ABSTRACT
Oral information dominated quantitatively the source materiall available to Herodotos to a vast degree. A rough count of his references to type of source and inferred sources would suggest at least five to one in favour of oral communication.2 The great variety of types of such communication makes a general assessment of reliability impossible: we cannot lump under one heading the statement of a guide to the Pyramids (who could no more read the hieroglyphics than could the Greek inquirer), the popular version of political or military events two or three generations earlier (or more), and the personal reminiscences of a veteran of the battle of Salamis, or the official account of Spartan institutions. (It is generally thought that Sparta had no written constitution, which is perhaps not indubitable, but in any case inquisitive foreigners would not be granted permission to study any such documents.)
The types of source within the main categories differ widely then - perhaps not much less so in written than in oral information - in the degree of authenticity of the original source, in the kind and the intensity of any bias concerned (individual, political, patriotic, racist) and in the amount of unintentional corruption incurred in transmission from person to person, generation to generation, language to language. They also differ in age and especially for oral sources the greater the time elapsed since the events narrated, the larger the number of mediating individuals, and the greater the likelihood of unintentional inaccuracy or deliberate perversion.
