Herodotus

Source

• Born: c. 484 B.C.
• Birthplace: Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey)
• Died: c. 430 B.C.
• Best Known As: Ancient author of The Histories

Herodotus is the ancient writer and reporter called "The Father of History." He was among the first to approach the reporting of history in a logical and skeptical way; he tried to separate true events from myth, and made a point of identifying his sources and noting his trust (or lack of trust) in them. It didn't hurt that he was a colorful writer and commentator; his most famous work, The Histories, remains a widely-read account of ancient facts and legends and (in particular) of the Persian invasion of ancient Greece. (It's the main source for details on the famous battles at Marathon and Thermopylae.) Ironically, the details of Herodotus' own life are unclear. He is believed to have been born at Halicarnassus, on the Aegean Sea in Asia Minor, and to have traveled widely, collecting and recording stories as he went.

The Histories is sometimes titled The Inquiries or simply Histories; all are variations on the original Greek.

Herodotus (ca. 484 B.C.-ca. 425 B.C.) was the first Greek writer who succeeded in writing a large-scale historical narrative that has survived the passage of time.

In the lifetime of Herodotus the writing of history, and indeed of prose of any sort, was still something of a novelty. The earliest writings in prose had been the work of a group of Greek intellectuals from the Ionian cities of Asia Minor who, from about 550 B.C. onward, wrote works on science and philosophy or on historical subjects. However, at this early date there were as yet few clear-cut distinctions between the various disciplines, and historical writing included much that today would be regarded rather as the concern of the geographer, the anthropologist, or the economist. Herodotus was heir to this tradition, and he was greatly influenced by his few predecessors, and especially by the ablest of them, Hecataeus of Miletus.

Herodotus's Life

Little is known of Herodotus's life beyond what can be deduced from his writings. He was born in 484 B.C., or perhaps a few years earlier, in Halicarnassus, a small Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor. His family was wealthy and perhaps aristocratic, but while he was still quite young they were driven from the city by a tyrant named Lygdamis. Herodotus lived for several years on the island of Samos and at a later date, is said to have returned to Halicarnassus to take part in the overthrow of the tyrant, but he did not remain there.

Herodotus spent several years of his early manhood in unusually extensive traveling. One early trip was to the Black Sea, where he appears to have sailed along both the south and west coasts. Later he went by sea to the coast of Syria, then overland to the ancient city of Babylon, and on his way back he may have traveled through Palestine to Egypt. He certainly visited Egypt at least once, probably after 455 B.C. It is possible that he went on his travels primarily as a trader, for in his writings he shows great interest in the products and methods of transport of the countries he describes, and few Greeks of his generation could have afforded to make such lengthy journeys purely for pleasure. He made excellent use of his opportunities, inquiring everywhere about the customs and traditions of the lands through which he passed and amassing a great store of information of all kinds.

About 450 B.C. Herodotus went to live for a time in Athens. During his stay there he is said to have become a close friend of the poet Sophocles. Another tradition, that he also became intimate with the great Athenian statesman Pericles, is much less reliable. After a time, however, Herodotus migrated to the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy, which remained his home for the rest of his life. The date of his death is uncertain; the latest events he mentions in his writings took place in 430 B.C., and it is usually supposed that he died not long afterward.

Herodotus's Work

The writing of Herodotus's great work, the Histories (the name is simply a transliteration of a Greek word that means primarily "inquiries" or "research"), must have occupied a considerable portion of his later life, but we do not know when, where, or in what order it was written. In its final form it could not have been completed until the last years of his life, but parts were undoubtedly written much earlier, as we are told that he gave public readings from it while he was living in Athens.

It is possible that he originally conceived his subject as being limited to the Persian attack on Greece made in 480, an event of his own boyhood, but in the end it expanded to embrace the whole history of the relations between the Greek world and Persia and the other kingdoms of Asia. The narrative of the Histories starts with the accession of Croesus, the last king of Lydia, and gives an account of his reign, including his conquest of the Asiatic Greeks and his overthrow by the Persian King Cyrus. These events take up the first half of Book I. (The division of the work into nine books is not Herodotus's own but was carried out later by Alexandrian scholars.) In the rest of Book I and the three following books the basic theme is the expansion of the Persian kingdom from the accession of Cyrus to about 500 B.C., but there are also several long digressions on the habits of the Persians and their subjects - the whole of Book II is one enormous digression on the customs and early history of Egypt. There are also several sections devoted to the history of some of the Greek states, and in particular, in a series of digressions, Herodotus gives us what is virtually a continuous history of Athens from 560 B.C. onward.

