Herodotus, whom the Roman statesman CICERO
would later hail as the father of history, was born at
the Greek colony of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor,
now Bodrum on Turkey’s Aegean coast. His
mother and father, Lyxes and Dryo, were prominent
in the community as well as wealthy and possibly
aristocratic. Herodotus had at least one
sibling, a brother named Theodoros.
Exposure to historical traditions was part of
Herodotus’s upbringing. The city of Halicarnassus
maintained a listing of the priests who had served
the temple of Isthmian Poseidon from the time of its
founding 15 generations earlier. Furthermore, the
EPIC poet Panyassis was a close relative, perhaps an
uncle or a first cousin, who composed verse about
the settlement of the Ionian cities in Asia Minor.
Herodotus’s family relocated to the island of
Samos to escape the tyrant Lygdamis, who put Panyassis
to death. Herodotus returned to Halicarnassus
years later to participate in Lygdamis’s
overthrow. When he was living for a time in
Athens, Herodotus became an intimate of the
tragedian SOPHOCLES. He finally made his home in
Thurii, in southern Italy, when it was being colonized
by the Greeks.
The first historian was an avid traveler, a zealous
sightseer, and an intrepid explorer. His insatiable
curiosity and hunger for knowledge led him
to Egypt, Cyrene (now Tripoli), Babylon, Scythia
in the Black Sea region, Ukraine, Thrace, North
Africa, and India.
In the early years of the Peloponnesian War between
Athens and Sparta,Herodotus published his
life’s work, History. In English, it is also sometimes
called The Histories, The Persian Wars, or History of
the Persian Wars. The work made Herodotus the
first scholar to undertake research on the events of
the past and impart them in a rational, rather than
mythical, fashion.
Herodotus died in Thurii not long after publication
of the History.
Critical Analysis
The History is contained in nine books, each
named for one of the muses. Its subject matter is
the legendary conflict between a motley band of
Greek city-states and the mighty invading Persian
Empire. Herodotus’s intentions in producing this
work, as he states in the very first lines, are to preserve
the record of the events for posterity and to
investigate why they occurred in the first place:
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus,
which he publishes, in the hope of
thereby preserving from decay the remembrance
of what men have done, and of preventing
the great and wonderful actions of the
Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their
due meed of glory; and withal to put on record
what were their grounds of feud.
(Book I)
Herodotus does not share his countrymen’s disdain
for foreigners. He did not use the word barbarian
in a pejorative way; it was simply the Greek
word for non-Greeks. His youth in a Greek city
that was not in Greece and his travels to far-off, exotic
lands had given him an outsider’s perspective
and an appreciation for other cultures that would
inform his magnum opus. He presents a balanced
treatment of the opposing sides and even reveals
an admiration for the Persians, whom he finds
valiant and heroic.
Herodotus represents the events in a vigorous
and high-spirited prose style, casting the Persian
Wars as a contest between tyranny and liberty; liberty
emerges gloriously victorious. Freedom triumphs,
he says, because the Greeks are free men
defending their self-government, while the Persian
soldiers are slaves risking their lives on behalf
of a despot. But the Greeks are not inherently superior
to the Persians; under tyranny, they behave
similarly:
And it is plain enough, not from this instance
only, but from many everywhere that freedom
is an excellent thing; since even the Athenians,
who, while they continued under the rule of
tyrants, were not a whit more valiant than any
of their neighbors, no sooner shook off the
yoke than they became decidedly first of all.
These things show that, while undergoing oppression,
they let themselves be beaten, since
then they worked for a master; but so soon as
they got their freedom, each man was eager to
do the best he could for himself.
Although the Persian War is the ostensible reason
for the tome’s existence, Herodotus makes frequent
digressions.Two-thirds of Histories is devoted
to the oddities he witnessed, was told of, and otherwise
learned about during his sojourns to far-off
lands. The people, places, things, and incidents are
recounted merely to set the stage for the central conflict.
For example,Herodotus tells of one-eyed men,
gold-digging ants, Babylonian temple treasures,
Egyptian crocodile hunters, and men with the heads
of dogs. He tallies the amount of money spent on
radishes, onions, and garlic for the slaves who built
the pyramids; describes what unattractive girls in Illyria
do to get husbands and how people travel by
boat over land when the Nile floods; reveals that
Scythian royalty are buried in tombs containing sacrificed
humans and horses, Libyan women are honored
for having multiple lovers, Danube island
dwellers become intoxicated by scents, and the king
of Persia will drink only boiled water when he travels.
More than the father of history, Herodotus was
the father of ethnography, geography, archaeology,
sociology—indeed, all the social sciences that are
concerned with people, places, and customs.
In his translation of The Persian Wars, George
Rawlinson writes:
Apart from all deficiencies of historical technique
and all merits of intrinsic interest, charm
of literary style, and more or less accidental
preservation of important historical facts, one
solid and important achievement stands out
in the work of Herodotus. He has succeeded
once and for all in expressing the conflict between
the ideal of the free man defending his
autonomy and basing his state on the rule of
law, and the despot who bases his rule on force
and whose subjects have the status of slaves.
English Versions of Works by Herodotus
Herodotus: The Wars of Greece and Persia. Translated
by W.D. Lowe.Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci
Publishers, 1999.
The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. Introduction
by John M.Marincola.New York: Penguin
Classics, 2003.
The Histories. Translated by Robin A. Waterfield.
Edited by Carolyn Dewald. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Works about Herodotus
Mikalson, Jon D. Herodotus and Religion in the Persian
Wars. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2003.
Selincourt, Aubrey de. Phoenix: The World of
Herodotus. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.
Thomas, Rosalind. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography,
Science, and the Art of Persuasion. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.