Translated by Tom Holland
Started: September 21, 2021
Finished: November 2, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background Information
Originally written in 430 B.C., The Histories by Herodotus is the longest ancient Greek text to survive into the modern world.
[In my review of The Iliad, I mentioned that given how laborious it was to transcribe and preserve long texts in the ancient world, it's a minor miracle that the entire epic has survived into the modern world intact. But since Herodotus is almost twice the length of The Iliad, I suppose that same observation is doubly true in this case.]
This book also supposedly established the genre of history the Western World.
Historical records and chronicles had existed before Herodotus, but Herodotus was apparently the first author who attempted to write history as literature. In other words, Herodotus told history as a story (W).
As a story-teller, Herodotus gives us access to material that nowadays would be outside the domain of serious historians. Herodotus gives us the internal thought processes of his historical figures. He also recreates the dialogue and speeches of historical figures. It is very much like reading a story instead of a chronicle.
In addition to adding in dialogues and internal monologues for his characters, Herodotus's histories are also filled with many outlandish tales that couldn't possibly be true.
For these reasons, Herodotus reputation was mixed even among the ancients themselves. Cicero famously called Herodotus "the father of history", but Plutarch called Herodotus "the father of lies". Thucydides (the other famous ancient Geek historian) was apparently very critical of Herodotus's methods.
But although Herodotus's habit of mixing tall tales and legends with actual history makes him problematic for serious historians, for the casual reader it makes him all the more entertaining.
Where Herodotus was getting his information from is still a source of speculation and debate among scholars. Herodotus himself was Greek, but claimed to have travelled extensively, and interviewed many different people for his history. But as Herodotus gives descriptions of people and places further and further away from the Greek homeland, he relates such outlandish things that it seems impossible that this history is based on any serious research. But then again, in the ancient world, how would you get accurate information about distant lands?
The book's structure is notoriously difficult to summarize. Herodotus goes off on so many digressions, that often it's difficult to tell what his main point is. (Translator Tom Holland calls Herodotus's Histories "a great shaggy dog story"--i.e. a story which frustrates the reader's expectations by refusing to ever get to the point, and instead goes off on multiple tangents within tangents .) But that said, the beginning of the book is (mostly) focused on the origins of the Persian Empire and the history of the Persian conquests, plus extended ethnographic description of all the people's living in and around the Persian Empire. (There's also a long digression all about Egyptian history, geography and culture in book 2).
The second half of Herodotus is all about the great wars between the Persians and Greeks--you know, all the cliches you learned about in 6th grade history-- the 300 Spartans, Battle of Thermopylae, the battle of Marathon, etc.
Why I'm Reading This Book Now / My History With this Book
I am ashamed to admit that I am only now, in my mid-40s, just getting around to Herodotus for the first time. I should have read him years ago.
Herodotus is the kind of book that most ancient history buffs read when they are still in their adolescent years. (For example Tom Holland, the translator of my edition, says that Herodotus “has been my constant companion since I was twelve”.)
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. After all, most normal people probably never get around to reading Herodotus at all. But then, most normal people don’t go around calling themselves ancient history buffs.
So, why has it taken me so long to get around to Herodotus?
Well, like Tom Holland, I first developed a love of ancient history around the age of twelve years old. At this time, I became aware of Herodotus, and his importance as an ancient history source. And there was a time in middle school when I actually intended to read Herodotus. I never managed to get around to it, but he was definitely on my reading list back then.
But then, a couple years later, by the time I had started ninth grade, my interest in ancient history generally had narrowed to an interest in the Roman empire exclusively. I was no longer interested in the whole of the ancient world, only the Romans. (When I was younger, I had a tendency to define myself by having narrow niche interests in certain things, rather than desiring to read broadly.)
So in high school, I attempted to read the ancient Roman historians. But the ancient Greek historians were no longer on my reading list.
And then in college, my interests shifted completely, and I decided I was more interested in modern history and the age of revolutions. And then Herodotus was completely off of my radar.
In the years since college, a lot of my history nerd friends have been reading Herodotus, and blogging about it.
