Reference
- HerodotusAuthor of Histories (written before 425 bce), among the most controversial ancient works on history. Some modern scholars insist that he was a romancer, who freely invented facts, citations, and even descriptions. Others treat him as a gifted and imaginative writer who did not derive his representations of Egyptians, Scythians, and other non-Greeks from independent, personal inquiry, as he claimed, but spun them from his own assumptions about the various nations. Still others argue that he proceeded by the most rigorous empirical and analytical standards of his time (standards that he shared, as he shared many interests, with the Hippocratic medical writers) and should be regarded, along with Thucydides, as one of the first creators of written history—even if Thucydides himself would have disagreed.
- HerodotusThe earliest historian (in the modern sense of that term) whose writings have survived largely intact, Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus in the province of Doria on the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. We know his father's name, Lyxes, and that of his uncle, Panyasis, a poet who wrote an epic about Heracles (Hercules). The city's ruler, Lygdamis, executed Panyasis.
The same political upheavals that resulted in his uncle's execution led Herodotus to migrate elsewhere. Though trying to draw an itinerary of all his travels from the pages of his The Histories is probably an exercise in futility, and though it remains unclear just when he undertook some of the journeys he did make, at the time of his exile or later, he certainly spent some time on the island of Samos. He also roamed Egypt, Athens, other parts of the Greek world, and perhaps some of Persia as well. He was acquainted with the Athenian statesman Pericles, and he is reported to have given a public reading of a portion of his history at Athens in 446 BCE—a reading for which he was very well paid... - The HistoriesHerodotus of Halicarnassus undertook researching and writing The Histories so that “men's actions” and the “great and wonderful accomplishments” both “of Greeks and Barbarians” would not in time be forgotten. He especially set out to examine the causes of war between the Greeks and the “Barbarians” (by whom he meant persons who did not speak the Greek language).
As Herodotus's work has come down to us, it has been subdivided by later editors into nine books, each of which those same editors have provided with a chapter title bearing the name of one of the nine Muses. The divisions of the chapters do not always follow the organization of the book's subject matter and may have been predicated on how much text the editor or scribe could fit on a single papyrus scroll... - The HistoriesThe Histories of the fifth-century-BCE Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus presents the earliest-known attempt in Western literature to write a broad, accurate nonfiction record of the past. Preceded mainly by poets and mythographers, Herodotus sought to apply disciplined research to the craft of storytelling, taking as his subject the course of hostilities between the vast Persian Empire and the relatively loose affiliation of Greek city-states and what caused the animosity between them...
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Why is Herodotus called “The Father of History”? - Mark Robinson
- Why is Herodotus called “The Father of History”? - Mark Robinson2,500 years ago, the writing of history as we know it didn’t exist. The past was recorded as a list of events, with little explanation for their causes beyond accepting things as the will of the gods. Herodotus wanted a deeper understanding, so he took a new approach: looking at events from both sides to understand the reasons for them. Mark Robinson explains how “history” came into being...
Online Resources
- Herodotus: BritannicaHerodotus, (born 484 BCE?, Halicarnassus, Asia Minor [now Bodrum, Turkey]?—died c. 430–420), Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world, the History of the Greco-Persian Wars...
- Herodotus: Columbia UniversityHistorian of the Persian empire, the Greek city-states, and the conflict between the two. “Of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, this is the presentation of his inquiry, so that human events may not be effaced by time, and the great and marvelous deeds/accomplishments, both those displayed by the Greeks and by the barbarians, may not be without glory, including other things and especially the cause for which they went to war with one another.”...
- Herodotus: History ChannelHerodotus was a Greek writer and geographer credited with being the first historian. Sometime around the year 425 B.C., Herodotus published his magnum opus: a long account of the Greco-Persian Wars that he called “The Histories.” (The Greek word “historie” means “inquiry.”) Before Herodotus, no writer had ever made such a systematic, thorough study of the past or tried to explain the cause-and-effect of its events. After Herodotus, historical analysis became an indispensable part of intellectual and political life. Scholars have been following in Herodotus’ footsteps for 2,500 years...
- THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS: Project GutenbergIf a new translation of Herodotus does not justify itself, it will hardly be justified in a preface; therefore the question whether it was needed may be left here without discussion. The aim of the translator has been above all things faithfulness—faithfulness to the manner of expression and to the structure of sentences, as well as to the meaning of the Author. At the same time it is conceived that the freedom and variety of Herodotus is not always best reproduced by such severe consistency of rendering as is perhaps desirable in the case of the Epic writers before and the philosophical writers after his time: nor again must his simplicity of thought and occasional quaintness be reproduced in the form of archaisms of language; and that not only because the affectation of an archaic style would necessarily be offensive to the reader, but also because in language Herodotus is not archaic. His style is the "best canon of the Ionic speech," marked, however, not so much by primitive purity as by eclectic variety. At the same time it is characterised largely by the poetic diction of the Epic and Tragic writers; and while the translator is free to employ all the resources of modern English, so far as he has them at his command, he must carefully retain this poetical colouring and by all means avoid the courtier phrase by which the style of Herodotus has too often been made "more noble."...
Perspectives
Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature
Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature is the first monograph devoted to the reception of Herodotus among Imperial Greek writers. Using a broad reception model and focused largely on texts outside of historiography proper, the book analyzes the entanglements of criticism and imitation in select works by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Dio of Prusa, Lucian, and Pausanias. It offers a new angle on Herodotus's intellectual afterlife, focused on evocations both explicit and implicit in literary criticism, the moral essay, public oration, satire, and periegetic literature. This monograph moves beyond the study of reputation only--what ancient authors explicitly had to say about Herodotus--to examine the interrelation between Herodotus's reputation and his often implicit reworking across genre and mode. It demonstrates how Herodotus was strategically construed as fabulist, classicist, moralizer, and evasive intellectual, and how Herodotean presences played to the wider purposes of Imperial writers. Ultimately, the book examines how attention to the presence of Herodotus in various texts unveils new layers of meaning in those works, while also showing how ancient receptions offer insight into the Histories.
Herodotus
Herodotus, widely known as the father of history, was also described by Aristotle as a mythologos, or "tale-teller." In this stylish and insightful book, intended for both general readers and students, James Romm argues that the author of the Histories was both a historian-in the original sense of "one who inquires"-and a master storyteller. Although most ancient historians wrote only about events they themselves had lived through, Herodotus explored an era well before his own time-from the rise of the Persian Empire to the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 and 480 B.C., the heroic fight of the Greeks against the invaders, and the final Greek victory. Working without the aid of written sources, Herodotus traveled widely and wove into his chronology descriptions of people and countries he visited and anecdotes that shed light on their lives and customs. Romm discusses the historical background of Herodotus`s life and work, his moralistic approach to history, his insatiable fascination with people and places, his literary powers, and the question of the historical "truth" behind the stories he relates. He gives general readers a fresh appreciation of the Histories as a work encompassing fiction and nonfiction, myth and history, and poetry and prose. Herodotus becomes not simply a source of historical data but a masterful and artistic author who created a radically new literary genre. Hermes Books John Herington, Founding Editor
Herodotus and Sima Qian: the First Great Historians of Greece and China
Comparing the writings of Herodotus in ancient Greece with those of Sima Qian in ancient China, Herodotus and Sima Qian: The First Great Historians of Greece and China highlights how their efforts helped invent modern notions of history writing and the job of the historian.
Dynasty XXVII - The Persians
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The Greek traveler Herodotus gives three different reasons Persia invaded Egypt. How do his accounts compare with Egyptian records? How did Egypt express its unbending will to be free under this latest group of foreign rulers?