Herodotus

About this figure

Herodotus (c. 484 - c. 425 BC) was a Greek writer from Halicarnassus, in Asia Minor, whom the Roman orator Cicero later called "the Father of History." His single surviving work, "The Histories," set out to preserve the memory of the great deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks alike and, above all, to explain the causes of the wars between Greece and the Persian Empire that culminated in the Persian invasions of 490 and 480-479 BC. In pursuing that story, Herodotus ranged far beyond the battlefield, weaving in lengthy accounts of the geography, customs, and histories of Egypt, Persia, Scythia, Lydia, and other peoples the Greeks encountered, drawing on his own extensive travels around the eastern Mediterranean and Near East as well as on interviews with local informants, priests, and other travelers.

He described his method as one of inquiry, "historia" in Greek, the word from which "history" derives, and he frequently distinguished what he had seen with his own eyes from what he had merely been told, sometimes voicing open skepticism about the more fantastic stories he relayed even as he included them. This willingness to record folklore and marvels alongside verified fact earned him a reputation for credulity among later ancient critics, including Thucydides, who wrote soon after him with a more austere and skeptical method; modern historians have taken a more balanced view, noting that archaeological and other evidence has since confirmed a number of details in Herodotus's account that were once dismissed as invention. Little is known of his life beyond what can be inferred from his writing: he was likely exiled from his native city at some point, traveled widely across the Greek world and beyond, and is thought to have spent his final years in the southern Italian colony of Thurii, where he may have died. Regardless of its occasional inaccuracies, "The Histories" remains the earliest surviving work of history in the Western tradition and a foundational text of prose narrative.

Written by Epoch Voices. Not the figure’s own words.