The most recommended Herodotus books

Barry Cunliffe has time and again proved himself to gracefully weave serious scholarship with compelling reflection. As he does with his other books, he builds conclusions and raises questions based on the most recent archaeological evidence. The Scythians are greatly misunderstood, their legacy shaded by the often-disparaging views of their contemporaries. Barry Cunliffe’s archeological approach helps the Scythians speak through the things they left behind.

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.

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, was Galen’s hero. This study by the leading expert in ancient Greek medicine sets his life and ideas in the wider context of life in the Aegean world of the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

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. 

This book is important, authoritative, and compelling because it demonstrates that a conservative historian can be comfortable with revisionist history. Kagan, a Yale historian noted as a leading academic traditionalist, terms Thucydides “the first revisionist historian” not because he was like today’s leftists but because he took issue with his pioneering predecessor, Herodotus. In his great history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides threw down the gauntlet over which was the “best” and “right” way to do history. He thought its subjects should be politics, warfare, the relation between states, and—a surprise?—men. His views held the field for centuries. The Framers of the Constitution were its legatees. So were we until the late 20th century, when social and cultural subjects gained attention. This wonderful book shows why.

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.

The volume (the publication of a Cambridge lecture series) addresses one of the key themes of modern culture: the nature of identity. The question ‘what is a Greek?’ is not as straightforward as it seems, given that the Greek world was very diverse, and the book explores this by examining Greek culture as a series of polarities: Greek vs barbarian; free vs slave, citizen vs non-citizen; male vs female and gods vs humans. It traces how these polarities illuminate how the Greeks thought about themselves, and how we think about them.

Although aimed squarely at a student readership, it is an approachable introduction to the nature of Greek culture and reflection on questions of identity, difference, and belonging which are at the forefront of contemporary political and cultural debate.

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.

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 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.