Michael Seselja’s Reviews > The Histories > Status Update
Michael Seselja
is on page 187 of 880
Book II
The master of digressions continues by mentioning the name of a ruler of Egypt and granting us 80 pages where he tells us everything he knows about Egypt. Again there’s some wild stories.
— Jun 05, 2026 03:28PM
The master of digressions continues by mentioning the name of a ruler of Egypt and granting us 80 pages where he tells us everything he knows about Egypt. Again there’s some wild stories.
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Michael’s Previous Updates
Michael Seselja
is on page 444 of 880
Book VI
Surprisingly the famous Battle of Marathon only gets a couple of pages. A lot of the chapter is spent on detailing how much the Greeks fought with each other; it seems the only thing that could (sometimes) bring them together was the threat of Persians invading.
Also I learned that the Spartans thought that drinking your wine neat would make you go insane. I wonder what they would think about scotch.
— Aug 06, 2026 07:46PM
Surprisingly the famous Battle of Marathon only gets a couple of pages. A lot of the chapter is spent on detailing how much the Greeks fought with each other; it seems the only thing that could (sometimes) bring them together was the threat of Persians invading.
Also I learned that the Spartans thought that drinking your wine neat would make you go insane. I wonder what they would think about scotch.
Michael Seselja
is on page 389 of 880
Book V
Herodotus thinks that in becoming democratic and giving their citizens a say over government, Athens became a much stronger fighting force as the men were more motivated. I think there’s something to this but it probably doesn’t work at the scale of many of today’s nation states.
— Jul 26, 2026 02:49PM
Herodotus thinks that in becoming democratic and giving their citizens a say over government, Athens became a much stronger fighting force as the men were more motivated. I think there’s something to this but it probably doesn’t work at the scale of many of today’s nation states.
Michael Seselja
is on page 337 of 880
Book IV
I don’t take all of Herodotus’ descriptions of the customs various peoples as gospel of course. But wow he makes the ancient Greeks look positively chaste and Christian by comparison.
— Jul 13, 2026 10:11PM
I don’t take all of Herodotus’ descriptions of the customs various peoples as gospel of course. But wow he makes the ancient Greeks look positively chaste and Christian by comparison.
Michael Seselja
is on page 187 of 880
Book III
A few more fun digressions, especially one about giant gold digging ants that apparently live in the deserts of India. But the best part is definitely when Herodotus says he doesn’t think Britain is a real place.
— Jun 28, 2026 09:44PM
A few more fun digressions, especially one about giant gold digging ants that apparently live in the deserts of India. But the best part is definitely when Herodotus says he doesn’t think Britain is a real place.
Michael Seselja
is on page 106 of 880
Book I
A bit of history, descriptions of some very interesting (by that I mean weird) customs and a whole lot of tangents. Herodotus is reminding me of Trump when he went on Joe Rogan: he loves taking the story on a massive detour but he always manages to get back to the point.
— May 23, 2026 09:03PM
A bit of history, descriptions of some very interesting (by that I mean weird) customs and a whole lot of tangents. Herodotus is reminding me of Trump when he went on Joe Rogan: he loves taking the story on a massive detour but he always manages to get back to the point.
Michael Seselja
is on page 70 of 880
Apparently when the ancient Persians had a drinking session they would thrash out important matters. Then in the morning when they were sobered up they would discuss things again, and if they still agreed then the decision stood. I think there’s something in that.
— May 20, 2026 06:37PM