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Charles W. Fornara's Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971) was a landmark publication in the study of the great Greek historian. Well-known in particular for its main thesis that the Histories should be read against the background of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars during which it was written, its insight and penetrating discussion extend to a range of other issues, from the relative unity of Herodotus' work and the relationship between his ethnographies and historical narrative, to the themes and motifs that criss-cross the Histories-how 'history became moral and Herodotus didactic'. Interpreting Herodotus brings together a team of leading Herodotean scholars to look afresh at the themes of Fornara's seminal Essay in the light of the explosion of scholarship on the Histories in the intervening years, focusing particularly on how we can interpret Herodotus' work in terms of the context in which he wrote. What does it mean to talk of the unity of the Histories, or Herodotus' 'moral' purpose? How can we reconstruct the context in which the Histories were written and published? And in what sense might the Histories constitute a 'warning' for his own, or for subsequent, generations? In developing and interrogating Fornara's influential ideas for a new generation of scholars, the volume also offers a wealth of insights and new perspectives on the 'Father of History' that attests to the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary engagement with Herodotus.
Modern scholarship judges Herodotus to be a more complex writer than his past readers supposed. His Histories is now being read in ways that are seemingly incompatible if not contradictory. This volume interrogates the various ways the text of the Histories has been and can be read by scholars: as the seminal text of our Ur-historian, as ethnology, literary art and fable. Our readings can bring out various guises of Herodotus himself: an author with the eye of a travel writer and the mind of an investigative journalist; a globalist, enlightened but superstitious; a rambling storyteller but a prose stylist; the so-called 'father of history' but in antiquity also labelled the 'father of lies'; both geographer and gossipmonger; both entertainer and an author whom social and cultural historians read and admire. Guiding students chapter-by-chapter through approaches as fascinating and often surprising as the original itself, Sean Sheehan goes beyond conventional Herodotus introductions and instead looks at the various interpretations of the work, which themselves shed light on the original. With text boxes highlighting key topics and indices of passages, this volume is an essential guide for students whether reading Herodotus for the first time, or returning to revisit this crucial text for later research.
How to destroy a mighty empire: the story of Croesus of Lydia -- Cannibals and conquests: the story of Cyrus the Great -- Horny goats and medicinal urine: the Egyptian logos -- Madness and mummies: the reign of Cambyses -- Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Mediterranean: the stories of Polycrates and Periander -- Earless imposters and randy mounts: the early reign of Darius the Great -- The trouble with nomads: Darius' Scythian campaign -- Stuttering colonists and lousy deaths: the Libyan logos -- Tattooed slaves and ousted tyrants: post-Pisistratid Athens and the Ionian revolt -- Miltiades, madness, and Marathon: the first Persian War -- Feats of engineering and doomed valor: the Second Persian War to the Battle of Thermopylae -- Trial by trireme: the Battles at Artemisium and Salamis -- Concluding scenes: the Battles of Plataea and Mycale and the siege of Sestus.
In Herodotus's Histories, almost anything is capable of being invested with meaning--human speech, gifts, markings, and even the human body. This book represents an unprecedented examination of signs and their interpreters, as well as the terminology Herodotus uses to describe sign transmission, reception, and decoding.
Charles W. Fornara's Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971) was a landmark publication in the study of the great Greek historian. Well-known in particular for its main thesis that the Histories should be read against the background of the Atheno-Peloponnesian Wars during which it was written, its insight and penetrating discussion extend to a range of other issues, from the relative unity of Herodotus' work and the relationship between his ethnographies and historical narrative, to the themes and motifs that criss-cross the Histories - how 'history became moral and Herodotus didactic'. Interpreting Herodotus brings together a team of leading Herodotean scholars to look afresh at the themes of Fornara's seminal Essay in the light of the explosion of scholarship on the Histories in the intervening years, focusing particularly on how we can interpret Herodotus' work in terms of the context in which he wrote. What does it mean to talk of the unity of the Histories, or Herodotus' 'moral' purpose? How can we reconstruct the context in which the Histories were written and published? And in what sense might the Histories constitute a 'warning' for his own, or for subsequent, generations? In developing and interrogating Fornara's influential ideas for a new generation of scholars, the volume also offers a wealth of insights and new perspectives on the 'Father of History' that attests to the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary engagement with Herodotus.
This volume brings together 13 original articles which review, re-establish, and rehabilitate the origins, forms, and functions of the mythological elements that are found in the narratives of Herodotus' Histories.
Reading Herodotus is a 2007 text which represented a departure in Herodotean scholarship: it was the first multi-authored collection of scholarly essays to focus on a single book of Herodotus' Histories. Each chapter studies a separate logos in Book 5 and pursues two closely related lines of inquiry: first, to propose an individual thesis about the political, historical, and cultural significance of the subjects that Herodotus treats in Book 5, and second, to analyze the connections and continuities between its logos and the overarching structure of Herodotus' narrative. This collection of twelve essays by internationally renowned scholars represents an important contribution to scholarship on Herodotus and will serve as an essential research tool for all those interested in Book 5 of the Histories, the interpretation of Herodotean narrative, and the historiography of the Ionian Revolt.
Modern scholarship judges Herodotus to be a more complex writer than his past readers supposed. His Histories is now being read in ways that are seemingly incompatible if not contradictory. This volume interrogates the various ways the text of the Histories has been and can be read by scholars: as the seminal text of our Ur-historian, as ethnology, literary art and fable. Our readings can bring out various guises of Herodotus himself: an author with the eye of a travel writer and the mind of an investigative journalist; a globalist, enlightened but superstitious; a rambling storyteller but a prose stylist; the so-called 'father of history' but in antiquity also labelled the 'father of lies'; both geographer and gossipmonger; both entertainer and an author whom social and cultural historians read and admire. Guiding students chapter-by-chapter through approaches as fascinating and often surprising as the original itself, Sean Sheehan goes beyond conventional Herodotus introductions and instead looks at the various interpretations of the work, which themselves shed light on the original. With text boxes highlighting key topics and indices of passages, this volume is an essential guide for students whether reading Herodotus for the first time, or returning to revisit this crucial text for later research.
Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.
Priestley explores some of the earliest ancient responses to Herodotus' Histories from the early and middle Hellenistic period. Through discussions of contemporary discourse relating to the Persian Wars, geography, literary style, and biography, it nuances our understanding of how ancient readers reacted to and appropriated the Histories.