Histories

In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, king of Persia. Here are not only the great battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis - but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2016 Naxos AudioBooks

Great hearing all I would probably never have read

As far as I am concerned Herodotus' Histories is the perfect sort of text for an audio book. It's the foundation of so many stories we know and have heard retold many times. It's amazingly rich with cultural detail and gossip from the ancient world. It's just cool to hear humans trying to work through the meaning of myth and lies and the possibility of an objective historical account. But it is long...and, in places, not as absorbing. I was glad to listen to it because I don't think I could have gotten through it reading. And I was very glad to not be in college needing to remember it all for a test! I would highly recommend Elizabeth Vandiver's lectures on Herodotus: The Father of History as a companion. I listened to Vandiver's lectures before I listened to the full text of Herodotus, and that helped me to keep track of the rambling stories and to contextualize Herodotus' work.

A Delightful Classic

I always enjoy Herodotus, and David Timson does a truly wonderful job as narrator. Many hours of thought-provoking listening pleasure.

Certainly covers a lot of ground

This book certainly covers a lot of ground, attempting to give histories of Egypt, Persia, the Ionians, the Scythians, and the Greeks, as well as touching on just about every other culture in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, eastern Africa, or western Asia. The one downside to this as an audiobook is that there is no way to have an accompanying map of the world at the time. (In fact, I would really like to have a map or set of maps that compares the ancient world to the modern world to see what they are talking about when they repeatedly refer to rivers or countries or people who just aren’t there anymore, at least not by the same names).

Much of this history is a recitation of battles and larger military campaigns. But Herodotus apparently likes clever solutions to problems, and he gives any number of examples of various people, mostly rulers, who got revenge on their enemies in clever, unusual, or particularly grisly ways. He also makes an effort to give some idea of the nature and customs of some of the people he talks about, particularly the Scythians and the other tribes who lived at ever greater distances beyond them.

Apparently, Herodotus collected his histories at least in part by traveling to the various lands he was writing about and talking to the people there. This allows him to occasionally give more than one version of the story if the people of the different countries tell it differently. He also occasionally encounters versions of various historical events that he doesn’t think are very credible, and he doesn’t hesitate to say so when this is the case. Sometimes he will speculate on what a more likely scenario might be.

Tthe people of the entire ancient world seem to have made a regular practice of consulting the various oracles before they did just about anything, especially before starting a war. Herodotus cites as proof of many of his stories the various valuable objects of art that were donated to the oracles as offerings in gratitude for predictions of victory in these undertakings and were still to be seen there in his day. He also tells how some people misconstrued the prophecies they received and failed badly as a result. There seem to have even been one or two cases of oracles being bribed to give prophecies favoring one side or the other in some conflict, and one of them even lost their position because of it.

The narrator was very good – clear and easy to understand. While he didn’t sound like a Greek – he was pretty obviously British – he did have just the right tone for a serious but not too stuffy historian.

Great choice of reader

The text is what it is, the gossip column of the ancient world. I can't compare to any other translations but it seems fine. What really shines is the reader's perfect portrayal of an old rumor-monger pulling you aside and letting you in on some long-winded, salacious secret.

The only complaint is that the companion PDF, which seems to want to provide you some guidance on what is in each section, is not very good. It just lists the first few words which doesn't help much since the text is full of digressions and anecdotes. At least the audio is broken up into many chapters so it's not impossible to search.

A great book

A fantastic study of the chronology of ancient western thinking. I liked it very much and recommend it highly.