Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

And all of that kind of goes into the modern study of history as well.

I mean, we really are still looking at this as one of the things that tells us how to do our job to some extent.

It has all these different facets.

It has all these different moments of focus.

Yeah, so he's absolutely fascinated by that.

And there are these huge digressions in the work.

I mean, the most important ones, obviously, in book two, he goes into the Egyptians in tremendous detail.

Book one actually talks about the Persians quite a lot, Persian customs, religion, habits, kingship, etc.

And the backstory of the Persian Empire, you know, however much you want to believe that.

And then in book four, he talks about the Scythians, so the people of Central Asia that he knows through Ukraine, essentially, where there are Greek settlements.

In book five, he has another big digression on the Thracians.

There are lots of these different bits of ethnography, and he applies that even internally, where he has a little piece in his work talking about the Spartans in almost the same terms.

He's saying, the Spartans, obviously they're Greeks, but they're a little bit weird, and here's how.

And there's almost explicitly like they're almost like foreigners to me in this way, you know, in particular when it comes to their royal houses and things like that.

So he's interested in that too.

And the whole thing is just the result of that is a narrative that is constantly interrupted with digressions where he says, oh, now I got to tell you the origin about this.

Get ready.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.

Several chapters later.