Stephen Bradford Marte's Blog
December 23, 2013
With This Shield
One of the most gratifying things about reading the reviews on Amazon for The Wandering King is the comments from people that are looking forward to reading the second book in the series. Therefore I wanted give my small band of followers a sneak preview as to where I am going with book two, titled: With This Shield.
The title comes from a famous rite of passage in Spartan culture. When a young man graduated from the agoge and was about to take his place in the army, his closest female relative, usually his mother, presented him with his shield, with these words:
“Return with this shield,
or carried home dead upon it.”
Victory or death. Come home a winner or don’t come back alive. That may sound like harsh advice, particularly from your mother, but the Spartans were so out-numbered by their helot serfs, their very survival depended entirely on military superiority. In fact, after just one catastrophic loss on the battlefield, at Leuctra in 371 B.C., the entire Spartan system collapsed and never recovered.
Magna Graecia
Book one in The Wandering King series, Summer, Harvest, War, was divided into three sections: Libya, Corinth and Delphi, and followed the main character Euryanax’s adventures in those three places. All of which gave me a chance to introduce readers to the Spartan way of life; Euryanax’s father Dorieus’ rivalary with his half-brother Cleomenes; and Dorieus’ initial attempts to build a Spartan colony overseas.
With This Shield is divided into two sections: Magna Graecia and Attica.
The first section follows Dorieus, Euryanax and their army to southern Italy and Sicily, which in ancient times were known collectively as Magna Graecia. During the Archaic Period of Greek history (750 – 480 B.C.), the Greeks colonized so much of southern Italy and Sicily they considered it an extension of Greece, and because the land was so rich compared to the motherland, it became known as Magna Graecia, which is Latin for ‘Greater Greece.’
The War Between Sybaris and Croton
In this section of the book, Euryanax recounts the war between the Greek colonies of Sybaris and Croton, which according to Herodotus, Dorieus may have taken part in. Not all the ancient sources agree as to whether or not Dorieus and his band of Spartans actually took part in this war, but as it took place at the same time Dorieus would have been passing by on his way to Sicily, I can’t help but think, what Spartan general would have been able to resist getting involved in a war with the wealthiest city in the world, particularly when Dorieus needed money to finance his colony?
Among the few ancient authors to comment on the war between Sybaris and Croton was a Greek named Athenaeus living in Egypt in 200 A.D. Athenaeus wrote a book called the Deipnosophistae, or The Banquet of the Learned, in which he discusses food, wine, luxury, music, art, sexual habits and literary gossip. The Deipnosophistae is primarily important to us today for its references to hundreds of earlier Greek writers, most of whose works have been lost over time. Some of the passages Athenaeus quotes are the only extant references we have for some of the missing works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Heraclides.
Athenaeus is important to me, because he is one of the few sources of information on the fabled city of Sybaris, which was legendary in ancient times as the wealthiest, most luxurious city of the age; sort of the Sodom & Gomorrah of its time. As the story goes, Sybaris controlled one of the largest tracts of fertile farmland in southern Italy and was the leader of an alliance of 25 cities. Dorieus and Euryanax were passing by on their way to Sicily, when Sybaris came into conflict with its neighbor Croton, and the Spartans became embroiled in this famous, but little known war.
The Philosopher Pythagoras
What interested the ancient Greeks about this particular conflict was Sybaris’ reputation for wealth and excess, and Croton’s reputation for its number of Olympic champions, good health and dutiful wives. Croton owed much of its reputation to the philosopher Pythagoras. Everyone has heard of the Pythagorean Theorem, but oddly enough, the mathematical equation attributed to Pythagoras has little basis in reality. Historians agree that the theorem (the square of the hypotenuse on a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides), was in use by the Babylonians, Egyptians and Indians hundreds of years before Pythagoras was born. It is possible Pythagoras learned about the theorem during his travels to the Far East and brought it to the Greek world, but it’s not the most interesting thing we know about the man that is credited with inventing the word ‘philosophy,’ love of wisdom.
Pythagoras was famous in the ancient world for his teachings on science, music, medicine, astronomy, politics, math, religion and everyday life. He preached equality for women, was a vegetarian and believed in reincarnation. He had a great influence on later philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, and started his own religion. During his lifetime his followers were called Cenobites, which meant, ‘the common life,’ but later they became known as the Pythagoreans, and greatly influenced the ancient world for hundreds of years after Pythagoras’ death.
