On Herodotus' Histories

Selected Bibliography and Links 

1. Histories - Herodotus . Translation by George Rawlinson (1858-60).

2. The Peloponnesian War - Thucydides. Translation by Richard Crawley (1874). Thucydides offers a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of human character and Greek politics than Herodotus.

3. Greek Lives - Plutarch. Translation by Robin Waterfield (1998). A must read. 

4. The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer. Translation by Robert Fagles (1996). Best modern translation.

5.  The Norton Book of Classical Literature - Bernard Knox, Editor (1993). Good sampling of the best stuff.

6.  The Greeks and Greek Civilization - Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97). Translated by Shiela Stern (1998). A celebrity historian (Swiss), regarded by many as the father of cultural history. Arguably the best modern study on the Greeks.

7. Greece and the Hellenistic World - Boardman, Griffin, Murray (Editors, Oxford University). Lots of Facts.

8. The Classical Greeks - Michael Grant. Ancient Greece via short essays on major personalities.

9. The World of Odysseus - Moses Finley (1912-86). Excellent for a background on the culture of early Greeks.

10. Aspects of Antiquity - Moses Finley. Informative, scholarly essays on diverse topics and personalities.

11. The Ancient Greeks - Moses Finley. Good summary of the stated subject matter, not an introductory book.

12. 7 Famous Greek Plays - Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill Jr, Editors. Includes plays by Aeschylus (Agamemnon and Prometheus Bound), Sophocles (Oedipus The King and Antigone), Euripides (Medea and Alcestis) and Aristophanes (The Frogs).

13. The Legacy of Greece - A New Appraisal, Edited by Moses Finley. Diverse topics treated in depth by modern scholars of Greek antiquity.

14. East is East and West is West - Or Are They? National Stereotypes in Herodotus.

15. Herodotus' conception of foreign languages.