Mapping the Histories

Herodotus, the Father of History, was a fifth century Greek historian. The Histories of Herodotus recounts the origins of the Great War between the Greeks and Persians and the rise of the Persian Empire.

The Hestia Project was set-up to carry out geospatial analysis of Herodotus's Histories. Part of that project includes this Herodotus Timemap. The Timemap connects the text of the Histories with a Simile timeline to allow users to visualize geographical references in the Histories on a Google Map.

As you progress through the chapters of the Histories the markers automatically update on the map to show the referenced locations. You can also progress through the text and the map by using the Simile timeline.


GapVis has also created a very similar text, Simile timeline and Google Map of Herodotus' Histories. GapVis is an interface for exploring locations referenced in a number of historical texts. The project aims to geo-tag and show the locations of ancient places mentioned in some of the key books from and about the ancient world.

Currently the interface allows you to explore texts such as Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Works of Flavius Josephus, The First and Thirty-third Books of Pliny's Natural History as well as Herodotus' Histories.

The GapVis Map of the Histories also includes an interesting breakdown of the most mentioned places in the text and the number of times that they are mentioned.