BORN A RAMBLIN' MAN.

Byline: CRAIG SMITH 

Whether you love travel or hate it, you can't deny that the urge to go and see for oneself is deep-rooted. We'll never stop setting forth on journeys, whether that means going halfway around the globe or down to the local drugstore. And we'll certainly never stop bringing back stories, slides, and souvenirs to prove that yes, we were there, exciting --

or boring -- our friends in the process.

By doing so we're simply following in the footsteps of untold numbers before us, and especially the astounding Herodotus. A native of the then-Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum in southern Turkey), he lived from around 484 to 425 B.C. During his lifetime he voyaged through much of the known world, including Babylon, Egypt, and Greece; saw amazing sights, including some of what we recall now as the Seven Wonders of the World; spoke to hundreds of people; steeped himself in the stories of the sands of time; and eventually wrote his famous Histories. His aim was to analyze the pivotal Greco-Persian wars and explore the two cultures that clashed in them; but in the process he also noted some amazingly entertaining and often apocryphal tales, recorded tragic and triumphant instances of valor, and became the first historian in the modern sense of the term.

But there is more. As British journalist Justin Marozzi points out in his enticing, evocative

The Way of Herodotus: Travels With the Man Who Invented History (Da Capo Press, 2008), Herodotus also captured an enduring truth, one any traveler worth his salt quickly learns -- we ignore the customs of others at our peril. Marozzi confirmed that during his own years following Herodotus' path through Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and Greece, and shared his observations with Pasatiempo in a phone interview from Norfolk, England.

Pasatiempo: Herodotus covered so much ground. How did he pay for that travel?

Justin Marozzi: There are so many things with Herodotus we don't know, but there are logical assumptions we can make. Such as, he was a merchant trader. Another, not mutually exclusive, is that he was some sort of aristocrat who could pay for it. You get the sense from the text and the circles he moved in that he was not born in the gutter. That he belonged in some sort to the elite. It is difficult to know without biographical details. The trade idea would be one valid theory, as would [the idea of] a wealthy man who would be able to fund the journey.

Pasa: I'm impressed with how you weave Herodotus' take on customs of his day with the experiences you had in making the point that custom can be much stronger than law.

Marozzi: Probably the area where it was brought home strongest was in Iraq, where you had this polarized clash of West and East [in war], each

with fairly developed ideas of their own superiority --

with their own traditions going back a long time.Customs are cemented by tradition and history.

I found Herodotus' views on customs fascinating.

But that kind of talk was absent from the Iraq debacle. We went in and wanted to impose some kinds of things that went completely against custom.

Pasa: Such as supplanting a local sheik's jurisdiction in legal and social matters with centralized government?

Marozzi: That's right. Their tradition of hereditary tribal authority is not something we're used to, but it is deeply embedded in their culture and customs. That kind of situation became a fulcrum to test the enduring relevance of Herodotus' writings.

Pasa: You talk about one case in Egypt, where thousands of policemen were conscripted to line the roads the country's president was supposed to take. And then he came in by helicopter.

Marozzi: Yes, in Luxor. The pharaoh concept is living on. If you are in power, they revere you with this fairly sort of awful deference to authority. It is desperately tragic in a way. I have been going to Egypt for a number of years. I find it a wonderful place but for the sense of stagnation. Not just economic, but hugely political, and among the intelligentsia. Writers, artists -- whatever they do, the government doesn't listen. No one cares. Nothing is going to change the way the country runs.

The country is getting ready for possibly [President Hosni] Mubarak's son to take over. It's passing on power from one pharaoh to the next.

Pasa: I noticed especially the interactions you had with your translators. Did you use intermediaries all the time when talking to people?

Marozzi: I have conversational Arabic but not good enough to get into serious Herodotus or historical details. No Turkish, and certainly no Greek, which was problematic at times in Greece. Generally I didn't have a translator [there], and when you're in the countryside and speaking to farmers, it's very difficult. I wondered how Herodotus managed it.

It's thought he didn't have languages.

Pasa: In the book, you don't seem to have much tolerance for the academics who denigrate Herodotus.

Marozzi: I found a way into this particular field because I observed how the modern academics dismiss him as being unreliable, and then I thought about the difficulties contemporary travelers would have now. It made me admire him all the more. I think he's an example of where the armchair academic is missing out on Herodotus, from the safety of the lecture room and libraries. He was inventing things as went along. He made mistakes. But he was not pedantic.

