Talk:Herodotus

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Contents 1 Wikipedia policy 2 Father of Lies 3 New Archeological Evidence 4 Doubt 5 Herodotus "Father of Lies" 6 Major Renovation 7 Sahara sandstorm 8 Cultural depictions of Herodotus 9 citations

[edit] Wikipedia policy

It is Wikipedia policy that things be under their MOST COMMON name. Please move "Herodotos" back to "Herodotus" where it was and where by Wikipedia policy it is supposed to be. In the article itself, he should also be called "Herodotus" as that is the way he is generally refered to in English (this IS the ENGLISH Wikipedia). But, by all means, include in the article all the data about the word "Herodotos" and how it relates to this guy. Thanks. 4.250.168.94 18:52, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. Care to list it on WP:RM? dab (ᛏ) 19:43, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Done, although the talk page is still at Herodotos...this one will have to be deleted, but I wanted to let you know first. Adam Bishop 19:53, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Herodotos is just an alternative transliteration of the Greek which is more faithful than the Latinized Herodotus. In anglophone scholarship, he appears about a 1/3 of the time as Herodotos. ajc--Ajcee7 09:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Father of Lies

Oh yes, he was the Baba Gee of lies, maybe something in their can be written on the extent of lies he told about the persians, one which can be fully proven to be false is the number of the Persian army under xerxes... who traveled into Greece.... he said with confidence that that number was more than 1.7 million which is a lie, an article in iranchamber.com (podium section) gathers this information and cites modern historians claiming it to be around 100,000 (these are only the conservative ones) others believe the number to be 40,000 .... this is proven by analysing the capacity of the ships xerxes sent to Greece, and accounts about how long it took the army to march over the bridge they built.

this shoudl be included as it is seen in history as one of the biggest fabrication created thanks to herodotus's extreme bias!

Dude, the sheer amount of misspellings and poor grammer (as well as your terrible writing style) don't exactly help your cause. Out of curiousity, why are you so pissed off at a guy who was dead roughly 2300 years before you were born? Sure Herodotus had some false information, but what leads you to believe that INCREASING the size of the invading force is evidence of bias. Leaving aside the fact that you seem to pick and choose ancient accounts to believe, how is a miscount tantamount to delibrite fabrication? There are plenty of arguments to be made against Herodotus, this one sucks ass.

You spelt "grammar" wrong, lol.

Herodotus has always mentioned Persia as a group of evil, crazy, lunatics. He has said that they were cruel beings that enslaved much of the world. And that the Greeks were great people who's way of democracy was the perfect form of government. Now, here's a question, why did Herodotus choose to live in Persia rather than Greece? A possible answer defending him - he sacrificed his life trying live in an evil nation to write about them and tell the rest of the world and the people of the future about the cruelty of Persia. Well then why didn't Persia enslave him, sentence him to death, or even imprison him?

Anyone noticed that in the article, it said that Herodotus "actually criticized Aristotle and other poets who wrote about the past for distorting it"? Isn't Aristotle after Herodotus' time?

[edit] New Archeological Evidence

Herodotus has been called the "Father of Lies" as the article states, but new archeological evidence has proven that at least some of what Herodotus wrote that was doubtful is actually true. Two examples that come immediately to mind are the recent discoveries of Scythian burial sites which parallel Herodotus' descriptions and a dedication by Sostratus, a wealthy Greek who is mentioned in "The Histories". It seems to me that this recent reassessment of Herodotus should be mentioned [I'm not sure if it's up to the original writer but thought it should be noted].

I've removed this sentence (which predates the above comments) "Recent archaeology has begun to prove his Histories were largely accurate." I don't know what discoveries this refers to to, but it seems inappropriate to anticipate the results of archaelogical research by saying that it has begun to prove something as yet unproved. The concept of "largely accurate" is also highly ambiguous. No one has ever thought that the Histories were completly made up (Sostratus, for example, is mentioned by other writers). Paul B 16:04, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Somebody at IP: 160.39.147.17 vandalized the page and it needs to be reverted.

