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The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories
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Manufacturer: Pantheon
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 930
EAN: 9780375421099
ISBN: 0375421092
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1024
Publication Date: 2007-11-06
Publisher: Pantheon
Release Date: 2007-11-06
Studio: Pantheon
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The real story of The 300
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Landmark? Not really.
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fantastic work
Comment: Wow! I can't believe I actually read this entire book...and thought doing so was really cool! To be sure, looking up each footnote slowed the reading down considerably, making reading more than 15 pages an effort, but on the other hand, knowing where all the locations were helped give more meaning to the stories. The maps every couple pages were excellent.
Essentially, the text is a 2500 year old first hand account of Herodotus' travels throughout the ancient Greek sphere of influence, Scythians, Persians (before Islam), Egyptians, etc, ranging from the east to west Mediterranean civilizations to civilizations up the Nile and out and around the Black Sea and going even further out to where India is today. Many, many details of many, many ancient cultures are described--what could be more fascinating??
There were also 20-25 short essays (about 100 pages total) after the text that were all excellent. I read these essays as they were referenced in the text as well as after I read the entire text. The translation was excellent making the stories and descriptions very readable and fun.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Landmark Herodotus
Comment: An inspiring work for all us amateur historians.
The translation is intelligent yet conversational, like sitting in front of a great storyteller (which is what Herodotus truly was). The side notes are helpful for search purposes, and the footnotes, photos, numerous maps and illustrations provide the modern-world connection to this ancient text.
I had heard this was a comprehensive edition, and I was not disappointed. But what is a pleasant surprise is how useful and usable this edition is.
One wishes all histories were organized this way--it shows that true interactivity doesn't need a computer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Save your money. Better and Cheaper Herodotus editions available
Comment: Let me start out by saying that, in theory, a "Landmark Herodotus" has much promise as an idea, but not in the execution of this volume, I'm afraid.
The model that worked so well for the Landmark Thucydides -- text with maps and appendices to explain larger themes and issues -- does not work so well for Herodotus.
While the maps are a welcome adornment, what this volume lacks are specific and copius textual notes to explain the material. Instead we are shunted to various appendices at the end that are all done by fine scholars, but are not directly tied back to the actual textual material.
Instead of purchasing this hardcover volume, I highly recommend the much cheaper Oxford Classics paperback edition of Herodutus. It is an excellent English language translation with dozens of pages of highly specific endnotes elucidating the material.
Herodotus is a wide ranging, expansive read in contrast to Thucydides, who is only covering a condensed period of history spanning some 20-30 years at its core, and is limited in its geographic scale to mostly Greece, Asia Minor and the Agean. [The notable exception being the great chapter on the Athenian expedition to attack Syracuse in Sicily].
If you must purchase this volume, I suggest waiting for the paperback edition to come out. The translation is a decent one, so it has merit from that standpoint. But the format that worked seemlessly for Thucydides, is lacking for Herodotus. With the wealth of material covered by the father of History -- a few appendices cannot do the work justice. You want to be able to follow along as you read the tales, and have the option of checking a source or an explanatory note if a subject strikes your imagination.
In many ways the experience of this volume is like reading a modern tourist guidebook for a country with all of the accomodations reviews for each city in one appendix, and all the restaurant reviews in another appendix.
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