Books V and VI cover primarily the lonian Revolt (499-494 B.C.) and the subsequent Persian expedition that was defeated by the Athenians at Marathon (490 B.C.), but again there are many digressions on contemporary events in the Greek states. In the last three books the story is rounded off by a detailed account, comparatively free from digressions, of the expedition of Xerxes (480-479 B.C.) and of its wholly unexpected defeat by the Greeks.

Herodotus's Sources

In compiling the materials for his Histories Herodotus depended mainly on his own observations, the accounts of eyewitnesses on both sides, and, for earlier events, oral tradition. There was very little in the way of official records available to him, and few written accounts. The results of modern archeological investigations show that he was a remarkably accurate reporter of what he saw himself. But when he depended on others for information, he was not always critical enough in deciding what was reliable and what was not and in making due allowances for the bias of his informants.

Herodotus was particularly uncritical in dealing with military operations, since he had no personal experience of warfare and therefore could not always assess accurately the military plausibility of the stories he heard. At the same time it is clear that he did not always believe what he was told and sometimes related stories of doubtful reliability because it was all he had, or because they were such good stories that he could not resist them. It is also sometimes said that he did not take enough care over matters of chronology, but it was very difficult indeed for anyone to work out and present a detailed and accurate chronological scheme in an age when every little Greek city-state had its own way of counting years and, often, its own calendar of months and days.

Herodotus's chief weakness, however, lies in his often naive analysis of causes, which frequently ascribes events to the personal ambitions or weaknesses of leading men when, as his own narrative makes clear, there were wider political or economic factors at work.

Herodotus wrote, in the Ionic dialect, a fascinating narrative in an attractively simple and easy-flowing style, and he had a remarkable gift for telling a story clearly and dramatically, often with a dry ironic sense of humor; the best of his stories have delighted, and will continue to delight, generations of readers.

An Evaluation

But Herodotus was much more than a mere storyteller. He was the first writer successfully to put together a long and involved historical narrative in which the main thread is never completely lost, however far and often he may wander from it. Moreover, he did this with a remarkable degree of detachment, showing hardly any of the Greeks' usual bias against the hereditary enemy, Persia, or of their contempt for barbarian peoples. And if he does not often achieve the depth of understanding of his great successor, Thucydides, his range of interests is much wider, embracing not only politics and warfare but also economics, geography, and the many strange and wonderful ways of mankind. He was the first great European historian, and the skill and honesty with which he built up his complex and generally reliable account and the great literary merit of his writing fully justify the title that has been bestowed on him: "Father of History."

Further Reading

The best short account of Herodotus's life is the one in the "Introduction" to vol. 1 of W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (2 vols., 1912; rev. ed. 1928). Recommended longer accounts are Terrot R. Glover, Herodotus (1924), and the first half of John Linton Myres, Herodotus: Father of History (1953). More specialized is Henry R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (1967). There is an excellent analysis of some of Herodotus's material in James A. K. Thomson, The Art of the Logos (1935). There are a number of works that deal with the developing art of historiography. Good but rather technical accounts of Herodotus's predecessors are in Lionel Pearson, Early Ionian Historians (1939). Chester G. Starr, The Awakening of the Greek Historical Spirit (1968), gives an interesting account of the early development of Greek historiography. There are useful comments in Arnold W. Gomme, The Greek Attitude to Poetry and History (1954). Herodotus is discussed in studies of classical historiography such as Stephen Usher, The Historians of Greece and Rome (1969), and Michael Grant, The Ancient Historians (1970). For background Aubrey de Selincourt, The World of Herodotus (1962), is lively but lacks depth. Good modern accounts of the period of history that Herodotus covered are in A. T. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire: Achaemenid Period (1948), and A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West (1962).

Additional Sources

Arieti, James A., Discourses on the first book of Herodotus, Lanham, Md.: Littlefield Adams Books, 1995.

Armayor, O. Kimball, Herodotus' autopsy of the Fayoum: Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth of Egypt, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1985.

Benardete, Seth, Herodotean inquirie, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, 1970.

Drews, Robert, The Greek accounts of Eastern history, Washington, Center for Hellenic Studies; distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973.

Evans, J. A. S. (James Allan Stewart), Herodotus, Boston: Twayne, 1982.

Evans, J. A. S. (James Allan Stewart), Herodotus, explorer of the past: three essays, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Fehling, Detlev., Herodotus and his "sources": citation, invention, and narrative art, Leeds, Great Britain: Francis Cairns, 1990.

