The first volume of Herodotus's Histories, an early work of Western historical writing. It recounts the rise of the Persian Empire and the background to the wars between Greeks and Persians, with digressions on the customs and lands of many peoples. Worth listening for its engaging storytelling and its role as an early example of history as inquiry.
If a new translation of Herodotus does not justify itself, it will hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it was needed may be left here without discussion. The aim of the translator has been above all things faithfulness—faithfulness to the manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to the meaning of the Author. At the same time it is conceived that the freedom and variety of Herodotus is not always best reproduced by such severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of the Epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be
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