Herodotus

Cicero called him the father of history, Plutarch the father of lies. But to me he's more like an affable uncle who's been around and knows what's up and what's gone down. If I could pour a libation out with any Ancient Greek, Herodotus would be the guy. "So," I'd say, hefting the krater in the direction of his goblet, "is it really true that there are Indians who kill no living creature at all? And that their semen is black like that of the Ethiopians?" And H would smile broadly under his show more resplendent beard and say "I did not see this for myself; this is only what I have heard reported — make of it what you will". And then we'd talk and talk and he'd change the subject by saying things like "so much for the snakes and how the Arabians obtain their frankincense..." and he'd relate how there are three kinds of mice in Libya, and how Peisistratos was brought down by wifely buttsex, and how the Greeks got their alphabet from the Phoenicians... And some of it would be true stories, and some would just be stories, but it wouldn't matter because he wouldn't pretend to be dealing in immutable verities, because nothing unquestionable is very interesting.

And his talk would be full of his favourite words, "amazing", "incredible", "marvel", "astonishment", because those are the words that come closest to capturing the amazing, incredible, marvelous, astonishing heterodoxy of his world and ours. I love the assiduous recording of which rivers the Persian army completely drinks dry (or more pertinently, which ones it doesn't). Was it really 1.7 million men plus several million more camp followers? Of course it bloody wasn't, but that's not the point; the point is, it was an absolute unit of a fighting force. The exaggerations are part of the story. But the father of lies is no fool. I'm an atheist, so I'll never get, like Croesus did, VIP status at Delphi ("priority in oracular consultation and exemption from fees, along with front-row places at their festivals") — but I get the impression from passages like this that my unbelief wouldn't set me entirely apart from old polytheistic H:

...at last the Magi, by offering sacrificial victims and singing incantations to the wind in addition to performing sacrifices to Thetis and the Nereids, brought about an end to the storm on the fourth day — or perhaps it abated of its own accord.

Add the ironic "perhaps" to that list of useful words.

Herodotus's theme is inexorable Fate and how we try and make sense of it — or at least not lose our goddamn minds at how unfair it is — through stories. History for him is very properly a story, instructive and compelling in the way that only stories can be. Truth isn't just subjective, it's peripheral to his project. Of course he's Hellenocentric — what else could a Greek (albeit one from the periphery of the Greek project) be? But the stories he tells us, about how people of all nations tell themselves and each other stories to bring order to their chaotic world, are universal. What goes around in Herodotus always comes around; his Greek mind, like his understanding of rivers and continents, is balanced, symmetrical. Comeuppance might take generations, but up it'll inevitably come. In the speeches, and in particular in the arguments of the Persians Otanes, Megabyzos, and Darius for democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy/tyranny respectively, we get a foretaste of the exquisitely balanced rhetoric of Thucydides. H has his ear to ground still being trampled today. There are also moments of great immediacy, like when we're told about the oars getting tangled in corpses and wreckage at Aphetai, and epic shit like when the Greeks summon Boreas to wreck the Persian fleet, and the fire beacons being lit, and the general large-scale summoning of allies in a Lord of the Rings fashion.

But it's Herodotus the ethnographer who'll always have my ear. Whether he's telling us about the Arabian sheep with trolleys for their massive tails, or Neurian lycanthropy, or the women of the Gindanes and their ankle bracelets ("they put on one of these for every man with whom they have had intercourse, and the woman who wears the most is considered to be the best"), or how the Scythians are "awed and elated by the vapor" of hemp seeds and their women love mud baths, his curiosity and delight in the "the drunkenness of things being various", as MacNeice put it, is what I come to books for. The Persian practice of considering everything once drunk and once sober before deciding has served me well, as has the remark of Artabanos that dreams, contrary to what everyone else in the book thinks, rather than being god-given visions, "tend to be what one is thinking about during the day". The Egyptian Amasis coins for us the phrase "tightly strung". We get an ancient account of the live-burial of children to consecrate a bridge, a rite reported in Medieval times in Andric's "The Bridge Over the Drina". We get 700 Thespians going into battle, and of course ample Lesbians too. And we get it all in the maximalist, thoroughly Herodotean Landmark edition, which gives uncle H the amazing, incredible, marvelous, astonishing widescreen presentation he deserves. show less

To read Herodotus or not to read him: That is the question. The answer for most people will be a resounding no! And I am certainly not going to sit here and say that everybody should. In the immortal words of Hilary Clinton, "What difference does it make?" Frankly, after the passage of 2500 years, who even cares? Admittedly, not many.

However, I am one of the happy few who decided to take the plunge. I ended up making a project out of it. My curiosity about The Histories was stirred when, as show more a young teenager, I happened to open a copy of The Histories to a description of Egyptian embalming methods! This was a wholly new concept and I was ghoulish enough to want to keep reading. But I soon gave up because there were too many strange names and places and I had no background to really understand the whole of Herodotus' massive work which was primarily concerned with the history of the conflict between the Greeks and Persians during the 5th century BC.

Herodotus was the first historian. No one before him had attempted a prose account of important events, and certainly not anything close to the scale of The Histories. In the course of reading I learned many reasons why a nonspecialist might want to undertake the project of plowing through the nine books of The Histories, some from Herodotus himself and some from various commentators'. It was those commentators that made all the difference. More about them later.

First of all, it is interesting to see an ancient mind at work, attempting to assemble enough facts and stories and geographical descriptions — all based on oral tradition and first, second and even third-hand accounts —to paint a complete picture of the whys and wherefores of the wars between Persia and Greece. This indeed is the focus of The Histories, even though it is easy to get lost in the minutiae and forget that this is Herodotus' purpose. After all, what could Egyptian embalming practices have to do with the Persian wars?

