The Histories (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Awesome book!!!
Review: A highly entertaining collection of stories involving the ancient world. You will read about societies from Libya to India and everything in between. This is also easy reading and the translation is great. You will simply be shocked at the way the world was back then and some of the religious rituals that people used to have.

Rating:
Summary: Gee,Herodotus is such an interesting man!
Review: I am reading this book and I LOVE it. One important reason is that the author, Herodotus, is really attractive to me. He is the type of person I want to make friend with: Kind, humorous, fair, honest, and most important of all, he possessed the holy curiosity about the wrold around him. I guess it would be a unforgetable experience to attend his lecture.

Some of his arguments might not be valid in our eyes,but I beilieve that he had tried his best and he generally made the most reasonable conclusions based on the information available at that time.

I really enjoy the chatting style of this book. I love the Thucydides too, and it is really interesting experience to read Histories and Peloponnesian War at the same time. After several pages of stuffy war narrative by Thucydides, I can't wait to turn to the relaxing chat with Herodotus. And after being entertained by too many stories in Histories, I'd like to switch back to the challenging Peloponnesian War. If I can choose, I would like to have Herodotus as my grandpa and Thucydides as my father; they are among those finest minds in the human history.

Rating:
Summary: read Herodotus
Review: I don't think any other work I've read has allowed me to live into how it was to live in a time so remote from our own. This really strikes me as an astounding achievement. I don't have a very good oversight over what other resources are available to historians about the daily goings on in in Greece and the Middle East at that period, but I find myself thinking as I read, "What if he had just not decided to write it?" What a loss that would have been.

I had a very hard time with the place names in the first version I borrowed from the library, so I'm very glad for the maps in this edition. Also now some years later, I've forgotten all but the biggest names (but I still remember Cyrus!), and there are a daunting number of names in the book. But for all that, it's sort of an easy read, because it's anecdotal. I remember what happened, and more or less what order it happened in. I remember the major nations and what they were like -- the Persians, the Scythians, the Lacedaemons,...) More importantly, I remember the tenor of the book and of the times. I have a sense for the role that the gods and oracles played, the number of wars an average person experienced in their lifetime, the consequences of war, the relationship between men and women, the sort of thing which motivated nations to do what they did. (I detect no bigotry or chauvenism in Herodotus.) And it's just replete with very good 'histories' of all sorts, which will stay with me forever -- the circumnavigation of Africa, the Babylonian queen who diverted the river in a huge engineering project to protect the city, the Scythians rites, his impressions of the amazing Egyptian labyrinth, the fabulous hearsay about what the Northern climates were like.

And I'm left with a different perspective, I think, than I was before. I don't think, for example, that I could ever be a full blooded pacifist after reading Herodotus. (It's very hard to picture how a pacifist would have survived very long in that world, it seems to me.) I think I also have a better sense for the human psychological need for religious devotion. And I'm convinced that religion is an excuse for war rather than the real motivating factor, because although they had plenty of wars, he doesn't seem to suggest that anyone believed in a right or wrong religion.

Anyway, this is one of the books I'm very glad I read.

Rating:
Summary: Herodutus, Humility, Honor, Honesty, History.
Review: This is my favorite ancient book, more because of Herodotus himself rather than what he writes. He means to make himself invisible while he writes, and is totally focused on his subject: yet the mindset of that ancient time, its values, is so clearly shown in HOW he writes! Of course, this reason for rating the book so highly isn't the normal way a person should review a book. Yet the best value of a book is the value it communicates; for one will forget the facts, and of course having the book means one can refresh the memory. But the values of the writer -- changes the reader's. For better, or for worse.

It's funny how most books of history prior to our American standard of facts without context were mostly written to illustrate ideas. Moreover, the audience must have been familiar with the material. I suppose the last book of this genre was Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Herodotus is classic of this type of historical writing. If you are NOT familiar with the historical period, you will have trouble understanding what he says; just as, you'd have trouble with Tacitus, Virgil, Plutarch, and the Greek plays. So, if you aren't familiar already, I'd recommend you FIRST study the "American" way, to get familiar with names and dates (i.e., read encyclopedias on the period). Then, plough into books like Herodotus with relish!

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful translation of an historical classic.
Review: This new translation by Robin Waterfield is smooth, colloquial, and easily readable, comparable to Robert Fagles' outstanding new translations of Homer's Illiad and Odessey. Carolyn Dewald has provided 150 pages of detailed and highly useful notes, all unobtrusively placed at the end of the book. Ten maps show virtually every geographical detail needed to follow Herodotus's tour around the known world, and a detailed index makes finding people--though not keywords--easy. All in all, an enjoyable read.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Readable, Nice Price, and Lots of Maps
Review: This Oxford Classics edition has much to recommend it. First, it is translated into smooth modern English, which, while not conveying every subtlety of Greek, will nontheless help the present-day reader through this long work. Second, the price is under $10. Third, there is an excellent map collection at the back showing the ancient world as we see it and as Herodotus saw it. The notes, bibliography, appendices, indexes, timeline and glossary all make this a great resource for the student or casual reader. There is enough mention of content in all the other reviews. I just wanted to point out the advantages of this edition.