The Helpline seminar runs weekly for much of the year on Wednesdays (at 6pm GMT). The seminar covers any topic (literary, historical, archaeological, linguistic, reception) connected to the Histories of Herodotus, both the world of Herodotus’ text and the world that his text describes: the history, society and cultures of the archaic and classical Greek worlds, and of Persia, Egypt, Lydia, Thrace, Scythia, and all the other non-Greek peoples with whom the Greeks were in dialogue.

If you would like to receive Zoom invitations to the seminar, simply join the Helpline via the form on the home page.

The majority of previous seminars have been recorded and are available to view on the Helpline’s dedicated YouTube channel. Links have been included in the schedules listed below.

Most Recent Talk

Upcoming seminars

April-June 2023

• 18 April (NB: Tuesday): Maurizio Giangiulio (Trento)  
  • After so many years. From Herodotus’ sources to oral tradition and social memory  
• 26 April: Jan Haywood (Leicester)  
  • Reading Herodotus  
• 3 May: NO SEMINAR
• 10 May: Giusto Traina (Sorbonne) 
  • Media and Armenia in Herodotus’ list of satrapies  
• 17 May: Reading session: 5.42-48 (the fall of Sybaris)
• 24 May: NO SEMINAR
• 31 May: Claudio Felisi (Sorbonne) 
  • Where do the names of the Greek gods come from? For a (partly) new reading of Herodotus’ answer 
• 7 June: Alexander Schütze (Munich), Andreas Schwab (Kiel) and others 
  • Herodotean soundings: the Cambyses logos 
• 14 June: NO SEMINAR
• 21 June: Paul Cartledge (Cambridge)  
  • Commentating on Herodotus: the Cambridge Green and Yellows 
• 28 June: Translating the Histories 

Past Seminars

April – July 2020

• 1 April: Thomas Harrison
  • Social distancing and history as contagion: Hdt. 4.196
• 8 April: J.D. Beazley, ‘Herodotus at the zoo’
  • [Reading group session]
• 15 April: Fabrizio Gaetano
  • Dividing the world: some reflections on Herodotus’ oikoumene
• 22 April: Alexandre Johnston
  • Divine agency and human responsibility in Herodotus
• 29 April: Alessandro Piccolo and Max Stocker
  • Graeco-Egyptian toponymy in Herodotus: the case of Thebes
• 6 May: Mali Skotheim
  • Comb him down, once with each comb’: carding and spinning as political metaphors in Herodotus’ Histories
• 13 May: Francesca Gazzano
  • The king that lived twice: the Herodotean Croesus, between history and tragedy
• 20 May: Thomas Harrison
  • Herodotus in St Andrews: Andrew Lang and ‘history as she ought to be wrote’
• 27 May: Melissa Benson
  • Herodotus and Bisitun revisited
• 3 June: Thomas Husøy
  • Thessaly and Phocis: what Xerxes’ invasion can tell us about the Phocian ethnos in the early fifth century
• 10 June: Yun Lee Too
  • Psammetichus and the ‘foundations’ of language
• 17 June: John Dillery
  • Herodotus and doublets
• 24 June: Fiona Mitchell
  • Spices and Strange Creatures in Herodotus’ Arabia
• 1 July: Anthony Ellis
  • The Logic(s) of Herodotean Prophecy: Narrative Patterns and Implicit Theologies
• 8 July: Ian Moyer
  • Herodotus, Bubastis, and the agora of the Egyptians: 2.137-138
• 15 July: Helen Tank
  • What does the rule of law mean in Herodotus’ Histories?
• 22 July: Rowena Fowler
  • The modern poet in the Herodotean mirror?

