Superb book, it immersed me in ancient Greece. Herodotus skills are unmatched as a story teller, although the speeches are far better in Thucydides.

Written at the outset of the Peloponnesian War this book comes across as Athenian propaganda some times. However, all the detail provided of the different civilizations the Greeks had contact with is just great. For anyone who enjoys reading on the subject this is a fun, thorough and excellently crafted book.

Props to Herodotus for being more entertaining than most modern writers.

Oh Herodotus, in some ways I feel like he was my college roommate - fore I spent that much time with him... very enjoyable reading from the "Father of History" about the spread of Hellenism and the Persian empire. Read for my senior thesis in undergrad - it was good to read these classics.

Do you secretly enjoy reading about murder, betrayal, torture, infanticide, mass suicide, Patricide & Co. (to name a few!) and whimsical people making idiotic decisions that end up butchering entire nations?

Oboy, do we have something for you! Have you heard of... Ancient Greece™?

The cradle of high European culture my balls, but let the bestselling author Herodotus tell you about it! Reading about human sacrifice has never been so entertaining.

Side effects may include: death out of boredom as the author eagerly and endlessly describes manmade lakes and canals and the exact process of digging them (it is, after all, a historical account... sort of) or, at the very least, perpetual confusion as about every person that had ever lived prior to Herodotus time is mentioned in this sensational piece of work.

Really enjoyable. Herodotus nails down the social and political fabric of his reality in a sprawling, widely digressive work that serves as history, social commentary, geography, philosophy, and scientific rumination all at once without ever reducing to any one of these. Sure, you need an atlas and probably a glossary to keep track of all the places and names, and yes there are many inaccuracies, but that's the point, the ancient world can be a big, messy, place, and nothing is too big or too small to escape commentary. An inquiry of what happens when two separate civilizations meet and are forced to interact (not to mention the starting point for all further issues regarding 'east vs. west')? Check. Examinations of the movements and actions taking place during battles which regularly involve over 5,500,000 people? Check. A brief lesson on the spawning habits of Nile river fish? Check. An oral history of local customs and folk-lore told from opposing perspectives which forces the reader to filter through and actively engage with the beliefs of this age? Check. Twenty five centuries later, and still lively.

What I learned from this book (in no particular order):

1.tAncient Greeks are quarrelsome and love to waste each other’s city-states for the pettiest reasons.

2.tFrom all forms of government known to man, democracy is the best. Tyrants and oligarchs suck.

3.tThe Persian Empire is a mighty barbarian nation, but being cowardly, effeminate and slavish, it is eventually defeated by the quarrelsome but brave and civilized Greeks.

4.tAmong the Greeks, the Spartans are the bravest. Gerard Butler with a six-pack King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans heroically perished in the battle of Thermopylae. They also have the particularly icky custom of marrying their own nieces.

5.tThe Delphic oracles are 100% accurate, except when someone manages to corrupt the Pythoness. The Gods are, however, a jealous sort and would strike any mortal who has the presumption of calling himself happiest on earth. Therefore, one should call no man happy until he is dead.

6.tEgypt is a country of wonders, but its citizens’ customs and manners are exactly the reverse of the common practice of mankind elsewhere. For example, the women there urinate standing up, while the men sitting down. The country also abounds in strange fauna, among them the hippopotamus --- a quadruped, cloven-footed animal, with the mane and tail of a horse, huge tusks and a voice like a horse’s neigh.

7.tThe Scythians are a warlike nation that practices human sacrifice. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man that he kills in battle and cuts off all of his enemies’ heads, which he must show to the king to get his share of the war booty. They also like to saw off their enemies’ skulls, which they make into fancy gold-plated drinking cups.

8.tThe manners of the Androphagi, being cannibals, are more savage than those of any other race. Darius the Persian smote them.

9.tThe Atarantians, alone of all known nations, are destitute of names. The title of Atarantians is borne by the whole race in common, but the men have no particular names of their own. They also like to curse the sun because he burns and wastes both their country and themselves.

