Born: c. 490-84 BC. Possibly related to the ruling family of Halicarnassus, Asia Minor. Career: Moved to Samos during civil strife, c. 460 BC; travelled and lectured in Greece, including Athens, and settled in the Athenian colony of Thurii in south Italy (founded 444-43 BC); also travelled in south Italy, Egypt, the Near East and Babylon, Scythia and the Black Sea, and the north Aegean. Died: Probably before 420 BC.
Publications
Works
[History], edited by Carl Hude. 2 vols., 1927; also edited by P.E. Legrand, 11 vols., 1932-54; as The History, translated by George Rawlinson, 4 vols., 1858-60, this translation edited by A.W. Lawrence, 1935, and abridged by W.G. Forrest, 1966; also translated by A.D. Godley [Loeb Edition], 4 vols., 1920-24; Enoch Powell, 1949; Aubrey de Selincourt, 1954; H. Carter, 1962; David Grene, 1987; translated in part by Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, 1992; as The Histories, translated by Robin Waterfield, 1998.
Selections, edited by Amy L. Barbour. 1985.
Critical Studies:
Commentary on Herodotus by W.W. How and Joseph Wells, 2 vols., 1912, revised edition, 1928; The World of Herodotus by Aubrey de Selincourt, 1962; Form and Thought in Herodotus by H.R. Immerwahr, 1966; Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay by C.W. Fornara, 1971; Herodotus, Father of History by J.L. Myres, 1971; The Histories of Herodotus: An Analysis of the Formal Structure by H. Wood, 1972; The Interrelation of Speech and Action in the Histories of Herodotus by Paavo Hohti, 1976; Herodotus and Greek History by John Hart, 1982; Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides by Virginia J. Hunter, 1982; AspectuaI Usage of the Dynamic Infinitives in Herodotus by Peter Stork, 1982; Herodotean Narrative and Discourse by Mabel Lang, 1984; Herodotus: Persian Wars—A Companion to the Penguin Translation of Histories V-IX edited by Stephen Usher, 1988; Herodotus and His ”Sources”: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art by Detlev Fehling, 1989; Herodotus, 1989, and Give and Take in Herodotus, 1991, both by John Gould; Herodotus, Explorer of the Past by J.A.S. Evans, 1991; Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction of Myth and History by Elizabeth Vandiver, 1991; Herodotus, The Histories: New Translation, Selection, Backgrounds, Commentaries edited by Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, 1992; The Malice of Herodotus by Plutarch, translated by A.J. Bowen, 1992; The Historical Method of Herodotus by Donald Lateiner, 1992; The Liar School of Herodotos by W. Kendrick Pritchett, 1993; The Relationship Between Herodotus’ History and Primary History by Sara Mandell and David Noel Freedman, 1993; Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus by Helma Dik, 1995; Discourses on the First Book of Herodotus by James A. Arieti, 1995; The Significant and the Insignificant: Five Studies in Herodotus’ View of History by J.E. van der Veen, 1996; Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community: Arion’s Leap by Norma Thompson, 1996; The Tragedy in History: Herodotus and Deuteronomistic History by Flemming A.J. Nielsen, 1997; Herodotus by James Romm, 1998; Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians by Peter Hunt, 1998; Herodotean Inquiries by Seth Benardete, 1999; Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion by Rosalind Thomas, 2000; Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus by Thomas Harrison, 2000; The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, edited by Nino Luraghi, 2001; Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus by Rosaria Vignolo Munson, 2001.
Herodotus is traditionally styled ”Father of History,” and rightly so—he invented it. There were before him a few local chronicles and geographical studies, which have entirely perished; no one had essayed a great and significant theme, nor assembled masses of material from diverse sources and organized them into a coherent whole. As there is no reason to think that those lost works were of any great literary merit, Herodotus is also entitled to be regarded as a pioneer of artistic prose composition.
Yet there is nothing primitive or unsophisticated about Herodotus. He aims to record for posterity the great deeds of men, and his chosen vehicle is the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians that reached its climax with Xerxes’ defeat by the Greeks in 480-79 bc. His handling of that tremendous theme shows a remarkable sense of planning and design: the first half of the work is devoted to the rise of Persia to her greatest extent; the second, by a smoothly negotiated transition, to her wars against the Greeks. The story unfolds in no crude annalistic way: instead it proceeds by a mixture of narrative and digression. The digressions are sometimes little more than footnotes; equally often they are substantial chapters, carefully designed to explain the background to the main narrative, while spacing out its climactic points. Some of these are miniature narratives themselves; others are extended essays in ethnology or sociology, such as the full-length study of Egypt (Book II).
Herodotus understands the broad tides of history, making it clear that Persia’s aggression was motivated by imperialist expansion; he is equally good on the grand strategy of the combatants in 480-79 bc— such non-narrative issues being conveyed through direct speech put into the mouths of his characters. He is noticeably weaker on detailed military tactics, however, and tends to personalize the causes of lesser events. He does not gloss over the failings of the Greeks at war—their occasional loss of nerve, the inter-allied bickerings; war itself he hates, despite the glorious exploits associated with it.
Accepting the Homeric picture of man’s relationship with the gods, he emphasizes the role of oracles in Greek life, and often quotes oracular texts, many authentic, some spurious. His ”theological” passages, such as the story of Xerxes’ cabinet meeting (VII), teach the lesson that man cannot escape his destiny, and that the gods are envious of excessive prosperity in mortals. This pessimistic view informs his whole work, which is tinged with sadness and pity for human suffering; yet this is lightened by passages of irresistible sparkle and humour—Aristagoras’ appeal to Sparta (V), ”Hippocleides doesn’t care” (VI), and dozens of others. His Greek is unmannered and effortless, resembling an educated man’s friendly conversation.
Herodotus was a man of broad sympathies. His travels furnished him with a wide variety of oral sources, and enabled him to appreciate the ”barbarian” point of view; but he was equally at home with the Athenian nobility, some of whose family history he records. His interests include poetry (he quotes from Pindar, Simonides, and many others), the visual arts, and medicine. But above all, he is concerned with humanity, and, like Homer, describes man’s behaviour as he finds it: heroism, generosity, foresight, loyalty, vindictiveness, xenophobia, cowardice, treachery, corruption, paranoia, sacrilege—all these, and more, are exemplified many times over in his pages. But what sets Herodotus apart from most other ancient historians is his conviction that history is more than war, politics, and diplomacy. Today, students of social and cultural history can regard Herodotus as their truest ancestor.
