Herodotus’s Histories
Inquire into empire, freedom, & fate with Herodotus, the father of history.
There’s a reason the classics are classics—and it’s not because they have better agents than books that aren’t classics. The classics are classics because they pose the most basic questions about human experience in a way that is both lively and narratively interesting. The Greek and Roman classics are the foundation for our way of seeing the world. And therefore, we read them because they tell us something both true about us and true about life.
In the case of the Odyssey, we are talking about one of the great family dramas. It’s about homecoming, it’s about the meaning of home, it’s about how you know and how you prove your intimacy with members of your family. It’s about the bonds that connect family members over many years despite time and distance, grief and age.
Beyond that, it’s one of the greatest adventure stories and the forerunner of both fantasy literature and science-fiction. It envisions an adventurer who’s exposed to strange new civilizations—a Greek, and hence a representative of Western culture, traveling to the limits of the known world and being exposed to strange new cultures and civilizations. It is through the hero’s interactions with different models of civilization, from total barbarity to hyper-cultured behavior, that he comes to reflect on the nature and meaning of his own civilization, and to determine where on that spectrum it falls.
Hence Odysseus is, in a way, also the first anthropologist. His tale is one of someone motivated by curiosity as well as by the urgent need to return home, a man who’s very interested to see how other kinds of people live. And through Odysseus, we the readers get to reflect on just what it means to be civilized.
Image: Arnold Böcklin, Odysseus and Polyphemus, 1896
Prof. Mendelsohn discusses his translation of The Odyssey
This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It will take place weekly via Zoom; the meeting day and time will be announced. Fellows who complete the seminar in good standing, including full participation, timely completion of the response paper, and submission of the course evaluation, will receive a $150 Amazon gift card. Required course materials will be provided.
Faculty
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn is an author, critic, essayist, translator, Editor-at-Large of The New York Review of Books, and a teacher of literature at Bard College. Trained in Classics, he has written widely on Greek literature, memoir, theater, film, and contemporary culture.
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator, as well as Editor-at-Large of The New York Review of Books, director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, and a teacher of literature at Bard College. Trained in Classics at the University of Virginia and Princeton University, he has written widely on Greek literature, memoir, theater, film, and contemporary culture. His books include The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, National Jewish Book Award, and Prix Medicis; An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic; Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate; and Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays. He has also translated the poetry of C. P. Cavafy. His translation of Homer’s Odyssey appeared from the University of Chicago Press in 2025. Mendelsohn’s honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism, Princeton’s James Madison Medal, France’s Order of Arts and Letters, and Italy’s Premio Malaparte. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
Session I
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session II
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session III
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session IV
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session V
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
Session VI
Meeting date, time, reading, and discussion details forthcoming.
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