One of my old college friends posted on Facebook a few years back that he loved Herodotus because he could open the book up to any random page, and always find something fascinating to read about. It made me think I should read Herodotus myself.
Also, friend of this blog Phil Christman read Herodotus about 10 years ago, and made a couple of blog posts about it, the first of which was entitled “Herodotus is so fun”. (Unfortunately Phil has since deleted all of the posts on this old blog, including the posts about Herodotus, so they’re no longer available. But I read them at the time, and at the time it was yet another nudge for me that I really should read Herodotus one of these days.)
But my personal interest in the ancient Greek world didn’t fully return until I, on a whim, picked up the historical novel Alexander: Child of a Dream by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Which set me off on reading a whole series of - books - about - Alexander - the - Great.
Although the conquests of Alexander the Great mark the end of the classical Greek city state era, all of these books about Alexander the Great made references to the Greek world and history which Alexander inherited. It officially rekindled my interest in ancient Greek history, and made me regret that I had never really read up on any of the ancient Greek sources.
For example, in my review of Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault, I said:
There is also a very rich portrayal of the ancient Greek world. Mary Renault, a classicist who has written many books on ancient Greece, knows the world of her characters very well. Before writing her trilogy on Alexander the Great, she had already written on book on the Peloponneisan War (W), and one book on the aftermath of the Peloponneisan War (W), and she weaves in these rich historical details about Athens and Sparta in with her story of the rise of Macedonia.(After having read this book, I feel like I really want to read more about ancient Greek history. I probably want get to it anytime soon, but Mary Renault creates the feeling of such a rich world that I feel the desire to learn more about the Peloponneisan Wars.)
With my interest in the Greek world back on, in 2016, I watched Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Donald Kagan, and reviewed it on this blog. I said in my review:
I regret to say that I've never read Herodotus or Thucydides.I was probably to young to read them when I was fascinated by ancient history in my adolescents, and by the time I was older I had moved onto other interests.I still have them on my list of books to read before I die.
The problem, as always, was getting ahold of a decent copy out here in Vietnam.
I did a little bit of research on the Internet, and discovered that most people were recommending The Landmark Herodotus (A) as the only way to approach Herodotus. Apparently The Landmark Herodotus has all sorts of in-texts maps and illustrations to make the confusing geography of Herodotus actually understandable. But the problem was that The Landmark Herodotus was not sold in Vietnamese bookstores.
... I've been told that to attempt Herodotus, you need a version with really good maps in it. And good luck finding that out here in Vietnam.
However, shortly after writing that, I found out that there was a new translation of Herodotus by author Tom Holland. (According to Wikipedia, Tom Holland's translation actually came out in 2013. But I only found out about it around 2018).
I had previous read Rubicon by Tom Holland, and loved it. Tom Holland had a real talent for writing readable prose. So I trusted that Tom Holland would also make Herodotus entirely readable.
On my next trip back to America, I stumbled upon Tom Holland's translation of Herodotus in a bookstore, and decided to buy it. (I would have bought The Landmark Herodotus if the bookstore had had that instead, but they didn't, so I went with Tom Holland's version.)
Even after I had a copy in-hand, it still took me a couple years to get around to it. (I'm a slow reader, and it takes me forever to get through a book, so I always have a long TBR.) But I finally started it in September, 2021.
The Reading Experience
The first piece of good news is that Tom Holland’s translation is entirely readable. I'll quote a section below to illustrate this, but for now just trust me that if you’re intimidated by this book, fear not, Tom Holland’s translation is completely accessible.
As I mentioned above, apparently The Landmark Herodotus is highly praised because of all the in-text maps and illustrations. In Tom Holland’s edition, the maps are all buried at the back of the book. So presumably this involves more flipping back and forth between the main text and the maps then you would have to do in The Landmark edition. But… it’s doable. You have to do a bit of flipping around with the maps, but the book is still entirely accessible, and it didn't spoil my reading experience.
(Most of the time, you don’t really need the map anyway. I mean, it’s nice to know where these cities are located on the map, just for visual reference, but it’s usually not a complete necessity to follow the overall narrative.)
And speaking of flipping back and forth… there are also a lot of endnotes at the back of the book.
