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Herodotus

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   Herodotus of Halicarnassus (in Greek, Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς, Herodotos
   Halikarnasseus) was a Dorian Greek historian who lived in the 5th
   century BC ( 484 BC–ca. 425 BC) and is regarded as the "father of
   history". He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories, a
   collection of 'inquiries' (or 'ἱστορίαι', a word which passed into
   Latin and took on its modern connotation of 'history') about the places
   and peoples he encountered during his wide-ranging travels around the
   Mediterranean. The theme for this work was the conflict between the
   ancient Greeks and the Persians or ' Medes'.

His life

   Most of what is known of the life of Herodotus has been gleaned from
   his own work.

   According to the Byzantine dictionary known as Suda, however, he was
   exiled from Halicarnassus after his involvement in an unsuccessful coup
   d'état against the ruling dynasty, and that he then withdrew to the
   island of Samos. (He seems never to have returned to Halicarnassus,
   despite the fact that he appears to have been very proud of his native
   city and of its queen, Artemisia I of Caria).

   It must have been during his exile that he undertook the journeys he
   describes in The Histories. These journeys took him to Egypt as far
   south as the first cataract of the Nile, to the Ukraine, and to Italy
   and Sicily. Although his description of Babylon contains highly
   suggestive remarks like "people who have not been there, will find it
   hard to believe that..." and "this was still the case in my days", he
   does not claim to have visited the city, and indeed, his description is
   extremely implausible.

   Herodotus mentions an interview with an informant in Sparta, and almost
   certainly he lived for a period in Athens. In Athens, he obviously
   became familiar with the oral traditions of the prominent families, in
   particular the Alkmaeonidai, (to which Pericles belonged, on his
   maternal side). However, as the Athenians did not accept foreigners as
   citizens, Herodotus must have felt distinctly out of place there.
   Indeed, when Athens sought citizens for the Italian colony of Thurii in
   444 BCE, Herodotus' name was, according to the Suda, among the willing.
   Whether or not he died in his adopted city is uncertain.

   At some point, Herodotus became a logios—a reciter of logoi or stories,
   written in prose. (It is important to emphasize that his work was
   originally presented orally, and was designed to have an almost
   theatrical element to it). His subject matter often encompassed
   battles, other political incidents of note, and, especially, the
   marvels of foreign lands. He made tours of the Greek cities and the
   major religious and athletic festivals, where he offered performances
   and expected payment.

   In 431 BCE, the Peloponnesian War broke out between Athens and Sparta.
   It may have been that conflict that inspired him to collect his stories
   into a continuous narrative. Centering as they do on the theme of
   Persia's imperial progress, which only a united Athens and Sparta had
   managed to resist, they may be seen as a critique of, or an attack
   upon, the war-mongering that threatened to engulf the entire Greek
   world.

Contribution

   Herodotus has passed on to us a large amount of the information
   concerning part of the world that was current in his own day.

   For example, he reports that the annual flooding of the Nile was said
   to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and comments that
   he cannot understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part
   of the known world. Of course, we know that this is, in fact, not the
   actual cause; but if it were not for Herodotus' method of comparing all
   theories known to him, we might never have discovered that such
   hydrological speculation existed in ancient Greece. (He also passes on
   reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa,
   they 'saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards'. Thanks to
   this brief mention, which is almost an afterthought, modern scholars
   have been able to establish that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by
   ancient seafarers—for this is precisely where the sun ought to have
   been.)

   Written between 431 BCE and 425 BCE, The Histories were divided by
   later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses (the 'Muse of
   History', Clio, represented the first book).

   As the work progresses, it becomes apparent that Herodotus is
   fulfilling his opening desire—to 'prevent the great and wonderful
   actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of
   glory; and to put on record what causes first brought them into
   conflict.' Indeed, it is only from this perspective that his opening
   discussion of ancient wife-stealing is comprehensible: he is attempting
   to discover who first made the 'west' and the 'east' mutual
   antagonists, and myth is the only source he can delve into for
   information on the subject.

