(I know this was posted a while ago but this may still be helpful)
I mean you can paraphrase (which is more of a modern history thing but you could get away with it) especially if it is a really long quote I think it should be fine. Just do '...' in places to so it looks like a quote, especially if it was a long quote from Herodotus. It kinda shows how you know what your referencing without putting the whole quote in, which is really important under time cause who has the time in the HSC to write out a 3 sentence quote.