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.

What I read: Histories by Herodotus

What I expected: Thucydides + Persians

What I got: Mountable battle dolphins
The complete discography of Kid Rock
Eyewitness testimony that Ethiopians produce pitch black semen (no homo)
"Our flying snakes will block out the sun!"
On all levels except physical I am a Mede *Whips the sea*
"Herodotus can I borrow 100,000 Persians?" "1,000,000 Persians? What do you need 5,000,000 Persians for?"
The Virgin Greek pederasty, the Chad Persian piss fetish

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!

Loved this to no end.

Nəhayət ki, bu lənət kitabı bitirdim, oxu-oxu bitmir.

Dünyanın bizə məlum olan ilk tarixi kitabı sayılır, Cicero buna görə Herodotu Tarixin atası adlandırırdı. Tarix oxumağı sevən biri olaraq, tarixdə fərqlənən ilk mədəniyyətlərin bir-birinə necə təsir etdiyini ilk bu əsərdə detallı şəkildə oxudum. Yunanıstanın əhəmiyyətli şəkildə Misirdən təsirləndiyini, İranın isə Yunanıstan mədəniyyətindən təsirləndiyini oxumaq təəccüb doğurdu məndə. Digər tərəfdən, bu xalqların qədim adətləri və yaşayışlarında bəzi şeylərinin günümüzdə də dəyişməməsi insanda qəribə təəssürat oyadırdı.

Ümumən 9 fəsildən ibarətdir, məncə sonlara doğru kitab sıxıcılaşmağa başlayır. Həddən artıq çox detal, nəsil ağacı insanın başını qarışdırır, daha öncə nə oxuduğunu itirirsən. Herodotun özünə aid yaxşıca gopları var kitabda, redaktor təxmini hansı hissələrdə gopladığını qeyd etmişdi, qeyd edim ki, Herodotun özündən uydurduğu hissələri onun yazdıqlarını araşdıran tarixçilər təsbit edib.

Normalda tarix kitablarının "biased" olmasından şikayət edirəm. Amma təəssüf ki, insanlıq tarixinin ilk tarix kitabı da "biased" yazılmışdı, Herodot öz yunanlığını ortaya qoymuşdu, bəzən yersiz təriflər və təsvirlər var idi. İranla müharibə dövrünün üstündə yaratdığı düşmənçilik abu-havası hiss edilirdi, bacardığı qədər aşağı səviyyədə təsvir edib onları.

Belə.

Herodotus writes with more narrative power than most novels. He has more insight into the human condition than all psychology departments. If hubris is what happens to arrogant kings in Herodotus’s account, then King Croseus is the hero of this story. He humbles himself when he is beaten and as a result is a wise counselor to the Persian kings. Most kings, however, aren’t like Croseus.

The story isn’t straightforward. He begins with the claim that he will give the background to the Persian war. He does. He also gives the background to everything else. Remember how in the Iliad when Homer would introduce some random dude, spend ten pages giving his backstory, only to have him killed off on the next page? Herodotus does the same thing.

There is a method to the madness, though. It’s quite brilliant. All of his random sidebars add up in the very end to present a coherent narrative. Further, there is a movement in his narrative which highlights liberty over despotism, which is the argument the Greeks used to unite themselves against Xerxes.

The ultimate showdown, first at Marathon, then at Thermopylae, and finally at Salamis, isn’t quite the “all of a sudden” event that the film 300 suggested. Much of Asia Minor was long understood to be Persian territory. Also, many Greek cities were quite friendly with Persia and no one saw a contradiction The tension, urged on by dreams and omens, developed over decades.

The climax of the story is Athens, not Sparta (which makes sense, given that Herodotus wrote this in the early stages of the Peloponnesian Wars). This compromises his neutrality, though it does make for good reading. “Here I am forced to declare an opinion which will be displeasing to most, but I will not refrain from saying what seems to me to be true. Had the Athenians been panic-struck by the threatened peril and left their own country, or had they not indeed left it but remained and surrendered themselves to Xerxes, none would have attempted to withstand the king by sea….As it is, to say that the Athenians were the saviors of Hellas is to hit the truth. It was the Athenians who held the balance; whichever side they joined was sure to prevail. choosing that Greece should preserve her freedom, the Athenians roused to battle the other Greek states which had not yet gone over to the Persians and, after the gods, were responsible for driving the king off. Nor were they moved to desert Hellas by the threatening oracles which came from Delphi and sorely dismayed them, but they stood firm and had the courage to meet the invader of their country” (VII:139).

Book I: Greece and Persia before the War

Book I has all of the elements of dark comedy and poignant tragedy. It isn’t a straightforward tale, though. He begins by explaining the background to the war with Persia, but it looks like he is getting sidetracked.

