Linguistics into Interpretation: Speeches of War in Herodotus VII 5 & 8-18

This volume is a sustained exercise in the genre of secondary literature which aims at explaining a literary work as much as possible in and through the author’s own words. A passage in direct speech by different speakers from the History of Herodotus , the earliest long Greek prose text, has been made the object of a systematic effort to distil and analyze the linguistic characteristics relevant to its interpretation, by confronting it with the rest of the work as well as with earlier and contemporary writings.