As a lifelong history buff, it had been a source of great private embarrassment to me that I had not taken the time to read Herodotus, the father of historical inquiry. Now, at last, the deed is done, although I will have to go back and reread certain parts to keep things fresh. As a first impression, having just finished this book for the first time, my only regret is that I did not read this sooner, and that I was not exposed to some of the wonderful stories contained in these histories in school. From my limited exposure to the classics, I have come to appreciate their value to a true liberal education. It is my goal to read (or reread) classical history from the primary sources.

Now, a description of the Histories themselves. The entirety of Herodotus' work - his "inquiry" - constituted an effort to examine the root causes of the Persian Wars (or as Herodotus would put it, the wars between the Hellenes and the barbarians) by giving the conflict as much historical and cultural context as possible.

Thus, much of the Histories are devoted to exploring the comparative histories of the Greeks and Persians, as well as the history and culture of all the peoples who had contact with either civilization. Persian history is described from the rule of the Medes to the rapid growth and military success of the Persian Empire in the 6th century BC. The histories of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Syrians, Libyans, Lydians, Ionians and Scythians are also discussed, as are their peculiar cultural practices, as each of these peoples either fell directly under the Persian imperial ambit or were threatened by them in some way. The culmination of the histories is an intimate account of the two Persian invasions of mainland Greece, and the heroic efforts of the Greek cities to persevere against seemingly insurmountable odds. Perhaps the most famous events described by Herodotus are the battles of Marathon (490), Thermopylae (480), and Platea (479).

Through scores of entertaining stories and anecdotes, Herodotus brings the grit, the turmoil and the human drama of the Greek world convincingly to life. The Greeks one encounters in Herodotus (as well as in Thucydides and Xenophon) are not the serene, marble figures of our popular imagination. They are not, as we imagine them, men in togas pacing around empty colonnades stroking their beards, contemplating the nature of reality. They are emotional, mercurial, honorable, dastardly, rational, fanatically-religious, zealous, disciplined, and absolutely ruthless. It is this very visceral portrait of the Greeks that make them simultaneously enigmatic and endearing. Perhaps more than we would like to admit, they remind us of ourselves.

Herodotus deserves reading as the father of classical history, and because his Histories are a profound story of human complexity in their own right.

It wasn't just Vollmann's fourth reference to Herodotus in a span of 20 pages in Rising Up and Rising Down, it was the reality and shame that I'm in my 40s and the most I know about the war between Persia and the Hellenic city states is what I learned from the movie 300. 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 yawn-worthy. But The Histories is anything but boring. At times, even page-turning, jaw-dropping 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 written 600+ BCE. His even-handed 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 300.

I absolutely adore this book! It is among my top favorites. What I'm sure most people identify it with, if they can identify it at all, is the movie 300. Yes, this book does relate the first, true story of the 300 Spartans and not with comic pictures. It is one of my favorite stories in this book (there are many: suicidal cats, burning of Athens, Croesus and Solon, etc.), but it is far from the baseness of the horribly inaccurate movie.

The kids bought me this for Christmas and it is a thing of infinite beauty. I’ve been meaning to read these histories for years and never quite got around to it. I had never realised quite how remarkable this book would be.

This version of the book is the third that I now own – I’ve also got a copy of the Penguin Classics and I’ve just finished listening to this as a talking book. But I am going to make my way through this book eventually, as it is hard to focus on many of the details of the wars and so on without a decent map in front of you to refer to – and this book has lots of maps and drawings and other illustrations, although, annoyingly, no illustration of the Egyptian labyrinth which Herodotus said was even more remarkable than the pyramids.

Along the way Herodotus tells some incredible stories. Some of them sound like they are straight out of the 1001 nights. Others make your jaw drop open.

There are also discussions of things like what is the source of the Nile, that really have whetted my curiosity to read more about the 19th century types who finally discovered the source. Now, why was this such a big question in the ancient world? Well, the problem was that the Nile seemed to come out of the desert and that isn’t exactly the sort of place where you would expect to find lots and lots of water. The winds that came for where the Nile seemed to flow out from were also always hot – and so the idea that perhaps the water in the Nile swelled once a year due to the melting of snow (although partly reasonable, obviously) didn’t seem to make a lot of sense when you thought that the river was coming out of a desert (deserts being the natural enemy of snow). It really is fascinating listening to Herodotus discussing these speculations about the source of the Nile and the paradoxes such speculations provided.

