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Gorgeous book -- makes Herodotus accessible to the general reader Dec 9, 2007 (154 of 156 found this helpful)
If you're interested in ancient history, you owe it to yourself to know something about Robert B. Strassler. This retired businessman did his undergraduate degree in -- and has had a lifelong interest in -- the classics. He has dedicated his "retirement," apparently, to the re-issue of ancient authors in handsome, reader-friendly editions. This is his second such edition, the first having been his Landmark Thucydides.
My comments so far:
THE MAPS. There is no edition of Herodotus like this -- abundant maps, all easy to use and pleasing to the eye. Newcomers to Herodotus will find the maps invaluable. The reason: Herodotus takes you on a tour of much of the ancient world, telling you stories and legends and relating recent history. You may not know exactly where Miletus was located, or Sardis, or the river Scamander, and you can't simply look them up on a Google map -- that world has vanished; the place-names are now all different. So it's incredibly helpful, when you bump into references to such places, to have at hand an attractive set of maps to refer to. Also, Strassler is faithful to his own method, which is always to provide at least TWO maps -- one an overview of a region (say, the eastern Mediterannean), the other a zoomed-in, detailed look at one portion of that region (e.g., the western coast of Turkey). As a result, the maps always work -- always helpful, never mystifying.
THE TRANSLATION. I'm no expert in ancient Greek, so I can't comment on the quality of the translation, which is by Andrea L. Purvis. Strassler, as the general editor of this edition, says that his goal was to ensure that the text "would be clear, simple, and easily comprehensible to a modern reader. My narrow objective occasionally created difficulties for Andrea and led to some disagreements between us -- she arguing for tighter fidelity to the Greek text and I for clarity in the English... With time and iteration, we were always able to find a mutually agreeable compromise."
THE PRICE. Were this book a college text, just looking at it, you might expect it to cost $70 - 80. The fact that you can get it for less than $30 is amazing.
My view, in short, is that if you're going to tackle Herodotus, this is the only way to do it.
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Greece through the eyes of the ancient Greeks Jan 12, 2008 (86 of 86 found this helpful)
Herodotus recorded primarily oral accounts of events leading up to the Persian Wars of 490 and 479-480 BCE and in the process describes the known world of his day. The detailed discussion (after a brief summary of mythic tales) begins at about 560 BC with Croesus of Lydia (he of "rich as Croesus") and concludes with the battle of Mycale and the siege of Sestos. He describes the interactions between Croesus and the Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and then goes on to describe the foundation of the Persian Empire by Cyrus and its subsequent expansion under his successors. Herodotus perceives the conflict as the result of individual human actions, rather than of larger political and economic forces. His account is a grand story filled with digressions to describe a myriad individuals, places and historical anecdotes while building to the grand finale of the Greek victories over the Persians. The whole is a colorful, fascinating tapestry of Mediterranean life in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.
Reasons to Read Herodotus
Readers interested in Ancient Greece can turn to many sources but reading Herodotus (and Thucydides) has the benefit of seeing Greece through the eyes of the ancient Greeks themselves. Thus the history and culture come alive from a first person perspective. The Histories are literally an `inquiry' (it was Herodotus who gave the word `history' its current meaning, until then there being no such concept) into the causes of the conflict between Greeks and Persians. He attempts to provide evidence for his conclusions and indicates where he disagrees with existing wisdom.
Herodotus is an astonishingly sophisticated and cosmopolitan observer. In Book 2, Chapter 3, referring to the Egyptians, he observes that with regard to religion he does not think that any one nation knows much more about such things than any other. This attitude is not universal even now and was almost unheard of until the 20th century. Herodotus has influenced us in ways we may not suspect. The informal motto of the US postal service (...neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dark of night keeps them from completing their appointed course) comes from Book 8, Chapter 98, referring to the Persian system of royal couriers.
The remarkable notion to emerge from reading the Histories is that while the emphasis seems to be on Greece, in fact it was the Persian Empire that was the 800 lb gorilla of the Mediterranean World. The war was in no way a conflict between the absolutes of good and evil. Numerous Greek cities sided with Persia, and there were influential pro-Persian lobbies even in the cities (e.g. Athens) that fought it. The exiled Spartan king Demaratos lived at the Persian court and accompanied Xerxes on his Greek expedition, advising him on the way. The Athenian general Themistocles after defeating the Persians on behalf of the Greeks ended up living at the court of Xerxes' successor in later life. The nuanced portrayal of antagonists (while recognizing affiliation to one side) is a special gift of the Greeks and dates back to Homer with his sympathetic portrayal of the Trojans.
