Herodot Tarihi
Histories
The History

Herodotus (MÖ 484-425)

Çeviren: Müntekim Ökmen
Yunanca Aslıyle Karşılaştıran ve Sunan: Azra Erhat
1.bs. 1973
640s.

Histories
The History, Historia, Araştırılmış haber, hikayeci tarih, nakliyeci tarih.

Cicero (MÖ 106-43): "Herodotus: Father of History".

İçindekiler:

· Birinci Kitap: KLIO
· İkinci Kitap: EUTERPE
· Üçüncü Kitap: THALİA
· Dördüncü Kitap: MELPOMENE
· Beşinci Kitap: TERPSİKHORE
· Altıncı Kitap: ERATO
· Yedinci Kitap: POLYMNİA
· Sekizinci Kitap: URANİA
· Dokuzuncu Kitap: KALLİOPE
· NOTLAR : s. 55-589.
· Herodotos’ta Ölçüler
· Soy Çizelgeleri
· Kronoloji
· Dareios ve Kserkes Döneminin Başlıca Olayları
· Dizin: s.597-640.

HALİKARNASSOS'LU HERODOTOS TARİHİ ya da HER BİRİ BİR MUSA ADI TAŞIYAN DOKUZ KİTABI.

Loved this to no end.

One of the surprising things about this book is that, despite its antiquity, the author’s personality comes through. Of course I’m hearing his voice through translation, but I couldn’t help but imagine that I was on the listening end of an extended conversation with the book’s narrator who had traveled widely, met many people, and read much. The book’s narrative sounds almost conversational with numerous digressions and detours that indicate extensive knowledge of the background of the characters and incidents being described. I almost feel like I’ve met the author who lived nearly 2.5 thousand years ago.

This book is generally recognized as the founding work of history in Wester literature. Published around 425 BC, the year the author died, it recounts the traditions, politics, geography, and wars of that era. The actual writing of the work had probably stretched over a number of prior years. The work is divided into nine books beginning with founding myths and Trojan War and proceeding through Greek history until the second Persian invasion.

It’s interesting to note that the second Persian invasion occurred approximately fifty-five years prior to the publishing of this account. Those intervening years were the zenith of the golden years of Ancient Greece during which Athens dominated over the other Greek city states. However, the beginning rebellions of what later became known as the Peloponnesian War (431 BC – 404 BC) were underway.

n  LINKn to my review of History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides.

n  LINKn to my review of Herodotus: The Father of History, by Elizabeth Vandiver (24 lectures)

Postscript added Sept 24, 2019:
One story told by Herodotus I found of particular interest—he reported being told of a Phoenician ship that circumnavigated around Africa (a.k.a. Libya in Herodotus’ era). This would have occurred about 2,000 years prior to Vasco da Gama. I was amazed to learn this, but Herodotus referenced the incident only as a reason for concluding that Africa was a smaller continent than Europe. Herodotus said the Phoenicians reported that the sun passed to the north of the ship while they were in the southern part of Africa—Herodotus believed this to be impossible. Ironically, Herodotus referenced the report of a northern sun as a reason for doubting to whole story, whereas today we recognize it as a reason to conclude that the reported circumnavigation to be credible.

Autor da história da invasão persa da Grécia (princípio do século V a.C.), conhecida simplesmente como As histórias de Heródoto.
Heródoto é o pai da História!
Heródoto foi o primeiro a gravar o passado e a considerá-lo um problema filosófico ou um projecto de pesquisa que podia revelar conhecimento do comportamento humano.

I love Herodotus. I always come back to him... He's the first of his kind, and his *historia* set the foundations for modern historiography/Ethnographic.

He's got a cool style, He mixes mythology with Historiography, and it has a fun and alluring nature. His descriptions of the "other" remind me of our conceptualization of the Orient, he's the first of his kind in many ways, and he holds a special place in my heart...

10/10 constantly revisiting

The Landmark Herodotus: blue/black/white maps every few pages; set out for readability; marginal content notes to skim through or locate events; opens to lie flat; short appendices A-U and an exhaustive index; the only fault in its well-thought-out usability may be its weight on your lap. Inexpensive for the quality.

