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Herodotus

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The Histories Paperback – April 29, 2003

by Herodotus (Author), John M. Marincola (Editor, Introduction), Aubrey de Sélincourt (Translator),

4.7 972 ratings

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Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt with an introduction and Notes by John M. Marincola.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“De Sélincourt’s pacy, natural-sounding, rendering, as superbly revised and annotated by John Marincola…was a game-changer…still reads freshly and is a bestseller six decades after its first publication.”
--Edith Hall, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Few facts are known about the life of Herodotus. He was born around 490 BC in Halicarnassus, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor. He seems to have travelled widely throughout the Mediterranean world, including Egypt, Africa, the area around the Black Sea and throughout many Greek city-states, of both the mainland and the islands. A sojourn in Athens is part of the traditional biography, and there he is said to have given public readings of his work and been friends with the playwright Sophocles. He is said also to have taken part in the founding of the colony of Thurii in Italy in 443 BC. He probably died at some time between 415 and 410 BC. His reputation has varied greatly, but for the ancients and many moderns he well deserves the title (first given to him by Cicero) of ‘the Father of History’.

John Marincola was born in Philadelphia in 1954, and was educated at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University. He has taught at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and at Union College in New York, and is currently an Associate Professor of Classics at New York University. From 1997 to 1999 he was Executive Director of the American Philological Association, and in 1999-2000 he was a Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), Greek Historians (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 31, Oxford 2001), and of several articles on the Greek and Roman historians. He is currently at work on a book on Hellenistic historiography.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0140449086
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (April 29, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780140449082
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140449082
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.77 x 5.08 x 1.37 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #35,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #110 in Foreign Language Reference
- #1,365 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #3,364 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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4.7 972 ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book easy to read and enjoyable. They appreciate the engaging storytelling and clear translation. Many describe it as a timeless classic that stands as an important source of history. However, opinions vary on the information quality - some find it helpful and useful, while others consider it complicated or confusing.

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Readability Storytelling Translation Enjoyment Age of book Information quality

33 customers mention "Readability"33 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and easy to read. They appreciate its intellectual depth and wisdom. Readers consider it a worthwhile purchase with one-liners.

"This book is amazing. Penguin knocks it out of the park again." Read more

"...The book is in itself absolutely fascinating since it shows how the world around us that we take for granted with our scientific minds looked to..." Read more

"...There is a handy outline in the rear of the book. It is a must read. Also take advantage of the glossary...." Read more

"...All in all, a wonderful and afordable volume that will server as a great resource for enjoyment reading, research, and reference." Read more

23 customers mention "Storytelling"23 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the storytelling in this book. They find it a good overview of Herodotus' history, with an epic content. The book is described as monumental and a great price. Readers appreciate the author's storytelling style and how he jumps from topic to topic while explaining history. They also mention that the book provides a great account of early Greek and Persian military battles.

"...it covers so much territory in the fields of geography, ethnography, history, climate, etc., etc...." Read more

"...On the one hand he is a fascinating story teller and hearing about the ancients and the places they inhabited from him is endlessly entertaining...." Read more

"A monumental book, at a great price." Read more

"...material such as the structural and chronological outlines are very helpful in keeping track of the dates and the people in context...." Read more

14 customers mention "Translation"14 positive0 negative

Customers find the translation easy to read and understand. They appreciate the flowing writing style that can be referred to throughout the reading. The text is accurate, complete, and succinct, making it accessible and fun to read. However, some reviewers mention that the names and places are difficult to pronounce at first.

"...This is an extremely readable translation and it is very enjoyable. I recommend it highly." Read more

"...The writing is flowing and clear, and though I am not a greek scholar, it seems to convey the "feel" of what one would imagine from Herodotus...." Read more

"...A work of art in its own right, it is accurate, complete, succinct and clear...." Read more

"Great book! In the beginning the names, and places are difficult to pronounce. Afterwards gives detail on how wars are lost and won...." Read more

7 customers mention "Enjoyment"7 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book. They find the material entertaining and the translation laudable. Readers appreciate the leisurely and pleasant digressions throughout the book.

