibid. 9–12.
33
As suggested by Barnes (above, n.31) 457 and by S. Luria in his monumental
work on Democritus, which I consulted in the Italian translation ed. by G. Reale,
Democrito. Raccolta dei frammenti, interpretazione e commentario di Salomon Luria
(Milan 2007) 1249–52.
34
After Hermann Diels, see M. L. West, “Near Eastern Material in Hellenistic
and Roman Literature,” HSCP 73 (1969) 120–21 and “The Sayings of Democritus,”
CR 19 (1969) 142.
35
See esp. Luria (above, n.33) 911–16, with detailed discussion of previous
scholarship. Add Pfligersdorffer (above, n.31) 39–43.
36
For an explanation of this passage in the framework of Greek theories on
the origins of geometry, see W. Leszl, “Democritus’ Works: From their Titles to their
Contents,” in A. Brancacci and P.-M. Morel, eds., Democritus: Science, the Arts, and
the Care of the Soul. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Democritus
(Paris, 18–20 September 2003) (Leiden and Boston, 2007) 37. The ἁρπεδονάπται were
in charge of measuring land plots again after the floods of the Nile.
37
On this text, preserved in Aramaic in a late-fifth century papyrus from the
Jewish colony of Elephantine in Upper Egypt, see S. West, “Croesus’ Second Reprieve
and other Tales of the Persian Court,” CQ 53 (2003) 423–24. The legendary Ahiqar
was supposed to have lived at the Assyrian court in the early seventh century.
38
On this, see especially the contributions of M. J. Luzzatto, “Grecia e Vicino
Oriente: tracce della ‘Storia di Ahiqar’ nella cultura greca tra VI e V secolo a.C.,” QS
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 447
should be kept separate, however. 39 Elements of language and style
in the passage are consistent with a fifth-century date. Consider for
instance the shift from the third to the first person, for which a good
parallel is provided by the famous incipit of Hecataeus’ Genealogies
(FgrHist 1 F 1) 40—assuming of course that the two passages that
Diels considers verbatim quotations from Democritus were indeed
consecutive, which is likely but not completely certain. 41 The recur-
rence of the iunctura λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι could by itself point to the
fact that these words really come from Democritus. Even if we ac-
cept the authenticity of the passage, it remains less than clear how
we should conceive of the λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι Democritus claimed to
have listened to. In any case, to judge by the context the possible
fields Democritus was learning about include morals and geometry.
Once again, one has the impression that the reference is simply to
learned and authoritative people.
Next, in the early fourth century, comes an imaginary speech,
probably composed by the sophist Alcidamas of Elaia in Mysia and
purporting to be a prosecution speech against Palamedes delivered by
Odysseus. 42 Here we find Odysseus stating, among other things, that
coinage had been invented, not by Palamedes as the latter claimed,
but by the Phoenicians, called the λογιώτατοι καὶ δεινότατοι τῶν
βαρβάρων (Od. 26 Muir). As the second attribute and the whole
context of the sentence make clear, in this case λογιώτατοι refers to
practical wisdom and/or cleverness, in other words to a high cultural
level; we should probably translate “the most cultivated (or wise)
and clever among the Barbaroi.” 43 In any case, it has nothing to do
with knowledge about the past. On the other hand, the playful tone
of the whole work may resonate with the ironic undertones perceived
by some scholars in other occurrences of the word.
The next passage may in fact be a case in point. Aristotle uses
the word twice in Politics. The first occurrence is in a short portrait

36 (1992) 5–84 and “Ancora sulla ‘Storia di Ahiqar’,” QS 39 (1994) 253–77; contra
F. M. Fales, “Storia di Ahiqar tra Oriente e Grecia: la prospettiva dall’antico Oriente,”
QS 38 (1993) 143–66. See also H. Wilsdorf, “Der Weise Achikaros bei Demokrit und
Theophrast,” Philologus 135 (1991) 191–206.
39
As previously noted by F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker IIIb,
Text (Leiden 1955) 28, commentary to 263 F 1. See now Leszl (above, n.36) 37 n.36
and also 52.
