Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the Histories, a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars, among other subjects such as the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty of Cyrus. He has been described as "The Father of History", a title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero.

The Histories primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural, ethnographical, geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of the narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information.

Herodotus was criticised in his times for his inclusion of "legends and fanciful accounts" in his work. The contemporaneous historian Thucydides, who covered the Peloponnesian War in his History of the Peloponnesian War, would separately accuse Herodotus of making up stories for entertainment. Herodotus retorted that he reported what he could see and what he was told. A sizeable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists.

Life

Scholars traditionally turn to Herodotus's own writing for reliable information about his life, and it is generally accepted that he was born there around 485 BC. The Suda says his family was influential, that he was the son of Lyxes and Dryo and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis – an epic poet of the time. Halicarnassus was then within the Persian Empire, making Herodotus a Persian subject.

thumb|upright=1.2|Romanticised statue of Herodotus in his hometown of [[Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum, Turkey]]

Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect, in spite of being born in a Dorian settlement. According to the Suda, Herodotus learned the Ionian dialect as a boy living on the island of Samos, to which he had fled with his family from the oppressions of Lygdamis, tyrant of Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia. Panyassis, the epic poet related to Herodotus, is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising.

The Suda also states that Herodotus later returned home to lead the revolt that eventually overthrew the despot. Due to recent discoveries of inscriptions at Halicarnassus dated to about Herodotus's time, it is now known that Ionic Greek was used in Halicarnassus in some official documents, so there is no need to assume (like the Suda) that he must have learned the dialect elsewhere.

Later life

In 443 BC or shortly afterwards, he migrated to Thurii, in modern Calabria, as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony. Aristotle refers to a version of the Histories written by "Herodotus of Thurium", and some passages in the Histories have been interpreted as proof that he wrote about Magna Graecia from personal experience there (IV, 15,99; VI, 127). According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, a late source summarised in the Library of Photius, Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was the eromenos of Herodotus and his heir. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless. Intimate knowledge of some events in the first years of the Peloponnesian War (VI, 91; VII, 133, 233; IX, 73) suggests that he returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an outbreak of the plague. It is also possible he died in Macedonia instead, after obtaining the patronage of the court there, or else he died back in Thurii. There is nothing in the Histories that can be dated to later than 430 BC with any certainty, and it is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth year.

Author and orator

Herodotus would have made his researches known to the larger world through oral recitations to a public crowd. John Marincola writes in his introduction to the Penguin edition of the Histories that there are certain identifiable pieces in the early books of Herodotus's work which could be labeled as "performance pieces". These portions of the research seem independent and "almost detachable", so that they might have been set aside by the author for the purposes of an oral performance. The intellectual matrix of the 5th century, Marincola suggests, comprised many oral performances in which philosophers would dramatically recite such detachable pieces of their work. The idea was to criticise previous arguments on a topic and emphatically and enthusiastically insert their own in order to win over the audience.

It was conventional in Herodotus's day for authors to "publish" their works by reciting them at popular festivals. According to Lucian, Herodotus took his finished work straight from Anatolia to the Olympic Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it. Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact, one 19th-century scholar

Similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a story-teller. Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of the polis or city-state. The interplay of civilisations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilisation was a recent memory.

Though Herodotus is generally considered a reliable source of ancient history, many present-day historians believe that his accounts are at least partially inaccurate, attributing the observed inconsistencies in the Histories to exaggeration.

Another critic of Herodotus is Giambattista Vico, who, in the opening pages of his book New Science, states that although “Herodotus is called the father of Greek history, his books are for the most part filled with myths, and his style contains many Homeric elements”.

See also

Critical editions

  • C. Hude (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Tomvs prior: Libros I–IV continens. (Oxford 1908)
  • C. Hude (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Tomvs alter: Libri V–IX continens. (Oxford 1908)
  • H. B. Rosén (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Vol. I: Libros I–IV continens. (Leipzig 1987)
  • H. B. Rosén (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Vol. II: Libros V–IX continens indicibus criticis adiectis (Stuttgart 1997)
  • N. G. Wilson (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Tomvs prior: Libros I–IV continens. (Oxford 2015)
  • N. G. Wilson (ed.) Herodoti Historiae. Tomvs alter: Libri V–IX continens. (Oxford 2015)

Translations

Several English translations of Herodotus's Histories are available in multiple editions, including:

  • Henry Cary, translation 1849: text Internet Archive
  • George Rawlinson, translation 1858–1860. Public domain; many editions available, although Everyman's Library and Wordsworth Classics editions are the most common ones still in print.

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Sources

Further reading

  • Pitcher, Luke (2009). Writing Ancient History: An Introduction to Classical Historiography. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
  • Waters, K.H. (1985). Herodotus the Historian: His Problems, Methods and Originality. Beckenham: Croom Helm Ltd.

;Online texts

  • The History of Herodotus, at The Internet Classics Archive (translation by George Rawlinson).
  • Parallel Greek and English text of the History of Herodotus at the Internet Sacred Text Archive
  • Herodotus Histories on the Perseus Project
  • Herodotus Histories on the Scaife Viewer
  • Excerpts of Sélincourt's translation
  • <!-- PLEASE see Talk Page (#28) before deleting --> , A.D. Godley translation with footnotes (&nbsp;)

;Other links

  • Herodotus of Halicarnassus at Livius.org