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"Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years"

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:51 am
by StephenGoranson
"Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years"
according to
https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -heraclion

Re: "Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years"

Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2019 6:34 am
by Secret Alias
Yeah I saw that. But is there any history of people thinking that Herodotus was lying about these ships?

Re: "Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years"

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:46 pm
by DCHindley
Secret Alias wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 6:34 am Yeah I saw that. But is there any history of people thinking that Herodotus was lying about these ships?
I believe the article said that dismissal of the truthfulness of Herodotus' account was the prevailing position until recently.

I have a book on Herodotus as a Historian and my recollection is that many historians thought Herodotus had sort of fabricated eyewitness accounts of all sorts, and that he was not as traveled as he claimed. I am not sure whether there are cases where details Herodotus gives in his eyewitness accounts flew in the face of archaeological evidence, though. If he didn't actually witness some of what he claims to seen, he may have simply used lore he heard from sailors in the ports or merchants in the town marketplace.

Modern critics also doubted Pliny's description of the behavior of the smoke plume from Mt. Vesuvius until it was replicated in the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington state, USA. No one doubted that Pliny had seen the smoke from the eruption from his vantage point, but a lot of folks thought his account *must* have been corrupted in transmission, or fabricated from oral lore.

But, then again, what does it matter? :confusedsmiley:

DCH