More than a ‘mere Herodotolater’
Paul Cartledge visits the archive of History Today to retrieve a critical appraisal of the Greek proto-historian Herodotus by the inimitable Oxford don Russell Meiggs, first published in 1957.
Right from the start the founders of History Today envisaged ‘History’ very broadly indeed: temporally and spatially, so as to encompass not only ‘ancient history’ as conventionally defined (Greek and Roman, together with the relevant European,Asiatic and North African); but also as unconventionally defined (premodern, non-Western). Happily, Herodotus, one of the founding fathers of all history, was soon given his place within this magazine’s covers. Russell Meiggs (pronounced Meggs) happens also to be one of my heroes, so there’s a special pleasure in plucking him and his essay on my ultimate intellectual ancestor out of the archive.
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