10.tIn the Indian desert live ants that are larger than a fox. They like to throw up sand-heaps as they burrow, which are full of gold. This is why India is so rich in gold. In Arabia, there are sheep that have long tails, so long that the shepherds have to make little trucks for their tails. Really.

BUT SERIOUSLY,

Herodotus is a consummate storyteller who had a fine eye for the fantastical, although to his credit, he always qualified his more improbable assertions by stating that they are based on hearsay or other sources that he could not wholly verify. Much of the pleasure of reading his book is found in the lush descriptions of long lost nations and their exotic customs. His 'Histories' does not concern itself solely with history in the modern sense, but it is also a book of travelogue, ethnography, zoology, geography and botany. He is an excellent raconteur, almost always entertaining, except when he drones about speculative geography. We can easily imagine him, a man of seemingly inexhaustible curiosity, interviewing Marathon veterans for firsthand battle accounts, or interrogating Egyptian temple priests about their country’s history and religion. History for him is not a dry recitation of facts and dates, but an intensely human story acted by a vast cast of monarchs, queens, warriors, tyrants, gods and ordinary citizens. Regicides and rebellions are caused by personal passions, such as in the stories of Caudales and Gyges, and Xerxes and Masistes. Dreams compel Xerxes to invade Greece. Divine intervention decides the course of epic battles.

A skein of tragedy runs through the historical drama that he narrates. The gods are so capricious and jealous that “one should not call a man happy until he is dead.” Xerxes, on beholding his massive force on the Hellespont, laments that “not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.” Yet while man lives his short existence he is capable of epic deeds, and Herodotus chronicled them all.

Herodotus was curious about the causes of the war between the Greeks and the Persians, and this is the central subject of his Histories. The conflict between Greece and Persia, which culminated in the great expedition of Xerxes to Greece in 480 BC, is the story of how an army of allegedly 750.000 men and a navy of 1200 ships were defeated by the fragmented forces of the Greeks, who barely counted with 40.000 men and 378 ships. The numbers might not be exact, but the truth is that the Greeks were heavily outnumbered in each and every battle.

Herodotus admired Athens but he was not an Athenian. He lived in Halicarnassus, an Ionian town on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. He traveled extensively throughout the ancient world because he believed in the importance of seeing things for oneself. When he could not see for himself he questioned the best sources available and reported conflicting information and his own doubts. He lived at a time when facts were enmeshed with myth and many critics since antiquity ridiculed him and described him as a reteller of tales and the "father of lies". Herodotus came from an oral tradition and he claims to practice oral history, now seen as one of the most modern historical disciplines.

His writing is exhaustive and digressive, sometimes confusing, sometimes too chatty and long winded, but always delightful and amusing. So many absurdities have been included in his Histories because he considers that anything could be possible. And yet, this is the first continuous prose narrative extant in Western literature, a source of instruction and delight, just what the ancients thought great literary works should be.

This book is not only about histories. It's also about the way of life of various long-lost civilizations notably the Persians, the Greeks (apparently there were so many nations then), the Egyptians, the Scythians, and many more. An interesting mix of history, anthropology, geography (I hate this part because there are no illustrations or pictures), political and social sciences...this book is not only quite thick, but provides a really vast description on those above mentioned people. The details given in the book makes me grateful I live in the current age.

The first half of the book was kinda boring but the second half was superb. I especially love reading the battles in Marathon, Salamis and Plataea. Total EPIC. Battle of Thermopylae was not so bad, but I was surprised with so little details on the battle itself, considering there are already two movies about it (AFAIK), i.e. The 300 Spartans and its poor remake, 300 dan probably even poorer sequel (why on earth Zack Snyder and Frank Miller keep on defiling ancient history??).

I think Herodotus made some exaggerated statements, such as the amount of troops brought by Xerxes to invade Greece. Almost 3,000,000, huh? Did the then world population even top that? Don't think so. Maybe around 150,000 to 300,000 would be more believable. There are so many names of people, places, nations, races, etc that can give you a headache. But whatever, I still like this book because it gave me a window to the ancient yet highly illustrious past which is almost forgotten by the current generation.