40
On this stylistic form, originating probably from epistolography, see A. Corcella,
“Ecateo di Mileto così dice,” QS 22 (1996) 295–301.
41
See Pfligersdorffer (above, n.31) 40.
42
For a recent introduction, see M. Edwards, “Alcidamas,” in I. Worthington,
ed., A Companion to Greek Rhetoric (Oxford 2007) 47–57. On this speech and the
problem of its authenticity, esp. 49–51 and J. V. Muir, ed. and comm., Alcidamas:
The Works and Fragments (Bristol 2001) xv–xviii. For a more skeptical approach and
a detailed discussion of earlier research, see R. Mariß, Alkidamas: Über diejenigen,
die schriftliche Reden schreiben, Oder über die Sophisten: Eine Sophistenrede aus
dem 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. eingeleitet und kommentiert (Münster 2002) 18–20, who
concludes that, while a date at the very beginning of the fourth century remains most
likely, Alcidamas’ authorship cannot be taken for granted.
43
See Orth (above, n.4) 32.
448 N ino L uraghi
of Hippodamus of Miletus, a slightly bizarre passage that deserves
quoting in full: 44
Hippodamus son of Euryphon, Milesian, invented the
subdivision of cities 45 and laid out the Piraeus. Also,
in his lifestyle in general he was rather eccentric
because of his φιλοτιμία , 46 to the point that some
thought he lived in too elaborate a fashion, wearing
his hair long and expensive ornaments. Furthermore,
he wore simple clothes, but made of warm material,
not only in winter but also in summertime, and he
wanted to be λόγιος περὶ τὴν ὅλην φύσιν . He was
the first non-politician to try and write about the best
constitution.
(Aristot. Pol. 2.8, 1267b22–30)
The passage is so at odds with the normally sober tone of Ar-
istotle that some scholars have even suspected its authenticity. 47 The
description of Hippodamus borders on the caricature, and clearly his
aspiration to be recognized as an expert in natural science is part of
this unflattering picture. This passage is usually kept separate from
discussions of the identity of the λόγιοι ἄνδρες , and yet it seems
clear that there is continuity of meaning linking it to the occurrences
of the term in Alcidamas and Democritus, and there is no reason
to think that here the word is employed to say something radically
different from what Herodotus means by it. This passage should
clearly be part of a general discussion of the meaning of λόγιος in
pre-Hellenistic Greek. Again, as in Democritus and Alcidamas, the
term probably refers to knowledge and authority, with no perceptible
link to the past or to stories or narratives of any kind.
The word shows up a second time in Aristotle’s Politics (7.9.2,
1329b5 sgg. = FgrHist 577 F 13), in a passage that discusses the
origins of the συσσίτια in ancient Italia and attributes to the λόγιοι
τῶν ἐκεῖ κατοικούντων the notion that the custom had been intro-
duced for the first time by their eponymous king and culture hero

44
For a detailed discussion of this passage, see P. Benvenuti Falciai, Ippodamo
di Mileto, architetto e filosofo. Una ricostruzione filologica della personalità (Flor-
ence 1982) 52–65 and C. Talamo, “Aristotele e Ippodamo,” in M. Faraguna and V.
Vedaldi Iasbez, eds., Δύνασθαι διδάσκειν . Studi in onore di Filippo Càssola per il
suo ottantesimo compleanno (Trieste 2006) 375–85. Passage translation by the author.
45
On the meaning of this sentence, that probably refers to the subdivisions
of the citizen body rather than to urban planning, see V. Gorman, “Aristotle’s Hip-
podamos (Politics 2.1267b22–30),” Historia 44 (1995) 385–95. On Hippodamus and
urban planning, see G. Shipley, “Little Boxes on the Hillside: Greek Town Planning,
Hippodamos and Polis Ideology,” in M. H. Hansen, ed., The Imaginary Polis, Acts of
the Copenhagen Polis Centre 7 (Copenhagen 1995) 351–79.
46
On this concept, see D. Whitehead, “Competitive Outlay and Community
Profit: Φιλοτιμία in Democratic Athens,” C&M 34 (1983) 55–74; Aristotle is prob-
ably using it in the rather negative sense that was prevalent until the middle of the
fourth century b . c . e .