September – December 2020

• 30 September: Elena Franchi (Trento)
  • Herodotus and folktale motifs. The Phocian ghost soldiers revisited, again (Hdt. 8.27)
• 7 October: Jan Haywood & Doris Post (Open University)
  • The downfall of Croesus and Oedipus: tracing affinities between Herodotus and Sophocles
• 14 October: Yvona Trnka-Amrhein (Colorado)
  • Ptolemy III Euergetes, Serapis, and the Herodotean Sesostris
• 28 October: Dan Crosby (Bryn Mawr)
  • Croesus and the test of oracles
• 4 November: David Branscome (Florida State)
  • The kyrbasia in Herodotus
• 11 November: Ivan Matijasic (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
  • Translating Herodotus from Cambridge to Westminster
• 18 November: Carolyn Dewald (Bard College)
  • ‘Narrative surface and authorial voice’ revisited
• 25 November: Francesco Mari (FU Berlin)
  • The tyrant and the busker: causes and effects of Hippocleides’ behaviour in Hdt. 6.126-130
• 2 December: Andreas Schwab (Bonn)
  • The variety of religion in Herodotus’ Histories [joint session with Innsbruck conference in honour of Reinhold Bichler]
• 9 December: Ross Clare (Liverpool)
  • Herodotus, a player’s guide to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

January – March 2021

• 13 January: Joel Alden Schlosser (Bryn Mawr)
  • Herodotus in the Anthropocene
• 20 January: Paul Demont (Sorbonne)
  • Winged snakes, hares, lions, vipers… and God: Hdt 3.107-109
• 27 January: Naoise Mac Sweeney (Vienna)
  • Remembering the Persian sack of Miletus
• 3 February: Ellen Millender (Reed College)
  • Herodotus on democracy: a reconsideration
• 10 February: P.J. Rhodes (Durham)
  • Public decision-making in Herodotus
• 17 February: Charles Chiasson (Texas at Arlington)
  • Periander and Lycophron (Hdt. 3.150-53) and Sophoclean tragedy
• 24 February: Aaron Hershkowitz (Princeton IAS)
  • Democratic sentiment and the words for crowds in Herodotus
• 3 March: Matthew Christ (Indiana)
  • ‘Herodotean kings and historical inquiry’ revisited
• 10 March: Nicky Rawnsley (Auckland)
  • The evidentiary value and visual impact of physical objects and phenomena in the Egyptian logos of Herodotus‘ Histories
• 17 March: Massimo Giuseppetti (Roma 3)
  • Herodotus on the ‘female disease’
• 24 March: Emily Greenwood (Yale)
  • Herodotus, Anti-colonialism, Diversity, and Black Traditions in the Modern World

May – July 2021

• 5 May: Sheila Murnaghan (Pennsylvania)
  • More on Herodotus and Sophocles: Herodotus at Colonus
• 12 May: James Morgan (Fribourg)
  • Herodotus’s hermeneutical dilemma, prophetic voice, and an estranged child named Luke
• 19 May: Jyl Gentzler (Amherst)
  • Herodotus and Plato on Gyges
• 26 May: Sam Blankenship (Harvard)
  • Herodotus and Achaemenid historiography
• 2 June: Irad Malkin (Tel Aviv)
  • The right and the middle: Demonax of Mantineia at Cyrene
• 9 June: Antti Lampinen (Finnish Institute, Athens)
  • The reception of Herodotus’ Thracians in antiquity
• 16 June: Maddalena Scarperi (Pennsylvania)
  • Crafting the Histories: Herodotus (re)telling Cleomenes
• 23 June: Anthony Ellis (Bern)
  • Rewriting Herodotus in Late Byzantine Mistra: Gemistos Pletho, Bessarion, and Kabakes
• 30 June: Cassandra Donnelly (Texas at Austin)
  • Economic logic in the Logoi: follow the money and see where it leads
• 7 July: Francesca Gazzano (Genova)
  • ‘Special deaths’ in the Histories

September – December 2021

• 29 September: Elton Barker (Open University)
  • Losing one’s spirit: a case of Homeric intertextuality in Herodotus?
• 13 October: Jordan Bayley (Newcastle)
  • From children to philosophers: mapping and measuring the impact of Herodotus in the long nineteenth century
• 20 October: Francois Hartog (EHESS, Paris)
  • Reflections on Le Miroir d’Hérodote
• 27 October: Elizabeth Irwin (Columbia)
  • The wife of Intaphernes
• 3 November: Giorgia Proietti (Trento)
  • Herodotus, the Persian wars, and the Greeks’ intentional (hi)stories
• 10 November: Carmen Soares (Coimbra)
  • Death, nomos, and anomia in Herodotus
• 17 November: Marco Ferrario (Trento)
  • Dam it! Herodotus in Chorasmia between Darius I and Fayzulla Xo’jaev
• 24 November: Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State)
  • Herodotus, Historian of the People of Israel, without knowing it
• 1 December: Edith Foster (Wooster College)
  • Devastation and plundering of land in Herodotus
• 8 December: Alexander Meeus (Mannheim)
  • Herodotos’ source citations: the old building blocks of a (not quite) new solution

