提 要：波斯帝国开国君主居鲁士大帝的主要史料源自希腊史家的记述，其传奇与说教色彩浓厚，细节难以采信。本文对希罗多德笔下的居鲁士传奇展开母题分析，说明该故事充斥着神话与民间故事母题，兼有东方与希腊成份；进而分析希腊史家们的史料来源及其可靠性、甄别加工史料的方法以及历史真相标准；最后通过分析口述历史的特征，说明希罗多德及其同代史家具有口述史家特征。他们所采集的东方史料均属口述史范畴，而非文献档案资料。

关键词：居鲁士；希罗多德；母题；口述历史

Title: The Romance of Cyrus the Great and Oral History

Author:Wang Yixin, Professor, School of History, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.

Abstract:The sources about Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, are mainly derived from the Greek historians’ records, incredible in details and full of legendary elements and moral teachings. This paper applies motif analysis on the Cyrus’ romances in Herodotus and shows in them the rich elements of myth and folktale, both oriental and Greek. Furthermore, this paper looks into issues such as what sources the Greek historians acquired, how they screened and colored these sources and by what standard they measured the historical truths. Finally, by summarizing the features of oral history, this study indicates that Herodotus and his contemporary historians have the features of oral historians. The oriental sources they collected are oral materials, not the archived documents.

Key words:Cyrus; Herodotus; motifs;oral history