Hi Hadi,

I am not yet that familiar w/ Herodotus but think Josephus pretty good, taking into account who he had to whitewash and who later had control of the manuscripts.

Persian empire from end of Babylonian (Belshazaar by handwriting on the wall till fall of Darius II to Alexander the great) lasted much shorter then conventional and even Josephus dating.

'Purim in the Persian empire' by Y. Landy is a nice book for the layperson, but accurate. He misses a couple of points.

For the timeline see or legacy of Sinai or 'the recent complex creation' . In the next edition more on how to reconcile the shorter timeline, ie who is ..

the 'kovei Itim' in Persia the scroll of Esther were exiles from the 10 tribes, tribe of ... we still use the persian names for our lunar months.

best,

pearlman cta

12 kislev, 5773

perhaps of interest,

under Assyrian empire, Sanherib would often relocate populations to reduce nationalistic impulse to restore self rule if left in old homelands.

so some of Persian scientific knowledge from some of these displaced nations,

for example Kings Solomon and Phoenician king Hiram learned from each other, see tunnels tours at aish.com for evidence of great engineering feat of Temple 1 Temple mount. king Solomon also had good gear tech based on what we know of his throne. The Holy Temple also had water pumping tech.

The example of the calendar / celestial knowledge by tribe (Naftali if i recall) displaced by Sanherib, goes way back to Abraham, perhaps pre Abraham

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon

Dealing since 30 years with the work of Herodotus I cannot say right/wrong to any text. There are some principles:

1. Herodotus was a Ionian Greek with detailed knowledge of the region around Samos, living a long time at Athens in her heyday. He was writing for the Athenian society which won the Persian wars (at least in their understanding). You have to take into account, that Barbarians are a new word in that time and that Athenian democracy is the ultimate culture.

2. The histories of Herodotus are the explanation why Greece won against the other world under Persian leadership. Thus he wanted to describe the other world and its historical genesis. The more distant from Greece and outside of the Achaemenid Empire the region is the less important is any 'truth' and hear-say became important.

3. Herodotus living in the 5th century has to rely on traditions of former events and on information of indigenes. A very curious example is the logos of Egypt. Tradition may be annalistic, but even official texts are erroneous. Fables and mythologems added, a cloud of curious tales are transmitted by Herodotus. Adding the interpretatio Graeca of Herodotus (things he didn't understand), the histories are a compendium of history and tales.

Herodotus was so brilliant that he formed tales from all his recordings and remained a bestseller since his times. Unfortunately for us historians it takes a hard work to cut out the history from them. Because in most cases we have no controlling source we have to interpret by ourselves what could be meant, what's underlying and what's a topos.

Thus one has to ask about a detailed part of Herodotus' histories to get a definite answer (or more).

kind regards

Guenter

During the 18th c, Herodotus was considered as a liar, but concerning Voltaire, he rejected many ritual practices described by Herodotus that were not considered as plausible at the time, because too alien to Voltaire's own values.

Philologists (I have late Jacquline de Romilly in mind) tend to oppose Herodotus and Thucydides, the latter being considered as more modern in his methods than the former, although both put to the fore autopsis and although Thucydides avows he makes his historical characters speak in a plausible way only according to what they should be saying in a given situation. The translation by Romilly of Thucydides is telling and her notes reveal very clearly her modernist interpretation of Thucydides

@Caterina, I do not know about Herodotus yet, but about Greeks and general, it is well known that they had strong nationalism feeling and they believed in their cultural and scientific premier. They looked other nations from upper position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus

Caterina,

you had my agreement till your last sentence 'before him there was only myth and legend. ' as with him there is still plenty of myth and legend, and before him there were certainly some credible factual histories that are fully consistent with the valid, factual evidence and dating, such as the 5 books of Moses, books of Judges, Samuel, Kings 1&2, Divrei Hayamim 1 and 2,.. basically all of TaNaCH, what you might know as the old testament.

see legacy of Sinai by Z Fendel, for the accurate unbroken timeline, as even the date given for Herodotus and the duration of the Persian empire .. is not accurate.

