Along with Xenophon and Plutarch, Herodotus may be the most underappreciated writer of antiquity. His Histories (by which he meant something like “investigations”) of the relations between Greeks and barbarians has more narrative power than most novels, more colorful incidents than any travel book, and more insight into human nature than any 1,000 works of sociology, psychology, or anthropology that one can name. His easygoing style is so good that it would be worth learning Greek just to read Herodotus, even if Homer, Plato, Sophocles, and all the rest had disappeared.

Herodotus’ reputation was very great in the ancient world, where one of the most hackneyed literary discussions was centered upon comparing him with his “rival,” Thucydides. One critic pointed out that while Thucydides chose to portray his people (the Athenians) in defeat, Herodotus took for his subject the great victory of the Greeks over the Persian empire. It is that story we think of first in connection with Herodotus—of the Athenians charging the Persians on the plain of Marathon, of the 300 Spartans holding the pass at Thermopylae, and of the great naval victory at Salamis. This cultural collision between East and West was as great as any in the history of the world, and it decisively determined the course of our own civilization. The Greek victory is partly responsible for the difference between a self-governed United States adhering to the rule of law and the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Since Herodotus preferred storytelling to argument, two anecdotes from his work can make the cultural contrast clear. First, the Persians. When King Xerxes decided to invade and conquer Greece, he made every effort to insure success. He assembled an enormous army and navy from throughout his empire; to avoid the problem of sailing around Mount Athos, where an earlier fleet had met disaster, he cut a canal around it and created an island. Even more impressively, he constructed a bridge across the Hellespont—the symbolic dividing line between Europe and Asia. When a violent storm smashed the bridge, Xerxes not only cut off the heads of all the engineers, he also gave orders that the Hellespont itself should receive 300 lashes and be branded with hot irons.

This was the Persian response to misfortune. Not long afterwards, the Persian army was halted at the pass of Thermopylae by a small force of Spartans and their allies. A Persian scout rode up and inspected the scene and reported back to Xerxes that he had seen soldiers combing their hair. The Great King was bewildered because he did not realize that Spartans facing death always pay careful attention to their hair. No matter how hard they tried, the Persians were unable to dislodge the well-groomed Spartans, until a secret pathway was betrayed to them. The allies were dismissed (except for some Thespians who refused to go), and the Spartans bought time for the rest of Greece by staying and dying, with their King Leonidas, to the last man:

The Greeks, who knew that the enemy were on their way round by the mountain track and that death was inevitable, fought with reckless desperation. . . . By this time most of their spears were broken, and they were killing Persians with their swords. In the course of that fight Leonidas fell, having fought like a man indeed. . . . Four times the Greeks drove the enemy off, and at last by their valour succeeded in dragging it away. . . . They resisted to the last, with their swords, if they had them, and, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them.

 

                                                                                                   (de Selincourt translation)

Americans who recall the battle of New Orleans or the Alamo or Corregidor will have no hesitation in claiming the Spartans as their spiritual ancestors.

Most of Herodotus’ work is not taken up with the Persian Wars. There are long sections on Egypt, the Scythians, and the conflict between the Lydian Kingdom and Ionian Greeks. Some of it borders on mere gossip because Herodotus seems to have cared less whether a story was literally true than whether it exemplified some theme of his work. He swallowed a lot of obviously silly things from the Egyptians, because he was convinced that in Egypt everything was done backwards from the rest of the world. In reporting the tales of “native informants,” Herodotus proved himself to be the first great ethnographer as well as the first great historian. His “slipshod” methods have infuriated more than one professional historian, and the greatest classical scholar of modern times, Wilamowitz, managed to devote a book to every major Greek writer with the single exception of Herodotus. Still, he has his admirers, and modern college students cannot entirely resist his charm, try as they might.

Herodotus has been translated a number of times into English in the past 100 years. George Rawlinson’s stately (but sometimes ponderous) version is available (slightly revised) through Modern Library, while Aubrey de Selincourt’s brisk and readable Penguin is perhaps the most widely read. Enoch Powell, an important Herodotean scholar before he became an MP, also did a translation in the late 1940’s. Why a new version, then? David Grene, in an introduction that may interest literary critics but supply little in the way of useful information to students or casual readers, declares that Rawlinson is “dull and prolix,” while the Penguin “sounds exactly as though new-minted by a twentieth century journalist”—judgments that are neither fair nor polite to his predecessors. His own preference is for a tone that is “literary and whimsical.” The only whimsy I can discern is in an odd preference for a stilted academic style and British diction (e.g., “corn” for grain). Consider this bit of whimsy: “So, penned in helplessness, Arion besought them, since they were so determined, to stand by and watch him while he sang, standing with all his gear on him. . . . ” Or this: “Fear neither myself, lest I might suggest this as a trial of you, nor yet my wife.” A student looking up the Greek words in a Victorian lexicon might have come up with such language, but more was to be expected from a University of Chicago professor and the University of Chicago Press. Fortunately, the $30 price tag will serve to keep it out of the hands of students.

 

[History of Herodotus, translated by David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) $30.00]