The Histories

by Herodotus
* * * * *
Content: 5/5
Poetic Mastery: 5/5
Literary Truth: 5/5

The Histories is the most surprising good read I can remember. When I picked it up — in a great hurry, grabbing anything on the classics shelf before a weekend a camping trip — I expected to encounter 600 pages of something like the most dull parts of the pentateuch: full of catalogues of names and places unknown and meaningless to me, convoluted, stilted, foreign, and ultimately uninteresting for anyone but the super-pre-acquainted. But only a few pages of reading this book were necessary to fully reverse that opinion. The Histories is a page-turner. Herodotus’ (ca. 484 – 425 BC) style and content are both clever and readable. I must say, though, that while the book is as straightforward and clear as it could be, nonetheless the sheer scope of the work makes the book a tough nut to crack; I found myself very often rereading sections of a narrative strain suspended some 200 pages back to refresh my memory of what had happened and who was who. Seriously, I’ve probably read half of this book two times to make sure I remember enough to justify the time taken to read it. But, fortunately, it was very interesting. It’s the type of work you could read more than once or thrice. My 4th and 5th graders have loved what of this work I’ve retold to them.

The Histories is a roaming history of the Persian-Greek wars, which Herodotus presents not-too-tacitly as the heir to Homer’s account of the sack of Troy in the line of great Greek historical and literary phenomenon. The tale is much more than a battle description; in fact the immediate lead-up to and action of the Greco-Persian battles comprise probably (wild guess…) less than 10% of the work. Herodotus treats the reader to extensive ethnographies, geographies, and histories of the major and minor players in the world leading up to the crisis, based upon the author’s fantastically well-traveled personal inquiries (a luxury of being Greek at a time of Greek supremacy, no doubt). Egyptology comprises all of what is now called Book II (of nine books).

Herodotus is aptly called the father of modern history. His content is “detatched” in that he succeeds in presenting the glories and downfalls of all people, whether Greek or not. Typical histories are ethnocentric: our gods are true, yours are false; our greivances against you are legitimate, and yours are not; our men are the bravest; our monuments are the grandest; and so on. But Herodotus is wide-eyed. Herodotus’ mission, he explains when reporting histories that he has factual reservations about, is not to always to tell what happened but to simply report what nations’ histories are about themselves. Herodotus also surprises me with the acumen of his mind, which brings him not only to be able to have a memory extensive enough to remember and record all within the work, but also to be able to collect with so curious and open a critical mind the stories, people, and geographies. I’ll never forget his hypothesis — based upon the alluvial quality of Egyptian soil, historical Nile flood measurements, and other data — that Egypt was once underwater (by a finger of water going south just as the Red Sea goes north). He argued that for silt from the Nile to have accumulated to create the land as it is would take “just” 10 thousand years, maybe 20,000 tops, based upon his measurements.

I’ll end this summary with a few side notes of importance to me but not of the work. First, I love the Persians’ mettle. Secondly, it was interesting to note that the Jews were never mentioned. Going to Sunday School every week since birth makes a Christian child see history as revolving around Jerusalem and Jews, much as the earth used to be thought of as the center of the universe. But noticing that Herodotus, in a giant volume listing seemingly every small tribe imaginable, refers not once to the Jews and only twice to Palestine at all, was truly an informative silence. Point of interest: The most extensive reference to Palestine is in a few sentences about how he knows the stories are true about an Egyptian pharoah who carved women’s genitals on the victory poles he erected in countries that were especially easily conquered; Herodotus says he saw one with such a carving himself in Palestine. Thirdly, I’d like to comment on the Penguin edition of this work. The paperback MSRP is $6.99, which seems almost wrong considering the the edition’s copious resources: maps, timelines, outlines, extensive endnotes, and bibliographic suggestions. I hope you enjoy the work some time!