#sydnor roy

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″Food and the Philosophy of Empire: Herodotus 9.82

 After the Battle of Plataea, Herodotus relates an anecdote about Pausanias’ reaction to Persian wealth. When he comes across Xerxes’ tent, he has the Persian slaves prepare a typical meal of the Persian elite. He then has his own slaves prepare a traditional Spartan meal. Pausanias is amused at the difference and calls the Greeks together, saying “my purpose in asking you all here is to show you how stupid the Persian king is. Look at the way he lives and then consider that he invaded our country to rob us of our meager portions!” (9.82). Scholarly response to this scene has been two-fold. First, Herodotus has Pausanias set up a display that proves one of the main themes of the Histories: that soft countries should not attack hard ones (Bowie 2003, Vasunia 2009). Second, the scene, along with Pausanias’ laughter, serves to foreshadow Pausanias’ eventual Medizing (Fornara 1971; Lateiner 1989). I propose that Herodotus includes this scene in order to highlight cultural difference and to show that Pausanias takes the wrong lesson from the Persian meal. His misinterpretation foreshadows not only his own downfall, but also problems in how Sparta exercises power. 

Herodotus creates a strong association between food and power in his presentation of the Persians (Munson 2001). When Croesus wants to attack the Persians, his advisor Sandanis warns him against it because the Persians’ “food consists of what they can get, not what they want” (1.71). If Croesus wins, he will gain nothing from it; but if he loses, he will lose everything. His statement is somewhat undercut, however, by his description of how Cyrus incites his Persians to rebel against the Medes, their first step towards empire. As an object lesson on conquest, he sets up two days, one of hard work clearing land and one of feasting, and then goes on to explicitly connect slavery with working the land and freedom with conquest and eating good food (1.127). This connection is reinforced by Cyrus’ advice at the end of the Histories: “it is impossible for one and the same country to produce remarkable crops and good fighting men” (9.122). The Persians associate luxury with conquest. 

The relationship between Spartan food and power is not emphasized in the Histories, although he does mention the communal mess as one of Lycurgus’ innovations on the Spartan constitution (1.65). Our picture of Spartan meals comes from later sources. Xenophon plays on the comparative meal scene in Herodotus at the beginning of the Cyropaedia, where he compares Persian and Median meals. Plutarch describes the simple Spartan meal in detail in his Life of Lycurgus. Spartan food is simple and signature. They avoid outside influences in their lives and in their food (Hodkinson 2000). The Spartans associate simplicity with power. 

The comparison of the meals after Plataea is paradigmatic for the misunderstanding between the two cultures. Herodotus tells us that the Persians enjoy large meals with many courses—this is analogous to enjoying their large empire with many different subject states. The Persians attack so that they can continue to have big meals. It is not a matter of amassing wealth, but rather maintaining a military society instead of having to shift into an agrarian one (a practice analogous to the Spartan practice of keeping their helots). The Persians will use and enjoy their wealth and they are warlike; their culture values warfare as a means and luxury as the goal. The Spartans value the military life for itself, and put limits on the trapping of wealth in all aspects of their lives. The Persians seek to strengthen their center by bringing more in; the Spartans strengthen their center by protecting it from influence. We can see this in how Sparta interacts with other city states and exerts its hegemonic power. Thus, the meals are emblematic of two kinds of power, rather than an ironic comparison of apparent strength.”

Sydney Roy Food and the Philosophy of Empire: Herodotus 9.82 (abstract)

Source; https://camws.org/meeting/2013/files/abstracts/134.Food%20and%20the%20Philosophy%20of%20Empire.pdf

Sydnor Roy, Ph.D. in Classical Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill, is Assistant Professor at the Texas Tech University, Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 39, 2023

Perceived time expands and contracts within each heartbeat. Arslanova, I., Kotsaris, V., & Tsakiris, M. (2023). Current Biology, 33(7), 1389-1395.e4.

The rostral intralaminar nuclear complex of the thalamus supports striatally mediated action reinforcement. Cover, K. K., Lieberman, A. G., Heckman, M. M., & Mathur, B. N. (2023). eLife, 12, e83627.

A model of hippocampal replay driven by experience and environmental structure facilitates spatial learning. Diekmann, N., & Cheng, S. (2023). eLife, 12, e82301.

Changes in behavioral priority influence the accessibility of working memory content. Ester, E. F., & Pytel, P. (2023). NeuroImage, 272, 120055.

Hippocampal spatio-predictive cognitive maps adaptively guide reward generalization. Garvert, M. M., Saanum, T., Schulz, E., Schuck, N. W., & Doeller, C. F. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(4), 615–626.

Neuronal birthdate reveals topography in a vestibular brainstem circuit for gaze stabilization. Goldblatt, D., Huang, S., Greaney, M. R., Hamling, K. R., Voleti, V., Perez-Campos, C., … Schoppik, D. (2023). Current Biology, 33(7), 1265-1281.e7.

Dissociating visual perspective taking and belief reasoning using a novel integrated paradigm: A preregistered online study. Green, R., Shaw, D. J., & Kessler, K. (2023). Cognition, 235, 105397.

