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spacestationtrustfund 's review for:
The Histories
by Herodotus
I love how all the primary sources we have for this period of history were written by some guys who just made shit up. Herodotus? Father of lies. Livy? Openly biased. Polybius? A taste for the embellished. Historians as a whole should go back to just bullshitting things within living memory. It's so amusing. Incredibly frustrating from an historiographic perspective, yes. Very funny, also yes.
Robin Waterfield's translation of Herodotus is excellent. Complete with appreciable notes and copious commentary by Carolyn Dewald, the translation is very faithful to the meaning of the original Ancient Greek, although sacrificing some of the syntax (as is to be expected). One complaint many have had is the way Waterfield includes more sentence/paragraph breaks than in the original (Herodotus was a rather prolix orator), often turning a single long elaborate sentence into a handful of shorter ones, but, without the strict syntax of the original Greek, this is probably the best option for studying the text.
Comparatively, Waterfield's translation is more technically accurate than most other translations, including the Landmark Herodotus (which I'd recommend for the supplementary material it contains, primarily essays and a large serving of maps; the footnotes are lacking, but the translation is relatively readable, despite many linguistic inaccuracies) and [b:Pamela Mensch's translation|25323053|Histories|Herodotus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428523322l/25323053._SY75_.jpg|488198] (which is more accurate than the Landmark, and very literal; the translation itself is quite dull, but the notes, which are clearly geared towards high school-level students, are frequent). Enoch Powell's translation is painstakingly literal, but the furthest thing from readable, adopting an affectatious archaic idiolect (of the "thou art" variety); similarly, the [b:Loeb|26790827|Herodotus I, Books I-II (Loeb Classical Library)|Herodotus|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|9720139] edition, translated by A.D. Godley, is essentially useless unless you're comparing it against the original Greek, in which case it's fine.
Robin Waterfield's translation of Herodotus is excellent. Complete with appreciable notes and copious commentary by Carolyn Dewald, the translation is very faithful to the meaning of the original Ancient Greek, although sacrificing some of the syntax (as is to be expected). One complaint many have had is the way Waterfield includes more sentence/paragraph breaks than in the original (Herodotus was a rather prolix orator), often turning a single long elaborate sentence into a handful of shorter ones, but, without the strict syntax of the original Greek, this is probably the best option for studying the text.
Comparatively, Waterfield's translation is more technically accurate than most other translations, including the Landmark Herodotus (which I'd recommend for the supplementary material it contains, primarily essays and a large serving of maps; the footnotes are lacking, but the translation is relatively readable, despite many linguistic inaccuracies) and [b:Pamela Mensch's translation|25323053|Histories|Herodotus|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1428523322l/25323053._SY75_.jpg|488198] (which is more accurate than the Landmark, and very literal; the translation itself is quite dull, but the notes, which are clearly geared towards high school-level students, are frequent). Enoch Powell's translation is painstakingly literal, but the furthest thing from readable, adopting an affectatious archaic idiolect (of the "thou art" variety); similarly, the [b:Loeb|26790827|Herodotus I, Books I-II (Loeb Classical Library)|Herodotus|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|9720139] edition, translated by A.D. Godley, is essentially useless unless you're comparing it against the original Greek, in which case it's fine.