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  • Published: 1 February 2007
  • ISBN: 9780141964836
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

Snakes With Wings And Gold-Digging Ants



Around the world in twenty books!

So much of what we know of the Ancient World comes from Herodotus (c.490 BC - c.420 BC) that he will always remain the greatest of historians. But in addition such a large part of the entertainment value of the Ancient World comes from his enormous, omnivorous, sometimes credulous appetite for stories of distant lands and strange creatures.

Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

  • Published: 1 February 2007
  • ISBN: 9780141964836
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

About the author

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 islands. A sojourn in Athens is part of the traditional biography, and there he is said to have given public readings of his work and been friends with the playwright Sophocles. He is said also to have taken part in the founding of the colony of Thurii in Italy in 443 BC. He probably died at some time between 425 and 420 BC. His reputation has varied greatly, but for the ancients and many moderns he well deserves the title (first given to him by Cicero) of 'the Father of History'.

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