The History

Herodotus, David Grene

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780226327723, 9780226327709
• eBook ISBN: 9780226327754
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

David Grene, one of the best known translators of the Greek classics, splendidly captures the peculiar quality of Herodotus, the father of history.

Here is the historian, investigating and judging what he has seen, heard, and read, and seeking out the true causes and consequences of the great deeds of the past. In his History, the war between the Greeks and Persians, the origins of their enmity, and all the more general features of the civilizations of the world of his day are seen as a unity and expressed as the vision of one man who as a child lived through the last of the great acts in this universal drama.

In Grene's remarkable translation and commentary, we see the historian as a storyteller, combining through his own narration the skeletal "historical" facts and the imaginative reality toward which his story reaches. Herodotus emerges in all his charm and complexity as a writer and the first historian in the Western tradition, perhaps unique in the way he has seen the interrelation of fact and fantasy.

"Reading Herodotus in English has never been so much fun. . . . Herodotus crowds his fresco-like pages with all shades of humanity. Whether Herodotus's view is 'tragic,' mythical, or merely common sense, it provided him with a moral salt with which the diversity of mankind could be savored. And savor it we do in David Grene's translation."—Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

"Grene's work is a monument to what translation intends, and to what it is hungry to accomplish. . . . Herodotus gives more sheer pleasure than almost any other writer."—Peter Levi, New York Times Book Review

Index

Abae, an oracular shrine in Phocis, 1.46, 8.27, 33, 134

Achaeans, 1.145, 2.120, 8.47, 73; of Phthiotis, 7.132, 173, 185–97; Achaea in the Peloponnese, 7.94, 8.36

Achaemenes, (1) early ancestor of Cyrus, 3.75, 7.11. (2) Son of Darius, governor of Egypt under Xerxes, 7.7; one of Xerxes’ admirals, 7.97; his advice to Xerxes to keep the fleet together, 7.236; his death, 3.12

Achaemenid dynasty in Persia, 1.125, 3.65

Adrastus, (1) a Phrygian refugee at Croesus’ court and purified by him of bloodguilt; later the inadvertent killer of Croesus’ son, 1.35–45. (2) An Argive hero, 5.67

Aeacus and the Aeacidae, heroes worshiped in Aegina, 5.80, 89, 6.35, 8.64, 83

Aegina, island in the Saronic Gulf, south of Athens, 3.59, 131, 7.147, 8.41, 60; feuds with Athens, 5.84–89, 6.88–92, 7.144; Cleomenes in Aegina, 6.50, 61; Aeginetan hostages, 6.85; fleet, 8.46; Aeginetans in battle of Salamis, 8.84, 91–93; offerings at Delphi, 8.122; Aeginetans at Plataea, 9.28, 78, 85

Aeolians: their conquest by Croesus, 1.6, 26; resistance to Cyrus, 1.141, 152; settlements in Asia, 1.149–52; in the armies of Harpagus, 1.171; part of a Persian province, 3.90; in Darius’ Scythian expedition, 4.89, 138; reconquest by Persians, 5.122; in Ionian revolt, 6.8, 28; in Xerxes’ fleet, 7.95; Thessaly originally Aeolian, 7.176. (Often mentioned with Ionians to denote Greek colonists in Asia.)

Aeschylus, the Athenian poet, 2.156

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, 1.67, 4.103, 7.159

Agariste, (1) daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, 6.126; won in marriage by Megacles of Athens, son of Alcmaeon, 6.130–31. (2) Daughter of Hippocrates of Athens, wife of Xanthippus and mother of Pericles, 6.131

Ajax, a hero of the Trojan War, 5.66, 6.35, 8.64, 121

Alcaeus, the lyric poet, 5.95

Alcmaeon, an Athenian, father of Megacles, 1.59; enriched by Croesus, 6.125

Alcmaeonidae, son and descendants of Alcmaeon: enemies of Pisistratus, 1.61, 64, 5.62; under a curse for killing Cylon, 5.70; suspected of collusion with Persians after Marathon, 6.115, 121–24. See also Cleisthenes (2); Megacles

Aleuadae, the ruling family in Thessaly, 6.6, 130, 172, 9.58

Alexander, (1) son of Priam; also known as Paris, 1.3; in Egypt, 2.113–20. (2) King of Macedonia, son of Amyntas: his treatment of Persian envoys, 5.19–21; claim to be a Greek, 5.22; advice to Greeks, 7.173; his ancestors, 8.137–39; as intermediary between Persia and Athens, 8.140–44; gives information to Greeks before battle of Plataea, 9.44–46

Alyattes, king of Lydia, father of Croesus: his war with Miletus, 1.16–25; protection of Scythians against Media, 1.73; his tomb, 193

Amasis, (1) king of Egypt: visited by Solon, 1.30; alliance with Croesus, 1.77; place in Egyptian chronology, 2.43, 145; his Greek guard, 2.154; his revolt against Apries, 2.162, 169; his friendship with Polycrates, despot of Samos, 3.39–43; his death, 3.10; Cambyses’ treatment of his body, 3.16. (2) A Maraphian, commander of Persian army against Barca, 4.167, 201, 203

Amazons: their intermarriage with Scythians, 4.110–17; Athenian victory over them, 9.27

Amestris, wife of Xerxes, 7.61, 114; her terrible revenge on her sister-in-law, 9.109–12. See also Masistes

Ammon, an oracular deity in Libya, identified with Zeus, 1.46, 2.32, 55

Amompharetus, Spartan commander who refused to quit his pos...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Book One
• Book Two
• Book Three
• Book Four
• Book Five
• Book Six
• Book Seven
• Book Eight
• Book Nine
• End Notes
• Notes
• Index