Talk:Herodotos
Herodotos: authentic without authenticity
[edit]- Sotos: Oh, why is this template empty? Granpa, are you lonely?
- Herodotos: My son, I sit here all day and eat my nails. Nobody cares about me. I wrote a hole book of history. I travelled to the devil's horn to collect data. Didn't have P.C. or at least a typewriter. Thought I was doing something important, look where I am now. The Anglo-Saxons have taken the lead and they care only for their own people...
- Sotos: Worry not, old man. I'm free until 01.35. I've got cigarettes and a glass of brandy. I'll keep you company and say something for you.
- Herodotos: But, my son, you are no historian...
- Sotos: Why, were you?
- Herodotos: (...)
He was called the "father of history". The fact is that he has nothing to do with history as we consider it today. Literature would be closer, but not even that. These are just labels.
Imagine a man to wake up. It's the dawn of history. Everything is new and unknown. Nothing is certain. Anything is possible to happen. God may exist and appears too. Satan the same.
The man starts to invent names to describe the world. He is innocent and pure in his heart. So he believes anything he is told. Someone meets him, see how frail he is and makes fun at him. Or maybe he himself doesn't know what this world is about. Our man writes down everything he hears so that they will not get lost.
Future people will decide which is which, true from lies. There is a philosophy that deals with that need. Phenomenalism?
Nothing is wasted — everything is collected, no matter how futile, and stored. We have time more than we need.
He wrote about people born bold (as without hair), and about aunts big as dogs, chasing humans and eating them. We laugh today. But could he really have known back then? Of course he was no historian, but he was the best historian he could be at the time and he made a start. Some of what he wrote turned out to be true. Habbits of people — Egyptians and others. Today these people do no longer exist. Sometimes he became a geographer, trying to find out how the Nile flows inside the desert.
Where were his sources?
Wow, it's limitted...
--213.5.49.216 20:01, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy
[edit]It is Wikipedia policy that things be under their MOST COMMON name. Please move "Herodotos" back to "Herodotus" where it was and where by Wikipedia policy it is supposed to be. In the article itself, he should also be called "Herodotus" as that is the way he is generally refered to in English (this IS the ENGLISH Wikipedia). But, by all means, include in the article all the data about the word "Herodotos" and how it relates to this guy. Thanks. 4.250.168.94 18:52, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)