Customer Reviews

Selections from Herodotus

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A good selection of usually quite exciting stories - many of which are pure fiction rather than anything resembling modern history. Herodotos was a truly great storyteller.He is usually introduced in the curriculum only after Basic Greek and Attic Prose (Platon, Xenophon), but if your memory is slipping, like that of yours truly sure is, you will appreciate this Selection even more, for it comes with a very helpful Commentary, which details most syntactic phenomena, and even morphology, line for line, even such matter that is already taught in the Basic and Attic Greek Courses. So you get a good rehearsal of the basics as well as learning a new dialect of Classic Greek - i.e. Ionian.
Moreover, there is an very full alphabetical Vocabulary following the Commentary part, which includes not only words peculiar to Herodotos, but again, even basic Greek words you were supposed to remember from your Basic Course!
After having studied and learned Herodotos, you are equipped with a sufficient grasp of the Ionian Dialect to proceed to The Ultimate Experience - Homeros. His "epic dialect" is mostly Ionian in character.(and you will appreciate his simpler syntax...).
A small snag: the Greek text is printed in a very small font which is peculiar to British and American works on Greek, and may therefore be somewhat tiresome for the eye. The English text is more normal-sized, but, being a reprint of a much older original, is slightly faded. I would have loved it if the text had been reset anew with modern fonts.

Highly recommended both for the good choice of entertaining stories and for the excellent toolboxes provided as help for the eager learner of Classical Greek.

As a Classics major, I've seen my fair share of Greek texts. I've used many different editions. This edition of Herodotus' "Histories" is every helpful. The grammar guide, the notes and the dictionary are all well put together and make the translating process go much faster.