A Guide to Reading Herodotus' Histories

Description

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.

Sean Sheehan is an independent scholar, having previously taught in the UK and abroad. His publications include The British Museum Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ancient Greece (2002), Socrates: Life and Times (2007), Zizek: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Sophocles' Oedipus the King: A Reader's Guide (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Herodotus's work poses a challenge to readers who enter its labyrinth. Welcome then is a guide which sets out the complex narrative structure clearly and gives the reader an insight into Herodotus' preoccupations and the reception of his great work. -- Alan Beale * Classics for All * This book gives students confidence to navigate the rich but disjointed narrative of the Histories under the guidance of the current trends in research. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review * This book is a clear and well written conspectus of Herodotean studies. Student and scholar alike will find it an invaluable vade mecum to a highly complex and multi-layered work. * Alan B Lloyd, Professor Emeritus, Department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology, Swansea University, UK *