At 392 pages, with accounts spanning 424 BC to 1453 AD, this is an ambitious work. An anthology of first hand reports, the first half of this book covers a Greek tale of Scythians and various Roman descriptions of the Celts, Germans, Goths, Vandal and Huns. The second half of “Chronicles” is devoted to the Vikings, Mongols and Turks and Crusaders. The selections are quite complete and the translations appear authoritative. Yet for all this I found this book of little use and rather maddening.
Ancient narrators bring with them worldviews vastly different than our own. Because I have waded through much primary material in some places I could pick out factual passages interlarded by excursions into fantasy. Where I was less familiar with the topic, I hadn’t a clue. What this heavy and elaborate hardcover badly needs is footnotes and detailed introductions to accounts. Unfortunately, it has neither. What is the purpose of in creation of such an elaborate and non-authorative book? Perhaps the publishers simply didn’t want the expense of hiring a historian or group of historian to annotate these diverse tales.
Certainly “Chronicles of the Barbarians” has its pleasures. Herodotus’ “Scythians” includes the following observation, “the Scythians have taken some seed of this hemp, they creep under cloths, then put the seed on the red-hot stones; but this being put on smokes…The Scythians, transported by the vapors, shout aloud…” More sobering, yet equally fascinating is a section from Matthew Paris’s Chronicles of 1240-1253. Amid somewhat accurate accounts of the Mongols, comes the bazaar anti-Semitic passages of the conspiracy of Mongols and Jews “1241: The Enormous Wickedness of the Jews.” --Not the kind of document commonly anthologized.
Is this book useful for Slavic studies? My estimate is that only
ten of its 38 essay relate at all to the region. Most or all of these
documents are anthologized in lighter, less expensive and better-annotated
book. Therefore, I don’t recommend this volume.
Gregory Frux