Although he is the very first historian in Western Civilization, Herodotus has something of a bad reputation for being too gullible. Current critical opinion tends to favor Herodotus's near contemporary, Thucydides, the author of an equally great history of The Peloponnesian War. And yet, as I re-read the earlier book, I was surprised that Herodotus frequently notes that he doesn't always believe what he has been told, but presents it anyhow, if only because the Greek word for "history" is the same as the Greek word for "investigation." There is something of the ethnologist in Herodotus: He is an Ionian from Halicarnassus, a people who have had a much longer acquaintance with the Persians, Medes, Assyrians, and other peoples of the East than the mainland Greeks.

The first five of the nine books of The Histories are mostly a survey of the peoples who allied themselves with Darius and Xerxes in their invasions of Greece. It is here that most of the outlandish anecdotes are concentrated, in his investigations of such peoples as the Egyptians, Libyans, and Scythians. Once the invasions themselves begins, his history becomes more exciting, with fewer digressions and greater plausibility.

I would recommend that readers take the first five books slowly and savor the strangeness. Once the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale had been fought, Herodotus showed himself to be a true Greek and one fiercely proud of his heritage.

I can see why this book is held in such esteem; for the first time the acts of men are looked at through the optics of investigative inquiry - "Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances" is still the lesson we seem to learn and forget every decade - "Circumstance is the hub of the wheel; men are the spokes that provide traction through connection to the felloes of history" is what this book has taught me.

Bir solukta okursunuz, destansı üslubunu seversiniz, başta sayfa sayısı çok gibi gelir, ne zaman bitti anlamazsınız.

Yunan-Pers mücadelesi özellikle Leonidas ve Kserkses arası mücadeleleri anlatıldığı bölüm nefisti!

Kütüphaneden alarak okudum, Calibromda e kitap olarak var ama en kısa zamanda basılı bir versiyonu da kütüphanemizde olsun isterim.

Baş ucu eseri!

Ayrıca Müntekim Ökmen'de harika dip notlar hazmış. Kafanız takılınca hızır gibi yetişiyor. Ölmeden mutlaka okuyun, okutun!

Herodotus, considered the first historian...but more than history, he either through his travels or "interviews" with others, describes topography, customs, dress, politics etc of the ancient world, along with traditional history and in this case the many battles that occur as powers rise & fall. It certainly filled in a section in my history education that was lacking especially in regards to Persian history! Yes, there are tedious parts, but also such unexpected gems that fall into your lap, or quite the joke. Lots of surprises. I probably couldn't have done it without it being a group read, well worth the effort!

Read a little more than a third of the text for a Humane Letters class in Hillsdale College's Classical Education MA program. In terms of sheer entertainment value, Herodotus is hard to beat, and his literary approach to mapping and explaining the world is fascinating—he really falls more into the genre of wisdom literature than chronicle. The great existential truth of the frailty of man is at the forefront of everything that he writes about, and is quite moving in the moments where it shines through fully, as in Cyrus's sparing of Croesus and Xerxes weeping as he gazes over the Hellespont. Ultimately, what makes Herodotus a Great Book is the fact that he is the greatest systematic expositor of the polytheistic worldview, without wishing for things to be different (as in Homer) or striving beyond the limitations of his day (as in Plato). His understanding of Fate, the relationship between the transcendent and immanent, the visible and invisible, and just his explanations of the customs of the nations make it almost a pagan Civitas Dei, and especially worth comparing to the Old Testament histories for a clear stack-up of the respective paradigms of Athens and Jerusalem. It is a book that, in its outlook, defines a huge era, and which, like the works of Homer and Dante, makes an entire cosmos come alive in vivid illumination for readers today.

Oh, and definitely splurge for the Landmark Herodotus. It's one of the highest quality and most helpful critical editions of anything. Andrea Purvis's translation is one of those, in the spirit of Lattimore, that needlessly "Hellenizes" the names in an effort to be more authentic (i.e. "Lykourgos", when literally everyone calls him Lycurgus). It would be like translating the Old Testament and calling Moses "Mosheh" and Solomon "Shlomo". But that's a minor annoyance.

