Rosamund Mitchell -- Herodotus on Persian Culture (paper 2 rewrite)

   The additions you have made are a good improvement over the first
   version, but several passages are still quite repetitive and I
   don't think you took the opportunity to really rework your essay
   as seriously as I hoped.  I'm thinking in particular of places
   like your final paragraph where you say "His goal is to record the 
   Persian culture and customs for posterity." near the start and 
   "It is difficult to determine whether Herodotus's information about 
   the Persians is reliable and valid due to lack of sources or possible
   unreliability of sources, and therefore he may not have succeeded in 
   recording the customs and  culture of the Persians for posterity."
   The second statement is referring back to the first, so the fact that 
   you are using essentially the same phrase "the culture and customs of 
   the Persians for posterity" again makes this seem repetitive.
   You could have tightened this up by rewriting the second to say something
   like "... and therefore he may not have achieved the goal mentioned 
   above."
 
   Two other technical points:

   In the sentence, "This idea of equality makes it easier for Herodotus's 
   Greek readership to conceivably understand their Persian counterparts."
   
   I think you want the "conceivably" much earlier: "The idea of equality
   conceivably makes it easier ... " (Or did I misunderstand what you 
   were trying to say?

   Finally, the reference "(Herodotus XXV)" is rather cryptic.  I assume
   you are referring to page xxv in the Introduction by Rosalind Thomas
   in the Landmark edition of Herodotus.  In the future (and especially
   in other classes) you will certainly need to include more complete 
   citations for direct quotations that you use.

   Content: B+

   Mechanics: A