Flory, Stewart, The archaic smile of Herodotus, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.

Fornara, Charles W., Herodotus: an interpretative essay, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971.

Gaines, Ann, Herodotus and the explorers of the Classical age, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994.

Glover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley), Herodotus, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1969; New York, AMS Press 1969.

Gould, John, Herodotus, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Hart, John, Herodotus and Greek history, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.

Hartog, François., The mirror of Herodotus: the representation of the other in the writing of history, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Heidel, William Arthur, Hecataeus and the Egyptian priests in Herodotus, Book II, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.

Hohti, Paavo, The interrelation of speech and action in the histories of Herodotus, Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1976.

A commentary on Herodotus with introduction and appendixes, Oxford Oxfordshire; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Hunter, Virginia J., Past and process in Herodotus and Thucydides, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Huxley, George Leonard, Herodotos and the epic: a lecture, Athens: G. Huxley, 1989.

Immerwahr, Henry R., Form and thought in Herodotus, Cleveland, Published for the American Philological Association Chapel Hill, N.C. by the Press of Western Reserve University, 1966.

Lang, Mabel L., Herodotean narrative and discourse, Cambridge, Mass.: Published for Oberlin College by Harvard University Press, 1984.

Lateiner, Donald, The historical method of Herodotus, Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

Linforth, Ivan M. (Ivan Mortimer), Studies in Herodotus and Plato, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.

Lister, R. P. (Richard Percival), The travels of Herodotus, London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1979.

Lloyd, Alan B., Herodotus, book II, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975-1988.

Long, Timothy, Repetition and variation in the short stories of Herodotus, Frankfurt am Main: Athenèaum, 1987.

Mandell, Sara, The relationship between Herodotus' history and primary history, Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1993.

Myres, John Linton, Sir, Herodotus, father of history, Chicago, H. Regnery Co. 1971.

Plutarch, The malice of Herodotus = De malignitate Herodoti, Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1992.

Powell, J. Enoch (John Enoch), A lexicon to Herodotus, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1966.

Pritchett, W. Kendrick (William Kendrick), 1909-, The liar school of Herodotos, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1993.

Shimron, Binyamin, Politics and belief in Herodotus, Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989.

Solmsen, Friedrich, Two crucial decisions in Herodotus, Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub. Co., 1974.

Stork, Peter, Index of verb-forms in Herodotus on the basis of Powell's Lexicon, Groningen: E. Forsten, 1987.

Thompson, Norma, Herodotus and the origins of the political community: Arion's leap, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Vandiver, Elizabeth, Heroes in Herodotus: the interaction of myth and history, Frankfurt am Main; New York: P. Lang, 1991.

Waters, Kenneth H., Herodotos on tyrants and despots; a study in objectivity, Wiesbaden, F. Steiner, 1971.

Waters, Kenneth H., Herodotos, the historian: his problems, methods, and originality, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.

Wells, J. (Joseph), Studies in Herodotus, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press, 1970.

Wilson, John Albert, Herodotus in Egypt, Leiden, Nederlands: Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1970.

Wood, Henry, The histories of Herodotus. An analysis of the formal structure, The Hague, Mouton, 1972.

For more information on Herodotus, visit Britannica.com.

Herodotus (c.490–c.425 BC), Greek historian, author of the ‘Histories’ (historiai, ‘inquiries’) of the Persian Wars, son of Lyxēs, of a distinguished family in Halicarnassus in Caria, at that time a city of Ionian Greek culture. He was a kinsman (nephew or cousin) of the epic poet Panyassis, who was put to death by Lygdamis, tyrant of Halicarnassus, in the political troubles of the 460s. Herodotus withdrew or was exiled to Samos and then travelled widely in Egypt and the Greek world. He visited Athens in the mid-440s, where he is said to have become acquainted with Pericles, before (reputedly) joining the Athenian colony at Thurii (founded 443) near Sybaris in south Italy. He mentions Greek events of 430 but none later, and is presumed to have died before 420.

