A Little Understood Problem With Regards The Ancient Books We Read

Above are just 3 different versions of Herodotus's The Histories. I am reading the middle one but know that the Robin Waterfield version is the best, while the Tom Holland one I have already thrown in the bin for being illegible.

Mark Twain once wrote; “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” I always took this to mean that we should all only read certified classics, little realising that even among those certified classics, some are so badly translated that the value of their teaching becomes lost. 

This has only fully hit home now after going through two different versions of Herodotus's The Histories and finding them unsatisfactory. Below I will show you how I got to know that they were not good enough. Fortuitously, I have been quoting Herodotus for the past 5 years or so from Wikiquote. So, as I was reading through the first (discarded) and second (already halfway with notes made so I am stuck with it) versions, I would constantly find what approximates to a quote I had used before but it just didn't sound right. 

For example, I have always liked Herodotus's: "If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it." In the picture below, here is where I found that quote misrepresented (but as I said above, I am halfway through this book, with notes made, so I must press on).

"If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it."

But because all these different authors truly believe their translations to be the best in circulation, you will never find a copy which forewarns you that it may not be the best.