Mapping an ancient historian in a digital age: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Image Archive (HESTIA)

HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) employs the latest digital technology to develop an innovative methodology to the study of spatial data in Herodotus' Histories. Using a digital text of Herodotus, freely available from the Perseus on-line library, to capture all the place-names mentioned in the narrative, we construct a database to house that information and represent it in a series of mapping applications, such as GIS, GoogleEarth and GoogleMap Timeline. As a collaboration of academics from the disciplines of Classics, Geography, and Archaeological Computing, HESTIA has the twin aim of investigating the ways geography is represented in the Histories and of bringing Herodotus' world into people's homes

Herodotus Use Of Prospective Sentences And The Story Of Rhampsinitus And The Thief In The Histories

The Histories of Herodotus is analyzed in terms of performance rather than as a text to be read. Herodotus\u27 discourse appears composed of different types of sentences or groups of sentences, which can be classified in terms of their different performative roles and force

Who Are Herodotus\u27 Persians?

In analyzing how Herodotus\u27 descriptions of foreign societies reflect Greek assumptions and prejudices, we have sometimes failed to recognize the extent to which he reports persuasive and historically valid information. This is particularly true of the Persians for whom Herodotus appears to have had access to very good sources, especially perhaps among Medes and Persians living in Asia Minor. This paper argues that Herodotus\u27 representation of Persian character and customs and his understanding of the relationship between the king and his subjects is based on genuine native traditions that reflect an internal debate within Persian elites in the aftermath of their war against Greece

The Herodotus Paradox

The Babylonian bridal auction, described by Herodotus, is regarded as one of the earliest uses of an auction in history. Yet, to our knowledge, the literature lacks a formal equilibrium analysis of this auction. We provide such an analysis for the two-player case with complete and incomplete information, and in so doing identify what we call the “Herodotus Paradox.”

The Herodotus Paradox

The Babylonian bridal auction, described by Herodotus, is regarded as one of the earliest uses of an auction in history. Yet, to our knowledge, the literature lacks a formal equilibrium analysis of this auction. We provide such an analysis for the two-player case with complete and incomplete information, and in so doing identify what we call the “Herodotus Paradox.”

Extracting, investigating and representing geographical concepts in Herodotus: the case of the Black Sea

In a short break from his preparations for the invasion of Scythia, Darius stops off where the Bosporus was bridged and sails to the Dark Rocks, apparently retracing the steps of the Argonauts.1 ‘There’, Herodotus reports, ‘he sat on the headland and viewed the Pontus, a wonderful sight’ (έζόμενος δέ έπί ρίω έθηεĩτο τόν Πόντον έόντα άξιοθέητον 4. 85. 1).2 In this paper, we aim to bring that wonderful sight to life using the latest digital technology, and to set out some of the ways in which the world that Herodotus describes can now be represented. At the same time, however, we will be concerned to show the potential of digital technologies for opening up new lines of enquiry, in particular the investigation of the ‘deep’ topological structures that underpin the Histories. After all, the Persian king is not the only figure to take an interest in the Pontus as a geographical concept: the historian too shows an interest in the Black Sea by extensively mapping the region and its place in the world, both before and after this episode (4. 37-45; 4. 99-101). The way that Herodotus articulates this space himself, which frames, and to a certain extent pre-empts, Darius’ invasion of Scythia, will be the concern of this paper

Modesty and Manliness: Gendered Truth-Telling in Herodotus

In the Histories, Herodotus fashions himself as the first historian as he chronicles the saga of the Persian Wars. Although he tries to base his narrative solely on fact, Herodotus must dip into the realm of oral tradition, folklore and myth in order fill the gaps of recorded history. In doing this, Herodotus takes on the roles of both author and historian. As a result, the work as a whole can be read as a historical document and a piece of literature. In order to gain the most from the narrative, it is imperative that one read the piece as both a historiography and literary work, and simultaneously and view Herodotus as an author of literature and a historian. What this means is that Herodotus the author uses his own beliefs and cultural biases to manipulate the characters in order to recount history accurately. Women especially are subject to these machinations. Unsurprisingly then, many of the female characters depicted by Herodotus act irrationally and unreasonably, just as the Greek cultural biases say they should. The mythological women who begin the Histories; Candaules’ nameless wife; Atossa; and Artemisia all adhere to the strict norms of femininity, and as a result, Herodotus can use the illogicality inherent to their femaleness to instigate seemingly unexplainable historical events. In contrast, Herodotus’ use of Greek male characters, in particular Aristagoras, allows the author to create an extension of himself. These parallel narrations allow Herodotus to assert his own authority as a narrator in order to strengthen the integrity of the work as a whole

GRK 26: Herodotus and Thucydides

Syllabus and bibliography for an advanced Greek seminar taught at Dartmouth in Winter 201

Writing space, living space: time, agency and place relations in Herodotus’s Histories

This chapter examines lived space in Herodotus’s Histories’ and explores how the picture that emerges differs from abstract depictions of space. Such overly schematic representations we see articulated by the Persians at the very beginning of the Histories, or explicitly challenged by Herodotus when he ‘laughs at’ the maps produced by his Ionian contemporaries that similarly divide the world into two regions of equal size (4.36.2), or more subtly undercut when Aristagoras turns up with just such a map and puts it to service an argument in favour of conquest. In particular, we want to challenge conventional readings of a polarised world of East versus West, which, while grounded in Herodotus’s concern to show how ‘Greeks and barbarians came into conflict with each other’ (1.1), fail to take into account either Herodotus’s implicit rejection of the Persian model of an Asia-Europe divide in favour of an inquiry that recognises that places change over time, or the extent to which Herodotus or his historical agents relate those places to each other. Using key features of lived space—time, agency and relation—, we sketch out the beginnings of a network analysis of book 5, backed up by a close textual study of the book’s opening episode. Both methods help to unpack the idea of the Histories’ lived space that underpins and greatly complicates the historical agents’ own understanding of the world around them