Fans pick 100 books like The Landmark Herodotus

Thucydides, along with Herodotus a generation earlier, created history as we know it. Herodotus added to narrative the analysis of cause: ‘why’ as well as ‘what’. Thucydides added different levels of causation: the immediate reasons for the war and the long-term causes. He studied how the dynamics of fear and power drive states into warfare. He took the gods out of history (it is hard to remember how radical that was). He studied the corruption of moral language and behaviour under the pressure of conflict. In Pericles’ Funeral Speech he set out the theory of Athenian democracy (Pericles would have denied that our own society was democratic—a challenging thought). Thucydides’ eye is not exactly cold, but it is unblinking: no historian seems so free of illusion.

Fifth-century BC Athenian society was male-dominated, so most of our evidence comes from – and is about – men. Elegantly written, immaculately researched, and pleasingly illustrated, Aphrodite’s Tortoise goes a long way towards restoring the gender balance, uncovering the complex role that women played in Greek society, whether as wives, priestesses or slaves. At the heart of the book is the use of the veil, which not only protected women from the male gaze as they ventured outside (hence the title) but could convey a variety of visual signals depending on how it was worn. It’s a really stimulating book, the kind that makes you sit up and think about not just the ancient world but our own.

Of the over 1,000 independent city-states that made up the Hellenic world -- and competed in the Olympic Games -- Sparta is today the most notorious and influential (after Athens). This book provides a wonderful insight into its extraordinary culture, where Spartan males were brought up in a strict, even ruthless regime of military training, discipline, and self-sacrifice for the communal good -- but where women were given unexpected freedom and power.

Much of Classical Greece remains intangible, but some of its artworks have survived (albeit often in fragments) allowing us to gaze upon what ancient Greeks once saw. Among the greatest sculptures are those which adorned the Parthenon, created in Athens’ heyday under Pericles. Few knew more about them than the late and much-missed Ian Jenkins, whose sumptuously illustrated book not only discusses the artworks but reproduces many in such glorious detail that you feel you could almost touch them. You can certainly appreciate their energy. And in the end, for me, it’s this energy – preserved through time in art or literature – that makes the study of Classical Greece so exciting. As Sparta was for Athens, so Classical Greece can be for us a mirror in which to reevaluate ourselves. 

I first encountered Herodotus—the “Father of History”—when studying Ancient Greek for the UK A-level exams. I read the Greek text laboriously, with help from Aubrey de Selincourt’s translation. My teacher and fellow students could hardly believe that I didn’t find Book Two, which covers the customs of the Egyptians, boring. They were also surprised that I wasn’t contemptuous of Herodotus’s willingness to record what he was told without judgment.

The myth Herodotus created—of a Western world devoted to the rule of law and the freedom of individuals under that law, in opposition to a “despotic” East—has echoed down the years. It has also been accompanied by a skeptical, even cynical, approach to any claims of miracles or almost divine insight. However, what I learned from Herodotus was that the Greeks were conscious of other, older, and sometimes more impressive “barbarian” cultures all around them. I thought… show more.

Herodotus is a joy to read. In his Enquiries into the heroic struggle of Greece against the mighty Persian Empire, he wanted to preserve the memory of wondrous deeds. And he does it brilliantly. Along the way we discover how to catch a crocodile in Egypt, visit the walls of Babylon, and travel with the fearsome, gender-fluid, Scythian warriors. As the massed Persian armies with their arrogant and manipulative commanders bear down on the divided state of Greece, we are taken to battlefield of Marathon, witness the tenacious heroism of the 300 Spartans, and fight on the sea at the great Greek victory at Salamis. This epic conflict between the forces and ideals of East and West is rendered beautifully in Tom Holland’s fluent translation, which nimbly walks the line between accuracy and accessibility.

If one wanted to understand the study of the galaxy, they might start with Galileo. Something similar could be said about starting with the historian Herodotus to understand ancient peoples (and the study of them). Was he serious about his craft? Yes. Was he a product of his time? Yes. Should you take everything he writes as fact? Absolutely not. So why read Herodotus? Because he was the first person (as far as I know) to study the Scythians for the purpose of scholarship. Moreover, his work contains many of the stories that scholars since his time have tried to prove, disprove, or reinterpret. In short, if you want to join a conversation, it can be helpful to know how it began.

Paul Cartledge is one of the best Greek historians alive today. Though profoundly knowledgeable about Greece and its history, he writes in a way that non-specialists can follow and appreciate.

I particularly like this book because, through a series of antitheses (Greek/barbarian, free/enslaved, male/female, myth/history), Cartledge gives the reader a splendid picture of the intellectual background against which Herodotus was writing his history.

I also like that, by comparing several contemporary authors with Herodotus, Cartledge can show (explicitly or implicitly) what is distinctive about Herodotus and his worldview.

Thucydides is generally seen to be a kind of historian; one of the two inventors of history in fifth-century BCE Greece (together with Herodotus) and, according to many of his modern admirers, someone who had anticipated the modern idea of history as critical and scientific. On the other hand, he never thought of himself as a historian, and many aspects of his work do not fit at all with our expectations. Emily Greenwood does an excellent job of exploring these issues from different perspectives: considering Thucydides in his original context and his relationship to different contemporary traditions of making sense of the world, and thinking about his relevance to the writing of history today.

There are many books about Herodotus, but John Gould’s book remains the best introduction even after thirty years. It appeared in the series Historians on Historians, and Gould approaches history with an eye for what is distinct and unique in Herodotus’s work.

There are excellent chapters on how Herodotus narrates his history, his views on religion and causation, and many other important aspects of the work. I like that, in contrast to earlier treatments of Herodotus (which often had a condescending attitude), Gould is sympathetic to what Herodotus was trying to accomplish, though, at the same time, he maintains a critical distance towards the author and his work.