Herodotus and the Histories (c. 430 BC): The First Historian

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek writer of the 5th century BC whose Histories, completed around 430-425 BC, is the earliest surviving large-scale work of history in Western literature. It tells the story of the wars between the Greeks and the Persian Empire and explores the customs of dozens of peoples from Egypt to the steppes. The Roman orator Cicero called Herodotus the “father of history”, though critics from antiquity onward also accused him of telling tall tales.

Life and travels

Herodotus was born around 484 BC in Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum on the south-west coast of Turkey. The city was Greek in culture but had a strong Carian population and was then part of the Persian Empire. Later tradition says that his family opposed the local tyrant Lygdamis, and that Herodotus spent a period of exile on the island of Samos.

Most of what we know about his travels comes from the Histories themselves. He says he went up the Nile as far as Elephantine, at the southern frontier of Egypt, and visited Tyre in Phoenicia and the Greek city of Olbia on the northern Black Sea coast. He also describes places in mainland Greece, the Aegean islands and southern Italy. Whether he actually reached Babylon, which he describes at length, is disputed.

He spent time in Athens in the age of Pericles and, according to later writers, gave public readings there. Around 444/443 BC he is said to have joined the new Athenian-led colony of Thurii in southern Italy, and later sources call him “Herodotus of Thurii”. He probably died around 425 BC, either at Thurii or possibly at Athens or Pella. The Histories mention events from the first years of the Peloponnesian War, but none after about 430 BC.

What the Histories are about

The opening sentence declares the purpose of the work: to preserve the memory of the past so that the great deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks would not lose their fame, and to explain why they went to war with one another. The Greek word he uses, historie, meant “inquiry” or “research”. Through Latin, it gave English the word “history”.

Later scholars divided the work into nine books, each named after one of the Muses. Broadly, the first half traces the rise of Persia and the second describes the great wars:

• Books 1-4: the Lydian king Croesus, the rise of Persia under Cyrus the Great, Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt (with a long description of Egypt in Book 2), and Darius I’s campaigns, including the Scythian expedition.
• Books 5-6: the Ionian Revolt of 499-493 BC and Darius’ expedition that ended at Marathon in 490 BC.
• Books 7-9: Xerxes’ invasion of 480-479 BC, including the battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea and Mycale.

The narrative ends in 479/478 BC, with the Athenian capture of Sestos on the Hellespont.

Herodotus’ method

Herodotus combined several kinds of evidence. He relied on what he saw himself (opsis), on what he heard from informants (akoe), and on his own judgment (gnome). His informants included Egyptian priests, Persian and Greek sources, and local guides at temples and battlefields.

He often reports more than one version of a story and tells readers which one he finds more convincing. He states that he is obliged to record what people say, but not obliged to believe all of it. This openness about sources and doubts is one reason modern historians regard him as a genuine inquirer rather than a mere storyteller.

His work is also full of digressions, or side stories, about geography, religion, animals and customs. These were not distractions to him: understanding how different peoples lived was part of explaining why they fought. He showed considerable respect for non-Greek cultures, especially the antiquity of Egyptian civilisation.

Herodotus also looked for patterns behind events. Again and again his stories show powerful rulers overreaching, ignoring warnings and being brought low, a pattern that reflects Greek ideas about divine jealousy and the limits of human fortune. Alongside this religious outlook he gave practical explanations too, such as revenge, ambition, geography and the strength of free citizens fighting for their own cities. Many scholars think the work was first shared through readings to audiences, which helps explain its lively, conversational style.

Famous stories

Many of the best-known tales of the ancient world come from Herodotus. They include the meeting between Croesus and the Athenian lawgiver Solon, who warned that no one should be called happy until he had died well. There is the story of Gyges and the ring of the Lydian queen, the musician Arion carried to safety by a dolphin, and the 300 Spartans under Leonidas at Thermopylae.

His accounts of Egyptian mummification, Scythian burial customs and the building of the pyramids have been read for centuries. The Scythian royal burials he describes, with horses and attendants killed and buried with the king, have been broadly confirmed by excavations of burial mounds in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia.

Father of history or father of lies?

Herodotus’ reputation has swung between admiration and suspicion. Thucydides, writing a generation later, never names him, but appears to criticise writers who aimed to please an audience rather than establish the facts. In the 4th century BC the Greek physician and historian Ctesias attacked his account of Persia, and around AD 100 Plutarch wrote a whole essay, On the Malice of Herodotus, accusing him of bias against some Greek cities.

Some of his stories are clearly wrong or legendary. His gold-digging ants “bigger than foxes” in the lands east of Persia are a famous example, although the explorer Michel Peissel suggested in the 1990s that they might reflect marmots digging up gold-bearing sand in the Himalayan region. His numbers for Xerxes’ army, which he puts at over 1.7 million fighting men, are rejected by modern historians, who usually estimate a land army of perhaps 100,000 to 300,000.

At the same time, much of his information has been confirmed by archaeology and by Persian, Egyptian and Babylonian records. Today most scholars see Herodotus as a careful collector of evidence working without archives, who was honest about what he could not verify.

Timeline

• c. 484 BC: Herodotus is born in Halicarnassus.
• 480-479 BC: Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, the climax of the Histories.
• c. 450s-440s BC: years of travel and residence in Samos, Athens and elsewhere.
• c. 444/443 BC: Herodotus is said to join the colony of Thurii in southern Italy.
• 431-430 BC: the latest events mentioned in the Histories.
• c. 425 BC: Herodotus dies, probably at Thurii.

Legacy

The Histories became a model for later Greek and Roman historians and have been read and copied ever since. The first printed edition of the Greek text appeared in Venice in 1502, from the press of Aldus Manutius.

Herodotus also shaped the image of the Persian Wars as a struggle between Greek freedom and Asian monarchy, an image that strongly influenced European thought. Modern historians use his work critically, comparing it with Persian sources such as the Behistun Inscription. In his home town of Bodrum he is remembered with a statue, and his name is honoured as that of the first writer to make the past a subject of systematic inquiry.

Why it matters

Herodotus invented history as a form of writing: a prose narrative based on research that tries to explain why events happened. Despite his errors and his love of a good story, his curiosity about other peoples and his habit of weighing evidence laid the foundations of the discipline that still bears the name of his inquiry.