Reasons to read this particular edition
The Landmark Herodotus has several useful features. The Histories are all about the geography of the ancient world and maps are essential to understanding them. The Landmark Herodotus has the appropriate maps (127 in all) interspersed with every few pages of the text, supporting every episode for easy reference. Notes on the text occur at the bottom of each page instead of in a separate section at the end of the book, making reference easy. The text is cross-referenced, i.e. when Herodotus refers to something described elsewhere in the Histories notes indicate the precise book and chapter. A short summary of each chapter appears in the adjacent margin as a side note. This makes flipping back and forth easy. Finally, at the top of each page is a running head providin
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An uncommonly handsome and useful volume Nov 8, 2007 (109 of 114 found this helpful)
This new volume is a companion piece to the earlier "The Landmark Thucydides," also edited by Richard B. Strassler.
Like its predecessor, the translated ancient text is accompanied by numerous side-notes that quickly orient the reader chronologically and geographically and also includes excellent, detailed essays exploring various relevant matters. Perhaps most important of all are the maps, a necessity for the modern reader when studying events of over two thousand years ago. Strassler has chosen to provide not merely a handful of general maps, as would be likely in most books of this kind, but instead well over a hundred very clear maps.
I cannot yet comment upon the translation, beyond saying that at first approach it appears straightforward and highly readable. Herodotus is our principal source for the story of the wars of the Greek city states against Persia, and he did much to shape our perceptions of that struggle and our views of the Greeks. An edition of "The Histories" such as the present volume is in that regard a real touchstone in appreciating the roots of the modern West.
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Save your money. Better and Cheaper Herodotus editions available Apr 15, 2008 (78 of 90 found this helpful)
Let me start out by saying that, in theory, a "Landmark Herodotus" has much promise as an idea, but not in the execution of this volume, I'm afraid.
The model that worked so well for the Landmark Thucydides -- text with maps and appendices to explain larger themes and issues -- does not work so well for Herodotus.
While the maps are a welcome adornment, what this volume lacks are specific and copius textual notes to explain the material. Instead we are shunted to various appendices at the end that are all done by fine scholars, but are not directly tied back to the actual textual material.
Instead of purchasing this hardcover volume, I highly recommend the much cheaper Oxford Classics paperback edition of Herodutus. It is an excellent English language translation with dozens of pages of highly specific endnotes elucidating the material.
Herodotus is a wide ranging, expansive read in contrast to Thucydides, who is only covering a condensed period of history spanning some 20-30 years at its core, and is limited in its geographic scale to mostly Greece, Asia Minor and the Agean. [The notable exception being the great chapter on the Athenian expedition to attack Syracuse in Sicily].
If you must purchase this volume, I suggest waiting for the paperback edition to come out. The translation is a decent one, so it has merit from that standpoint. But the format that worked seemlessly for Thucydides, is lacking for Herodotus. With the wealth of material covered by the father of History -- a few appendices cannot do the work justice. You want to be able to follow along as you read the tales, and have the option of checking a source or an explanatory note if a subject strikes your imagination.
In many ways the experience of this volume is like reading a modern tourist guidebook for a country with all of the accomodations reviews for each city in one appendix, and all the restaurant reviews in another appendix.
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Another Excellent Landmark Edition Feb 29, 2008 (20 of 20 found this helpful)
Like the Landmark Thucydides, the Landmark Herodotus is an excellent edition, with a good introduction, copious notes, 127 maps, 21 appendices, a glossary, bibliography, dated timeline, and index. Being a huge fan of the Thucydides edition, I was hoping for a Landmark Herodotus, and am overall very impressed with the book. The only criticism I have is in the translation. The Thucydides edition used Richard Crawley's fine and well established translation, but a new translation by Andrea Purvis was used for Herodotus. Hers is not a bad translation, in fact I think it is probably very true to the original Greek, but it is simply not as elegantly done as George Rawlinson's The Histories (Everyman's Library). For example, here is how Purvis translated the Proem:
Herodotus of Halicarassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds - some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians - not go unsung; as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other.
And Rawlinson's rendition of the same:
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.
Readers unfamiliar with other translations will probably not miss anything, but I must admit I found the translation a bit hard going at times. I would personally prefer a slightly less literal and more literary translation than a precise modern version that reads a bit tediously in places. But overall, this is a wonderful edition. Hope we get more Landmark editions, as Strassler seems to hint in his preface.