{"id":2637122,"date":"2026-07-29T09:10:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-herodotus-ancient-wisdom-helps-make-sense-of-modern-times\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T09:23:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T13:23:44","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-herodotus-ancient-wisdom-helps-make-sense-of-modern-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-herodotus-ancient-wisdom-helps-make-sense-of-modern-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Herodotus&#8217; Ancient Wisdom Helps Make Sense Of Modern Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignhow-herodotus-ancient-wisdom-helps-make-sense-of-modern-times%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2637122&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>This passage highlights the author&#8217;s experiences teaching during his PhD at the University of Michigan, where he explored classical texts such as Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides. He reflects on how Thucydides\u2019 analysis of power politics during the Peloponnesian War remains remarkably relevant to modern geopolitics,especially during the Gulf War,offering insights into political rhetoric and strategy.<\/p>\n<p>The discussion then shifts to Herodotus,often regarded as the father of history,who pioneered the analysis of culture,battles,and political leaders through a narrative grounded in investigation and empirical evidence. Emily Katz Anhalt\u2019s book,&#8221;Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times,&#8221; is introduced as a compelling exploration of Herodotus\u2019 approach,emphasizing the importance of objective truth,human conduct,and the recurring patterns of human self-deception and desire. Anhalt demonstrates how Herodotus\u2019 observations about human folly-such as greed, pride, and self-deception-are highly applicable today, especially in the context of political polarization, fake news, and media manipulation.<\/p>\n<p>The author appreciates the book\u2019s thoughtful close readings of Herodotus\u2019 passages, which connect ancient lessons with contemporary issues, like the dangers of hubris and self-deception. However, he critiques some of Anhalt\u2019s perspectives, such as her separation of Herodotus from religion, uncritical praise of modern Western ideals without fully acknowledging their roots in Christian history, and her portrayal of ancient Greek democracy.<\/p>\n<p>the book is praised for its balanced and humanistic approach, offering valuable insights into human nature, history, and the importance of evidence-based understanding. The reviewer encourages broader readership and hopes for future works applying these lessons to other classical authors like Thucydides, to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/40-years-later-hollywood-could-never-make-the-breakfast-club\/\" title=\"40 Years Later, Hollywood Could Never Make &#039;The Breakfast Club&#039;\">address current social<\/a> and political divisions.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>While pursuing my PhD in English at the University of Michigan, I had the privilege of teaching in the honors college program during the 1990-1991 academic year. In addition to conducting students through the epics of Homer, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, I was afforded the opportunity of introducing them to Thucydides\u2019 historical account of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.<\/p>\n<p>As we wrestled with Thucydides\u2019 incisive analysis of Athenian and Spartan power politics, the Gulf War was raging in Iraq and on the nightly news. I do not exaggerate when I say that for every political speech I heard on television, I could find a parallel in Thucydides. Whether it was \u201cthis is not a war about oil but a war about aggression,\u201d or \u201cwe are trying to make the world safe for democracy,\u201d whether terms like \u201cdefense of allies\u201d or \u201cclash of civilizations\u201d or \u201cpreemptive strike\u201d were being used in increasingly fungible ways, I could find insights in Thucydides\u2019 2500-year-old analysis that helped make sense of the jargon, the rhetoric, and the euphemisms.<\/p>\n<p>Thucydides is arguably the father of political science, but he was preceded on the scene by the father of history, Herodotus. Though some have called him the father of lies because of the tall tales he tells in his <em>Histories<\/em>, Herodotus\u2019 account of the war between Greece and Persia marks the first attempt in the West to analyze battles and cultures and political leaders in such a way as to construct a meaningful narrative that sheds light on the forces that propel history.<\/p>\n<p>Though many have written on Herodotus, Emily Katz Anhalt, professor of classics at Sarah Lawrence College, empowers her readers to take the insights of the <em>Histories<\/em> and apply them to our own troubled times of political polarization, fake news, conspiracy theories, and media deception. In <em>Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times: Why Humanity Needs Herodotus, the Man Who Invented History<\/em>, Anhalt uncovers the subtle patterns that Herodotus weaves through his history, patterns he likely meant as object lessons to his Athenian readers who were embarking on the disastrous Peloponnesian War, but which also have direct relevance today.