Pasa: I believe you mention that Aristotle really didn't like him, and took him to task; called him

The Father of Lies.

Marozzi: That was Plutarch! That was a good

old-fashioned hatchet job. It was a bit of a stroke

of hypocrisy and literary jealousy. .

Pasa: You also note, though, how wonderfully excited certain people would get when you mentioned Herodotus, and not just academics

or museum people.

Marozzi: It was a really nice morale boost. You never knew when it was going to happen. The lady in the Greek port town of Cavalla, she was a huge fan. So was a Turkish historian. The Greek hotelier in Cavalla, her eyes went a bit misty at the mention of Herodotus, and she told me how she read him on a trip up the Nile and was mesmerized by his descriptions of natural history, temples, architecture. I thought it was a nice, romantic image. And the other lady in Cairo, the expert on mummification, who adores him.

Pasa: You point out that when Herodotus saw the Pyramids in Egypt, they were as many years apart from him as he is now apart from us. Did your views on monuments and archaeology change as you worked on this book?

Marozzi: Certainly my views changed a bit on some aspects of archaeology -- on restoration, which is a controversial subject. In Babylon, my first reaction was, what has Saddam done? But by the end of my trip there, I began to see what Saddam had done had improved Babylon. The ancient relics, which are really not for the world anymore, had a sort of a slightly tragic feeling -- unimpressive teetering stuff here and there. Saddam's stuff was enjoyed by the Iraqis and gave them a sense of national pride. And it helped Babylon to be around for a few more generations to come.

Who are archaeologists to dictate that they are the only people who can have the defining view in how history is preserved? Babylon, especially, has very often been a city governed by dictators with very crude ways of building and rebuilding.

Pasa: In my school days we were taught how huge Babylon was and how immense its walls and gates were -- so that two teams of horses, each pulling a chariot, could pass each other on the city walls. It was a real megalopolis.

Marozzi: Yes, and of prodigious wealth and prosperity. You've read that description, you know, about the walls and the Hanging Gardens; it has a rather dramatic name, with all its associations of historical glory. The site itself is difficult to live up to that. I thought it was interesting to see it in

[the context of] yet another conflict, in 2003. Yet another historical warfare in a part of the world that has seen the transformative nature

of power, right up to the 21st century. It shows the very transitory nature of authority and power. Herodotus brings that message out incredibly clearly.

Pasa: How has the book been received?

Marozzi: I think what people have commented on, mostly, is that Herodotus has this wonderfully modern, tolerant voice. That has been picked up by them with the situation in the Muslim world and the West now. He's always been relevant, and people see the relevance very plainly -- about us not being so judgmental [about other cultures] and being more accommodating to different cultures.

Pasa: When you were in Iraq for a year, and following Herodotus' footsteps, you were also working, paying your way around.

Marozzi: I've always been a freelance writer and reviewer but also a security consultant, mostly in Iraq. The Iraq job was consulting with a British security firm and setting up a civil-affairs program. It was fascinating and very challenging, helping schools and hospitals.

Pasa: If you were recommending an edition of Herodotus, what translation would you suggest?

Marozzi: I definitely have a favorite, which would be the Penguin edition. I'm slightly hesitant to say that, as a friend is about to issue a new one! But the current Penguin Classic, translated by Aubrey de Salincourt and with notes by John Marincola, has been reissued in a very handsome edition with lots of illustrations.

If you survey the book as a whole, there's pretty much a universal verdict on the grace and ease of his style. It's widely commented on. Even if you talk to people who read him slightly reluctantly at 18, doing what we call A-levels in this country, they remark that he is an easy, elegant read and an elegant writer. They often contrast him with more difficult writers, whether that be Thucydides or others. He has this very light, breezy, jaunty but elegant style.

To view him with our word, just as a historian, misses a broader aspect -- of him going out there gathering his information. He is travel writer meets reporter meets historian via anthropology and archaeology. It's quite funny; every now and then a critic says it's presumptuous to make assumptions about his character from his writing. To me, it shows so much of the man's character. He's not a shy, retiring type. He's getting around everywhere, talking to everyone on this endlessly curious mission to get information. You can't miss it. <