Book II: Egypt

Did Egypt copy Greece or did Greece copy Egypt? Herodotus argues that Greece took much of its religious terminology from Egypt (116). Nevertheless, while there is overlap, there are also differences. Egypt didn’t have quite the overt phallic symbolism that Greek rituals had (115), though it had obscenities of its own sort.

The Egyptians also were the first to put forth the idea of the immortality of the soul (145).

Analysis

Custom is stronger than any Nomos and rulers disregard that at their own peril. Herodotus notes: “For if it were proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs, each, after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own are by far the best. It is not therefore to be supposed that anyone, except a madman, would turn such things to ridicule. I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that all men hold this belief about their customs. When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. Then Darius summoned those Indians who are called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is lord of all” (III:38).

While Herodotus doesn’t draw the explicit point, a point which I think Thucydides will later draw, this is why global government is always doomed to fail.

What role do humans play in history? Herodotus is very clear that God (more on that later) and Nemesis respond to human Hubris. The “gods” (whatever that word means) also punish excess in vengeance (IV:205).

Herodotus ends with wisdom from Cyrus, who was urged to become lord over Europe: “It is only reasonable that a ruling people should act in this way, for when will we have a better opportunity than now, when we are lords of so many men and of all Asia?” Cyrus heard them, and found nothing to marvel at in their design; “Go ahead and do this,” he said; “but if you do so, be prepared no longer to be rulers but rather subjects. Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.” The Persians now realized that Cyrus reasoned better than they, and they departed, choosing rather to be rulers on a barren mountain side than dwelling in tilled valleys to be slaves to others” (IX:122).

Ok, I am going to say I am officially done reading The Landmark Herodotus as of December 21, 2018. I finished the body of the text long ago but had been holding out with the intent of reading several of the critical essay appendices. I believe I did read one or two of those critical essays, but I don't expect to read more of them any time soon.
My main recommendation is yes, if you are going to read Herodotus, you should most definitely read The Landmark Herodotus. Having all those maps right there at hand while reading is really essential to getting the most out of the book and not having your eyes glaze over as often.
For much of what he writes, I have a sense that I've been hearing references to these same things all my life. Even though it's boring in places, there's a precious vibrancy to hearing the primary source.
It really is amazing to have this account of happenings thousands of years ago. A wonderful grounding in the history of the ancient world.

"Inquiry" is the proper title of this work, from the Greek ἱστορία, but Herodotus will never be known as "The Father of Inquiries," so I guess he's stuck with the History tag. It is helpful to know that the goal of Herodotus was not strictly an accounting of events -- his primary purpose was to ask questions about remarkable things (including foreign cultures, bizarre landscapes, strange animals, and amazing tales) and report them in a way that might eventually explain the reasons for the Persian War. History as we know it was only a part of his overall project. Herodotus was influenced not only by Homer in the way he reports his findings, but also by the Ionian intellectual revolution that spawned the first scientists. He's a really curious guy, and his curiosity isn't limited to military or political events.

The most amazing tale of his time and place was the rise of the Persian Empire and their improbable defeat at the hands of a much smaller coalition of Greek city states. That story is the crowning concern of the Inquiry, but leading up to that are examinations of all of the people and lands which were at some point in contact with the Persians, especially the Egyptians, the Scythians, and of course the Greeks. There are numerous "digressions" on almost every conceivable subject, but each side trip circles back to the path to the heart of the book: the nature of and reasons for the Persian-Greek conflict. In the process he reveals something about the character of humanity in general. He makes no final conclusions about this, but he opens the way for rich discussion.

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.

A generation had no living memory of the greatest danger that the Greeks had ever lived through, but one man decided to change all that and gift posterity with a new genre. The Histories written by Herodotus details 80 crucial years from the rise of the Persian Empire to the defeat the remnants of Xerxes expedition and the events that led to the latter.

Using knowledge gleamed from extensive travel across the ancient world Herodotus begins his historical narrative by giving the ‘legendary’ encounters between the peoples of Europe and Asia before delving into the more ‘historical’ events that lead to Xerxes’ grand expedition. Herodotus details the history of the kingdom of Lydia that was the first to conquer populations of Greeks, those in western Anatolia, and how its great king Croesus lost his war to Cyrus the Great thus placing those same Greeks under the rule of Persia. The history of the Medes and their conquest by the Persians is related then the subsequent history of the Persian Empire until the Ionian revolt which led to the intervention of Athens and setting the stage for Darius expedition to Marathon. Intertwined with the rise of Persia was Herodotus relating the events within various Greek city-states, in particular Athens and Sparta, that contributed to the reasons for first Darius’ expedition and then to Xerxes’. Eventually his narrative would go back and forth between the two contending sides throughout the latter conflict as events unfolded throughout 480-479 BC.

The sheer volume of material that Herodotus provides is impressive and daunting for a reader to consider. Not only does he cover the political and military events, but numerous past historical and general culture aspects as well as lot of biographies and antidotal digressions that add color to the overall piece. Given that this was the first history ever written it’s hard to really criticize Herodotus—though Thucydides apparently had no problem later—but some digressions I wish Herodotus had left out or not heard at all.

