Originally Posted by SeattleUte
Wow. I looked this book up on Amazon. It looks facinating. It sounds like something creekster may have read. As far as its accuracy, there are some concepts to keep in mind.
First, because the writer lived not long after the events in question, indeed while many eyewitnesses still lived, his account shouldn't be dismissed as largely inaccurate. Herodotus was not an eyewitness to the momentous events described in his "Histories," but historians accept them as providing generally the best available record of what happened and as such the narrative is accepted as history with caveats including that some facts are contrary to logic or common sense.
Second, some assertions can be tested with logic. For example, Herodotus says 700,000 or some such huge number of Persians under Xerxes' command invaded the Greek Isles. But we know that logistically it would have been impossible for an army of anything close to this size to migrate vast distances as a cohesive unit, that transporting enough food and other provisions would be impossible, and that the Greek countryside could not have supported such a vast army. I understand scholars have pegged the number at closer to 30,000 to 80,000 Persians.
Third, archeological discoveries test the accuracy of an account. For example, we know that the ancient, highly civilized Greek society described by Thucydides really existed because of the massive ruins, and, indeed, Roman civilizaion itself and to a large extent ours is built on this culture. There has even been loose corroboration of the Iliad, a story that is clearly fanciful in many if not most respects, from archeological digs evincing Minoan cities destroyed by seige warfare during the time in question including a particularly large one on Asia Minor believed to be Troy (far from conclusive).
Fourth, truth for truth's sake was not assigned the same value as it is in our society. Telling a good story or prapaganda may have been more the objective. Often we see that a story is uncannily derivative of a myth or chronicle from an earlier epoch.
Fifth, linguistics play a critical and perhaps the most conclusive role in testing accuracy of ancient chronicles and histories. Jared Diamond discusses, for example, how traces of dialect in South Seas languages establishes indigenus people from the isles came from the south of China in pre-history.
This is a totally lay perspective, and I undoubtedly missed some considerations.
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