Selincourt herodotus biography

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The World of Herodotus

July 11, 2021

This book was recommended as in introduction to Herodotus’s Histories. I don’t think it fulfills that task as well as the more recent volume by James Romm (Yale University Press, 1998).
What Sélincourt’s treatment offers instead is a tour d’horizon of Greek culture in antiquity. The main interest here is the author’s dissent from consensus opinions about the ancient Greeks, based on his thorough knowledge and love of the literature. The achievement of his Greeks was, in many ways, admirable, but they were not, as some maintain, our betters in all aspects of civilization. Their matter-of-fact cruelty and mendacity, indeed, their overall “self-regarding ethics,” to use Sélincourt’s phrase, mean there is no need to idealize them. Unfortunately, Sélincourt doesn’t trust the reader to remember this insight the first, second, or third time he shares it.
This book was also useful in helping me to realize that we oversimplify when we refer in a gene

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Aubrey de Sélincourt

British writer, academic and translator (1894–1962)

Aubrey de Sélincourt (7 June 1894 – 20 December 1962) was an English writer, classical scholar, and translator. He was also a keen sailor. He had over 24 books credited to his authorship,^[1] but is chiefly remembered for his translations—all for Penguin Classics—of Herodotus'The Histories (1954), Arrian's Life of Alexander the Great (1958), Livy's The Early History of Rome (Books I to V, 1960), and The War with Hannibal (Books XXI to XXX, 1965, posthumous).

Life

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De Sélincourt was the son of the businessman Martin de Sélincourt, owner of the Swan & Edgar store in London. His uncle, Henry Fiennes Speed, was the author of Cruises in Small Yachts and Big Canoes (1883). Aubrey was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and at Rugby School, from where in 1913 he won an open classical scholarship to University College, Oxford.

Following the outbreak of the First World War

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byHerodotus, Aubrey dem Selincourt (Translator)

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the Histories describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to avvisa the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colourful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed dock and gold-digging ants. With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the Histories offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.

About Herodotus

Few facts are known about the life of Herodotus. He was born around 490 BC in Halicarnassus, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor. He seems to have travelled widely throughout the Mediterranean world, including Egypt, Africa, the area around the Black Sea and throughout many Greek city-states, of both the mainland and the