47
See Benvenuti Falciai (above, n.44) 58 n.53.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 449
Italos. 48 Most of the geographic information included in the passage
has precise parallels in the fragments of the historian Antiochus of
Syracuse, commonly dated between Herodotus and Thucydides. Espe-
cially the idea that the name Italia had originally designated only the
very tip of the toe of the peninsula, south of the Castellace Isthmus,
is attested in two fragments of his work quoted by two different au-
thors. 49 Therefore, it is generally recognized that Antiochus was the
main source, directly or indirectly, of the passage, 50 in which case
it seems obvious that the reference to the local λόγιοι came from
Antiochus, too, since there seems no reason to assume that Aristotle
or his direct source added it. Reliable knowledge of the remote past
seems to be what distinguishes the people referred to.
Referring to the definitions of the word in Liddell and Scott’s
dictionary, Jacoby suggested understanding the λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι of
the first passage of Democritus as “learned, wise,” as in Herodotus’
passage on Anacharsis. In the second fragment, which he considered
genuine, and in Aristotle/Antiochus, as well as in the other three
Herodotean passages, λόγιος should mean something like “versed
in tales or stories.” 51 This second meaning is the foundation of both
Nagy’s and Evans’ interpretations of the meaning of the term and of
the identity of the λόγιοι. The idea that λόγιοι in early Greek authors
could indicate people distinguished by their knowledge of stories de-
rives in part also from ancient commentators of Pindar and Herodotus,
who thought that the term in early Greek literature designated expert
interpreters of local traditions or polymaths ( πολυΐστορες ), or more
simply, writers in prose. 52 For modern scholars, who tend to doubt
that Herodotus, let alone Pindar, made much use of written sources,
referring the term to storytellers is but a little step. One further fac-
tor may have been at play in inducing scholars to see storytellers
of whatever sort behind Herodotus’ references to people defined as
λόγιοι . Ever since folktales started being investigated, scholars have

48
The “people who live there” could in theory be Greek colonists, but the ex-
pression designates most naturally indigenous non-Greek people; see the discussion in
N. Luraghi, “Ricerche sull’archeologia italica di Antioco di Siracusa,” in Hesperìa, 1.
Ricerche sulla grecità d’Occidente (Rome 1990) 68 n.37.
49
See esp. Antiochus FgrHist 555 F 2 and 5 from Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
AR 1.12.3 and 1.35.1 respectively, and 555 F 3a from Strabo, Geogr. 6.1.4. For an
overview on Antiochus, N. Luraghi, “Antioco di Siracusa,” in R. Vattuone, ed., Storici
greci d’Occidente (Bologna 2002) 55–89.
50
See, e.g., C. Roebuck, “Antiochos on Italos,” in Φιλίας χάριν. Studi in onore
di Eugenio Manni (Rome 1980) 1199–1200; notice however M. Lombardo, “Italo in
Aristotele e Antioco: problemi di cronologia mitica,” in S. Alessandrì, ed., Ἱστορίη.
Studi offerti dagli allievi a Giuseppe Nenci (Galatina 1994) 265–80.
51
Jacoby (above, n.7) 389, n.5. Notice that in LSJ “versed in tales or stories,”
with reference to Herodotus, is the first meaning, while “learned, erudite” appears as
a subentry of this main meaning, and Democritus is the first authority quoted. See
the definitions of the word by ancient (mostly late antique) authors collected by Orth
(above, n.4) 4–5.
52
See the definitions of the lexicographers Phrynichus and Moeris (second–third
century c . e .) in Orth (above, n.4) 60–61 and Schol. Pind. Ol. 7.42b, 100a, 101, Pyth.
1.181a, Nem. 6.50, 53b.