Although Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos, he left during the turmoil caused by the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, ventured to Egypt and Babylon, eventually settling in Italy at Croton where he was responsible for writing their code of laws. In some sense, Pythagoras is a mythical, somewhat Christ-like figure, as his views differed radically from what most Greeks believed, his teachings inspired a religious cult, and he came to a tragic end.
Though Herodotus never mentions a meeting between Pythagoras, Dorieus or Euryanax, there is no question that the famous philosopher was living in Croton at the same time my heroes stopped in southern Italy on their way to Sicily. Were Euryanax and the Spartans attracted to Pythagoras’ teachings? No one knows. All we know is that according to Herodotus, Sybaris’ army amounted to over 300,000 men. Herodotus does not give us a figure for the army fielded by Croton and Dorieus’ Spartans, but it was miniscule in comparison. To the Greeks, the war between Sybaris and Croton was remembered as a clash between the forces of excess and the forces of discipline.
A Failed Attempt at Democracy
I’m not going to tell you what happened during the war, except to say that one of the additional causes, beyond Sybaris and Croton’s obvious differences in lifestyle, was a difference in political philosophy. Sybaris was ruled by a tyrant named Telys. Croton was ruled by an oligarchy called the Thousand. The ancient sources such as Strabo and Diodorus hint that Croton was among the first cities in the ancient world to flirt with the idea of democracy. Unquestionably it was a failed attempt, possibly led by Pythagoras and his followers.
What is fascinating to me about what was going on in southern Italy is that my hero Euryanax got to witness these political struggles between tyranny, oligarchy and democracy, and this struggle provides the backdrop for what occurs in the first section of With This Shield.
I cannot reveal what happens to Euryanax in Italy and Sicily, but a reading of Herodotus will let you know that the Spartans didn’t stay in Magna Graecia. Euryanax eventually returned to Sparta, where in the second section of With This Shield, he is sent with an expedition of Lacedaemonians to free the Athenians from the oppressive rule of the tyrant Hippias.
The Democratic Revolution at Athens
The second section of the book is titled ‘Attica,’ which is the name of the Greek province where the city of Athens is located. Why not call it ‘Athens?’ Because the action takes place in the city of Athens along with several additional locations in Attica, such as the plain of Phalerum, the villages of Braunon and Piraeus, and by the Cephissus River.
I’ve always been amazed that there aren’t dozens of books on the market regarding how the world’s first democracy was formed at Athens. History books touch on the subject, but there’s never been a novel depicting the revolution that occurred in Athens around approximately 508 B.C., a revolution triggered according to Herodotus, by a small Spartan expeditionary force that was sent by Euryanax’s uncle King Cleomenes to overthrow Athens’ tyrant Hippias.
Herodotus is among our few sources for what happened at Athens, and he is maddeningly vague about the details. All of which allows me to create my own plot based on the details we do know. Suffice it to say, it makes for a good story.
Like the first book in the series, With This Shield is first and foremost an adventure story that describes Euryanax’s wanderings around the ancient world during a pivotal period of history. On a deeper level, With This Shield is about the end of the Age of Tyrants and the emergence of democracy on the world stage.
While we take things like freedom of speech and democracy for granted today, they were prized commodities in the ancient world, things people fought and died for. One of the things that may surprise you about the original democracy at Athens is how many people, Socrates and Plato among them, distrusted ‘rule by the people.’ To them, it meant rule by the uneducated, unwashed masses.
As of December 2013, I’m approximately 3/4′s of the way through writing With This Shield. I hesitate to promise an exact date as to when it will be available, but will say that it’s my goal to have it completed in 2014. Stay tuned…
The title comes from a famous rite of passage in Spartan culture. When a young man graduated from the agoge and was about to take his place in the army, his closest female relative, usually his mother, presented him with his shield, with these words:
“Return with this shield,
or carried home dead upon it.”
Victory or death. Come home a winner or don’t come back alive. That may sound like harsh advice, particularly from your mother, but the Spartans were so out-numbered by their helot serfs, their very survival depended entirely on military superiority. In fact, after just one catastrophic loss on the battlefield, at Leuctra in 371 B.C., the entire Spartan system collapsed and never recovered.