“These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were the grounds of feud.”

Herodotus’s reference to his “researches” (sometimes translated “inquiries”) uses the Greek word historie, from which we get “history.” This is the first recorded use of the word. 

The main subject of The Histories is the twenty years (499-479 B.C.E) of war between Greece and Persia. Herodotus begins by presenting the alleged origins of enmity between Greece and Persia in mythic times. He adds Persian and Phoenician accounts that he has heard to Greek ones. These stories have to do with the abduction of women. According to the Persians, the Phoenicians began the quarrel by carrying off the Greek woman Io and taking her to Egypt. The Greeks retaliated by abducting the woman Europa from the Phoenicians, and later they carried off Medea of Colchis, which motivated Paris to abduct Helen. Herodotus says that the Persians trace their enmity toward the Greeks back to the Trojan War. The Phoenicians, on the other hand, insist that Io left willingly. 

After summarizing these stories, Herodotus says that he will not discuss further which account is correct, and changes the subject to historical causes more recent than the legendary past: “I prefer to rely on my own knowledge, and to point out who it was in actual fact that first injured the Greeks…” Herodotus traces the beginning of the conflict to when Croesus of Lydia conquered the Greek towns of Asia, but Books I - IV focus on other issues. Most of this part of the book is concerned with geographical accounts, stories of notable people, and ethnographies of the peoples ruled by the Persians. Some scientific issues also come up, such as the cause of the flooding of the Nile. Starting with Book V, in which the Persians suppress the rebellion of the local Greek population in Persian territory (the Ionian Revolt) the narrative becomes more tightly focused.  

Herodotus is a moralist; he presents the story of the Persian Wars as a story of how the hubris of the Persian rulers leads to their defeat, and demonstrates how “the god with his lightning smites always the bigger animals, and will not suffer them to wax insolent… likewise his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and the tallest trees” (Bk VII).

The website Livius.org has commentaries that I found really helpful when I was reading this. 
http://www.livius.org/articles/person...

The website also has an interesting essay, “The Significance of Marathon” on the historiography of the battle of Marathon, which occurs in Book VI.

“It is often said that the battle of Marathon was one of the few really decisive battles in history. The truth, however, is that we cannot establish this with certainty. Still, the fight had important consequences: it gave rise to the idea that East and West were opposites, an idea that has survived until the present day, in spite of the fact that 'Marathon' has become the standard example to prove that historians can better refrain from such bold statements.”

Some great reviews by other readers on GR:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... (this one’s pretty funny)

some highlights:
Bk I: The story of Croesus & Solon & Cyrus - The wealthy king of Lydia, Croesus, urges Solon, the Athenian lawgiver [magistrate] to admit that he is the happiest of men. (Croesus at this point as captured nearly all the Greek towns along the west coast of Asia.)

Solon warns him that no one can be called happy until he ends his life well. “Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate. Scarcely, indeed, can any man unite all these advantages: as there is no country which contains within it all that it needs, but each, while it possesses some things, lacks others, and the best country is that which contains the most; so no single human being is complete in every respect — something is always lacking. He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, in my judgment, is entitled to bear the name of ‘happy.’ But in every matter it behooves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin.”
 
Croesus dismisses Solon’s answer, “since he thought that a man must be an arrant fool who made no account of the present good, but bade men always wait and mark the end.”

Croesus suffers for his arrogance when his son Atys is accidentally killed in a boar hunt. Croesus later attacks Cappadocia, part of the empire of Cyrus the Great (and part of modern Turkey). In the conflict that follows, Cyrus captures the city of Sardis. Croesus's other son is killed in the fighting, trying to protect his father, and Croesus is captured. Croesus tells Cyrus the story of Solon's warning to him years before, and how everything had turned out exactly as Solon had said, although it was nothing that especially concerned him, but applied to all mankind alike, and most to those who seemed to themselves happy... Then Cyrus, hearing what Croesus had said, relented, bethinking himself that he too was a man, and that he was a fellow man, and one who had once been as blessed by fortune as himself, that he was burning alive; afraid, moreover, of retribution, and full of the thought that whatever is human is insecure. So he bade them quench the blazing fire as quickly as they could, and take down Croesus and the other Lydians, which they tried to do, but the flames were not to be mastered.”

