Articles and Essays

Academic Articles | Student Essays | Other | "Lay" Readings | Abstracts

Academic Articles

"Herodotus' Conception of Foreign Languages" by Thomas Harrison, Histos 1998.

"Herodotus Readings" by Peter Derow for Classics Ireland, 1995. Derow explores "why Herodotus wrote [the Histories], or why he wrote them the way he did," drawing on Fornara's Herodotus, an interpretative essay and Gould's Herodotus.

Herodotus and The English Patient by Thomas Harrison for Classics Ireland 1998.

"Like Minghella, Herodotus - by conjuring up some psychologically plausible pillow-talk or by supplying (generally less plausible) numbers where none are available, slips from a focus on historical truth to one on verisimilitude. If The English Patient has given rise then to a controversy over the boundaries between history and fiction, it has only reawakened an argument as old as history itself. Herodotus may be the 'Father of History', as Almásy has it, but certainly not history as we know it."

"East Is East And West Is West - Or Are They? National Stereotypes In Herodotus" by Christopher Pelling, Histos 1997.

"Herodotus and the North Carolina Oral Narrative Tradition" by Philip Stadter, Histos 1997.

Comments by John Marincola, Histos.

Review of recent reissues of Rawlinson, de Selincourt and Grene's translations by P.J. Rhodes, Histos 1997.

"Reading the Rise of Pisistratus: Herodotus 1.56-68" by Vivienne Gray, Histos 1997.

"Medes, Lydians, the 'Battle of the Eclipse' and the Historicity of Herodotus" by G.D. Summers. Electronic publication related to the Kerkenes Project , an excavation of Kerkenes Dag in Turkey. Although not the sort of topic I get excited about, the article is interesting and accessible to non-astronomical specialists. I also adore the layout and laud Summers for allowing the image of a a red herring to go with a statement about red herrings.

"Herodotos's Report on Thales' Eclipse" by Thomas Worthen, Electronic Antiquity, May 1997.

12:16:52 PM"The Pride of Halikarnassos. Editio princeps of an inscription from Salmakis" by Signe Isager, ZPE 1998. This is the text of a fascinating new inscription from Halicarnassus (Bodrum). The inscription in praise of the city mentions Herodotus at the end of a broken passage, so I'll quote a short poem found in Rhodes, perhaps by the same author:

"Assyria (has) the stone-mound of Semiramis.
But the city of Ninos did not bring forth an Andron, neither did
such offspring of the Muses shoot from the ground among the Indians.
Primeval Babylon did not nourish a mouth like that of Herodotos' which is even sweeter, nor
Panyassis with his sweet words, but the rugged earth of
Halikarnassos did. Through their songs
does she enjoy a renown among the cities of the Hellenes."

K.H. Waters, Herodotos the Historian: His Problems, Methods and Originality (Norman, 1985). Etext of the introduction, chapters 1 and 2, from William M. Murray's Herodotus course. .

"Paktoun and paktosis as Ship-constrction Terminology in Herodotus, Pollux and the Documentary Papyri" by Steve Vinson, ZPE 1996.

"Who is Pythius the Lydian?" by Sian Lewis, Histos 1998.

"Una variante-fantasma in Herod. 1.196." by Walter Lapini, ZPE 1998.

"Unremitting Activity: Herodotus' Mycerinus and Zenon's Correspondents" by Stephanie West, ZPE 1998. Philological.

Student Essays

"Spartan Women in Herodotos" by Holly, from Everything Spartan, Lakonian and Messenian.

"Historical Causation in Herodotus" by Carol Abernathy. Abstract of Senior Honors Thesis, Tulane University.

"Herodotus and Thucydides Through the Lens of Aristotle" by Ben Zarit for Gregory Crane's "Greek Science" class at Tufts. Studying accounts of the hippopotamus and other topics, Zarit presents how Aristotle drew on Herodotus and Thucydides' strengths.

"Herodotus: Father of History, Father of Lies" by David Pipes for the The Student Historical Journal (Loyola University) 1989-90.

The Historical Narrativity of Herodotus by Nancy Thuleen, on Cyrus — an undergraduate paper

Abstracts

"Dreams and Dreamers in Herodotus" by Laurel Bowman (conference paper, down the page)

"Herodotus and Solon" by Susan O. Shapiro Classical Antiquity, 1996.

"Horribly Similar: Reading the Name of Smerdis in Herodotus" by David Chamberlain. APA 1999 abstract.

"Lay" Readings, Every now and then somebody not in school picks up a copy of Herodotus and is surprised at what they find.

A reading of Herodotus by Richard Seltzer. Seltzer was surprised what he found when he read it as an adult. I wouldn't go with some of what he says, but the effort is right-on.

Web Archive: Anne's book talk .

Other

The Calendar in Herodotus' Time by Bll Hollon, part of a nice set of Calendar histories and resources.

From Herodotus to Hollywood: Myths about ancient Egypt by Carol S. Paton, from Strange Horizons 2000. Popular article with good points about the continuity between ancient and modern misunderstandings of Egypt.