Apion likely drew on prior Greek accounts,

Apion was fable, here say , not sure how much if any truth.

see against (contra) apion 1 & 2 by Josephus

western dating Persian empire overstates by 155 years, should be only 52 years from end of BelShazar AKA night of handwriting on the wall via the hands of Darius and Cyrus the great, Persian /Meade alliance, till Alexander the defeats Darius II.

Dear friends

Although I am working on history of medicine and I am not historian; but I think I should to notice some points about Herodotus to clearify dioscusion.

I believe that Herodotus was a Extreme Patriot and wrote his history to show Greeks power in contrast of other nations, specially Persians. Unfortunatly he Geskended many ethical rules and changed the historical facts many times to reach this aim. On the hand, although his history is not trustable every time, but It is one the most important sources to find history of Achaemenid empire. But we need to use his history with caution and exclude truth amnog the stories.

@Arman: I will be so pleased if you mention some specific cases that Herodotus was '' Extreme Patriot and wrote his history to show Greeks power in contrast of other nations'' Thanks,

dear hadi

only as an example, he wrote an strange story about persian attack toGreece. He wrote Persians had about 2.5 milion soldiers against only afew Greek defenders. Also his stories about this war are refuesed by current investigations. He wanted to show Greecians were heroes against barbarians iwm his stories

Hi Arman, I guess you are not persuaded by the 'proof' of how portrayed in a hollywood movie. :)

Hi Roger

I suggest you to read the book of "Xerxes' invasion of Greece" by Charles Hignett fro Oxford University to find some historical challenges in the Herodotus stories. Also, please read the book of Herodotus to find some interesting subjects to use in hollywood movies :).

Thank you Arman, hope to get a chance, just saw nova proram's on sphinx and old kingdom boat/ship building.. researched a bit and conclusion is as in riddle of the exodus, children of Israel bondage till the end of the old kingdom.

a neigbor/friend from Persia/Iran did not like at all depictions of fiction/ action movie 300, Jews were an important part of Persian/Mede empire.

Chanukah recalls when just 7000 Jews defeated the Syrian/Greek military machine of far more then 7k, and far better armed then the '300' and their allies.

How much of Herodotus is credible, is too big a question to attempt to answer here.

I would, however, suggest that it is naive to approach the ancient Greeks as some kind of unified nation. They were not. They were a collection of independent, and largely insular, city states located both in Greece as we now know it, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, along the west of Turkey, and on Crete, Rhodes in particular.

The term "barbaroi" was used for people who did not speak Greek, including the Egyptians, for whom I believe Herodotus had some regard. But to the ancient Greeks, even other Greeks from a different city were foreigners. They were called "Xenoi", from which we get the modern word xenophobia. And the cultures of the Greek city states were very different. Compare, for example, Athens and Sparta.

Macedonians, by the way, were not held by many other Greeks to be Greek, even though the Macedonians spoke Greek. Though that changed after the reigns of Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(Greek) give a reasonable overview.

If you want to get a better picture of Ancient Persia, a good place to start is A T Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire, even if it is a bit old now.

The Persians were an imperialistic culture, the size of whose empire waxed and waned dramatically with each successive leader. There armies could be very large, but the units were drawn from all over the Persian empire, which probably caused frequent command communication problems, since the units and their commanders would have spoken many different languages.

The Persian army also often included Greek units, either as mercenaries, or contingents from the Greek satrapies of the Western Persian empire.

I don't agree with your interpretation of the word "barbarian"& "superior/inferior nations. As it is explained by (some) historians in modern Greek schools the Persians (and other non-Greeks as well) could not pronounce Greek names and words. For example to say the name "Parmenion" they would start "bar.." "bar..", but would be unable to say the whole name. Hence the name barbarian, it did not mean somebody inferior at all.

Words have their meaning twisted going from one language to another. Same happened to people from Lesbos, the international community has turned them into lesbians…..

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