450 N ino L uraghi

recognized the presence of a rich and developed storytelling tradi-

tion behind Herodotus, 53 and yet, the storytellers themselves are all
but absent from the Histories. 54 It is therefore understandable that
scholars should tend to have a particularly keen eye in looking for
them. One wonders, however, if we really need to think that, in the
passages we have been considering, the term λόγιος is used with
two different meanings. “Versed in tales or stories” seems a less than
satisfactory rendering of the way Herodotus describes the priests of
Heliopolis: after all, most of what he attributes to them is neither
tales nor stories, but knowledge of religious matters and of the most
distant past based on written evidence, as Herodotus himself points
out. Even the expertise of the Persian λόγιοι boils down to rational-
izing a series of very well known Greek myths: they would hardly
have struck Herodotus’ audience as people particularly knowledgeable
about the past. If we look at the passages we have been consider-
ing, it seems clear that the more general translation entertained by
Jacoby for the Herodotean passage on Anacharsis and the fragment
of Democritus on the origins of religion can apply without a problem
to all of the occurrences of the word observed so far; even better,
one could translate λόγιος simply as “authoritative,” which would
preserve some of the vagueness of the term and the connection to
prominence and authority that is clear in some of its occurrences.
This said, it is immediately clear that, as far as the use of the
term λόγιος is concerned, the passages of Democritus, Alcidamas, and
Aristotle/Antiochus have something in common with Herodotus: in
all cases, the λόγιοι are non-Greek. We cannot tell where Democritus
located the few λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι of the first fragment: if he thought,
like Thucydides did (1.3), that the names “Greeks” and “Greece”
had originated in the relatively recent past, nothing prevents us from
supposing that he imagined the scene of their stretching their hands
towards the air to have taken place in what later became Greece.
Even if this should be the case, however, the ethnic discontinuity is
stressed very pointedly by the words “what now we Greeks call the
air,” which obviously means that those people, whoever they were,
did not speak Greek. 55 In the second fragment, Democritus appears
as a wandering polymath, much in the way in which Herodotus de-
scribes his own ἱστορίη , and the λόγιοι ἄνϑρωποι are clearly people
he has met during his journeys. The whole tone of the passage shows
that he is not speaking of Greeks. The same is almost certainly true
53
See the classic (and unreplaced) W. Aly, Volksmärchen, Sage und Novelle bei
Herodot und seinen Zeitgenossen, second, revised edition with an appendix by L. Huber
(Göttingen 1969) and the crisp overview of A. Griffiths, “Stories and Storytelling in
the Histories,” in Dewald and J. Marincola (above, n.1) 130–44.
54
On the absence of references to storytellers, see “Le storie prima delle Storie,”
in M. Giangiulio, ed., Erodoto e il “modello erodoteo.” Formazione e trasmissione
delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia (Trento 2005) 87–90.
55
This part of the passage has caused undue misunderstandings; see e.g. Cole
(above, n.30) 203, who suggests that Democritus means the early humans called the
air “zeus” (sic).
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 451
of the Aristotle/Antiochus passage: the cumbersome periphrasis “the
λόγιοι among those who dwell there” most probably reflects the fact
that, according to Antiochus, multiple changes of name and move-
ments of population had occurred in the area after the age of Italos.
Interestingly, the relative otherness of the λόγιοι, that is, the fact that
authors tend to use the term to refer to a cultural context different
from their own, is a phenomenon that goes well beyond the fifth
century: we find Etruscan, Roman, Chaldaean λόγιο ι, that look pretty
much like those of Herodotus, and only rarely is the term referred to
Greeks.56 When finally the “λόγιοι of the Greeks” pop up, this happens
in contexts of anti-Greek polemic. In the proem of the Judean War,
Josephus uses the expression to indicate Greek historians whom he
criticizes for narrating again and again the great wars of the distant
past (BJ 1. Praef. 5). Next, from the first half of the second century
c . e ., the “ λόγιοι of the Greeks” come to indicate the classical Greek
philosophers, attacked in the writings of the Christian apologists as
representatives of the pagan culture whose inferiority to Christianity
they were establishing. 57 It is tempting to conclude that such authors
understood λόγιος as a term used by the Greeks to indicate barbarian
knowledge, and turned the tables on the Greeks themselves. For them,
the term may have included a nuance of superiority and patronizing
irony, perhaps even of contempt.