I’ve complained about endnotes before on this blog (HERE, HERE, HERE, etc). Given the choice, I would much prefer that the notes go as footnotes (at the bottom of the page) rather than endnotes (at the back of the book). I find it cumbersome to always be flipping back and forth.
However, I should really stop complaining about this, because there’s nothing to be done about it. Endnotes are the way it’s done now.
(Book critic Steve Donoghue mentioned on one of his Youtube videos that absolutely nothing gets published with footnotes nowadays--publishers will only use endnotes. The reason is apparently because publishers are worried about scaring away potential buyers by putting in footnotes. So the notes are buried in the back now, so that they’re less noticeable when you’re browsing through the pages at the bookstore.)
Tom Holland's edition has a lot of notes. Each page has multiple reference numbers on it, all directing the reader to the endnotes in the back. Some of the notes contain valuable supplemental information, but a lot of the notes are Tom Holland just chatting with you. For example, sometimes Tom Holland will have an endnote to simply point out that Herodotus is unusually opinionated in a certain section, or to point out that Herodotus appears to be changing topics suddenly.
For the most part, I enjoyed Tom Holland’s frequent endnotes. It gave me the feeling of having a chatty scholar standing over my shoulder commenting on the book as I read it. But… constantly flipping back and forth was a pain.
When I read this book, I ended up having to use two bookmarks--one to mark my progress in the main text, one to keep my place in the endnotes.
(Update: Actually I didn't realize this until I was in the middle of writing this review, but it turns out that the end notes are not by Tom Holland. They're by Paul Cartledge (W). This information was actually directly on the cover of the book, but for whatever reason I didn't absorb it while I was reading. I had been imagining these notes as the voice of Tom Holland the whole time. I mean, usually the translator does his own notes, right? Is it a bit strange to have another person come in and do the notes?)
As for the content of the book itself...
Before reading this book, I had watched a video of Tom Holland talking about Herodotus on Youtube [LINK HERE] in which Tom Holland describes his experience of reading Herodotus over the years. Tom Holland says that when he was twelve, he was impatient with Herodotus because he just wanted Herodotus to hurry up and get to the point, but Herodotus never got to the point. But then, over the years, Tom Holland came to appreciate all the tangents that Herodotus went off on--he came to realize that the fact that Herodotus took forever to get to the point wasn't something to be frustrated by, it was something to treasure, as you luxuriated in all the fascinating information in these weird and wonderful tangents.
(Tom Holland makes the same point in written form in his translator's preface to this edition.)
I’m glad I listened to this before I read Herodotus, because it helped me adjust my expectations perfectly. Had Tom Holland not warned me that the work would be full of digressions, and that the digressions were to be enjoyed rather than to be a source of irritation, I might have become impatient with Herodotus myself. But since Tom Holland had given me full warning, I just let myself go with Herodotus and tried to just enjoy following his digressions wherever they might lead.
I referenced above a friend of mine who said that he loved Herodotus because there would be some sort of interesting anecdote on every page, and that’s not too far off actually. This history is chock full with weird and bizarre stories, and you can find one on just about every page. (Although in the video I linked to above, Tom Holland actually puts forth an exception to this: Tom Holland says that Herodotus is dreadfully boring whenever he’s describing rivers--everything else is fascinating. And I’d go along with Tom Holland’s assessment.)
However for the modern reader (a.k.a. me), there are two problems.
The first problem is that although all the individual anecdotes are interesting enough on their own, there’s no overall narrative momentum. There are no plot threads or character arcs that the reader gets to follow over the whole of the narrative. So there’s nothing to pull the reader along and keep them hooked on turning the pages. While I always found Herodotus pleasurable reading, I didn’t always find him compelling reading--there was nothing to keep pulling me back to the book, and over the course of the past year I consequently found myself going through a few reading slumps with this book where I stopped reading it for stretches.
I also think that Herodotus's discursive narrative structure makes it difficult to fully absorb him--or at least to remember him. Now that I’ve come to the end of the book, I feel like I can’t remember most of the anecdotes that took up the beginning of the book. (Although I suppose this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that Herodotus lends itself to re-readings. And in fact I’ve noticed that many of the people who love Herodotus seem to love reading and re-reading him.)