   The first six books deal broadly with the growth of the Persian Empire.
   The tale begins with an account of the first 'western' monarch to enter
   into conflict with a 'eastern' people— Croesus of Lydia attacked the
   Greek city-states of Ionia, and then (misinterpreting a cryptic
   oracle), also attacked the Persians. (As occurs many times throughout
   The Histories to those who disregard good advice, Croesus soon lost his
   kingdom, and nearly his life). Croesus was defeated by Cyrus the Great,
   founder of the Persian Empire, and Lydia became a Persian province.

   The second book forms a lengthy digression concerning the history of
   Egypt, which Cyrus' successor, Cambyses, annexed to the Empire. The
   following four books deal with the further growth of the Empire under
   Darius, the Ionian Revolt, and the burning of Sardis (an act
   participated in by Athens and at least one other Greek polis). The
   sixth book describes the very first Persian incursion into Greece, an
   attack upon those who aided the Ionians and a quest for retribution
   following the attack upon Sardis, which ended with the defeat of the
   Persians in 490 BC at the battle of Marathon, near Athens.

   The last three books describe the attempt of the Persian king Xerxes to
   avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon and to finally absorb Greece into
   the Empire. The Histories end in the year 479 BCE, with the Persian
   invaders having suffered both a crushing naval defeat at Salamis, and
   near utter-annihilation of their ground forces at Plataea. The Persian
   Empire thus receded to the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor, still
   threatening but much chastened.

   It is possible to see the dialectic theme of Persian power and its
   various excesses running like a 'red thread' throughout the narrative—
   cause and effect, hubris and fate, vengeance and violence. Even the
   strange and fantastic tales that are liberally sprinkled throughout the
   text find their source in this momentum. At every stage, a Persian
   monarch crosses a body of water or other liminal space and suffers the
   consequences: Cyrus attacks the Massagetae on the eastern bank of a
   river, and ends up decapitated; Cambyses attacks the Ethiopians to the
   south of Egypt, across the desert, and goes mad; Darius attacks the
   Scythians to the north and is flung back across the Danube; Xerxes
   lashes and then bridges the Hellespont, and his forces are crushed by
   the Greeks. Thus, though he strays (and sometimes strays rather far)
   off of this main course, he always returns to the task at
   hand—answering the question, how and why did the Greeks and Persians
   enter into the greatest conflict then known, and what were the
   consequences?

Opinions

   Herodotus' invention has earned him the twin titles The Father of
   History and The Father of Lies. As these epithets would seem to imply,
   there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's 'On the
   Laws' (Book 1, Chapter 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales, and,
   more importantly, concerning the extent to which he knew himself to be
   creating fabrications. Indeed, every manner of argument has surfaced on
   this subject, from a devious and consciously-fictionalizing Herodotus
   to a gullible Herodotus whose sources 'saw him coming a long way off'.

Scrutiny of his works

   There are many cases in which Herodotus, either uncertain of the truth
   of an event or unimpressed by the lackluster 'facts' presented to him,
   reports the several most prominent accounts of a given subject or
   process and then opines as to which he believes is the most probable.
   Though The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias,
   inaccuracy and even plagiarism, (for example, Lucian of Samosata
   attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae historiae and went so far as to
   deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed) this
   methodology has been seen in a more positive light by many modern
   historians and philosophers, especially those searching for an example
   of relatively objective historical writing. Of course, given the
   sensitivity of the issue, the very founding of the discipline of
   history, this has not become a consensus view; attacks have been made
   by several scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus
   exaggerated the extent of his travels and completely fabricated
   sources—that he made up more than one on a given topic is worse, they
   seem to say, not better.

   Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have helped to
   rehabilitate Herodotus' reputation a great deal. The archaeological
   study of the now submerged ancient Egyptian city of Heraklion and the
   recovery of the so-called ' Naucratis stela' lends substantial credence
   to Herodotus' previously unsupported claim that Heraklion was founded
   under the Egyptian New Kingdom. . Because of this recent increase in
   respect for his accuracy, as well as the quality and content of his
   observations, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in
   history, but in ethnography and anthropology as well.

   Readers of Herodotus, however, insulated from the historiographical
   considerations of academia, are content in the belief that he did the
   best he could with the material he had. They often point out that his
   achievement is astonishing, given the massive problems facing anyone
   attempting to perform historical research in the ancient world and are
   also quite charmed by the outcome.

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