Is Herodotus Your Homeboy?

[EndOfOrdinary]

The boy wants to do ancients again next year. This year we did the classic epics (Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Beowulf) and the Classical myths. Next year he wants to focus more on history, so Herodotus it is. Ds wants to retread The Histories in the original Greek while in high school, so it isn't like he will never see these works again. He is just a bit hardcore about his Classics.

 

Currently our ancients course looks like such:

The Great Courses - The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World

The Great Courses - History of the Ancient a World: A Global Perspective

The Great Courses - Herodotus: The Father of History

 

We will of course read The Histories over the course of the year.

 

I was hoping to pull in news and scholarly reporting of the archeology which has happened crediting Herodotus' writings or disproving it. Ds loved researching and puzzling over the Homeric Question this year, so I thought this might be fun.

 

Anyone else done fun or awesome things with Herodotus? Anything great I should know about? Anything rather questionable in The Histories which I might want to steer clear of, censor for the time being, or be prepared to explain?

[IsabelC]

I know hardly anything about Herodotus, but just popped in because the thread title was seriously kewl :D

[Miss Tick]

I had to check out a thread with that title.

 

I can't offer much, except that I listened to an Ln Our Times podcast from the BBC recently about Strabo which mentioned Herodotus in passing, and I wonder if they would have anything for you.

[serendipitous journey]

It's been forever since I read Herodotus.  But, RE things to be concerned about, as a rule of thumb I always think a child who has been reading the Old Testament will be okay with the classical civilization epics & histories. 

 

You've probably seen this, or something like it, but in case not: this wiki page gives a run-down of the topics of the books.   Book 1 kicks of with the rapes of Io, Euripides and Medea; remember though that until pretty recently rape meant abduction (women were usually abducted for one particular purpose, however, which is probably how the word evolved into its contemporary meaning) and again, nothing new to an Old Testament reader.  The same book apparently has Harpagus tricked into eating his son.  To my quickly scanning eye those seemed the most possibly-disturbing of the topics ... 

 

-- great thread title! 

[azucena]

Here is an article you might enjoy by Daniel Mendelsohn, who is simultaneously erudite and hip: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/04/28/080428crbo_books_mendelsohn.  

[SarahW]

I was hoping to pull in news and scholarly reporting of the archeology which has happened crediting Herodotus' writings or disproving it. Ds loved researching and puzzling over the Homeric Question this year, so I thought this might be fun.

 

 

It has occurred to me that a really neat book would be something that had Herodotus on one page, and then a running commentary on the facing page. But I haven't found it yet... I've seen something like that for Eusebius, but no one else. 

 

But the Landmark Herodotus looks like a neat all-in-one resource. With some planning the essays could be applied to their appropriate place in Herodotus.

[chiguirre]

If Herodotus doesn't take all year, I'd add on Thucydides, Plutarch and Livy. There's a good TC class on Roman history to use as a guide too.