Scan barcode
trilobiter's review
3.0
At some point, it seems to me that twenty-first century translations ought to be widely available for the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. The language of this volume is nineteenth century English, and as time flows on it only becomes more archaic and unreadable to average twenty first century readers (to say nothing of our descendants in the twenty second). If this history is worth knowing about, it ought to be maximally accessible.
That is only an idle thought, however, from someone with an already fair grasp on archaic diction and some familiarity with the Ancient Greeks and their histories. Though I'd never "read" Herodotus, I was certain I recognized the wording of key passages from their quotation in other books. And while I was not already familiar with every military campaign recorded here, I knew enough about ancient wars in general to get a good picture in my mind.
On the whole, I think it would be better to read each (or some) of these collected authors individually, than to try and distill their "essence" into a book like this. The content is good, but the abridgements leave stories feeling unfinished. The history of the ancient Greeks thus recedes from focus, and the reader mainly has to deal with the personalities of the authors, as filtered through the nineteenth century translators. That is a fascinating subject in its own right, but not really what I was looking for here.
That is only an idle thought, however, from someone with an already fair grasp on archaic diction and some familiarity with the Ancient Greeks and their histories. Though I'd never "read" Herodotus, I was certain I recognized the wording of key passages from their quotation in other books. And while I was not already familiar with every military campaign recorded here, I knew enough about ancient wars in general to get a good picture in my mind.
On the whole, I think it would be better to read each (or some) of these collected authors individually, than to try and distill their "essence" into a book like this. The content is good, but the abridgements leave stories feeling unfinished. The history of the ancient Greeks thus recedes from focus, and the reader mainly has to deal with the personalities of the authors, as filtered through the nineteenth century translators. That is a fascinating subject in its own right, but not really what I was looking for here.
More...