TheHistories primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such asMarathon,Thermopylae,Artemisium,Salamis,Plataea, andMycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural,ethnographical,geographical, andhistoriographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information.
Herodotus was criticized in his times for his inclusion of "legends and fanciful accounts" in his work. The contemporaneous historianThucydides who covered the infamousPeloponnesian War in hisHistory of the Peloponnesian War would separately accuse Herodotus of making up stories for entertainment. Herodotus retorted that he reported what he could see and what he was told.[4] A sizable portion of theHistories has since been confirmed by modernhistorians andarchaeologists.
Current scholars generally turn to Herodotus's own writing for reliable information about his life,[5]: 7 supplemented with archaic yet much later sources, such as theByzantineSuda, a 10th-century encyclopedia which possibly took its information from traditional accounts. Still, the challenge is great:
The data are so few – they rest upon such late and slight authority; they are so improbable or so contradictory, that to compile them into a biography is like building a house of cards, which the first breath of criticism will blow to the ground. Still, certain points may be approximately fixed [...]
Herodotus was, according to his own statement, at the beginning of his work, a native ofHalicarnassus inAnatolia,[7] and it is generally accepted that he was born there around 485 BC. TheSuda says his family was influential, that he was the son of Lyxes and Dryo and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related toPanyassis – an epic poet of the time.[6]: Introduction [5]: Introduction
Halicarnassus was then within thePersian Empire, making Herodotus a Persian subject,[8][9] and it may be that the young Herodotus heard local eyewitness accounts of events within the empire and of Persian preparations for theinvasion of Greece, including the movements of the local fleet under the command ofArtemisia I of Caria.[citation needed]
Inscriptions recently discovered at Halicarnassus indicate that Artemesia's grandsonLygdamis negotiated with a local assembly to settle disputes over seized property, which is consistent with a tyrant under pressure. His name is not mentioned later in the tribute list of the AthenianDelian League, indicating that there might well have been a successful uprising against him some time before 454 BC.[citation needed]
Romanticized statue of Herodotus in his hometown ofHalicarnassus, modernBodrum, Turkey
Herodotus wrote hisHistories in theIonian dialect, in spite of being born in aDorian settlement. According to theSuda, Herodotus learned the Ionian dialect as a boy living on the island of Samos, to which he had fled with his family from the oppressions of Lygdamis, tyrant of Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia.Panyassis, the epic poet related to Herodotus, is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising.[10]
TheSuda also states that Herodotus later returned home to lead the revolt that eventually overthrew thedespot. Due to recent discoveries of inscriptions at Halicarnassus dated to about Herodotus's time, it is now known that Ionic Greek was used in Halicarnassus in some official documents, so there is no need to assume (like theSuda) that he must have learned the dialect elsewhere.[5]: 11 TheSuda is the only source placing Herodotus as the heroic liberator of his birthplace, casting doubt upon the veracity of that romantic account.[6]: 11
As Herodotus himself reveals, Halicarnassus, though a Dorian city, had ended its close relations with its Dorian neighbors after an unseemly quarrel (I,144),[clarification needed] and it had helped pioneer Greek trade with Egypt (II, 178). It was, therefore, an outward-looking, international-minded port within thePersian Empire, and the historian's family could well have had contacts in other countries under Persian rule, facilitating his travels and his researches.
Herodotus's eyewitness accounts indicate that he traveled in Egypt in association with Athenians, probably sometime after 454 BC or possibly earlier, after an Athenian fleet had assisted the uprising againstPersian rule in 460–454 BC. He probably traveled toTyre next and then down theEuphrates toBabylon. For some reason, possibly associated with local politics, he subsequently found himself unpopular in Halicarnassus, and sometime around 447 BC, migrated toPericlean Athens – a city whose people and democratic institutions he openly admired (V, 78). Athens was also the place where he came to know the local topography (VI, 137; VIII, 52–55), and leading citizens such as theAlcmaeonids, a clan whose history is featured frequently in his writing.
According toPlutarch,[11] Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work. Plutarch, usingDiyllus as a source, says this was 10talents.[12]
In 443 BC or shortly afterwards, he migrated toThurii, in modernCalabria, as part of an Athenian-sponsoredcolony.Aristotle refers to a version of theHistories written by "Herodotus of Thurium", and some passages in theHistories have been interpreted as proof that he wrote aboutMagna Graecia from personal experience there (IV, 15,99; VI, 127). According toPtolemaeus Chennus, a late source summarized in the Library ofPhotius, Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was theeromenos of Herodotus and his heir. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless. Intimate knowledge of some events in the first years of thePeloponnesian War (VI, 91; VII, 133, 233; IX, 73) suggests that he returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an outbreak of the plague. It is also possible he died inMacedonia instead, after obtaining the patronage of the court there; or else he died back in Thurii. There is nothing in theHistories that can be dated to later than 430 BC with any certainty, and it is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth year.
