Herodotus, THE HISTORIES, transl. Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin,
harmondsworth, 1968 (1954).

Herodotus (c. 485-c.425 B.C.E.) is the first surviving Western
historian. His history in nine books (some 590 pages in this popular
Penguin translation) provides the background and describes the unfolding
events of the clash between the great Persian Empire and the European
Greek city states. The work contains much legendary material, as well as
that more recent and reliable.

As the Classics were widely known by educated Westerners of previous
generations, some of the major events and details of this history form
part of a common Western cultural foundation. A main theme is the
ability of a free people to repel the massed might of a great empire.

In 490 B.C.E. the Athenians defeated an Imperial invasion force at
Marathon. Ten years later a much larger Imperial army struck Greece.
Badly outnumbered Spartans bravely defended the pass of Thermopylae,
until a traitor showed the enemy a way around it. The Athenians fled
their city and met the Persians in the sea battle of Salamis.  The
Persian emperor observed this battle from the nearby coast.

As some Westerners during the Cold War opinined the superiority of
individualism against Soviet co-operative attitudes, Herodotus's
assessment of the Battle of Salamis is cited:

   The Persians were, indeed, bound to get the worst of it, because
   they were ignorant of naval tactics, and fought at random without
   any proper disposition of their forces, while the Greek fleet worked
   together as a whole; none the less they fought well that day -- far
   better than in the actions off Euboea. Every man of them did his best
   for fear of Xerxes, feeling that the king's eye was on him. p. 526

TXerxes then sailed back to Asia, leaving an army behind which was
defeated the following year at Potidaea.

Among the many interesting details of this so fascinating work is the
awareness that the Caspian Sea is bounded (p. 90), the account of the
Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa c. 595 B.C.E. for Egypt's Pharaoh
Neccho (the expression of disbelief at the sailors' assertion that as
they rounded the southern coast of Africa the sun was to their north
p. 255 gaining modern acceptance of the account) and the issue of the
settlement of Byzantium:

   This same Megabazus once made a remark for which the people along the
   Hellespont have never forgotten him: he was in Byzantium, and on
   hearing that Chalcedon was settled seventeen years earlier than that
   city, he said that the men of Chalcedon must have been blind at the
   time; for if they had had any eyes, they would never have chosen an
   inferior site, when a much finer one lay ready to hand. p. 289

Toynbee, HELLENISM, pp. 73-74 refers to this. In 685 B.C.E. when
Chalcedon was settled, the colonists were seeking arable land and would
have been blind to settle at Byzantium, but when Megabazus made his
remark in 513 B.C.E. the primary consideration was trade, not
agriculture, hence his famous reference to the city of the blind.

On page 155 Herodotus names "Aesop the fable-writer". On pages 159, 378
and 410 he refers to other historians. On page 124 he estimates that
Hesiod and Homer lived less than four centuries before his own time. On
page 403 he mentions a Persian oil well

Another item of interest is his reference to the Persian imperial
couriers:

   There is nothing in the world which travels faster than these Persian
   couriers. The whole idea is a Persian invention, and works like this:
   riders are stationed along the road, equal in number to the number of
   days the journey takes -- a man and a horse for each day. Nothing
   stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the
   quickest possible time -- neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness. The
   first, at the end of his stage, passes the dispatch to the second,
   the second to the third, and so on along the line, as in the Greek
   torchrace which is held in honour of Hephaestus. p. 531

This work is a very readable presentation of myth and history, a
treasury of fascinating data and a glimpse of the human spirit.

Michael McKenny, June 18, 2006 C.E.


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