Abstract

‘He who tries to play a double part, and fails in the attempt, as Histiaeus did, is not likely to occupy an honourable place in history. He seems to have been of great and selfish ambition, without the capacity to form a judgement as to the means requisite to carry it out, and without any scruple as to the means he did adopt.’ Grundy's judgement has proved widely influential among modern scholars. It has been seriously questioned only by Heinlein, who, in making Histiaeus the loyal confidant of Darius, offered a radically different interpretation of his political career. But the wild and undisciplined nature of many of Heinlein's conjectures prevented his hypothesis from winning acceptance. In this paper I venture to suggest that the accepted view of Histiaeus as a private adventurer might be false, and that a revaluation of his career along the lines proposed by Heinlein might be profitable