Start Reading Histories (Classics Of World Literature) Written And Illustrated By Herodotus Available In Readable Copy

to review Herodotus It's much like trying to review the Bible, Most would probably say something like, "I liked the blood and guts and stories about the cheating wives of kings the genealogies were boring.
" But I found the entire book utterly captivating, It's something special to be able to lose yourself in a world that's completely different from your own, that has a rich history of its own with strange characters and stranger frontiers.


Herodotus is truly a child of the world, marveling at its every wonder, To the modern reader, much of what he writes is quaintly naive and at times pretty racist, For instance, when describing Indians a people he located in the very northwestern part of what we now know as India, he says that they "dwell farthest to the east and closest to the sunrise.
For east of the Indians lies an uninhabitable desert of nothing but sand, "These Indians also "have intercourse out in the open just like animals" and "the seed they ejaculate into their wives is not white like that of the rest of men, but black like their skin and like the semen of the Ethiopians.
"And in describing the land of Egypt, he constantly spews wildly inaccurate exoticisms, He describes the symbiotic relationship between an alligator and a plover bird the alligator, who is the most vicious creature in the world, opens its mouth to let the plover eat the leeches from his gums not true, despite the misinformation still circling today, even.
There is a report of ants that are smaller than dogs but larger than foxes who gather gold out of the desert.
He tells a story about a race of oneeyed men who steal gold from goldhoarding griffins, but he discounts the story because he can't believe in the existence of oneeyed men the eagleheaded lion, however, he has no trouble accepting.


Herodotus's histories are great fodder for contemporary literature, I have no doubt that every story that could be told had already been told by the time of Herodotus, The influence of literature like this is most plainly seen in fantasy works after all, the ancient Greeks lived in a fantasy world, where gods wreaked havoc and monsters resided in the shadows.
George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire would never have existed without Herodotus and the works of his peers, His tyrants, whores, valiant knights, plots of political intrigue and betrayal, may very well have all been lifted right off the papyri of these ancient texts.
And no one could blame him for doing so, This is good stuff.

So Herodotus is truly a child of the world, marveling at its every wonder, But if he's so gullible, can we really call this history My answer is that I don't really care what you call it.
This is better than history, It's entertaining, it's fascinating, it's educational at times, Much like the Bible, it's got a bit of everything, It's a collage of knowledge, ancient rumors, wild speculation, and bewildering stories, that's begging out to be read and enjoyed by even such a removed generation as ours.


P. S. A quick note on the Landmark edition, translated by Andrea L, Purvis and edited by Robert B, Strassler. With all these maps and appendices and copious footnotes, why would you ever read a different edition It's well worth it to shell out a few more bones for this one.
I think I would like to invite my Goodreads friends to browse any Book you like, then take heart to start with Book I as the inception of the whole inquiry unthinkable to those Greek scholars at that time, but Herodotus could make it and you cannot help admiring him when you read his famous preamble:

Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians may not be without their glory and especially to show why the two people fought each other.
p.

This preamble, I think, in theedition may entice you as well:

HERODOTUS of Halicarnassus, his Researches are here set down to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples and more particularly, to show how they came into conflict.
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Moreover, the one in thisedition published by the University of Chicago Press is also interesting:

I, Herodotus of Harlicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why they fought one another.
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First of all, don't be intimidated by its length, that is,pages in thePenguin edition, please find any translation you're familiar with its style or wording then keep reading a few pages once in a while, don't hope to finish it in a few days/weeks since it's one of the masterpieces in ancient history, you need time to think, take notes and ask yourself why.


Secondly, this is definitely his magnum opus for posterity of all nations to read, reflect and interpret in terms of reciprocal toleration as fellow human beings so that we learn not to make unthinkable mistakes again.
In many engagements there, you can witness various unimaginably ruthless deeds instigated by the powers that be, fate and godlike valour of those true Greek and Persian soldiers.
Those fallen heroes including all innumerable soldiers killed in various battles deserve our respect with awe, admiration and gratitude as our exemplary models of humankind.


