Herodotus, Histories 1.8.2 · 1.8.2
"Ears are less trustworthy than eyes"
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Herodotus — χρόνου δὲ οὐ πολλοῦ διελθόντος ( χρῆν γὰρ Κανδαύλῃ γενέσθαι κακῶς) ἔλεγε πρὸς τὸν Γύγην τοιάδε.
Candaules — Γύγη, οὐ γάρ σε δοκέω πείθεσθαί μοι λέγοντι περὶ τοῦ εἴδεος τῆς γυναικός ( ὦτα γὰρ τυγχάνει ἀνθρώποισι ἐόντα ἀπιστότερα ὀφθαλμῶν), ποίεε ὅκως ἐκείνην θεήσεαι γυμνήν.
Not much time had passed (for it had to be that Candaules should come to grief) when he said this to Gyges: "Gyges, I don't think you believe me when I talk about my wife's beauty (for ears are, as it happens, less to be trusted than eyes for men), so contrive that you see her naked."
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The setting
Candaules is not content to be believed. He wants a second pair of eyes on what he has.
A note on this passage
Before Candaules opens his mouth, the narrator steps in with a parenthesis: <em>chrēn gar Kandaulēi genesthai kakōs</em>, "for it had to go badly for Candaules." The ending is announced before the scheme is proposed. Herodotus uses the same turn of phrase three more times in the whole work: for the Egyptian king Apries (2.161), the Scythian king Scyles (4.79), and, near the very end, for Artaynte and her whole house (9.109), in another story of a king's illicit desire and a wife's revenge. Each time it marks someone who has started down a road they cannot leave.
Candaules' reason sounds like a proverb, and it is also Herodotus's own rule of method. At 2.99 he tells the reader which parts of his account of Egypt rest on his own sight and which on what he was told, and he trusts the eye first. The king says, in a bedroom, what the historian says about his sources: hearing is not enough, you have to see. The joke is grim. The principle that makes a good inquirer makes a bad husband.
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