Reading Herodotus' "The Histories" was life altering for me - I highly recomend it - but you MUST read a quality translation. I read the translation by Robin Waterfield. There are other good translations. What you should not do is download any old version you find online. Bad translations ruin the book.
I just read the Robin Waterfield myself, and I found it absolutely wonderful. It was the first ancient writing I've read in my adult life, and I was shocked by how clear and easy to understand it was. I know there are arguments for preserving the original prose of a text, however reading Waterfield's translation, it's clear that Herodotus wanted to be understood. He spoke clearly, and often caveated his speech to as to be clear to the reader.
I can grab some verbatim excerpts if anyone's interested, but his clarification when telling of Darius of child ("But he didn't say Darius, because no one knew he was called Darius yet") and then his explanation of a metaphor in Getae blew my mind. ("They probably don't mean the northern lands are literally covered in feathers, and this was likely just a metaphor for snow.") This is how a precise, scientifically-minded modern writer would communicate.
I had always always equated ancient writing with the Old Testament, or some of the more metaphor-laden prose for old plays (Oedipus) that were pretty opaque to my young mind. But reading Waterfield's translation of Herodotus was a different experience altogether: every sentence is easy to understand, and you can sympathize strongly with Herodotus and the ancient peoples he talks about: there's quite a bit of talent and intelligence, but not much concrete information. And, if you read the Histories without a reference nearby, then you're on equal footing with Herodotus himself.
To add to your comment, this is one of the examples I still remember from reading parts of the Histories:
"As for Libya [Africa, apparently], we know it to be washed on all sides by the sea, except where it is attached to Asia. This discovery was first made by Necos, the Egyptian king, who on desisting from the canal which he had begun between the Nile and the Arabian gulf, sent to sea a number of ships manned by Phoenicians, with orders to make for the Pillars of Hercules [the strait of Gibraltar], and return to Egypt through them, and by the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians took their departure from Egypt by way of the Erythraean sea, and so sailed into the southern ocean. When autumn came, they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with corn, waited until the grain was fit to cut. Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not till the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared- I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may- that in sailing round Libya they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent of Libya first discovered."
So Herodotus passes on us a piece of information he doesn't understand or believe in, but that seems to prove that the circumnavigation of Africa actually happened because the sailors, having passed the equator, kept seeing the sun on their right side at midday- since they were moving clockwise around the continent. Shivers :)
Those poor Phoenicians, expertly conducted a long and dangerous voyage of exploration, and afterwards most of their contemporaries probably thought they were lazy incompetent liars who wasted time for a few years before coming back.
It's not just Herodotus; many ancient works create this impression. We have this implicit chronological snobbery because of our technology achievements, but when you read ancient works you realize that they were just as smart as we are.
> when you read ancient works you realize that they were just as smart as we are.
When you read ancient works the impression you get is heavily distorted by survivorship bias; it's not like we've preserved a representative sample of such works.
I think everdrive captures it well: the ancient text most of us are exposed to in childhood is the bible (or other religious texts). I forgave a lot, because I just imagined that people were like that back then: gullible, ignorant, lacking in a critical approach. When you read Herodotus, it is like sitting in a room with a modern fabulous story teller. He is thoughtful, critical, sarcastic, skeptical and amusing. In short, a thoroughly modern person. The stories themselves are of course compelling too - the epic struggles between Greece and Persia. But it is the sense of intelligence that comes through. As I said, for me, life altering.
For me the best story was finding out that already back then it was common to do "Erasmus", Greek medicine students going to Egipt to practice with what were the best known doctors in the field for a couple of years.
Also in similar vein there is a letter from a known Roman writer, cannot remember the name now, complaining how his son is wasting his money in student parties in Athens instead of taking care to finish his degree.
Some things haven't changed that much in a couple of thousand years. :)
It was common, in many periods of history, for young and wealthy men to go on travels for purposes of education (e.g. the Grand Tour of 17th century aristocrats). Interestingly enough, one of the key principles of the development of early medieval universities was free and unmolested travel of scholars between institutions, independent of civil or religious authorities. This means both teachers and students travelled between universities to teach / find better teachers, respectively.
Off-topic: the phrase "do Erasmus" is unmistakable. I see you're either Portuguese or Spanish ;)
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast has a whole series on the Persian empire (King’s of King’s) that draws heavily from Herodotus. It gets quite meta in places with a lot of time dedicated to Herodotus and his storytelling style, and he ends up as one of the more fascinating characters in the story itself. Dan likens him to a modern day screenwriter with a sense for drama and emotion that previous historians lacked and that reading Herodotus vs earlier records is in some ways like the difference between the black and white silent film era and modern cinema.
