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Herodotus 484? - 425? BC Greece

From Columbia Encyclopedia

484?–425? B.C., Greek historian, called the Father of History, b. Halicarnassus, Asia Minor. Only scant knowledge of his life can be gleaned from his writings and from references to him by later writings, notably the Suda. He traveled along the coast of Asia Minor to the northern islands and to the shore of the Black Sea; he also at some time visited Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Egypt. By 447 B.C. he was in Athens, and in 443 he seems to have helped to found the Athenian colony of Thurii in S Italy, where he probably spent the rest of his life completing his history. That classic work, the first comprehensive attempt at secular narrative history, is the starting point of Western historical writing. It is divided into nine books named for the Muses (a division made by a later editor). Herodotus was the first writer to evaluate historical, geographical, and archaeological material critically. The focus of the history is the story of the Persian Wars, but the extensive and richly detailed background information put Greece in its proper historical perspective. He discusses the growth of Persia into a great kingdom and traces the history and migration of the Greek people. Among his grand digressions are fascinating histories of Babylon, Egypt, and Thrace, as well as detailed studies of the pyramids and specific historical events. The value of the work lies not only in its accuracy, but in its scope and the rich diversity of information as well as the charm and simplicity of his writing.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2003 Columbia University Press.

Encyclopedia Entries

Jona Lendering's introductory essay on Herodotus, including sections on the structure of the narrative, causality and sources.  a useful summary of the nine books . 

John Porter's interesting introduction to Herodotus 

John Kitson's Herodotus Website . esp. Herodotus and Persian Sources . See also Maps Section.

Perseus Encyclopedia. 

Brittanica 11th Edition article on Herodotus. 

 

Questions of 

Historical writing

Flourished fifth century B.C.E.  (485 B.C.E.? - c. 420 B.C.E.?)  Herodotus^P of Halicarnassus^P (modern Bodrum^P in Turkey), Greek historian, was the author of a history of the Persian invasion of Greece in the early fifth century B.C.E., known simply as The Histories of Herodotus.  This work was recognized as a new form of literature soon after its publication.  Before Herodotus, there had been chronicles and epics, and they too had preserved knowledge of the past.  But Herodotus was the first not only to record the past but also to treat it as a philosophical problem, or research project, that could yield knowledge of human behavior.  His invention earned him the title "The Father of History" and the word he used for his achievement, historie, which previously had meant simply "research," took on its modern connotation of "history."

The Histories was often attacked in the ancient world for bias, inaccuracy, and plagiarism.  Similar attacks have been made by a few modern scholars, who argue that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and fabricated sources.  Respect for his accuracy has increased in the last half century, however, and he is now recognized not only as a pioneer in history but in ethnography and anthropology as well.

Published between 430 and 424 B.C.E., the Histories was divided by later editors into nine books, named after the Muses.  The first six books deal with the growth of the Persian Empire.  They begin with an account of the first Asian monarch to conquer Greek city-states and exact tribute, Croesus^P of Lydia.  Croesus lost his kingdom to Cyrus,^P the founder of the Persian Empire.  The first six books end with the defeat of the Persians in 490 B.C.E. at the Battle of Marathon, which was the first setback to their imperial progress.  The last three books of the Histories describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes^P ten years later to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and absorb Greece into the Persian Empire.  The Histories ends with the year 479 B.C.E., when the Persian invaders were wiped out at the Battle of Plataea^P and the frontier of the Persian Empire receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor.

As to Herodotus' life, we know that he was exiled from Halicarnassus after an unsuccessful putsch against the ruling dynasty in which he was involved, and he withdrew to the island of Samos.  He seems never to have returned to Halicarnassus, though in his Histories he appears to be proud of his native city and its queen Artemisia.  It must have been during his exile that he undertook the journeys that he describes in the Histories.  These journeys took him to Egypt, as far south as the First Cataract, to Babylon, to the Ukraine, and to Italy and Sicily.  Herodotus mentions an interview with an informant in Sparta, and almost certainly he lived for a period in Athens.  In Athens, he tapped the oral traditions of the prominent families, in particular the Alkmaeonidai,^P to which Pericles belonged on his maternal side.  But the Athenians did not accept foreigners as citizens, and when Athens sponsored the colony of Thurii^P in the instep of Italy in 444 B.C.E., Herodotus became a colonist.  Whether he died there or not is uncertain.

At some point he became a logios^P--that is, a reciter of prose logoi^P or stories--and his subject matter was tales of battles, other historical incidents, and the marvels of foreign lands.  He made tours of the Greek cities and the major religious and athletic festivals, where he offered performances for which he expected payment.  In 431 B.C.E., the Peloponnesian^P War broke out between Athens and Sparta.  It may have been that conflict, which divided the Greek world, that inspired him to collect his logoi into a continuous narrative--the Histories--centered on the theme of Persia’s imperial progress, which Athens and Sparta as allies had brought to a halt.


For Further Reading

Reading

Writing available on the net

Translation of the Histories by George Rawlinson (Internet Classics Archive—broken)

A new online translation of Herodotus by Shlomo Felberbaum.  photographs by Shane Solow  translation is  clunky, preserving Greek features such as word- and clause-order to the considerable detriment of English style. 

G. C. Macaulay's translation of Herodotus  Project Gutenberg.

The Perseus Version, with Greek text keyed to dictionaries, and How and Wells

Commentaries

Detailed Outline of Herodotus by David L. Silverman for a Greek history course at Reed. Most of Herodotus is covered, one page per book.

How and Wells' schematic outline of Herodotus.

How and Wells' A Commentary on Herodotus is available at Perseus. Although single books have received commentaries and there is an complete Italian in the pipeline, How and Wells' remains the standard commentary. Kudos to Perseus for putting it online.

Schematic outline of Herodotus by John Porter, University of Saskatchewan. Covers 1, part of 6, 7 and 8.

Web Archive: Outline of Croesus Story in Herodotus. from Margaret Cook's "Greece in the Classical Period," College of Saint Benedict / Saint John's University.

"Herodotus' New Kind of Historical Writing" by Thomas R. Martin for Perseus (part of his Overview of Classical Greek History from Homer to Alexander)

Quotations