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Herodotus

Ancient Greek Historian, "Father of History"

Those Who Set the World Down in Writing · Scholars & Explorers

The HistoriesThe Record of the Greco-Persian WarsEarly Ethnography and Geographical Description

Who they are

Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC) was an ancient Greek from Halicarnassus whose chief work the Histories systematically recounts the rise of the Persian Empire and the whole course of the Second Greco-Persian War, interweaving throughout detailed accounts of the geography, customs, history, and legend of surrounding peoples such as the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Scythians — the first truly systematic, narrative work of history in Western history, and Herodotus was thereby honored by the Roman statesman Cicero as the "father of history." His method of writing fused the multiple information sources of personal travel and observation, interviews with local inhabitants, and the relaying of existing legend; this method of history of "field observation plus oral collection," though it thereby mingled in not a few anecdotes later scholarship holds unreliable (he himself often explicitly marks "it is said" to signal doubt), opened the basic paradigm of Western historical writing of "systematic recording, inquiring into cause and effect," and together with the more rigorous and evidential History of the Peloponnesian War of his contemporary Thucydides laid the two great sources of the Western historical tradition.

Primary sourcesHerodotus, The Histories

Key stories

A Method of History by Travel and Observation

To write the Histories Herodotus traveled in person to Egypt, Babylon, the Black Sea coast, and further, interviewing local priests and inhabitants and observing famous ancient sites such as the pyramids and the walls of Babylon in the field; this method of history of "reading ten thousand books and traveling ten thousand li" was quite rare in the historical writing tradition of the time, and the vivid, detailed accounts of foreign customs from his pen are still among the most important references for the study of the historical ethnography of the peoples of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean, though the accuracy of some of the anecdotal content has since been tested and revised by archaeological evidence.

Recording the Tragedy of Thermopylae

In the Histories Herodotus recorded in detail the tragic battle in which the Spartan king Leonidas I led three hundred elite to defend Thermopylae to the death against the Persian army, and this account thereafter became the most classic historical narrative model in Western culture of the spirit of "facing overwhelming odds and death without flinching," and the main primary source by which later ages know this famous battle.

Version differences

Herodotus’s Histories mingle much anecdotal material he himself often explicitly marks "it is said," not a little of which was later falsified or revised by archaeological evidence; compared with his contemporary Thucydides, whose history is more rigorous and evidential, Herodotus’s reliability has always been a focus of discussion in classics, but the source value of his account remains irreplaceable.

Relationships

Nemesis

📜Sun Tzu　The two, about a century apart, were each among the earliest systematic recorders of history/strategy in the classical age of East and West

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "father of history"This title given to Herodotus by the Roman statesman Cicero is still used today, and though modern historical methodology is far from his way of writing, "father of history" is still the most-cited expression in introducing the origins of Western historiography.

Appears in

The Empires and Thought of the Axial AgeCyrus the Great’s Empire of Tolerance

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