Other Natures. Clara Bosak-Schroeder
Diodorus is again more explicit than Herodotus, noting rivers’ “benefaction” (euergesia) to human beings (Diod. Sic. 1.36.2).
The most prominent nonhuman actor in both Herodotus’s and Diodorus’s histories is the Nile, a river with a long hold on the Greek and Roman imagination.47 As Herodotus says at the beginning of book 2:
Δῆλα γὰρ δὴ καὶ μὴ προακούσαντι, ἰδόντι δέ, ὅστις γε σύνεσιν ἔχει, ὅτι <ἡ>Αἴγυπτος ἐς τὴν Ἕλληνες ναυτίλλονται ἐστὶ Αἰγυπτίοισι ἐπίκτητός τε γῆ καὶ δῶρον τοῦ ποταμοῦ.
It is clear even to one who has not heard [the Egyptian account] before, but sees for themselves (if they have any sense) that the “Egypt” to which the Greeks sail is land acquired (epiktētos) for the Egyptians and a gift (dōron) of the river. (Hdt. 2.5)48
αύτης ὦν τῆς χώρης τῆς εἰρημένης ἡ πολλή, κατά περ οἱ ἱρέες ἔλεγον, ἐδόκεε καὶ αὐτῷ μοι εἶναι ἐπίκτητος Αἰγυπτίοισι.
The majority of the land I have spoken about seems to me to be an additional acquisition (epiktētos) for the Egyptians, just as the priests say. (Hdt. 2.10.1)
This language of gift giving characterizes the Nile as a benefactor who has made Egypt for the Egyptians. “What was given from the river to the land and the land to the people” is correlated with the Egyptians’ periods of greatest fortune.49 In these passages, Herodotus points out that the land the Greeks take for granted as “Egypt” has a history. Although the Egyptians are elsewhere known as one of the oldest societies on Earth (2.2), and Herodotus is often criticized for representing them as static, his portrait of Egypt is a land that has changed under the Nile’s direction.50
The Nile’s actions in Egypt also illustrate the temporal dimension of physis and what Greek writers consider “natural.” Human action often succeeds the actions of other beings, like rivers; for example, as we saw earlier, Herodotus says that some of the Nile’s mouths have been “dug” (orukta) by humans, while others are “original” (ithagenea, 2.17.6), that is, dug by nonhuman forces. But the Nile has given land to Egypt that is epiktētos, “acquired in addition,” which posits an “Egypt” that predates the Nile’s actions. There is an “original” pre-Nilotic Egypt, just as the Nile had “original” prehuman mouths.51
A parallel passage in the Histories reveals additional connotations of epiktētos. In book 7, the Spartan king Demaratus explains that in Sparta, poverty is “native” (suntrophos), while valor is “acquired” (epaktos) through wisdom and law (7.102.1). Rosalind Thomas argues that Demaratus uses suntrophos and epaktos to contrast the effects of the Spartans’ physical environment with their cultural response.52 But set against the actions of the Nile, we should not understand this difference between physical environment and culture as a static division between preset, nonhuman nature and reactive, human society. Rivers are also capable of reacting to the world and remaking it as they see fit.
Since Herodotus says that the flow of the Nile is “different in nature” (2.35.2: physin alloiēn)—presumably different from other rivers—and “contrary in nature” (2.19.3: empalin pephukenai), we might assume that its actions are unique. But Herodotus elsewhere clarifies that other rivers give gifts as well:
τῶν γὰρ ταῦτα τὰ χωρία προσχωσάντων ποταμῶν ἑνὶ τῶν στομάτων τοῦ Νείλου, ἑόντος πενταστόμου, οὐδεὶς αὐτῶν πλήθεος πέρι ἄξιος συμβληθῆναί ἐστι. Εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἄλλοι ποταμοί, οὐ κατὰ τὸν Νεῖλον ἐόντες μεγάθεα, οἵτινες ἔργα ἀποδεξάμενοι μεγάλα εἰσί· τῶν ἐγὼ φράσαι ἔχω οὐνόματα καὶ ἄλλων καὶ οὐκ ἥκιστα Ἀχελῴου, ὃς ῥέων δι’ Ἀκαρνανίης καὶ ἐξιεὶς ἐς θάλασσαν τῶν Ἐχινάδων νήσων τὰς ἡμισέας ἤδη ἤπειρον πεποίκε.
Of the rivers that have deposited these lands, none is worthy of being compared for greatness with even one of the mouths of the Nile, which has five. But there are other rivers, none as enormous as the Nile, which have displayed great works (erga apodexamenoi megala). I could recite the names of others, but not least of these is the Achelōos, which flowing through Akarnania and terminating in the sea has already made half of the Echinades islands into mainland. (Hdt. 2.10.2–3)
While the Nile is preeminent in its benefaction, rivers characteristically act on and create the lands that Greeks are used to taking for granted. This process is ongoing and, Herodotus argues, historically significant. By calling the actions of even these minor rivers erga megala, Herodotus ties them explicitly to the erga megala he sets out to record in the proem and correlates the “displays” (1.1: apodechthenta; 2.10: apodexamenoi) of both humans and rivers. Rivers are agents who can “will” (2.11: ethelēsei) and “work hard” (2.11: ergatikou), and whose erga are worthy of the historian’s attention.53
In Diodorus, the Nile has even greater powers. Diodorus’s Egyptian informants say:
κατὰ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τῶν ὅλων γένεσιν πρώτους ἀνθρώπους γενέσθαι κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον διά τε τὴν εὐκρασίαν τῆς χώρας καὶ διὰ τὴν φύσιν τοῦ Νείλου. τοῦτον γὰρ πολύγονον ὄντα καὶ τὰς τροφὰς αὐτοφυεῖς παρεχόμενον ῥᾳδίως ἐκτρέφειν τὰ ζωογονηθέντα· τήν τε γὰρ τοῦ καλάμου ῥίζαν καὶ τὸν λωτόν, ἔτι δὲ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον κύαμον καὶ τὸ καλούμενον κορσαῖον καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦθ’ ἕτερα τροφὴν ἑτοίμην παρέχεσθαι τῷ γένει.
In the beginning, during the creation of the universe, human beings first came into existence in Egypt because of the mildness and nature (physis) of the Nile. For being very productive and providing nourishment on its own, it easily supported the creatures that had come to be. For the root of the reed and the lotus, and the Egyptian bean and the korsaion, as it is called, and many other plants such as these provide nourishment to the race of human beings. (Diod. Sic. 1.10.1)
This passage ties human beings to other animals and elevates the importance of the Nile to human life. Building on the Egyptians’ cosmology, Diodorus puts the Nile in parallel with human heroes, like Isis, Osiris, and Heracles, later immortalized for their great gifts to humankind. The Nile, Diodorus says, “in general surpasses all other rivers in the world in providing benefits to human beings.”54 Like human rulers in the Library, Diodorus’s rivers compete with one another in benefaction and surpass those that, as we have seen, extract human labor without providing sufficient reward.55 As one of the best benefactors, the Nile provides both “ease in toil” (tois men ergois eukopian) and “profit” (1.36.4: lusiteleian).
Yet like a human being, the Nile can also make mistakes. Although the land the Nile provides and irrigates is a great gift, Herodotus observes