"Charvakas denied metaphysical concepts like reincarnation, an extracorporeal soul, the efficacy of religious rites, other worlds (heaven and hell), fate and accumulation of merit or demerit through the performance of certain actions.[40] Charvakas also rejected the use of supernatural causes to describe natural phenomena. To them all natural phenomena was produced spontaneously from the inherent nature of things."
I think this example is sort-of silly. It’s basically “there existed in the past people who denied religious beliefs which I also deny therefore they were not completely gullible.” But this argument basically requires one to assume that (a) society was progressing towards the denying of these religious beliefs and (b) that these people were part of the steps of that progress. It all feels very Whiggish.
One can imagine eg a modern day Christian looking back to some roman converting to Christianity and saying that clearly not all Romans were completely gullible.
I do not claim that there is nothing interesting in the history here but I do claim that it isn’t at all about gullibility.
> this argument basically requires one to assume that (a) society was progressing towards the denying of these religious beliefs
No. I've never said that and I don't believe in that.
My thesis it: there were the thinkers around 2500 years ago, on some very distant places, that came to the basis that is the actual basis of the modern science, fruits of which we all enjoy.
The actual basis of the science is simple: to investigate the world, one must simply posit that the scientific explanation for any observation is not any other-worldy miracle. As soon as one bases his explanation on that, anything is possible, and automatically is out of the science.
Moreover, the sciences which have to posit that aren't only physics or biology. Even history has to posit that: the basic premise of historic examination of any historic even is that there were no deities doing miracles, but the stories claiming miracles invented by humans.
So one can either do history scientifically, or simply be religious, but he can't get the points in science from doing later. His work will then, correctly, be dismissed.
Note, we started the discussion here by talking about Herodotus, the father of history. Not the father of religion.
For a historian doing history, every religious story involving miracles is just a myth, no matter which religion tells it. Every (non theological) university book can't be made otherwise.
And the same approach was of course true for the physicists doing physics: Newton could believe in deities as much a he wanted, he didn't explain the movements of planets with angels flipping wings but by demonstrating the calculations based on the rules of gravitation.
(Btw word to the wise, Most Wikipedia articles dealing with Indian philosophy including the ones you cited are crap.)
Anyway...
Very little is actually known about the Charvakas except through quotes by their opponents but we can definitely conclude they were skeptics alright but hardly scientific or even rationalist. They only believed valid knowledge only comes from perception by the five senses so even inference was opposed which makes logic impossible.
There is also a recent theory which I’m not sure I buy but sounds interesting that far from being radically anti-religious, the Charvakas were actually the remnant of the most conservative strains of thought.
The Vedic religion c. 500 BC mostly involved sacrificial rituals of greater or lesser complexity performed by a man and his wife. The goal of those rituals was worldly power and wealth. They were addressed to Gods who were either personifications of natural phenomena or embodiments of human archetypes. Such metaphysics as there was involved creating a new body for the deceased so he could enjoy life in heaven. (We can still see remnants of this in the Hindu funeral rites or shraddha in which reincarnation is only rather awkwardly bolted on.) This heaven was beyond the everyday world but otherwise exactly the same. One could even physically travel there.
Around 500BC or so there was cultural upheaval and many new ideas arose. In the Upanishads, Buddhism, Jainism and other sects that no longer survive, a new paradigm arose that emphasized enlightened knowledge over ritual action, the ascetic monk over the married householder, and liberation from constant reincarnation over one future life in Heaven. Heaven (and the new concept of Hell) were also expanded into multiple worlds inhabited by all kinds of supernatural creatures.
If we examine the extent Charvaka fragments, it is mainly these new-fangled ideas that they mock. Furthermore all the known Charvaka authors are Brahmanas some of them well-versed in traditional learning. One of them even quotes the Vedas to support his views. This is because they were actually representatives of the old guard or so the theory goes. Like I said I’m not sure if I buy it but there it is.
This is an intriguing theory that I haven't come across before. Do you have any book recommendations for learning more about the evolution of Indian philosophy?
If you like Herodotus, you should also try Thucydides, who wrote just slightly later. His attitude towards history is strikingly modern, to the point when it's a shock when he mentions some "new" piece of technology that's 2,500 years old.
