The first Historian

A few months ago, I started reading the Landmark edition of Herodotus' HISTORIES.  Herodotus, of course, was an ancient Greek who wrote a nine-volume history of the wars between the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in the early fifth century BC.  Landmark has done an excellent job with this translation, inserting plenty of maps and footnotes to prevent confusion.  My book got out in the rain, damaging the cover, but the text inside wasn't affected, and it now has a nice travel-worn look, like the book Count Almasy was carrying in THE ENGLISH PATIENT. (Incidentally, IMHO people who accuse that movie of moral relativism don't give the story's complexity its due.)

Herodotus wrote what was basically European civilization's first book of history.  But it isn't history the way we imagine it today.  The text is full of tall tales, like the one about Arion the minstrel sailing toward Corinth, getting thrown overboard, and completing his voyage on a dolphin.  You'd be well advised to take many of his stories with a grain of salt, and even ancient readers were often skeptical.  But it's a very entertaining book:  at times Herodotus reads like a folklorist similar to the Grimm brothers.

The first book is about Lydia's conflict with Persia (ending with Croesus' hubris and nemesis) and Persia's rise under Cyrus; the second, Egypt before its conquest by Persia; the third, Persia under Cambyses and the succession of Darius; the fourth, Persia's campaigns north into Scythia and west into Libya.  I'm now on the fifth book, which will bring me into the first war and its culmination at Marathon.

Some of the liveliest writing is in the second book.  Its stories are relatively reliable, and most people think Herodotus actually lived there at one point. (The part about Scythia, on the other hand, has only second- and third-hand accounts.) I especially enjoyed his account of the Boubastis festival:

"Men sail with women, large crowds of them together in each barge.  Throughout the entire journey, some of the women play castanets, some of the men play flutes, and the rest of them, both men and women, sing and clap their hands.  Whenever they approach some city along the way to Boubastis, they skirt the shore with their barge, and while some of the women continue as before, others shout at the women of the city, mocking and ridiculing them, and some dance, and still others stand up and lift their robes, exposing themselves.  They do this at every city along the river, and when they arrive at Boubastis, they celebrate their holiday by performing huge sacrifices.  They consume more grape wine at this festival than at any other time of the year, and according to what the native inhabitants say, there may be as many as 700,000 men and women (but no children) gathered together here."

I also liked his account of a couple of Thracian kingpins who wanted to grab Darius' attention, so they hired a statuesque woman to walk near him, spinning flax with both hands, leading a horse with her elbow in the rein, and balancing a pot of water on her head. (I'd notice that!) Like much of Herodotus, I can't be sure it's a true story, but it's fun to read anyway.

Herodotus brings to mind a line from the western THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!"