The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus: Being Parts of the History of Herodotus; Edited for Boys and Girls, With an Introduction (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Boys and Girls Herodotus: Being Parts of the History of HerodotusImagine yourself in the city of Athens near the close of the year 446 B.C. The proud city, after many years of supremacy over the whole of Central Greece, has passed her zenith, and is surely on the decline. She has never recovered from the blow received at Coronea. The year has been one of gloom and foreboding-. The coming spring will bring the end of the five years' truce; and an invasion from the Peloponnesus is imminent. But, as the centre of learning, refinement, and the arts, the lustre of her fame is yet undimmed, and men of education throughout the world deem their lives incomplete until they have sought and reached this intellectual Mecca. During this year a stranger from Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, after many years of travel in Asia, Scythia, Libya, Egypt, and Magna Græcia, has taken up his abode at Athens. He is still a young man, hardly thirty-seven yet his fame is that of the first and greatest of historians. Dramatists and poets immortal there have been, but never man has written such exquisite prose. Twenty centuries and more shall, wear, away, and his history will be read in a hundred different: tongue as well as in the beautiful and simple Greek that he wrote. His name will grow into a household word; the school-boy will revel in his delightful tales, and wise men will call him the Father of History! For weeks the people of Athens have listened entranced to the public reading of his great work, and now the Assembly has passed a decree tendering to him the city's thanks, together with a most substantial gift in recognition of his talents - a purse of money equal to twelve thousand American dollars.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com