Can you name three or four ancient world historians? I don’t mean modern writers who study the history of the ancient world; I mean writers who lived in the ancient world and wrote about the history of their time and earlier. Don’t say that you could care less—or that you couldn’t care less, depending on which version of that idiom you prefer.

Even when your course is called “Ancient History”—a class I was required to take in eighth grade—you usually read modern historians whose subject is the ancient world. Note the distinction. Almost nobody reads actual classical historians anymore, even in English translation.

But there are some exceptions. In my case, I read some moderately interesting Tacitus in fifth-year Latin, some amusing but often unreliable Herodotus in third- or fourth-year Greek (I don’t remember which), and some extremely difficult Thucydides in fifth- or sixth-year Greek. But I’m not trying to return to any of them now, at least not in the original Greek or Latin. Let’s settle for English translations, and you can join me to appreciate one of them.

I mentioned in the previous paragraph that Thucydides is extremely difficult. That’s especially true if you read him in the original Greek, but fortunately that’s not today’s subject. Instead, we turn to Herodotus, whom I described as “amusing but often unreliable.” In other words, he often presents good stories as objective history. Here is his map of the world, in which you easily discern many deviations from reality, including the shapes of Africa and the Iberian peninsula as well as the peculiar path of the Nile:

The reason I’m writing about Herodotus today is that I just bought a copy of a wonderful new edition for a remarkable $16.19—remarkable not only because it has a relatively small market but also because it’s a richly illustrated 953 pages! The translation by Andrea Purvis is clear, scrupulously footnoted, and accompanied by many illustrations, particularly maps that help the reader connect ancient names and geographic views with modern ones. Robert B. Strasser did a magnificent job of editing it. $16.19: it’s a steal!

Here is one example of a map in this edition:

Categories: Books, Linguistics