The second issue is, as with any ancient history, there’s the difficulty of relatability. This is both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, the strangeness and exoticism of ancient history has always been the main attraction in the first place. The harsh and violent life of the ancient world is fascinating to read about. (Dan Carlin, when discussing Herodotus’s narratives, goes on and on about this--he talks about how can’t possibly imagine how the human psyche could withstand the horrors of ancient warfare, and how that disconnect between the civilized humanity of modern life and the brutal humanity of ancient life is a source of endless fascination to him.) But on the other hand, this same strangeness can serve to keep the reader at arm’s length from the narrative. The morality of the ancient world seems so far removed from that of the modern world that it's hard to identify with the motives of any of the characters. This prevents full immersion in the narrative.
Both of these factors actually reminded me of the feeling of reading the historical narratives from the Old Testament. The Old Testament histories also feel like a bunch of anecdotes that are individually strange and fascinating on their own, but which lack an overall narrative coherence, and are difficult to relate to. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re already familiar with the Old Testament histories from Sunday School, you may already have a good idea of what it’s like to read Herodotus.
[Although there are important differences as well. The Old Testament narrative is very sparse in its details. Herodotus gives loads of extra narrative descriptions and details than can be found in the Old Testament histories--an interesting difference in style which I noted before in this blog post HERE. So in that regard, Herodotus also provides an interesting point of comparison to the Old Testament histories.]
My Reading Journey
I started reading this book in September 2021 when we were still in the midst of the corona virus lockdowns here in Vietnam. This worked out well for me, because I was stuck at home with nowhere to go. I kept busy (I was working full time, and had kids). But I was also able to keep multiple large books easily at my elbow for whenever I had a free minute to read. And for the first several months, I made slow but steady progress on Herodotus.By January of 2022, I was still slowly inching my way through this book (on page 424 out of 639). But I began to get worried that I had completely forgotten most of the anecdotes in the first half of the book.
This was partly a result of my reading so slow. But, as I mentioned above, I also believe Herodotus's style of just relating tangent after tangent also makes it difficult to organize and remember all the information that he's giving you. So from the week of January 30, I tried to refresh myself on the early chapters of Herodotus by listening to the audiobook on Youtube. (The version on Youtube is the LibriVox recording, which uses the A.D. Godley translation. The A.D. Godley translation is also, for the record, completely accessible.)
Once I returned to in-person teaching in the spring, I found it difficult to keep reading Herodotus. Especially because Herodotus involved so much flipping back and forth between the main texts and the maps and the endnotes, which made it difficult to read during my lunch breaks--which was now when the majority of my reading happened. So I mostly stopped reading this book from May to September. But then I became worried that if I didn't make a concerted effort to return to this book, I might never finish it. So I focused on this book in October, and managed to finish it up.
I'm a bit embarrassed about how long it took me to get through this book. (According to readinglenth.com, the average reader can finish this book in 13 hours, and it took me 13 months!) But then, I say that about every book I read. My slow reading speed and lack of focus is a perpetual source of embarrassment to me. I will endeavor to have better focus on the books I read in the future!
While I was reading Herodotus, I also took the opportunity to do a couple supplemental projects related to Herodotus.
In podcasting, I listened to King of Kings by Dan Carlin. (Most of this podcast is essentially just Dan Carlin retelling Herodotus's narrative.)
In comic books, I read 300 by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, which is also a retelling of Herodotus's narrative.
Summary of the Contents
Oof! Boy, is there a lot of stuff in this book. It's difficult to summarize.
As I mentioned above, the structure of this book is a bit difficult to figure out. I've heard a couple different theories as to what Herodotus's original purpose was.
One theory is that Herodotus originally intended this book as a travelogue of the ancient world. That would explain why sections of it are so heavy on ethnography and geography. But as Herodotus started narrating all the lands of the Persian Empire, he found himself naturally just falling into a history of the Persian Wars.
Another theory is that Herodotus's main purpose all along was to retell the story of the Persian and Greek Wars, but he just couldn't resist going off on tangents about everything along the way. (This second one seems the most inline with what Herodotus himself says in his own introduction, but if this is really Herodotus's purpose, it's a bit hard to see how he could get so off topic.)
