Herodotus: The Father of History

By: Elizabeth Vandiver, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Elizabeth Vandiver

Witness the "works and wonders" of the ancient world through the eyes of its first great historian in this sparkling series of 24 lectures from a much-honored teacher and classical scholar.

Herodotus (c. 484-420 B.C.E.) was a Greek who was born in what is now the modern Turkish resort town of Bodrum and who died, so tradition says, in the south of Italy. In between, his tirelessly inquiring mind took him from one corner of the known world to another. And he reported on or visited all of its continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa) to write about the vast array of subjects that captured his interest. These included the "great works" of the ancient land of Egypt; the remarkable kings who built the vast Persian Empire; and the strange customs and unlikely origins of the Scythians, a warlike, mounted people who lived beyond the Danube and whose repulse of Darius and the Persians in 513 B.C.E. made them the first Europeans to throw back an eastern invasion.

The book that emerged from these "inquiries" - The Histories - is Herodotus's only known work, yet it still made Herodotus one of the rare, landmark figures in the story of thought. In these lectures, Professor Vandiver introduces you to Herodotus and The Histories, tracing the influences he assimilated and the new methods he used in crafting this monumental work. You learn how that work looked at the past in new and fresh ways, seeing it not as a distant recess shrouded in legend and rumor, but as something that lies close at hand; as something that immediately affects the here and now, and as a subject whose great personalities and patterns of events can be studied in order to make the reasons behind them as clear as possible.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2002 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2002 The Great Courses

Will Listen to This Again

Adding perspective and context to The Histories of Herodotus about the Greek and Persian wars, this series of lectures is a wonderful companion to reading (or listening to) Herodotus. In twenty-four half hour sessions, Professor Elizabeth Vandiver puts Herodotus’ great work into the context of other writers and movements of the time, provides background on Athenian and Spartan customs and cultures, and discusses the text, including one lecture spent analyzing the first sentence. While life is short, and there are many books and topics to explore, I enjoyed these lectures so much that I expect I'll be listening to them again.

Captivating

Her Entire series is excellent
i love the non apologetic attitude
and the critical examinations

Filled a gap in my histories

I hadn’t learned a lot about Herodotus compared to his contemporaries so it was nice to see how the ‘father’ of history might be portrayed and what work he gave to us about the Persian Wars.

Fantastic

This was the fourth course of this professor that I've listened to and this was absolutely fantastic and I think my second favorite behind the Iliad. I was sad this course ended.

a great course

i saved this one as my last of the available courses on greek history and mythology because Elizabeth Vandiver has been my fav Great Courses instructor so far. now that i am out of her courses i will have to find a copy of her book "Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction of Myth and History"

Thoroughly enjoyable for Seniors

I'm not a scholar, just a senior who enjoys learning. I rarely enjoy a female voice, but Ms Vandiver has a wonderful presence She is now a top favorite of mine. As for the material, I felt like I was there. I learned so much, never having been exposed to this bit of history. Thank you, Great Courses

Incredibly informative

I absolutely loved this lecture, I’ve been wanting to find something that could explain The Histories and give me a concise sense of what was going on at the time it was written. This was exactly what I needed.

Really Loved It

I thought this was completely informative and enjoyable. It does what courses like this do best by taking a topic you know a little bit about and just expanding it. At first, I was skeptical about the Professor but I was wrong. She was knowledgeable and easy to follow. But she also seemed to just genuinely enjoy the topic and have a lot of affection for Herodotus (as odd as that sounds by the end I did too), which really makes you get into it.

The Histories really were an amazing achievement from a person who seemed to be maybe naive maybe intentionally deceptive but, regardless, endlessly curious and inquisitive about just everything. Not just the wars but culture, religion, science. And the Professor conveys that along with conveying facts.

It obviously seems like a narrow and niche topic to pick up. But I really think it is worth it. It really covers a lot about the history of history and of the time. The Professor talks about how Herodotus influences others (even as they were disdainful of him) but I think that has never been more relevant. She doesn't get into it but at this point there is an "oral history" on every topic imaginable floating around. Some are considered classics (Please Kill Me, Live From New York and most of Studs Terkel). And some aren't. But the idea of learning about a topic and a place in time by just talking to a bunch of people and relating what they say word for word even if one contradicts the other has definitely come back into vogue in a very big way. That approach has a lot of flaws when it comes to relating facts and dates (so traditional history is of course important) but it often captures the mood, the feelings, the idea of a place (the real truth) in a way relating the facts can't. And, in that sense, Herodotus has truly never been more relevant.

A superb survey of our literary past

After listening to several of Professor Vandiver's lectures, I felt compelled to finally commit to paper (so to speak) exactly how excellent of a lecturer she is, and how superlative this particular series of lectures is.

Professor Vandiver provides enough of a context to understand the era within which this particular author, Herodotus, lived and wrote, and never imposes modern, anachronistic views onto the peoples of the past. She is thorough, articulate, presents all sides of scholarly arguments, and then states her own opinion in a clear, well-organized, well-spoken manner. She also provides enough tidbits, or factoids, of deeper data - like translations of specific words - that hint at exactly how deep she could go, and how knowledgeable she truly is. And yet, the lectures themselves remain accessible to anyone of any educational level. This is all done in an approachable, friendly way, without any of the ego and smugness often (and sadly so) associated the high halls of academia, particularly the Classics. Frankly put, Professor Vandiver's work is beyond reproach.

As I was listened to these lectures, I myself felt inspired by the work of Herodotus, a person who blended myth with fact, storytelling with historiography, into a truly sui generis work that most definitely went on to inspire everything from "Gulliver's Travels" to "The English Patient." Even if folks don't realize it, it's Herodotus who we're citing when thinking of the Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans holding off against Xerxes (other Greeks were there, too, as you'll learn). It's him who we have to thank for inspiring explorers of Egypt, for descriptions of nomadic Scythian bands, and for igniting the imagination in many, many other ways. I knew these things already before starting this course, and have still left the course with a tremendous, much-expanded appreciation of Herodotus, regardless of any of the lingering controversies regarding the verifiability of his work.

By all means, listen to these lectures, and any of Professor's Vandiver's other selections. It's simply impossible to spend your time in a worse way, and leave the course any other way other than fully, completely enriched.

If you are a fan of Herodotus, you will LOVE THIS!

I learned certain facts about Herodotus that would be difficult to have found out elsewhere.