As we turn to poetry, only two authors appear to have used the
term λόγιος , Pindar and Ion of Chios. For reasons that will become
clear in due course, they will be dealt with in reverse chronological
order. Probably born in the eighties of the fifth century, Ion was
one of the most versatile writers of his age. 58 He is credited with
elegiacs, tragedies, and works in prose of narrative and philosophical
nature. In a poem in elegiac couplets partially quoted by Athenaeus,
Ion calls wine “the starting point for λόγιο ι from all lands, wherever

56
See the list of ethnically-identified λόγιοι in Orth (above, n.4) 12; note the
expression οἱ λογιώτατοι τῶν ἀρχαίων συγγραφέων , used by Polybius (6.45.1) and
introducing a list of authors that comprises Ephorus, Xenophon, Callisthenes, and Plato.
The non-Greekness of the λόγιοι is the foundation of their interpretation as oriental
wise men by von Fritz (above, n.24) 343–46; see the comments of M. L. Lang and
W. R. Connor on G. Nagy’s paper in Arethusa 20 (1987) 203 and 260 respectively.
57
See the passages collected in Orth (above, n.4) 44–49. The first occurrence
is probably in Aristides’ Apology, addressed to Hadrian or Antoninus Pius: 13.251 οἱ
σοφοὶ καὶ λόγιοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων . Strictly speaking, however, since the Greek text of
the Apology is preserved embedded in the medieval Byzantine Story of Barlaam and
Joasaph, it is not completely certain that these words really go back to Aristides (on
the problem, see J. Armitage Robinson, in J. Rendel Harris, ed. and tr., The Apol-
ogy of Aristides on Behalf of the Christians, from a Syriac Ms. Preserved on Mount
Sinai, with an appendix containing the original Greek text by J. Armitage Robinson
[Cambridge 1891] 67–80). In any case, the λόγιοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων appear in Tatian (ad
Gr. 40) in the late second century c . e .
58
See K. J. Dover, “Ion of Chios: His Place in the History of Greek Literature,”
in J. Boardman and C. E. Vaphopoulou-Richardson, eds., Chios: A Conference at the
Homereion in Chios, 1984 (Oxford 1986) 27–37, and the various contributions col-
lected in V. Jennings and A. Katsaros, eds., The World of Ion of Chios (Mnemosyne
Supplement 288, Leiden 2007).
452 N ino L uraghi
there were gatherings of all Greeks and feasts of kings.” 59 From the
remaining lines of the fragment, it is not clear whether he means
that the λόγιοι talk about wine or that wine loosens their tongues,
as one may be inclined to think. 60 In any case, it is noteworthy that
Ion depicts the λόγιοι as in some sense performing: they seem to
be wise and learned men who go where they know they can find an
audience, at Panhellenic festivals or at the courts of kings. Whatever
we make of the connection with wine, it seems hard to avoid seeing
an ironical undertone in Ion’s evocation of the λόγιο ι. In this aspect
as in general, his testimony is in line with what we have seen so
far, except for the fact that Ion’s λόγιοι appear to be Greek, or at
least also Greek, and more importantly, he seems to think of them as
a category of people, rather than use the term to qualify somebody.
One might be tempted to gloss over this slight discrepancy, but this
would not be a good idea, for indeed, the reasonably clear and un-
controversial conclusions outlined so far become rather problematic
once we turn to the earliest Greek author to use the term λόγιος .
Pindar refers to λόγιοι twice in his victory songs, first in the
First Pythian Ode (92–94), composed for the tyrant Hiero of Syracuse
in 470 b . c . e ., and then again in the Sixth Nemean Ode (45), com-
posed for the young Alcimidas of Aegina probably sometime in the
sixties. 61 In the first case, after having exhorted Hiero to be gener-
ous so as to acquire a good fame, Pindar states gnomically that it is
the posthumous acclaim of fame that reveals by way of ἀοιδοί and
λόγιοι 62 the character of men of the past, and mentions as examples
of good and bad fame Croesus and Phalaris respectively. In the sec-
ond passage, the Aiakidai, mythic ancestors of the Aeginetans, are
said to have provided broad avenues from everywhere to the λόγιοι
for the praise of the island. 63 At first sight, these two passages seem
to contradict almost every aspect of the meaning of λόγιο ς observed
so far. First and most obvious, Pindar’s λόγιοι are Greek. Second,
he uses the word as a noun, rather than as an attribute referred to
people who may be more or less λόγιοι . And finally, his words can
be taken and have often been taken to refer to a precise group of

59
Fragment 89, 2–3 Leurini = 26 West 2 ap. Athen. 10.447d–f; my translation is
based on L. Leurini, ed. and comm., Ionis Chii fragmenta (Amsterdam 1992) 259 and
D. A. Campbell, ed. and transl., Greek Lyric IV (Cambridge, Mass., 1992) who, unlike
Leurini and West, reads ᾗ rather than αἵ at the beginning of line 3.