Herodotus has been called by Cicero and others ‘the father of history’ because in his account of the Persian Wars he was writing on a scale and with a comprehensiveness that had never been attempted before, and with a grasp of the decisive importance these wars had for the future development of the Mediterranean world. He describes the scope of his work in the opening sentence: it is an investigation, historiē, undertaken so that the great achievements of Greeks and barbarians (in this case, the people of Asia) may not be forgotten, and in particular, to show how they came to fight one another. He was writing a generation after the wars, and facts were hard to come by. His sources were for the most part not written down; he himself emphasized that his work was based on what he had seen and what he had heard and the conclusions he had drawn. On this basis, he was trying to make a true and systematic record. He sought out those who had the information he needed: aristocrats who preserved their family history (information particularly liable to distortion for political or other reasons), and priests and officials who had access to written records; but in foreign countries where he did not know the language he had to rely on interpreters. His history was shaped in subtle ways by many influences. He may have learned from Homer to divide the world into Greeks and barbarians and to see his purpose as akin to that of epic, namely to preserve the memory of great deeds. He understood the events of history to originate in the characters and actions of individual great men and saw an inexorable moral providence underpinning his whole history: the gods bring it about that overweening pride eventually ends in ruin; the gods intervene in human affairs; their oracles cannot be disregarded. But as well as divinely operated cause and effect Herodotus understood that on a different, non-moral level, scientific cause and effect operated. His search for rational explanations of things and his interest in natural causes reveal his own cast of mind, as well as the influence of earlier Ionian scientists and logographers, ‘those who write accounts of stories’, especially Hecataeus. Herodotus' digressions from the main theme of his history, from mere anecdotes to a whole book on Egypt, for example, may be in the manner of such writers, but the boundless scientific curiosity they display is entirely Herodotus' own. These digressions diversify Herodotus' work so that parts of it are, rather than history, studies in anthropology, ethnography, and archaeology.

The History comprises the struggle between Greece and Asia from the time of Croesus (mid-sixth century BC) to Xerxes' retreat from Greece (478 BC). It has been regarded as unfinished but it is not clear that Herodotus intended to cover events later than the capture of Sestus, which concludes the ninth and last book; the last episode, indicating Persian degeneracy at the end, has a final ring. The division of the work into nine books each named after a Muse is probably the scheme of Alexandrian editors; Herodotus himself divided his work into logoi, ‘episodes’. So improbable did some of his stories seem to later Greeks that he had the reputation of being a liar: Plutarch accused him also of unfairness and uncharitableness (Plutarch came from Boeotia whose chief town, Thebes, was the bitter enemy of Athens). In modern times Herodotus' attempts to use oral tradition in describing other societies have been better understood and his reputation for veracity restored. His style is simple, clear, and graceful, and his narrative has great charm. He wrote in his native Ionic dialect, using also archaic and poetic forms; the manuscripts, however, include forms that it seems unlikely Herodotus could ever have written, the text having been compiled perhaps by later Greek editors ignorant of the correct usage. The following are the principal subjects of the several books:

Book 1. Blame for the conflict between Greeks and barbarians is attributed to Croesus, whose attack on Cyrus of Persia ruined his own kingdom of Lydia. A digression explains why neither Athens nor Sparta helped Croesus. The conquest of the Medes by Cyrus is followed by his subjection of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and then an account of the Persian empire under Cyrus, and of Babylon; the book ends with the war of Cyrus against the Massagetae.
Book 2. This book is devoted to a description of Egypt, the pretext for which is furnished by the invasion of that country by Cambysēs, Cyrus' son and heir (the story of Rhampsinĭtus is in chapter 121).
Book 3. The conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, the story of the Persian usurper, the false Smerdis, and the accession and reforms of Darius (anecdotes of Polycratēs, tyrant of Samos, and his sealring, 40, and of Zōpyrus and the capture of Babylon, 153).
Book 4. The expeditions of Darius in Scythia and Libya (145), with an account of their peoples.
Book 5. The operations of the Persian general Megabazus with a detachment of troops against the Thracians, and an account of the latter; the Ionian Revolt (28) and the burning of the Persian city of Sardis by the Ionians (101).
Book 6. The suppression of the Ionian revolt; the march of the Persian general Mardonius to Macedonia and the wreck of the Persian fleet off Mount Athos (43); the second Persian expedition to Greece under Datis and Artaphernes (94); the Greek victory at Marathon (102); Pheidippidēs' run from Athens to Sparta (105); anecdote of Cleisthenes and Hippocleidēs (126). Events on the Persian side are alternated with events at Sparta and Athens.
Book 7. The death of Darius; preparations by Xerxes, his son and heir, and invasion of Greece; defeat of the Greeks at Thermopylae (201).
Book 8. Victories of the Greeks at Artemisium and Salamis (56); the withdrawal of Xerxes (97).
Book 9. The victory of the Greeks at Plataea and the retreat of the Persians; the victory of the Greeks at Mycalē (98); the capture of Sestus (previously held by the Persians; 114).