The hero of the English Patient carries around a beat up old copy of Herodotus and tells stories from it. there is a reason as its simply the best historical account of this period but its still timeless even today. My copy is falling apart!

Hegel and Marx get a lot of credit for changing the way we view the writing of history, and well they should. But Herodotus was highlighting the subjectivity of historical records well before either were born.

Here's a perfect example of how translation really does matter: the Penguin Classics edition of Histories is a very different read from this one. The Oxford translation has more humor, more self-awareness, more of an understanding that even Herodotus doesn't necessarily think what he is reporting can be trusted as fact (lots of qualifiers like "According to learned Persians..." or "It is so-and-so's contention that...", etc).

Regardless of translation or the factual content of his reporting, though, the real value of Herodotus (at least to me) is that it humanizes antiquity, putting life and personality to an era that we usually only experience through statues.

قبل 2500 سنة وفي وقت مفصلي مهم
كتب هيرودوت تاريخ اليونان والمنطقة

حيث كان الفرس الاخمينيين في اوج توسعهم حتى احتلوا اجزاء من بلاد الاغريق .. وفي معركة سلاميس المفصلية الذي انتصر بها اليونان وحققوا بها استقلالهم من الفرس .. جاء هيرودوت ليؤرخ تلك الاحداث في منهجية علمية متميزة عن المؤرخين السابقين عليه
طبعا يبقى الكثير مما كتبه هيرودوت يقترب للميثولوجيا والاساطير .. وربما كان هذا ميزة في الكتاب حيث يؤرخ لنا اعتقادات المجتمع والقصص الغريبة التي يتبادلونها

يؤرخ هيرودوت للاغريق والفرس ومصر والاثيوبيين وغيرهم عبر قصص ملفتة .. لكن يبقى من الصعب ان نقول بأن نظرة هيرودوت او من نقل عنهم كانت محايدة وموضوعية ..

كتاب تراثي قيم ..لكن يبقى صعبا ومملا احيانا ..لكنه مدخل مهم للثقافة والتفكير الاغريقي القديم

n  Hubris in History: A Recurring Terrorn

n  “The conversion of legend-writing into the science of history was not native to the Greek mind, it was a fifth-century invention, and Herodotus was the man who invented it.”

~ R.G. Collingwoodn

The prime subject of The Histories is the twenty years (499-479 B.C.E) of war between Greece and Persia for domination of the Greek world. However he intersperses this main narrative with plenty of personal interest stories, “wonders” about firsts and bests, historical parallels and occasionally his own biased judgements, but always making it clear that he is interested only in presenting a viewpoint — he leaves the act of judgement to the reader. We can safely say that it was Herodotus who helped create the concept of the discipline of “history,” in part by stressing and criticizing his sources and accepted traditions. My job is to record what I have been told, make of it what you will - that is the dominant warning note wherever H’s authorial voice intervenes in the narrative. That should be the disclaimer all history books should come with.

All the main themes of the book are evident in its beginning and ending, in keeping with the circular narratives that H prefers to adopt. All the intervening incidents act like reinforcements of the overall thrust inherent in the beginning and ending.

The Beginning: The Parallel Rise of Freedom & Empire

We begin with an insecure Hellenic world, just shaking off the shackles of tyranny and tasting real ambition for the first time. Meanwhile in the other end of the world, an existing empire is being shaped into a fearsome tyrannical force by the new Persian rulers. Soon the Persian empire starts to extend ominously outwards and gobbles up most of the known world. This infringes on a core idea of H — the concept of natural limits and over-extension. Persia is meant to fall. “The Small shall become the Big; and the Big shall become the Small.”

As long as empires are driven by ambition, history is doomed to repeat itself.

The gods set limits and do not allow human beings to go beyond them; Herodotus makes it clear that the Persians have to fail in their plan to conquer Greece, because they have overreached their natural boundaries. Xerxes announces his campaign by telling his advisers that he intends to conquer Greece so that ‘we will make Persian territory end only at the sky’ (7.8).

