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ἕθνος and γνος in Herodotus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. P. Jones
C. P. Jones
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Herodotus has often been considered the Father of Ethnography no less than the Father of History. It comes as a paradox, then, that he has been taxed with confusion in his use of two terms that recur over and over in his discussion of peoples, ἕθνος and γνος. Here is the formulation of Raymond Weil:

Hérodote definit mal l‘ethnos’. C'est pour lui tantôot une subdivision du ‘génos’, tantôt au contraire un ensemble de ‘géné’. Ainsi 1' ‘ethnos’ des Médes, comme celui des Scythes, groupe plusieurs γνεα. Mais cet ‘ethnos’ scythe porte aussi le nom de ‘génos’, et comprend des ἕθνεα. Les Athéniens sont un ‘ethnos’ hellénique qui fait partie du ‘génos’ ionien, les Lacédémoniens un ‘ethnos’ pélasgique à rattacher au ‘génos’ dorien.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , December 1996 , pp. 315 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1996

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References

1 Weil, R., Aristote et I'Histoire, Études et Commentaires 36 (Paris, 1960), 385.I have learned much from talking with Kevin Daly, Alex Hollmann, Simon Hornblower and Gregory Nagy, and am also grateful to the readers for CQ. My research for this paper has been greatly facilitated by the use of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (Irvine, CA).Google Scholar

2 The text (1.56.2) is ambiguous, but not on this point: Herodotus in fact attributes the original Ionians to the ‘Pelasgic ἕθνος’, the Spartans to the Hellenic.

3 The first view (γνος as a subdivision of ἕθνος) is already in Schweighaeuser's Lexicon, and thereafter in the revised Stephanus and LSJ.

4 The famous phrase in 8.144.2, τò Eλληνικòν òν, ὃμαιóν τε κα is not actually a ‘definition of Greekness’, as it has sometimes been called, but means only ‘the fact that the Greek people is of one blood and one tongue’.

5 A useful discussion in Asher, R. E. (edd.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (Oxford, 1994), s.v. ‘intension’, iv 1699–1702.Google Scholar

6 Mieder, W.etal. (edd), A Dictionary of American Proverbs (New York, 1992), s.v.‘house’27,29.Google Scholar

7 On this distinction, see The Encyclopedia of Language (above, n. 5) s.v. ‘markedness’, v. 2378–83.

8 Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique de la Langue grecque ii(Paris, 1970), 315.Google Scholar

9 References in Powell, J. E., A Lexicon to Herodotus (Cambridge, 1938), s.v. (henceforth ‘Powell, Lexicon’). Powell puts one instance under a second rubric, ‘nationality’, οὔτε Φωνν οὔτε στα οἓτε τò ἕθνος γνωσκον (4.111.1; τò omitted by the codex Mureti): but this could be understood as ‘the nation (to which the strangers belonged, sc.)’.Google Scholar

10 Chantraine (n. 8), i (Paris, 1968), 222.

11 LSJ (s.v. γνος V 2) cite Parm, P.I.. 129 C, but in fact Aristotle is the first to establish this distinction (É. des Places, Lexique de Platon i [Paris, 1964], 110).Google Scholar

12 Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides i(Oxford, 1945), 95–8;J.Alty, H. M., JHS 102 (1982), 1–14Google Scholar

13 For Herodotus' account of the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Attica, 6.137–40.

14 On this application of the expression ‘Chalcidian’ to inhabitants of this region, Gomme (n. 12), 203–8. See also below, on Thuc. 4.61.3.

15 Casevitz, M., Ktema 8 (1984), 75–83.Google Scholar

16 Oath: Aesch. 3.110, εἒ τιζ τδε παρβανει ἢ πλιζ ἢ ἰδιώτηζ cf. A. Giovannini, Untersuchungen über die Natur und die Anfdnge der bundesstaatlichen Sympolitie, Hypomnemata 33 (Göttingen, 1971), 14–16;F. Walbank W., Selected Papers (Cambridge, 1985, 6, 22.)

17 For Φλον as conveying ‘the distinctiveness of one race as opposed to another’, Nagy, G., Greek Mythology and Poetics (New York, 1990), 290–1.Google Scholar