# The Histories Tags: #literature ## Metadata * Author: [Herodotus, Paul Cartledge, and Tom Holland](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B00G3L1900 * ISBN: 0670024899 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G3L1900 * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900) ## Highlights The premium that Herodotus set on providing sources for his material is so taken for granted now by historians that it is possible not to recognize just how revolutionary it originally was. — location: [141](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=141) ^ref-26442 We always take stuff like this for granted. What ws once innovative becomes commonplce but we would do best to fill pur lives with whtever inspires childlike wonder --- Anyone who has ever used the internet to check up on a fact stands in a line of descent from him. — location: [173](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=173) ^ref-24237 Stand on shoulders of giants - everything is interrelated --- The internet, with its seemingly infinite web of hyperlinks, has provided a whole new metaphor for Herodotus’ discursive style of relaying information. When he refers to the capture of Nineveh by the Medes as ‘an episode I will recount in a later chapter’ (1.106), and then never does so, the frustration for the reader is akin to that of clicking on a broken link. Similarly, the experience of never quite knowing where Herodotus’ narrative may lead – to a laugh-out-loud story of a drunk man dancing on a table, perhaps, or to the chilling account of a eunuch’s revenge on the man who had him castrated as a child – will be something thoroughly familiar to all who have ever surfed the web. — location: [176](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=176) ^ref-51136 --- His ambition, as he declared in the opening sentence of the first work of history ever written, was to ensure that ‘human achievement may be spared the ravages of time’. — location: [185](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=185) ^ref-29210 --- Herodotus, from Halicarnassus,1 here displays his enquiries,2 that human achievement may be spared the ravages of time, — location: [612](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=612) ^ref-33268 --- The longer the span of someone’s existence, the more certain he is to see and suffer much that he would rather have been spared. — location: [880](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=880) ^ref-45088 --- No matter what, you must always look to the end, look to how it will turn out: for the heavens will often grant men a glimpse of happiness, only to snatch it away so that not a trace of it remains.’ — location: [900](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=900) ^ref-51694 --- And now it happened that the single foreigner among them – yes, Croesus’ guest, the same man who had been cleansed by him of the stain of blood, the one known as Adrastus – took aim at the boar with his spear, missed, and hit Croesus’ son. Struck by the spearhead, Atys fell to the ground – and the calamity foretold in the dream was fulfilled. — location: [966](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00G3L1900&location=966) ^ref-15670 Always find these stories of prophetic dreams coming to fruition in spite of (or perhaps because of) ppls desperate actions to prevent them ---