Top 10 Best Books About... Herodotus
Before Herodotus, travel writing didn’t exist - nor did journalism. No-one had ever travelled anywhere with the sole intention of finding something out and writing it all down “so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time”. Travel writing was not so much a road less travelled, but a road never travelled at all. Not only did Herodotus change all that - but he set an extremely high benchmark for future writers of the genre, who are still struggling to beat his best-seller, The Histories.
There can be few books – the Bible is perhaps one – that have proven a more popular travelling companion than The Histories. Herodotus would have been a modern publisher’s dream, an ancient literary sensation akin to morphing Hemingway, Kapuscinski, Theroux and Palin (Michael, not Sarah...), and one who could generate sales (and arguably as much fiction) to rival Dan Brown.
Yet perhaps the most surprising aspect of all this is that despite his extensive reportage on most of the known world, he only ever documented his findings once, in The Histories. No new editions or abridged versions came from this one-hit wonder; no texts broken down and re-released by country or culture or date or experience, or under different titles.
Amazon now has more than 30 pages – it could be 40 or 50 or 60, but I got bored scrolling through them – listing various versions of The Histories. There are editions – one by just about very major history publisher – faithfully producing a translated text of the work (along with detailed introductions and notes, tables, charts, and glossaries), plus a plethora of versions concentrating on one or more of the nine books that make up the full work. Given that his ambition was to ensure his investigations lived beyond his time and outside of his memory, Herodotus would surely have been satisfied with the ultimate results of his wanderings. Something which would have also made putting up with all those pesky travelling companions worth his while.
Here are Heritage Key's Top 10 Herodotus reads.
1: The Histories
There are numerous editions and translations of The Histories. We’ve chosen two accessible and faithful editions. Penguin’s contribution comes from its Classics range, and is the work of translator Aubrey de Selincourt and editor John Marincola, a historiography specialist, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus (below) and translator of The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (below). The Oxford Paperback of The Histories, meanwhile, is edited by Carolyn Dewald, Marincola’s co-editor on The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus. It is this version, translated by Robin Waterfield, that accompanied Ryszard Kapuscinski (below) on his travels.
2: The Landmark Herodotus
It technically fits into the category above because it is, in essence, just another translation of The Histories. But this Landmark edition is so breathtaking in its design and detail that its near-1,000 pages (compared to Penguin’s exhaustive 716-page paperback) combine to make it so much more than just another a translation. The 1.6kg tome, edited by Robert B. Strassler and complete with a new translation by Andrea Purvis, carries as much as you’d probably ever need to know about Herodotus. Aside from the translation of The Histories (including extensive notations that provide supplementary details Herodotus himself would never have known), there are detailed glossaries, more than 100 maps of Herodotus’ world, and tables and charts that trawl every detail of the author’s work. A wow-factor book for the every Herodotus devotee, it’s part of a three-book Landmark series edited by Strassler, the others being The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika and The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War.
3: Travels with Herodotus
This must surely be the most modest, most poetic and most enchanting book to have been inspired by Herodotus. Travels with Herodotus was the last book the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski had published before his death in 2007, though he could have written it many years earlier. Kapuscinski was given a copy of The Histories as a “present for the road” by his editor prior to his first overseas assignment. He was young and green and overwhelmed by India, his copy of The Histories (not yet as dog-eared or battered as it was to become) offered an escape and, later, inspiration and education. The book is Kapuscinski’s recollections of his early years as a reporter, and his subsequent journeys through Asia, the Middle East and Africa, all with Herodotus his constant companion.
4: The Man Who Invented History: Travels With Herodotus
A more recent take on the theme of travelling with Herodotus comes from British journalist Justin Marozzi in The Man Who Invented History: Travels With Herodotus. Unlike Kapuscinski, who by chance ended up travelling with The Histories, Marozzi is already a devotee when he decides to retrace the footsteps of Herodotus. He offers a passionate and knowledgeable account of Herodotus’ travels. Particular highlights include his introduction of Herodotus to the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and his exploration of the Tunnel of Eupalinos on Samos, which both demonstrate the at-times obsessive nature of Marozzi’s fascination with Herodotus.
Aside from being excellent reads and travelogues in their own right, the books by Marozzi and Kapuscinski both also offer quasi-abridged versions of The Histories for those less inclined to tackle Herodotus from the get-go. They are also both excellent and informal introductions to the Persian Wars.
5: Ionia: A Quest
The intrepid British travel writer Freya Stark (1893-1993) is another to have travelled with Herodotus as her companion – she even thanked him in the introductory notes of Ionia: A Quest. Her interest in and fascination with Herodotus, though, should probably not come as a great surprise given her specialist knowledge of the regions Herodotus covered – she travelled extensively through the Middle East (she was particularly famous for her explorations and mapping of desert areas), and studied both Arabic and Persian. The nine-page ‘Synopsis of History’, which she says “may be be omitted by the well-informed”, is an excellent whistlestop tour of 5,000-odd years of human history, and a wonderful preamble to her Turkish adventures.
6: Herodotus Backgrounders
The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus by Carolyn Dewald and John Marincola covers all aspects of Herodotus’ work, from his language skills through to his attitude towards nature, the gods and foreigners, and his view of history. In Herodotus, James Romm argues that Herodotus was not just a reporter of history, but a talented author who pioneered a new literary genre.
7: Herodotus as a Historian
Herodotus: Historians on Historians by John Gould looks at Herodotus as a historian, and studies his methods of collecting information, the logic of his narrative and his understanding of human behaviour. Gould says we should acknowledge Herodotus as “enacting in narrative the social memory of his own generation”. The Historian's Craft in the Age of Herodotus, meanwhile, argues that the origins and development of Greek historiography can’t be fully understood unless early historical writings are situated in the framework of late archaic and early classical Greek society.
8: Herodotus and the Persian Wars
The Histories covers the expansion of the Persian Empire in the 6th and 5th centuries BC and the wars between Greece and Persia in 490 and 480 BC. Featured in great detail are some of the most famous battles in history. In Herodotus and the Persian Wars, John Claughton argues that Herodotus’ greatness lies not only in the momentous nature of the events he describes, but also in his explanations of events – often encompassing the relationship between gods and men, the nature of different peoples, and the character of individuals.
9: Greece v Persia Backgrounders
The Greco-Persian Wars is Peter Green’s account of the long and bitter struggle between the Persian Empire and the upstart Greek states, with the Greek victory at Salamis in 480 BC paving the way for democracy to take hold. The acclaimed Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West by Tom Holland also covers off history’s first battle of East v West, and also draws parallels between the ancient and modern worlds.
10: Writing History After Herodotus
You’re spoilt for choice if you’re interested in the development of history writing since Herodotus blazed the trail. Writing Ancient History: An Introduction to Classical Historiography by Luke Pitcher is an overview of historiography in antiquity. In addition to giving a rundown of how history is actually written (the finding and managing data; the importance of style, composition, etc), it also discusses the likes of Livy, Tacitus, Herodotus, Cicero, Plutarch and Lucian.
There’s also A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, and History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction.
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