Croesus prays to Apollo and a rainstorm extinguishes the flames. Cyrus, “convinced by this that Croesus was a good man and a favourite of heaven” asked him after he was taken off the pile, "'Who it was that had persuaded him to lead an army into his country, and so become his foe rather than continue his friend?' 'What I did, oh! king, was to thy advantage and to my own loss. If there be blame, it rests with the god of the Greeks, who encouraged me to begin the war. No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons. But the gods willed it so.”

Bk II: Herodotus’s story about Indian burial customs:

“… if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages surpass those of all others. Unless, therefore, a man was mad, it is not likely that he would make sport of such matters. That people have this feeling about their own laws may be seen by many proofs; among others, the following. Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked -- 'What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?' To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said -- 'What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?' The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language.”

Bk III: Sosicles of Corinth’s response to the Spartans, who at this point in the narrative plan to reinstate a tyrant in Athens. Sparta’s allies are skeptical of the plan, but only Sosicles the Corinthian argues against it:

“Surely the heaven will soon be below, and the earth above, and men will henceforth live in the sea, and fish take their place upon the dry land, since you, Lacedaemonians [another name for the Spartans] propose to put down free governments in the cities of Greece, and set up tyrannies in their room. There is nothing in the whole world so unjust, so bloody, as a tyranny. If, however, it seems to you a desirable thing to have the cities under despotic rule, begin by putting a tyrant over yourselves, and then establish despots in other states… If you knew what tyranny was as well as ourselves, you would be better advised than you now are in regard to it.”

Sosicles then tells of how Corinth was once ruled by an oligarchy, before it became democratic.

Bk VII: The battle of Thermopylae 
“And now there arose a fierce struggle between the Persians and the Lacedaemonians over the body of Leonidas, in which the Greeks four times drove back the enemy, and at last by their great bravery succeeded in bearing off the body. This combat was scarcely ended when the Persians with Ephialtes approached; and the Greeks, informed that they drew nigh, made a change in the manner of their fighting. Drawing back into the narrowest part of the pass, and retreating even behind the cross wall, they posted themselves upon a hillock, where they stood all drawn up together in one close body, except only the Thebans. The hillock whereof I speak is at the entrance of the straits, where the stone lion stands which was set up in honour of Leonidas. Here they defended themselves to the last, such as still had swords using them, and the others resisting with their hands and teeth; till the barbarians, who in part had pulled down the wall and attacked them in front, in part had gone round and now encircled them upon every side, overwhelmed and buried the remnant which was left beneath showers of missile weapons.

Thus nobly did the whole body of Lacedaemonians and Thespians behave; but nevertheless one man is said to have distinguished himself above all the rest, to wit, Dieneces the Spartan. A speech which he made before the Greeks engaged the Medes, remains on record. One of the Trachinians told him, ‘Such was the number of the barbarians, that when they shot forth their arrows the sun would be darkened by their multitude.’ Dieneces, not at all frightened at these words, but making light of the Median numbers, answered ‘Our Trachinian friend brings us excellent tidings. If the Medes darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade.’ ”

Bk VIII: Xerxes reflects on the passage of time: 
“And now, as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but after a little while he wept. 

Then Artabanus, the king’s uncle (the same who at the first spake so freely against the king, and advised him not to lead his army against Greece) when he heard that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said: ‘How different, sire, is what thou art now doing, from what thou didst a little while ago! Then thou didst congratulate thyself; and now, behold! thou weepest.’

‘There came upon me,’ replied he, ‘a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man’s life, and considered that of all this host, numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.’

‘And yet there are sadder things in life than that,’ returned the other. ‘Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy, as not to have felt the wish — I will not say once, but full many a time — that he were dead rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us; sicknesses vex and harass us, and make life, short though it be, to appear long. So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race; and God, who gives the tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very gift, to be envious.’”