The most recommended Herodotus books

This is a good-humoured look at the serious business of taxation. For thousands of years governments, whether democracies, monarchies, or empires, have imposed taxes on all kinds of things, including salt, windows, tea, and beards. 

In this book the authors share all kinds of stories about taxes, partly for entertainment and partly to illustrate the challenges inherent in collecting taxes that modern governments have to grapple with.

Historical thought, like everything else, has a history. But contrary to what you may think, such history doesn’t have to be dull, especially when told by a masterly writer who was also among the world’s most knowledgeable experts on the subject. So don’t think that this overview of what historians have written about the past since ancient Greece will be hard going. It isn’t. Sometimes it’s even fun. In fact, I know of no more enjoyable introductory guide to history’s history or a better place to start your journey within it than this book. Burrow canters through the major developments in historical writing and practices in the West over 2,500 years. His pages are peopled by pagan, Christian, Marxist, feminist, and many other kinds of thinkers and scholars. They’re a treat.

The Persian empire’s size and diversity impose special challenges for modern study. The major sources are written in a wide variety of ancient languages, including Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and many texts were initially studied in specialist publications with limited accessibility outside a small circle of scholars. Kuhrt’s sourcebook did a tremendous service to scholars and students alike by gathering reliable translations of a wide range of written evidence from the Persian empire, replete with supporting notes and bibliography for further reading. It includes substantial selections from Greek historians of Persia, including Herodotus, Xenophon, and the Alexander biographers, but ensures that readers are able to contextualize these texts alongside internal materials reflecting the full diversity of Persian empire and society. 

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.

For fantasy, adventure, and humanity, I find no book like Homer’s Odyssey. Some prefer the Iliad, but for me, the Odyssey has greater depth, resonance, and experience of life. Most of us know about Odysseus’ wonderful adventures, but the whole second half of the epic is about his attempts to get home and, once home, to reintegrate himself into his family and society, from which he has been absent for twenty years.

I love the way the epic relates stories but also makes you think about what stories mean, why people tell them, and how to tell false ones from true. There are many fine translations of the Odyssey, including Emily Wilson’s recent one; my favorite, however, though a bit dated, remains that of Lattimore.

This is a lesser-known gem of a novel that has all the hallmarks of excellence in historical fiction. Roseanna White does a brilliant job of weaving solid historical research into a captivating story. This is based on the book of Esther, but is also a compelling story of Xerxes, the Persian king that was her captor and husband. Richly drawn historical detail, page-turning action, and a cast of fascinating characters will keep you reading late into the night. 

For anyone wanting to find out not just what happened in the Graeco-Persian Wars (490–479 BC) but how their participants viewed the world, Herodotus’ Histories are a treasure trove. Writing a generation after the event, Herodotus travelled widely, interviewing as many people as he could from veterans to Egyptian priests. But readers must be wary: Herodotus wasn’t writing history as we understand it. Instead, he blended fact, anecdote, and moralizing to demonstrate why in his view the Greek way of life (especially Athenian democracy) was superior to Persian totalitarianism, and why Persian hubris merited divine punishment. While the Landmark edition’s translation of Herodotus’ seductive prose may not be the best (Tom Holland’s, for example, is better), the number and clarity of its maps make it invaluable.

Sarah B. Pomeroy’s book on women in antiquity was a landmark study when it was first published some fifty-odd years ago in 1975.

It remains important both for its discussion but also because of its place in the history of the study of women in the ancient world. Pomeroy works from literary and archaeological evidence to explore the lives of Greek and Roman women from the Bronze Age to women of the early Roman empire, with a particular focus on classical Athens and Rome.

It is erudite and readable, and, despite its age, deserves a place on any ancient history buff’s bookshelf. It was the first book on the subject that I bought when I was an undergraduate student and has been a great foundation for further study.

For those of us who have chosen to make our career in history, Herodotus is the "father" of our chosen profession. His seminal work, The Persian War, is as much or more about Persia as it is about his fellow Greeks. To be sure, much of this book is slow-going as Herodotus has a lot of "X the son of Y the son of Z" and so on, as well as a bewildering amount of archaic place names, and names of peoples and tribes. However, this book is history at its very best, examining the motivations behind key decisions, and going out of its way to provide multiple perspectives on events.

Herodotus discusses sources and emphasizes where these sources are contradictory. But on the important matters, he doesn't equivocate. He gives full credit to the Athenians for being the one city-state that never wavered, and for playing the most… show more.

Although I had become interested in Roman history at a very early age, this was the first full ancient text that, at about fourteen years old, I read about the Roman emperors. I was immediately taken by Tacitus’ serious tone and the immediacy of his narrative.

His near-contemporary account of (at least part of) the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero sounded, for all that it was written almost two thousand years before, very modern. After reading it, I bought as many of the (purple) Latin and (brown) Greek Penguin translations of classical literature–history, poetry, and drama–as were available.