In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “There ain’t no limit to the amount of trouble women bring”. There are interesting asides about the Trojan war and how Herodotus speculates that Helen was probably dead by the time of the war started and so when the Greeks asked for the Trojans to hand her over they literally couldn’t. He can’t see why else they would have allowed their civilisation to be crushed for the sake of one woman, beautiful or not.

There is a woman who commanded a ship on the side of the Persians, there are women who come back as ghosts and complain about being cold (which their husband should know as the last time he tried to bake his bread the oven was cold – this would have taken me a while to understand if Herodotus did not explain that the husband had lain with her after she had died.) But this is not really a history that involves many women – this is a story about blokes doing what blokes like most – killing other blokes.

All the same, my favourite bit of this came quite early in the piece. The story of the theft of Rhampsinitos’ treasure. I’m going to give you the short McCandless version of this as it really is a wonderful story and I can’t leave this review without talking about it.

When Rhampsinitos (an Egyptian king) decided to have a place built for his treasure he didn’t know that the builder would put a stone into the works that could be easily removed. The builder told his sons about this stone as he lay dying and once the builder had died his sons nipped around to the king’s treasury and helped themselves to the riches inside. The king noticed this sudden loss of wealth and set a trap to capture those who were all too frequently popping in and stealing his goodies. The trap was quite successful and one of the brothers ended up getting caught. He told his other brother to cut off his head so that they wouldn’t both be discovered. This his all too obliging brother did. The king then had a body without a head in his treasury, but still had no idea how anyone could get into the treasury room without breaking any of the seals on the locks.

So, he had the body of the thief hung up and guarded so that whoever cried in front of it would be brought before him. The thief who had cut off his brother’s head was then told by his mother that he had better do something to rescue his brother’s body or else all hell would break lose. He came up with a plan to get the guards drunk and to steal the body, which he did and also shaved half of their beards off to make sure they quite understood how stupid they had been made to look. The king was, needless to say, bloody furious. (I did mention this reminded me of the 1001 nights, yeah?) Anyway, the king then decides to get his daughter to work in a brothel, but before she sleeps with anyone she is to ask them what is the worst thing they have ever done and if any of them say anything like they cut off their brother’s head and stole his body from the king’s guards, she is to grab hold of him and call for the police (or whatever the Egyptian equivalent was at the time). The thief decides to play along, and goes to the brothel with the severed arm of a freshly dead corpse under his jumper. When he tells the king’s daughter about his exploits she makes a grab for him and he holds out the dead man’s arm, which she holds onto while the thief cleverly makes his escape. The king is so impressed with this man’s exploits that he begs him to come forward and receive a reward, which he does and ends up getting to marry the king’s daughter – I assume the daughter he gets to marry is the prostitute mentioned earlier, but I guess no one actually ever called her that to her face.

The best bit of this is that it shows something Herodotus does the whole way through these histories. He will be telling one of these stories and suddenly they will start to become completely unbelievable and he will say, “of course, I don’t believe this stuff for a minute, but this is the story I was told in Egypt and what would you have me do? I have to tell you what I was told.”

The other story that held me enthralled was of the self-mutilation of Zopyros – honestly, this is utterly remarkable. It is worth reading the book just for this story alone.

There are lots of occasions where fathers are forced to do horrible things to their sons – my favourite is the story of a king who punishes one of his advisors by feeding him his son as the meat portion of a feast. The king then leaves this advisor in a position where he can revenge himself on the king. You know, if I was to feed someone their own child I would probably kill him straight away afterwards – call me overly cautious, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the person who has feed you the flesh of one of your kids is never going to be one of you best friends ever again, no matter what else they do for you.

This book is fantastic and the Landmark edition is like its name implies, really something special.

Absolutely bonkers read, he was just saying anything about anything. There is one story about a guy who gets blinded in an accident, and an oracle tells him the urine of a woman who has only ever been with her husband will cure him, so he tries washing his eyes with the urine of many different women, and eventually it WORKS, so he gathers up all the women whose urine didn't work (which includes his wife) and sets them all on fire.

Although it's been some time since I read the Histories, I think about it now and again and think it's worth sharing a few comments for anyone considering spending some time with it.

Herodotus travelled extensively through the ancient world, interviewing people and collecting stories. The Histories covers everything from how the Egyptian priests mummified the dead to the upbringing of Persian kings to what happened at Thermopolae. Note that Herodotus finished his Histories within 55 years of the battle of Thermopolae -- so there is little accurate information that can be added to this other than the results of archeology. (Sorry Hollywood.)