The Histories by Herodotus is one of classic historical works that needs to be read by anyone who enjoys reading history. Whether or not you love the style of writing or even the topic, this book is important because it literally is the first history book.

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.

I feel quite a sense of accomplishment having finished Herodotus' 'Histories'. It is a formidably large text that I am sure will overshadow any other historical non-fiction I decide to read this year. For that reason, I am not even going to attempt anything as onerous as a chronological review of its contents here.

The Histories is comprised of nine books that chart the events of successive Persian dynasts, including Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. Epithetically known as the "Father of History," Herodotus is a candid raconteur: he tells stories with an intimacy and ingenuousness that immediately draw you in.

Many tales of impetuous or improvident kings have a proverbial quality to them, reading more like perennial myths that have been orally bequeathed over generations - which can lead one to doubt their veracity. The most salient example occurs in Book One, where Grecian king Croesus seeks counsel from the Delphic Oracle as to whether he should attack the Persians under Cyrus. Ever cryptic, the Pythia's response was that if he did, a great empire would perish. Croesus mistook this to mean Cyrus's empire, not his own, much to his chagrin. Later, captured and fettered, Croesus's wit and sagacity endear him to Cyrus the Great, who decides to employ the erstwhile king as his chief advisor. Every cloud has a... Persian rug capable of flying through it, I suppose…

The Histories often read like you were being taken on a magic carpet ride through antiquity. Book Two explores the Egyptian Empire, delineating the customs, rituals, rulers, and the myriad of ways in which they contrasted with the Greeks. There are fascinating anecdotes that document a sort of cross-pollination of cultural influence; for instance, the Egyptian ruler Amasis' yearly edict that each citizen has to declare the source of their income to the provincial governor; a failure to prove honest income was punishable by death - a law subsequently borrowed by Solon of Athens.

Prosaic details of everyday life are punctuated with barbarous accounts of violence, such as that of the insane ruler Cambyses, who, in an egregious demonstration of his own martial skills, shoots an arrow through the heart of a young boy - the son of one of Cambyses' servants - to somehow prove that the Persians have been talking nonsense about him, and that he is, in fact, not insane! After hitting the mark, the boy drops dead, and Cambyses exclaims, "You see Prexaspes? I am not mad! It is the Persians who have lost their wits!" Afraid for his own life, Prexaspes is forced to congratulate Cambyses on a good shot.

It is striking how nonchalantly Herodotus documents abhorrent acts of savagery; there is scarcely a page that doesn't detail a castration, evisceration, or one tribe rummaging through some freshly extracted animal entrails to decipher a portent of some kind. Moreover, accounts of gratuitous sacrifice are common throughout the book, as are the methods that distinguish the peoples enacting the atrocities. At one point, the Taurians capture shipwrecked Greeks, decapitate them, and offer their bodies to Iphigenia; the daughter of Agamemnon who, in Aeschylus's play, is sacrificed by her father so that he might secure a favorable sea-wind in order to sail back from Troy.

It is hard to imagine a world replete with the ubiquitous barbarity of this magnitude, but I suppose in attempting to, we can appreciate exactly why these peoples were in a state of continual war: their way of life and the survival of their children depended on them not succumbing to the force and brutality of their neighbours. This was a world devoid of morality in any recognisable sense; instead, it was a world of constant provocation, hostility, and superstition. Each tribe was well aware of the modus operandi practiced by the victors. For instance, in retribution for previous atrocities committed by the Ionians, the Persians would invade the land, kill the men, rape and enslave the women, castrate the boys turning them into eunuchs, and dispatch the girls to the king.

What I found most interesting was Herodotus' perspicacity; the meticulousness with which he details the object of his focus - equally impressive is his inclusion of etymological and genealogical information that serves to buttress the account he provides. Take the following, for example: "The Greeks called the Persians the 'Cephenes'. Then Perseus, the son of Danaë and Zeus, arrived at the court of Cepheus, the son of Belus, married his daughter Andromeda, and fathered a child whom he named Perses. Perseus left this son behind because Cepheus had no male offspring. It was from this same Perses that the Persians then derived their name”.

The final books, eight and nine, were cumbersome to get through; this is predominantly due to the fact that a huge war involving an infinitesimal number of tribes is being recounted, and Herodotus goes heavy on the genealogy here; and I mean Old Testament heavy. By the end of the book, my head was swimming in names: Lacedaemonians, Boeotians, Lydians, Milesians, Corinthians, Scythians, Mycenaeans, Thegeans, Phoenicians, and on, and on, ad nauseam. Perhaps if I had approached the final chapters with fresh eyes, I might not have found them as arduous to get through; admittedly, fatigue did set in towards the end. But fundamentally, this is a monumental book of inestimable significance. It is understandably considered to be one of the most important texts in Western history.