I’m trying form a picture of how the oldest complete copies of The Histories made their way from classical Greece to at least the medieval era.

Let’s say there was a copy written in 400 BCE, we’ll call that an original (understanding that it was as close to the one Herodotus wrote himself as we can get). How would the entire text of the original make it to the 9th-13th centuries?

Were the medieval scribes translating from a Latin copy that had been copied multiple times throughout the span of the Roman Empire? So the medieval scribe was unrolling a Roman scroll from the 2nd century AD, making it something like 8 copies away from the original?

Any insight as to how ancient texts made their way into the medieval era would be greatly appreciated.