On the Malice of Herodotus

On the Malice of Herodotus or On the Malignity of Herodotus (Greek: Περὶ τῆς Ἡροδότου κακοηθείας) is an essay by Plutarch criticizing the historian Herodotus for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation in Histories. It has been called the "first instance in literature of the slashing review." The 19th-century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity." Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch plays devil's advocate to see what could be said against so favourite and well-known a writer. Some scholars however have dismissed the essay as the work of a Pseudo-Plutarch, "full of the most futile accusations of every kind", in which the author merely establishes his own malignity, and whose "calumnious fictions" were inspired by wounded Theban patriotism (Thebes is treated unflatteringly in The Histories). According to another Plutarch scholar, R. H. Barrow, Herodotus' real failing in Plutarch's eyes was to advance any criticism at all of those states that saved Greece from Persia. "Plutarch," he concluded, "is fanatically biased in favor of the Greek cities; they can do no wrong."

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