Book contents
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Ethnography to History
- Chapter 2 ‘Romantic Poet-Sage of History’
- Chapter 3 Herodotus as Anti-classical Toolbox
- Chapter 4 George Grote and the ‘Open-hearted Herodotus’
- Chapter 5 Imagining Empire through Herodotus
- Chapter 6 Two Victorian Egypts of Herodotus
- Chapter 7 Of Europe
- Chapter 8 From Scythian Ethnography to Aryan Christianity
- Chapter 9 Herodotus and the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War
- Chapter 10 Herodotus’s Travels in Britain and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages of Herodotus Cited
- General Index
Chapter 10 - Herodotus’s Travels in Britain and Beyond
Prose Composition and Pseudo-Ethnography1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2020
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Conventions and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 From Ethnography to History
- Chapter 2 ‘Romantic Poet-Sage of History’
- Chapter 3 Herodotus as Anti-classical Toolbox
- Chapter 4 George Grote and the ‘Open-hearted Herodotus’
- Chapter 5 Imagining Empire through Herodotus
- Chapter 6 Two Victorian Egypts of Herodotus
- Chapter 7 Of Europe
- Chapter 8 From Scythian Ethnography to Aryan Christianity
- Chapter 9 Herodotus and the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War
- Chapter 10 Herodotus’s Travels in Britain and Beyond
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages of Herodotus Cited
- General Index
Summary
How far the Father of History travelled in his researches – whether he indeed went to Egypt, Syria or the Black Sea – has been one of the most heated questions in Herodotean scholarship. Herodotus’s Histories show only the slightest knowledge of the Tin Islands, or indeed they show no knowledge at all except of the name. The quotation which opened this chapter, however, is one of a number of Herodotean fragments that purport to describe his travels beyond the Mediterranean. These texts, the longest of which runs to thirty-eight pages of printed Greek, see the historian travelling to all corners of Britain, to Ireland, to Iceland, to India, the sources of the Nile and even to the New World. If some of these destinations render the reader suspicious, (s)he may be more so on learning that Herodotus’s travels appear to take in events and people that the historical author would have been hard pressed to see: that in Mexico he describes the Aztecs, that in India he witnesses the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 and that in Britain he pays particular attention to Oxford and Cambridge, London Zoo, and Eton College.
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- Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century , pp. 244 - 273Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020