Magna Graecia
Book one in The Wandering King series, Summer, Harvest, War, was divided into three sections: Libya, Corinth and Delphi, and followed the main character Euryanax’s adventures in those three places. All of which gave me a chance to introduce readers to the Spartan way of life; Euryanax’s father Dorieus’ rivalary with his half-brother Cleomenes; and Dorieus’ initial attempts to build a Spartan colony overseas.
With This Shield is divided into two sections: Magna Graecia and Attica.
The first section follows Dorieus, Euryanax and their army to southern Italy and Sicily, which in ancient times were known collectively as Magna Graecia. During the Archaic Period of Greek history (750 – 480 B.C.), the Greeks colonized so much of southern Italy and Sicily they considered it an extension of Greece, and because the land was so rich compared to the motherland, it became known as Magna Graecia, which is Latin for ‘Greater Greece.’
The War Between Sybaris and Croton
In this section of the book, Euryanax recounts the war between the Greek colonies of Sybaris and Croton, which according to Herodotus, Dorieus may have taken part in. Not all the ancient sources agree as to whether or not Dorieus and his band of Spartans actually took part in this war, but as it took place at the same time Dorieus would have been passing by on his way to Sicily, I can’t help but think, what Spartan general would have been able to resist getting involved in a war with the wealthiest city in the world, particularly when Dorieus needed money to finance his colony?
Among the few ancient authors to comment on the war between Sybaris and Croton was a Greek named Athenaeus living in Egypt in 200 A.D. Athenaeus wrote a book called the Deipnosophistae, or The Banquet of the Learned, in which he discusses food, wine, luxury, music, art, sexual habits and literary gossip. The Deipnosophistae is primarily important to us today for its references to hundreds of earlier Greek writers, most of whose works have been lost over time. Some of the passages Athenaeus quotes are the only extant references we have for some of the missing works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Heraclides.
Athenaeus is important to me, because he is one of the few sources of information on the fabled city of Sybaris, which was legendary in ancient times as the wealthiest, most luxurious city of the age; sort of the Sodom & Gomorrah of its time. As the story goes, Sybaris controlled one of the largest tracts of fertile farmland in southern Italy and was the leader of an alliance of 25 cities. Dorieus and Euryanax were passing by on their way to Sicily, when Sybaris came into conflict with its neighbor Croton, and the Spartans became embroiled in this famous, but little known war.
The Philosopher Pythagoras
What interested the ancient Greeks about this particular conflict was Sybaris’ reputation for wealth and excess, and Croton’s reputation for its number of Olympic champions, good health and dutiful wives. Croton owed much of its reputation to the philosopher Pythagoras. Everyone has heard of the Pythagorean Theorem, but oddly enough, the mathematical equation attributed to Pythagoras has little basis in reality. Historians agree that the theorem (the square of the hypotenuse on a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides), was in use by the Babylonians, Egyptians and Indians hundreds of years before Pythagoras was born. It is possible Pythagoras learned about the theorem during his travels to the Far East and brought it to the Greek world, but it’s not the most interesting thing we know about the man that is credited with inventing the word ‘philosophy,’ love of wisdom.
Pythagoras was famous in the ancient world for his teachings on science, music, medicine, astronomy, politics, math, religion and everyday life. He preached equality for women, was a vegetarian and believed in reincarnation. He had a great influence on later philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, and started his own religion. During his lifetime his followers were called Cenobites, which meant, ‘the common life,’ but later they became known as the Pythagoreans, and greatly influenced the ancient world for hundreds of years after Pythagoras’ death.
Although Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos, he left during the turmoil caused by the tyrant Polycrates of Samos, ventured to Egypt and Babylon, eventually settling in Italy at Croton where he was responsible for writing their code of laws. In some sense, Pythagoras is a mythical, somewhat Christ-like figure, as his views differed radically from what most Greeks believed, his teachings inspired a religious cult, and he came to a tragic end.
Though Herodotus never mentions a meeting between Pythagoras, Dorieus or Euryanax, there is no question that the famous philosopher was living in Croton at the same time my heroes stopped in southern Italy on their way to Sicily. Were Euryanax and the Spartans attracted to Pythagoras’ teachings? No one knows. All we know is that according to Herodotus, Sybaris’ army amounted to over 300,000 men. Herodotus does not give us a figure for the army fielded by Croton and Dorieus’ Spartans, but it was miniscule in comparison. To the Greeks, the war between Sybaris and Croton was remembered as a clash between the forces of excess and the forces of discipline.