Known as the "Father of History," Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.E.) was born on the southwest coast of Asia Minor in Halicarnassus, which was at that time a Greek-speaking city ruled by Artemisia, queen of Caria, under the overlordship of the Persian Empire. Herodotus traveled widely in that empire and in Greece. Eventually, exiled from Halicarnassus, and having spent some years in Athens (where he gave regular readings of his work), he joined the new colony of Thurii in southern Italy, where he died.

Herodotus is the author of the earliest surviving work of history and one of the masterpieces of Greek literature. It is owing to him that the word "history" came to mean what it does: he introduces his book as "the inquiries (historiai) of Herodotus of Halicarnassus." The usual title in English translations is The Histories. His purpose was to explore the interaction, peaceful and warlike, between Europe (particularly Greece) and Asia (particularly the Persian Empire). Some of his best stories are of kings, but he takes just as much interest in the adventures of differently privileged people—physicians, athletes, merchants, priests, and cooks.

Book 2 of Herodotus's Histories focuses on Egypt (then subject to Persia) and North Africa. Books 1 and 3 include much information on Babylonia, Lydia, and other Persian provinces. Book 4 includes a survey of the peoples of Scythia (the Russian steppes).

One of the means by which Herodotus characterizes peoples is through their food behavior. His descriptions of the Egyptians, Persians, and other highly civilized peoples among whom he had lived are far more nuanced than those of "barbarian" peoples, most of whom he knew only by hearsay. The underlying message to his audience is different in the two cases. He was rightly impressed by the long history of civilization in Egypt and Babylonia and by the efficiency of the Persians: he seems to encourage the reflection that the lifestyle of these peoples is logical in its own terms, sometimes more logical than that of the Greeks, and may have been instrumental in their successes. Barbarian tribes, by contrast, are shown as making stranger and stranger food choices as they recede farther and farther towards the edge of the world, from agriculturalists to pastoral nomads to cannibals.

A structural anthropologist before the term was invented, Herodotus is not one to waste a promising structure. He asserts, and it is likely enough, that if the Persians took a decision while drunk, they made a rule to reconsider it when sober. Few authors between Herodotus and Lévi-Strauss would have dared to add, as Herodotus does, that if the Persians took a decision while sober, they made a rule to reconsider it when they were drunk (Histories, book 1, section 133).

Herodotus is preeminent as a historian of the conflict of cultures. Throughout his work, food behavior is often the focus for sensitive and striking portrayals of culture clash. When Persian ambassadors visited the king of Macedonia, their stupidity in demanding the company of women at dinner, in conflict with local custom, was justly rewarded: the "women" who entered the dining hall were young men in disguise, armed with daggers, and the ambassadors were never heard of again (Histories, book 5, sections 18–20).

Bibliography

Hartog, François. The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. Baltimore and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954.

Thomas, Rosalind. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

—Andrew Dalby

An ancient Greek historian, often called the father of history. His history of the invasion of Greece by the Persian Empire was the first attempt at narrative history and was the beginning of all Western history writing.

Quotes:

"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks."

"The destiny of man is in his own soul"

"How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied."

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]"

"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."

"In soft regions are born soft men."

See more famous quotes by Herodotus

Herodotus
Ostensible bust of Herodotus
Born	c. 484 BC Halicarnassus, Caria, Asia Minor
Died	c. 425 BC Thurii, Calabria or Pella, Macedon
Occupation	Historian

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς Hēródotos Halikarnāsseús) was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC). He is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative.^[1] He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a record of his "inquiries" (or ἱστορίαι, a word that passed into Latin and took on its modern meaning of history) into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BC—especially since he includes a narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly documented; and many long digressions concerning the various places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Although some of his stories were not completely accurate, he claimed that he was reporting only what had been told to him.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Historian 3 Opinions 3.1 Criticisms of Herodotus 3.2 Gold-digging ants 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Translations 7 Bibliography 8 External links

Biography

Much of what is known of Herodotus's life is gathered from his own work. Additional details have been garnered from the Suda, an 11th-century encyclopaedia of Byzantium, which likely took its information from traditional accounts. It holds that he was born in Halicarnassus (Bodrum in present-day Turkey), the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis, an epic poet of the time. According to this account, after being exiled from Halicarnassus by the tyrant Lygdamis, Herodotus went to live on Samos. Later returning to the land of his birth, Herodotus took part in the ousting of Lygdamis. The traditional biography includes some time spent in Athens, where he is said to have given public readings from his oeuvre and befriended the dramatist Sophocles. It also has Herodotus joining and founding the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy in 443 BC.

