#ihaveweirdtaste

[athensandspartaadventures]

Of all the human characters (historical figures) you have included in your story so far, who's your favourite (you don't have to answer, if you don't want)?

Off the top of my head I recall I drew an anachronistic Herodotus in one panel and since I am reading the Histories right now I’m very biased towards him. The people who hold Thucydides as peak Greek historian haven’t actually read Thucydides, they’re just people who like to pat themselves on the back for theoretically knowing Real History (tm) and not Made Up Stuff like Herodotus. Leave Herodotus alone, he’s the one and only Old Man Yells at Cloud in my heart and the kind of guy who throws in stuff like “one of the concubines at Sardis gave birth to a lion” just to make sure you’re paying attention.

For more Fun Facts from Herodotus, I provide my liveblogging on my main blog ( @allbeendonebefore ) and tag it hapo reads herodotus while my dear friend @judiejodia is also taking this challenge on with me using the tag herodotus blogging

[allbeendonebefore]

ihaveweirdtaste replied to your post “Persian War Wednesdays 1.30-1.32”-

Emo Athens is so different from his usual loud and proud self. I don't know which one I prefer more!

At this time he was dealing with tyrants like Drakon so when everything is punishable by death and you don’t have any autonomy, there’s not a lot of room for ego yet xD

But nevertheless, Solon and Croesus' meeting has always striked me, because I thought it was out of -sorry- out of a greek myth, not something that happened in reality.

This is exactly why early historians like Herodotus are so fascinating, there isn’t really a particular definition between mythology or history yet because there’s not really a great need or even a possibility for a split between them yet. We place a lot of importance on “truth” and “accuracy” today and less importance on good stories, but you could argue that good stories had (and have) more resonance with people who hear them than reality does. Epics like the Iliad survive because they evolved in a way that was easy for people to remember, to add onto, to twist, to pass on... etc.

In our case today we are more aware of how misinformation can be extremely dangerous, but back then there wasn’t a lot of ways to validate “truth” and this was a way for someone much better travelled than his peers to share narratives and points of interest that they might never encounter otherwise.

And we also just have this one written version- we don’t know what kinds of things people might have said to Herodotus while he was telling these stories or if people liked to argue with him or not.

[athensandspartaadventures]

ihaveweirdtaste replied to your post “acetechne: doodle of athens aka everyones...”

Not gonna lie, he's actually hot in this drawing!🤤

I appreciate you living up to your username like this :’D

[checks “draw characters people think are hot” off the list]