A Failed Attempt at Democracy
I’m not going to tell you what happened during the war, except to say that one of the additional causes, beyond Sybaris and Croton’s obvious differences in lifestyle, was a difference in political philosophy. Sybaris was ruled by a tyrant named Telys. Croton was ruled by an oligarchy called the Thousand. The ancient sources such as Strabo and Diodorus hint that Croton was among the first cities in the ancient world to flirt with the idea of democracy. Unquestionably it was a failed attempt, possibly led by Pythagoras and his followers.
What is fascinating to me about what was going on in southern Italy is that my hero Euryanax got to witness these political struggles between tyranny, oligarchy and democracy, and this struggle provides the backdrop for what occurs in the first section of With This Shield.
I cannot reveal what happens to Euryanax in Italy and Sicily, but a reading of Herodotus will let you know that the Spartans didn’t stay in Magna Graecia. Euryanax eventually returned to Sparta, where in the second section of With This Shield, he is sent with an expedition of Lacedaemonians to free the Athenians from the oppressive rule of the tyrant Hippias.
The Democratic Revolution at Athens
The second section of the book is titled ‘Attica,’ which is the name of the Greek province where the city of Athens is located. Why not call it ‘Athens?’ Because the action takes place in the city of Athens along with several additional locations in Attica, such as the plain of Phalerum, the villages of Braunon and Piraeus, and by the Cephissus River.
I’ve always been amazed that there aren’t dozens of books on the market regarding how the world’s first democracy was formed at Athens. History books touch on the subject, but there’s never been a novel depicting the revolution that occurred in Athens around approximately 508 B.C., a revolution triggered according to Herodotus, by a small Spartan expeditionary force that was sent by Euryanax’s uncle King Cleomenes to overthrow Athens’ tyrant Hippias.
Herodotus is among our few sources for what happened at Athens, and he is maddeningly vague about the details. All of which allows me to create my own plot based on the details we do know. Suffice it to say, it makes for a good story.
Like the first book in the series, With This Shield is first and foremost an adventure story that describes Euryanax’s wanderings around the ancient world during a pivotal period of history. On a deeper level, With This Shield is about the end of the Age of Tyrants and the emergence of democracy on the world stage.
While we take things like freedom of speech and democracy for granted today, they were prized commodities in the ancient world, things people fought and died for. One of the things that may surprise you about the original democracy at Athens is how many people, Socrates and Plato among them, distrusted ‘rule by the people.’ To them, it meant rule by the uneducated, unwashed masses.
As of December 2013, I’m approximately 3/4′s of the way through writing With This Shield. I hesitate to promise an exact date as to when it will be available, but will say that it’s my goal to have it completed in 2014. Stay tuned…
May 29, 2013
The Calling
If I ever had a calling, it’s to write. It’s one of the few things I’ve known with absolute certainty from a fairly young age.
At nineteen years old, I walked into our local newspaper office with a file folder of poetry and short stories and tried to parlay them into a reporting job. The managing editor, Tom Edmunds, sat there with his flat-top haircut and bow tie flipping through my folder. Finally Tom said, “Son, I have college graduates coming in here every week with journalism degrees. I just don’t need any more writers right now.”
Desperately wanting to get on the paper, I blabbered, “I’ll do anything to work here. I’ll wash windows, sweep floors, clean toilets…”
Tom laughed and said, “Well, if you want to get your foot in the door, come to think of it, I do have a position open for a typist. It doesn’t pay much. Can you type?”
I’d had taken typing in high school, so said yes. I grabbed the job and was soon typing 60 words a minute. This was back in the days before computers and reporters’ used such caveman-like tools as manual Royal typewriters. As The Spirit was a morning paper, it had an 11 p.m. deadline. The reporters all made sure they had their stories in by eleven, then the night editor Kenny Anderson laid the paper out, and the printers (not HPs or Canons, but huge industrial sized rolls of paper that looked like King Kong-sized toilet paper) had till 6 a.m. to crank out 10,000 copies for the local residents.