There are several pieces of gossip about Herodotus. According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, a late source who has been accused of fiction, as summarized in the Library of Photius, an eleventh-century Byzantine cleric, "Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was the eromenos of Herodotus and one of his heirs.^[2]. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless.^[3] Henry Rawlinson, in the nineteenth century, argued that, although such anecdotes were from an "authority of the least trustworthy kind", it might well be true that Herodotus was childless and Plesirrhous published his work after his death; no one would find it worth the trouble to invent such stories.^[4]

Herodotus' death and burial are placed either at Thurii or at Pella, in Macedon, between 425 and 420 BC. It is suspected he was buried at Thurii as he typically referred to himself as "Herodotus of Thurii." ^[5] How much of this information is accurate is not known. It was common practice in antiquity for the biographies of poets to be pieced together from inferences drawn from their works. Something similar may have happened in Herodotus' case. His casting as a tyrannicide may simply reflect the pro-freedom attitude that he expresses in the Histories, whereas the stays at Samos and Athens may have been invented to explain the pro-Samian and pro-Athenian bias that has often been thought to pervade his work. His exile from Halicarnassus may also be fictional: later historians, such as Thucydides and Xenophon, underwent periods of exile, and their fates may have been retrospectively imposed on Herodotus by later writers.^{[citation needed]}

Historian

“

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

”

Reconstruction of the Oikumene (inhabited world) ancient map from Herodotus, c. 450 BC.

Herodotus provides much information concerning the nature of the world and the status of the sciences during his lifetime. He was arguably the first historian and certainly the first to travel methodically around the known world in a bid to record information more accurately, although his efforts still involved second and third-hand accounts involving his primary subject, the Persian Wars, much myth and non-scientific speculation, but occasional useful or, at least, intriguing information.

Croesus Receiving Tribute from a Lydian Peasant, by Claude Vignon.

Herodotus reports, for example, that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and he comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part of the known world, offering an elaborate explanation based on the way that desert winds affect the passage of the Sun over this part of the world (2:18ff). He also passes on dismissive reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa, they "saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards". Owing to this brief mention, which is included almost as an afterthought, it has been argued that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers, for this is precisely where the sun ought to have been.

Herodotus is one of the sources on Croesus and his fabulous treasures of gold and silver, and many stories about his riches.

Written between 431 and 425 BC, (the latest event recorded by Herodotus is datable to 430BC - Herodotus VII.137) The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses (the "Muse of History", Clio, represented the first book).^[6] His accounts of India are among the oldest records of Indian civilization by an outsider. ^[7]The Indian Empire

Opinions

His statue in Bodrum, ancient Halicarnassus

Herodotus' invention earned him the twin titles "The Father of History", first conferred by Cicero, and "The Father of Lies".^{[8][dead link]} As these epithets imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's On the Laws (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales and, more importantly, the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications.

Criticisms of Herodotus

There are many cases in which Herodotus, not certain of the truth of a certain event or unimpressed by the dull "facts" that he received, reported the several most famous accounts of a given subject or process and then wrote what he believed was the most probable. Although The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism—Lucian of Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed —this methodology has been seen in a more-positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for a paradigm of objective historical writing. Some attacks have been made by various scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources.^[9]

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have helped greatly to restore Herodotus's reputation. His description of Gelonus, located in Scythia city, as thousands of times larger than Troy was widely disbelieved until it was rediscovered in 1975. The archaeological study of the now-submerged ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion and the recovery of the so-called "Naucratis stela" give extensive credibility to Herodotus's previously unsupported claim that Heracleion was founded under the Egyptian New Kingdom. Because of this recent increase in respect for his accuracy, as well as the quality and content of his observations, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in history but in ethnography^[10] and anthropology.

Gold-digging ants

Gold dust and nuggets.

One of the most recent developments in Herodotus scholarship was made by the French ethnologist Michel Peissel. On his journeys to India and Pakistan, Peissel claims to have discovered an animal species that may finally illuminate one of the most "bizarre" passages in Herodotus's Histories. In Book 3, passages 102 to 105, Herodotus reports that a species of fox-sized, furry "ants" lives in one of the far eastern, Indian provinces of the Persian Empire. This region, he reports, is a sandy desert, and the sand there contains a wealth of fine gold dust. These giant ants, according to Herodotus, would often unearth the gold dust when digging their mounds and tunnels, and the people living in this province would then collect the precious dust. Now, Peissel says that in an isolated region of Pakistan, in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir that is known as the Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA), on the Deosai Plateau there exists a species of marmot, (the Himalayan Marmot), (a type of burrowing squirrel) that may solve the mystery of Herodotus' giant "ants". Much like the province that Herodotus describes, the ground of the Deosai Plateau is rich in gold dust. According to Peissel, he interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Deosai Plateau, and they have confirmed that they have, for generations, been collecting the gold dust that the marmots bring to the surface when they are digging their underground burrows. The story seems to have been widespread in the ancient world, later authors like Pliny the Elder mentioning it in his gold mining section of the Naturalis Historia.

