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History & The Arts
Solon upsets the wealthy Croesus
Consider the answer to Croesus’ question of him about ‘happiness’ before exploring possible routes for Solon’s journey, comparing them with travelling in the Mediterranean today. According to Herodotus, Solon, the Athenian lawmaker, spent ten years ‘sailing forth to see the world’, before meeting with Croesus in Sardis.
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History & The Arts
Crowdsourced annotation: what do you think?
Take a look at 'crowdsourced' resources to help understand ‘The Histories’ alongside the Hestia project. We direct you to other resources so that you may extend your enquiry by comparing accounts, cross-referencing evidence, or verifying sources.
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History & The Arts
Consulting the oracle at Delphi
Explore the ‘riddles’ of the oracle through the words of Herodotus, and consider the power of the Pythian priestess. The utterances of the oracle at Delphi had significant influence over Croesus, King of Lydia and the Athenian politician, Themistocles as they were both consulting the oracle under different circumstances.
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History & The Arts
‘Lydios logos’: the story of Croesus
Herodotus tells the story of Croesus in the first tale, or ‘logos’, of his great work ‘The Histories’. Explore the contradictions in his narrative with other contemporary and archaeological evidence. Think about the extent to which Herodotus deserves his title ‘father of history’.
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History & The Arts
'As rich as Croesus'
Croesus' legendary wealth leads to the expression 'rich as Croesus’ and according to Herodotus, Croesus was the first monarch to mint gold and silver coins. Explore the evidence for this from the Hestia texts and other sources.
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History & The Arts
Herodotus 'The Histories': a timeline
This timeline provides a ‘snapshot’ of events Herodotus wrote about in the context of the Classical world, with links to explore the Hestia Project text and map.
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History & The Arts
Herodotus 'The Histories'
Find out more about our Classical past by exploring the digital text of Herodotus’ ‘The Histories’ with online mapping and an interactive map-and-narrative timeline 'mashup'.
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History & The Arts
Battle of Thermopylae
Explore the site of a battle at Thermopylae, described by Herodotus, and the subject of two 21st century movies. The extent of the Greeks’ geographical knowledge of the world can be reconstructed from considering regions and places mentioned by contemporary authors. Understand how the geography of the area has changed, and consider how the ...
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History & The Arts
Health, disease and society: Scottish influence in the 19th century
This free course, Health, disease and society: Scottish influence in the 19th century, examines the role that Scots played in contributing to the developments in healthcare during the nineteenth century. The radical transformation of medicine in Europe included the admission of women as doctors and the increased numbers of specialised ...
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History & The Arts
Expert opinion: Origins of the First World War
Listen to two leading historians give their thoughts on the origins of the First World War.
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History & The Arts
360 Degrees of Separation
How does Surrealism relate to Freud? What does Freud have to do with the Prisoner's dilemma? Josie Long takes you on a whistle-stop tour and finds the connections between Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Game Theory, Nuclear Fission and microbes that may have played a key role in the origins of life.
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History & The Arts
Atom Bomb in Popular Culture
German surrender brought the Second World War in Europe to an end. But all feared that war with Japan would drag on and on. Behind the scenes, the US had been working on a secret weapon – the most powerful ever devised – and by August 1945… it was no longer such a secret. These films explore A-Bomb in Pop Culture or: How The West Has Changed its...