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Herodotus Quotes

Greece

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος, Hēródotos) (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC) was a historian, known for his writings on the conflict between Greece and Persia, as well as the descriptions he wrote of different places and people he met on his travels.

Greece
Historians

Also known as: Herodotos

Random Herodotus quote

47 quotes

"At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men." (By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!).

But I like not these great successes of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.

trans. A. D. Godley, vol. 2, book 3, paragraph 40, p. 53, 55 (1928)

Although he had plenty of troops he did not have many men.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.

The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

I am going to talk at some length about Egypt, because it has very many remarkable features and has produced more monuments which beggar description than anywhere else in the world.

"My men have turned into women and my women into men!"

But Alexander (I of Macedon), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place.

The wooden wall alone should remain unconquered.

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

In soft regions are born soft men.

Alexander ( I of Macedon), however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied step for first place.

"It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs."

This I know - if all men should take their troubles to the market to barter with their neighbors, not one, when he had seen the troubles of other men, but would be glad to carry his own home again.

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.

It was a kind of Cadmean victory.

The young men accordingly were sent out and did that which had been commanded them: and when the Amazons perceived that they had not come to do them any harm, they let them alone; and the two camps approached nearer to one another every day: and the young men, like the Amazons, had nothing except their arms and their horses, and got their living, as the Amazons did, by hunting and by taking booty.

For if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Herodotus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.