Herodotus was a storyteller. The man loved hearing and repeating a good story, even if he felt it necessary to also write down, "Now, I don't believe this myself, I'm just telling you what I heard." He traveled all over what was the known world to a 5th Century BC Ionian Greek talking to leading citizens and gathering material for his epic of ethnography, geography and history, with the Greco-Persian Wars providing the organizing backbone of the work. The Histories is a mixture of the mythological and the historically accurate, and where that line is drawn in this work is still a matter for debate evidently. Wherever that may be, this is what people in this part of the world 2,500 years ago believed, which the curious mind of today will find interesting.

I found this Oxford University Press translation to be very readable, and the notes/commentary to be helpful in answering many "how historically accurate is THAT" questions, and in pointing out references to other sections of the work. This is definitely a two bookmark book, one for the main text and one for the running commentary that comes after. Also extremely helpful is having access to Wikipedia at your fingertips, especially for aiding your sense of the geography of the story. Pro tip: Greece at the time was a highly fractious plethora of city-states ranging from Libya to Asia Minor. You're gonna need to look places up. ( )

Herodotus of Halicarnassus proved to be like a lot of us: he got a chance to travel his world and was very interested in the events which shaped that world. To this end he wrote what he simply called historiai, and which we call The History. In so doing he changed everything.

Ostensibly, Herodotus set out to describe the events of the Persian Wars between the Greeks and Persians in 490 and 480-479 BCE and to explain how such enmity developed, in a sense hearkening back to the Achaeans vs. Trojans of the Trojan War days, but more “practically” in terms of the growth of the Lydian Empire, its fall at the hands of Cyrus the Persian, the growth of the Persian Empire and its conquest of Ionia, the Ionian Revolt, and then descriptions of Darius’ Scythian and Greek campaigns and Xerxes’ Greek campaign in greater detail.

Yet such a description does not do any sort of justice to what Herodotus wrote. Herodotus is way more fun than that.

For generations a lot of people hated on Herodotus because of his particular brand of story telling. Historians in general tend to want to laud Thucydides and his account of the Peloponnesian Wars; to them Herodotus was too enamored with mythology and whatever fantastic tales were told to him by various people.

But that’s what makes Herodotus so fun and interesting. For most of the book you can forget it is intending to be setting forth the story of the Persian Wars. Herodotus will unfailingly stop any sort of narrative to provide some story he heard about some ancestor of the people in the action, or of the stories about the land, as in Egypt or other places. He will often provide contradictory accounts. Sometimes he will tell you what he thinks. Many times he just left it to the audience to figure out what they want to accept.

Herodotus is known as the “Father of History,” and for good reason; all historigraphical writing ever since has been based, in some way or another, on Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus was well timed and well placed for this endeavor: as far as we can tell, the primary events he described all happened before he was born or soon afterward; if born in 484 BCE, he would have been 5 when the battles at Plataea and Mycale were fought. His would have been the days of the Peloponnesian Wars; yet having originated in Halicarnassus of Ionia and eventually ending up a citizen of Thurii in modern-day Italy, he could view them at some remove. He has clearly traveled much: certainly to Egypt, likely to Persia. We have to wonder if many people could have written a historical travelogue like his at many points before him.

We certainly need to be careful about bias and prejudice, but we should also be able to understand why the definition of “pre-history” has been “the time before Herodotus.” So much of what we know about the world of the fifth century BCE, and in many respects the previous worlds of the ancient Near Eastern world, comes from various aspects of what Herodotus recorded. And Herodotus has been vindicated many times by archaeology in terms of the chronicles he has provided, although matters regarding the number of soldiers in various battles remains challenging.

If you have any interest at all in ancient history, Herodotus remains critical reading. Biblical personages like Darius and Xerxes (the Ahasuerus of Esther) take center stage in The History, and so its study can add an extra dimension to understanding the age of the post-exilic period. Grene’s translation is decent; his notes are often helpful. ( )

I approached this book with trepidation. I have never read any Greek or Roman histories and assumed that it would be a book i would read a page or 2 a day as a worthy, thing to do. It was highly recommended by Tom Holland on The Rest is History but he would wouldn't he ( he is the translator).
It is actually amazing- a page turner- his insights and thoughts are really modern and Herodotus has a great sense of humour.
Recommended even for people who usually only read popular history books.

Strangely compelling, for ancient history -- especially in this (de Selincourt) translation. ( )

Herodotus is frequently referred to as the first historian, and this work, The Histories, as the first historical work. This book is thus invaluable to the historical profession, and is of particular importance to students of the Ancient Mediterranean. As that is not my area of study, I did find this book a bit of a slog to read through, with its style being so starkly different to what I am used to. There are different books within, and no chapters, making it harder to the reader to pause than more modern works. While certainly interesting, it was a difficult read. I did not come away feeling I would be able to incorporate this work into my own, as it's so drastically different from my usual (early modern) era. I would not likely recommend it for students of history that are not interested in the Ancient Mediterranean, though for anyone who does study the region and place, it is a good read. ( )