Since Thomas T.'s review (below) does a great job of outlining what the book covers -- I'll just discuss how it compares to similar work.

Herodotus' work is generally more entertaining that Xenophon and Thucydides but also "looser". Unlike them he is not reporting history in which he is taking an active role. Despite Xenophon's tendency toward self-aggrandizement, the Anabasis is (and reads like) an eyewitness account. Thucydides lived through the Peloponnesian wars, was infected, recovered and helped others during the great Athenian plague. He knew what he was talking about, was an eyewitness to much of it and, as a general, had the military knowledge to put the actions of both sides into context. Unlike Xenophon, Thucydides work shows little if any self-aggrandizement. However, of the three authors, Thucydides is the most difficult to read.

To modern eyes, Herodotus sometimes reports things that seem farfetched (eg: flying serpents) and occasionally turns his stories into morality tales. However, he does try to be clear when he is reporting hearsay. Compared to other literature of the time (he predates and "instructs" Thucydides and Xenophon) the Histories was about as objective as it got. Short of archeology, it is the best source for the account of the Persian Wars.

On this edition - I really like Robin Waterfield's translations! I've also read his translations of Plato's Philebus and Theatetus and Xenophon's Conversations with Socrates. Since I don't read ancient Greek I can't comment on accuracy but his translations of books of that era seem the most readable of any I've encountered.

Finally - there is an apocryphal story that Herodotus read his Histories in the ancient olympic stadium and that Thucydides, a young man at the time, was there to hear it -- a great image and something I'd like to think is true.

It took me awhile to get through this one, as there was just so much research that needed to accompany it to find out where and what was always being referenced. Thank goodness for wiki! I had always heard how incredible Herodotus was as a historian, but I found that he was very humble in what he proposed. For example he would reference this or that peoples living in a mountain or eating certain fruits etc. and then he would say that he found the part about them having one eye very unbelievable but basically he would put in the information because it was what was commonly said of them at the time. I think this is a brilliant way to go about recording history. Sure facts get muddled with hearsay, but it gives you a great picture of how the greeks must have seen the rest of the ancient world, their neighbors and the wars that surrounded their history, and as Herodotus was in many ways one of the earliest historians that we have record of he did not have much else to go off of so I think he did an excellent job. This was not only intellectually stimulating but very engagingly written and fairly fast paced for the amount of incidences he recorded.

The history of the Persian/Greek wars, the war between Athens' democracy and freedom against Persia's slavery and tyranny, the first history book ever written, and, according to this translator, the greatest shaggydog story ever told (and he's right). It's hard to classify this as non-fiction - the Gods still exist and have power, but contrary to (for example) the Odyssey, they've taken a backseat. Instead of mingling with the mortals, their power is indirect; all those who do wrong are correctly identified and punished:

No sooner had they blinded Euenius, however, than their livestock stopped giving birth and their soil turned similarly barren. When the Appollonians asked [the oracles] at Dodona and Delphi the reason for the calamity they were experiencing[, both gave the same answer]: that they had unjustly deprived Euenius, the guardian of the sacred flock, of his sight.

The oracles are always right - except when they're bribed and then themselves duly punished - their prophecies always come true, often in ironic ways, as known from Oedipus.

If you attack you will destroy a great empire.

Reading this is often like reading through an ancient Wikipedia, since Herodotus lists as many facts as he could collect. Like Wikipedia's links, every time Herodotus mentions a new place or a thing he can't help but immediately list everything about it, with the consequence that this reads like a phylogeny of stories, with branches branching off other branches, as if you'd replace all links in the Wikipedia by their respective articles' texts. You have to be careful when reading this, if you're tired when reading Herodotus' frequent sidetracking will confuse you.

Funny enough, it takes Herodotus about 6 or 7 of the 9 books until the "action" of the wars really starts; before that, he draws a picture of his world as complete and detailed as possible, knowing that this all will be lost and forgotten if not for his work. Book 2 is all about Egypt and what an amazing place it was, book 4 is about the Scythians and their customs. Darius, King of Persia and first enemy of Athens appears in book 3 - he dies in book 7, to be followed by Xerxes, who subsequently raises the biggest army the world had ever seen, literally drinking rivers dry, and their subsequent bloody run-in with the Spartans (here often Lacedaemonians, after the region of which Sparta was the capital) at Thermopylae under Leonidas (you know the comic and movie) and the subsequent defeat of the Persian fleet by the Greek fleet.