Extracting statistical information about shapes in the visual environment. Hansmann-Roth, S., Chetverikov, A., & Kristjánsson, Á. (2023). Vision Research, 206, 108190.

Unsigned surprise but not reward magnitude modulates the integration of motor elements during actions. Jamous, R., Takacs, A., Frings, C., Münchau, A., Mückschel, M., & Beste, C. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 5379.

Saccadic modulation of neural excitability in auditory areas of the neocortex. Leszczynski, M., Bickel, S., Nentwich, M., Russ, B. E., Parra, L., Lakatos, P., … Schroeder, C. E. (2023). Current Biology, 33(7), 1185-1195.e6.

Emotion dynamics as hierarchical Bayesian inference in time. Majumdar, G., Yazin, F., Banerjee, A., & Roy, D. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(7), 3750–3772.

Differential replay of reward and punishment paths predicts approach and avoidance. McFadyen, J., Liu, Y., & Dolan, R. J. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(4), 627–637.

Systematic differences in visual working memory performance are not caused by differences in working memory storage. Pratte, M. S., & Green, M. L. (2023). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 49(3), 335–349.

Multiple cortical visual streams in humans. Rolls, E. T., Deco, G., Huang, C.-C., & Feng, J. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(7), 3319–3349.

Subjective perception of objects depends on the interaction between the validity of context-based expectations and signal reliability. Rossel, P., Peyrin, C., & Kauffmann, L. (2023). Vision Research, 206, 108191.

Estrogens rapidly shape synaptic and intrinsic properties to regulate the temporal precision of songbird auditory neurons. Scarpa, G. B., Starrett, J. R., Li, G.-L., Brooks, C., Morohashi, Y., Yazaki-Sugiyama, Y., & Remage-Healey, L. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(7), 3401–3420.

On quantification and maximization of information transfer in network dynamical systems. Singh, M. S., Pasumarthy, R., Vaidya, U., & Leonhardt, S. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 5588.

Intrinsic activity development unfolds along a sensorimotor–association cortical axis in youth. Sydnor, V. J., Larsen, B., Seidlitz, J., Adebimpe, A., Alexander-Bloch, A. F., Bassett, D. S., … Satterthwaite, T. D. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(4), 638–649.

Somatosensory targeted memory reactivation enhances motor performance via hippocampal-mediated plasticity. Veldman, M. P., Dolfen, N., Gann, M. A., Van Roy, A., Peeters, R., King, B. R., & Albouy, G. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(7), 3734–3749.

Tracking neural activity from the same cells during the entire adult life of mice. Zhao, S., Tang, X., Tian, W., Partarrieu, S., Liu, R., Shen, H., … Liu, J. (2023). Nature Neuroscience, 26(4), 696–710.

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Purposeful Cultural Change in Herodotus’ Histories

In this latest talk from the Spring 2023 edition of the Herodotus Helpline, Professor Sydnor Roy (Texas Tech) explores the idea of purposeful change in Herodotus' Histories. Professor Roy examines a wide range of cases in which different individuals and communities respond to cultural and environmental factors, arguing that these actions constitute fundamental political acts in Herodotus' work.

Source: the youtube channel of Herodotus Helpline

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Herodotus and political relativism

”Political relativism: implicit political theory in Herodotus' Histories

Roy, Cornelia Sydnor

A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics Chapel Hill 2010 

Approved By: Phiroze Vasunia Rosaria Munson Emily Baragwanath Brendan Boyle William Race

Abstract

This dissertation argues that Herodotus presents political institutions in a manner similar to the way he presents customs and cultural institutions. That is, he promotes a position of political relativism parallel to his cultural relativism. The dissertation first explores the Constitutional Debate and establishes that Herodotus' political thought is primarily applied thinking that is dependent upon temporal and social context. The second and third chapters establish the close relationship between cultural description and political description. Chapter Two examines this relationship in two ways: semantically and developmentally. Herodotus uses similar vocabulary and syntax in order to talk about political and cultural behavior. The developmental approach examines societies in their early stages of existence. I determine that, at the most basic level, societies seek justice, stability, and cultural representation from their governments. Political practices and institutions closely mirror the customs of the societies that practice the, Chapter Three extends this developmental examination to six more advanced and better defined societies in the Histories: Lydia, Egypt, Scythia, Sparta, Persia, and Athens. I show that even these societies have political structures that develop from and are limited by their cultural background. Chapter Four brings together the arguments of the prior chapters by focusing first on the idea of freedom as it is presented in the Histories. The text supports freedom in the abstract, but recognizes that freedom is a subjective experience within the societies presented in the Histories. I examine models of political relativism found in the text that are related to this conception of freedom. I conclude by exploring the impact of this kind of thinking on later Greek history and, in particular, the Peloponnesian War. I suggest that Herodotus' political relativism is, in part, a belief that political ideology is a complex issue and not a reason to go to war.”

Source: https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/t148fh75t

The whole dissertation can be found on file:///C:/Users/USer/Downloads/Political_relativism___implicit_political_theory_in_Herodotus__Histories%20(1).pdf