[edit] Doubt

I have and doubt: Who whas the Herodotus book that talk about the existence of lions in Greece and Balkans in your time??

   Are you saying you doubt that there were lions in Greece and the Balkans, or you doubt that Herodotus mentions them? --Dcsmith 02:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

there were lions in the ancient meditteranian until they were over hunted by the romans among others because they were popular for the colloseum.Several historians say this including Philip Matzyk (pico)

[edit] Herodotus "Father of Lies"

I just think overall this section needs more source citation, either pro or con. The only source listed is one that validates a Herodotus claim. I'm sure there is more out there. Agne27 20:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major Renovation

This article in no way reflects the state of scholarship on Herodotus at the moment. The following I feel should be rectified:

• It takes an overly sceptical view of his work which is now generally discounted as misconceiving the aims and nature of his work. Detlev Fehling's rabidly anti-herodotean stance claiming that he is a 'liar' has been roundly shown to fundamentally miss the point and import modern ideas about historiography, culture and society into a context in which they inevitably make no sense (the locus classicus contra Fehling is Nino Luraghi's article "local knowledge in herodotus", but see also Flory, Thomas, Gould, Griffiths etc).

• The two main developments in herodotean studies, oral tradition and sophistic influence, are nowhere mentioned. For oral tradition, Rosalind Thomas' "Orality and Literacy in Ancient Greece" is best, along with the articles in which she addresses her findings to the problem of Herodotus. With regard to sophistic influence, again Thomas' "Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion" is key, along with the insights of R.L.Myres, though Thomas' book being so new (relatively speaking - 2000), the full implications have not cohered themselves into several more works in this area quite yet.

• This leads in to the wider question of Herodotus as an 'historian'. His intellectual interests were far wider than this and history, rather than a profession as it is today, was a new genre which he created in order to cohere his other interests (incidentally, the fact that he is creating a genre instantly puts pay to Fehling's claim that he is lie and fabricating, since this would presuppose a genre to parody which, a priori, is impossible).

• It should be noted that the majority of authobiographical material about Herodotus is apocryphal, created either in the ancient tradition to fit with the characteristics of his work, or by modern scholars to help massage evidence from Herodotus to fit their theories (this is now less the case, but was typical of those who would 'correct' Herodotus, e.g. Cawkwell, Burn, de Ste Croix, How & Wells, Grote etc.)

• A discussion of the relative merits of different translations would be helpful - there is certainly an alarming disparity in quality between the various texts, with some cutting out sections deemed 'improper' altogether (e.g. blind scythian slaves shoving pipes up the vaginas of female horses to milk them).

• In the last few years, a trend has emerged in the scholarship which increasingly argues for the ubiquity of events contemporary to Herodotus being reflected in his historical interpretation of the past. Crucially, this brings Herodotus far closer in method to Thucydides in his method, since, though in different ways, they thus both become historians of their own time. Certainly, the indirect and direct approaches to contemporary histroy which their styles encapsulate can be said to be two sides of the same coin. The importance of a genos, polis or ethne's history was of immediate political significance in diplomatic disputes, social interaction and the creation and manipulation of identity. Thus, Herodotus' work is not antiquarian, but in many respects rather daring in coming to fairly frank and uncomfortable conclusions about important families (the Alcmeonids most notably), poleis (Sparta, Athens and Corinth primarily) and ethnai (in particular the Ionians).

• Considering how major this all is, I have removed the recommendation for this article to be put on Wikipedia CD since it is in such a state it may as well be a stub.

ajc --Ajcee7 09:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sahara sandstorm

The History Channel recently aired a program called The Sahara (9/23/06). They said Herodotus reported a Saharan sandstorm that killed 40,000 people, though modern historians do not believe it. Do you know where that might be found in his writings? (I tried to navigate The History Channel's website to ask this questions but without success.)

[edit] Cultural depictions of Herodotus

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 17:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] citations

people keep asking for citations for passages in the book! you wouldnt do that in harry potter would you