(ca. 480-425 B.C.) historian
Herodotus, whom the Roman statesman cicero would later hail as the father of history, was born at the Greek colony of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, now Bodrum on Turkey’s Aegean coast. His mother and father, Lyxes and Dryo, were prominent in the community as well as wealthy and possibly aristocratic. Herodotus had at least one sibling, a brother named Theodoros.
Exposure to historical traditions was part of Herodotus’s upbringing. The city of Halicarnassus maintained a listing of the priests who had served the temple of Isthmian Poseidon from the time of its founding 15 generations earlier. Furthermore, the epic poet Panyassis was a close relative, perhaps an uncle or a first cousin, who composed verse about the settlement of the Ionian cities in Asia Minor.
Herodotus’s family relocated to the island of Samos to escape the tyrant Lygdamis, who put Pa-nyassis to death. Herodotus returned to Halicar-nassus years later to participate in Lygdamis’s overthrow. When he was living for a time in Athens, Herodotus became an intimate of the tragedian sophocles. He finally made his home in Thurii, in southern Italy, when it was being colonized by the Greeks.
The first historian was an avid traveler, a zealous sightseer, and an intrepid explorer. His insatiable curiosity and hunger for knowledge led him to Egypt, Cyrene (now Tripoli), Babylon, Scythia in the Black Sea region, Ukraine, Thrace, North Africa, and India.
In the early years of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Herodotus published his life’s work, History. In English, it is also sometimes called The Histories, The Persian Wars, or History of the Persian Wars. The work made Herodotus the first scholar to undertake research on the events of the past and impart them in a rational, rather than mythical, fashion.
Herodotus died in Thurii not long after publication of the History.
Critical Analysis
The History is contained in nine books, each named for one of the muses. Its subject matter is the legendary conflict between a motley band of Greek city-states and the mighty invading Persian Empire. Herodotus’s intentions in producing this work, as he states in the very first lines, are to preserve the record of the events for posterity and to investigate why they occurred in the first place:
These are the researches of Herodotus of Hali-carnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.
Herodotus does not share his countrymen’s disdain for foreigners. He did not use the word barbarian in a pejorative way; it was simply the Greek word for non-Greeks. His youth in a Greek city that was not in Greece and his travels to far-off, exotic lands had given him an outsider’s perspective and an appreciation for other cultures that would inform his magnum opus. He presents a balanced treatment of the opposing sides and even reveals an admiration for the Persians, whom he finds valiant and heroic.
Herodotus represents the events in a vigorous and high-spirited prose style, casting the Persian Wars as a contest between tyranny and liberty; liberty emerges gloriously victorious. Freedom triumphs, he says, because the Greeks are free men defending their self-government, while the Persian soldiers are slaves risking their lives on behalf of a despot. But the Greeks are not inherently superior to the Persians; under tyranny, they behave similarly:
And it is plain enough, not from this instance only, but from many everywhere that freedom is an excellent thing; since even the Athenians, who, while they continued under the rule of tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the yoke than they became decidedly first of all. These things show that, while undergoing oppression, they let themselves be beaten, since then they worked for a master; but so soon as they got their freedom, each man was eager to do the best he could for himself.
Although the Persian War is the ostensible reason for the tome’s existence, Herodotus makes frequent digressions. Two-thirds of Histories is devoted to the oddities he witnessed, was told of, and otherwise learned about during his sojourns to far-off lands. The people, places, things, and incidents are recounted merely to set the stage for the central conflict. For example, Herodotus tells of one-eyed men, gold-digging ants, Babylonian temple treasures, Egyptian crocodile hunters, and men with the heads of dogs. He tallies the amount of money spent on radishes, onions, and garlic for the slaves who built the pyramids; describes what unattractive girls in Il-lyria do to get husbands and how people travel by boat over land when the Nile floods; reveals that Scythian royalty are buried in tombs containing sacrificed humans and horses, Libyan women are honored for having multiple lovers, Danube island dwellers become intoxicated by scents, and the king of Persia will drink only boiled water when he travels. More than the father of history, Herodotus was the father of ethnography, geography, archaeology, sociology—indeed, all the social sciences that are concerned with people, places, and customs.
In his translation of The Persian Wars, George Rawlinson writes:
Apart from all deficiencies of historical technique and all merits of intrinsic interest, charm of literary style, and more or less accidental preservation of important historical facts, one solid and important achievement stands out in the work of Herodotus. He has succeeded once and for all in expressing the conflict between the ideal of the free man defending his autonomy and basing his state on the rule of law, and the despot who bases his rule on force and whose subjects have the status of slaves.
English Versions of Works by Herodotus
Herodotus: The Wars of Greece and Persia. Translated by W.D. Lowe.Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci
Publishers, 1999.
The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. Introduction by John M.Marincola.New York: Penguin
Classics, 2003.
The Histories. Translated by Robin A. Waterfield.Edited by Carolyn Dewald. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Works about Herodotus
Mikalson, Jon D. Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Selincourt, Aubrey de. Phoenix: The World of Herodotus. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.
Thomas, Rosalind. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art ofPersuasion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