The Middle: The Clash of Civilizations

Then we are taken through the many over-extensions of the Persian empire under a succession of rulers (in Ionia, Scythia, etc), until they are poised to encroach upon the newly non-tyrannical Greek world. Here we enter the climactic middle of the narrative and is drenched in the details of the gory encounter. Many heroes, legends and dramatic material is born here and we emerge on the other side with a clear sense that it was Athens, without the yoke of tyranny, that was able to bring down the fearsome war machine of the Persian empire. David has won out against Goliath. This is achieved due to much luck and much pluck, but in the final analysis H seems to imply that the fault was with the hubris of the Persians.

It needs to be pointed out that: H is quite clear that as human beings Persians are on the whole no better and no worse than Greeks. Structurally, however, Xerxes’ great expedition to Greece stands as a monument to the dangerous blindness of massive empires and grandiose thinking—but it is also the backdrop against which H has been able to present to us the Greeks’ love of their homeland, their valor against incredible odds, and their deep desire to preserve their freedom.

So, even as this main narrative concludes, we are shown what is the inevitable result of Hubris that over-extends its own reaches. And of how tyranny in any form is not going to triumph over people who have tasted what freedom means.

The Ending: A Reenactment of The Beginning

Herodotus could have ended there. But he doesn’t. Instead he takes us to the Ending to rub in the message and to instill that message with its true significance — what is its bearing on the future? For, an investigation of History is meaningless unless it can educate us about the future. And it is the future that H ironically points to as he takes us through the concluding sections of his Histories.

For now it is the turn of the Greeks to over-extend. In the thrill of victory and in the thrall of a thirst for revenge, in the spirit of competition with its own neighbors, Athens and Sparta launch out on its own imperialistic enterprise to mainland Asia. This is to culminate in H’s own day with the Ionians looking upon Athens as the equivalent of a Tyrant.

The beginning of this period saw the triumph of the Greek mainland states over the might of the Persian Empire, first in the initial invasion of 490 and the battle of Marathon, and then in the second invasion of 480/79, with the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, and finally Mycaleb in Asia Mnor.

This unexpected victory against what seemed like the mightiest empire on Earth resonated in Greek consciousness through the fifth century and indeed beyond. The Greeks in general, and the Athenians in particular, because they had played the major part in the triumph of “Freedom”, saw these victories as a triumph of right over might, courage over fear, freedom over servitude, moderation over arrogance. It helped crystallize and reinforce Greeks’ attitudes to their own newfound way of life and values, intensified their supreme distrust of monarchy and tyranny, and shaped their attitude to the Persians. And after what they visualized as the great struggle for freedom, the people of Athens entered upon a spectacular era of energy and prosperity, one of the great flowering periods of Western civilization.

In more practical terms, Athens’ naval success in the Persian Wars and its enterprise immediately after led to the creation of the Athenian Empire, which started as an anti-Persian league and lasted for almost three-quarters of a century (479-404).

H seems to imply that Athens should learn from these investigations of the past, see what Tyranny can do, see the dangers of over-extension, understand the need for balance, respect certain international boundaries, and stay its own overreaching hand.

And indeed within fifty years of the Persian defeat the dream had faded, and before the end of the century Athens, over-extended abroad and overconfident at home, lay defeated at the mercy of her enemies, a Spartan garrison posted on the Acropolis and democracy in ruins. Much in the intervening years had been magnificent, it is true, but so it might have remained if the Athenians had heeded Herodotus. He had portrayed the Greek victory as a triumph over the barbarian latent in themselves, the hubris that united the invader and the native tyrant as targets of the gods. The Persian downfall, or at least the defeat of their imperialistic ambition, called not only for exultation but for compassion and lasting self-control.

As should be quite obvious, there is much to learn in this for modern times too, but with an added twist. For Hubris did not end its romp through history there. It took on new wings once history started being recorded. Now every new emperor was also competing with history. Alexander had to outdo Xerxes. Caesar had to outdo Alexander. Britain had to outdo Rome. Germany had to outdo Britain. USA had to outdo Britain, etc. A never-ending arms-race with imperial history and the accompanying Hubris that powers it.