Herodotus would have made his researches known to the larger world through oral recitations to a public crowd.John Marincola writes in his introduction to the Penguin edition of theHistories that there are certain identifiable pieces in the early books of Herodotus's work which could be labeled as "performance pieces". These portions of the research seem independent and "almost detachable", so that they might have been set aside by the author for the purposes of an oral performance. The intellectual matrix of the 5th century, Marincola suggests, comprised many oral performances in which philosophers would dramatically recite such detachable pieces of their work. The idea was to criticize previous arguments on a topic and emphatically and enthusiastically insert their own in order to win over the audience.[13]
It was conventional in Herodotus's day for authors to "publish" their works by reciting them at popular festivals. According toLucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight fromAnatolia to theOlympic Games and read the entireHistories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it.[6]: 14 According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian,[14] Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at the festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade – by which time the assembly had dispersed. (Hence the proverbial expression "Herodotus and his shade" to describe someone who misses an opportunity through delay.) Herodotus's recitation at Olympia was a favourite theme among ancient writers, and there is another interesting variation on the story to be found in theSuda: that ofPhotius[15] andTzetzes,[16] in which a youngThucydides happened to be in the assembly with his father, and burst into tears during the recital. Herodotus observed prophetically to the boy's father: "Your son's soul yearns for knowledge."
Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides's tomb in Athens. Such at least was the opinion ofMarcellinus in hisLife of Thucydides.[17] According to theSuda, he was buried in MacedonianPella and in theagora in Thurii.[6]: 25
Reconstructed map of the world based on the writings of Herodotus
Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of hisHistories:[b][18]
Here are presented the results of the inquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks.
— Herodotus,The Histories (tr. R. Waterfield, 2008)[19]
His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic ofAugustan Rome, listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve, often charming – all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself.[20]
Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to the ancient account, these predecessors includedDionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus,Hellanicus of Lesbos,Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all,Hecataeus of Miletus. Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, and the authenticity of these is debatable,[5]: 27 but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his ownHistories.
This sectionis missing information about substantive details of modern criticism. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(June 2024)
It is on account of the many strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics have branded him "The Father of Lies".[5]: 10 [21] Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact, one modern scholar[6] has wondered whether Herodotus left his home in GreekAnatolia, migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been dedicated to Herodotus at one of his three supposed resting places,Thuria:
Herodotus the son of Sphynx lies; in Ionic history without peer; a Dorian born, who fled from slander's brand and made in Thuria his new native land.[5]: 13
Yet it was in Athens where his most formidable contemporary critics could be found. In 425 BC, which is about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic dramatistAristophanes createdThe Acharnians, in which he blames thePeloponnesian War on the abduction of some prostitutes – a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians' account of theirwars with Greece, beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroinesIo,Europa,Medea, andHelen.[22][23]
Similarly, the Athenian historianThucydides dismissed Herodotus as a story-teller.[24]: 191 Thucydides, who had been trained inrhetoric, became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas with his frequent digressions Herodotus appeared to minimize (or possibly disguise) his authorial control.[19] Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of thepolis or city-state. The interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory.[24]: 191
Before the Persian crisis, history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family traditions. The "Wars of Liberation" had given to Herodotus the first genuinely historical inspiration felt by a Greek. These wars showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the city, of which the story might be told; and they offered to him as a subject the drama of the collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was born into Greece; and his work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance ofClio.
Though Herodotus is generally considered a reliable source of ancient history, many present-day historians believe that his accounts are at least partially inaccurate, attributing the observed inconsistencies in theHistories to exaggeration.[26][27][28]
George Rawlinson, translation 1858–1860. Public domain; many editions available, althoughEveryman's Library and Wordsworth Classics editions are the most common ones still in print.[6] (revised in 1935 byA. W. Lawrence)
Andrea L. Purvis,The Landmark Herodotus, edited by Robert B. Strassler. Pantheon, 2007.ISBN978-0-375-42109-9 with adequate ancillary information.
Walter Blanco,Herodotus: The Histories: The Complete Translation, Backgrounds, Commentaries. Edited by Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013.
Tom Holland,The Histories, Herodotus. Introduction and notes by Paul Cartledge. New York, Penguin, 2013.
^For the past several hundred years, the title of Herodotus's work has been translated rather roughly asHistories orThe History.[citation needed] The original title can be translated from the Greek as "researches" or "inquiries".[citation needed]
^Dandamaev, M.A. (1989).A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire. Brill. p. 153.ISBN978-90-04-09172-6.The 'Father of History', Herodotus, was born at Halicarnassus, and before his emigration to mainland Greece was a subject of the Persian empire.
^Kia, Mehrdad (2016).The Persian Empire: A historical encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 161.ISBN978-1-61069-391-2.At the time of Herodotus' birth southwestern Asia Minor, including Halicarnassus, was under Persian Achaemenid rule.
^Marcellinus,in Vita. Thucyd. p. ix, cited by.[6]: 25
^"Herodotus".Encyclopedia of World Biography. The Gale Group. Retrieved11 March 2018.
^abDewald, Carolyn, ed. (1998).The Histories by Herodotus. Translated by Waterfield, Robin. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. "Introduction", p. xviii.ISBN9780199535668.
^Tritle., Lawrence A. (2004).The Peloponnesian War. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 147–148.
^Hart, John (1982).Herodotus and Greek History. Taylor and Francis. p. 174.
^abMurray, Oswyn (1986)."Greek historians". In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper; Murray, Oswyn (eds.).The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press. pp. 186–203.ISBN978-0-19-872112-3.
^Mark, Joshua J."Herodotus".World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved27 September 2023.
^Larkin, Patrick (11 March 2022)."Herodotus, Homer, and The Histories".Stony Brook Undergraduate History Journal.Archived from the original on 12 October 2023. Retrieved27 September 2023.
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