January – March 2022

• 26 January: Thomas Harrison (St Andrews)
  • Agariste of Sicyon and the contest for Greece
• 2 February: Annual General Meeting
• 9 February: Delila Jordan (Innsbruck/Edinburgh)
  • Plato, Herodotus, and the question of historical truth
• 16 February: Rosaria Munson (Swarthmore)
  • Retrospect: Telling Wonders
• 2 March: Juha Isotalo (Turku)
  • Relating the truth of the matter. Social identity construction through shared memory of the past in Herodotus’ ethnography
• 9 March: Marek Węcowski (Warsaw)
  • Herodotus, the Persian Wars, and Greek political patronage
• 16 March: Elizabeth Vandiver (Whitman)
  • Controversies and Pitfalls of Translation: Herodotus in Contentious Times
• 23 March: Elizabeth Irwin (Columbia) and Ivan Matijašić (Siena)
  • Round-table: Performing the Histories

May – July 2022

• 4 May: Lucia Visonà (Sorbonne)
  • Looking back in anger. Plutarch on Herodotus on Greek unity
• 11 May: Ruobing Xian (Fudan)
  • The portrayal of doctors in Herodotus Book 3
• 18 May: Louise Brouard (Sorbonne)
  • Contestation, popular language or technical vocabulary? The use of καλέω and ὀνομάζω in Herodotus’ Histories 
• 25 May: Maria Fragoulaki (Cardiff)
  • The human body in Herodotus’ battle scenes 
• 31 May – Weds 1 June
  • The Herodotus Marathon: Books 1-3, Books 4-6, Books 7-9
• 8 June: Edward Nolan (University of Maryland, soon to be National Taiwan University)
  • Interpreters in Herodotus
• 15 June: Janric van Rookhuijzen (Utrecht)
  • Herodotus’ account of the Persian siege of the Acropolis and its reception in archaeology 
• 22 June: Deborah Roberts (Haverford)
  • Retelling Herodotus for children: text and image 
• 6 July: Olaf Almqvist (St Andrews)
  • The Stranger-King: Or Marshall Sahlins among the Greeks 

September-December 2022

• 28 September: Jan Haywood (Leicester)
  • Human and divine action in Herodotus’ Histories
• 26 October: Larisa Ficulle (St Andrews)
  • Through the lens of tradition: Herodotus and the historians of the age of Justinian 
• 16 November: Alex Tarbet (Michigan)
  • Blind Pharaohs and Greek Seekers: Herodotus meets an Egyptian
• 23 November: Scarlett Kingsley (Agnes Scott)  
  • Herodotus the Presocratic

January-March 2023

• 25 January: Carlos Hernández Garcés (Southwest University of Science and Technology)  
  • Greek Justice Versus non-Greek Despotism through the aiti– language in Herodotus 
• 1 February: Amelia Brown (Queensland)  
  • Thetis and the Nereids as Patrons of Greek Sailors in Herodotus
• 15 February: Flavia Frisone (Salento) 
  • Scattered Fragments of a Western Iliupersis. The collapse of Sybaris in Herodotus’ tales 
• 22 February: Alexander Schütze (Munich)
  • The role of Egyptian places, things, and stories in Herodotus’ logos on Egypt 
• 1 March: Sydnor Roy (Texas Tech)
  • Purposeful cultural change in Herodotus’ Histories 
• 8 March: Ivan Matijašić (Venice / CHS, Harvard)
  • Was Herodotus a Model for Ammianus Marcellinus? The case of the Battle of Adrianople