Herodotus on Twitter

PRLog notes that Herodotus’ The Histories has entered the age of Twitter:

Herodotus, who wrote his History of the Persian Wars in the 5th century B.C.E., is using social media to bring his story to a modern audience. He announced on his Twitter account (@iHerodotus) Friday that he would begin tweeting his History, one section per day, one tweet (he anticipates) per section. The project is expected to take almost five years: the last tweet should be posted in January of 2015.

A web 2.0 Herodotus is not a new idea. I posited a wiki Herodotus back in 2008. My musings were in reaction to Daniel Mendelson’s review of The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (ed. by Robert Strassler) and several other recent titles on the “father of history” in the New Yorker. Particularly, I was motivated by the following quote:

It occurs to you, as you read “The Landmark Herodotus”—with its very Herodotean footnotes, maps, charts, and illustrations—that a truly adventurous new edition of the Histories would take the digressive bits and turn them into what Herodotus would have done if only they’d existed: hyperlinks.

Personally, I hope that the Twitter edition makes full use of hyperlinks, twitterpics and other forms of connectivity that the medium allows.

(HT: Chuck Jones via Facebook)