Download or read book Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community written by Norma Thompson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subtitle of this book is `Arion's Leap' and it is from this example of the puzzling fictionality of some of Herodotus' histories that the author starts her exploration (Arion was the singer who leapt into the sea to escape from Corinthian pirates and was rescued by dolphins). Scholars have long wrestled with Herodotus' practice of placing fanciful stories alongside factual ones, but Thompson suggests that rather than displaying a primitive conception of history, such a practice indicates a profound grasp of political theory and an understanding of the way that central stories can become the core of a political community. This major reconsideration of Herodotus' art draws his work into the modern historical debate, and the author uses the writings of Martin Bernal, Fran�ois Hartog and Edward Said to shed new light on Herodotus' conception of history.