Reviews for The History of Ceylon from the Earliest Period to the Present Time: With an Appendix, Contai...

The average rating for The History of Ceylon from the Earliest Period to the Present Time: With an Appendix, Contai... based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-18 00:00:00 Matt Blanchard What I learned from this book (in no particular order): 1. Ancient Greeks are quarrelsome and love to waste each other’s city-states for the pettiest reasons. 2. From all forms of government known to man, democracy is the best. Tyrants and oligarchs suck. 3. The Persian Empire is a mighty barbarian nation, but being cowardly, effeminate and slavish, it is eventually defeated by the quarrelsome but brave and civilized Greeks. 4. Among the Greeks, the Spartans are the bravest. Gerard Butler with a six-pack King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans heroically perished in the battle of Thermopylae. They also have the particularly icky custom of marrying their own nieces. 5. The Delphic oracles are 100% accurate, except when someone manages to corrupt the Pythoness. The Gods are, however, a jealous sort and would strike any mortal who has the presumption of calling himself happiest on earth. Therefore, one should call no man happy until he is dead. 6. Egypt is a country of wonders, but its citizens’ customs and manners are exactly the reverse of the common practice of mankind elsewhere. For example, the women there urinate standing up, while the men sitting down. The country also abounds in strange fauna, among them the hippopotamus --- a quadruped, cloven-footed animal, with the mane and tail of a horse, huge tusks and a voice like a horse’s neigh. 7. The Scythians are a warlike nation that practices human sacrifice. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man that he kills in battle and cuts off all of his enemies’ heads, which he must show to the king to get his share of the war booty. They also like to saw off their enemies’ skulls, which they make into fancy gold-plated drinking cups. 8. The manners of the Androphagi, being cannibals, are more savage than those of any other race. Darius the Persian smote them. 9. The Atarantians, alone of all known nations, are destitute of names. The title of Atarantians is borne by the whole race in common, but the men have no particular names of their own. They also like to curse the sun because he burns and wastes both their country and themselves. 10. In the Indian desert live ants that are larger than a fox. They like to throw up sand-heaps as they burrow, which are full of gold. This is why India is so rich in gold. In Arabia, there are sheep that have long tails, so long that the shepherds have to make little trucks for their tails. Really. BUT SERIOUSLY, Herodotus is a consummate storyteller who had a fine eye for the fantastical, although to his credit, he always qualified his more improbable assertions by stating that they are based on hearsay or other sources that he could not wholly verify. Much of the pleasure of reading his book is found in the lush descriptions of long lost nations and their exotic customs. His 'Histories' does not concern itself solely with history in the modern sense, but it is also a book of travelogue, ethnography, zoology, geography and botany. He is an excellent raconteur, almost always entertaining, except when he drones about speculative geography. We can easily imagine him, a man of seemingly inexhaustible curiosity, interviewing Marathon veterans for firsthand battle accounts, or interrogating Egyptian temple priests about their country’s history and religion. History for him is not a dry recitation of facts and dates, but an intensely human story acted by a vast cast of monarchs, queens, warriors, tyrants, gods and ordinary citizens. Regicides and rebellions are caused by personal passions, such as in the stories of Caudales and Gyges, and Xerxes and Masistes. Dreams compel Xerxes to invade Greece. Divine intervention decides the course of epic battles. A skein of tragedy runs through the historical drama that he narrates. The gods are so capricious and jealous that “one should not call a man happy until he is dead.” Xerxes, on beholding his massive force on the Hellespont, laments that “not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.” Yet while man lives his short existence he is capable of epic deeds, and Herodotus chronicled them all.