The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus

The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus - Being Parts of the History of Herodotus, Edited for Boys and Girls

Imagine yourself in the city of Athens near the close of the year 446 B.C. The proud city, after many years of supremacy over the whole of Central Greece, has passed her zenith, and is surely on the decline. She has never recovered from the blow received at Coronea. The year has been one of gloom and foreboding. The coming spring will bring the end of the five years' truce; and an invasion from the Peloponnesus is imminent. But, as the centre of learning, refinement, and the arts, the lustre of her fame is yet undimmed, and men of education throughout the world deem their lives incomplete until they have sought and reached this intellectual Mecca. During this year a stranger from Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, after many years of travel in Asia, Scythia, Libya, Egypt, and Magna Grcia, has taken up his abode at Athens. He is still a young man, hardly thirty-seven, yet his fame is that of the first and greatest of historians. Dramatists and poets immortal there have been, but never man has written such exquisite prose. Twenty centuries and more shall wear away, and his history will be read in a hundred different tongues, as well as in the beautiful and simple Greek that he wrote. His name will grow into a household word; the school-boy will revel in his delightful tales, and wise men will call him the Father of History! For weeks the people of Athens have listened entranced to the public reading of his great work, and now the Assembly has passed a decree tendering to him the city's thanks, together with a most substantial gift in recognition of his talentsa purse of money equal to twelve thousand American dollars. {iv} Such is the account which Eusebius gives, and others to whom we may fairly accord belief; and it adds no slight tinge of romance to the picture to discover among the listening throng the figure of the boy Thucydides, moved to tears by the recital, who then and there received the impulse that made of him also a great student and writer of history. Herodotus, noticing how intensely his reading had affected the youth, turned to Olorus, the father of Thucydides, who was standing near, and said: "Olorus, thy son's soul yearns after knowledge." Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus, 484 B.C., and died at Thurium in Italy, about the year 425. As in the case of Plutarch, our knowledge of his personal history is very meagre, aside from the little we glean from his own writings. His parents, Lyxes and Rho, appear to have been of high rank and consideration in Halicarnassus, and possessed of ample means; and his acquaintance both at home and in Athens was of the best. A lover of poetry and a poet by nature, the whole plan of his work, the tone and character of his thoughts, and a multitude of words and expressions, show him to have been perfectly familiar with the Homeric writings. There is scarcely an author previous to his time with whose works he does not appear to have been thoroughly acquainted. Hecatus, to be sure, was almost the only writer of prose who had attained any distinction, for prose composition was practically in its infancy; but from him and from several others, too obscure even to be named, he freely quotes, while the poets, Hesiod, Olen, Musus, Archilochus, the authors of the "Cypria" and the "Epigoni," Alcus, Sappho, Solon, sop, Aristeas, Simonides of Ceos, Phrynichus, schylus, and Pindar, are referred to, or quoted, in such a way as to show an intimate acquaintance with their works. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55758
Author: Herodotus, 480? BCE-420? BCE
Release Date: Oct 16, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: White, John S. (John Stuart), 1847-1922