Book 2 of these Histories is a long digression all about Egypt--80 pages in my edition. Because it's so long, and because it's so unconnected to anything else, the notes in my edition say that this may have started out as a different work. That is, Herodotus had probably earlier written up a treatise on Egypt as a separate work, and then only later incorporated it into his larger Histories.
For those of us interested in narrative history, Herodotus's lengthy ethnographies and geographies might at first glance seem to be boring. Except that Herodotus has picked up so many ridiculous tall tales about all of the peoples and places that he's describing that it's actually pretty entertaining. I mean, probably completely useless as history, but entertaining nonetheless.
**************
Given Herodotus's reputation as the earliest Greek historian, I was disappointed to discover how little information there was on the early history of Greece. I had been expecting to learn all about things like the origins of Athens and Sparta, and the democratic revolution in Athens, etc. But none of that is in here.
Herodotus is much more interested in chronicling the origins of the Persian Empire than he is in recounting the origins of the Greek world. I guess, since his audience was Greek, maybe Herodotus assumed they already knew their own history, and the Persian history would be more exotic to them.
Because no equivalent of Herodotus has survived from the Persian world, this means that historians are entirely reliant on Herodotus for the origins of the Persian Empire. (When I was first listening to Dan Carlin's King of Kings podcast, I was surprised by how reliant he was on Herodotus for the stories of Persia. Shouldn't he be using some Persian sources for this? But it turns out, there are no Persian sources.)
As for Greece:
It turns out that for events in early Greek history, like the origins of democracy in Athens, were reliant on later historical writers like Aristotle and Plutarch. Even though these writers came after Herodotus, they were looking back to earlier times. (And had, presumably, access to other early sources that have not survived to us.)
Although...
If you look up the Democratic Revolutions in Athens (Wikipedia article HERE), they actually cite events which are in Herodotus. This is the overthrow of the Athenian tyrants, and the reforms of Cleitsthenes.
This seems to be, at least according to secondary sources, one of the great turning points in Athenian democracy, but Herodotus mentions it in such an off-handed way that I didn't realize it's importance. (Herodotus devotes only a couple sentences to Cleisthene's reforms out of a 639 page history. It's easy to miss their significance.)
Extended Quotation
Now, it so happened that this Candaules had the most all-consuming obsession with his own wife--so all consuming, in fact, that he actually believed her to be by far the most beautiful woman in the world. It happened as well that among his bodyguards there was one man, Gyges, Dascylus’ son, for whom the king had a particularly soft spot, and whole ear he was endlessly bending, sometimes about weighty affairs of state and sometimes, to a quite obsessive degree, about the desirability of his wife. In no time at all, indeed, Candaules was being led into making Gyges a fateful--and fatal--proposition. “I can see that you still need convincing,” he said, “no matter how much I keep harping on about my wife’s stunning looks. Fine--since I suppose it is always easier to trust the evidence of one’s own eyes, rather than just believing what one is told--here is what I want you to do: set things up so that you get the chance to see her naked.”
“Master,” cried out Gyges in horror, “what a monstrous suggestion! Ogle my mistress nude? What--when a woman has only to remove her clothes to shed her sense of self-respect as well? There are certain time-honoured principles that everyone needs to heed--and one of them is this, that a man should always look to his own. I certainly need no convincing that your wife is beautiful beyond compare. But please, I beg you--do not ask me to take this illicit action.”
Yet even as Gyges dug in his heels, terrified of the possible consequences if he did not, the king replied by telling him to show more backbone. “There is no need to be scared of me, Gyges, or of my wife. I can assure you, I am not doing this to entrap you, and as regards my wife--well--no harm will come to you from her, I promise. I have a plan, you see--one that will guarantee she never even realizes that you have been spying on her. I am going to station you behind the open door of our bedroom--and then, when I come to bed, my wife will come in close behind me. Right beside the entrance there is a chair--as as my wife starts removing her clothes, garment by garment, and laying them down on it, so you will have the opportunity to look her over in detail. Then, when she crosses from the chair to our bed, with her back still to you, you can slip out through the door--making sure, of course, not to let her spot you.”