Bobak marmot in central Asia.

Even more tantalizing, in his book, "The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas", Peissel offers the theory that Herodotus may have become confused because the old Persian word for "marmot" was quite similar to that for "mountain ant". Because research suggests that Herodotus probably did not know any Persian (or any other language except his native Greek), he was forced to rely on a multitude of local translators when travelling in the vast polylingual Persian Empire. Therefore, he may have been the unwitting victim of a simple misunderstanding in translation. (It is also important to realize that Herodotus never claims to have himself seen these "ants/marmot" creatures—he may have been dutifully reporting what other travellers were telling him, no matter how bizarre or unlikely he personally may have found it to be. In an age when most of the world was still mysterious and unknown and before the modern science of biology, the existence of a "giant ant" may not have seemed so far-fetched.) The suggestion that he completely made up the tale may continue to be thrown into doubt as more research is conducted.^[11][12]

However, it must be noted that this theory of the marmots fails to take into consideration Herodotus's own follow-up in passage 105 of Book 3, wherein the "ants/marmots" are said to chase and devour full-grown camels; nevertheless, this could also be explained as an example of a tall tale or legend told by the local tribes to frighten foreigners from seeking this relatively easy access to gold dust. On the other hand, the details of the "ants" seem somewhat similar to the description of the camel spider (Solifugae), which strictly speaking is not a spider and is even sometimes called a "wind scorpion". Camel spiders are said to chase camels (they can run up to 10mph), they have lots of hair bristles, and they could quite easily be mistaken for ants given their rather bizarre appearance. And as has been noted by some, on account of the fear factor of encountering one, there have been "many myths and exaggerations about their size".^[13] Images of camel spiders^[14][15] could give the impression that this could be mistaken for a giant ant, but certainly not the size of a fox.

See also

• The Histories
• Thucydides, ancient Greek historian who is often said to be also "the father of history"
• Naturalis Historia
• Pliny the Elder

Notes

1. ^ New Oxford American Dictionary, "Herodotos", Oxford University Press
2. ^ "Καὶ ὡς Πλησίρροος ὁ Θεσσαλὸς ὁ ὑμνογράφος, ἐρώμενος γεγονὼς Ἡροδότου καὶ κληρονόμος τῶν αὐτοῦ" [Eng tr. by Wikipedia editor Haiduc] Photius, Library; "Ptolemy Chennus, New History" 190
3. ^ The life of Herodotus drawn out from his book By Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, George Valentine Cox; p.169
4. ^ The History of Herodotus By Herodotus, John Gardner Wilkinson, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson; p.27; 1859 edition. (p.32 in the 1875 edition)
5. ^ The Landmark Herodotus : the histories / a new translation by Andrea L. Purvis with maps, annotation Herodotus. New York : Pantheon Books, c2007. lxiv, 953 p. : ill., col. maps ; 25 cm.
6. ^ Larcher, Pierre-Henri (1829). Larcher's Notes on Herodotus. London: John R. Priestley. pp. 526. http://books.google.com/books?id=Tpp5B39UlTMC&pg=PA526&lpg=PA526&dq=Herodotus+Muses&source=web&ots=fN1yLn78Kq&sig=TVDhDoGYj11kCRjDiHzuhxvj-iE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result. 
7. ^ The Indian Empire The Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1909, v. 2, p. 272.
8. ^ David Pipes. "Herodotus: Father of History, Father of Lies". http://www.loyno.edu/history/journal/1998-9/Pipes.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-18. 
9. ^ Fehling, Detlev. Herodotos and His "Sources": Citation, Invention, and Narrative Art. Translated by J.G. Howie. Arca Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers, and Monographs, 21. Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1989.
10. ^ See, for example, C. P. Jones, ("ἔθνος and γένος in Herodotos", The Classical Quarterly, New Series, 46 (2):315–320; 1996), who refers to him as "the father of ethnography" (p. 315).
11. ^ Simons, Marlise. Himalayas Offer Clue to Legend of Gold-Digging 'Ants'. New York Times: 25 November 1996.
12. ^ Peissel, Michel. "The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas". Collins, 1984. ISBN 978-0002725149.
13. ^ Wikipedia. "Solifugae". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugae. Retrieved 2008-02-20. 
14. ^ Camel Spiders (Main Page)
15. ^ Camel Spiders (Pictures)