"...about the ancients and the places they inhabited from him is endlessly entertaining...." Read more

"...Through many leisurely and generally pleasant digressions, Herodotus describes (1) their rulers and their forms of government, (2) their wars and..." Read more

"...and connect with contemporary readers and is super accessible and fun to read." Read more

"...It is not just interesting - it is addictive! I had no idea it was actually readable, but it stole two evenings before I got strong...." Read more

5 customers mention "Age of book"5 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's age. They say it's a timeless classic and predates the Bible. The translation is modern and accessible.

"...although a little disorganized by modern day standars, it stands as a timeless classic. A most for those interested in ancient history" Read more

"Great for any student. Great for anyone that loves history and anything in antiquity. I got this after taking a Greece and Roman history class...." Read more

"Just as great 40 years after the first read. I think it was a new translator?" Read more

"Great modern and accessible translation." Read more

6 customers mention "Information quality"3 positive3 negative

Customers have different views on the book's information quality. Some find the notes helpful and the outline in the back useful, while others find it complicated, confusing, and disorganized by modern standards.

"...There is a handy outline in the rear of the book. It is a must read. Also take advantage of the glossary...." Read more

"...The characters are complex, although a little disorganized by modern day standars, it stands as a timeless classic...." Read more

"Glad I purchased this book for my collection. Great information. Knowledge is power." Read more

"hard to read, confusing" Read more

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PizzaWombat
Great!
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2024
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This book is amazing. Penguin knocks it out of the park again.

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Tom Marking
Encyclopedia Hellenica
Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2014
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Although Herodotus' Histories is ostensibly the story of the Great Persian War fought early in the 5th century BCE it covers so much territory in the fields of geography, ethnography, history, climate, etc., etc. that it might well be considered to be the world's first encyclopedia. Herodotus' interests were wide ranging and he tells us that he has personally travelled to many foreign countries such as Egypt and Babylonia in order to collect data for his book. As he states himself, the purpose of his journeys was so that "human achievements may not be forgotten in time". So Herodotus was perhaps the first world traveler and he set us on the path of all the tourists who were to come in later ages. Although the main period of interest in the Histories is from the establishment of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great in 559 BCE until the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE where the Persian forces were utterly routed and although he covers this historical period in depth I got the feeling when reading the book that he was a bit bored by the topic and he never missed an opportunity for a diversion. So there are lots of anecdotal stories thrown into the main plot.

The earlier of the nine books deal with the history and geography of the main countries during Herodotus' day. There is extensive coverage of Egypt along with Babylonia and Persia. Frequently Herodotus just reports the stories which he has been told during his travels and he seldom expresses any incredulity. He has been faulted for that by later authors but we must remember that in most cases Herodotus had no way to validate the stories he was being told. In some cases the stories are so unbelievable that even Herodotus refuses to believe them and he says so. For example, he doesn't believe in the race of one-eyed men called the Arimaspians who are said to live in the far north. At other times he expresses gullibility such as when he claims to have actually seen the remains of winged snakes who fly across the Red Sea to Egypt. But there were a lot of things he got right such as his claim that the inland desert regions of Libya (i.e., Africa) stretch all the way to the Pillars of Heracles (i.e., Strait of Gibraltar) as we know the Sahara desert does. He knows that the Caspian Sea is a lake bounded on all sides, something that later Greek and Roman geographers forgot about. Those things he doesn't know and couldn't find any information about, Herodotus flatly states outright such as his ignorance concerning the source of the Nile River. So for his era, and given the paucity of good information, he got more things right than he got wrong.

