Travels with dead historian more fun than you’d expect

DOUG CHILDERS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Published: January 4, 2009

NONFICTION

He may have died nearly 2,500 years ago, but the Greek historian Herodotus is enjoying a renaissance these days.

In the past 20 years, he has popped up in everything from Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" to Ryszard Kapuscinski's posthumously published "Travels with Herodotus." And the battle of Thermopylae, vividly presented in Herodotus' "Histories," provided the plot for Frank Miller's graphic novel, "300."

Now, the man considered to be the world's first historian (and the author of the first great travel book) traipses around the Mediterranean region again in Justin Marozzi's "The Way of Herodotus: Travels with the Man Who Invented History."

Historians disagree about the extent of Herodotus' travels, but Marozzi, a journalist and travel writer, accepts Herodotus' claims and bases his own travel itinerary on them.

After visiting the historian's hometown of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum) in Turkey, he follows Herodotus' purported footsteps through Iraq, Egypt and Greece in a book that blends travel and popular-history writing.

As he travels, Marozzi keeps one eye on the present and the other on the past as described by Herodotus.

Not surprisingly, Herodotus' accounts often prove more eye-popping.

"It is difficult not to be amazed by the range of fact (and sometimes fiction) Herodotus records in Egypt," Marozzi writes. "Sometimes it's the sober voice of an encyclopedia, at others it's Lonely Planet on acid."

Herodotus' knack for entertaining his readers has proved to be both a boon and a bane to the historian's place in history, Marozzi writes.

Attacked for stories that read like tall tales -- among them, accounts of "dog-headed men that live in the mountains, the gold-digging ants of India . . . and the fabulous flying snakes of Arabia" -- Herodotus fell out of favor among historians interested in dry, carefully documented facts.

For them, Marozzi writes, Herodotus is "all sex and no evidence."

Some of the blame lies in Herodotus' sources. He often relied on local priests for his accounts, and their stories were colorful but frequently lacking in verifiability.

"Priests were to Herodotus as Google is to the early-twenty-first-century information-seeker: a valuable and ubiquitous source of information, not all of it accurate," Marozzi writes.

Take heart, Herodotus buffs: The rise of social history has lifted Herodotus and his intoxicating tales back into favor.

"Outside the world of academe, storytelling is prized again, literary talent is admired and thrilling historical narratives are eagerly consumed by record numbers," Marozzi writes.

In other words, bring on the lurid sex and violence. Who says history has to be boring and irrelevant to our own world?

In "Travels with Herodotus," Kapuscinski drew parallels between the ancient world's heavy-handed autocrats and the Communist dictators who ruled behind the Iron Curtain.

In "The Way of Herodotus," Marozzi finds lessons for Western leaders. In launching the present war in Iraq, he writes, President George W. Bush failed to heed Herodotus' advocacy for peace over war. And in the midst of a global war on terror, Marozzi suggests that it would be wise to heed the Greek historian's lessons on religious and cultural tolerance.

The parallels Marozzi uncovers are occasionally broad, but "The Way of Herodotus" is an enjoyable, highly readable book, and its digressive, loose structure and high entertainment quotient make it a pleasant descendant of Herodotus' writings.
Doug Childers is a Richmond writer and edits WAG, a literary Web site at http://www.thewag.net.