Eventually we get to the stories about the Persian war that are still somewhat cultural background knowledge: the battle of marathon, from which we get the modern marathon race, the battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans knowingly fought to the death to prevent as many Persians as possible from getting through the pass into Greece (rekindled in public consciousness with the 2006 Gerard Butler movie 300), the naval battle at Salamis and the final land battle at Platea (these last two I was much less familiar with, although the word ‘Salamis’ sounded familiar).

This means that he traces the rise of the Persian empire, we get side stories about just about everything that catches his eye- unscrupulous kings, Egyptian customs, family squabbles, etc. Herodotus is interested in the unusual and the interesting, as well as the background that brought the Greeks and Persians to a place of conflict. The Greek author Herodotus is primarily focused on telling the story of the Persian Wars between the Greek city states and the Persian Empire under Xerxes, but I use ‘primarily’ very loosely here. The Histories dates to 426-415 BCE, and is essentially the first history book.

I keep meaning to read it, and even made several attempted starts, but The Histories does not make for easy casual reading.

Here is the long and storied background to how this brick of a book has been in my possession, unread, for 20 years: I picked up The Histories from the sale rack at A&B sound when I was a romantic undergrad student, smitten by Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, in which The Histories plays a supporting role (it is the book that Ralph Fiennes’ character carries with him everywhere and turns into a journal, pasting in paintings that Kirstin Scott Thompson’s character made of the petroglyphs in the Cave of Swimmers).

The book written by herodotus