A Commentary On Herodotus Books I Iv

Herodotus, one of the earliest and greatest of Western prose authors, set out in the late fifth century BC to describe the world as he knew it. This commentary by leading scholars, originally published in Italian, has been fully revised by the original authors and is now presented for English readers.

This volume offers a historical and factual commentary on Herodotus book 6. The introductory discussions include one on the background to the Ionian revolt and the role of Histiaeus. The commentary aims to assess the reality behind Herodotus' text: the revolt and its aftermath; the various aspects of Spartan affairs in the middle of the book; Datis' invasion of Eretria and Attica; and Miltiades' expedition the following year. Material that cannot conveniently be dealt with in the commentary itself, and a number of related topics that merit consideration, are considered in a series of appendices. These include discussions of Cleomenes' madness in relation to his activities in Arcadia, and the Argive reaction to his victory at Sepeia.

History begins with Herodotus (485–425 b.c.e.). Born in Halikarnassos, a gateway between the Greek and Persian worlds, Herodotus in his Histories narrates the great historical struggle between the Persian Empire and the Greek-speaking city-states at the dawn of the classical era. Herodotus does not merely list events or tell tales; his history inquires into the causes of events and casts its net wide to include ethnography and legend as well as political and military history. Book V of the Histories focuses on the Persians and their expansion into Thrakia and Makedonia, as well as their conflict with the Greeks of Ionia. Beginning in the timeless legends of prehistory, Herodotus discusses the customs of the Thrakians, offers insight into Sparta’s mindset, and narrates the struggle to restore democracy at Athens after the reign of the tyrant Peisistratos. The narrative of Book V sprawls over Asia, Africa, and Europe, naming more than 350 people and places. The reader will find in Herodotus a literate, keenly observant, wide-ranging guide to a time when Persia ruled 40 percent of the world's population and was confronted by an uneasy and fragile alliance of Greek city-states. In his introduction to the text and commentary, author Philip S. Peek outlines a process by which students of ancient Greek can develop translation and reading skills. For students’ convenience, Peek pairs the Greek text with the commentary and includes in the book’s appendices a case and function chart, an explanation of infinitives, a summary of the subjunctive and optative moods, a list of parsing terms, and a list of the 500 most commonly occurring Greek words. A comprehensive glossary rounds out the volume. As further aids to students, running vocabulary for each text section and a generalized list of the principal parts of verbs can be downloaded from oupress.com.

Modern scholarship judges Herodotus to be a more complex writer than his past readers supposed. His Histories is now being read in ways that are seemingly incompatible if not contradictory. This volume interrogates the various ways the text of the Histories has been and can be read by scholars: as the seminal text of our Ur-historian, as ethnology, literary art and fable. Our readings can bring out various guises of Herodotus himself: an author with the eye of a travel writer and the mind of an investigative journalist; a globalist, enlightened but superstitious; a rambling storyteller but a prose stylist; the so-called 'father of history' but in antiquity also labelled the 'father of lies'; both geographer and gossipmonger; both entertainer and an author whom social and cultural historians read and admire. Guiding students chapter-by-chapter through approaches as fascinating and often surprising as the original itself, Sean Sheehan goes beyond conventional Herodotus introductions and instead looks at the various interpretations of the work, which themselves shed light on the original. With text boxes highlighting key topics and indices of passages, this volume is an essential guide for students whether reading Herodotus for the first time, or returning to revisit this crucial text for later research.