Historiography as Translation
Persian Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) in Classical Greek Histories
Abstract
Historiography, the writing of history, is thought of as translation of facts into narrative fictions. The translational nature of historiography holds more tenable when historians engage in writing the history of other cultures in their own native language. Some historians also, like cultural anthropologists, engage in cultural translation, since they usually not only travel and use translation to gather their raw material, but also translate the cultural practices of land they are writing its history. Relying on Asad’s (2018) view of cultural anthropology and narrativist historians and in the light of a transdisciplinary view of translation, the present article seeks to show how Greek historiography can be assumed as a translational practice. Second, it aims to explore the translational character of the three leading Classical Greek historians of ancient Persia, Herodotus, Ctesias and Xenophon, and seeks to show how the historiography of the Persian Achaemenid empire is folded through translation, not only in ancient era, but also in modern times, through (re)translations of these so-called primary sources.
Keywords:
narrativist philosophy of history, Greek historiography, translational practice, Persian Achaemenid empireReferences
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