As this was in the Dark Ages before the advent of the internet, my job was to sit at a typewriter wearing a pair of earphones and take the calls from our reporters as they phoned in their stories from all over the tri-county area. Most were out covering county, township, and local meetings. After the meetings they found whatever cubby hole they could, banged out their story, and called it in to me. They were generally in a hurry to get home and spoke a lot faster than I could type, so my typing skills improved immeasurably. After they were done, I tore the copy out of the spindle and handed it off to Kenny who checked it for mistakes and then found a home for it in the layout.
In between frantic bouts with the Royal, while I was waiting for the next reporter to call, Kenny had me help him. It surprised me to learn the reporters did not create their own headlines. The night editor created them based on how many columns the story covered in the paper. Kenny would hand me a news story and say, “Read this about the fire at the mall and give me an 18-point font, 32-character headline.” When I saw my first headlines in the paper I was as a giddy as parent looking down at their newborn child. My words were in print!
Once I got inside the paper, like a faithful puppy I began following our star reporters Andy Petite and Karen Wilson everywhere. Thus began an unofficial apprenticeship. Andy and Karen allowed me to tag along with them when they went out to cover supervisory and school board meetings, and afterwards told me to write a news story based on what I’d witnessed. They’d write the actual story for the paper, and sit down with me later and go over my copy, giving me pointers. From them I learned how to take notes, how to write a lead sentence, getting in the ‘who, what, where and when,’ and how to organize a news story, from most important to least important facts, skills I use to this day.
A month after I’d started at the paper Tom called me at home one day. He had a huge story on his hands concerning an incident that occurred in Washington D.C. where Muslim terrorists had held a group of people hostage for a week in a Jewish synagogue. The hostages had just been released that day and one of them was a local man. Sounding somewhat desperate, Tom said, “I need someone to interview that hostage and all my reporters are out on assignment. Do you think you can handle it kid?” I did more than handle it, I interviewed the man at his home in Southampton, banged out the story, and it landed on the front page in the lead spot. Nor did Tom edit a single word, a feat I’m not sure that I’ve ever duplicated since. No bad for my first effort. Anyway, it proved to Tom I could write a news story. The rest, as they say, is history.
During my brief stint as a high school English teacher I told my students, “Each of you has a calling. Each of you has a special talent. There’s something that comes easy to you. Something that makes you come live. It could be math or science or history. Your primary goal in high school should be to figure out what your special gift is and pursue it. It could lead you to be an artist or an auto mechanic or a nurse. But the important thing is, you’ll spend your life doing something that gives you immense satisfaction.”
As someone wrote, “Find your passion and you will find your purpose in life.”
At nineteen years old, I walked into our local newspaper office with a file folder of poetry and short stories and tried to parlay them into a reporting job. The managing editor, Tom Edmunds, sat there with his flat-top haircut and bow tie flipping through my folder. Finally Tom said, “Son, I have college graduates coming in here every week with journalism degrees. I just don’t need any more writers right now.”
Desperately wanting to get on the paper, I blabbered, “I’ll do anything to work here. I’ll wash windows, sweep floors, clean toilets…”
Tom laughed and said, “Well, if you want to get your foot in the door, come to think of it, I do have a position open for a typist. It doesn’t pay much. Can you type?”
I’d had taken typing in high school, so said yes. I grabbed the job and was soon typing 60 words a minute. This was back in the days before computers and reporters’ used such caveman-like tools as manual Royal typewriters. As The Spirit was a morning paper, it had an 11 p.m. deadline. The reporters all made sure they had their stories in by eleven, then the night editor Kenny Anderson laid the paper out, and the printers (not HPs or Canons, but huge industrial sized rolls of paper that looked like King Kong-sized toilet paper) had till 6 a.m. to crank out 10,000 copies for the local residents.
As this was in the Dark Ages before the advent of the internet, my job was to sit at a typewriter wearing a pair of earphones and take the calls from our reporters as they phoned in their stories from all over the tri-county area. Most were out covering county, township, and local meetings. After the meetings they found whatever cubby hole they could, banged out their story, and called it in to me. They were generally in a hurry to get home and spoke a lot faster than I could type, so my typing skills improved immeasurably. After they were done, I tore the copy out of the spindle and handed it off to Kenny who checked it for mistakes and then found a home for it in the layout.
