Herodotus' History

The History: Thalia, the Internet Classics Archive ^ | 440 B.C. | Herodotus, tr by George Rawlinson

[SunkenCiv]

There is a great river in Arabia, called the Corys, which empties itself into the Erythraean sea. The Arabian king, they say, made a pipe of the skins of oxen and other beasts, reaching from this river all the way to the desert, and so brought the water to certain cisterns which he had dug in the desert to receive it. It is a twelve days' journey from the river to this desert tract. And the water, they say, was brought through three different pipes to three separate places.

[SunkenCiv]

The rivers of Sinai are long gone, filling with water only after the rare downpour. Petra isn't near rivers, and the closest ones empty into the Dead Sea or into the Mediterranean. Herodotus' Erythraean sea is the Indian Ocean (including the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and gulfs of Aqaba and Suez).

Rivers in Arabia are likewise dry until the rare seasonal downpour. My best guess remains that the Corys was found in the deep south of Arabia, at or near Marib, but it's possible that it existed somewhere else along the western coast, provided it wasn't a conflation of several stories. It seems more likely that Herodotus had heard of the story of the Arabian king who diverted water but never got the chance to see it for himself, whereas the more plausible story was supplied, and Herodotus had heard about or seen the Sinai watering stations for himself.

[SunkenCiv]

found an online photo of the Marib dam, will include in next post.

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[SunkenCiv]

I should point out that the Herodotus files on that website used to be complete (I grabbed them when they were) but are now truncated, and no one seems to care.

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[SunkenCiv]

Sorry, I gave a slightly incorrect link in the initial post. Not that the text quoted actually appeared in the truncated file...

One of the reasons I like Herodotus is that he includes so much stuff that modern writers would ditch, or portray as some quaint story. The actual source of the Nile flood was known in Herodotus' time due to travel, commerce, and word of mouth. Herodotus preserves the three then-current explanations for the out-of-season flooding the Nile, listing the real reason as the least likely of the three, then offers a whopper of his own making. He also preserves the information that it was common knowledge in his own time that the Indian Ocean the Atlantic were essentially one body of water.

The Histories
by Herodotus
Book II -- Euterpe
tr by George Rawlinson

I was particularly anxious to learn from them why the Nile, at the commencement of the summer solstice, begins to rise, and continues to increase for a hundred days -- and why, as soon as that number is past, it forthwith retires and contracts its stream, continuing low during the whole of the winter until the summer solstice comes round again... Some of the Greeks, however, wishing to get a reputation for cleverness, have offered explanations of the phenomena of the river, for which they have accounted in three different ways... One pretends that the Etesian winds cause the rise of the river by preventing the Nile-water from running off into the sea... The second opinion is even more unscientific... that the Nile acts so strangely, because it flows from the ocean, and that the ocean flows all round the earth. The third explanation, which is very much more plausible than either of the others, is positively the furthest from the truth... that the inundation of the Nile is caused by the melting of snows. Now, as the Nile flows out of Libya, through Ethiopia, into Egypt, how is it possible that it can be formed of melted snow, running, as it does, from the hottest regions of the world into cooler countries? ...I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summer time. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the country to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that there the streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most.

[SunkenCiv]

Hecataeus of Miletus
by Jona Lendering

About half a century after his death, in c.490, another researcher, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, wrote in his Histories that Hecataeus had understood the size and power of the Persian empire, and had advised his compatriots not to rebel against king Darius I the Great. They did not listen. The Ionian revolt, as the insurrection of the Greek towns in the Persian empire is called, was initially successful, but eventually, the rebels were defeated. Miletus was destroyed in 494, and rebuilt on another site. A late tradition, retold by Diodorus of Sicily, says that Hecataeus conducted the negotiations between the Milesians and the new satrap, Artaphernes, and obtained a favorable treatment. It may be true... Hecataeus was one of the first scholars to skeptically research the ancient tales. Moreover, he was the first to investigate the depths of history. Hecateaus may not have been a real historian like Herodotus, but he was certainly a great mind.

The website is a great preliminary source, sort of an online encyclopedia written by Lendering.

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent.

[SunkenCiv]

The Persian Wars
By: Professor Livio C. Stecchini
Saturday, January 01, 2005
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/persian_wars6.php

"Herodotos reports that the fleet consisted of 1207 triremes and 3000 lesser fighting ships and supply ships (VII 89, 184). The figure of 1207 triremes is itemized by specifying the number of ships contributed by the several subjects and allies of the Persian Empire (VIII 89-95). Nobody has succeeded in proving that any of these partial figures is questionable; the contributions made by the Greek subjects of Persia corresponds to what we know to have been their naval strength in other episodes of Greek history. Herodotos' figures are confirmed by several other sources. The historian Diodoros (XI 3) states that the triremes were 1200 at the time of the muster at Doriskos; the orator Lysias (II 27) mentions an initial force of 1200 triremes, whereas the orator Isokrates mentions 1300 triremes at the beginning of the campaign (VII 49) and 1200 on the eve of the battle of Salamis (IV 93); Plato (Laws, III 699 B) speaking in general terms refers to 'one thousand ships and more.' In order to find a trace of disagreement it is necessary to refer to the narrative of the historian Ktesias, as summarized by the Byzantine writers of the ninth century, Photios; in this text the figure of the triremes is given as 1000, but the text contains such an accumulation of obviously wrong information that either Ktesias or Photios must be dismissed as totally unreliable."

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Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

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[SteveH]

https://www.archaeology.org/news/6748-180626-egypt-secretary-birdBird

bird Images May Offer Clue to “Land of Punt”

Archaeology today

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Steven.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1566605/posts
http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2493367/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2866878/posts?page=12#12
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2866878/posts?page=39#39

[SunkenCiv]

History of Herodotus — Someone beat me by a few years:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/987210/posts

I restarted it later:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3360426/posts