Translations

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Herodotus

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Herodotus

Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Ηρόδοτος

• Several English translations of The Histories of Herodotus are readily available in multiple editions. The most readily available are those translated by:
  • C.E. Godley, 1920; revised 1926. Reprinted 1931, 1946, 1960, 1966, 1975, 1981, 1990, 1996, 1999, 2004. Available in four volumes from Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-99130-3 Printed with Greek on the left and English on the right.
  • David Grene, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
  • George Rawlinson, translation 1858–1860. Public domain; many editions available, although Everyman Library and Wordsworth Classics editions are the most common ones still in print.
  • Aubrey de Sélincourt, originally 1954; revised by John Marincola in 1996. Several editions from Penguin Books available.
  • Strassler, Robert B., (ed.), and Purvis, Andrea L. (trans.), The Landmark Herodotus, Pantheon, 2007. ISBN 978-0-37542109-9 with adequate ancillary information.
  • Robin Waterfield, with an Introduction and Notes by Carolyn Dewald, Oxford World Classics, 1998.

Bibliography

• Bakker, Egbert e.a. (eds.), Brill's Companion to Herodotus. Leiden: Brill, 2002
• Dewald, Carolyn, and John Marincola, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006.
• Evans, J. A. S., Herodotus. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
• —. Herodotus, Explorer of the Past: Three Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• Flory, Stewart, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.
• Fornara, Charles W. Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
• Harrington, John W., To See a World. C. V. Mosby Company, 1973. Harrington explored Herodotus's deduction that deltas, including Egypt's, were deposited over a great period of time.
• Hartog, F., "The Invention of History: From Homer to Herodotus". Wesleyan University, 2000. In History and Theory 39, 2000.
• Hartog, F., The Mirror of Herodotus. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988.
• Immerwahr, H., Form and Thought in Herodotus. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1966.
• Kapuscinski, Ryszard, "Travels with Herodotus". New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf, 2007.
• Lateiner, D., The Historical Method of Herodotus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.
• Momigliano, A., The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography. University of California Press, 1992.
• Pritchett, W. K., The Liar School of Herodotos. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1991.
  • Kwintner, Michelle. The Liar School of Herodotus (Review). Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 1994.
• Romm, James S. Herodotus. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 1998 (hardcover, ISBN 0-300-07229-5; paperback, ISBN 0-300-07230-9).
• Thomas, R., Herodotus in Context; ethnography, science and the art of persuasion. Oxford University Press 2000.
• Selden, Daniel. "Cambyses' Madness, or the Reason of History," Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 42 (1999), 33-63.
• Simons, Marlise. Himalayas Offer Clue to Legend of Gold-Digging 'Ants'. New York Times: 25 November 1996.
• Peissel, Michel. "The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas". Collins, 1984. ISBN 978-0002725149.

External links

• Herodotus at About.com
• A reconstructed portrait of Herodotus, based on historical sources, in a contemporary style.
• Herodotus on the Web
• Herodotus for Kids
• Herodotus of Halicarnassus at Livius.org
• 1911 Britannica article "Herodotus"
• Mendelsohn, Daniel (2008-04-28). "Arms and the Man". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/04/28/080428crbo_books_mendelsohn. Retrieved 2008-04-27. 
• Herodotus Inquiries—new translation with extensive photographic essays of the places and artifacts mentioned by Herodotus hyper-linked to the text
• Works by Herodotus at Project Gutenberg
  • The History of Herodotus, vol. 1 at Project Gutenberg (translation by George Campbell Macaulay, 1852–1915)
  • The History of Herodotus, vol. 2 at Project Gutenberg
• The History of Herodotus at The Internet Classics Archive (translation by George Rawlinson)
• Parallel Greek and English text of the History of Herodotus at the Internet Sacred Text Archive
• Excerpts of Sélincourt's translation
• Herodotus Histories on Perseus

Persondata
NAME	Herodotus of Halicarnassus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Herodotos; Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς; Hērodotos Halikarnāsseus
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Dorian historian
DATE OF BIRTH	484 BCE
PLACE OF BIRTH	Helicarnassus
DATE OF DEATH	c. 425 BCE
PLACE OF DEATH

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