In between frantic bouts with the Royal, while I was waiting for the next reporter to call, Kenny had me help him. It surprised me to learn the reporters did not create their own headlines. The night editor created them based on how many columns the story covered in the paper. Kenny would hand me a news story and say, “Read this about the fire at the mall and give me an 18-point font, 32-character headline.” When I saw my first headlines in the paper I was as a giddy as parent looking down at their newborn child. My words were in print!
Once I got inside the paper, like a faithful puppy I began following our star reporters Andy Petite and Karen Wilson everywhere. Thus began an unofficial apprenticeship. Andy and Karen allowed me to tag along with them when they went out to cover supervisory and school board meetings, and afterwards told me to write a news story based on what I’d witnessed. They’d write the actual story for the paper, and sit down with me later and go over my copy, giving me pointers. From them I learned how to take notes, how to write a lead sentence, getting in the ‘who, what, where and when,’ and how to organize a news story, from most important to least important facts, skills I use to this day.
A month after I’d started at the paper Tom called me at home one day. He had a huge story on his hands concerning an incident that occurred in Washington D.C. where Muslim terrorists had held a group of people hostage for a week in a Jewish synagogue. The hostages had just been released that day and one of them was a local man. Sounding somewhat desperate, Tom said, “I need someone to interview that hostage and all my reporters are out on assignment. Do you think you can handle it kid?” I did more than handle it, I interviewed the man at his home in Southampton, banged out the story, and it landed on the front page in the lead spot. Nor did Tom edit a single word, a feat I’m not sure that I’ve ever duplicated since. No bad for my first effort. Anyway, it proved to Tom I could write a news story. The rest, as they say, is history.
During my brief stint as a high school English teacher I told my students, “Each of you has a calling. Each of you has a special talent. There’s something that comes easy to you. Something that makes you come live. It could be math or science or history. Your primary goal in high school should be to figure out what your special gift is and pursue it. It could lead you to be an artist or an auto mechanic or a nurse. But the important thing is, you’ll spend your life doing something that gives you immense satisfaction.”
As someone wrote, “Find your passion and you will find your purpose in life.”
May 17, 2013
A superior translation of Herodotus
The Histories: The Landmark Herodotus by HerodotusMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've studied Herodotus pretty extensively as he is the basis of a historical novel I just published.
Herodotus is known as the 'father of history' as his The Histories is the oldest history on record (excluding the Bible). The word historie in Greek means 'to inquire.' Herodotus lived about 50 years after the events of the Persian War, which at the time was probably like the World War II of its era. Herodotus was the first person we know of to travel around Greece methodically interviewing veterans who'd been taken part in the war (the same way Ken Burns interviewed WW2 vets for his documentary The War.)
Where Herodotus gets knocked around by modern historians is that he did not check his facts. A lot of what he records were out-right exaggerations and folklore. The classic example of this was his claim that Xerxes' Persian army numbered one million men. Modern historians claim it would have been impossible to feed that many people that far from home. Odds are, the ex-vets told him it was a million men, simply because it was a huge force and a million was the biggest number they knew. It's pretty much excepted that Xerxes' army was probably closer to 250,000 men. Still a huge force, compared to what Greece could muster.
The folklore comes into play when Herodotus talks about stories from places like Persia, Egypt and Libya. For instance, the stories that in Egypt there were flying snakes, in India there were ants the size of dogs that dug up gold, or that it was impossible to travel north of the Danube River because of all the bees. Some people try explaining these stories, but odds are, Herodotus simply inquired among people who dished out folklore rather than facts.
Still, Herodotus has a lot of good stories to tell. He's the one responsible for giving us the tale of King Leonidas and the last stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. He also reports about the Battle of Marathon, Battle of Plataea and the naval engagement at Salamis. When you read them, it's obvious Herodotus was not a mititary man as his descriptions are rather vague and confusing. He was more of a moralist than a true historian.
Thucydides is actually the better historian, and is known as the 'father of scientific history.' He was a general at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, so his knowledge of warefare is more detailed and a lot more accurate, as it seems he went to greater lengths to check his facts. Unfortunately, he did not complete his work. He stopped short of the end of the Peloponnesian War. Thankfully, Xenophon picked up the story and finished it in his Hellenica.
The Landmark Herodotus is a great edition, superior to the many other translations on the market as it includes maps on nearly every page, oft times of places that no longer exist, and it includes copious commentary. If you want to know more about the Persian Wars and you're going to pick up a copy of Herodotus' work, I'd go with this one.
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