A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV
David Asheri
Language: English
Pages: 794
ISBN: 0199639361
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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 - its peoples and their achievements, together with the causes and course of the great wars that brought the Greek cities into conflict with the empires of the Near East. Each subsequent generation of historians has sought to use his text and to measure their knowledge of these cultures against his words.
This commentary by leading scholars, originally published in Italian, has been fully revised by the original authors and has now been edited for English-speaking readers by O. Murray and A. Moreno. It is designed for use alongside the Oxford Classical Text of Herodotus, and will replace the century-old historical commentary of How and Wells (1912) as the most authoritative account of modern scholarship on Herodotus.
Books I-IV cover the history and cultures of Lydia, Egypt, Persia, and the nomads of Scythia and North Africa, in their contacts with the Greeks from mythical times to the start of the fifth century BC; these themes, with many digressions, are woven into an account of the expansion of the Persian Empire and its relations with the Greeks.
Adonis: The Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance
Hand of Isis (Numinous World, Book 2)
Dead of Winter (The Arcana Chronicles, Book 3)
Loki: Nine Naughty Tales of the Trickster
Rolle, Scythians Rolle, Totenkult Rom m Rom m , Herodotus Rose he r, AGWL Rose her, Lexikon Rose, Handbook Greek Literature Rose, Handbook Greek Mythology Rosen, Sprachform Rostovtzeff x li Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschafty ed. G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, K. Mittelhaus, and K. Ziegler, Stuttgart 1893 ff. E. D. Reeder (ed.), Scythian Gold, New York 1999. W. Reese, Die griechische Nachrichten fur Indien bis zum Eeldzuge Alexanders des Grossen. Eine Samtnlung der Berichte und
I—II, New York 1951-61. C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and H. R. Hall, History of technology, 1-V, Oxford 1954-8. Skifskij mir, Kiev 1975. Skify i Sarmaty, Kiev 1977. Skify severnogo pricernomorja, Kiev 1987. The Song o f Igor's Campaign: An Epic of the Twelfth Century, trans. Vladim ir Nabokov, London I960, k. F. Smirnov, Savromaty, Moscow 1964. G. E. Smith and W. R. Dawson, Egyptian Mummies, London 1924. W. S. Smith, The Art and Architecture o f Ancient Egypt, rev. with additions by W. Kelly
law that forbids them to flee the battlefield (VII 104,4-5). In the case o f the Ethiopians, the description o f their customs and their mentality is intentionally connected to the main narrative o f Cambyses’ campaign; in other cases the connection is not as clear.107 The Greeks are, o f course, a case apart, but they share with the barbarians we have mentioned, and with the Persians themselves who rebelled against the Medes and were later attacked by Croesus, an uncomprom ising love o f
scepticism is not yet dead. Anthropological interest in oral cultures and, in particular, a series of African studies (see above, p. 16, n. 43) are responsible for the topical conception o f Herodotus as the first writer to record oral traditions. Finally, modern psvchophilosophical concern with the personal and collective perception of time have reopened the problem o f the origins and nature of the archaic historical con sciousness from Homer to Herodotus. Herodotus taught the historians o f
foundation o f new ones. There is no lack o f scholars who, like Beloch, absolutely deny the historicity o f the Dorian migration. Today there are various tendencies that, on the basis o f linguistic and archaeological data and the study o f the ancient tradition, on the one hand emphasize that the same cultural phenomena can be detected in both Doric and non-Doric areas (e.g. in Attica), and on the other reject the theory o f a sudden and complete break between the Mycenaean and Dorian