So Herodotus, even as he recorded History so as to blunt its devastating force on the lives of men, also unwittingly added new impetus to its influence, by adding the new flavor of recorded glory to the existing receptacle of legendary glory. Hubris drank it up.

I don't think there's anything I can say about Herodotus that hasn't already been said, and I doubt anyone needs a review to tell them whether they should read his histories or not; it seems to me the only real basis for a review is on the efficacy of the particular edition relative to others that are available, and thus the five stars for this Landmark Edition.

This is the second of the Landmarks that I've read (the first being The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika), and for someone like me, who is not a student of the antiquities, but only an interested general reader, the difference between the Landmark Editions by Robert Strassler and most other editions are like night and day. A couple of years ago, I read Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, and though I liked Rex Warner's translation, I felt as though I was only able to grasp part of the story because of the paucity of supplemental material. After reading Herodotus and Xenophon in the Landmark Edition (and re-reading Book I of Thucydides in the Landmark), I know that my understanding has increased by orders of magnitude.

I would say that the biggest reason is the maps. I still can't explain to myself why the inclusion of maps makes such a difference when reading these accounts, but whatever the reason, after being able to locate all the sites that these ancient historians are talking about, it seems as though I'm much more involved in the story. The old Penguin paperback I read of Thucydides had three maps at the back of the book. In contrast, the Landmark edition of Herodotus has 127 of them. For the majority of the book, this translates into a map every three or four pages.

Another aid that I found useful were the footnotes. As I said, I'm just a general reader, and many of the place names and references in these ancient texts were unfamiliar to me. In each instance where a name occurred afresh on a page, it was footnoted and referenced to a particular map. I suppose it could be argued that the editors went slightly overboard with this (Greece or Hellas is mentioned many, many times, of course, and each time it is footnoted and referenced. The same with place names like Europe and Asia), but certainly better to over-footnote than under-footnote. As a consequence, by the time I read both Xenophon and Herodotus, I had begun to get a pretty decent idea of ancient Aegean and Mediterranean geography.

Robert Strassler, the general editor and primary force behind the Landmark Editions probably says it best: "Modern readers who lack special schooling or assistance of some sort understand progressively less about what is happening as they proceed in to the book, and soon find the going arduous and confusing. After all, how much can readers expect to comprehend of a historical narrative if they are not informed of the date of location of many events, cannot envision the temporal or geographic relationship between events, or are unaware of the meaning and significance of important aspects of those events? This ignorance creates a barrier which obscures the reader' perception, diminishes their interest, and separates them from an essential quality of the narrative: its historicity, At its worst, the text becomes something like a literary exercise, a dreary recitation of disconnected incidents at unknown places concerning artificial characters whose names cannot be pronounced. At best, it reads like a modern fantasy novel, but all too often it is a bad novel, a boring novel." This description fits my earlier experience with Thucydides to a T.

As to the narrative itself; of the three ancient historians that I've read, I had more trouble sustaining interest in Herodotus than the others, primarily because Herodotus' account is not only a narrative of the Greek and Persian wars, but a travelogue and ethnographic report (as Herodotus found it or heard about it from his sources) of the ancient world. This is also the exact reason why some people really enjoy Herodotus. But when he reports on the actions of the different personalities of this time, he is often fascinating.

This edition has a new translation by Andrea L. Purvis, a lengthy introduction by Rosalind Thomas, and 21 different appendices covering various aspects of the ancient world and specific items in Herodotus' account. I haven't compared Purvis' translation to any others, but I never had any issue with its readability--and that's about all I'm competent enough to say about translations from ancient Greek.

I can't recommend these Landmark Editions enough, if one is interested in any of the historians that have thus far been treated and is a general reader rather than a student of these periods--I did hear at one time that there were still a couple more historians that Robert Strassler was considering giving the Landmark treatment to (Polybius was one). I hope so, and even if Mr. Strassler retires, I hope someone else considers this kind of authoritative approach to other ancient writings.