60
On these lines, see A. Katsaros, “Staging Empire and Other in Ion’s Sympotica,”
in Jennings and Katsaros (above, n.58) 229.
61
For the chronologically relevant elements in this ode, see W. B. Henry, ed.
and comm., Pindar’s Nemeans: A Selection (Munich and Leipzig 2005) 49.
62
Rather than “to ἀοιδοί and λόγιοι. ” See
����������������������������������������
M. R. Calabrese De Feo, “Interpreta-
zione e restauro testuale in Pindaro Py. I 92–94 e Ne. VI 29–30,” in G. Arrighetti, ed.,
Interpretazioni antiche e moderne di testi greci (Pisa 1987) 30–31 and L. Kurke, The
Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Poetic of Social Economy (Ithaca and London 1991) 47.
63
On the pervasive presence of the Aiakidai in Pindar’s (and Bacchylides’) odes
for Aeginetan athletes, see C. Mann, Athlet und Polis im archaischen und früklassischen
Griechenland (Göttingen 2001) 204–12 and 215–17; and A. P. Burnett, Pindar’s Songs
for Young Athletes of Aigina (Oxford 2005) 17–28.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 453
people identified as practitioners of a literary or proto-literary trade:
chroniclers, storytellers, or some other sort of non-poetic purveyors
of tradition, or, as Nagy puts it, masters of oral tradition in prose.
As usual with Pindar, nothing here is simple. Some scholars have
found it surprising, or even unacceptable, that a further category of
men should be entrusted with bestowing glory, which is of course the
main function of the praise poet. Now, if we scroll down the Sixth
Nemean Ode, it turns out that the broad avenue of the glory of the
Aiakids, now called a carriage road, had been discovered by Pindar’s
predecessors, and he is himself going to take it (53–54). 64 This may
of course imply that the λόγιοι referred to a few lines earlier were
actually poets. 65 The problem with this interpretation is that it does
not seem to work for the ἀοιδοί and λόγιοι of the First Pythian, not
to mention that in the Sixth Nemean itself (29–30) λόγοι and ἀοιδαί
are again coupled and said to preserve the glory of the departed. 66 If
the λόγιοι were themselves poets, the passages would be strangely
redundant. That is to say, the conclusion that Pindar in these pas-
sages recognizes that the poets stricto sensu do not have a complete
monopoly of praise seems inescapable. As Ruth Scodel aptly put it,
in the verses of the First Pythian “what people say about a living
man, what they say about a dead man, and what poets sing of both
living and dead slip into each other.” 67 Should we perhaps conclude
that the poets can be seen in some sense as a subset of the λόγιοι ?
The performing λόγιοι of Ion might seem to support such a view.
If we broaden our observations, we may start to see a possible
avenue of interpretation, perhaps not as wide and easy to travel as
those offered by the glory of Aegina, but practicable. In a recent
study, Ruth Scodel has argued that Pindar, while affirming that
only the Muses can confer beauty to his celebratory songs, shows
explicit awareness that poetry is not, as it were, the only way for
people to talk about other people. In various ways, he acknowledges
the existence of a more generalized oral tradition that conveys the
memory of deeds, and points to the potential shortcomings of such
tradition, and to the necessity of approaching it in a discriminating
way. Truth, the truth he claims for his poetry, is the result of such a
discriminating approach, based on principles some of which remind

64
See Kurke (above, n.62) 57–59. On road metaphors in Pindar, see also D.
Steiner, The Crown of Songs: Metaphor in Pindar (New York 1986) 76–87.