And finally, scholars should honour and keep him in mind since Cicero called him 'the father of history' and we can enjoy reading his second to none narrative.
However, some chapters might not be interesting when he sometime told us about the flora/fauna seemingly unrelated to the looming hostilities.
I take them as relaxing moments and we can learn from what he told us frankly and goodhumoredly, Those ruthless war scenes, for instance from Chapteronwards in Book IX, are amazingly described to the extent that we can visualize such ruthless gory scenes with increasingly stupefying horror in which it is hopelessly put into words.


That's it and I think I would reread the University of Chicago version for solace and advice in there whenever I'm free from work.
It'd teach us of course to mind our own business, be kind, have mercy towards our fellow colleagues, friends, cousins, etc.
since we all have limited time to live on earth,

Note: In fact, I have another Penguin copy with its front cover showing a painted vase depicting two soldiers in action Persian vs.
Greek, not this one so the page

numbers as mentioned above may vary, Therefore, I've reposted my review since I don't know how to return to its previous book cover, If Herodotus only kept to his main story, the growth of Persia and its eventual halt by Greece, the book would probably be onlypages long.
Thank God he didn't do this, The Histories is a narration of the known world and the people living in it, When introducing a new character, even unimportant ones, he gives very interesting backstories, One of my favourite stories is about Cleisthenes of Sicyon who organized a competition whose winner was to marry his daughter Agariste.
Cleisthenes tests the suitors' courage, character, education and manners by spending time with them for a year, Some Athenian guy named Hippoclides pleases the tyrant of Sicyon the most, but then he does something very embarrassing, He dances on a table and then dances while standing on his head, like modern breakdancers, Cleisthenes doesn't want this man to marry his daughter anymore and says: "Son of Tisander, you have danced your marriage away.
" Hippoclides has the greatest comeback in history and simply replies: "Hippoclides doesn't care!" as if he participated in the competition for a year just to have fun and party.
You might wonder what this story has to do with Persia's conquest of Greece, Well, not a lot. Cleisthenes is just an ancestor of the important statesman and general Pericles, who doesn't have anything to do with the main story either.


Herodotus doesn't just narrate about individuals, but also about whole nations, Bookfocuses mainly on Egypt, Herodotus tells about its geography, the animals living in the country, the religion, its culture and its history, The Egyptians have customs which seem very weird to Herodotus, He explains a typical Egyptian party: "After the meal at a party of welltodo Egyptians, a man carries round the room in a coffin a corpse made of wood, which has been painted and carved so as to be as lifelike as possible, and whose length is about a cubit or two.
The man shows the corpse to all the guests, one by one, while saying: 'Look on this while you drink, for this will be your lot when you are dead'.
That is what happens at Egyptian parties, " Especially the last remark seems really funny to me, I can see a hint of distate in this sentence,

Herodotus doesn't just write down what he has heard, he also comments whether he thinks the story could be real or is fabricated.
That's really great about him, He writes like a real scientist who doesn't just believe everything he's been told, It's really a great book and I recommend everyone to read it, You will learn a lot about how people used to live, It wasn't just Vollmann's fourth reference to Herodotus in a span ofpages in Rising Up and Rising Down, it was the reality and shame that I'm in mys and the most I know about the war between Persia and the Hellenic city states is what I learned from the movie .
Thus, The Histories.

First: I can't imagine what it would have been like reading these nine books by Herodotus in any format other than this simply amazingly researched and presented volume.
The Landmark has to be the final word on Herodotus: the maps, the footnotes, the appendices, indices, forwards and notes it is an astounding collection created for the layperson like me to approach a subject that is seemingly dry and yawnworthy.
But The Histories is anything but boring, At times, even pageturning, jawdropping awesome, When you say to your partner, "Honey, listen to this " and then quote Herodotus, you know something amazing has happened,

Herodotus does more than just recount tales of war, he goes to great lengths to describe the culture and the history of dozens of the denizens in his world.
An astounding undertaking in any age made even more incredible given that this was writtenBCE, His evenhanded histories and details of Persia, a nation looking to conquer and subjugate his own, is an astounding feat of scholarship and academia even before those words had meaning.


I was so impressed with The Landmark that I purchased their publications on Thucydides and Xenophon, By the time I've finished both of those, I'll be able to play horseshit bingo the next time I watch .
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