David Grene, one of the best known translators of
the Greek classics, splendidly captures the peculiar
quality of Herodotus, the father of history. Here is
the historian, investigating and judging what he has
seen, heard, and read, and seeking out the true causes
and consequences of the great deeds of the past. In his
"History," the war between the Greeks and Persians, the
origins of their enmity, and all the more general
features of the civilizations of the world of his day
are seen as a unity and expressed as the vision of one
man who as a child lived through the last of the great
acts in this universal drama. In Grene's remarkable
translation and commentary, we see the historian as a
storyteller, combining through his own narration the
skeletal "historical" facts and the imaginative reality
toward which his story reaches. Herodotus emerges in all
his charm and complexity as a writer and the first
historian in the Western tradition, perhaps unique in
the way he has seen the interrelation of fact and
fantasy. "Reading Herodotus in English has never
been so much fun. . . . Herodotus crowds his fresco-like
pages with all shades of humanity. Whether Herodotus's
view is 'tragic, ' mythical, or merely common sense, it
provided him with a moral salt with which the diversity
of mankind could be savored. And savor it we do in David
Grene's translation."--Thomas D'Evelyn, "Christian
Science Monitor" "Grene's work is a monument to what
translation intends, and to what it is hungry to
accomplish. . . . Herodotus gives more sheer pleasure
than almost any other writer."--Peter Levi, "New York
Times Book Review "
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