The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories | Herodotus

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories | Herodotus | The real story of The 300

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The Landmark Herod...

	The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories Herodotus Pantheon, 2007 - 1024 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From the editor of the widely praised The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus, the greatest classical work of history ever written.

Herodotus was a Greek historian living in Ionia during the fifth century BCE. He traveled extensively through the lands of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and collected stories, and then recounted his experiences with the varied people and cultures he encountered. Cicero called him ?the father of history,? and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose that harks back to the time of oral tradition, Herodotus set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day.

In The Histories, Herodotus chronicles the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city-states. Within that story he includes rich veins of anthropology, ethnography, geology, and geography, pioneering these fields of study, and explores such universal themes as the nature of freedom, the role of religion, the human costs of war, and the dangers of absolute power.

Ten years in the making, The Landmark Herodotus gives us a new, dazzling translation by Andrea L. Purvis that makes this remarkable work of literature more accessible than ever before. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps, this edition also includes an introduction by Rosalind Thomas and twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields, covering such topics as Athenian government, Egypt, Scythia, Persian arms and tactics, the Spartan state, oracles, religion, tyranny, and women.

Like The Landmark Thucydides before it, The Landmark Herodotus is destined to be the most readable and comprehensively useful edition of The Histories available.

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A fantastic work

Wow! I can't believe I actually read this entire book...and thought doing so was really cool! To be sure, looking up each footnote slowed the reading down considerably, making reading more than 15 pages an effort, but on the other hand, knowing where all the locations were helped give more meaning to the stories. The maps every couple pages were excellent.

Essentially, the text is a 2500 year old first hand account of Herodotus' travels throughout the ancient Greek sphere of influence, Scythians, Persians (before Islam), Egyptians, etc, ranging from the east to west Mediterranean civilizations to civilizations up the Nile and out and around the Black Sea and going even further out to where India is today. Many, many details of many, many ancient cultures are described--what could be more fascinating??

There were also 20-25 short essays (about 100 pages total) after the text that were all excellent. I read these essays as they were referenced in the text as well as after I read the entire text. The translation was excellent making the stories and descriptions very readable and fun.

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The real story of The 300

I got interested in Herodotus because of the movie "The 300." This is the real story. This edition may have been aimed at an academic audience but it gives the ordinary reader great help with its notes. Anyone interested in ancient Greek history will find this a great book to have.

dream come true

The Landmark Herodotus is a book I wanted but didn't know it existed. I tried to read Herodotus once and found it difficult to read because of his many references to places that no longer exist. This edition has extensive maps, references and background material that make Herodotus not only much more accessable, but also fun and a joy to read! I love this book! It's like The Lord of the Rings but better because it's real (mostly). I would highly recommend this book and give it as a gift to people I care about.

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It no longer all Greek to me

Greek history is a big gap in my education. When I read a review of the "Landmark Herodotus" that talked about all the maps and annotations it contained, I thought this would be a good way to get up to speed.

I had some basic questions starting out; how were the Persian wars different from the Peloponnesian wars? Why should we still care about Greek history? I understand why we care about Greek culture but not so clear on the importance of the history. What did we really know about the Persian wars and how did we know it?

Reading Herodotus answered most of these questions and though his History isn't a primary text, it did give me insight into the thinking and the culture of that period. Much of what Herodotus wrote about was within a generation or two of his own times.

What stood out was the conflict between the forces of fate as represented by prophecies of oracles and the actions of men. While Herodotus saw men and women as capable of great deeds, they were often hampered or helped by prophecy.

Next, the long chronological context that he places the Persian war into. Its stretches back to the Egyptians and he is clearly fascinated by that culture and sees that while Persians conquered them, the Egyptians remained very influential on the Greeks.

Third, the multitude of tribes or people of the ancient world surprised me. The Greeks weren't just Greeks. They were Ionians, Athenians and Spartans and many more as well. The Persians conquered many people and this was a problem when they went into battle with people who didn't share a loyalty or connection and were a cause of the Persian's many defeats.

Finally, I was disappointed that the conflict between democracy and tyranny wasn't more delineated. I thought Herodotus would extol and explain the virtues of Athenian democracy but not so much.

The annotations were useful but weren't quite as illuminating as I had hoped. The pluses were the many maps and the timeline which I used after I finished a chapter to ground myself in the "who did what to who, when" that I'd lose track of as I read the text. The minuses included a poor glossary that could easily have been ten times as large and the appendices which were plentiful and written by eminent scholars on a wide range of subjects but they didn't give me a cohesive understanding of the whole of Herodotus' work. It was a bit like Sinatra's Duet albums where he and his singing partners never shared the same recording studio. Connection and engagement were missing.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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