Customer Reviews

Herodotus Book I (Greek Commentaries Series; Book 1) (Bk. 1)

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At last: a commentary that actually helps the student who wants to read Herodotus' Greek. It prints the O.C.T, which is what most students are asked to read, explains the main differences between Ionic and Attic, and then proceeds to comment, clearly and unpretentiously, on all the useful linguistic information, explaining the Ionic dialect, difficult verb forms, tricky constructions etc. Herodotus is such a fascinating author that all scholars have wanted to do over the centuries is debate his historical methods, view of the cosmos, and argue about whether he is reliable or making the whole thing up. This has meant that for 2500 years those that reckon they can make their own mind up on those issues but would like some help just working through his Greek have been completely abandoned. How and Wells, the only English commentary on the whole of Herodotus, is a classic example of masses and masses of history but no linguistic information. But this commentary has filled the gap superbly. It has identified the real needs of the reader of Herodotus and has met them exactly. I found it incredibly useful when reading Herodotus 1 and I think others will too. I hope something similar is on the way for books 2-9.

I was really looking forward to reading this but when I got it, I found that it was all in Greek (even thought it said that it was all in english).