HERODOTUS AND THE 1820 SETTLERS IN SOUTH AFRICA: HISTORIOGRAPHIES OF COLONIZATION AND THE ‘CACOPHONY OF VOICES’

Abstract

The renewal of interest in Herodotus as an effective and creative historian within a predominantly oral tradition has been a feature of prolific research during the last twenty years. In the very year in which the arrival of the 1820 settlers in the east of the former Cape Colony in South Africa is being remembered, and even commemorated, I attempt a reading of Herodotus’ celebrated account of the Greek colonization of Cyrene in Libya (North Africa) through the historiographical lens of accounts of the arrival of these British settlers, focussing on the narratives of colonization common to these exempla more than two millennia apart. My intention is to continue the conversation, especially amongst South African classicists, about how to tackle the thorny question of decolonizing the content and teaching of the Classics in our universities.