Herodotus Book 1

Greek
1

I just finished Book 1 of the Histories. I was surprised by the size of the vocabulary. It seems to me that Herodotus uses a fair amount of synonyms. It would not be surprising if he avoided using the same words in close proximity in the text, but generally it seems that synonyms occur fairly far apart. (Unfortunately I didn’t record examples while I was reading.)

I’m wondering if the synonyms are due to the wide variety of sources that Herodotus uses – that is to say that he preserves the words that his sources use. Otherwise are there nuances in the meaning of seeming synonyms that I’m not picked up on?

I’m going to read Book 5 now. I figure I might as well take advantage of the familiarity I have now with Ionic. I’m also curious to see how more recent events are recorded versus the somewhat mythic past of Book 1.

Mark

2

Hi Mark,

Congratulations on finishing book 1! It’s an interesting idea, Herodotus taking over the vocabulary of his sources, but to my mind Herodotus’ language is consistently all his own. It’s far from uniform in style, but it tends to be distinctively Herodotean, or so it seems to me. And I’m really not sure about synonyms. Are they truly synonymous, I wonder? Offer some examples?

Michael