Word: herodotus
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...Cortés' conquest of Mexico. The new translation is so smooth that the story gains as a narrative but lacks something of the awkward dignity with which the proud old soldier must have recalled his years of service under Cortés. The book inevitably evokes Herodotus-another old soldier who lived to remember and tell-as Díaz begins: "I am an old man of 84 and have lost my sight and hearing. It is my fortune to have no other wealth to leave my sons and descendants except this, my true story, and they will...
...Persian messengers travel with a velocity which nothing human can equal. . . . Neither snow, nor rain, nor heart, nor darkness are permitted to obstruct their speed."--Herodotus, Book Seven...
...while the average Cambridge postman knows very little about Persian messengers or even about Herodotus, it should be fairly obvious from the above quotation that he has something in common with the former and is somewhat in debt to the latter...
...this country, Herodotus' phrase has been slightly rewritten to conform to the more heroic conception of a courageous courier who fights his way through the cold, black night to bring the news to a last outpost of civilization. "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," is the popular adaptation of Herodotus' words, which, although certainly discriminatory towards Persian messengers, has been inscribed atop the main Post Office Building in New York City...
Tourists from Herodotus to Rita Hayworth have swarmed around the gigantic base of Pharaoh Cheops' pyramid, which stands in the desert on the outskirts of modern Cairo. None of them, until this week, knew what lay under their feet near the pyramid's south face...