Herodotus' coverage of the Persian War is interesting in itself. There are certain facts that have been greatly exaggerated such as his claim that the army of Xerxes that invaded Greece in 480 BCE had 1.7 million soldiers which is ten times the amount of Allied soldiers who landed on D-Day in World War II. There is simply no way that an army of that size could have been fielded in antiquity although scholars are not certain of the army's true size. ~100,000 seems like a more reasonable estimate. At the final battle of Plataea, Herodotus says that the Persians lost 297,000 men while the Spartans lost only 91 and the Athenians only 52. I think we can take those statistics with a big grain of salt. The details of the major battles are surprisingly thin. One would have thought that Herodotus would have had access to more eyewitness testimony than actually shows up in his book. For example, for the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE Herodotus simply has the Athenians rushing the Persians and overwhelming them, capturing 7 of their ships. I'm sure it must have been more complicated than that, but we are left with few of the nitty gritty details.

Herodotus also takes, what to modern sensibilities, seems like a peculiar attitude towards oracles and divinations. All parties in the book seem to use oracles and other methods of divination in order to determine the will of the gods. Herodotus instinctively believes in the correctness of oracles, especially the Oracle at Delphi. He makes it seem like all of the Delphic oracular pronouncements turned out to be correct. The Delphic responses may be obscure or even ambiguous but Herodotus seems to have an unshakeable belief that they are always correct. Perhaps their recipients misinterpret their meaning such as in the case of the Lydian king Croesus, but they always can be interpreted correctly to predict actual future events. Thus, when the Athenians are told that safety lies behind a wooden wall it is Themistocles who correctly interprets this Delphic pronouncement to mean they should rely on their navy. Even the Persians are portrayed as intensely superstitious with King Xerxes launching his invasion of Greece only because he has been told to do so by a figure in a dream. Today billions of people pray daily to some deity but imagine a world in which the deity communicates back to you. Such was the world of the Oracle at Delphi and both the Greeks and the barbarians took it very seriously. This was the case despite the fact that Herodotus informs us that on a number of occasions the high priestess at Delphi accepted bribes to respond in some specified fashion to certain questions.

It's difficult for us to assess what influence these various oracles had on the outcome of history but it may have been sizable. Herodotus tells us that both sides delayed the final Battle of Plataea for more than a week because the portents of divination were not favorable. Thus, gods, goddesses, and their predictions have their fingerprints on most historical events of the period. This is a far different world than the modern one. Herodotus takes these customs as a matter of course and he has a steady faith that God is on the side of the Greeks. So this is not an impartial history written by a neutral observer but rather the report of a biased writer who was against the Persians even though his home town of Halicarnassus fought on the side of Xerxes.

There are many places in the book where Herodotus quotes long speeches by various characters supposedly verbatim. In most cases there is probably not much chance that Herodotus could have known exactly what was said. Perhaps he heard the gist of the conversation and filled in the details using his own imagination. In any case, this practice of inventing speeches and filling their content based on the imagination of the writer was commonly used by contemporary Greek historians and even Thucydides who came decades later (e.g., the Melian dialogue). We revere Herodotus today as the "Father of History" and that title is much deserved but Herodotus was much more than that. He was the first one, so far as we know, who attempted to collect in one place the sum total of the geographic, ethnographic, linguistic, and historical information of the entire world that was known to him. Thus, his Histories are in a sense the "Encyclopedia Hellenica" and despite their many flaws they form the foundation of the Greek pursuit of knowledge which in subsequent centuries would create the Great Library of Alexandria. Herodotus stands at the beginning of that Greek intellectual journey which is still having repercussions in our world 2,500 years later.

The Histories are a must read for anyone interested in the foundation of Western culture. I highly recommend them.