65
See Calabrese De Feo (above, n.62) 30–35.
66
On this passage, see Kurke (above, n.62) 43–45. J. B. Bury, ed. and comm.,
The Nemean Odes of Pindar (New York 1890) 110–11, points out clear parallels be-
tween lines 29–32, that deal with the spread of the glory of the Bassidai, the kinship
group of the winner, and 44–52 on the glory of the Aiakidai. It may be interesting to
observe that actually all manuscripts and the only papyrus that preserves Nem. 6.29–30
unanimously read ἀοιδοὶ καὶ λόγιοι , and the scholia presuppose this same reading,
usually rejected by modern editors for metric reasons. On the textual problem, see
Calabrese De Feo (above, n.62) 38–44, Henry (above, n.61) 61.
67
R. Scodel, “Poetic Authority and Oral Tradition in Hesiod and Pindar,” in J.
Watson, ed., Speaking Volumes: Orality and Literacy in the Greek and Roman World,
Mnemosyne Suppl. 218 (Leiden 2001) 126.
454 N ino L uraghi
us of fifth-century historians. According to Scodel, “(F)or Pindar,
there is no significant difference between what people say and what
poets sing, except that poetry has more power to convince, and that
it lasts more reliably.” 68
Non-poetic oral tradition is always referred to by Pindar in rather
general terms, with a simple “they say” or more extended references
to “words of the men of the past” (Nem. 3.52), “ancient reports of
humanity” (Ol. 7.54) and so forth. These are clearly non-textualized
reports, and there is no sign that in principle specialists, comparable
to the poets, are in charge of them. On the other hand, some of the
stories Pindar attributes to this undifferentiated oral tradition were
indeed the subject matter of earlier poetry, including, e.g., the Iliad. 69
This does not mean, however, that poetry for Pindar was completely
subsumed in this undifferentiated concept of tradition, for he re-
peatedly refers to other poets, especially Homer, as having sung a
specific story. In other words, the way that Pindar’s perception of
oral tradition seems to be able to include poetry, without completely
canceling the specificity of the latter, parallels the way in which the
λόγιοι can subsume the poets, but the poets can be distinguished
from among the λόγιοι .
These observations suggest the possibility of seeing Pindar’s
λόγιοι not so much as the masters of a prose tradition parallel to
poetry, but rather, as authoritative non-specialists, whose knowledge
and wisdom—for in Pindar’s world it is an act of wisdom to praise
the good and blame the bad—are not based on a competence of a
literary sort, not even in terms of oral literature. 70 In other words,
one has the impression that their connection to prose was no more
specific than that of the bourgeois gentleman of Molière, who at
some point famously discovered he had been doing prose his whole
life. Such a view would have the distinct advantage of not implying
a substantial difference between the way Pindar uses the term and the
way other authors of the fifth and fourth century, including Herodo-
tus, did. In a world where truth was established primarily in speech,
not everybody’s words carried the same weight. Λόγιοι were those
whose knowledge and wisdom conferred authority to their utterances.
A consequence to be drawn from the above is that to some extent
we should use the evidence of the other authors in order to make sense
of Pindar. But not exclusively: Pindar’s λόγιοι also offer important
elements to understand the use of the term by later authors. Most
importantly, Pindar’s λόγιοι , as at least part of Ion’s, for that matter,
were clearly Greek. If Pindar really meant by that term something
like “authoritative people, wise and knowledgeable about the past,”
then it is important that to him it was unproblematic that such kind
of people existed among the Greeks. The differences in focus between

68
Scodel (above, n.67) 125.
69
See Scodel (above, n.67) 124.
70
See Henry (above, n.61) 64.
