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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 930
EAN num: 9780192824257
ISBN number: 0192824252
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 840
Printing Date: September 15, 1998
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 70649
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'The father of history,' as Cicero called him, and a writer possessed of remarkable narrative gifts, enormous scope, and considerable charm, Herodotus has always been beloved by readers well-versed in the classics. Compelled by his desire to 'prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time,' Herotodus recounts the incidents preceding and following the Persian Wars. He gives us much more than military history, though, providing the fullest portrait of the classical world of the 5th and 6th centuries. This readable new translation is supplemented with expansive notes to help the reader appreciate the book in depth.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is a very fine translation of one of the most important books from the ancient world. Be forewarned, this is not easy reading for the ordinary or casual reader of history. The university level teacher or classical scholar will savor every page. Herodotus does not give you a simple narrative. He starts you out and then runs you down ten thousand rabbit trails so you may forget where you started and where you were trying to go. He introduces names and places in a staggering volume in just a few pages. He will introduce a person and then tell you all about his great grandfather,grandfather,father,mother,siblings, every person he killed and every woman he ever slept with. He goes to great length to tell you how the Greeks chose their commanding general at the Battle of Marathon but he gives you sparse detail about how they actually won that famous conflict. The breadth of people and events Herodotus covers is huge but the pathway is not linear.
Rated by buyers 
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What amazed me about this book was Herodotus'curiosity and lack of ethnocentrisism. Herdotus wasn't simply interested in chronicling major events, but delving deeper to understand why the events occured in the very first place. Furthermore, he does something that many scholars and policy makers yesterday should do more of; that is, he trys to understand other cultures in order to make more sence of their actions. In this endeavor, he should not only be called the "Father of History", but also the Father of Anthropology. But, perhaps he understood way back then that history and anthropology, as well as geography are all complimentary.
While Herodotus - being a Greek himself - undoubtedly sees the Greeks as heroes in their struggle against the Persian invasion, he shows them to be extremely jealous, greedy, arrogant and even treacherous. This is something that many of the ancient world - including the Greek world - would rarely do to their own kind. Therefore, Herodotus is also one of the very first examples of someone critquing their own culture.
Herodotus makes it clear that the causes of conflict were complex - often stemming from selfishness, such as the Greek Histiaeus wanting to start an Ionian revolt just so he could leave the Persian court - and the "heroes" were no knights in shining armour. The best example is Themistocles, who was instrumental in saving Athens due to his insistence in forcing a sea battle in the Salamis straights. Rather than dying with the reputation as a heroe, he ended his life in excile collaborating with the Persians against Greece. It would be as if after leading the Americans to victory in the American Revelution and being President, George Washington was exciled to England and became and an advisor to the British king on how to retake America.
While it may not have been his intention, one irony that becomes apparent regarding the Spartans and Athenians is that democratic Athens has an imperialist impulse from the outset of their victory at Salamis, while the oligarchic - some may even say proto-facist - state of Sparta is very reluctant to take any offensive measures and are rather content to stay in their peninsula. They were complaining about simply sending troops into central Greece to stop the Persians.
Unfortunately, many "progressive" historians cut out the inconvenient truths of this history and make it into more of a grey and white affair. For me, it was Herodotus' inquisitive mind, search for the truth - by revealing contridictory accounts - and, relative to ancient authors, very unbiased account that makes this work a must read for anyone interested in western civilization, ancient history, and world history in general.
Rated by buyers -
This is great, fun book to read. This is a book you can read for enjoyment. I was reluctant to read it because I assumed it would be difficult because it was written around 425 BC. I assumed because it was ancient it would be difficult to read. That was wrong. It's a very entertaining read. It's also extremely interesting. Herodotus was a very smart and learned man for his time and it is interesting to read what he thinks. And the commentaries at the back of the book are also well done. Often the commentaries will note that Herodotus is just wrong in what he says, but sometimes he's right. I find myself switching between Herodotus and the commentaries. If you're at all interested in ancient history, you will not regret buying and reading this.
Rated by buyers 
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Too intellectual! Too narrow! So cumbersome! Additionally, the translation, from Greek to English, is definitely not accurate. There exists ACCURATE translations of this wonderful work of Herodotus. These intellectuals seems to have written this book to astound their fellow literati; not to expound the truth.
Rated by buyers 
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Herodotus's Histories are a treasure trove of wisdom, anecdotes and sheer joy. In the words of Robert D. Kaplan, "Thucydides may have been the more trustworthy historian, but Herodotus would have been more fun to share a wineskin with--and is a better guide to the god-filled geopolitics of the current era." (Kaplan's remarkable article on Herodotus, titled "A Historian for our Time", is available at [...]
I fully agree with other reviewers about the beauty of this translation, which results in a fluent and pleasant text. I am also overwhelmed at the abundance of notes and commentaries about perhaps most paragraphs in the book.
The problem is, while the translation increases our reading pleasure, the organization of this edition does not help the reader: the use of endnotes rather than footnotes means that readers have to keep moving to and fro between the text and the end of the book. Worse still, there is no footnote numbering, so readers must turn at virtually every paragraph to the end of the book, so as not to miss possible clarification. Eventually, I decided to check before reading each of the nine chapters ("Books") and mark the endnoted paragraphs myself.
Perhaps Oxford's intention was, as another reviewer put it, to ensure that notes were "unobtrusive" and the reader would have the clean text before his eyes. I beg to differ: few modern readers could do without the additional explanations provided in the notes. And, if they felt they could, or so wished, they would have a wealth of translations to choose from, much poorer in notes than this one.
I think no other edition of the "Histories" has so many maps. These are necessary and helpful. But they could have been clearer. In some of them, it is hard to tell land from sea, for example.
I do look forward to a "Landmark Herodotus" similar to the magnificent "Landmark Thucydides", with notes AND maps exactly where they are needed, so the reader never has to leave the page he is reading. This may sound shallow, but it greatly facilitates concentration. And this, after all, is supposed to be one of the main benefits of a fluent and pleasant text in the very first place.
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