Books for study of Herodotus

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Zaarin
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Books for study of Herodotus

Post by Zaarin »

Hi,

In a short while I'm going to have to do some serious work on bits and pieces of Herodotus for a history course; I was wondering if anyone could reccommend a good edition to work out of. A commentary or two wouldn't go amiss either - I'd particularly be interested in any that have good references to secondary literature and/or other sources, and the kind that don't just say 'X ancient river corresponds to Y modern river', but go on to say '...and here's where you can find the evidence for that.' (if something that detailed has ever been done of course).

Also anything, whether in an edition or a commentary or something separate, that would have an index of proper names (both personal and of groups and places) in Herodotus listing all their occurrences, or at least the major sections where they appear, if such a thing exists.

I have access to some brilliant libraries, so please don't hesitate to quote really obscure/old things.

Edit: forgot to add that anything reasonably concise on the differences between Herodotus' Ionic and Attic would be really useful as well, since Attic is almost the sum total of my Greek experience.

Many thanks,
Zaarin.

GlottalGreekGeek
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Post by GlottalGreekGeek »

Textkit offers "Selections from Herodotus in Greek" which includes a section comparing the Attic and Ionic dialects.

chad
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Post by chad »

hi, get barbour's selections from herodotus, second edition. the only downside is she deletes parts of the text without indicating where (to make the size of the book small enough that you can get through the whole thing -- the greek itself isn't simplified though).

the upsides are, the commentary is v helpful, there's an ionic grammar/syntax which the commentary refers out to frequently, a full vocab in the back from memory, &c.

i haven't done much h though, there might be better commentaries than this out there, i just found this book in a 2nd-hand bookstore.

Hciebel
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Post by Hciebel »

Hello Zaarin,
I would recommend Brill's Companion to Herodotus. I could imagine that Powell's Lexicon to Herodotus might be useful too, though I don't know it myself. If you read German, there is Haiim B. Rosen's Eine Laut- und Formenlehre der herodotischen Sprachform. This is a very thorough investigation of the language of Herodotus.

Mark

Timotheus
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Re: Books for study of Herodotus

Post by Timotheus »

Zaarin wrote:Hi,

In a short while I'm going to have to do some serious work on bits and pieces of Herodotus for a history course; I was wondering if anyone could reccommend a good edition to work out of.
I am currently reading Herodotus book 1 and 2 Loeb's edition. I picked it up from amazon through the Textkit store link. it was $21.50 US dollars and because I got books 3 n 4 I got free shipping.

Also I thought that this syllabus might be of intrest to you, esp. the Bib.

http://www.unca.edu/classics/herodotus%201.htm

best of luck, Tim :)

Timotheus
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Post by Timotheus »

Here's another site that may be benificial.

http://gainsford.tripod.com/lato/gk_h.htm

give it a try and see. :wink:

Zaarin
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Post by Zaarin »

Many thanks everyone, some very useful suggestions there. I've picked up the 1927 OCT from the library (there seems to be a more recent Teubner in some bibliographies, don't know if I should look for that), along with Powell's Lexicon, which is just the sort of thing I needed, so many thanks for that.

I still haven't found a good bit on Hdt's dialect though - everything I've seen just seems to point out features, particularly in phonology, like 'aspirated consonants become unaspirated' or '[size=150]αι[/size] sometimes becomes [size=150]α[/size]', but nothing on the exact circumstances in which these things happen, and most don't seem to be universal. Unfortunately I'm still a day-2 beginner in German so I can't follow up on the Sprachform. Also, quick specific question - it seems that [size=150]μιν[/size] is used as the singular accusative personal pronoun, but so is [size=150]σφε[/size] (the latter also for the plural) - anyone know anything about the difference of usage between the two? Is [size=150]σφε[/size] used in circumstances where Hdt. doesn't want to, or can't, distinguish singular and plural? Does Hdt. ever use [size=150]ἑ[/size] for the 3rd pers. acc?

Another thing that would be great if it existed (sorry for the multipluricity of questions!) is something with details of the origins of the MSS and whatnot so I can make better use of the critical apparatus - there's a bit in the beginning of the OCT, but in Latin, and my Latin is rusty to the point of uselessness.

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