In between there are numerous speeches, fights, customs, small stories, rapes and brutal murders, intrigues, bribes, lootings, valorous acts in battle, stupid decisions, hilarious events, and philosophies.

Herodotus himself has a strong voice and judges the stories as told to him by others; sometimes highly skeptical, sometimes blindly trusting (in which case Holland's footnotes play the skeptic's part). By the way, the footnotes are numerous and extremely helpful in locating cross-references by Herodotus (or these cases where Herodotus says "I'll talk about this later" and then forgets all about it). In my ebook version with my font and size settings, the book ends at 68%, the rest is footnotes.

Recommended for: Everyone.

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. 4)

This preamble, I think, in the 1970 edition 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. (p. 41)

Moreover, the one in this 1988 edition 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. (p. 33)

First of all, don't be intimidated by its length, that is, 543 pages in the 1996 Penguin 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 good-humoredly. Those ruthless war scenes, for instance from Chapter 20 onwards 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.

What book contains a king ordering his servant to surreptitiously look at his naked wife, a poet riding a dolphin, a king declaring war on the wind, a king having the ocean whipped for being disobedient, flying snakes, ants the size of foxes, *and* an epic battle between Greece and Persia? This one. This one does.

Of course, I read selections back in high school. So I presumed that I knew what Herodotus was all about. Then in reading/seeing The English Patient, which quotes very different kinds of selections, I began to suspect I had majorly missed the mark.

On finally reading from cover to cover, I discovered that the story of the invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes takes up a very small part of the book, at the end. Yes, that part has some dramatic scenes, some quotable quotes, and is "history." But most of Herodotus is anecdotal anthropology and travelogue and a delightful collection of rumors and traditions. The heart of the book isn't the history, it's the digressions. That's where you get the flavor of the times, a sense of what it might have been like to live in the fifth century B.C.

Eye openers:

The physical territory of Greece was but a small part of the Greek world, long before Alexander conquered and hellenized. Considering how slow and difficult transportation was, it's truly remarkable the cosmopolitan nature of that Mediterranean world. There are Greeks and Greek influence all over Egypt -- and the influence of Egypt on Greece was strong. In fact, it's very difficult to say where one culture ends and another begins -- there is little correlation between political boundaries and cultural boundaries.
The Greeks come across as a semi-nomadic people, frequently taking to their ships en masse, abandoning one territory/city and going off to conquer and settle territory somewhere else in the Mediterranean. They are nomads of the sea. They are like hermit crabs, shedding one shell and then taking over another, or sometimes growing another. There are Greek settlements all along the coasts of Africa, Italy, and Spain, and on almost every island -- not just in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, but also Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
The oracles, particularly the oracle at Delphi, play a key role in determining when, where, and how populations move. Anyone contemplating "colonization" consults the oracles and anyone involved in a territorial dispute brought on by colonization consults the oracles as well. Greek peoples seem to be constantly at war with one another and shifting alliances for the flimsiest of reasons -- whether because of a bribe and/or because of some bizarre cultural insult (with obscure precedents in the distant, legendary past). But all trust the same oracle(s) and fear the wrath of gods should they desecrate temples or holy places (regardless of whether it is a god that they themselves hold in high esteem).
Some religious/cultural traditions are very local and others are held in common. The Spartans, for instance, are repeatedly constrained from participating in key battles/events because of local festivals/ceremonies which make little sense to other Greeks. (e.g., don't send troops to battle Darius' army at Marathon, despite the urgent pleas of the Athenians). But all respect the tradition of the Olympics -- even with Xerxes horde advancing on them.
The Persians were not so totally foreign to the Greeks as the Darius/Xerxes passages alone would lead one to believe. There were many Greeks at the Persian court. Many Greek colonies and mainland cities were Persian allies, or simply considered the Persians as another player in their local deadly games of coup and conquest and colonization. It was not just a matter of right and wrong, democracy against the evil empire. The Persians invaded at the prompting and request of various Greeks who wanted their help to advance their own personal ambitions. And even Athens seriously considered switching sides and allying with the Persians.
The Greeks often colonized voluntarily. A dissident faction would, with the full support of the local political powers, gather people, ships, and supplies and go off to conquer or found a city somewhere else. Or facing the threat of conquest, an entire city make take to its ships and sail off over the horizon with only the scantiest notion of its destination, and opportunistically taking root at the first likely looking landfall.
Peoples conquered by the Persians were often forced to colonize. Darius would take soldiers captured in war or the entire populations of conquered cities and resettle them on lands hundreds of miles away. he would give the leaders of his conquered enemies estates and wealth in his own territory, and would resettle some of his own people or subject peoples on the newly conquered land. This approach and the Greek voluntary colonization led to a continuous cultural churning and cross-fertilization. I had thought of the ancient world, with its limitations of transportation, as consisting largely of isolated parochial communities -- like rural mountain towns in the 19th century. Instead it was this vast mixing bowl -- turning and turning and turning again.
There were enormous cultural differences that persisted despite this churning. The traditions and beliefs with regard to marriage/sex and religion/death differ as widely from one city or one small country to the next as they did from island to island in the South Pacific in the 1920s. And on the fringes of the "civilized" world, where there was less churn, and about which far less was known first-hand, the differences much greater and some of the common practices were much more brutal by today's standards. In particular, I was interested to read of a nation where the women as well as the men were warriors, where a woman had to kill a man in battle before she had the right to marry.
When I think of the Mediterranean world in the 5th and 4th century BC, the only woman's name that comes to mind is Aspasia -- the brilliant courtesan, who inspired Plato and others. I was surprised to read in Herodotus about Artemisia -- ruler of a small nation allied with Xerxes. Apparently, the Greeks were somewhat scandalized to see a woman as a warrior/ruler (despite their legends of Amazons). But Artemisia was one of the most effective generals in Xerxes vast army.

