On the Nature of the Nile River (Herodotus The Histories Bk 2, Part 1)

Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Liv Albert

Comedy, History, Arts

4.6 • 5.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are back to Herodotus folks, and here we enter the wonderful work of Egypt as understood by him. How's he gonna do? Who knows, we shall find out. Enjoy me struggling to be a person while recovering from an ailment, attempting to drink tea, and understand what this man is going on about concerning the Nile River.

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CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events.

Sources: Herodotus The Histories translated by Tom Holland.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, hi there. Live here, speaking from the future. If you are keen to support this podcast,
0:05.6	if you are enjoying the episodes as you find them and you want to listen ad-free, check out
0:11.4	the Oracle edition on Patreon. It didn't exist way back when these early episodes were recorded,
0:17.5	but I'm telling you about it now. You can get all 700 and counting episodes of Let's Talk About Myths Baby,
0:24.6	ad free, along with so much more at patreon.com slash mythsbaby or via the link in the podcast description.
0:34.1	Thanks and happy listening.
1:18.5	Music description. Thanks and happy listening. Hello all and welcome back to Let's Talk About Myths, Baby. It's me, Michaela Pangerish,
1:23.9	back to bring you some more delightful history content. We ain't going to the Hellenistic series,
1:30.1	though, this time, so sorry about that. Don't worry, though, because we aren't done with all that stuff. We'd go back to another time, but this time we're going to head back to what we did
1:34.4	last September with Herodotus's histories. We finished up book one last year with Cyrus and what
1:42.3	was he, what he was up to ending with his eventual
1:44.9	death supposedly at the hand of the Mesogetans led by Queen Thomas. We love Thomas in
1:50.6	this household. What an absolute delight of a woman with her wine skin filled with blood. But we are
1:56.9	done looking at this point in time. Herodotus will eventually find his way back to
2:01.4	continue the narrative, but first, we must go on quite a tangent. And what a wonderful tangent it is.
2:08.2	Book 2 is all about Egypt. Do you see that coming? Yeah, I did. But only because I've looked
2:15.7	into this before, and well, I had to read it for all of you to get this done first, which I happily did. But only because I've looked into this before, and well, I had to read it for all of you
2:18.8	to get stunned first, which I happily did, because my God, is Herodotus a fun person to read?
2:25.7	I spent all of last semester translating Herodotus in my Greek class and was given the delightful
2:30.8	news that that is exactly who I'm going to be translating for the first half of this semester as well in Greek. We're going to end this semester with Thucydides. But, you know, start with Herodotus and all those wonderful tangents. We're making our way through the story of Giggis right now. Remember that one? He was the guy who was forced by his king to look at his wife naked, and the wife had Giggis killed the king, and Giggis became the new king.
2:54.1	Thus, the family Cresis was a part of found the way to the throne.
2:58.7	I'm rambling now. Herodotus would be proud of me.
	...

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