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A review by tumblyhome_caroline
The Histories by Herodotus
5.0
This review is about the Tom Holland translation and the gorgeous Penguin Deluxe Classics edition with deckled edges.
I am bereft.. I finished Herodotus. THIS book is the book I would take on a desert island. I absolutely love this book and can’t believe I didn’t consider reading it until now. It was incredible and much easier to read than I thought it would be.
It was written to record the war between the Athenians and Persia..BUT only the very end actually does that.. what Herodotus does in most of the book is tell you all about the peoples of the known world.. their customs, stories, politics, gossip, intrigues etc. It honestly feels like you are sitting listening to Herodotus talk to you by a camp fire in a desert with the stars swirling above your head.
Whereas some of the history he records is clearly fantastical (he gathered his information by word of mouth), much has also been verified as accurate too. Either way it is a real insight to the minds of folk 2,500 years ago. Some stories might not be true, but the fact they they entertained people who heard them all that time ago tells you a lot about what they liked to hear about. They were not so different from us because the stories entertain still today.
This translation (by Tom Holland the historian) is excellent and you get a real sense of sitting down with Herodotus and listening to the most wonderful stories. Herodotus has a voice that you hear loud and clear in a way the authors of modern history non fiction seem to lack. It is vibrant and immersive.
I particularly liked the chapter about Egypt and how that information helps Egyptologists to this day.
I loved how he will be telling you about some serious historical matter then suddenly he says, out of the blue ‘Let me now describe the nature of the crocodile’ and talks at length about crocodiles..which he had clearly seen, unlike hippopotamuses which he says have the manes, tails and neigh of a horse!
Every page had something that made me laugh, gasp and read out to anyone near me.. I would love to put some here but if you ever read this, the joy is in coming across these moments.
Anyway, I LOVED THIS BOOK. You need good maps of the ancient world … the ones in the book sometimes were too small…I hear theDK book The History of the World Map by Map is really helpful…and you can’t read this quickly, it isn’t like modern fiction..
Oh and regarding trigger warnings… ALL APPLY, PLUS some you may not have considered in the past. Times were a bit brutal in those days.
I am bereft.. I finished Herodotus. THIS book is the book I would take on a desert island. I absolutely love this book and can’t believe I didn’t consider reading it until now. It was incredible and much easier to read than I thought it would be.
It was written to record the war between the Athenians and Persia..BUT only the very end actually does that.. what Herodotus does in most of the book is tell you all about the peoples of the known world.. their customs, stories, politics, gossip, intrigues etc. It honestly feels like you are sitting listening to Herodotus talk to you by a camp fire in a desert with the stars swirling above your head.
Whereas some of the history he records is clearly fantastical (he gathered his information by word of mouth), much has also been verified as accurate too. Either way it is a real insight to the minds of folk 2,500 years ago. Some stories might not be true, but the fact they they entertained people who heard them all that time ago tells you a lot about what they liked to hear about. They were not so different from us because the stories entertain still today.
This translation (by Tom Holland the historian) is excellent and you get a real sense of sitting down with Herodotus and listening to the most wonderful stories. Herodotus has a voice that you hear loud and clear in a way the authors of modern history non fiction seem to lack. It is vibrant and immersive.
I particularly liked the chapter about Egypt and how that information helps Egyptologists to this day.
I loved how he will be telling you about some serious historical matter then suddenly he says, out of the blue ‘Let me now describe the nature of the crocodile’ and talks at length about crocodiles..which he had clearly seen, unlike hippopotamuses which he says have the manes, tails and neigh of a horse!
Every page had something that made me laugh, gasp and read out to anyone near me.. I would love to put some here but if you ever read this, the joy is in coming across these moments.
Anyway, I LOVED THIS BOOK. You need good maps of the ancient world … the ones in the book sometimes were too small…I hear theDK book The History of the World Map by Map is really helpful…and you can’t read this quickly, it isn’t like modern fiction..
Oh and regarding trigger warnings… ALL APPLY, PLUS some you may not have considered in the past. Times were a bit brutal in those days.