I've finished Herodotus!

Yesterday I finally finished Herodotus' history.  This edition also has several appendices and an introduction, but I mostly skipped over that part.  The eighth volume is largely about the sea war, culminating in the Battle of Salamis; the ninth and last is about the later land war, culminating in the Battle of Plataya.

You know those cheesy war movies where the sergeant gets orders to gather his men and retreat, and he says "The HELL we'll retreat!"? There's a scene like that in Herodotus' book from just before Plataya.  In that version the non-retreaters relented when they realized they were on their own.

There's also a story near the end about how the Persian Emperor Xerxes fell in love with his brother's wife, and married off his son to the wife's daughter, then his fancy turned to his niece, then his jealous wife blamed the brother's wife and had her disfigured, then the brother ran off to a remote province to start a rebellion, then the Emperor's army caught up with him and killed him.... They should make that into an opera.

Seriously, the first place I remember reading about the Greco-Persian Wars was in a comic book where Uncle Scrooge and his brood used a time machine to land on the Plain of Marathon just as the Battle was about to start...

Now I've returned to the politics issue of LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY.  My next big book will be the first volume of Mark Twain's century-delayed autobiography, which I've heard reads like a blog.

I also finished the first season of HELL ON WHEELS yesterday on Netflix.  It's a powerful show, with an effect that builds cumulatively. One line goes, "Choose hate.  It's easier." A quibble: How did the surveyor's widow manage to stay so gorgeous while living on the frontier? (Such visual license I can live with, of course.)