<\/p>\n<h2>The Father of Objective Truth<\/h2>\n<p>In diagnosing current problems, Anhalt thankfully steers clear of naming politicians on either side of the aisle. Her analysis is non-partisan and delves to the root causes of our fractured discourse:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>In today\u2019s volatile political environment, reality is under siege. Influential voices at all extremes of the political kaleidoscope\u2014some cynical opportunists, some blinded by ideological certainties\u2014craft narratives and interpretations drawn not from fact but from fantasy. Purveyors of falsehoods prey on human gullibility. . . . Extremists gain powerful support from anyone uninterested in learning facts or unwilling to moderate an opinion based on evidence and logic. Some argue that we are each entitled to our own reality, or that objective facts are inherently prejudicial, or that factual evidence is fake news. Captivated by misleading and demonstrably false narratives, we forfeit our capacity for compassionate, humane interactions and we imperil human survival itself.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What Herodotus offers to moderns trapped in such an environment is a method for assessing the past and the present that is grounded in evidence and the proper interpretation of that evidence. \u201cHerodotus introduced the concept of objective truth, derived not from personal preference or authoritative pronouncement (whether by a political or divine authority) but from factual investigation and empirical deduction and analysis.\u201d Though it is true that Herodotus includes fanciful stories and bizarre legends in his <em>Histories<\/em>, he provides, with those tales, the necessary criteria for evaluating their veracity.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas Homer\u2019s <em>Iliad<\/em> and <em>Odyssey<\/em> and Hesiod\u2019s <em>Theogony<\/em> and <em>Works and Days<\/em> begin with invocations of the muse, Herodotus writes on his own authority; indeed, the first word of his book is his name! Like Homer, he recounts memorable deeds, but he does so in a way that excludes the actions and interventions of the gods. Instead, he \u201cconcentrates on human conduct, beliefs, and choices and their consequences. Not divine but human behavior emerges as a potent force for change in human events.\u201d He also \u2014 and Professor Anhalt is to be commended for <em>not<\/em> critiquing Herodotus for this \u2014 does not offer reductive, materialistic, anti-humanistic explanations, but champions a Great Man view of history by which the decisions and actions of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/humanity-can-still-learn-from-the-father-of-history\/\" title=\"...ity Can Still Learn From &#039;The Father Of ...&#039;\">individual human beings drive historical action<\/a>: \u201cUninterested in political or economic motives for military aggression, Herodotus . . . finds causal agency in human impulse or desire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Anhalt\u2019s book is carefully researched and undergirded by an abundance of notes and a thorough bibliography, it is structured around a series of incisive, fully accessible close readings of key passages from Herodotus. She begins each chapter with her own literal, yet literary translation of a passage from the <em>Histories<\/em>, and follows with an expository analysis of the passage that elicits its major themes and patterns. She gets us into Herodotus\u2019 mind and the way he sifts material evidence, eyewitness accounts, geographical and cultural observations, and heroic and cautionary tales to arrive at a logical assessment of how and why Greece and Persia fell into conflict and how and why the former was able, against all odds, to defeat the latter. She then ends each chapter by showing how her close reading is relevant for today.<\/p>\n<p>In her early chapters, Anhalt recounts and examines five tales Herodotus tells about powerful but foolish barbarians (non-Greeks) who bring ruin upon themselves through lust, pride, and\/or greed: King Candaules, who insists his bodyguard Gyges gaze in secret on the naked beauty of his queen, only to have queen and bodyguard conspire to assassinate him; a group of sailors who drown a man for his money, only to have him be rescued by a dolphin and expose their crime; Croesus, who interprets in his favor the Oracle of Delphi\u2019s prophecy that if he fights Persia he will destroy a great nation, only to discover too late that the nation he was fated to destroy was his own; Astyages, who tries to prevent a dream from happening by attempting to kill his own grandson; Cyrus, the first King of Persia who, after a brilliant career, impulsively, and against all the oracles, attacks a fierce tribe of warriors, leading to his ignominious death.   <\/p>\n<p>Here is how Anhalt perceptively unpacks what Herodotus wants his readers to learn from these seemingly unrelated events, some of which are historical and others legendary:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>For Herodotus, the human capacity for self-deception constitutes an unseen but determinative force in human life. Three powerful autocrats\u2014Croesus, Astyages, Cyrus\u2014deceive themselves into thinking that supernatural signs validate their desires and confer control over future events. . . . Nothing compels Croesus to attack Persia, Astyages to try to kill his grandson, or Cyrus to attack the Massegetai. They just want to. Lust for greater territory and power, like a king\u2019s lust for his own wife [Candaules] or sailors\u2019 greed for a passenger\u2019s money, needs no further explanation. But self-deception feeds human appetites and makes supernatural signs worse than useless.