Realizing that he was cornered, Gyges gave in. When Candaules judged that he could reasonably retire for the night, he led Gyges to his bedroom--where, sure enough, they were joined a few moments later by Candaules’ wife. Gyges watched her come in and disrobe. Then, as she turned her back directly on him, and headed over to the bed, he slipped out from his hiding place. But the woman caught a glimpse of him as he was leaving.... ***END QUOTE***
(From pages 6-7 of my edition. The story goes on, but I don't want to quote too much. You get the idea).
I think this little quotation perfectly illustrates a number of things I've already talked about in my review:
* Hopefully this quotation illustrates how accessible and easy to read Tom Holland's translation is. If you've been intimated by Herodotus, as I was for a long time, you have nothing to fear from this edition.
* Note that even though there's no supernatural or fantastic elements in this little story, the whole thing is obviously a tall tale. I mean, you don't have to be a trained historian to suspect that this isn't historical. You can just feel that this is a folktale. And the whole of Herodotus is like that.
* Note also that, as I mentioned above, it's exactly the type of little fable that might appear in The Old Testament, but Herodotus's narration style is much more detailed and chatty than the Biblical narrative.
* Typical of Herodotus, this whole story is part of a tangent within a tangent within a tangent. Herodotus wants to tell the origins of the Persian Empire, but before he gets to that he wants to tell the story of the Lydian king Croesus, but then before he gets to Croesus, he wants to tell the story of how the kingship of Lydia passed out of the hands of the bloodline of Hercules and into Croesus's family. Which is what this little story about Candaules and his wife is ultimately leading up to.
Links
* I've mentioned Blogging the Canon a few times before on this blog (he's a blogger I've been following since I discovered his review of Kim years ago.)
Anyway, his review of Herodotus is interesting. Check it out HERE.
* Also since I'm always referencing about Steve Donoghue on this blog, I should link to his review of The Tom Holland Herodotus HERE. And his video review HERE.
Commonplace Book
8 out of 10. I know that I should really give this book a 10 out of 10, since it's a foundational document of Western Civilization. But I rate these things on how interesting they were for me to read personally, not on it's broader cultural importance. And I felt like although it was definitely very interesting in sections, I had to force myself to keep reading for other sections. There was, as I mentioned above, no overall narrative momentum.
September 19, 2021 Herodotus Introduction i-xxxviii, main text 1-72
September 26, 2021 Herodotus p.72-120
October 3, 2021 Herodotus p.120-152
October 10, 2021 Herodotus p.152-226
October 17, 2021 Herodotus p.226-244
October 24, 20201 Herodotus p.244-278
October 31, 2021 Herodotus p.278-286
November 7, 2021 Herodotus p.286-314
November 14, 2021 Herodotus p.314-318
November 21, 2021 Herodotus p.318-324
November 28, 2021 Herodotus p.324-328
December 5, 2021 Herodotus p.328-344
December 12, 2021 Herodotus p.344-366
December 19, 2021 Herodotus p.366-376
December 26, 2021 Herodotus p.376-380
January 2, 2022 Herodotus p.380-392
January 9, 2022 Herodotus p.392-408
January 16, 2022 Herodotus p.408-412
January 23, 2022 Herodotus p.412-416
January 30, 2022 Herodotus p.416-424
February 6, 2022 Herodotus p.424-426
February 13, 2022 Herodotus p.426-428
February 20, 2022 Herodotus p.428-450
February 27, 2022 Herodotus p.450-452
March 6, 2022 Herodotus p.452-470
March 13, 2022 Herodotus p.470-472
March 20, 2022 Herodotus p.472-480
March 27, 2022 Herodotus p.480-482
April 3, 2022 Herodotus p.482-484
April 10, 2022 Herodotus p.484-486
April 17, 2022 Herodotus p.486-494
April 24, 2022 Herodotus p.494-538
July 24, 2022 Herodotus p.538-548
July 31, 2022 Herodotus p.548-550
October 23, 2022 Herodotus p.550-579
October 30, 2022 Herodotus p.578-614
November 6, 2022 Herodotus p.614-639
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
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