The Histories - Softcover

Herodotus

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140440348 ISBN 13: 9780140440348

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1973

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A key text for every student of Ancient Greece, Herodotus' Histories is the first great prose work in European literature. Its main theme is the heroic and sucessful struggle of a small and divided Greece against the mighty empire of Persia - with its underlying conflict between the absolutism of the East and the free institutions of the West. Herodotus has been called the Father of Lies as well as the Father of History; but it was a feature of his method, when evidence was lacking, to record popular belief, and the results is one of the most entertaining books in the world. Herodotus' culminating story of the great invasion of 480-479B.C. comes from men with whom he had talked; he never claims to remember any incident in it personally; and in agreement with this, later Greeks dated his birth to 484 B.C. He often has occasion to refer to later events; and the four latest, all in the last four books, refer to the first years of the Pelopponesian War, 431-430 (VI, 91; VII, 133 and 233; IX, 73). Herodotus probably died soon after that. Herodotus' great life-work, as we have it, is carefully and elaborately planned. Starting with Greece and its relations with the East in the generation of Cyrus, the founder of Persian power, it builds up steadily through sixty-six years to the great invasion of 480, which is recognized as an axial point in Greek history and as a vital point in the history of Western Civilization. The division into books was made for convenience, probably by the librarians of Alexandria: PART I: THE RISE OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE (to c.510BC):Books I to V; Part II to III,66: Cambyses and Egypt; III, 67, to V, 27: Darius, The Empire, The Mediterranean and Europe. PART II: GREECE AND THE PERSIAN WARS: Books V(28) to IX.(500-479BC): V, 28 to VI,42:The Ionian Revolt: its origins, suppression and settlement. VI,43 ff: Renewed Persian Advance Into Europe; VII to IX: The Great Invasion of Xerxes; VII, 175, to VIII, 26: Thermopylae and Artemisium

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