History Vol. I Herodotus

Publisher: Fundació Bernat Metge (2000)
Language: Catalan/Greek
Softcover : 170 pages
ISBN : 84-7225-757-6 (Volume I) Paperback
ISBN : 84-7225-765-7 (Complete Works)
ISBN : 84-72250016
Dimensions : 23 x 14,5 cm
Weight: 600gr
Condition: new

Considered the father of historiography by Cicero in De legibus: pater historiae, Herodotus was the first to compose a reasoned and chronologically structured account, which proposed a history that went beyond the previous narrow limits. As stated in the foreword, this work is an investigation of the causes and development of the Medical Wars (which pitted Greeks against Persians in the 5th century BC) from the distant to the near past, focusing on what is human and singular. In short, the historian gathers information from all the known world of his time and presents it in prose with digressions of all kinds. “This is the exposition of the results of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnass, done so that in time the memory of the great and admirable deeds carried out both by the Greeks and the barbarians may not be lost, but even more so that the causes that induced them to make war may be known”. With these words begins the first book of Herodotus’ History. The singular translation of the title of his work, History, contrary to the use of some who put it in the plural, responds to the criteria of the translator and curator of the text, the introduction and the notes, Manuel Balasch. According to Balasch, Herodotus’ work constitutes a block that is difficult to divide, a unity conceived as such at the beginning of the author’s work, and Herodotus himself begins his work using the word in the singular.