Historical Equilibrium: Herodotus’ Just Order of Events Ryan Bauman College

In The Histories, Herodotus offers an account of the events leading to the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states of 5th century BC and attempts to determine “the reason why they fought one another” (1.1). In recounting the events that preceded the Greco-Persian War, the historian Herodotus places historically significant political and social events, which likely hold complex causes and effects, in linear order, primarily tied together through the motif of retribution for mutual acts of wrongdoing. Causality in The Histories is the result of what Herodotus sees as history’s inherent ability to maintain balance; a certain harmony is found in the oscillating power of individuals and groups through their recurring cycles of prosperity and destruction. In addition, Herodotus attests to an even more consequential equilibrium: that which is found between human motivation and the natural laws of fate.

The Histories’ proem begins by recounting the abduction of the king of Argos’ daughter, Io, at the hands of Phoenician sailors, which supposedly ignited the conflict between Greeks and Persians. “After that, say the Persians, certain Greeks, whose name they cannot declare, put into Tyre in Phoenician...