Justin Marozzi on Herodotus

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Justin Marozzi on Herodotus

28 Oct 2010

Speakers: Justin Marozzi

Justin Marozzi leads us in the footsteps of Herodotus, the father of history and its first explorer ‘in a number of senses of the word’. His travels through Ancient Asia Minor were extensive and, if his accounts are to be believed, punctuated with extraordinary encounters: he writes of dog-headed, mountain-dwelling men, of gold-digging ants in India, and of the fabulous flying snakes of Arabia. With his interest in the peoples he encountered, he was ‘a multiculturalist before the term existed,’ driven by irrepressible curiosity, which in Marozzi’s view, is ‘the hallmark of a great explorer.’

His achievements were astounding, and his preoccupation with Egypt – to which one third of The Histories is devoted, despite its pretension of being a book about the Persian Wars – is made clear when Marozzi highlights that, back in the 5th century BC, the pyramids were as old to Herodotus as he is to us. Herodotus is praised as the first great explorer: like all great writers, he remains relevant long after his death, with many a timeless line to his name, including Marozzi’s closing statement: ‘Often enough, God gives man a glimpse of happiness - then utterly ruins him.’