دوستانِ گرانقدر، با آنکه زنده یاد «هرودوت» این مورخ نامی، در برخی از اخباری که ارائه نموده، در مورد ایران خصمانه برخورد کرده و در جاهایی نیز نوشته هایش بسیار با واقعیت فاصله دارد، امّا در هر حال میتوان گفت که یکی از کتبِ تاریخی مرجع میباشد که برخی از اخبار و رویدادهایی که نوشته، تنها در همین کتاب یافت میشود... این مورخ نامی زحمات بسیار زیادی برای بر جای ماندن تاریخ برای انسانهای امروزی کشیده است و مشکل فقط و فقط همان تحریف هایی است که بعضاً به دلیل دشمنی دیرینه با ایرانیان، وارد اخبارش کرده است... البته اخباری را که تحریف شده است را اگر بر تاریخ ایران تسلط داشته باشید، به خوبی متوجه میشوید.. به گونه ای که در هرکجا که ایرانیان یا فلان پادشاه ایرانی را کوچک انگاشته، بدانید که کینه و بداندیشی از سوی «هرودوت»، در پشتِ آن رویداد و خبر، نهفته است
درکل، به عنوان مکمل میتواند کتاب مناسبی جهت فهم تاریخ سرزمینمان و همچنین تاریخ یونانیان و رومیان باشد
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
در بند 141 از تاریخ «هرودوت» اخباری از «کوروش بزرگ» نوشته شده که بدون تردید از خواندن آن لذت میبرید و به شعور و خرد نیاکانمان افتخار میکنید
در بند 141 نوشته: یونانیانِ این سرزمین (منظور آسیای صغیر بوده است) که مغلوبِ «کوروش» شده بودند، سفیری نزد او فرستادند و تقاضا کردند که با آنها به همان نحو رفتار کند که با پادشاه مغلوبِ لیدیه (کرزوس) رفتار کرده بود. یعنی در امور داخلی آنها دخالت نکند و همان امتیازها را برایشان بشناسد. «کوروش» جواب مستقیمی به آنها نداد، ولی این مثال را برایشان آورد: نی زنی به کنار دریا رفت و دید ماهی هایِ خوشرنگ در آب شنا میکنند. پیش خود گفت: اگر نی بزنم یقیناً اینها به خشکی خواهند آمد. ولی چندان که نی زد، اثری از ماهیها نیافت... پس توری برداشت و به دریا افکند و عده ای از ماهیها در آن افتادند... وقتیکه ماهیها در تور میجستند و می افتادند، نی زن گفت: حالا بیهوده می رقصید، میبایست آنوقت که نی میزدم میرقصیدید.(رقصیده باشید)...پایان
یاد «کوروش»، آن ایرانی بزرگ و خردمند، تا همیشه زنده و پاینده باد
«پیروز باشید و ایرانی»