The Histories, by Herodotus book review: History of the World, Part 1
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- My review of Herodotus's The Histories, a book of great antiquity which constitutes the first real long-form compendium of historical events, and which primarily relates the conflicts between Greece and Persia, but which is also rife with tangents that help provide an immeasurably valuable glimpse into the lives of our ancient forebears.
#thehistories #herodotus #history #ancienthistory #greece #persia #books #literature #booktube #bookreview #penguinbooks
I'm very much Team Herodotus, not Team Thucydides-- I love the stories and digressions. But a lot of it is fiction, even if it is really good fiction. "300" took a lot of stories from Herodotus, but his version of Thermopylae is...let's say....embellished. Still...I do really like the Histories.
I really did enjoy the Histories overall. I might give The History of the Peloponnesian War a go someday, although I feel like Thucydides is probably a lot more dry and unengaging than Herodotus. XD
@@TH3F4LC0Nx Thucydides is a lot more...pessimistic...than Herodotus. He takes a darker view of human nature. He was an Athenian general who was exiled for botching the relief of a besieged town, so he had a lot of time to brood and write. He talks a lot about the way suspicion and fear fed Sparta's rivalry with actions, and those passages are very good.
\
I've been hesitant to pull the trigger on reading this so it's been gathering dust on my shelf. But this review just gave me the push I need to start on it. Thanks!
Hope you enjoy it! I actually did, mostly. Some of it's dry; some of it's flagrant bs, but some of the stuff, like when he talks about the sexy time rituals of some of the different tribes, is genuinely kind of hilarious. XD And, surprisingly, I found out that that line in 300 about "fighting in the shade" was actually legit! :D
Herodotus is pretty based, trust me bro author, modern history builds heavily on his work more then it likes to admit.
Well, he did pretty much lay the entire groundwork. :)
Gotta love the ants
Ah yes, the gold-digging ants! XD Surprisingly, as I'm given to understand it, the common consensus now is that he was actually referring to a type of small rodent-like animal that actually does dig in the ground. The truth got mangled in the transmission, but there's still a kernel there apparently. :)
Ok, so this book has been on my wishlist for so long, maybe longer than any other. I just keep wondering if I'd enjoy it. I do enjoy history but I also am not the biggest fan of Homer's works. Your review gave me the added impetus to go ahead and read it. Thank you, as always. ❤
Try M.I. Finlay's "The World of Odysseus", which is a great read about Homer's era.
Oh, thank you! I'm off to Amazon. @@SmallSpaceCorgi
I won't lie and say it wasn't a tad dry at times, but on the whole I found it fascinating enough to stay hooked. Some of the stuff where he discusses some of the ancient people's...err..."romance rituals" was kinda hilarious, actually. XD A lot of it is probably bs, but it can be an interesting window for sure. :)
" Herodotus....
He was the first man to find the principle of averages. It was a great discovery at that time, and he was so overwhelmed by it, that one day when he had gone for a picnic with his wife and seven kids - they came across a small river...
The wife was a little worried, but Herodotus said, "Wait. I will take the average depth and the average size of our kids. It will take only five minutes." He took out his measuring tape, found out the average height of the children, and ran around into that small river. At a few points he measured it and told his wife, "Don′t be worried. The average depth of the water cannot drown the average height of our kids. You come on!"
But somewhere the water was deeper and somewhere it was shallow, and some child was smaller and some child was bigger... The average does not work in actual situations; it is good for mathematical calculations.
The wife was still worried, so she kept herself behind. And when she saw one child drowning, she called to Herodotus who was going ahead, "Look! I was concerned from the very beginning. I don′t understand your mathematics!"
And can you believe it? Herodotus did not go to save the child, the wife had to run...! He ran back to the bank, where on the sand he had made all the calculations, to find out whether the calculation was wrong. The calculation was perfectly right, but existence does not follow your calculations."
Wow, not the best husband or father then, I take it. XD But you're right; statistics and numbers have to be taken into account contextually.
Always remember-- the 300 Spartans were backed up at the end by 700 men from the nearby town of Thespiae and some volunteers from other cities. It wasn't supposed to be a last stand-- it was supposed to be a fighting withdrawal to cover the retreat of the main Greece force (which had been somewhere between 7500 and 11,500 men). If Leonidas had handled the allied troops better, they wouldn't have been surrounded by the Persians. Note that the 700 Thespians all died with the Spartans , and the Persians made an example of the town of Thespiae, which was burned down and its population enslaved.
Indeed. There's always more to the story than what gets most remembered. ;)
I've been thinking about re-reading this, and I discovered that Tom Holland has done a new translation of the Histories for Penguin Books. So I may try that translation.
I've heard good things about him as a translator. :)