 T he I mportance of B eing λόγιος 455
Herodotus, Democritus, Alcidamas, and Aristotle/Antiochus on the
one side, and Pindar on the other, may explain why the former were
less interested in Greek λόγιοι . Pindar’s conservative social ideology
may be at play, too. 71 In any case, for him, the social authority of
the λόγιοι seems to have been one of the foundations on which the
very authority of the encomiastic poets rested. On this foundation,
of course, the poets erected the building of their songs thanks to
their specific competence, the ornament that comes from the Muses
and reinforces κλέος , making it more durable. Herodotus—for only
in his case can we be specific—built his authority on a combina-
tion of instruments, the λόγιοι being one of them, the authoritative
sources of ἀκοή , which however for Herodotus was inferior both to
eyewitness and to logical argument. 72 At the same time, offering to
a Greek audience a perspective not only on customs and events, but
also on knowledge and tradition among the Barbaroi, it made sense
for him to explain who, among the Barbaroi, were λόγιοι , and how
λόγιοι they were. In other words, comparison with Pindar strongly
suggests that Herodotus, and probably also Democritus and Aristotle/
Antiochus, refer to non-Greeks who are λόγιοι to indicate to a Greek
audience just what kind of people they were talking about. One could
almost say that Herodotus’ barbarian λόγιοι require Greek λόγιοι to
be understandable at all. If this conclusion is correct, than the corol-
lary should probably be that, after Herodotus, and especially in the
Hellenistic period, barbarian λόγιοι in part ended up being caught
in a discourse of cultural superiority, as the potential representatives
of kinds of knowledge and distribution of social authority that the
Greek considered inferior and underdeveloped. In a world where
knowledge about the past was becoming less and less an aspect of
social authority and more and more the preserve of specialists, that
is, the historians, the authority inherent in being λόγιος could easily
end up being seen as inferior. This explains the reaction of authors
like Josephus, Aristides, and Tatian, who turned the term against
the Greeks in order to claim the superiority of their own cultural or
religious tradition.
To conclude, Herodotus’ references to Barbaroi being λόγιοι should
be seen as part of the discourse of ἱστορίη , Herodotus’ implicit and
explicit discussion of tradition and research. In this framework, be-
ing λόγιος is being wise, as Anacharsis, cultivating memory, like the
Egyptians, and arguing about myth, like the Persians. Being λόγιος
is not, let it be noticed, about telling stories. Herodotus’ λόγιοι are
no storytellers: as noted above, even the Persians, who are the only
λόγιοι who say anything in the Histories, argue about remote respon-
sibility based on Greek myths that everybody in Herodotus’ audience

71
If there was anything old-fashioned about being (or wanting to be, see Hip-
podamos) λόγιος , one would understand even better the undertone of irony that often
accompanies the word, from Ion to Aristotle.
72
Luraghi (above, n.1 2006) 85–88.
456 N ino L uraghi
was familiar with—knowing about those myths is hardly a distinction.
Which leads to a further conclusion. It is true that essentially most
of the positive qualities of being λόγιος apply to Herodotus himself:
his statements about the gods and human destiny imply a claim to
wisdom, and the Histories as a whole are a hugely impressive display
of knowledge. And yet, it would be wrong to say that he intended
to depict himself as a λόγιος . In critically comparing and scrutiniz-
ing the traditions of different peoples, he acts as a practitioner of a
knowledge that is emphatically non-local and therefore impartial and
superior. The authority he claims for himself is based on ἱστορίη , a
more comprehensive and complex practice that puts him on a differ-
ent and higher level than any group of λόγιοι .
Princeton University NINO LURAGHI
Classical World 102.4 (2009) nluraghi@princeton.edu

THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE ATLANTIC

STATES
CALL FOR PAPERS
2010 Annual Meeting, October 7–9
Elizabeth, N.J.
Hilton Newark Airport
We invite individual and group proposals on all aspects of the classi-
cal world and the classical tradition, and on new strategies and resources
for improved teaching. Especially welcome are presentations that aim at
maximum audience participation and integrate the concerns of K–12 and
college faculty. We are planning a special session on Thornton Wilder
and the Classics, and are delighted that the poet, essayist and critic Katha
Pollitt will be our Saturday luncheon speaker. In connection with a panel
spotlighting undergraduate research in classics, we are eager for propos-
als from undergraduates, particularly but not necessarily from the CAAS
region. All proposals must be submitted via the online form at the CAAS
website, and all submitters must be members of CAAS. The submission
deadlines are April 1, 2010, for panels and workshops and April 10, 2010,
for individual presentations. For more detailed information visit http://www.
caas-cw.org/papercall.html.