Thursday, November 08, 2007

The father of History

I've posted a bit about Herodotus recently, so I thought I'd include a picture of the big man himself. This is from my recent trip to Europe, out the front of the parliament in Vienna (Herodotus is the one on the left). On one side of the huge ramp that leads up to the entrance are statues of four great Greek historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Polybius. On the other side are four great Roman historians: Livy, Tacitus, Julius Caesar and Sallust.

They're interesting figures to have outside your parliament house. I guess the architects wanted to emphasise how important an understanding of history is in making laws and exercising power, as well as identifying themselves with what they saw as a enlightened and admirable civilisations.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

(Oh and i thought Herodotus was the one the right!)

Anonymous said...

oh, and here I was thinking teenage dirtbag had retired from commenting. my mistake.

love the photo, mr. morrison. just make sure you keep your eyes on the statue at all time. don't blink. don't look away. they move fast. impossibly fast...

... and you wouldn't get a thing i'm saying unless you've watched series 3 of the new doctor who...