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-11-11 00:00:00 Matt Frankforter Ἰστορίαι = The Histories, Herodotus The Histories of Herodotus is the founding work of history in Western literature. Written in 440 BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Western Asia, Northern Africa and Greece at that time. Although not a fully impartial record, it remains one of the West's most important sources regarding these affairs. Moreover, it established the genre and study of history in the Western world. The Histories also stands as one of the first accounts of the rise of the Persian Empire, as well as the events and causes of the Greco-Persian Wars between the Achaemenid Empire and the Greek city-states in the 5th century BC. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه آگوست سال 1972میلادی عنوان: تاریخ هرودوت؛ نویسنده: هرودوت؛ ترجمه به انگلیسی: جرج راولین سن؛ تنظیم: ا.ج اوانس؛ مترجم: غلامعلی وحید مازندرانی؛ تهران، علمی، 1324، در 24ص و 211ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، بنگاه ترجمه و نشر، 1360، در هشت ص و 300ص؛ موضوع تاریخ هخامنشیان - جنگهای ایران و یونان - از سده ششم پیش از میلاد تا سده چهارم پیش از میلادی عنوان: تواریخ؛ نویسنده: هرودوت؛ مترجم: غلامعلی وحید مازندرانی؛ تهران، دنیای کتاب؛ 1368؛ در 573ص و 4ص، مصور؛ شابک 9643461637؛ چاپ دوم 1368؛ چاپ سوم 1386؛ چاپ دیگر مشهد، خاتم، 1391؛ 612ص؛ شابک 9786006153278؛ عنوان: تاریخ هرودوت؛ نویسنده: هرودوت؛ مترجم: مرتضی ثاقب فر؛ تهران، اساطیر، 1389، در دو جلد؛ شابک جلد یک 9789643314699؛ شابک جلد دوم 9789643314705؛ تاریخ «هرودوت» یا کتاب «تواریخ» یک کتاب تاریخی است، که توسط «هرودوت»، مورخ «یونانی» در سال چهارصد و چهل پیش از میلادی نگاشته شده‌ است؛ این کتاب نخستین کتاب «تاریخ» در جهان به‌ شمار می‌رود؛ و شامل نه کتاب است (سه کتاب نخست به «آسیای صغیر»، «مصر»، «میان‌رودان»، «ایران» و «سوریه» و «سرزمین‌های مجاور آن»، کتاب چهارم دربارهٔ «سکاها» و کتاب پنجم تا نهم به «جنگ‌های ایران و یونان» اختصاص دارد)؛ شرح زندگانی چهار شاه ایرانی «کوروش بزرگ»، «کمبوجیه یکم»، «داریوش بزرگ»، و «خشایارشای بزرگ» در این کتاب آرمیده است شرق شناس پرآوازه، و کاشف خط میخی «هنری راولینسون»، در دوران پادشاهی «محمدشاه قاجار»، مربی نظامی در فوج «کرمانشاه» بودند، ایشان ضمن خدمت، به کاوش و پژوهش برای کشف رموز «خط میخی» نیز همت گماشتند، و سرانجام موفق شدند؛ پس از کشف چگونگی خوانش «خط میخی»، برادر ایشان «جرج راولینسون»، از آن اکتشاف مهم تاریخی بهره گرفتند، و نخستین ترجمه کامل از «تاریخ هرودوت» به زبان «انگلیسی» را، با حواشی و توضیح در چهار مجلد، در سال 1858میلادی منتشر کردند، در سال 1910میلادی، نسخه ی تازه ای از ترجمه ی مزبور، در دو جلد منتشر شد، در این نسخه بیشتر متن را حفظ، اما حواشی و یادداشتها و مقدمه را، خلاصه کرده بودند، در آغاز جنگ جهانگیر دوم، نسخه ی یک جلدی از ترجمه ی «راولینسون» توسط «ا.ج اوانس» دوباره تلخیص و تنظیم شد، این کتاب برگردان جناب «غ وحید مازندرانی»، از همان نسخه یک جلدی، از زبان «انگلیسی» میباشد، که نخستین چاپ آن در سال 1324هجری خورشیدی، توسط انتشارات علمی، در دسترس پژوهشگران قرار گرفته است؛ این فراموشکار نخستین بار متن «انگلیسی» کتاب را خوانده ام، و سپس بارها و بارها نیز آنرا دوباره خوانده ام، و هربار که فرصتی دست دهد، و حوصله ام برای تاریخ تنگ شود، باز هم تکه ای از متن «انگلیسی» را میخوانم، کاغذ آن نسخه ی کتاب جیبی این فراموشکار کاهی است، و صفحاتش زرد شده، و چشمانم حروف «انگلیسی» ریز را این روزها خوب تشخیص نمیدهند، ولی میخوانم، این نوشته ی «هرودوت» شاهکاری است، که هماره باقی خواهد ماند، تا به آیندگان آموزش دهد که تاریخ را چگونه بنویسند تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 01/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی