Product Description

From the editor of the widely praised The Landmark Thucydides, a new Landmark Edition of The Histories by Herodotus, the greatest classical work of history ever written.

Herodotus was a Greek historian living in Ionia during the fifth century BCE. He traveled extensively through the lands of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and collected stories, and then recounted his experiences with the varied people and cultures he encountered. Cicero called him “the father of history,” and his only work, The Histories, is considered the first true piece of historical writing in Western literature. With lucid prose that harks back to the time of oral tradition, Herodotus set a standard for narrative nonfiction that continues to this day.

In The Histories, Herodotus chronicles the rise of the Persian Empire and its dramatic war with the Greek city-states. Within that story he includes rich veins of anthropology, ethnography, geology, and geography, pioneering these fields of study, and explores such universal themes as the nature of freedom, the role of religion, the human costs of war, and the dangers of absolute power.

Ten years in the making, The Landmark Herodotus gives us a new, dazzling translation by Andrea L. Purvis that makes this remarkable work of literature more accessible than ever before. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps, this edition also includes an introduction by Rosalind Thomas and twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields, covering such topics as Athenian government, Egypt, Scythia, Persian arms and tactics, the Spartan state, oracles, religion, tyranny, and women.

Like The Landmark Thucydides before it, The Landmark Herodotus is destined to be the most readable and comprehensively useful edition of The Histories available.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5344 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Released on: 2007-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1024 pages

About the Author
Robert B. Strassler is an independent scholar whose articles have appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. He holds an honorary doctorate of humanities and letters from Bard College and is chairman of the Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Andrea L. Purvis holds a Ph.D. in classical studies from Duke University and has taught in Duke University’s department of classical studies. She is author of Singular Dedications: Founders and Innovators of Private Cults in Classical Greece and coauthor of Four Island Utopias. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

dream come true
The Landmark Herodotus is a book I wanted but didn't know it existed. I tried to read Herodotus once and found it difficult to read because of his many references to places that no longer exist. This edition has extensive maps, references and background material that make Herodotus not only much more accessable, but also fun and a joy to read! I love this book! It's like The Lord of the Rings but better because it's real (mostly). I would highly recommend this book and give it as a gift to people I care about.

The real story of The 300
I got interested in Herodotus because of the movie "The 300." This is the real story. This edition may have been aimed at an academic audience but it gives the ordinary reader great help with its notes. Anyone interested in ancient Greek history will find this a great book to have.

Landmark? Not really.
Having previously read an inexpensive edition of Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War, I understand the difficulty of making one's way through a book of ancient history without the aid of maps or footnotes. When I decided to read Herodotus' Histories, then, I was thrilled to find this one, which advertises copious annotation.

And copious annotation it delivers. It has a map about every three pages (with only the locations of immediate interest labeled, which is a nice simplification). It also provides dates in our modern time-scale, which is helpful, and has interesting photos sprinkled throughout. Essays follow the text to give further insight into a smattering of interesting topics. It aims to provide, under one cover, everything an interested student would want to look up in order to understand the text. An admirable goal.

The problem is that Strassler chains himself rigidly to a poorly designed annotation system. He boasts in his introduction that every location mentioned in the text is found on a map he provides. That's great, but he also inserts a footnote for every location mentioned in the text! Every mention of Asia, the Nile River and the Peloponnese gets a footnote. I'm 400 pages into the text - I know where the Peloponnese is!

And in drawing his maps, he misses perfect chances to be helpful. Herodotus will describe beautifully the path taken by Xerxes' army, and Strassler stiffly provides a map with all the locations labeled. Would it be so difficult to draw lines where the Greek and Persian armies marched?!

He also follows the ridiculous policy of starting over his footnote numbering every verse. There are maybe 20 verses per page, so if each verse has one footnote that means that each of the 20 footnotes at the bottom of the page will be marked "1." With 10-20 footnotes per page, this creates quite a jungle to fight through when looking for the note you're interested in.

And most of the footnotes are on topics of no interest at all (debate as to the size of a ship due to uncertainty in the measurement systems; the Greek word for "lord" used in in the text in reference to Apollo was a specific word used only in reference to deities...), while situations crying out for annotation (references to mythology or a previously mentioned person) go by in silence.

He also fills the 2-inch margins with a running summary of the text. Since the text is a straightforward history, a line-by-line summary is not helpful.

So in summary, I had high hopes for this edition and was sadly disappointed. The book has 1000 pages and they are larger that the standard format, making it somewhat unwieldy. That would be fine, except that probably 60% of the additional paper was a waste of a perfectly good tree.

All that said, the maps are helpful. Just don't expect more than that.