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Title: The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories
ISBN: 0375421092
Author:
Herodotus
Publicate Date: 2007-11-06
Publish: 2007-11-06
List Price: $45.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $26.57
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $31.17
Amazon Merchant Price: $29.70
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| Customer Review: |
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1: It no longer all Greek to me
Greek history is a big gap in my education. When I read a review of the "Landmark Herodotus" that talked about all the maps and annotations it contained, I thought this would be a good way to get up to speed.
I had some basic questions starting out; how were the Persian wars different from the Peloponnesian wars? Why should we still care about Greek history? I understand why we care about Greek culture but not so clear on the importance of the history. What did we really know about the Persian wars and how did we know it?
Reading Herodotus answered most of these questions and though his History isn't a primary text, it did give me insight into the thinking and the culture of that period. Much of what Herodotus wrote about was within a generation or two of his own times.
What stood out was the conflict between the forces of fate as represented by prophecies of oracles and the actions of men. While Herodotus saw men and women as capable of great deeds, they were often hampered or helped by prophecy.
Next, the long chronological context that he places the Persian war into. Its stretches back to the Egyptians and he is clearly fascinated by that culture and sees that while Persians conquered them, the Egyptians remained very influential on the Greeks.
Third, the multitude of tribes or people of the ancient world surprised me. The Greeks weren't just Greeks. They were Ionians, Athenians and Spartans and many more as well. The Persians conquered many people and this was a problem when they went into battle with people who didn't share a loyalty or connection and were a cause of the Persian's many defeats.
Finally, I was disappointed that the conflict between democracy and tyranny wasn't more delineated. I thought Herodotus would extol and explain the virtues of Athenian democracy but not so much.
The annotations were useful but weren't quite as illuminating as I had hoped. The pluses were the many maps and the timeline which I used after I finished a chapter to ground myself in the "who did what to who, when" that I'd lose track of as I read the text. The minuses included a poor glossary that could easily have been ten times as large and the appendices which were plentiful and written by eminent scholars on a wide range of subjects but they didn't give me a cohesive understanding of the whole of Herodotus' work. It was a bit like Sinatra's Duet albums where he and his singing partners never shared the same recording studio. Connection and engagement were missing.
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2: dream come true
The Landmark Herodotus is a book I wanted but didn't know it existed. I tried to read Herodotus once and found it difficult to read because of his many references to places that no longer exist. This edition has extensive maps, references and background material that make Herodotus not only much more accessable, but also fun and a joy to read! I love this book! It's like The Lord of the Rings but better because it's real (mostly). I would highly recommend this book and give it as a gift to people I care about.
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3: The real story of The 300
I got interested in Herodotus because of the movie "The 300." This is the real story. This edition may have been aimed at an academic audience but it gives the ordinary reader great help with its notes. Anyone interested in ancient Greek history will find this a great book to have.
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4: Landmark? Not really.
Having previously read an inexpensive edition of Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War, I understand the difficulty of making one's way through a book of ancient history without the aid of maps or footnotes. When I decided to read Herodotus' Histories, then, I was thrilled to find this one, which advertises copious annotation.
And copious annotation it delivers. It has a map about every three pages (with only the locations of immediate interest labeled, which is a nice simplification). It also provides dates in our modern time-scale, which is helpful, and has interesting photos sprinkled throughout. Essays follow the text to give further insight into a smattering of interesting topics. It aims to provide, under one cover, everything an interested student would want to look up in order to understand the text. An admirable goal.
The problem is that Strassler chains himself rigidly to a poorly designed annotation system. He boasts in his introduction that every location mentioned in the text is found on a map he provides. That's great, but he also inserts a footnote for every location mentioned in the text! Every mention of Asia, the Nile River and the Peloponnese gets a footnote. I'm 400 pages into the text - I know where the Peloponnese is!
And in drawing his maps, he misses perfect chances to be helpful. Herodotus will describe beautifully the path taken by Xerxes' army, and Strassler stiffly provides a map with all the locations labeled. Would it be so difficult to draw lines where the Greek and Persian armies marched?!
He also follows the ridiculous policy of starting over his footnote numbering every verse. There are maybe 20 verses per page, so if each verse has one footnote that means that each of the 20 footnotes at the bottom of the page will be marked "1." With 10-20 footnotes per page, this creates quite a jungle to fight through when looking for the note you're interested in.
And most of the footnotes are on topics of no interest at all (debate as to the size of a ship due to uncertainty in the measurement systems; the Greek word for "lord" used in in the text in reference to Apollo was a specific word used only in reference to deities...), while situations crying out for annotation (references to mythology or a previously mentioned person) go by in silence.
He also fills the 2-inch margins with a running summary of the text. Since the text is a straightforward history, a line-by-line summary is not helpful.
So in summary, I had high hopes for this edition and was sadly disappointed. The book has 1000 pages and they are larger that the standard format, making it somewhat unwieldy. That would be fine, except that probably 60% of the additional paper was a waste of a perfectly good tree.
All that said, the maps are helpful. Just don't expect more than that.
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5: A fantastic work
Wow! I can't believe I actually read this entire book...and thought doing so was really cool! To be sure, looking up each footnote slowed the reading down considerably, making reading more than 15 pages an effort, but on the other hand, knowing where all the locations were helped give more meaning to the stories. The maps every couple pages were excellent.
Essentially, the text is a 2500 year old first hand account of Herodotus' travels throughout the ancient Greek sphere of influence, Scythians, Persians (before Islam), Egyptians, etc, ranging from the east to west Mediterranean civilizations to civilizations up the Nile and out and around the Black Sea and going even further out to where India is today. Many, many details of many, many ancient cultures are described--what could be more fascinating??
There were also 20-25 short essays (about 100 pages total) after the text that were all excellent. I read these essays as they were referenced in the text as well as after I read the entire text. The translation was excellent making the stories and descriptions very readable and fun.
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