 "Penguin Edition" | 2009-07-19 |
| - Reviewed By bccrab |
As others have noted below , reading Herodotus is a mixed experience. On the one hand he is a fascinating story teller and hearing about the ancients and the places they inhabited from him is endlessly entertaining. On the other hand he tends to go off on long tangents in order to set up a specific incident and at times the book drags.
I personally found the penguin edition and the Selincourt translation fine as an introduction but as I got about halfway through I found the absence of maps and foot notes a bit distracting as place names became more obscure to me. I then paged through a copy of the Landmark Herodotus and realized that the experience of reading this would be better with the added illustration and annotations so I switched.
Nevertheless the Penguin is a smaller more portable version that is serviceable enough. |
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 "Review of Penguin Classics Herodotus" | 2009-05-31 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1K6AA9Q9XF77P |
While I found the material entertaining and the translation laudable, I can't help but criticize the format of this work in light of similar, but better, editions. I speak specifically of "The Landmark Herodotus," by Strassler. I haven't actually read the work, but I've read its counterpart, "The Landmark Thucydides," and found it to be a large improvement over similar editions.
This book is easy enough to follow, but at times drags on. If you don't mind having a larger book in front of you, I recommend the Strassler edition, which features extensive maps and footnotes (this work only had endnotes). |
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| "An interesting read, but a rambling narrative." | 2009-02-09 |
| - Reviewed By minorprophet |
The Histories of Herodotus are, without a doubt, one of the premier sources in any study of the antiquities. Spanning hundreds of years, Herodotus provides a rich narrative of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean region during the height of the Greek and Medo-Persian empires. The focus begins in Lydia and Media, then shifts briefly to Egypt before ultimately settling on an extended account of Xerxes' invasion of Greece and the events leading up to that war. The cultures of Greece, Egypt and especially Persia are highlighted, along with the geography of Greece, Asia Minor and the Black Sea region.
Key players in the narrative start with Lydian kings like Astyages and Croesus, but quickly shift focus to the Persian dynasty that included the likes of Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes. Certain personalities among the Greeks and Ionians also figure prominently at various points, such as Periander and Themistocles. Critical battles like Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea are recounted in some detail.
My only complaint is that Herodotus is very rambling and often disjointed in his presentation. He is prone to excessive digression (in my opinion) and frequently leads his readers on merry rabbit chases to set up some background information for a particular tale that he is about to relate. Thankfully all his digressions eventually work their way back around, but I personally found this a bit distracting and occasionally hard to follow. On a final note, I would add that The Histories are not light reading, but definitely worth the time investment for any lover of history. |
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| "very dry, with passages full of depth" | 2009-02-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1CS503NT9MDZZ |
| T. is very dry reading for most people. However, he occassionally gives very vivid, empathic images of the human condition. For that he is worth being read over and over again. |
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| "Bare bones edition" | 2008-12-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3EO4PDA9KXZD1 |
Other reviewers have commented extensively on the significance of Thucydides' History and its place in the pantheon of historical literature. Given a choice of translators and publishers, my focus is on some of the characteristics of this particular edition to aid in making a purchasing decision.
This version of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides appears to be a reprint excerpted from an older work -- "Thucydides, translated into English, to which is prefixed an essay on inscriptions and a note on the geography of Thucydides", by Benjamin Jowett. Second edition. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1900. Jowett was a prolific translator of Greek texts. A search on his name on the Amazon site will yield a huge number of hits. The 1960 Bantam Classics edition of the History claimed Jowett's translation as definitive.
The key point I want to make is that there are neither translator notes nor historical commentary in this reprint. There is also no publisher information anywhere in this book, making it difficult to track down the sources for this edition. Furthermore, all of the editorial comments on the Amazon page for this book refer to **other** editions, not the one you are purchasing from this page, and which might erroneously lead one to believe that there is historical background included in this particular book.
Finally, this book is available as an e-book for free under Creative Commons License, according to the terms of which, I believe, this reprint should have included the original attribution that I've given here.
In summary, this book is a complete translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War by a well-regarded translator. It is however, a bare-bones edition without additional historical background on either the author or the content of this work.
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 "One of the most entertaining history books ever written." | 2008-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: AXN69OEGE1K2R |
Herodotus' Histories have come down to us after two and a half millennia for a reason: they're entertaining and hard to ignore. Whereas Thucydides and Polybius, among many other BCE historians, took it upon themselves to write a specific narrative, Herodotus showed his curiosity for knowledge of all things by writing down everything he could about the peoples he spoke of. For example, he gives a descriptive account of the Nile and its animals when he gives a narrative of events in Egypt, adding many things that modern historians would leave to the fields of biology, geography, religion, or just plain superstitious rumor. He says it best himself: "My business is to record what people say, but I am by no means bound to believe it - and that may be taken to apply to this book as a whole."
Even if Herodotus' stories and observations are ridiculous by today's standards, they are no less amusing and no less insightful into what the Greeks thought at his time.
The books are split up basically that Book I is the account of Cyrus the Persian king, Books II through IV are events around the Mediterranean and the reign of King Darius of Persia, and Books V through IX are the account of the war between Greece and Persia that will be of particular interest to fans of the movie 300 or of Sparta/Thermopylae in general. Whether or not this is your reason for picking up the book, though, I would recommend it for anyone with an interest in history because this is where it all began in Europe, and it's not the least bit dry. |
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