We see the seeds of the great man theory of history being sown by Herodotus, the theory that dominated historical discourse right down to the beginnings of the 20th century. Herodotus always tells us that individuals are the causes of events. We see how much Herodotus' approach to rhetoric and style and the structural considerations of The Histories influenced later writers of not only history, but travel writing, ethnographical studies, philosophy and even fiction. Indeed, some detractors — not the least of which was Plutarch — have called The Histories a tissue of lies.

To get a proper perspective, think of someone in the year 2000 attempting to write a history of World War II — sixty years previous — based on nothing but interviews and personal observations and no documentary evidence! Herodotus was a boy at the time of the final battles between the Greeks and Persians, and his later reportage was more dependable than when he was reporting about three, four and five generations before his time. Yes, the work is filled with inaccuracies, as what oral history wouldn't be, yet even if it were entirely a work of fiction it would still be worth reading because a certain amount of "truth" is to be gleaned from even the most prosaic novel. And there is a lot of truth in The Histories.

As mentioned above, I chose to make a project out of reading Herodotus. First of all, the edition one chooses is very important. Preferably, pick one with at least a good introduction and copious notes. The edition I chose was The Landmark Herodotus, which constitutes the equivalent of a college course. Not only does it have an introduction, but possibly — as the Austrian Emperor declared in Amadeus — it contains too many notes! It assumes that the reader has opened the book at random to any page and if a location is mentioned as recently as the previous page, a footnote cites a relevant map.

The Landmark Herodotus contains 125 pages of maps. One can be found at the turn of every two to three leaves on average. And each map contains only what you need to see for the related discussion. There is a set of reference maps at the end, complete with gazetteer, which contain nearly everything.

In addition to the introduction, notes and maps, The Landmark edition provides twenty-plus appendices which flesh out subjects too complex for footnotes. These appendices are short essays on subjects like Herodotus' geography; Athenian and Spartan government; the truth or fiction of Herodotus' account of Egypt; hoplite warfare and trireme warfare; converting Greek measurements into modern feet, miles, etc.; and many more. These appendices are written by scholars other than the general editor Robert B. Strassler. A chapter by chapter time line precedes the text.

Taken altogether, The Landmark Herodotus is a treasure house. But like I said, I made a project out of this. Before I was finished, I had listened to a Teaching Company course (24 half-hour lectures) on Herodotus, and I had consulted the Oxford World Classics edition of Herodotus, which contains a wholly different approach than that contained in the Landmark edition both in the introduction and the notes. Both editions are extremely interesting, helpful and all-consuming.

This project took up about two months of my life. I did read other books along the way as a respite from all this, and taken altogether, it was a very rewarding journey, one that I am almost certain to enjoy even more in retrospect. For many reasons, I have to give this whole effort five stars.

I hope that I have given enough fair warning. But for readers who enjoy this sort of thing, you are in for a memorable experience. show less

I think what I enjoyed most was the honesty. Herodotus was trying to write about the known world and the people in it. He reported stuff that he didn’t always personally believe, but he was up front about it and would admit, “Yeah, I’m not so sure, but this is what they say in Myconos,” or wherever. And he did TRY to get reliable sources. Which isn’t to say he didn’t sometimes get his leg pulled – there is not, in fact, a tribe of people in the Sahara who don’t have heads. show more But again, “that’s what the Libyans told me…” It made the book feel like a friend telling you a story as opposed to someone trying to lecture at you.

I really really really (REALLY) liked that he didn’t have an agenda. By which I mean his unbiased coverage: He was Greek, and Greece had just had a bunch of wars with the Persian Empire (ever see “300?” He writes about it). So for him, as a Greek, to say anything nice about the Persian people or anything they do—and he does when it’s deserved—is pretty unheard of in his time. Or, let’s be honest, ours. He tells the story WITHOUT inflicting his personal value judgments on it.

It being the ancient world, women are generally ignored, but there are a few notable ladies he writes about for being wise or clever or what have you (plus there’s Amazons!). Also, the science of geography being the massive joke it was back then, he had NO idea how big Africa really was, and the British Isles were an unproved rumor as far as he was concerned. However, I have to say it was REALLY nice to read a book written before 19-sumpty-some that ISN’T racist. He’ll helpfully inform his European audience that yes, people in Egypt and Ethiopia tend to be a bit dark compared to us, etc. etc., but there are no implicit or explicit judgments associated with skin tone. Maybe because the various Greek city-states were so busy fighting *each other* all the time, meaning that the person most likely to kill you looked like you. As a matter of fact, he can’t say enough nice things about Egypt, and he thought Ethiopians were “the tallest, most handsome and longest lived of all men.”

The book has so many great passages here and there that I actually took to marking their place in the margin – in pencil, of course, but for me to write in my books at all is saying something. show less

This was quite a slog, and I abandoned ship at the end of book six, so bear that in mind. This is a book that probably is very rewarding to study, to read it in chunks at bedtime can be a bit problematic. Whilst The Histories has a structure the presentation is not as readable as the layperson might be used to, and I found that I was often lost in time and space! Wait, is this same Megacles? There are some fantastic stories here, but lots of similarly named people going places and fighting show more over people, in ways that aren't especially dramatic. I always enjoyed the Pythias though, they sounded like they had fun. I guess that I don't want to badmouth this book, because I can recognise that the failings were mostly mine, but if you're a bit of a thicky like me then you might want to get a well-edited or annotated version. I will definitely come back to the last three books sometime though. show less