Hē tou Hērodotou Halikarnasseōs Historia
by Herodotus
Herodotus was the first Greek historian, and perhaps the first true historian (who committed history to writing) in the world. Born in Halicarnassus (an Ancient Greek city in present-day Turkey on the Aegean Sea), Herodotus wrote during the third quarter of the fifth century BCE. He, and Thucydides following him shortly after, embraced the systematic approach of true historia, meaning inquiry, observation and research of events and people. Though his methods were still in the early, untested stages which would be greatly improved upon by more modern historians, Herodotus began a crucial intellectual endeavor for which Ancient Greece became known. [1]
Now considered one of the foundational books of history, Herodotus’s Histories, or The History, was originally criticized and discounted by his peers. His anthropological approach to history was much less desired than more strictly political works. Analyzing the importance of culture in key historical events, Herodotus’s work fell to the wayside behind the “sharper but narrower political historiography of [his contemporary] Thucydides.” [2]
| Hē tou Hērodotou Halikarnasseōs Historia = Herodoti Halicarnassensis Historia | |
 Title page from Hē tou Hērodotou Halikarnasseōs Historia = Herodoti Halicarnassensis Historia, volume one, George Wythe Collection, Wolf Law Library, College of William & Mary. | |
| Author | Herodotus |
| Published | Glasgaue: In aedibus academicis, Excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis |
| Date | 1761 |
| Language | Greek |
| Volumes | 2 volume set |
Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library
Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as Herodotus. 8.v. 12mo. Foulis and given by Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes. A nine-volume set produced by the Foulis Press in 1761 most closely fits Jefferson's notation.[3] Both Brown's Bibliography[4] and George Wythe's Library[5] on LibraryThing include this edition as the one intended by Jefferson. A copy of the Foulis 1761 edition at the Library of Congress includes a "marginal note on p. 129 of volume 1" which Sowerby attributes to Wythe.[6] The set is nine volumes rather than the eight listed by Jefferson and it has no markings of Eppes' ownership. Perhaps Jefferson re-acquired Wythe's copy after Eppes' death in 1823? If so, did the missing volume reappear, or are two volumes within the set bound together?
Description of the Wolf Law Library's copy
Bound in contemporary full polished calf with gilt spine decorated in compartments. Contains red title labels with volume number below and gilt roll on board edges. Purchased from A&F.McIlreavy.Buderim Rare Books.
External Links
View this book in William & Mary's online catalog.
References
- ↑ G.E.M. De Ste. Croix, “Herodotus,” Greece & Rome, Second Series 24, no. 2 (Oct. 1977): 130-1.
- ↑ Carl E. Schorske “History and the Study of Culture,” New Literary History 21, no. 2 (Winter 1990): 409.
- ↑ Philip Gaskell, A Bibliography of The Foulis Press, 2nd ed. (Winchester, Hampshire, England : St Paul's Bibliographies, 1986), 241.
- ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433
- ↑ LibraryThing, s. v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on November 18, 2013, http://www.librarything.com/profile/GeorgeWythe
- ↑ E. Millicent Sowerby, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 1:7-8 [no.13].
