Between Leisure, Humour, and Ethnography: Entertainment as a Historiographical Method in Herodotus

Abstract

The article analyses the role of leisure, humour, and entertainment in Herodotus's Histories from an ethnographic and comparative perspective. Against interpretations that consider them secondary narrative resources, it argues that these practices form a central part of his historiographical method. Through the study of festivals, games, banquets, episodes of laughter and irony, it shows how these ludic forms act as a functional ethnographic marker which, following Redfield's anthropology, allows for the encoding of the structure of the alien nomos through its playful forms. Such manifestations appear as culturally situated phenomena that enable the observation of alterity without recourse to explicit moral judgements and constitute a fundamental element of Herodotus's historiographical project.