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The human propensity for self-deception is often highlighted in the <em>Histories<\/em>, a fatal flaw that can only be overcome by \u201cself-reflection and self-restraint,\u201d the very things that Herodotus\u2019 barbarian autocrats lack. And yet, the Athenians are not above a little self-deception of their own. Three times, they are fooled into ceding power to the tyrant Peisistratus, a political trickster who does not destroy but delays the full flowering of Athenian democracy. In his retelling of the wiles of Peisistratus, \u201cHerodotus directly connects deception with domination and credulousness with subjugation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she does throughout her book, once Anhalt clarifies and articulates Herodotus\u2019 warning, she applies it to our own propensity for self-deception: \u201cModern technology has made us not less but more vulnerable to authoritative trickery. Mainstream news sources and social media have trained many of us to seek \u2014 like Candaules and Croesus \u2014 not factual information but corroboration of our biases and assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why then if the Greeks are as susceptible to deception as the barbarians were they able to defeat the Persians? Because their sense of history and of the repeated patterns of cause and effect that connect one generation to the next empowered them to learn from the past. (Anhalt intriguingly argues that the Greek word for truth, <em>aletheia<\/em>, means \u201cnot forgetting.\u201d) Persian autocrats like Darius and Xerxes, on the other hand, refused to study, consider, or be instructed by past errors. \u201cWhile discussion enables the Greeks to absorb facts and recognize wise counsel, the Persians ignore factual evidence and fail to learn from previous experience.\u201d In his preparation for the decisive naval battle of Salamis, the \u201cPersian king [Xerxes] makes unilateral decisions. He lacks discernment and access to dissenting opinions. He draws incorrect inferences from misleading external appearances. In contrast, Greeks benefit from constructive debate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another way of saying this that most readers will recognize from their schooldays is that Xerxes falls prey to the consequences of <em>hubris<\/em>. However, whereas most of us were taught that <em>hubris<\/em> means overweening pride, Anhalt argues that \u201c<em>hubris<\/em> in Greek meant excessive, unrestrained desire, ambition, and overconfidence. It frequently involved impulsive, short-sighted violence, specifically violence redounding to the harm of the perpetrator. . . . In Greek, the opposite of <em>hubris<\/em> is not \u2018humility\u2019 or \u2018modesty\u2019 but <em>s\u014dphrosun\u0113<\/em>, meaning \u2018wisdom,\u2019 \u2018prudence,\u2019 \u2018self-restraint,\u2019 \u2018moderation,\u2019 even \u2018chastity.\u2019 . . .[[<em>Hubris<\/em> is that which]liberates the ruler\u2019s most violent impulses and frees him to wreak havoc.\u201d It makes him believe that he can, like the gods, fulfill his sexual lusts without consequences. So fall the tyrants of the earth.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Wise and Judicious Classicist<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Although I found <em>Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times<\/em> to be an entertaining and bracing, if at times repetitive, read, there were three aspects of it I found troubling. First, Anhalt tries too hard to separate Herodotus from religion, as if she wants to secure him as a modern scholar living in <a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/A_Secular_Age\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Charles Taylor\u2019s disenchanted cosmos<\/a>. Second, while occasionally critiquing Herodotus and his fellow Greeks for seeing the world through the lens of Athenian exceptionalism, she takes for granted that the modern American near-worship of egalitarianism has somehow been proved to be superior to all other previous worldviews. Third, combining these two factors, she seems blissfully, or naively, unaware that that our modern, democratic notions of justice, equality, and freedom that can (and should) be traced back to Athens, would not have taken the form they have apart from the mediating influence of Christianity. In another writer, these three idiosyncrasies might have stopped me from reading further. But not Anhalt.<\/p>\n<p>Never once does she come across as smug or condescending. Far from a resentful, virtue signaling academic, she is a quaint, well-mannered daughter of the Enlightenment, a true heir of an older school of wise and judicious classicists that includes Michael Grant, Robert Graves, and Edith Hamilton. In a word, she is a true secular humanist who can profitably be read alongside Tom Holland, Douglas Murray, and Jonathan Haidt. Whereas most modern secular humanists are really secular <em>anti<\/em>-humanists, Anhalt upholds human dignity, celebrates human reason and volition, and treats virtue as a worthy goal grounded in absolute standards. <\/p>\n<p>Her voice is a much-needed one in our fractured polity, and I hope she will get a wide reading. Above all, I hope she will follow up her analysis of Herodotus with a book on Thucydides that will help us wrestle with the political division and social unrest that have increased tenfold since the comparatively halcyon days of the Gulf War.  <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hc.edu\/contact\/louis-markos\/\">Louis Markos<\/a>, professor in English  and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. His books include &#8220;Apologetics for the 21st Century,&#8221; &#8220;On the Shoulders of Hobbits,&#8221; and &#8220;Restoring Beauty: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the Writings of C. S. Lewis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching honors students about ancient texts and history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":645,"featured_media":2637123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Book-Cover-Image-3-1.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[83374,66775,83375],"class_list":["post-2637122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-ancient-wisdom","tag-herodotus","tag-modern-times"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Book-Cover-Image-3-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2637131,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637122\/revisions\/2637131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2637123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}