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Doc John
Excellent Translation of a Fascinating Book
Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2014
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Although this is not the translation usually recommended by those who teach Herodotus, I found it to be an extremely readable translation. The book is in itself absolutely fascinating since it shows how the world around us that we take for granted with our scientific minds looked to those who lived a long time ago. Herodotus has been criticized because much of what he writes is so far-fetched that it is humorous, but the reader can tell that he is making an effort to use his intelligence to sort fact from fiction. Even things that Herodotus considers preposterous have been very helpful to historians. For example, he completely dismisses as a ridiculous story the Phoenician claim to have sailed around the tip of Africa because they saw the sun on the right-hand side of the vessel while they were sailing west, something that cannot happen since everyone knows the sun is always in the southern half of the sky. Based on that story, modern historians feel certain that the Phoenicians did circumnavigate Africa. On the other hand, Herodotus found remnants of seashells in the hills near the delta of the Nile and correctly realized that what was desert in his time must have once been under the sea. There are many wonderful stories like this throughout the book as well as some real insights into the way people view things a long time ago. This is an extremely readable translation and it is very enjoyable. I recommend it highly.

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18 people found this helpful

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alliecat
Babylon
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2020
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Wanted to read about Babylon from an ancient. I learned that Ennigaldi (who I found after googling people I couldn't find except in the book) was the old high priestess of Sin and the inspiration behind the prophets of the Bible. The idea of Semiramis as Nimrod's wife does not fit the Bible. I also saw that the culture was obsessed with sexualizing women. Requiring them to prostitute their wives and sell their daughters at auctions based off beauty. And that the priestess of Bel sat on a long couch but was a virgin. Thus why the Biblical comparison to a whore was so shocking because the priestess of Bel was a virgin! And the priestess was the love of Bel and Bel would personally visit her while she lived isolated and lonely in the temple. It also talks about King Cyrus but I wanted to read about Babylonian women so I found what I wanted. Very satisfied! We've come a long way (Satanists ruin women's lives today and yesterday however. Poor women)

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9 people found this helpful

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R. J. Marsella
Penguin Edition
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2009
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As others have noted below , reading Herodotus is a mixed experience. On the one hand he is a fascinating story teller and hearing about the ancients and the places they inhabited from him is endlessly entertaining. On the other hand he tends to go off on long tangents in order to set up a specific incident and at times the book drags.
I personally found the penguin edition and the Selincourt translation fine as an introduction but as I got about halfway through I found the absence of maps and foot notes a bit distracting as place names became more obscure to me. I then paged through a copy of the Landmark Herodotus and realized that the experience of reading this would be better with the added illustration and annotations so I switched.
Nevertheless the Penguin is a smaller more portable version that is serviceable enough.

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8 people found this helpful

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Ramón Burciaga
The histories
Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2024
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A monumental book, at a great price.

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Amazon Customer
This was reported as the first history book. It predates the Bible.
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2023
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I read this book as education for education sake. It was a complicated book. It predates the Bible. The myriad of names, cities and countries was almost overwhelming. There is a handy outline in the rear of the book. It is a must read. Also take advantage of the glossary. I found the many sections on how various societies handle death fascinating. I do not regret reading it through.

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Mark B. Röttenberg
Herodotus
Reviewed in Brazil on September 3, 2024
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Das traduções que li de "HISTORIES" esta foi a mais fiel.
A Penguin Classics está da parabéns, mais uma vez.
Além disso, para aqueles que querem entender as guerras gregas, HISTORIES é essencial. A descrição das Thermophilas, por exemplo, é simplesmente excepcional!

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A Worthy Tome
Reviewed in Mexico on March 11, 2024
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A book perfect for reading in the shade. Not too dense, easy to understand, reading between the lines is a good thing.

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Rafael
Gran libro
Reviewed in Spain on December 2, 2021
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Gran libro, ed bastante denso, recomiendo dosificar cuanto lees, sino puedes satruarte

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Mannu
Five Stars
Reviewed in India on March 6, 2018
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Excellent work

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Sailor Tomb
An excellent modern translation of an important text.
Reviewed in Canada on July 17, 2016
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Herodotus writes of tales told and personal experience and testimonials gathered by travel. He regales us with the mundane regularity of human war right along side the amazing depths of ancient faith and imagination. If you have any interest in the day-to-day regard the ancient Greeks had for their belief, history and battle ethics this text is for you. An entertaining and educational book even for casual readers.

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